The Burning (19 page)

Chapter Seven

M
AEVE

Rebecca’s parents didn’t invite the police to her memorial service, but they had been kind enough to allow me to come anyway. I lurked at the back of the pocket-sized parish church in my least scruffy suit, then followed the mourners back up the lane to the Haworths’ substantial house on the outskirts of Salisbury. I had left London on an iron-grey December day and gone to Wiltshire to eavesdrop at the service with the barest approval from DI Judd, who had sneered that he didn’t see how it would be useful but I might as well go as do anything else. Nettled, I was determined to bring back something worth knowing.

The house where Rebecca Haworth grew up was Georgian and stood foursquare in its own grounds. I had left my car at the church, at the tail end of the line of mourners’ cars, most of which were far nicer than mine. As I walked up the lane towards the house, a big black Mercedes with tinted windows oozed past me and turned into the drive, gravel crunching under its wheels. The driver got out smartly and opened one of the back doors and I wasn’t surprised when the passenger proved to be a small man with sandy hair so thick it looked like a wig, and a beaky nose. I had spotted him in the church, where he had been surrounded by people I recognised from my visit to Ventnor Chase. It didn’t take a great deal of intuition to work out that this was the famous Anton Ventnor himself, too important to walk the few hundred yards to the house. I followed him down the side of the house towards the back garden, pausing only to examine the building and its view. Big sash windows stared blankly at a vista of fields and bare hedges that unrolled like barbed wire across the hills. I wondered if the teenage Rebecca had been very bored.

The Haworths had decided to keep their visitors out of the house, probably wisely, and had erected a marquee in the garden, complete with fan heaters. It lent the scene an oddly festive air, like a wedding, except in place of the bride and groom I found a drawn and tired couple who were going through the motions of being good hosts. Years of practice, and what I recognised as deeply felt pride, gave them composure, but Rebecca’s mother looked through me rather than at me and held on to my hand for a moment too long when I introduced myself.

‘Thank you so much for coming. It’s so very kind of you,’ she said in a voice that was deeper and warmer than I had expected, and I mumbled something about wanting to represent the investigating team, though I had the impression that she wasn’t actually listening.

She was brittle, close-up, with a fretwork of lines around her eyes and a quiver in her jaw that she couldn’t quite control. But she was a beautiful woman nonetheless, with good bones and expensively coloured hair. Her black dress was tailored to her frame and she wore elegant heels that flattered her narrow ankles. Like the house itself, Avril Haworth was the beneficiary of years of care, money and attention, and she had not lost her polish in the days since Rebecca’s death, even if the light had dimmed in her eyes.

It was her husband who gently took her hand out of mine and guided me to one side, away from her. He was tall, an imposing presence in an impeccable suit and ink-black tie.

‘You’ll want to have a word with us, I imagine, and I would like to talk to you about the investigation. But now isn’t the right time. We have guests … responsibilities …’ He gestured vaguely.

‘I understand – I don’t want to intrude,’ I said, hating that I’d pushed my way into their private world. ‘I can come back another time, if you’d prefer.’

‘That won’t be necessary. You can speak to us today, once everyone has gone. They won’t stay long. Avril thought that we should invite Rebecca’s friends to join us here since so many of them travelled down from London for the service, and of course our friends are here too. It’s very simple, though. A buffet. Just sandwiches and tea or coffee. With the weather, we thought people would need warming up.’ He looked around, the dark eyes that I’d noticed in his photograph scanning the gathering, missing nothing. ‘We decided not to serve alcohol. It’s not a party, after all. And most of the guests are driving.’

I nodded, reflecting on the unmistakable steel in his voice. Rebecca’s father was not a pushover, grief-stricken though he was.

I left Gerald Haworth to his guests and slipped through to the far side of the marquee, picking up a glass of water from a bow-tied waiter on the way. I took up a position on the edge of the crowd, trying to fade into the background. There must have been sixty people there, mostly wearing sober colours and muttering quietly to one another. The noise level was not what might have been expected from such a large group, but as Gerald Haworth had said, this was not a party. I saw Anton Ventnor in the centre of the marquee, surrounded by his staff. I had imagined an imposing, powerful man from what I had heard from his employees, and was amused at my own assumptions. He spent most of the time looking around him, but he had an odd trick of holding his glass in front of his mouth on the rare occasions that he actually spoke. It was something I associated with habitual liars, and my interest sharpened. I might not have managed to speak to him so far, but Anton Ventnor was definitely still on my list. The others from Ventnor Chase were slightly too well dressed for the occasion, I thought – teetering in fashionable heels, expensively made-up, carrying the latest in designer bags. That was the pond Rebecca had been swimming in. That was how she had chosen to live her life. I could tell that status was all-important for them, and wondered if any of them had bothered to keep in touch with her after her dismissal, or if she had even wanted them to. Rebecca’s background was one of effortless success and accomplishment; I wondered how she had coped with disgrace.

The older guests had to be neighbours and friends of the Haworths, but there were plenty of younger people there too, including Tilly Shaw who was everywhere at once, hugging people tenderly, passing around plates, moving chairs from one end of the marquee to the other for the sake of the frailer guests. She had straightened her hair and added a black streak to the front. It went well with her short, tight dress. Not conventional mourning wear, but then nothing about Tilly was particularly conventional. I looked for her polar opposite and found her after a few seconds – Louise North, whom I had spotted in the church, though I didn’t think she’d seen me. Her head had been bent as she sat in the pew behind the Haworths, and I hadn’t noticed her looking around. At one point she had leaned forward to put her hand on Avril’s shoulder as Rebecca’s mother shook with sobs. I guessed she must have known the Haworths for a long time. She was standing on the other side of the marquee, holding a cup of tea but not actually drinking it, listening to an elderly man in a stripy tie who was waving his hands around wildly as he talked. To give her her due, she didn’t appear to flinch, even when he got pretty close with the disintegrating sandwich he was holding in his right hand. I would have laid money that he was also a spitter.

Louise wasn’t wearing make-up and her cheeks were pale, her lips almost colourless, but she looked smart in a navy-blue coat that fitted her frame beautifully. Her hair was scraped back into a ponytail that was so tightly controlled not a single wisp appeared to have worked free. I put a hand up to my own head, suddenly self-conscious about the state of my hair, which had dried wild again. It was hard to look groomed when every gust of the scarifying wind carried a handful of rain. The fact that Louise North had managed it was mildly irritating.

I was just thinking about going to her rescue when someone jostled my elbow and I moved out of their way automatically, murmuring something that might have been taken as an apology. Instead of going on, however, they stood beside me, a little too close for comfort. Gil Maddick, today film-star handsome in a dark suit with an open-necked white shirt. I guessed it was about as formal as he got. He grinned down at me without the least hint of warmth.

‘Fancy meeting you here. What brings you to this part of the world? You can’t possibly think you’re going to find the killer at Rebecca’s memorial service.’

‘I’m representing the investigative team. May I ask why you’re here? I had the impression that you didn’t care too much about Rebecca or what happened to her.’

‘I was invited.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Really? By the Haworths? Didn’t they know you and Rebecca had split up?’

‘Silly Tilly asked me to come along and pay my respects. She helped to organise this ridiculous shindig. A funeral with no corpse.
Hamlet
without the prince.’ He spoke lightly, but again I had the impression that he was under pressure.

‘You didn’t have to come,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m sure no one would have noticed.’

Instead of answering me, he stared over my shoulder, and I turned to see that he was looking straight at Louise North. Almost as if she’d felt his eyes on her, she looked up and met his gaze. I didn’t see her blink; she might not even have breathed. She reminded me of a hare in long grass, startled to have been seen, ready to run at a moment’s notice.

The look on his face when I swung back was unreadable, at least to me. It took him a second or two to remember that I was standing there, and I needn’t have bothered waiting for a reply, because all I got was a muttered, ‘Excuse me,’ before he walked off towards the buffet. And when I looked back in Louise’s direction, she had disappeared.

It took me quite a while to get close enough to Anton Ventnor to strike up a conversation, surrounded as he was by attentive acolytes. In the end, I stalked him until he went to the very posh Portaloos the Haworths had hired, and lay in wait outside. He did not look altogether thrilled to be accosted by me, but good manners or good training won out.

‘How can I help you, Miss …’

‘Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan,’ I said firmly, enunciating each and every last syllable.

He snapped his fingers in recognition. ‘You wanted to talk to me.’

‘And you never called me back. Not to worry. Now’s as good a time as any.’

His eyelids flickered. ‘Is it? I don’t think––’

‘It won’t take long.’ I grabbed his arm and steered him through a gap in the tent, towards an unoccupied corner of the garden. He came without demur, probably too startled by the physical contact to offer any resistance. Besides, he was a good five inches shorter than me, and twenty years older, and I didn’t think he was in peak physical condition. I was stronger than him and he knew it. And I had counted on him not wanting to make a scene.

A small stream cut through the Haworths’ garden, and they had put a wrought-iron bench beside it. Overhung with the long trailing strands of a weeping willow, it was an impossibly pretty, romantic setting in spite of the fact that the willow was bald at that time of year and the ground underneath the bench was muddy. The effect was rather spoilt in any case by the small, cross, middle-aged man in a tight-fitting suit who was sharing the bench with me, even before you noticed that his wig was making a bid for freedom down the back of his head.

‘Surely this could have waited until we got back to London.’ He sounded irritated.

‘Don’t you want to get it over with now?’ I took my notebook out of my bag and flipped it open. ‘You were Rebecca Haworth’s employer for four years, is that right?’

‘If you say so.’ He caught the glint of annoyance I couldn’t quite suppress, and sighed. ‘Yes, then. I hired her four and a half years ago. She was a very important part of my team and I paid her very well indeed.’

‘What sort of a person was she?’

He stared into the distance, considering. ‘If you’d asked me that eight months ago, I’d have told you that she was the dream employee. Hardworking, dedicated, never put herself before the work. She was excellent with our clients. Well liked in the company.’

‘Did you like her?’

He turned to look at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Not more than I should have. We had a pleasant professional relationship, no more than that.’

‘Why did Rebecca leave the company?’ I wanted to hear his version of events.

‘She left because I asked her to go. She wouldn’t have gone of her own volition, I can assure you. Unfortunately she had developed some bad habits – well, one bad habit, to be precise – and became unreliable. I couldn’t let her continue to work in my company. The damage to our reputation was insupportable.’

‘Did you confront her about her cocaine use?’

He spread out his hands. ‘What could I say? I didn’t want to waste my time with her. If she had genuinely cared more about her job than about the drugs, she wouldn’t have let them interfere with her ability to work. She had made her choice already. I simply formalised it.’

‘So you didn’t give her an opportunity to get clean before you sacked her.’

‘I think you’ll find that she resigned.’ His voice was nasal and high-pitched, and at that moment utterly smug.

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on at an employment tribunal. But she’d worked for you for quite a while. I understand from her colleagues that she was very upset to be leaving Ventnor Chase.’

‘That is an understatement.’ He gave a little giggle. ‘I might have been prepared to give her another chance if she hadn’t reacted the way she did. It showed me she had lost all sense of judgement – all her self-respect. She offered me – I think the phrase is sexual favours? I had to decline, of course.’ He took out a purple handkerchief that matched his tie and blotted his upper lip deliberately. ‘I thought it was an extraordinary thing to do. I had known for some time that she was promiscuous, but I was inclined to turn a blind eye. Once she brought it into the workplace, I’m afraid I had had enough.’

‘She was desperate,’ I said quietly.
She must have been
.

‘That was nothing to do with me. I couldn’t employ her any longer. Not after she grovelled like that.’

He stood up and wadded his handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘If that’s all you need from me, I must go. I’d like to get back to London before the end of the working day. You can contact my PA if you have any more questions for me.’