‘I don’t reckon your hope’s going to be fulfilled,’ Zoe Everett said.
‘What hope?’ Annie Delamere glanced again at her watch, wondering how long they ought to give this. It was already gone six thirty and she didn’t want to be too late getting back to Sheena. They’d arrived here just before six, but there’d been no response to her insistent ringing of Jonny Garfield’s doorbell. She’d suggested sitting tight for a while on the basis that Garfield might still be out at work. She was keen to get this case moving, and Garfield was the only real lead they had.
‘That Garfield Junior’s place might be more pleasant than his dad’s. Not judging from the neighbourhood.’
It was a fairly dismal inner city backstreet just outside Derby city centre, lined with narrow Edwardian terraces. Annie suspected that most of the houses were occupied by students. The tiny front gardens were mostly filled with overflowing wheelie bins, and few of the houses looked in decent repair. Garfield’s had clearly been converted into flats, and his was one of four bells by the front door. Annie had tried all of them in the hope that someone inside might be able to give them some information on the likelihood of Garfield’s return, but there had been no answer.
‘Do you want to call it a night?’ Zoe said. ‘You ought to be getting back.’
‘I checked with Sheena. She told me she’d be annoyed if I didn’t carry on as usual.’
‘But she didn’t mean it, obviously,’ Zoe said. ‘Gary says stuff like that, and what he means is: if you’re not back in the next fifteen minutes, I’m filing for divorce.’
‘You don’t know Sheena,’ Annie said. ‘She meant it. And she’d expect me to say the same to her. Although at the moment I’m not being very obliging. I’m telling her the last thing she should be doing is carrying on as normal.’
‘Quite right. It’s one thing accepting that your job carries risks. It’s another to play silly buggers when those risks start becoming real.’
‘That’s exactly what— Wait, is that him?’
A tall, slightly gangling young man was approaching Garfield’s house. He was probably in his early twenties, with an unkempt mop of black hair. There was no immediate resemblance to his father, but something about the awkwardness of his gait echoed his father’s physicality. Sure enough, he turned in to Garfield’s garden and began climbing the steps to the front door.
Annie and Zoe climbed out of the car and crossed the road towards him. ‘Mr Garfield?’
Garfield had turned at the sound of the car doors slamming, visibly nervous. He had seemed to relax at the sight of the two women, but then tensed again as Annie called to him.
‘Who?’
‘Jonny Garfield.’
‘Don’t know him.’
‘That’s odd,’ Annie said. ‘We’ve just been talking to your dad, and he reckons you live here.’
‘My dad…’
‘You take after him, Jonny. Anybody ever tell you that?’
Garfield looked almost physically deflated. ‘Not for a while, no. What do you want?’
‘DI Delamere and DS Everett. We just want a little chat.’
Garfield had noticeably relaxed at the sight of Annie’s ID. Whoever he was afraid of, it clearly wasn’t the police. Or perhaps more accurately, Annie added to herself, he was afraid of someone else more. Some of his initial bravado seemed to have returned. ‘You got a warrant?’
Annie sighed. ‘We want a chat, Jonny. Not to ransack your house. We can do it out here in the street if you like, but that might attract interest from some of your neighbours. We could head back to police HQ and make it a lot more formal, but that’d be a waste of your evening. Or you could just invite us in and give us a cup of tea. What do you reckon?’
‘This going to take long? I’ve got things to do.’
‘That rather depends on how cooperative you are. Wouldn’t want to interrupt your social life.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Garfield said. He pulled a set of keys from his trouser pocket. ‘Come on, then. Let’s get this over with.’
He led them inside, then up the stairs to the first floor. He unlocked the door of the flat and gestured for them to step inside.
Despite Zoe’s earlier misgivings, the flat was a relatively pleasant surprise. It comprised essentially just three rooms, a decent-sized sitting room with a kitchen space and two adjacent doors that presumably led to a bedroom and a bathroom, though it was difficult to imagine how both had been fitted into the space apparently available. The sitting room, though, was immaculately tidy, the polar opposite of the equivalent room in the father’s house.
There wasn’t much to the room, except for a small sofa, a single armchair, a low coffee table and a large flat-screen television. Even so, Garfield had clearly made some efforts to personalise the place. There were pot plants scattered about, some pictures on the walls alongside a large Derby County banner, and even a small bookshelf containing a handful of books.
‘Nice place,’ Annie said.
Garfield looked genuinely pleased by the compliment. ‘Not been here long,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got it, I want to look after it properly.’
‘You look to be doing a good job,’ Zoe said.
‘Thanks.’ Garfield’s initial frostiness towards them had thawed somewhat. ‘Do you really want a cup of tea?’
‘Just a figure of speech, Jonny,’ Annie said. ‘Okay if we sit down?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ He gestured towards the sofa. ‘Make yourselves at home. What’s this all about?’
Garfield wasn’t what Annie had been expecting. From the descriptions given by his father and the others, she’d thought he would be some kind of truculent delinquent. In person Garfield came across as quiet, polite and relatively articulate, although Annie had been a police officer long enough to know that appearances could be deceptive. ‘We’re trying to gather information on someone called Darren Parkin. That name mean anything to you?’
The initial suspicion seemed suddenly to return. ‘I’m not sure. Why?’
‘We’ve heard you go way back.’
She could see Garfield hesitating, wondering whether to try to bluff his way out of this. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I knew Darren from school.’
‘When did you last see him?’ Zoe asked.
‘Dunno exactly. A few weeks ago, I guess.’
‘You’re still in touch with him, then?’
‘I suppose. We’re not so close these days. We’ve both got our own circles, you know. But we meet up every month or two for a few beers.’
‘You still get on?’ Annie asked.
‘Pretty well. You know how it is when you’ve known someone for a long time. What’s this all about, anyway?’
Ideally, Annie would have liked to have kept Garfield in the dark for longer, expecting he might clam up once he knew the circumstances of their visit. But he really had been a friend of Parkin’s, and she had no justification for withholding the information. ‘I’m afraid it’s bad news. Darren’s been found dead.’
Garfield was clearly taken by surprise. ‘Really?’
‘I’m afraid so. We’ve got solid DNA and fingerprint matches, so there’s not really any doubt.’
‘Shit. How did it happen?’
‘We’re still really only at the beginning of the investigation. But we’ve reason to believe it was an unlawful killing.’
Garfield had dropped his head into his hands. Annie said nothing more, allowing his evident anxiety to build. Finally, he looked up at her. ‘Can you at least tell me when it happened, then?’
‘We’re still waiting on the full post-mortem details. But we think within the last few days.’
‘Christ.’ He was staring past her, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular.
‘I’m sorry we’ve had to break it to you like this,’ Annie said.
He flicked his gaze back to her. His expression indicated that he’d given away more than he’d intended by his response. ‘Well, you know. He was a mate. Like you said, we go way back. It’s a shock.’
‘Of course. It’s always a shock when we lose someone who’s been close to us, even if we don’t see them very often.’
‘Yeah, well, exactly.’
‘And you said you last saw Darren – what, a few weeks back?’ Zoe asked.
Garfield took a deep breath. ‘Maybe more recent than that, now I think about it. Couple of weeks ago? Something like that.’
‘I don’t want to press you if you’re finding this too distressing, Jonny,’ Annie said. ‘But would you feel up to answering a few more questions about Darren? The more information we have at this stage, the easier it’ll be for us to discover who was responsible for this.’
Garfield’s expression was sceptical. ‘You reckon? You solve every murder then?’
‘There’s very little chance of whoever did this not being caught. The more information we have during the earliest stages of the investigation the better.’
‘You’ve seen his nan and grandad? Don’t suppose they told you much.’
‘We’ve seen them, yes,’ Annie said. ‘But we need to know about Darren’s recent life. Where he was living, what he was doing for work if anything, who his friends and associates were.’
‘I don’t know how much I can tell you,’ Garfield said. ‘Like I say, we weren’t that close these days.’
‘You’ve seen him more recently than anyone else we’ve spoken to,’ Zoe pointed out. ‘Do you know where he was living?’
‘Somewhere in town. I don’t know exactly.’
‘He never invited you back?’ Annie said.
‘What? Like for coffee? He wasn’t trying to pull me.’
‘You’ve no idea of the area he lived in?’ Annie didn’t believe this for a second. ‘What about work? What did he do?’
‘Like all of us, I guess. Whatever he could to get by.’
‘Such as?’
Garfield shifted uncomfortably in his chair, as if aware how unconvincing his responses sounded. ‘Last time we spoke about it he was working as a kitchen porter in some cafe in town.’
‘You know which cafe?’ Annie allowed a note of scepticism to creep into her tone. ‘Or was that another thing he didn’t bother to discuss?’
Garfield was silent for a moment. ‘Yeah, he told me.’ He gave them the name of what Annie knew to be a fairly upmarket cafe-bar in the city centre.
‘But he never told you where he lived?’
‘I— No, not exactly.’
‘What about friends? Who did he mix with apart from you?’
‘I don’t know. We were friends from the old days. He’d got a whole new bunch of mates now.’
‘Any names you can give us?’
‘Not really.’ Garfield paused. ‘He mentioned someone called Andy. Andy something.’
‘Andy something.’ Annie had ceased hiding her disbelief. ‘I presume he never gave you any idea where Andy something might be living. Or how we might track him down.’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really.’ Annie leaned forward. ‘You know what I think, Jonny. I think you’re lying through your teeth.’
Garfield looked as if he’d been physically struck. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You know exactly what I mean. All this nonsense about not knowing where Darren lived, not knowing anything about his friends. Pretending that you didn’t know who we were talking about, then claiming you last saw him a couple of weeks ago. You’ve given us nothing but bullshit since we arrived, Jonny. What is it you’re trying to hide?’
‘I’m not trying to hide anything.’
‘You’re certainly not succeeding. I can read you like a Sun headline, Jonny, and you’re making about as much sense.’ She leaned forward and stared directly into his eyes. ‘Who are you afraid of, Jonny?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He sounded now like a truculent teenager.
‘You know full well. When we got out of the car earlier, you looked scared to death. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who was relieved to discover I was a police officer. So who else were you expecting?’
‘No one. Nothing. I mean, you just startled me when you got out of the car.’
‘What do you know about Darren, Jonny? What can you tell us that’ll help us find the people responsible for this?’
‘People?’ Garfield spoke and then seemed to bite back the words, as if he’d said too much.
‘Or person,’ Annie said. ‘You think it might have been more than one person?’
‘No, I mean, you said—’
He was definitely rattled now, she could tell. Experience told her that this might just make him clam up more. Whatever Garfield was afraid of, he found it more frightening than any threat she might offer. They were more likely to make progress by allowing him to clamber back onto safe ground, hoping he might let his guard down as he relaxed. She gave Zoe an almost imperceptible nod.
‘When you last saw him,’ Zoe said, in her best emollient tone, ‘did Darren seem worried or anxious?’
‘I— Well, yes, he might have been. He didn’t seem quite his usual self.’
‘And how would you describe his usual self?’ Zoe said.
‘I don’t know, exactly. You know, sort of relaxed…’
‘Happy-go-lucky?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’ Garfield’s tone suggested he’d never heard the expression before. ‘Things didn’t usually worry him.’
‘But this time you thought he seemed anxious?’
‘A bit. As if there was something troubling him.’
‘He didn’t give you any idea what?’
There was another silence. Annie felt Garfield wanted to tell them something, to unburden himself, but couldn’t find a way to do it. Or perhaps, she added to herself, a safe way to do it. ‘No, not really. Like I say, it was just a feeling. Maybe I was wrong, or maybe it wasn’t anything important.’
‘What did you talk about?’ Zoe said. ‘The last time you met, I mean.’
‘I don’t know. What do you talk about with your mates?’
‘Not the same things you do, I’m guessing.’ Zoe smiled. ‘You must be able to remember some of it?’
‘The usual stuff, I suppose. Football. That kind of thing.’
Zoe gestured to the banner on the wall. ‘You both supported County?’
‘Yeah, for what it’s worth. We’d both been at the match the previous Saturday. They’d been crap so we talked about that. That’s probably what we spent a lot of the evening talking about.’
Annie could see Garfield was regaining some of his fluency now he felt on safer territory. Given the chance, he’d spout this kind of bollocks all day long.
‘Did you go to the match together?’ Zoe said.
Another pause. ‘No. We did sometimes run into each other, but I hadn’t seen him that Saturday.’
‘So you talked about football. And what else?’
‘I don’t know. Some crap film he’d seen, maybe. And he had some story about work. Some customer who’d been behaving like an arsehole. It was just that sort of stuff.’
‘And a couple of weeks later, or maybe less,’ Annie said, ‘he winds up dead. Any idea why that might have been, Jonny?’
‘I don’t know—’
‘You don’t know much, really, do you, Jonny? Do you know any reason why someone might have wanted to kill Darren? Any enemies? People he’d got on the wrong side of? People he owed money to?’
Garfield looked up at her, and she could tell he’d had to stop himself from responding. ‘I don’t know. He never talked about anything like that.’
‘But?’
‘It’s how we live, isn’t it? People like us. I do better than most. I do better than Darren did. But it’s all hand to mouth. It’s not difficult to end up in debt to the wrong people. Maybe that’s what happened to Darren.’
It made sense, but Annie still didn’t think Garfield was telling the truth, or at least not the whole truth. There was a lot more he wasn’t telling them. ‘Any idea who he might have been in debt to?’
‘Like I say, he didn’t say anything. But that might have been it.’
‘And that’s all you can tell us, is it? That he might have been in debt, but you’ve no real reason to think that and no idea who he might have been in debt to? Doesn’t get us very far, Jonny.’
‘I’m trying to help—’
Garfield flinched as Annie jabbed a finger in his direction. ‘You’ve not given us an ounce of help since we arrived here, Jonny. The only piece of solid information you’ve given us is where Darren worked, assuming even that’s true. You really expect me to believe you know literally nothing else about his life? You don’t know where he lives. You don’t know any of his friends. You don’t know anything about his life, except that he meets up with you for a beer now and then. For Christ’s sake, Jonny, the two of you went back years. Don’t you want to help us find his killer?’ Annie could feel her irritation spilling over. Other than learning who the victim was, they were getting precisely nowhere.
‘I’m telling you everything I can.’
‘What’s the problem?’ Zoe said, gently. ‘What are you frightened of?’
‘I’m not afraid of anything. I’m just telling you as much as I can.’
Zoe rose and walked over to stand beside Garfield. She placed a hand gently on his shoulder. ‘We’re not idiots, Jonny. You’re scared to death of something. Or someone. If you tell us what or who, we can maybe help. That’s our job.’
Garfield had visibly flinched at her touch. ‘I’ve told you everything I can.’
Zoe looked back at Annie, who nodded. They’d worked together for long enough to have this routine off pat. Their version of good cop, bad cop. But it wasn’t going to work for them today, Annie thought. If Garfield didn’t want to confide in them, there wasn’t much they could do. They could drag him back to the office and make everything more formal, but he’d just clam up still further. But it was worth pushing it as far as they could. If nothing else, Garfield would know that, when he was ready to talk, someone would be wanting to listen.
‘Jonny,’ Zoe said softly. ‘Are you afraid of whoever killed Darren? Do you think they’re coming for you next?’
Annie could see Garfield’s body tense. ‘Don’t be stupid. I’ve no idea who killed Darren. I don’t know why he was killed. Why would I be worried about that?’
‘You tell us,’ Annie said. ‘You seem very frightened of something.’
‘I’ve got you here. That’s the only thing that’s worrying me.’
‘If you think you’re in danger,’ Zoe said, ‘you need to tell us. We can give you protection. We can help you. Just tell us who it is.’
Garfield had closed his eyes, with the air of a child about to explode into a tantrum. ‘There isn’t anybody. I’m not afraid of anyone. I’ve just told you everything I can. Can’t you understand that?’
Annie rose. ‘You think it’ll help you if you tell us nothing. But trust us, Jonny, that’s not how it works. If someone’s threatening you, they won’t care whether you told us anything or not. They just won’t trust you. If they are as dangerous as you seem to think…’ She left the sentence hanging. ‘I’ll leave you a business card, Jonny. If you decide you want to talk, just call me. Any time. Believe me, if you’re in some kind of trouble, it’s the only way out.’
Garfield shook his head. ‘You’ve really no idea, have you?’
‘No idea about what, Jonny?’
‘About what life’s like for people like me. Or Darren.’
‘You could try telling us.’
‘I’ve nothing to tell you. There’s nothing you can do for people like me.’
‘If you say so, Jonny. But when you’re ready to talk, just call me.’ Annie placed the business card carefully on the coffee table. Garfield might throw it away as soon as they’d left the house, but she suspected somehow that he wouldn’t. ‘Come on, Zoe. We’ll leave Jonny for the moment. He seems to be expecting some other visitors.’ She turned her gaze back towards Garfield. ‘We’ll be back, though, Jonny. I just hope we’re not too late.’