Deadly Virtues (32 page)

“You talk…” Her voice cracked and she had to try again. “You talk as if there’s an alternative. As if we can go back to Meadowvale and carry on like nothing happened!”

“No,” Fountain agreed candidly, “of course that’s not an option. I’ll resign. I’ll take responsibility for what happened to Jerome—it’s my station, it was always my responsibility—and I’ll leave. But before that I’ll make sure nobody takes over where Mickey left off. That can be my legacy. To put things right before I go. To leave a town at peace instead of under anarchy. Wouldn’t that be better? Honestly?” It was a tribute to the sheer power of his personality that she found herself wondering if it wouldn’t.

It was necessary to say something before he took her silence for consent. “What about Alice? What can you offer her to
begin
to make up for the harm you’ve done?”

Fountain pivoted slowly, his glance sweeping over the forge like the beam of a lighthouse. “I can’t bring her fiancé back. But I can make all this”—he indicated the dirty workshop and the dead man on the floor—“go away. Give me the gun. Nobody need ever know that Alice shot her father.
I
shot Mickey Argyle. He tried to kill me, I got him first. No one will even question it. And Alice doesn’t have to go through the rest of her life with the gutter press haunting her every move.”

No one said, “Yes, that would be best,” but no one told him what he could do with his suggestion, either. The silence
had
to mean they were considering it. Against their better instincts perhaps, but considering it nonetheless. For Alice. For Alice who’d lost everything, who wasn’t to blame for any of this but who was going to pay for it, one way or another.

Fountain wasn’t thinking about Alice. Fountain was trying to see his way out of this mess with his reputation, and if possible his pension, intact. It was true what he’d told Hazel—he’d gone into it with good intentions. He’d climbed onto the tiger’s back thinking it would take out the other tigers for him and then he could vanquish it. He still didn’t feel that being unable to complete the task made him a bad man.

All Fountain could think about was Denis. How she would face up to his disgrace. Bravely, of course, but God, he’d have given anything to save her that. He’d have given his life. Widow’s weeds at a police funeral would at least have left her some dignity, and she’d never have known that he let her down. If it all came out, Denis was going to be so disappointed. He thought she’d stand by him—in fact he knew she would—and he thought she’d speak her mind only once, only to him, and after that she’d be the dutiful, supportive wife for as long as necessary. But Fountain had no illusions about what it would do to her.

Unless these three people could be persuaded that there were better ways for this to end than with him in the dock and photos of Alice Argyle all over the tabloids. He thought Constable Best was at least considering his proposition. Alice, he thought, would do what the others told her to. Which left Gabriel Ash. Rambles With Dogs.

Johnny Fountain smiled at the battered man. “You’re thinking I’ve nothing to offer you. Nothing to set against the satisfaction of showing a town that humiliated you that you were cleverer than its senior police officer and its top gangster put together.

“But you’re wrong. You see, Mr. Ash, I know things. I may know more about what happened to your family than anyone else. Some of it because I got a brief from Division when you came back here, and some because Mickey Argyle knew another side to the story. I doubt if anyone else in the country knows as much as I do, and that’s only because I made a pact with the devil. How’s that for poetic justice?

“What do you want most in the world, Mr. Ash? To know what happened to your wife? To know where your sons are? What I can do for you is tell you things nobody else can—”

In the confined space, and the breathless hush into which Fountain was dropping his serpent words, the last gunshot sounded like cannon fire.

CHAPTER 31

O
NLY WHEN JOHNNY
Fountain fell over, no surprise on his face this time, just a dreadful blankness, did Hazel see Argyle behind him, propped up on one elbow, still aiming his gun with infinite care as if, in the clouding mists of his mind, he couldn’t be sure if he’d hit him the first time.

Ash let out a wail of terrible anguish, the howl of a tortured dog. Fountain was dead before he hit the floor, but Ash wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t bring himself to believe it. For most of four years he’d had no hope. Then someone had dangled the promise of information in front of him, and before he’d even had a chance to respond, the promise had balloon-burst in front of him. If Fountain was dead, what he knew had died with him.

Ash fell on him and thumped frantically at his chest, numb to the pain of his broken fingers. “Breathe,” he cried, half furious, half weeping. “Breathe, damn you!”

Hazel reacted with a combination of instinct and training that precluded the need for thought. Before the sound had finished echoing around the forge, she’d caught Alice by the elbow and swung her outside the door. Then she turned back.

In training college they’d taught her the art of triage. It didn’t matter that Ash was breaking apart in front of her. It didn’t matter that Johnny Fountain was dead or dying on the floor. It mattered that Argyle was still somehow conscious and still pointing his gun, and where Fountain had been a moment earlier, now there was Ash.

Hazel had half a second’s notice of what was going to happen next. She didn’t hesitate. She brought up the hand holding Fletcher’s gun from due south to due west and fired.

Police trainees tend to divide into two camps: those who dread having to make the life-and-death decision and those who can’t wait. On the whole, the former make better police officers. Hazel had been one of the former. What astonished her now was how easy it was, how uncomplicated by morality or compassion or simple human reticence, to make that decision when the moment came. To shoot a bad man in order to protect a good one. There was no thought in her mind of disabling Argyle. He needed stopping, right now, and she aimed the gun that fortune had provided her with at the center of his forehead and blew his brains out.

*   *   *

“Hazel, he knew! What happened to them. He knew what happened to them!”

Now that it was over, Hazel’s hands were trembling. She tried to keep her voice steady. “Gabriel, calm down. I don’t think he knew anything. Only how to play with your emotions. He needed you to think there was something he could offer you, that’s all.”

“He said he knew where the boys are! Not where they died, not where they’re buried—where they are!” There was something deeply pathetic about his eagerness to believe. “Doesn’t that mean they’re alive?”

Hazel put the gun down carefully on the anvil and put her arms around him, though whether for his comfort or her own, she could not have said. “All he knew was what came down to him from Division—that you were living in Norbold again, and why, and that you might need an eye kept on you. I’m sorry, Gabriel. I don’t think he knew anything that
you
don’t know. He was trying to use you.”

“But…” He so wanted to argue with her. To convince her that Chief Superintendent Fountain had put together snippets of information garnered on both sides of the fence and come to an understanding that no one else had. But before he was a grieving husband and father and a broken man he was a security analyst, trained to know when he was hearing the truth, and what she said made sense. At the end, Johnny Fountain had used every weapon at his disposal to save his professional life. And sometimes you don’t even need a weapon to make someone do what you want—you just have to make them think you have one. He thought Hazel was probably right. The tears flowed from his swollen eyes down his bloody cheeks.

With DI Gorman and an ambulance finally on the way, Hazel took her companions outside, away from the abattoir inside the forge, and settled them in Fountain’s car.

Ash looked doubtfully at the cream leather upholstery. “I don’t want to bleed on it.”

“Who’s going to care?” asked Hazel brutally. “Listen to me, both of you. We have maybe ten minutes to decide what we’re going to say. And the only way it can be other than the unvarnished truth is if we all agree.”

Ash looked as if he hadn’t quite taken in anything that had happened since Johnny Fountain turned his world upside down again, and he wasn’t doing any better with this. “
Other
than the truth? Why…”

Hazel breathed heavily at him. “You know why.
Fountain
knew why. Because if we tell how it happened, I’m going to walk away undamaged and you’re going to walk away undamaged, and Alice is going to have to convince the authorities that the father who murdered her fiancé was prepared to murder her, too, so it was self-defense when she shot him. Even after that her story—her tragedy—is going to be tabloid fodder for months. She’s nineteen years old, Ash! She’s been through enough already. What I’m asking is, can we save her from going through any more?”

Finally his thought processes seemed to engage. “How? How would it work?”

Hazel nodded, relieved to have got through to him. “We change a few salient details. Mr. Fountain offered to say that he shot Argyle—well, we take him up on that. I think the old bastard owes us a favor. So everything happened exactly the way it did until Argyle pulled his gun. Then Fountain snatched Fletcher’s gun from Alice and shot him. Then he gave it to me to preserve as evidence. I’ll put his prints on it, then some more of mine over the top.”

It wouldn’t just mean manhandling the corpse; it would mean lying. “But you killed Argyle?” Ash was making sure.

“I
did
kill Argyle. We’re editing Alice out, that’s all. If we’re agreed that we should, and that we can all stick to the amended version.”

Alice said numbly, “I meant to kill him. When I shot him, I intended to kill him.”

“I know,” said Hazel softly. “And I don’t blame you, and I don’t think anyone else would, either. The fact remains, you didn’t kill him—I did. I was doing my job, and I’ll answer for it to anyone who asks. There’s nothing to be gained by saying it was you, not Fountain, who fired the first shots.”

“I don’t want anyone else paying for what I did.”

“It won’t cost me a thing. And it won’t cost Mr. Fountain anything, either, and it wouldn’t even if he was alive.”

“Then…” The girl wrestled her head around it. “All right. Mr. Fountain shot him. I took the gun off Andy Fletcher, and Mr. Fountain grabbed it when my father produced his.” Hazel could hear the burden lightening in her voice; but also the uncertainty that remained. The hope that could still be taken away.

“Exactly.” She turned to Ash. “Gabriel?”

Except for physically, Ash wasn’t even in the car. He was back in the forge, with Johnny Fountain offering to tell him about his sons. Recalled by the sound of his name, his body jerked. “What?”

“A kind lie or a harsh truth? Where do you stand on this?”

Ash blinked the better of his eyes. “If we lie, where does the lie stop?”

“Right there,” said Hazel with certainty. “If you’re wondering if I’m prepared to perjure myself to protect Johnny Fountain’s memory, the answer’s no. I don’t care who knows. IPCC can worry about it, Division can worry about it. If they want to sit on it, they can. If they want it out in the open, they can issue a press release. I don’t care. I’m asking if you’ll help me protect Alice. One lie, to protect a nineteen-year-old girl who’s done nothing wrong.”

“You’re a police officer. I don’t think you’re supposed to tell even one lie.”

“No,” she agreed, “I’m not. But I’m going to, unless you tell me you can’t.”

He thought for a moment. “I didn’t see who shot Mickey Argyle.”

Hazel gave a tight smile. “Good man.”

“No, really—I didn’t see. A lot of what happened I didn’t actually see.”

“Okay,” said Hazel. “Stick to that, and don’t speculate, and we’ll be fine. And if either of you finds yourself in difficulties, remember the magic words.”

“M-magic words?” stammered Alice.

“
I don’t know.
Stops an interview in its tracks every time. Don’t speculate, don’t answer questions you haven’t been asked, don’t try to be clever, and any time you find yourself on shaky ground the answer is
I don’t know.
It leaves the investigator nowhere to go. He may think you’re lying through your teeth, but in order to unpick your story you have to give him a story to unpick.
I don’t know
gives him nothing.”

Alice said hesitantly, “You don’t have to do this. If you’re going to get into trouble…”

“I’m not going to get into trouble,” said Hazel firmly. “I’ll tell Mr. Gorman that the old sparring partners ended up shooting each other and he’ll believe me. Why wouldn’t he? If I was going to lie about anything, it would be about the shot
I
fired, and I’ll be quite candid about that. I had no choice, so I did it.”

“I wouldn’t want you sacrificing your career for me,” insisted Alice, shy and stubborn at the same time. “I’ve nothing to hide. Not my relationship with Jerome, not how it ended, and not the fact that I shot the man responsible. I don’t know if it was self-defense. I think he
was
a danger to me, but that’s not why I killed him. I killed him for Jerome.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Hazel reminded her. “I did.”

“I did my level best,” said Alice.

*   *   *

Hazel heard the police cars coming and walked to the gate to meet them. But before they arrived, something else caught her eye. A very weary, very footsore, very dirty white dog was limping up the lane toward her, its tongue hanging around its knees.

“Oh dear God,” murmured Hazel, and hurrying forward she bent and gathered the dog up in her arms; staggering a little under the weight because although it was leggy, it was also muscular. “Gabriel! It’s Patience.…”

Alice, of course, had no idea where the dog had come from. But she saw how Ash reacted, and she got out of the car and went to the front seat so Hazel could put the animal in beside him. Patience put her head on his knee, and Ash stroked her grimy fur with anxious, damaged hands and bowed his head over her. His tears invested her with fresh new spots.