The Burning (25 page)

‘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 his 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?’

‘I can’t say that I am. Why don’t you enlighten me.’

He gave a rueful smile. ‘I would, but at heart, I’m still a pedagogue. I’m going to give you the classic teacher’s line and tell you to look it up. It’s the funeral song from Act IV.’

The lawyer had got to his feet and guided me out into the hall, glaring a warning at Faraday to stay where he was and closing the door firmly behind him. He breathed heavily, staring at me with bloodshot eyes for a long moment before he spoke.

‘You don’t need me to tell you that he’s not a killer. He’s an idiot, but he couldn’t have murdered that girl.’

‘I haven’t made up my mind about that.’

‘You have, but you won’t tell me.’ He smiled wolfishly. ‘Let him have his little indiscretion, DC Kerrigan. I’m sure it will be his last.’

‘Are you? In my experience, they don’t stop at one little indiscretion. It becomes a habit.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s between man and wife, isn’t it?’

I was about to answer when sharp heels sounded on the path outside and a key twisted in the front door. I stepped back against the wall instinctively as the door opened to reveal Delia Faraday, looking even thinner and more beautiful than I had expected. If her face had been capable of moving as nature had intended it to, it would have been twisted into a sneer.

‘Who the fuck is this?’

Mercer was too smooth to look tense. ‘No one you need worry about, Delia. One of the accountants.’

‘Well, what the fuck is she doing in my hall, then? Get out of the way.’ She pushed past me and went into the room we’d just left.

I thought for a second about following her, taking out my warrant card and explaining exactly why I was there, but I couldn’t, in the end, be so brutal for no reason.

‘Thank you,’ Avery Mercer mouthed silently and I nodded without warmth, then turned to go.

I left Caspian Faraday’s house with the absolute conviction that I was not going to bother looking up Act IV of
Cymbeline
just so I could see how bloody clever he was. You can’t go against your nature, though. At twenty to two the next morning I was out of bed, hunched over my computer, searching for the funeral song with very bad grace but an overwhelming need to know. And when I found it, I understood what he had meant.

Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust
.

The lines were still on my mind the next day as I sat in the incident room, twirling a pen in my fingers and staring into space.
Come to dust
. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Back to burning in two easy steps. Could I picture Caspian Faraday battering Rebecca to death? Could I imagine him methodically arranging the scene to match the Burning Man’s
modus operandi
? I was surprised to find that I could, particularly the second part. There had been something stagey about the Highgate house, something self-conscious about the way the furniture was all from the correct period and lovingly arranged as it would have been in the good old days when men were men and women knew their place. He was meticulous in his professional life, attentive to detail, and I thought he would have enjoyed creating a show for the police. He would have liked fooling us as well. And whatever he alleged about his agreement with Rebecca, he certainly had a motive for wanting her dead.

‘You look busy.’ Rob threw himself into the chair next to me and stretched.

‘I’m thinking. This wouldn’t be familiar to you,’ I said primly.

‘From what I’ve heard, it’s overrated.’ He handed me a few sheets of paper that were stapled together. ‘You wanted Gil Maddick’s PNC print. I’ll say this for you, you know how to spot them.’

I was skimming the pages at top speed, and the smile on my face was getting wider by the second. ‘Oh, my God. His ex-girlfriend took out a restraining order on him four years ago.’

‘I know,’ he said patiently. ‘I’ve read it. Then he breached it – turned up at her flat and got arrested.’

The magistrates had taken a generous view, though; he had pleaded guilty and paid a fine, rather than having to do any time. I put the pages down. ‘I knew he was trouble. It looks as if he has form for being violent. I bet I was right not to be convinced by his story about how Rebecca fractured her cheek.’

‘It’s certainly worth finding out more. I think we should go and see Miss Chloe Sandler, don’t you?’

‘Definitely.’

The address that was listed on Gil Maddick’s PNC print-out was still current for her, and a quick phone call confirmed that she was in, and happy to speak to us, and generally keen to cooperate. She was even keener, if possible, when she opened her front door and clapped eyes on Rob, who was just the right side of scruffy that day and looking all the better for it. This was one interview where I would be taking a back seat. I sat on a chair by the door, leaving Rob to sit beside Chloe on the squishy white sofa.

While Rob explained who we were and what we wanted to talk to her about, I took the opportunity to look around her living room. Chloe was thirty-one going on thirteen judging by the collection of rom-com DVDs on her shelves and the clutter of cutesy ornaments on every available surface: an orchestra of kittens playing tiny musical instruments on the mantelpiece, a
cloisonné
frog crouching on the windowsill beside a crystal-studded lizard of surpassing hideousness, a family of tiny cut-glass penguins that marched across the top of the television. She was lovely, with huge wide-set brown eyes in a heart-shaped face that was set off by a Louise Brooks bob. Her voice was breathy and soft, and I had to strain to hear her when she spoke.

‘I haven’t spoken to Gil in years. I mean, I did call him after the court case, just to apologise for getting him in trouble, but apart from that, I haven’t had any contact with him.’

‘They don’t hand out non-molestation orders for no reason,’ Rob said gently. ‘There must have been some reason why one was granted to you. Do you mind telling us about what happened?’