The Burning (38 page)

‘Is that it?’ Peter Belcott’s upper lip was drawn back in a sneer that revealed his abnormally long incisors.

‘I can’t see there’s any other explanation for this footage. Louise North drives a very smart BMW sportscar, bought the week Rebecca died. She traded in her old car, a car she told me was a fourteen-year-old blue Peugeot that had seen better days.’

I picked up a remote control and pointed it at the DVD player behind me. I had cued the disk to start in the right place.

‘This is two hundred yards from where Rebecca Haworth’s body was found. These images were recorded at two fifty-seven on the morning of Friday the twenty-sixth of November. This’ – I pointed – ‘is a blue Peugeot with one occupant, a female, driving towards the waste ground where Rebecca’s body was dumped. You can see the side of her face.’ I stopped the DVD and moved forward to the view from a different camera taken around a minute later, showing the back of the car as it braked at traffic lights. The driver was just a silhouette, unidentifiable. ‘Here it is again. You can get a partial on the registration number in this image though the car behind blocks some of it. I’ve checked Louise’s old car registration and it matches the partial plate here.’ I skipped forward again. ‘This is twenty minutes later, footage from the second camera. The car is coming back from the direction of the body dump. This time, we can see the driver quite clearly.’ I paused it, letting everyone look at the slightly blurred but completely identifiable image of Louise North. ‘If you were wondering, she lives in Fulham. She told me the first time I met her that she had been at home the night of Rebecca’s murder. She certainly didn’t mention a walk on the wild side south of the river in the middle of the night.’

Colin Vale was shaking his head. ‘It didn’t fit the profile. If I’d known …’

‘You had no reason to look at this car and think anything of it,’ I said comfortingly. ‘I would have missed it if I hadn’t seen it in your log. And I was looking for a different car at the time. It just so happened that Louise told me about changing her car and mentioned what make and model it was, and I happened to spot it.’

‘It was lucky,’ Godley said from the head of the table, causing everyone’s heads to turn towards him like compass needles swinging to the north. ‘But it was also good police work. And as Maeve has pointed out, if it hadn’t been noted in the first place, we’d have missed it.’

‘We could examine those images,’ Colin said. ‘See if the car is more heavily laden going in the direction of the body dump.’

‘Yeah. That’s all we can do, I’m afraid, because according to Louise, the car was scrapped.’

‘Well, that’s something else we could do,’ Kev Cox observed. ‘Trace the car. Find out where it went and where it is now. We might still be able to recover trace from it, even if it’s been compressed.’

‘That’s a long shot,’ Judd said. ‘And the defence would have a field day pointing out how the evidence might have been compromised.’

‘In the absence of a better idea, let’s try it anyway,’ Godley ordered. ‘Colin, that sounds like a job for you.’

The cadaverous detective nodded. He didn’t look excited at the prospect, which was fair enough. It would be a tedious job to do, especially when the chances of recovering anything were so slim.

‘What were you looking for when you noticed her car in the logs?’ DI Judd was frowning.

‘When Rebecca was a student, she had an inappropriate relationship with her tutor. It started up again a few months ago, but this time she blackmailed him.’

‘Academics don’t have any money,’ Judd pointed out.

‘This one does. Caspian Faraday.’

‘I’ve got his books. I’ve watched him on TV.’ Colin Vale sounded shocked. It wasn’t often that I got to witness the fall of an idol and I felt a twinge of sympathy for him.

‘He’s married to an heiress, Delia Waynflete. I got the distinct impression that his priority in life is to maintain his relationship with his wife – I don’t want to accuse him of seeing her as his meal ticket, but she definitely makes a big difference to his standard of living. I could imagine him deciding that he couldn’t stand to live with the fear of his wife discovering his extra-marital affair. I could also imagine him staging Rebecca’s murder. I couldn’t quite see him killing her, but in the right circumstances, maybe he would have found some reserves of brutality within himself. His wife, however, would have the funds to hire someone to kill a rival even if she didn’t do it with her own hands. And Faraday himself seems to have had some doubts about it; their lawyer lied to me when I asked if she’d been in the country at the time of Rebecca’s death. DC Belcott did some digging and found agency pictures of her at a charity ball in London the night before Rebecca died, and at an art gallery the day after the body was found. I was looking for her car, or her husband’s.’

‘You’d think for the sake of the money alone he’d keep his cock under control,’ Ben Dornton commented.

I pulled a face. ‘I didn’t spend a lot of time analysing him, but I’d have to guess that he finds it a bit emasculating to be in such an unequal relationship. He’s done well enough for himself, especially given that basically he’s a disgraced academic, but she’s astronomically wealthy. It must be hard to give up the kind of lifestyle he currently enjoys – that doesn’t mean he likes himself for it.’

‘Let’s get rid of Dr Chen and have Maeve do her bit instead.’

I glared at Rob. ‘Thank you for the suggestion, DC Langton. It’s just conjecture, as you know.’

‘This is all conjecture,’ Belcott complained. ‘Why did you decide the academic and his wife were out of the picture?’

‘Rebecca was Faraday’s walk on the wild side – he didn’t want her dead. And I don’t think that Delia would have bothered with having her rival killed. She’d just have reminded her husband who was in charge and made him live in a different city for a while.’ I pointed at the screen. ‘With hindsight, Louise’s behaviour has been suspicious from the start, when we found her in Rebecca’s flat. We never found Rebecca’s address book, an appointments diary or the notebook she always carried. I have a feeling they walked out the door in Louise’s Prada bag.’ I turned to Sam. ‘Do you remember her bursting into tears all of a sudden and needing to pay a trip to the bathroom to recover her composure? What do you want to bet that while we were talking in the living room, she was hunting through the rest of the flat to make sure she hadn’t missed anything?’

‘Wouldn’t be surprised,’ Sam said. ‘We missed it.’

‘Comprehensively,’ I agreed. ‘But if we hadn’t been there in the first place, we’d never have known she was in the flat at all.’ I managed not to look at Godley as I said it. He had already apologised to me for bollocking us; Sam’s apology would presumably come after the meeting.

‘Why take the risk of trying to make it look like a Burning Man murder?’ Judd asked.

‘I think she thought she could get away with it. She must be extremely arrogant to have taken the risk of going to Rebecca’s flat and cleaning it up. Remember, if I’m right about all this, she got away with murder once before. And there is something flashy about this crime, something that I, for one, was convinced fitted in with the flamboyant confidence that Gil Maddick has in spades. From the first, Louise tried to point me in his direction. She had him lined up to take the fall if we weren’t convinced Rebecca was one of the serial killer’s victims. That was before she started a relationship with him, of course. I have to assume becoming involved with him wasn’t part of her initial plan, because it seems foolhardy in the extreme. Rebecca was always the dominant one when they became friends – she was the pretty, popular girl, and Louise was more in her shadow. I get the impression that with Rebecca gone, Louise has a chance to shine, and she’s taking it, no matter how unwise it may be.’

‘I’m still missing something,’ Judd said. ‘You’ve told us how. You haven’t said why.’

‘Because I can’t be sure about it until we talk to her, and that’s assuming she’ll cough to it, which I doubt she will. She is a lawyer, after all. And she’s very proud of that fact. She has a lot to lose if her reputation is damaged. That’s why, I think, Rebecca had to die.’

‘Because she threatened her reputation?’ Colin Vale asked.

‘Because Louise couldn’t take the risk that she would. Her only insurance was if Rebecca had been sufficiently involved in killing Adam Rowley to make it impossible for her to blackmail her friend without dropping herself in it. But Rebecca was broke and desperate, and she’d exhibited some fairly appalling judgement all along. Louise couldn’t trust her. If she got away with murder seven years ago, why not perform the same trick now when she had so much more to lose if she didn’t?’

‘Are we taking this to the CPS on the strength of a voicemail message and some CCTV?’ Judd asked Godley.

‘We’ve got enough to make an arrest. Whether we can charge her with murder depends on the interview. We need a confession.’ Godley looked down the table. ‘Ben and Chris, were you taking notes? It’s going to be up to you now to get this case off the ground.’

Dornton and Pettifer nodded, looking thoughtful. I wished them luck with facing down Louise when she was brought in; I wouldn’t have wanted to try. I was gathering up my notes, so tired I could barely see straight. Godley’s voice called me back to attention.

‘Maeve, stick around. We’ll get things organised for the arrest and go straight into the interview. I’m going to need you to watch it with me. There’s that chance you might spot something we’d miss, like you did with the car.’

‘Oh. Really? I––’

‘It’ll be a couple of hours before we move on making the arrest. So get some food or something. Relax. Take things easy.’

‘I was going to––’ I broke off. Godley wasn’t listening to me. He had already moved on to talk in a low-pitched mutter with Judd about briefing the CPS. I stood there, swaying with fatigue, wanting more than anything to go home.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Rob was standing up, stretching, then sauntering towards me. Rob, whom I had known for over a year without being remotely ruffled by his presence. Rob, who had sat beside me in countless cars and interviews and briefings, his shoulder against mine. Rob, who had surely never made my heart beat in such an infuriatingly erratic way just by standing near me and saying my name. I turned and smiled, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the colour that had risen in my cheeks.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Just tired.’

‘You must be. All that talking.’

‘And thinking. Don’t forget the thinking.’

‘Unaccustomed as you are to it. Want to go for a coffee? You’ve got time if it’s going to be a few hours yet before she’s interviewed.’

I shook my head. I couldn’t think of anything worse than coffee for my state of mind. I was already feeling jittery, nervous about Louise being arrested, worried that I’d missed something or invented something that wasn’t there. I had that sort of fatigue that comes at the end of a long-haul flight, when the world seems to recede down a narrow tunnel. Even Rob was suddenly very far away.

‘I’m OK.’ I looked around the room piteously, as if a bed would materialise in front of me if I wished for it. ‘What I’d really like is a rest.’

‘We can manage that.’ He dug in his pocket for car keys. ‘Let me take you home.’

‘To my parents’ house? Too far to go. We wouldn’t even have time to get there and back before the interview starts.’

‘So I’ll take you somewhere else. Come on.’

‘Where to?’

He didn’t answer, just smiled and walked out of the room. I followed, too worn out even to be curious. I didn’t even particularly care if anyone saw us leaving the building together. No one would think anything of it. We went places all the time together. And Rob wasn’t acting as if there was anything to hide anyway.

He interrupted my train of thought by stopping on the steps outside and looking at me assessingly. ‘We’d better get a cab. You look as if you couldn’t walk to the corner without keeling over.’

‘You’re not driving?’

‘No parking,’ he said succinctly, and hailed a black cab, leaning in through the driver’s window to give the address so I didn’t hear where he was taking me. The traffic was, as usual, horrible, and it took a while to get to our destination, even though it proved not to be too far away. Rob looked out of the window, his face turned away from me, and instead of second-guessing him as I usually would, I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes, drifting a little. Somewhere, Louise was going about her life, oblivious to the effort that was building up to take her into custody, more or less on my say-so. I felt a wave of nausea and fought it down. If I was right, she deserved it. If I was wrong … but I couldn’t be wrong.

Where Rob took me turned out to be a tiny hotel tucked between shops in a Knightsbridge back street, a hotel that made up in luxury for what it lacked in size. He made me sit in a wing-backed armchair by the fire in the minuscule bar while he dealt with the receptionist, and the warmth revived me to the point where I was ready to tackle him when he came back.

‘You can’t do this. We can’t just check into a hotel because I want a rest.’

‘Can. Have.’ He dangled a key in front of me. ‘Want to see if there’s a minibar?’

‘We’re on duty,’ I said automatically.

‘Spoilsport.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ I allowed my arm to be taken as I was helped out of my chair and escorted to the lift, past the reception desk where two immaculately made-up girls were standing, eyes cast down discreetly as we went by. ‘And what must they think?’

‘They can think what they like,’ Rob said firmly, summoning the lift. ‘If you want to go back to the nick, tell me and I’ll get you a cab. But I’m staying.’

I grumbled all the way into room 4, where I abruptly stopped, because it was a jewel of a room with rose-coloured walls, a claw-footed bath in the black-and-white tiled bathroom, big windows veiled in layers of curtains that muffled the sounds of the traffic below and, dominating the room entirely, a vast bed with fat pillows and a satin coverlet.

‘Wow. How did you know about this place?’