The Killing Club (24 page)

‘But foolhardy enough to get himself killed when Roseborough tumbled to what was going on,’ Wilton suggested.

Brunswick nodded, his former cheeriness and self-confidence crumbling as the revelations rolled on. ‘Have you got hold of some photographs Christian took?’ he asked. ‘Is that the evidence you were referring to?’

‘We have some photographic evidence, in connection with the case, sir,’ Wilton told him, ‘but not yet confirmation of the person who took the photographs. Did Christian come to see you before he went back to Yorkshire? Did he make any references to shots he might have taken, relevant to the murders?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Absolutely. We weren’t big buddies. I just saw him occasionally when he came up to London. We’d have a drink together.’

‘But you didn’t tell your wife about these meetings?’ Wilton asked, thinking that Charles must be a man who had a taste for secrets.

Charles shook his head. ‘Harriet didn’t really want to keep in touch with him.’

‘He’s right,’ Harriet said. ‘When I left home and came to London I wanted to leave my peculiar childhood behind me. Christian was fine, an OK person. But he was not my brother, and I suppose I resented what I considered his intrusion into our family, taking up attention from my parents. God knows they had enough lame dogs without him.’

Charles put his arm around her and kissed her on the forehead and then the lips. She kissed him back.

Wilton made a speedy alteration to his first perceptions of this interesting couple. They looked pretty well soldered to each other, for all her high-handedness and his slippery charm.

‘What’s Julian going to do next?’ Harriet demanded, suddenly. ‘Who’s at risk?’ She turned to her husband. ‘Oh God, Jake’s at a sleepover with Oliver!’

‘Where he will be very safe,’ Charles told her, soothingly. ‘We’ll ring to check.’

She rounded on Wilton. ‘Well, who’s the target?’

‘We believe that Julian Roseborough’s immediate concerns will be to get possession of the incriminating evidence we have in our possession.’

‘So basically DCI Swift is the one who should be looking out for himself?’

‘I’m sure DCI Swift is well used to doing that,’ Wilton said.

‘Julian won’t be after our son Jake, or my mother, or us?’ Harriet persisted.

‘I think that would be very unlikely,’ Wilton said. ‘Try not to worry, Mrs Brunswick. The police in Yorkshire are aiming to cover all angles, which includes protection for your mother.’ How’s that for diplomacy, he told himself, guessing that Roseborough had now gone to ground and was lying low.

‘Oh, poor Mum, having to cope with Christian’s being killed and then getting mixed up in all this.’ Harriet exclaimed. ‘And I was such a bloody bitch to her yesterday.’

Wilton gave a respectful nod of his head to acknowledge her guilt and grief. He wasn’t a psychologist; it wasn’t up to him to comment. He now prepared to wind up the interview, judging that things had gone better than he could have hoped for. Anticipating that DCI Swift might give him the pat on the back he had long been short of. That Roseborough might possibly be brought to book. That the big shots who had shat on him from a great height might have some explaining to do to their own superiors. All rather satisfactory, if it could be pulled off. He recalled his surly treatment of Inspector Cat Fallon and felt an uncharacteristic twinge of regret. She’d been the one to pull all this together with her hunch, link the ‘Tipper’ with the Hartwell case. He had initially scorned her theorizing as mere woman’s intuition. It seemed like Ms Fallon was one very smart cookie.

As Wilton walked out into the street, Brunswick followed on, the latter paid the waiting taxi driver and told him he wouldn’t be needed.

‘Time for a night in,’ he said to Wilton, his tone of genial superiority gradually returning.

Wilton realized that Brunswick, the heart surgeon, regarded him, the police inspector, as just a public servant and a minion. Rather like Julian Roseborough’s view, only not as dangerous and psychopathic. It didn’t bother Wilton. His view of the world was entirely different. And just at this moment he was in exactly the job and the situation he wanted to be; he couldn’t imagine any job more exciting, stimulating and worthwhile. And sometimes, thrillingly powerful.

PC Burns and his colleague PC Jolie were on their way to Ruth Hartwell’s house. They had been given a personal briefing by DCI Swift on their job of protecting Mrs Hartwell for the next twelve hours. They had been told that Mrs Hartwell had been discharged from hospital some two hours before and was resting at home.

‘The DCI was a bit on the cagey side,’ Burns commented. ‘I had the impression he was holding out on us, not letting us into the full picture.’ Burns was in his twenties, enthusiastic and studying hard for his sergeant’s exams. He had attended a number of psychology lectures and been fascinated by what he had learned. Now he was applying his new knowledge to DCI Swift. ‘That’s not like the DCI. He’s usually so straight and up front,’ he said. ‘This case must have turned into something bigger than he’s letting on.’

‘He was clearly concerned about Mrs Hartwell’s welfare.’ PC Jolie commented. Jolie was a family liaison officer and her main focus and expertise lay in comforting the grieving families of victims. She was a dispenser of solace and paper tissues, a sturdy shoulder to cry on and a tower of empathy.

‘Yeah, concerned enough to give us a free hand to get full back-up if we had any worries.’ Burns was beginning to feel excited. Being a stone’s throw away from the cutting edge of catching dangerous villains was setting his adrenaline flowing.

Arriving at Mrs Hartwell’s house, they smoothed and straightened their uniforms as they stepped out of the car. On viewing the crumbling villa set in a large rampant garden, they exchanged meaningful glances.

Burns peered at the house’s name plate and then pressed the bell.

‘Goodness. It’s positively gothic,’ PC Jolie murmured, tucking a stray hair behind her ear and looking up at the dark bulk of the house from which no sign of light or life emanated.

There was a long pause, the sound of a dog’s bark, and then there was the glow of a bulb coming from the hallway. ‘I won’t be long,’ a voice reassured them. The door was thrown open to reveal an elderly woman with a mass of wiry silver hair which was tied back in a girlish pony tail. On seeing the two officers, her face brightened.

‘Mrs Ruth Hartwell?’ PC Jolie enquired.

‘Yes. Come in, come in, I was expecting you.’

She led the officers down a wide, dark hallway into a large, square kitchen. In contrast to the coolness of the hallway, the kitchen was throbbing with warmth pulsing from a wood-burning stove which looked to the two young constables like a piece of engineering which should now reside in a museum. A small dog got up from its bed and greeted the officers with tail wags and kindly looks. Burns, who kept a rather fine German Shepherd, thought this one had the appearance of an animal which had once been squashed by a large object.

‘Please sit down,’ she continued, gesturing to the assortment of ancient wooden chairs surrounding a large oak table.

The two officers looked around them. More museum fodder.

PC Jolie felt warmth rising up beneath her jacket. The heat from the stove was overpowering, even on a cool July evening.

‘You’ve come to “mind” me,’ Mrs Hartwell said. ‘Is that the correct term?’

‘Yes ma’am,’ said Burns.

‘Please call me Ruth,’ she said. ‘Or Mrs Hartwell, if you prefer.’

‘We were told a neighbour was staying with you,’ Jolie commented, in her gentle, compassionate tones.

‘Yes. I sent her home. She needed to prepare supper for her husband. She’s very kind but she does like to talk a great deal, and I’ve got rather a headache.’

‘Do you want us to call a doctor?’ Jolie asked with concern. ‘You’ve only recently been discharged from hospital, haven’t you?’

‘I don’t need a doctor. I’ve taken a paracetamol. That should do the trick.’ She looked at Jolie. ‘There’s no need to be worried. I’ve been fully checked out at the hospital. My CT scan indicated that I don’t have any internal head injuries or bleeding into the brain. However, if I sound at all odd, you must bear with me. I had some kind of blackout, and the doctor didn’t really give me an explanation of the medical reason for that. I am approaching my seventies, so maybe my brain is giving out, whatever the CT scan says.’

A canny old bird, Burns thought, even though she did look as though she’d got dressed from the contents of a tramp’s carrier bag.

‘I presume you know that a good deal of trouble has occurred since my informally fostered son Christian was found dead on the crag?’ Mrs Hartwell asked them.

‘Yes, we are aware of the main facts of the case,’ said PC Jolie keeping her voice low and gentle. ‘And we’re very sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you.’

The two officers smiled, neither of them quite sure how to take her.

‘I am extremely worried,’ she said, suddenly sounding very serious and very much in charge of her brain. ‘If Chief Inspector Swift thinks I need a twenty-four-hour police guard, he must also be very worried.’

‘We will make sure you are safe, Ruth,’ Jolie said.

‘Thank you. It’s not me I’m most worried about. It’s my daughter and her family. And Craig.’

‘DCI Swift is doing all he can to protect your family – and Craig,’ Jolie said.

‘I know that. But the man who is threatening us is not like other people. He has little regard for the welfare of others. He has the coldest, cruellest eyes I’ve ever seen.’ She put her head in her hands.

The atmosphere grew heavy with tension. PC Jolie did what she often did in difficult and tense circumstances. She filled the kettle and made a pot of tea.

Swift watched Cat walk down the platform and felt almost weak with relief. He pulled her against him for a few moments.

‘I could have done without the incident in Doncaster,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

As they walked down the concourse together, Cat slipped her arm through his. Outside the station, passengers from the delayed train who had missed local connections home were forming a long snaking queue for taxis, their faces drained and exhausted. Swift and Cat headed for his car which was parked in the small private park reserved for station staff.

‘How are we doing?’ Cat asked, as he steered the car through the traffic, passing supermarkets and car show rooms before climbing the long hill leading north out of the city. ‘Any progress?’

‘Pin your ears back,’ he told her.

Keeping a discreet eye on his rear view mirror to check whether they were being followed, Swift gave her a full and detailed account of his talk with David Colburn, filling in the details which he had not had time to mention when he phoned her at Kings Cross.

She let out a long breath when he had finished. ‘That is one chilling story,’ she said. ‘And you’re sounding as though you believe it.’

‘Sir David’s the sort of guy who you feel you can trust. But, yes, it was just a story; there was no clear evidence to implicate Roseborough.’

‘And Harriet, Christian and Charles have kept it secret all this time.’

‘They’ve certainly kept it well hidden from us.’

‘Fear of reprisals from Roseborough?’

‘That was my theory too. But now we do have some corroborating statements – from the horses’ mouths as it were.’

‘From Harriet and Charles?’

‘Your pal Wilton went to see them after you and I had spoken when you were at Kings Cross. I called him and reeled him in with a mixture of bribes and flattery.’

‘I can imagine,’ Cat said, grinning. ‘And unlucky them! He’s a granite man with a heart of iron.’

‘Well, he got the job done.’ Swift gave her the details which Wilton had e-mailed to him following his fruitful visit to the Brunswick household.

She listened with intense interest, drinking his words in. The revelations about the total silence Harriet and Charles Brunswick had maintained on the subject of Julian Roseborough for so long almost took her breath away. ‘And Christian kept quiet too,’ she mused. ‘Until now.’

‘Until he came face to face with Roseborough again and realized that his psychopathic personality had not altered very much. Except possibly for the worse.’

‘Sounds like Christian was a true newshound with a nose for wicked deeds.’

‘Yes. But unfortunately not enough nose to scent the killer rat, despatched to assassinate him.’

‘Poor guy.’

‘You realize that all of this represents a possibly significant breakthrough on both Hartwell’s and the “Tipper” case. And it’s down to you, Cat. You’re the one who saw the billboard sign telling the tale of the “Tipper”. You’re the one who put two and two together, and made just that little bit more than four.’

‘No, I wasn’t so brilliant as to get that far. I just had one of those hunches we all get from time to time. Mine being: killer tips man into canal, with a touch of his fingers, killer tips man over the edge of the crag in much the same way. Was it the same man? Are the two cases connected?’

‘I’m not sure whether Christian’s “tipper” was the same man who’s been pushing old drunks into the Regents Canal. But your hunch about a link between the two cases is looking spot on.’

There was a short, charged moment as she glanced at his tense face.

‘We found the mobile phone which Ruth Hartwell’s solicitor gave to her. It contained a short video of the “Tipper” killing one of his victims. We don’t know which one yet. But we know the date and the venue of the filmed killing.’

‘Sometime during Christian’s last stay in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think Christian was stalking the “Tipper” – deliberately waiting for a chance to film him committing a crime?’

‘That’s a difficult question to answer. It’s possible he was doing that. However, if he knew the killer was likely to kill again, then in some way he was colluding in the murder of an innocent victim, filming but not intervening, or raising an alarm. Which is, in itself, an offence. But maybe he was taking his time to consider his options, and then was unfortunately stopped in his tracks.’