The Last Girl (50 page)

‘You told him where to find you.’

‘Because you wanted to know who he was. You asked me if I could help you, and I did. I thought I was doing the right thing.’

‘You should have given us the phone and let us track him down. You could have put yourself in danger.’

‘I thought I could get him to talk to me. That’s what he wanted. To talk about Laura.’

‘And pick up with you where he left off with her?’ Derwent asked.

Lydia blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘No. Not at all.’

‘Were they still in a relationship when she died?’ I asked.

‘She’d broken up with him, he said. She told him she was too busy to see him. She had other things to do with her time. She couldn’t be bothered to sneak around any more.’

I frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound as if she was campaigning to introduce him to your parents, does it?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Were you in touch with him before Laura died? Did you know him then?’ I asked.

‘No. I’d never met him. I spoke to him twice this week, on the phone. That was it.’ She sounded definite, her eyes guileless. So much for my theory about them being in cahoots.

‘Did he tell you anything else about Laura, or their relationship?’

‘No. He just wanted to see me to talk about her.’ Her face puckered again. ‘He said he missed her. And I miss her too.’

‘Of course you do.’ Savannah put her arms around her sister’s neck. ‘Can we stop this now?’

‘Fine.’ Derwent glowered at Lydia. ‘But you need to start being honest with us, young lady. Is there anything else you’ve been holding back?’

Instead of answering, Lydia looked up at Savannah. She seemed to be about to say something, but settled for shaking her head.

‘Right, then.’ He leaned across and chucked her under the chin. ‘You’ll do, missy. But don’t try to do our jobs for us, will you. That’s what we’re paid to do. Now head off home and don’t get in any more trouble.’

She nodded, gazing up at him as if the sun shone out of him. It was nice that someone shared Derwent’s high opinion of himself, even if I couldn’t imagine why. He made a most unlikely father figure. Then again, Philip Kennford was not what I would describe as ideal either. In comparison with him, even Derwent might look good.

They had taken Seth Carberry down to a cell in the basement of the police station to wait – not the most pleasant place to be, so he was as cooperative as he was going to get
when
he appeared in the interview room. On the other hand, that didn’t mean that he was prepared to be cooperative at all. I hadn’t been clear on what to expect from Laura’s secret boyfriend but it wasn’t what I got. Carberry was small and wiry, and his skin was pure white as if he never saw daylight. He had unruly black hair, heavy eyebrows and an awkward nose that he was still growing into, but there was something hypnotic about his eyes, which were very dark indeed – so much so that I strained to see his pupils. I had seen him before at his family home and failed to notice much about him, but looking at him now without the beanie hat I was sure I had seen him on another occasion and I couldn’t quite recollect when. It bothered me, twisting at the back of my mind like a forgotten name. I tried not to think about it and naturally I couldn’t then think about anything else. It wasn’t from the pictures in Laura’s camera, because he hadn’t been the star by any means. He had been a triangle of torso, a flat stomach with a meagre trail of hair down the centre, a strip of thigh in the corner of an image. I had imagined him to be older, not least because Laura had been a pretty girl, and outgoing, and I had expected her to find someone worthy of her. Seth Carberry didn’t even come close to it. That didn’t seem to have occurred to him. He had as much natural arrogance as a gamecock, and gave me and Derwent the same unimpressed look down his bony nose. He was wearing a grey T-shirt that had obvious sweat marks under the arms and jeans that were at least one size too big for him, with very dirty sports socks. I was inclined to forgive the grubbiness; police stations weren’t the most antiseptic places. On the other hand it was the second time I’d seen him looking scruffy. Teenage chic, I presumed, and was glad the men I met generally knew their way around a washing machine and shower.

‘What’s this about? Why do you want to talk to me? I thought I was in trouble with the locals, not the Met.’

‘Sit down.’ Derwent pointed at the chair opposite us and then fiddled with the recording equipment. ‘You know what it’s about, don’t you? It’s about you turning up at Miss Savannah Wentworth’s house and snooping about, and whether that’s connected with the case we’re investigating. The murder of Vita and Laura Kennford.’ He ran through the official preamble for the benefit of the tape, including the fact that the boy had waived his right to have a solicitor present. It didn’t make either of us think he was innocent or anything other than naive, but it made life easier. ‘Mr Carberry, you were arrested for attempted burglary of Miss Savannah Wentworth’s premises at Godetts Farm, Sussex, on Thursday the nineteenth of August at eight p.m. What were you up to?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t even know it was her house.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I wanted to see Lydia. To find out what happened to Laura, not just what was in the papers and on TV. She’d said she’d see me, but when I got there she wasn’t around.’

‘And Zoe jumped on you.’

‘Is that her name? We weren’t introduced. I didn’t get the chance to explain I was there by invitation.’ He frowned. ‘I wasn’t really snooping, either. It was still daylight. If I’d wanted to hide, I’d have come at night.’

‘Is that what you usually do?’ I asked.

He shifted in his seat. ‘I don’t do that kind of thing usually.’

‘But you did go to Laura’s aunt’s house in Twickenham, to try to see Lydia. And you ran away when you were challenged.’

‘Yes.’ He admitted it reluctantly, but he did admit it. I flicked a glance at Derwent who narrowed his eyes very slightly in return. Not Christopher Blacker in the garden, then. And yet I still didn’t feel easy in my mind about him.

‘You didn’t intend to harm her on that occasion either,’ Derwent said.

‘I just wanted to talk to her, as I said. And I thought she wanted to see me. She gave me that impression.’

‘Did you get in touch with her or did she contact you?’

‘She contacted me. Freaked me right out when I got a message from Laura’s phone, but I realised what was going on pretty quickly.’

‘Had you met Lydia before?’

‘Fuck, no. She’s a massive weirdo, isn’t she? Doesn’t go out much. Doesn’t have friends. My sister had told me about her so I wasn’t all that keen. Then Laura didn’t even want me to meet her, so it didn’t matter.’

‘Laura wanted to keep you a secret. Why was that?’ I asked.

‘She had her reasons, I assume. And I didn’t mind. I wasn’t exactly keen for everyone to know about us when she was so much younger than me. It wasn’t going to do a lot for my reputation, put it that way.’

‘But now that Laura’s dead, you do want to talk to Lydia.’

‘Like I said, I’m curious about what happened. I want to know how she died.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not that weird, is it?’

‘You went to the Kennfords’ house in Wimbledon the night Laura died.’ It had taken me a little while but I’d placed him at last. The boy in the baseball cap.

‘How did you know that?’ He looked at me as if I was clairvoyant. Beside me, Derwent was doing the same.

‘You were in the crowd by the gate when we arrived. You were watching the police coming and going.’

‘There’s nothing suspicious about it.’

‘We’ll decide that, son,’ Derwent said. ‘What were you doing there?’

‘I’d gone to the house to see her – to speak to her, not because I thought something had happened to her. We were supposed to meet last Sunday night. It had been arranged for ages, and then she cancelled.’

‘Did that annoy you?’

‘Yeah, it did.’ The dark eyes met mine. ‘It was my birthday, actually. I’d gone to a fair bit of trouble to make it a nice evening for us – I’d borrowed a mate’s house so we wouldn’t be disturbed, and I’d bought champagne for a kind of picnic dinner. I was pissed off when she cancelled.’

‘Pissed off enough to take it out on her?’ Derwent asked.

‘What do you mean by that?’ He fidgeted, rubbing his hands over his knees as if he was trying to wipe something away on the denim. ‘Enough to kill her? Obviously not.’

‘Did you argue with her?’ I asked.

‘We had a fight.’

‘What sort of a fight?’

‘The kind where you break up at the end of it.’ He gave me a pitying look, the arrogance undented.

‘Did it get physical?’ Derwent asked.

‘I don’t think I understand the question.’

Derwent stood up, surprising even me, and leaned across the table. ‘Understand this. I am asking you if you hit Laura when you argued with her, or at another time. I am asking if you laid hands on her in a violent way.’

Seth looked wary. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘There was bruising to her face. It was identified at the post-mortem. It happened a day or so before her death, so the timing fits. Was it you?’

‘I don’t want to get in trouble.’

‘You’re already in trouble,’ I pointed out. ‘Start talking.’

He shrugged. ‘I gave her a little tap.’

‘A little tap,’ Derwent repeated, sitting down very slowly. I could tell he wanted to lunge across the table at the boy. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Nothing to tell. I slapped her.’ He mimed an open-handed blow. ‘Pow.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she rubbed me up the wrong way. She told me
she
wanted to finish with me. She wanted more, apparently, than I could offer.’ He laughed. ‘She thought a lot of herself, did Laura.’

‘You hit her because she broke up with you.’ I didn’t even try to keep the disgust off my face. ‘Looks like she made the right decision.’

‘She’d have come back.’

‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

‘Because she would have. It wasn’t over.’

‘Sounds like it was pretty much over to me. How long had you been in a relationship?’

‘Seven weeks.’

‘Is that all?’ Derwent ran his hands over the sides of his face as if he was testing out how his shave had lasted. ‘Bloody hell, I thought it was some kind of great love affair.’

‘Seven weeks is a long time when you’re a teenager,’ I said to Derwent. Seth bridled.

‘I’m nearly twenty.’

‘And there’s a point,’ Derwent said softly. ‘What were you doing with a fifteen-year-old?’

‘She’s a friend of my sister’s. You know that. She came to our house once to work on a project and we got talking.’

‘Then you made your move. On a girl your sister’s age.’ Derwent’s tone was pure disgust, but I was pretty sure he was faking that. He’d have done the same in a heartbeat and called it shooting fish in a barrel.

‘She was the one making all the running, believe me. I wouldn’t have tried it on with her if she hadn’t been flirting with me. I thought she was pretty but she was young and inexperienced. She didn’t really know what she was doing at first, which was sweet.’ He gave me a smile that made my stomach clench in disgust. ‘That kind of innocence – you just want to teach them what to do. And you can. They’ll do anything you say.’

‘She was only fifteen.’

‘She didn’t act like a fifteen-year-old.’

‘I know. We’ve seen the pictures.’ Derwent was straight in with that.

‘Oh.’ He flushed a little, obviously aware of what we’d seen.

‘That is you in the photos with her, then. On her camera.’

‘Probably. Unless she was sleeping with someone else. I’d have to see them to be sure.’

I looked at Derwent, knowing he was going to be cross. ‘We don’t have a set with us.’

‘We can arrange for you to see them. Confirm it is you in the pictures.’

‘It looks like you,’ I said, and wished I hadn’t as Seth’s mouth curled into a smile.

‘What did you think of them?’

I glowered. ‘I thought they were images of an underage girl having sex with someone who was old enough to know better.’

‘Pretty sexy, though. You’d have to say.’

‘Pretty illegal is what occurred to me.’ He flinched a little, visibly on edge for the first time. I pushed harder. ‘What did you do with them? Did you put them on the Internet?’

‘No. Nothing like that. They were for personal use only.’

‘Yours?’

‘Laura’s. It was her idea.’

Derwent snorted. ‘The fifteen-year-old virgin wanted to commemorate her first experiences in the nasty world of sex, is that right?’

‘Basically.’

‘Sorry. I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true. Laura had a list of things she wanted to do. She watched a lot of porn.’

‘Where would she get hold of that kind of thing? She wasn’t old enough to buy it.’

‘Um, for free, all over the Internet?’ Seth’s tone was
scathing,
as if he couldn’t believe what a dinosaur Derwent was.