Let the Dead Speak

by Jane Casey

  NORRIS: I know. And I would never have forced her.

  DERWENT: What did she say afterwards?

  NORRIS: Nothing. I mean, she laughed it off.

  DERWENT: She laughed.

  NORRIS: She told me she thought I should get home. She said she’d see me soon. And I left. That was the last time I saw her.

  DERWENT: You said you saw her on Friday evening.

  NORRIS: Yes. That’s right. Standing in her window. When I say it was the last time I saw her I mean it was the last time I saw her to speak to.

  DERWENT: Right. So not the last time, in fact.

  NORRIS: I suppose not.

  DERWENT: Did you watch Kate, Mr Norris?

  NORRIS: Watch her?

  DERWENT: Did you go to the house on Constantine Avenue without her? Did you go there when you knew she had visitors?

  NORRIS: No.

  DERWENT: The thing about Harold Lowe’s property is that it’s behind Kate Emery’s house. There’s a very good view, isn’t there? If I was spying on someone who lived in that house, it’s the ideal location. You said you were obsessed with her. Did you watch her?

  NORRIS: No.

  DERWENT: Did you fantasise about her?

  NORRIS: No.

  DERWENT: Did you resent her for rejecting you?

  NORRIS: No. Not at all.

  DERWENT: When my colleague interviewed you, you said she had male visitors. You’d noticed them. You implied that you disapproved. Was that because you were jealous?

  NORRIS: It was her life. I had no claim on her.

  DERWENT: You see, I can imagine you needing to see what they did when they went into the house. I can imagine you needing to watch them through the windows. I can imagine Kate not getting round to closing the curtains, so you had a grandstand view of all the men she wanted to touch her. She didn’t want you, even though you were just as good as them.

  NORRIS: I didn’t watch.

  DERWENT: You saw them arrive. You imagined what they were doing. You watched. It made you even more obsessed. And then, finally, you’d had enough. You’d risked everything for her and she didn’t want you. She invited you round to her house, but not for sex, not like the other men. She wanted to break up with you. She gave you oral sex out of pity, to shut you up.

  NORRIS: [inaudible]

  DERWENT: It meant nothing to her, did it? It meant everything to you. You’d broken your marriage vows and she didn’t care. You betrayed your faith for her.

  NORRIS: No.

  DERWENT: You were hurt and embarrassed.

  NORRIS: No.

  DERWENT: You went away and instead of feeling better, you felt worse. When Chloe went to stay with her father, you knew Kate was alone. You wanted her to respect you, not laugh at you. You wanted her to be as passionately attracted to you as you were to her. You’re a handsome man. Why didn’t she want you?

  NORRIS: [inaudible]

  Derwent leaned into the room. ‘Well?’

  I took off the headphones. ‘Remind me never to let you interview me. How many times did you make him cry?’

  He shrugged. ‘You play, you pay. If he didn’t want to talk about getting sucked off in his neighbour’s kitchen, he shouldn’t have done it in the first place.’

  ‘That was nice. Romantic.’

  ‘A special moment,’ Derwent agreed.

  ‘He was very forthcoming, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Wouldn’t shut up. The whole confessional thing. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  ‘That’s Catholics.’

  Derwent shrugged. ‘Same difference. Talking seemed to make him feel better about it.’

  ‘In fairness, he couldn’t deny the condom.’

  ‘Nothing like a bit of DNA to make people feel chatty.’

  ‘Of all the things to forget about, that’s a big one. If he killed her, he made her body disappear without a trace – you’d think that would be a lot harder than remembering to clean up after yourself.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for the dog we wouldn’t have gone near Harold’s house, though. Going back to clean up would have been riskier than leaving it alone.’ Derwent sounded distracted. ‘Go back to disposing of the body.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I think he had to have help. She’s an adult woman. At the very least he had to carry her through two gardens and along an alley. He needed a car. He needed to find a place to put the body – somewhere that was so well chosen, we haven’t found it yet. And he needed to clean the car out.’

  ‘There was no trace of Kate in the car,’ I reminded Derwent. ‘They’re looking at it again, but either he did a great job or it wasn’t that car.’

  ‘So he could have had an accomplice.’

  ‘I think he’d have needed one.’

  ‘Morgan Norris?’

  ‘It’s possible. I wonder if he knew his brother had had sex with her too.’

  ‘He said he didn’t when I asked him. I wouldn’t want to be Morgan when he gets home.’

  ‘They obviously have very similar taste in women. Or they compete for them. Did you know that Morgan and Oliver’s wife had a thing before she got together with Oliver?’

  ‘A thing?’

  ‘According to Morgan, it was all very innocent, but I wouldn’t necessarily believe anything he says.’ I stretched. ‘I did notice they were at ease in each other’s company. I suppose she wouldn’t have let Morgan stay in the house for so long otherwise, Christian charity or not.’

  Derwent checked his watch. ‘Burt’s doing a press conference in a minute. Want to come and watch?’

  ‘I want to finish Oliver Norris off.’

  ‘That’s what Kate Emery said.’

  ‘Get out.’ I threw a pencil at him and he sauntered off, chuckling. I put my headphones back on but before I started the video again, I looked for Kate’s picture. It was pinned up on the wall, fuzzy from being blown up to A4 size. Dark hair in the corner of the picture was Chloe’s, though someone had cropped her out. Kate was squinting, her face screwed up. Her hair had blown across her nose and mouth, but she was smiling. Full of life. She had been attractive enough to make men abandon their principles, break their vows, humiliate themselves to please her. She had stuck up for her daughter in the face of institutional indifference. She had started a business and tried to make it work. She had done her best, I thought.

  Or she had used strangers for sex, and tormented her pious neighbour for her own amusement, and pestered her ex-husband for money, and victimised her daughter because she needed her to be dependent on her. Two totally different pictures. Two sides of the same coin.

  Except that in Kate’s case it was heads you lose, tails you lose. Whether she was good or bad, she was dead. It didn’t really matter whether she had done anything to bring it about. The only person responsible for Kate’s death was the person who killed her. I wasn’t going to sit in judgement on her. The only reason I needed to know what she was like was so I could work out why she’d died.

  17

  ‘I’m not saying it was a complete waste of time to get the two of them in for questioning but it doesn’t get us that much further, does it?’ Derwent looked around the room where the team were sitting. Most of us were slumped in our chairs, exhausted and fed up. Saturday morning. No weekend for us. ‘All that we’ve got from it is that Kate had sexual relations with at least two of her neighbours.’

  Una Burt nodded. ‘That’s not illegal and not necessarily a motive for murder.’

  ‘If Eleanor Norris knew about it, it might have been,’ I observed.

  ‘But did she?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I tried to remember how she had been the first time I’d met her. Nervy. Tense. Shocked. Not like someone who was braced for the horror of an investigation. ‘She was still ironing her husband’s shirts. I don’t think she’d have been doing that if she’d known he’d cheated on her.’

  ‘What about if Norris had found out about his brother?’ Georgia said. ‘He could have
killed Kate in a jealous rage.’

  ‘But let Morgan stay in his house?’ Derwent frowned. ‘He’d have started off by kicking him out. And I thought he looked properly shocked when I mentioned it.’

  Colin Vale cleared his throat. ‘I do have one new lead. I was going through the information we got from Kate Emery’s bank. She was living right at the edge of her income, incidentally – she had a fair amount coming in but she dipped into her overdraft every month and she only paid off the minimum on her credit cards.’

  ‘So she was depending on Emery’s financial support,’ I said. ‘Even though it was really intended for Chloe.’

  ‘Unless she had some other source of income that was going into a different bank account. I haven’t found anything to suggest that.’ Colin smiled happily. ‘What I did find was a direct debit she cancelled last week. It was a business name I didn’t know so I asked the bank for more information. Turns out it’s a small storage company in Roehampton. She had an account with them. It’s paid up to the end of this month.’

  ‘Storage space for her products?’ I suggested. ‘If she was trying to save money that would be one place to start.’

  ‘Maybe. But the timing’s interesting,’ Burt said. ‘Anything that happened right before she died could have triggered her murder. Maeve, take Georgia and check it out. See if you can find out what she was keeping there.’

  I was more than glad to go, even with Georgia in tow. I would take any excuse to get out of the office and the slow death of hope that we’d be ending this investigation any time soon.

  In the car park, Georgia went to the passenger door of the battered Vauxhall pool car.

  ‘Do you want to drive?’ I asked.

  She looked terrified. ‘No, that’s OK.’

  I unlocked the car, wondering if I’d scared her and if so whether it was worth trying to mend fences. I hadn’t tried very hard with Georgia and I couldn’t work out why.

  I was putting my seatbelt on when the door behind me opened. Derwent swung himself into the back seat.

  ‘What the—’

  ‘Get out of here before Burt notices I’m gone.’ He was keeping low, peering out through the window as if he was worried about snipers.

  ‘You must have something better to do,’ I said, not moving.

  ‘Nope. Only boring paperwork.’ He reached around the side of my seat and pressed down on my thigh. ‘This leg is for the accelerator – that’s the pedal at the end of your foot. Pushing it makes the car move.’

  ‘Don’t touch me.’ I adjusted the rear-view mirror so I could glower at him.

  ‘Most of the inspectors I’ve worked with never went out on enquiries,’ Georgia observed. She was transformed, her eyes bright as she stared back at Derwent.

  ‘I’m not like most inspectors.’

  ‘He says, as if that’s a good thing.’

  ‘Oh, cheer up, Kerrigan.’

  ‘Get out of the car.’

  ‘No.’ In the mirror his eyes were steady, daring me to argue.

  Georgia tried, not very hard, to suppress a giggle. I debated whether I should order both of them out of the car, or just get out myself and leave them to it. In the end, I reversed the car out of the space and drove to Roehampton in silence.

  I almost overshot the road that led to the storage company and had to make a sharp turn. Georgia braced herself on the dashboard and Derwent swore.

  ‘Sorry.’ I concentrated on driving up the narrow lane between the high walls of two industrial units. The entrance to the storage company’s yard was concealed around a bend and led into a small yard with a row of garages on one side. The car lurched over the old, broken concrete, loose stones crunching under the wheels as I parked outside a Portakabin with a tattered sign in the window: OFFICE.

  ‘You’d never find this unless you knew it was here,’ Derwent commented. ‘We passed two other storage companies on the way here – big places with proper car parks and lifts. Why pick this one?’

  ‘Cheaper?’ I suggested.

  ‘It wasn’t, though. She was paying a couple of hundred quid a month.’

  ‘For this?’ Georgia wrinkled her nose. ‘That seems a bit steep.’

  ‘Maybe it was the customer service that sold her on it.’ I was looking at the elderly man who was standing on the steps of the Portakabin. He yawned and scratched his belly through the thin T-shirt that was stretched over it. His tracksuit bottoms were perilously low-slung, his trainers unlaced. You couldn’t have said his expression was welcoming. I got out of the car and walked over to him, Georgia beside me.

  ‘What’s your name, sir?’

  ‘Yawl.’ He spelled it for me. ‘First name’s Martin. I ain’t got no criminal convictions so don’t bother looking.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was a police officer.’

  ‘I knew you were Old Bill as soon as I saw you. Even pretty girls like you can’t hide it.’ He leered at Georgia who smiled as if she was genuinely pleased by the compliment. ‘What have you done now, Martin, I thought to myself. What do they want with an old bloke like you? I ain’t done nothing wrong, miss.’

  ‘Do you know this woman?’ I showed him Kate Emery’s picture.

  ‘Why?’ He looked past me, watching Derwent, who was wandering around inspecting the garages like a dog trying to decide where to wee.

  ‘Never mind why. Do you know her or don’t you?’

  ‘I know her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She rents one of the units here.’ He scratched his head, long nails raking through his lank grey hair. ‘Katie, that’s her name. Nice girl.’

  ‘When did she rent it?’

  ‘I’d have to check.’ He frowned. ‘No, I do remember. Three months ago. She said she only wanted it for three months.’

  Three months. I glanced across at Derwent to check whether he’d heard and he nodded slightly.

  Yawl was still talking. ‘She wanted to pay me in cash, but I wasn’t having that. She tried to argue with me but she needed the unit and she could tell I wasn’t going to back down. People think they can fuck you off because you’re running a small business but I know what I’m doing. Bank details, direct debit, all in my account in advance, and then I know who you are and I know how to find you. I’ve got to be able to protect myself, don’t I? I’ve got to know you are who you say you are. I had a little incident once with the tax man – a mistake on my part, nothing illegal – so now I’ve got to keep proper records. Once Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have you on their list you never get off it again. It’s harassment of small business people, really, when they’re letting those crooks in the City get away with murder.’

  ‘She cancelled the direct debit last week,’ I said.

  ‘Three months, see? She meant it.’ He spat on the ground but well away from me: habit, not an insult. ‘End of the month, everything goes, then. If she doesn’t come back for anything, it’s mine. They don’t get one day for free off me. Clear it out and clear off, that’s what I say. I’m not running a charity.’

  ‘When was she here last?’ I asked.

  ‘Wednesday last week.’ The answer came too quickly for my liking.

  ‘You’re sure about that.’

  ‘I know my business.’ He looked defensive. ‘Always been good at knowing when things happened. Dates and times, type of thing. Ask me what day Christmas is this year. Go on, ask.’

  Derwent snorted. ‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s about Christmas, Martin. Which unit is hers?’

  He pointed to one on the end of the row of garages. The door was closed with a chain that ran through the hasp. It was padlocked.

  ‘Do you have a key for the padlock?’

  ‘No. It’s hers.’

  ‘What did she use it for?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘Storing things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘I dunno. I never asked.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘And you never noticed her carrying things in and out? Come off it, Mr Yaw
l.’

  ‘She didn’t use it for much,’ he said reluctantly. ‘She was here most weeks but whatever she was keeping in there, it wasn’t bulky. It was small enough to go in a bag. I had a look in when she was coming and going, you know, when the door was open, to make sure it wasn’t anything illegal that was going on in there, because you never know these days, do you, and these are my premises and at the end of the day it all comes back to me, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And what did you see when you looked in?’ I asked patiently.

  ‘Nothing. The freezer, that’s all.’

  ‘The freezer?’

  He nodded. ‘That unit’s got a freezer inside. A big one. A chest freezer. That’s why she wanted it. Urgently.’

  Derwent rattled the door. ‘If you don’t have a key, how are you going to get in here to clear it out?’

  ‘I’ve got bolt cutters. I warned her. I warn everyone. If you don’t take your padlock away with you when you’re finished using it, I cut it off. But she’s got until the end of the month.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s going to be back, mate.’ Derwent hit the door with the heel of his hand and it echoed, as if the space behind it was empty. ‘You couldn’t get us the bolt cutters, could you? You can blame us if she comes back and gets angry about it. I’ll give you a receipt.’

  ‘All right.’ He turned round to shuffle into the trailer and I nudged Georgia.

  ‘Go with him. Get him to show you the paperwork for the unit. Make sure it matches up with his story.’ I could tell she didn’t want to go but she nodded and hopped up the steps into the trailer.

  ‘A chest freezer,’ Derwent said behind me. ‘Call me paranoid but I don’t like them.’

  ‘It explains why she came here rather than using a bigger storage company. They don’t tend to have things like chest freezers hanging around.’

  ‘It doesn’t explain why she needed it. Unless her stock needed to be kept frozen.’

  ‘She’s been running the business for years, though. She’d have had to have it somewhere else if it did need to be frozen. And why would she have known she only needed it for three months? Why was she coming and going with a small bag?’

  Derwent was working his hands into blue gloves. ‘I don’t like any of this, to be honest with you. I can’t smell anything bad through the door but we’re still a body down on this murder inquiry. I’m not opening the freezer. You can do it.’