The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘That’s sort of the point of my job,’ I said gently. ‘No matter who they are or what they’ve done, they never deserve it.’

  ‘Never?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘OK. I’ll be five minutes.’ She disappeared, then popped her head back in. ‘Make that ten. There were a lot of guys.’

  I took a good lungful of frigid, petrol-scented air when I made my escape from Ventnor Chase. Rank though it was, it tasted like freedom. I was waiting for a lift, but as far as I was concerned it was a million times better to wait outside than in the soulless reception where a flat-screen TV tuned to Sky News hung behind the receptionist’s desk, providing me with an unsolicited update every fifteen minutes on the lack of progress in the hunt for London’s current serial killer. I had become extremely tired of the offices while I’d been waiting for Jess to come back. The quiet tastefulness of beige carpet and mushroom-coloured chairs grated on me. It was too perfect, too manicured. Too good to be true, just like Rebecca. The more I found out about her – about the secrets she’d been keeping, and the life she’d been busily dismantling – the more I felt that Rebecca had been a disaster waiting to happen.

  While I leaned against some railings, I went through my notes and found Louise North’s business card. I dialled the number for her direct line and got voicemail, then tried the mobile number on the back. It was neatly written in black ink, definite and precise like the woman herself. She answered on the second ring. She sounded completely unsurprised; it was as if she had been expecting me to call.

  ‘What have you found out?’

  In spite of myself, I bristled; I had not rung to report on what I had achieved (or failed to achieve, I had to admit) in the days since I’d last spoken to her. I did not, I assured myself, have to justify myself to Louise North. So it was doubly annoying to hear the apology in my voice when I spoke.

  ‘We’re still following up some leads, Louise. Making some progress. But nothing substantive yet.’

  ‘That’s disappointing. How can I help?’

  ‘Did you know that your friend had a drugs habit?’

  Silence at the other end of the line. I waited, counting off the seconds in my head. Three … four … five … There are comparatively few people who can stand to allow a silence to develop for longer than a couple of seconds on the phone, but it was a full seven seconds before she spoke again.

  ‘I had some idea, yes. Is that relevant to how she died?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said, not really knowing myself. ‘Er – how did you form that idea, may I ask?’

  ‘Various things.’

  More silence. I pulled a face; she was the wrong kind of person to talk to on the phone. I should have gone to see her. She had less room to manoeuvre when she was sitting in front of me. ‘Do you mind telling me what those things were?’

  ‘She had become erratic. She was always a bit unreliable, but she was getting to be completely impossible. She made arrangements to see me and then didn’t turn up. She was hard to get hold of. I mean, that’s why I went around on Friday. To see her. Because it had become so difficult.’

  ‘When you were tidying,’ I said, knowing what the answer would be, ‘did you find anything that might have proved it? Drugs? Or drugs paraphernalia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Both,’ Louise said tightly. ‘In the bathroom, by the sink. White powder, which I assumed was cocaine. I flushed it down the loo. And there was a mirror with a razor blade on it. I got rid of that too. I had it in my handbag when I left the flat.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to mention anything about this when I asked.’

  ‘It wasn’t relevant.’

  ‘Isn’t that for us to decide?’ I could feel a headache starting, a throb behind my left eye, and I pressed the heel of my hand against it.

  ‘I suppose so.’ There was another pause. Then, ‘I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I was trying to protect Rebecca, and her parents. I had been hoping to talk to her about it – get her to get help. But I never got the chance.’

  ‘Once you knew she was dead, you might have thought better of hiding it. I gave you every opportunity to come clean when we were looking around the flat the other day.’

  ‘I was in shock.’

  ‘Clearly. It just makes me wonder what else you found that you didn’t think of sharing with the police.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything else.’

  ‘I’d like to be able to believe that,’ I said, sounding as cross as I felt. ‘But I can’t exactly take what you say at face value any more.’

  ‘I’ve apologised, DC Kerrigan. What more do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what happened to Rebecca’s diary. Did you think that was worth spiriting away too?’

  ‘What diary?’ She sounded wary.

  ‘The one that she always carried, according to her assistant. A pink one. We didn’t find it in the flat.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘The diary would tell us what she was doing right up to her death, wouldn’t it? She wrote down everything in it, I believe. Maybe things that you think we shouldn’t know.’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’

  I wouldn’t have described Louise North as flustered, but there was definitely tension in her voice. I wondered if she ground her teeth in her sleep. All of that stress had to come out somehow.

  ‘Right. Well, I would appreciate it if you would share information with me instead of trying to hide Rebecca’s secrets out of misguided loyalty.’

  ‘Point taken.’ The veneer of calm had cracked; she sounded properly pissed off and I suppressed a grin. A beat, and then she spoke again, this time with a more measured tone. ‘If I think of anything, you’ll be the first to hear about it.’

  I thanked her cordially enough and rang off, then swore. I’d meant to ask her if she’d been the one who helped clear out Rebecca’s office, just so I knew. It didn’t matter enough to call her back, but I made a note to ask her about it the next time I spoke to her.

  A silver Ford Focus had pulled in next to me, and the driver was revving the engine in a very irritating manner. I bent down to look in through the passenger window, which was open.

  ‘Looking for business, love?’ said the man in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t do Mancunians.’

  Rob snorted. ‘That’s about all you don’t do, if half of what I’ve heard is true.’

  ‘Probably only a quarter of it is worth believing,’ I said primly as I folded myself into the car. ‘And even then some of that is wishful thinking.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s fun to think about, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s more fun to do it, to be honest, but you’ll have to settle for thinking, my friend.’ After five years in the job, I had enough material for twenty sexual harassment cases if I had wanted to take them, but the constant innuendo never really bothered me. For one thing, I had never actually slept with anyone in the Met, so any speculation was just that. For another, it made me laugh. And when laughs were otherwise thin on the ground – like now – any excuse would do.

  But there was one thing I wasn’t laughing about. I turned to glare at Rob. ‘Gobshite? Was that the best you could do?’

  He looked wounded. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The mugs, Rob. Don’t play the innocent with me. You wrote “gobshite” in mugs in my kitchen.’

  ‘It’s Ian’s kitchen really, isn’t it? I hope he didn’t think I meant that he’s a gobshite.’

  ‘What else was he supposed to think?’

  Rob shrugged. ‘That I wanted to write the longest swearword I could think of that didn’t use any letters twice. It was either that or knobhead.’

  ‘You twat …’

  ‘Four letters and too many Ts. Try again.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’ I bit my lip, trying to keep a straight face and failing. ‘For God’s sake, Rob
, he was pissed off already.’

  ‘I’m sure you made him feel better.’ Abruptly, he changed the subject. ‘How did you get on at Rebecca’s office?’

  I filled him in on what I’d learned at Ventnor Chase and he looked thoughtful. ‘Not the most stable person, was she? Drugs, an eating disorder, unemployed at the time of her death … It was all going a bit wrong.’

  ‘You can say that again. Perfect on the outside, rotten on the inside. Troubled was not the word.’

  ‘So, DC Clever Clogs, do you want to hear the results of the house to house?’

  ‘More than anything.’ I felt excitement squeeze my stomach.

  ‘No one saw anything.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Very much so. Lots of them recognised her, lots of them remembered seeing different men there with her from time to time, but none of them remembered what happened on Thursday night, if anything did. Do you know what bothered me the most?’

  ‘Obviously not,’ I said patiently. ‘But I suspect you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘None of them cared. When we told them she was dead, none of them actually cared. One of them asked what the square footage of her flat was. Fucking animals. I hate London.’

  ‘So why live here?’

  He shrugged. ‘If you want exciting crimes, go where the exciting criminals are, and that means London. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good place to live.’

  ‘Or die,’ I said soberly.

  ‘So have you worked out who killed Rebecca yet, if not the Burning Man?’

  ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘Already?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Not her boyfriend.’

  I looked at him, deflated. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It’s always the boyfriend. Too obvious.’

  ‘Murderers are obvious,’ I insisted. ‘It all fits. Can you think of a better way of getting rid of someone than to make it look as if a serial killer has targeted them? Get the police looking the wrong way, sit back and act as if you’re in mourning. Wait for the dust to settle and go on with your life. It’s perfect. Rebecca’s assistant said that Gil was the love of her life. She thought it was a real turning point for Rebecca when they broke up, and not the good kind of turning point. I think she was obsessed with him. I think she’d have done anything for him, including going to the dodgiest bit of Kennington in the dead of night to meet him. I think she trusted him and the feeling I get is that maybe she shouldn’t have.’

  Rob looked at me with a frankly sceptical expression. ‘You’ve met him, haven’t you? What did he say to make you so suspicious of him?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’ A chill raced over my skin and I shuddered. ‘He gives me the creeps.’

  ‘OK. I’m sure that will be enough for the CPS.’

  ‘Obviously it isn’t,’ I snapped. ‘But I’m working on it.’

  ‘Course you are. Let’s go and talk to this friend of hers, then. What’s her name?’

  ‘Tilly Shaw. Short for Matilda, presumably.’

  Rob pulled out into the traffic at speed. He always drove as if he was just behind the lead car on the last lap of the Grand Prix and I braced a hand on the dashboard to steady myself. A horn blared and I flinched, looking over my shoulder to see a black cab filling the back windscreen, altogether too close for comfort.

  ‘Jesus. I’d like to get there in one piece if that’s OK with you.’

  ‘Fine by me.’ He accelerated to get through the lights before they changed to red and didn’t quite manage it. ‘Just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.’

  ‘Two of those things are completely impossible with you behind the wheel, and I’m already sitting as far back as I can,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Anyone who drives like you can’t really complain.’

  ‘I drive perfectly well,’ I said with dignity. ‘It’s just parking I can’t do.’

  ‘Oh, nothing important then.’

  ‘No one ever died because they couldn’t parallel park.’

  ‘Well, we’re not dead yet.’

  ‘Yet is right. Just stop talking to me, OK? Just … concentrate.’

  ‘I can drive and talk.’

  I shook my head, pressing my lips together, and refused to speak again until we arrived at Tilly Shaw’s address. She lived in Belsize Park, in a small one-bedroom flat carved out of a larger Victorian house, and standing in the communal hallway with a bitter draught whistling around my feet I feared the worst, but her door opened with a blast of heat. Tilly was small and ravishingly pretty, with dyed red hair cut in a deep fringe. She was wrapped in layer upon layer of knitted material, not all of which was immediately identifiable as a specific garment.

  ‘I’ve got all the radiators on because it’s so unbelievably cold in this house, especially with this weather, I mean, my God, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be warm, but if it’s too hot, let me know, or if you want a hot drink or anything, just say, because I can easily make some tea. I mean, I would like some tea myself, so it’s no trouble to make you some.’

  She gabbled on and on and I shrugged at Rob as she led the way into her flat, which was tropical. Rob immediately ripped off his coat and suit jacket and had one hand on his tie knot when he noticed me glaring at him.

  ‘I’ll have a glass of water, thanks,’ he said to Tilly, who darted off to the kitchen at top speed. I took the opportunity to look around the room, which was crammed with old, dark furniture that was too big for it – a triangular cupboard looming in one corner, a square tapestry-covered ottoman that barely left any room to move around it, an elderly Knole sofa and two fat, sagging armchairs. The rest of the place was decorated in a style that I recognised from those friends of mine who had spent a lot of time travelling, picking up bits and pieces magpie-style to remind themselves of where they’d been – batik fabrics, embroidered panels, odd bits of pottery and glass. It made for a weird combination.

  ‘My parents gave me most of this stuff when I moved to London.’ She had come back with Rob’s water and was watching me when I turned around. ‘It was all stuff they didn’t want at home. I think they thought I might have a bigger flat than this.’

  ‘It’s nice.’

  ‘It’s not,’ she countered. ‘But at least the furniture was free.’

  ‘Makes up for a lot, doesn’t it?’ Rob said with a grin that got him a swift, winning smile in return. Then her face became serious.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me about Rebecca. How can I help?’

  I went into my little spiel about wanting to build up a picture of Rebecca so that I could understand her better and Tilly nodded.

  ‘It’s like acting. You have to understand the character before you can know how she would behave.’

  ‘Are you an actress?’ Rob asked, ignoring the fact that I was glowering at him for drawing the conversation off course.

  ‘I have been. And a waitress. And a receptionist. And a temp. A dog walker. A pastry chef. A shop assistant.’ She beamed. ‘More things than you can imagine, basically. I still haven’t worked out what to do with my life.’ Again, the smile ebbed away and she looked pensive. ‘I thought I had plenty of time. This thing with Rebecca – being murdered – I mean, it’s just so weird. So completely wrong. But then, she always said it would happen, so I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  I sat up, electrified, and Rob leaned forward. ‘What did you say?

  ‘She always said she would die young,’ Tilly said matter-of-factly. ‘Something really awful happened and she said she was responsible. I don’t know what it was – she never told me and I wasn’t in touch with her at the time it happened anyway. I was living in Prague when she was at university, and it was around then, I think. I was studying sculpture,’ she explained, seeing Rob looking quizzical. ‘It didn’t work out.’

  I tried to drag her back to the subject I was really interested in. ‘So something happened. Why would that mean she was going to die young?’

  ‘The only time we talked about it, she said �
��’ Tilly screwed up her face, remembering. ‘She said she owed her life for someone else’s and that she’d have to pay sometime.’

  ‘And didn’t that strike you as odd?’ I demanded.

  ‘Not really. She could be quite intense. But she really believed it. And now I realise of course that she must have had a premonition,’ she said calmly.

  ‘Do you believe in that sort of thing?’ I had the faintest inkling that Rob’s interest in Tilly was waning.

  ‘Sure. Why not? Past lives, second sight, destiny, fate – all that stuff.’ She must have seen us both looking sceptical. ‘OK, but who was right this time? I mean, Rebecca did die like she’d said she would. It was her destiny, and you can’t fight your destiny.’

  ‘When did she tell you about her – um – destiny?’ I was afraid to catch Rob’s eye.

  ‘About two years ago. New Year’s Eve. A girl I knew had a party and we got totally shitfaced on gin cocktails and ended up sitting side by side in the bath with our legs over the side, crying our hearts out over nothing, while some guy was sick in the sink. I possibly wouldn’t have remembered it but she said it again in the morning when we were trying to get over our hangovers by eating a cooked breakfast in the greasy spoon down the road. God, that was a mistake. The day went horribly wrong from then on.’ She shuddered.

  ‘Speaking of things going wrong, what can you tell me about Gil Maddick?’

  ‘Gorgeous Gil. What do you want to know?’

  ‘What happened with him and Rebecca?’

  ‘The usual story. They were a great couple, really happy together, and then one day, they weren’t. He wanted out and she had to let him go.’

  ‘I’ve heard he was possessive – that he shut people out of Rebecca’s life.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  I didn’t answer, waiting for her to respond to my question first. She sighed.

  ‘He wasn’t possessive, exactly, but there wasn’t a lot of room for anyone else in the room when they were together. He did kind of absorb her light, if you know what I mean. He was always what she focused on, when he was there. And if you were hanging around with them, pretty soon you felt as if you were in the way. Not because of anything they said, but just the way they looked at one another. I always thought it was a sign of how much they loved each other. It just goes to show, you can’t always tell which relationships are really going to last.’