The Kill (43 page)

‘We know she’s got an accomplice out there somewhere,’ Derwent pointed out. ‘She didn’t shoot Hammond. She just made it possible for someone else to do it. That means she has someone to call on for help. Someone who has an interest in keeping her out of prison.’

‘So what do we do now? Wait?’ Burt was back to pacing. ‘I don’t like that approach.’

I cleared my throat. ‘Without wishing to jump to any conclusions, I think I have an idea.’

This time, I found Andrew Hardy in his office at the White Valley Shooting Club, rather than standing in reception. He hadn’t known I was coming and his expression when he saw me was pure dread.

‘What can I do for you, Miss Kerrigan? Do you need to speak to more of our members? I’m fairly sure you’ve seen them all by now.’

‘I just need to look at a few files,’ I said. ‘It won’t take long.’

‘What sort of files?’

‘When we came to see you originally, you made us sign in. Do you keep the sign-in sheets?’

‘We do. It helps us to keep track of who is using the facilities and what our busy times are.’ He took down a lever-arch file that was fat with yellowing paper. ‘They’re all in here.’

I leafed through, looking for the day we’d visited. I didn’t expect to find Amy Maynard’s name in the book, and nor did I. She wouldn’t have been an official visitor. I doubted she’d even been in the clubhouse. She was there to meet her fellow murderer, someone who was probably a member of the club, someone whose name appeared on the list Rex Gibney had given us of people who knew about the gun. Probably someone I’d spoken to already.

There were about twenty names on the sheet when I found it. I scanned through it. ‘Can I see the files on everyone here?’

‘Why do you need them?’

‘Just checking.’

Hardy went through his filing cabinets methodically, taking out the files and setting them on his desk. The office was so small that he ceded it to me rather than try to work around me.

I was halfway down the list when I opened Jonny Pilgrew’s file and the obvious answer hit me between the eyes. Under ‘other gun-club membership’, in a straggling, unformed hand, Jonny had written: ‘Uplands School’.

Jonny, Stuart Pilgrew’s son. The boy with light eyebrows and short dark hair. The boy who’d walked away from me without even knowing who I was or what I wanted with him. The boy who’d known very well who I was because he’d seen me at his school a few days earlier.

He’d cut and dyed his hair since I’d seen him leave the student counsellor’s office, where he’d been with Amy Maynard. He’d done what he could to change his appearance. What he couldn’t hide was his fear, and now it made sense to me.

It was a nice house, not large but detached. Cream-painted, like its neighbours. Two cars in the driveway. Lights on in the living room and a bedroom upstairs.

I rang the doorbell and waited, Derwent beside me.

‘Yes?’ Stuart Pilgrew stood in the doorway, obviously not long home from work. He had shed his tie and his jacket, and he was wearing socks with a hole over one toe, but he looked more like a successful businessman than he had at the gun club. He frowned at me, not knowing who I was, then spotted Derwent. His face transformed itself into a welcoming smile. ‘All right, mate?’

‘Not bad, thanks. Do you mind if we come in for a minute?’

‘Of course, of course.’ Pilgrew let us into the hall and directed us to the living room, which was comfortable and untidy. A young teenage girl unwound herself from the sofa and disappeared silently. There was a smell of roasting meat and an occasional clatter from the kitchen. I heard a woman’s voice asking a brief question that got an even briefer answer from the girl.

‘Sorry for disturbing you. We’ll try not to stay too long,’ I said.

‘What can I do for you? I thought I’d seen the last of you after you ran out on us at the club.’

‘I had somewhere to be,’ Derwent said.

‘In quite a hurry.’ Pilgrew was affecting good humour and friendliness but there was a shrewd look in his eyes that told me he was frantically trying to work out what we wanted. ‘Is this about the gun?’

‘What gun?’ I asked.

‘The one you’ve been asking everyone in the club about. Rex Gibney’s gun.’

‘Did you know about it?’

‘Yes. I saw it.’

‘Did you?’ I was genuinely surprised that he was volunteering that information.

‘He showed me and Jonny when we were at his house once. He let Jonny actually fire it.’

‘Jonny, your son.’

‘So my wife tells me.’

‘That’s the second time you’ve made that joke,’ I said coldly. ‘You need some new material.’

He was watching me, definitely wary now. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know why you’ve just told us Jonny fired the gun. It makes me think you’re trying to muddy the waters. Because if we find it and there’s forensic evidence linking Jonny to the gun, you’ve already said he handled it and fired it, haven’t you?’

Pilgrew shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’

‘Can we have a word with Jonny? Please?’ Derwent waited for a moment. ‘I’d rather talk to him here than at the station, but I will take him in for formal questioning if you prefer.’

‘No. Definitely not.’ Pilgrew was jittery with tension. He got up and went into the hall. ‘Jonny? Get down here. Now.’

Now
took a minute or two. We sat in silence, staring at Pilgrew, while he stared back. He was squeezing his hands together, over and over again. Not happy. Not at ease.

He knew, I thought.

Jonny Pilgrew walked into the room looking as if he was going to the scaffold. He was white with fear and looked very young in his wine-coloured school jumper and dark grey trousers, a uniform I recognised instantly.

‘I see you go to Uplands School,’ Derwent observed. ‘Are you in Vanessa Hammond’s year?’

‘No. The year above.’ His voice was hoarse and almost inaudible.

‘Do you know her?’ I asked and got a definite headshake in response.

‘Do you know Amy Maynard?’

The boy flinched, visibly. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you know that we’re looking for her?’

He stared at me dumbly. I thought he was going to cry.

‘Who’s Amy Maynard?’ Pilgrew demanded.

‘The student counsellor at Uplands,’ Derwent said. ‘And chief suspect in the murder of Terence Hammond.’

Jonny was so pale I thought he was going to faint.

‘When we saw you at White Valley,’ I said, ‘we didn’t know that Amy Maynard was there too. But her car was in the car park. Was she there to see you?’

‘No.’

‘Why was she there?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her.’

‘Were you expecting to see her?’

‘No. I don’t know.’

‘Why did you cut your hair, Jonny?’

He put a hand up to touch it, uncertain.

‘I don’t know why he did, but it was a good thing. He looked ridiculous with it long.’ Pilgrew’s eyes were switching back and forth from me to Derwent, considering what we were saying.

‘Why did you dye it?’ The roots were starting to show already, a line of paler hair that told its own story.

‘I wanted a change.’

‘When did you decide to do it?’

‘A while ago.’

‘After we saw you at the school coming out of Miss Maynard’s room.’

He nodded.

Pilgrew rounded on his son. ‘Why were you having counselling? You’re not gay, are you?’

‘No! Dad, come on.’ Jonny tried to laugh, but he was shaking. ‘Leave it out.’

‘I just don’t understand why you were going for counselling.’

‘Miss Maynard suggested it. She spoke to the sports department about talented people. She thought she could help us. She did hypnosis and stuff. Gave me advice on focusing when I was shooting. She’d read books on sports psychology.’

Which qualified her to teach him precisely fuck all. She’d heard about his talent for shooting and decided she could use him.

‘What a waste of time,’ Pilgrew said dismissively.

Jonny flushed. ‘She was really good.’

‘You like her, don’t you?’ Derwent smiled. ‘I can see why. She’s pretty.’

The boy was scarlet.

‘Did you fancy her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did she fancy you?’

‘He’s just a kid,’ Pilgrew said.

Derwent gave him a thin smile. ‘He’s a teenager who will be tried as an adult when he is charged with murder. He’ll be looking at a life sentence.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

Instead of answering, Derwent said, ‘Jonathan Pilgrew, I am arresting you for the murder of Terence Hammond. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Jonny sat down on the edge of the sofa and dropped his head into his hands.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Pilgrew thundered.

‘This is what we think happened,’ I said. ‘Amy Maynard got close to Jonny. She persuaded him to help her. She arranged for him to steal Rex Gibney’s gun and he used it to shoot Terence Hammond, at her request.’

‘Is this true?’ Pilgrew asked his son.

‘He was a bad person. A killer. He’d abused vulnerable kids. He maimed his own son.’ Jonny sounded as if he still couldn’t fathom how evil Terence Hammond had been. I marvelled at the half-truths, the compromised facts that Amy had used to construct her trap. ‘He raped Miss Maynard. She was so brave. She lured him back to the place where it happened and made him think she wanted to be with him again.’

‘And what did you do?’ I asked.

‘I did what she asked me to.’

‘Which was what?’

‘I shot him.’

‘Stop talking,’ Pilgrew said. ‘He needs a solicitor.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘We need to find the gun. We have a search warrant.’ I showed it to Pilgrew who read through it carefully, then handed it back to me.

‘It’s under my mattress,’ Jonny volunteered. ‘In pieces.’

‘I told you to shut up,’ Pilgrew yelled.

‘What’s the point? I did it. They knew it. They were going to find the gun anyway.’ Jonny’s eyes were wet. ‘She asked me to do it and I didn’t want to but I had to. It was different from shooting at a target. A lot different. I didn’t think I could do it – but he was so gross. All over her. Touching her. Pushing her head down so she could—’ He broke off, swallowed, regrouped. ‘The world would be better without him, she said. So I did it. I didn’t want to let her down.’ He stared around at us, moving from one face to another like a lost dog seeking reassurance. He looked very young indeed.

‘It’s all right,’ Derwent said. ‘I understand.’

‘She loves me and I love her.’

‘Has she been in touch with you, Jonny?’ Derwent’s voice was quiet, in contrast to the boy’s father. ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘No.’ But he put a hand up to rub his upper lip just after he said it, and we all saw the panic in his eyes. Not a practised liar. Not a good one. But very useful to us indeed.

‘Do you think she’s going to show?’

‘She has to. She needs the money.’ I watched the crowds milling around the shops, fast-food stands and entertainment arcades that filled the Trocadero. It was one of the busiest places in London, just off Shaftesbury Avenue, and Amy Maynard couldn’t really have picked a more difficult place for surveillance. There were too many exits and too many places to hide. The only good thing about it was that the undercover officers who were loitering in key locations had plenty of cover. No one would have noticed twenty extra people standing around, not doing much. Even if they were on edge, as Amy presumably would be.

We were standing opposite the escalators that led up to the cinema complex on the second floor. It was where Amy had suggested Jonny could meet her, to hand over the £1,200 in cash he’d taken out of his bank account over the previous few days.

‘Do you think she’ll be on time?’ I asked.

‘He’s her lifeline. I’d imagine so.’

‘Do you think she’ll show herself if she doesn’t see him?’

Derwent scowled. ‘She’d better. I still think it’s bollocks that we weren’t allowed to use him.’

‘He’s a child.’

‘Old enough to kill. Old enough to be tried as an adult.’

I scanned the scene in front of me, trying to see if the undercover officers stood out. A male and female officer were having a deeply intimate conversation while looking over each other’s shoulders. Another, a tall black guy, was talking on his phone. Two bulky men in bomber jackets strolled across the concourse holding cups of coffee. To me, they were obviously police. But in the milling crowds we might just get away with it.

Derwent was scanning the scene too. ‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know.’ A few minutes passed as we watched and waited, the tension twisting in my gut. I couldn’t help expecting to see the Amy Maynard I’d met before, the girl in colourful, unflattering clothes. I’d warned the surveillance teams that she might be dressed differently but it still took me a second to appreciate that the woman walking out of the cinema complex was Amy herself. It was only her walk that gave her away; it was hard to disguise the way she moved. Her hair was cropped and blond, her jeans skin-tight, her top fitted enough to show, very clearly, that she wore no bra. She was attracting plenty of attention, but not from the undercover teams.

‘There,’ I said.

‘Where?’ Derwent was trying to see where I was pointing. I didn’t wait. I was gone already, moving fast to get to her before she had time to run. In my earpiece Derwent was relaying a description to the undercover officers over the radio, his voice tense. One by one I saw them focus on her and head towards her, iron filings to a magnet.

And Amy looked straight at me. It took her no longer than a second to realise she was in trouble and to start running. It wasn’t her fault that a second wasn’t long enough.

I collided with her when she was about ten feet away from the escalators. I sent her sprawling to the floor and landed on top of her.

‘Let’s try this again, shall we?’ I pulled her hands out and the black undercover officer cuffed her with her wrists behind her.

Amy was kicking the floor, overwhelmed with rage. ‘Stupid fucking cretin. Dickhead. Twat.’