‘Last night Emily Francis was assaulted at knifepoint.’
Garibaldi stood by the board, addressing the team.
‘She wasn’t injured but she was told to keep her mouth shut. She was also told to remember what happened to Giles Gallen. Emily works for Forum Tutors, the firm that Gallen worked for and she was with him on Saturday night. She’s given us a statement and the clothes she was wearing last night are at the lab. This is a significant development and one which might affect where we look for Gallen’s killer.’
‘What’s she being told to be quiet about?’ said Gardner, quickly out of her blocks.
‘We don’t know. More to the point Emily doesn’t know either, or at least she says she doesn’t. The obvious link between her and Gallen is Forum. To have one of your tutors murdered may be regarded as misfortune but to have one murdered and another one attacked with a knife looks like carelessness.’
He paused and looked at the room, wishing he’d been able to stop himself. The room looked back at him blankly. ‘Oscar Wilde,’ he said.
Some looked at him expectantly, as if he had just named a likely suspect. 171
‘So we need to talk to Forum. I should think they’re already shitting themselves at the likely press coverage.’
DCI Deighton stepped forward. ‘Thank you.’ She pointed at the board where Emily’s name had been placed next to Gallen’s and a picture attached. ‘Emily Francis says she has no idea why she was told to keep her mouth shut, can’t think of any big secret she and Giles shared that they might need to be quiet about. As always, we need to keep an open mind, but this looks very significant.’ Deighton looked round the room. ‘Right, an update on Gallen’s tutoring.’
She stepped away from the board and nodded to Garibaldi. He picked up a marker pen and added the name Devon Furlong to the list of students Giles Gallen had been tutoring.
‘Devon Furlong, seventeen, a high-achieving student at Hillside Academy and one of the pupils on the receiving end of Forum’s pro bono work. Gallen was helping him with his Cambridge application. Devon liked him a lot and asked him for advice. Emails at first, but then they started to meet. They met several times. We’re not sure if that was breaking any rules but it’s not what you would expect. Safeguarding. Child protection. It’s a bit of a grey area and we need to find out what the Forum line on that kind of thing is.’
Garibaldi paused. He didn’t want what he was about to say to come out wrong.
‘Devon Furlong is a different kind of student from the ones Gallen was seeing in Barnes and Chiswick and Sheen. He’s a black kid living on the White City Estate.’
He looked round the room, hearing the unvoiced assumptions. Estate. Black kid. Gangs. Knives.
‘Devon is simply another kid Gallen was tutoring. As 172with all the other kids there is nothing at all to suggest he’s connected in any way to the murder, but, like the others, he needs checking out.’
Garibaldi squirmed, kicking himself for not having said it more directly. After all that had happened – in the world and in the Met – he shouldn’t have needed to say it at all.
‘Right,’ said Deighton, breaking an awkward silence, ‘so where are we on the others? The Rivettis?’
‘Sam Bannister resigned from tutoring the Rivetti kid last week,’ said Gardner, ‘and stopped working for Forum. Got a job in digital publishing. And it appears that the offer made to Giles Gallen by the Rivettis was to take over Sam’s tutoring of their daughter, Anna.’
‘OK,’ said Deighton, ‘and the other families?’
‘Only thing on the PNC about any of them,’ said DC McLean, ‘is to do with Clive Marsh. Gallen was tutoring one of his daughters for her eleven plus and the other for A Level. It appears that Marsh was arrested for possession of cocaine in 2016. Works in advertising so no surprise there. Nothing on the others, though one of the dads looks a bit dodgy. Vince Ainsworth owns a string of clubs. When I say clubs we’re not talking Pall Mall. Looks a bit shady but there’s nothing on him. And it seems that one of the other parents, the mother of Jade Murray, works for him.’
‘Yeah,’ said Garibaldi. ‘The Ainsworths and the Murrays are old friends. The Ainsworth mum and Ginny Murray were at school together. Hilary Ainsworth recommended Gallen to her.’
‘OK,’ said Deighton. ‘CCTV on the Emily Francis attack?’
‘There’s a camera on the Lower Richmond Road,’ said Gardner, ‘at the junction with the road her home’s in. And we’ve got him.’ 173
Gardner fiddled with her computer and an image appeared on a screen at the front of the room.
It showed Emily Francis turning for home and, seconds after, a man following. Puffa jacket, jeans, trainers, peaked cap, hoodie. His face was well hidden.
‘I can’t see anything beyond what we’ve been given in her description,’ said Gardner.
Garibaldi screwed up his eyes and looked closer. He couldn’t see anything either.
‘But I’ve got something else,’ said Gardner. ‘Footage from the Red Lion. She pressed a few keys. ‘It’s at 22.00, so about thirty minutes before Gallen left.’
The camera showed the outside of the Red Lion. A few people were coming in and out of the side door, all turning to the right when they exited and coming back from the same direction. ‘It’s now,’ said Gardner. The door opened and a man came out. Gardner paused. ‘That’s Gallen.’ She pressed a key and Gallen moved not to the right where the Ladies and Gents were located, but to the left into the garden.
The CCTV camera stayed focused on the door. One minute later it opened. Gardner paused and Emily Francis stood freeze-framed in the doorway. Gardner pressed play again and Emily Francis also took a left into the garden.
‘There’s one camera covering the whole garden. It doesn’t show Gallen and Francis, but we do have them coming back in.’
Another key press and the screen showed Gallen walking towards the door by himself.
‘Look at this,’ said Gardner. She froze the picture and moved into close-up. Gallen was tucking in his shirt and smoothing his hair. His hand reached for his groin, scratched it and checked his flies. 174
A minute later Emily Francis came to the door from the same direction as Gallen. She also ran fingers through her hair.
Gardner froze the picture again and moved in on the untucked shirt hanging below the back of Emily Francis’s jacket.
‘That shirt,’ said Gardner, ‘was tucked in when she went into the garden.’
Garibaldi looked at his sergeant, impressed.
‘So the question is,’ said Gardner, ‘what Gallen and Francis were doing in the pub garden shortly before they left and shortly before Gallen was murdered. They may have just been talking. If so, about what, and why the need to do it in the privacy of a dark garden? And if the state of their dress and their gestures suggest they were up to something else in the garden, is it significant?’
‘This could, of course,’ said Deighton, ‘account for the semen on Gallen’s body. Something that happened before he got to the Old Cemetery. Thank you, Milly. Great work.’
‘Yeah,’ said Garibaldi. ‘Great stuff.’
‘We need to have a word with Emily Francis,’ said Deighton.