The Kill (7 page)

‘But there are five gates that allow vehicles out of this park and six pedestrian gates and it wasn’t that late and … I’m going to be watching a lot of footage,’ Colin finished. He actually sounded happy about it.

Godley turned to Belcott. ‘Pete, I want you to dig into Hammond’s past. See if there’s any reason why someone would have a grudge against him. Check his personnel files, his old cases, any complaints made against him – the works.’

‘What about me and Kerrigan?’ Derwent asked, as if we had to work together.

‘I want Maeve to come with me.’

Around the circle, I was aware of eyebrows going up, of meaningful looks being exchanged. I couldn’t seem to kill the rumour that Godley and I were having a secret relationship. If only they knew the secret we shared, they would know there was nothing romantic about it. Godley had been passing information to a major criminal, John Skinner, for years. And I was the only one who knew about it. Derwent’s expression was neutral, unreadable. He knew Godley better than most, and I thought he probably didn’t believe there was anything going on between me and the superintendent, but I wasn’t sure.

Apparently oblivious, Godley went on, ‘Josh, you stay here. Glenn’s going to move the body soon and I want someone on the spot in case there are any surprises. Talk to the witnesses. Talk to the SOCOs. Get hold of the local Safer Neighbourhoods Team and find out if this was a regular spot for couples. Maybe Hammond was a regular. I want you to concentrate on this end of the investigation, Josh. With your background in the army you know more than anyone else here about shooting.’

‘But Kerrigan knows more about giving blowjobs than anyone else.’

It was a mutter but Derwent didn’t miss it. He rounded on Belcott, who actually took a step back. ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing. Just a joke.’

‘And well up to your usual standards,’ I said, unruffled. There was very little Belcott could say that would genuinely annoy me. I had no need to impress him.

‘Let’s get moving.’ Godley headed off in the direction of his car. The others followed, Belcott glaring at me as he passed. I smiled sweetly until he turned away. I hung back for a moment, reluctant to walk down the hill with him.

Derwent came to stand beside me. ‘What did you ever do to Belcott?’

‘Nothing at all. Except for being cleverer than him, and better at the job, and taller than he is, and whatever else it is that chafes his nuts.’

‘Whatever that may be.’ Derwent was smiling to himself. The smile died as he turned to look at the car, with its nightmarish passenger. The sky was starting to change colour, the darkness lifting, the birds tuning up for dawn. It was cold and my spirits plummeted again. Around us, London would be starting to wake up on a clear Sunday morning. Terence Hammond’s family would be waking up to a tragedy.

And nothing I could do would change that.

Chapter 4

When I got to his car, Godley was listening to the news, frowning.

‘… found dead in Richmond Park in south-west London. Police have not yet named him. There are unconfirmed reports that the man was a police officer, shot in his car in the early hours of this morning as he returned from work. Several roads are closed within the park and traffic in the area will be subject to diversions for the rest of the day.’ The calm, measured voice paused for a moment. ‘An eight-year-old boy has died in a house fire …’

Godley turned the radio off.

‘They got hold of that quickly.’ I put on my seatbelt.

‘They always do now. One of the witnesses tweeted about it.’ Godley shrugged. ‘Nothing we can do. As soon as it gets light there’ll be a helicopter or two filming the scene.’

A silver Volvo slid past us and Godley followed it. ‘That’s Superintendent Lowry, Hammond’s boss. He’s got Hammond’s inspector with him, Dan West. Do you know either of them?’

‘No. Never met them.’

‘I don’t know anything about West but don’t judge John Lowry by this morning. He’s not usually so tense. Hammond had two kids, apparently. Fourteen and sixteen. Tough age to lose a father.’

‘I’m not sure there’s a right age for that to happen. It’s good of Superintendent Lowry to break the news to Mrs Hammond himself.’

‘I’d do the same. I’ve never had to, thank God.’ He looked sideways at me. ‘I’ve come close a couple of times, as you know.’

I did know, since I’d been the one hovering between life and death on at least one occasion. It was a weird thing to be embarrassed about but I was embarrassed.

‘No one ever thinks it will be them.’

‘The odds are against it,’ Godley agreed. He was staying close to Lowry’s car, following him through the quiet streets. ‘It’s still the sort of job that makes you a target. Like that PC in Lambeth a couple of weeks ago. What was his name?’

I knew who he meant. ‘Gregory. Philip or Peter or something.’

‘Crossing the road, in uniform, on duty and he gets hit by a car. A walking target. He was lucky.’

‘He jumped,’ I said, remembering some of the details. ‘I think he broke an arm or a leg though. Did they get anyone for that?’

‘They haven’t even got a suspect. It was a residential street. No CCTV. No witnesses. He didn’t get more than a quick look at the car himself and he was single-crewed.’ Godley shook his head. ‘I don’t think they’ll get whoever did it. My guess is that someone attacked the uniform, not the man. It was the day after Levon Cole was shot. You don’t have to look too far for reasons for us to be unpopular at the moment.’

Levon Cole was a teenager who had been shot by police officers in murky circumstances. It was just the latest reason for people not to love the Met. ‘Do you think Terence Hammond was killed because he was a cop?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Maybe he was killed because he was having an affair.’

‘Also possible.’

‘So when do we ask the grieving widow about whether her husband was faithful to her?’

Godley’s mouth twitched. ‘Derwent would ask her straightaway.’

‘Which is why he’s hanging out with the dead man in Richmond Park.’

‘That’s one reason.’

‘It’s good enough.’

‘To answer your question about Mrs Hammond, I’m not sure how I’m going to do this yet. I’m going to let Lowry take the lead with breaking the news and offering her whatever consolation he can. Then I’ll talk to her. I haven’t decided how I’m going to approach it. I want to wait until I see her. I’m assuming she’ll want to find her husband’s killer. If she’s strong enough, she might want to talk about their ups and downs. If she falls apart we’ll have to rely on friends and family to get a picture of how Hammond was at home.’

‘I have no sense of his personality at all,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t even see what he looked like.’

Still driving, Godley dug in his pocket and handed me his phone, tapping in the PIN code without looking down at the screen. ‘Check my emails. I got someone at Isleworth to send me an up-to-date picture of him.’

I navigated to the emails, scrolling through many messages to find the right one. The picture was formal, a head-and-shoulders shot. Hammond had just missed out on being handsome, I thought. He looked like a rugby player, thick-necked and short-haired with a heavy jaw. Straight eyebrows. A nose too small for his face. I knew not to read too much into a single image – a formal picture at that – but I couldn’t help trying to invest his face with character. There was something to the tilt of his head, the droop of his eyelids, that made me think he was arrogant. Maybe that was just because I knew he’d died with his flies open and some unknown person’s face in his crotch. I flicked back to Godley’s inbox.

‘It’s Sunday morning and you’ve had about twenty emails since the one with Terence Hammond’s picture. How do you find the time to read all of these?’

‘I don’t.’

‘What if they’re important?’

‘They’re never important.’

‘Seriously, though.’

‘Seriously, if it’s important, I get a phone call. If it’s rubbish, it comes as an email. The ones with the Excel attachments are the ones I read last. If ever.’

There was something giddy about Godley – as if he was excited but suppressing it. Maybe it was because the end of his marriage spelt liberation. In almost three years of working for him I’d seen him angry a handful of times, serious most of the time, and light-hearted roughly never.

Covertly, I watched him as he drove. It had been a long night. The tiredness lurked in the corners of his mouth and around his eyes, where the lines were deeper and longer than usual. But he still looked as if something fundamental had changed and I wondered what it was.

‘Sir—’

The phone vibrated in my hand. I’d forgotten I was still holding it. Automatically I glanced down to see the first few lines of the message flash up as a preview on the screen.

Make no mistake

you fucking cunt, you’d

better change your mind

or you know what will

I stared down at it for a few long seconds. The phone was on silent so Godley had no idea he had a new message. More importantly, he didn’t know that I’d seen it. I turned the phone over so he couldn’t see the screen and slid it on to the central console. It was none of my business.

I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d forgotten Terence Hammond. I’d forgotten why I was sitting in Godley’s car and where we were going.
Change your mind
.
You know what will
. I could fill in the rest of that sentence without too much trouble.
You know what will happen.
Something to take the smile off Godley’s face, I thought. Something terrible. The message was nothing to do with me but I was light-headed with shock.

‘This must be the place.’

I looked up, surprised, as Godley pulled in behind Lowry’s car. It had stopped outside a 1930s semi-detached house with an empty driveway. The curtains were closed. No one was up yet.

‘I’ll go in with Lowry and West,’ Godley said. ‘Make sure you stay close to me. I don’t want you to get sidelined. I value your opinion.’ A sideways look. ‘That’s why I wanted you to come with me, you know. You’re good at people.’

I dredged up a smile that felt stiff on my face. ‘Thanks.’ I did appreciate the compliment, even though I knew it was the one area where I had an advantage over my male colleagues. It was a widely held belief that female officers were useful to have around when people were likely to be upset. I wasn’t so sure; I’d known more than a few who had no nurturing instincts at all.

‘I want your impressions of the family. I want to know if you think Mrs Hammond is surprised by the news about her husband.’

‘Are you thinking of her as a suspect?’

‘Anything’s possible. Especially given what Hammond was doing when he died. I doubt she pulled the trigger but she might have asked someone else to do it. Loving wives of unfaithful husbands make good suspects.’

‘Cynic,’ I said, smiling for real this time.

‘You know the rules. Most murders occur for reasons that are close to home.’

A bulky man was levering himself out of the driver’s seat of the car in front. He was overweight, his jowls overlapping his collar, and his face was red. His blood pressure had to be through the roof. He gave Godley a sick look and nodded to the house.

‘Right.’ Godley picked up his phone and slid it into his pocket without looking at the screen. ‘Time to go.’

I hung back as he went to join Lowry and West on the pavement. The three of them conferred for a minute. West was a thin, wrinkled man whose skin was weathered to a shade that was almost the same light-brown as his fine hair. He kept passing a hand over the top of his head, smoothing his hair down. They walked up the drive together and Godley rang the doorbell.

It was a long time until someone responded. The light went on in the hall first, and then the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged woman. She was tying the belt on her dressing gown, but her attention was on us, her gaze flitting across our faces, trying to read our expressions. Her face was pale, sleep-saggy, wary. Her hair was short and streaked blond. At the moment it stood up like a cockatoo’s crest.

‘Mrs Hammond?’ Lowry began.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Superintendent John Lowry. Sorry to bother you so early. It’s about Terence. I’m so sorry. May we come in?’

I saw the shock hit her. I watched her world fall apart.

And we hadn’t even got around to breaking her heart yet.

The kitchen was dark, even with the lights on. It was in need of an update: at least two of the cupboard doors were hanging off their hinges and the tiles by the cooker had cracked. If it had been Hammond’s intention to redo it, he’d missed his chance. I hunted for mugs and sugar, opening wobbly drawers in search of a teaspoon as the kettle boiled. I had one ear trained on the conversation in the living room between Mrs Hammond and the three senior police officers. I didn’t want to crash in at an awkward moment with my tea tray.

Tea, the answer for every problem. Burglary? Tea. Missing child? Tea. Dead husband? Tea. No one ever seemed to drink it. For us, the cups were a prop, something to do with your hands while gently delivering the bad news and easing yourself back out to the street. Nothing ever felt as good as the first breath of fresh air when you walked out of a house filled with grief.

And yet I felt as if I was in my natural environment. It was the wedding that felt unreal now. I’d already forgotten the details of the day, the dress, the conversations I had had. Now I was at work I focused on everything around me, my mind working to see significance in mundane details, even though I didn’t expect to find anything of interest in Hammond’s kitchen. I might never be in the Hammonds’ house again but I would be able to close my eyes and say for certain which drawer had a loose handle or which cupboard door was chipped or where the floor was stained, by the bin.