Hilary Ainsworth was not surprised when the man and woman standing on the doorstep of her Cleveland Road house showed their cards and announced themselves as detectives from the Metropolitan Police. She’d been expecting the visit ever since she heard the news and she greeted it with a sense of relief – at least she no longer had to debate whether she should get in touch with them or wait for them to come to her, no longer had to wonder whether giving them a call might make them more likely to think she had nothing to hide.
‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mrs Ainsworth.’ said the short, dark man who had introduced himself as Detective Inspector Garibaldi, ‘and take a statement.’
‘Of course. I’m really sorry, but I’m still struggling to take it in. And I can’t think of how I might be able to help. I mean … murder?’
‘Tell me, Mrs Ainsworth, did Giles Gallen come here last Saturday to have a lesson with your daughter?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Hilary. ‘I can check with Briony of course but I would have known if he was coming.’
‘How often did Giles tutor your daughter?’ 73
‘Once a week during term time. Usually on a Saturday afternoon.’
‘But not last Saturday?’
‘No.’
‘How did Giles seem when you last saw him?’
‘Absolutely fine. He came in and did his lesson. Perfectly polite. Charming as ever. He was very charming, Giles. And he’s … was he really stabbed?’
The detective nodded.
‘Nothing that struck you as odd or unusual in any way?’
Hilary shook her head. ‘He was a good tutor. Briony really enjoyed his lessons. She’s totally devastated. Still in a state of shock.’
‘Is Briony in?’ said the woman. Hilary nodded. ‘We’d like to speak to her.’
‘Of course.’
Hilary walked into the corridor and called upstairs. ‘Briony!’
There was no response, so she called again. This time there was a muffled ‘what’ from behind her closed bedroom door.
‘Can you come down, please?’
The bedroom door opened and Briony thumped downstairs, her mouth dropping open when she saw the two detectives standing in the hallway.
‘I know this is very upsetting for you, Briony,’ said the woman, ‘but we need to ask you a few questions. Did Giles come to give you a lesson last Saturday?’
Briony shook her head. ‘No. Definitely not.’
Hilary hoped her daughter was telling the truth. Bitter experience had taught her that this wasn’t always the case and part of her wondered whether Giles had come round on Saturday and Briony was keeping it quiet, though she 74couldn’t imagine why she might feel the need to. Unless … Surely not. Giles Gallen may have been charming and handsome and not much older than Briony, but it was ridiculous to think that something might have been going on between them.
She shook the thought away. Just because Briony’s parents had, on that very weekend, been involved in their own acts of betrayal, she shouldn’t suspect her daughter had been doing the same. And she shouldn’t be so quick to wonder what Vince might do if he found out she had.
Briony may have had only a vague idea of where their wealth came from, the money that had bought their Barnes house and paid for the private education, but Hilary had a more informed knowledge of how Vince had made a fortune from the string of clubs he owned. She also knew more about the kind of contacts Vince had and what he was capable of when things didn’t go his way or when he came upon something he didn’t like. That’s why it was important not to do anything that would anger him, or if you couldn’t do that, make sure you never got caught – a lesson she had learned many years ago and one that Briony was beginning to understand.
‘And tell me, Briony,’ said the sergeant,’ What was Giles like?’
‘He was like …’ Briony gasped for breath. ‘He was like a friend. A real friend.’
It was all so sad, thought Hilary, all such a tragedy, a senseless waste of a young life. And murdered. She knew people got murdered in London, but it happened to other people and in other places. Not to people like Giles. PLU. People Like Us.
What could he possibly have done to deserve that? Maybe nothing. Maybe it was some sicko, some random 75attack and Giles was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. That kind of thing happened all too easily.
Or maybe Giles wasn’t what he seemed. When it came to appearances, you never could tell. Giles could have all kinds of secrets.
She thought back to last Saturday. She knew only too well where her husband had been. Away on a golfing weekend with business associates. That’s what he’d said, but Hilary knew the truth. She knew that Vince had been with her old friend Ginny and she knew exactly what they had been up to.
The question was whether Vince knew that on Saturday afternoon she had been up to the same thing – that, far from visiting her aunt in Surrey, she had been somewhere else entirely, and that her affair had been going on for just as long as his.
The thought of what he might do if he found out she’d been pulling the wool over his eyes frightened her. Never mind that he’d been doing the same to her for years – his mind didn’t work like that.
And yet she continued to do it. Why?
Maybe she was simply a bad person.
And maybe it was because she was a bad person that her thoughts turned to Briony’s future. She needed good grades, and for those, she had no doubt, she would need another tutor.
Much as she was shocked and saddened by the murder of Giles Gallen and while she recognised that it was a terrible thing, the world had to go on, and that world was a tough place, one where you needed to look after your own.
She would get in touch with the agency as soon as she could. 76
Briony couldn’t believe it. This was someone she knew, someone who came to their house and gave her lessons. She’d got to know him really well. All those one-to-one sessions. It wasn’t as though you spent the whole of the hour working. There was plenty of chat. And it helped that he was so easy to talk to. A real charmer. Good-looking too. She could tell her parents thought so as well because they kept making these comments about how they needed to leave the door open in the living room and how she shouldn’t have lessons with Giles when neither of them were in the house. Especially her dad. He’d even made suggestions that Briony might be better off with a woman tutor.
Briony was churning inside and her hands were shaking. She hoped the detectives hadn’t noticed. They’d think she was hiding something. That one with the Italian name had been looking at her in a very odd way throughout the whole interview, as if he already knew things about her she’d want to stay hidden.
The woman’s eyes weren’t quite so sharp. She seemed kinder somehow.
‘When Giles came to give you a lesson,’ she said, ‘did he talk to you about things?’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Things other than work.’
Briony shrugged. The truth was he did. Sometimes they spoke more about other things than they did about Emily Dickinson or Sylvia Plath. Those were the good weeks.
‘We’d have a break sometimes,’ she said, ‘and talk about films and music and stuff …’
The man leant forward. ‘And there was nothing Giles said that suggested he might be in some kind of trouble?’
Briony shook her head.
Should she tell them? 77
It wasn’t anything huge, but ever since she heard of his murder, she’d been thinking a lot about some of the things Giles had said in their last lesson together.
What should she do? What should she put in her statement?
She took a deep sigh and decided there was only one thing to do. She had learned its power a few years ago and since then she had turned it on and off to good effect. It had even got her a main part in the school play.
‘I still can’t believe it! I can’t believe someone’s killed him!’
Her voice wobbled and her lower lip trembled. She braced herself and, reminding herself of how well she had done it in that audition, she started to cry.