Loose Head (21 page)

“Maybe.” I thought back on my own complex relationship with John, on the calculating look in his eyes on the night of his murder, and knew, with absolute clarity, that he had been weighing how much I could afford, on a policeman’s salary, to pay him for his silence about my affair with Jane. Obviously he had decided that the potential profit didn’t justify the risk that I would simply arrest him on the spot – which I almost certainly would have done. Still, if what Brian was saying was true, how could I have missed the signs?

“Anyway.” Brian studied the rich play of light in the depths of his pint. “Something Devilliers said suggested another line of inquiry.”

“What?”

Brian made a dismissive gesture. “Probably nothing. I’ll let you know if it pans out.”

I drained my pint. “I’m not sure I want to know. The farther his case proceeds, the more an ass I feel.”

“Speaking of feeling an ass,” said Brian, arising, “tonight’s sex night, so I shall bid you adieu.”

“What, so soon?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s only been two months since our last steamy love-bout. My advice to you, laddy, is to go home and, like me, crawl into bed. You look knackered, and tomorrow’s going to be a very long day.”

For once, a sensible suggestion. I was suddenly very tired – tired of it all. “Give my best to Fee,” I suggested.

“Well. I’ll give her
my
best, at any rate,” said Brian smugly. And chuckling to himself, he scuttled for the door.

II

It is truly remarkable the extent to which, in the Bard’s immortal words, a good night’s sleep, sore labor’s bath, can knit up the ragged sleeve of care. I had taken Brian’s advice, gone home to my flat in the Mews, read a few pages of
Dombey and Son
, and slipped effortlessly into profoundly restful slumber. I dreamt that I was 22 again, rampaging across the rugby pitch in some exotic foreign land, and awoke revitalized and ready to cope with Weathersby’s tangled web. A good sluicing in the old shower, some tea and toast, and I was fairly whistling as I strode the final few blocks to the office.

I should’ve known it was too good to last. As I rounded the last corner, I saw the seething mass of humanity in front of Hendon nick. At first I thought it was just another demonstration against police brutality. Then I noticed the cameras.

“DI Reed! DI Reed! Is it true you’ve arrested Lord Delvemere?”

“DI Reed! Have you identified the prostitutes in Lord Palmerston’s video?”

“DI Reed! Is it true you’ve used your position to conceal your teammates’ past criminal wrongdoing?”

“DI Reed! Were you being blackmailed as well?”

“DI Reed!”

“DI Reed!”

By the time I had shouldered a none-too-gentle path through the swarm of reporters and paparazzi and gained the relative haven of the security checkpoint inside the lobby, I was shaking with rage. Someone within the department had leaked the blackmail videos to the press. It was a disaster of unimaginable magnitude – for the case, and most especially for my teammates. The hounds of hell were loose now, and had already clamped their ravening jaws around the throats of some of my closest mates. I knew one thing, and one thing only. Whoever had unleashed this apocalyptic shitstorm, whether for financial gain or simply to watch me squirm, would pay, and pay dearly.

The message light on my phone was blinking when I arrived at my desk. I had just finished listening to the last cheery call, from Barlowe (“Dex, you utter cunt! How could you do this to me, after you promised to warn me, so I could be the one to tell Sarah? Ah, Dex, she’s gone – wouldn’t even speak to me! Oh, Christ, what’s the use? What’s the use of anything?”) when Brian arrived, lightning fairly shooting out of his ears.

“Dex! For Christ’s sake, how could this have happened? Are the disks still there?”

I unlocked the drawer. The disks were where we’d left them. “See for yourself.”

“How many other copies are there?”

“Two. One for Wicks, and one for Oakhurst.”

He paused. “Oakhurst.”

“Yes. Said he needed them for his meeting with the Crown prosecutor. But not even he would do something this heinous. He may hate my guts, but he wouldn’t put his career on the line just to bugger me. Whoever did this has left the Metropolitan Police Service open to millions in lawsuits. The chief will go berserk!”

At that moment, my phone rang. “DI Reed, would you step ‘round to my office, please?”

I hung up. “Speak of the devil,” I said. “Oakhurst.”

“What’s he want now?”

“Something I’ll enjoy about as much as a fishhook through the ball-sack, I’ll wager. But while I’m gone, if you’re not too busy, there’s something I’d like you to do for me.” Brian listened to my request. And then he began to smile.

III

Oakhurst was openly gloating when I arrived. “I don’t need to tell you that the events of this morning have put the Metropolitan Police in a very bad position, DI Reed.”

“No, sir. You certainly don’t.”

Wicks was pacing the office like the pendulum on a metronome, face like woman in third-stage labor whose husband has just told her she looks fat. “A bad position? It makes us look like we’ve all got shit for brains! My wizened buttocks are black and blue from the bollocking I’ve just received from the head of SCD! We will discover who leaked those videos, and his or her head will be on a spike before this day is out!”

“I agree, sir,” I said seriously. “Only three copies of the disks exist. Mine are still under lock and key. Have you verified that the same is true of yours?”

“Of course!” Wicks barked. “Do you take me for a cretin?”

“Naturally not, sir. What about yours, DCI Oakhurst?”

“They’re right here, where I left them last night,” he replied, and unlocking a file drawer, demonstrated that this was so. “And now, DI Reed, perhaps you can explain this to me.” And he laid a sheet of paper on his desk.

It was a faxed copy of an incident report, from the Wellington, New Zealand police, dated April 12, 1999. My heart sank as I read it. It described a particularly nasty bar fight between local mechanic Andrew Marshall, age 28, and visiting English rugger Harry Barlowe, 40. The police had been inclined to prosecute, but one of Barlowe’s teammates, DI Dexter Reed of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, had intervened, managing to persuade the dubious local constables that Barlowe had acted in self-defense.

I looked up. “Sir?”

“This incident wasn’t in any of your reports.” Oakhurst addressed himself to Wicks. “Did I not tell DI Reed, in your presence, that any attempt to conceal information pertinent to the Weathersby investigation would result in the severest possible consequences?”

Wicks frowned. “You did.”

“This is a clear violation of departmental procedure. I intend to see that DI Reed answers for it.”

“That’s at your option, of course. But later. Until we find out who leaked those videos, it’s all hands to the pumps.”

“Quite. Well, DI Reed? What do you have to say for yourself?”

“The incident report speaks for itself, sir. Barlowe was attacked in a bar, and he defended himself. I was there, helped break up the fight, and gave a statement to the police. They agreed it was self-defense. No criminal charges were filed. It isn’t relevant to the Weathersby case.”

Oakhurst regarded me incredulously. “It isn’t relevant? It says here Barlowe might have killed the man if you hadn’t intervened! One of our primary suspects has a documented history of homicidal violence and you don’t consider that relevant?”

“He didn’t start the fight. He was attacked, and he defended himself. That’s hardly what I call a history of homicidal violence. And in any event, I thought you were convinced that Lord Delvemere was the killer. Sir.”

“A good investigator keeps an open mind, and isn’t afraid to change it when fresh evidence comes to hand! Did it not occur to you, DI Reed, that Barlowe might have felt not only himself, but his family, under attack from Weathersby? If he reacted to some drunken lout in a bar by attempting to choke the life out of him, how would he react to the threat of losing his family at the hands of an unscrupulous teammate?”

I had no answer for that. I rose to depart.

“It must have rankled all these years, DI Reed.”

I paused, hand on the knob. “What’s that, sir?”

“Being the lone scholarship boy on a team full of rich nobs. Having your nose rubbed in that lifestyle, but never really being a part of it.”

“Is that just a personal observation, sir?” I spoke in a voice carefully neutral, noticing that Wicks had gone very still. “Or do you believe it to have some bearing on the case?”

“Just an observation, detective.” And with an airy flutter of his fingers, he shooed me from the room.

IV

Still pondering this enigmatic exchange, I returned to my desk, to find that Brian had left a note: “Checking out a promising lead. Meet me for lunch at the Prospect of Whitby in Docklands.”

I used the intervening two hours to pursue a promising lead of my own, involving a visit to the exquisite Emma Kwan of the computer crimes lab. When I left, the day seemed brighter, and I hummed as I cabbed it eastward along the Thames.

Brian was waiting when I arrived. An extraordinarily fat bloke, so spherical as to be the same height lying down as standing up, shared his table. “DI Dex Reed – meet Cyrian O’Toole. Old mate of mine.”

Everyone in London knew O’Toole; his scandal-raking scribblings were a daily must-read for every social climber in the city. He was the disgraced eldest son of one of the oldest and most conservative families in Britain, whose transgressions at Cambridge had caused his tradition-minded father to cut him off without a farthing. O’Toole, privy to a thousand family and near-family secrets, had embarked on a career as a journalist, and swiftly made himself someone to be feared and cultivated in equal measure. He was, so I had heard, extravagant in his tastes, ambiguous in his sexuality, brilliant, unscrupulous, and deeply insecure.

O’Toole gave a small grimace of distaste as he slipped me a small, moist hand. “Delighted, detective. Now, can we get on?”

“Certainly, certainly.” Brian was in high good humor. “I think you know that Cyrian’s the society columnist for the
Star
? He was the first to break the Weathersby story.”

“Was he?” I said.

“Yes, well...” O’Toole preened modestly. “It was, between us, quite a coup. Circulation numbers through the roof, my dear chaps! Our rivals shat themselves in fury! You could almost smell them from the newsroom!”

“You buggered my investigation, and several of my closest friends,” I growled.

O’Toole shed his skin of affability like a yearling anaconda, and favored me with a disdainful glare. “Be serious, detective. Did you seriously expect me to bury a story like this? In this day and age, when a good sex scandal can hit the web before the unfaithful husband’s dong is dry? This is blackmail and murder among the aristocracy, with video to boot! Stories like this make journalists’ careers.” He turned me a knowing wink. “Just like they make policemen’s.”

“What about those they ruin?”

O’Toole bulbous face flickered through scarlet and into magenta. “Listen, DI Reed. I didn’t ruin anyone’s career. They did that themselves. It was their...”

“Speaking of ruined careers,” said Brian in his best commanding London bobby voice, “I seem to recall that you were grabbed up for indecent exposure a year or two ago. Something about an 80-year-old granny, I believe?”

“Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sake!” O’Toole hissed. “I just stopped for a piss in her garden! Anyway, the charges were dropped!”

“Only because, at the time –“ Brian laid a heavy emphasis on the latter word “ – one of my colleagues was persuaded not to pursue it. I believe the case could still be reopened. The statute of limitations is seven years.”

“All right, all right, you’ve made your point,” said O’Toole, sweating visibly now. “What d’you want to know?”

]“Obviously,” I said mildly, “we want to know who sold you the videos.”

“I can’t tell you that! It was a confidential source!”

“Look, Cyrian. We know it was someone on the inside at Hendon. And they haven’t just embarrassed the MPS.” For just an instant, I allowed the rage roiling inside me to show in my eyes, fixed with unwavering intensity on his. O’Toole flinched backward involuntarily. “They’ve embarrassed me personally. And I will show no mercy to anyone who helps them get away with it. None.”

O’Toole acknowledged my threat with a flick of a disdainful glance. “I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to, DI Reed. I don’t know who it was.”

“What d’you mean, you don’t know?” asked Brian, leaning his massive forearms on the table.

“I don’t know because it was an anonymous source!”

“Just tell us what happened,” I growled.

“I got a call. Someone who said he worked at Hendon, and was in the middle of an investigation that would blow the lid off London! He told me about the case and the videos, asked how much we’d pay for copies!”

“And how much did you pay?” I asked curiously.

“A hundred thousand pounds up front, with another £100,000 if the information proved out. He left the disks in a blind drop, a rubbish bin near our offices. We made the second payment after we’d reviewed them, and seen they were dynamite.”

“How was payment made?”

“Electronic transfer. He gave us an account number, and we gave the order to our bank. Funny thing, though.” He narrowed his porcine eyes. “It was actually two different account numbers – a domestic one for the first payment, and a Swiss account for the second.”

“We’ll need those account numbers.”

O’Toole shook his head mulishly; a few drops of sweat spattered the tabletop. “I can’t. That would tell you who the source was as surely as if I’d given you his name myself.”

“So it was a man.” Brian leaned backward, a thoughtful look on his face.

“Yes, it was a man! But I’ve bugger-all idea which man! Now if you’ll excuse, me, I’ve got a very busy day today.” He rose.