True Witness (20 page)

Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness

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At close of play Deacon took Charlie Voss out for a pint. Voss was not fooled for a moment. He hadn't been working for Deacon for very long, but still long enough to know that these evenings of impromptu hospitality were nothing to do with thanking him for a job well done. They were a way of wringing a bit more work out of him without it counting as overtime.

“Nathan Sparkes, hm?” rumbled Deacon by way of opening the conversation. “Who'd have thought it?”

Voss sighed. But he knew what was expected of him. “Not Daniel Hood, apparently.”

Deacon gave a disparaging sniff and took a bite out of his beer. “Hood! You'd get more sense out of Randolph Hearst's sheep!”

“Damien,” murmured Voss. “Randolph Hearst owned newspapers. Damien Hirst pickles sheep.” He could have said nothing but it might have been a test.

“Well, pardon my ignorance,” snarled Deacon. “I don't get in a lot of art galleries these days. The last armless nude I saw was crammed up a drain under the railway line. Once you've seen that, you kind of lose interest in poncey sculptures.”

DS Voss knew his inspector hadn't brought him here to be unpleasant to him. He could do that without buying drinks. He wanted to know what Voss thought without having to ask. “But he does have a point, sir. He witnessed the murder of Chris Berry and he saw the murderer's face. We could ignore his evidence if we had reason to consider him unreliable, but we haven't. Anything but. The fact that he stuck to his guns when everyone was telling him it was Cochrane suggests to me he has a pretty clear picture of the man he saw. And it wasn't Nathan Sparkes any more than it was Neil Cochrane.”

Deacon went on glaring at him over the rim of his mug. But he didn't contradict, or even argue. Voss thought he was telling him something he already knew.

At about the same time Brodie was serving supper for three. At first they tried to keep the conversation light, to steer it away from recent events. But actually there was nothing else worth talking about. And with two young men dead it seemed somehow disrespectful to avoid the subject.

Marta voiced the question that was troubling everyone, those round the table and those in the pub. “But if the boy didn't kill his friend, why did he kill himself?”

“He was upset,” said Brodie. She heard how lame that sounded, shrugged apologetically.

“Sure he was upset,” said the tall Polish woman witheringly. “Life's not easy, things happen, lots of things upset people. They don't go round topping themselves!” Between music students she watched a fair amount of daytime television. It was beginning to show.

“He was eighteen,” said Brodie. “Things hurt more when you're eighteen. You feel them more, and you can't see past to a time when you'll feel better. The balance of his mind was disturbed.”

“Is that what you think?” asked Daniel quietly. “You were the last one to talk to him. Was he really suicidal over losing his friend?”

“I don't know,” admitted Brodie. “He was fraught, he wasn't making much sense. He certainly blamed himself for something. I took it for survivor guilt â you know, where the one who didn't die looks for a reason to blame himself.

“But God almighty, if people behaved like that nobody'd reach middle age. We've all lost someone at some time. Yes, you flay yourself over it. You think of all the things you could have done differently that would somehow have
affected the outcome. But even at the time, deep down you know you're being unreasonable. It's a ritual you have to go through in order to forgive yourself and get over it.

“So yes, I think there was something more going on. Something was gnawing away at him, and not just that Chris would have had the car if he hadn't damaged it. It never did get fixed, but that didn't stop Nathan driving it.”

“Perhaps Nathan had it on Monday night,” suggested Daniel, “and that's why Chris was on foot.”

“I thought of that. I asked Nathan, in the gym ten minutes before he died. He never really answered, which I think was answer enough. If that was what was preying on him, surely he'd have given some sign of it?

“And anyway, what if Nathan did have the car? It was a joint purchase: sometimes one would have it, sometimes the other. It was just rotten luck that Chris didn't have it the night it really mattered. Even when he was hurting most, at some level Nathan must have known that. After three days he shouldn't still have been flaying himself. Of course he'd always have regrets â but suicide? I don't buy it. He killed himself because he couldn't live with what happened, and that makes no sense if Chris was the victim of a random psychopath â either Cochrane, or someone mimicking Cochrane, or some other violent maniac.”

“But it would make sense if Nathan killed his best friend,” said Daniel softly.

Brodie met his gaze and nodded. “Yes.”

“It still wasn't Nathan I saw.”

“Then maybe he had help,” hazarded Charlie Voss.

Deacon frowned. “What?” They were onto their second beer by now.

“Maybe it wasn't just Nathan and Chris. Could there have been a third man?”

Deacon spluttered into his glass. “Oh sure. The one thing everyone's agreed on is that those boys were best friends â and Nathan topping himself out of remorse doesn't work if they weren't. But hell, if we can't find a theory that fits the facts let's make the facts fit the theory. So you reckon he got someone to help him brain Chris with a wheel-brace, is that it?”

Voss clung onto his patience. “No, sir, that doesn't fit either. Not with what we know of the two boys, and not with what Daniel saw. He saw an older man chase Chris out onto the pier, hit him with an iron bar, tip him into the sea and run away. He saw his face. He's adamant it wasn't Nathan Sparkes.”

“Then why is Nathan dead?”

Sergeant Voss had those oddly clear green eyes that tend to go with red hair. They were intelligent and kind, and right now they were grim. “Because we didn't get to the bottom of this fast enough, sir. And we aren't there yet.”

“And it was nobody you've seen before or since?” asked Brodie.

Daniel shook his head. “I'd have recognised him if he was someone I knew.”

“Which rules out the staff at Dimmock High, a handful of local tradesmen, some policemen, and that's about all.” Feeling their eyes Marta had the grace to look apologetic. “You got to admit, Daniel, you don't got the biggest social circle in the world.”

Daniel gave a wry smile. “You two, and Paddy, and a bad-tempered policeman who hates my guts. But I do know other people to see, and I'm as sure as I can be that I never saw that man's face before. He was a stranger to me.”

“Could it genuinely, for once, have been a passing maniac?” asked Voss. Deacon squinted at him. “Just checking, sir,” the sergeant added hurriedly. “But it must happen sometimes. We'd feel pretty silly if that was the answer, and we missed it and kept looking for something more meaningful.”

Deacon gave it some thought but then he shook his head. “There was nothing insane about this, and nothing random either. It was planned, meticulously. Someone wanted that boy dead, and wanted Cochrane to take the blame. He thought if we couldn't prove it before we wouldn't be surprised if we failed to prove it again. He thought that the next best thing to covering up the crime was hiding it in a ten year-old file that we'd despaired of closing.

“He knew how we'd react to the murder of a teenage boy with a wheel-brace on the pier. More than that, Charlie â he knew how
I'd
react. It was unfinished business, mine as much as George Ennis's, and he knew I'd leap at the chance of wrapping it up this time. Despite any discrepancies in the evidence. Desspite the only witness ruling out the prime suspect. Damn it,” he smouldered, “he's been pulling my strings! If Daniel Hood wasn't a stubborn little son-of-a-bitch he'd have won. Even without the evidence to charge him, we'd never have looked any further than Neil Cochrane. Do you know how that makes me feel, Charlie Voss?”

It was a moment for tact if ever there was one. Oddly enough, detective sergeants who seek advancement are better not being seen out-thinking their inspectors. He said carefully, “It makes you feel like it's personal, sir?”

“All the things he knows,” said Daniel slowly. “Don't they tell us something about him?”

“Like what?” Brodie was watching him warily. He had a habit of saying what she was thinking, and she thought he was about to do it again.

“Like, he was in Dimmock ten years ago. He followed the original case in some detail. Those aren't just the headlines he's remembered, they're the essence of what was happening. We know he wasn't the killer then, because we know who was. But he must have been pretty close to the action.”

“How?” asked Marta, leaning bony elbows on the table.

“A reporter covering the murders would have that kind of detailed information,” murmured Brodie.

“Tom Sessions was the reporter covering it for
The Sentinel
,” said Daniel.

Brodie couldn't see Sessions as a killer either. “Others would come down from the London dailies.”

“But how many of them are still in Dimmock today?”

Brodie considered. “So who else would know all the details?”

“The victims' families,” offered Marta. “They'd remember everything that happened, everyone who was involved. Probably they still live in the area.”

Brodie's eyebrows rocketed. “Hellfire, Marta, that's a bit sick.”

Marta bristled. “Whoever did this is sick. It's the one thing we know for sure. You want to know who was around ten years ago and is still here now, who would remember the killings in more detail than the average reader of newspapers? Well, there were three victims, they each had parents, they would have brothers and cousins and uncles. Any of them could be the man you're looking for. I'm sorry if it's bad taste to say so, but you know what us damned foreigners are like â¦”

Daniel chuckled. Then the pale eyes behind his thick glasses went distant and still. The machinery of thought was grinding almost audibly.

“What?”
asked Brodie.

“Marta's right,” he said slowly. “We have to think the unthinkable. There's someone else who'd have all the necessary information, and enough understanding of how the
police work to be able to protect himself. You said someone was pulling Jack Deacon's strings, Brodie. To do that he'd need to know him pretty well â¦”

“He knows you, sir,” said DS Voss. “I don't mean that he has your name and rank as the officer heading this inquiry. He knows
you
. He knew how you'd react when it seemed Cochrane was up to his old tricks again. He knew if he threw down the right clues you'd follow them out to Manor Farm. And while you were doing that you wouldn't be looking for him.”

Deacon's face was both dark and frozen, like a section of thundercloud somehow preserved for posterity. He wanted to shout at someone but Voss didn't deserve it. Voss was doing his job, making connections and inferences and not being misled by preconceptions. If Deacon had refused to be misled by preconceptions they might have reached this point three days ago. But whoever did this knew he'd go after Cochrane first. Knew that even the testimony of an eye-witness wouldn't stop him. Knew Deacon's weaknesses, in fact, better than Deacon knew them himself. Almost nothing that had gone before angered the detective as much as that.

He had to unclench his jaws to get the words out. “And if he knows me that well, I know him.”

“Brodie?” It was Marta, growing anxious because the seconds were turning into minutes and there was still no sign of her friend returning from the inner space to which she had retreated. “Brodie! You still there?”

“What?” She blinked. “Sorry. What?”

“I thought you emigrated.”

“No. Just thinking.” Brodie managed a distracted smile.

But Daniel wasn't fooled. He said, very quietly, “You know who it is, don't you?”

“No! No,” she said again, less emphatically, “I don't.”

“Then, you know who it could be. Tell me. It doesn't matter if you're wrong. It won't go any further unless you're right.”

Brodie felt a spark of anger at him. “Who says if I'm right or wrong? You?”

“I saw him,” said Daniel. “I'll know him when I see him again.”