Evil in Return (32 page)

36

Alex walked out of the hospital and crossed the Fulham Road. He had been there for several hours and it was now late afternoon. He felt as though he had been hit by a truck, but apart from some broken ribs where Henderson had punched him, and needing stitches to his cheek and above his left eye, where he had been pistol-whipped, there was nothing seriously wrong that a few stiff drinks and some decent sleep wouldn’t fix. He considered himself very lucky indeed that he hadn’t spent long in the darkroom. He had given a blood sample and they would find out soon enough what drug he had been given, but it was academic. He was alive, and that was all that mattered.

The Brompton Cemetery was only a few minutes away along the Fulham Road. He had arranged to meet Tim there at six. When he had called him earlier to tell him what had happened, Tim was on his way back from Oxford after his case had been adjourned. Tim had tried to coax him back to his house for a drink to hear the full story, but Alex had refused, saying that he wanted to go to the cemetery and see the place where Joe’s body had been found. In the end, curiosity had got the better of Tim. Alex checked his watch and saw that it was already well past six. He turned in through the gates and walked past the lodge and the chapel. The air felt strangely close and as he started down the path towards the colonnades, he heard the distant rumble of thunder.

The cemetery was much as he remembered, although he had forgotten the sheer size of it and how the tombs were so densely spaced. The first and only time he had been there before had been one summer about ten years back, when he had gone there for a picnic with some actress he had been working with. Sheltering from the rain, which had started suddenly to pelt down, they had climbed into one of the mausoleums. The family had been Russian, he remembered, and it had been built like a small, ornate chapel, although the inside was a bare shell with only a little round stained glass window for decoration. They had eaten their sandwiches and drunk the best part of a bottle of cheap red wine sitting on the dusty floor, then the woman had insisted they have sex. He had been all fingers and thumbs as he desperately tried to please her, but the thought that anyone might come along had been almost paralysing. He had seen her once or twice after that but he had forgotten her name, although he still vividly remembered the place and what had happened. He was looking around for the exact mausoleum when he spotted Tim looking down at him from the open arch of one of the colonnades.

‘You’re late,’ Tim called out.

‘Sorry,’ he said, walking slowly and awkwardly up the steps to where Tim was standing. The painkillers they had given him at the hospital seemed to be wearing off.

Tim looked him up and down. ‘God, you look a fright. Does it hurt?’

‘Yes, but it’s nothing serious. I just have to take it easy for a few days.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re here,’ Tim said, as they started along the covered walkway together. ‘I’ve had two young boys offering me their services already and there are some very odd types hanging around. I wouldn’t want anyone I know to see me here, in case they got the wrong idea. What kept you?’

‘I had to talk to someone else from the police before they would let me go. They’re offering me counselling, although I think I’ll be OK.’

Tim gave him a gentle pat on the back. ‘Not wishing to be cynical, it’s probably because they’re worried you’ll sue them for not giving you protection. But if they’re offering, I’d take it. These sort of things take an age to iron out in the mind. You’re bloody lucky to be alive, you know.’

‘Don’t rub it in.’

‘What you told me sounds horrendous. Something like that can mess with your brain, not least the fact that you survived, while Joe and the others didn’t.’

He nodded. Sometimes, for all his thick-skinned singlemindedness, Tim could be surprisingly sensitive. Survivor’s guilt hadn’t yet kicked in, but he was sure it would when he had time to think about things. For the moment, there was so much already messing with his brain that he felt strangely numb and detached about what had happened to him that morning, almost as though it had happened to someone else. Maybe it would hit him later, or maybe he was already in shock and just not aware of it, but things would just have to run their course. Until guilt or whatever stopped him in his tracks, he had to keep going. Besides, there were other ways to deal with guilt. There was something he still needed to do to make amends to Joe and the rest. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about it all again,’ he said, as they passed a young man leaning casually against one of the pillars watching them. ‘I’m talking about what happened at the lake.’

Tim looked over at him. ‘Why won’t you let it rest? You’ve got enough to deal with and they’ll catch the man who’s doing this. Then it will all be over.’

Alex shook his head. ‘It won’t be over until they find out who killed the girl. She was murdered, you know.’

‘So they told me.’

‘The man who killed Joe, Paul and Danny was her father. It’s funny, I don’t blame him for what he tried to do to me. I don’t feel any anger towards him and I understand now how he had to find out who killed her.’

‘Stop worrying. They can’t pin anything on you. After all this time, well, the evidence will be long gone . . . if there ever was any.’

‘I’m not worried any longer. After what happened this morning, it’s all clear. I was sitting in that chair in that foul darkroom waiting. I know it’s a cliché, but maybe because I thought I was going to die, I suddenly saw it all so clearly.’ He stopped and turned to face Tim, who looked puzzled.

‘What’s that?’

‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her.’

Tim sighed. ‘Alex, nobody ever thought you had. It was just the police playing games, trying to scare you.’

‘But I wondered, I really did. When that policeman started throwing all that stuff at me, I thought maybe, somehow, I had. And that I’d blanked it out. I mean you read about people doing terrible things that they then forget. It’s the mind’s way of coping, I suppose. And I was pretty high. I might have done anything. But I now know that I didn’t. I didn’t kill her.’ He said it again, loudly this time, feeling the sudden joy and power of those words.

Tim smiled. ‘I’m glad you’ve finally got that through your thick skull. Now do you feel like a drink? There are a couple of good pubs in the area and we could go and celebrate your newfound wisdom.’

‘In a minute. I just want to take a look at the crypt.’

‘Alright, then. But let’s make it quick. This place is giving me the creeps.’

They walked to the end of the colonnade, passing another man who was standing in the shadows with his back to them, hands in pockets looking out through one of the arches as though admiring the view.

‘Wouldn’t fancy coming here after dark,’ Tim whispered.

Each to his own, Alex thought, momentarily amused that it made Tim uncomfortable.

‘As I told you,’ he said, glancing over at Tim as they turned down the stairs at the end of the walkway. ‘I’ve been thinking about the night of the party. I wanted to ask you a few things, just to get it all straight in my head. There are just a few bits and pieces I seem to be missing.’

‘Fire away, although I’m afraid I don’t recall much about that evening.’

‘Where was Milly? She wasn’t there, was she?’

Tim sighed. ‘No. She’d gone home to her parents for the weekend. We’d had a row, quite a serious one in fact. Can’t even remember what it was all about, but I thought it was all over between us at the time. Seems so silly now, whatever it was.’

‘That makes sense.’

‘What do you mean?’

For a moment Alex said nothing. They came to the steps leading down to the crypt and he turned to face Tim. There was no point stringing it out any further. ‘You and she were practically joined at the hip, you did everything together. Yet when I saw you in the woods, you were on your own.’

Tim looked baffled. ‘Your point is?’

‘You went to bed on your own and the next morning you were still on your own.’

‘And?’

‘What I mean is, you had to be on your own. What happened doesn’t make sense otherwise.’

‘You’re the one who’s not making sense, Alex. Let’s go and get that drink and you’ll feel better.’ He put his hand sympathetically on Alex’s shoulder, but Alex shrugged it off.

‘There’s something else. You know I told the police that Paul had seen her going off towards the boathouse with someone. But I remember now it was you who said that.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. That’s why we all went trooping off there and found her clothes in the boathouse and bagged them up. That was your idea too. Tidying up, I think you called it.’

‘Your memory’s better than mine.’

‘Maybe. None of us were thinking clearly that morning so we didn’t stop to ask questions, but how did you know they’d be in there?’

‘I suppose I must have seen her going in.’

‘But you didn’t see who she was with?’

‘I really don’t remember. Must we re-hash all of this now?’

‘Yes. That’s why we’re here. I need to square the circle. There’s one more thing that’s come back to me. You were also the one who persuaded us to put her in the lake.’

‘No I didn’t. It was Paul’s idea, or maybe Joe’s.’

‘No, it was yours,’ he said insistently. ‘Paul was against it to start with, then finally he went along with what you wanted to do. Joe wanted to go to the police, don’t you remember? But you convinced us all we had to do it, like you’ve been convincing us to do things all these years. It’s why you’re so bloody good at your job.’

Tim frowned. ‘What if it was my idea? So what? I’m sure I was just thinking of protecting us all.’

‘No Tim, that won’t wash any more. You were protecting yourself.’

Tim was staring at him. ‘Alex, you’ve gone mad. Given what you’ve been through, it’s not surprising but—’

‘Look,’ Alex shouted, pointing down the stairs that led to the crypt. ‘That’s where Joe’s body was dumped. He was in there. In that horrible dark hole. It’s not a good place to end up, is it? And all because of something you did and made us all lie to cover up. I don’t know how you’ve lived with yourself.’

Tim rubbed his face, which had turned bright red. ‘Keep your bloody voice down.’

‘You killed her, Tim.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Tell me what happened. It’s just you and me.’

For a moment Tim said nothing, then he sighed heavily, his broad shoulders sagging as though he was letting out the strain and tension of all those years. ‘It was an accident,’ he said quietly. ‘Just an accident.’

‘She had a fractured skull . . .’

‘She fell against one of the boats in the boathouse and hit her head. OK?’

‘You raped her, didn’t you? That’s what the police think happened.’

‘I said shut up! It wasn’t rape. She wanted it, she wanted me. I’d had too much to drink and I got carried away, that’s all.’

‘That’s all? She was strangled, Tim. Why?’

‘Look, one minute she’s fine and loving it, telling me to keep going and it’s OK, the next she’s screaming, saying she’s going to tell her dad. I just tried to shut her up. As I said, I got carried away, in the heat of the moment. I never meant to kill her . . .’

‘You stripped her and put her in the lake—’

‘I didn’t know what else to do. I panicked.’

‘But all those years, I’ve been thinking that somehow I—’

‘I didn’t expect you to bloody find her.’

‘Get down,’ a voice shouted from the distance. ‘Get down.’

As Tim wheeled around, a shot rang out. Alex felt something wet and warm hit him in the face, but he felt no pain. He touched his cheek and found blood. He looked up and saw people zigzagging towards them between the gravestones. He thought he caught sight of Mark Tartaglia. ‘Get down,’ someone shouted again, but he was unable to move. He noticed a man walking slowly down the steps from the colonnade. He was dressed in black and had a gun at his side. Alex recognised Colin Henderson. He heard a strange sound beside him and looked around. Tim was clutching his neck. Blood spurted in bright jets between his fingers and he sank to his knees, then fell forwards on the ground.

Alex knelt down, pushed Tim over onto his back and cradled his head in his lap. ‘It’ll be alright, Tim. Don’t try and speak. We’ll get an ambulance.’ Tim’s lips were moving slightly but he had become very pale.

A shadow fell across them and Alex looked up to see Henderson staring down at Tim. Then he turned to Alex and held out his gun by the barrel.

‘Here, you take it,’ he said, his face expressionless. ‘I’m done. I heard what he said and I know now you didn’t kill her.’

From behind the tall gravestone where he had taken cover, Tartaglia saw Alex hesitantly take the gun, holding it gingerly like someone who had never touched one before and was afraid of it. Colin Henderson held his hands up high in the air and turned towards Tartaglia. ‘I’m unarmed,’ he shouted. ‘You can come and take me.’

Tartaglia stepped out into the open. ‘Keep your hands up high where we can see them,’ he shouted back. He ran towards them and grabbed the gun from Fleming, as two members of the surveillance team rushed to cuff Henderson. Fleming’s face was spattered with Wade’s blood, some of which had run down his neck, otherwise he seemed unharmed. ‘Are you OK?’ Tartaglia asked, as Henderson was taken away.

‘As much as I can be,’ Alex replied quietly, tears running down his face as he stared at Wade.

‘We have it all recorded, crystal clear. Thank you.’

Fleming said nothing. Tartaglia followed his gaze to where Wade lay glassy-eyed in a pool of blood outside the crypt where Joe Logan’s body had been found. The irony didn’t escape him. Wade had started the whole thing nearly twenty years before and his actions had cost several people their lives.

‘I know it’s probably the last thing on your mind,’ he said, meeting Fleming’s eye, ‘but we’ll need a statement from you when you feel up to it. Shall I send someone over to fetch you in the morning?’

Alex shook his head wearily. ‘No. Let’s get it over and done with.’

37

‘Where do you want me to drop you?’ Tartaglia said to Fleming as they walked out of Kensington Police station together several hours later.

‘On the canal, where Joe’s boat is. I’m going to see a friend of his who lives a couple of boats along.’

‘You mean Maggie Thomas?’

‘That’s right.’

Something about the set of Fleming’s jaw didn’t invite further questioning.

It was raining, the first time in weeks, and the pavement was slick underfoot. Donovan was waiting for them just outside in her Golf. Fleming climbed awkwardly into the back, while Tartaglia took the passenger seat and explained where they were going. He had spent the best part of the evening sorting out Fleming’s statement and felt exhausted. Colin Henderson was still being interviewed elsewhere by Steele, and a detective from DCI Grainger’s team who were still officially handling Paul Khan’s murder. It was a lengthy process and would continue the following day, but they already had the gist of what had happened. He had watched part of it on a screen in another room and had been struck by Henderson’s composure. Slim and wiry, he sat upright in his chair, his surprisingly sensitive, weatherbeaten face unmoved as he described the sequence of events; about how he’d known Anna since she was twelve; about his meeting her again after all those years, and how he had desperately grabbed the opportunity to find out what had happened to his daughter. Genuine love, so difficult for him to express in words, showed in his eyes as he talked about Danni and about his longing to know what had happened; how the uncertainty had hung over him like a cloud, colouring everything he did.

His quiet desperation and strength of feeling had impressed Tartaglia, particularly coming from someone so unemotional and shut down, and he respected the man for his honesty, even if at times, when describing what he had done, it was also brutal. He had shown no mercy for his victims. In his view, they were all guilty for hiding what had happened, even if only one of them had actually killed her. The only time he had hesitated was when he talked about Anna. But whatever he felt for her, he refused to discuss it. Some of what he said corroborated the bare version Anna had given Tartaglia that morning. He was amazed to find that she had told him the truth, or at least an edited version of it, about the accidental meeting between her and Henderson, her reading Joe’s book and her piecing together what had happened. Apart from the obvious, Tartaglia wondered if part of the attraction for Henderson had been the connection with his daughter, although Anna would have used anything to get what she wanted. However, Henderson clearly cared about her, refusing to implicate her in any way in the actual killings, saying that he had been acting alone. Although Tartaglia didn’t believe him, so far Henderson was sticking to his story.

As for Anna, she would be properly interviewed when she was released from hospital, but based on the few things she had said so far, it was clear she intended to deny any knowledge of or involvement in the murders. So long as Henderson stuck to his story, with a good brief she might even get away with it. Everything she had said, even down to the misleading information she had given them about the second book, could be given an innocent spin by a good barrister. She must have had fun planting that red herring, he thought, although she would deny that too. He had been through every detail in his mind and although he had no doubt of her complicity in the killings, there was no hard evidence yet to back it up. The task of the next few days would be to find something to prove her guilt and he wouldn’t stop until he had.

As for her real motivation, he was none the wiser. Had she really cared about Danielle that deeply? He thought back to their brief drink together in the Scarsdale Arms when she had asked him if he believed in the justice system. ‘I just want to know for myself,’ she had said. ‘Do you think you deliver justice to the victims and their families?’ He remembered the way she had looked at him, like a young girl who wanted to believe. Was there some softness and genuine feeling there that he had missed? Something sweet and tender left over from her youth that hadn’t entirely shrivelled? He hoped so. Or perhaps the whole thing had just been a game, like so much of her life. Either way, she had to find out the truth. She would have got Joe to tell her everything, as far as his knowledge went. He would have been putty in her hands, and Henderson too, probably. She would have got a kick out of pulling his strings, sending the emails, planning the bizarre dumpsites, getting him to add the last dramatic touches to the bodies of his victims. She was behind all the things that didn’t fit psychologically with everything else Henderson had done. Thinking of her, thinking of what had happened between them that night at his flat, he felt no lingering connection, just revulsion. He hoped he would never have to see her face to face again. Whatever her motivation, he felt no remorse for her, however damaged she was. He had seen it so often before, the bullied becoming the bullies, the abused becoming the next generation of abusers. The depressing but inevitable knock-on chain reaction of evil. But it was no excuse.

Henderson was a different matter. However hideous his actions, there was no sign that he had derived any sadistic pleasure from what he had done. Coming from a background and training where violence was the norm, a means to an end, he had simply wanted to find out who had killed his daughter. A part of Tartaglia felt a glimmer of sympathy for him and he understood the pain that had driven him. His former colleagues had dismissed what the man had done as a cold-blooded mission designed to prove himself, but they had underestimated him and missed the point. It had been about Danielle and nothing else. She had been the one light in his darkness. In Henderson’s shoes, what father would not have wished to do the same? The only difference was that Henderson had seen it through in reality.

He was still musing about it all when Fleming leaned forwards.

‘Hey, can you stop for sec?’ he said. They were in the Edgware Road, not far from the canal.

‘Do you want to walk?’ Tartaglia asked, surprised. Fleming seemed physically drained as well as badly bruised from what had happened.

‘No. I just want to get something from a shop.’

‘OK, but don’t be long.’

Donovan stopped the car and Fleming got out. Tartaglia watched as he walked slowly back along the pavement, shoulders hunched against the rain, to a brightly lit supermarket and went inside. A minute later, he reappeared holding several bunches of flowers.

‘He’s one of the world’s last, genuine, old-fashioned romantics,’ was how Wade had described Fleming the day before. The thought made Tartaglia smile.

Two minutes later, Donovan pulled alongside the canal and Fleming got out. He was about to walk away, when he turned and bent down as though he wanted to say something. Tartaglia opened the window.

‘Just one final thing,’ Fleming said, leaning in, ‘so’s it’s clear in my mind. When you asked me to meet Tim at the cemetery and wear a wire, were you using me as bait?’

‘You agreed it was the only way to trap Tim Wade,’ Tartaglia said.

‘That’s not what I meant. Did you know that man would come after me, come after us?’

It seemed an honest question, as though Fleming hadn’t yet made up his mind. ‘No,’ he said firmly, hoping to convince him. ‘I assumed he’d gone.’ Never in a million years would he admit to anyone his true thought processes, that he had suspected that Henderson might show. With his surveillance background it would have been child’s play to keep watch without being observed. He would have seen Fleming carted off by ambulance to the hospital just a few minutes down the road. He would also have known that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with him. He would have found out exactly where in the hospital Fleming had been taken and when he was due to be released. Again, child’s play to follow him the short distance to the Brompton Cemetery. But should there ever be an enquiry, Tartaglia would deny all of it. He had no idea what Steele thought; it was not something either of them had brought up, but he knew she would back him. Her head would be as much on the block as would Clive Cornish’s, who had sanctioned the whole operation. ‘We had a full debrief from his superiors,’ he said to Fleming. ‘Their assessment was that he would abandon what he was doing to save himself, and that he would try to leave the country. A man matching his description, travelling on what turned out to be a false passport, caught a flight to Paris.

We didn’t think you or Wade were at risk any longer.’

Fleming shook his head. ‘You honestly believed that?’

‘Look, we have to work with what we’re given,’ he said noncommittally. ‘Everything happened so fast, there wasn’t much time for analysis. They told us they knew Henderson inside out. They gave us a full psychological profile and they said he’d abort the mission, that that’s how he’d see what he was doing.’

‘Jesus, you really believe that? I’m no amateur psychologist, but that’s crap. He was her dad; he had to find out who killed her, whatever happened to him. He wouldn’t have stopped until we were all dead, or he was.’ Tartaglia said nothing. That had been his assessment too, but however much he found himself reluctantly warming to Fleming, he had no intention of agreeing. ‘Why don’t you tell me the truth?’ Fleming continued. Rain was running down his face and he was getting soaked but he seemed oblivious. ‘You set me up, didn’t you? You used me as bait and you knew he’d come.’

He met Fleming’s eye. ‘Listen, I’ll tell you the truth when you tell me exactly what you did with Danielle by the lake.’ He didn’t expect an answer, but it was the last piece of the puzzle, the one final thing he needed to satisfy his curiosity. All along Fleming had acted like a guilty man, guilty of something even worse than finding and hiding a young girl’s body, and he wanted to understand why.

For a moment Fleming said nothing. Then a half-smile flickered across his battered face. ‘That’s something nobody ever needs to know but me, but I’m comfortable with it now. Her ghost has finally left me.’ Slowly and awkwardly he stood up. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and, with one final glance at Tartaglia, turned and walked away, the flowers carefully cradled in the crook of his arm. For a man who had been to hell and back again, there was a surprising lightness to his step as though nothing in the past mattered any longer and the future was a brighter place. Almost envious, Tartaglia watched him go, saw him disappear down the steps to the canal and Maggie’s boat. Fleming was right. He had baited the trap knowing that Henderson would come. Back in the hospital, when Fleming had told him of his suspicions about Wade, the ethics of risking Fleming’s life were the last thing on his mind. He had had qualms about using Fleming but there had been no other choice. Anyway, Fleming was hardly innocent. He had been caught up in the evil deed since the beginning. They had to nail Wade and if they netted Henderson too, it was worth the gamble. All that mattered to Henderson was finding out the truth of what had happened to Danielle. Given the opportunity, he would want to hear what the two of them had to say before finishing them off. If Fleming protested his innocence, as they had carefully rehearsed, then accused Wade of her murder, he might leave Fleming alone. He had also gambled that Wade, thinking himself and Fleming alone, would confess. However outwardly resilient he appeared, it must have been a weight off his shoulders to finally unburden himself. Whether his account was entirely honest was another matter, although it had sounded plausible. His death was unfortunate, but after the destruction and misery he had caused, Tartaglia couldn’t feel too much pity for him, although he felt sorry for the collateral damage to his wife and children. Wade had directly, or indirectly brought about the deaths of several innocent people.

As Donovan accelerated away down the street, he took one last look at the canal, his mind turning again to the murdered young girl whose body had been pulled out of that stretch of water only a few months before. It was a dark world in which they lived. He turned to Donovan.

‘Have you got time for a drink? You and I need to talk.’