The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘But weeks ago she said she had got rid of it.’

  ‘Ordinarily, the car would have been scrapped within a couple of days, but it was in such good condition he let his son have it.’

  Belcott took over. ‘I went down to retrieve it and apparently it hadn’t even been driven. The lad is only sixteen – just about to start lessons on his birthday, which is in a few weeks. The Peugeot was just sitting there in the yard, parked beside the office. We’ve had Kev Cox look it over and he found blood.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the boot. He sprayed the area with Luminol and it lit up under UV light. There was quite a significant amount of it even though you couldn’t see it with the naked eye. It had soaked into the material lining the boot. Looks as if Louise tried to tidy up but didn’t go to too much trouble. I suppose she thought it would be gone before we caught up with it, if we ever did.’

  ‘Nice one, Colin.’ I couldn’t bring myself to congratulate Belcott. He hadn’t really done anything – he’d just been the one who went to get it. I couldn’t believe he was getting a share of the glory, but that was him all over. The right place at the right time, as usual.

  ‘There were a couple of hairs, too. And Kev said we might be able to match fibres from the carpet in the boot to ones that were found on Rebecca’s dress. The colour looked right.’

  I turned to Judd and Godley. ‘There’s no innocent explanation for that, is there? And no break in the chain of evidence – Rebecca was dead days before the car changed hands.’

  ‘No. We’ve got her.’ Godley’s face had lit up with triumph.

  ‘Have you told Venetia yet?’ I couldn’t resist it.

  ‘Just about to.’ He lifted the phone. ‘That’ll teach her to trust me.’

  Judd was shaking his head. ‘You had no way of knowing we’d find the car. It was a total fluke.’

  ‘It was good luck and good policing. And if you have enough of one, you don’t need the other.’ He nodded to the rest of us. ‘Nice work, all of you. We’ll wait for the forensics to be confirmed before we spread the word too widely, but I don’t mind if the squad hears about it first. It’s definitely worth a drink or two.’

  I went back to my desk and sat there, staring into space in a haze of self-satisfaction tempered with anxiety. I couldn’t see how Louise would get out of this one. Even the most thick-headed juror couldn’t fail to see the point of the evidence. But I just couldn’t believe it was going to be that easy.

  And then the door banged as Rob walked in. He saw me, raised his eyebrows and smiled, and I forgot all about Louise North all over again.

  LOUISE

  Against my better judgement, I agreed to see Gil. Blame it on the tedium of prison, the desire for anything to break the mind-numbing routine. Blame it on a need to see someone from the outside world who wasn’t a lawyer. Blame it on simple curiosity about what he could want. When they told me he had come I left my cell and walked without haste through narrow halls to the room where he was waiting, slipping through the door silently thanks to the trainers on my feet. He was sitting still, lost in thought, incongruously handsome against the backdrop of breezeblock walls clotted with bland pink paint. My first sight of him was in profile and in spite of everything I couldn’t help but respond to him as I always responded to beauty – that shiver of simple pleasure at the happenstance of natural perfection. He turned his head and saw me then and moved abruptly, awkwardly, half-rising to his feet.

  ‘Don’t get up.’ I stayed by the door, ignoring the chair that was placed on the other side of the table from Gil.

  ‘Lou. My God.’

  He was staring at me, seeing the changes in my appearance that I didn’t like to think about. The pallor. The weight loss. The shadows under my eyes from not sleeping. He had all the same signs of strain, and more – a muscle twitched in his cheek and I thought he was fighting to keep his composure.

  ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Almost two months.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d see me.’

  ‘And yet here we are.’ There was little warmth in my manner.

  ‘I didn’t know if I could bear to see you.’ He said it like it was a challenge, and watched me for a reaction.

  ‘I see. You think I did it,’ I said pleasantly.

  He looked wretched. ‘I honestly don’t know what to think. Why don’t you tell me what really happened?’

  I felt a laugh bubbling up. ‘Tell you? Why would I?’

  ‘I think you owe it to me.’

  I did laugh at that, the sound harsh and jarring even to me.

  He put out his hand. ‘Come on, Louise. This is hard for me. I hate seeing you here, like this. I hated seeing you in court. It’s all wrong.’

  ‘So why did you come?’

  ‘Because I needed to see you. I needed to know that it was real. It just feels like a horrible nightmare.’

  ‘Poor Gil. How you must have suffered.’ Ice frosted every word.

  ‘Of course it’s harder for you,’ he said quickly. ‘Shit, I just can’t get this right, can I? I’m trying to explain, it wasn’t that I was convinced you were guilty; I just didn’t know what to think. I’ve been trying to decide if you could have done it, for God’s sake, and if you did, if you were trying to frame me for Rebecca’s murder – that’s a hell of a tough one.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He stared at me, puzzled. ‘What is the truth, Louise? What’s your story?’

  ‘The truth is …’ My voice trailed away. ‘The truth is that I don’t have anything to say to you about it, or anything else. Just leave me alone. Forget about me if you know what’s good for you.’ I turned to the door and rapped on it a couple of times.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ Gil pleaded, stepping forward. ‘I haven’t even touched you, and I miss you so, so much – I still wake up in the middle of the night and reach out for you. I don’t understand what happened between us. I feel as if you were playing a game with me and I just can’t work out what it was.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I had wanted to see him humbled; I had wanted to make him beg. I had got what I wanted, in a way. Oddly, it gave me no pleasure. Given the circumstances, though, maybe it wasn’t so odd.

  The door opened and I moved towards it, then stopped. ‘One day, I’ll tell you about Rebecca and me and how things really were. One day, I’ll tell you what really happened. But not now.’

  He called my name as I walked out, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t even look back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dear Gil,

  By the time you read this, I will be dead. That’s how a suicide letter is supposed to start, isn’t it? A clear statement of intent. And I am perfectly clear on what I want. I want to be gone.

  I should start by telling you the truth, as you wanted me to when you saw me a few weeks ago: I did it. I murdered Rebecca. You were right, I’m afraid; I had every intention of framing you for it, if my attempt at copying the Burning Man didn’t come off. I wonder if Rebecca would have been amused to see you convicted for it. I can’t think it would have been completely unfair. You are morally responsible for her death, believe me, even if you don’t know it. But that was my plan – I thought it was what you deserved. The more I got to know you, the more I realised you needed a far harsher lesson, one about betrayal. I went to great lengths to be perfect for you, to make you fall in love with me, and I think it worked, as far as you’re capable of loving anyone but yourself. It’s almost worth getting caught to show you how stupid you’ve been, how wrong about me. You’ve always underestimated me, you know.

  I’m sure you’re wondering what’s prompted this. I’ve just had a meeting with my solicitor, to discuss the prosecution case summary he’s received. He didn’t say it outright, but I could interpret it easily enough. I don’t have a hope of being acquitted. The car is the problem. I thought it would be OK. I thought it would be dismantled, untraceable, gone. But you can�
��t rely on anyone to do their job, can you? I should have dealt with it myself - dumped it in a canal or burned it out, but I was too clever for that, too subtle. Too bloody stupid.

  Thaddeus thinks I should plead guilty. There would be a certain poetry to that, since I am, but I don’t want to. Pleading guilty would mean a life in prison, or most of it. I could be looking at thirty years. All the good years. Missing out everything that makes a life meaningful – travel, work, new experiences, maybe even children. No stability. No normality. No domesticity. No thank you. I’d rather make my own choices and opt out. I don’t want to be part of the legal system any more. I’ve had enough of it, and everything else.

  But before I go, I want to tell you what happened, and why. I don’t want your forgiveness. I don’t want you to grieve for me – don’t you dare pretend to be broken-hearted when we both know you don’t have the equipment. I want you to understand because I want to know you have had your eyes opened to what you really are. You have money, and charm when you want to use it, and a pretty face, but all that is just window-dressing. It made me laugh every day that we were together to see you try to manipulate me. DC Kerrigan thought I was at risk from you, but it was the other way around. You thought you were the dangerous one, but you don’t know what dangerous is. You’re just a misogynist with a predilection for forcing women to have sex. You raped me, and I’m pretty sure you raped Rebecca – that story about the fractured cheekbone that was just an accident didn’t ring true for me either, I’m afraid. That doesn’t make you special, Gil. It doesn’t make you clever. And it doesn’t make you worthy of me, or of Rebecca, or any of the other women you’ve tried to control over the years.

  I have no idea when you’re going to read this letter, or if they’ll even allow you to. I’m going to leave a note for DC Kerrigan too, when I’m ready to go, asking her to make sure you get it. I have a feeling she’ll do that for me. Or for you, if it comes to that. She probably feels bad about suspecting you. I wouldn’t blame her for it. I was very plausible. I am good at lying, as you might have noticed.

  I’m trying to write clearly. ‘Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.’ Isn’t that it? I don’t remember a lot of Othello, but that bit always stayed with me. In the end, there’s nothing left but the truth. There’s no point in trying to hide any more. Just a few more days and I’ll be able to take the antidepressants I’ve been hoarding. I can’t wait until after the trial; they’ll be watching me then. Now is the time to do it. I’ve devoted a lot of time to making the guards trust me. They never search my cell. Amazing what saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ can achieve. Being on remand is stressful and I didn’t have any trouble convincing the prison doctor that I needed to be prescribed antidepressants. The hard part was not taking them – now that really did require an effort of will. But I have a lot of self-control, especially when there’s something I want. Just as, briefly, I wanted you.

  I didn’t want to kill Rebecca, though – I need to make that clear from the start. It wasn’t a thrill for me. It wasn’t fun. I had to do it, to save myself. Rebecca was weak. Too weak to know what she knew about me. Too weak to be trusted. Too weak to be a friend to me like I was to her.

  If you’re going to understand, I have to start at the beginning, and that’s not easy. I don’t talk about my childhood; I never have. Since I left the town where I grew up, I haven’t been back, and I won’t tell you where it was. It’s not relevant to who I became.

  I lived with my mother and grandmother. No father – don’t ask me where he went, but he was never around. I didn’t miss him. Mum was a wreck, barely functional most of the time, a manic depressive who was either flying high or flat out and I never knew what I’d find when I got out of bed in the morning. I have no idea how I survived until my grandmother came to live with us when I was four. She brought a bit of order. She made sure there was food in the cupboard and sheets on the bed, and that my clothes were clean even if they weren’t new or nice or what I would have wanted. But I was clean, dressed and fed, and I actually didn’t mind that I had to share a room with Nana. Not then, anyway. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear her breathing and know that someone was there. It was only when I was older that I grew to hate the sound of her huffing and groaning in her sleep. I could never get away from her, never have any space of my own. She was always there, watching me, commenting on what I was reading or wearing or saying. She had a mean mouth, Nana, and you never knew what she was going to find objectionable, but when she did, there was no mistaking it. I spent a lot of time trying not to attract her attention. That meant I spent a lot of time in the local library, or at school. There was nowhere else to go. It made me into a reader, a hard worker. It made me achieve more than I might have otherwise, so thanks, Nana, I suppose.

  The other thing about Nana was that she was a total hypochondriac, never out of the doctor’s. She must have been up there twice a week for something or other. She had prescriptions for every painkiller known to man, as well as something for her nerves and other tablets to help her sleep and a few to help her wake up … Eventually, she got a new GP who diagnosed her with polymyalgia rheumatica and she was delighted, telling everyone about her polly-molly-what’s-it and how the old doctor hadn’t known what it was. I looked it up once, on the Internet. Do you know what it is? Unspecific aches and pains. My back. My knees. Ooh, doctor, it’s in my hip. My neck. I can barely stand today.

  Never mind. Have some painkillers.

  Oh, well, if you insist.

  I never thought of making use of Nana, not until Steve Wilmot from two floors down tried to mug her on the stairs. Steve was as thick as a brick and about as dynamic, and he hadn’t reckoned on Nana being more determined to hang on to her handbag than he was keen to steal it. He’d put a scarf around his face but she knew who he was. It wasn’t difficult. He wore the same Russell Athletic sweatshirt every day. It never occurred to him to change it before he jumped on her. She told him she’d tell his mother on him and he ran a mile. He was a bit older than me but I knew him to nod to, and the next time I saw him playing football outside the flats I asked what he’d been trying to do. He knew as well as I did that Nana didn’t carry much cash.

  ‘Drugs. She’s got plenty, hasn’t she?’

  ‘You don’t take them, though.’ It was true. He fancied himself as an athlete and kept the illegal substances to a bit of hash now and then.

  ‘I was going to sell them on. Make good money if you can get the right stuff to the right people.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Steve, who had never been known to remember anything other than football stats and his usual order at the Chinese takeaway, became suddenly fluent. ‘Uppers. Downers. Jellies – you know, Valium, that kind of thing. Anything with codeine. Tramadol. If they’ve given her proper morphine, that, obviously.’

  I thought of the locker beside Nana’s bed, the army of small bottles with a handful of pills in each, the cardboard packets with foil-backed blister strips poking out. She had tried everything that was available and never threw anything out. I had seen it just as more old-lady clutter but now it looked more like an untapped resource.

  I started taking a few pills here and there – not enough for her or the doctor to notice, but enough to put by a bit of cash. I’d pick up prescriptions for her too and lift a bit here, a bit there. I got very helpful all of a sudden, running to get her pills for her if she was watching TV. She got used to it. She liked having me fetching and carrying for her. And I liked doing it, for obvious reasons. Steve took a percentage off the top but I didn’t mind; it made it less likely that I’d get caught. I had an old envelope full of cash that I kept in my room. It was the most precious thing I owned. I’d get up in the middle of the night and move it to a new hiding place, holding my breath in case I disturbed Nana. I’d find myself thinking about it in school, and used to hurry home to check no one had found it. I never spent any of it. Not a pound. And even though it was only small amounts now and
then, it added up.

  Say what you like about drug dealing, but that’s how I was able to afford to go to Oxford for my interview. I would never, never have thought that someone like me would be able to go to somewhere like that, but I had a teacher, Mr Palmer, who took me to one side after maths one day and huffed sour coffee breath in my face while he told me about Oxbridge and how I should apply and not let anything hold me back. He went to Cambridge, himself. Told me all about it. The Backs. The Cam. The fens. That made up my mind for me; I didn’t want to go there. Mr Palmer had not gone far enough, in my view. And you can’t apply to both in the same year; you have to choose. Oxford it was.

  And Oxford chose me, too. I was pushing an open door, did I but know it. They were bending over backwards to improve the ratio of applicants from a state-school background. I could have doodled all over the exam papers and I’d still have been invited for interview. I was terrified when the letter came in November. Interviews at the start of December. Accommodation arranged in Latimer College, though I would have interviews in two other colleges as well. Advice on how to get to Oxford, what to bring, how long I would need to stay, when I would hear if I was successful. Mr Palmer offered to lend me some money himself so I could go, realising, I think, that there was no point in me even asking Mum or Nana for help. I told him no, I would manage, thinking of the rolled-up envelope that was currently living in one half of an old pair of trainers under my bed, right back against the wall. It was soft with handling, the paper creased into a million tiny wrinkles, the ripped edges fluffy like velvet, and it had almost nine hundred pounds in it.

  I didn’t even tell them where I was going, and Mum didn’t ask. Nana was more interested, but I managed to fob her off with a geography field trip. She didn’t seem to know I wasn’t even doing geography for A-level. Small rebellions – tiny lies – made life bearable. Homeopathic deceit. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. I spent some of the money on an interview outfit, a plain black dress with thick tights and flat slip-on shoes, and packed the rest of the money away in my backpack. There was no way I was going to leave it behind. I caught a coach to London, then changed for Oxford, getting there just as the sun was setting. It was one of those winter sunsets where the sky is completely clear, the sun dark red, and the light coming through the leafless trees by the river made my heart jump when I saw it. I had never seen anything as fine as the time-worn carving on the faces of college buildings, the arc of the High Street that had the perfect curve of a strung bow, the river running grey-green under Magdalen Bridge. Nothing was mean, or meagre, or glaringly new. I wandered around for a while until the light had faded and the gold stone turned to grey, then found my way to Latimer College and stepped in through the wicket gate that was cut into the huge, heavy oak doors. The stone beneath my foot was worn to a shiny hollow by generations of students that had passed that way, and I promised myself that I would be one of them, not just a candidate bleating nervously at the porters’ lodge that I was here for interview, and receiving in return a key with a round metal fob that made my sweating hands smell like coins.