The Last Girl (26 page)

‘And well-off. And handsome.’

‘Not really attractive. Old. But yes, he acted as if he was rich. He asked me to come to his flat, so he could show me
where
he lived. I thought it wouldn’t matter if I did. I thought it would be fun.’ She looked at Derwent again. ‘I like fun, you know?’

‘I can imagine.’ His ears had gone red.

‘His flat was very nice. I spent the night there.’ A little shrug. ‘That was okay too. But I didn’t think it would become anything important. He told me he would get in trouble if anyone found out. But then, I think he liked that.’

‘Thrill-seeker, isn’t he. Mind you, I don’t think anyone would need too many reasons to want to be with you, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ Gallantry, from Derwent. I marvelled, but kept it to myself.

‘You are very kind.’ Her eyes rested on me for a second and I had the impression she wished I wasn’t there. Which probably made two of them. I sat back in the sofa, very definitely not going anywhere.

‘You didn’t think it would turn into anything, but it did, is that right?’ Derwent asked.

‘We started to see one another, when we could. Mostly at his place. Once here, because I wanted him to see how I lived.’ She laughed, showing a completely unexpected dimple. ‘I knew he would hate it here. That’s when he asked me to move in with him.’

‘Which you did.’

‘But I should have said no. He didn’t like it that I was there all the time, once he had given me a key. He said it was like having two wives.’ She rolled her eyes.

‘And how did you feel?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t like it either. I like being independent. I had to ask him if I wanted to do anything. I had to be careful that no one saw me there, because he has friends who live in the same building. I wasn’t allowed to answer the telephone or the door. It was like being kidnapped or something. Always hiding.’ She shuddered. ‘Not worth it.’

‘So when did it come to an end?’

‘When I told him I was pregnant.’

‘Was it true?’ Derwent asked.

‘Oh, yes. I wouldn’t tell a lie about that. I was pregnant, with his child. I told him he needed to decide what to do. He could divorce his wife and marry me, or he could give me money.’

‘To look after the child.’ Derwent sounded deeply understanding.

A pitying expression came over her face. ‘To look after me.’

‘You mean you’d have got rid of it.’

‘I don’t like children. I would have had it if he had wanted it, but he had to prove that by marrying me. Without a proper commitment, I wasn’t going to go through with it. Too easy for him to say yes, I want you to have it, I’ll love it and look after you both. Then there is nothing to stop him from walking away. And I am left with a baby and no figure, no money, no one to look after it.’ She shuddered. ‘No. I was stupid, but not that stupid.’

‘What did Kennford say?’

‘He said he couldn’t divorce his wife. He couldn’t afford to because she had all the money and he wouldn’t get any of it if he left her. He said he couldn’t pay me, either. He told me I had to have the baby and have a DNA test to make sure it was his. Then he would give me an allowance for the child.’ She snorted. ‘I didn’t agree.’

‘You didn’t have the baby.’

‘No, of course not.’ She looked at Derwent as if the idea was completely insane. ‘I told him I wouldn’t leave the flat until he gave me money to have an abortion and to make up for what he had done to me, or I would go to his wife and ask her for the payment I wanted.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He laughed. He told me she wouldn’t leave him, even if I told her about our affair. He said I had a week to get out.’ She folded her arms, which had the added advantage of maximising her cleavage. Somehow, though, I thought she
had
lost quite a lot of her charm as far as Derwent was concerned. He tended towards sentimentality when it came to mothers and babies, I’d noticed, and all of this hard-headed negotiation would be a major turn-off for him. ‘I told him I wouldn’t leave without my money and I couldn’t get rid of the baby unless he paid me. Of course, I had already arranged for the termination but he didn’t know that.’

‘But he wasn’t worried about having another child,’ I said. ‘Or was it brinksmanship?’ Niele looked blank and I realised her excellent English didn’t include that word. ‘I mean that he was pretending not to care about whether the baby was born or not so you couldn’t blackmail him, but actually he did care.’

‘I don’t think he really minded another baby. He said he hoped it was a boy, if it was his, because he didn’t have a son. And it was his,’ she added. ‘I was sure of that. But I was also sure it wouldn’t be born, so it didn’t matter.’

I thought of Kennford’s daughters and how casual he seemed about them, and wondered if there were others scattered around the world. He was the type to like the idea of lots of descendants, a true alpha male intent on scattering his seed. In the case of Niele, it had fallen on very stony ground indeed.

‘What happened at the end of the week?’

‘He got some men to come.’ She looked affronted. ‘All of my things, they shoved them in bags and threw them in the street. I had to go too, or everything would have been stolen, and besides, they pushed me out. It was humiliating. I didn’t think he would cause a scene like that, but he didn’t seem to care any more.’

‘And you retaliated,’ I said. She looked cagey. ‘Don’t worry, we aren’t interested in the details of that. It wasn’t reported to the police so there’s no crime to investigate.’

‘Some friends helped me. They were angry about what Philip had done to me. How he had behaved. They knew
where
I had been living so they went around there and … made it not so comfortable for him.’

At her invitation, I was pretty sure. She acted like a fragile waif who needed protecting, but I didn’t really believe in all of these ‘friends’ who came to her aid when she needed it. She had whistled up some Baltic muscle and they’d done the dirty work for her.

‘They trashed the place, I gather.’

‘Maybe. I didn’t see it afterwards.’

‘But you went there, because that’s where you met Mrs Kennford.’

‘That was when I was most glad I had got rid of the baby. Imagine, the coward, he arranges for me to come and see him so he can pay me. Then he tells his wife to meet him there at the same time, and to bring her cheque book to pay for the repairs. She and I meet on the doorstep, but he never shows up. He knew she would see me. He knew we would talk. He knew she would pay me the money I wanted. He is a horrible, weak man, and if you want to know if he killed his wife, I say no, because he wouldn’t have the courage.’ She wound up with a volley of what I assumed was Lithuanian. It was also a fairly safe assumption that it mostly consisted of swearwords, given her overall demeanour.

‘Calm down.’

I wondered if Derwent had ever found those two words to be effective in dealing with an angry woman. They certainly weren’t now.

‘I will not. I was so upset with him, and so was she. But she stood up for him. Her marriage is more important, her children need their father, on and on and on, and she offered me twice or three times what I had asked for.’

‘What did you settle on in the end?’

‘I don’t want to say. More than I had hoped.’

‘Worked out well for you, didn’t it? Was it your first time to try a bit of blackmail, or is this a regular part of your income?’

‘It wasn’t blackmail. It was a gift from her to me.’

‘You said she wasn’t a pleasant person,’ I reminded her. ‘That doesn’t suggest someone who was being generous for the sake of it.’

She pulled a face. ‘She was mean. She told me I was a whore and out to get what I could. She blamed me for her husband having an affair, instead of thinking about what she should have been doing to make him happy. She was aggressive from the start, when she didn’t need to be. As far as I was concerned there were arrangements to be made, but I didn’t want a fight with anyone. She wanted to keep me away from her husband and protect her family, so it was worth a few thousand pounds to her. She told me it meant nothing to her, she wouldn’t miss it, so I might as well take it. But you could see she thought I was awful to get rid of the baby – she went on and on about her daughters. The twins, the twins, they mustn’t know about their father.’ She laughed, sounding genuinely amused. ‘Just think, if I’d gone ahead with it, I’d have a baby now. Here. Imagine! I had forgotten, truthfully, until you asked me how long ago it was.’

‘Charming,’ Derwent said heavily. I was right; the bloom had definitely gone off his Lithuanian rose.

‘You cannot judge me. You don’t know what you would do and you will never be in that situation.’ She looked at me. ‘You look like you care about your career. What would you do if you became pregnant?’

Panic. Swear. Sink into a nine-month depression. Call my mother and await delivery of multiple knitted items
. The thought of it kept me awake at night, but I had no intention of sharing any of that with Niele. I settled for smiling at her blandly instead of answering. I had noted the little dig about being career-minded; I guessed she meant at the expense of my appearance. It was the second insult to my personal style in a couple of hours, and not calculated to win me over.

Recognising that she wasn’t going to get an answer, Niele stroked her stomach, which was as flat as an ironing board. ‘I am so glad I didn’t go through with it. I wasn’t sorry at the time and I’m not sorry now.’

‘Your body; your choice,’ Derwent said. ‘We get it. But what did you do with the money? If Vita was as generous as you say, you should have been able to move to somewhere nicer than this place.’

‘I told you, I like it. I like the facilities.’

‘What facilities?’

She swung open the door to the room and beckoned to someone who was standing on the other side. ‘You should meet Jurgis.’

Jurgis, it transpired, was well over six feet tall and correspondingly broad, with hands like shovels. He was silent, but the expression in his small, dark eyes spoke volumes. We were no longer welcome in Shetland Street, I divined.

‘One of your friends?’ Derwent asked, getting to his feet. It only served to highlight the difference in size between the two men.

‘A very good friend.’ She patted him on one giant bicep. ‘These are police, Jurgis. They need to leave now.’

He advanced on Derwent, who stood his ground remarkably well.

‘If we think of anything else to ask, we’ll be in touch.’

‘I don’t think I can help you.’ She caught my eye and sighed. ‘Look, I have told you the truth. I met Kennford’s wife once. She was a bitch, but she paid me off and she had bigger balls than her man did, that’s for sure. I didn’t kill her. I don’t think Philip would have killed her, or could have, even if he’d wanted to. That’s all I know.’

Jurgis put his hand on Derwent’s shoulder and squeezed.

‘Watch it, mate, or I’ll arrest you for assault on a police officer.’ The pressure intensified, the giant hand clenching
around
Derwent’s collarbone. He stood it for a second, then twisted out of Jurgis’s grasp. ‘I mean what I say, Miss Adamkuté. If we need to talk to you again, we will, here or at the station. You’ve been arrested before – you know the drill. You’re better off to cooperate.’ He put his card down on the coffee table and tapped it twice, meaningfully.

‘This is what I have been doing.’ She looked amused, but I couldn’t tell what was making her smirk. ‘I don’t think I’ll be seeing you again, DI Derwent.’ She picked up the card and read it. ‘DI
Josh
Derwent. But it really has been a pleasure.’

‘Mutual,’ Derwent said automatically, and blushed his way past her, back out to the car. He was already in the driver’s seat by the time I got to the passenger door, gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. ‘Don’t say anything.’

‘Not a word.’

He risked a look at me. ‘You can understand, can’t you? You’d go lesbo for that.’

‘Not even in your dreams.’ I patted his arm. ‘Never mind. I think you were doing quite well before you embarked on your pro-life campaign.’

‘Pretty face, cold heart.’ He shook his head. ‘Kennford knows how to pick ‘em.’

‘And apparently he’s not firing blanks, with or without the aid of the little blue pills.’

‘Think she had Vita and Laura killed?’

‘She’d have done it if it suited her, but I can’t see why she’d have needed to.’

‘Me neither.’ He sighed. ‘Next time you want to make me happy, just book us a day trip to Disneyland Paris. That fucking Jurgis made me feel like one of the seven dwarves anyway. I might as well go and see if Snow White is up for a bit.’

‘I don’t think the dwarves and Snow White had that kind of relationship.’

‘They did in the film I saw. Although come to think of it, that wasn’t made by Disney. And it wasn’t a cartoon.’

It really never took Derwent long to recover from a setback, which was unfortunate from my point of view. I put my sunglasses back on and braced myself for a long trip back.

Chapter Twelve

I GOT HOME
to discover that Rob had made it back from work before me. He was lying on the sofa in the sitting room, wearing only his boxers, and raised a hand in salute as I stopped in the doorway. ‘We must stop meeting like this.’