The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘What made you think she might not be?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just hadn’t heard from her for a while. I’ve got a key – I used to feed her goldfish for her when she was away.’

  ‘But you don’t any more?’

  ‘It died.’ She stared at me. ‘Look, what is this about? I don’t know when Rebecca will be back, I’m afraid, so there’s no point in waiting. But if you want to leave your card for her—’

  I pointed past her. ‘Is that the living room? Do you want to come and sit down, Louise?’

  She wasn’t stupid. She must have known from that moment that what I had to say about her friend wasn’t good news. But she led us into the living room and sat down on an upright chair that was pulled out from the tiny table that stood against the wall. That left a squashy sofa – the only other furniture in the room apart from the flat-screen TV – for me and Sam to occupy. Generously proportioned the room wasn’t, as Sam had predicted. But as rabbit hutches went, it was all right.

  This time, Sam let me do the talking, and I broke the news to Louise as gently as I could. As with Aaron, it was the fact that it appeared Rebecca had been the victim of the Burning Man that really shocked her, not the bare fact that the girl was dead; it was almost as if Louise had been expecting bad news of her friend, and I probed a little.

  ‘You said you hadn’t heard from Rebecca in a while – was that unusual?’

  ‘Fairly. We’ve been friends since we were eighteen. We met at university.’ Her voice was lifeless and her eyes were fixed. She was clearly in shock.

  I jumped up. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water.’ I couldn’t get into too much trouble with the SOCOs for turning on the tap, I calculated. Providing I was careful with what I touched, I should be able to get away with it. But when I opened the door on the other side of the living room to find a tiny galley kitchen, the washing machine I’d heard earlier was still spinning and the dishwasher hummed in the corner. Rebecca couldn’t have been the one who put them on, I realised belatedly. I stared at them for a moment, watching evidence literally disappear down the drain, then went back into the living room at top speed.

  ‘Louise, did you put the dishwasher on? And the washing machine?’

  She blinked up at me. ‘The flat was in a bit of a state when I arrived. Rebecca wasn’t massively keen on cleaning or keeping things neat. I was just tidying up. Force of habit, I’m afraid. Rebecca and I used to live together and I’ve just got used to tidying up after her.’

  And in the process, she had destroyed any evidence of what Rebecca Haworth had been doing – and who she’d been with – before she died. I could tell the frustration was written on my face, but I couldn’t do anything to hide it.

  We were too late. Again.

  Today was turning out to be a really bad day.

  LOUISE

  Dead. The word was meaningless when you applied it to Rebecca. It was impossible that she was gone.

  I sat on a hard chair, feeling the seat digging in to the back of my thighs, and watched the tall detective roam around the small spaces of Rebecca’s flat as if she needed to do something with her surplus energy. The fat older one sat, unblinking, a stony-faced Buddha on the sofa. If I stayed very still, if I listened very hard to what the woman was saying, I would be all right.

  They thought she had been a victim of the serial killer who had been targeting lone women in South London. Or at least, the detective said, her eyes a strangely luminous grey that seemed to scan me in a very disconcerting way, it appeared she had been a victim of the serial killer. They couldn’t be sure yet. They’d have to check.

  ‘How … do you check?’ I asked through stiff lips.

  There would be a post-mortem. Forensic examination of the body, once it had been positively identified by a family member.

  Rebecca. A body.

  This was real. This was happening now. To me. I was the best friend of the victim. Her body was found this morning. On fire. Smoke blackening skin, hair shrivelling, flames rising, her face, don’t think about it, don’t think … I would recognise the Burning Man’s signature, the detective said in her musical voice, dark shadows under the light eyes, a thin eager face. She wore heels even though she was tall, I noted, and felt a distracting gleam of respect for any woman who had enough self-confidence to do that.

  My mind had drifted away from what she was saying. I needed to listen.

  ‘… after the post-mortem examination it might take a while for the body to be released to the family, which can be difficult. Do you know the family?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s just her parents. She was an only child.’

  Her hand finding mine on a dark night as we ran across a cobbled square together past the high amber-lit windows of a reading room, heads bent against a cold wind, wine sharp on her breath, laughter welling up from deep within her at something she had done that she shouldn’t have, something I couldn’t believe she had risked and now couldn’t remember. You’re the sister I should have had, Lou.

  ‘You said you hadn’t heard from Rebecca in a while – was that unusual?’

  My voice sounded strange in my ears as I replied. ‘Fairly. We’ve been friends since we were eighteen. We met at university.’

  It didn’t begin to convey the truth about Rebecca and me. It didn’t begin to suggest how close we had been. I had known her face better than my own. I would have recognised her footsteps with my eyes closed. I was who I had become because of her.

  I had loved her, like so many others, but the difference was that I had known she loved me too.

  I had trusted her with my life.

  And she was dead.

  The detective was looking at me with concern. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water.’

  I watched her open the kitchen door with the fatalistic realisation that I was about to be in serious trouble. In my mind I ranged over the rest of the flat, thinking of the things I had moved, the surfaces I had scrubbed, the evidence I had doubtless obliterated. I had been everywhere, I thought. I had gone through everything. I knew that there was nothing for the police to find. The tall detective would be disappointed. She would want to know why I had been so thorough, and there was only one answer, even if I didn’t think she would understand.

  I had done it for Rebecca. My Rebecca.

  Everything was always for her.

  Chapter Three

  MAEVE

  The one advantage of Louise having tidied up was that the kitchen was hopelessly compromised from the point of view of forensic investigation, so I could make us all a cup of tea. I found a lone pint of milk in the fridge, still in date. The glass shelves of the fridge were otherwise practically empty – jars of mustard and a bottle of ketchup, a beribboned box of chocolates with an expiry date from February that had clearly been there, untouched, since the previous Christmas, and a lot of white wine. One shelf of the fridge was taken up with jars of eye cream, expensive moisturiser and bottles of nail varnish.

  There was a box of cereal on the counter and I gave it an experimental rattle: two-thirds empty. So Rebecca lived on cereal when she needed to eat something, otherwise it was a liquid diet. The balanced nutritional intake of a single girl about town. She had worked in PR, Louise had told us, and did a lot of client entertaining so she was often out in the evenings. No point in buying food if it was just going to go off. When I had lived alone, I hadn’t bothered with shopping much. Now Ian insisted on a weekly trawl around the supermarket, dodging hyperactive toddlers and slow-moving, trolley-pushing old women in pursuit of his favourite pasta sauce, his choice bottles of wine on special offer, his over-priced, over-perfect vegetables that were entirely tasteless. I have more in common with the victim than I have with my own boyfriend, I found myself thinking, and had to force myself to concentrate on checking out the rest of the kitchen, opening all of the cupboards and looking in the drawers.

  Everything was impeccably organised. Wine glasses lined up on the shelves like rows of soldiers, and wer
e arranged by size too. The cutlery was carefully separated into categories, gleaming in drawers. A clean tea towel hung by the cooker; the old one was presumably whirling in the machine. Again, I couldn’t tell what was Rebecca’s own inclination and what Louise had done since she’d been in the flat.

  I poured boiling water onto teabags and thought about Rebecca’s friend. She was an odd one, Louise, but then grief did affect people in odd ways. Band-box neat, unrumpled after what she had said was a lot of tidying up, she didn’t have a hair out of place. Her composure had been so unshakeable that I was shocked when I came back in holding a tray of mugs, milk and sugar, to find her with her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Sam looked up at me helplessly and shrugged when I mouthed, ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Are you OK, Louise?’ I asked gently, setting a mug down on the table near her.

  ‘Yes,’ came from behind her hands. ‘I just – just give me a minute.’

  I sat down and handed Sam a mug, then the sugar bowl, and watched disapprovingly as he did his best to empty one into the other.

  ‘We were just talking about the last time she saw the victim,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘They went out for a meal a few weeks ago. Hadn’t heard from her since, so she got worried.’

  Murmuring something, Louise stood and walked out of the room; I cocked my head and heard a door close, followed by water running into a sink.

  ‘Uptight, isn’t she?’ Sam jerked his thumb in the direction of the door.

  ‘Do you blame her? She’s just found out her best friend was murdered.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that. Who lets themselves into someone else’s flat – someone they haven’t seen for over a month – and tidies up? I wouldn’t have the nerve, would you?’

  ‘No, and I wouldn’t want to do all that cleaning either, but I’m not Louise North. She said it was a habit. Maybe she did that sort of thing for Rebecca a lot.’

  Restless, I stood up and prowled around the room. It didn’t take long. The room was overwhelmingly bland, the wall painted the shade of inoffensive magnolia that Ian called Rental Flat Cream. There was nothing on the small table at the wall, where Louise had sat on one of two upright chairs – socialising in this flat would be limited, but then based on the contents of her fridge I didn’t think Rebecca Haworth had been the sort to throw lavish dinner parties. Beside the sofa stood a small table with a lamp on it along with remote controls for the TV, DVD player and sound system. There was nothing personal – not even a magazine. No clues there to the dead woman’s tastes. The TV was large and stood opposite the sofa, its back to the balcony doors that led out onto a postage stamp of outside space where no effort had been made to cultivate window boxes or add decoration. I wandered over to stand at the door and stared out at the flats opposite where there were pots and trellises on the majority of the balconies, silhouetted against the lights from inside the flats. I couldn’t see the point, personally. I wouldn’t have bothered to plant anything either. Not when the balcony was too small to actually sit on it. Across the narrow street the neighbouring block was like a glassed-in hive; the occupants’ lives were on display. I watched a couple kissing with what seemed to me to be excessive enthusiasm, a man lacing up running shoes, a sturdy woman eating crisps on her sofa while her TV flickered in the corner.

  ‘Proper Rear Window stuff, isn’t it?’ Sam hadn’t bothered to get up, but he was stretching his neck to see what I was looking at.

  ‘Mmm. If I lived here, I wouldn’t bother having a television. The view is far more entertaining.’

  ‘For you, maybe. But I bet you were born nosy, Maeve.’

  I flashed a smile at him. ‘How’d you guess?’

  ‘Explains your choice of job, for starters.’ Sam stretched, reaching over his head without being remotely self-conscious about the sweat patches on his shirt, the wavering outlines clearly delineated like desert saltpans.

  ‘And what’s your excuse?’

  ‘I didn’t know any better,’ he said lugubriously. ‘Innocent, that’s what I was. And now look at me.’

  ‘Yeah, innocent isn’t the first word that comes to mind.’

  I turned away from the view of other people’s lives and focused on the only item of furniture that was of interest to me. There was a narrow bookcase in the corner with a miscellaneous collection of novels on it and three framed photographs, which I looked at with some attention. A fair-haired woman appeared in all of them and I guessed that was Rebecca Haworth, though the body I’d seen that morning was unrecognisable, the face swollen and discoloured. In life, she had had regular features and a wide smile that showed off impeccable white teeth. Her hair had gone through various shades of blonde over the years, getting progressively lighter. One picture showed her with her arms around an older couple; parents, I assumed. The older woman was expensively blonde too and well groomed, and her daughter could have looked at her and had a rough idea of how she would look in her fifties. Rebecca had had her father’s eyes, though – an unusually dark brown, almost black. It was an arresting combination with her fair hair. In another picture she was wearing black and white, an academic gown sliding off one shoulder, her head thrown back as she swigged champagne from the bottle. The end of exams, maybe, I thought, turning my attention to the other girl in the picture, my interest sharpening as I recognised Louise North. At university, she had been even more of a mouse, with long straight hair and drab clothes. Unlike her friend, she wasn’t wearing make-up or academic dress, and was smiling awkwardly as she looked away from the camera towards Rebecca. The victim was the extrovert, Louise the foil for her glamorous friend. I had never liked being second best in a friendship, myself.

  A voice came from behind me. ‘That was taken in our first year. I framed the picture that was taken of us about two seconds later. Rebecca had just finished Mods. I’d done mine the previous term.’

  ‘Mods?’ I queried, turning to find Louise standing in the centre of the room, composure restored.

  ‘Honour Moderations, to give them their full title. First-year exams. Everything has a stupid name at Oxford.’

  The last word fell into the room with a thud; oh yeah, I thought, and I’m supposed to be impressed that you went to Oxford. Big deal.

  She had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea. I went to a state school.’

  But I couldn’t help noticing that she’d lost whatever accent she’d once had along with the long mousey hair that was now shot through with blonde highlights and cut in sleek layers.

  ‘What was that like, then? Going to Oxford?’ Sam at his most avuncular.

  ‘It changed my life.’

  I bet, I thought, looking at her shoes that had probably cost her more than I earned in a week. She was a long way from state school, and not looking back either.

  ‘How did you meet Rebecca?’

  She turned to face me, her chin up, as if she was braced for this question. ‘We met on the first day of the first year. We shared a set – rooms with a shared living space and separate bedrooms,’ she clarified, seeing me look quizzical. ‘I didn’t think we were going to get on – I assumed she’d have better things to do than socialise with me. But she just scooped me up and made me part of her world.’ Louise still sounded surprised. ‘I don’t think I’d be the person I am now if I hadn’t ended up sharing rooms with her. I knew from very early on that it was going to be a friendship for life.’

  Well, she was right about that. It was just that life for one of them hadn’t lasted quite as long as it might have done. I saw a shadow fall over her face as she had the same thought, and I cut in quickly.

  ‘Louise, who’s this?’ I pointed at the last framed photograph – Rebecca and a man on a beach with their faces pressed close together, the wind whipping in their hair. He had been holding the camera at arm’s length and the two of them looked up at the lens with shining eyes, laughing.

  Louise leaned to see the picture, then straightened, her lips pulled into a narrow
line. ‘That’s Gil. Gil Maddick. He was Rebecca’s boyfriend for two – no, two and a half years.’

  ‘They split up?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Eventually. It was doomed, though, right from the start. He was … possessive. There wasn’t room for anyone else in Rebecca’s life, as far as he was concerned.’

  ‘Shut you out, did he?’ Sam suggested.

  ‘Well, he tried.’

  ‘When did they break up?’

  She shrugged. ‘Six months ago, maybe? A bit less? I don’t really know; you’ll have to ask him. We didn’t get on, so Rebecca didn’t bother talking to me about him much.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Everything else. She was like a sister. We were never stuck for conversation.’

  Like a sister, or something more? Louise had been jealous of Rebecca’s relationship. I wondered if she’d been suppressing an underlying attraction to her friend – or whether she’d voiced it and found she was unrequited.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said you hadn’t heard from her for a while. Why was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I tried to get in touch, but I couldn’t get hold of her. I assumed she was busy.’ The solicitor’s voice was still pleasant, but there was an edge to it that I registered. She didn’t like that her picture of happy, close friendship was marred by the facts. What she had told us was that Rebecca had cut her out of her life, deliberately or otherwise. She didn’t seem to know what had been going on with her any more than I did, and with that in mind, I turned to discuss something she definitely did know about.

  ‘When you got here, what did you find?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Louise said, with a slight hesitation, as if it was a question she didn’t know how to answer.

  ‘I mean, how was the flat left? I want you to talk me through what you tidied.’ I gestured around me. ‘If you hadn’t cleared up, we’d have had some idea of what happened before Rebecca left it for the last time. As it is, you’re the only one who has that information. If you can, I’d like you to go through it for me and tell me what’s changed.’