The close, p.1
The Close, page 1
THE CLOSE
Jane Casey
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
Copyright © Jane Casey 2023
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers
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: 9780008404970
Ebook Edition © March 2023 ISBN: 9780008404994
Version: 2022-11-11
Dedication
For Sarah Law, with love
Epigraph
We walk the path in innocence because we do not know what is at its end.
Robert Macfarlane
Underland
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
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
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Jane Casey
About the Publisher
1
All murder investigations were different and yet all of them began the same way, at least for me: standing in silence near a body, trying to catch the faintest echo of what had happened. Sometimes the air still vibrated with violence and high emotion, and sometimes the silence was empty. It was a habit that I kept to myself, but one that reminded me of the fundamental truth: this was more than a job. Someone’s life had been ended too soon. Finding out who had done it, and why, was my duty.
Silence could be hard to come by, however, depending on the crime scene and who else was there. Currently, I was battling to hear anything over the hum of conversation from uniformed officers and scene-of-crime specialists and, inevitably, my colleague, Detective Constable Georgia Shaw, who talked as if she was paid by the word. I tuned back in just in time to hear, ‘So he was in the driver’s seat, but I mean, clearly, he didn’t drive here, did he? Because he was already dead from what Dr Early said. With the rigor, and everything.’
The body was slumped, half of it inside a bright blue BMW sportscar, half lolling through the open door. One arm dangled. Dr Early, bright-eyed and brisk, had demonstrated with a quick swing that it hung loose.
‘He would have been in full rigor when they moved him to the driver’s seat. You can see he’s not in the correct position to have been driving. The angle of his legs is all wrong and his feet wouldn’t have been near the pedals. I’d guess he was curled up and they were able to slide him into the seat all right but they needed to move his arm to close the door.’ She had straightened up with a shrug. ‘You can break rigor, but you can’t make it come back again.’
‘So we were supposed to think he was killed in the car?’ I said. ‘And assume it happened here?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ Dr Early had returned to her examination, probing the bloody mess on the top of the victim’s head, where someone had hit him with enough force to smash his skull.
The victim: Hassan Dawoud, a doctor, aged thirty-four. And where we stood was the car park of the big, sprawling London hospital where he had worked. It was just after five on a clear June morning, the light delicate but with the promise of heat later on. The nearest hospital building was a triumph of Sixties brutalism in stained concrete, with aluminium-framed windows that flared brightly as the early sun caught them. Behind them, hundreds of onlookers, I guessed, attracted by the fuss of a murder investigation in full swing. We had taped off half of the car park, which sent the hospital authorities into a tizzy: people would be coming to appointments and to visit their loved ones and to visit A&E and the car park was already inadequate. Without access to parking, the hospital simply could not function. The sooner we took our dead body and went, the better, they had strongly implied.
‘Do you want to talk to Liz St John? She’s keen to get home,’ Georgia said.
‘Who is that? Oh – the woman who found the body?’ My first instinct was to tell Georgia to do it. I spent a lot of time trying to give her jobs that she couldn’t get wrong. In truth my reluctance had more to do with the motivation I’d been struggling to find lately. I had seen the woman already, sitting in the back of a police car with the door open, a blanket around her shoulders, her eyes wide with the kind of stare that saw nothing. Make an effort, I told myself. ‘I’ll speak to her. They’re ready to move the body, if you don’t mind looking after that.’
‘Of course.’ Georgia sounded keen and competent, and at least one of those things was true. She was getting a lot better, I reminded myself. I still found myself checking up on her, but nine times out of ten she’d got everything right. It was really just the thought of the tenth time that kept me on edge.
And speaking of being on edge, Liz St John was doing a fair impression of someone who had reached that state some time ago. She was holding a cup of tea, probably not the first one she’d been given. Her other hand was heavily bandaged.
‘Mrs St John? I’m DS Maeve Kerrigan. I understand you found the body.’
She nodded. ‘I didn’t know – I said to the police when they came, I had no idea. I would never have opened the door if I’d known.’
‘You opened the car door?’
A convulsive nod. She was thin and pretty usually, I guessed, though tiredness had put bags under her eyes and dulled her skin. Fair hair, fat diamond stud earrings, another few carats on her fingers and a Mulberry bag at her feet. A well-off woman who had blundered into her worst nightmare. She was staring at me with matching interest, seeing, I supposed, someone whose life was nothing like her own. I was wearing a dark trouser suit with a plain white top underneath, minimal jewellery, minimal make-up. I was tall and striking enough to attract attention but I tried to look neutral when I was at work. What was routine to me was shocking to her, and I reminded myself to be gentle with her.
‘Go back to the start. Why were you at the hospital?’
‘I was chopping carrots for the children’s tea. Batons.’ She half-laughed. ‘They don’t even like carrots, you know. They wouldn’t have eaten them.’
‘And you cut your hand,’ I prompted. I wanted to get her out of there before the body was moved. It was behind screens but there were things you didn’t need to hear, never mind see.
‘We have these knives – they’re Japanese. Very expensive. They’re far too sharp. I must have been distracted and I sliced into my hand.’ She grimaced. ‘I had to wait for Hughie – my husband – to come home before I could go to the hospital. To mind the children. So I was quite late getting here, and then it was a four-hour wait. They made me have an X-ray – anyway, they were nice to me. I was worried that I was wasting everyone’s time by coming here, but …’ she trailed off, lifting her hand, showing me the bandages.
‘What time did you leave the emergency department?’
‘Coming up on two in the morning. It was still busy.’
‘It’s always busy,’ I said, with feeling.
‘Yes. Anyway, I came out here and the parking machine was broken.’ She gestured in that general direction. ‘There was a notice on it. Coins only. No notes. I mean, who carries that much change? And the amount they charge for parking … well, I didn’t have it. I was short two pounds. Everything was closed and there was no one around. I w as stuck and Hughie was at home with the kids so I couldn’t get him to come and rescue me. I knew the receptionists wouldn’t be able to give me change but I thought I might find someone to help. I was about to go back into the building when I saw the car.’
‘Hassan Dawoud’s car.’
She nodded.
‘Why did you go over to it? Was there something about it that attracted your attention?’
She looked surprised. ‘I know – knew him. He’s my next-door neighbour.’
I blinked. ‘Wow.’
‘Quite a coincidence.’ She frowned. ‘Except, not really. Lots of doctors live around where we are, and it’s the closest A&E to us. It wasn’t a surprise to see someone I knew. I didn’t think anything of it except, “Oh good, Hassan will help me.” The windows are tinted but I could see him in the driver’s seat.’
‘So you went over.’
‘And knocked on the window. When he didn’t look up, I opened the door. And he fell out.’ She swallowed convulsively. ‘I thought he was ill. I thought – well, I don’t know. But then his cap came off and I saw his head.’
‘It must have been a shock.’
‘A total shock. I was almost sick.’ She shut her eyes, and I saw a glint of sweat across her forehead as if the nausea had returned. ‘Hassan means handsome, did you know that? Someone at playgroup told me. He was terrifically handsome. Beautiful, really. Seeing him like that was a nightmare.’
‘Did you touch him?’
‘I sort of caught him when he flopped out. I checked for a pulse, but he was cold.’ She shuddered. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have touched him, but I didn’t know.’
It was a pain, forensically speaking. I hoped she didn’t know what I was thinking. ‘We’ll need to get a sample of your DNA, if that’s all right.’
‘Of course. Anything.’
‘Was Hassan married?’ I had noticed a platinum ring on his hand.
‘Yes. Last year. They seemed happy.’ She bit her lip. ‘Most of the time, anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There were arguments now and then. Breaking china. Shouting.’ Her eyes slid up to mine. ‘It’s not that I’m nosy. I couldn’t help hearing, when we had the back doors open. It gets so hot in the kitchen. Late at night – when they’d been partying – there were rows.’
‘Violent ones?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t say.’ Instant regret, common to witnesses who felt they had said too much. She looked down at the tea. ‘This is cold and disgusting. Could you take it away?’
I took the cup out of her hand and put it on the roof of the car. ‘Go back to Mr Dawoud’s marriage. Tell me about his wife.’
‘His – oh, no. No. Sorry. I’ve misled you. Hassan didn’t have a wife. He had a husband. Cameron. But he’s away.’ She shivered. ‘So it couldn’t have been him who did this. Could it?’
2
‘I told you all of this before. We had a good marriage.’ Cameron Grant Dawoud sat with his hands clasped in front of him on the table, pressed tightly together. A tremor ran through his body every few moments: a physical manifestation of the grief that had left him red-eyed and puffy-faced. He was big, his muscles well-defined, his shoulders straining the cotton of his T-shirt. He was thirty-six, I knew, but his sandy hair was thinning across the back of his head already. The sun had burned him pink across the bridge of his nose and the upper part of his arms. He had come straight to meet us when he got back to London, pausing only to get his solicitor to join him.
I was reserving my opinion of Cameron Dawoud.
‘Did you ever argue?’ Beside me, Georgia was taking a confident lead with questioning him.
‘Of course.’
‘Of course?’ she repeated, her eyebrows raised as if she was surprised. Don’t overplay it, Georgia.
He shrugged. ‘I’m not going to try to tell you we didn’t fight now and then. That would be unrealistic.’
It would have been a lie, too, I thought.
‘Was it physical?’ Georgia said. ‘When you argued?’
‘No.’
‘Was there damage to property?’
‘No.’
‘Neither of you ever got angry enough to throw things?’
‘I said no.’ His jaw was clenched.
‘That’s not what we’ve heard,’ Georgia said cheerfully and I saw his eyelids flicker as he thought about who might have come up with a different version of events.
‘You must be talking about Liz.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Georgia hopped on what he’d said as if it was evidence of wrongdoing and he sighed.
‘I know she found him – you told me that much – so I suppose you’ve been talking to her.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘You can’t have had time to talk to anyone else, really. What is it – twelve hours since he was found? Less than that? And I presume you want to start with me since I’m his husband.’
He was no idiot, I thought, and he was easily out-thinking my junior colleague.
‘What difference does it make if Liz told us?’ My voice was quiet. It was almost the first thing I’d said in the whole interview and Georgia looked around as if she had forgotten I was there. She was enjoying herself, and I was not. I wished I was somewhere else, and looked down at my notebook to hide the thought from the man I was supposed to be interviewing.
‘It doesn’t make any difference, really. Except that she was mistaken.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know why she would say that we fought. She seems like a perfectly nice woman, but I can’t say I know her well enough to judge her as a witness.’
‘Did you ever call the police? Either of you?’ I was the last person to judge them if they hadn’t involved the police, given that I hadn’t called for help myself when I’d stumbled into a relationship with a man who won arguments with his fists.
‘Absolutely not. And you can check that quite easily, can’t you?’ He glared at me, his brow furrowed. ‘Why are you wasting your time on this? It’s hardly a big deal that we argued. That’s what adults do from time to time, kids. Life isn’t one long honeymoon, no matter how much you love each other.’
‘But you hadn’t been married very long,’ Georgia pointed out. ‘Still in the honeymoon period.’
‘It was almost a year.’ His voice broke and he hung his head for a moment. ‘We’d been together for four years before that.’
‘Why did you decide to get married after all that time?’
‘Because we could,’ he snapped. Then, in a gentler tone, ‘Because we wanted to make a permanent commitment to one another, I suppose. We both felt marriage was for life. We didn’t have anything to prove – everyone who knew us knew we were completely devoted to one another.’
‘What did you argue about?’ I asked. Cameron turned his attention to me again, his forehead furrowed.
‘All kinds of things. Who hadn’t loaded the dishwasher properly. Who was supposed to pick up the meat from the butcher. Who didn’t water the garden.’
‘Was that all?’
A flicker of irritation. ‘Sorry to disappoint you. Hassan liked to let off steam that way. He’d pick a fight over something small and we’d argue for ten minutes and then he’d make it up to me over a whole weekend.’ He sounded more Scottish when he was upset, I thought, which was the sort of giveaway that could be useful. ‘Were you hoping for some juicy details of infidelity? I presume you think that we weren’t faithful to one another because we’re gay. You’re assuming we wouldn’t play by heterosexual rules.’
‘I’m not assuming anything,’ I said. ‘Some people have open marriages. Some people have affairs. Some people are faithful to one another. I’m sorry to ask about anything so personal but I have to.’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it.’
Cameron’s solicitor shifted in his chair, a small but meaningful movement and Cameron pressed his clasped hands to his forehead, mastering himself.
‘Of course I understand. You have to find out if I had a motive to kill him. Even though I couldn’t have killed him because I was away. Which you know.’
Cameron Dawoud had been competing at a windsurfing competition in Pwllheli, in North Wales, when his husband’s skull was fractured.
‘I wasn’t going to ask about your relationship and whether you were both faithful.’ Yet. ‘I was more interested in arguments about money.’
He gave a short huff of surprise. ‘We weren’t exactly short of cash, if that’s what you mean. Hassan was a consultant, which means he got paid a decent amount of money, even for his NHS work. He spent half the time working for the NHS and half of the time for Havenview Hospital, which is private. He was a kidney specialist. People respected him. He earned a lot and he spent money on things he liked. Same as me, if it comes to that.’
