Authors: Jane Casey
‘Do you think this was about her?’
‘I’m not ruling anything out at this stage and nor should you.’
I acknowledged the sense in that, but I couldn’t imagine a teenage girl inspiring the kind of murderous hatred that had ended her life. I picked up a big digital camera that was wedged onto the bedside table. It was a massive, expensive Canon with a professional lens. It took me a second or two to work out how to turn it on so I could review the images on the memory card.
‘Bloody hell.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Laura had a boyfriend.’
‘So?’
‘Laura had sex with her boyfriend.’
‘How can you tell?’ Derwent was rummaging through her chest of drawers. He held up a packet. ‘Because she was on the pill?’
‘Because she took extremely detailed pictures of herself engaging in sexual acts.’ I handed the camera to him. ‘There are forty-two pictures on that memory card and you can’t see his face in any of them.’
He scrolled through at top speed, a look of distaste on his face. He was pretty far from being a prude but he had a real problem with underage sex, even if it was consensual. Something in his past, I presumed, but I’d never got very far with finding out what.
‘Do you think he’s the same age?’
‘Give or take a couple of years.’ The boy’s body was pale and lean, not heavily muscled, almost hairless. Laura had focused more on herself, or allowed him to. The images were close-ups mostly, both sharp and graphic. I felt we had intruded on something she had a right to keep private, and hated that it was our job.
Derwent put the camera down on the bed and sighed. ‘Big job to do here going through her belongings. Any sign of a phone?’
I shook my head. ‘It could have been downstairs, I suppose.’
‘Didn’t see it there either.’ He looked around, visibly flagging at the thought of starting to go through Laura’s room at that late hour. I wasn’t exactly disappointed that the next words out of his mouth were ‘Where next?’
The next one turned out to be a guest room, bland and luxurious in equal measure, with a bathroom off it.
‘Bigger than my flat.’ Derwent didn’t sound impressed. ‘Where do you think Vita got her money?’
‘Not the gallery, from what Kennford said. Family, I suppose.’
‘Daddy worked hard so you don’t have to.’
‘You can’t criticise her for inheriting money, if that’s where it came from. What was she supposed to do? Hand it back?’
‘It’s not the having that bothers me. It’s how she threw it around. Look at this place. It’s halfway between a museum of modern art and a show home. Whatever happened to living modestly? You can’t tell me they needed all this crap.’
‘They could afford it and they liked it. They were entitled to live here undisturbed and enjoy their money.’
‘They might as well have been sitting in a shop window counting their cash. It’s just stupid to draw attention to yourself, especially if you are loaded. And especially, you’d have thought, if you routinely work with big-time criminals.’
We filed out into the hallway. The next room was where Kennford had been attacked; we had visited it earlier with Godley. It had as much character as a five-star hotel room. An Eames recliner stood by the window and a Damien Hirst spot painting hung over the bed, both shorthand for ‘
I
have money and taste but no imagination’. The mirror on the wall had been wide and full-length, positioned just where Kennford would have seen himself coming out of the bathroom. Derwent moved soundlessly on the thick carpet, sliding around the corner of the bathroom wall to lie in wait within arm’s reach of me. He mimed hitting my head.
‘Could you see me?’
‘Hard to tell.’ Almost none of the mirror glass had survived in the frame. ‘Depends on whether the lights were on in here. And if he was looking.’
‘He was probably staring at himself. The body beautiful.’
‘Think he’s vain?’
‘Don’t you?’ Derwent had found a wardrobe and stood back to reveal a row of immaculate dark suits. ‘All handmade. Shoes too. Shirts and jumpers on this side, on the shelves.’
‘Where are Vita’s clothes?’
‘Not in here. But didn’t you hear him say this was his room? Maybe Vita sleeps elsewhere.’
Looking around, I had to agree. There was something masculine about it, and something that suggested only one person used the room. The headboard of the bed was upholstered in grey velvet, probably the perfect fabric to show wear and tear. There was a scuffed area on the left side of the bed: the right was pristine. A biography of Marx lay on the bedside table on the left, along with some loose change. The other table was empty. I went into the bathroom.
‘No women’s cosmetics in here. Quite a bit of stuff for men, though.’
‘See? Vain.’ Derwent poked around, not finding what he was looking for. ‘He must have it somewhere else.’
‘Dare I ask?’
‘Viagra.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Magic little blue pill. Essential accessory for the pork swordsman. Especially at his age.’
‘He’s not old.’
‘Probably starting to give a bit, though. Not quite as firm as he used to be. Not able to keep going as long.’
‘I’m not having this conversation,’ I said flatly, heading out to the hall followed by Derwent’s laughter. ‘Anyway, he probably keeps it in his shag pad, as you so elegantly put it.’
‘Not much reason to have it in this house.’ He sauntered out after me, looking over my shoulder as I opened the next door, which led to the largest of the bedrooms. Grey walls, cream carpet, a geometric patterned throw on the bed. More of the same aseptic neatness and puritan style, but enough personal items on the dressing table and by the bed for me to be fairly sure it was Vita’s room. ‘Separate bedrooms don’t exactly say hot sex, do they?’
‘Maybe he snores. Maybe he can’t keep his hands off her and she had to banish him to another room to get some rest.’
‘Speaking from experience, Kerrigan?’
‘Don’t try to make this about me. I’m thinking about Vita.’ Vita, who had no mirrors in her room at all. At least, none on show. There had to be one somewhere. She was too much of a perfectionist not to have a way of checking how she looked, even if she needed to prepare herself for it. I opened the wardrobe door and found a full-length one inside the door, along with rows of ironed and folded clothes in neutral colours, slate grey to ice white via every possible shade of beige. ‘Disciplined, wasn’t she?’
‘And into exercise.’ Derwent had stepped onto the running machine that lurked in one corner of the room and was poking buttons. ‘This is bigger than the one at my gym.’
‘Don’t break it.’
‘You sound like my mum.’ The belt began to move and Derwent straddled it, watching the screen. The machine was quieter than I would have expected. ‘She has it set to a six-mile run. Fast, too. Incline and everything, so she must have been fit. I can’t see the point of it, though. Plenty of hills around here.’
‘Control. She could measure her progress. Count the calories.’
Derwent hit the stop button and the machine whirred to silence. ‘So she did her exercising in here, in private. Away from the family. What else did she do?’
‘Groomed herself.’ I was looking through the collection of pots and lotions on the dressing table. ‘Crème de la Mer doesn’t come cheap. Nor does Shiseido. Nothing but the best for Vita.’
‘Trying to keep Mother Nature at bay. She was older than Kennford and he had a wandering eye.’ Derwent opened one of the pots and sniffed suspiciously at the contents. ‘Worth slapping a bit of goo on now and then. If she wanted to keep him, that is.’
‘It seems she did.’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t really see what he brought to the marriage. No money, according to him. He wasn’t even here when he was working.’
‘And that would be most of the time. He’s in demand. Chances are he uses his flat during the weeks.’ He lay on the floor to peer under the bed. ‘What’s this?’
I knelt beside him as he stretched to retrieve a wooden box, rectangular, about eighteen inches by twelve. ‘Jewellery?’
‘I bet they have a safe.’ He flipped the lid up. Three silver objects sat in the box, cradled in purple silk. Derwent lifted one out, a long curved shape covered with apparently random bumps. ‘Sculpture.’
‘Not quite.’ I was having trouble stopping myself from laughing. I reached out and pressed a button on the base
and
it hummed into life. Derwent held it for a second, uncomprehending, and then dropped it with a shudder.
‘Don’t tell me that’s some sort of dildo.’
‘That’s exactly what it is. These are high-end sex toys.’
Derwent stripped off his gloves and took a fresh pair out of his pocket, pulling a disgusted face. ‘You could have warned me.’
‘I wasn’t sure. I’m not exactly in the market for things like that. They cost a fortune. And I don’t need that sort of thing, obviously,’ I added, heading off an off-colour remark before he could begin to form it.
He pointed suspiciously at a pebble-shaped one. ‘How does that work?’
‘No idea.’
‘That one looks like a whisk. Where do you think it’s supposed to go?’
‘Wherever you fancy, I should think. Isn’t that the point?’
‘Perverted,’ Derwent announced.
‘That’s a bit harsh.’ There were ribbon tabs at either end of the purple silk tray. I lifted it out and discovered a collection of books, DVDs and some more toys. ‘
Fanny Hill
. The Marquis de Sade.
At Her Master’s Pleasure
. This one seems to be all about spanking.’
Derwent had picked up a book with a vast Viking on the cover, holding a scantily dressed redhead who seemed to have swooned. ‘“Drogo forced her thighs apart with one cruel knee, his desire for her unstoppable, his manhood as hard as the iron hilt of his sword. She fought to free herself even as she ached for him to ravage her. As he plunged his whole length into her, violating her most secret places, she shuddered with ecstasy, her body betraying her at the moment of her greatest shame.” Fucking hell. Drogo needs arresting.’
‘You’d never get a conviction. Look at what she’s wearing. She was asking for it.’
‘I will never understand women. How could you get excited about being raped?’
‘Well, it’s not all women, is it? And it’s a fantasy. Not everyone wants to live out their fantasies.’
‘What if Vita did and Kennford wasn’t into it?’
‘Well, that would explain the sex toys.’
‘Nothing to say she was using them on her own.’ He moved on to the DVDs. ‘
Anal Attraction IV
. Well, that is the standout from the series. Everyone knows the first three are a bit samey.’
‘Do you think she had someone on the side?’
‘Safe assumption, if you believe the rumours about Kennford. I doubt he’d have the energy to violate her with his iron manhood after spending all week shagging. And it looks as if Vita wasn’t undersexed. So what if she found someone who was happy to play the rapist? Someone who liked it rough, who liked to slap her around?’
‘And what if this mythical person got carried away and decided to murder her and her daughter?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m not seeing it. Why kill Laura? If he was excited by the thought of killing Vita, you’d think it would have happened while they were having sex, not in the living room on a Sunday evening. And then the attack on Kennford. That’s not in keeping with a sex murder.’
‘Half-hearted, too. All that violence downstairs and a tap on the head for him.’ Derwent sat back on his heels. ‘Try this. Vita has a secret lover. Laura finds out, wants to know what the attraction is, and starts shagging him secretly. Kennford discovers them together. Laura spills the beans on her mother’s relationship. Kennford goes mental, kills her, kills his wife, bashes his head against the mirror in his room to give himself an alibi and waits for the one in the swimming pool to come into the house and discover the bodies.’
‘If you found your underage daughter in bed with a strange man, why would you wait for him to leave before
you
started to lash out? We should have another body. Your theoretical lover would be the obvious place to start.’
‘Maybe Kennford’s a coward and he was too scared to tackle him. Or maybe he had enough self-control to wait until he could execute his plan.’
‘To kill his favourite child because she slept with her mother’s lover, and to kill his wife because she had a lover in the first place, even though he is notoriously unfaithful himself?’
‘No one said it had to be logical.’
‘Doesn’t fit with the planning,’ I pointed out. ‘You’re suggesting that he was blinded with rage and jealousy. He had to set this up, if it was him. He had to wait for the right moment.’
‘Okay. So maybe the motive is wrong. Maybe he wanted to kill Vita and he wasn’t expecting Laura to be there.’
‘Why did he want to kill Vita?’
‘Because she’d had enough. She was going to kick him out and find someone else, someone who would appreciate her many millions and ravish her five nights a week. If they got divorced, you can bet his lifestyle would take a bit of a knock.’
I looked around the room, at the wardrobe doors hanging open, the box spilling its secrets on the floor, the many expensive ways Vita had attempted to stave off the effects of ageing. ‘All of this says that she wasn’t happy. She had high standards for herself and she was anxious to keep her husband. But she wasn’t satisfied. You could be right. Maybe she felt she’d done all she could and he still wouldn’t give her what she needed.’