The Burning (41 page)

‘You do seem to have difficulties with women, Mr Maddick.’ I was thinking of Chloe Sandler and her restraining order, and from the way he flinched, he knew exactly what I meant.

‘Yeah, well, they don’t usually break up with me.’ He sounded like a sulky teenager. ‘I still haven’t got to the bottom of that one.’

‘Maybe you had a lucky escape.’

‘I don’t think I was in any danger.’ He frowned at me. ‘Do you think I should go and see her?’

‘I couldn’t advise you either way. But if you did … you know she gave no-comment interviews to the police. She hasn’t given any explanation for what she did. I’d like to believe she’s innocent, but she doesn’t trust us enough to talk to us.’

‘Do you blame her?’

‘Not really.’ I met his gaze squarely. ‘But if she did talk to you, could you see your way to telling me what she says?’

‘Absolutely not.’ He sounded completely determined, but I persevered.

‘If she gives you the idea that she’s guilty, presumably you won’t want her to be released. And if you’re convinced she’s innocent, I promise you, between now and the trial I will devote myself to investigating whether someone else murdered Rebecca.’

‘I have to think.’

He walked away a couple of paces with his head bent and his arms folded, and I watched him wrestling with himself, afraid to interrupt. After a minute or two, he turned back to me. ‘I can see why you would want me to do it. And I can see why I would want to do it. But I don’t know that I could like myself very much if I did. It feels like a betrayal.’

‘You could think of it that way. But the only thing I want – the only thing you should want – is the truth. And if she’s innocent, then she has nothing to fear.’

‘What if she won’t see me?’

‘She’ll see you,’ I said with confidence I didn’t really feel. ‘Why would she say no?’

‘Why would she break up with me?’

I could think of a million reasons but as he obviously regarded it as a mystery on a par with the fate of Atlantis, I settled for a sympathetic shrug.

‘Will she have to know about it? Afterwards, I mean?’

‘Probably not. But look at it this way, if it gets her off the hook, she’ll be nothing but grateful to you. And if it incriminates her …’

‘I won’t care anyway,’ he finished. The long seconds dragged out as he stared at me, considering. I held my breath. Finally, he sighed.

‘I’ll do it.’

‘Fantastic.’

‘It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?’

‘Absolutely.’

His face was bleak. ‘So why do I feel like Judas?’

Judging correctly that it was a rhetorical question, I looked sympathetically at him until he got tired of that and went off in the same direction as Gerald Haworth. I sighed, watching him walk away. If we were relying on Gil Maddick to provide the
coup de grâce
, we were in trouble.

After court, I went back to the nick to report on what had happened. Superintendent Godley spotted me the moment I walked in and came to the door of his office.

‘Maeve, you’re going to want to hear this.’

There was a small gathering in the room, I discovered – DI Judd, Colin Vale, Peter Belcott. All of them looked cheerful, remarkably so, and it was distinctly out of character for Judd and Vale to be so jolly. I turned to the superintendent.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Colin found the car.’ Four words that changed the whole case.

‘How did you manage that?’

‘I got in touch with all of the scrapyards in the Home Counties and found the one Louise North used. It’s a smallish one in Kent, near Ashford.’

‘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.

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.

My room was in Garden Building, overlooking the river, with a high window and empty bookshelves over the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked out at the bare trees that clustered around Angel and Greyhound Meadow, and Magdalen Tower standing sentinel over it all, bleached pale by floodlighting. There was noise in the corridor, other candidates talking loudly, confidently, making plans to go out and try their luck at getting served in the nearest pub. I stayed where I was, too shy to speak to anyone. Besides, I didn’t want to. I wanted to take in every detail of where I was, of the smells and sounds and feel of the place, in case I never got to experience anything like that again. I didn’t even dare imagine it was my room, and how I would live in it. The undergraduate who used it in term-time had cleared out all evidence of her presence except for the tiny luminous stars that I discovered dotted all over the ceiling when I turned out the light.

My first interview was at ten the following morning and if it had been up to me I would probably have avoided breakfast, but the girl next door banged on my door at eight and asked if I wanted to go with her to hall. She needed moral support, she claimed, and chattered all the way there as if she had been there many times before, as if she belonged. She was a candidate for history, with a wide face scattered with freckles, and I can’t now remember her name. She didn’t get in, anyway, for all her confidence. I was silent, trying to see everything between Garden Building and hall, and once we got in there I was too busy to talk, staring at the oak panelling, the great gold-framed portraits on the walls, the long massive tables. Hundreds of people were sitting on benches along the tables, talking at the tops of their voices, though there was a fair proportion who were silent with nerves. I choked down some toast and lukewarm tea while I listened to … we’ll call her Joan, since I really can’t guess what her name was … telling me about her friends and her hobbies and how she really didn’t think she wanted to go to Oxford because it was too much like hard work and all her mates had laughed at her for applying in the first place.