Cruel Acts

‘What fucking horseshit.’ Derwent glowered at a driver who was failing to give way to him.

‘There’s more.’

‘Of course there is.’

‘“What must Leo Stone’s lawyers have thought when they read juror Stan Maxwell’s self-published account of the trial? They must have been pleased that they had grounds for an appeal, but I think they must have been horrified too. How easily a man can lose his freedom and his reputation. By his own account, Maxwell and his fellow jurors read the rumours that spread, unchecked, across the internet. They searched for the secrets of Leo Stone’s life: the missing pieces of the puzzle that they weren’t supposed to know. They cheated the system. They cheated Leo Stone. They cheated justice. This is how easy it is to lock up an innocent man: a few unflattering pictures, a few stories that float without attribution or evidence to tether them to the facts of the case, a few arrogant and prejudiced jurors with smartphones.”’

Derwent grunted. ‘Well, he’s not wrong there. Nice of him to mention the dead women too.’

I checked. ‘He didn’t.’

‘I know,’ he said patiently. ‘That was my point.’

‘Wait for the next bit.’

‘Go on.’

‘“But even if they had confined themselves to looking at the evidence, there’s no reason to believe the jury would have been able to make a fair decision. Two murder appeals have been successful already this year because of the revelation that the Home Office pathologist Dr Glen Hanshaw failed to uphold the highest standards of his profession in the months before his death, through ill health and arrogance. Hanshaw is dead and gone. His legacy is a black mark on the legal system that nothing can erase.”’

‘Fuck’s sake.’

‘Don’t crash the car.’ I put a hand on the dashboard to brace myself as Derwent swerved impatiently around a cyclist.

‘That makes it sound as if poor old Hanshaw was deliberately trying to trick people. He was doing his best.’

‘Which wasn’t good enough.’

Derwent shifted in his seat, irritated. ‘He could have done with more oversight but he wasn’t that sort of person. There was no one around to tell him he wasn’t coping. At least, no one he trusted. No one he’d listen to.’

‘If that ever happens to you, I promise I’ll tell you to quit.’

‘If I’m dying and I still want to go to work every day, you have my permission to shoot me.’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘This is why you need to start looking for a new bloke.’

‘Sorry, what?’

‘You’ll end up like Glen Hanshaw if you don’t. You have nothing in your life but work.’

‘Excuse me—’

Derwent held up a hand. ‘Save the outrage. Tell me, when was the last time you went out? Not on a date. Just out.’

I opened my mouth to tell him it was none of his business and shut it again.

‘Ages, is it? Months? Last year some time?’

‘I don’t remember.’

He whistled. ‘Worse than I thought.’

‘I’ve been busy. I’ve been working a lot.’

‘Pulling double shifts. You must be raking in the overtime.’

There it was: a door offering me a way out. I could explain myself by telling Derwent I was just saving up for a deposit so I could buy my own flat and stop paying him rent.

The trouble was, it was a lie.

Worse than that, it was a lie he would spot in a heartbeat.

‘I might be a bit lonely.’

Another glance, this time unexpectedly gentle. I had to look away at the passing streetscape before I could go on. ‘It’s so much easier when you’re in a relationship. You wake up on a day off and you go and do something. No planning. No fuss.’ I swallowed. ‘Everyone I know seems to be getting married, or they’re just married, or they’ve just had a baby. None of my friends are ever at a loose end. They have their own lives – it’s not their fault that I don’t.’

‘What about Liv?’

‘She’s having IVF.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Don’t say anything. She and her girlfriend want to have a baby. They’ve picked a donor but it hasn’t happened yet.’

‘I was about to volunteer,’ Derwent said, and I laughed before I could stop myself. There was a chance – a small one – that he was actually serious.

‘Listen, Kerrigan, you’ve been under a cloud since that two-timing shitweasel dumped you and went off to play happy families with his new bird. You’ve got to get your head straight.’

‘That two-timing shitweasel’, otherwise known as the love of my life, Rob Langton. Derwent wasn’t his biggest fan. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘You’re not getting any younger, you know. If you want to have kids, you need to meet someone in the next year.’

‘I’m not that old.’ Outrage made my voice squeaky.

‘Your clock is ticking, whether you can hear it or not. Think about it. You meet someone. Then you’ve got to spend a year or so getting to know them. Then you’ll want to get married because your parents would shit a brick if you had a child out of wedlock. That’ll take another year to organise. And then you’ll be cleaned out financially. You won’t want to take maternity leave until you’ve built up a bit of cash. Call it another year. Then you can’t assume you’ll get pregnant straight away. All the time your fertility is declining. Sad, really.’

‘You seem to have given this a lot of thought.’ My voice was so cold it could have flash-frozen a side of beef. Derwent wasn’t noticeably affected.

‘It’s just common sense, isn’t it, but you don’t seem to have any.’

‘I know you’ve embraced domesticity—’

‘This has nothing to do with me.’

‘You’re so right. So why are we talking about it?’ I waggled my phone at him. ‘Do you want to hear the end of this or not?’

‘Give it to me. I can take it.’

‘“After his successful appeal yesterday, Leo Stone deserves an apology from all of us. The Metropolitan Police, too, must bear responsibility for this miscarriage of justice. The CPS is insisting there must be a retrial, wasting more time and money. An innocent man must suffer because they can’t bear to admit they made a mistake. Sara Grey’s family have campaigned for Leo Stone’s release from prison. They, like me, believe Leo Stone is innocent of these murders. He is a victim of this crime, like the two women he was alleged to have killed. If the Home Secretary has any sense she will discourage the CPS from pursuing him any further so the Met can reopen the case and, this time, bring the real killer to justice.”’

‘Who wrote this?’

‘A journalist named Christopher Fallon.’ I showed Derwent the byline photograph, knowing it would irritate him further.

‘State of him. Pencil-necked twerp, telling me I can’t do my job. Listen, Christopher, if I want your opinion I’ll come round to your house and beat it out of you.’

‘He’d be shaking in his shoes if he could hear you.’

Derwent glowered at me instead. ‘You don’t think that sort of piece affects public opinion?’

‘A tiny number of people will read it.’

‘The victims’ families will read it.’

‘True. But they don’t love us anyway.’

Derwent didn’t reply, because it was true. That was one very good reason why we had decided to do places before people.

I concentrated on the directions DCI Whitlock had given us, aware that if Derwent took a wrong turning it would be my fault. The roads got narrower as we came closer to the Greys’ home, and Derwent slowed down. The slackening speed of the car seemed to mirror my reluctance to get there.

‘They’re angry. Very angry. They won’t trust you and they definitely won’t help you,’ Whitlock had warned us. I liked to make my own mistakes, instead of inheriting the results of other people’s poor judgement.

‘That’s it up there.’ I pointed to the right, where a white, thatched building stood in a gravelled yard. It was a barn conversion, half-timbered and sagging under its heavy roof. It appeared ancient but well looked after.

‘Big, isn’t it?’

‘They’re well off. She’s a retired GP and he was a management consultant.’ I hesitated, waiting for him to turn the car through the gate. ‘Remember what the boss said. We need to be on our best behaviour.’

‘I know you’re not implying I would do anything else.’

‘I wouldn’t dare.’

Derwent parked beside a battered Volvo and a newish BMW. ‘Let’s see those convent manners, Kerrigan. I’m counting on you to charm them.’

Charm was not going to be enough, I thought, on edge as Derwent rang the doorbell.

The car had been loud on the gravel, so they had known we were outside. Even so, it took a long time for anyone to come to the door. When it opened, an elderly man stood in front of us. He was leaning on a stick.

‘Mr Grey?’

A nod.

I introduced myself and Derwent. ‘Thank you for agreeing to speak with us.’

‘We had no choice.’ He stepped back and disappeared into the house, leaving us to shut the door and follow him into a huge double-height room with a brick fireplace at one end and a kitchen at the other. A slim, pale woman sat on one sofa, her face tight with tension. Mrs Grey, I guessed, and corrected myself: Dr Grey. She stood up as we approached, but her eyes followed her husband, not us. He had a dragging walk, one foot sliding along the ground as he moved.

A second man stood by the fireplace, his hands in the pockets of immaculately pressed chinos. He had the ruddy complexion of a man who spends a lot of time on golf courses, and his hair was slicked back from his forehead. I knew before he spoke that he was going to have the sort of plummy voice that made my hackles rise.

‘Hi. Tom Mitchell.’ He leaned across and shook hands with Derwent, sketching a wave in my direction. ‘I was Sara’s fiancé at the time of her disappearance.’

‘Please tell us’ – Mr Grey sat down with a grunt of effort – ‘what exactly this charade is supposed to achieve? You’re investigating Sara’s murder all over again so you can prove that Leo Stone did it.’

‘We’re examining every aspect of the previous investigation to make sure we haven’t overlooked any details,’ Derwent said.

‘And if you have?’

‘Then we’ll advise the CPS accordingly.’

‘What a waste of everyone’s time,’ Mr Grey spat. ‘An exercise in reinforcing a set of errors that should never have been made. A cover-up for your friends, so no one realises they framed an innocent man.’

‘There was a considerable amount of evidence that suggested Mr Stone was your daughter’s killer,’ I said tentatively.

‘That’s what you wanted everyone to believe.’

‘The fact is that no one knows who took my daughter.’ Dr Grey’s voice was low and precise. ‘No one ever traced the person who killed her. I’m absolutely sure of that. We’re asked to believe that Leo killed her purely because her body was left in the same area as Willa Howard. Well, I’m sorry. It isn’t convincing to me and I don’t think it would have convinced the jury if they hadn’t broken the law to find out more about Leo.’

Leo. ‘Are you in contact with Mr Stone?’

‘Not directly. We get messages from him.’

‘Written messages?’

‘No. His son Kelly is in touch with us. He passes on communications from Leo.’

‘What sort of communications?’ Derwent asked and Dr Grey glanced at him before she answered.

‘He’s very grateful to us for our campaigning on his behalf. I always say it’s in our interests as well. We want Sara’s real killer to be located and punished. He shows tremendous empathy to us in our difficulties. Kelly, too. He’s quite remarkable.’ Dr Grey took out a handkerchief and pressed it under her eyes. ‘They want us to get justice for Sara’s sake, not just because Leo is incarcerated. I can’t believe that after all this, you’re pursuing him again.’

‘What would you prefer us to do?’ Derwent asked.

‘Find the real killer, of course.’ She flung out a hand in irritation. ‘Your stupid colleagues wasted weeks bothering Tom and his friends, even though he wasn’t in the country when poor Sara disappeared. He couldn’t have been involved and we said so. But they didn’t listen. They were utterly determined to make him into a killer. They wanted to turn us against him but we didn’t listen, did we, Tom?’

‘No. And I was very grateful.’ Tom looked from me to Derwent and back again. ‘I’m not going to tell you how to do your job but I can save you a lot of time if you’re drawing up a list of suspects. I wasn’t involved.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Derwent’s voice carried the slightest overtone of I’ll-be-the-judge-of-that.

‘The fact is,’ Dr Grey said again, ‘your colleagues struck lucky when they found Sara’s body. They saw an opportunity to make Leo take responsibility for Sara’s death as well as the other girl’s. Far easier than looking for a second killer.’

‘But the two bodies were left in much the same way,’ I began.

‘A dead body is a dead body, especially if it’s left outside. There was nothing left of her. She was eaten, Detective. Animals took her flesh. Her face. Her hands. She was utterly decomposed. Have you read the pathologist’s report?’

‘I’ve spoken with the pathologist who is working on this case now.’ In the face of Dr Grey’s anger I felt like a badly prepared student. I should have read Dr Hanshaw’s report as well as talking to Dr Early.

‘They didn’t even find all her bones. The small ones disappear. They were missing twenty-three bones – vertebrae, toes, fingers. Bones that I made.’ She stopped, choking with emotion, the mother in her elbowing aside the rational scientist who believed in facts above all. ‘I blame them for not finding Sara’s killer. I don’t think the original investigation was adequate in any way. I do not believe that Leo was involved in the slightest, with either murder. I will not help you to lock him up again.’

‘That’s not our aim.’ I really hoped Derwent wouldn’t contradict me. ‘Our intention is to review the evidence and make sure the correct person is prosecuted for murder. If the evidence leads us towards Mr Stone, we’ll know that the original investigation was sound. If it leads us away from him, please believe me, we’ll follow the facts. We don’t want an innocent man to be behind bars. We want justice for your daughter too, and we’ll work as hard as we can to get it.’

‘I gather from DCI Whitlock that Sara’s possessions are here,’ Derwent slid into the quiet aftermath of a speech that I was both proud and embarrassed to have made. ‘Is it possible for us to look at them?’

‘I suppose so,’ Dr Grey said heavily.

‘I’ll show you.’ Tom Mitchell started towards the stairs that led up to an upper floor. He moved quickly, full of nervous energy. I caught a flash of gold from his left hand as I followed him: a wedding ring. ‘It’s all boxed up, I’m afraid. But the police went through everything. They couldn’t find anything in Sara’s life that would have made someone want to harm her.’

He led us into a room that should have been a bedroom but it had no furniture in it. Boxes piled on top of boxes filled the space instead. The room smelled musty and he pushed open the window.

‘She’d moved out, you see. There was nothing here. All her things were in our flat. I kept everything for a long time. I didn’t want to clear Sara out of my life, I suppose. But in the end I had to. She wasn’t coming back. Barbara – that’s Dr Grey – didn’t want to unpack it so it ended up here.’ He stood in the middle of the room and looked around, his posture somehow conveying bafflement and longstanding grief. ‘Not much, is there? Not for a whole life.’

I felt unexpectedly sorry for him, and angry with myself for my reverse snobbishness. Bad things could happen to wealthy, privileged men who wore Ralph Lauren cashmere jumpers and inherited signet rings, the crest softened and blurred by time. Life wasn’t easy for anyone who mourned, whether they were rich or poor.

‘What do you think happened to her?’ I asked, taking advantage of the fact that the door was closed.

‘She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He rubbed his head with his left hand and winced. ‘I keep forgetting I’ve got a ring on this hand and end up battering myself.’

‘Recent addition?’ Derwent asked.

‘I got married a couple of months ago.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘I felt weird about it. The Greys said they understood, but—’ he broke off. ‘Oh, you know. It shouldn’t have been this way. It should have been Sara.’

‘Is that how you felt?’

‘A bit.’ He looked miserable. ‘A lot. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.’

‘What does your missus make of that?’ Derwent asked, and I was glad he had, because I was wondering the same thing.

‘She understands of course.’ He held himself stiffly, guarded now. ‘She was one of Sara’s best friends. It helps that she knew her so well. We talk about Sara a lot. She misses her too.’

‘I’m sure she does,’ I said.

‘Vanessa was supposed to be our bridesmaid.’ Tom sighed. ‘I’m lucky to have her.’

We got back into the car after a long and thoroughly unhelpful search through Sara Grey’s possessions – the clothes, the photographs, the school reports and letters, and books she had loved. The Greys had sent us on our way without warmth, just as angry as they had been when we arrived, despite my best efforts.

Derwent drove out through the gate with a sigh of relief.

‘They really don’t want Leo to be guilty, do they?’

‘Nope.’

‘They must see something in him that I don’t.’

‘The son has obviously worked hard on them. Plus the original investigation burned through any goodwill there might have been towards us by focusing on Tom.’ I shook my head. ‘Maybe it’s just that they don’t feel any better for having Leo locked up. It hasn’t brought their daughter back. If he’s the wrong man, they can keep looking for justice.’

Derwent nodded. ‘So how long would you give Tom Mitchell’s new marriage?’

‘Months.’

‘Weeks, I’d say.’

‘Days.’

‘It’s over already.’

‘It never started,’ I said soberly. ‘He’s not over Sara yet. Maybe he’ll never get over her.’

‘Poor bloke,’ Derwent said, as if he meant it.

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