A Good Day To Die (39 page)

But something nagged at me, something that I just couldn't get out of my head. You see, it was the timing. Heidi Robes had been abducted and murdered seven years ago. According to Thadeus, one of Pope's lowlifes had got rid of her body and planted the false evidence of her father's guilt. Tomboy Darke had left London for the Philippines seven years earlier, having made enough money (by his account, as an informant) to set up a business there. One of Tomboy's criminal trades
when he'd been back in England had been burglary. Coincidence? Let me tell you something, speaking as a copper: there's no such thing.

It was eleven o'clock when I pulled off the M1 just short of Leeds and drove until I found a deserted lay-by. I got out and switched on the mobile, ignoring the banging coming from the boot. As I walked across a piece of scrubland towards some trees, I dialled our dive lodge in Mindoro. It would be a little after seven in the morning there.

Lisa, our part-time receptionist, answered. It was nice to hear her voice and it was a good line.

'Mr Mick,' she said. 'How are you?'

I told her I was good and she asked when I was coming back. 'Never,' was the answer, but I didn't tell her that. Instead I said it would be soon, and she said she'd look forward to it. I asked her if Tomboy was there.

'Yes, he is around here somewhere. I get him for you. See you soon, Mr Mick.'

A minute later, he was on the line. 'How are things?' he asked.

'Take a walk,' I told him. 'So you're out of anyone's earshot.'

He asked me once again how things were. He sounded nervous, but not unduly so.

'Cold,' I said. 'What's it like there?'

'Warm,' he answered. The conversation was awkward, but then I'd expected that. 'I'm in the
dive shop now,' he said eventually, 'and there's no one about. You can talk.'

'Good.' I sighed, wishing that it hadn't come to this. We'd been good mates once. Even a week ago. Now, though, the whole world had changed. 'I know everything, Tomboy.'

'What do you mean?' There was no mistaking the nerves in his voice now.

'You know what I mean. I know about the girl Pope and his friends killed at their little get-together all those years back, and I know that they used you to get rid of her body.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Her name was Heidi, by the way. Heidi Robes. And she was twelve years old. And her old man, the one whose house you broke into to plant the evidence, he's dead now. He was found guilty of her murder, even though they never had a body, and he finally topped himself two years back. He'd lost his wife first, then his only child. I'm amazed he lasted as long as he did.'

The silence at the other end of the phone spoke volumes. Tomboy didn't have to say anything; we both knew that what I said was right.

'You'll never be able to bring either of them back, and you'll never be completely able to shake off the guilt of what you've done all in the name of greed, but you can do one thing to make things a little better. There's one man amongst those paedophiles who's so far escaped the fate that's coming to him,
and he's now the Lord Chief Justice in the UK, if you can believe that. He raped that girl, and one way or another, even after all this time, I'll bet he left some DNA evidence on her. They weren't so clued up about it seven years ago. So what I want you to do is tell me where you buried the body.'

Tomboy cleared his throat. 'I don't know what to say,' he croaked, sounding like he'd just lost his life savings on a horse that had fallen a yard short of the finishing line.

'You do. I've just told you what to say. I want to know the location. It'll never get back to you, I promise.'

'Mick ... Dennis ... Look, I ...' His voice trailed off. 'Pope was blackmailing me, you know? I had to do it. I wouldn't have done normally, you know that. He found out I'd grassed up Billy West for a job he'd done, and he was threatening to tell him. You've got to believe me.'

'The location, Tomboy.'

He told me that he'd taken her to woodland down in Dorset, not far from the coastal town of Swanage. 'There's a lake in the middle. She's in there, weighted down with chains. Or she was, anyway. In a wooden box.'

I made him give me directions and he tried to remember as much as possible while I wrote it all down in my notebook, the phone pressed to my ear. By the time he'd finished he was crying. 'I wish I hadn't done it, Dennis, but he made me. He had
stuff on me. He could have had me killed. I did it because it was my only chance of escape.'

Part of me wanted to tell Tomboy that I understood, but in the end, how could I? 'You're very lucky that you're six thousand miles away,' was all I could manage.

'Is that it, then?'

'For us, yes. Just hope I never decide to come looking for you.'

I rang off, and stood for a while staring at the spindly bare trees in front of me as they rose up like gnarled, many-fingered hands in the winter night; wondering if I'd done the right thing by coming here and tearing up the past. It would have been so much easier if I'd never heard about Malik's death; had never shot Slippery Billy West, or found out about his part in the whole bloody chain of events. If I'd simply carried on life in paradise with my old mate Tomboy, ignorant of what he too had done in his past. Diving, drinking, letting one day drift into the next.

But the world never works like that. Life's hard, and it's unfair. And if ignorance is bliss, then knowledge is essential. There are some terrible people walking the earth, and even now they might be coming for you or me. If you're not watching, not acting, not neutralizing them, then one day they're going to have their hands around your neck, and it'll be too late.

People say that one man can't justify being judge,
jury and executioner. Some have even said it to me. I suspected Parnham-Jones himself would say it. And in many ways I can agree. But there are times when you need to take a short cut to justice. Because the alternative - letting the guilty get away with crimes too sickening to contemplate - simply doesn't bear thinking about.

As I turned to walk back to the car, the phone rang again. I didn't recognize the number so I picked up and said nothing.

'I called to see how you're doing,' said Nicholas Tyndall. Bizarrely enough, after all that had happened that day, his voice came across like a breath of fresh air.

'It's over,' I told him wearily.

'And the people who've been trying to fuck up my business?'

'All dead. Including the reporter.'

'Miss Neilson? You know, I always had a feeling about her.'

'Well, she was a part of it. A lot more cunning and a lot more vicious than either of us gave her credit for.'

'You're not upset she's gone?'

'I'm upset she was what she was.'

'We're all what we are, my friend.'

He was right, but I still couldn't help wondering what Emma would have been like if she hadn't had Eric Thadeus as a father. And that was the sad thing: we'd never know.

'Do I owe you any money?' he asked.

'No, we're quits. You might get a bit of heat for a while, but it'll be over soon, I promise you.'

'That's what I like to hear. Thanks for your good work. Maybe we'll do business together again some time. I could always use men like you.'

'No thanks. This is the end of it. We won't be talking again.'

'Suit yourself,' he said.

I said I would and hung up. Then switched off the mobile and chucked it towards the gnarled old trees. It was someone else's problem now.

I drove north until eventually I came to the North Yorkshire Moors. It was there, amidst cold bleak hills, with not a tree or dwelling in sight, that I opened up the boot and told Theo Morris that he could go.

'Where?' he asked.

'Wherever you like,' I said. 'But go now while I'm still feeling charitable.'

That did the trick. He jumped out and without so much as a backward glance took off in the direction of an undulating valley below. He might have been cold, tired and lost, but I guessed that he was also extremely relieved.

I got back in the car and continued to drive.

Epilogue

THREE WEEKS LATER

It was late afternoon on Christmas Eve and raining steadily as the car pulled up at the end of the track and came to a halt. The driver was only partly visible through the fogged-up windscreen as he scanned the surrounding undergrowth for signs of activity.

I waited thirty seconds, then stepped out from behind a nearby beech tree and made my way over to his window. I was wearing a long grey raincoat, a grey beanie hat, and a black scarf that obscured most of my face but left my eyes and mouth uncovered. In my hand was a sealed waterproof bag containing the document I'd been working on for the past three weeks, as well as the co-ordinates for the final resting place of Heidi Robes.

The window came down as I approached and DI John Gallan eyed me warily. He was an honest-looking guy a couple of years younger than me, with a decent head of curly black hair that I would
have thought was beyond regulation length, and a face that bore enough laughter lines to suggest he was good company.

'What I've got here is of the utmost importance,' I told him when I reached the window, sounding like a character in
Mission Impossible.

'So you said on the phone,' he replied, staring at the bag, then back at me. 'What is it?'

'It's information that relates to an old murder investigation. Someone was tried for the crime and convicted, but didn't do it.'

'Why come to me about it?' Gallan asked, making no move to take the bag. 'Why not just drop it at a police station?'

'Because I've read about you and some of the cases you've worked on, and I think you can be trusted. I also think you'll give the contents your full attention. Especially when you see the name of the person involved. It's important that it's in the hands of an honest man.'

'How did you get hold of this information?'

I couldn't help but smile a little at that. It was a typical copper's response - trying to find out as much as possible. I'd have asked the same thing in his position.

'Let's just say circumstances led me to it.' I handed the bag to him through the window, and he placed it on the seat beside him.

'And that's the best I'm going to get, is it?'

I nodded. 'That's it. And it's also the end of my
involvement.' I stepped away from the car. 'Anyway, thanks for coming. And Merry Christmas.'

'I'd wish the same to you,' he said, watching me with a thoughtful expression on his face, 'but I don't know who you are. You might not deserve a Merry Christmas. Do you?'

I thought about it for a second. 'I don't know,' I said at last. 'I think that depends on your opinion.'

'Well, my opinion is that if you're a good man you deserve one, and if you're a bad one you don't.'

'That reminds me of something an old friend of mine would have said. Well, from what I've heard, you're a good one, so enjoy it.' With that, I turned away and started walking.

'You still haven't answered my question,' he called out after me, but I kept going, and soon afterwards I heard him reverse down the track the way he'd come.

The problem was, I couldn't answer his question, because I genuinely didn't know.

Twenty years ago, it had all been so different. All so black and white. I'd been a young probationer then and on the way up, dreaming of a future I could shape through my own efforts. I'm not sure if I was ever an idealist, but I honestly did think I was doing the right thing, and even though it's a long time since the police have been looked at by their peers in a positive light, I was proud of what I did. I thought it was a better job than being a businessman or a computer programmer. Less money, but
much more to it. I think I dreamed that one day I'd get married and have a couple of kids; that I'd rise through the ranks until I was a DCI or even a DCS; that I'd stand up for my fellow coppers against government interference; that I'd tell the Home Secretary that he had to cut back on the paperwork and give us the freedom we needed to bring the bad guys down. That people would sleep safely in their beds, knowing that men like me were looking after them.

Never once did I dream that I'd be a murderer.

But then you don't, do you?

When I got back to my car, it was beginning to get dark. I started the engine and drove away without looking back.

THE END

Acknowledgements

A lot of people helped in the writing of this book. So, in no particular order, thanks to Pete, Sam, Doc and all at El Galleon, Mindoro Island, Philippines, for answering my many questions and providing me with an introduction to expat life there. I particularly enjoyed the walks between Sabang and Puerta Galera, Pete. To Matt for helping me find the best place to dump the bodies. To Waggy in Manila who was the best (and, dare I say it, the cheapest) guide I could have hoped for. Sorry so much of what you showed me was cut from the final document! To Selina Walker, my editor at Transworld; Amanda Preston, my agent; and my wife, Sally; all of whom provided constructive criticism of the various drafts, and whose comments made it a far better book than it would
otherwise have been. And to my invaluable sources amongst law enforcement and its related arms, none of whom (as usual) wish to be named.