Liv shook her head as I walked into the office. ‘I knew you’d never stay away. What’s the excuse this time?’
‘Not an excuse. Some business that couldn’t wait.’ I explained that Derwent and I had been interviewing Bianca and her boyfriend, and why.
‘What a bitch.’
‘She’s ambitious.’
‘At her friend’s expense.’ Liv bristled. ‘I’d arrest her for perverting the course of justice.’
‘That option is still on the table, but the pair of them are being very cooperative.’
‘Now that they’ve been found out.’
I laughed. ‘OK. No sympathy for Bianca. But we’ve got Paige’s notes and her computer and phone, so we can find out exactly what she knew and who she was dealing with when she died. I actually think we might be able to solve her murder.’
‘Well that’s good news. That only leaves a few hundred to work on.’
‘Said like someone who is going on maternity leave in a few weeks and won’t have to care about it for a year.’
‘Pretty much,’ Liv said happily. ‘Hey, did you get a chance to read that email about Roddy Asquith?’
‘Not yet. That was on my list of tasks before I leave again.’
‘I couldn’t see anything useful in it,’ she confessed. ‘It’s highly technical. All about how the car was rigged to run into the wall but nothing that points a finger at anyone in particular.’
‘What about Carl Hooper? Did he admit to knowing anything about Roddy’s murder?’
‘No. He denied all knowledge. He said that as far as he knew the only actual murder in the club’s history was Iliana’s. He doesn’t know anything about Paige or Roddy.’
‘Or he’s heavily implicated in both and doesn’t want to give himself away. He’s already in serious trouble for assisting in disposing of the bodies. He’s looking at prison time.’
Liv looked dubious. ‘Hmm, he’s being very forthcoming about what he did and did not do on Sir Marcus Gley’s instructions, but when we ask about Roddy and Paige, he’s at a loss.’
‘Maybe he was out of the loop.’
‘He clearly knew too much already.’
I sighed. ‘Is there anything new I haven’t seen yet?’
‘We’ve got CCTV footage from the rental agency where the BMW was hired but we haven’t been able to identify the man yet. The quality is terrible and he’s wearing a cap. You don’t get a clear look at his face. Also, he used a fake licence as ID.’
‘Send the CCTV to me,’ I wheedled.
‘Absolutely not. You’re supposed to be on sick leave. You’re not supposed to be working.’
‘Watching a few minutes of video is hardly work.’
‘It’s more than you’re supposed to be doing.’
‘I might recognise him. I spent more time in the club than anyone.’
Liv rolled her eyes. ‘If you insist. But you shouldn’t be here. I don’t want Josh to shout at me for encouraging you.’
‘I’ll zip through my inbox, and then I’m gone,’ I promised. I meant it, too, and it might even have worked out if the fifth email I opened hadn’t been the one from Frank Steele in Hampshire. This time I read through the report in more detail, and got to the final appendix of pictures from the forensic examination of the car’s wreckage. They had finally located and identified the object that had weighed down the BMW’s accelerator. I looked at it, then looked again with closer attention and a creeping sense of dread: a circular five-kilo weight with a hole in the middle, the kind you add to a set of dumbbells.
The kind Luke Gibson had under his bed when I searched his room before Roddy died.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
‘I’m getting pretty tired of coming in here.’ Luke was sprawling in his chair, affecting to be relaxed, but he was fidgeting in a way I hadn’t seen before. Blue shadows under his eyes hinted at too many sleepless nights in the previous couple of weeks. There were innocent explanations for that, of course; it could have been grief. It could have been that he was worried about being in the building where his biological father worked. Equally, it could have been his guilty conscience, I reminded myself sternly. He had agreed to come with me when I’d asked him to be interviewed again. He had allowed himself to be measured and opened his mouth obediently for the DNA-sampling swab of his cheek, cooperating without questioning why we wanted this information. At the same time I had the sense that he was desperately worried and on his guard. The good humour was a very thin veneer today.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m beginning to think you’re coming up with excuses to bring me in because you want to see me.’
I didn’t smile at him; I was a long way past jokes. ‘As I explained earlier, I’ve asked you to come in today because we’ve found something that we’d like you to explain. The weight that was used to bring about Roderick Asquith’s murder matches the weights you own. When I visited your house this afternoon, I located your weights and discovered that you were missing one that matches the one recovered from the crime scene. You were unable to account for its absence.’
‘I’d noticed it was gone, but to be honest I assumed you’d taken it on one of your searches. There seemed to be quite a wide and random selection of things that disappeared from the house. I found it hard to keep track.’
‘When did you notice the weight was missing?’
‘I don’t know. A few days ago.’
‘Can you identify the weight in this picture?’ I slid it across the table and he glanced at it.
‘It’s the same make as mine. It’s the same size as the one that’s missing. It could be mine. I can’t say without any doubt. I don’t remember that it had any marks on it or anything that would make it stand out as mine, and it’s a well-known brand.’
‘Did you kill Roderick Asquith?’
‘No.’ A muscle flickered in his jaw and I did my best not to think about Derwent, who was watching a video link from the interview room. He had been silent since I told him what I’d found, and had withdrawn from the investigation at Una Burt’s request, but nothing on earth would have kept him from watching his son while I questioned him. No one had tried to stop him.
‘Do you know who killed Roddy?’
‘No.’
‘Who had access to your room?’
‘Anyone who came to the house, I suppose. I don’t lock the door to my room.’
‘Who would have known you had weights under your bed?’
‘I don’t know. They weren’t hidden.’ He shifted in his chair, uneasy.
‘They weren’t easy to see either, were they?’
‘No.’ His mouth tightened. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Someone would need to know where they were if they wanted to take one. They wouldn’t come across them accidentally.’
He shrugged, helpless. ‘I can’t say if that’s true. I didn’t keep them in a particularly prominent place but they weren’t a secret.’
‘Do you know if Roddy had any enemies?’
‘No. No way. He was a good guy.’ He sounded definite.
‘Did you ever fall out with him?’
‘No.’ The answer came instantly. ‘He was the kind of person who didn’t like arguments. He’d go out of his way to avoid upsetting anyone.’
‘Did he talk a lot?’
‘Yeah, all the time. You couldn’t shut him up.’
I thought of the no-comment interview he had given me, of how he had hardly dared to open his mouth. ‘Was he good at keeping secrets?’
Luke actually laughed. ‘No. Orlando used to call him Roddy FM because he broadcast everything he heard at school. If you wanted to spread a rumour, he was your guy.’
‘Is that why he talked to Paige Hargreaves about the Chiron Club?’
The smile faded from his face. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he ever talk to you about the Chiron Club?’
‘Not in any detail.’
‘Did he mention any concerns or worries he had about the club or its members?’
‘No.’
‘Did he ever talk to you about the time he borrowed your car without asking and had a friend drive it to Standen Fitzallen?’
‘No. I was away for a while and then I suppose he didn’t think of it. I didn’t get the chance to ask him about it after you told me they’d taken my car.’ Luke jammed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets for a moment, emotion catching him unawares. He got control of himself. ‘I was hoping to ask him about it. You questioned me about it … and then, afterwards, I went home for a couple of days because my mum was upset.’
We both knew what had upset her; there was no need to record it on tape.
‘By the time I went back to my house, I’d already heard that Roddy was dead. So no, we never talked about it. But I wish we had.’
Orlando Hawkes had lost weight since the first time I met him. He was verging on gaunt, his cheeks hollow, his eyes sunk in his head. I wondered if he had been ill. The cocky arrogance was gone, and so was the Chiron Club’s fancy lawyer. This time he had a quiet young woman who looked about twelve, if she was small for her age – the opposite of intimidating, though I knew better than to assume she’d be easy to handle.
When I came into the room, Orlando looked up at me.
‘How’s Luke?’
‘He seems fine.’
‘Have you let him go?’
‘Not yet.’ I settled down at the table, Chris Pettifer beside me, and we began the formal interview process. He had been cautioned already and had gone through the same measuring and DNA-sampling process as his housemate, but Orlando hadn’t been able to pretend he was relaxed about it. He had shaken like an overbred pedigree puppy throughout.
‘Do you know why you’re here, Mr Hawkes?’
‘Because you found a weight in the wreckage of the car Roddy was driving when he killed himself and you think it’s significant.’
I tilted my head fractionally. ‘Why do you say he killed himself?’
‘That’s what happened.’
‘We’re investigating it as murder.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if you’ve got a quota to hit or something but it wasn’t murder. Roddy was under intolerable pressure because you were harassing him. He wasn’t the kind of person who could cope with that sort of stress. He topped himself. No great mystery there.’
‘But plenty of forensic evidence that someone else was involved.’
Orlando gave a nervous laugh. ‘What kind of evidence?’
‘All sorts,’ Pettifer said. ‘Like CCTV from the rental place where someone hired the car that killed Roddy.’
‘Would you like to see it?’
Orlando swallowed convulsively and said nothing, and Pettifer made a big deal out of turning his laptop around and making sure the screen was angled so Hawkes and his solicitor could both see clearly. They watched the footage closely. I’d seen it many times that day and didn’t look at the screen; I knew it was miserable quality. When it came to an end Orlando sat back and smiled, a little too relieved for my liking.
‘That could be anyone.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We don’t have a good shot of the guy’s face, and he’s wearing nondescript clothes – nothing identifiable. But we were able to use the images to calculate his height. It’s not Luke. He’s too tall. And it wasn’t Roddy, because he was much broader than this man. But this person is in or around the same height as you.’
‘Totally circumstantial,’ the lawyer said. I ignored her.
‘So we have someone who could be you renting the car for Roddy, and we have a weight taken from your house as a means of wedging the accelerator down to drive the car at the base of the chimney. It must have been a bad moment when you realised you couldn’t retrieve it because the engine was on top of it.’
‘I—’ He shook his head.
‘You knew Luke had weights under his bed. Luke was away. Roddy trusted you. There was nothing to stop you from setting this up.’
‘Roddy was my best friend. Why would I want to kill him?’
‘We actually know the answer to that one. You were worried he’d give away your secret, and you wanted to make sure Peter Ashington understood he’d get the same treatment if he told us what he knew about you.’
‘Ash …’ Orlando’s face was bloodless.
‘I spoke to him just now, after I talked to Luke.’ I smiled. ‘It was very interesting. According to him, you wanted to make sure he didn’t say anything about your little adventure in Standen Fitzallen. Two people knew about it and one of them was Roddy, who was your best friend since school. You knew he couldn’t be trusted. You didn’t know about Ash. So you used him to help set up Roddy’s death, to give yourself something to hold over him and to show him you meant what you said. If he talked, you’d kill him too.’
‘I did wonder,’ Pettifer said heavily, ‘why he was so keen to talk about the rape he carried out the night before he picked you up. It turns out he knew he could probably get acquitted if the rape case made it to court. He wasn’t at all sure he could get away from you if you decided he had to die.’
‘Was Roddy already drunk when you put him in the car?’ I asked. ‘When did he realise you were going to kill him?’
Orlando squeezed his eyes closed and I guessed he was remembering what he had done, and how Roddy had been.
‘Was he scared?’ I asked quietly, and Orlando winced.
‘He … I don’t …’
I waited, but this time instead of breaking down he rallied.
‘I didn’t hurt him. I wouldn’t. He was my friend.’ He blinked at us, focused again. ‘I wouldn’t.’
‘But you did. And we know why.’ I slid them across the table, one by one: images we had found in the safe at the Bishops Avenue address. A slender, raffish young man with a beard and curling hair and languid dark eyes, lounging in evening wear on a terrace, the smoke from his cigarette looping through the night air. The same man swimming naked in a pool with another man whose tattoo was a dark shadow in the water. The two of them kissing. Teeth sinking into a shoulder. One pinned against a wall by the other. Both of them on a bed, tangled together. The bearded man dragging the other man’s head back as the strain made the tendons stand out of his neck like guitar strings, and his face contorted. The room was completely silent.
‘In the last couple of years, you’ve lost the beard, cut your hair, put on a bit of muscle and kept your nose clean. But in July, two years ago, you were this guy here. And this one’ – I tapped the tattooed man’s face – ‘he didn’t make it home that night. He died.’
Orlando lifted his hands to his face, his whole body trembling. ‘Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.’
‘What was his name?’ I asked.
‘You don’t have to answer that,’ the solicitor said, but Orlando ignored her.
‘I n-never knew it. I – I don’t even know what happened. You have to believe me. I was out of it – drink, drugs, fuck knows what I’d taken. When I woke up, he was floating in the fucking pool. There was nothing I could do. He was dead by the time I found him. I mean, I don’t think I did anything to make that happen. I didn’t hurt him. Apart from – you know.’
‘We know how this guy died,’ Pettifer said. ‘There’s a video of it. You weren’t involved.’
‘What?’ The emotion leached out of his face, leaving utter blankness that was somehow worse. ‘You know how he died?’
‘He OD’d. You were asleep. Nothing to do with you,’ Pettifer said gruffly.
I tapped the photographs. ‘This was a scandal that you could have lived down.’
‘If it was only the sex, then I wouldn’t have cared. I mean, shit, it’s embarrassing to see myself like that, but fuck it.’ He gave a strained little laugh. ‘We’re all somewhere on that spectrum, aren’t we? Not a big deal to cross the line. Lots of guys do it.’
‘But you thought you’d killed him,’ I said. ‘And the Chiron Club let you go on thinking that so you’d be a good little member and get your father to use his considerable wealth and influence to have land rezoned for housing in commuter towns around London.’
‘They set you up,’ Pettifer said helpfully. ‘You made it easy for them.’
‘And the only person you told was Roddy, because you needed his help to get home to London, but Roddy needed to involve Ash because he couldn’t drive. Then when we started investigating Paige’s murder, you were so scared that you were going to be found out you decided Roddy knew too much to be trusted and it would teach Ash a lesson too.’ I leaned across the table, dropping my voice so he had to concentrate on what I was saying. ‘You killed him, and you set up Luke to take the fall for you.’
‘I never wanted that to happen.’
‘Come off it, Orlando. You could have used a few bricks to wedge the accelerator down. You took something of Luke’s because when it came down to it, he was as expendable as Roddy. You put yourself first, over and over again.’
‘No. I wanted to get the weight back. I didn’t realise what would happen to the car.’ His solicitor winced but there was nothing she could do; she couldn’t stop him from talking if he wanted to, and the truth was spilling out of him. Privilege was a double-edged sword, after all. Orlando simply didn’t believe he was going to get in trouble for what he’d done. He looked from Chris to me. ‘It was nothing to do with Luke, I swear it. He’s never been involved at all.’
‘The best thing you can do for him is to start at the beginning and tell me exactly what you did.’ I relaxed, giving him some space. It was all falling into place, the pieces arranging themselves without needing much help from me. ‘Tell me about Paige. When did you decide you had to kill her?’
‘Paige? I barely knew her.’ He shook his head. ‘I never hurt her.’
I stared at him. ‘But if you thought Roddy had told her what you did—’
‘I never thought that. Roddy fancied the arse off her so he told her as much as he could about the club, but a lot of it was rumours and gossip that he came up with as a way to impress her. He was trying to get her into bed but I wasn’t worried he’d give me away to her. I’d warned him. He knew the score.’
I was puzzled. ‘But you also warned him not to talk to me, didn’t you? And he didn’t.’
‘I could have convinced Paige he was talking shit if she’d asked me about it. She wasn’t the police. She was really full of herself and everything she was going to achieve but she wasn’t all that bright. She’d get obsessed with something she was writing about and bore on about it, like everyone else should care too. Totally self-absorbed.’ He blinked at me. ‘You’d know, though. He’d have told you everything and I’d never have been able to fool you into thinking he was lying. You’re much too clever for that. I had to shut him up … because of you.’
It was the kind of compliment I could really have done without.