True Witness (21 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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“Then I am wrong,” said Brodie, “because you've seen him lots of times. At least …” Her voice slowed and died.
“Yes?”
“Actually, no.
I've
seen him lots of times, but maybe you haven't. Maybe …” She thought some more. “No. That's ridiculous.”
Daniel again: “Brodie?”
She had to tell him. She honestly didn't know what it meant, or if it meant anything, but she had to tell him. “It's almost as if he's been avoiding you. He sent Nathan to get you on the night of the fire, even though that meant leaving a novice driver to wrestle a big vehicle out of a tiny yard and then maybe to face a hostile crowd. He's a runner too: he could have come for you himself and left Nathan to call the police. But then you'd have met face to face.
“When I questioned him about Chris he wasn't going to answer, not for me. But when I suggested that he talk to you instead he changed his mind. Suddenly nothing was too much trouble. He'd do anything I asked, rather than have you asking.
“Last night, too. He helped in the search, but as soon as we knew you were safe he left. I thought he was making room for the police cars. But maybe he was afraid you'd see him. He thought you were dead – they all did. He didn't mind searching for a corpse. Dead men can't identify anyone.”
All the expression had frozen in Daniel's face. When he
had a voice again he said carefully, “Are you sure about this?”
Brodie nodded jerkily. “I'm sure of what I'm saying – that he fits the pattern. He was here ten years ago, was intimately familiar with the killings then. He knows Jack Deacon better than anyone: he'd know the mere suggestion that Cochrane was on the rampage again would make him rush off in pursuit, abandoning all the meticulous detective work and intelligent thinking he'd otherwise be doing. He'd know what strings to pull and what pitfalls to avoid. If old poachers make the best game-keepers, I dare say old policemen make pretty good murderers.”
“George Ennis?
George Ennis
killed Chris Berry?”
 
 
“Never,” said Voss with conviction. He looked both shocked and offended, as if Deacon was having a joke at his expense. “You're kidding, right?”
Deacon ground out the words, “I have never been more serious in my life.”
“But – damn it, sir,
why
? Chris Berry was his pride and joy. Those two boys were his star athletes, the reward for the time and effort he's put in on that gym. Their success was his triumph. The way he talks about them – I don't believe that's an act.”
“Neither do I,” said Deacon tersely. “Whatever happened, it tore him apart damn near as much as it did Nathan. But he's older and smarter, and he did what he had to do to protect himself. But Nathan couldn't deal with it. He literally couldn't live with what happened. He owed George too much to give him up, and he could only see one other way out.”
“George Ennis? George Ennis killed Chris Berry? And he killed him with a wheel-brace so as to put you onto someone else's trail?”
“I told you he was smart.” Deacon's teeth were showing but there was no humour whatever in the smile.
“I still can't imagine how it happened,” said Voss.
“Me neither.” Deacon got up and made for the door. “Let's ask him.”
They'd both drunk too much to drive. Deacon called for transport. They were waiting for it when his phone rang.
It was Brodie Farrell. She sounded uncharacteristically reticent, her tone uncertain, reluctant to state the reason for her call. “I'm sorry to bother you this late, Inspector. It's just … Well, we were talking about things – Daniel and Marta and me – and we came up with a … kind of …
“Listen, I expect we've got it all wrong. I don't believe it myself, I wasn't sure I should call. But once we'd come up with a name we didn't feel we should keep it to ourselves. But feel free to laugh when I tell you who we were wondering about …”
“George Ennis,” said Deacon flatly.
In any other circumstances the gasp at her end of the phone would have given him immense satisfaction. “How – what – how did you
know
?”
The police car rounded the corner. Deacon hailed it. “Because you, Chief Superintendent Fuller and a significant percentage of Dimmock's population have been right all along,” he said bitterly. “It turns out I
am
a nasty suspicious bastard. I've just come to the same conclusion.”
“I know what you did, George, I know how you did it. I want to know why.”
They weren't talking in Deacon's office this time. They were in Interview Room 1, with the tape running. Ennis had declined to have his solicitor present but Voss was there. Deacon was starting to feel slightly incomplete without the sergeant, though he couldn't have said why. He wasn't aware that Voss contributed much more than an attentive ear and a willingness to nod in the right places, but for some reason Deacon seemed to think more effectively when he was around.
They had gone to Ennis's flat and found it empty. He was downstairs, sitting in the gym in the dark. He must have been there for hours: when Deacon turned on the lights the floor round his feet was littered with photographs. He looked up at the sound of footsteps and smiled wanly. “Both my boys,” he murmured by way of explanation. “Both my boys.” The drifts of photographs were of Chris Berry and Nathan Sparkes, sometimes together, sometimes apart, covered in mud and smiles, holding trophies.
On the short journey here Deacon had built up a head of steam. Not even at what he believed Ennis had done, but at how he'd tried to get away with it. It was calculated and manipulative, and also arrogant. He'd used his knowledge of someone who respected him to try to get away with murder. Deacon had to keep reminding himself that wasn't actually the worst thing Ennis had done, because he wanted to bloody his fists on the man's face and that was why.
But when the lights went on and he saw George Ennis sitting in the wreckage of his dreams, the anger dissipated. Whatever he'd done, whatever he'd tried to do, all now was ashes. For the friendship they'd once shared, Deacon found
he could spare a little gentleness. “Come on, George. Let's get this sorted out.”
But if he was expecting a full and frank confession he would be disappointed. Ennis said nothing until they were going up the police station steps. Then he said, “I know what you're thinking, Jack. But you're wrong.”
“Save it for the tape, George.”
Taped interviews were introduced to protect the accused from coercion. There are people, however, for whom the presence of a machine faithfully recording their every word is an irresistable temptation. They have to fill the tape. Hard-eyed men who would hold their tongues under torture react to the tape-recorder as they do to a karaoke machine – they just have to play with the technology. Many an incautious word has been said to a machine that the person being questioned would have died rather than say to the detective.
But ex-Detective Chief Inspector Ennis was too familiar with the technology to fall into the trap. He waited to see how Deacon wanted to do this.
And the answer was, as directly as possible. “I want to know why.”
Ennis shook his head slowly. He was gazing at the tabletop between his cupped hands, but he raised his eyes to meet Deacon's. “You think I killed Chris. You think I destroyed the most precious talent I've ever come across. Why? You tell me why. What possible reason could I have for killing one of the boys I've spent every spare minute of the last five years nurturing, knowing it would also destroy the other?”
Deacon sniffed. “You've been off the job too long, George, you've forgotten the routine. I ask why, and you tell me.”
Ennis gave a little desperate snort, half a chuckle, half a sob. “I can't help you, Jack. I didn't kill Chris. He was my friend, my student, my protege. As an athlete, and as a man, I thought the world of him. It'll sound like a cliche but actually
it's true: I'd have died for Chris Berry. I would never have hurt him.”
“George, you were seen! If I hadn't been so sure it was Cochrane I'd have recognised the description. The mere fact that Chris was running and not leaving his pursuer behind should have been enough. You're the only man I know of our generation who could do that.”
“I dare say I could, but I didn't! I didn't chase Chris onto the pier, and I didn't kill him with a wheel-brace. You might as well believe me, Jack, because it's the truth. Hood? Good grief, man, if you believed everything you'd ever been told by a well-meaning eye-witness you'd have filled the prisons with innocent men and set all the guilty ones free! Look. It was the middle of the night, yes? Hood was on the beach, the man he saw was on the pier. There's no way he could make an ID in those circumstances. Whatever he thinks, you should know better. I taught you better.”
Deacon felt his eyes starting to burn and blinked. He knew you couldn't see through a man's skin to where the guilt or innocence showed, but he couldn't stop trying. He was desperate to know, and not for the lost youths now but for himself. He had to know if a man he'd trusted and respected and occasionally risked his life for had used him. But if Ennis was lying, he was doing it well.
Of course, this was a situation he understood. Even if he was more familiar with the other side of the table, it held no fears for him. He knew the limits of what Deacon could achieve in the face of downright denial. That might have been all it was: that the man believed he could claw his way to safety even from here. But Deacon, who had been sure he was right only half an hour ago, found himself wondering now if he had been wrong.
He spread his hands on the table. “We've known each other a lot of years,” he nodded. “You were a damned good copper; I always thought you were a good man. I still think that.
“Which means that one of those things happened which can drive even good men to terrible acts. Trust me, George, tell me what it was. If it was one of those tragic misadventures that aren't really murder or even manslaughter so much as rotten bad luck, I'll understand. I'll help all I can. But I need to know what happened.”
Ennis regarded him levelly. A little sympathy wasn't going to make him putty in anyone's hands, nor would silence seduce him. None of the standard CID tricks would serve here. The man knew them all. He'd invented some of them.
He breathed steadily. “I wasn't there, Jack, I didn't see what happened. Somebody killed Chris with a metal bar, I know that much. If you're sure it wasn't Cochrane then you'd better find out who it was. All I can tell you for certain, hand on heart, is that it wasn't me.”
And the annoying thing was, Deacon believed him. In his years as a detective he'd believed a lot of lies, some only very briefly, some for quite a time. He still put a lot of faith in his own instincts. Until he found the evidence, instinct was sometimes all he had. “What about Nathan?”
There was a flicker an expression then, as if Deacon had kicked him. “What
about
Nathan?”
“He killed himself. Why?”
“Because he'd lost his friend and thought the world had come to an end. Because he was eighteen and didn't know that most pain fades after a while.”
“Or because he was the one who killed Chris, and he couldn't live with that.”
Ennis looked at him with disdain. “You have a witness, you have a description. If it fits me, it sure as hell doesn't fit Nathan. You want to take this to a jury, Jack, you'd better decide what story you want to tell them.”
Deacon gritted his teeth. The effort of holding on – not to his patience exactly, he didn't have much of that at the best of times, perhaps to his self-command – sent a ripple along
the powerful muscles of his jaw. He didn't like being lectured by anyone, least of all by a man who could still be a murderer, but he knew he could either vent his spleen or control this interview. He couldn't do both, not when the man across the table had won more of these confrontations than Deacon had.
Besides which, Ennis was right. He needed a coherent theory for what had happened, and this was one of those occasions when having one was infinitely better than having two. If he hoped to convince a jury there had to be no credible alternatives. Hood would tell them that he saw two men at the pier, the one who killed and the one who died, and that neither of them was Nathan Sparkes. One was Chris Berry, the other could have been George Ennis.
So Ennis was lying. So why did he sound like someone telling the truth?
“You want to talk about Hood, let's talk about Hood. He saw the murder take place. He's going to identify you as the murderer.”
“Which begs the question,” said Ennis, “why you wasted so much time chasing Neil Cochrane? Hood told you it wasn't Cochrane he saw but you thought he was wrong. You thought it was too dark for him to be sure. You thought, if you kept showing him men's faces, sooner or later one of them would look familiar. Yes, maybe it'll be mine. But if he could have been wrong once he can be wrong again. You can't base a case on a witness you've already dismissed as unreliable.
“Jack, I'm telling you the absolute, God-honest, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die truth. I didn't kill Chris. How could I have? – I thought the world of the boy. Of both of them. Let's be honest here: I loved them.
“Oh, don't look at me like that,” he said wearily. “I know it's a dirty word in your vocabulary, but most people have a bit more room in their hearts than you. I'm fond of all my kids – what I do wouldn't be worth the effort if I wasn't. But
those two were special. Either of them would have made the last eight years worthwhile; together they were a coach's dream. You could train decent, determined, hard-working athletes for a lifetime and never handle champions like them. They were eighteen. If they'd lived to be twenty they'd have been national heroes. If they'd lived to the next Olympics they'd have won medals.
“And yes, I loved them. In the last five years I put as much into their upbringing as their parents did. I spent more time with them. I taught them how to reach into their hearts and souls, how to reach down into their very bones, to be the best that they could be. And I watched them do it. I watched them hit the pain barrier again and again, for me. They strove, they suffered and they won – for me. They spilt blood, sweat and tears for no better reason than that I asked them to. You'd need a heart of stone to have boys like that around you and
not
love them. I'd have needed to be you.”
It was meant as an insult, and Deacon felt it as one. He wasn't in touch with his feminine side. The only thing he ever wanted to feel was other people's collars. So it shouldn't have bothered him that George Ennis, a man who might yet prove to have murdered one teenage boy and caused the death of another, considered him cold and uncaring. If someone had accused him of being warm and affectionate he'd have denied it vigorously. Still somehow he felt diminished by Ennis's scorn.
The problem was, they knew one another too well. For years that had been a strength, an asset. Now it was a weakness to be exploited. The older man knew how to unsettle him, even without seeming to try. In the same way that he would have known where to direct Deacon's attention if he needed to hide his own involvement in a young man's death.
Deacon felt a flush rising in his cheeks. He opened his mouth with no idea what was going to come out of it.
Charlie Voss said softly, “If you didn't murder Chris, was it an accident?”
There isn't a lot of furniture in an interview room. There's a table, and usually four chairs drawn up to it; and the tape-recorder hissing quietly as it consigns the words to its mechanical memory; and there's a clock. Voss's murmured intervention momentarily stunned all three of them. Ennis froze, Deacon gaped, and the clock seemed to miss a beat.
Deacon recovered first. Puce with disbelief, he stared at his sergeant as if he'd caught him poking lighted matches through the evidence cupboard keyhole. “
What
?”
Voss didn't look at him. “Mr Ennis? Is that what it was – a terrible accident?”
But Deacon wouldn't let him answer. “What the hell are you
talking
about?” he demanded furiously. “An accident? He chased him up the pier and beat his head in with a wheel-brace! Exactly which bit of that is the unforeseeable consequence vital to the whole concept of Accident?”
Voss was watching Ennis's face. He knew he'd struck a chord: he wasn't sure yet what tune to expect. He knew he should pursue this line of questioning. But Deacon was his inspector, he couldn't send him out of the room. He couldn't even ignore him for very long. He said in a low voice, “Mr Ennis, this could be the last chance to set the record straight.”
Deacon was on his feet, his chair crashing behind him. He read the time onto the tape and stopped the interview. “A word with you outside, Detective Sergeant Voss.”
Voss's eyes pleaded for more time. “Sir –”
“Now!”
When he was angry, Deacon could lift someone by the lapels and slam him against the wall without laying a finger on him. In the corridor Voss felt the concussive wave of his fury and for a moment thought he'd been struck. He struggled to organise his thoughts. “Sir –”
“Don't you Sir me!” snarled Deacon, nose to nose with the younger man. “Are you
trying
to get him off the hook? Because he used to be a policeman – is that it? Well, lots of
people used to be policemen. Some of them used to be policemen until they started pissing me around!”

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