I was braced for impending doom but when my phone rang at ten past eleven I didn’t realise the moment had arrived.
‘Is that DS Maeve Kerrigan?’
‘Speaking.’
‘My name is Paul Varley. I’m a police constable in Swindon. I believe you’re investigating the murder of Paige Hargreaves.’
I sat bolt upright. ‘I am. What can I do for you?’
‘Well, I hope it’s what I can do for you.’ He had a mellow, measured voice with a pleasant country burr, and sounded as if retirement couldn’t be too far off. ‘I don’t know if it’s any use to you but I thought I should get in touch regarding a conversation I had with this Miss Hargreaves about two weeks before her body was found, regarding an investigation she was doing into some private club in London.’
I pulled my notebook towards me, hope tingling down my spine. ‘That could be very useful. What did she want to know?’
‘Well, it was a backwards kind of conversation. Miss Hargreaves was convinced that there’d been a murder near a village called Standen Fitzallen coming up on two years ago. She wasn’t sure of the address where this crime had taken place or who had been killed, but she knew the date – the night of the twenty-second of July.’
‘She didn’t know much, did she?’
‘Very little. She said someone had told her they’d picked up a friend from the middle of Standen Fitzallen on the twenty-third of July, about four p.m., and he’d been hysterical. He said something about a dead body in a big old country house, in the swimming pool. He’d walked to the village from the house. Miss Hargreaves was wondering if she could match it up with a murder investigation in that general area, around that time.’
‘Could you?’
‘Absolutely not.’ I heard the smile in his voice. ‘You probably deal with murders all the time but it’s not the kind of thing we’d forget. There was nothing of that sort within thirty miles of Standen Fitzallen in July or August that year. And nothing since, either.’
‘But she was sure about the location where the car picked up this person who claimed there’d been a murder?’
‘She was. And I did recall one thing: on that Saturday we had a few phone calls from concerned residents about a young man who was behaving strangely in the village. It’s the sort of place where you can’t cough without someone noticing. Quiet little spot.’
‘What sort of strange behaviour did they notice?’
‘He was barefoot and dishevelled. One or two people tried to talk to him but got no sense out of him. They were concerned he’d escaped from some institution or other. I wasn’t too busy so I went over to the village to check it out, but by the time I got there he’d been picked up.’
‘And no one got the car’s number plate.’
‘Oh no, they did.’ He was smiling again, I could tell. ‘Told you, they miss nothing around there. I didn’t take it any further because the young man had gone, so as far as I was concerned the situation was resolved. I didn’t know anything about a connection with a murder at the time – not that I know any more about it now than I did two years ago, but regardless, I might have followed it up if I’d had a reason to.’
‘You don’t have the number to hand now, do you?’
‘Right here.’ He dictated it to me. ‘A 2009-plate blue VW Polo.’
‘Amazing. I’ll follow it up.’ I hesitated. ‘I suppose she didn’t happen to mention how this tied in with her investigation into the Chiron Club.’
‘The what? Oh, this private club. No, all she said was that some of the people involved were members and she believed the murder was an initiation thing. But there was no murder. No reports of missing people.’
‘What sort of area is it?’
‘Small villages, well spread out. Heart of the horse-racing industry. The Downs. Farmland, managed woods, that kind of thing.’
‘Lots of big old country houses?’
‘Tons of them,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Many with swimming pools. I did try to work it out but without more information I’m stuck, I’m afraid.’
‘If I find out anything at my end, I’ll let you know, I promise.’
‘Mind if I say I hope you don’t? Nothing personal but I prefer a quiet life.’
‘Don’t we all,’ I said, with feeling.
Calling the DVLA was my next step, and they were as efficient as ever in matching up the registration of the car with its registered keeper. It was a matter of minutes before I had a name and an address. I made sure I’d ended the call before I gave vent to my feelings.
‘Fuck everything sideways.’
The second time Luke Gibson came in for interview, late that afternoon, he walked in by himself. This time his mood was distinctly cooler.
‘I don’t know why you’ve had to call me in again. I thought we’d covered everything yesterday.’
‘So did I. Some new information has come to light and I wanted to ask you about it.’
‘What sort of information? About Paige?’ He was frowning at me and now that I knew who he was it might as well have been Derwent sitting on the other side of the table. The hostility was identical.
‘Do you have a car, Mr Gibson?’
‘Yeah.’ The frown deepened. ‘So?’
‘Is it a VW Polo?’
‘Yes. It’s parked outside the house. I hardly ever use it these days. Weekends, sometimes. The supermarket. IKEA trips. That’s about it.’
‘How long have you owned it?’
‘Since university.’
‘Does anyone else drive it?’
‘No.’
‘Where do you keep the keys?’
‘In my room, in a drawer.’ He looked mystified. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Have you ever been to Standen Fitzallen?’
‘Where?’
‘It’s near Swindon.’
‘Not as far as I remember.’
‘What about the twenty-third of July the year before last?’
He laughed. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? How do you expect me to remember that?’
‘A car matching your car’s make and model, with licence plates that matched your vehicle, was seen in Standen Fitzallen on that day.’
‘Seen? By whom? Why does that matter?’ He shook his head. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re asking me or why.’
‘Someone driving that car picked up a man who was behaving in an unusual way in the village. Paige Hargreaves contacted the local police there shortly before she died to find out more about that incident. She claimed it was connected with a murder at a country house near Standen Fitzallen.’
‘A murder? Who died?’
‘That’s something we still need to clarify.’
‘Two years ago.’ He looked thoughtful all of a sudden. ‘Can I check something on my phone?’
‘Be my guest.’
He took it out and checked the calendar, thumbing through the months. ‘What date did you say?’
‘The twenty-third of July. Mid-afternoon.’
‘Maybe my car was there, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t have been the one who was driving. I was hiking the route to Machu Picchu that day.’
Relief made me sag in my chair for an instant. If he wasn’t involved, my life was about to get much simpler. ‘Can you prove it?’
‘Probably. I was with a girlfriend. We hiked in and out. Took us a couple of weeks. I think she put the whole trip on Facebook.’ He paused for a second as his phone loaded, then started scrolling through images. ‘Yeah. There you go. They’re all dated. She put them up when we came home.’
I took the phone from him and skimmed through pictures of Luke grinning as rain dripped off his hat, squinting up at the camera as he held it so the ruins were visible in the background, a pretty girl draped around him. The dates tallied with what he’d told me. I gave him the phone. ‘That’s really helpful.’
‘You’re not kidding.’ The tension had ebbed away from him, taking the scowl along with it. ‘I must give Lily a call and thank her for getting me off the hook. I can’t honestly remember why we broke up.’
‘You’re not completely in the clear yet. If you weren’t driving your car, someone else had to be.’
He froze in the act of putting his phone away. ‘Ah.’
‘Any idea who that might have been?’
‘No.’
‘What about Roddy?’
‘Roddy can’t drive. He has epilepsy. He’s never learned.’ He said it as if his mind was somewhere else. I watched him think, and saw the exact moment something clicked. His eyes widened for an instant, before he looked up at me and shook his head. ‘I’d like to help.’
‘Then tell me who was driving.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you have some idea.’
He groaned. ‘Do I have to say?’
‘No, I suppose you don’t. I can’t compel you to.’ I folded my arms. ‘I don’t know how Paige Hargreaves died, but from the manner of disposal of her body I would guess it wasn’t pleasant. I currently have no suspects and no motive for her death. If I’m going to work out what happened to her, and why, and who did it, I need as much help as I can get. I know it might put you in a difficult position if you want to be loyal to your friends, but Paige deserves some loyalty too. Someone ended her life, quite brutally, and I want to bring them to justice.’
His mouth thinned to a grim line. ‘Yeah. I get it.’
‘Paige seems to have believed that someone was murdered near to Standen Fitzallen and it had something to do with the Chiron Club. Your housemates are members of the club. As far as I can tell, Roddy was helping her with this story she was working on, but he’s not being very helpful to me at the moment. Now, from what you’re saying it couldn’t have been him who was driving because of his epilepsy, but he could have been the man in the village.’
‘Roddy wouldn’t have hurt anyone. He’s not that sort of person. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him lose his temper.’ Luke’s forehead was creased with worry. ‘Can’t you ask him?’
‘I can and I will, but the more I know in advance, the better chance I have of getting a proper answer out of him.’
‘There’s a guy who’s a friend of Roddy’s,’ Luke said slowly. ‘Ash. He borrowed the car a couple of times when Roddy needed driving somewhere. I’d completely forgotten but he was insured on the car for a few months. Roddy paid for it. Both of them knew where the keys were. If Roddy needed picking up – or if someone else did – he might have asked Ash to do it. I haven’t seen him for ages.’ He frowned. ‘Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve seen him since that trip to Peru. Roddy never mentioned him to me.’
‘Where does Ash live?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s his surname?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘Do you have a number for him?’
‘No, sorry. He was never a friend of mine. I just let Roddy sort out the car when he needed it and Ash did the driving.’
‘How do they know each other?’
Luke shrugged. ‘School? University? I do know Ash is a member of the Chiron Club too. They went to events there together.’
I started at the beginning again, asking the same questions in a different way, the best method to identify the places where he might be lying. As before he answered carefully and precisely, and I believed him. Once I was satisfied he’d told me all he knew, I ended the interview.
‘Right. That’s it. You’re done.’
He rubbed his face. ‘I feel like shit for dropping Roddy in it. And Ash. I don’t even know if they did anything wrong.’
‘That’s for me to find out. But if they were involved in something illegal, they used your car to do it, without your knowledge. If you hadn’t been able to prove you were out of the country I could have arrested you by now.’
He ran his thumb over his knuckles edgily, not looking at me. ‘They probably didn’t realise I could be implicated.’
‘Or they were prepared to take the risk.’
‘Roddy wouldn’t have wanted to get me in trouble.’ He sounded certain but his eyes were shadowy with hurt. He knew as well as I did that someone had decided it didn’t matter either way. As far as they were concerned, he was dispensable.
If I’d been Luke, I’d have been thinking about acquiring some better friends.