Authors: Nicci French
Chapter Twenty-two
‘Don’t you get it yet, Mel? They think it’s one of us.’
I stood outside the kitchen, my hand lifted half-way to the door, listening to his words. The fear that was always inside me seemed to swell now, blocking off my passageways, preventing me breathing or uttering a sound.
‘But how can they…?’
‘And that’s not all.’ Davy’s voice, more authoritative than I’d ever heard it, cut off Mel’s wail. ‘That’s why Owen’s packing his bag. That’s why Dario’s running round like a headless chicken. That’s why Miles was throwing up in the bathroom and putting all those letters from Leah into the garbage before he’s marched off to the police station. That’s why Astrid looks completely distraught.’
I put my hand on the slightly open door, waiting to push it.
‘But the police are wrong,’ cried Mel, her voice cracking in distress.
‘Are they?’
‘Yes, of course they are. What are you saying, Davy? You don’t mean this. You can’t. This is horrible, just horrible.’
‘We have to look at it clearly, my love, and if that means…’
‘I heard what you were saying,’ I said to Davy.
‘I didn’t mean to make this worse.’
‘No. I agree with you. That’s what the police think and that’s what we’re all trying not to think but thinking anyway.’
‘Are the police treating you properly?’
I shrugged. ‘That’s hardly the point. It’s like a frenzy down at the station. There’s an incident room and photos and charts everywhere, and about thirty police officers charging around. Have you seen Miles?’
‘I think he’s in his room. Packing, or clearing stuff out or something. We’re all being interviewed soon. But everyone’s locked away in their own private space, as if that’s the only place they’re safe.’
‘Except you.’
‘I’ve got Mel.’
‘Lucky you,’ I said. ‘What are your plans? Are you moving out?’
Davy and Mel exchanged a glance.
‘We’re working on it,’ said Davy. ‘What about you?’
‘I think I’d better make some calls,’ I said. ‘I thought it would end badly. But even so…’
I left them to their arrangements and went to find Pippa. As I passed Miles’s room I stopped and listened. I heard things being moved around. For a moment I thought I would go in and try to comfort him. He was my friend and once he’d been more. But as Owen had asked me, who did I trust? Not Miles, not any more. Not Miles or Mick or Dario or Owen, though if Owen knocked on my door I would let him in; I would pull the covers over us and in the darkness I would hold him against me. I carried on to Pippa’s door and, at the sound of her voice, pushed it open and stepped inside.
If her room had been a mess before, now it was in a new phase of chaos. Any clothes that had been in drawers or cupboards had been pulled out and lay in colourful heaps. Any books that had been in piles or on shelves were scattered. Folders were splayed open and papers lay across the floor like leaves in autumn. It took me a moment to find Pippa in the wreckage. She was sitting cross-legged by the side of the mirror, rummaging through a capacious makeup case, tossing stubs of lipstick and cakes of eye-shadow into a bin bag.
‘Hi,’ I said, lowering myself to the floor beside her.
‘Rough time?’
‘Pretty rough.’
‘Do you want to tell me?’
‘No, I don’t think so. There’s nothing left to tell. Everything I say I’ve already said a hundred times before. It all feels like a lie now. Does this additional layer of chaos mean you’re packing?’
‘Yup. I’m going to Ned’s tomorrow evening.’
I didn’t ask who Ned was. Instead I picked up a fringed shawl and held it against my cheek, closing my eyes for a second.
‘I’ve ordered a skip,’ continued Pippa. ‘We can dump the stuff we don’t want into it.’
‘Is there anything left after your yard sale?’
Pippa and I looked at each other and didn’t smile. The memory wasn’t so funny now.
‘You’d be surprised,’ she said.
‘The police might object,’ I said. ‘Disposing of evidence.’
She pulled a face.
‘Maybe they can take everything away,’ she said, ‘on condition they don’t bring it back.’
‘I’ve got the money,’ I said.
‘Where?’
‘Here.’ I tapped my pocket.
‘Christ! You’re just carrying it around with you?’
‘I didn’t know where else to put it. The police are about to descend on us and go through everything. I thought it would look odd if they found twenty thousand quid in my knicker drawer.’
‘Is there anything that doesn’t look odd?’
‘I want to divide it up. Can you work out who gets what?’
‘All right,’ said Pippa, vaguely. She picked up a pair of tights and started to ravel it up in her hands, then stretch it out again to check for ladders.
‘Soon?’
‘Fine.’
I remembered this house when we’d first moved in, every room clean, empty and full of possibility, the floorboards echoing when we trod on them, the light streaming in through the uncurtained windows. Gradually it had filled up – with objects, with people, with noise and with history – until it had become overloaded, like a boat buckling and tipping under the weight of too many passengers. But now we set about stripping it down again, and returning it to its original state. Rooms were being emptied, occupants were departing. Pictures were lifted down from walls, leaving patches behind them that Dario had never got round to painting. Hairballs and dust floated in the corners. The skip filled with the rubbish that had been too worthless even to put out for the yard sale, and I went and looked over its yellow rim at odd socks, cracked plates, torn sheets, a broken chair, a twisted bicycle wheel, yellowing newspapers: everything chipped, ripped, wrecked and unloved lay in the bottom. It was like a tide, I thought, that had swept in over the years, carrying us with it, and now was inexorably sweeping out again. Soon all that would be left in the house was the debris, the flotsam and jetsam of the life we’d led there.
As we were preparing to go, so the police arrived. Some were in plain clothes and would be conducting interviews with the occupants of seventy-two Maitland Road – DCI McBride and Paul Kamsky were there, and I thought I saw PC Jim Prebble, like a potato-faced hallucination from earlier days, but I didn’t recognize anyone else. Others came in uniform, carrying bags and cameras, not looking us in the eye; they would be picking their way through each room and even, it became apparent, through the skip and the bin bags into which we’d so hurriedly been pouring our unwanted objects. If it felt like an invasion, that was because it
was
an invasion. They poured over our threshold like a conquering army, with their IDs, their titles, their notebooks, their evidence kits and their suspicions. I saw the house through their eyes and it was full of dark and ugly secrets; I saw us through their eyes and we were a motley tribe, nervous, defensive and scared. It had become impossible to behave naturally or innocently, or to feel that way.
I watched Dario as he led a male and female officer up the stairs towards his room; he was ashen and red-eyed. Mick scowled at them so that his forehead corrugated and a vein pulsed in his temple. He wasn’t angry, I knew, he was full of terror and uncertainty, and probably all the nightmares from his past were crowding around him again. Only Pippa seemed quite cool, almost interested. She was used to things like this. She moved in the world of law and knew its language.
I went slowly down the stairs and stood in the hall, outside Pippa’s and Miles’s rooms. As I did so, a policeman came up the stairs from the kitchen and knocked heavily on Miles’s door. After a few seconds, Miles opened it. He was dressed in an oddly formal way, in a dark suit with a white linen shirt I had given him a long time ago. His face looked thinner than it had just a few hours ago, and older as well. He stood back and the police officer entered the room. Miles stared at me for a moment, his eyes glittering. Then he smiled faintly and turned away.
‘Astrid?’
I looked round. ‘Well, if it isn’t Detective Chief Inspector Kamsky. You don’t need to interview me again, do you?’
We walked out into the back garden together. I took him to my vegetable patch and pointed. ‘Broad beans, runner beans, potatoes,’ I said. ‘Those ones there are asparagus, but it takes two years to grow, so I doubt if any of us will be eating it. I’m moving out, you know.’
‘You’ll need to inform us of your –’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘I won’t run away. I’m going to stay with my friend Saul, not far from here.’
Kamsky didn’t reply. He seemed preoccupied with things he couldn’t say.
‘When will this be over?’ I asked.
‘All I can say is what I tell the team, and that is…’
But I never did find out what he told the team, for at that moment a police officer came walking across the grass towards us and Kamsky stepped away from me. The officer said something, and I saw Kamsky’s face become expressionless. A feeling of absolute foreboding descended on me.
‘Don’t let anyone else in,’ I heard him say, as the officer turned away. Then he looked back at me. ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said, with a curious little bow, as if he was deserting me on a polished dance-floor.
‘What is it? Have they found something?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They have.’
Chapter Twenty-three
From that moment everything changed. Suddenly I was shut on the outside looking in, not able to see. I asked Kamsky what had happened, what had been found, but he shook his head. He was an impersonal official now, estranged from me. He said it was part of an ongoing investigation and he couldn’t reveal any details. I said I didn’t understand. Were they going to arrest somebody? We were still standing out there in the garden, by my doomed vegetable patch. Kamsky started to speak, then hesitated, then spoke again. ‘I think it’s likely that charges are imminent,’ he said.
‘Who?’ I said. ‘Who’s being charged?’
‘We’ll see,’ he said, then nodded. ‘Come with me.’
Then things happened quickly. A process was under way and we, the residents of seventy-two Maitland Road, were swept along helplessly in it. The house wasn’t ours any more. It had changed even in the time that Kamsky and I had been in the garden. It looked like the site of a sinister biological accident. People were wandering around in white coats with their shoes wrapped in white nylon bags. The rooms on the ground floor were being sealed off with tape.
‘We’d like you all to come into the station with us,’ said Kamsky.
‘Can I fetch something from my room?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kamsky. ‘You can’t. This is a crime scene now.’
‘What do you mean, a crime scene?’ I said. ‘What crime?’
Dario was being led down the stairs by the two officers I’d seen him with before.
‘Astrid,’ he said. ‘They’re taking us in.’
‘Quiet,’ said Kamsky. ‘I don’t want you to confer.’
So Dario gestured at me helplessly, almost comically, as he was led past me and out into the street. Two men came in carrying arc-lights on metal stands. At the same time I was thinking urgently. In my pockets I had the bundle of money. Was I a suspect? Would I be searched at the police station? Would I have to surrender all the contents of my pockets? Probably not, unless I was the one who was going to be charged. In which case it would look very bad indeed. If there was any chance of it being found, it would be prudent to tell them in advance. But I couldn’t think of a way of saying it that wouldn’t sound strange. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Kamsky, I think I ought to mention that I’ve got twenty thousand pounds in cash in my pocket. It’s not at all relevant to the case, but I thought you might want to know.’
I felt a touch on my arm and started. It was Kamsky. ‘We’re leaving now, if that’s all right,’ he said.
‘Can I take my bike, at least?’ I asked. ‘It belongs to Campbell – and it’s my livelihood.’
He shrugged. ‘Go on, then. A police car will follow you.’
As we were led out, I saw that the street now seemed to be jammed with police vehicles, the brightly coloured cars and vans and then more unmarked vans. Lines of tape sealed off a whole section of Maitland Road in front of our house. Behind the tape a crowd of people was staring. Did they think I was being arrested? That I was a suspect? Was I a suspect? It suddenly occurred to me that I ought to compose my face into a suitable expression. I mustn’t smile. That would look insensitive. I mustn’t cover my face, seem angry or evasive. I needed to look businesslike, every inch the woman who was helping the police with their inquiries. Except that everyone knows that ‘helping police with their inquiries’ is the euphemism for being the main suspect who hasn’t yet been charged. I had to look self-consciously unselfconscious, like the person who really was helping the police with their inquiries. Which is what I was, wasn’t I?
People from the crowd shouted my name as I walked out. I looked around reflexively. They weren’t neighbours or friends. This was London, after all, where you don’t know your neighbours. These were the journalists and photographers who already knew me. What did they think, seeing me with an officer at my elbow? The headline that accompanied the photograph would be the thing that everyone remembered, whatever else happened.
My return to the police station, to the interview room, the plastic moulded chairs, the linoleum, the pimpled wallpaper, was like a recurring dream, coming back to the same place, telling the same story, filling in the gaps in response to the same questions. Except this time I knew that Mick and Davy and Mel and Pippa and Owen and Miles and Dario were sitting in other interview rooms or on benches waiting their turn. For a few minutes I was left alone in the room and I could almost feel their proximity. I felt as if it wasn’t just that we were separating, leaving the house and each other. It was as if one of those wrecking balls had swung into the house and smashed away a whole wall. I thought of half-demolished buildings, where you could see the wallpaper exposed to the rain, and all the innards, the wires and beams and joists, like bones and muscles and tendons spilling out of a wound.
The process of giving the statement was long and it was boring, but I noticed gradually that it lacked the hostility of my earlier interviews. A junior detective of about my own age took the statement, and he was so ill-briefed that I had to prompt some of his questions. I knew my part so well now. I was numbed by it, but he was clearly excited to be involved. When there was really nothing more to be said, he left me alone once more. After a few minutes the interview-room door opened and Kamsky came in. I saw a new brightness in his eyes as he sat down opposite me. ‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Just knackered,’ I said.
‘You can leave now,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid you can’t go back to the house. Have you got somewhere you can stay?’
‘Yes – my friend Saul, remember? But – ’
‘You’ll need to keep us informed of your whereabouts,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you done?’
‘Not entirely,’ he said, and then his face broke into a smile. ‘We have found evidence – blood, hair, trophies taken from the dead women. Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this, but we’re about to call a press conference at which we’ll announce that we’re charging Miles Rowland Thornton with the murders of Margaret Farrell, Ingrid de Soto and Leah Peterson.’
At which point I thought two things more or less simultaneously. I thought: No, oh, no, please, no. And I thought: He never told me he was called Rowland. I didn’t know I was crying until Kamsky pressed a tissue into my hand. Because, in spite of everything, Miles was my friend.
‘Tell me about it,’ I said at last. ‘Tell me everything.’
As Kamsky kept saying, evidence was evidence. Motives might be incomprehensible, explanations hard to find, but the fact was that they had evidence that tied Miles to the deaths of Margaret Farrell, Ingrid de Soto and Leah Peterson.
‘No,’ I said. ‘How? All three?’
‘All three.’
‘What?’
‘A murder weapon for one. And bodily samples for another,’ he said, with grotesque delicacy. ‘Tissue and hair from Margaret Farrell, if you want me to be precise. Don’t you see? It’s perfect.’ He was actually smiling. ‘It solves the problem of Margaret Farrell’s body. Her body was kept in Mr Thornton’s room. She may have been killed there. What is certain is that her body was kept there, then dumped later at the site where it was found. What’s more, there were also objects hidden in his room. Trophies, we assume.’
‘Trophies? Like what?’
‘You’ll hear soon enough.’
‘I just don’t get it. Why? I mean, I can understand Leah. Not understand-understand, but grasp it. He knew her. He was her lover. But the others. Peggy, for God’s sake, he hardly knew her. She was just a harmless woman who lived down the road.’
At this Kamsky gave a knowing smile. ‘He killed her, though. In his own room.’
‘And what about Ingrid de Soto? There’s no possible connection.’
‘There was an invitation from Mrs de Soto in Mr Thornton’s possession.’
‘What?’ I stared at Kamsky for a moment. Then I remembered Andrew de Soto in the hotel, his wretched, creased face. ‘Her husband thought she was having an affair,’ I said slowly. ‘You mean, she was having an affair with Miles?’
‘We don’t know about that yet,’ he said. ‘We’ve only just started.’
I wanted to say that Miles wouldn’t have had an affair with someone like Ingrid de Soto, but what did I know? Nothing had ever been the way it seemed.
‘I feel a bit sick,’ I said.
‘I can imagine.’
‘I don’t think you can, actually.’
‘All I can say, Astrid, is that you may never understand. Sometimes questions don’t have answers.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘You should go home now.’
‘You’re forgetting. I don’t have one any more.’