Jane Casey - Cruel Acts

‘Can I help?’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘You don’t even know what it is.’

‘So?’ Georgia’s blue eyes were unblinking. I could see it from her point of view: a chance to impress the boss before he came back to the team. Get a head start. Make progress.

‘I’m not in charge of this one.’

‘Who is? DI Derwent?’ She swung round, looking for him.

‘You’re going to be working with Pettifer on the Clarke case,’ I said firmly. ‘Once that’s out of the way, we might be able to use you. But at the moment—’

She pulled a face, obviously annoyed. ‘Pettifer can finish the Clarke case on his own.’

‘He could, but he isn’t going to.’ I stared her down for a long moment, daring her to take it further, and in the end she broke first.

‘So what’s the case?’

‘Reinvestigating—’ I broke off to cough. ‘Reinvestigating the Leo Stone case.’

‘The White Knight? Wow. I would love to work on that.’

‘Noted.’ There was nothing to encourage her in my tone of voice.

‘Why did Superintendent Godley want you to work on it?’ Her eyes were narrow.

Derwent leaned in between us. ‘Because he has a soft spot for Kerrigan.’ Georgia laughed.

‘Because he thinks I’ll do a good job,’ I said stiffly.

‘Of course you will.’ Derwent patted my arm.

Instead of arguing the point I walked away from both of them to talk to Pettifer myself. Georgia could try to convince Derwent to let her work on it too. If he wanted her, he’d include her in spite of my objections. If he didn’t want her help, nothing I could say would persuade him. Either way, I didn’t need to hang around.

He caught up with me in the kitchen where I was waiting for the kettle to boil.

‘What’s up with you?’

‘Nothing.’ I coughed again. Shit, I didn’t want to be ill. ‘I’m tired. I’m cold. I want to go home.’

‘ My home.’

‘I’m renting it. That means it’s my home. Temporarily, anyway.’ I still wasn’t used to living in a space that I associated so completely with Derwent. For instance, I’d discovered there was no bleach strong enough to take away the mental image of him lounging in the bath.

‘As long as you’re looking after it.’

‘Yeah, I don’t want to piss off the landlord.’

‘Oh, you’ve done that already. Look at me.’

I did, reluctantly. He was holding the sides of his jacket open so I could see the muddy mark that ran across his chest. Not just the shirt: the tie too. ‘I said I was sorry.’

‘No, you said it was an accident.’

‘Well, it was.’ I took a deep breath. ‘But I’m sorry.’

‘Finally. You’re forgetting your manners.’

‘Speaking of which, I could manage the box by myself. You didn’t even ask before you took it.’

His eyebrows went up. ‘Don’t try to pretend that’s why you’re in a mood.’

‘I’m not in a mood.’ I turned and leaned against the kitchen counter, gripping it for courage. ‘I am very annoyed that you decided to stir up trouble by hinting that Godley wanted me to work on this case for any other reason than that he thinks I’m a good detective. You of all people know how unfair it is to suggest he puts professional opportunities my way for personal reasons.’

Derwent gave me his stoniest look. ‘That’s not what I did.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Saying he had a soft spot for me?’

‘It’s banter.’

‘It needs to stop. It’s not a joke. Someone like Georgia who doesn’t know any better will take it seriously, and I’ve had enough of it. You know it’s not true and you know there are a lot of people who’d like to believe that it is.’

‘You can’t live your life worrying about what other people think.’

‘Spoken like someone who doesn’t ever have to worry about it.’

‘ You don’t have to. That’s my point. You’re choosing to care.’ He shrugged. ‘These people aren’t worth getting upset about. If they want to think the worst of you, they will, whether I say anything or not.’

‘Maybe, but you don’t have to throw fuel on the fire.’ Frustration was a knot in my stomach. It was impossible to explain how I felt to Derwent, and he didn’t have the imagination to put himself in my shoes. The gulf between his life and mine was unbridgeable. ‘You have no idea what it’s like to have to prove yourself over and over again,’ I said at last.

He rolled his eyes. ‘I have a fair idea.’

‘Because I’ve told you before. And yet, here we are, having the same conversation all over again.’ I turned away from him and squashed the teabag against the side of the mug, viciously. When I flicked the teabag at the bin I had the very small satisfaction that it went in first try.

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Derwent said at last. He almost sounded sincere. He would never admit he had been wrong, though, and nor would he apologise.

‘Thanks for being so understanding.’ I poured the milk into my tea and watched little white specks bob to the surface. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, who puts gone-off milk back in the fridge?’

‘Poor Kerrigan. It’s not your day,’ Derwent said, and left, whistling as he went.

I leaned against the wall, defeated. I was tired and cold and fed up. All I’d wanted was a hot bath, a good meal and an early night. Instead I had nothing to look forward to but a long evening on my own, reading about someone else’s investigation and some very dead women. Not my day, not my week, not my year.

I had read the files and looked at the photographs until my eyes burned; I had watched the CCTV that the first investigation had painstakingly located and analysed. I knew the circumstances of Sara Grey’s disappearance inside out. Still, as Derwent drove down the Westway, I felt my pulse getting faster. Sara Grey. Victim one, chronologically.

‘Bloemfontein Road is coming up on the left. Not this one, the one after.’

Derwent slowed to make the turn.

‘This was where the tyre gave up.’

‘Puncture?’

I nodded. ‘They never worked out where she picked up the nail. There was nothing forensically interesting about it. Probably bad luck rather than Leo Stone’s planning. We have CCTV of her here, turning into Bloemfontein Road.’

‘Tell me about her.’

‘Sara Grey was twenty-nine at the time of her disappearance. She was engaged to Tom Mitchell, who was the same age as her. She was a primary school teacher; he had his own property development company.’

‘Did they ever check to see if he had employed Leo Stone?’

‘I didn’t see anything about it in the files.’ I scrawled a note to myself to look into it. ‘He was in Latvia on a stag weekend when it happened. Otherwise he’d have been suspect number one.’

‘Being out of the country doesn’t let him off the hook as far as I’m concerned. It’s a bit too convenient.’

‘Poor guy. If he’d been in the UK you’d be even more convinced he was involved.’

‘It’s always the husband. Or the fiancé. Or the boyfriend. Or the ex.’

‘Not this time. The original investigation focused on Tom, though, before her disappearance was linked to the others. They were looking for money worries or secret affairs or any kind of motive. They didn’t find anything.’