If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) (27 page)

Stark woke in discomfort around four, again. As with previous nights he topped up on painkillers and made a futile attempt at more sleep. He was deep in the cycle now, where the very urgency for sleep drives all hope away and the mind churns ceaselessly.

‘Fuck!’ Frustrated, he swung his legs out of bed – and gasped as a sharp stab of pain shot through his hip. There was no getting away from it: he’d have to talk to someone about this. He’d see how he got on that night in the pool and discuss it with Kelly.

He tried his exercises, gave up in frustration and made himself a snack instead. The omelette stared back at him from the plate. He’d not felt like this in a while. Upping his OxyContin was beginning to dull his appetite, a reprise of those post-op morphine days: a depressing leap backwards. Still, food was fuel: he’d soldiered through then, so he’d soldier through now and eat every joyless scrap.

The image of Maggs in court drifted up, his performance in front of the magistrate – unexpectedly cool and controlled, no fireworks. Given what he’d witnessed and the simmering anger that had emerged in interview, it seemed remarkable. Then again, even that anger had an aspect of control. Maggs was careful. But
why
was he being careful? What was his goal? He seemed determined to go to prison: why? To get it over and done with before Pinky was found and put under the spotlight? Surely he couldn’t expect that.

There was mixed incentive on the CPS side: Pinky’s testimony might strengthen the sexual-assault charges against the gang but weaken the murder charge against Maggs – his defence counsel would wave Pinky like a flag. After which the prosecution would cross-examine her rigorously – Stark felt a pang of guilt at the prospect. It would certainly shore up the case against Nikki if Pinky could ID her, but maybe there was enough evidence already. Did they need another witness, another victim? Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to find her.
Maybe she could stay hidden and get on with her life without being traumatized all over again.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Fran, the second she saw him. ‘What the hell happened to you? There’s no way you got
that
lucky!’

‘After your timely interruption on Friday?’

‘You should be thanking me. I saved you from dismal humiliation.’

‘Thank you, from the very heart of my bottom.’

‘So why do you look like Doctor Frankenstein couldn’t jump you a pulse?’

‘A pure soul never rests easy in a wicked world, Sarge.’

‘In
this
wicked world there’s no such thing. Come on, intravenous caffeine might at least get you through the meeting.’

It was blessedly short. A fresh TV appeal had generated hundreds of calls, ranging from mistaken to misleading to wildly fanciful, but nothing solid. The news companies wouldn’t run it again. They were on their own now, and there was little more they could do. DI Graham’s territorial CID team, who’d been shouldering the rest of the workload since Alfred Ladd’s death, were instructed to divvy it out as appropriate. Fran accepted a burglary case with poor grace and generously shared her irritation during lunch.

‘So, one usual suspect with a whiffy alibi, nearby at the time but denying involvement, closely associated with a second in possession of items stolen claiming to have bought them from a stranger in, of all places, a pub. And they’ll both get off because we can’t disprove their bullshit. How many times have we seen this? No wonder the little sods turn recidivist.’

‘What about SOCO?’ asked Dixon, humouring her.

‘Fingerprints all proved to be family, and a boot-print cast from the flowerbed was traced to the window cleaner.’

‘Has anyone looked at the window cleaner?’ asked Stark, forcing down another mouthful.

Fran gasped. ‘You mean we’re supposed to consider
all
the options, not just the first, most obvious one?
Shit
. I must’ve missed that lesson in police school. Does everyone know this? We should make an
announcement! Think of all the blindingly obvious clues we might’ve missed over the years,’ she wailed. ‘God, this is
awful
!’

‘That’d be a yes, then?’ smiled Stark.

‘Clean as a whistle apparently.’ Fran pushed the file away from her. ‘Bloody lame pony.’ A case not worth a punt, fit only for the knacker’s yard.

‘Can’t win ’em all,’ sneered Harper.

Looking around to gauge what others made of the remark, Stark accidentally met Harper’s eyes and was shocked by a flash of malevolence. The man had missed his weekend shift with an unspecified ‘illness’ and returned today in caustic mood, bearing fresh physical evidence of his troubled home life. This had reignited the whisperings about his wife’s mental health and drinking. To make matters worse, Stark had noticed one idiot sympathize, quietly but in plain view. It was clear Harper had convinced himself Stark was to blame. Stark tried wearily to put that thought from his mind.

After lunch Fran delighted in relaying Stark’s revolutionary new theory on investigative procedure to the whole office. It was only on the third retelling that it hit him.

‘Shit!’ he said aloud.

‘Don’t be a poor sport, Stark,’ said Groombridge.

‘No. I didn’t mean …’ Stark was still trying to grasp the squirming thought. ‘What I meant was, have we made that exact mistake?’

‘What mistake?’ asked Fran, still amused by her own joke.

‘Overlooked a possibility because we were handed a better one on a plate. What if Maggs didn’t stab Kyle Gibbs in the back?’

‘Of course he bloody did!’ scoffed Harper. ‘Want me to show you the photos?’

More laughter, but Groombridge saw Stark was in earnest. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What if Maggs isn’t trying to shield Pinky from exposure but trying to shield her from a murder charge?’

Harper gave a mocking laugh, but finding himself alone fell silent, embarrassed and displeased.

Fran hardly looked happier. ‘Give it a rest, Stark. You just don’t want to think he did it.’

‘You think I’ve lost objectivity?’ he asked, keeping his voice measured.

‘You arrested him! We have his confession! Why would he lie?’

‘Because he’s a broken-down old soldier with an over-developed sense of nobility,’ Groombridge intervened. ‘I have to say, I don’t buy it. It’s plausible, I’ll give you that. I can even see it in my head. Maggs doesn’t get the knife off Gibbs but he does knock it flying. He catches Gibbs in the throat but while everyone’s watching the two of them a poor girl, traumatized half out of her wits, picks it up and does the unthinkable. But I don’t buy it. Maybe some people out there would take a murder rap for a complete stranger, but would Maggs?’

It was a serious question. ‘I don’t know, Guv,’ answered Stark, honestly.

‘CPS aren’t going to thank us for this, Guv,’ said Fran, still unhappy, as they waited for Maggs to be shown into the gloomy prison interview room.

‘Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service are never ungrateful when justice is served, DS Millhaven. Especially when it’s served before they are publicly shown to have wrongly convicted someone – again.’ Groombridge smiled at her, then frowned at Stark. ‘You up to this, Stark? You look all in.’

‘Guv.’ Stark wasn’t at all sure he was.

The door opened and Maggs took his seat opposite them.

‘Well,’ he said gruffly, ‘Inspector Questionable Orientation, Sergeant Hardarse and Constable Weekender, to what do I owe the pleasure?’

Stark ignored him and conducted the preliminaries for the tape.

Maggs chuckled. ‘They letting you make the running today? Is this like a practical exam, interrogation for beginners? D’you get a little sew-on badge?’

Stark waited in silence.

‘What do you want?’ asked Maggs, eventually, irritably.

‘Still wishing we weren’t too squeamish for the noose?’ asked Stark.

Maggs indicated his surroundings. ‘What’s the difference?’

‘Scope for redressing miscarriage of justice,’ replied Stark. He watched Maggs for some reaction but saw little.

‘I’m getting a strange
déjà vu
,’ said Maggs, looking at the others for some clue.

‘And I’m starting to wonder if you’re the only
innocent
man in Shawshank.’

Maggs stared at him. ‘You calling me a liar, Constable Stark?’

‘I think you’d have to have had good reason. I’m wondering what reason would be good enough.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘It would have to be a point of honour,’ mused Stark, aloud.

‘Where’s this bollocks coming from?’

‘The more I see of you, the less I can reconcile myself with the idea of you stabbing an unarmed teenager in the back.’

‘He wasn’t unarmed –’

‘He was, once you had his knife.’

‘The little shit stabbed me, twice.’

‘And attack is the best form of defence?’

‘Right.’

‘Bollocks. You know as well as I do that once you had the best of Gibbs the rest would fade away. And if Gibbs was still coming at you his wound would be in front.’

‘Not if I grabbed him and turned him in a neck-lock. Hand over the mouth, knife up under the ribs through a kidney into the diaphragm, nice and quiet. You remember, I’m sure,
Corporal
Stark.’

‘I remember. But that wasn’t the pattern of the wound. Besides, this wasn’t national defence. I think if you’d got him in a neck-hold, simple threats would have been enough. And you know it too.’

‘I was drunk.’

‘So you claim, but adrenalin can have a very sobering effect.’

‘Your sleep deprivation is dulling your wits!’

Stark shook his head, impressed. ‘And you’re defending by attacking again. Tell me about the girl with pink hair.’

Maggs was riled now. ‘I’ve told you everything!’

‘I don’t think you
have
.’

‘Then ask her yourself,
if
you ever find her.’

‘We already did.’ Stark paused just long enough to see alarm in Maggs’s eyes. ‘In a manner of speaking. We found the phone, Maggs. Robust little thing. Smashed against a parking meter, immersed in drain water for days, but still holding on to its precious recollections.’

Fran slipped a series of stills from the attempted rape on to the table one by one, culminating in a blur of olive drab.

‘Not just stills, Maggs. Video and audio too. Nice war cry, by the way.’

‘
You heartless shits!
’ hissed Maggs. He picked up the image of Pinky, half naked, pinned beneath Gibbs and waved it at Groombridge. ‘Is this what you wanted, you
sick fuck
? I bet you can’t wait to see it on the front page!’

‘This isn’t just about that, though, is it, Maggs?’ said Stark, as evenly as he could.

Maggs glared at Stark. Then, just for a second, there was pleading in his eyes. Stark groaned inside. He was right, and Maggs saw it. ‘Don’t,’ said Maggs, quietly. ‘Please.’

Stark sighed. ‘He didn’t do it, Guv. He didn’t stab Kyle Gibbs. It was Pinky.’

Maggs shook his head sadly. ‘Which of us is doing the right thing, Weekender?’ he asked. ‘What will
your
reflection tell
you
?’

‘Maybe we both are, Maggs,’ replied Stark.

‘Ow!’ Stark rubbed his arm where Fran had punched him. A passer-by looked disapproving.

‘
That
’s for showing me up in front of the whole of bloody CID!’

‘I must remember it’s not nice to ridicule people before their peers,’ replied Stark, pointedly.

‘Now, now, children.’ Groombridge played father. ‘Play nicely or I won’t let you listen in when I call CPS and tell them their killer is still at large. Don’t look like that, lad. If she comes clean she might even walk. This has diminished responsibility, or at least provocation, written all over it.’ He must’ve seen Stark’s thoughts in his face, something Stark was determined to learn to prevent.

‘We have to find her first,’ said Fran. She punched Stark again. ‘That’s for bollocksing our stats.’

‘At least you can hand that lame pony straight back,’ said Groombridge. ‘Come on. We’re about to get busy again.’

CPS took the news without much rancour, candidly admitting the murder charge was always a long shot, brought to help secure a lesser conviction. And even if the new theory could be corroborated, there was still the blow to the windpipe. The coroner’s report was inconclusive on whether it might’ve proved fatal, had Gibbs not then been stabbed. Maggs wasn’t going anywhere.

According to Groombridge, Superintendent Cox took the news
stoically enough too. Those who didn’t were DI Graham and his team, as Groombridge’s gleefully handed back all the lame ponies they’d accepted just hours earlier. A new TV appeal, slanted towards Pinky as a victim of violent assault rather than possible witness, or indeed suspect, was organized, and the process of keeping her uppermost in the minds of the regional police forces redoubled.

All Stark cared about was making it through the day. He even considered ducking out of his evening with Kelly, but couldn’t face the defeat. He doggedly hit the phones and at the end of the day went to freshen up. He sensed someone follow him into the changing-room and turned just as Harper grabbed him by the lapels and shoved him against the lockers. Stark could have freed himself without difficulty but not without violence, so he let himself be lifted on to tiptoe by the heavier, taller man. ‘I don’t like gossips and backstabbers!’ hissed Harper, leaning in, eye to eye.

The natural reaction in this predicament was to pull your head away from your assailant’s face, grasping at the hands gripping your lapels. Throw in a fearful expression and you have the perfect disguise for a retaliatory head-butt. Few things said fuck-you quite so eloquently as a Glasgow Kiss. Harper’s nose had been broken before and would break very nicely again. If Harper had pulled this kind of amateur theatrics away from the station Stark might not have let him get away with it. ‘And I don’t like bullies,’ he replied. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to come to your senses.’

‘You’ve been talking behind my back, spreading lies about me and my wife.’

‘I have not.’

‘
Don’t lie to me!
’ growled Harper. ‘You were eavesdropping on the stairs – that was a private conversation and whatever you think you heard –’