Garibaldi and Gardner sat facing Emily Francis in the living room of her parents’ Putney home.
‘Thank you for getting in touch, Emily.’
‘I had to. I knew I had to talk to you. You see, I think I may have been one of the last people to see Giles, to see him …’
The word ‘alive’ hovered in the short silence.
‘I hope you don’t mind answering a few questions.’
‘Of course not. Anything to help find out who did this. It’s so …’ Emily shook her head in disbelief.
‘So you were with Giles on Saturday night?’
‘Yes. We were both at the party but I was with him before and after as well. We were in the Coach and Horses before and we went to the Red Lion afterwards.’
‘So you were with him all evening?’
‘I wasn’t with him. I mean we weren’t … I wasn’t by his side the whole time.’
‘You mean you’re not his girlfriend.’
‘Girlfriend! No, nothing like that.’
‘How did you know Giles?’
‘I met him at the Forum drinks party about three or four years ago. We’d both just started tutoring. I don’t know 106him that well. We’ve had the occasional drink with mutual friends, messaged every now and then. That kind of thing.’
‘But you spoke to Giles on Saturday evening?’
‘Oh, yeah, we spoke all right. Mostly in the pub before the party. I mean there were only three of us there.’
‘So that’s you, Giles, and …?’
‘Simon.’
‘Simon …?’ Garibaldi flicked through his notebook to find the list of tutors at the Forum drinks party.
‘Simon Prest.’
‘I see. And on Saturday night was there anything Giles said or anything about his behaviour that struck you as unusual?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Nothing that made you think he might be in trouble?’
Emily shrugged and spread her hands, palms-up. ‘He certainly didn’t say anything to suggest that someone was going to kill him!’
‘Did Giles have a partner?’ said DS Gardner.
‘He had a girlfriend, but I think they’d broken up.’
‘And did he have a current girlfriend, anyone he was seeing?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Simon thinks he might have been seeing this girl he was tutoring with abroad, but when he asked him about it on Saturday Giles was very coy about it.’
‘Do you know the name of Giles’s girlfriend, the one he broke up with?’
‘I think she was called Beth, but I can’t swear on it.’
‘Surname?’
‘No idea.’
‘And the girl he tutored with?’
‘Sam, I think.’
‘Surname?’ 107
‘Again, I don’t know. Look, do you have any idea at all who did this?’
‘We’re pursuing several lines of enquiry,’ said Garibaldi. ‘Tell me, what did you speak about with Giles on Saturday evening?’
‘I can’t remember. I … does it really matter what I said to him?’
‘I won’t know that until you tell me, will I?’
‘Well, I can’t remember exactly. It was just the usual stuff. Catching up on our summers, that kind of thing.’
‘And Giles had been abroad in the summer, is that right?’
‘Yeah. With this Italian family.’
Garibaldi looked at his notebook. ‘That would be the Rivettis.’
Emily nodded. ‘The Italians. He started working for them about a year ago.’
Garibaldi scribbled in his notebook. ‘I see. Tell me about this drinks party. You were with Giles in the pub before and after the party. Were you with him at the party?’
‘No. I mean, I may have had the occasional word with him, but I didn’t see much of him. He seemed to be with the Irelands most of the time, Felicia and Roddy. They had a lot of time for Giles. I think he was their blue-eyed boy and he played up to it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He milked it. He knew they rated him, knew that they put him forward for glam jobs like the Rivettis, so Giles made sure he was always onside with them. You know, said the right thing. Told them what they wanted to hear.’
‘And what did they want to hear?’
‘That he was committed to being a tutor. Most of us really want to do something else. I mean, I really want to be a …’ Emily stared wistfully out of the living room window as if 108her ambition had just floated by. ‘I really want to be a journalist and I’m doing it to make ends meet. It’s not what I want to do. Just like I don’t want to be still living at home with mum and dad. But the Irelands, they have this thing about career tutors and they think that’s what they have … had in Giles.’
‘And is that what they had in Giles?’
‘Giles said no, but we didn’t believe him. It wasn’t like he kept banging on about what he really wanted to do – unlike the rest of us. And he’s got the perfect background for Forum.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Public school. Cambridge. That kind of thing helps when it comes to tutoring.’
Garibaldi looked round the living room of Emily’s Putney family home. It didn’t scream lack of privilege, and Emily herself, in jumper, jeans and Converse with the clean, fresh-faced confidence of youthful affluence, came across as someone from a background not a million miles from Giles’s.
‘I take it you didn’t go to private school then.’ Private. Garibaldi always opted for the more accurate adjective.
‘Lady Margaret’s.’
Garibaldi knew it. A far from shabby all-girls comprehensive and a favourite choice of the middle classes.
‘And Cardiff,’ added Emily. ‘I’m not saying it’s counted against me or anything – it’s more that what Giles had definitely counted for him.’
‘I see. So let’s get this straight, you didn’t speak to Giles at the party, but you went to the pub with him afterwards.’
‘The Red Lion was on the way home for us and close to where Giles lived so we headed there. We went early and Giles joined us later when he’d managed to pull himself away from the Irelands.’
‘Who’s we?’ 109
‘Giles, me and Simon.’
‘And can you remember what time Giles left the pub?’
‘Not exactly, but I think it was round about ten thirty.’
‘And what time did you leave the pub?’
‘Shortly after him. I fancied one last drink but Simon was in some kind of hurry and I didn’t want to stay by myself so, yeah, we left very soon after Giles.’
‘And how did you get home?’
‘I got an Uber.’
‘And Simon?’
‘He lives in Barnes, so he walked home.’
‘I see. So there was nothing at all unusual in Giles’s behaviour on Saturday night?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Nothing I noticed. It’s completely unbelievable. That kind of thing happening to Giles. It doesn’t make any sense.’
Garibaldi got up and reached for his card. ‘If you think of anything, absolutely anything, do get in touch.’
Emily looked at the card and shook her head. ‘I mean, what the fuck was Giles doing in a cemetery at that time of night? Maybe it was some weirdo. Or maybe they, I don’t know – maybe they thought he was someone else.’
‘We’re not ruling anything out,’ said Garibaldi.
He headed for the door, adding mistaken identity to his list of possibilities. Luck. Or Lack of Luck. Not such a silly idea. Maybe he’d bring it up at the next meeting.
Simon Prest sat in the living room of his parents’ Barnes home, leaning back in his chair, one foot resting on a jiggling knee. He ran a hand through his mop of curly blond hair and sighed.
‘This kind of thing,’ he said, ‘it just doesn’t happen to … people you know. Do you know what I mean? 110
Garibaldi knew what he meant. People you know. White. Middle-class. Educated. Privileged.
‘It’s freaked me out completely. I really don’t know what to say.’
‘Maybe you could start by telling us where you were with Giles on Saturday night?’
‘Saturday night? Yeah, sure. I met Giles and Emily in the Coach and Horses before the party and we went to the Red Lion after it.’
‘So you spent a lot of time talking to him, then?’
‘Not much at the party, but before and after, yeah.’
‘And did Giles say anything to suggest he was in trouble of any sort?’
‘Trouble?’ he said. ‘Giles? Trouble wasn’t Giles’s thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was Mr Clean. Mr Squeaky Clean. Always was.’
‘Was there anything about his behaviour that evening that struck you as odd?’
Giles gave a slow shake of his head. ‘Nothing. He was just … just Giles. I can’t believe he’s gone. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I understand that he’d been tutoring abroad in the summer.’
Prest chuckled. ‘Yeah. Lucky sod. A holiday in the sun, luxury lifestyle, all expenses paid. I never get gigs like that. Mainly because I’m in Edinburgh in the summer performing to half-empty rooms.’
‘So you’re a comedian?’ said Garibaldi.
‘The jury’s out but, yeah, that’s what I’d like to do. So when it comes to August I have to leave the swanky jobs in the sun to the likes of Giles and head off to rainy Edinburgh. Not that I ever get offered swanky jobs in the sun.’
‘How did you know Giles?’ 111
‘We were at school together.’
‘I see. That would be Radley. And you both live in Barnes.’
‘Yeah. My family moved here after my first year at Radley.’
Garibaldi looked round the living room of the Nassau Road house, close to the pond and the heart of the village. Public School. Huge houses in Barnes. Where did these people get the money?
‘So schoolmates and neighbours? You must know – have known – each other pretty well, then.’
‘Yeah, we did. At school obviously but we hung out down here as well. As close to best friends as you can get. Which makes it all the more …’ Prest bowed his head, screwed up his eyes and rubbed them with his hands. ‘It’s difficult. I can still remember meeting him on our first day at Radley. We were in the same Social.’
‘Social?’
‘Sorry, house. You’re so used to the lingo you forget. But, yeah, Giles was a real success at school. More than me. He was Head of So – House. Clever. Good at games. Good at everything. Whereas I was good at games but not so hot at the rest. He went off to Cambridge and I went off to Newcastle. I was always the joker. He was, you know, the real deal.’
Garibaldi looked at his notebook. ‘Giles’s mother mentioned another old school friend. Hugo. She said the three of you were particularly close.’
Prest smiled and gave a wistful sigh. ‘Yeah, we were. Hugo’s devastated. I mean, we all are, everyone is.’
‘And you saw each other often?’
Prest nodded. ‘We kept in touch. And we’d meet up for a drink every now and then.’ 112
‘And tell me,’ said Garibaldi, flipping over a page in his notebook. ‘How did both you and Giles end up tutoring?’
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ laughed Prest. ‘You’d have thought Giles would be destined for something better, wouldn’t you? Not that there’s anything wrong with tutoring, but you know what I mean. I’m doing it because it fits in with my comedy. But Giles? I’d always expected him to go into the City or the Law or even head off to teach in some public school like Radley but no, he moves back to Barnes with nothing planned and drifts into tutoring. I’d already got myself on Forum’s books, told him about it and he came on board. Said he never thought he’d do it for more than a couple of months but it seems he liked it.’
Garibaldi consulted his notebook. ‘Emily says you were talking to Giles about the woman he tutored with in the summer.’ He consulted his notes. ‘Sam.’
‘Yeah. Sam.’
‘Were they an item?’
‘I don’t know, but Giles was a real charmer. Always was. And spending weeks together in a Mediterranean villa or on some yacht. All that sun and sand …’
‘But he didn’t mention it?’
‘Giles didn’t give much away.’
‘I see. It seems that you were one of the last people to see him alive. You were in the Red Lion together after the drinks party. How did he seem to you then?’
‘He’d clearly had a drink. I mean, we all had.’
‘What time did he leave?’
‘I can’t remember exactly. Maybe round half ten.’
‘Did you leave with Giles?’
‘No. He left before us.’
‘And you and Emily left shortly afterwards.’
‘Yeah, about half an hour afterwards.’ 113
‘And where did you go when you left?’
‘Where did I go? I walked back here.’
Garibaldi glanced at his notebook. ‘So there was nothing in his behaviour, nothing about him that made you think he might be in any kind of trouble?’
Simon Prest shook his head. ‘He seemed perfectly OK. Nothing to suggest he was about to be …’
‘Well, thanks for your time, Simon.’ Garibaldi got up from his chair and nodded to Gardner. ‘If you think of anything at all that might be of interest and I mean anything, however small, however much you think it might be irrelevant, do let us know.’ He handed him a card. ‘You’d be surprised how helpful small details can be.’
‘I will,’ said Simon. ‘It’s difficult to think of Giles not being …’
He trailed off, leaving Garibaldi to wonder whether it was a sentence he couldn’t finish or whether his old schoolmate’s not being was a state Simon Prest found difficult to contemplate.