The Kill (18 page)

‘I’m a police officer,’ Derwent said. He was still uncharacteristically quiet. ‘I actually do have a firearms cert. I’m firearms qualified.’

Stuart took a long look at him. He was younger than Hardy, with a shrewd demeanour. He hefted the rifle. ‘Ever fired one of these?’

‘Not for years.’

He held it out to Derwent, who took it and pointed it towards the ground. He pulled back the bolt and squinted down the barrel. Apparently satisfied, he pushed the bolt forward to close the breech and pulled the trigger. There was a click as the firing pin connected with nothing.

‘You were in the services,’ Stuart said.

‘The army.’

Stuart nodded. ‘I’ll take you out. Are you right-handed?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You can use my kit, then. Here’s the jacket. Might be a bit tight on you.’

It was a special shooting jacket, with a leather patch at the shoulder and a strap that attached to the gun. Derwent shrugged it on while Stuart waited to hand him a single heavy glove.

‘Stuart is one of our instructors,’ Hardy explained to me. ‘Stuart Pilgrew. Competed in the World Championships in 2004.’

‘It was 2005.’ Stuart flicked a look at me. ‘And I didn’t get anywhere.’

‘Still pretty impressive,’ I said, which was what Hardy had seemed to be expecting me to say. He turned back to Derwent and I wandered past him into the armoury, expecting at any moment to be called back. It was a small room, lined with racks for rifles and a cupboard for pistols. There was a teenager in there, a rifle in pieces on a table in front of him as he cleaned it. It occurred to me he might be one of Gibney’s protégés. He glanced up, his eyes wary. Brown hair, very short. His eyebrows were faint and almost invisible. It gave his face a vulnerable look.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m a police officer. I’m just looking around.’

He mumbled something and then stood up, knocking the table with one leg as he headed for the door. The rifle parts slid sideways and almost fell. He steadied the table and hurried out, his face bright red.

The horror of being a self-conscious teenager, I thought. ‘You don’t have to go.’

It was too late. By the time I got to the door he was walking across the club room, head down, making for the door with a sign for toilets.

‘Jonny, where are you going?’ It was Stuart who called out to him, his voice tight with irritation. The boy’s shoulders hunched up further around his ears and he disappeared through the door without breaking his stride.

‘Is he yours?’ I asked.

‘So my wife says.’

Derwent laughed. I didn’t. I was thinking that a lot of teenage boys seemed to be running away from me these days. The fifteen-year-old me would have been heartbroken.

Hardy said, ‘Sorry, Stuart. I didn’t know you were here with Jonny. If you need to go, I can find someone else to take DI Derwent to the shooting range.’

‘It’s fine. We’ve only just got here. Jonny’s making himself useful while I get some practice in. It’ll be his turn in an hour.’

‘Does he come and watch you?’ I asked.

‘Not him. He used to. Now he thinks he knows it all.’ Stuart hefted a mat on to his shoulder. ‘Unfortunately for me, he shoots a lot better than I do. He shoots better than I ever did.’

‘That’s annoying,’ Derwent said.

‘Isn’t it?’

The two of them went out together, ahead of me and Hardy, talking in low voices as they walked. There was a short path down to the range, which was essentially a long, low concrete shelter. Three others were shooting, though we’d arrived during a break. Hardy handed me a pair of ear defenders.

‘Put them on, please. It gets loud down here.’

Stuart went out to put up some new targets for Derwent. There were three, at intervals in front of us – 25 metres, 50 metres and 100 metres. I stood at the back of the shelter, watching as Derwent settled himself on the ground and peered through the sights.

Stuart came back and lay down next to Derwent. He conferred with him, gesturing from the gun to the targets. Derwent nodded a couple of times, but not in his usual bored way. He was concentrating, for once. This mattered to him. He leaned in, his body completely still, his gloved hand supporting the weapon as he focused on the first target.

Even with the ear defenders, the sound of four rifles firing more or less in unison was shatteringly loud. My eyesight wasn’t good enough to let me see how well Derwent was doing, but Hardy was watching through binoculars and he nodded a couple of times. I lost count of how many rounds they fired. Ejected casings rang and rattled as they fell on the concrete beside Derwent.

As the firing died away, the man in charge of the range shouted, ‘Cease firing. Breeches open. Change targets.’

Derwent did as he was told, then sat up, turning his back on the range, ripping his ear defenders off and letting them fall to the ground beside him. He leaned his elbows on his knees and stared into space with a concentrated expression. Stuart went out to collect the targets and I took my ear defenders off.

‘Impressive,’ Hardy said. Derwent didn’t answer. He stood up instead and slid off the jacket and glove. He gave them to me and went straight past me, up the path, heading for the car park.

‘Is he all right?’ Hardy asked.

‘Usually,’ I said.

Stuart came back to us and took the equipment from me, giving me the targets instead. ‘That was good shooting. Very good. He said he hadn’t used a rifle in years, but you’d never know from these.’

‘He should compete,’ Hardy said. ‘I could see about getting a recommendation for him from a member. Being a police officer I don’t think we’d have any problem about admitting him.’

‘I’ll let him know.’ I gave back the ear defenders and thanked them both, then followed Derwent’s route back to the car.

I’d expected him to be waiting for me but I couldn’t see him at first. Then I heard retching nearby. I went around the car and saw him leaning on the boot of the one parked next to us. As I approached he gave another heave and I heard the splatter of vomit on tarmac. I stood and waited until he seemed to have stopped. He was still bent over, but his breathing was returning to normal.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’ He straightened up and wiped his mouth.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’ He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

‘You’ve just thrown up all over someone’s car. That’s not nothing.’

He glanced at the car, which was a dusty green Nissan with a dent in one door. I was glad it wasn’t one of the smarter models in the car park.

‘It’s just a few splashes. They won’t notice.’

‘They might.’

‘Who cares,’ he said on an exhalation.

‘They might,’ I said again.

‘The rain will take care of it.’ His tone told me the subject was now closed. He unlocked the car and got in. I hurried around to my side and got in, looking across at him as I put on my seatbelt. He leaned across to get a stick of chewing gum from the glove box.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you want these?’ I handed him the targets and he threw them into the back seat without looking at them. ‘They said you were good.’

‘Yeah, obviously.’

‘They said you should compete.’

‘Fuck, no.’ He drove out of the car park at speed. We bumped down the track towards the main road in silence, far too fast for comfort. I braced one hand on the dashboard, knowing that it would annoy him.

While we were stopped, waiting to pull out into traffic, Derwent said, ‘And don’t ask about it any more.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘You’re the one who brought it up.’

‘Don’t mention it again. To anyone.’

‘Fine.’

‘I mean it.’

‘I understand.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t. Now, where’s this rich bloke’s house?’

‘Do you want to talk to him now?’ I was scrabbling for the map and my notebook, trying to recall whether we needed to start by turning right or left and coming up blank.

He gave me a filthy look. ‘No, I suppose not. It’s only a murder investigation. Only a dead copper. Nothing too urgent, is it? No need for a quick-time response.’

‘Right,’ I said under my breath. Because of course, for every revelation of weakness, there had to be an equal and opposite show of strength. I should have expected it. I knew to expect it. I concentrated on the map and told myself I didn’t mind.

It almost worked.

Chapter 12

Tigg’s Lane was a devil to find, and by the time we located Callancote’s high gates, Derwent was in a correspondingly demonic mood. I took on the job of dealing with the intercom, holding up my warrant card to the camera and hoping it was legible enough to get us in. The gates wheezed open eventually and Derwent drove in, leaving me to walk up the winding drive. I didn’t mind. It gave me time to look at the well-kept gardens and the neat Georgian symmetry of the redbrick house.

The door was open when I reached the front steps, where Derwent was already deep in conversation with a small, plump man who looked as if his face was made for smiling. Currently, though, he wasn’t.

Derwent gave me a warning look that had just a touch of pleading in it, and I braced myself without knowing what to expect. ‘This is Rex Gibney. Mr Gibney, this is my colleague, DC Maeve Kerrigan.’

Gibney’s response told me exactly what I was dealing with: a good old-fashioned sexist. ‘The lady from the gate. I was just telling your pal here I wouldn’t have let him in if he’d buzzed. Good thing he sent you to do it. I couldn’t say no to a female in distress, could I?’

‘I hope I didn’t look as if I was in distress.’ I smiled at him. ‘It’s good of you to see us, Mr Gibney. I’m sorry to turn up without warning.’

‘Andrew Hardy rang me.’

‘Did he?’ I shouldn’t have been surprised. I hadn’t told him not to warn Gibney that we were on our way. ‘What did he say?’

‘That you had questions about the shooting in Richmond Park. I doubt I can help you.’ Behind small glasses, his eyes were as cold as glacier ice. ‘I don’t know why Hardy thought I could.’

‘We asked him about people who were enthusiasts for guns and shooting and he gave us your name. We just have a few general questions.’ There was a timely gust of wind that carried a handful of rain and I didn’t have to pretend to shiver. ‘If we could come inside for a few moments …’

‘As I said, I doubt I can help.’ He stood there for a few seconds, not moving. We didn’t move either. This was a world away from the warmth and generosity Hardy had described, and I thought two things: that most wealthy people didn’t make their fortune by being nice, and that Gibney probably wasn’t a big fan of the police if his interest in guns ran beyond what was legal.

Possibly it was the fact that my teeth were chattering that roused Gibney’s conscience.

‘Come in, if you must.’ He stood back and we piled into the marble-tiled hall without waiting for him to think again. It wasn’t a large house but the proportions were lovely. I looked up at the ceiling. It was a riot of ornate plasterwork, an elaborate procession of sheaves of wheat and bunches of grapes and musical instruments.

‘All original.’ Gibney sounded very slightly more friendly. ‘We had it restored when we moved in.’

‘It’s amazing.’

‘You’d better come through to the study. It’s the other side of the sitting room. These old houses, the rooms lead into one another. They didn’t believe in corridors.’

As Gibney turned to open a heavy mahogany door, Derwent applauded silently. I gathered I was being thanked for getting us out of the hall. I shook my head at him. I hadn’t been faking an interest in the house, and if I had been pretending I thought Gibney would have noticed it. He was sharp, despite his age and cuddly appearance. Derwent needed to watch his step, and so did I.

There was a grey-haired woman in the sitting room with a Pomeranian perched on her lap. She looked up at us, surprised, but Gibney just waved at her and kept walking. No introductions, but this was Mrs Gibney, I gathered. I smiled at her in what I hoped was a reassuring way. The room was warm and comfortable rather than formal, but the overall impression was of wealth and furniture chosen to be in keeping with the period of the house.

The study was small and not the book-lined room I’d been anticipating. There was one breakfront bookcase but the books in it looked as if they had been bought by the yard, matching sets jammed in tightly so you’d break the spine if you tried to pull one out. An ottoman in front of the fireplace had a stack of newspapers on it, and Gibney sat in a chair nearby with the air of a man coming home.

‘I read the papers every day. Keep up with the news.’

‘And the crossword?’ Derwent asked, sitting opposite him.

‘No. Can’t be bothered with that sort of thing. Pointless. Pat yourself on the back for being clever enough to work out something that thousands of people have guessed before you.’

‘Mr Hardy told us you used to have a business hiring out equipment to builders,’ I said.

‘We had everything. Cranes and cherry-pickers. The big stuff. If you wanted it there on time and in good working order, you called Gibney’s. We guaranteed to supply what you needed when you needed it or you’d get what you wanted half-price. But we hardly ever had to do that.’

‘Looks as if it was a good line of work,’ Derwent commented.

‘Because of this place?’ Gibney chuckled. ‘Well, we’re lucky. We’re not short of cash, put it that way. But we bought this house in the eighties. The previous owners were direct descendants of the family who built it in the eighteenth century. I don’t know how they’d hung on to it for so long; the last one who had any money was the one who built Callancote. I got it for next to nothing. They were desperate to sell and no one wanted to buy it. There was a recession on. Anyway, it wasn’t a country estate. It was in the suburbs, according to the estate agent.’ He laughed again. ‘Nearest house is a mile and a half away but that’s not far enough for some people.’

‘It feels as if we’re in the middle of the country,’ I said, glancing out the window at the mature oak trees that ringed an immaculate lawn.