Silent Kill
JANE CASEY

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Jane Casey 2020

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Jane Casey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © August 2020 ISBN: 9780008149154

Version: 2020-07-21

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

A Note on Chronology

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Jane Casey

About the Publisher

A Note on Chronology

Silent Kill is set in the spring after the events of Cruel Acts, before The Cutting Place.

Chapter 1

‘Here we are. That must be the bus we’re looking for.’

‘What makes you think that, Georgia?’

I looked at Pete Belcott, trying to judge whether he was being sarcastic. He was staring out at the single-decker bus, his expression deadpan. It didn’t take a detective to work out it was the bus we were looking for; it couldn’t have been anything else. The vehicle was stopped at the side of the road, flanked by police cars. The hazard lights were blinking yellow and canvas sheeting covered some of the windows to hide whatever was inside. Someone had strung police tape around the bus, carving out space for the emergency crews on the pavement. Uniformed officers kept the crowds back, and there were crowds: there was clearly nothing better to do on a cold March evening on Clapham Common than stare at a parked bus.

Of course, what was inside it was interesting, but the most they could hope to see was a body bag on a stretcher, manoeuvred out through the door of the bus before the stretcher was loaded into a private ambulance for transportation to the morgue. I would be getting a front-row seat at the crime scene itself. I was lucky. This was the dream, wasn’t it? Murder investigation team, detective constable in the Met Police, solving crimes, locking up bad guys, taking charge. Everything I had wanted when I signed up for fast-track direct entry, skipping the tedious bits of the job. I was the elite, the best and the brightest, and I could have been doing a more lucrative job with better hours if I wasn’t happy.

And I was happy, I told myself.

I couldn’t admit, even to myself, that the job wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be.

I was leaning forward now, trying to take in every detail of the scene before I even got out of the car. Every new crime scene was a chance to prove myself, to do better. The tension was a knot in my stomach.

‘Pull in here. There’s a space,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I was going to, actually.’

I felt a twinge of irritation at the wounded tone in Pete’s voice. He made it his business to be offended by just about everything. He particularly disliked being told what to do by someone who was younger than him, and less experienced, and female. I knew I had a tendency to sound bossy. People had told me that often enough, and told me that I came across as a know-all. I thought wistfully of the stack of self-help books by my bed, bristling with Post-its, fat with folded-down corners, every margin crisscrossed with notes. The books were all concerned with effective communication and working as part of a team and being confident and self-assured, which were some of the things I struggled with. For the sake of a good working relationship, I knew I needed to stop ordering Pete around. I should ask his opinion now and then, and let him speak first. The trouble was, Pete hadn’t read the same books as me. He was quite capable of sitting in silence for an entire shift if I didn’t talk.

‘Are we the first ones here?’

Pete shook his head and pointed, proving my point about not using his words. I followed the direction he was indicating and saw a broad-shouldered man in a long dark coat. He was towering over a small figure wearing a driver’s uniform, who was shaking his head dolefully.

‘Oh, Derwent. Brilliant.’ I put a note of world-weariness into my voice and Belcott picked up on it instantly.

‘I thought you liked him.’

I said nothing. I knew what Pete was trying to imply and I wasn’t going to rise to it. Yes, of course Josh Derwent was attractive. He had the kind of tough good looks that always appealed to me. His confidence, his square, strong hands and the way he moved suggested – to me at least – he would be a huge amount of fun in bed, not that I would go there because an office romance would complicate life far too much. That didn’t mean I liked him.

On the other hand I didn’t dislike him, despite his reputation for being difficult. No, my problem with him wasn’t what he did, but what he didn’t do. Before I started working with the team I’d been warned he was a massive flirt, and maybe he was, but not with me. I would never admit it to Belcott, or anyone else, but I resented the fact that Derwent had a glint in his blue eyes that he never wasted on me. I might as well have been invisible to him, or even a man. He just wasn’t interested. At all.

I took out my phone and flicked to camera mode, turning on the front-facing camera with practised ease. My face looked back at me, immaculate. My foundation wasn’t smudged, my eyelashes were starry with expensive mascara. Blusher gave me a flush of colour and a neutral lip gloss made my lips look fuller without being unprofessionally bright. I looked fine. I looked the way I was supposed to look.

‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall.’

I turned the camera off and glared at Belcott. ‘Appearances matter, Pete.’

‘Turning up matters. Being there on time. Doing the job when you get there. How you look – that doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, I can see that’s what you think.’ My voice was as cold as the raw wind that greeted me when I got out of the car. Scattered raindrops blew into my face, stinging my eyes. I slammed the door and walked across to the officer who was managing the scene, to give him my details. I was aware of the crowd watching me and held my head high, pretending I didn’t even notice them.

‘Detective Constable Shaw. Right, thanks.’ The PC was young, black and painfully earnest. I gave him a dazzling smile of thanks and ducked under the tape, getting my bearings. Josh Derwent might be here but I hadn’t seen Detective Sergeant Maeve Kerrigan yet. I scanned the scene casually, wondering where I might find her. She always seemed to know where to be, how to look busy, how to look as if she was needed, while I stood around with gloved hands dangling at my sides. There was no sign of her, though, which meant I couldn’t take my cue from her.

Well, there were advantages to that too. I felt my spirits lift slightly: if she wasn’t here, maybe I’d have more to do. Not that I would take her place – not exactly. But if Derwent needed to discuss the case with someone, maybe he’d come and find me. Maybe he would sit on the edge of my desk, listening to my theories with respect and gain a new insight into me. You’re not just a pretty face, I imagined him saying in the low, warm voice that he never bothered to use on me.

It was a fantasy as comforting as a hot bath, but it evaporated like steam as I looked into the bus: she was in there after all. I should have known she would be right at the heart of the scene.

A stocky figure stepped out of the bus: Kev Cox, crime scene manager.

‘All right, Georgia? Got shoe covers to put on?’

‘Yeah.’ I pulled them out of my pocket, wishing I didn’t have to step into them in front of the crowd. If I overbalanced and someone caught it on a mobile phone I could end up all over social media, and that was my worst nightmare. ‘What have we got? They were a bit discreet over the radio.’

Kev turned so his back was to the crowds and the press. ‘Understandably. It’s a child.’

‘A child?’

‘A teenager. Schoolgirl. She’s in the second row from the back, left-hand side.’

Even I could probably find a dead body on a small, empty bus, but I didn’t say that. I was still processing what he’d told me: a teenage girl. That wasn’t what I’d expected, though I couldn’t have said what I had expected. I hadn’t been thinking about the victim much, to be honest. It made sense of the close-lipped radio transmissions, and the grim look on DI Derwent’s face, and the quiet murmuring of the onlookers. Not a standard day at the office. A tragedy. I modified my expression accordingly, and thanked Kev as I pulled on my gloves.

The bus was a single-decker vehicle with twenty-four seats, mainly arranged in rows at the back, and it was as cold as a fridge. An emergency exit halfway along the bus hung open, the door dangling like a broken wing. The windows were pebbled with moisture, inside and out. Even though the doors were wide open the condensation from damp passengers hadn’t yet evaporated, and the air was stale. I wrinkled my nose at it, so I was pulling a very unfortunate face when Maeve straightened and looked over her shoulder. She raised her eyebrows.

‘All right?’

‘Yeah. It’s stuffy, that’s all.’

She stared at me for a long moment and I fought the urge to fidget or apologise under the scrutiny from those wide grey eyes. The lighting in the bus was that particularly flat fluorescent light that deadens the best complexion and highlights every flaw. Maeve’s skin was clear and delicately flushed. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were dark enough that she didn’t need to add anything to them to look human, unlike me. It took me twenty products to create something approaching a natural look, and she did it by getting out of bed. It wasn’t fair.

She turned back to what she had been doing: going through the bags that presumably belonged to the girl slumped on the seat near the back of the bus, where the window was covered with canvas sheeting. I guessed she was no more than five foot two or three, but not slight: her body was solid and her face was rounded with puppy fat. Most of her was hidden inside a giant navy-blue parka with a fur-lined hood, but underneath that she wore her school uniform – pleated skirt, V-neck jumper, white shirt, and a blue tie that was loosely knotted. Her nails were bitten, I noted, and her skin was marked with livid scarring: acne had dappled the area around her mouth and chin, and across her forehead. Black eyeliner was smudged underneath her eyes and the remains of foundation clung to her cheeks. Her make-up had a harsh peach tone under the bus’s lights, especially compared to the pallor of her skin.

‘Who’s our victim?’

‘Her name is Minnie Charleston. She’s a student at Lovelace School in Battersea.’

‘Is that a state school?’

‘Private,’ Maeve said shortly. ‘She was fifteen, according to her school ID.’

‘Can I see?’

She held the card out in a gloved hand and I studied it: in life, Minnie had a cheeky grin, complete with dimples. Her eyebrows had been plucked since the picture was taken. Two uncertain arches straggled across her face now, in place of the thick dark eyebrows on her card. A typical teenager, trying to turn herself into something she wasn’t.

Maeve was sorting through the contents of the girl’s bag. She paused to study an asthma inhaler, one of three that had been shoved in a side pocket of the bag.

‘So are we sure it’s murder? It couldn’t have been natural causes? If she had asthma, that could have killed her.’

‘Not unless it was armed with a knife.’ She pinched the edge of the girl’s coat and drew it back so I could see that the side of her torso was saturated with blood. ‘She was stabbed.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you think the response officers and paramedics would have called us in for an asthma attack?’

‘No, of course not.’

She laid the coat back into place with a gesture that looked almost tender and went back to taking things out of the bag. ‘House keys. Phone – that’s useful, that can go to the lab for downloading. School diary …’ She flipped through it, reading the entry for today. ‘Right, so she was going to extra hockey training at a club in Wimbledon. This bag has her kit in it, and this one has her hockey stick, gumshield and shin guards. That backpack is what she used for schoolbooks.’

‘She wasn’t travelling light, was she?’ The girl must have been surrounded by clutter, I thought, hemmed in by it.

Maeve started unfolding the contents of the kitbag, which I privately thought was a waste of time. A hockey shirt, a hockey skirt that was crumpled from being wadded into the bag, thermal leggings and a white T-shirt with a black logo on it. The logo was a heat transfer that was threadbare from washing it: a zig-zag shape like a slanted Z with a line through the oblique. Maeve held it up so I could look at it. ‘What do you think that is?’

‘No idea. Band merchandise of some sort? She looks like an emo kid.’

‘Maybe. She doodled it on her homework book too, and on her bag.’ Maeve pulled out her phone and took a picture of the T-shirt, then folded it back into the bag. ‘I’ve checked everything now except her body – I’ll leave that for the PM. No drugs, no knife, nothing gang-related or illegal.’

‘Were you expecting to find something gang-related?’

‘When a kid gets stabbed on a bus in South London? Of course.’

‘She’s not exactly the gang type, is she? I mean, she’s white, upper-middle-class, posh private school, plays hockey …’

‘And she could have a boyfriend who deals drugs, or she could be letting a gang use her bank account to launder money or she could be earning a bit of extra pocket money by selling dope to her pals.’ Maeve looked amused. ‘You don’t know many private-school kids, do you? They’re just as likely to be up to no good as the poorer ones, I promise you.’

‘She just doesn’t seem the type.’

‘Hard to tell.’ Maeve’s face changed and she sighed. ‘I’ll have to ask the parents about it, I suppose, when I go round later. That sort of conversation always goes well.’

‘Can I come with you?’

‘Um …’ she drew the answer out until my nerves were jangling like wire hangers in an empty wardrobe. ‘OK. Why not.’

‘Great. What can I do now?’ I was distracted by a face at the window nearest me: Derwent. He was looking at Maeve, not me. She had no idea he was there until he tapped on the glass.

‘What is it?’

He mimed drinking and she shook her head, but with a smile. With a nod he stepped back, out of range of the interior lights, and disappeared into the darkness. He hadn’t asked me if I wanted a coffee, I thought, and pushed the hurt far down inside me so it didn’t show on my face.

‘Go and talk to the rest of the passengers,’ Maeve said. ‘We’ve managed to get hold of the ones who were still on the bus when someone raised the alarm, but they want to go home, understandably enough. Find out when they got on, if they saw her involved in a confrontation, if they noticed the girl seeming upset – that kind of thing. We’ve got good CCTV from the bus but we don’t know yet when she died, which seems quite important.’

I nodded. ‘Is that it?’

‘For now.’ She had paused to read the back of a book, a novel with a girl against a background of snowy pine trees on the cover. The book’s spine was threaded with white from reading and rereading. ‘“Brought up in hiding, Narya is a walking target for the men who killed her family. But with nothing to lose, she’s about to fight back.” I wonder …’

‘What do you wonder?’ I was trying to follow her train of thought.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

‘I’ll get going.’

She nodded, and there was something suspiciously like relief in her eyes now at the prospect of me leaving. I hesitated, wanting to say something useful or insightful, but I’d missed my moment. Maeve was staring into space, with the abstracted air that made you want to know, passionately, what she was thinking.

But whatever it was, she wasn’t going to share it with me. I went back outside, whipped off the shoe covers and went in search of the disgruntled passengers. They, at least, might be susceptible to a little bit of charm, even if my colleagues were immune.

Chapter 2

‘Do they know?’ I asked as the car pulled up outside the house: a double-fronted Victorian red-brick that was immaculately kept, from the Farrow-and-Ball tastefulness of the pale green front door to the pruned bay trees on either side of the porch. The curtains were drawn in all the windows, blocking out the night, but there was no sign of anything amiss.

‘They’ve been informed. Response officers went around earlier, as soon as we had an ID for her.’ Maeve was gathering her notebook and pen, distracted. ‘They said no to having an FLO and they don’t want a police presence outside the house if they can avoid it. I think they’re hoping to preserve their privacy as much as possible.’

‘We’ll make this quick,’ Derwent said over his shoulder to me. I was sitting in the back seat, like a child. ‘They won’t want to talk to us for long and they won’t be much help, more than likely. Still, we have to see if they’ve anything useful to tell us.’

‘Was Minnie an only child?’ I asked, and of course Maeve knew the answer.

‘No. Older brother, younger sister.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Is it? That makes up for losing one, does it?’ Derwent shook his head at me. ‘Wrong attitude.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ I wouldn’t have said it to the parents, anyway, I thought, but surely it made sense that it would be worse to lose your only child than one of three.

‘If you say anything stupid, you’ll get us kicked out. Keep your mouth shut and just take notes.’

I opened my mouth to protest but thought better of it after seeing the look on his face. There were times you could talk DI Derwent around, and times you should do exactly what he said.

Maeve raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Are you OK?’

He grimaced and a muscle tightened in his jaw. ‘Not looking forward to this.’

She touched his arm lightly with the back of her hand. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

‘It’s so kind of you to come and talk to us. Really, it is.’

There was no correct way to behave when your child was murdered, I reminded myself, but Gail Charleston wasn’t what I would call devastated, at least outwardly. She sat on a sofa in the big kitchen at the back of the house, swathed in a cashmere jumper that she wore over leggings and flat knee boots. Soft lighting from underneath the cupboards and a few lamps that were dotted around the room made it feel strangely intimate, an effect heightened by her manner. She had long, expensively tinted hair, very good skin, subtle make-up and a trick of blinking extremely slowly while she spoke.

‘Where is Mr Charleston?’

‘He went to the hospital for the formal identification.’ Blink. Blink. ‘Can I offer you a drink? I feel like such a bad hostess.’

‘They don’t want a drink, Mum.’

I looked over to where Robbie Charleston was gripping the edge of the marble kitchen counter. He was short and slight but made up for that with excellent posture and good looks: untidy black hair and high cheekbones and the same thick black eyebrows as his sister, before she got her hands on them. He was wearing a black jumper that was unravelling at the cuffs with skinny black jeans. Unlike his mother, he looked as if he had been crying. The skin under his eyes seemed bruised and his knuckles shone as white as the work surface.

‘I still can’t take it in.’ Gail waved a hand with a graceful movement. ‘It seems unreal. Impossible.’

‘Who did it?’ Robbie again. He had plenty of confidence, I thought and a deep, expensive voice to match.

‘We don’t know yet, but we’re going to find out.’

‘I knew it was a bad idea for her to get the bus.’ He shot a vengeful look at his mother. ‘You should have collected her from school and taken her to hockey yourself. It’s not safe. Everyone knows that. Thousands of gang members wandering around here armed to the fucking teeth. Little white kids like Minnie are easy targets.’

‘Not just white kids,’ Derwent said levelly. ‘More often than not we’re looking for the killers of little black kids.’

Robbie shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

‘Had she been threatened?’ Maeve asked.

‘Not specifically.’ He held her gaze, his eyes burning with hostility. ‘Not as far as I know. But she got mugged for her phone a couple of times.’

‘Did she report that?’ Derwent asked.

‘No. What was the point?’

‘Catching them?’ There was an edge to his voice and Robbie’s chin went up, defensive.

‘That’s not what happens, though, is it? You take a statement and then nothing. No one ever gets caught for it. Just hassle, that’s all.’

‘Did this happen recently?’ Maeve asked quickly, before Derwent could get into a proper argument with the boy. Robbie sniffed.

‘Not that recently. One last year, one just after Christmas. I guess they know people get phones for Christmas. It was a brand-new iPhone. She was gutted.’

‘Well, that didn’t happen this time,’ Maeve said. ‘We found her phone in her pocket.’

‘Can I have it?’ Minnie’s little sister, Audrina, hauled herself onto a high stool at the kitchen island. She was a smaller version of the girl from the bus, stocky rather than slender like her brother. She was ten, she had informed us.

‘Shut up, Audrina.’

‘Mine is shit, you know that.’

I looked to see if her mother reacted to the swear word, but her beautiful face was impassive.

‘Because you keep dropping it.’ Robbie ran his hands through his hair, clutching his head as if it ached. ‘I’m not talking to you about your stupid phone.’

‘Anyway, can I have it?’ Audrina turned her round eyes to the three of us, as if we might give her permission.

‘It’s gone off for analysis,’ Maeve said. ‘We need to see what was on it and who Minnie might have been talking to. We’re going to need to keep it for the time being, I’m afraid.’

‘Do you think it was someone who knew her?’ Robbie demanded.

‘We don’t know yet. It’s a possibility.’

‘So strange,’ Gail murmured, and Robbie’s expression darkened.

‘What’s that, Mum? Is it time for another pill?’ He glowered at us. ‘Don’t think she’s just like this because of Min. This is how she is all the time, isn’t it, Mum? Little pills that make life bearable. That’s why you couldn’t drive Minnie to hockey. It would have interfered with your lovely drugs.’

‘It’s medication, Robbie.’ She blinked at us sleepily. ‘He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live with anxiety. There are days I can’t leave the house. There are days I can’t even get out of bed.’

‘The au pair used to get me ready for school,’ Audrina volunteered. ‘Now I’m old enough we don’t need one any more. We never see Mum in the mornings.’

‘So you didn’t see Minnie this morning?’ Derwent asked Gail, who shook her head slowly. ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘Yesterday.’ She didn’t sound certain. ‘Or was it— what day is it today?’

‘Christ,’ Robbie said explosively. ‘What sort of mother are you? I saw Minnie this morning. She was fine. She was running late.’ His face twisted. ‘She took toast off my plate and I told her to fuck off. That was it. The last time I saw her.’

Audrina slipped off her stool and went to hug her brother as he crumpled, sobs shaking his body.

‘Did Minnie have any particular friends?’ Maeve asked, and Gail raised her voice to be heard over her son’s weeping.

‘She was popular. She was out a lot. She didn’t often ask people to come and stay here, but she seemed to have sleepovers and parties to go to all the time.’

‘Any fallings-out with anyone at school?’ Derwent asked.

‘Ups and downs, like you would expect from any group of teenage girls.’ Gail ran her tongue over her upper lip. ‘You could ask the school.’

‘Would your husband know more?’ I suggested, and she laughed.

‘Heavens, no. He wouldn’t have a clue.’

‘He’s a lawyer,’ Robbie said. His eyes were swimming in unshed tears, but he was back in control. ‘We never see him. He’s at work all the time.’

Gail nodded. ‘He loves to work.’

‘I don’t know why he went to identify her,’ Robbie said, folding his arms across his skinny chest. ‘I really doubt he could pick her out of a line-up unless she was wearing a name badge.’

‘Would you rather have money or love?’ I asked Maeve as we climbed the stairs to the second floor, without Derwent. He had decided, with the privilege of rank, that he didn’t need to stick around. The three children of the family had their own bathroom and bedrooms on the second floor, well away from their parents, as well as a small room that had belonged to the au pair. It was now a tiny sitting room with a TV in it. The door to Robbie’s room was firmly closed but the hot, rank sharpness of cannabis smoke hung in the air nearby.

Maeve had been considering my question. ‘Being poor is awful but I’d never pick money.’

‘They don’t seem to have been keeping a very close eye on Minnie, do they?’

‘To say the least.’ She pushed open the door of Minnie’s room and we stood for a moment, contemplating the truly magnificent mess. ‘I’ve seen neater burglaries.’

‘Robbie said the cleaner refused to come up here. I can see why.’

The room had a sour smell overlaid with perfume and a sickly-sweet odour I traced to drifts of spilled make-up on top of the chest of drawers. Pictures torn from magazines covered the walls, the edges rough and tattered. Clothes overflowed out of a fitted wardrobe in the corner and the bed was a lavish double sleigh bed; someone had chosen curtains and lampshades and paint colour with care, but I felt it hadn’t been Gail or her husband. Neither of them had cared enough. Dust hung in the air and clouded all the surfaces.

‘There’s her computer.’ Maeve shook out an evidence bag and set about sliding the laptop – a top-of-the-range Mac – into it. ‘Have a look at the bedside table.’

I was planning to, actually. I held the words back and did a thorough search, widening my area of interest to the bed itself once I’d finished going through the clutter of books and keyrings and rubbish that had collected there. The sheets hadn’t been changed for a long time. I noticed she had drawn the zig-zag symbol on the side of her bedside table in wavering felt tip, where it would be next to her when she slept. Under the bed was grim and I gave it the quickest look possible after almost putting my cheek down on a toenail clipping that was stuck in the carpet.

‘Disgusting.’

‘What did you say?’ Maeve turned from the chest of drawers.

‘Nothing.’ I was still kneeling beside the bed. ‘Found anything?’

‘Not really. No drugs, no contraceptives, nothing that we should be concerned about. Some cash – not a lot. A bank card. An old phone.’

‘More than I found,’ I said. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? You’d think she had everything she wanted, but she seems to have been almost neglected.’

‘If this was a council house, we’d probably be making a report to social services about the youngest one. They have everything material you could possibly need and no family life at all. Even putting the kids up here is all out of sight, out of mind.’ Maeve shook her head. ‘Poor Minnie. I wonder if she was doing anything to get their attention.’

‘School might be able to tell us.’

‘Tomorrow.’ Maeve checked the time. ‘Pete’s gone to the hospital to deal with Mr Charleston, so I don’t think we need to hang around.’

‘Definitely not.’ I caught sight of myself in the mirror that hung behind Maeve and reassured myself that I still looked OK – no dirt on my clothes or face, my make-up still mainly in place. I had chewed off the lip gloss, I saw.

‘What are you looking at?’ Maeve twisted to see, and her tone changed as she spotted the mirror. ‘Oh.’

‘I wasn’t really looking at anything,’ I said quickly, aware that my face was warming. ‘Just thinking.’

‘About what?’

I shrugged, at a loss. ‘About Minnie being given so much freedom, I suppose. I’d have loved that when I was a teenager, but I needed rules.’

‘Everyone needs rules, even if it’s just to have something to rebel against.’ She jumped. ‘What’s up, honey?’

I realised that Audrina was standing in the doorway, watching us.

‘Nothing.’ She looked around. ‘I want to move into this room. It’s much bigger than mine.’

‘We have to leave it as it is for now.’ Maeve crossed the room and ushered her out onto the landing.

‘Do you want me to do anything else?’ I asked.

‘I think we’re finished here. There’s nothing to point us towards a motive, as far as I can see.’

‘OK.’ I hurried to join her on the landing.

‘It could have been a chance encounter. She could have said the wrong thing to the wrong person on that bus, or just looked at someone the wrong way,’ Maeve said, almost to herself.

‘Always a possibility.’

‘Maybe she was mean to someone.’ Audrina had retreated to the top of the stairs, but no further. Her hair had an oily sheen to it, as if it needed a wash, and her lips were chapped. She swung on the bannisters, careless of the drop behind her. ‘She was always mean to me.’

‘That’s big sisters for you,’ I said lightly.

‘No, she was really horrible.’ The girl’s bottom lip stuck out for an instant, as if she was going to cry, but it was self-pity rather than grief that had brought tears to her eyes. ‘She never talked to me or let me go into her room. She never helped me. She used to kick me and pinch me, and she ripped my favourite dress once, to teach me a lesson. She was a cow, and I’m glad she’s gone.’

Chapter 3

‘Of course we are all very, very shocked about Minnie.’ Doctor Karen Chang shook her head slowly, with sorrow. The headmistress of Lovelace School was a tall woman with a long oval face and glasses. Her neat dark bob was threaded with silver that she hadn’t attempted to dye. Her eyes were intelligent and her manner was full of confidence; I could imagine her making all the difference for parents who were considering whether to pay the £9,031 fees per term at Lovelace. ‘It’s a horrible way for us to lose a member of the school. We are so careful to brief the girls about safety, but these things do happen, sadly.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t have a minibus to transport the girls from this place to the sports campus.’ Derwent, brutal as ever and unimpressed by the surroundings. He was sprawling in his chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. Something about being in front of the headmistress seemed to bring out the badly behaved schoolboy in him. Privately, I thought he could stop showing off and be a bit more respectful. The school had stunned me from the moment I walked into it. The buildings were modern, with floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows affording us a view of the wide, lead-coloured Thames flowing past. In the distance I could see the straggling grey branches of trees in Battersea Park, still bare. It was clean, elegant, quiet and the exact opposite of the school I’d attended.

‘We do have a minibus,’ Dr Chang said calmly. ‘We transport our year 7 and 8 girls by bus. But we prefer to encourage the older girls to go out into the community. It’s all too easy to live in a bubble when you are from a particular social background. We do music and drama projects with the local state schools, for instance. And remember, they do travel to school by public transport, for the most part, so they’re quite used to navigating the local trains and buses.’

‘I’d have thought they were all dropped off by chauffeurs.’

‘Some of them are.’ She held his gaze, not intimidated in the least by his grumpiness.

‘Tell us about Minnie,’ Maeve said. ‘What sort of girl was she?’

‘She was academically gifted, if not outstanding – we have a competitive exam for applicants to the school, so the standard is extremely high. She was at an acceptable level of attainment in all her classes. None of her teachers had mentioned any issues with her performance.’ Dr Chang opened the file that was on the table in front of her and sifted through the contents, considering it. ‘Really, she was doing quite well. Slightly below average in general, but the average here is not the same as in other schools. She was on track to do very well in her GCSEs.’

‘Were her parents pleased about that?’

‘I’m sure they were.’ A certain reserve had entered Dr Chang’s manner.

‘Did you see a lot of them?’ Maeve asked.

‘No. No, I wouldn’t say that. Some of the parents are more available and engaged than others. I wouldn’t have expected to see Mr and Mrs Charleston at school performances or sports days, for instance, but he did come to parents’ evenings. And they made a major financial commitment to the school in the form of a donation for our new building.’ She waved a hand at an architect’s model in a glass case that stood near the window. ‘We’ve been fundraising for several years and Mr Charleston’s donation put us over the line. He has been very generous.’

‘Did you ever need to speak to them about anything else to do with Minnie?’ Maeve asked. ‘Mrs Charleston mentioned there were some ups and downs.’

Mrs Charleston had been completely dismissive of that, I thought, and wondered why Maeve was even bothering to raise it. But as the silence lengthened from the other side of the headmistress’s wide desk, I began to reassess it.

‘There were … issues. At times. Suggestions that unfortunate things might have been said. It’s regrettable, but of course teenage girls are still developing. Their brains aren’t fully formed. They can lack empathy, and it’s something we work on with them.’

‘Bullying?’ Derwent suggested.

Dr Chang gave an elegant shrug. ‘What counts as bullying for one child can be enjoyable banter for another. Occasionally people overstep the boundaries that we would like them to respect, whether it’s to do with physical appearance or wealth or something else.’

I felt a wave of sympathy for poor neglected Minnie, a real poor little rich girl. What had her mother said? She went for sleepovers and to other people’s houses, but she never invited anyone back. That told its own story. She was ashamed of her mother and probably self-conscious in a hundred other ways. The coat she had worn was oversized, massive, something to hide inside. She had tried to change her appearance, but her genes hadn’t been kind. I’d seen a picture of her father now and she’d inherited his heavy, bulldog physique. Her brother was the one who’d taken after her delicate mother, and I doubted it made him happy either.

‘I don’t wish to be unhelpful, but I’m surprised by your interest in Minnie’s life.’ Dr Chang looked from me to Maeve to Derwent. ‘I was under the impression that she was attacked by a stranger. I don’t see how that could have anything to do with the school, except for the obvious fact that she was in uniform.’

‘We don’t know who attacked her yet,’ Maeve said.

‘But I was given to understand – I thought there would be CCTV from the bus.’

‘It’s inconclusive.’ Maeve’s voice was calm but Derwent scowled and shook his head, unable to hide his frustration.

Inconclusive. Maddening was another word for it. We had come back to the office after finishing the search of Minnie’s room to find DS Colin Vale and Derwent glowering at the TV in the viewing suite. Colin was our resident tech expert, able to conjure magic from the least promising CCTV, but not on this occasion. The footage was clear enough. On screen, people took their place beside a sleeping Minnie Charleston, and travelled for a few stops, then got off to allow someone else to take their place. There was no dramatic moment where someone plunged a weapon into our victim; whatever had happened had been quick and subtle. Throughout the journey passengers had got on and lingered in the aisle, blocking Minnie from view for several long seconds at a time. Plenty of footage to watch: no answers so far.

‘We’ve found that it’s a good idea to start with the victim in a murder investigation anyway,’ Maeve explained to Dr Chang. ‘We need to get to know them, to understand what led them to be where they were at that particular moment in time. We don’t want to assume that the person who killed Minnie was a stranger to her. If there’s anything else you can tell us about Minnie – anything at all – we would appreciate it.’

Dr Chang frowned. ‘I do take a pastoral interest in the girls, but the best person to talk to is probably Pauline Kennedy. She was her class teacher. She would have seen Minnie every day. You should talk to Pauline. She can help you.’

‘I don’t think I can help you.’ Pauline Kennedy, slim and fair and younger than I had expected, was busy tidying her classroom – far too busy to stop and talk to the police. She had her back turned to us, organising books on some shelves, but the narrow crescent of her face that I could see was flushed.

‘Why would you say that?’ Derwent was deceptively polite. ‘We were told you saw Minnie every day.’

‘Yes, but she wasn’t the sort to confide in me.’ A glance at Derwent that only made her blush deepen. ‘She was … robust. She didn’t need me. Some of them like to spend a lot of time with me. I hear all about their difficulties. Minnie was … closed off, from me at least. She had a lot of friends. She had plenty of people to turn to if she needed them.’

‘That’s interesting, though – that she had a lot of friends.’

‘Is it?’ She gave a little laugh. ‘She was quite a leader. Quite forceful. She was a strong personality. Not everyone got on with her, but a lot of the class wanted to be friends with her.’

‘See, I knew you could be helpful. That’s not information we had before.’ He perched on a desk and folded his arms, making it clear, pleasantly, that he was going nowhere until she cooperated. I was always interested to see how other officers handled a difficult witness. He would be hard to imitate, I thought – he took up so much space and he had such presence it was impossible to ignore his scrutiny. Besides, with his long legs and the way he was sitting, he had basically trapped her in her corner.

As for Maeve, she was wandering around the classroom looking at the posters on the walls, lost in thought. I took advantage of her being distracted to stand next to Derwent, lining up on his team. It looked as if he and I were there together, and Maeve was just tagging along. I liked giving that impression.

‘Did she get on with everyone?’

‘No. Not at all. She had a serious falling-out with another student a few months ago. It was … unpleasant. You know how teenagers are – they take everything to heart. And Minnie could be very sharp. She looked down on the other girl.’

‘Why was that?’ Maeve had turned, her attention caught by the teacher’s words.

‘Oh – Rosa was pretty and very clever. She was all of the things Minnie would have liked to be, I think. She had a full scholarship, and those are hard to come by. Minnie made fun of her for being poor.’ Pauline shrugged, uneasy. ‘I think there was more to it, but Rosa wouldn’t talk about it with us. Dr Chang was in a difficult position because Minnie was at fault but her father was a major donor to the building project, and – well, Rosa wouldn’t tell us what was going on—’

‘So it was easier to get rid of the scholarship girl.’ There was a hint of anger in Maeve’s voice but her face didn’t give her away.

‘That’s basically what happened, yes. It’s not the decision I would have made, but then I’m not in Dr Chang’s position. And Rosa wasn’t asked to leave – not exactly. Dr Chang felt she would be happier elsewhere and her parents agreed. She went to a school that was better for her at the moment.’

‘Did Minnie confide in any adults other than you, do you know? Any other teachers?’ Derwent asked.

Pauline jumped as if she had touched an electric wire. ‘Um … not recently.’

‘But she did at one stage.’ He leaned forward, softening his tone to coax her into trusting him. ‘Come on. We’ll find out anyway.’

She sighed and turned to face him. She was barely more than a schoolgirl herself, I thought.

‘I don’t think it’s relevant. It was just … it was unfortunate.’

‘What happened?’

‘Minnie developed an interest in one of the male teachers here – Zach Roth. She had a bit of a crush on him, I think. He was a music teacher and she was quite musical, so she would find reasons to go to the studio when she knew he was there. She played the guitar and sang. She had a good voice – deep, not a soprano. She sounded like a rock star. You couldn’t put her in a choir or get her to sing classical music, but she had such a distinctive sound and she was determined to make something of it. She wrote her own lyrics – she’d even designed album covers and logos.’ Pauline shook her head. ‘It was a genuine interest of hers, but it also meant she could spend time with Zach, so she became kind of obsessive about it. And he was very much aware it was risky. A twenty-seven-year-old male teacher in a girls’ school might as well have a massive target painted on his chest. He was so careful to keep their relationship on a professional basis. He told her he didn’t have time to read her lyrics or listen to the music she recorded by herself. He did give her advice, but it was just the advice he would have given anyone. He never saw her outside of school, he tried not to be alone with her, he maintained proper professional boundaries.’ She paused, almost short of breath. Her face was still flushed and her eyes glittered with distress.

‘I’m guessing things didn’t stay within those professional boundaries,’ Derwent said.

‘No, they did! But she didn’t like that.’

‘What did she do?’ I asked.

‘She threatened him. She said she would tell Dr Chang he’d behaved inappropriately with her.’

‘But would anyone have believed her?’ Derwent asked.

‘Even the suggestion might have caused trouble. Dr Chang doesn’t take any risks with that sort of thing. And … and she had a couple of text messages from him that were completely innocent but without context you could think they weren’t. Song lyrics. He was quoting things. But if you didn’t know that, you might think it was … inappropriate.’

‘What did she want him to do though?’ Maeve crossed the room, taking an interest again. ‘If he began a relationship with her, he would be in the wrong then too. He’d have got the sack either way.’

‘He pointed that out to her, but she didn’t care. She said she loved him, but I think she’d decided to destroy him if she couldn’t have him. Anyway, there was no question of him starting a relationship with her.’ Pauline pressed her lips together. ‘He would never have done that.’

‘So what happened?’ Derwent asked. ‘Dr Chang didn’t mention this to us.’

‘Dr Chang never knew about it. He left – not just the school, but teaching.’ She cleared her throat, blinking hard. ‘He was my friend. We started working here at the same time. I liked him. A lot.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’ I flipped open my notebook. ‘Can you give us his full name and contact details, please?’

‘He took a job with a band – The Inviolates. They needed some extra musicians for their Asian tour.’

I’d heard of them – I’d actually seen them perform at a festival once. They wrote folksy, quirky songs and had a passionate following of teenagers.

‘He could play anything, really, but he hated performing. He was shy. He just loved making music and because he wasn’t part of the regular line-up he could play on stage with them without attracting too much attention. They were in Thailand in November and – and there was an accident … A moped crash. He didn’t survive.’ The tears spilled over. ‘He should never have been there. He loved teaching and making his own music so much.’

‘Do you have a picture of him?’ Maeve asked gently.

The teacher got her phone and scrolled through it, sniffling. ‘There. That’s him. That’s us together.’

They were smiling, leaning against one another. Zach was thin and handsome in an impeccably nerdy way – little round glasses, floppy hair, an actual cardigan. Unthreatening was the word that came to mind. Ideal for a teenager who was simultaneously drawn to men and frightened of them, who wasn’t pretty and didn’t know how to get what she wanted with charm. He must have been terrified of Minnie, and maybe that was enough for her. If he was scared, at least he was thinking about her. That was all she’d wanted, I thought – to matter to someone, even if it was because of fear, not love.

‘Were you in a relationship with him?’ Maeve asked.

‘No. I’d thought – but no. We were friends. Just friends.’ She touched the screen with a fingertip, then closed the image. ‘I miss him so much.’

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