The Stranger You Know (39 page)

‘He doesn’t want Burt in there because she’d frighten the wits out of Shane. She’s mentioned specifically in the UN mandate against torture, you know. Cruel and unusual punishment, just looking at her.’

‘She’s all right.’

‘She doesn’t like
you
.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Gave you evils when you were speaking. Shot down your point about the bar records being up for inspection. That wasn’t altogether stupid, I thought. Well done you.’

‘I live for your praise,’ I said drily.

Derwent sat down again, this time beside me. ‘Answer me one thing. It’s been bothering me.’

‘What?’

‘Do you always sleep fully clothed?’

‘I didn’t pack pyjamas.’

‘I’d have lent you something.’

‘There was no need. I don’t mind sleeping in clothes.’

‘Seems a bit extreme. Must save on wear and tear on your hangers, I suppose. But I thought it might be because you didn’t trust me. I meant what I said. You are flattering yourself if you think you’re my type, Kerrigan.’

I was saved from answering by the video link flickering into life. Beside me, Derwent fell silent, thinking his own thoughts as Godley and Maitland got ready for Shane to be brought in.

It took the usual age for the cast to be assembled – the solicitor was taking a call in the corridor and Shane elected not to enter the room without her – but when they were finally seated around the table, Maitland began, and his technique was a joy to behold. Gentle, persistent, friendly, he was a world away from the table-thumping rhetoric that was popularly supposed to be effective. He persuaded Shane to trust him inside the first three minutes just by talking to him like a human being, and I could sense Shane’s confidence growing as his brief became more and more uneasy.

It didn’t take long to get to the events of the previous night.

‘You broke in.’

‘Yes, I did.’ Shane seemed relieved to agree.

‘What were you planning to do when you broke in?’

The solicitor was a large woman with spiky hair and long, red nails. She leaned over and spoke softly to her client, who shrugged and answered in a matter-of-fact way.

‘I wanted to find Josh Derwent and kill him.’

Derwent didn’t so much as blink.

‘Why?’ Maitland asked.

‘Because he was responsible for murdering my sister and no one would listen to me when I told them. Because there’s a fucking conspiracy of silence just because he’s a copper.’

Godley sounded infinitely reasonable when he replied. ‘If there was evidence of him having committed a crime, we would take that very seriously. More seriously than if it was a civilian, not less.’

‘Tell me another fairy tale.’ The bitterness on Shane’s face was clear even on the smudgy video.

Maitland took over. ‘Why did you attack DC Kerrigan?’

‘She was in his bed,’ he said, as if that explained everything. I really wished I could explain, for the benefit of the transcript, that I’d been alone, and fully dressed, and not expecting him to join me.

‘Was that a good enough reason to try to kill her?’

‘No.’ He swallowed. ‘Is she okay?’

‘She’s very shaken,’ Godley said, his voice cold.

Derwent leaned over and patted my hand. ‘Poor dear.’

‘Save it.’ I touched the scarf around my neck that was hiding a technicolour display of bruises. ‘This is all your fault.’

On the screen, Shane put his hands over his face. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. It was dark in the bedroom and I didn’t know it wasn’t Josh until I felt that it was a woman. She’d woken up – I thought she’d scream – and I panicked. I was trying to work out what to do even when I knew I was going to kill her. Then I thought, “Well, what does it matter? He’ll find out what it’s like to lose someone he loves.”’

‘You decided to kill her.’

‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

The solicitor wrote something on her notepad.

‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Did you kill your sister?’

‘No! Of course not.’ His voice had risen, the veins standing out in his neck. Godley put a hand flat on the table, a signal to Maitland to let him take the lead again.

‘Let’s come back to that. I want to know why you disappeared the day before yesterday, Shane.’

‘I saw him on the news. Josh, I mean. Being shot in the playground. I realised he was in hospital and I could get at him. I stayed in a hotel near the hospital while I was working out what to do, how to get in to his room. But when I saw the footage of him leaving the next day I thought I’d missed my chance, and I would have if it wasn’t for him punching that Pace guy.’

‘How did that help?’

‘The reporter who followed him filmed his house and then I saw a street name and checked it on Google Maps, and it looked right. I couldn’t believe my luck.’

‘Nor can I,’ Derwent said darkly. ‘You get on the news a couple of times and you’re a sitting duck. How fair is that?’

‘Maybe this will teach you to stop punching people on camera,’ Burt observed.

‘Name one person I hit who didn’t deserve it,’ Derwent demanded, and was rewarded with silence.

They took a break before they asked Shane about his switch to cash (‘to avoid getting ripped off’), about why the business was on the market (‘I’ve had enough of this country. I want to live somewhere warm’) and about the timing of both. He denied any knowledge of the murders beyond the conversation he’d had with me about them.

‘Were they in your bar? The women?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

‘DC Kerrigan said you told her you’d show their images to your staff. Did you?’

‘Yeah. No one knew them.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to pin on me. I’m admitting what I did last night but that’s it. I have nothing else to tell you.’

‘Do you have alibis for the nights of the murders?’ Maitland reeled off the dates.

Shane put one hand up to his face and rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t know. I’d have to check my diary.’

‘We’ll need you to do that.’

‘You have trouble with alibis, don’t you?’ Godley observed. ‘You had to invent one for Angela’s death.’

‘What? How did you know that?’ His face darkened. ‘Did Claire tell you—?’

‘Did you kill Angela?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Angela wasn’t sexually assaulted. That always makes us think it could be a family member who did the killing. You. Your father. Someone who wanted to punish her, not rape her.’

‘Please. My dad was on the other side of town and I wasn’t even there until after the police came.’

‘Why did you need to lie?’ Godley asked, intent.

‘I was terrified of the copper who was investigating – I thought he’d crucify me for smoking dope. And I didn’t want my parents to know I’d been doing drugs instead of looking after Angela. They’d have been mortified, and they’d have hated me for it. I hated myself.’

‘Very moving,’ Una Burt said in a voice that indicated she thought the exact opposite.

Derwent glared at her. ‘You don’t know him. He means it.’ Shane could hate Derwent all he wanted, but Derwent was still loyal to him, even after so long.

‘When did you decide to lie?’ Godley asked.

‘It was Vinny’s idea. The policeman had been giving Vinny a hard time and he knew I wouldn’t be able to cope.’

The story matched Claire’s version of events, at least. I was starting to think we had got through all the murky lies to the solid truth, or at least an approximation of it.

‘Tell us about Vinny,’ Godley said. ‘He was in the army, I understand. When did you hear about his death?’

It was an easy question but Shane looked wary. He turned to his lawyer. ‘Can we take a break?’

‘We’ve just had a break,’ Maitland said quickly.

‘My head hurts. I want some painkillers. I need to see the doctor.’ He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. ‘I’m getting double vision.’

Godley reached out to the tape recorder. ‘Interview suspended at 16.22.’

‘He didn’t like that,’ Derwent said. ‘He didn’t like that at all.’

‘Why not?’ Burt asked. ‘You’re the one who knows him, after all.’

‘I don’t want to speculate.’ Derwent got up, found his crutches and limped out of the room, banging against most of the furniture on the way. He was clearly heading for Godley and Maitland so he could talk it over with them, and I wasn’t surprised Una Burt looked put out, or that she made an excuse to go after him a few seconds later.

Colin Vale was still working through the numbers, shuffling paper behind me, as happy as a child in a sandpit. I was silent. It was nice to have some time to think. I thought about the little group, the relationships, the complicated dynamics of it all. And about Vinny, who’d also had no alibi but held up to Orpen’s questioning. Vinny, who’d run away, first to travel and then to join the army. Vinny, whose death came before the current run of murders. Shane, and his cash-based lifestyle. The hospitality industry and its hidden workers. A face I had seen and not recognised at the time, because it was out of context and impossible and wrong.

‘I’ve just got to make a phone call,’ I said to an oblivious Colin, and left.

It took a long time to get the information I needed – longer than I’d expected. One phone call became two, and then I had a long wait for someone to get back to me, swivelling on a chair at a borrowed desk and fielding questions from the local CID. It was torture but I made myself wait until I knew the story, or as much of it as I was likely to find out from third parties. I hung up the phone for the last time and gave myself a second to process what I’d found out. Then I headed back to our little room, where the atmosphere was pure poison and Colin Vale looked desperate for someone to referee the Burt/Derwent bitch-off that was in progress. On screen, the interview was continuing.

‘We need to interrupt them,’ I said.

‘Absolutely not,’ Burt snapped. ‘They’ve only just started again, and it’s going really well.’

‘There’s something they need to know.’

‘Give her a chance,’ Derwent said. I’d been sure he would take my side once Burt was against me. ‘What is it?’

‘Vinny didn’t die in Afghanistan. He got an honourable discharge in November last year, and came home. He’s in London.’

‘Motherfucker,’ Derwent whispered. Una Burt looked as if she was thinking the same thing.

In case they hadn’t worked out where this was going, I wrapped it up for them. ‘And six weeks after Vinny got back to the UK, Kirsty Campbell was killed.’

Chapter 32

There was no need to argue with anyone after that. Burt herself went and knocked on the interview-room door. Maitland and Godley came down the corridor at a run to hear what I’d found out, crowding into the little room with Burt behind them.

‘Are you serious?’ Maitland demanded.

‘Never more so. He’s alive and pretending not to be.’

‘Why did he leave the army?’ Godley asked.

‘There are two versions to that. I only know the truth because I managed to speak to his commanding officer, who is now based in Essex. The official story was that he put in his papers because he’d had enough. I leaned on the guy a bit and he told me, off the record, that Vinny got in serious trouble in Helmand. He attacked a teenage boy and almost killed him. They hushed it up – said the guy was Taliban and Vinny had been acting in self-defence – but according to his CO, he beat him half to death and left him with life-changing injuries.’

‘What does that mean?’ Derwent demanded.

‘He ripped his balls off.’ Every man in the room looked sick, Derwent most of all. ‘You asked,’ I pointed out.

‘Any idea of a motive?’

‘A row about a local girl.’

‘Huh,’ Derwent said. ‘A crime of passion. He was bloody lucky they didn’t do him for it.’

‘Vinny was very popular, very well respected. No one wanted to see him in a court martial. There was a ton of evidence against him – he didn’t bother trying to hide what he was doing or why – so he was looking at considerable jail time and a dishonourable discharge. His CO advised him to put in his papers instead and go home.’

‘And they let him?’ Maitland was incredulous.

‘It’s not as if he did this in Warrington or somewhere. Afghanistan is a long way from the UK, and an eye for an eye isn’t such a big deal there,’ Derwent said.

‘The CO actually said to me, “What happens in Helmand stays in Helmand”,’ I added.

Godley folded his arms. ‘Let the army sort out its own mess. If the Red Caps were prepared to let him go, I’m not going to make a case against him for that. But given the timings, I want to find out more about Vinny, and I want to know what Shane knows about him.’

‘Start off by asking him where Vinny’s been living. Not with him, not in that flat.’ I was absolutely sure of it, having searched it.

‘Find out if he’s been giving him money. That could explain the switch to cash,’ Colin said.

‘If Vinny’s folks think he’s dead, he must be sending them his pension,’ Burt suggested. ‘That’d leave him short.’

‘Shane has been giving him money, but not as a handout. Vinny’s been working for him in the bar.’ I was getting used to being the one who dropped the bombshells but that got almost as good a reaction as the news that Vinny wasn’t dead after all.

‘What the actual f—’ Derwent started to say and Godley cut him off.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I saw him.’ I turned to Maitland. ‘You saw him too. Remember when we cut through the kitchen at the bar? The guy unloading a dishwasher? Tattoos up both arms? Muscles?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘He was wearing a blue T-shirt,’ I said. Maitland shook his head. I gave up and went on. ‘I saw his face but I didn’t make the connection until just now because I thought Vinny was dead.’

‘So you think he got back, got in touch with Shane and got a job,’ Godley said.

‘And Shane switched to cash as far as he could to hide whatever money he was sending Vinny’s way. I bet he was being paid more than your average kitchen hand,’ I said.

‘We need to get him picked up,’ Burt said.

I shook my head. ‘Once I found out he was alive, I did some checking. I had time on my hands while I was waiting to hear from the CO. No one at the bar knows where he lives and no one has seen him since we found out Shane was missing. He’s gone.’