The Last Girl

by Casey, Jane

  I cut in before Derwent could say anything else undiplomatic. ‘What we’d really like to do is talk to Lydia first, then Seth Carberry.’

  ‘I’ve got her waiting for you.’

  ‘You didn’t arrest her, did you?’ Derwent asked.

  Saunders looked genuinely surprised. ‘Why would I? DC Kerrigan mentioned that you’d like to talk to her so I invited her to come and wait for you. She seems like a nice enough kid.’

  ‘Is she on her own?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s got her half-sister waiting with her, I believe.’

  I looked at Derwent. ‘Will Savannah do for an appropriate adult? Because I don’t fancy your chances of getting Renee to turn out tonight, and you didn’t want to involve her father if you could help it.’

  ‘We’ll make it work. She’s just giving us a bit of insight, isn’t she? We’re not treating her as a suspect. At the moment.’

  ‘What could you suspect her of? If you don’t mind me asking.’ Saunders’ broad face looked baffled. ‘Doesn’t seem the sort to say boo to the proverbial.’

  ‘We’re not sure. Maybe nothing.’ Derwent narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice, trying to impress the detective. ‘Maybe murder.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Saunders shrugged. ‘Takes all sorts, doesn’t it?’

  It wasn’t the response Derwent had been hoping for, but he went with it, striding down the corridor. ‘Let’s have a look at her, anyway.’

  ‘It’s this way, actually,’ Saunders called after him, pointing in the other direction. ‘But if you want to take the long way round, don’t let me stop you. That might be how you do it in the Met. I wouldn’t know.’

  It was the second time I’d seen Savannah in a police station and for the second time I was struck by how she managed to transcend the dingy surroundings. Slender in khaki shorts and a white top, with her hair scraped back in a ponytail, she was leaning against the wall when we went in. Lydia was sitting at the table, her head buried in her arms, and Savannah raised one finger to her lips.

  ‘She’s asleep.’

  ‘Too bad. We’ll have to wake her.’

  ‘Give her a minute. She’s exhausted.’ Savannah stood up straight and stuck her hands in her pockets, tilting one foot so she was balanced on the edge of it. She looked coltish and very young, and I was quite prepared for Derwent to go along with whatever she asked. To my surprise, he dragged a chair out from the table, the legs shrieking on the tiled floor. I glared at him but it was too late; Lydia had lifted her head and was staring at us blearily.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Okay.’ She whispered it. Her face was pale, her eyes red, and I wondered if she had been crying or if it was just how she looked when she’d woken abruptly.

  ‘Let her wake up.’ Savannah spoke sharply. ‘Don’t interrogate her until she’s ready to talk.’

  ‘No one is interrogating anyone. We just want to find out a bit more about what happened tonight.’ I said it as much for Derwent’s benefit as for Lydia’s. He needed to keep in mind that we had no evidence against Lydia – nothing that would be a reason to arrest her. Without evidence we were relying on her cooperation, and while I couldn’t imagine Lydia flouncing out of the police station in a huff, I could certainly visualise Savannah doing just that.

  ‘Then you should speak to him. That freak. Creeping around, terrifying us.’

  ‘I gather Zoe dealt with him pretty effectively.’

  Savannah’s face lit up. ‘She frightened the life out of him. I don’t think he even tried to fight her. By the time he knew he’d been spotted he was face down with his hands tied behind his back.’

  ‘So she wasn’t injured?’

  ‘Not at all. But we agreed it was better for me to come to the station with Lydia so she had someone from the family with her. Moral support.’ She looked past us. ‘Is Dad coming?’

  ‘We haven’t informed him of the events of this evening yet. We wanted to know what happened ourselves before involving him.’ I looked at Lydia. ‘Did you want him here?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘She’d have liked him to show he cared, I think.’ Savannah’s mouth was incapable of looking thin-lipped but it came close at that moment.

  ‘I’ll get in touch with him when we’re finished here. Probably tomorrow, at this rate. It’s getting pretty late, after all.’ I smiled at Lydia, who was looking a little less wan. ‘Do you need anything, Lydia? A drink, or something to eat?’

  ‘No. I’d just like to get back and get some rest.’

  ‘We’ll try not to keep you for long.’ Derwent leaned across the table, crowding her a little bit. ‘But you need to do some talking, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How did he know where you were? Not just this time. When you were in London too.’ Derwent tapped the table with one finger, more or less under the girl’s nose. She leaned back to get away from him. ‘You had to have been in touch with him, Lydia. You told him where to find you.’

  Her face crumpled and for a couple of minutes there was no sound in the room except for sobbing. After a while Savannah moved over and stood beside her, patting her shoulder in a slightly awkward way. It might have helped; certainly Lydia got herself under control and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve.

  ‘All right. You’re right.’ She was barely audible.

  ‘You were in touch with this Seth Carberry all along.’

  ‘He got in touch with me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Laura’s phone.’

  ‘You had it,’ I said softly. She nodded. ‘Where is it now?’

  I hadn’t noticed it but Lydia had a bag on her lap, a small satchel. She opened it and took out an iPhone, then slid it across the table to me.

  ‘The password is one two three five.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I turned it off without looking at it.

  ‘Don’t you want to see what’s on there?’ Savannah asked.

  ‘I do, but it has to go for technical examination.’ I shrugged. ‘They don’t like us fiddling with the evidence. I’m not an expert. I might lose something important.’

  ‘Or add something. You couldn’t trust her.’ Derwent grinned at me. ‘Only joking.’

  ‘What did Seth want with you? And what did you want with him?’ I asked Lydia, ignoring Derwent.

  She looked revolted. ‘I didn’t want him.’

  ‘You told him where to find you.’

  ‘Because you wanted to know who he was. You asked me if I could help you, and I did. I thought I was doing the right thing.’

  ‘You should have given us the phone and let us track him down. You could have put yourself in danger.’

  ‘I thought I could get him to talk to me. That’s what he wanted. To talk about Laura.’

  ‘And pick up with you where he left off with her?’ Derwent asked.

  Lydia blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘Were they still in a relationship when she died?’ I asked.

  ‘She’d broken up with him, he said. She told him she was too busy to see him. She had other things to do with her time. She couldn’t be bothered to sneak around any more.’

  I frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound as if she was campaigning to introduce him to your parents, does it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Were you in touch with him before Laura died? Did you know him then?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I’d never met him. I spoke to him twice this week, on the phone. That was it.’ She sounded definite, her eyes guileless. So much for my theory about them being in cahoots.

  ‘Did he tell you anything else about Laura, or their relationship?’

  ‘No. He just wanted to see me to talk about her.’ Her face puckered again. ‘He said he missed her. And I miss her too.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Savannah put her arms around her sister’s neck. ‘Can we stop this now?’

  ‘Fine.’ Derwent glowered at Lydia. ‘But you nee
d to start being honest with us, young lady. Is there anything else you’ve been holding back?’

  Instead of answering, Lydia looked up at Savannah. She seemed to be about to say something, but settled for shaking her head.

  ‘Right, then.’ He leaned across and chucked her under the chin. ‘You’ll do, missy. But don’t try to do our jobs for us, will you. That’s what we’re paid to do. Now head off home and don’t get in any more trouble.’

  She nodded, gazing up at him as if the sun shone out of him. It was nice that someone shared Derwent’s high opinion of himself, even if I couldn’t imagine why. He made a most unlikely father figure. Then again, Philip Kennford was not what I would describe as ideal either. In comparison with him, even Derwent might look good.

  They had taken Seth Carberry down to a cell in the basement of the police station to wait – not the most pleasant place to be, so he was as cooperative as he was going to get when he appeared in the interview room. On the other hand, that didn’t mean that he was prepared to be cooperative at all. I hadn’t been clear on what to expect from Laura’s secret boyfriend but it wasn’t what I got. Carberry was small and wiry, and his skin was pure white as if he never saw daylight. He had unruly black hair, heavy eyebrows and an awkward nose that he was still growing into, but there was something hypnotic about his eyes, which were very dark indeed – so much so that I strained to see his pupils. I had seen him before at his family home and failed to notice much about him, but looking at him now without the beanie hat I was sure I had seen him on another occasion and I couldn’t quite recollect when. It bothered me, twisting at the back of my mind like a forgotten name. I tried not to think about it and naturally I couldn’t then think about anything else. It wasn’t from the pictures in Laura’s camera, because he hadn’t been the star by any means. He had been a triangle of torso, a flat stomach with a meagre trail of hair down the centre, a strip of thigh in the corner of an image. I had imagined him to be older, not least because Laura had been a pretty girl, and outgoing, and I had expected her to find someone worthy of her. Seth Carberry didn’t even come close to it. That didn’t seem to have occurred to him. He had as much natural arrogance as a gamecock, and gave me and Derwent the same unimpressed look down his bony nose. He was wearing a grey T-shirt that had obvious sweat marks under the arms and jeans that were at least one size too big for him, with very dirty sports socks. I was inclined to forgive the grubbiness; police stations weren’t the most antiseptic places. On the other hand it was the second time I’d seen him looking scruffy. Teenage chic, I presumed, and was glad the men I met generally knew their way around a washing machine and shower.

  ‘What’s this about? Why do you want to talk to me? I thought I was in trouble with the locals, not the Met.’

  ‘Sit down.’ Derwent pointed at the chair opposite us and then fiddled with the recording equipment. ‘You know what it’s about, don’t you? It’s about you turning up at Miss Savannah Wentworth’s house and snooping about, and whether that’s connected with the case we’re investigating. The murder of Vita and Laura Kennford.’ He ran through the official preamble for the benefit of the tape, including the fact that the boy had waived his right to have a solicitor present. It didn’t make either of us think he was innocent or anything other than naive, but it made life easier. ‘Mr Carberry, you were arrested for attempted burglary of Miss Savannah Wentworth’s premises at Godetts Farm, Sussex, on Thursday the nineteenth of August at eight p.m. What were you up to?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t even know it was her house.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I wanted to see Lydia. To find out what happened to Laura, not just what was in the papers and on TV. She’d said she’d see me, but when I got there she wasn’t around.’

  ‘And Zoe jumped on you.’

  ‘Is that her name? We weren’t introduced. I didn’t get the chance to explain I was there by invitation.’ He frowned. ‘I wasn’t really snooping, either. It was still daylight. If I’d wanted to hide, I’d have come at night.’

  ‘Is that what you usually do?’ I asked.

  He shifted in his seat. ‘I don’t do that kind of thing usually.’

  ‘But you did go to Laura’s aunt’s house in Twickenham, to try to see Lydia. And you ran away when you were challenged.’

  ‘Yes.’ He admitted it reluctantly, but he did admit it. I flicked a glance at Derwent who narrowed his eyes very slightly in return. Not Christopher Blacker in the garden, then. And yet I still didn’t feel easy in my mind about him.

  ‘You didn’t intend to harm her on that occasion either,’ Derwent said.

  ‘I just wanted to talk to her, as I said. And I thought she wanted to see me. She gave me that impression.’

  ‘Did you get in touch with her or did she contact you?’

  ‘She contacted me. Freaked me right out when I got a message from Laura’s phone, but I realised what was going on pretty quickly.’

  ‘Had you met Lydia before?’

  ‘Fuck, no. She’s a massive weirdo, isn’t she? Doesn’t go out much. Doesn’t have friends. My sister had told me about her so I wasn’t all that keen. Then Laura didn’t even want me to meet her, so it didn’t matter.’

  ‘Laura wanted to keep you a secret. Why was that?’ I asked.

  ‘She had her reasons, I assume. And I didn’t mind. I wasn’t exactly keen for everyone to know about us when she was so much younger than me. It wasn’t going to do a lot for my reputation, put it that way.’

  ‘But now that Laura’s dead, you do want to talk to Lydia.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m curious about what happened. I want to know how she died.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not that weird, is it?’

  ‘You went to the Kennfords’ house in Wimbledon the night Laura died.’ It had taken me a little while but I’d placed him at last. The boy in the baseball cap.

  ‘How did you know that?’ He looked at me as if I was clairvoyant. Beside me, Derwent was doing the same.

  ‘You were in the crowd by the gate when we arrived. You were watching the police coming and going.’

  ‘There’s nothing suspicious about it.’

  ‘We’ll decide that, son,’ Derwent said. ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I’d gone to the house to see her – to speak to her, not because I thought something had happened to her. We were supposed to meet last Sunday night. It had been arranged for ages, and then she cancelled.’

  ‘Did that annoy you?’

  ‘Yeah, it did.’ The dark eyes met mine. ‘It was my birthday, actually. I’d gone to a fair bit of trouble to make it a nice evening for us – I’d borrowed a mate’s house so we wouldn’t be disturbed, and I’d bought champagne for a kind of picnic dinner. I was pissed off when she cancelled.’

  ‘Pissed off enough to take it out on her?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ He fidgeted, rubbing his hands over his knees as if he was trying to wipe something away on the denim. ‘Enough to kill her? Obviously not.’

  ‘Did you argue with her?’ I asked.

  ‘We had a fight.’

  ‘What sort of a fight?’

  ‘The kind where you break up at the end of it.’ He gave me a pitying look, the arrogance undented.

  ‘Did it get physical?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘I don’t think I understand the question.’

  Derwent stood up, surprising even me, and leaned across the table. ‘Understand this. I am asking you if you hit Laura when you argued with her, or at another time. I am asking if you laid hands on her in a violent way.’

  Seth looked wary. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘There was bruising to her face. It was identified at the post-mortem. It happened a day or so before her death, so the timing fits. Was it you?’

  ‘I don’t want to get in trouble.’

  ‘You’re already in trouble,’ I pointed out. ‘Start talking.’

  He shrugged. ‘I gave her a little tap.’

/>   ‘A little tap,’ Derwent repeated, sitting down very slowly. I could tell he wanted to lunge across the table at the boy. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Nothing to tell. I slapped her.’ He mimed an open-handed blow. ‘Pow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she rubbed me up the wrong way. She told me she wanted to finish with me. She wanted more, apparently, than I could offer.’ He laughed. ‘She thought a lot of herself, did Laura.’

  ‘You hit her because she broke up with you.’ I didn’t even try to keep the disgust off my face. ‘Looks like she made the right decision.’

  ‘She’d have come back.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

  ‘Because she would have. It wasn’t over.’

  ‘Sounds like it was pretty much over to me. How long had you been in a relationship?’

  ‘Seven weeks.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Derwent ran his hands over the sides of his face as if he was testing out how his shave had lasted. ‘Bloody hell, I thought it was some kind of great love affair.’

  ‘Seven weeks is a long time when you’re a teenager,’ I said to Derwent. Seth bridled.

  ‘I’m nearly twenty.’

  ‘And there’s a point,’ Derwent said softly. ‘What were you doing with a fifteen-year-old?’

  ‘She’s a friend of my sister’s. You know that. She came to our house once to work on a project and we got talking.’

  ‘Then you made your move. On a girl your sister’s age.’ Derwent’s tone was pure disgust, but I was pretty sure he was faking that. He’d have done the same in a heartbeat and called it shooting fish in a barrel.

  ‘She was the one making all the running, believe me. I wouldn’t have tried it on with her if she hadn’t been flirting with me. I thought she was pretty but she was young and inexperienced. She didn’t really know what she was doing at first, which was sweet.’ He gave me a smile that made my stomach clench in disgust. ‘That kind of innocence – you just want to teach them what to do. And you can. They’ll do anything you say.’