Mercy Killing (17 page)

‘Do you remember that night I came back from the East Rise Players’ emergency meeting?’ he said, chancing a look up into the eyes of a furious woman.

‘The one that you and Jude walked out on?’

‘Yes,’ he said with a sigh. ‘That’s the one.’

‘If I remember rightly,’ Elaine said, ‘you both walked out and went straight into the pub.’

‘OK, OK. Are you going to let me tell you what happened?’

She reached down to her handbag which she’d dropped to the floor, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and put one in her mouth.

‘What?’ she said, the lighter held to her face. ‘You can bring the police to my door asking questions about a murdered paedophile that you pranced about on stage with, have
your fingerprints taken, but I can’t have a smoke? Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here.’

He recognized that it probably wasn’t the best time to mention that he thought they’d given up smoking together six years ago, so Jonathan continued.

‘Jude and me sat at the meeting, thinking it was going to be about raising extra funds or selling tickets or something. We had no idea that Eric Samuels, prick of the parish, was going to
drop a bombshell about one of the members being a sex pest.’ He glanced up at the smoke as it curled towards the white ceiling. He thought about reaching out and taking a cigarette himself.
Instead he carried on.

‘You know that I only went along because Jude’s wife made him go and he didn’t want to go by himself. At first, when Jude got so angry at what Samuels said, I wondered if it
was because he only wanted a reason to storm out, something to tell his wife that she couldn’t argue with. Well, once we left the Cressy Arms, we walked to the Hake and Billet. Jude
didn’t say a word the whole way.

‘Once we sat down, he started ranting about Woodville and what he’d like to do to him. We drew a few looks in the pub, I can tell you. I had to shut him up cos we were on the verge
of getting barred.’

He watched his wife tap her cigarette ash into an empty coffee mug on the table, something he had never seen her do in all the years of knowing her. Even when they were students and
couldn’t afford an ashtray, it wasn’t a level he’d ever seen her sink to. That action more than anything struck a chord in him – he was reducing his wife to pitiful.

He knew he couldn’t tell her the truth. Even if their marriage survived, he wasn’t sure she was up to it.

‘Elaine,’ he said, putting his hands on top of her left hand, idle on the table. He felt the gold wedding band touch his palm. ‘We didn’t kill Woodville. Could I look you
in the eye and tell you such a bare-faced lie? Could I? After all the years we’ve been married, known each other, loved each other? You do believe me, don’t you?’

‘Then why were the police here?’

It was said without feeling, without accusation, with a cold detachment.

He put his hands up to his temples and leaned on his elbows.

‘Because we were the only two blokes at the amateur dramatic society who weren’t over sixty and actually had a backbone. Everyone sat and tutted at that meeting; a few people,
including Samuels, said that the police had it wrong and hadn’t given us all of the facts.

‘I don’t have much time for the filth but they don’t tell you someone’s a nonce when they really mean that he forgot to pay his bloody television licence. They
don’t work like that. Me and Jude were horrified that someone like that was walking amongst us. We reacted; the rest of them didn’t. I can’t help that. What’s done is
done.’

He waited for his wife to say something, even if it was another accusation.

More worrying than that was that now she said nothing.

Elaine ground out her cigarette on the side of the
I love Cyprus
mug, picked up her handbag and walked out of the front door.

Jonathan sat at the kitchen table and heard the sound of his wife’s car start as she drove away from him.

His stomach lurched. He was certain she’d be back soon. Certain that she would be back this time.

He tried to think in terms of the momentary reprieve he had before Elaine came back and started asking him more questions. She’d driven away from him when he’d lied to her. He
didn’t want to think what she would do to him when she learnt the truth.

It was taking a little longer than expected for DC Hazel Hamilton and DC Pierre Rainer to reach their final destination. It was only a couple of hours’ drive from East
Rise to the small Sussex town where Dean Stillbrook had lived, but Hazel suggested that they make another stop.

‘Are you sure you’re all right to carry on driving?’ she asked for the third time. ‘I thought we were going to swap over when we stopped for a coffee.’

She couldn’t continually ask him as it sounded to her own ears as if she was nagging him.

‘I know you’ve only just flown back from your holiday and that’s the fourth time you’ve stifled a yawn. And I know it’s not because I’m anything other than
fascinating company.’

Pierre laughed and said, ‘OK. Let’s have breakfast. I am pretty hungry and that’ll give us a chance to plan how we tackle this enquiry.’

A few minutes later, they were sitting opposite one another, steaming mugs of coffee and a silver serviette container partially filling the gap between them.

While they waited for their food to arrive, Pierre said, ‘I’m not entirely sure that we need to stay overnight. I got the impression that Harry wanted it sorted out in one go, less
chance of us going back to the incident room and being bombarded with questions from the others until we’ve got as much from the young girl as possible.’

He stopped stirring sugar into his drink and glanced up, catching the look on Hazel’s face.

‘Perhaps it’s because I’m new,’ she said as she picked up her coffee mug, ‘but looking at it impartially, I think it’s because if it’s a planned
overnight enquiry, they don’t have to pay us an overnight allowance for being away from home. If the DI plans ahead and we don’t need to stay over, he can cancel the hotel, the
department gets its money back and the cost is nil.’

For a few seconds, Hazel wasn’t sure if she had spoken out of turn. She didn’t want her new team to dislike her, although she wasn’t about to hide her forthright attitude. She
bit her tongue, not wanting to say anything unpleasant about her new detective inspector before she got the lie of the land and had sounded out Pierre’s thoughts.

‘Harry’s one of the good guys,’ he said.

She felt herself raise her eyebrows at him. ‘I know he is. He’s the sort of bloke that everyone likes, even those who don’t agree with him. I did my homework before I came
here. It’s just that’s what I’d do if it was down to me – I’d plan ahead and save money. It makes good business sense.’

She glanced in the direction of the kitchen, wanting their food to appear. Right at that moment, she felt she needed the distraction. She wanted to make a good impression on her new work
colleague and desperately churned her mind over to find something neutral to talk about.

She was grateful when Pierre came to her rescue.

‘So when you’re not at work, leaving disastrous relationships out of the equation, what else do you get up to?’

Hazel smiled and felt her shoulders relax. ‘I foster dogs,’ she said. ‘Usually only for a day or two because of work but I love helping out.’

Pierre picked up his coffee mug and studied her face. He didn’t take a sip, simply continued to look at her. She took it as her cue to continue and for the first time that morning she was
happy to talk, to tell him about the many dogs over the years she had cuddled up to, walked, fed, sat on the sofa with at night, their heads in her lap.

‘It started when I was on the domestic violence unit.’ She turned her gaze to the window, not really seeing what was the other side of the glass and not really caring.

‘Vanessa Meaden went back to her violent husband three times in as many years. He used to beat her for a period of weeks and eventually, when he’d put her in the hospital, we’d
get involved, he’d get arrested and go to court. He always got a ridiculously short sentence, if he got one at all.

‘Anyway, she always went back to him, whatever he did to her. I’d ask her over and over again why she didn’t leave him.’

Hazel sat at the Formica table retelling the tale she had told herself so often, knowing that she couldn’t have prevented what happened, but accepting that it was possible for such
situations to have a different outcome. Of all the things she stressed about, this was one she never gave herself a difficult time over. There’d been a problem she hadn’t been aware of,
and all she could do now was play her tiny part in making things easier in the future for victims of domestic abuse, such as Vanessa Meaden.

‘She used to tell me that she couldn’t leave because she had nowhere to go.’ Hazel looked at Pierre, saw him open his mouth to say something, pause and sit back in his plastic
seat. ‘I’d guess that you were about to say a refuge. The thing is, refuges take women and children, but they don’t take pets, especially not Great Danes. She wouldn’t leave
because she had nowhere to go where she could keep the dog.

‘Her lowlife, piece-of-crap husband gave the dog a kicking too on a couple of occasions. I put people who are cruel to children, animals, the elderly, the disabled, wife-beaters and
paedophiles in the same category – worthless human beings. They pick on the weak and those who won’t or can’t tell.’

She swirled the remains of her coffee around the bottom of the mug.

‘What happened?’ said Pierre. ‘Although I have a pretty good idea.’

‘He beat her again, pushed her down the stairs and she lay behind the front door until the postman called the next day, looked through the letterbox and saw the dog sitting beside her dead
body. According to the neighbours, who had stopped calling the police because of the abuse they got from him when he inevitably got released from custody, the row started about midnight so the dog
probably sat there for something like eight or nine hours.’

‘So you foster dogs so that women like Vanessa can make a fresh start?’

‘That’s the idea. I’m happy to help out usually only for a day or two because of work, on my days off, something like that.’

Pierre was still holding his mug. She saw him look at it, place it on the table and lean towards her. He looked a little uncomfortable at what he was about to say next. Hazel told herself that
whatever it was she wouldn’t be offended.

‘It seems as though everything you do is for someone else,’ he said in what she gauged to be the least judgemental tone he could muster.

‘Not really. I get a lot out of looking after the dogs. I fostered one for a fortnight a while ago and he was a nervous and timid dog when he came to me. By the time he left, he was a lot
livelier and cowered less. I really got a kick out of that.’

The waiter appeared with their plates of food, giving Hazel a few more seconds to think before she spoke again, or Pierre asked her anything else. She was keen to come across as level-headed and
show herself in a good light, especially so early on in a department she had walked away from once. She couldn’t afford to mess this up.

‘So,’ he said as he sawed into his breakfast, ‘getting back to what we’ve got to do today, do you have a plan any better than knock on the door and say to the parents,
“Can we speak to your daughter about the allegation she made against Dean Stillbrook?”
 
’

Hazel ripped a corner from a piece of brown toast and forced it into the top of her fried egg, watching the yolk run towards the bacon before she said, ‘I do, but it’ll have to wait
until I’ve finished. No one likes a cold fry-up.’

Eventually, Hazel pushed her plate to one side and said, ‘With any luck, when we get there, at least one of Monica Lewis’s parents will be home. She should be at school but I think
that if we start by speaking to her mum or dad . . . then once she’s home from school we can go back and chat with her. I’m not . . .’

Pierre looked up from his plate, last mouthful on his fork. ‘Go on,’ he said before he chewed on the piece of fried bread and mushroom.

Once again, Hazel was torn between saying what she was thinking and testing the waters. She tapped her fingernails on the edge of the table top.

‘I appreciate what you said about Harry, and I don’t disagree with you. My only comment would be that perhaps we should have called the Lewis family and arranged to see Monica at a
different time. The reactions of victims of any crime are difficult to predict, none more so than those of an eleven-year-old girl who’s gone through such an ordeal. The element of surprise
is all very good in the right circumstances. I’m very worried about freaking this poor kid out.’

He nodded his head at her but something about his expression told her that he wasn’t about to agree.

‘It’s a judgement call, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘If we call and make an appointment and the parents tell Monica, then she may fret for days. If we turn up, we possibly
uncover something that we would have otherwise missed.’

‘The classic police damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ she said. ‘I know what you mean, but I’m all about the bigger picture here. A successful murder
investigation is one thing, a traumatized kid messed up for life is quite another.’

‘What was the real reason you left Major Crime?’ asked Pierre.

Hazel didn’t want to answer. She couldn’t avoid the truth forever, though she thought she had done a very good job of dodging the question by talking about Gordon Letchford and their
disastrous relationship. It was her safest option, the option that didn’t let on how every day she tortured herself that she hadn’t seen the warning signs and had been too busy to do
anything to help before it was too late. Pierre seemed too astute and it would be hard for her to fob him off without appearing rude.

She liked Pierre and wanted to tell him. The enquiry they were about to carry out probably meant he deserved her honesty. Besides, he could always ask around. Someone was bound to tell him
eventually. It might as well be her.