The Last Girl (5 page)

‘Did you see anything that struck you as unusual when you came in from the garden?’

‘Nothing. But I didn’t put the lights on in the kitchen or the hall. I just went straight upstairs.’

‘In the dark?’

‘I knew the way. And it’s not as if there was much to bump into.’ He raised his eyebrows, inviting us to laugh with him, though none of us took him up on it. It seemed I was right about his taste being very different from his wife’s.

‘Did you see Vita or Laura when you came in?’

‘No. In fact, I thought Laura was out. She had gone around to a friend’s house and I’d expected her to be there all evening.’

‘Which friend?’

‘I don’t know. Vita knew.’

And you didn’t listen when she told you about it
.

‘Didn’t you hear voices from the sitting room?’ Derwent asked.

‘I didn’t stop to listen. I wouldn’t have expected to. As far as I knew, Vita was in there on her own.’

‘What was she doing with her evening?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Reading? Watching telly? Phoning her friends? Embroidery? Surfing the Internet?’

There was obvious irritation in Kennford’s voice when he answered. ‘There’s very little point in naming pastimes to see if any of them ring a bell. I didn’t ask her how she planned to occupy herself and she didn’t tell me.’

‘Didn’t you care?’

‘I respected her privacy.’ He looked at Derwent’s left hand. ‘You’re not married, are you? I wouldn’t expect you
to
understand, but sometimes you need to give each other space to breathe. Too much interest in each other’s lives can be smothering.’

‘Sounds like someone’s been reading the Relate handbook.’

‘Let’s move on,’ Godley said hastily. ‘Did you see anyone strange hanging around in the last few weeks? Anyone you didn’t recognise? Anything that made you suspicious?’

‘I’ve been racking my brains, but no.’

‘You’ve got a very serious alarm system,’ I said. ‘Did you use it when you were in the house?’

‘Not when the door to the garden was open. When we were upstairs at night, yes. But the alarm is based on the perimeter being secure, so we couldn’t have ground-floor windows or doors open when it was on. In this heat we never bothered with it.’

‘Were you worried about anyone in particular?’ Godley asked. ‘Was that why you had the alarm put in?’

‘My wife had it installed. I assumed it was to reduce the cost of our insurance, but I never asked. We had to pay through the nose because of all the art she bought.’

‘I noticed you have quite an impressive collection.’

‘If you like that sort of thing.’ He sounded bored. ‘I didn’t pay too much attention to what she wanted to hang on the walls. She knew her stuff, though. She ran a gallery before we were married.’

‘Successfully?’ Derwent demanded.

‘Yes, if you mean that it was a very successful way of losing money.’

‘So you made her give it up.’

For his next birthday I was definitely going to buy Derwent a copy of
Charm for Beginners
.

‘I never made Vita do anything. She sold the gallery when she found out she was pregnant with the twins. She only ever wanted to be a housewife, it transpired, and the
twins
were a very good reason to avoid going back to work.’

‘Would you have preferred her to work?’ Godley asked.

‘It would have given her an interest outside the family.’

‘Even if it cost you money?’ Derwent again.

‘It never cost me a penny, mainly because I don’t have two coins to rub together.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t be fooled by the big house and the fact I’m a QC. I’m still a criminal barrister, when all’s said and done, and no one gets rich off legal aid, especially not when they’re paying income tax at the level I do. My first wife takes whatever I manage to keep from the taxman. The money is all Vita’s. Or it was, I suppose.’

‘And now it’s yours.’ Derwent sounded exceedingly smug as he pointed it out.

‘Indeed. And what a perfect motive for murder. But you need to come up with a reason why I would have killed my daughter as well.’ For the first time I picked up on a thread of raw emotion that roughened his voice. ‘And then you have to explain why I didn’t go the whole hog and kill the other one too. It’s not as if I didn’t know where she was.’

‘Leave it with me.’

Before Kennford could snap back, Godley leapt in with, ‘You know we have to look at all the angles, even the ones that are unlikely.’

‘And I know that husbands kill wives. They even kill their kids too, sometimes. But I didn’t.’ He rolled his cigarette against the edge of the ashtray, moulding the ash into a cone. ‘You said Laura had her throat cut. Didn’t you?’

Derwent looked across at Godley for permission to speak, and got a nod. ‘She had a serious injury to her neck.’

‘Did she suffer?’

‘I’m not a pathologist.’

‘Don’t treat me like a fool. I’m not a civilian and I don’t
need
to be lied to. You’ve seen plenty of murders. You know what happened in there.’ He pointed in the direction of the sitting room, his hand shaking very slightly. ‘I’m asking because you’re enough of a bastard to tell me the truth. Did she suffer?’

‘It was probably too quick. She wouldn’t have known what was happening until it was over.’

‘Did Vita see it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t imagine how she must have felt.’ He said it more to himself than to us, muttering it into his chest.

‘She tried to fight.’

‘She was good at that. Never backed away from an argument.’

But she had tried to run when she knew she was doomed to lose. And she had certainly suffered, something her husband didn’t seem to care about. It made me slightly uneasy that he didn’t ask about how she had died.

‘When will you be finished here?’ He stubbed out his cigarette though there was a good inch of white paper left. ‘We’ll need to get someone in to clear the room out, I suppose, and clear up the mess upstairs. I don’t know where to start. Vita would have sorted all that out.’

‘We’re going to need to keep the house as it is for a while, Mr Kennford. In fact, I was just going to ask if you had somewhere else to stay.’

‘Oh. Right.’ He looked down at the dog. ‘I’ll make a couple of calls. I rent a flat in town, but animals aren’t allowed. I’ve got a friend with rooms in the Temple, the lucky sod. He’s got a house in France where he goes for the summer. If I can make arrangements to stay in his rooms, Mollie can come with me because tenants’ dogs are allowed. And Lydia would be all right there. I think there’s a sofa she can use.’

He certainly had his priorities straight, I thought. Poor
Lydia
was one step down from the dog – maybe two. That wasn’t what was bothering Godley, though.

‘Is there anywhere else Lydia can stay? Someone you trust? A friend, or a relative?’

‘She won’t mind roughing it for a few days.’

‘I’d prefer it if she was somewhere else.’

‘Not with me, you mean.’ His eyebrows drew together and his mouth narrowed, his face transforming into something positively unsettling as his anger showed in it. He pointed at Derwent. ‘You’re just like him, aren’t you? You’ve made up your mind already.’

‘That’s not true. But two members of your family died in this house, and you were attacked. Lydia is the only one who wasn’t harmed, at least physically. She could be a very important witness. If you’re together, you’ll discuss what’s happened. You won’t be able to help it. When she’s ready to talk to us, I want to hear what she thinks, not what you’ve suggested.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You should.’ Godley changed tack, his voice softening. ‘Look, I have a daughter around the same age. I know you want to protect her, but the best place for Lydia is a proper home, not a borrowed flat where she doesn’t even have a bed. Is there anyone she could stay with?’

‘Vita’s sister lives in Twickenham.’

‘Does she get on well with Lydia?’

‘I haven’t a clue. Renee is a mystery to me, but she seems perfectly pleasant.’

‘You sound as if she’s a stranger,’ I said. ‘Twickenham’s not far from here, is it? Don’t you see her often?’

‘I don’t. Vita might have. I don’t really have much to do with the in-laws, I’m afraid.’ He didn’t sound too guilty about it. I paused to marvel at a world where it was possible not to see close relations who lived nearby. My mother kept track of every up and down in the lives of even quite distant members of the family, no matter what
part
of the globe they had made their home, and I was expected to do the same. Family was family even if only by marriage; what happened to them
mattered
. But Philip Kennford didn’t seem to subscribe to the same point of view.

‘Does Renee have a family?’ Godley asked.

‘Boys. Older than Lydia and Laura. Crispin is twenty, I think. Tobias is two years younger.’

At least she would have some maternal instincts we could appeal to. Godley appeared to be thinking along the same lines. ‘Do you think she would be willing to look after Lydia?’

‘I imagine so. If she has nowhere else to go.’

It was hardly a ringing endorsement, but it was better than nothing.

‘I’ll have Lydia taken round there once your sister-in-law agrees to have her. We’ll need to break the news to Renee about what’s happened. Would you like to call her or would you prefer me to send a family liaison officer around?’

‘Renee might take it better if it comes from someone who’s on the spot. Someone neutral, I mean.’ And Kennford would happily take advantage of anything that meant he didn’t have to talk to her. He limped to his desk and wrote her address on a slip of paper. We would be going there the following day to interview Lydia if that was where she ended up staying. I rather hoped I’d get a chance to ask Renee what she thought of her brother-in-law.

Godley took the paper from him. ‘Fine. We’ll get it organised.’

‘Where is Lydia, anyway?’ Kennford looked around as if he expected her to materialise in the room. It was late in the day for him to be worried about his surviving daughter, I thought, but Godley was too professional to show a trace of disapproval.

‘She’s resting. I have an officer with her in case she needs
reassurance,
but she’s under sedation at the moment anyway.’

‘Went to pieces, I imagine.’ Kennford sounded scathing.

‘She walked in on the corpses of her twin sister and her mother lying in their own blood. She thought you were dead too. She didn’t know if the killer was still in the house and she was deeply traumatised but she held it together for long enough to call 999 and let our lads in. I think she’s entitled to a handful of tranquillisers and a lot of sympathy.’ Derwent wasn’t usually soft-hearted but when he leapt to your defence, he did it in style. I could have given him a round of applause.

‘Lydia is not a strong person, DI Derwent. Laura got all the backbone when they were in the womb. She was worth ten of her sister.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t know Lydia. With respect, I do. I’m not surprised she’s in a state.’

Kennford didn’t actually sound respectful, but he stopped short of sneering the words, which was more than could be said for Derwent when he repeated them.

‘With respect, I’m not surprised either. But I can understand it and empathise. Maybe you should have a go at that. Given that she’s still alive and everything, you might want to try being a father to her.’

‘Are we finished?’ Kennford snapped.

‘I am.’ Derwent headed for the door, stopping halfway and wheeling around. ‘There was one thing that was bothering me. Why do you need a flat in London if you live in SW19?’

‘During big trials I don’t like to come home. It’s distracting. I function better if I can close myself off from the world and concentrate. I can stay at work until midnight if I like, grab some cereal for dinner, get up at five and keep going. You can see how that lifestyle doesn’t really fit in with family life.’

‘Oh. So it’s not a shag pad, then.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I think you heard.’ He shrugged. ‘Just going by your reputation, Mr Kennford. I’m sure it’s all very innocent and above-board. You know how people love to talk.’

‘I do. And I know it’s not worth listening to gossip.’

‘Listening isn’t the same as believing. I make up my own mind about that. But I do like to know what people are saying.’

Kennford got up, pushing the dog out of his way, but rather than confronting Derwent he squared up to Godley. The two men were about the same height but I thought the boss edged it on looks. ‘I can’t say I’m filled with confidence, Superintendent. I happen to know your team’s being kept busy at the moment – what is it, ten gang murders in the last month?’

‘Eleven.’

‘So you have your work cut out for you, don’t you? And you’re not going to put your top people on a couple of murders like this, even though it’s an interesting story and it will get into all the papers. You just can’t spare them. This can’t be your priority and that’s why you’ve chosen Inspector Obvious and his bimbo sidekick to go through the motions.’