The Judgement Book (20 page)

Dan breathed out hard, swallowed to calm himself. ‘I’m just interested, Sarah,’ he said neutrally. ‘It’s part of my job to understand.’

‘I’m flattered, Dan. But then, I suppose I’m going to be the subject of some of your reports now. Shall I consider this two interviews in one then? A criminal one from Adam and a journalist’s one from you?’

Dan heard Adam snort.

‘I’m just interested, Sarah,’ he said again. ‘It was an establishment thing, wasn’t it?’

She shifted her position, leaned back against the hard, whitewashed wall.

‘Yes, Dan, your wonderful insight is right. It was an establishment thing. But it was a little more than that. I could have taken what the government did to me if it wasn’t for something else that happened one night.’

And now her voice was tense, strained, and Dan knew he was on the verge of discovering something important. He held her look. Her eyes were soft, misty. She was somewhere else, lost in the comfort of a favourite memory.

He let the moment run, then gently prompted, ‘What was it, Sarah?’

She stared at him, then down at the concrete floor. Seconds drifted by, but Dan kept quiet. The old trick, the one he’d used so many times in interviews.

The power of silence.

He stood still, waited. Finally, Sarah looked back up, said softly, ‘Nice try, Dan. You almost got me … almost. But I’ll leave you to think on that one. You’ll find out soon enough how it all began.’

Through the glass windows of the Ginger Judge, Dan could see three white-overalled forensics officers unscrewing a table. Another pair checked the walls for wires, leads and any possible hiding places. They’d been called in as soon as Sarah was arrested. The trouble was they didn’t know what they were looking for. A modern day Judgement Book could be small or large and it might not even be a book, just a memory stick, a CD, or a file on a computer’s memory.

Adam stood outside and talked to the head technician, a small, reedy young man called Crispin. He seemed nervous, continually pushing his glasses up his nose. Adam explained he’d been newly promoted and this was his first time in charge of a crime scene. He would have preferred a straightforward burglary or mugging, but this was a high profile and complex case and it was making him edgy.

A small crowd of people had gathered to watch. Adam was about to have the street closed off when Dan interrupted.

‘Could you wait half an hour?’

‘A story?’ the detective asked wearily.

‘Yep. There’s no way this won’t get out. Give me half an hour and I can get Nigel and El here. I’ll have exclusive pictures for tonight and El will get the story in the papers for tomorrow. You can put out a message that you’re making progress with the case. It’ll play well with the public and your High Honchos.’

Adam straightened his impeccable tie, asked coyly, ‘And I suppose you’d like an interview with me too?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Half an hour only then.’

Dan almost smiled. He found himself wondering if Adam recorded his TV appearances, to preserve them for posterity. It wasn’t beyond the detective’s vanity.

He made the calls. El arrived, panting, twenty-five minutes later. He didn’t even say hello, just raised his camera, loosed off some shots and then flopped heavily down on the pavement.

‘Had to run all the way from the top of town,’ he gasped, between breaths. ‘Doing a job on a bloke who’s suing the hospital after his wife died in there. She only had an in-growing toenail. Bloody car wouldn’t start.’

He caught his breath and panted out a rhyme.

‘It’s rare to get Dirty El to run,

But he’ll do it if he sniffs out some fun,

And for this blackmailer,

He won’t want to fail ’er,

’coz he knows he can make some good mon–’

El waited for a few seconds, then added the missing ‘ey’.

Dan pursed his lips. The paparazzo’s latest masterpiece defied comment.

When Nigel had finished filming the forensics team, they interviewed Adam. He sounded positive about the arrest and search of the bar, but made it clear the case wasn’t yet over. Dan again found himself wondering what Sarah could possibly do from a cell in Charles Cross. Nothing, he reassured himself. Just simply nothing. Those claims about exposing him and Adam were pure bluff, the ranting of a criminal bitter at having been caught. The case was over.

He couldn’t quite convince himself. She had sounded very sure.

After that last interview with her Adam had given up, said they were getting nowhere. They’d left her in a cell, sitting on the thin, padded mattress, still wearing that whimsical smile. As the heavy steel door closed, they’d both looked back. Through the narrowing gap, Sarah had waved.

Dan checked his watch. Almost four o’clock it said, so probably about ten past. He waited outside the Judge for another hour. The forensics teams had nearly finished and he wanted the latest news to put on air. So long as he left by quarter past five he’d have at least an hour to get the story together.

He could get it edited in less, but it was always a delicate balance. The longer you left yourself, the more time there was for thought and a well-considered script. Only the reckless went for last-minute edits when they could be avoided. Besides, it wasn’t good for the heart. He had to look after himself. In future, he would have responsibilities, the most important a man could know. That was if they decided to have the baby, of course.

That word again. If.

Dan’s mobile rang, a welcome interruption to his thoughts. It was Lizzie and she was fizzing. He held the phone a little away from his ear as it buzzed with her voice. He didn’t have a chance to get a word in until the hurricane that was his editor in full flow had abated.

‘There’s some kind of police raid at a pub in town. It’s to do with the blackmailer case. The cops are ripping the place apart, apparently. What’s the good of you being part of the inquiry if we don’t get these things? The pictures sound fantastic! Really dramatic! I need them! I want them! I want to lead the show with them tonight. I want you on it at once! I want interviews. I want you live in the studio to talk about it. I want you moving! Now!’

Dan savoured the moment. Ah, the rare and sweet delight of being ahead of the game for once. He waited, waited, waited, delighted in the heady anticipation.

It was like the coming of the time to open a bottle of vintage wine, one you’d been saving for countless years.

The phone squawked again. ‘Dan? Dan?! Dan?!! Are you there?’

Another beautiful pause as he wondered which weapon of choice to employ. Indignation? Hurt? Irritation? Under-statement, he thought. It would be a fine and effective counterpoint to Lizzie’s tirade.

Quietly and calmly Dan said, ‘I’m already here. We’ve got all the pictures. We’ve been here for a few hours, in fact. Got an interview too. All exclusive to us – naturally.’

It was interesting how edifying a silence could be. That was all he heard in return, a first for Lizzie. ‘I’ll be back at the studios in 15 minutes,’ Dan added and hung up.

He had another quick word with Adam first. The search teams had found the two bugging systems, in the best tables in the house, just as Sarah said.

They were both radio microphones and both in the cutlery pots, linked to a receiver upstairs. There was a small digital recorder too, capable of storing hundreds of hours of conversations, but it was blank. The technicians thought it had been erased recently. Dan grimaced when Adam told him. Had it held the chat they’d had over lunch? And what others?

Adam believed the recorder was to keep a log of the conversations Sarah didn’t have time to listen to when potential victims were in the bar. She probably sat down and checked them later, wrote up the most compromising parts in the Judgement Book before the recordings were erased.

A mobile phone was also found. Initial investigations indicated Sarah had been using it just before the raid in which she’d been caught. A couple of officers from the Square Eyes technical division had been assigned to find out who she’d rung and why. That was their most urgent line of inquiry, Adam said. He looked worried.

Dan well understood why. The call must have been made just after they’d been discussing how Adam had directed him to Osmond’s house, and how previously they’d broken the law to catch a serial rapist. Were they such powerful snippets of information that Sarah couldn’t resist passing them on? Quickly and gleefully, as excellent blackmail material. And if so, who had she passed them to? Dan tried to push Adam to talk about it, but the detective wouldn’t. He seemed preoccupied, lost in his thoughts.

The teams had searched the bar and the upper floor, but there was no sign of anything that might be the Judgement Book. There was one oddity. A file of cuttings on the Iraq War and the death of a peace activist in Baghdad. Dan felt his imagination stir, but didn’t have time to think about it further. He had to get the story on air. He agreed with Adam what he could report and drove back to the studios.

He wondered whether to talk to Lizzie about turning the report into an edited package rather than him being live in the studio, but decided against it. Once set on a strategy, she wasn’t easily dissuaded. It was like trying to talk a torpedo into changing course. Plus, it wouldn’t do any harm to appear in person to claim obvious ownership of the exclusive.

Dan sat at the news desk, suffered the attentions of the floor manager as she clipped on a microphone, puffed some make up powder onto his face. At first, your macho instincts resisted it, but it made such a difference, stopped your skin shining distractingly in the inevitable sweat of nerves. It was especially important if your hairline was receding, as Dan had finally acknowledged – with great reluctance and annoyance – that his had begun to.

Lights flared in the metal trellis rigging of the roof and the thundering drumbeats of the title music played. Dan felt the familiar shot of adrenaline of live broadcasting, the knowledge of half a million people watching him. Craig turned to one of the cameras and introduced the story.

‘We begin tonight with another exclusive on the blackmailer case,’ he said. ‘The police have raided a Plymouth bar and made an arrest which they describe as highly significant. Our crime correspondent Dan Groves is with us.’

Dan talked about the search of the Ginger Judge for equipment that might be used to eavesdrop on conversations and the arrest of a member of staff. Nigel’s pictures ran as he commentated. Then there was a clip of Adam’s interview, the detective being cautiously optimistic that this was an important breakthrough. Dan summed up with a little of the background to the case.

At the meeting after the programme, Lizzie professed herself “reasonably pleased”, quite an accolade. It was one notch below the current absolute peak of her praise, an unqualified “pleased”. That was reserved for exclusives of the quality of the revelation of alien life, or proof of the existence of God. She’d never understood the meaning of the word wholehearted.

In the excitement of the raid, Sarah’s arrest and questioning, Dan realised he’d hardly thought about Claire or their baby. But now the image was back with him, playing football in the park with his son. It was raining, but the two of them didn’t care. They were belting the ball at each other as they took it in turns to go in goal, shouting and laughing as they floundered in the morass of mud.

So, they were going to have the child again, then. What was going on in his mind that one minute they would be proud parents, the next not? They had to talk about it.

Dan fished his mobile from his pocket and called Claire. Good timing, she was almost finished at work and was about to head home. He’d tend to Rutherford and take him for a quick walk if she would pick up a Chinese take-away. As he slipped some clothes, shoes and shampoo into a bag, a sudden nervousness hit him. He didn’t want to think why.

Claire unwrapped the plastic containers and spread them out over the coffee table. Dan stared at the colours of the chicken, beef and pork and realised he didn’t feel at all hungry. He picked at the food and noticed she was doing the same. They weren’t even drinking the glasses of red wine she’d poured, hers another conspicuously small measure. They sat side by side on her sofa and made small talk about how their days had been, the state of the investigation and Rutherford until he couldn’t take it any more.

Dan put down his plate. ‘This is ridiculous. We might as well just get on and talk.’

She turned to him and nodded. Her eyes were full of tears and her lips trembled. She reached out, cuddled into his neck and held him close. He felt the trembles of her sobs shiver through him.

Dan held her and stroked her hair until the crying had subsided. She sat back and looked at him, dabbed at her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what to do. I’m not used to feeling like this.’

Dan took her hand. He weaved his fingers into hers.

‘I don’t know either. What can we do?’

‘There are two options,’ she said, after a pause. ‘And I’m frightened of both.’

‘Me too.’

She began crying again and he reached out and held her. Her voice was muffled by his body.

‘I’m sorry, so very sorry,’ she sobbed once more, the words tumbling out. ‘I just don’t know what to do. I hate the idea of an abortion, but I don’t know if I’m ready to have a baby. I don’t know where we’d live, or how we’d cope. I don’t know what it might do to my career, or yours. I’m worried it might force us apart, whatever we do.’

Dan squeezed her shoulders, then sat back and took her face in his hands. He unfolded another tissue from the box. It was almost empty. There’s been too much crying lately, he thought.

He dried her eyes. ‘We’ll work something out.’ Even to him, the words sounded hollow.

She managed a weak smile and nodded. He knew she didn’t believe it either. Her eyes were full of doubt.

‘I know we will,’ she said. ‘I just feel so tired and unsure of myself. I’m all lost and helpless. Whenever I think I’ve made a decision, all these doubts crowd in on me and I start to change my mind again.’