The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘Do you mind? I need good light so I can read my own writing,’ I said with a wide grin.

  He struggled with himself for a moment, looking around the room at the many places I could have sat that would have done just as well. Politeness won out, as I had known it would. ‘Please. Sit wherever you like. There are probably more comfortable chairs, though.’

  ‘This is fine,’ I said, shifting my weight and feeling it give very slightly as I did so. ‘Is it old?’

  ‘Regency. But if it’s survived this long, it should make it through a – what was it you said? – casual conversation.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  Faraday smiled politely, then shot a covert look in his lawyer’s direction. Checking to see whether he should be worried, I thought, and took my time about asking my first question.

  ‘I’m here to talk to you about Rebecca Haworth. Can you tell me how you met her?’

  ‘The first time we met was when she was applying to Oxford. I interviewed her. That would have been the December before she came up – so over ten years ago.’ He looked startled for a moment. ‘I hadn’t realised it was so long ago.’

  ‘What were your first impressions – do you remember?’

  ‘She was obviously very bright. Very well informed and well read. She had an active and questioning mind, which is what we were looking for in our undergraduates. You can teach someone the facts, but if they don’t have the intellect to draw their own conclusions, there’s very little point in them being at Oxford.’

  ‘But Rebecca did?’

  ‘Certainly. I remember being impressed with her confidence, but also her speed in responding to a new idea as soon as I suggested it to her. A lot of young people break down if you challenge their views, but she enjoyed the discussion. There was no question in my mind that she should be admitted to Latimer College, and when she came up the following October she seemed to settle in quickly.’

  ‘And you were her tutor.’

  ‘One of them. There were three history fellows and we shared the teaching between us. She also would have had tutorials in other colleges, in the subjects where we didn’t have a lot of expertise between us. And of course the history faculty arranged a programme of lectures. I’m afraid I don’t know whether she was good at attending them – they are essentially optional.’

  His manner was pleasant and open, as if he had nothing to hide, and for a moment a worm of doubt squirmed at the back of my mind. But I had heard enough to know that there was more to the story than he was letting on at the moment.

  ‘What was your relationship with Rebecca?’

  ‘I taught her. I provided her with support and guidance, when it was appropriate.’

  ‘You stood up for her when she wanted to defer her exams, I understand.’

  ‘As I would have done for any of my students.’ His voice was still calm, but now he leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together.

  ‘According to the person I spoke to at Latimer College, you had quite a battle on your hands.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘A senior member of the college,’ I said blandly, not seeing why I needed to tell him anything more.

  He sighed. ‘They were being completely unreasonable. Rebecca was a very good student – first class, in my view. She was having a difficult time. They couldn’t expect her to sit finals three weeks after the death of one of her friends, and do herself justice.’

  ‘Did you know Adam Rowley?’

  ‘Who? Oh, the boy who died. No. I’d never noticed him. He wasn’t one of my students. I had completely forgotten his name until you mentioned it.’

  It was apparent to me that Adam had been a bit-player in the drama of Caspian Faraday’s life. There was only room for one hero in the cast, and as far as he was concerned it was Caspian himself.

  ‘You said Rebecca wouldn’t have done herself justice if she’d taken her exams then, but she didn’t get a first in the end, did she? She got a 2.2.’

  He made a dismissive gesture. ‘It’s very hard to come back after a year and sit Finals. I wasn’t surprised that she struggled. Especially given that it had taken her a long time to recover from her breakdown.’

  ‘You gave her some extra tutoring, I believe.’

  He looked at his lawyer before answering and I suppressed a smile; we were sailing into dangerous waters now.

  ‘I saw her a number of times, yes. Not formally – the college was quite clear that she shouldn’t receive any extra tutoring as a result of having deferred. But I thought she deserved more than that, and I wasn’t prepared to toe the line. That was one of the many reasons why I found Latimer College to be a stifling environment. They were obsessed with rules, regulations. They didn’t seem to be able to look past tradition and see the students as people.’

  ‘But you did see her as more than a student, didn’t you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ There was an edge in the velvety voice now.

  ‘I’ve been informed that you and Rebecca became very close when she returned to Oxford. I understand that you began a sexual relationship with her. That’s not usually considered appropriate, is it?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d know about that.’ He was still trying for casual and relaxed, but his hands were clamped together so tightly that the strain he was under showed in the white sheen over his knuckles. ‘Technically, we weren’t doing anything wrong. She was an adult, and no longer my student, officially. There was an attraction, I will admit, but nothing happened before her return to Oxford to sit her exams. And when it did, she was the one who started it.’

  I had heard a different story from Rebecca’s friends in the pub. According to them, Faraday had groomed her, gaining her trust, inviting her to come to the house he was renting in Cowley for dinner and long drinking sessions, keeping her away from the friends she still had at Latimer. And Rebecca, still unsettled by the events of the previous year and star-struck by her brilliant, handsome tutor, had gone along with what he had so obviously wanted.

  ‘How long did the relationship last?’

  ‘A couple of months. I was going to teach at a summer school at Berkeley, and she was planning on leaving Oxford as soon as she’d sat her exams anyway. I don’t think she liked being there much. Too many memories.’ He looked at me. ‘We both knew it wasn’t going to be a longstanding affair. It was a fling, but a highly pleasurable one for both of us.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Debs, when she hadn’t been staring adoringly at Leo, had had a nice line in invective about Caspian Faraday and how he had dumped Rebecca unceremoniously and without warning, packing his bags and catching his flight to California on the same day. Rebecca, abandoned by someone she had trusted and admired, had floundered, not surprisingly. But there was no point in challenging Faraday about it now. It wasn’t a crime to break someone’s heart. I didn’t have to like him for it, though. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He was looking wary.

  ‘Well, you went off to the States, and Rebecca left Oxford. Did you stay in touch?’

  ‘I had an email from her when the results came out. Of course, she was disappointed with her class of degree. It wasn’t a true reflection of her capabilities.’ He shrugged. ‘It was still better than nothing. I don’t think she found that the result held her back, in the long term. An Oxford BA is worth having, whatever the class.’

  ‘And that was the extent of your contact with her? An exchange of emails?’

  ‘I’m a busy man. More so now than I was then, but at the time I was committed to many hours of teaching a week as well as my own research. I didn’t have the leisure to keep track of my students – or my ex-girlfriends, if it comes to that.’

  ‘And you went back to teaching at Latimer College.’

  ‘Yes. But I left at the end of the following year.’

  I looked at him limpidly. ‘I heard that you left halfway through the year.’

&n
bsp; ‘It might have been the end of Hilary term. I really can’t recall, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why did you go?’

  ‘Lots of reasons.’ He was back to looking tense again. ‘I was finding my responsibilities to be excessively onerous. I didn’t think I was doing justice to my work or my students. I made the decision that I would be better off giving up teaching and concentrating on my writing.’

  ‘You had a bit of help with making that decision, didn’t you?’ I smiled pleasantly. ‘Who was it who told the college authorities about your – fling, I think you said it was – with Rebecca?’

  His lips thinned to a line. ‘I never found out.’

  ‘They took a rather different view of it, didn’t they? They felt that the relationship was inappropriate.’

  ‘As I said, I found the atmosphere at Latimer to be quite stifling. They were too focused on rules for me to be happy there.’ He tried a smile. ‘I’ve always been one to push boundaries, but on this occasion I really didn’t see that I had done anything wrong. I left Oxford because I felt I had spent as long there as I really wanted to. There were other opportunities to be explored. And I think we can all agree that it was a decision that worked out nicely for me.’

  ‘From what I understand,’ I said silkily, ignoring the self-satisfaction, ‘you were asked to leave Latimer College and it was made clear to you that you shouldn’t apply for any other teaching positions within the university. You haven’t taught since – are you blacklisted?’

  ‘That is unfounded conjecture. I chose to pursue other avenues. There was no question of anyone not employing me because of what happened.’ His voice had risen and the solicitor, who had been maintaining a Buddha-like silence, cleared his throat. It seemed to recall Faraday to himself, I was disappointed to see.

  ‘So you didn’t apply for any other teaching positions.’ I had no way of checking whether he had or not, short of contacting each and every third-level institution in the English-speaking world, but Faraday didn’t know that.

  ‘I did consider a few, but on the whole I felt I had reached the end of that particular part of my career. It was a case of going through the motions while I decided what I was going to do next. I wasn’t surprised not to be offered another teaching job. I’m sure it was clear to everyone that my heart wasn’t in it.’ His pride was still wounded, I could tell; he had been cast out of the tribe and it hurt, wealth and fame notwithstanding.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Rebecca?’

  ‘In person? God.’ He thought for a second. ‘It must be three – no, four years ago. She came to a book signing I was doing and we chatted for a minute or two – you know, just catching up. I signed her book, told her she was looking gorgeous, and that was it. Next in the queue, please.’

  I smiled at the historian. ‘That’s not true, is it? Do you want to have another go?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said flatly, and looked over at Mercer again. The lawyer was studying his hands.

  ‘I happen to know that you met Rebecca again. Quite recently, in fact. Make that five months ago, not three years.’

  ‘That’s not right – I didn’t––’

  ‘Oh, you did. You took her out to dinner, to a little Spanish place in Marylebone.’ And Rebecca had written it in her desk calendar, luckily for me. ‘It was in July, wasn’t it? A Thursday. Where was your wife that night? Or should I ask where your wife thought you were that night?’

  Faraday had slumped in his chair and was gnawing his bottom lip. The low winter sun highlighted the sweat that was beading on his forehead and dampening his hair. ‘OK. OK, you got me. We met for dinner. But it was just once.’

  I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t, I’m afraid. That was the first time. Then you met her again two weeks later. And again the following week. You sent flowers to her office on the fifth of August.’ Jess had passed on that little tidbit.

  ‘If you know all this, why are you asking me about it?’ Faraday was close to shouting now.

  ‘Because I want to hear what really happened between you. Who got in touch with whom? When did you start having an affair?’ I looked down at my notes, giving him time to think that was all I knew, before I hit him with the killer punch. ‘And why did you transfer ten thousand pounds into her bank account two months ago?’

  ‘My client is only speaking to you on the understanding that this remains confidential. You are right to think that a crime was committed, but it was Mr Faraday who was the victim,’ Avery Mercer said ponderously.

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘It’s true.’ Faraday was looking defiant; Mercer’s interruption had given him time to regroup. ‘Look, I didn’t want to tell you about what happened between me and Rebecca in the last year because I’m not proud of it. I never meant to cheat on my wife – I certainly didn’t intend that anything was going to happen between us. I was pleased when Rebecca got in touch, because I’d always liked her – we had had a real connection. It was good to see her. I enjoyed our dinner. It just seemed natural to see her again. And then – well, the situation just got a bit out of control.’

  ‘Why did she get in touch with you?’

  ‘She’d just had a bad break-up, she said. She told me she was going back over all the major relationships in her life to see where she’d gone wrong. But I thought it was a bit of an excuse, to be honest.’

  Honest was the one thing Caspian Faraday wasn’t. ‘So in July she asked you to meet up.’

  ‘Yeah. We had dinner a couple of times after that. We started sleeping together in August – I sent those flowers after the first time. It was crazy, and wrong, and I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. I mean, someone as well known as me can’t go sneaking around without being caught eventually. But that was part of the thrill too.’

  ‘What was Rebecca getting out of it?’ I asked drily.

  Faraday looked past me, as if he couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? I thought she was getting a buzz out of being with me again. I mean, the sex was great. Mindblowing. It reminded me of the good old days. But I realised later that she’d been working to a plan all along.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She started blackmailing me. She said she’d tell my wife what had been going on.’ Faraday’s jaw was clenched. ‘I realised that getting money from me must have been her intention from the start.’

  ‘Very upsetting for you,’ I said, without bothering to sound sympathetic. No one had made him cheat on his wife, after all. ‘How much did she ask you for?’

  ‘She wanted five thousand pounds.’

  ‘But you gave her twice that.’

  ‘I made a deal with her. I’d pay her double what she was asking, but she was never to contact me again, for any reason, and she was certainly never to attempt to make contact with my wife. I mean, it’s not as if I was short of cash. It was easy to give her more just to make her go away.’

  ‘Do you really think she would have kept her side of the bargain?’ I was genuinely curious.

  ‘Yes. I do. You have to understand, Rebecca was basically a good person. The blackmail thing – it wasn’t like her. She said she needed money quickly and she couldn’t think how else to get it, but I didn’t think she enjoyed it, if you see what I mean. Not once we’d made an emotional connection again.’

  Mercer and I exchanged a sceptical look. He could think that if he liked. There was no blackmailer in the world that was satisfied with one shot at their target. Caspian Faraday would have been a walking cashpoint for Rebecca.

  ‘I told her she was playing a dangerous game. Delia would have killed us both if she’d found out about it.’

  ‘That’s a turn of phrase,’ Mercer said quickly. ‘He doesn’t mean it literally.’

  ‘Where was Delia on the twenty-sixth of November?’

  ‘Out of the country. I think she was in New York.’ The lawyer again.

  I made a note. ‘We’ll check on that. Does she drive?’

  Faraday shook hi
s head. ‘She doesn’t have a licence. Anyway, she didn’t have a reason to kill Rebecca. I paid her off and Delia never found out about it.’

  As far as he knew, anyway.

  ‘The frustrating part is that I’d have given Rebecca the money if she’d just asked me for it. I liked her – I liked her a lot. She understood me.’ He looked at me again. ‘Are you married, DC Kerrigan?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then, you probably won’t understand, but I needed Rebecca. I needed something outside my marriage. It wasn’t just sex – it was the lack of fuss. Seeing her was fun. Being with her was fun. It was like a holiday from the real world.’

  I found myself wondering what Delia Faraday was like. Hard work, I imagined. There was a silver-framed photograph at Caspian’s left elbow that I recognised from my Internet research as being a close-up of his wife. She looked groomed, glamorous and very slightly sulky, and I doubted she had ever voluntarily tasted any of her father’s convenience foods, even if she had enjoyed the proceeds.

  ‘Rebecca took you for a fool, didn’t she? Are you seriously saying you’re not bitter about it?’

  ‘I was angry at the time,’ he said quietly. ‘I called her every name I could think of. But I thought, in the back of my mind, that one day we might meet again in different circumstances and I could forgive her. I never, ever thought she would die before that could happen.’

  ‘You realise that you have a motive for her murder.’

  His brow crinkled in puzzlement. ‘But she was murdered by that serial killer. The Burning Man, isn’t that what they call him?’

  ‘Maybe she was. Maybe not.’ I let him think about that for a moment. ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me about Rebecca?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He got up and looked out of the window, his arms folded, and when he spoke, he sounded a million miles away. ‘You know, she was one of those people who was more alive than everyone else. She just glowed. When I heard she was dead, I immediately thought of those lines from Cymbeline. They’re such a cliché, but it’s true. Are you familiar with the play?’