There were hints, too, of darker troubles. Two long-term residents of his parents’ quiet street remember tensions between Nick and Jim Thomas, an elderly neighbour, now deceased, who took issue with the teenager’s habit of using his back garden as a short-cut to the street behind.
‘Nick used to jump over his back fence,’ one recalled. ‘It scared the living daylights out of Jim, turning the light on to find Nick standing on his back patio staring in through the kitchen window. Jim had an old shed at the end of the garden, near where Nick used to come in, and several times he said he found drug paraphernalia on the bench inside. When he complained to Gordon and Elizabeth, they were very apologetic, they always were, but nothing seemed to change. Lizzie always excused his behaviour as teenage hi-jinks but it was clearly more than that.’
What passed between Nick and Jim Thomas is still the subject of local speculation but six weeks after Thomas’s complaint to the Reillys, the shed on his allotment was found ablaze. Three weeks after that, Thomas’s dog, a Red Setter named Molly, was found drowned on the bank of a stream that runs close to the houses. Nick had played truant from school that afternoon and had earlier been seen on the street wearing jeans soaked to the thigh. Neighbours recall a tearful Thomas banging on the Reillys’ front door but though the police were called, for reasons that remain unclear no charges were pressed. Reilly’s immunity held firm.
Classmates at his senior school describe Nick Reilly as charismatic and entertaining, though they struggle to remember who his particular friends were among the other boys. Clearly, however, by the later years of school he was a major success with his female contemporaries, a fact perhaps unsurprising given his looks, reported charm, and the second-hand orange Triumph Spitfire that arrived outside the bungalow on his 17th birthday, courtesy of his mother.
If he had no particular friends among the boys, it seems also that he had no particular favourite among the girls, instead spreading his favours equally between the best-looking and most popular members of his own year and the one above. Reilly had been sexually active since the age of 13, but relationships were short-lived and casual, at least on his side. Though there is no suggestion of a causal connection, he is believed to have had a brief relationship with Emma Simpson, a lovely but emotionally fragile girl who committed suicide not long after they parted company.
Despite his poor school attendance record, Nick’s natural academic ability was enough to secure him the grades for a place at university in Leeds, where he studied economics, ‘at least nominally’, says Rachel Jenkins, a fellow student on the course. He soon became a fixture on the city’s vibrant party scene, where his use of alcohol and drugs – constants in his life for several years by that point – really took off. He graduated with a third-class degree, which many considered him lucky to get at all. Reilly was reportedly angered by the result, however, and demanded his papers be remarked. His grade remained the same.
As soon as exams were finished, he vacated his student digs in Headingley and moved south again to London. Most of his university contemporaries reduced the high costs of London living by renting houses together but Nick took a one-bedroomed flat in Borough where he lived for the next three years.
How he paid for the flat is not clear. He is known to have received financial support from his mother but not enough, it would seem, to cover life in central London. His employment record during these years was patchy at very best and included brief stints as an assistant in a high-profile PR firm, an estate agency and a record company.
He had no difficulty getting jobs – his charm made him a natural at interviews – but keeping them was another matter. The issue was his work ethic. A fellow employee at the estate agency recalled: ‘He was late every day, took long lunches and called in sick three times in his first fortnight. He just didn’t seem to care.’
Then, at the age of 26, Reilly started working with his brother, Mark, and seemed at last to have found something that held his interest for more than a couple of weeks.
In marked contrast to Nick, Mark Reilly had, by the age of 27, achieved tremendous success. After taking a first-class engineering degree at Cambridge, he had come to London and begun raising the capital that allowed him to start DataPro, a company that designs custom-made software for banks and brokerage firms in the City and, these days, around the world. Within three years, the company was generating an annual turnover close to £5 million.
Nick Reilly was employed as a project manager at DataPro and his job was to win new business for the firm and ensure good working relationships with clients. He seemed initially successful in the role.
He received a handsome six-figure salary, which funded the lifestyle that has already been widely reported in the press: the flat just off the King’s Road in Chelsea, a new Porsche, frequent visits to top London restaurants and nightclubs, and skiing in Val d’Isère where parties at his rented chalet, fuelled by cocaine and unending streams of vodka and champagne, often lasted until noon the following day. Women – party girls, a model, two junior employees from the same fashion magazine – came and went, none of them lasting long enough to make an impression.
Nick Reilly had found his element.
In court this week Jonathan Hepperton QC, prosecuting, said: ‘In Nicholas Reilly we see a man who is arrogant almost beyond belief, entirely careless of others, ultimately amoral. He is the embodiment of a sense of entitlement, a man who views life as a series of opportunities for him to take what he wants, putting his own pleasure above all other considerations, no matter what the cost to those around him.’
Those people include his brother Mark who in January this year took a rare weekend away from work and accepted Nick’s invitation to join him in Val d’Isère. It was in the queue for a ski lift that Mark met Patty Hendrick, also there for a long weekend. The pair shared a lift and clearly enjoyed each other’s company enough for Mark to suggest they meet for a drink that evening. Back in London, they began meeting regularly.
The relationship was not serious but there was a clear attraction between the handsome, successful Reilly and the pretty, vivacious Patty. ‘They had fun together,’ said Jamie Hancock, a friend of Mark’s. ‘Mark had been working very hard for years at DataPro and before that at Cambridge, and Patty offered him a chance to blow off steam. She might not have been his intellectual equal or his soulmate, but neither of them was looking for that. It was about fun.’
The events of the night of 7 March and the following 48 hours reflect well on none of the key players. The revelation that Mark Reilly had sex with Patty in the lavatories of the club before she left with Nick has challenged the public perception of the senior Reilly as a decent man who fell victim to his brother’s remorseless sexual appetite and instead helped paint a portrait of a group of people for whom anything went.
It was an environment that suited Nicholas Reilly perfectly, a meeting point for gross consumption, his imagined entitlement to pleasure and his belief that he was immune from the consequences of his actions, literally above the law. This week the jury at the Old Bailey has surely ended that belief once and for all.
Reilly now awaits sentencing but the case continues to raise troubling questions about the world in which he lived. What kind of society have we created, people have asked this week, when young women like Patty Hendrick will willingly sleep with a pair of brothers and indulge in protracted binges of drug-taking and extreme sexual activity? When a man like Nick Reilly will let a woman die rather than stop the party? What does this case tell us about our over-privileged younger generation?
The death of Patty Hendrick is beyond doubt a tragedy for her friends and family, and a crime that is hard to fathom. For many, however, it speaks of a generation without a moral compass, one that worships at the altar of the false god of consumption – of fast cars and foreign holidays, drink and drugs, and, ultimately, of each other.
Chapter Fifteen
Hannah woke to an insistent buzzing, a sound like an angry bee trapped
under a glass. After several seconds’ confusion she connected the noise to her BlackBerry on the bedside table, sat up and reached for it. The number on the screen was a central London one, but the phone didn’t recognise it and neither did she. Curiosity got the better of her, however, and she hit the green button and croaked hello.
‘Good morning. Am I speaking to Hannah Reilly?’ It was an older woman’s voice, with a clipped accent that evoked girls’ boarding schools and crisp tennis whites.
Hannah confirmed that she was.
‘Hello, my name’s Jessica Landon,’ the voice said more warmly. ‘I’m calling from Roger Penrose’s office.’
Roger Penrose – in her newly conscious state Hannah made a reduced-speed search of her mental archives. Penrose. The woman clearly expected her to know whom she was talking about. At last she found the index card: Roger Penrose, from Penrose Price.
Jessica Landon was talking again. ‘Roger very much enjoyed meeting you on the second and asked me to apologise for the length of time it’s taken us to get back to you. I’m afraid his wife hasn’t been very well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Thank you. She’s feeling much better now.’ A second’s respectful pause. ‘Anyway, as you know, we’re a family company and pride ourselves on being tight-knit. Roger likes to meet the final candidates for senior roles in a social context, along with their partners. He wonders whether you and your husband are available for dinner next week?’
‘Dinner?’
‘It would be you and your husband, and Roger and his wife, Diane. How about next Tuesday, a week today? Would that suit? At eight o’clock?’
‘Er, yes,’ Hannah said. ‘I think that’ll be fine.’
‘Lovely. I have your email address here so I’ll make a reservation and be in touch again later on today with the details.’
Dinner. Hannah pictured Mark and herself sitting smiling over a stiff white tablecloth and single, interview-appropriate glasses of wine, making smalltalk and pretending everything was fine, that they were an ordinary happy couple, no stolen savings or hidden killer brothers to muddy the crystalline marital waters. The idea – the fakery it would demand – was grotesque. And yet she’d have to do it. The final candidates for senior roles: here was a chance. If she could just get this job, a salary, she’d have options again. Choices.
She threw back the blankets, swung her feet to the carpet and went to the window. The air was cold on her bare legs; the heating was kept low in here, turned up only on the rare occasion when someone came to stay. Outside in Quarrendon Street, at least, it was a normal day, the houses across the road offering their usual inscrutable façades, the lush magazine lifestyles that went on behind them hinted at by a small Venetian chandelier visible above white slatted half-shutters, an orchid in a beautiful glazed pot in the narrow first-floor window of an en suite bathroom.
The tiny woman from the house opposite was just clambering down from the driver’s seat of her enormous navy blue Range Rover, looking child-like as she hopped out on to the pavement. She was in yoga clothes, the hair on the back of her neck dark with sweat. Hannah glanced back at the clock on the bedside table. 9.17 – shit. How had it got so late? Well, she’d seen four o’clock and five, quarter past. She must have fallen asleep just after that. How much time did she have? Surely not much. If his flight had run to schedule, Mark would be home any minute: the last night flights left New York around eleven, which meant they landed at Heathrow around eleven a.m. If he’d caught an earlier one, he could even be back already, waiting downstairs. What would he think if he’d come looking and found her sleeping in here?
She walked to the door, placing her feet gingerly in case he was in the sitting room below. The brass handle made a treacherous squeak and she froze but when she listened for sounds of movement downstairs, half-expecting his voice to call up to her – ‘Han? There you are. What were you doing in the spare room, you nutcase?’ – there was only the usual oppressive silence. The quilt on their bed next door was undisturbed and the bathroom was empty. On the top floor, his study door was ajar at the same angle it had been last night.
Downstairs, the dirty glass and the bottle of Armagnac, now half-empty, were still on the table. She put them away and filled the kettle. As she reached to turn off the tap, there was a sudden movement on the other side of the glass and a huge crow took off from the top of the fence, its wings black and ratty-looking against the flat grey of the sky.
What was she going to say to him? That was the question – or one of them – that had kept her brain churning through the early hours. How did you broach something like this? ‘Hi, darling – good flight? Oh, while you were away, I checked my bank account, and what do you know? Someone’s transferred all my money over to you. And why didn’t you mention your brother was getting out of prison? Manslaughter, was it? Not to worry.’
The water boiled and she put a new filter in the Krups machine and heaped in coffee grounds. She needed to be alert this morning, to think clearly. As she’d lain awake, she’d thought about what Mark had told her about his brother. Most of it could be interpreted as the broader truth, Nick’s character, his general behaviour, but even within the framework of his cover story, Mark had lied. He’d told her that Nick had missed being with their mother when she died because he was in bed with some woman when, actually, he must have been in prison. Why tell her that? Why bother coming up with such a detailed little sub-story – a married woman, Brighton?
She poured a cup of coffee and took a scalding sip. Perhaps she was over-thinking it. She’d put Mark on the spot that night in her apartment and he’d had to extemporise a complete cover story in the time he’d been out walking the freezing streets. He’d added a few details for verisimilitude; it was hardly surprising.
On the other hand, however, there was Hermione. She’d admitted that she’d spoken to him lately but, according to Neesha, there had been several calls. There is someone who calls. A few weeks – a month. He always closes his door. Why had they kept talking? What was there to say over a period of weeks? And if she and Mark were such good friends that Hermione was the person he’d turn to about this, why hadn’t she, Hannah, even heard of her before?
At her laptop she brought up the site for the Royal London. She clicked through, found the number and entered it into her phone. It rang three times and then a woman’s voice came on the line. ‘Renal.’
‘Hello. Could I speak to Doctor Alleyn, please?’ Hannah remembered the form of address used by the nurse behind the desk. Yes, that was right, wasn’t it? Surgeons weren’t called Doctor; they became Misters and Mizzes again once they reached consultant level. ‘Ms Alleyn,’ she corrected herself.
‘She’s in theatre this morning, I’m afraid. Can I take a message?’
Hannah paused. If she left her number, would Hermione call back? No, that wouldn’t be a good idea, anyway: she needed to control when they spoke. What if Hermione rang when Mark was around? How could she explain it or slope off to take the call without arousing suspicion?
‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I’ll ring back. Do you know what time she’ll be finished?’
‘Sorry, I really can’t say.’
‘No problem. I’ll try again later. Thanks.’
She hung up and put the phone back on the table. As she did, she became aware of a change in the room, a shift in the light, or perhaps she glimpsed an image in the glass of the French windows. She spun around.
‘Hannah?’ He laughed. ‘Oh, sorry – did I startle you, darling?’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Who was on the phone?’ Mark stepped further into the room.
‘What?’
‘The phone just then – who were you talking to?’
‘Oh, no one.’ She shook her head quickly. ‘I couldn’t get through. It was just a job thing – someone I said I’d call back.’ She saw him glance at her outfit: the T-shirt she’d slept in, a pair of old round-the-house jeans. Her bare feet were s
lowly turning blue on the slate floor. He knew her pretend-you’re-still-in-the-real-world, job-search rules – up and dressed by eight, act like a professional until you are one again – and making calls like this broke all of them. Mark was in jeans, too, but he was fit for the outside world, the collar of a soft long-sleeved T-shirt visible beneath a black cashmere sweater, his usual flying outfit. He still had his coat on, and just beyond the door she could see his leather weekend bag on the floor in the hallway. How long had he been standing there?
‘Something interesting?’ he said.
She looked at him.
‘The job thing.’
‘Oh, right. Well, I don’t know yet. Possibly – maybe.’
He gave a sort of half-nod, apparently accepting what she was telling him, and moved towards her with a big smile, putting his arms out. ‘Come here, you. Six days has been far too long.’
He was within touching distance, inches away. With a jolt of panic, she took a step backwards, colliding noisily with a chair, banging her hip. She took advantage of the confusion to slap down the lid of her laptop, hiding the Royal London’s website.
When she looked up again, Mark’s smile had gone. For a moment neither of them said anything and the kitchen rang with the clatter of furniture. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home for the weekend,’ he said. ‘This buy-out – there’s just so much riding on it, our whole financial future, and I have to do everything I can to maximise it. I know I should have called more but I was so caught up in doing projections, and without my mobile . . .’
Hannah’s whole body was shaking suddenly, the vibrations running down her arms into her hands, which felt as if they were fluttering, like leaves in a breeze. It wasn’t nerves but anger, physical fury. She clenched her fists, fighting the urge to launch herself at him and thump him, beat on his chest like a drum.
‘Why did you lie to me?’ Her voice was shaking, too.
Before We Met: A Novel Page 17