Jane Casey - Cruel Acts

‘I might be a bit lonely.’

Another glance, this time unexpectedly gentle. I had to look away at the passing streetscape before I could go on. ‘It’s so much easier when you’re in a relationship. You wake up on a day off and you go and do something. No planning. No fuss .’ I swallowed. ‘Everyone I know seems to be getting married, or they’re just married, or they’ve just had a baby. None of my friends are ever at a loose end. They have their own lives – it’s not their fault that I don’t.’

‘What about Liv?’

‘She’s having IVF.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Don’t say anything. She and her girlfriend want to have a baby. They’ve picked a donor but it hasn’t happened yet.’

‘I was about to volunteer,’ Derwent said, and I laughed before I could stop myself. There was a chance – a small one – that he was actually serious.

‘Listen, Kerrigan, you’ve been under a cloud since that two-timing shitweasel dumped you and went off to play happy families with his new bird. You’ve got to get your head straight.’

‘That two-timing shitweasel’, otherwise known as the love of my life, Rob Langton. Derwent wasn’t his biggest fan. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘You’re not getting any younger, you know. If you want to have kids, you need to meet someone in the next year.’

‘I’m not that old.’ Outrage made my voice squeaky.

‘Your clock is ticking, whether you can hear it or not. Think about it. You meet someone. Then you’ve got to spend a year or so getting to know them. Then you’ll want to get married because your parents would shit a brick if you had a child out of wedlock. That’ll take another year to organise. And then you’ll be cleaned out financially. You won’t want to take maternity leave until you’ve built up a bit of cash. Call it another year. Then you can’t assume you’ll get pregnant straight away. All the time your fertility is declining. Sad, really.’

‘You seem to have given this a lot of thought.’ My voice was so cold it could have flash-frozen a side of beef. Derwent wasn’t noticeably affected.

‘It’s just common sense, isn’t it, but you don’t seem to have any.’

‘I know you’ve embraced domesticity—’

‘This has nothing to do with me.’

‘You’re so right. So why are we talking about it?’ I waggled my phone at him. ‘Do you want to hear the end of this or not?’

‘Give it to me. I can take it.’

‘“After his successful appeal yesterday, Leo Stone deserves an apology from all of us. The Metropolitan Police, too, must bear responsibility for this miscarriage of justice. The CPS is insisting there must be a retrial, wasting more time and money. An innocent man must suffer because they can’t bear to admit they made a mistake. Sara Grey’s family have campaigned for Leo Stone’s release from prison. They, like me, believe Leo Stone is innocent of these murders. He is a victim of this crime, like the two women he was alleged to have killed. If the Home Secretary has any sense she will discourage the CPS from pursuing him any further so the Met can reopen the case and, this time, bring the real killer to justice.”’

‘Who wrote this?’

‘A journalist named Christopher Fallon.’ I showed Derwent the byline photograph, knowing it would irritate him further.

‘State of him. Pencil-necked twerp, telling me I can’t do my job. Listen, Christopher, if I want your opinion I’ll come round to your house and beat it out of you.’

‘He’d be shaking in his shoes if he could hear you.’

Derwent glowered at me instead. ‘You don’t think that sort of piece affects public opinion?’

‘A tiny number of people will read it.’

‘The victims’ families will read it.’

‘True. But they don’t love us anyway.’

Derwent didn’t reply, because it was true. That was one very good reason why we had decided to do places before people.

I concentrated on the directions DCI Whitlock had given us, aware that if Derwent took a wrong turning it would be my fault. The roads got narrower as we came closer to the Greys’ home, and Derwent slowed down. The slackening speed of the car seemed to mirror my reluctance to get there.

‘They’re angry. Very angry. They won’t trust you and they definitely won’t help you,’ Whitlock had warned us. I liked to make my own mistakes, instead of inheriting the results of other people’s poor judgement.

‘That’s it up there.’ I pointed to the right, where a white, thatched building stood in a gravelled yard. It was a barn conversion, half-timbered and sagging under its heavy roof. It appeared ancient but well looked after.

‘Big, isn’t it?’

‘They’re well off. She’s a retired GP and he was a management consultant.’ I hesitated, waiting for him to turn the car through the gate. ‘Remember what the boss said. We need to be on our best behaviour.’

‘I know you’re not implying I would do anything else.’

‘I wouldn’t dare.’

Derwent parked beside a battered Volvo and a newish BMW. ‘Let’s see those convent manners, Kerrigan. I’m counting on you to charm them.’

Charm was not going to be enough, I thought, on edge as Derwent rang the doorbell.

The car had been loud on the gravel, so they had known we were outside. Even so, it took a long time for anyone to come to the door. When it opened, an elderly man stood in front of us. He was leaning on a stick.

‘Mr Grey?’

A nod.

I introduced myself and Derwent. ‘Thank you for agreeing to speak with us.’

‘We had no choice.’ He stepped back and disappeared into the house, leaving us to shut the door and follow him into a huge double-height room with a brick fireplace at one end and a kitchen at the other. A slim, pale woman sat on one sofa, her face tight with tension. Mrs Grey, I guessed, and corrected myself: Dr Grey. She stood up as we approached, but her eyes followed her husband, not us. He had a dragging walk, one foot sliding along the ground as he moved.

A second man stood by the fireplace, his hands in the pockets of immaculately pressed chinos. He had the ruddy complexion of a man who spends a lot of time on golf courses, and his hair was slicked back from his forehead. I knew before he spoke that he was going to have the sort of plummy voice that made my hackles rise.

‘Hi. Tom Mitchell.’ He leaned across and shook hands with Derwent, sketching a wave in my direction. ‘I was Sara’s fiancé at the time of her disappearance.’

‘Please tell us’ – Mr Grey sat down with a grunt of effort – ‘what exactly this charade is supposed to achieve? You’re investigating Sara’s murder all over again so you can prove that Leo Stone did it.’

‘We’re examining every aspect of the previous investigation to make sure we haven’t overlooked any details,’ Derwent said.

‘And if you have?’

‘Then we’ll advise the CPS accordingly.’

‘What a waste of everyone’s time,’ Mr Grey spat. ‘An exercise in reinforcing a set of errors that should never have been made. A cover-up for your friends, so no one realises they framed an innocent man.’

‘There was a considerable amount of evidence that suggested Mr Stone was your daughter’s killer,’ I said tentatively.

‘That’s what you wanted everyone to believe.’

‘The fact is that no one knows who took my daughter.’ Dr Grey’s voice was low and precise. ‘No one ever traced the person who killed her. I’m absolutely sure of that. We’re asked to believe that Leo killed her purely because her body was left in the same area as Willa Howard. Well, I’m sorry. It isn’t convincing to me and I don’t think it would have convinced the jury if they hadn’t broken the law to find out more about Leo.’