Silent Kill
‘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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