by Jane Casey
I shook myself mentally, forcing myself to sit up properly and concentrate as best I could, only to discover that, at long last, the meeting was drawing to a close. I started to draw up a list of tasks to tackle in order of priority, but found myself drifting again after number six (update the company searches on each of the subsidiaries to verify current directors and shareholders). Another scintillating night in the office lay ahead of me. I had wanted it – needed it, in fact, if I wasn’t to get in serious trouble at work. Even though I didn’t miss Gil – not at all – I was missing having a life already.
Pathetic.
I went back to the list, scribbling points as I recalled jobs undone, emails unwritten, documents to check. It was a petrifying prospect, far more than one evening’s work.
The one good thing about being in the office all the time was that I was inaccessible. The presents had started the day after I broke up with him – expensive, lovely trinkets: a pearl and gold pendant in the shape of a flower; a rough-hewn chunk of amethyst that looked like a purple pansy frozen in ice; a tiny eighteenth-century portrait miniature of a girl with fair hair and a small red mouth; an ivory netsuke in the shape of a donkey, presumably because I was so stubborn. I had collected them in a box under my desk, tantalisingly close to the bin. If one of the cleaners happened to make a mistake and threw them out, I wouldn’t shed too many tears. There were flowers, too, every day. I had told Martine not to show them to me any more. I wasn’t interested. I didn’t care.
My foot tapped under the table. Come on, Louise. Concentrate.
‘I think that concludes our business for today. Unless anyone has any other business they’d like to discuss.’ The senior partner looked around the room expectantly.
On cue, there was a rattle from the door handle. Like everyone else in the room, I craned to see what was going on, and saw with some bemusement and not a little shock that Martine was at the door, her face tragic.
‘So sorry to interrupt,’ she began, ‘I wanted to speak to Louise.’
I was already on my feet and moving around the table, concerned but a little irritated that she hadn’t been able to wait. The meeting was almost over. It was embarrassing to be called out of it. I couldn’t think why. What had Gil done now?
And then I saw, behind her, the unmistakable tall figure of the policeman who had been in charge of the Burning Man murders, and of Rebecca’s case. I recognised him from the news. I was still walking, still closing the distance between us, but it was as if time had slowed, as if the carpet I had to cross had suddenly stretched out for miles, as if my feet wouldn’t move quickly enough. I had to get to the door before he spoke. I could take him to my office and close the door and no one need ever know what he had wanted with me; I could make something up. And maybe I didn’t need to. Maybe he was just here to tell me what was happening with the investigation. Maybe there was nothing to worry about.
The last flickers of hope died when he came to meet me, shouldering past Martine as if she wasn’t there.
‘Louise North,’ he began, ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Rebecca Haworth. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.’ He went on with the caution, the familiar warning about my words being taken down as evidence, but I wasn’t really listening. I had turned where I stood to see my colleagues, the firm’s heads of group, the senior partner. I wanted to see their faces. They were frozen, mouths hanging open, an identical expression of shock from one end of the room to the other. It was almost funny.
I turned back to the silver-haired policeman who was waiting for me to move. He put out his hand to take my arm and I shook my head; I would walk out myself, no handcuffs, no manhandling. The end of my career was turning out to be pretty dramatic. The best I could do was to make it a dignified affair too.
Chapter Fourteen
MAEVE
I hadn’t imagined that Louise would fall apart in her interview. I hadn’t been naive enough to imagine that she would confess, no matter how expertly the questions were directed. But on the other hand, I hadn’t anticipated that she would take the option chosen by every obviously guilty career criminal I had come across, and answer ‘no comment’ to each and every question.
‘Did you murder Rebecca Haworth on the twenty-sixth of November this year?’ Chris Pettifer asked in his usual level tone, the opposite of confrontational.
‘No comment.’
‘Did you murder Adam Rowley on the thirtieth of April 2002?’
‘No comment.’ She answered the same way each time, in a conversational voice, as if it was all a game.
‘Did you try to stage the scene where Rebecca was found so that it looked as if she had been the victim of the Burning Man?’
Not a flicker of distress. ‘No comment.’
I sat beside the superintendent, watching the television screen that relayed live footage from the interview room. Godley was completely still, hardly blinking, totally focused on the interview. Behind us, other detectives came and went, standing for a few minutes or hours to watch Louise North defeating the efforts of our best interviewers, specially trained to deal with people accused of the most serious crimes. And as they took turns to try to break down the reserve of the woman in front of them, they couldn’t make her break a sweat.
‘She’s tough,’ Bill Pollock commented from behind me. ‘Not a hair out of place.’
‘She’s always like that,’ I said without looking around. ‘This is what she does.’
Godley took his eyes off the screen for a half-second to glance at me, having picked up on the bleak tone of my voice. ‘Don’t doubt yourself, Maeve. You may have been taken in by her initially, but you found her out in the end. The evidence is there. The facts don’t lie. And even if the rest is conjecture, it’s convincing.’
It was nice of him to sound so positive, but I knew the arrest had gone ahead with only lukewarm encouragement from the CPS. I didn’t know the lawyer who had been assigned to the Haworth case once Rebecca’s murder was positively, definitely and permanently removed from the list of Razmig Selvaggi’s alleged crimes. Her name was Venetia Galloway and her first name was the only flourish about her well-scrubbed, mid-forties person; otherwise she was strictly no-nonsense and as far as I knew, utterly lacking in a sense of humour. I had seen her in the distance, standing in Godley’s office with her arms tightly folded and her mouth puckered like the top of a drawstring bag as the case we were constructing began to fall apart for the lack of a confession.
And we weren’t going to get one. Louise’s manner was pleasant. Not even the most personal, borderline offensive questions seemed to ruffle her. Her solicitor sat beside her, massive in a pinstriped suit, a heavy gold signet ring on the little finger of his right hand, with the air of a man who hadn’t had to sit in a police station for quite a long time. He was the head of a large practice of criminal solicitors, generally regarded as the best in the business and certainly one of the greatest beneficiaries of legal aid cash in the country. The fact that Louise had got Thaddeus Sexton himself to sit by her side showed that she knew what she was doing. His reputation was as formidable as the man himself. Not, it had to be said, that he was doing much to earn his pay at the moment. Looking like a walrus who had spent some time and much money on Savile Row, he sat back with his eyes half-closed and let his client deal with the questions.
‘Were you jealous of Rebecca?’ Dornton was taking a more forceful approach than his colleague had tried. It had much the same effect on Louise.
‘No comment.’
There was a definite sneer in his voice as he asked, ‘Isn’t it true that you’ve been sleeping with her ex-boyfriend?’
‘No comment.’
‘Everyone loved her, didn’t they? Didn’t anyone love you?’
‘No comment.’
Training meant that Dornton and Pettifer didn’t show their frustration with Louise’s intransigenc
e, but outside the interview room they were able to give vent to their feelings, and did. The frequency of breaks must have been one indication to Louise and Sexton that we were running out of ideas, especially since the clock was ticking. We had to charge her or free her within twenty-four hours of making the arrest, and either option had its risks.
‘We aren’t going to get anywhere,’ I observed once the screen had gone blank for yet another interview suspension. I looked at Godley, who had a thoughtful expression on his face.
Before he could respond, the door opened. Chris Pettifer was the mildest of men usually, but his face was red as he came in. He pushed the door so hard that it banged against the wall and a few tiny flakes of plaster slipped down to frost the carpet. ‘The fucking cow.’
‘All right, Chris,’ Godley said. ‘Sit down and have a break.’
‘She’s sat in there smiling at that tub of lard. Makes me sick.’
Dornton trailed in after him, too worn out even to swear. ‘I’ve had it, boss. We’ve done everything now, haven’t we? Tried the lot. She’s not going to say anything.’
‘That’s what Maeve thinks too.’ Godley stood up and stretched. ‘Right. Well, if we’re wasting our time, we should stop. What time is it?’
‘Twenty to four,’ I said after a glance at the big clock on the wall.
As if on cue, Judd poked his head into the room. ‘A little over two hours left, boss. What do you want to do?’
‘Not sure yet. Is Venetia around?’
‘Coming over in half an hour. She’s just been on the phone.’ Judd grimaced. ‘Not happy.’
‘Good,’ Godley said absently, and I suspected he’d stopped listening once he’d heard she was on her way. ‘Right. Here’s the plan. We’ll ask Venetia what she wants us to do. Whatever she says, we’re going to charge Louise North anyway.’
‘How are you going to get away with that? What if she says we have to let her go?’
‘Leave her to me, Tom. I’ll convince her.’
The look on Judd’s face spoke volumes – disbelief, awe and concern. ‘I don’t even want to think about how you might be planning to do that.’
‘You don’t have to think about it,’ the superintendent said. ‘You just have to wait until I’ve done it and make sure everything’s in order for us to charge Miss North.’
‘Are you sure?’ I was starting to panic again. ‘I mean, we really needed her to say she’d done it, didn’t we? That was something we’d all agreed. You said it yourself. We need a confession.’
‘And you said just now we weren’t going to get one. As it happens, I agree with you. But I also feel very strongly that the young woman in our interview room is guilty, and I dislike letting people like that go.’ He shrugged. ‘The trial is a long way off. Anything could happen. If we can charge her, we’ll get her into the system and see if being on remand makes an impression on her. Holloway is a bit different from the comforts of Fulham.’
I thought of the house I’d visited, the warm sunny kitchen, the cold living room. ‘We’ll see. But I wouldn’t be too sure that prison will make any difference to her. I think it’ll push her further into herself, even more out of reach. And I don’t know how we’ll get her back.’
‘With luck,’ Godley said, and grinned. ‘With a bit of luck.’
He whistled as he headed off towards his office, Judd two steps behind him as usual. I watched them go and my face must have shown how surprised I was. Pettifer, now restored to good humour, laughed.
‘You didn’t know that about Charlie, did you? Give him a risky proposition and he’ll always take it. And what’s more, it usually pays off.’
‘I hope so. I really do. But I wouldn’t bet against Louise either. And don’t forget, he’s still got to convince Venetia.’
How he got away with it, I will never know, but at twelve minutes past six on the eighteenth of December, Superintendent Godley formally charged Louise North with the murder of Rebecca Haworth. At his invitation, I was among the group of detectives watching from beside the custody sergeant’s desk as the superintendent went through the charge against her.
‘Louise North, I charge you with the following offences:
‘That between the twenty-fourth day of November and the twenty-sixth day of November 2009 you unlawfully and injuriously imprisoned Rebecca Haworth and detained her against her will.
‘That on the twenty-sixth of November 2009 you murdered Rebecca Haworth.’
As Godley read I was looking at Louise, trying to see any hint of fear or anger. She was totally composed but her face was colourless as she listened. Sexton patted her arm with a fat paw and she moved an inch away from him without acknowledging it. Touch me not. She was small beside him, almost fragile, and I recalled with surprise that she was my age. She looked much younger, and totally harmless. Well, appearances could be deceptive. I waited for her to look at me, but she kept her eyes fixed on Godley’s face while he spoke, and afterwards she looked down at the floor until she was taken to the cells, as if no one else was there.
I was at Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court early the following morning, nursing a polystyrene cup of watery tea and a headache as I waited for Louise’s first appearance. Thaddeus Sexton would be determined to keep her out of prison in the lead-up to the trial; we were equally determined not to allow her out on bail, and this was the first opportunity for battle to be joined. I wondered how she was coping with being in custody. The holding cells at the court made the police station where she had spent the night look like the Savoy. It was noisy down there, and chaotic, and altogether not what Louise was used to.
Up above, things weren’t much better. I dumped the tea and went into the correct courtroom to wait for Louise’s appearance. It was overheated and crowded, and the CPS prosecutor had a massive stack of files in front of him that suggested it was a busy morning. I crossed my fingers that Louise would feature early in the proceedings; I did not want to have to sit through a procession of drunk and disorderlies or possession of class A or common assaults, the usual fodder for the magistrates.
I spotted Sexton near the front, looking about as cheerful as if he had just stepped in shit. The magistrates’ court was so far beneath him I was surprised he had bothered to come himself. But then, Louise was going to be a high-profile client. It was worth his while to be there.
The district judge who was hearing the cases in that court was female, determinedly unmade-up and supremely efficient. She dispatched the first few cases on the list with barely a pause, and the list caller was kept busy, shuttling back and forth between the waiting area and the courtroom. At long last he came back into the room and said lugubriously, ‘Number seventeen on your list, Louise North, represented by Mr Sexton.’
It was a feature of the courts that you could hear the heavy security doors between the cells and the dock opening and closing with a shriek of metal and a jangle of heavy keys. It ratcheted up the tension nicely as the sound of locks turning and doors slamming came closer and closer. I fidgeted in my seat, looking around to see if anyone else I knew was there. At the back of the court I saw a familiar face: Gil Maddick. He looked strained, as if he hadn’t slept, and his eyes were glued to the door at the back of the dock. I looked in the same direction just in time to see it open and Louise step through it, flanked by two custody officers. She wore a white shirt and a black skirt, and the expression on her face was entirely neutral.
Her role in the proceedings was limited to stating her name, date of birth and address, which she did in a low-pitched but clear voice; pleas would not be entered until the case reached the Old Bailey. The clerk stumbled a little over the charges and the judge bent her head, listening. As soon as he’d finished, she nodded. The normal routine was to refer the case up to the Old Bailey for a plea and case management hearing, known as the PCMH, and that was exactly what she did.
‘We’ll have the PCMH in six weeks.’
Thaddeus Sexton surged to his feet in response. ‘We’d like to
apply for bail, madam.’
The judge turned to the CPS lawyer who gave a brief, not to say sketchy outline of the Crown’s case, speaking rapidly and hoarsely so it was sometimes hard to hear him. ‘The Crown objects to bail being granted on the grounds that Miss North will fail to attend her trial because of the serious nature of the charges and the inevitable life sentence that would apply on conviction. She has no family, no community ties. She has considerable financial resources that are not restrained and would enable her to flee the jurisdiction, and as she has shown considerable ingenuity in attempting to avoid being brought to justice, there is every reason to believe that she would do the same to avoid the risk of conviction at trial.’
‘Madam, my client is of good character – she’s a respectable solicitor without a criminal record,’ Sexton countered. ‘There are other options than custody. She could be under a curfew and monitored with a leg tag. She is prepared to report to her local police station daily; she would surrender her passport and reside only at her home address.’ He spoke persuasively, rocking a little on the balls of his feet, putting in a fine performance in conveying arguments that the judge considered for all of three seconds before turning them down crisply.
‘Bail is refused because there are substantial grounds to believe that the defendant would fail to attend her trial if released. Take her down.’
The custody officers moved to take Louise back to the cells, but she stood where she was for a moment, staring across the court to where Gil was sitting. Her face was unreadable. I twisted in my seat to look back at him and saw that he looked distraught. He scrambled to his feet as she was taken away, and hurried out of the court before I could try to attract his attention.
I sat on in the court, thinking, as prisoner after prisoner shuffled into the dock and faced their fate. Gil should have been angry with Louise – he must have realised by now that she had planned to frame him for murder, having heard the outline of the prosecution case. But if anything it looked as if it was the other way round. There was no love on Louise’s side – that much was clear. But Gil had looked utterly and completely smitten. I sighed. People were strange. Love was stranger still.