It was still dark when Derwent’s car pulled up outside my parents’ house. I hurried out, closing the front door as quietly as I could so I didn’t wake them up.
‘Morning.’ He looked at the tin I had balanced on my knees as I put on my seatbelt. ‘What’s that?’
‘Cake. Mum made it for the team.’
‘Brilliant.’ He sounded genuinely delighted. ‘I knew it was worth picking you up.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’
‘Why not?’
I shrugged. ‘I thought you’d change your mind. I am supposed to be on sick leave.’
‘I don’t see why some miserable little shit’s emotional problems should deprive you of being at Gley’s arrest. If you hadn’t nosed out the Chiron Club story, we wouldn’t know anything about Gley or Iliana. This is all down to you.’
‘Thanks.’
He nodded, concentrating on the road. ‘You deserve this. And Burt agreed with me.’
‘You got permission?’
‘Everything by the book.’
I waited until we had stopped at a red light to pop the lid of the cake tin. The smell of chocolate filled the car. Derwent leaned over and inhaled deeply.
‘That is beautiful.’
‘She said it was your favourite. Why does my mother know your favourite kind of cake?’
‘She’s that sort of person.’
‘And I’m not?’
‘No, and please promise me you’ll never bake me a cake.’
‘You’d be lucky.’
‘Yeah, lucky to survive. I’ve seen your cooking. I wouldn’t risk it.’
‘I won’t bother then,’ I snapped.
He gave me a sidelong smile that was sweet and surprising enough to defuse my anger. ‘Just promise me you’ll keep it away from Liv until I’ve had some. She’s like a python at the moment. She’d down it in one.’
The quiet road in St John’s Wood where Sir Marcus Gley lived had never seen anything so shocking as the dawn raid on his house, complete with three police cars, one van and two unmarked vehicles. We weren’t expecting trouble, but it was best to go prepared for it. In addition to a lot of uniformed officers and Derwent, the team consisted of Chris Pettifer, Pete Belcott and Colin Vale, who had left the office for the first time in months. No Liv, who was limited to desk duties. I wasn’t officially there either, but I was glad to be included, and Derwent made sure I wasn’t pushed out of the way as we trooped up the narrow path to the front door. The houses weren’t huge but they were late Georgian, complete with fanlights over the doors and high windows, and only very wealthy Londoners could have aspired to own one. The brass knocker on the door gleamed in the morning light with the sheen of proper elbow grease. I heard a chorus of soft chirps around me as the uniformed officers switched on their body-worn cameras to record whatever happened next.
Sir Marcus himself came to the door when we knocked, before the officers had to use the battering ram known familiarly as the big red key. He was plum-faced and rumpled, lashing himself into a brightly coloured dressing gown.
‘What on earth is going on?’
‘Sir Marcus Gley?’ Derwent asked.
‘Yes.’ He smoothed his hair, suddenly self-conscious. ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’
Gentlemen. I was standing right in front of him.
‘We’re here to arrest you,’ Derwent said.
There was nothing jolly about his face now: I recognised the terrifying temper he had unleashed on Iliana Ivanova in the video of her death. ‘On what charge?’
‘Murder.’ Derwent recited the caution smoothly as Sir Marcus took a step back, shaking his head.
‘What? There’s been some mistake. This is insanity.’ His eye fell on me at last. ‘You. I recognise you. You came to the club. You asked about a journalist. Is this about her?’
‘Indirectly,’ I said.
‘Ridiculous. I told you I never saw her. I don’t know anything about what happened to her.’ He peered past me, looking across the road to where a small knot of neighbours had gathered to watch what was going on, even at that early hour. The spinning blue lights on the emergency vehicles would have given the game away. ‘This is harassment! I’m going to sue the police for this. You’re damaging my reputation for no reason. My lawyers are going to make you pay for this.’
‘We need to search the premises.’ Chris Pettifer handed him a warrant. ‘Is there anyone else here?’
‘My wife. You can’t disturb her. She’s still in bed.’ He was calling after Derwent, who was halfway up the stairs already, two uniformed officers in tow.
‘I’ll be nice,’ Derwent promised, which was even less reassuring if you knew him.
The rest of the detectives and officers fanned out through the house. I stayed in the hall with a PC who was guarding the door, and Sir Marcus, who looked at me blankly.
‘You’re making a terrible mistake, you know. I didn’t kill that journalist.’
I wrote it down. He’d been cautioned properly; he should have known not to talk. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. ‘I’m not here to arrest you for that.’
‘For what, then?’
He really didn’t remember, I realised. There was nothing feigned about his bemusement. Iliana had mattered so little to him, alive and dead, that he had forgotten all about killing her. If it hadn’t been on video, there would have been no evidence at all that he’d done it, assuming Hooper had never decided to talk. Gley and his money had wiped every trace of her off the face of the earth, and his arrogance had removed even the memory of her death from his mind.
Our plan was to take Sir Marcus to the office once he’d got dressed and we’d conducted a preliminary search of the house. We intended to leave a PoLSA team at the house to go through it with more care, in case there was something useful buried in a cupboard or a drawer. Somewhere he would have the clothes he had worn the night he killed Iliana; it was a long shot but there might be trace evidence there, if we were lucky and the dry cleaners hadn’t obliterated it. He struck me as a man who owned more than one evening suit. I hoped it might have been hung up and forgotten.
What I hadn’t appreciated was that Gley had lived in the house for forty years or more, and every inch of it was densely cluttered with heavy antique furniture filled with junk and paperwork. We were slower than I would have liked to get moving. At last, we were ready to take him to the van. Pettifer had no sooner cuffed his hands in front of him than Belcott popped his head in.
‘Boss, just to let you know, someone’s tipped off the media.’
Derwent swore. ‘Who’s done that?’
‘You probably did it yourself,’ Sir Marcus said bitterly and Derwent shook his head.
‘Not me. More likely one of your neighbours.’
‘What sort of media does he mean? Are there cameras? I can’t be on camera like this.’ He looked around wildly. ‘You have to help me.’
I was wearing my jacket over my shoulders to accommodate my sling. I slipped it off and dropped it over his wrists to hide the cuffs.
‘People will know I’ve been arrested anyway,’ Gley complained.
‘Yes, that seems likely.’ Derwent’s face was poker straight.
‘But they’ll jump to all sorts of conclusions.’
‘They might think you’re a criminal.’
‘Exactly.’ He gave Derwent a look of pure loathing. ‘You think this is funny.’
‘On the contrary. I want to get you into the police van with as little trouble as possible.’ He gathered a few of the biggest officers and surrounded Sir Marcus with them. ‘Don’t get separated, don’t get distracted, and let’s do this as quickly as we can.’
I moved to the side of the hall, out of the way. Derwent looked for me and nodded, relieved.
‘Stay out of trouble.’
That had been the idea, I thought but didn’t say, confining myself to a glower that made the corners of his mouth turn up.
It wasn’t Derwent’s fault that the transfer to the van was the opposite of smooth. As soon as the front door opened, a photographer snapped a picture of Sir Marcus. The flash of the photograph startled him and he stepped back, encountered a large policeman behind him and stepped forward again, but lost his balance on the step. He pitched forward, and the photographer got a second shot which would appear in several of the next day’s newspapers. In it, his mouth was open and his eyes were wide with horror. His hair floated away from his head like cobwebs. Someone caught him and set him on his feet before he actually fell, but the momentum was gone. Reporters and cameramen jostled for the right angle, and the whole ungainly mob pushed into the hall before the police took control and moved through the scrum, Gley all but invisible in the middle of them. I peeled myself off the wall where I’d been stepped on, squashed and dragged, easing my arm where it ached.
‘Are you OK?’ Colin asked, his eyes wide.
‘Never better,’ I said, and to my total shame toppled forward in a dead faint, as Derwent stepped forward smartly to catch me.