Saturday Requiem (13 page)

Jason Brenner was the first on their list; he lived in Forest Hill. Yvette turned off a roundabout into a cul-de-sac. The two women got out of the car and looked around. There was a row of six little pebble-dashed houses. Frieda imagined them when they were first built as neat, smart cottages on the edge of fields or woodland. They might have felt like an escape from London. Even now, the road wasn’t paved. There were just patches of concrete and gravel. But Fern Close was thoroughly, brutally surrounded. Opposite the line of houses was the wall of a warehouse. At the end of the road there was a chain-link fence and, on the other side, a timber yard. Of the houses, the first was bricked up with breezeblocks. The furthest along had a decrepit caravan in its front yard and next to it a rusted car with no tyres. Brenner lived in the second house from the end. It looked abandoned, except that where two windowpanes had been broken, someone had taken the trouble to block the gap with cardboard.

It was half past nine in the morning and Jason Brenner looked as if they had woken him up. He was wearing jeans and nothing else. It was a grey, rainy day, but even so the light seemed to hurt his eyes. He was resistant at first, but Yvette showed her badge and Frieda talked of taking him to the police station and having his place searched, so he led them inside and up the stairs. They went into a back room where there was nothing more than a couple of old armchairs and a low glass table. There were dirty plates, glasses
and beer cans scattered about, but still the room didn’t feel like anyone lived there.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ Brenner said.

He padded out of the room and they heard the sound of running water and coughing. Frieda and Yvette looked at the chairs and remained standing. Frieda stared out of the window. The house backed onto a car showroom selling a brand of car she didn’t recognize.

‘This is five minutes away from where the Dochertys lived,’ she said. ‘It feels like a different world.’

‘You’ve got to stop doing that,’ Yvette said.

‘What?’

‘Talking about bringing people into the station for questioning. One day someone is going to call your bluff or get a lawyer.’

‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

‘I’m not talking about being embarrassed. I’m talking about being disciplined or fired.’

Brenner came back into the room and Frieda was able to look at him properly. She could guess that he had been handsome once, but it needed some imagination. He was so thin that his sharp cheekbones looked as if they might break through his papery, pallid skin. His dark hair was long and matted. He had a beard that wasn’t quite a beard. Too much skin showed through. He had dressed only by putting on a dusty brown zip-up cardigan and a pair of black workman’s boots, unlaced and with no socks. He picked up a coat from the floor, rummaged in the pockets and found a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit a cigarette.

‘You knew Hannah Docherty,’ said Frieda.

‘A long time ago.’

‘Obviously. She’s been locked up for a long time,’ said Yvette.

‘Shall we go somewhere?’ said Frieda. ‘Get a coffee or a tea?’

Brenner took a phone from his trouser pocket and looked at it. Frieda found the sight almost comical. This man had nothing, but he had a smartphone. He shook his head. ‘I’m meeting someone.’

‘Then we’ll try to be quick.’ Yvette had taken up a position that Frieda was becoming familiar with, her feet slightly apart, her hands on her hips, her chin lifted and her brows drawn into a frown. ‘You were an associate of Hannah’s.’

He gave a slight smile. ‘Associate?’

‘Friend,’ Frieda amended. ‘Boyfriend even.’

‘We hung out.’

‘You didn’t give evidence at the trial,’ said Frieda.

‘I wasn’t asked.’

‘A close friend of yours was accused of murder. You might have wanted to help.’

‘I’m not a character-witness sort of person.’

‘Can you tell me anything about Hannah’s relationship with her family?’

‘What can I say? It wasn’t good. She’d moved out. She was staying with us at this friend’s place.’

‘That was Thomas Morell.’

‘Tom. Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Do you know where to find him?’

‘We lost touch.’

‘I know,’ said Yvette.

‘And Shelley Walsh,’ Frieda continued.

Brenner gave a slow smile that made Frieda feel uncomfortable.

‘Shelley. That’s right. We lost touch as well.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Yvette. ‘Old friends are important.’

‘We drifted apart.’

‘Because of the murder?’ asked Frieda.

‘It happens.’

‘Well, when
this
happened, this murder of a family that became a national story, did you think that Hannah had done it?’

‘What does it matter what I think?’

‘You were spending time with her. You were her friend. You were sexually involved with her. And now she’s been locked up for thirteen years. Don’t you have an opinion about that?’

His expression changed and he stepped forward. ‘What the fuck are you doing here? If you want to look into this, then look into it, just don’t ask what I fucking think about it.’

‘All right, then,’ said Frieda. ‘Let’s be specific. She was getting on badly with her family. Do you know why they were getting on so badly?’

‘Because she was a teenager. Because they were trying to control her. Because she was spending time with people like me.’

‘Anything else?’

‘There was some argument just after she left. Her mum or her stepdad said she’d been taking money from them.’

‘And had she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You were living with her. You were sleeping with her. She must have told you.’

‘She may have helped herself once or twice.’ He gave a shrug. ‘We didn’t have food to eat.’

‘
We
,’ said Frieda. ‘So she was stealing on behalf of you all.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘And you said she helped herself. That suggests there was money available in the house.’

‘Of course it fucking suggests it.’

‘Substantial amounts of money.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘And that’s you all knew about it.’

‘That’s rubbish.’

‘Were you in trouble with the police during this period?’

‘Trouble?’ He raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly. ‘They were always round our place on one pretext or another.’

Frieda was standing by the window, looking outside. ‘There’s something about this street,’ she said.

‘There’s a few things,’ said Jason. ‘None of them good.’

‘No, I mean the shape of it, the direction, it reminds me of something.’

‘That’s the river.’

‘What river?’ said Yvette. ‘There’s no river.’

‘You can’t see it,’ said Jason. ‘It runs underneath, along this street and under the car park.’

‘That’s right,’ said Frieda. ‘I should have realized.’

‘It’s funny. I’ve only met one other person who was interested in this bloody river that you can’t see and nobody knows about.’

‘Hannah?’

‘She used to talk about it. She knew all about it. She couldn’t believe there was a river underground that went all the way from Upper Norwood to the Thames and nobody knew about it. It never seemed much of a big deal to me.’

‘What’s it called?’ asked Yvette.

‘The Effra.’

‘You know the name,’ said Frieda. ‘You must be a little interested.’

He shook his head. ‘We used to go up to Effra Road in Brixton and she said it was because of the river. That’s how I know.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘I don’t think about the past.’

‘You look as if you’ve been through a difficult time, these last years. Almost as bad as Hannah, in its own way.’

‘You don’t know anything about my life.’

‘You don’t think that the way someone lives says something about their life? Also, you shouldn’t be injecting drugs, and if you’ve got hepatitis, you definitely shouldn’t be injecting drugs, or taking drugs in any form, or drinking alcohol.’

Brenner lifted his right hand and Yvette took a step forward but he just pointed at Frieda. ‘You don’t come in here and say things like that. Something might happen if you keep doing things like that.’

‘Careful,’ said Yvette.

‘Or what?’ said Brenner.

‘Are you serious? We can turn this place over. I’m sure we can find something.’

‘And then? I’ve been in prison. I can handle that.’

Frieda looked at Yvette. ‘Have you got a card? With your number.’

Yvette handed one across to her, with a disapproving sigh. Frieda scribbled her own email and mobile onto it as well and handed it to Brenner. ‘What was it like to see that happen to a friend of yours?’ she asked. ‘And to do nothing. Just stand by.’

Brenner looked down at the card. ‘It didn’t feel like anything,’ he said.

‘It’s all a bit late,’ said Frieda. ‘But if you remember anything, ring that number.’

Back in the car, Yvette paused before starting it.

‘What a bastard,’ she said.

‘You think?’

‘He knew about the money. He has no morals of any kind – he doesn’t care about some young girl he was sleeping with.’

‘So which is it?’ said Frieda. ‘Is he indifferent or did he do the crime himself? Or did he do it with her? Or is it none of the above?’

‘He’s obviously gone downhill since then. If there was any money, he didn’t get his hands on it or he spent it quickly.’

‘At any rate, he’s not got any money now.’

‘He didn’t show any concern at all about Hannah Docherty,’ said Yvette. She seemed angry.

‘Maybe he thinks she did it and doesn’t deserve any concern. Anyway, why does he need to perform for two strangers who pop in thirteen years after it all happened? I wonder if he told us in another way.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘By the look of him, by the life he’s led. By what he’s done to himself.’

‘Why did you say that about hepatitis? About injecting drugs? Was it in the file?’

‘You saw the puncture marks on his arm when he let us in,’ said Frieda.

‘I didn’t, actually.’

‘And then his emaciated state and the yellowness of his eyes. It was pretty obvious.’

‘You see, that’s not remorse for his girlfriend. That’s what people who do that when they’re twenty look like when they’re thirty.’

‘Let’s go and see what the others look like now.’

Tom Morell was nothing like Jason Brenner and it was hard to imagine the two men ever being friends. He was quite short, plump, with a mop of dark brown hair and a broad
face. He was dressed in a pair of dark trousers and a grey jacket, with a bright-checked shirt underneath. They met him at the housing association he worked for in Peckham and he offered them both coffee, seeming disappointed when they refused. Frieda noticed a photo on his overflowing desk of a beaming woman holding a baby, who was unmistakably his.

‘Thanks for seeing us,’ she said, taking a seat opposite him.

‘It’s the least I can do. I had quite a shock when you said it was about Hannah.’

‘Why?’

‘I haven’t talked about her in ages. When it first happened, I couldn’t talk about anything else. I went over and over it, on a loop. I remember once getting drunk in a bar and telling the whole story to a total stranger, who was wasted too. It was like I couldn’t believe it until I’d talked it out of my system.’

‘And then you stopped.’

‘One day I realized I was enjoying telling the story. Like I was some kind of hero for having lived alongside this girl who became a mass murderer. It was almost my party piece, the thing that made me interesting, gave me a kind of status. So that was when I shut up a bit. I still talk to Trudi sometimes – my wife.’ He gave a nod to the woman in the photo. ‘She knew Hannah as well and was in and out of the house. But less and less. It’s become more like a dream. Not misty, too clear, unreal. But I’m going on about myself. What’s happened?’

‘There have been concerns about how the inquiry was conducted,’ said Yvette.

‘Well, I don’t know what I can tell you about that. I only met the police once – no, twice. The first time was a junior officer – a young woman who seemed in rather a state,
actually, not like how I thought a police officer would be. And once the man in charge – what was his name?’

‘DCI Sedge?’

‘That’s the one. He was a bit stern with me. I gave a statement, but I don’t think it was particularly helpful, one way or the other. I was out of town on the night of the murders.’

‘It was more a general context that we were after,’ said Frieda.

‘What kind of thing?’

‘Tell us about the house first of all.’

Tom Morell looked rueful. ‘By the time Hannah joined us, it was pretty dreadful. Not at all what I’d had in mind when we started out. I had this idea of a commune, where everyone was welcome and everyone equal, where we all contributed what we could and helped those in trouble. You know the kind of thing. But it didn’t really work out like that, though the first year or so was all right. We were in this house that had been abandoned for ages so it was pretty run-down. Then the woman I moved there with had a fling with one of the others and they both left together. By that time Jason and Shelley were there. Have you met them yet?’

‘We’ve talked to Jason Brenner.’

‘How is he?’

‘Not in the best of health,’ said Yvette.

‘He wasn’t a very easy housemate,’ said Tom Morell. He looked from Yvette to Frieda. ‘This won’t be used in any way?’

‘We’re not interested in his drug habit, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Right. He was injecting heroin and drinking as well. Stealing to pay for it. He was an odd mixture of apathetic and aggressive. Funny, women seemed to like him in spite of that, though he never seemed bothered.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘I was always polite and reasonable and attentive and
they never looked at me, but Jason – he just had to crook his little finger. He was good-looking, I guess.’

‘I understand he was involved with Hannah.’

‘I guess she was involved with him. He didn’t have relationships. He just fucked women. Sorry.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘He had a thing going on with Hannah, who deserved better, and with other women he brought back to the house, and with Shelley, who was off her head most of the time. She was rather shrill about it all, not that I blame her.’