The killing kind, p.1
The Killing Kind, page 1
THE KILLING KIND
Jane Casey
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021
Copyright © Jane Casey 2021
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Cover photographs © Philip Mckay/Arcangel Images (woman with umbrella), Shutterstock.com (all other images)
Jane Casey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008404925
Ebook Edition © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008492304
Version: 2021-05-13
Dedication
For Alison Gleeson
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I think about …
2019
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
2016
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
2017
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
2019
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Jane Casey
About the Publisher
I think about death a lot; it’s my job. Specifically, I think about how death happens. About the truth of it, or the lie. About when you can be absolutely certain, and when the edges are blurred, and what gets lost to memory or misunderstanding.
I think about my job, which is to take the facts of a case and arrange them into a story – without elaborating or exaggerating – and how that story must convince the jury to believe my version of events. I am very convincing. I tell a good story.
But I have to think hard about where to start with this story, because the beginning isn’t the accident, even though it seemed that way to me. The wolf was already at my heels, planning his next move as I walked, oblivious, through the forest.
He had waited for a long time, and now he was ready.
2019
1
I think about death a lot, but I was not thinking about it the day it came for me. I was too busy running up Ludgate Hill, dodging other people’s umbrellas so they didn’t shower me with icy October rain when they collided with mine. The rain was a curse for two reasons: I hated having wet feet, and otherwise I would have been hiding behind the biggest sunglasses I owned.
I wasn’t just wet: I was late, which was the greatest sin of all for a barrister. My pupilmaster had told me as much on my first day. You may have to go to court unprepared, sick, hungover, stressed or even wretchedly unhappy, but for God’s sake, get there on time. The whole situation made me furious with myself. I knew better than to cause myself problems for no reason, other than that I’d been up too late the night before.
I didn’t go through the smoked-glass revolving door of the Central Criminal Court, also known as the Old Bailey. Instead I hurried across the road to a small café that was thronged with people. A bull-necked bald man was sitting near the back, reading a newspaper. He glanced up and whistled.
‘Dear oh dear, Miss Lewis. What happened to you?’
‘Late night.’ I parked my wheeled bag beside the table and concentrated on folding my umbrella so I didn’t have to look him in the eye.
‘Not the best preparation for today, was it, Ingrid?’ Disapproval rolled through every consonant, lent more weight by his accent which was still pure Glasgow despite thirty years in London. Because he was a solicitor and the reason I was at work at all, I couldn’t quite bring myself to make a joke about it.
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Of course you will.’ He grinned. ‘I’m only kidding you on. Have a coffee and get your breath back.’
‘Can I get you one?’
‘White, two sugars.’ He went back to his newspaper with a hint of a smile still softening the corners of his mouth and I turned to the counter to order. I quite admired how he’d managed to get me to buy him a coffee. It was a small gesture when Niall Hyde had made it possible for me to pay the rent that month, and the month before. Moreover, I knew what the clerks would say if I annoyed him. What was good for me was good for chambers, and if I made an enemy of one of the most successful defence solicitors around, I would make twenty more among my colleagues.
Barristers had a way of working that was confusing to outsiders, but it was based on centuries of tradition. We were self-employed, independent of one another in theory, but most of us pooled our resources in a set of chambers that was more like a club than a shared office. The downside was that what affected one of us in chambers could affect us all. Each set had clerks who ran the barristers like benign and cocky gang-masters, allocating cases and work as they saw fit. Cross the clerks and I would end up on an endless run of first appearances in magistrates’ courts across the south east instead of pursuing the nice little practice that had me at the Bailey on a Monday morning. I had been doing this job for seven years, after a law degree and a year at bar school and another year as a pupil, and I was finally starting to feel I was getting the hang of it. My income still varied wildly and most of the time, if I worked it out, what I earned wasn’t close to the minimum wage. But I loved it. It was worthwhile, and challenging, and sometimes even inspiring.
And I liked it when I won.
‘What was it, a break-up?’
I pushed his coffee across the table and sat down. ‘Yes, but not mine. My best friend’s boyfriend of three years walked out on her.’
‘Is that right, aye?’ Sarcasm coated the words. ‘And the solution was red wine?’
‘Among other things.’
‘Haven’t you learned not to mix your drinks?’
‘You’d think,’ I said ruefully. ‘But I really will be okay in court.’
‘Of course you will.’ He twinkled at me, his eyes bright with amusement. ‘Tried hair of the dog?’
‘No, and I’m not going to. I’m never drinking again.’
That made him chuckle and we drank our coffee in perfect amity. It was Hyde’s routine to head to the café in the mornings and a steady stream of lawyers came to pay court to him. In between interruptions I made sure I knew exactly what Hyde wanted to achieve for his client that morning. It was a pre-trial hearing, completely routine, where a man was going to plead not guilty to attempted murder. A sex game gone wrong, according to him; long minutes of strangulation according to the prosecution, who had the medical evidence of bruises and broken blood vessels to back it up. I’d met him and looked into his wide, honest eyes and heard the ring of sincerity in his voice, and we had evidence from a dating website of his girlfriend’s stated sexual preferences that included ‘breath play’ and bondage. A post-sex argument, a false accusation of violence to get revenge: it happened.
‘But did it happen in this case?’ my best friend Adele had slurred at two in the morning, and I’d shrugged.
‘His story is that it did. The evidence doesn’t contradict him.’
‘But he hurt her.’
‘With her consent, he says.’
‘You can’t know that for sure.’
‘The point is that the prosecution can’t prove otherwise.’
Adele poured another slug of wine into her glass, spilling some over the side. ‘Whoops. I don’t know how you can live with yourself, tel ling lies for these bastards.’
People who weren’t barristers worried a lot more about innocent and guilty than we did. We separated ourselves from questions of morality because we had to. Everyone deserved a decent defence or justice couldn’t be done. We took the work that was offered to us without demur because that was the cab-rank rule; we generally didn’t pick and choose cases that suited our personal tastes or morality. We were professional and polite and did our best, and most of us quickly got used to it. The system worked for everyone or it worked for no one.
‘I don’t know it’s a lie,’ I’d said patiently. ‘That’s up to the jury to decide. I presume he’s not guilty unless he actually tells me he did it, at which point I have to advise him to plead guilty. Until then he’s entitled to the best defence he can get. If he still gets convicted, then at least I know I tested the prosecution case.’
‘And if he did it but you persuade the jury he didn’t?’
‘Then the prosecution didn’t do their job properly and I did.’
‘There are times,’ Adele said blurrily, ‘that you don’t sound anything like yourself any more.’
Ouch. ‘It’s just part of the job,’ I said. ‘You have to put some distance between yourself and the work or you’d go mad.’
‘I don’t mean,’ Adele said, ‘work. I mean … everything.’ She gestured around her vaguely.
And don’t you think I have good reason to be different?
I didn’t say it out loud.
‘Sick,’ Adele pronounced, which I thought was a further comment on me until she flopped over sideways and started heaving.
The Old Bailey was one of the few courts that still had separate robing rooms for male and female counsel, and the female robing room was a safe place in every way. I closed the door behind me and scanned the room for people I knew, recognising a couple of barristers I’d been up against before. A young woman in the corner was one of the pupils from my chambers. At present her face was as white as the sheet of paper that vibrated in her hands. First-timer nerves, I diagnosed, and smiled at her. She managed a watery sort of smile in return.
I needed to change into court dress myself: it was deeply traditional and not particularly practical. I fastened the starched bands around my neck, then drew a billowing black gown over my staid black suit and white shirt. The finishing touch was the horsehair wig that demanded neat hair underneath it so that all anyone could see was a hint of pale gold under the rough grey curls. I had inherited fair hair from my Danish father, Jens Villemand, along with grey-blue eyes, but my cheekbones, arched eyebrows and surname all belonged to my mother. I had taken her name after they divorced, from a sense of loyalty, and because it made life simpler since I lived with her.
I was concentrating on pinning my hair back in a tight bun, my mouth full of hairpins, when a woman rushed into the robing room, moving fast despite terrifyingly high heels. Belinda Grey, one of the sharpest women I’d ever met, thirty-five and well on her way to a dazzling career. I’d been her junior on a rape trial four years earlier and it had been both terrifying and exhilarating. It was a small world and I ran into her often enough that we were edging towards friendship, though I was always going to hero-worship her. She was whippet-thin and glamorous, with a glossy sheen of wealth and confidence. Her suit was fitted to her body as if it had been made for her, which was actually a possibility. I opted for flats so I could get places quickly, and work clothes that verged on dowdiness they were so plain. I didn’t like attracting attention any more. Belinda positively revelled in it.
She was on the phone, as usual.
‘No, he needs his sports kit for Playball. After school.’ A note of irritation. ‘The forecast is for the rain to stop by lunchtime so— I did write it on the fridge, actually, Michael, so if you didn’t see it—’ She broke off to wave at me and mouth hello. I smiled back. ‘Well, it was there. Yes, it was. Did you even check? Did you—’ She looked at her phone and shook her head. ‘He’s gone. Hung up on me.’
‘How is Michael?’ I asked.
‘Fed up. We’re between nannies and he’s using up his annual leave being a house husband.’
‘And he doesn’t like it?’
‘He’s terrible at it. Archie is running rings around him, as only a five-year-old can. And meanwhile the world of advertising seems to be surviving without Michael.’
I grinned. ‘Very disappointing.’
‘Well, exactly. You’d think they’d pretend to miss him, just to be kind.’ She checked her watch. ‘Of course I’m supposed to be in two places at once. The judge insisted I had to come along today for this hearing which is mainly so he can give me a bollocking, even though I’ve got a conference in chambers at eleven. And this rain. I’ll look like something the cat threw up if it hasn’t stopped.’
I knew her chambers – Garter Buildings – was at least a ten-minute walk from the Old Bailey, because it was right opposite mine. ‘No umbrella?’
‘I couldn’t find it before I left.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The cleaner quit last week, and good riddance because I’m sure she deliberately broke things when she was pissed off with us, which was all the fucking time. Anyway, the house is total, utter chaos. I’m amazed I managed to find matching shoes.’
I finished stabbing pins into the ball of hair that was coiled at the back of my neck. ‘You can have my umbrella if you like.’
Her eyes lit up for an instant but then she shook her head. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Take it. I don’t have anywhere important to be and my hearing isn’t for a while. But if you’re wrong about the forecast, I won’t be happy.’
‘Ingrid, you star.’ She picked up the umbrella. ‘I won’t forget this.’
I had no illusions; she would still take every opportunity to kneecap me if we were on opposing sides in a trial. However, it couldn’t do any harm to have someone like Belinda Grey on my side. And I liked her, despite her acid tongue and terrifying reputation and staggeringly high turnover of domestic staff.
Belinda had moved on and I turned back to my reflection, checking the details: my hair was smooth and neat. My make-up was enough to make the best of the hollow hangover eyes that had greeted me that morning, but no more than that. My bands were sitting flat, my gown was immaculate, and not too much white shirt was showing. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The hearing was straightforward, as I’d said, but there was always a flutter of nervous energy in my stomach before I went into court. You couldn’t take anything for granted, and the day you did was the day it would all go wrong.
There was no sign of Belinda or my umbrella when I got back to the robing room, but the rain had stopped. My hearing had gone well and Niall Hyde had been pleased enough to clap me on the shoulder afterwards.
‘Good job, lassie. See you soon.’
The last traces of my hangover had even disappeared in the glow of satisfaction. There was a definite spring in my step as I bowled out of the court building, or tried to. The elderly security guard was leaning through the door, eyeing the traffic that was nose-to-tail up the street.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Accident down on Ludgate Circus. Pedestrian went under a lorry.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said inadequately. ‘Were they …’
‘I should think it was fatal. Happened a while ago and the traffic has been like this ever since. Backed up all the way to Holborn and Aldwych, from what I’ve heard.’
I shuddered. ‘I never take a risk with crossing that road.’
‘No, you wouldn’t want to. Happens every year. Don’t expect the rain helped.’ He shook his head, his eyes watering. ‘Everyone in too much of a hurry these days, that’s what it is.’
I nodded, not having much to add to that and being in a hurry myself because I had a case to prepare for the following day. I set off past the stalled traffic, thinking about work as I emerged from Old Bailey onto Ludgate Hill. I spared a glance for the imposing portico of Wren’s cathedral, because what was the point of living in London if you couldn’t nod to the classical grandeur of St Paul’s when you passed it. Then I headed down towards Ludgate Circus at a brisk pace, calculating the detour I would need to make if it was still closed off. There was a crowd of onlookers massed on the pavement. Because of the steep hill, I had a grandstand view of the lorry stopped in the middle of the intersection, and the tent that was propped up against the front of it hiding God knows what. I had prosecuted a death by dangerous driving once, and had learned enough about processing the scene to be able to understand what was going on. There was a cordon manned by grim-faced City of London police that extended around the entire junction and officers in fluorescent jackets were engaged in measuring distances and taking photographs. Circles of spray paint indicated where pieces of evidence had landed across the carriageway. A fatal accident, as the security guard had thought. Someone wouldn’t be going home that night. They would never be home again.
