Milly Gardner was glad to have the car to herself. Driving Garibaldi around was all well and good but they said too much to each other sitting side by side. She knew too much about Alfie, Kay and Dom (or Fuckwit, as Garibaldi liked to call him). And Garibaldi knew too much about what went wrong with Kevin and her new boyfriend, Tim (or Smartarse, as Garibaldi liked to call him).
She couldn’t stop herself seeing similarities between her boyfriend and her boss. They were both clever, and they both liked to show it. With Garibaldi it was often a case of coming up with a quote or a reference, something off-beat or unexpected that others wouldn’t get, or at least not get immediately. It was different with Tim. He didn’t go out of his way to show how much he knew but whenever she said something wrong or revealed her own ignorance he would make her aware of it.
That conversation in the car with Garibaldi about tutors and My Fair Lady had really got to her. She’d even looked it up on Wikipedia when she got home that evening to see what he was getting at. She’d also tried to put into practice his advice about saying what she really felt rather than what 243she felt she ought to, but so far the results hadn’t been good. On each occasion Tim had looked at her as if she’d lost her senses. He’d not even bothered to correct her – just gave her a what-the-fuck look.
Maybe she should take Garibaldi up on his offer of lessons? On the other hand, maybe not. The more she found out about private tuition the less she liked it.
‘And did you enjoy having him with you in the summer?’
Paolo nodded. ‘It was good.’
‘It must have been a terrible shock to you to find out he’d been murdered.’
Paolo nodded again. ‘He was so nice. I don’t understand it.’
‘Tell me, Paolo, what was Giles helping you with in particular?’
‘Everything I needed for my exam.’
‘What exam is that?’
‘The one I need to take to get into the school.’
‘Which one’s that?’
‘St Mark’s. It’s difficult. A lot of people take it and not everyone gets in.’
Milly looked at the young boy in front of her. Poor kid. You could see the strain on his face, sense the pressure he was under.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘And do you really want to go there?’
Paolo shrugged and gave a little smile. ‘I’d like to. It would make my parents very happy.’
‘But what about you?’ said Milly.
Paolo tilted his head to one side with a thoughtful look, as if he wasn’t in the habit of considering what he himself wanted.
‘It would be good. My dad says it opens all kinds of doors 244and sets you up for life. A good school and a good university. He says it’s important.’
‘And your mum. What does she say?’
Paolo laughed. ‘She goes on about it even more.’
‘So you’ve had to work very hard for this exam?’
‘Yeah. I have.’
Gardner nodded, as if she knew all about working hard for exams. Paolo Rivetti wasn’t to know that when it came to exams she’d never pushed herself. Maybe if she’d had a Maria Rivetti on her case it would have been different.
‘And you had to work so hard that you even brought Giles with you on holiday in the summer. That must have been strange, having to study when you’re on holiday.’
‘Yeah, but it wasn’t that much. Just a couple of hours a day and Giles made it fun. We hung out a lot as well doing, you know, fun things. It wasn’t really like having a tutor out there.’
‘So it didn’t stop you having fun?’
Paolo smiled. ‘Yeah we all had fun. Lots of fun. And there were parties.’
‘Parties?’
Paolo paused. His face flushed. ‘Nothing big,’ he said. ‘Just, you know, some evenings people came round.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you … ?’ Paolo broke off and looked at Milly with large pleading eyes. ‘Do you have any idea who did it?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out, Paolo. That’s why I’m asking you these questions. You never know what might be important, even the tiniest detail.’
The door opened and Maria Rivetti put her head round.
‘Everything OK?’ she said.
‘Fine,’ said Milly. ‘I’ve just been asking Paolo a bit more about being tutored by Giles.’ 245
Maria looked at her son. ‘You liked him so much, didn’t you?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘It’s still so difficult to take in.’
‘And I was asking Paolo about the summer.’
‘The summer?’ said Maria, as if she couldn’t see the relevance.
‘His time with you on holiday.’
‘We didn’t want Paolo to go off the boil in the holidays. It’s so easy to do.’
‘But Paolo tells me it wasn’t all work and no play.’
Maria threw back her head and laughed. ‘All work and no play? If only! Sometimes it’s difficult to get any work out of him at all!’
Milly got up to leave. ‘Still, it’s nice to know you still had time to party.’
‘Party?’
Maria Rivetti looked surprised, as if party was a word she didn’t understand. She glanced at Paolo and then turned back. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Just because we expected the kids to do some work each morning didn’t mean we weren’t going to have a good time. It was our holiday after all. You can’t let this tutoring stuff get too much, can you?’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Milly, heading for the door. ‘And, please, if anything occurs to you that you think might be relevant to Giles’s murder, however small it is, please give us a call.’
‘Of course,’ said Maria Rivetti.
‘And if I don’t see you, Paolo, before you take your exam, good luck!’
‘Thanks,’ said Paolo.
‘Thank you,’ said Maria Rivetti, closing the door behind Gardner.
Milly walked to her car, wondering why she had such a 246strong sense that there was more to the summer than they were revealing.
Maybe Garibaldi was right – everyone did have something to hide.
Chloe looked at DS Gardner. She seemed different without the other one, the one with the Italian name. More confident, perhaps. More probing. She was certainly managing to make her feel uncomfortable, but that was probably more to do with her own guilt than the detective’s questioning.
‘I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions again, Chloe,’ said the detective, ‘but we need to double-check a few things and we also need to know if anything else might have occurred to you.’
‘No problem,’ said Chloe, trying to give a confident smile. ‘I quite understand.’
‘And has anything occurred to you since we last spoke?’
Chloe furrowed her brow as if she was trying hard to think of something. The truth was nothing new had come to her in the interim. What she knew had been there all the time. The question was whether or not she should tell anyone.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘when you came to see me I was in a real state of shock. I still am, but I’ve, you know, had a bit more time to reflect …’
She paused for a breath.
‘Take your time,’ said the woman.
‘I think I referred to tough times. My mum walking out. Stuff like that. What I didn’t say was …’
Should she do this? There was no point telling them about the problems she’d had ever since her mum walked out, about her trouble with boys or about the way she had fancied Giles something rotten and still swooned when she 247remembered some of the sessions with him and the things he said about poems. But surely there was some point telling them about her father and the row she overheard? Not that she thought he could have anything to do with the murder, but because she should, because in some strange kind of way she felt she owed it to Giles.
The woman was leaning forward, waiting for her to speak.
‘Look,’ said Chloe, ‘I don’t think this is really relevant, but I just feel I should tell you. Ever since my mum left, my dad, well he’s behaved a bit strangely. Maybe it’s just a reaction to mum, but he’s been really over-protective when it comes to me and … and boys. It’s like he’s trying to, I don’t know, control me. And the thing is, I think he thought there might be something going on between Giles and me.’
‘And was there?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Did your dad say anything to you?
‘Not to me, but he did to Giles. He thought I was out and he had this big row with him. It was terrible. He was accusing Giles of doing all sorts of things. I couldn’t believe how angry he was.’
‘Did Giles say anything to you about it?’
‘No. I thought the next time I saw him he might have been a bit cooler towards me, but he didn’t say anything.’
‘And did you say anything to your Dad?’
Chloe shook her head. Did she really have to explain? Couldn’t she see how bad her relationship with her father was?
‘Look,’ said Chloe. ‘I’m sure he’s got nothing at all to do with it and I didn’t even think it was worth mentioning because it all seems so unlikely …’ 248
‘You’ve done the right thing,’ said the woman, leaning forward. ‘You really have.’
‘Are you going to have to talk to my Dad about it?’
‘We’ll have to follow it up.’
‘It’s just … well things are pretty shit between us already and I don’t want them to get worse.’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll tread lightly.’
Milly flicked through her notebook as she sat opposite Freddie Barker. She’d already filled up a couple of pages with notes on Paolo Rivetti and Chloe Marsh.
‘I won’t keep you long, Freddie. I just want to go over a few things again to do with Giles Gallen.’
‘Have you found out who killed him?’
‘Not yet.’ Remembering an old trick of Garibaldi’s, Milly added, ‘but we’re very close.’
‘I keep thinking about it,’ said Freddie. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘It is horrible, Freddie, but you must try not to think about it.’
‘It’s a bit difficult when you keep coming round asking questions, isn’t it?’
Milly tried to ignore Freddie’s tone, feeling waves of sympathy for anyone who had ever tried to teach him.
‘This will be the last time. I promise.’
‘OK,’ sighed Freddie.
‘I just want to know if there’s anything you haven’t told us. Anything at all you remember of Giles. Anything he did. Anything he said.’
Freddie scratched his head. ‘I can’t think of anything. He was great. I mean he …’ He broke off and looked to one side. ‘What was so good about him wasn’t what he taught me. I mean, that was good and it really helped, but it was the other stuff that was the best.’ 249
‘The other stuff?’
‘The chats we had. Football. Music. Films. And he used to give me things.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘He tried to give me books at first, you know, things he thought I might really like as opposed to the crap I have to do for GCSE. But he could see I wasn’t really interested so he started to give me other stuff. CDs. DVDs. I mean, when I say “give” I mean lend. I gave them back. And he told me not to tell my mum because she’d think he was trying to distract me from school work. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want my mum to know about it.’
‘Any particular CDs you remember him giving you? Any DVDs?’
Freddie thought for a moment and then came up with a few titles.
Gardner jotted them down, but not many of them rang a bell.
‘There’s one other thing I probably should have told you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It was the last time I saw him, that Saturday. When we’d finished and he was about to leave he said something. I probably should have told you …’
‘What did he say, Freddie?’
‘He said he would probably have to stop tutoring me.’
‘Did he say why?’
Freddie shook his head. ‘That’s all he said. He said he hadn’t said anything to my mum yet, but he was probably going to stop a lot of his tutoring.’
‘Did he say when he was going to stop?’
‘No, that’s all he said. Like I said, I didn’t really think anything of it at the time but it’s funny, isn’t it? I mean, he was right, wasn’t he? He’s not going to be coming round 250here again, is he?’ Freddie sighed. ‘And I never got the chance to return the CDs and stuff.’
He sniffed a couple of times and his lips tightened. He looked like he was fighting back tears. Under the teenage truculence Milly suddenly saw a vulnerable, frightened boy.
Jade Murray looked at the detective sitting opposite her and wondered what it would be like to do her job. How would it feel to go from house to house asking questions, to be constantly on the hunt for some truth that you felt people were keeping from you? Pretty frustrating, she reckoned, and maybe even close to boring. It seemed a long way from the exciting things she saw detectives do on telly, and she certainly wasn’t tempted to add it to her list of possible careers.
This detective seemed a bit different without the other one, the one who freaked her out by quoting Larkin. She seemed more relaxed, more friendly, and it was maybe this friendliness that caught her out. Jade had been in two minds about whether or not to tell the police the whole truth. She knew Giles hadn’t done anything wrong, certainly nothing illegal, but she also knew that the same couldn’t be said about herself. When the detective started asking her questions, smiling and laughing at some of her answers, Jade felt like she was talking, if not to a friend, then at least to someone who was a sympathetic listener, and she let her defences down.
Before she knew it, she had told the detective what it was that Giles had mentioned and what she had done in response.
She didn’t tell her the whole truth. She said she’d stopped some time ago, and wouldn’t dream of doing it again, and she hoped this meant they wouldn’t be interested in doing anything about it. 251
But she still felt uneasy when the detective left, and kept asking herself why she had told them.
Briony Ainsworth was having a bad day. School was shit. Home was shit. Life was shit. She’d spent the whole day wondering what it would be like to be at another school, to live in a home where your parents weren’t cheating on each other and where the family wealth wasn’t derived from, at best questionable, and at worst illegal, activities. She knew all about her parents’ affairs and she was beginning to discover things about her father’s clubs.
And to round off a brilliant day, she was now facing more questions from the police. At least it was only the woman this time, and she was being nice enough, but, even so, she was still finding the whole thing distressing.
Maybe that was why she decided to tell her what Giles Gallen had said the last time she had seen him, the Saturday before his murder.
‘Look,’ she said to the detective, who sat opposite her, pencil in hand, notebook open on her lap. ‘I should probably have told you this when you first came to see me but I was all over the place, I mean really upset by the whole thing.’
The detective straightened in her seat, eyebrows raised.
‘He said he had to stop seeing me.’
‘You mean stop giving you lessons?’
‘Yeah, don’t worry. He wasn’t seeing me in any other sense. There was nothing like that going on.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘No. All he said was that he was going to have to stop.’
‘Did he tell your parents?’
‘He said he was telling me first so that I knew.’
‘And this was a week before he was murdered?’ 252
‘Exactly. I don’t know if it’s of any significance but I thought you should know.’
The detective scribbled in her notebook. ‘Well, thanks for your time,’ she said, getting up to leave.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s just that everything’s been shit. I hope you understand.’
‘Of course I do. You take it easy, OK? It must have all been a terrible shock.’
Briony looked at the detective leave. Life was still shit but she felt a little better for having told the truth.