by Jane Casey
‘You knew what he wanted. You had him hooked.’
‘It wasn’t difficult. Just like it wasn’t difficult with the one upstairs. They’re all the same. Fucking pigs.’ She spat at me again, the gobbet of saliva landing just by my foot. ‘Keep looking, bitch.’
Back out to the garage, to find some bolt cutters that were covered in cobwebs and tarnished with patches of rust. They still seemed viable. I ran back in and up the stairs and got a lecture the entire time I was wrestling with cutting through the links, until I stopped and told him I would leave him there for the fire brigade to rescue if he liked. That bought me enough silence to finish the job. The last bit of metal gave way and the chain slithered into the bath with a rattling thud.
‘Do you need any help?’
‘I can manage.’ Derwent levered himself up and fell over the side of the bath, landing face-down on the mat. ‘Ow.’
‘Ow,’ I agreed, sitting down beside him and taking out my phone. My nose hurt. My hand hurt. I seemed to have torn something crucial in my shoulder at some stage, though I couldn’t remember what or when. I was covered in cobwebs and blood, and my clothes were cold and damp.
‘Who are you calling?’ Derwent asked.
‘Someone to come and take Amy Maynard away.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I handcuffed her to the Aga.’
‘Seriously?’
I nodded, then concentrated on getting through to the control room and giving the details of where to find us. Derwent eased himself into a sitting position, wincing.
‘You look like shit. Did the two of you have a fight?’ he asked when I hung up.
‘We might have. I won, obviously.’
‘I can’t believe I missed it.’ He sounded genuinely regretful.
‘You were tied up.’
‘No, no.’ He wagged a finger at me. ‘None of that. Don’t even start.’
‘You were hanging around up here.’
‘I’m warning you, Kerrigan.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she didn’t just kill you, but why did she do this?’ I gestured at the bath.
‘She really hates coppers.’ Derwent stretched, wincing. ‘She wanted me to die slowly. She said that was the problem with just shooting Hammond. He hadn’t known what was coming. She wanted my death to be my fault, because I was too weak to live.’
‘But you survived.’
‘She picked the wrong guy,’ Derwent said, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was only because I’d happened to find him that he hadn’t drowned.
I eyed him. ‘Do you want to put some clothes on before the cavalry arrive, or are you planning to greet them in a state of nature? And if so, what are you going to tell them about why you’re wandering around the house naked in the middle of the working day? You’ll get in serious trouble if anyone finds out you were planning to shag a witness at all, let alone while you were on duty.’
‘I know. I’ll get dressed, if I can find my clothes.’ He got to his feet slowly, wincing. ‘Bloody women.’
‘Don’t blame women,’ I said, following him into Amy’s bedroom. ‘Blame yourself. If you’d just stop thinking with your dick, sir, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen to you.’
For an answer, he stepped out of his pants and held them out to me.
I put my hands over my eyes instead. ‘Excuse me, what are you doing?’
‘I can’t wear them. They’re soaking.’
‘Well, I don’t want them. And put some clothes on, for the love of God.’
He dropped the pants with a wet slap and groaned as he bent to pick up his trousers. ‘I may need some help.’
‘You’re on your own.’ I slid past him and ran down to the kitchen to tell Amy the good news that she’d be taking a little trip to the police station. I stopped dead in the doorway.
‘Oh, fuck.’
I went back to Derwent. ‘Did you have your cuffs on you?’
‘In the car. Why?’
‘Where was the key?’
‘With them.’
‘Fuck,’ I said again. Handcuff keys were tiny. Easy to lose. Easy, unfortunately, to hide. ‘She must really like keys.’
‘What?’ He was knotting his tie. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I don’t think DCI Burt is going to be very pleased with us.’
‘Why not? We just caught her a killer.’
‘That very much depends on how you define “caught”.’ I held up my unlocked handcuffs and shrugged.
In the distance, a siren whooped.
‘If we ran too,’ Derwent said, quite seriously, ‘how far do you think we would get?’
Chapter 29
‘Just tell me what happened again. One more time.’ Una Burt was walking up and down in front of us, her hands behind her back. If she wasn’t careful, she would wear a path in the carpet and it wasn’t her office. I was missing Godley more than I could say.
I stood up a little bit straighter, not feeling in the least like laughing at Derwent for standing to attention now. It was stressful, reciting the same half-truths over and over again. It was all too easy to slip up on a detail. No wonder it was one of our interrogators’ favourite techniques. My hand throbbed where the doctors had glued it together. My shoulder ached. Concentrate.
‘I arrived and saw no sign of DI Derwent at the premises. I interviewed Amy Maynard to find out if she had seen him, and to establish her relationship with Terence Hammond, which was what DI Derwent had been intending to ask her. I noticed a set of keys for a Ford Mondeo hanging on the board in the hall and I asked Amy what car she drove. She said it was an old Nissan. That fitted with Hugh Johnson’s account of what he saw at the time of the shooting, and with Philip Gregory’s revised description of the car that drove at him. And Terence Hammond drove a Mondeo. We hadn’t found the keys and our theory was that the woman in his car had taken them away with her after the shooting. I felt it all fitted together and pointed to Amy Maynard as a credible suspect.’
‘So you attacked her. You were taking a pretty big risk given that all you had was a feeling that it fitted together and two sets of car keys. I call that jumping to conclusions.’
‘Well,’ I said, trying to hold on to my temper. ‘It was more than a feeling. A lot of things fell into place when I saw the keys. And anyway, I was right.’
‘Yes, you were. Go on.’
‘She was holding a knife. I restrained her and disarmed her. I handcuffed her to an immovable object and went in search of DI Derwent.’
‘Why didn’t you call for backup immediately?’
‘I didn’t want to wait. I thought Amy was trying to keep me talking. I thought it might be time-sensitive. And it was.’
‘So you found him chained up and in danger of drowning.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you untied him.’
‘Yes. I had to look for the keys, and then a bolt-cutter when the keys didn’t turn up. It took a while.’
‘Did you search Amy Maynard at any point?’
‘I did.’
‘But you missed the keys.’
‘I must have.’
‘And you missed the handcuff key she had hidden somewhere on her person.’
‘Yes.’
‘So she was able to free herself.’
‘Yes.’ All the wriggling and complaining had been very convincing, I didn’t add. Amy had fooled me comprehensively.
‘And you, Josh. How do you explain what happened?’
‘I had a short conversation with Amy Maynard. She seemed very defensive about her relationship with Terence Hammond. I had wanted to speak to her because I thought she had a crush on him and that she might have identified his girlfriend, the lady we still hadn’t been able to trace. During the course of our conversation, I became suspicious of her and I asked to use the bathroom. I took the opportunity to look into the bedrooms upstairs and while I was looking around Miss Maynard’s room, she hit me over the head with a lamp. When I came t
o, I was suspended above the bath in danger of drowning.’
‘How did she manage to move you from the bedroom to the bathroom and lift you into the bath? You must weigh twice what she does.’
‘She used a wheelchair to move him,’ I said. ‘The bath was equipped with a hoist. According to the neighbours, her mother nursed her father in the house before she became too feeble to cope and they both went into a home. The house was equipped for moving heavy individuals.’
‘Okay.’ Burt was frowning. ‘But why would she just attack you?’
‘She doesn’t like police officers,’ Derwent said. ‘Or men.’ It was the understatement of the year, and close enough to the real reason to sound true. Especially if you didn’t think about it for too long.
‘Her sister was Annabel Strake, who died in 2001,’ I said, judging it was time to distract from what Derwent might or might not have done in the house to incur Amy’s wrath. ‘Amy changed her name to Maynard after her parents died.’
‘And she blamed Terence Hammond and Phil Gregory for what happened to her sister,’ Una Burt said.
‘Rightly, I think. She killed herself because no one believed her. Terence Hammond took advantage of her.’
‘Why would he do something like that? He was an experienced police officer.’
‘He was under tremendous pressure. He’d had a car accident the year before that caused a catastrophic injury to his son. His marriage was in trouble as a result. He had two small children and an angry wife who wasn’t providing him with – um – his conjugal rights. Annabel Strake was young, high and an easy target.’
‘Have you told the DPS Gregory lied to them?’
‘With great pleasure,’ I said. ‘I think they’ll be interviewing him again soon.’
‘How did Amy Maynard find Gregory and Hammond?’
‘By chance, and then by design,’ I said. ‘She trained as a counsellor because she genuinely wanted to help young people, I think. Annabel had problems with depression and alcohol abuse. Amy grew up around that. She had real empathy with teenagers, especially ones who were coping with family problems. Being a counsellor was actually quite a good career for her. Then she came across Hammond. She had a printout on the screen that was a report from a local paper, about two years ago. It mentioned him by name.’
‘And she decided to get close to him by going through his kids.’
‘She offered to work at his daughter’s school and they accepted because she was willing to work for a pitiful salary. According to the headmistress, she said she wanted to get some experience for her CV. She spent a lot of time getting to know Vanessa, gaining her trust, being the alternative to the very difficult Julie Hammond. Vanessa liked her, Ben liked her – Terence liked her. He liked her a lot. He was reckless around her. He liked the crazy things she suggested they do, like meeting in Richmond Park after his shift for illicit sex in a public place.’
‘He must have thought he’d won the lottery,’ Derwent commented. ‘Young, pretty, absolutely filthy and interested in him.’
‘Yeah. How could he say no?’ I managed not to give Derwent a meaningful look because Burt was watching for it, but that was the only reason I didn’t.
‘He was someone she hated. How could she bear to let him touch her?’ Burt mused.
‘To get what she wanted. She was quite single-minded about it,’ I said. ‘She had a plan to execute. And she would have loved the thrill of it. She basically made an excuse to talk to me at Hammond’s funeral service. I was with Gregory. He might have made a connection between her and Annabel. They looked very similar, even though Amy dressed so modestly.’
‘Why take the risk?’ Burt asked.
‘I think she wanted to know what he was doing there, and she wanted to talk to him face to face. She’d found Gregory on the Internet too, in his case on a dating site. She emailed him from a few different profiles, getting to know as much about him as she could. He was forthcoming. He made it easy for her to find him. The only thing she couldn’t control was how quick his reactions were when she tried to run him down.’
‘Good for him,’ Derwent said.
‘She liked talking to me about the investigation at the funeral. It gave her a kick to fool us.’
‘Then she must be loving this,’ Una Burt said, her voice very dry. ‘No sign of her. The dog didn’t track her further than the end of the road. She must have been ready to run.’
‘I’m sure she’s good at improvising,’ I said. ‘She’s clever. She can’t have known she was going to need the handcuff key but she had it on her. Mind you, she likes keys. That’s why she kept Hammond’s.’
‘We know she’s got an accomplice out there somewhere,’ Derwent pointed out. ‘She didn’t shoot Hammond. She just made it possible for someone else to do it. That means she has someone to call on for help. Someone who has an interest in keeping her out of prison.’
‘So what do we do now? Wait?’ Burt was back to pacing. ‘I don’t like that approach.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Without wishing to jump to any conclusions, I think I have an idea.’
This time, I found Andrew Hardy in his office at the White Valley Shooting Club, rather than standing in reception. He hadn’t known I was coming and his expression when he saw me was pure dread.
‘What can I do for you, Miss Kerrigan? Do you need to speak to more of our members? I’m fairly sure you’ve seen them all by now.’
‘I just need to look at a few files,’ I said. ‘It won’t take long.’
‘What sort of files?’
‘When we came to see you originally, you made us sign in. Do you keep the sign-in sheets?’
‘We do. It helps us to keep track of who is using the facilities and what our busy times are.’ He took down a lever-arch file that was fat with yellowing paper. ‘They’re all in here.’
I leafed through, looking for the day we’d visited. I didn’t expect to find Amy Maynard’s name in the book, and nor did I. She wouldn’t have been an official visitor. I doubted she’d even been in the clubhouse. She was there to meet her fellow murderer, someone who was probably a member of the club, someone whose name appeared on the list Rex Gibney had given us of people who knew about the gun. Probably someone I’d spoken to already.
There were about twenty names on the sheet when I found it. I scanned through it. ‘Can I see the files on everyone here?’
‘Why do you need them?’
‘Just checking.’
Hardy went through his filing cabinets methodically, taking out the files and setting them on his desk. The office was so small that he ceded it to me rather than try to work around me.
I was halfway down the list when I opened Jonny Pilgrew’s file and the obvious answer hit me between the eyes. Under ‘other gun-club membership’, in a straggling, unformed hand, Jonny had written: ‘Uplands School’.
Jonny, Stuart Pilgrew’s son. The boy with light eyebrows and short dark hair. The boy who’d walked away from me without even knowing who I was or what I wanted with him. The boy who’d known very well who I was because he’d seen me at his school a few days earlier.
He’d cut and dyed his hair since I’d seen him leave the student counsellor’s office, where he’d been with Amy Maynard. He’d done what he could to change his appearance. What he couldn’t hide was his fear, and now it made sense to me.
It was a nice house, not large but detached. Cream-painted, like its neighbours. Two cars in the driveway. Lights on in the living room and a bedroom upstairs.
I rang the doorbell and waited, Derwent beside me.
‘Yes?’ Stuart Pilgrew stood in the doorway, obviously not long home from work. He had shed his tie and his jacket, and he was wearing socks with a hole over one toe, but he looked more like a successful businessman than he had at the gun club. He frowned at me, not knowing who I was, then spotted Derwent. His face transformed itself into a welcoming smile. ‘All right, mate?’
‘Not bad, thanks. Do you mind if we come in
for a minute?’
‘Of course, of course.’ Pilgrew let us into the hall and directed us to the living room, which was comfortable and untidy. A young teenage girl unwound herself from the sofa and disappeared silently. There was a smell of roasting meat and an occasional clatter from the kitchen. I heard a woman’s voice asking a brief question that got an even briefer answer from the girl.
‘Sorry for disturbing you. We’ll try not to stay too long,’ I said.
‘What can I do for you? I thought I’d seen the last of you after you ran out on us at the club.’
‘I had somewhere to be,’ Derwent said.
‘In quite a hurry.’ Pilgrew was affecting good humour and friendliness but there was a shrewd look in his eyes that told me he was frantically trying to work out what we wanted. ‘Is this about the gun?’
‘What gun?’ I asked.
‘The one you’ve been asking everyone in the club about. Rex Gibney’s gun.’
‘Did you know about it?’
‘Yes. I saw it.’
‘Did you?’ I was genuinely surprised that he was volunteering that information.
‘He showed me and Jonny when we were at his house once. He let Jonny actually fire it.’
‘Jonny, your son.’
‘So my wife tells me.’
‘That’s the second time you’ve made that joke,’ I said coldly. ‘You need some new material.’
He was watching me, definitely wary now. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to know why you’ve just told us Jonny fired the gun. It makes me think you’re trying to muddy the waters. Because if we find it and there’s forensic evidence linking Jonny to the gun, you’ve already said he handled it and fired it, haven’t you?’
Pilgrew shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘Can we have a word with Jonny? Please?’ Derwent waited for a moment. ‘I’d rather talk to him here than at the station, but I will take him in for formal questioning if you prefer.’
