The Stranger You Know Read Free Page A

Somers Town murder – Princess Gordon. We’ve got one in custody.’
    ‘Her husband?’
    ‘Partner.’
    ‘Give me the details.’ Instead of inviting me into his office he stayed where he was, standing in the doorway, in plain sight of everyone on the team. Maybe he did know about the rumours after all.
    Briefly, I explained what we had found out. Godley listened, his blue eyes trained on my face. He had a gift for total concentration on whatever was in front of him, and it was a large part of his charm that he made you feel as if you were the only person in the world when he was listening to you. I could have done without the rapt attention, all the same. It made me too aware of my voice, my face, my tendency to wave my hands around while I was explaining things, my suspicion that my hair had gone frizzy in the damp evening air.
    Not that he cared about any of that. He cared about the fact that I had worked out, beyond any doubt, that he was utterly, totally corrupt. He was paid by one of London’s biggest drug dealers, a ruthless gangster with an appalling record of violence, and I wasn’t sure exactly what Godley did for him in return. I didn’t want to know. I had worshipped the superintendent, blindly, and finding out that he was a fake made me more sad than angry. And for all that he was on the take, he was still a supremely gifted police officer.
    I’d promised him I wouldn’t give him away, because it was none of my business and I couldn’t throw him to the wolves. He’d promised me it made no difference to how he did his job, and he’d also promised not to treat me any differently. But he had lied about that, and I was starting to change my mind about interfering. I still couldn’t reconcile the two facts: he was a boss who inspired total loyalty in everyone who worked with him, and he gave away inside information for money. He’d said it was more complicated than I knew, and I wanted to believe him, I really did.
    I just couldn’t trust him.
    ‘And the sister?’ Godley asked.
    ‘DI Derwent wants to interview her again, but he doesn’t think she was involved.’
    ‘Unless she’s a fuckwit.’ Derwent crossed the room, folding his stolen newspaper as he approached, and sat down at a desk that was currently unoccupied. He started casually, carelessly ransacking the desk, opening and closing drawers. ‘Who sits here?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I did know, in fact, but I didn’t want to tell him. The desk belonged to DCI Una Burt, his superior and emphatically not a member of the very select group of colleagues that Derwent could stand. Nor was she one of the even smaller group who liked him. ‘I know they don’t want you to go through their things.’
    ‘That’s a nice stapler.’ He clicked it a couple of times, very fast. ‘That’s better than the one I’ve got.’
    ‘Josh. Concentrate.’ Godley’s tone was mild but Derwent dropped the stapler and turned around to face the boss.
    ‘The CPS were happy for us to charge Olesugwe but they agreed with me that we need to know more about Blessed before we decide what to do about her. I think Olesugwe will plead eventually but at the moment he’s still hoping for a miracle. Which he’s not going to get, because he’s fucked. Did Kerrigan tell you about the keys?’
    ‘What about them?’
    ‘Kerrigan had a look through his personal effects before we interviewed him. She spotted that he had the key to the shed and the car, and she just happened to ask him if there was a spare set of car keys anywhere.’
    ‘The car was fifteen years old,’ I explained. ‘I thought it was probably second-hand or third-hand and there was a good chance it was down to one set of keys.’
    ‘Well done,’ Godley said, without enthusiasm, and I blushed, wishing that Derwent had just said nothing.
    Apparently oblivious, he grinned at me. ‘You see, you look vague, but you’re actually not all that stupid when you try.’
    ‘Thanks.’ For nothing ,