The following morning, my mobile rang at one minute past six. I fumbled it off the bedside table and under the covers.
‘H’llo?’
‘Don’t tell me you were asleep.’ Derwent sounded offensively pleased with himself.
‘I was, actually.’
‘Guess who I just charged with murder.’
‘Gley?’
‘None other.’
I pushed the duvet off and eased myself upright, leaning against the stack of pillows that was supposed to make my shoulder more comfortable in bed. I thought it couldn’t be less comfortable, but I wanted to get back to work quickly so I would do as I was told. For now.
‘Did he confess?’
‘Nope.’
‘What did he say to the video?’
‘Nothing whatsoever. But you should have seen his face. His lawyer too. I think we need to start handing out sick bags before we play stuff like that.’
‘And he didn’t cop to it even though he saw the video?’
‘Oh, he offered a plea to manslaughter at four o’clock this morning. Or his lawyer did. Gley cried.’
‘You made him cry!’
‘I said what I imagined you would say if you were there and it was surprisingly effective.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. Anyway, the CPS said no to manslaughter. He strangles her for almost a minute and shows no remorse afterwards and it’s all on video from start to finish. It’s murder. I reckon we’ll get a guilty plea at some stage but he wants to hurry up and do it before it gets to trial because he’ll lose out on credit for a guilty plea.’
‘I’m sure you’re very worried about the amount of time he serves.’
‘I don’t care if he dies in prison,’ Derwent said cheerfully, ‘but there’s much less work to do if he goes straight to a plea.’
‘Well, that all sounds good.’
‘It is.’
There was a note in his voice I recognised though, a note that I associated with nothing good. Trouble coming. ‘What else has happened?’
‘Nothing. But you might want to have a look at the Times.’
‘Why?’
‘Bianca Drummond has written a piece about the Chiron Club.’
‘Saying what?’
‘Nothing prejudicial. The lawyers must have been all over it. She basically explains the club is a den of iniquity behind closed doors. They use young women as toys and consume illegal drugs openly and get up to all kinds of bad behaviour. She does say there are credible accounts of sexual assault at the club and even rumours of murder. She also says she went undercover and observed a lot of this behaviour herself and that there’s an ongoing police investigation that she’s helping.’
‘Is she helping? I hadn’t noticed.’
‘She’s an important witness, you know.’
‘Does she mention Paige?’
‘Nope.’
‘What about Gley or Hooper?’
‘In passing. She stops short of saying that Gley is a killer but she mentions he’s been arrested. One of the pictures is of him from yesterday morning. Not a flattering shot.’ I heard the newspaper rustling. ‘Not like the main picture they’ve used for the article. That’s very striking.’
‘What is it?’ I snapped.
He read the caption. ‘“Fighting the good fight: an undercover police officer dealing with a member’s unwanted attention.” In fairness, you can’t see your face. Only someone who knows you very well would recognise you.’
‘I suppose you identified me immediately.’
‘I’d know that bottom anywhere,’ he said solemnly.
‘Oh God.’
‘Nice clear image. I wonder what equipment she was using? The technical side of covert surveillance has really come on a lot.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s got his arm around your waist. You’re all standing up drinking champagne.’ More rustling. ‘I mean, you might as well not be wearing a skirt.’
I put one hand over my eyes. ‘How bad is it?’
‘At least an inch of cheek. But on the bright side the world can see you were wearing underwear.’
‘He grabbed me. There was nothing I could do. I thought it was too crowded for anyone to see anything,’ I wailed.
‘It’s a lucky shot through the crowd. They must have moved apart at precisely the right moment.’ No one ever sounded smugger than Derwent did then.
‘Is that everything?’
‘I think it’s probably only the start,’ he said, and hung up before I could reply.
I did look at the article online after breakfast, because I wanted to read it rather than because I was keen to see the picture, although I saw that too. I was, thankfully, unrecognisable, as Derwent had promised, but he hadn’t exaggerated at all about how much of me was displayed in a national newspaper and internationally on the website. I focused on the words instead, frowning as I read it. Bianca had started by explaining a bit about the history and public reputation of the Chiron Club, and who the typical members were, establishing it as a haven of male privilege. Then she tore into it. The article was expertly written to suggest a lot that was, as yet, unsaid, but an intelligent person could read between the lines. I read it twice, then sat and thought for a while, then read it again. There was what it said, and what it didn’t say.
I was on sick leave. I needed to recover. The previous day had shown me I was far from back to full working order.
It still bothered me that I hadn’t found out who killed Paige Hargreaves, and it bothered me that her name wasn’t mentioned in Bianca’s article. She was disappearing from view, lost forever like Iliana, except that Paige didn’t have a family to grieve for her. There was no one to hound us to get a result – no one to mourn. Without that there was every chance she would slip down the pile, an unsolved case, a file on a shelf and a small collection of body parts waiting for disposal.
Well, not if I had anything to do with it. I set about collecting what I needed and made a couple of phone calls. The following day I put on jeans and a clean shirt, tied up my hair and headed for Greenwich with a spring in my step. It was good to be doing something useful. I felt that way for the first half of my journey, before the hot, sticky, crowded underground began to drain the energy from me. Someone jostled my elbow as I emerged from the station and the resulting wave of pain left me sick to my stomach. I trudged slowly around to Paige’s street and when I reached her house I leaned against the railings for a moment. I shut my eyes. Maybe I shouldn’t have come on my own.
‘Are you all right?’ A woman’s voice, close to me: Paige’s neighbour, Mila. I stood up straight and blinked myself awake.
‘I’m fine. Having a break.’
‘What happened?’ She was looking at the sling, and the fading bruises on my face that were still visible in the right light.
‘An accident. Not work-related.’
She looked different, I thought. There was something softer about her appearance: pale pink lipstick instead of red, but also a gentler look to her face. She was wearing a white linen dress and a huge straw hat. ‘Thanks for agreeing to meet with me at such short notice, Mila.’
‘You were lucky. It happened to fit in with my plans.’ She was the sort of person who gave offence casually, without being aware of it, and considered it a point in her favour that she was a straight talker. She clearly wouldn’t have changed her plans one iota if it hadn’t suited her to meet me. ‘Do you want to come in?’
I couldn’t face the steps up to the front door, I discovered. ‘No, thanks. I don’t want to keep you for long. I wanted to ask if you could look at a few photographs for me.’
‘An ID parade?’
‘Sort of. Unofficially, for now.’ I handed her the sheaf of images I’d printed off at home on my parents’ dodgy printer that had to be hand-fed every page. ‘Have a look at those and tell me if you see the man who came round to look at Paige’s flat before we did.’
She shuffled through the printouts, shaking her head as she went. The familiar faces slipped past: Roddy, Luke, Orlando, Peter Ashington, Carl Hooper and a few others I’d thrown in like Pete Belcott and Chris Pettifer to round out the collection. She got to the end and sighed.
‘No. None of them.’
‘Have another look. Take your time. He would probably have looked very different in a suit. These images aren’t great quality.’
‘They look as if you found them on Facebook.’
And a few other places, I thought. ‘Once more. Please.’
She looked again, more thoroughly this time, sliding her sunglasses up on to the top of her head. I almost had a heart attack when she hesitated over Luke’s picture but at last she moved on to the next one, and the next. She went through all of them and then pulled out one which she handed me.
‘That could be him.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘That’s a help.’
‘He looked older. His hair was different. Slicked down, not sticking up. And he was wearing a suit, as I said before, not casual clothes. But I think it was him.’
‘Leave it with me.’
‘All right.’ She looked up at the house. ‘Do you know when you’re going to be finished with Paige’s place?’
‘Soon, I hope.’
‘The landlord has agreed I can tackle the mould upstairs before he rents it out again. Paige simply wouldn’t consider it. She didn’t want the upheaval. But he says he’s going to let me have the whole place refurbished – all the damp addressed, everything. It’s wonderful.’ Her cheeks had flushed with excitement.
‘Are you paying for it?’
‘Contributing. I view it as an investment in my own property. And if he ever decides to sell, I’ve got first refusal on it. I could turn the building back into one house.’
‘That sounds like a worthwhile project.’
She nodded, looking up. ‘I want to get on with it now.’
‘I understand. We’re still trying to find out what happened to her though, so …’
‘Oh, of course.’ She slipped her sunglasses into place as if she was lowering a mask over her face. ‘I should have asked if you had any leads.’
‘Some. We’re making progress,’ I said cautiously, thinking of the absolute lack of any forensic evidence to link Paige to the Chiron Club currently, and how frustrating that was.
‘That’s good.’ She was frowning though. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You do look pale.’
‘I’m fine.’ I thanked her, and said goodbye, and waited until she had gone inside before I took out my phone to make one more call, even though it could only cause me trouble.