Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

‘Any of them particularly noteworthy?’ I asked.

‘Any of what?’ He turned back to face us.

‘Any of the new interests,’ said Guleed with a note of respectful curiosity – it was her party trick. According to legend she’d once got a confession out of a rapist just by looking sympathetic and nodding occasionally.

‘Me personally,’ Stephanopoulos had said, ‘I’d have nailed his testicles to the chair.’

Ah, the good old days, I’d thought.

Martin Chorley succumbed.

‘History,’ he said. ‘She started reading a great deal of history. I did find it a little bit odd because she wasn’t taking history at A-level.’ He was hazy about exactly when and where her interest had been focused, and I could see that pressing him was just going to make him angry. So I let it go. Tact and fucking diplomacy and all that.

A specialist POLSA team had already turned over Christina Chorley’s room at St Paul’s – I made a note to go over their report and see what she’d had on her shelves.

Martin Chorley said that most of his daughter’s interests had seemed to centre around her phone.

‘I never thought to ask,’ he said. ‘I was just glad—’ He stopped and his lips turned up in a humourless smile. ‘I just never thought to ask.’

‘Was it unusual for Christina to stay in town over the weekend?’ asked Guleed.

‘I believe I’ve already been asked these questions,’ said Mr Chorley.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Guleed. ‘Narrowing down the timeline is crucial and we find that people sometimes remember more once they get further away from an incident – every little detail helps.’

We also find that people tend to forget exactly what lies they told the last set of coppers they talked to. But either Mr Chorley had an exceptional memory or his earlier statement – that he thought his daughter had been staying with her friend Albertina Pryce – was true.

‘She generally stayed with Albertina when she spent the weekend in town,’ he said.

‘Did she ever stay with anyone else?’ asked Guleed.

‘Not that I know of,’ said Mr Chorley. ‘There were sleepovers, you know. Girls’ stuff. I did consider tracking her phone, but one doesn’t want to hover – do you? Since her mother died I found it quite difficult to find the right balance to be father and mother at the same time.’

Guleed nodded understandingly.

Christina’s mother had died three years previously in an RTC on the A355 just short of the junction with the M40, having lost control of her Mercedes C-Class and drifted into oncoming traffic. According to the accident report, she’d been four times over the legal alcohol limit at the time but since she’d hadn’t killed anyone else the coroner went easy on her and ruled it as death by misadventure.

‘Do you think I should have?’ said Mr Chorley. ‘Been more of a helicopter parent?’

Guleed gave a ‘what can you do’ sigh and looked sympathetic.

‘Did she ever have any trouble with her phones?’ I asked.

This got a frown.

‘What sort of trouble?’ he asked.

‘Did she seem to lose or claim to have broken her phone?’ I asked. ‘More often than you’d expect?’

‘You think she was selling them?’ asked Martin Chorley. ‘For drug money?’

Actually, I thought she might be destroying them through the power of her magic, but I felt that saying this might violate Seawoll’s rules about tact and diplomacy. Also, I was looking to see how Mr Chorley reacted – for some indication he might know why damaged phones were significant. But what he mostly was, was bewildered and sad.

There’s being thorough and there’s being cruel, so I zipped through the rest of my questions. Guleed followed my cue and didn’t ask any additional questions of her own.

‘Did you get anything useful?’ she asked as we stepped back into the rain.

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘Didn’t think so.’

Useful or not, it still had to be written up because a) empirically speaking a negative result is still a result, b) someone cleverer than you might make a connection you missed and c) in the event of a case review it’s sensible to at least look like you’re being competent. So back we went to our desk share at Belgravia and did just that.

‘Do you think it’s odd he only had the one?’ asked Guleed.

‘One what?’

‘One kid,’ she said. ‘These rich people usually have three or four.’

‘I don’t think it’s compulsory,’ I said and then thought of something. ‘Have we talked to the nannies yet?’

According to the whiteboard the MIT had identified five of the kids at the party, leaving two unidentified – assuming we had the count right. One of them – ‘Rod Crawfish or something’ – DC Carey had tentatively pegged as Roderick Crawford, also at Westminster and in the same year as James Murray. He was heading off to Primrose Hill to TIE him with a brand new DC called Fergus Ryan.

‘Fergus Ryan,’ I said. ‘Really? Where’s he from?’

‘Redbridge, I think.’

Three of those kids, unlike Christina, had two or more younger siblings and, consequently, the families had live-in nannies.

‘Told you,’ said Guleed. ‘Big families.’

All the nannies were already actioned to be statemented, but I was thinking that Christina Chorley probably had a nanny when she was young and that ‘the slave always knows more about the master than the master knows of the slave’ – even if I couldn’t remember who’d said that. Tracking them down without alerting Mr Chorley was going to be a bit of a bastard, so I suggested it as a further action in my report in the hope that Stephanopoulos would palm it off on someone else. Once I’d dropped the report in the Inside Inquiry Office I went looking for Nightingale. I found him downstairs in Stephanopoulos’ office reading a hardcopy that some kind soul must have printed out for him.

‘Any luck?’ he asked, looking up.

‘Not really,’ I said and briefed him on the interview, my ideas about former nannies and having a look around Christina’s bedroom at the house in High Wycombe.

‘I’ll take care of that,’ said Nightingale. ‘I believe you have a family engagement to go to.’

‘What about Tyburn?’ I asked.

‘They released Olivia on police bail over an hour ago,’ said Nightingale. ‘She’s to return here first thing tomorrow morning. I thought Cecelia took it rather well – considering. I believe we may be safe from cataclysms along the Tyburn for tonight at least.’

‘Did Olivia change her story?’

‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘She still claims to have supplied the fatal drugs. Although frankly I don’t believe a word of it and more to the point neither did Miriam. Not least because she’s remarkably vague about where she obtained the drugs in the first place.’ He nodded at Stephanopoulos’ desk. ‘Miriam said she’d be back later if you need her for anything.’

It didn’t help that there wasn’t any physical evidence, beyond her presence at the party, to corroborate her confession. That had to be nagging at Stephanopoulos, but I doubted that if Olivia had been some seventeen year old off an estate somewhere we would have been spending this much time on the case. We had a confession and I suspect we would have charged her and let the Crown Prosecution Service sort it out.

‘I did have a moment to see if the parents were on any of our lists,’ said Nightingale.

Meaning, to check if any of them been members of the Little Crocodiles dining club while at Oxford University. Unlike other similar clubs this one had eschewed smashing up restaurants in favour of learning magic, courtesy of a former colleague of Nightingale’s called Geoffrey Wheatcroft. In this he broke the law and, more importantly, the social conventions of the Folly – he was probably lucky he died in bed before Nightingale found out.