After the Fire (39 page)

‘I only wanted money. A watch, a ring – people can say, “Yes, that belonged to my father.” People remember watches and rings. Money has no owner.’

I nodded. ‘And you wanted more money, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t—’

‘The woman gave it to you. You had over a thousand pounds in cash on you when the police picked you up at the truck stop. New notes. If you’d earned it from prostituting yourself, it would have been in fives and tens and twenties, not consecutively numbered new twenties.’

She bit her lip. ‘I needed to get away. She owed me. And she was rich. She could help me.’

I was thinking of Justine Rickards, of the money she’d been saving for her operation. ‘What was the woman’s name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where did she live? On the estate?’

‘I don’t know. We took a taxi to a hotel near a motorway. She paid for the taxi and for a room for three nights. She came back after two nights with money. I didn’t think she’d come, but she did. I didn’t see her. She put it under the door.’

‘Did she give you a way to contact her?’

‘No.’

‘Describe her.’

A shrug. ‘I can’t.’

‘Height.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Hair colour.’

‘She had a scarf over her head.’

‘Skin colour.’

A shrug. ‘White.’

‘White? Are you sure?’ I didn’t mean for my voice to be as sharp as it sounded.

‘Yes. Of course. Like you.’

Justine Rickards was light-skinned, but there was no way on God’s earth anyone could have confused her skin with my sun-hating Irish complexion.

‘White,’ I said.

‘Yes, this is what I’m saying, white.’

‘Eye colour?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

I sighed, frustrated. ‘Age?’

‘Old.’ She looked at Una. ‘Same as you, maybe.’

The chief inspector’s mouth twitched. ‘Right. Thank you.’

‘If I showed you a photograph of her, would you recognise her?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Drina,’ I said. ‘This is important.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t sound it. ‘I can’t say anything more.’

Whether she couldn’t or wouldn’t, there was no budging her. I persevered for a little while and got nowhere. When I emerged from the interview room, Derwent was waiting outside the door.

‘That was nice work.’

‘Sort of.’

‘Where does it leave us?’

‘Looking for a white woman who wanted Armstrong dead. Someone who carried pepper spray. Someone who was made murderously angry to discover he’d been sleeping with someone else.’

‘His wife.’ Derwent stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘He’d warned her to arm herself. I never believed she didn’t know exactly where he was. There’s vague and there’s wilful ignorance.’

‘Go and see her,’ Una Burt said. ‘Put her under pressure.’

‘Two minutes,’ I said. ‘There’s something I want to check first.’

THE HOUSE LOOKED
empty. The curtains were drawn at all the windows, even though it was mid-morning, and there was an indefinable air of abandonment to the place. Derwent rang the doorbell for a good long time, his eyes on me throughout, as if it was my fault that no one was answering. Eventually, I saw a figure approaching the door. It was the housekeeper who’d been making soup the last time we visited the Armstrongs. She looked terrified when she saw us.

‘We wanted to speak to Mrs Armstrong, please. Is she here?’ Derwent asked.

A nod and she stood back to let us come in, her hands plucking the little apron she wore. The sound of footsteps on the stairs made me look up. Elaine Lister was running down the steps. She stopped when she saw us.

‘Oh. I thought it was a delivery or the press again.’

‘No. Just us.’ Derwent frowned up at her. ‘Where’s Mrs Armstrong?’

‘She’s in bed, I think.’ Elaine came down another step. ‘She hasn’t been feeling too well.’

‘Can we see her?’

‘Is it just an update on the case?’

‘Yes,’ Derwent said easily. ‘We just need a quick word with her.’

‘Unless it’s urgent, I’m afraid—’

‘We really do need to speak to her,’ I said, not having the patience to negotiate with Armstrong’s secretary any longer.

‘Of course.’ She gave me a tight-lipped smile. ‘I’ll get her to come down.’

‘No need.’ Derwent took the stairs two at a time, arriving at Elaine’s side before she had time to protest. ‘We can speak to her up here.’

‘Oh. I’ll just go and see.’ Elaine looked at the housekeeper, a look that sent the woman scurrying back to the kitchen. Then she led us up the stairs, not hurrying, until she reached a closed door. ‘Wait here, please.’

She tapped on the door, then went in without waiting for an answer. I looked around, noting the paintings on the walls, the oriental rugs, the general air of wealth and privilege. It felt like a glamorous sort of prison to me, with paid warders to control every aspect of the inmates’ lives.

The door opened again. ‘You can come in, but not for long.’

The room was dark. It smelled sour, as if the windows hadn’t been opened for a long time. Cressida Armstrong was in bed, sitting up against some pillows. She looked thinner than on our previous visit, and the half-closed eyes made me think she was dopey with drugs.

‘Can we have some light in here?’ Derwent asked and Elaine opened one set of curtains, the heavy oyster-coloured silk sweeping back to reveal an elaborate, highly feminine bedroom.

‘Mrs Armstrong. Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she muttered. Her words were slurred.

‘What’s she on?’ Derwent asked Elaine, his irritation obvious.

‘Whatever the doctor prescribed. She was anxious. She was finding it hard to sleep.’

‘Cressida, are you listening to me?’ Derwent sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Cressida, I need to talk to you about Geoff.’

‘He’s gone.’ She dragged her eyes open with an effort. ‘He’s left me. All alone.’

‘She wasn’t like this the other day,’ I said in a low voice.

‘It took a while to sink in. She enjoyed the attention at first. The excitement.’ Elaine looked at Cressida. ‘Then she realised what it meant.’

‘Cressida, do you have a mobile phone?’ Derwent asked.

‘In my bag.’ She gestured at a handbag that was on a chair near the bed.

‘Can I look at it?’

‘Of course.’ Her eyes closed again, her head tilting back. Out of it.

Derwent pulled on some gloves and went through the bag, his movements deft and careful. The first thing he took out was a small can of pepper spray, which he put on the table by the bed. He set her mobile phone beside it and pointed at the pepper spray.

‘That’s not legal.’

‘Geoff bought it for her. She wouldn’t have known anything about it being legal or illegal. You can take it away if you want.’

‘I will,’ Derwent said. He levered off the cap and looked at it. ‘As I thought.’

‘What? What did you think?’ Elaine asked.

Derwent ignored her. He checked the phone was switched on and had reception, then nodded to me. I took out my phone and dialled the number I’d noted from Armstrong’s phone records, the records that had finally turned up about ten minutes before we left the office. The three of us stared at the bedside table, at the phone. Cressida was miles away, floating on a chemical cloud of bliss. The room was so quiet, everyone could hear the purring sound from my phone as the number I had dialled rang, and rang, and rang.

The phone on the bedside table didn’t so much as beep.

‘What are you doing?’ Elaine asked.

‘Checking to see if Mrs Armstrong was in contact with her husband before he died.’ I sighed. ‘No luck.’

‘What number did you dial?’

‘The last number he called.’ I shook my head at Derwent. ‘Out of luck, I’m afraid.’

I could hear the regular tread of someone climbing the stairs, not quickly. There was a tap on the door and the housekeeper’s worried face peered around it. She held out a phone to Elaine Lister. ‘You left your phone downstairs. Someone called you. Just now. I thought it might be urgent.’

I thought Elaine was going to smack it out of her hand. She lunged towards the housekeeper and I stepped in the way, shoving her back against a chest of drawers. Framed photographs toppled over and Cressida opened her eyes.

‘That’s interesting,’ Derwent said, having taken the phone himself. ‘That’s your number, Kerrigan.’

‘Imagine that,’ I said flatly.

‘Elaine Lister, you are under arrest for the murder of Geoff Armstrong on the twenty-eighth of November of this year. You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something you later rely on in Court. Anything you say will be used in evidence.’

‘This is insane.’ Elaine twisted in my grip, trying to get free.

‘We can work out exactly where the phone has been, you see. And when. We can put you in the flat with Armstrong when he died.’ Derwent looked at Elaine and his expression was cold. ‘We’ve got a witness.’ Who was probably not going to cooperate with us. ‘We’ve got you on CCTV.’ An image so smudgy that she was truly unidentifiable, her head hidden with a scarf. Derwent moved on to more solid ground. ‘We’ve got the cashier’s stamp and initials on the cool grand you dropped on paying off your little accomplice, so we can work out which bank you got it from and check their CCTV to prove the money came from you. Your money, your bank account, your partner in crime who’s in custody even as we speak. We have your phone. And Cressida’s pepper spray has never been used. It’s still sealed. I think we’ll find that yours, on the other hand,
was
used. And it was used on Geoff Armstrong himself, just before you killed him.’

‘Fuck you,’ Elaine spat. She tried to struggle away from me but I held on to her.

‘Why did you do it, Elaine? Tell us. We know everything else, and we can prove it. You loved him, didn’t you?’ Derwent’s tone was calm. Conversational. Reasonable, even. ‘Why did you kill him?’

‘Why were you even there?’ I frowned at her, as if she puzzled me. As if I thought she was pathetic. ‘He didn’t need you. He didn’t want you. So why were you there?’

The words tore out of her. ‘I wanted to help him. I wanted to rescue him.’

‘Did you start the fire?’

‘No. No, of course not. I followed him there. I always did. It wasn’t safe for him to be there. I waited downstairs, in case he needed me. And then he did.’ Her face was glistening with sweat and tears and her nose was running. She couldn’t have looked less attractive, less heroic, less like the image of herself she’d had as she charged up the stairs to the rescue. ‘I heard the alarms. I saw the smoke. I called him and he wasn’t going to leave. I mean, I could see flames. It wasn’t just a little fire. It was breaking windows, bursting through the walls. He was in terrible danger.’

‘And you went to rescue him.’

‘I wanted to help him get out. I saw
her
.’

‘Her?’

‘The black
bitch
he was fucking.
She
ran away. She
left
him. She can’t have cared about him at all.’

I didn’t think it was the right moment to explain about Armstrong and Justine and their arrangement.

In the bed, Cressida stirred. ‘What did she say? Who?’

Elaine ignored her, thankfully. She was absorbed in her own difficulties, her own sacrifices.

‘I went to save him, even though it was dangerous.’

‘And he didn’t appreciate it,’ I said quietly. ‘He shouted at you.’

‘He called me a moron.’ She sobbed, once. ‘I had the pepper spray in my hand. I don’t know what I was thinking. It just made me so angry that he spoke to me like that. I’ve given him
everything
. I was risking my life for him. I sprayed him with it and he was completely furious.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘The things he said. He shouted. I couldn’t bear it. He was kneeling down at my feet, rubbing his eyes, and I put my scarf around his neck and pulled. I wanted to make him take me seriously. I wanted him to be scared of me. I wanted him to know how angry I was. I wanted him to realise he couldn’t speak to me that way.’ She blinked. ‘It was only supposed to scare him. But then – then he died …’

She broke down, weeping and raging at us, at Cressida who was struggling to understand what was going on. The housekeeper wept too, in the hall, sitting on a chair with a hand over her mouth. Reluctantly, Derwent handcuffed Elaine for our safety and her own, with her wrists in front of her. Something about being handcuffed made her calmer, as if it made it all real in a way it hadn’t been before. I helped her down the stairs as Derwent called for a van to transport her to the nearest police station. He phoned Una Burt too, to give her the good news, and he wasn’t standing quite far enough away from the house as he spoke, the ring of triumph all too audible to me. Elaine Lister shivered like a puppy beside me in the hall. I watched her in a great gilt-framed mirror that hung on the wall, not quite able to stare at her directly. She was gulping air in a way I recognised.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I think – I think I’m going to be sick.’ She jumped up and I stood too. ‘There’s a cloakroom here – if I might – Oh,
God
…’

It was a tiny room, a sink and a lavatory and nothing but a framed print on the wall. I let her go in and stood outside with the door open, listening to the too-familiar retch and spatter.

Derwent came through the front door and raised his eyebrows. ‘Escaped, has she?’

‘Being sick,’ I said, glancing at Derwent.
Better here than in the van
, we were both thinking, and we thought it for a second too long. I heard the crack and tinkle of glass breaking and I knew what it was before I even turned around: she had used the handcuffs to smash the thin picture glass to long, cutting shards. I moved as quickly as I could, hurling myself through the doorway, and it was too slow but I was never going to be fast enough to stop her.

I got a hand to the rigid bar that linked the cuffs and dragged it down with as much force as I could muster, pulling her hands down, away from her face, yanking her into the hall to sprawl on the carpet. I put my foot on the cuffs, holding her hands down as Derwent carefully drew a four-inch piece of glass out from between her fingers.