The Last Girl

by Casey, Jane

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ He gave a bitter smile. ‘Prison isn’t a great place for anyone convicted of abusing a child. The fact that she was fourteen didn’t matter. I’m not what you’d call a fighter but I had to stand up for myself a couple of times.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have let you into the general population.’

  ‘The prisons are packed. They don’t have a choice about it, some of the time.’ He shivered. ‘Anyway, I preferred the decent ordinary murderers and bank robbers to the sex offenders. They were worse, most of them. Evil. And not remorseful.’

  ‘Prison doesn’t work for everyone.’

  ‘Prison is a place to put people so you can pretend they don’t exist. Nothing more than that. But it’s also a place where you get plenty of time to think, and that’s what I did.’

  ‘What conclusion did you come to?’

  ‘That I was going to get out. And I did.’

  ‘What was the basis of your appeal?’ I asked.

  ‘Two things. One was a remark the judge made during his summing-up. The appeal court agreed it was prejudicial and made the jury’s verdict unsafe. The other was my representation. Philip Kennford was censured in the judgement for having failed to take notice of my instructions to him. They described him as arrogant and cavalier.’

  ‘Perceptive,’ Derwent commented. ‘So you got out.’

  ‘The Crown Prosecution Service decided not to go for a retrial. I think they were aware by then that Isobel might not be the strongest witness in the world. Her family made no objection to me being released, so they must have known.’ His face twisted. ‘But do you think any of them would have said anything if the conviction had been upheld? It took me all that time to realise that no one really cared about it. They just wanted it to go away – the cops, the lawyers, the family, Isobel. Everyone. With me in prison, they could get on with their lives. With me out, everything was a lot more complicated.’

  ‘Did you try to contact Isobel?’ I asked.

  ‘No! Never. I don’t care if I never come across her again. But they know they might bump into me now. I’m in their world again, even if I’m just looking on from the shadows.’

  Derwent was patting his pockets. ‘I think I’ve got a violin here somewhere.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. The pathos is getting to you.’ He shook back his hair. ‘I wanted to put it behind me. I thought I’d be happy once I got out, but I wasn’t. Things were worse. I had nightmares – horrible, awful nightmares that I can still remember. I was living with my parents and they’d hear me screaming in the middle of the night. Mum said it was like having a baby in the house again.’

  ‘What were the nightmares about?’

  ‘Going back. The appeal being overturned, somehow. Being chased and finding myself in a prison cell, or waking up there and realising being free was all a dream.’ He was sweating, I noticed. The room was airless but it was agitation that was making him perspire, still, even just from talking about it. I did my job happy in the knowledge that the people I put behind bars deserved to be there, but Christopher Blacker was another matter and I wondered how Kennford had been able to be so offhand about him, about the mistakes he had made that condemned an innocent man to months of hell.

  ‘When did they stop? The nightmares, I mean?’

  He looked at me with a funny smile. ‘I’m still waiting. But they got better after a couple of months. It wasn’t every night any more. Every other night, maybe.’ A slow headshake. ‘But that didn’t mean I was free of it. It started to take over during the day. I’d be walking along the street and I’d find myself thinking about the trial, and Kennford, and suddenly I’d come to on a park bench, gazing into space. Lost time, I called it.’ Another twisted smile. ‘Made me pretty fed up, I can tell you, when I was the one who was owed time for the year in prison.’

  ‘I can understand you feeling bitter.’ Derwent reached into his tiny store-cupboard of empathy and produced a crumb of comfort that was all the more affecting for being a surprise. ‘Kennford let you down.’

  ‘I was more than bitter, mate. I couldn’t stop thinking about him and his comfortable life, his career. I was just a misstep, a blip in his statistics. He’d forgotten about me the moment he left court. He was the one who’d fucked up but he’d lost nothing. I’d done my job, but through no fault of my own I’d been punished. I just couldn’t seem to get over it. I was surrounded by people who wanted to help me – friends, my family. My ex-girlfriend even hung around for a bit until I told her to piss off. Everyone felt guilty about what had happened to me, but no one knew how to talk to me. I couldn’t help them. I didn’t know myself.’

  ‘Did you get counselling?’ I asked.

  ‘A few sessions. It was on the NHS – my GP set it up – so I had to wait a few months. I wasn’t actually suicidal, you see, so I wasn’t a priority.’

  ‘Did it help, when you did get to see someone?’

  ‘I think I’d already gone through the worst of it.’ He looked sheepish. ‘And I found a way to relieve my feelings, which is why you’re here I should imagine.’

  ‘You made threats against Philip Kennford. And his family.’

  ‘And his dog, and his car, and his house. You name it.’ He looked down at the floor, laughing a little. ‘I’m ashamed of it now. Turning up at his offices in a towering rage and demanding to see him, saying I had a right to get back at him for what he’d done to me. Thank God they didn’t take it seriously enough to call you lot or I’d have ended up inside again.’

  ‘They told us it was never serious enough to be a police matter.’

  ‘I wandered into the reception area and frightened the life out of their receptionist.’

  ‘Blonde. Nice curves.’ Derwent, as he never got tired of reminding me, had an eye for the ladies.

  ‘She was a brunette. Young. I doubt she’s still working there, after what I did.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I mean, I sent flowers, afterwards, once I’d calmed down. But it can’t have been fun for her to have me reeling around her nice little reception desk swearing blue murder and making threats.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t very pleasant. How did they calm you down?’

  ‘A couple of the staff sat me down in a chair and held me there while an older one poured me a huge whisky and told me to pull myself together. I drank the whisky, got a grip on myself, started apologising and left. I was waiting for a knock on the door, but he must have decided to turn a blind eye.’ A tiny glimmer of humour. ‘It was the least he could do.’

  Derwent leaned forward again, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. He looked as if he was halfway to getting up. That was one of his techniques: save the hard questions for the end when they think you’re finished and they’re home free. ‘What did you think, then, when you heard about Kennford’s family on the news?’

  ‘What do you mean, what did I think? Poor lady, poor kid. I didn’t know at first it was his family. They didn’t say.’ He sounded bemused.

  ‘You didn’t think Kennford had got what he deserved, once you realised who they were?’

  ‘That would be a bit harsh, wouldn’t it? And a bit unfair on his wife and daughter. They hadn’t done anything wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t have cried for long if something had happened to Kennford, especially if he’d ended up in prison for something. That would have been poetic justice, wouldn’t it? But someone killed half his family. That’s more than revenge. That’s monstrous.’

  Derwent levered himself up. He looked down at Blacker, seeming taller than I knew him to be. ‘I think we’re done. Maeve?’

  ‘One more question. Do you feel sorry for him?’

  ‘No.’ The word hung in the air for a moment before he elaborated. ‘But then I don’t feel anything for him. Not any more.’

  It was the first thing Christopher Blacker had said that I didn’t believe.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘I’VE GOT A treat for you.’

  I didn’t usually spend a lot of
time worrying about whether Derwent was happy or not, but I’d thought he deserved some fun when I was setting up our interviews for the day, and even though he obviously admired Miranda Wentworth, she was a bit long in the tooth for him. It was a shame I hadn’t been able to get hold of Savannah Wentworth herself, but after five increasingly rude phone calls her agent had promised to get her to call me. I wasn’t holding my breath. The next best thing was next on the list, Niele Adamkuté.

  Derwent looked at the name without enthusiasm. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’

  ‘Another of Kennford’s clients.’

  ‘Someone else he let down?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘How the fuck does this guy have a good reputation if he can’t be bothered to do his job properly?’

  ‘I think he represented Adamkuté successfully enough. It was what happened afterwards that was more complicated.’

  ‘Oh.’ Derwent considered that for a few seconds. ‘No. I give up. What was he on trial for?’

  ‘She was on trial for money laundering and got off. And then Mr Kennford got off.’

  ‘Filthy hound.’ Derwent sounded, for the first time in relation to Philip Kennford, admiring. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be making you drive all the way to Poplar to find out.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’ Derwent stared ahead of him at the traffic that was clogging every road in central London. ‘That’s miles.’

  ‘She’ll be worth it,’ I said with a confidence I didn’t really feel, a confidence that would, in any case, have ebbed away under the onslaught of Derwent’s grousing as we inched through London in the heat. Every car and shop window added to the glare and I had a headache from squinting before we’d gone very far. I found a pair of sunglasses in my bag and put them on, defying Derwent to mock them. Which, of course, didn’t stop him.

  ‘That’s amazing. Where did you manage to find Stevie Wonder’s cast-offs?’

  ‘These are designer shades, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘How much did they set you back?’

  ‘A hundred and seventy quid.’

  He whistled. ‘They pay you too much.’

  ‘I like them, okay?’ I was sounding defensive and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘I don’t spend a lot of money on clothes.’

  ‘You’re not telling me anything I wouldn’t know by looking at you.’

  I looked down at what I was wearing: grey trousers and a plain white shirt. Bland, forgettable, inexpensive but I’d hoped reasonably smart nonetheless. ‘I’d have to be insane to spend money on work clothes, doing the job I do. You don’t want to be worried about your dry-cleaning bill when you’re crawling around a crime scene.’

  ‘Doesn’t have to be boring, though, does it?’

  ‘I don’t mind boring. I don’t particularly want to stand out from the crowd.’ I wanted to watch people, not attract attention.

  ‘You’d have a job to fade into the background,’ Derwent observed.

  ‘Because I’m tall. Yeah, I know.’

  ‘You’re quite eye-catching.’ He glanced across at me and looked away with a snort. ‘Sorry. I can’t take you seriously in those. They’re the size of bin-lids.’

  ‘Big is in,’ I said calmly. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, I don’t spend much on fripperies. Plenty of people I know would have the deposit for a house if they’d saved the money they spend on bags and shoes.’

  ‘And have you saved enough for the deposit on a house?’

  ‘Not quite,’ I admitted, thinking with some guilt of my neglected savings account. ‘But it sounded good, didn’t it?’

  ‘It sounded like something an OAP would say.’

  ‘That makes sense. I think I nicked it from my mum, word for word.’ I shuddered. ‘Oh my God, I’m turning into her.’

  ‘All women turn into their mothers eventually. That’s why I have a strict policy of only shagging girls under twenty-five. Before the rot sets in.’

  ‘That’s creepy. And it’s only going to get creepier as you get older.’

  ‘I’ll probably go up to thirty once I hit forty-five. A twenty-year age-gap is more or less sustainable, but anything more than that gets boring. You keep having to explain who people are and why they’re famous.’ He grimaced. ‘The first couple of times it’s cute. Then it just gets sad.’

  ‘Yeah, sad was the word that had occurred to me.’ I looked at him curiously. ‘Don’t you want to find someone you can have a conversation with?’

  ‘My priority isn’t talking, Kerrigan.’

  ‘Even allowing for you being the world’s greatest lover, you can’t have sex all the time. You have to go out for a meal occasionally. Go on holidays. Drive long distances. Isn’t all of that easier with someone who gets your sense of humour and understands your cultural references?’

  ‘To be honest, if I’m bored in the car, I just put the radio on.’

  I counted it down in my head. Five … four … three … two … Click. Freddie Mercury’s voice filled the car, wanting to break free.

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘I’d let you pick the station but I don’t want to listen to any old shite. Classic tunes, that’s what I prefer.’

  ‘Who is this again?’ I asked, feigning ignorance. ‘Is it the Beatles?’

  There was the touch of a smile on his face. ‘Fucking philistine.’

  Bickering with Derwent was a good way to distract from the tedium of traffic and in fact we were twenty minutes early for our appointment when we got there. Derwent stopped outside a newsagent and went in, reappearing with a bottle of water and a whippy ice cream for both of us. Mine came with a chocolate flake.

  ‘What’s this in aid of?’

  ‘You’ve organised a treat for me. I had a sudden urge to be nice in return.’ He watched me attempting to eat the flake without dropping crumbs of chocolate down my front. ‘And I had a feeling it was likely to be a spectator sport.’

  ‘Give me strength.’

  ‘Go on. Work the tongue. Tickle the underside. Oh, yeah, baby, that’s it.’ He humped the air.

  ‘You aren’t going to spoil this for me. And every word you say is going straight into my official complaint of sexual harassment.’

  ‘That file must be as thick as the phone book by now.’ He didn’t sound particularly perturbed. He knew as well as I did that there was no complaint, and that there wouldn’t be one. The last thing I needed was to get a reputation for being a humourless ball-breaker. He made remarks like that because it amused him, and because he could, and because he genuinely thought that way a lot of the time, and he wasn’t going to stop. So I would keep batting back the rude remarks and he would keep making them, and in the meantime there was ice cream to eat. I made it my business to do so as unalluringly as possible.

  Niele Adamkuté lived in a narrow street of terraced houses near Canning Town tube station. It was an area that had benefited from the development of Canary Wharf, the giant huddle of skyscrapers in the middle of the East End that exerted its own gravitational pull on the surrounding neighbourhoods. People converged on it from all over London every weekday and abandoned it at weekends, and most of them never set foot in the heart of Poplar or Limehouse or any of the other places where property prices had spiked on a promise of new wealth in the area. The recession had delivered a sharp correction, but there were still plenty of people trying to make a fortune as property developers, turning a bargain buy into a des res for yuppies. Shetland Street, where Adamkuté lived, was halfway to being gentrified, which meant most of the houses didn’t look their best. Skips sat on the road outside three of them. A couple of others were swathed in scaffolding and tarpaulins, and half-naked builders sat on the front steps of another two, smoking and soaking up the sun. Houses with neatly painted woodwork and immaculate front gardens butted up against ones that looked unoccupied, the windows dark and fogged with dirt, rubbish piled high inside the front gate. Adamkuté’s house had all the hallmark
s of a rental property: ugly double glazing, overflowing bins outside and a front garden full of gravel, the cheap no-maintenance solution to outside space. I rang the bell. Inside the house, just visible through the frosted glass of the front door, someone passed through the hall and ran up the stairs.

  ‘Friendly.’

  ‘I rang to make the appointment. She knows we’re coming.’ I leaned back to peer in through the front window, seeing bare walls and a minimum of furniture. ‘I don’t think that was her. It looked like a man to me.’

  ‘And me. But I don’t have high hopes of Miss Adamkuté. Kennford would fuck a hole in the ground if it was all that was available.’

  As he said it, the front door darkened, as if someone had been standing just beside it, hidden from our view. She couldn’t have failed to hear what Derwent said, but when Niele opened the door, her face was composed. She looked at me.

  ‘You are DC Kerrigan?’

  ‘Yes. This is my colleague––’

  ‘Josh Derwent.’ He lunged forward with his hand out. ‘DI Derwent.’

  The rank didn’t seem to impress her any more than the hand he was offering her. She looked down at it as if she didn’t understand what he wanted, then stepped back. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to see us at such short notice,’ Derwent babbled, following me into the sitting room while Niele waited patiently to shut the front door. I could under stand why he was flustered, because she was all I had been told and more. She was quite stunning – tall, reed-thin apart from a very well-developed bosom, elegant in tailored black trousers and a cream silk top. There was more to it than just good looks, although she certainly had those. She had a quality of stillness that was unusual, a reserve that was more intriguing than off-putting. Her eyes were incredible, slanting and green under arched eyebrows, and her hair was dark and glossy. A beauty spot high on one cheekbone was the only thing that marred the perfect symmetry of her features and it gave her face a touch of character it might otherwise have lacked. I knew that she was thirty-one but I wouldn’t have guessed that she was a day over twenty-five, and I had a feeling Derwent would make an exception to his rule if he thought he had a shot. Her English was good, almost unaccented and idiomatic. She stood in the doorway while Derwent and I got ourselves organised, and I couldn’t interpret the expression on her face. Not quite hostile, but definitely guarded, I decided. And the first words she said confirmed it.