Jane Casey - Let the Dead Speak

‘What have you got?’ I stood in the doorway of the study, mainly because it was very much a one-person space. The computer was gone from the desktop, leaving a labelled void behind, and some of the files and folders were missing from the shelves, the spaces tagged to show that it was the police who’d removed them. Otherwise it was the same as the rest of the house – organised and orderly.

‘Nothing.’ Derwent didn’t bother to look up from the filing cabinet he was flicking through. ‘But Liv’s got the good stuff already.’

‘Is there anything about her daughter?’

‘A fuck of a lot of correspondence with the local educational authority.’ He was skim-reading it. ‘This goes back a long way. She had a fight to get Chloe educated around here. She wanted her to stay in mainstream education and the local council didn’t want to have to pay for the extra learning support.’

‘What’s does it say about Chloe?’ I was curious about her. She had been distant but lucid when I spoke to her. And shock could do that to you.

‘Speech delay. Developmental delay. Attention deficit disorder. Anxiety. Oppositional defiant disorder.’ Derwent snorted. ‘That just means you don’t like doing what you’re told.’

‘What else does it say?’

‘Depends who you ask. According to the Council, she was fine. According to her mother and the educational psychologists she consulted, Chloe needed a full-time classroom assistant to help her, extra tuition, extra time for tests …’ Derwent sighed. ‘Makes you realise how lucky you are if your kid is normal.’

‘I don’t think we’re supposed to say normal any more. There’s no such thing.’

‘Bullshit.’ He pushed past me and disappeared into the bathroom.

I listened to him rooting through the cupboards even though I’d already searched there. ‘Did you find a passport?’

‘In a drawer.’

‘Cash?’

‘Nothing significant.’

‘Jewellery?’

‘No. But she’s not wearing much in the pictures I’ve seen of her.’ Derwent reappeared. ‘Anyway, do you see this as a burglary?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Come and look at this.’ He led me back into the bedroom and opened the French windows. A waist-high railing ran across the space. It was dark now, the lights on in the houses all around. The rain had stopped for the time being but the air was sweet with it and night scents rose up from the gardens that stretched as far as I could see. The trees were plumy with leaves and from where I stood the gardens blended into one enormous space framed with houses, the walls and fences invisible.

‘We need to ask the neighbours if they saw anything.’ I had a perfect view across to the houses behind, to the domestic dramas playing out in brightly lit windows. Life going on, as it tended to.

‘Especially at the back. We think she went out the back door,’ Derwent said. ‘The dog took us to the back fence, through a gate and along an alley that runs between the gardens. We went left. We got one … two … three gardens along – that house.’ He pointed. ‘Twenty-two Constantine Avenue, if you were wondering. We took the dog into the garden and it got excited about the fox shit. And then … nothing.’

‘Who lives in that house?’ It stood out because the lights were off.

‘It’s unoccupied. The neighbours said the owner is in a nursing home. I had a look at the doors and windows, but it looked secure.’

‘Access to the front of the house?’

‘There’s a gate. You could climb it.’

‘Even me? It must be easy. But could you get a body over it?’

‘Very possibly. And if you didn’t want to, you could pick the lock in about ten seconds.’

‘Did the dog seem to think someone had done that?’

Derwent shrugged. ‘The dog had lost interest by then.’

‘But our killer could have parked in front of the unoccupied house and taken the body away in his car.’

‘He could indeed.’

‘It seems like a lot of trouble, though. If you want to move the body, why not take it out the front door?’

‘With all the neighbours watching?’ Derwent shook his head. ‘What you don’t know about that house is that there’s a front garden.’

‘Is there?’

‘With a high hedge.’

‘Now you’re making more sense.’

‘So it’s worth dragging a dead weight all the way over there if you know the area.’

‘If you do,’ I said. ‘You’d have to know it was unoccupied, though, and about the gate. You’d have to be local.’

‘Mm.’ Derwent stared out at the houses across the way where the silent scenes played out, as unreal as television. ‘I might not know where to find Kate Emery’s body but I do have some idea where to start looking for her killer.’

Monday mornings are the same the world over, no matter the job or the city. It was a pale and bleary-eyed group of detectives who gathered in the meeting room for an early briefing about the Putney crime scene. I’d seen Una Burt outside the room, pacing up and down, eager to get started. I wished I could feel as keen. I tried not to yawn, my jaws quivering as I fought it back. Georgia Shaw was sitting near the front of the room in a grey trouser suit, silver Tiffany heart earrings, her fair hair sleekly groomed.

I would not allow myself to glower at her. I was better than that.

‘Hi.’ Liv Bowen slid into the seat beside me, immaculate in black, her hair folded into a complicated knot at the back of her head. She was a detective constable and a good one, and she was my friend. I felt myself relax.

‘Hi, yourself.’

‘You look knackered. What time did you leave the scene?’

‘Getting on for one.’ And then I’d gone back to my empty flat. I hadn’t gone to bed straight away. I’d stopped for long enough to eat a bowl of cereal while I watched the news headlines. That already represented something like a victory. One: I had bought cereal. Two: I owned milk that hadn’t gone off. Three: I’d remembered to eat them. I sensed that Liv would be underwhelmed, so I didn’t bother to tell her about it. She lived in domestic harmony with her girlfriend in a pretty little house near Guildford and she had long since despaired of my sketchy home life. I also didn’t tell her how I’d wandered through my flat looking at all the tidy rooms where nothing had moved since the cleaner left two days before. The tracks of the vacuum cleaner were still visible in the carpet. You spent a few hours judging someone else for how they lived and it gave you perspective on your own life, whether you wanted it or not.

The investigation had been on the news, but the details remained under wraps. The media only knew it was a murder investigation. The report was heavy on footage of police officers searching the area in the rain, lifting drain covers, poking bushes with sticks. I had been on screen for a split second. The camera had lingered on Georgia’s fair hair.

I could get to like working with Georgia if she took some of the unwanted attention off me.

‘How did you get on?’ I asked Liv.

‘Bits and pieces. Background stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing you could call an obvious motive to kill Kate Emery.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘I thought so.’

Derwent took the seat in front of me with a sigh. He barely nodded hello, which didn’t surprise me. He wasn’t a morning person.

He wasn’t an afternoon or evening person either.

‘Right.’ Una Burt marched in and put her folder down on the desk. ‘We’re here to talk about Kate Emery. She’s a forty-two-year-old mother of one, who lived at Valerian Road in Putney with her daughter, Chloe Emery. Chloe is eighteen. She was staying with her father and his family for the last few days. She left London on Wednesday and returned yesterday afternoon. Five days.’ She looked around the room meaningfully. ‘When Chloe left, everything was normal. When she returned, the house was covered in blood and her mother was gone. We need to know what happened to Kate Emery in those five days, and we need to know where she is now. Who wants to start?’