After the Fire (Maeve Kerrigan) Page 18

‘If we go to Westminster first, I can go on to the Maudling Estate and you can go to the morgue.’

  ‘Why don’t we do the estate first and then split up?’ Derwent asked.

  Because I don’t want you anywhere near Claudine Cole. I couldn’t think of a polite way to say it. He got there on his own anyway.

  ‘You don’t think she’d like to talk to a white male in a position of authority.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I think she’d assume you were like all the other coppers who’d let her and her community down.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Debatable. ‘It’s just something else to overcome. We’re not starting from a strong position with Claudine Cole. I don’t think we should take any risks when we’re dealing with her.’

  ‘What about MI5?’

  ‘I’ve requested any information they can share with us. I wouldn’t hold your breath for them to rush it through.’

  Derwent sighed. ‘Right. We’ll do it your way. You go to see Mrs Cole on your own. Are you going to warn her you’re turning up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Risky.’

  ‘I know. I don’t want to annoy her but I also don’t want anyone from her organisation to disappear because they know I’m coming.’

  Derwent frowned. ‘Do you want me to get someone else to go with you? Liv, maybe?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the Maudling Estate is no place for a woman on her own, even if she’s a copper. Maybe especially if she’s a copper. And you know that better than I do.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But I can manage.’

  He drained the last of the tea from my mug and set it down on the table. ‘Tell you what, Kerrigan, keeping you out of trouble is a full-time job.’

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ I said, ‘that feeling is absolutely mutual.’

  Geoff Armstrong’s office was in Portcullis House, the great block of charmless metal and concrete that lurked by Westminster Bridge, in sorry contrast to Pugin’s golden, ethereal Houses of Parliament. It was quiet as we walked through it, deserted on a Saturday morning when the MPs were all engaged in constituency business.

  Armstrong had been dead for about forty hours and the small set of rooms he’d occupied were already in a state of upheaval. A trolley stood outside in the corridor, loaded with boxes of files and miscellaneous clutter such as a desk lamp and a photograph of Armstrong with a senior American politician. Derwent picked it up and looked at it.

  ‘How did he get to see her?’

  ‘He was good at making himself look important,’ I said, taking it out of his hand and putting it back on the pile. ‘And from what I know of her, they had a lot in common. No benefits, no public medical care, no safety net. Only the strong survive.’

  ‘What happens to the kids?’

  ‘Their parents should look after them. And if they can’t—’

  ‘They shouldn’t have them.’

  ‘Armstrong didn’t have any children,’ I said. ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘You saw Cressida. Those weren’t childbearing hips.’

  ‘She did not seem to be the maternal type,’ I agreed.

  ‘They didn’t want children.’ The voice came from the doorway to Armstrong’s office, where Elaine Lister stood. From her pallor and the purple shadows under her eyes, I guessed she hadn’t slept since the last time I’d seen her. Her hands were grey with dust. She held them in front of her, crossed at the wrist, well away from her clothes. ‘Geoff didn’t believe in having children for the sake of it, he said. He thought it was an indulgence in a world that was already overpopulated.’

  ‘And his wife didn’t mind?’

  ‘She was pleased. She didn’t want to lose her figure. Or her freedom.’

  ‘They were well matched, then,’ Derwent observed.

  ‘I don’t think they had very much in common at all, but they wanted the same things out of life. If that’s a good marriage, they had it.’

  It didn’t sound like my idea of a good marriage, but what did I know? And Derwent’s longest relationships could be measured in weeks, not months. We weren’t in a position to judge the Armstrongs.

  Which was fine, because Elaine Lister was happy to oblige. ‘I suppose it will make it easier for Cressida now that they had separate lives. She’s not going to miss him as much as I will.’

  I blinked and Elaine caught it.

  ‘I suppose that sounds strange, but he was my professional life and he was my best friend. He was at the centre of everything I did. Of course I’m going to miss him. And who is going to want to employ me at my age?’

  ‘You probably shouldn’t worry about that now,’ I said. ‘Just get through the next few days and things will seem a lot clearer.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘What was it you wanted to show us, Mrs Lister?’ Derwent asked gently. ‘You mentioned on the phone that you’d misled us about something.’

  ‘Yes. You’d better come in.’ She led us into the office, where there were more boxes of files and cupboards standing empty.

  ‘Are they making you move out already?’

  ‘I wanted to get on with clearing the office.’ She was the sort of person who needs to have something to do to feel alive, I thought. She almost smiled. ‘And I wanted to get it done before John came in on Monday. I can’t bear him. Always interrupting me, or talking over me. The only reason he ever spoke to me was to get ideas that he could present as his own. Eventually I stopped talking when he was around.’

  ‘Did Mr Armstrong get on with him?’ Derwent asked.

  She pulled a face. ‘I think Geoff thought John was useful. But he was wary of him. He knew John was only working with him because he was a rising star. John would be the first out the door if anything went wrong for Geoff. He likes success. What is it they call people like that? Star fuckers, isn’t it?’

  It was a shock, somehow, to hear her use bad language when she seemed so restrained otherwise. She noticed the flicker of surprise I couldn’t hide and smiled.

  ‘John Grey brings out the worst in me, I’m afraid. He has no heart and I think he sold his soul years ago.’

  ‘So Armstrong and Grey had a purely professional relationship.’

  Elaine nodded. ‘Of course, John is gay. Geoff didn’t really approve of that. He made him promise to be discreet. It’s not that Geoff was homophobic exactly but a lot of his voters would have views on homosexuality. Geoff opposed gay marriage, gay couples having children by IVF – all of the things that homosexuals seem to see as their rights these days.’

  ‘And John Grey didn’t mind that?’

  ‘He viewed it as politically expedient to oppose these things. I have no idea what his personal opinion was or is. You’d have to ask him.’

  ‘Did they ever argue?’

  ‘All the time,’ Elaine said calmly. ‘But not about personal matters.’

  ‘Is that what you wanted to talk to us about?’ I asked. ‘John Grey?’

  ‘No.’ She sat down on one of two low chairs and I took the other one. Derwent perched on the edge of the desk, which meant that we had to look up to him, just the way he liked it.

  Elaine Lister cleared her throat. ‘I wanted to speak to you again because – because I may not have been entirely truthful about Geoff.’

  ‘In what respect?’ I was careful not to sound shocked or surprised, and indeed I was neither. It was so common in a murder case for the victim to be an angel, perfect in every way, until reality supervened.

  She looked down at her hands. ‘I told you he wasn’t having an affair. But – well, I don’t know he was. But there was something strange going on.’

  ‘What can you tell us?’ I asked.

  ‘It started about two months ago. He had me clear three hours every Thursday. No calls unless it was incredibly urgent. No meetings, no appointments. Nothing could come between him and his Thursday afternoons.’

  ‘Did he give you any explanation?’ I asked.

  ‘That he
was going to the Maudling Estate for a meeting of Claudine Cole’s group.’ She looked up. ‘But I rang. I was – suspicious, I suppose. They don’t have meetings on Thursdays.’

  ‘Strange thing to lie about. It’s easy enough to check,’ Derwent said. ‘We’d have found out.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I told you.’ Elaine said it as if it was perfectly reasonable.

  ‘That makes us wonder, you see, if there’s anything else you’ve been hiding about Mr Armstrong.’ Derwent’s voice was quiet but firm. ‘Anything you don’t think we’ll find out, so you’re keeping it hidden.’

  She flushed, biting her lip.

  ‘It’s normal for you to feel loyal to your employer – your friend,’ I said. ‘But the best way to help him now is to tell us what you know. We want to find whoever killed him and we need your help for that.’

  ‘Whoever set the fire, you mean,’ Elaine Lister said.

  ‘I mean whoever killed him.’

  Her lips were bloodless. ‘But I thought – you said he fell out of a window. He jumped.’

  ‘That’s how it looked initially.’

  She leaned back in her chair. ‘I— give me a minute, will you?’

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’ I suggested.

  ‘No. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘It’s a shock,’ Derwent said.

  ‘Well, yes.’ She started to look a little brighter as her intellect took over from her emotions. It was a problem to be solved now. ‘You know, it never made sense to me that he would kill himself. Geoff wasn’t that sort of person. He didn’t run away, ever.’

  ‘It looks as if he died after the fire began,’ I said. ‘We think he was pushed out of the window.’

  ‘So we really need to know who he was meeting there, and why.’ Derwent leaned forward. ‘If there’s anything you can tell us about it, please, now is the time.’

  ‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. But every Thursday morning he sent me out to the cashpoint. The one by Westminster tube station. I got out two hundred pounds for him. And he didn’t have it by Thursday evening, because a couple of times he asked me to lend him twenty quid if he was getting a taxi somewhere.’

  ‘Did he usually ask you to get cash out for him?’

  ‘From time to time, but only if he was really busy. I just thought he wanted to make sure it was done. If he wanted to be certain of anything, he asked me to look after it.’ She saw the look on my face. ‘His work was so demanding, it was easy for things to slip his mind.’

  And he was a giant man-baby who couldn’t even be bothered to organise the cash to pay off his lover. I nodded sympathetically. ‘He really relied on you. Was it always two hundred pounds?’

  ‘When it started, it was a hundred and twenty. It went up, over time. It was two hundred for the last couple of weeks.’

  ‘And when did he start asking you for the cash?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘Two months ago. About the same time he told me to clear Thursday afternoon in his diary. I’d assume the two things were connected,’ she added with a wry smile.

  ‘Me too,’ Derwent said.

  ‘Did you ever hear him making mysterious phone calls?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but there were text messages. I held his phone for him if he was doing a public engagement, and there would be messages from a number I didn’t recognise. Just, “okay” or “great” but it was spelled out with an eight – you know, the numeral.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘I used to say, “your teenager has been in touch again” and he’d laugh.’

  ‘Do you think it was actually a teenager?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no. If it had been, he wouldn’t have found it funny. No, it was just someone he’d picked up.’ For a second, her expression was pure distaste. ‘It’s so common but it was still a shock to me when I worked it out. And he didn’t try to hide it from me. He never talked to me about it, but he must have known I knew what he was doing.’

  ‘He trusted you to keep his secrets,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not all I kept. I thought you’d like these.’ She reached behind her and lifted up a heavy box file from the floor. It was too full, bulging against the catch that held it shut. ‘These are the threats that came in by email or on the Facebook page or Twitter or by post. Anything written down. We got phone calls too but I didn’t record them. I logged them with a brief synopsis of what the caller said but it’s not all that accurate, I’m afraid. Most of the threats were emailed.’

  ‘You said Armstrong told you to throw it away,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t say I did it.’ She handed it to me. ‘I hope there’s something useful in there.’

  Whether there was or there wasn’t, going through it was going to keep me busy. And I couldn’t expect any help from my senior officer, I knew very well, glancing up to see a distant look on his face. He didn’t need to tell me the paperwork was all mine.

  Chapter 19

  I PARKED IN an empty space outside Murchison House, reversing into a spot between two vans. My meeting was in Elton House, the third high-rise tower on the Maudling Estate, but outside Murchison House the parking spaces were still taped off for the emergency services. The building was closed to everyone except the fire investigators, the scene of crime officers who were following up on our inquiries, and the workmen who were starting to make inroads into repairing the structure for the residents. Days after the fire, the building looked worse than ever, dark-streaked where the smoke had stained it, with gaping ugly holes in the walls where the fire had clawed its way out. The sky was concrete grey, the few trees bare and black. There was no colour in it, no life. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to move back into Murchison House, but choice was a luxury. It didn’t take me very long to decide against putting the Police on Duty notice on the dashboard of the car. It looked like a police officer’s car anyway: there was no point in putting an actual target on it.

  I headed into Elton House, my collar turned up against the chill, and took the stairs rather than risk the rattling lift. Claudine Cole lived on the sixth floor and I was glad I was on my own, without Derwent, who would have taken the stairs two or three at a time and complained when I got out of breath. And Liv – she would have struggled to keep up with me. She was too fragile for this, too vulnerable to be back-up. I preferred to be alone. Without wanting to, I thought of her pale face floating in the comforting gloom of the pub, the look of disappointment and surprise in her eyes. I knew she was worried about me, and I knew that, unlike Derwent, she would hold back until I invited her into my world, my problems. They were alike only in that they were both my friends, I thought, then checked myself, because Derwent wasn’t a friend.

  Except that, now and then, I recognised that the way he spoke to me was as close as he could come to telling me he cared. He had added me to the small group of people he would defend with his life, without question, and I knew he was pleased to be able to insert himself into my struggle with Chris Swain. I just wasn’t sure that was something I should be glad about. Derwent had a trick of amplifying any situation he found himself in. If anyone was going to turn Swain from a grenade to a nuclear bomb, it was Derwent.

  On the other hand, I’d been trying to provoke Swain for months, and I’d got no closer to him than before I started. So maybe I needed Derwent.

  I arrived at Claudine Cole’s door and took a second to let my heart rate slow. The door was decorated with a red and a white paper rose intertwined, the symbol of her campaign. A banner underneath read ‘Justice for Levon’, red letters on white satin, the whole thing slightly dingy now. He’d died in August, shot by an armed officer who’d chased him into a stairwell, convinced he was a gunman. A violent gang had just killed a twenty-year-old a few streets away and the area was flooded with armed officers on the lookout for a gunman. Mistaken identity. An easy mistake to make, maybe, when all teenagers seemed to wear the same trainers, the same jeans, the same oversized hoodies that shadowed their faces.

  An unforgivable mist
ake, when you knew Levon Cole, who had never been in a gang in his life.

  I squared my shoulders, took out my warrant card, and knocked on the door. A murmur of voices and the door opened. It wasn’t Claudine Cole who stood there – I would have recognised her instantly, with her beautiful oval face, her braided hair, her huge, shadowed eyes. Instead, a slim black man stood in front of me, his expression unwelcoming behind heavy, dark-framed glasses. His hair was cropped, showing off the fine shape of his skull. He wore a thick cable-knit blue jumper and grey flannel trousers, like a student in the 1960s.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘DC Maeve Kerrigan, Metropolitan Police.’ I held up my warrant card and slid my foot across the threshold in the same moment. It was a mean trick, but a useful one. ‘I’d like to talk to Mrs Cole, please.’

  ‘With regard to what, exactly?’

  ‘With regard to the fire in Murchison House.’

  ‘That has nothing to do with Claudine.’ He started to close the door.

  ‘I know. I’m not suggesting that she was involved. I just really need to speak with her about Geoff Armstrong, the MP.’

  The man stopped. Not looking at me, he said, ‘What about him?’

  ‘He was one of the victims of the fire.’ It wasn’t the time to go into the details of how he’d actually died, I judged. ‘I need to follow up on a few things he said to people about what he was doing here on the estate. He was a regular visitor, apparently, and he said it was in order to support Mrs Cole’s work.’

  A laugh began deep in the man’s stomach, spreading through him until his entire body was shaking. His head was thrown back as he struggled for air. ‘Geoff … Armstrong … of all people … What a complete and total cock.’ He wiped his eyes, calming down. ‘No, it was nothing to do with Claudine.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to her.’

  ‘I’ve told you—’

  ‘And I’d still like to speak to her.’ There was a conversation going on somewhere in the flat, women’s voices, and I strained to hear how many people were there. On and on it ran, water over stones, and I thought I could pick out Claudine Cole’s low tones among the babble. ‘Is there a meeting here this morning?’