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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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Finally Brodie put down the photocopy and leaned back. “I'm with you. It doesn't look to me as if the man who killed Chris Berry also killed these boys.”
Daniel's relief was almost palpable. He shut his eyes for a second and sighed, “Thank God.” Then, remembering he was an atheist, cast her a wry grin. “Why not?”
Brodie thought for a moment, marshalling her arguments. “Because the man who chose those three as victims wouldn't look twice at Chris Berry.”
“Because he was older?”
“Not even that. He was a whole different sort of guy. He was big, strong and athletic. Physically he was a grown man. These other three were boys.”
She pushed the report across the table, indicating the photographs. “Look at them. Those are not rough, tough, boisterous youths. Some sixteen-year-olds are physically adults and some aren't. These weren't. They were small for their age, looked younger than they were. If you were a pervert looking for boys to brutalise, these would attract you. Chris Berry and his muscle-bound mates wouldn't.”
“Then how do you explain the similarities?” Now he'd got what he'd wanted, someone to say he was probably right, Daniel couldn't keep from playing Devil's Advocate. “The details of Chris's murder could have come straight from that ten-year-old newspaper. It
can't
be a coincidence.
I
don't believe that, let alone Jack Deacon.”
“I don't believe it either,” said Brodie. She regarded him across the table. “What's the best place to hide a tree?”
Everyone knew the answer to that. “A forest.”
“So what's the best place to hide a murder?”
She saw understanding dawn in his face, the initial relief turning to horror as he realised what that meant. “You mean
– the man who killed Chris Berry worked out how to pass the crime off as someone else's work, and only carried it out when he knew what clues to leave?”
Brodie nodded sombrely. “Not exactly a spur-of-the-moment thing, was it? Not a crime of any sort of passion.”
“We have to tell Inspector Deacon!”
Brodie's shapely eyebrows soared. “Tell him what? That he's wrong? – you've already told him. That if he'd abandon his preconceptions and think about the facts he'd come to the same conclusion we have? – go right ahead, but I'll wait for you outside. He'll get there in his own good time.”
“But time is important! There's a killer out there –”
“But not necessarily a serial killer. If that's how he wanted it to look, it's because Chris Berry's murder was something quite different. He killed Chris because he wanted him dead – not just anyone, him. He took this much trouble to disguise the fact precisely because there won't be another victim.”
“You make him sound pretty smart,” said Daniel in a low voice.
“I think he is pretty smart,” said Brodie. “I think
he
thinks he's pretty smart. Smart enough to try messing with Deacon's head. He'd worked out, before he went after Chris, that the best way to shift suspicion from himself was to put it on someone else. He knew Deacon's spent the last ten years wanting another crack at whoever killed those boys and designed Chris's death to look as if it had started all over again.”
Her voice warmed to the theory. “The pier, the wheel-brace, the nature of the injuries – it's camouflage. Chris Berry wasn't killed by a paedophile. He was killed by someone who knew him, who had a reason to want him dead, and who was afraid that a good detective with an open mind would work it out. His best defence was to plant the idea that this time Deacon could solve all four murders. If you hadn't seen him on the pier, he'd have succeeded.”
Daniel was watching her open-mouthed. There were times
when Brodie Farrell seemed only and exactly what she appeared to be: an intelligent, slightly harrassed young woman juggling her home and business commitments. But sometimes the veil parted, giving a glimpse of iron intellect and steely will. He blinked. “And you still don't think we should tell Deacon what we know?”
Brodie shook her head impatiently. “Daniel, we don't
know
anything. It's a theory. It sounds good. It may well be the truth, at least as far as it goes. But it's pure speculation, and when Deacon's got over the shock of being wrong he can do his own speculating. If we march into his office and tell him what to think he'll reject the idea on principle. We could set the investigation back a week. Much better to let him get there under his own steam.”
“If he does.”
“He will. Any time now, if he hasn't already, he'll do what you just did: get out photographs of the boys from ten years ago and compare them to one of Chris Berry. He'll see how unlikely it is that they all died for the same reason. The rest will follow.”
Daniel was feeling better. His refusal to tow the CID line wasn't inviting further tragedies. On the contrary, it should lead the police to Berry's murderer when they could still have been sniffing round someone who'd never even met him.
He wasn't mad, he wasn't stupid, he wasn't undermining the investigation by putting all his trust in an image imprinted on his brain in less than a second, and there weren't going to be any more deaths. He had, as well as a real fondness, a huge respect for Brodie Farrell. He trusted her judgement. That she believed in him was a weight off his shoulders.
Taking the pots to the sink, she put her head into the sitting-room to make sure Paddy hadn't found a way of accessing the Playboy Channel. When she came back Daniel was finally asleep, his head cradled on his arms on her kitchen table.
 
 
If there was ever any evidence in Neil Cochrane's trailer his sheep had obliterated it. And the more Deacon thought about it, the less sure he was that Chris Berry had ever been in it. Cochrane hadn't got as far with Berry as he had with the other boys. Something alerted the young man to his danger and he ran for his life. He must have expected to get away. But speed was never going to be the deciding factor on a pier two hundred metres long. When they came together it was strength that mattered, and the fact that one of them was armed with an iron bar.
It was quarter to eleven before the policemen knocked off for the night. They'd been working for twenty hours solid. Deacon gave his sergeant a ride home.
Voss had been disobeying orders and thinking again. “You don't suppose this could be a copy-cat killing? Someone who's read the '92 reports and thought it would be a clever way to disguise his own identity?”
Deacon shook his head wearily. “I think he's even cleverer than that. I think that's what he wants us to think.”
He was in bed by eleven, asleep by five past. When the alarm-clock rang he fumbled for it, swearing, sure it was still the middle of the night.
The worst thing was, he was right. It was the police station. “Sorry to wake you, sir. But we've found another one.”
His name was Kevin Sykes, he was seventeen years old, and he didn't look like he'd had a square meal since hitting puberty. His clothes were worn and dirty. Under them the emaciated body was dirty too, and there were lice in the tangled hair. There was also blood, a lot of it, and fragments of bone, and a quantity of whitish matter ejected from the massive wound to the side of the head.
“Was this one raped?” asked Deacon, stifling a yawn. He wasn't bored but he was still very tired. It was half past one: he'd had just two hours of sleep in the last twenty-four.
“Not sure,” said Dr Roy, the Forensic Medical Examiner. He crouched over the filthy, wasted body in his bright white suit and moved the rags of clothes aside. “There's some blood, but there's also some old damage. This may be how he made his living. I'll be able to tell you more after I've taken him home.” He meant, to the mortuary where he could carry out a full examination. But it wasn't really a joke. He looked on his work as a kindness to the dead.
“I don't suppose I need ask what killed him,” said Deacon grimly. “How long's he been dead?”
“Not long. His temperature's still dropping. Maybe an hour or so?”
“Has he been moved?” He might not have been. On paper this was a brown-field site, formerly used for industrial purposes and now awaiting redevelopment. In fact it was a derelict brewery, not so much demolished as allowed to fall down, and redevelopment presupposed someone with a desire to live or work here. This was the grimy underside of Dimmock, neither solid town nor leafy suburb: no one had a use for it and almost no one came. The occasional car turned in at the gates, rocked on its springs for ten minutes and then left. A couple of times a year Dimmock's small homeless
community, evicted from the old Roxy Cinema, gathered here for two or three days until it was safe to return. Apart from that, no one. Even the local drunks staggered home by a more scenic route.
“No reason to think so. No unexplained lividity, and the ejector” – he meant the blood and brain tissue splashed on the ground – “is consistent with him having died here.”
“And the murder weapon?”
Dr Roy regarded him quizzically. “Murder is a legal concept, not a medical one. He died because something caused a massive comminuted fracture of the skull. Since there's nothing handy for him to have jumped off I don't see how it could have been self-inflicted. But murder is something you have to prove.”
Deacon breathed heavily at him. “Then, could the damage have been inflicted with a wheel-brace?”
Dr Roy shrugged white shoulders and pursed dark lips. “I'm not sure. There's so much damage it's hard to say. I mean, yes, conceivably it was caused by a hail of blows with a blunt instrument. But there are other things it could have been too.”
“Such as?”
“I've seen damage like this in road accidents.”
So had Deacon, but not in isolation. He looked down the length of the skimpy body. “There's no damage to the legs.” The bumper invariably caught the legs first. If the victim was thrown up into the air, the damage to the head was secondary, incurred when he landed.
Roy nodded. “I know. That was just an example.”
Jack Deacon had worked with a lot of pathologists in his time, the good, the bad and the inspired. The one thing they all had in common was this reluctance to commit themselves. Roy would still be hedging his bets if he'd actually witnessed the murder of Kevin Sykes.
He changed tack. “How do we know his name? Has he been identified?”
The FME shook his head. “The kid's still wearing his old school shirt. It's got a name-tape inside. And he's scratched his initials on his boots.”
Somehow, that struck Deacon harder than the murder itself: the fact that, within the last couple of years, someone thought enough about this boy to sew his name inside his clothes. What had gone wrong? Why had he ended up, ragged and filthy and selling his body for what it would make?
There was an answer. More often than not it was the right one. “Drugs?”
“Oh yeah,” said Hari Roy. He stretched out a thin arm: the veins were visible as dark tracks of infection. “To be honest, murdering this one was a wasted effort. I doubt he'd have lasted the month.”
It didn't make it better. The anger rose in Deacon's throat like bile. It may not have been much of a life but it was the only one Kevin Sykes had and it shouldn't have ended like this. If Cochrane thought that destroying a guttersnipe was the safe option, that less effort would go into solving the murder, he was going to find out that he was wrong.
Right now. Deacon whistled to Sergeant Voss like calling a dog and got back in his car. There was nothing more he could do here. Roy would learn whatever the body had to tell, Sergeant Mills was the scenes of crime expert, forensics would analyse anything that would bear analysis. More than ever, modern scientific methods left detectives free to focus on the people involved.
“Where are we going?” asked Charlie Voss.
“Guess,” snarled Deacon, heading for the hills.
 
 
Brodie had the radio on as she made Paddy's breakfast. Details of the night's events were still sketchy, but the reporter
connected the death of Kevin Sykes with that of Chris Berry and so did Brodie. She left the toast half-spread and picked up the phone.
It was only eight o'clock, she hoped she'd be getting Daniel out of bed. If he'd been asleep she could break the news herself. She wasn't sure why that was better than hearing it on the radio, only knew that it was. But his phone rang and rang and no one answered, and she knew then that he already knew.
As soon as Paddy had eaten, before she had time to wonder if she'd like another slice, Brodie took her up to Marta. “Would you walk her to school? I have to go and see Daniel. There's been another …” She indicated with her eyebrows the nature of the omitted word. Marta signalled her understanding.
Paddy had a perfect instinct for when she was being kept out of the loop. “Another what?”
“Another hike in the price of fish,” said Brodie.
Paddy didn't know what that meant but she knew when she was being flanneled. She squinted at her mother as she brushed past into Marta's flat, but for a moment Brodie thought she'd got away with it.
Then the little girl turned and announced firmly, “I was at Daniel's house yesterday. I saw a dead person.”
Brodie's heart stumbled.
Marta put a bony hand on top of the moppet's head and steered her inside. “Well, don't boast about it,” she said briskly, “there aren't enough to go round.”
Brodie drove straight to the netting-sheds. But Daniel didn't answer her anxious rapping any more than he'd answered the phone, and finally she accepted that he wasn't there. She phoned the police station and asked for Detective Inspector Deacon.
“I'm afraid he's busy,” said the woman on the switchboard. “Can someone else help?”
“Probably not. I'll try again later.” A thought occurred to
her. “You don't happen to know if Daniel Hood's on the premises?”
“Are you a relative of Mr Hood's?” asked the woman warily.
“Just a friend,” said Brodie. “And you've already answered my question.”
 
 
Daniel sat in an interview room in the bowels of Dimmock Police Station, not being interviewed. Occasionally DS Voss looked in, apparently to check he was still there; once someone brought him a cup of tea. No one asked him anything or told him anything. He hadn't seen Inspector Deacon since he arrived.
The next time Voss stuck his head round the door Daniel was ready for him. “Wait a minute. Tell me what's going on. I don't even know what I'm doing here.”
Of all the tools in a policeman's armoury, a look of slightly miffed surprise is one of the most versatile. In five years with CID Charlie Voss could hardly recall an inquiry where he hadn't pressed it into service. He did it now. “I'm sorry? I thought you came here to help with our inquiries.”
“I did,” nodded Daniel. “Two hours ago. Nobody's been near me since.” Voss looked pointedly at the paper cup. Daniel felt himself bridle. “Except for the tea-lady. That isn't why I came.”
“You wanted to help.”
“Yes,” said Daniel. “I heard about … On the radio this morning.”
Voss nodded. “Have you remembered something you didn't tell us? Have you thought better of something you did tell us?”
“I told you everything I saw and heard! I'm not going to tell you anything more or anything different.”
“I see,” said Voss evenly. “So you came to do – what, exactly?”
Daniel shut his eyes. Put like that, he wasn't sure. “
I
don't know. Maybe we should do that identity parade. Maybe Inspector Deacon's right and I'm wrong. Maybe if I see his suspect in person I
will
recognise him. Damn it, there has to be
something
I can do.”
But Voss knew what Daniel didn't, that identity parades are a double-edged sword. While a successful one will help towards a conviction, an unsuccessful one is a powerful weapon for the defence. The most diligent jury will be wary of convicting a felon unrecognised by the witnesses.
“He's up to his eyes right now,” he said apologetically. “I'll have a word with him. If he's not going to be free this morning there's no point you waiting.”
Daniel was beginning to think so too. When Voss returned five minutes later he was glad to be dismissed.
“The inspector appreciates you coming here,” said Voss tactfully. “He'll call you when he has a spare minute. Let me show you out.”
They didn't go the way Daniel had been brought in. Voss took him down the back stairs and out by the back door. “It's quicker. The front office is like Piccadilly Circus.”
In the long corridor they moved aside to let three men pass. The first was Jack Deacon. Daniel thought he'd changed his mind, but Deacon only grunted an acknowledgement and turned into a room on his right. The others followed: a tall man in work clothes and another policeman. Daniel didn't know either of them.
As soon as he was rid of his charge Charlie Voss hurried back down the corridor. Deacon was waiting outside the shut door. “Well?”
“Not a flicker,” said Voss. “From either of them.”
Deacon's scowl was like a gathering storm. “I don't understand. It
had
to be Cochrane he saw.”
“There are only three possibilities,” said Voss. “Hood is lying. Or it was Cochrane but the light was too bad. Or it wasn't Cochrane.”
Finally Deacon seemed to give some consideration to the last option. “An accomplice? It's not the sort of crime you'd expect two people to be involved in, but it does happen. But Cochrane's a loner in every other respect: why would he involve another party when what's at stake is the rest of his life? He never needed a partner before.”
“As far as we know,” amended Voss. “He's older now. And Berry was older, and stronger.”
“So why pick an athlete?” There were too many questions he couldn't answer. The chain was broken: the thing should be making more sense than this if what he thought had happened had indeed happened. “Damn it, Charlie Voss,” he swore thickly, “you don't suppose the little sod was right all along?”
 
 
“He was right all along,” said Daniel dully. “He said there'd be more killing if I didn't help him, and he was right. I only saw the man for a second. I thought I'd know him again, but I was wrong. My mistake cost a teenage boy his life.”
Brodie watched him with compassion. If there'd been anything to say that would have made him feel better she'd have said it, true or not. There wasn't. “I'm so sorry,” she said quietly.
“I should have –” said Daniel miserably, and stopped.
Brodie had kept trying his number until finally it rang twice and was cut off. She shut up the office and came straight here, and kept knocking on his door until he opened it.
She took his hand. “But that's it, isn't it? There was nothing you should have done differently. Maybe Deacon
was
right. That's no reason to say you saw something you didn't. You had to stick to what you believed, there'd be no value in your evidence otherwise. Anyone could lie for him. Only you could tell him the truth.”
His pale tormented eyes raked her face. “But I was wrong. Don't you understand? I was wrong, and now someone else is dead. Deacon could have stopped it. I could have said I wasn't sure, that maybe his suspect was the man I saw. I didn't have to lie, just say I didn't know.”

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