The Last Girl (59 page)

‘But when you realised that by being her girlfriend you had effectively exiled yourself from your father, and permanently, Savannah was in trouble, wasn’t she?’

Zoe stared at me, not answering.

‘Once you’d decided to try to get in touch with the twins, you couldn’t let her live. She’d have told your father about your relationship. And he was so hostile to the idea of her being with a woman, let alone her half-sister, you must have known it would destroy any chance of being part of the family.’

‘I hadn’t planned that it would work out that way. Being with Savannah was never part of the game.’

‘But there was a game to be played. And that’s why you made contact with Laura. How did you find her? Facebook?’ Zoe didn’t reply but I saw her eyelids flicker; I’d guessed right. ‘You told her you were her long-lost
sister,
to see what she’d say, and she thought it was great. Her parents deserved to have their cosy world shaken up, didn’t they? You got Laura to trust you and you promised to confront her mother and father, to tell them they were hypocrites and liars and generally do the job that Laura had been trying to do since she became a teenager.’

‘Have you read her emails?’

‘We’re working on it.’

Zoe nodded and sipped from the water in front of her as if she didn’t care either way, but I saw the tremor in her hand as she lowered the cup to the table.

‘Seth Carberry was Laura’s boyfriend. He told us she had messages on her phone from someone who wanted to meet her – someone he assumed was a love rival. It was you, though, wasn’t it?’

When she didn’t reply, Derwent rocked forward on his chair. ‘We’ve got Laura’s phone now, you know. Lydia had it all along. We’ll trace the messages. You probably used a pay-as-you-go one and I bet it’s long gone, but we’ll be able to see where you were when you sent them. I’d be surprised if you’d travelled far from home just to text Laura. And the nice thing about the farmhouse is that it’s in the middle of nowhere. We’ll trace it all back to your door.’

She bit her lip.

‘In fairness to you, you weren’t expecting Laura to be in the house that night. She’d agreed she would be out. But you must have gone prepared to kill Vita. You had a knife.’ I flipped open the file and took out a photo of Vita’s body that had been taken at the morgue. She was naked, her body washed and pale under the light of the flash. Her injuries looked – and were – horrendous. ‘You told me once you trained as a chef. You must be comfortable around knives, so that would explain your choice of weapon. And you knew you weren’t going to get
anywhere
with Vita when she’d already rejected you once. Vita had to go, didn’t she?’

Zoe swallowed. Her freckles were standing out on her skin as if they were painted on, and I wondered if she was going to be sick.

‘The thing is, you couldn’t kill her in front of Laura. And you couldn’t let Laura identify you. And Vita was so obsessed with her children she wouldn’t make room for you – just a little bit of room, you weren’t asking for much. So killing Laura in front of her was the best revenge you could have had.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Her voice was husky.

‘You cut Laura’s throat, but it was a clean kill. Business. Stabbing Vita – that was a pleasure.’

The photo sat on the table between us, turned towards Zoe. She hadn’t looked at it.

‘When Vita ran, she was trying to get to Lydia, to warn her. You didn’t realise about the swimming pool in the back garden, and when you went exploring you found your father. Being in the same room as him must have been a shock. Seeing him. You had to knock him out because he might have fought you and won, but there was something half-hearted about it, something indecisive, and it made us think he was a viable suspect. And he thought he had seen Savannah in the mirror, so you did yourself another favour by letting him live.’

‘You’re making this up.’

‘It’s guesswork,’ I agreed. ‘But it hangs together. And there is physical evidence too. The bail that was recovered from the scene – it matches ones you use in your jewellery. The soil will match the farm when they test it, won’t it? And the DNA on it brought us to you. You were there, Zoe. You were in the house, stepping in blood, walking around.’

‘It was Savannah.’

‘That’s what you told Lydia so you could persuade her
to
kill her. But why would Savannah want to kill her step-mother and sister?’

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘No, nor can I.’ I leaned on my hand. ‘You know, Savannah told me she slept very heavily that night, for hours. If I wanted to buy myself some time, I might drug the person I lived with, like on the night I was going off to commit murder.’

‘You’ll never prove that,’ Zoe said scathingly. ‘You’d have had to test her blood straightaway.’

‘I just don’t think you’re the sort of person to take a chance on being found out because your girlfriend decides to surprise you while you’re supposedly working.’

‘You gave us an alibi for Savannah, but it was rubbish,’ Derwent said. ‘You just needed us to believe you’d been there all night, whatever about her. It suited you that the lack of an oil patch made us suspicious of Savannah.’

‘Not suspicious enough to stop Lydia from coming to live with you, though. You were determined to have Lydia here.’

‘Savannah wanted her,’ Zoe said.

‘I think it was your idea for Savannah to ask us to let Lydia stay with you. That’s why you came to the interview – that and to find out what we knew about the murders. Savannah was a very useful shield for you to hide behind. You got Lydia away from her aunt’s house, where she was safe but unhappy. You gained her trust. You got ready to finish the game, and Seth Carberry turned up. He almost spoiled everything, didn’t he? He drew our attention back to the farm, and Lydia, and what had happened before the murders, and we got the phone. And then I called this morning. You must have panicked.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘You were lucky with Lydia. She’s the sort of person who would take orders from you. She’d admit she was guilty straightaway. You hadn’t thought she’d try to kill
herself,
but that would have suited you even better. As it was, Lydia told us what had really happened and you had to go to plan B, where you pretended she was trying to frame you. You’d been really careful to clean up – both the room and yourself. I’m sure you’ve disposed of your clothes already. We’ll find it hard to tie you to the crime scene, beyond the evidence that you shared the bed with Savannah. You have a good shot at convincing a jury Lydia was lying about what happened today. It would have been better without the forensic links to the Wimbledon crime scene, but a defence barrister would give it a go.’

‘If we believed you Lydia would go to prison, or a mental institution.’ Derwent was picking up where I left off, hitting her hard. ‘And you’d be in the clear.’

‘You could get to know Philip Kennford. The two of you could grieve together.’

‘You’d be the only one. His only daughter, even if he didn’t know it. You could look after him.’

‘The two of you could play happy families. Happy ever after,’ I said softly.

‘This is bullshit,’ Zoe said violently.

‘It’s convinced me.’ Derwent nodded to me. ‘Good work, Maeve.’

‘Good work,’ she repeated. ‘You’ve made up a load of old shite to get Lydia off the hook because you like her, because everyone cares about poor little Lydia and no one cares about me. It doesn’t matter if I go to prison. No one will shed a tear. But we can’t let Lydia suffer.’

‘I think it will bring her much closer to her father,’ I said to Derwent. ‘He really seemed moved, didn’t he?’

‘Like he’d realised what he’d almost lost,’ Derwent agreed. ‘But it didn’t seem to bother him that we were taking you away in cuffs.’

‘He had a lot to take in. He’d only just heard I was his daughter.’

‘He didn’t ask where you were going,’ I said gently.

‘He’s probably really worried about me now.’

‘He was more worried about whether Lydia had to be arrested too, the last time I saw him. And he hasn’t been in touch since. No messages. He hasn’t come to the station to see if you’re all right. He’s all wrapped up in his real daughter, Lydia, and he’s forgotten about you again.’ I stared at her sadly. ‘That must sting.’

Her lips were drawn back over her teeth. She looked quite insane at that moment, and her voice was unrecognisable when I listened back to the tape. ‘What more do I have to do to make him notice me? What else could I have done? Why wouldn’t he pay attention to me? What more do I have to do?’

Zoe Prowse began to cry.

And just like that, it was all over.

Job done.

Chapter Twenty-six

I KNOCKED ON
the door of Godley’s office and waited.

‘Maeve. Come in.’ He looked pleased to see me. ‘How are things?’

‘Derwent and I are just back from the Mags.’ It had been Zoe’s first appearance in court, the day after being charged, and the Magistrates’ Court hearings were always a formality to be run through.

‘How did it go?’

‘No surprises. The first hearing in the Crown Court is next month, and she’s tucked up in prison even as we speak.’

‘That’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. I suppose so.’ I fiddled with a paper clip that had been lying on the edge of his desk, balanced at the point where a nudge would send it to the floor. ‘I think she’s going to try for diminished responsibility because of her traumatic upbringing.’

‘That old chestnut.’

‘We heard a lot about foster care yesterday.’ She had talked once she’d recovered from her fit of crying – talked and talked, needing very little prompting. Getting her new story straight, Derwent had said sourly, and I had agreed.

‘Had a bad time, did she?’

‘Abuse. Violence. Rape. The works.’ I shuddered. ‘I can sort of understand how you could come through that and feel you’d been hard done by if you saw your father
making
a fuss of your siblings when he couldn’t even be bothered to remember your mother’s name.’

‘Not everyone who makes it through the system turns into a criminal or a murderer.’

‘No. Some people stay on the straight and narrow, no matter how tempting the alternative is.’ I could see by the look on his face that he knew exactly what I meant.

‘You did good work, Maeve. You’re learning all the time.’

‘I hope so.’ I looked at him levelly. ‘I don’t want to make any mistakes. And I don’t want to risk my career over someone else’s problems.’

‘No one wants that.’ He was spinning his pen on his blotter. ‘I am grateful to you for your help.’

‘I’m sure you are.’ I stood up. ‘But I’d rather not get involved. And you involved me in your business with Skinner.’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ I insisted. ‘You thought I wouldn’t work out what was going on, but I was already wondering why you wanted to keep Derwent out of the gang case. He assumed it was because of Una Burt, but it was because he’d have spotted you were up to no good.’

‘There’s more to it than you know.’

‘I know you told Skinner to get rid of his new accomplices and five of them turned up dead a couple of days later. I know you deleted numbers from Niele’s phone. I know you were trying to cover yourself and you used me.’

‘You’re making assumptions.’

‘Maybe so. I can make some more if you like. I can assume you were acting as a go-between for Niele and Skinner, and that’s why you needed to clear her phone. You got nervous when she turned up in the Kennford case, even though it was a coincidence that she had been involved with him. Maybe she got in touch with you and
asked
you to make us go away. Maybe she threatened to tell us she knew you. Whatever happened, you thought it was worth the risk to have them dealt with, and you told Skinner as much.’

‘Please believe me, it’s not about money. It’s not anything I could help.’ He sounded ragged, desperate almost. ‘I don’t want you to think that of me.’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s none of my business.’

‘It does to me.’ He drew a square on his notepad and started to shade it. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You would be within your rights to raise your suspicions with the DPS.’

The Department of Professional Standards were the Met’s watchdogs, the ones charged with stamping out corruption and bad behaviour – police for the police, in a nutshell – and the thought of reporting Godley to them was not a pleasant one.

‘I think you should decide the best course of action and talk to the DPS yourself, if that’s what you think is best. I meant what I said, I don’t want to be involved any more.’ I hesitated. ‘I still want to work with you, if you’re happy to keep me. I still think you’re the best around at what you do.’ I just didn’t hero-worship him any more.

‘Of course I’m happy to keep you.’ He looked pained. ‘Maeve …’

‘I’d better go.’

He was pale under his tan, his face suddenly gaunt. He looked his age for the first time since I’d known him. ‘What are you doing now?’

‘What I always end up doing. Moving house.’