Let the Dead Speak

by Jane Casey

  Maybe he’d killed her because he loved her.

  William Turner. I would have known his little blue Corsa anywhere.

  Why did it surprise me? He was intimately familiar with stabbings, after all.

  I took out my torch and shone it through the windows, checking that the car was empty. The doors were locked and a blanket lay rumpled on the back seat.

  I had stuck up for him.

  I had fallen for his charm, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it.

  I had ignored the warning implicit in the fact that he had previously faced down the police and won.

  I remembered his cold anger when he told me about Nolan molesting Chloe and it made me shiver.

  I had been blind.

  If Turner had made it back to his car, he would have driven it away. For whatever reason, he had run the other way – downstream. So if I wanted to find him, that was the way I needed to go.

  On the way back I reached the house sooner than I had expected, covering what was now familiar territory more quickly. From the river it wasn’t possible to see much of the house itself – it was almost as if Crow Lane House wanted to hide among its brooding trees. I hoped like hell the back-up would arrive soon and that Georgia would get on with sending them down to the river. Kate’s body was still where we’d left it, stiffening into rigor mortis. I shied away from looking too closely at her face, at the accusation I thought I’d see in her eyes. Why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you save us?

  The trees on this side were denser, the air cool and dark as I hurried along the path. How long had it been since Derwent started down the path? Ten minutes? Twenty? How far could he go in that time? He was a runner. He would be faster than me. He might even be faster than Turner, given the fact that Turner had his asthma to slow him down and had been limping the last time I saw him – although it occurred to me that Turner might have been faking it to look less of a threat. And the asthma – how bad was it really? I was questioning everything I had assumed I knew about Turner. How had he found Kate?

  The answer came easily, as if I’d known it already. She had told him where she was. Colin Vale’s voice again in my ear: If anything happened to my kids … I’d want to kill whoever hurt them. And his face, so calm but implacable.

  She had invited him to her house. She had lured him there, hoping that when his guard was down she could get her revenge on him.

  It hadn’t worked out that way. Maybe she hadn’t minded that either. Maybe it had come as a relief. So much of what she’d done had been for Chloe’s sake as well as her own. What was the point of going on?

  I had slowed my jog to a walk, cautious now. If Turner had somehow managed to overpower Derwent or dodge past him, he would be coming back this way. I didn’t want to run straight into him. I was keeping to the edge of the path, under the trees, half-hiding, half-inclined to go back to Georgia and wait for men with dogs and searchlights and maybe even a helicopter to track Turner.

  It was a stupid place to walk I realised a split second after someone caught hold of my elbow and hauled me backwards. I took a breath to fill my lungs and a cold hand came down over my mouth, hard enough to hurt. I elbowed him as viciously as I could in the stomach, just under the ribcage, and heard the air rush out of his lungs. It didn’t begin to loosen his grip on me. He dragged me into the shelter of the trees, away from the path and hissed two words in my ear.

  ‘It’s me.’

  I nodded fervently and Derwent slackened his grip on me enough to let me pull his hand away from my face and twist around to look at him. His hair was plastered against his skull and he was shivering. His clothes were completely saturated.

  ‘Why did you grab me?’ I whispered, outraged.

  ‘Any excuse. Why did you elbow me?’ He was holding on to his stomach, wincing.

  ‘I wasn’t sure it was you. Any luck?’

  ‘I saw someone but I lost him in the reeds. He was miles away,’ Derwent added, defensive. ‘I didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘Did you go in the river?’ I was staring at his clothes, at the mud and grass stalks that clung to the material.

  ‘A little bit.’

  ‘You’re lucky you’re not a little bit dead.’

  A grin. ‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t give me the kiss of life.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have had the chance. You’d be in the sea by now if it had gone wrong.’

  He rubbed a drip off the end of his nose and pushed his hair back off his forehead, leaving a beautiful muddy streak that I thought he deserved. ‘This fucking weather. I didn’t get a good look at him.’

  ‘It was William Turner.’

  ‘What?’ Derwent stared at me, obviously startled. It made me feel slightly better about having been taken in. ‘How do you know?’

  I told him about the car while the rain eased up, not that it mattered to either of us by then.

  ‘Shit. He’ll have wanted to get back to the car.’ Derwent swore some more, peering up and down the path. ‘Could he have got past both of us?’

  ‘I don’t think he can have gone by the river – you’d never be able to swim against the current even if it wasn’t running high. Maybe he climbed the wall.’

  Derwent hacked through the undergrowth to get to the wall. He clambered up it with a reasonable amount of skill and a frankly excessive amount of swearing. When he got to the top he leaned over it for a minute or two, shining his torch along the wall in both directions.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nope.’ He slithered back down to the ground, and if the river hadn’t done for his trousers, the wall finished the job. He examined the rip that exposed one knee as he trudged back to me. ‘I mean, it’s possible. But I think he went in the water.’

  ‘He panicked,’ I said.

  ‘He saw I was after him, that’s why.’

  ‘If he’d known you were that old and slow he’d probably have taken his chances.’

  Derwent glowered at me. ‘Watch it, Kerrigan.’

  We started to trudge back towards the house.

  ‘I keep thinking about Kate,’ I said. ‘About the fact that we have to take some responsibility for what’s happened.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Really?’ I was surprised. Guilt wasn’t something that Derwent usually bothered to feel.

  ‘The paperwork is going to be a fucker, for starters. Death during police contact?’ He shook his head. ‘I hope you like time off.’

  ‘We weren’t even there when she died.’

  ‘Georgia was.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t do it.’

  Derwent shrugged. ‘Stand up for her if you like, but it’s not worth you sacrificing your career for someone who wouldn’t do the same for you.’

  A shout from up ahead made me jump.

  ‘That’ll be the locals,’ Derwent said, picking up his pace.

  I could hear dogs barking and wished more than ever my radio was working so I could warn them that we were going towards them. Police dogs tended to bite first and ask questions later. But when we found them – or they found us – the dogs were on leashes.

  ‘Lost someone, have you?’ the sergeant said. His dog was dancing on hind legs, her tongue lolling crazily as she panted. There were three other police officers and one other dog, and all of them looked fiercely competent.

  I gave them the description of Turner and told them about the car. The sergeant nodded.

  ‘We’ll split up. I’ll get a couple of men on the water. If he’s in the area, we’ll track him down.’

  They were true to their word. Before dusk had quite fallen, but after Kate Emery’s body had been removed to the black private ambulance that would transport it to the morgue, they called me to the riverbank. It had stopped raining and the evening air was sweet. Georgia came too and the two of us traipsed along the path for a mile or so, in silence. There had been a lot of silence from Georgia since we had found Kate’s body. She wasn’t stupid; she knew she was going to be in trouble. We were all
in trouble, if it came to that. I was too tired to mind, much. I could deal with it; I would have to. More important was doing my job while I still had the chance.

  The first sign I had of what they’d found was a glimpse of an inflatable boat, lights mounted fore and aft, manoeuvring against the current. Then we came out from under the trees and I could see them: a small gang of police officers strung out along a narrow jetty that stretched into the river. One of them was manning a searchlight, angling it carefully into the water as two others grappled with something that the men in the boat were trying to pass to them. It was a black shape, formless, anonymous, and it landed on the jetty with a solid thump that made me wince even though I knew he was beyond feeling it.

  Georgia let me go first and the two of us walked down to the end. Una Burt was there, square and unsmiling, which hardly seemed fair; she had wanted Kate Emery’s body and we had found it, after all …

  Derwent was crouching beside the corpse, inappropriately casual in borrowed jeans and a jumper. He checked the pockets deftly, coming up with a cigarette tin, an inhaler, a thin wallet with a saturated ten-pound note in it.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Keys?’ I said. ‘For the car?’

  ‘Not so far.’ He checked again. ‘No.’

  ‘They might have fallen in the water,’ one of the other officers suggested. He was an inspector, I noted. ‘The tide was pretty strong.’

  Derwent looked up at me. ‘They only found him because he was caught on a tree branch further downstream.’

  I leaned across, bracing myself on Derwent’s shoulder briefly to look more closely at the body.

  ‘Problem?’ Burt said.

  ‘His face.’ It was swollen, barely recognisable. His mouth was hanging open and I could see one of his teeth was missing. He hadn’t had anything like that amount of damage the last time I’d seen him.

  ‘Looks as if he did a few rounds in a boxing ring, doesn’t it?’ The uniformed inspector shrugged. ‘That happens with drownings. Especially when the river is running high. Lots of debris in there, moving fast.’

  I stepped back from the body. ‘I want Dr Early to do the PM.’

  ‘Our guy is good,’ the inspector said.

  I nodded. ‘I’m sure he is. I just want to be sure.’

  ‘You can have Dr Early if you want,’ Derwent said, straightening up. ‘But I’ll tell you this for free. It’s definitely Turner. And he’s definitely dead.’

  35

  The next day, I went to the hospital. My first problem was getting through the security checks to gain access to the secure unit where Bethany was being treated. The second problem was sitting on a chair outside her room. Morgan Norris stood up when he saw me coming down the corridor towards him, and folded his arms.

  ‘No way, sweetheart. I’m not letting you anywhere near her.’

  ‘It’s not really up to you,’ I said, ignoring the way he’d spoken to me even though the word sweetheart was creeping up and down my spine on scuttling insect feet. ‘I need to talk to her.’

  ‘So you thought you’d sneak in to talk to her while everyone’s back was turned. That’s hardly ethical, Sergeant.’

  As if you know anything about being ethical. I held it back behind my teeth and smiled. ‘It’s an important part of the investigation.’

  And if I didn’t get to do it now, I probably wouldn’t. I was avoiding the office, avoiding Una Burt and the investigators who wanted to talk to me about Kate Emery’s death. I was going to be on restricted duties – Burt had more or less told me so – and this was my last chance to interview Bethany Norris.

  So I was absolutely not going to let Morgan get between us.

  He was shaking his head. ‘Can’t do it. Sorry. If Eleanor and Ollie were here they’d say no.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘No idea. They left me in charge.’

  I wouldn’t have done any such thing and it probably showed on my face because he looked offended.

  ‘Do you have a problem with me?’

  ‘Not personally.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  It means I’d like to arrest you for raping Kate Emery and I’ll never get the chance.

  ‘My only interest is in solving the case,’ I said.

  ‘I thought it was all squared away. Turner is dead.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’ And in about half an hour he would be on Dr Early’s slab, giving up whatever secrets his body held. I could imagine the sound of the saw, the tools snapping through his bones, the wet slither of organs detached to be weighed, measured, described and dropped back into the body. I’d proved my nerves still held by attending Chloe’s post-mortem; I didn’t need to endure William Turner’s. ‘I’m tidying up the loose ends.’

  ‘Loose ends,’ Morgan repeated.

  ‘Like what exactly happened when Bethany and Chloe disappeared. I need to know how Turner found them and if he ever threatened either of them. When was the last time you saw Turner?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ His eyes were flat. He didn’t care or he wouldn’t tell me; either way I was getting nothing out of him.

  ‘Where were you yesterday?’

  ‘Here. All day.’ He looked around vaguely. ‘The nurses can tell you.’

  ‘Why were you here?’

  ‘Keeping an eye on Bethany.’

  ‘And where was Eleanor?’

  ‘She had to go. Ollie phoned her at lunchtime. He needed her to drive him somewhere.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he drive himself?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because Eleanor had the car here?’ He said it as if I was stupid, which was fine by me. I wanted Morgan to think I was stupid if it meant he’d let me see Bethany. ‘He needed her to pick him up. I don’t know where he was, before you ask me, and I don’t know when they came back. They were at home last night when I got there.’

  ‘Did you see them?’

  ‘I saw Ollie. Eleanor went to bed early.’

  ‘What about today?’

  ‘Eleanor was here. Not very communicative, as usual.’

  ‘When did she leave?’

  ‘An hour ago? Ollie rang her and she said she had to go.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Home?’ He shrugged. ‘I really can’t tell you. When Oliver calls, she goes. She’s like his slave. Maybe that’s why he married her. It definitely wasn’t her looks or her sparkling conversation, was it?’

  ‘I thought you saw her first, Morgan. I thought Oliver took her away from you.’

  That hit home. ‘It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t interested in her. I was messing around with her, that’s all.’

  ‘Did you mind when she chose him over you?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said again.

  ‘Funny how it was just the same with Kate. She preferred your brother too. She actually wanted to sleep with him. He didn’t have to force her.’

  His face was slack. ‘Did she – did she talk to you about it?’

  ‘She did,’ I said, for the pleasure of watching the fear sink into his bones. I wasn’t going to tell him that she hadn’t said enough, that I hadn’t pressed her hard enough, that he was going to get away with it after all …

  I changed tack. ‘Did you know that Kate was blackmailing Eleanor?’

  ‘How did you— did she tell you that?’ Too casual, the panic leaking through the very lack of interest he was evincing.

  ‘There were plenty of clues. Plenty of evidence of lots of things.’ I considered him for a long moment. ‘Eleanor asked you to warn Kate off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You went around to scare her and you got carried away. You decided to teach her a lesson. Make her respect you. Take you seriously. You wanted her to realise that she’d picked the wrong brother even though – what was it you said? – you have no job prospects and no income, living in your dear brother’s house, one s
tep away from being on the streets.’

  Morgan looked at me as if he wanted to kill me. ‘Shut your mouth.’

  ‘I’m only repeating what you said. There’s no loathing like self-loathing, is there, Morgan? I bet you’d do almost anything to prove that you’re still a real man.’

  ‘God, I’d like to show you—’ He cut himself off, shaking his head. ‘You’re good, aren’t you.’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘Things got a little crazy. With Kate.’ He shrugged. ‘If she’d been that bothered, she would have called the cops.’

  ‘But she couldn’t, could she? Not when you’d have told us she was blackmailing Eleanor.’

  ‘Eleanor wouldn’t have let me do that.’

  ‘But Kate didn’t know that. She couldn’t take the risk.’

  ‘That was her problem. Her choice.’ Morgan smiled, in control of himself once again. ‘You know, I like women. I even like them when they’re doing their best to piss me off.’ To make absolutely sure I knew he meant me, he winked. I fought the urge to peel his eyelids off his face.

  ‘I’m just doing my job.’

  ‘Why do you have to go on harassing us? What’s in it for you?’

  ‘The truth. That’s all I want.’

  ‘And you think Bethany can help you?’

  ‘I know she can. I know she saw William Turner yesterday. I need to know what she told him. There’ll be an inquest, you know. It’s not me being curious for the sake of it. I need to know what sent Turner down to Hampshire, so whatever Bethany said to him is relevant. If I can talk to her now, it might save her from having to give evidence in front of the coroner.’

  He thought about it for longer than I would have liked, weighing it up. ‘I don’t know what Ollie would say. I should call him.’

  ‘OK. Call him if you don’t trust your own judgement. And find out where he is, would you? He’s next on my list.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust my own judgement,’ Morgan snapped.

  ‘Right.’ I leaned against the wall and took out my phone, idly skimming through the messages. ‘Let me know when he’s told you what to do. I mean, he left you in charge, but we both know that doesn’t mean he trusts you.’