The Shadows of Justice (26 page)

“Which brings us back to the conspiracy theory,” Adam replied, thoughtfully. “But who could he be working with? The only one who doesn’t have an alibi is Parkinson. And I can’t see him being involved.”

Claire guided the car around the lorry and onto the roundabout. She had something else to say, Dan could see, but was struggling with it. The gate at the back of Charles Cross ground out its guttural welcome.

Adam moved to get out of the car, but Claire said, “Stop a moment, please, sir.”

Her voice had changed. It wasn’t the usual measured calm, but instead had taken on a querulous tone. It was almost a fear of what she needed to release.

“Yes?” Adam replied.

“This is difficult for me to say, but I think I have to.”

In the back of the car, Dan sat still and silent. Never before had he heard Claire speak like this.

She flicked at her hair, and then said, “I think I have an idea who might have killed the Edwards.”

“What?” Adam yelped. “Who?”

“It’s difficult…”

“Templar, you mean? Do you think it’s Templar?”

“No.”

“Ivy?”

“No. Not Ivy either.”

“What, Parkinson then? Surely you don’t think it’s him?”

“No, I don’t.”

Adam looked baffled. “But they’re all the suspects we’ve got. There is no one else. Claire, what are you talking about?”

She swallowed hard. “I think the killer may be one of us, sir.”

“One of us? What? Who? Claire!”

Once more she hesitated, before saying, “I think it might have been Katrina.”

Amongst the mass of the professions a detective is one of the hardest to shock, and an experienced investigator the toughest of all.

It might be the years of prying into the terrible details of the foulest of horrors the human race can inflict upon its kin. The countless sleepless sights of bodies, dismembered in the clinical coldness of an insane killer, or in the bloody, slashing rage of passion. It could be the accumulations of corpses that many detectives have to face at some point in their careers.

Or it can be the simple day-to-day corrosion of lies. The expectation of deception that picks away another little chip of humanity each time. Or the foul abuse that is whispered, shouted and screamed. Or the threats of a bloody revenge, no matter how long it takes, a criminal’s vengeance one day sure to come.

All this Adam had known in his years as a police officer and so had become largely insulated from shock. But it was clear now, in the windows of his eyes.

“I did say it wasn’t easy, sir,” Claire repeated.

“You’re not wrong there,” the detective replied, with feeling. “Go on then, let’s hear the worst.”

The first part of Claire’s argument was straightforward. Katrina had got to know Annette well – perhaps too well.

“I noticed a real closeness between them. In court, when Annette was upset, it was Katrina she wanted to run to.”

“Carry on,” Adam said, thoughtfully.

“Look at Katrina’s reaction since the Edwards were murdered. She’s not exactly been showing great commitment to catching the killer. Not like she did when we were trying to get Annette back.”

It was growing hot in the car. Dan wound down a window, but a glance from Adam prompted him to close it again. This was no conversation to risk being overheard.

“She’s a cop,” Claire continued. “She knows how to commit a crime and not leave any traces. She could easily have seen a case like that gas explosion in Plymouth before and got the idea how to kill the Edwards from it. She knows a fire is the best way to destroy evidence.”

“Ok,” Adam said slowly. “Anything else?”

Now Claire hesitated. There was more difficult terrain to come. She looked straight ahead, out of the windscreen and up at the police station.

“There’s her – well, character. There’s a kind of detachment about her. It’s a certainty, a conviction that what she thinks is right. It’s the sort of dissociation we’ve seen before in many killers.”

Adam watched a police van reverse carefully from a space and head out of the gates. A patrol car followed it.

“That’s all highly speculative,” he said. “Where’s your actual evidence? There’s nothing solid to it.”

Claire waited for a few seconds, before saying, “Actually, there is.”

And now she looked around, at Dan. Throughout the conversation he had been doing his very best to keep quiet – hoping the two people in the front of the car might forget he had ever existed.

But Claire was a detective – a good one. And that meant he knew exactly what was coming next.

One day he would have told her. He would have confessed it. He’d agreed that with Rutherford. One day, when he was able to stand before her, he’d finally tell her that his mind was clear. When he knew their future.

He would apologise and ask for forgiveness. Say he didn’t know what he was doing. That he was confused, unbalanced, vulnerable – all the excuses so familiar to men throughout the ages. He had never imagined the confession would come in the back of an unmarked police car in the yard at Charles Cross.

“Dan?” Claire prompted, gently. “There is evidence, isn’t there?”

“Well, I don’t know – I mean…”

“What Dan’s trying to say is that he’s been seeing Katrina.”

Their eyes were fixed upon him. One set, the eyes of a detective and a friend, the other those of a detective and a lover. Dan could have been a naughty child, fetched by his parents and taken home from school. The fun was over and a mighty reckoning had begun.

“I, err – well…” he gulped.

“Haven’t you?” Claire persisted.

The thinness of air had become curiously thick.

“I don’t know about seeing. I mean, I might have just—”

“I know,” Adam cut in, ruthlessly. “Of course I know. I was just hoping you didn’t, Claire.”

“No, I knew too. I wasn’t sure whether to be angry, or pity him. But I don’t hold it against him – not too much, anyway. He’s never been the best when it comes to emotions.”

“I hope he’s learned a lesson,” Dan’s newly appointed father replied.

“Yes,” Claire agreed, before softening her voice and adding. “And I very much hope he sorts out that strange mind of his soon.”

They both looked at him, as if parents united in their disappointment, ire and indulgent fondness. And amidst all this, the subject of their rue sat quietly because there was nothing else to do.

“On the day Annette committed suicide, later that evening, Dan sent a text message to Katrina,” Claire said. “Ostensibly, it was a few words to share the shock of what happened and check she was coping. In fact, it was designed to get together with her that night.”

Dan was still finding the way of a Trappist the only available option.

“But he didn’t get a reply,” Claire continued. “Instead, the next morning, Katrina apologised for not texting back, saying she was preoccupied. It was when we were at Homely Terrace, after the explosion.”

“I recall,” Adam said.

“That, in itself, was an interesting insight into her character,” Claire went on, coolly. “I think it was partly to goad me. And looking back, I think she also couldn’t resist giving us a clue. That it was her who’d killed the Edwards.”

Adam swore and loosened his tie. “You’re saying she didn’t want to see Dan because she knew she was going to kill the Edwards that night?”

Claire didn’t reply. There was no need.

A seagull swooped down and landed on the bonnet of the car. Adam waved an irritable hand. It gave him a contemptuous look, but deigned to fly off again. The detective stared at the air it had vacated, working away at Claire’s words. And they were everywhere, confined in the small space of this car.

“This is bloody far-fetched,” he said, eventually. “Katrina’s got an impeccable reputation. She’s run loads of these cases.”

“But never one quite like this.”

“I know her track record. She’s handled some huge kidnappings.”

“When the subject’s been a 17-year-old girl? Who she’s got so close to?”

“Yeah, but – I just can’t see it.”

“I don’t like it either, sir. But you must admit it’s feasible.”

“Well…”

“Which means we’ve got to check it.”

“Maybe.”

“She broke the golden rule. She got involved. And you know what that can do.”

Adam rolled his neck and rubbed a hand over the stubble of his chin.

“Ok, go check it out. Talk to the staff at her hotel. And get the CCTV, too. But Claire…”

“Yes?”

“Be damned discreet.”

They got out of the car and headed towards the back door of the police station. They were only metres away when it opened and Katrina stepped out.

“Afternoon,” Adam said brusquely, and pushed past. Claire followed, without a word.

Katrina watched them go, one eyebrow raised. Dan put on the vaguest of smiles, mumbled a greeting and also edged into the corridor.

Stepping out into the grey light of the afternoon, from the darkness of the police station, those eyes had looked particularly vivid. The brown was warm and burnished, the green as bright as a jewel.

Dan wondered if, in the months to come, they would be captured on the front page of every newspaper and labeled the most beautiful eyes a murderer had ever possessed.

***

The time was coming up to two o’clock, the scheduled start of Newman’s press conference. Dan rang Nigel and asked to speak to Phil.

“I need a favour.”

“Are you ok? I mean, Lizzie’s—”

“I’m fine. I just need your help. You’re at the hospital?”

“Yeah, they’re doing the conference in the garden.”

“I need to hear what’s said. Can you leave the line open and put your phone down near Newman?”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask.”

Dan switched on the phone’s speaker. There were a couple of bumps and thuds and some muffled, background conversation. Adam came to stand beside him, in the corner of the MIR.

“Deputy Chief’s due in a couple of hours. I’d say we’ve got until five.”

“Snap.”

“Meaning?”

“That’s as late as I can leave it before I miraculously resurface, hopefully to tell my editor I’ve been undercover but now I’m back with an exclusive on who killed the Edwards.”

They were alone in the room, but Adam lowered his voice anyway.

“What do you think about whether Katrina might have…”

“I don’t know what to think. But I know we’ve got to check it.”

“Yep.”

“And if Claire’s right, apart from being a flash of genius, it might just save us. On the subject of which…” Dan nodded to a pile of papers in the other corner. “That’s Katrina’s stuff.”

“No!” Adam protested. “It could be personal, it could be confidential. I can’t possibly start going through a fellow officer’s notes.”

“You’re right. It’s only our futures at stake.”

Another silence. Both men looked around the room. At the felt boards, the clock, the windows, but never the papers in the corner.

“I could do with a coffee,” Dan said airily. He nodded to his phone. “It might ease the pain of what we’re about to hear.”

“Good thought.”

“But – oh darn.”

There followed a vigorous pocket patting display, which would have prompted derision even from a junior school drama class. “I don’t have any money.”

Adam folded his arms. He somehow managed to produce a look which was both knowing and disapproving. “I suppose I’ll have to go, then.”

From the phone’s speaker came the sound of chairs being shifted and background conversation. The door to the MIR clicked closed.

Dan checked over his shoulder and walked nonchalantly across the room.

“How messy,” he said to himself at the hillock of papers. “These could do with tidying. But I’d better make sure there’s nothing important before I move them.”

He checked through the pile. There were lists of the suspects’ alibis and details of which officers had been assigned to the various inquiries. Nothing interesting. But at the bottom he found a pocket notebook.

It was full of the details of various cases, dating back a year. But towards the end, Dan found one page which was all doodles.

In a variety of styles and sizes, time and again, were written the letters
PP
.

The door opened and Adam returned, carrying two coffees. He made a point of shuffling in backwards.

“Good timing,” Dan said, from his seat on the windowsill. “The press conference is about to start.”

***

A resonant voice broke from the phone’s speaker. It asked for quiet in a way that made it clear the words were an instruction, not a request.

“Thomas Mortice,” Adam observed. “The head of one of the local solicitors. They’re good – and expensive. Newman must be serious.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mortice was saying. “You’ll be more than a little taken aback to learn my client, eminent local entrepreneur and tireless worker for a range of charities, is under arrest. Let me assure you, we believe this to be the most ridiculous folly on the part of the police. It is, perhaps, a bizarre reflex action which comes about because they are unable to bring to justice those who really did kill Martha and Brian Edwards. We will naturally be challenging the allegation robustly. However, given that Mr Newman is technically a suspect, I have advised him only to read a statement.”

The speaker rustled and clicked. In the background, they could hear the whirring of camera motors. Dan could see each lens turning to find Newman. He would be sitting in a wheelchair, probably against a backdrop of flower beds, a sheet of paper in his hands, the smartly-suited figure of Mortice protectively by his side.

Newman began in a voice which was quiet, but rang with indignation. It didn’t sound as though he was playing to the crowd.

“I have always had the greatest respect for the law,” he read. “I have always believed the British police have a very tough job, but that they do it marvelously well. When Annette was kidnapped I had every faith they would bring her home to me – and they did. I was indescribably grateful for their efforts.”

Newman paused. Dan imagined him turning a page or working down to the next paragraph. Whoever wrote the script had done it well. First, build up your victim. Love them good.

And then, in a second of turning, bring them crashing down.

“But now,” Newman continued. “Now…”

Dan could see Mortice stretching out a reassuring arm, telling him it was right to go on, that what he had to say must be aired. The cameras were tracking in their shots for the close up of Newman’s anguished face.