by Jane Casey
Levon Cole was a teenager who had been shot by police officers in murky circumstances. It was just the latest reason for people not to love the Met. ‘Do you think Terence Hammond was killed because he was a cop?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Maybe he was killed because he was having an affair.’
‘Also possible.’
‘So when do we ask the grieving widow about whether her husband was faithful to her?’
Godley’s mouth twitched. ‘Derwent would ask her straightaway.’
‘Which is why he’s hanging out with the dead man in Richmond Park.’
‘That’s one reason.’
‘It’s good enough.’
‘To answer your question about Mrs Hammond, I’m not sure how I’m going to do this yet. I’m going to let Lowry take the lead with breaking the news and offering her whatever consolation he can. Then I’ll talk to her. I haven’t decided how I’m going to approach it. I want to wait until I see her. I’m assuming she’ll want to find her husband’s killer. If she’s strong enough, she might want to talk about their ups and downs. If she falls apart we’ll have to rely on friends and family to get a picture of how Hammond was at home.’
‘I have no sense of his personality at all,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t even see what he looked like.’
Still driving, Godley dug in his pocket and handed me his phone, tapping in the PIN code without looking down at the screen. ‘Check my emails. I got someone at Isleworth to send me an up-to-date picture of him.’
I navigated to the emails, scrolling through many messages to find the right one. The picture was formal, a head-and-shoulders shot. Hammond had just missed out on being handsome, I thought. He looked like a rugby player, thick-necked and short-haired with a heavy jaw. Straight eyebrows. A nose too small for his face. I knew not to read too much into a single image – a formal picture at that – but I couldn’t help trying to invest his face with character. There was something to the tilt of his head, the droop of his eyelids, that made me think he was arrogant. Maybe that was just because I knew he’d died with his flies open and some unknown person’s face in his crotch. I flicked back to Godley’s inbox.
‘It’s Sunday morning and you’ve had about twenty emails since the one with Terence Hammond’s picture. How do you find the time to read all of these?’
‘I don’t.’
‘What if they’re important?’
‘They’re never important.’
‘Seriously, though.’
‘Seriously, if it’s important, I get a phone call. If it’s rubbish, it comes as an email. The ones with the Excel attachments are the ones I read last. If ever.’
There was something giddy about Godley – as if he was excited but suppressing it. Maybe it was because the end of his marriage spelt liberation. In almost three years of working for him I’d seen him angry a handful of times, serious most of the time, and light-hearted roughly never.
Covertly, I watched him as he drove. It had been a long night. The tiredness lurked in the corners of his mouth and around his eyes, where the lines were deeper and longer than usual. But he still looked as if something fundamental had changed and I wondered what it was.
‘Sir—’
The phone vibrated in my hand. I’d forgotten I was still holding it. Automatically I glanced down to see the first few lines of the message flash up as a preview on the screen.
Make no mistake
you fucking cunt, you’d
better change your mind
or you know what will
I stared down at it for a few long seconds. The phone was on silent so Godley had no idea he had a new message. More importantly, he didn’t know that I’d seen it. I turned the phone over so he couldn’t see the screen and slid it on to the central console. It was none of my business.
I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d forgotten Terence Hammond. I’d forgotten why I was sitting in Godley’s car and where we were going. Change your mind. You know what will. I could fill in the rest of that sentence without too much trouble. You know what will happen. Something to take the smile off Godley’s face, I thought. Something terrible. The message was nothing to do with me but I was light-headed with shock.
‘This must be the place.’
I looked up, surprised, as Godley pulled in behind Lowry’s car. It had stopped outside a 1930s semi-detached house with an empty driveway. The curtains were closed. No one was up yet.
‘I’ll go in with Lowry and West,’ Godley said. ‘Make sure you stay close to me. I don’t want you to get sidelined. I value your opinion.’ A sideways look. ‘That’s why I wanted you to come with me, you know. You’re good at people.’
I dredged up a smile that felt stiff on my face. ‘Thanks.’ I did appreciate the compliment, even though I knew it was the one area where I had an advantage over my male colleagues. It was a widely held belief that female officers were useful to have around when people were likely to be upset. I wasn’t so sure; I’d known more than a few who had no nurturing instincts at all.
‘I want your impressions of the family. I want to know if you think Mrs Hammond is surprised by the news about her husband.’
‘Are you thinking of her as a suspect?’
‘Anything’s possible. Especially given what Hammond was doing when he died. I doubt she pulled the trigger but she might have asked someone else to do it. Loving wives of unfaithful husbands make good suspects.’
‘Cynic,’ I said, smiling for real this time.
‘You know the rules. Most murders occur for reasons that are close to home.’
A bulky man was levering himself out of the driver’s seat of the car in front. He was overweight, his jowls overlapping his collar, and his face was red. His blood pressure had to be through the roof. He gave Godley a sick look and nodded to the house.
‘Right.’ Godley picked up his phone and slid it into his pocket without looking at the screen. ‘Time to go.’
I hung back as he went to join Lowry and West on the pavement. The three of them conferred for a minute. West was a thin, wrinkled man whose skin was weathered to a shade that was almost the same light-brown as his fine hair. He kept passing a hand over the top of his head, smoothing his hair down. They walked up the drive together and Godley rang the doorbell.
It was a long time until someone responded. The light went on in the hall first, and then the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged woman. She was tying the belt on her dressing gown, but her attention was on us, her gaze flitting across our faces, trying to read our expressions. Her face was pale, sleep-saggy, wary. Her hair was short and streaked blond. At the moment it stood up like a cockatoo’s crest.
‘Mrs Hammond?’ Lowry began.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Superintendent John Lowry. Sorry to bother you so early. It’s about Terence. I’m so sorry. May we come in?’
I saw the shock hit her. I watched her world fall apart.
And we hadn’t even got around to breaking her heart yet.
The kitchen was dark, even with the lights on. It was in need of an update: at least two of the cupboard doors were hanging off their hinges and the tiles by the cooker had cracked. If it had been Hammond’s intention to redo it, he’d missed his chance. I hunted for mugs and sugar, opening wobbly drawers in search of a teaspoon as the kettle boiled. I had one ear trained on the conversation in the living room between Mrs Hammond and the three senior police officers. I didn’t want to crash in at an awkward moment with my tea tray.
Tea, the answer for every problem. Burglary? Tea. Missing child? Tea. Dead husband? Tea. No one ever seemed to drink it. For us, the cups were a prop, something to do with your hands while gently delivering the bad news and easing yourself back out to the street. Nothing ever felt as good as the first breath of fresh air when you walked out of a house filled with grief.
And yet I felt as if I was in my natural environment. It was the wedding that felt unreal now. I’d already forgo
tten the details of the day, the dress, the conversations I had had. Now I was at work I focused on everything around me, my mind working to see significance in mundane details, even though I didn’t expect to find anything of interest in Hammond’s kitchen. I might never be in the Hammonds’ house again but I would be able to close my eyes and say for certain which drawer had a loose handle or which cupboard door was chipped or where the floor was stained, by the bin.
The rest of the house was in a better state than the kitchen, but it was unwelcoming and unloved. I’d looked into a small dining room that was functioning as a junk room and study, piled with paperwork and boxes. The sitting room was furnished in a perfunctory way – two sofas facing each other across a wide coffee table and a single armchair facing the television. The carpet was grey, the curtains dark blue and the effect dreary beyond belief.
The atmosphere in the sitting room wasn’t helping much. There was a reason I was currently hiding in the kitchen. I’d made my escape thanks to foresight in standing near the door. Mrs Hammond was not devastated by grief or silent with misery. She was angry, and she wanted us to know it. She had taken up a position on one sofa, her back ramrod-straight. She glared across at West and Lowry as if she held them personally responsible for what had happened to her husband. The air had fairly trembled with awkwardness.
‘So you’re saying he stopped on his way home. Why would he stop?’
Good question, lady.
West and Lowry fidgeted unhappily, and it was Godley who answered her.
‘We’re still trying to establish what happened in the last few hours. Anything that I could tell you now would be speculation. And I don’t want to speculate. I’d ask you to wait until we’re sure of the facts.’
‘The facts.’ Her voice was quiet. ‘I can tell you some facts if you like.’
‘Please do.’ Godley leaned in. I knew he was hoping she would bring up Terry’s extra-marital activities.
‘It’s a fact that I’ve got two kids. It’s a fact that one of them has special needs. It’s a fact that Terry’s gone and I’ve got to try to look after them on my own.’ She laughed. ‘He was never bloody here in the first place, I don’t know why I’m worrying.’
‘If we can alleviate that worry for you, there will be a pension.’ Lowry sounded relieved to have some good news to share. It didn’t last long.
‘It’s not about money,’ Mrs Hammond said, her eyes as bright and unblinking as a snake’s. ‘You don’t have a clue. I earn more than Terry. I always have. Money isn’t the problem. Money can’t buy you someone to share the responsibility of having a son like Ben. Money doesn’t help you make decisions about what’s best for him. He’s sixteen. When he’s eighteen, he’ll be finished at school. Done. Ready to go out into the world. Except that he hasn’t learned anything in school, as far as I know. He doesn’t talk. Can’t write. He’s not going to get a job, or a girlfriend. He’s not going to move out. He’s not going to lead anything like a normal life, and neither am I. And there’s no one to help any more. There’s no one who understands what it’s like. There’s no one who’s in exactly the same position as me.’
‘I’m sure there are support groups,’ West offered. I saw Godley flinch, but it was too late.
‘Support groups,’ she repeated. ‘Oh, well, that makes everything all right then.’
‘Obviously not, but—’
‘You have no idea what my life is like and you have no idea what it will be like. You come to my house to tell me my husband is dead and then you patronise me? How dare you?’
There was no easy answer to that. Her words hung in the air until Godley spoke again. ‘Can you think of anyone who would want to harm your husband, Mrs Hammond?’
‘No.’
‘Was he worried about anything recently? Did he seem distracted or unhappy?’
‘He was just the same as usual.’
‘Was it normal for him to be late back from work?’ Godley was sailing close to the wind.
‘He came and went, you know. He worked shifts all the time, so some weeks he’d be here and other weeks I wouldn’t see him at all. I didn’t really keep track. I was busy. I work, as I said, and I look after Ben and Vanessa. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for Terry.’ She stopped and corrected herself. ‘I mean it didn’t leave a lot of time.’
Happy families. I caught Godley’s eye and slid out of the room. Now, on my own in the kitchen, I thought about the Hammonds and wondered if the marriage had been over in all but name. Maybe Mrs Hammond knew about her husband’s affair. Maybe not. It would take a braver police officer than me to raise it with her when she was in such a combative mood.
And that was something else worth noting. We’d been in the house for forty minutes and she hadn’t shed a tear.
I’d been keeping in touch with the conversation in the living room as the senior officers stuttered through their script. Now the noise of the kettle drowned out everything else. I stood in the centre of the room and stretched my arms over my head, fingers linked, arching my back to try to loosen out the kinks in my spine. Left to my own devices, I could feel fatigue creeping up on me. My eyes felt sore, my head heavy. I couldn’t let myself relax yet, but I allowed myself a yawn that almost cracked my jaw.
The kettle clicked off and I swung my arms back down, sighing. Then I jumped about a mile in the air as someone spoke behind me.
‘What are you doing? Who are you?’
I turned to see a girl who had to be Terence Hammond’s daughter, a slight figure in oversized pyjamas. She looked younger than fourteen. The button nose that had looked out of place on her father’s face made sense here, giving her an elfin prettiness. Her hair was long and dark. It hung down over the left side of her face, shadowing one of her eyes. The one I could see was a striking shade of grey-green, as clear as well-water. I’d had a look through the noticeboard in the kitchen and knew more about her than her name and age. Vanessa played netball. Vanessa had a dentist’s appointment on Thursday. Vanessa was going to Bordeaux on a school trip at half-term.
Vanessa was standing in the doorway to her kitchen, wearing pyjamas and a huge woolly cardigan. It was ten to six on a Sunday morning and she had every right to look truculent.
‘I’m Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan.’
‘Do you work with my dad?’ Her voice wasn’t loud but it was clear, every word enunciated.
‘I’m a Metropolitan police officer too.’
‘In Isleworth.’
‘In central London.’
‘Why are you in my house?’ That question came with a childlike lift of her bottom lip; she was trying not to cry.
‘I came with some senior colleagues to talk to your mum.’ To tell her or not to tell her … I’d waited too long to pour the water from the kettle. If I made the tea with water that had cooled, it would taste vile. I flicked the switch on again.
She raised her voice so I could hear her over the hiss from the kettle. ‘About what? About Dad?’
I concentrated on arranging the mugs, playing for time. ‘Would you like me to get your mum?’
‘No, I would like you to tell me what’s going on!’ The kettle switched itself off halfway through and Vanessa’s last five or six words sounded overloud in the small, shabby kitchen.
I heard an exclamation from the next room, followed by soft, scuffing footsteps, and braced myself for Julie Hammond’s arrival.
‘What are you doing down here? Get back to bed.’ She sounded brisk rather than angry, and matter-of-fact rather than upset. I understood very well that she wanted to let her daughter have an hour or two more of normal life before she found out what had happened. I also understood that her daughter was having none of it.
Vanessa looked stubborn. ‘I heard people talking.’
‘They’re talking to me. Now off you go.’
‘What’s happening, Mum? Is it Dad?’ The teenager’s voice cracked.
The pause that followed told her everything. Mrs Hammond watched
her daughter’s face crumple with a curious, detached expression on her own.
‘I’m sorry, Vanessa. He’s gone.’ A brief hug. I noticed the awkward contact between the two of them. You could see hugging wasn’t something they did often. Julie Hammond stepped back. ‘I’ll tell you more later.’
‘What? But—’
‘Go back to your room now. Take a cup of tea with you.’
‘I want to stay here. I want to know what happened.’
There was an undertone of irritation in Mrs Hammond’s voice when she answered her. ‘I don’t know what happened myself. That’s what I’m trying to find out. That’s why I need to talk to the police officers who are in the lounge.’
‘I can sit with you. I can help.’
‘No, you can’t. You’ll just get in the way.’
That was temper, I thought, not no-nonsense parenting, and it hadn’t taken long for it to flare up. Vanessa narrowed the one eye I could see.
‘You can’t keep me out of this. The police will want to talk to me.’
‘And I’ll be present for that.’
The girl looked at me. ‘Is that true?’
‘Yes. Unless you want another responsible adult to be there,’ I added, and saw Julie Hammond’s face darken.
‘I’m her mother and I insist on being present when Vanessa speaks to the police.’
‘I don’t want her there,’ Vanessa said to me.
‘Vanessa!’
‘Mum, I don’t want you there.’
‘This is not the time to punish me for wanting to be a good parent.’ I could hear the strain in Julie Hammond’s voice.
‘It’s not about that.’
‘Then what is it about?’
No answer from Vanessa. I watched the two of them face off. They were about the same height and Vanessa’s slender frame was like her mother’s, but the girl was prettier. At that moment, though, they looked just as stubborn as each other.
