The Last Girl (10 page)

‘But if he wins––’

Maitland shrugged. ‘Then he gets the lot. And he’s not in a position to enjoy it, so whoever’s been on his side is quids in. Hence the new agreement.’

‘New agreement?’ I looked to Liv for an explanation.

‘The latest we’re hearing is that he’s gone in with some
immigrants.
We don’t know much except that they’re supposedly Eastern Europeans, which could mean anything from the Baltics to Afghanistan. The word is, they carried out the last killing – the two lads who were dumped behind the ice rink in Streatham. They’re not on our radar so far so I can’t tell you any more than that.’

‘And luckily for us they’re not on Ken Goldsworthy’s radar either, so we’ve had a couple of nights off. Not that it’ll last.’ Dornton finished off with a cavernous yawn.

‘You don’t seem too bothered,’ I said, amused.

‘I just can’t get that worked up about a load of drug dealers and scumbags killing each other. I know the tabloids are screaming for us to do something, but I don’t see them making any useful suggestions.’

‘It’s all window dressing, isn’t it?’ Liv said. ‘Godley needs us to look busy so the Chief Constable will leave him alone. We can chase around from crime scene to crime scene, but the truth is we’re always too late to do anything useful. By the time we find whoever did the last murder, they’re usually bleeding out on a pavement somewhere in Peckham or Tooting.’

‘Rough justice, but it works.’ Dornton shrugged. ‘You might as well go off and do something more useful with your time, Liv.’

‘While “London descends into chaos”.’ I turned around the newspaper that was lying on Liv’s desk so Dornton could read the headline. He snorted in disgust.

‘Give it a rest. There are thirty or forty possible targets for Skinner and his boys – more for Goldsworthy, probably, now that these foreign lads are in on it. Someone else is going to die, and soon, but there’s fuck all we can do about it.’

Liv nodded. ‘All we need is for John Skinner and Ken Goldsworthy to agree their territories and the killing will stop.’

‘It sounds so simple when you put it that way. I can’t
imagine
why we haven’t done it already.’ Godley walked past us without waiting for Liv to respond, which was probably a good thing as she looked too mortified to speak.

‘That’s the sort of thing that usually happens to me,’ I said once he was well out of earshot.

‘Well, it’s true.’ She grinned at me, recovering fast. ‘Good thing he didn’t come along a bit earlier, isn’t it?’

‘Like when Belcott was accusing me of sleeping with him? He is the only person on this team who could put two and two together and come up with sixty-nine.’

‘There’s more of it about than you’d think.’ Dornton caught my eye and ducked down behind his computer, muttering something about having work to do.

‘Well, if you hear anyone else saying it, Ben, you know what to tell them. Besides, it’s not as if the Kennford case is fun. If it was up to Derwent, we’d be working on the gang shootings.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. He used to be on Godley’s task force dealing with organised crime. He’s got the background and the experience but for some reason he’s not involved. He feels he’s been sidelined in favour of DCI Burt, and it kills him that he’s lost out to a woman.’

‘Is that his problem?’ Liv asked, fascinated.

‘I’d say it’s one of the many.’

‘Did he tell you all that?’ Dornton’s eyebrows were hovering around his hairline.

‘No.’ I smiled condescendingly at him. ‘But a woman knows.’

‘So that’s why you’re top of the boss’s list. Feminine intuition.’

‘That’s right. It’s just our natural advantage. Don’t worry. One day you men will start being given the same opportunities we enjoy. Until then, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to work harder than us to get the recognition you deserve.’

‘Very funny, Kerrigan.’

‘I’ve never been more serious.’

‘You could try and make yourself look a bit better too. Smarter. Do something with your hair,’ Liv suggested. ‘And tidy your desk.’

‘Good idea. A few fresh flowers would make a world of difference. Little masculine touches add a lot to the workplace.’

Dornton glowered at me. ‘I hope you’re better at being detectives than comedians. Go and do your interview, for God’s sake, and leave me alone.’

‘Back soon,’ Liv trilled. ‘Try not to miss me when I’m gone.’

‘I’ll be counting the minutes.’

I headed for the door, the smile on my face fading as I started to focus on what I was about to do, on the fact that I was responsible for running an interview that could make all the difference in tracing the killer of two people, one still a child. When it came down to it, office politics didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting a result, and if I didn’t, I’d only have myself to blame.

It was no consolation to know there’d be a queue of people ready to do the same.

Chapter Five

WHATEVER ELSE THEY
had in common, Vita and her sister both had an eye for expensive real estate. Renee Fairfax’s home was far more traditional than the house I had searched the night before: a detached, white-painted Georgian property with extensive gardens that ended in a particularly pretty bit of the Thames. Polished antique furniture, silver knickknacks and gilt-framed pictures gleamed in the rooms I could see from the hall. That was where Liv and I had been left to wait for the housekeeper to find Renee herself. I felt most definitely out of place and couldn’t tell if Liv felt the same way.

She had been scanning her surroundings with interest. ‘What do you think Mr Fairfax does for a living?’

‘Something that brings in big money to afford a place like this. It makes the Endsleigh Drive house look basic.’

‘Not too shabby, is it?’ Liv ran her toe over the fringe of the oriental carpet. ‘I feel like I’m on a film set.’

‘I know what you mean.’ Even the flowers were perfect, great vases full of red roses that stood on two matching half-moon tables on either side of the hall. I wandered over to one to inhale their sweet scent, noticing in passing that there were two tiny drops of water on the table. I wiped them away before they could leave a mark on the varnish. When I turned to go back to Liv, she raised her eyebrows.

‘You look perplexed.’

‘I am, I suppose. These flowers are fresh. They were put here this morning.’

‘So?’

‘So what kind of person cares about having fresh flowers on display in her home less than twenty-four hours after her sister’s brutal murder?’

‘Maybe it was the housekeeper’s idea. I can’t really believe they have servants. I thought that kind of thing went out in Victorian times.’

‘Not if you’re very, very rich.’

‘And these people definitely are. Where do you think the money comes from?’

‘Inherited, I’m sorry to say.’ Unobserved by me, a tall red-haired woman had emerged from the shadows at the back of the hall. Renee, I presumed. She was lean to the point of emaciation, her white cotton shirt and narrow pink jeans hanging off her frame. I tried to remember what I’d just been saying about her and her family, and whether it had actually been offensive or just speculative.

She advanced towards us, moving into the light. She was nothing like her sister in appearance, but striking in her own way. A long necklace of jade beads and gold links was looped twice around her neck and hung inside her collar, the green startlingly dark against paper-white skin. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was blow-dried to perfection and she had elegantly arched eyebrows over cold green eyes. It was the classic redhead colouring and I thought it was all natural, even to the darker brows and lashes. She had been unlucky to get the delicate com plexion that traditionally came with red hair – unlucky because it showed her age cruelly. Wrinkles fanned out from her eyes and curved around her narrow mouth. Her forehead was smooth and shiny, like soap, and I recognised the signs of an expensive Botox habit. Her voice had a metallic quality, which contributed to the impression I had formed, more or less immediately, that she was pure steel.

‘I’m DC Maeve Kerrigan. This is DC Liv Bowen.’ Renee folded her arms as I introduced myself so I abandoned any
attempt
at shaking her hand. ‘We’re investigating the deaths of your sister and your niece.’

I was deliberately brutal in how I phrased it to see if I would get a reaction of any kind, which I did not.

‘I gathered that. I’m afraid I’m not sure how I can help.’ She was too composed. It was either a way of disguising her grief or she simply didn’t feel any.

‘I’d just like to ask you a couple of questions, if I may.’

‘Such as?’

No point in starting small. ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill your sister?’

‘Certainly not.’ She seemed to find the very idea an insult. ‘This entire situation is completely grotesque.’

That was one way of putting it. ‘It must be very shocking.’

‘Naturally. It’s been extremely traumatic.’ Renee did not look particularly traumatised. However, she was hugging herself as if she was cold, which was surely impossible on such a hot day.

‘Did you see much of your sister? Speak to her often?’

‘We spoke. Not daily. A normal amount.’ She shook her hair back. ‘We were on good terms.’

It was a fairly formal way of putting it, but I let it go for the moment. The truth about how people related to one another tended to come out, whether they wanted to hide it or not.

‘Would you have known if anything was worrying her?’ Liv asked. ‘If she was frightened, for instance?’

‘I imagine she would have said something if she was
frightened
, though I can’t imagine what would have made her feel that way. As for anything worrying her – well, she had plenty of things to be concerned about.’

‘Such as?’

‘Family issues. Mothers always worry about their children. Some wives worry about their husbands. Vita had good reason.’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Fairfax?’

‘I mean that Philip was not a good husband and teenage girls are not straightforward. Vita found it hard to deal with the three of them. And when Philip should have been backing her up, he was always away,
working
.’ She sounded deeply scathing.

‘He does seem to be a busy man.’

‘Busy playing around. He is consistently unfaithful.’

It fitted in with what Derwent had said about him. ‘Is that a recent development?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s always been the same. He married her for her money, as I always told her. Having got his hands on it, he had no further use for her. I hope he’s on your list of suspects because I wouldn’t trust him in the slightest.’

‘Did he ever threaten her, do you know? Any violent incidents?’

‘No.’ She sounded regretful.

‘Would you have known about it if there were any incidents of that sort?’ Liv asked. ‘Very often victims of domestic violence hide it, even from those who are close to them.’

‘The only thing he ever threatened her with was leaving her.’

‘And she didn’t jump at the chance? He doesn’t sound like the sort of person you’d want to stick around.’

‘She believed in marriage,’ Renee said coldly. ‘She believed in her vows, even if he didn’t. And she wasn’t cut out to be a single mother. She managed to persuade him to stay.’

‘Did you think that was a good idea?’

‘She’d made her bed.’ Zero warmth; zero understanding.

‘Did she have any enemies?’

Renee laughed. ‘She wasn’t a character in a soap opera.’

‘Ordinary people have enemies too, Mrs Fairfax.’

‘Not people like Vita.’

‘Sometimes,’ I insisted. ‘Wealth and privilege don’t exempt you from other people’s envy. Quite the opposite.’

‘I’ll have to try to remember that,’ Renee drawled, and I felt myself blush. I very much disliked being made to feel inferior because of my accent or my job or the fact that I was clearly impressed by my surroundings. Class was still an issue and only those who never needed to worry about it in the first place thought it wasn’t. I had to make a special effort to keep myself from sounding nettled.

‘Can you think of anything that might help us find your sister and niece’s killer?’

‘Hard work?’ She arched an eyebrow, then shook her head, becoming almost human before my eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist being flippant. I just don’t think there’s anything I can suggest. I’m at a loss.’

‘I understand.’ To be charitable, she was probably in shock. And she had apologised. I was prepared to be magnanimous, if not friendly.

‘Can you tell us about Vita’s wealth? How much was she worth?’

‘I don’t know to the nearest pound. A considerable amount, though. The money came from banking, originally. My grandfather had his own. He made a fortune in the Far East in rubber and mining interests.’

‘Ethical?’ Liv asked with a raised eyebrow.

‘It was the thirties. No one cared about that kind of thing then.’ And it didn’t look as if Renee cared much now. ‘He was one of the richest men in the world at the time, but after the war, his investments had lost a lot of value. My generation inherited the last of it – a few million.’