True Witness (22 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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“Didn't you see his face?” said Voss. “That meant something to him. He was going to say something.”
“Probably he was going to say, Thank you very much, Sergeant Voss, I hadn't thought of that! What are you
talking
about, an accident? We know what happened. Hood saw what happened. There's no way it could have been an accident.”
Charlie Voss couldn't see how either. But he'd seen something in Ennis's expression that was more than just a desperate man clutching for a lifeline. He'd got a bleep on the radar, and if he didn't yet know what it meant he thought it was a genuine contact.
He said, “The more he talks about his runners in general and Chris in particular, the less likely it seems that he did that. You know the man a lot better than I do: do you believe it? That they fought over something so massive, so insurmountable, that Ennis saw no alternative but murdering a kid who was like a son to him? And not in the heat of the moment, a sudden loss of temper, a thrown punch and somebody's head bounces off the corner of the mantlepiece. No. He had to plan it, carefully, in order to leave the clues that would send you after Cochrane. Do you believe he's capable of that – of planning this murder and then carrying it out in cold blood?”
“I'd rather believe that than think it all happened by accident!” snapped Deacon. “Damn it, Charlie, you're playing right into his hands. He's responsible for the violent deaths of two decent young men – that's only one less than Neil Cochrane! Maybe I don't know the whys and wherefores, but I'll bet good money that when I put him in a line-up Daniel Hood will ID him. The fundamental, rock-bottom, nothing's-going-to-alter-it truth is that he committed murder. I want him to go down for murder. I don't want him persuading a jury that in some obscure way he was as much a victim as Chris Berry was.”
“Then you do believe it,” pressed Voss, half expecting Deacon really would hit him this time. “That Ennis is capable of the brutal premeditated killing of a boy who respected and relied on him.”
“I believe,” grated Deacon, “that almost anyone is capable of almost anything if you push the right buttons. When I know beyond question that George Ennis murdered Chris Berry, I'll find out why.”
Voss nodded, defeated. “You want to put him in a line-up?”
“Yes,” said Deacon. “Right now. Send a car for Daniel.”
It was three o'clock in the morning. The police car on the gravel drive woke every occupant of the big house in Chiffney Road except the one it had come for. Used to sleeping through the sound of shingle, Daniel woke with a start when Marta shook his shoulder.
Brodie met them in the hall, pulling on her dressing-gown. “What's going on?”
Constable Vickers explained.
Brodie frowned. “You can't hold an identity parade in the middle of the night! Where do you find seven passers-by of broadly similar appearance to the suspect?”
The task had fallen to Sergeant Voss, who had applied himself with characteristic inventiveness. He took out a van and came back with a Leading Fireman, a nightclub bouncer, a male nurse, a printer from
The Dimmock Sentinel
and graveyard shift operatives from the local utilities. He even brought a spare – a superviser at the continuous process carpet factory in Pettifer Lane – in case the witness happened to know any of the others. They were all between forty-six and fifty-eight years old, and between six foot and six-foot-four in height.
Deacon gave Daniel his instructions. “Take as long as you like. Nobody here has anything more important to do. Look at each man closely before you make a decision. When you've done that, if you recognise any of them I want you to tell me where you know him from. If you think one of them is the man you saw on the pier when Chris Berry was killed, it's important to be honest about how sure you are. If you're positive, fine. If you're not sure, don't try to help by pretending that you are.” He sniffed disparagingly. “Of course, I don't need to tell you that, do I?”
Daniel was too tense to smile. He just nodded.
Deacon glanced at his sergeant. “You can send the spare man home now.”
Voss headed up the corridor at a jog. “I'll be right back.” He meant, Don't start without me.
But Deacon was on tenterhooks and wouldn't wait. He'd been disappointed twice: he wasn't a superstitious man, except today he believed in third time lucky. He turned to Daniel and nodded. “When you're ready.”
Gven his choice of where to stand, George Ennis had slipped into the line-up second from the left. Deacon said nothing but he knew that wasn't random. The door was on the left. A nervous witness was prone to picking the first face he saw; someone who didn't recognise anyone might choose the last in desperation. If he could restrain himself till he came to the second man, the average witness would do as he was told and check them all out before saying anything; in which case he would look at a lot of faces after passing the second from the left. Any attempt by a suspect to avoid the witness's gaze only drew attention to him; but suspects standing second from the left had the best chance of being overlooked.
It might have been the intelligent thing for a guilty but clued-up individual to do. Or it might have been pure instinct: he'd done so many of these in the past that it came naturally.
Daniel did as Deacon asked, began at the left of the line-up and looked carefully at the man standing there – craning because every man there was a head taller than him – before proceeding to the next. Deacon held his breath – and then had to let it go unobtrusively when Daniel passed on from Ennis to the man beside him. And then the next, and so on down the line.
When he came to the last man he turned and did the whole thing again in reverse. Again he passed George Ennis with neither more nor less of an inspection than the others.
Deacon sighed. Of course, it had been dark but for the
meagre glow of a red torch. And they had been metres apart, and the fleeing man paused only an instant before hurrying on down the pier and out of sight. It was always a long shot. Deacon would have to make his case without identification evidence …
Daniel took a step back, looked over his shoulder to where the inspector was deliberately keeping his distance, hands behind his back lest mounting frustration turn a perfectly normal gesture into a pointing finger, and said quietly, “Yes. I can identify the man I saw on the pier. The man who killed Chris Berry and threw his body into the sea.”
The funny thing about an identity parade is that, when it's successfully concluded, it isn't only the investigating officer who breathes a sigh of relief. The other people in the line-up do too. They glance at one another and trade relieved grins, as if a mistake by the witness would have projected them instantly into the dock of the Old Bailey.
Amid the general susurrus of escaping breath Deacon was resisting the temptation to cheer. He kept a tight grip on himself and went by the book. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” said Daniel.
“Very well. Will you please touch that man on the shoulder?”
But before he could do that there was a knock at the door and Sergeant Cobbitt came in. He looked surprised when he saw eight men lined up against the wall. “You've started.”
Deacon nodded tersely, trying to bridle his impatience. “What do you want?”
The duty sergeant frowned. “I thought you were a man short. You sent out for another one.”
Deacon frowned. “No, I didn't. We've got enough. Actually, we had a spare – I've just sent him home.”
“Well, somebody told this gentleman you needed his services.” Cobbitt opened the door wider. “That's right, isn't it, Mr – er – um – ?”
Everything then happened very, very quickly. The door
flew open much faster than it should have done, as if someone had kicked it wide. Another tall, rangy middle-aged man came through and slammed it behind him, at the same time extracting something long from the folds of his coat. A couple of voices were raised in alarm, until another that sent melt-water pouring down Daniel's spine stopped them.
“Against the wall, the lot of you. You too, Mr Deacon – no, don't look at me, look at the wall. You know who I am so you can guess what I'm doing here. And you know what this is. Anyone moves before I tell him, I'll blow his frigging head off.”
 
 
It's often said that panic costs lives. But the failure to panic when appropriate costs them too. People die in survivable plane-crashes because they're too polite to make a dash for the emergency exit. People die in fires because they thought there was time to get their belongings.
In the same way, people confronted with an armed man let pass the moment in which an uncontrolled stampede for the door might have floored him and instead try to stay calm and co-operative. He's pointing a gun at them, he's made it clear that he's prepared to kill them, and they're trying to be helpful.
If Jack Deacon had been alone in this room when Neil Cochrane burst in, or if there had been only police officers here, he'd have wrested the gun away from him or died trying before the echo of the slamming door had faded. Before the intruder had time to arrange things to his satisfaction. He knew that if he moved Sergeant Cobbitt would throw his weight into the fray. Someone might get hurt. But
not
tackling a man armed with a sawn-off shotgun isn't a recipe for longevity either.
In fact Deacon never got a chance. He was at the far end of
the room when Cochrane burst in, with seven innocent men, one guilty one and a vital witness between him and the gun. Even the duty sergeant was half-way down the room with his back to the weapon when the identity parade took its unexpected turn. Neither of them was in a position to jump Cochrane. And if the gun had gone off, neither of them would have taken the shot. Deacon's muscles actually jumped inside his skin, but he had the self-control to keep his feet planted where they were. All he could do from back here was get someone killed.
Among those close enough to tackle the gunman were some who would have done it if they had been sure what was going on. But this wasn't their show. The whole concept was so bizarre – they were standing with seven men they didn't know so that another whom they also didn't know could say if they'd committed a crime they knew they hadn't – that they had had to just go with the flow and do what they were told. Though the situation had now changed radically, psychologically they had yet to catch up. They were still compliant, waiting to be told what to do. Surreally, they found themselves wondering if this was part of the procedure. They looked blankly at Neil Cochrane, hostage to the very human fear of making a fool of themselves, and until they knew what was going on they were doing nothing.
Daniel knew what was going on as soon as Deacon did, and he was a lot closer to Neil Cochrane. But he was a fundamentally different sort of man. He didn't fight his way out of difficulties, he reasoned through them. Despite the difference in their build, he might have knocked Cochrane's gun aside, making time for the policemen to subdue him, if he'd acted immediately. But he didn't. He looked at the gun, and he looked at the man behind it, and he swallowed. “This is why I'm alive?”
Neil Cochrane gave a fractional nod. “You were the only one who could identify him. I needed you to tell me who wasted ten years of my life.”
Daniel stepped back as if he'd been slapped. “No.”
Cochrane said nothing. But his eyes were cold and admitted no doubt. He believed absolutely that Daniel would tell him who killed Chris Berry. He expected him to refuse at first, it was the decent thing to do: to resist, to decline to betray a man to his enemy. But Cochrane believed he could change Daniel's mind. If pointing out that the man was unworthy of his protection didn't do the trick, honest-to-God pain ought to. One thing was already acting in his favour. Daniel knew enough to be afraid of him.
At the far end of the line-up, now jumbled and peering anxiously from the policemen to the gunman, Jack Deacon too was wondering what Daniel would do. He came to the opposite conclusion. He was afraid that nothing Cochrane threatened him with would loosen his tongue if a man's life was at stake. Maybe he was wrong. Staring the wrong way down a gun-barrel changes people: perhaps it would change Daniel. Plant seeds of pragmatism among the lofty boughs of integrity. No one would blame him, whatever the consequences. He must know that. Deacon would remind him if the opportunity arose. Daniel exasperated the hell out of him, but he'd hate to see him lay down his life for a murderer. Already Deacon was thinking of Ennis in those terms. He could no longer afford to think of him as a friend.
Cochrane nodded calmly at the room in general. “Mr Deacon, everybody. I guess most of you know who I am. So who's going to shorten this by telling me what I want to know? One of you people is a killer. Who is it?”
There was some shuffling and mumbling, an exchange of troubled glances. Possibly from the best of motives the bouncer said, “We don't know. He didn't say.”
For just a second the insane fury that had brought him here flared in Neil Cochrane's eyes. When it dimmed he was looking at Deacon again. “Is that right? I got here too soon?”
Deacon disdained either to confirm or deny it. “I don't
know what you're doing here at all. You'd given us the slip: you should be half way to Tangiers by now.”
The hatchet jaw came up. “Is that what you expected? That I'd run?”
“It was the only intelligent thing left to do.” Deacon took a step towards him. “After you'd confessed your crimes to Hood and then let him go. The only sane thing.”
“That lets me out then, don't it,” said Cochrane with heavy irony. “You know I'm not sane. You told the papers so ten years ago.”
He had, too, before they had a suspect. Tom Sessions caught him in an unguarded moment, with the rage still burning from the discovery of the second boy's body, and he'd said what he was thinking. Ennis had torn strips off him for it. The killer would read that, he warned. He might agree with the assessment or resent it bitterly; either way his response could be another body. When Gavin Halliwell turned up on the town dump Jack Deacon had reason to remember that incautious quote.
He sniffed. Not even looking at Cochrane he took another step towards him. Just one, but if he kept taking just one step and the man kept not noticing, soon he would be within reach. “So this is you proving me wrong, is it? You walk into a police station, shut yourself in a room with one door and no windows, and produce a gun. And why? To find out what, if you'd waited twenty-four hours and then bought a newspaper, you'd have known anyway – that we'd charged a man with the murder of Chris Berry. You didn't have to come here. You could have been safe.”
“I know what I'm doing,” growled the farmer.
“Yeah?” Deacon barked a little laugh to cover his next step. “You think you're going to walk away from here? Cochrane, you're leaving this room in handcuffs.”
Neil Cochrane's anger was mounting again. That may have been Deacon's intention but it was a risky ploy. If you take a dangerous, unpredicatable man, arm him with a
shotgun and shut him in a room full of panicking people, it isn't a good idea to annoy him as well.
“Don't worry about me, Mr Deacon. Worry about how the rest of you are going to leave. On stretchers, in boxes, that kind of thing. Because unless I get what I came for soon, people are going to start dying.”

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