Jeremy Fallon had changed his tie and his suit but not his manner; his eyes still had all the warmth of the blue heart of an iceberg.
‘Mr Fallon, so nice to see you again.’
‘The pleasure is mine.’ He squeezed my hand in both of his. I remained uncharmed. I had changed into a suit, worn with a shirt that had a high collar to hide the bruise on my neck, and it felt like armour. I introduced Derwent, who had been briefed by me outside the interview room about Fallon and his techniques. He shook hands with Fallon, then looked down at Peter Ashington, who was huddled in his chair, a slight figure in a paper boiler suit. One foot tapped constantly and he swallowed every couple of seconds, as if his mouth kept filling with saliva.
‘All right, mate? You gave me a run for my money.’
Ashington glanced up at him and then returned to staring at the floor but his foot-tapping intensified.
‘I do hope we can bring this to a satisfactory and speedy conclusion.’ Fallon eased himself into his seat.
‘That depends on how helpful your client is inclined to be,’ I said. ‘He’s charged with a couple of very serious offences already.’
‘I think we both know that assault is a very variable offence, Sergeant Kerrigan.’
‘He gave a police officer concussion.’
Ashington roused himself. ‘She didn’t say she was a police officer. I didn’t know.’
Georgia hadn’t identified herself, I remembered. She had only told him to stop. ‘It’s still a serious assault. She spent the night in hospital.’
Fallon seemed taken aback. Ashington looked up at me, his eyes tortured under thick dark brows. ‘It was an accident.’
‘I saw what happened,’ I said quietly, and left it at that while I started the tape running and began the interview formally.
We started by going through the events that had led to Georgia’s injury, and Ashington stuck to his accident line stubbornly.
I leaned across the table. ‘Even if it was an accident, why were you running away?’
‘I don’t know. I’d had a lot to drink.’
‘When I mentioned Roddy Asquith, you ran. Why was that?’
‘Don’t know. I can’t remember.’
Fallon flicked a look at him and I thought I read approval in it. Don’t tell them anything. Stall them. They can’t do anything if you’re vague.
‘You know Roddy’s dead, don’t you.’ Derwent was deceptively relaxed beside me, like a tiger lying in the long grass before it starts the hunt in earnest.
‘He crashed his car.’
‘Not his car. He couldn’t drive.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Well, you did.’ I smiled at him, and Fallon, who was looking wary now. ‘You used to drive Roddy around, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t have a car.’
‘No, and that’s why you were insured on Luke Gibson’s car. You used to borrow it whenever Roddy needed to be driven somewhere.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Luke did.’
Ashington widened his brown eyes, belatedly coming to the realisation that we knew more than he had anticipated. ‘Uh, yeah. I mean, it was a while ago. I’d forgotten about it.’
‘Something else you’d forgotten about,’ Derwent said.
‘Let’s talk about the twenty-third of July two years ago.’ I watched for a reaction from Ashington, and was disappointed. Fallon wrote himself a note and circled it with a savage slash of his biro.
‘I – I don’t know what happened on the twenty-third of July two years ago.’ Ashington sounded baffled.
‘It was one of those occasions when you borrowed Luke’s car,’ Derwent said. ‘He was away on holidays, so you probably didn’t even need to ask permission. This time you drove it into the countryside. To a place called Standen Fitzallen.’
If I’d thought Peter Ashington was pale before, I had a new standard for that. His face was entirely bloodless, his lips white. ‘How – how do you know about that?’
‘What were you doing there, Peter?’
‘P-picking someone up.’
‘Who?’
He shook his head, but it lacked conviction. ‘No one I knew.’
‘You drove to Standen Fitzallen for a stranger.’
‘No. Roddy asked me to.’
‘Was it Roddy Asquith you picked up?’ I asked.
‘No, he was with me—’ Ashington stopped himself and took a deep breath. ‘I drove there because Roddy asked me to. We picked someone up. I didn’t know him. He slept on the back seat while I drove to London. I took him to Roddy’s place, parked the car and left.’
‘It was a Sunday, wasn’t it?’
‘Sunday afternoon.’
‘Were you all right to drive?’ Derwent asked.
‘I was fine.’
‘I suppose it was late enough by then. You must have had a hell of a hangover though.’
Alarm came off Ashington in waves. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’d been out the night before at the Chiron Club. Big night, wasn’t it? A special celebration?’
I clicked my fingers. ‘A celebration of Sir Marcus Gley’s presidency, wasn’t it? They published a special little book about him to mark the occasion.’
‘Yeah.’ He shrugged. ‘So what?’
‘So you were there,’ Derwent said. ‘You and some friends.’
‘Are you building up to charging my client with drink driving based on the notion that he might have had too much to drink two years ago?’ Fallon chuckled. ‘This really is a remarkable turn of events.’
I had the sense that he was playing for time on Ashington’s behalf, giving him some breathing space to prepare for what was coming next. What I couldn’t decide was whether Fallon knew what was in the envelope we had found in Ashington’s bedroom. He was clearly employed by the Chiron Club. I wondered if he was a member himself. I would have to get Liv to check the members’ register which we had removed from the club.
‘Peter, you were in the club that night. Did you see anything illegal taking place?’
He blinked at me. ‘Not really. I mean, a few people might have been using drugs. Not me. Some people. That does happen from time to time.’
You could see the hope dawning that what interested us might be the drugs after all. I ruined it for him with my next question.
‘What about the women who were there? Did you see anything happen to any of them?’
He considered it, then shook his head, his face a polite blank. ‘There were girls. Waitresses and so forth. But I didn’t see anything happen.’
‘That’s strange.’ Derwent opened the folder in front of him and pushed a photograph across the table. ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’
The picture was of two young men standing in the hall of the Chiron Club. They wore black tie, their hands were in their pockets and they were deep in conversation. One faced the camera; the other had his back to it. The one facing the camera was clearly recognisable as a younger version of the man in front of me, his face rounded and childish.
Ashington reached out a trembling hand and drew the picture towards him.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘Same place we got the rest.’ Derwent drew a second picture out and slid it across the table. ‘That’s you talking to Antoinette Breve.’
‘Who?’
‘She was working as a waitress that night,’ I said. ‘In this picture, she was asking you if you knew where the ladies’ bathroom was.’
‘In this one, you’re pretending to show her.’ Derwent produced the third image: the slight figure between two dark-suited men who were guiding her towards a door.
‘That’s not the ladies’ bathroom, is it?’ I said. ‘That’s a glorified coat cupboard. Why did you take her in there?’
‘No. It wasn’t me.’ He shook his head.
‘Is this you coming out?’ Derwent showed him the fourth image. The other man’s face was obscured with a black square, but Peter Ashington was clearly visible. He was laughing, and zipping up his fly.
‘That’s me, but that doesn’t mean anything. I was getting something out of my coat and – and – those trousers were really annoying, and the zip kept sliding down all the time.’
‘Here’s Antoinette coming out. She doesn’t look so happy, does she?’ Her face was contorted, her mouth a rectangle as she sobbed. I pretended to be dispassionate as I looked from the photograph to Ashington but anger smouldered in the pit of my stomach. ‘Her clothes are all over the place.’
‘Antoinette says you and your buddy raped her.’ Derwent leaned across the table. ‘She’s told us the whole story.’
‘No. She was into it. She wanted us to do it like that.’
‘She wanted you, two strangers who didn’t even know her name, to hold her down and cover her head with a coat so she could barely breathe, and to rip her underwear off and rape her while she was working as a waitress, trying to save some money for her education.’
‘I don’t know about any of that. It wasn’t bad.’ Peter shook his head. ‘The girls – that’s what they’re there for. They know what they’re getting into. They’re there to make more money and this is the kind of thing they do. You have a bit of fun, you pay them, everyone’s happy.’
‘She was paid,’ Fallon said. ‘Did she tell you?’
So the lawyer knew exactly who she was, and what had happened to her. I felt the heat in my face, but I held on to my composure. ‘She told me the whole story, even down to the amount of money she was given as a bribe to stay silent.’
‘Let me guess. It didn’t go as far as she thought it would and she’s looking for a further payment.’ Fallon flicked his fingers. ‘This is a waste of our time. And yours. I know you’re required to take these complaints seriously but this would never stand up in court. A jury would never believe her.’
‘Who sent you these pictures?’ Derwent asked Ashington. ‘You left them in the same envelope they came in, which was useful for us. They were addressed to you at your old address. We found them hidden carefully in your current flat so we know you saw them.’
‘I – I don’t know who sent them.’
‘The postmark tells us they were sent the Friday after these events took place.’
He shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So we had a good look at them,’ I said. ‘Before we talked to you about them, we wanted to know as much as we could about the pictures and who took them and who sent them to you and why.’
‘These are copies,’ Derwent said. ‘We’ve kept the originals. But this is a photograph of the reverse of one of them. See this mobile telephone number? It’s faint. Written in pencil.’
‘So?’
‘We rang the number,’ I said. ‘Someone answered.’
‘How very thrilling for you,’ Fallon snapped.
‘It was quite exciting, yes. Especially when we realised it was the police constable who was on duty in the members’ offices at the Chiron Club, answering a mobile telephone that was in one of the file drawers.’
It was Fallon’s turn to look deeply uncomfortable. Beside him, Ashington had dropped his head to his chest. When he raised it, I saw he was laughing silently.
‘Is this funny?’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ He shot his solicitor a look of pure dislike. ‘You’re screwed now. You’ve been holding this over me for long enough. I still don’t think I did anything wrong – I mean, I was told to behave that way. I was promised it was all right. They said she’d put up a fight for show but she was in on it all along.’ He looked from me to Derwent. ‘If I didn’t know, it doesn’t count, right?’
‘It counts.’ Derwent’s face was grim.
‘She took the money.’
‘You still raped her.’
‘Debatable. She was acting, whatever she says now. It’s my word against hers and she has to explain the money she took.’
He was right, and we all knew it. The chances of getting him prosecuted for rape were tiny. I knew there was no chance a jury would believe Antoinette, with her accent and her ambition, when Ashington had nice manners and good looks and wouldn’t have needed to rape anyone. His lawyers would destroy the case – and Antoinette – and think they’d done a good job.
‘If you weren’t worried about being prosecuted, why did you keep the photos?’ I asked.
Ashington glanced at Fallon. ‘Shall I tell them everything, Jez?’
Fallon’s head seemed to have inflated. ‘I don’t think I can represent you any more. I advise you to say nothing else until you have arranged other representation.’
‘What do they have on you, Mr Fallon?’ Ashington laughed. ‘It must be good.’
Fallon stood up, mumbled something and made for the door.
Ashington looked at us. ‘This is what they do. They create a situation where you have to be grateful to them, and then you owe them. They buy your loyalty with your own blood. You have no choice about it.’
‘There’s always a choice,’ I said.
‘OK, yes. They loaded the gun, I pointed it at my own head.’ He mimed shooting himself with his finger. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what it would mean.’
‘Why would they do this?’ Derwent asked. ‘What do they want? Money?’
‘I really advise you to say nothing,’ Fallon said again from the door. He was breathing heavily, his face glossy with sweat.
‘It’s not just money. For me it was access to my dad. Do you know who my dad is?’
I shook my head.
‘Vince Ashington. He runs one of the top venture capital businesses in the UK. He’s richer than you can imagine. He barely gives me any money. I mean, you’ve seen where I live. He would only buy me a shitty little one-bed flat. It’s embarrassing. He wants me to make my own way in the world.’
‘You’re old enough to stand on your own two feet,’ Derwent said.
Ashington laughed. ‘Oh my God, you sound just like him.’
A commotion at the door was Fallon leaving the room. I explained his departure to the tape and asked if Ashington was happy to carry on without him.
‘Might as well.’
‘Does your father pay your membership fees at the Chiron Club?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘But he’s not a member. They tried to get him to join when he was at university himself but he said no. He’s much, much cleverer than me.’ Another laugh. ‘I’m what happens when you marry a trophy wife who’s as thick as two short planks and she gives her brains to your kids.’
‘But he pays for you.’
‘I can’t afford the fees myself,’ Ashington said. ‘And I have to keep paying them.’
‘After this?’ I gestured at the pictures.
‘That and … some other things.’
‘Like what?’
‘I think I’ve said enough.’ He laughed again, his eyes bright: he was almost high on the reckless excitement of letting it all out. ‘But put it this way – they’ve got me for life. And through me, they’ve got my dad. He can’t face the idea of me being publicly humiliated. It would reflect badly on him. So he pays for my membership fees, and when they need a bit of investment for a member’s project, they get on the phone to him. He’s put up millions for them. Tens of millions. And some of it worked out OK.’
‘But some of it didn’t,’ I said.
‘Yeah. Well, that’s business. Sometimes everyone makes money, sometimes no one does.’
‘Is this something they tried with you, or do they do it to everyone?’ Derwent asked.
‘Everyone, to some extent, for some reason or other. All of us are in the same boat. They tricked us all.’ Ashington ran his hands through his hair. ‘The things they’ve done. The people they own. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Politicians, judges, media bosses, billionaires. They’ve got them all.’
‘What happened to Paige Hargreaves?’
‘Who?’ His face was blank.
‘This woman.’ Derwent produced her picture and Ashington stared at it.
‘Nope. Never seen her before.’
‘What about Iliana Ivanova?’
‘Never heard that name before either.’ He looked at me earnestly. ‘You should ask Carl Hooper. He’s the only one who knows what’s really going on. He’s the guy in charge of all of this shit.’
‘We’re looking for Mr Hooper at the moment.’
‘You’ve lost him.’ Ashington threw his head back and laughed. ‘That’s hysterical. You got me and let him go. You really need to find him. He’s the big bad wolf. I’m nothing but a cub.’
‘Do you have any idea where he might be?’
‘No. No idea at all.’ Ashington blinked, serious again. ‘I mean, I assume you checked the house already.’
‘The house?’
‘There’s a house in Highgate. The Bishops Avenue.’ He shuddered theatrically. ‘That’s where the real shit goes down. Or so I’ve heard.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘It’s where you go if you don’t cooperate, or if you fuck up too publicly. That’s where they sort problems out.’ He nodded to himself. ‘That’s where you don’t want to go.’