Left for Dead: A Maeve Kerrigan Novella (Maeve Kerrigan Novels) (13 page)

But I couldn’t help fidgeting, all the same.

I didn’t have to wait too long, because after a couple of minutes, one of the big double doors that led to the ICU opened. Rob and I both turned to see a nurse leaning out. She was young, with honey-coloured highlights through her hair and fake-tanned skin. I had to admire her commitment to glamour at that hour of the morning. She ignored me after one quick, assessing look that took in my damp hair and make-up free face, then smiled warmly at Rob.
Here’s one you charmed earlier
…

‘Your boss wants you.’

We both stood at the same time. Rob was a shade above average height and I was tall in my heels; we were eye-to-eye. Rob frowned.

‘He wants to talk to me, not you.’

‘He doesn’t know I’m here,’ I said sweetly. ‘He’d want to speak to me if he did.’

‘I’ll tell him you’re waiting.’

‘I’ll tell him myself.’

There it was. No matter how much I liked rob, no matter how well we got on, when it came to competing for the attention of our boss, we were as mature and reasonable as children fighting over a favourite toy.

‘Suit yourself.’ He slung his jacket over his shoulder and walked past me, pushing through the swing doors with a bang. He didn’t wait to see if I was following him or hold the door open for me; not that I expected special treatment—it wasn’t as if I made a fuss about needing to be treated like a lady—but I didn’t expect outright rudeness. I abandoned my coffee cup on the chair and hurried through the door after him, practically clipping his heels. It wasn’t my imagination that he sped up, determined to get there first. If I’d known where ‘there’ was, I might have been tempted to compete, but as I didn’t, I contented myself with being one step behind as he threaded his way through the ICU.

I somehow wasn’t surprised to find that Chief Superintendent Godley had taken over one of the waiting rooms and made it his own. There were files open on the table, and a laptop that hummed quietly. Hunched over the screen was a thin, dark man with glasses and a pinched expression: DI Thomas Judd. That was no surprise: where Charlie Godley went, Tom Judd followed, and if I didn’t like him much, I had to respect the way he’d organised the admin for the investigation so far. Godley was leaning back in a low chair, his arms behind his head, shirtsleeves rolled up, looking tired but focused. He had gone grey early—his hair was almost white—but it didn’t make him look old: quite the opposite. The combination of silver hair and blue eyes was a bit of a winner, especially when Godley was also tall and broad-shouldered and altogether too photogenic for the media to be able to resist him. He was pale, though, and his eyes looked red and tired. I had to resist the urge to cluck sympathetically. Worship of the boss was not encouraged. He had no interest in commanding a cult following.

Rob tapped on the doorframe. ‘You wanted me, sir?’

Godley looked up, his eyes unfocused. ‘Yes. good. And Maeve, you’re here too. Excellent.’

‘Rob phoned me,’ I said from over his shoulder. I knew it would make him happy to get the credit. It might even take the sting out of the fact that Godley had smiled at me. But Rob didn’t really need any help from me. He was carving out a reputation for himself quite competently.

Godley had snapped back to alertness by now. ‘Did you fill her in?’

Rob nodded.

‘So you know we’ve got a suspect. And a witness.’

There wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d get within sniffing distance of the suspect. I had schooled myself not to want what I couldn’t have. It would be the bigwigs who spoke to him, when he could talk to them.

But the witness was mine. Smoothly, I said, ‘I’d like to interview her. The girl, I mean. Probably easier for me to gain her trust.’

‘We’ve been waiting for her to be willing to provide a statement, and to sober up. I’m sure you’ll have a great rapport with her.’ Judd was still bent over his screen, tapping furiously, but he was never likely to miss an opportunity to put someone down. Particularly me. And just like that, the slight nerviness I always felt in the presence of the boss changed to outright anger directed at the inspector. I hadn’t inherited my father’s red hair, but there was no question that I’d got the temper that was popularly supposed to go with it.

‘What’s that supposed to mean, sir?’

‘Exactly what I said.’ His tone was bland but there was a glint behind the glasses; he knew as well as I did—as well as everyone in the room did—that he had pretty much just called me a drunk. The same old rubbish all over again: of course I was a drinker, I was Irish. ‘Mine’s a pint of Guinness—no, make that two pints with a whiskey chaser.’ Never mind the fact that my parents were both teetotal, that I hadn’t tasted alcohol until I was twenty and that when I drank, I preferred red wine.

‘You’ll do fine,’ Godley said, ignoring the tension that was crackling through the stifling little room. ‘You can take Rob with you when you speak to her. I want to know what happened up to the point where she stabbed him. I want to know how he picked her up and how he got her into the car. What he did that made her panic. I’m working on the assumption that he did or said something that made her sure she was sitting in the car with our murderer, but I don’t know what it was, and I don’t want to talk to him without having her side of the story.’

‘Right.’ It wasn’t rocket science. It should be straight forward. Should be.

‘This is an important witness,’ Godley said. ‘I don’t want anyone putting her back up. Treat her with respect.’

I was fairly sure this last comment wasn’t directed at me. I didn’t need to be told that and I hoped Godley knew it. Judd was a different story.

‘When can we see her?’

‘Straightaway. She’s keen to leave. She’s agreed to give us a statement, but my guess is she’s halfway out the door. Don’t hang about.’

I turned to go, but stopped when Rob spoke. ‘Any news on the car, sir? Did they find anything?’

Judd answered, his lips thin. ‘Not so far.’

‘What?’ I was genuinely confused.

‘The car is clean. No evidence of any of the things we might have expected. No knife or weapon of any kind. No accelerant.’

‘Could he have dumped it? Done a Sutcliffe and hid the evidence when he knew he was going to be arrested? He was there for a while before they found him.’ It wasn’t the first time the Yorkshire ripper had been invoked in connection with our killer, but I was surprised at Rob for mentioning him. If there was one thing that annoyed Godley more than anything else, it was the comparisons between his investigation and the unwieldy, disorganised and ultimately futile hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, who was caught more or less by chance. And here was another parallel. It wasn’t police work that had brought us Vic Blackstaff, and the media would be all over it. Godley’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t speak, letting Judd do the talking.

‘We’ve been searching the alley and surrounding areas. But the doctors don’t think he would have been able to move easily. He was unconscious when the paramedics arrived.’

‘So …’ I said slowly.

‘So you need to find out what really happened,’ Judd finished for me. ‘Because at the moment, we don’t have the first idea.’

Also by Jane Casey

The Last Girl

The Reckoning

The Burning

The Missing

About the Author

Photograph courtesy of Annie Armitage

JANE CASEY was born and raised in Dublin. A graduate of Oxford with a master’s of philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin, she lives in London, where she works as an editor.

Don’t miss the new young adult thriller from JANE CASEY

HOW TO FALL

“Great YA crime thriller with a cast of interesting characters, especially the female lead
.

It’s tense & compulsive & written with an unerring ear for the teen psyche.”

—
TheBookBag.co.uk
on How to Fall

Available everywhere books are sold, September 2014.