True Witness (9 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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“You made an honest mistake,” murmured Brodie.
“Don't,” gritted Daniel, his fair head bowed. “Just – don't tell me that the man who never made a mistake never made anything.”
“I wasn't going to.”
He looked up again, ashamed. “Deacon wouldn't see me. He knows what I've done.”
In the same way that he pushed his honesty until it got up people's noses, he tended to do the whole sackcloth-and-ashes number over things he could not have prevented. Brodie knew he was hurting. Other men when they were hurt hit out; Daniel turned the violence inward. She supposed it was nobler to absorb the pain than to spread it around, but it was no less destructive and hardly more attractive.
“For pity's sake, Daniel,” she growled softly, “get a grip. The boy's dead because someone beat his head in with a wheel-brace. That's where the responsibility begins and ends. It's not your fault you didn't recognise the man. You haven't done anything wrong.
“Except this wallowing in guilt. That's wrong. It's stupid and unproductive, and it's self-indulgent. You seem to think this is about you. It's not. It's about a serial killer and his victims. You're just a bit-part player: you've said your lines, now leave the stage to those who can carry the action forward.”
He flushed as if she'd slapped him. Brodie heard the breath catch in his throat. After what felt a long time he nodded. “You're right. I'm sorry. I know I'm being stupid.”
Remorse tweaked at her heart-strings. She had to stop herself from taking it all back. “You're still in shock, Daniel.
Since this began you've had a lot to deal with, physically and emotionally. Your blood's full of chemicals your brain can't process. Be gentle on yourself for a couple of days.”
“In a couple of days someone else could be dead,” he murmured miserably.
Patience no longer came as naturally to Brodie as it once had. “You're right,” she agreed tersely. “Keep this up and it could be you.”
“You have to release him,” said Chief Superintendent Fuller.
“If I release him,” said Inspector Deacon, tight-lipped, “he'll kill someone else.”
“You have no grounds to hold him,” said Fuller, as if explaining the basics of police procedure to a new recruit. “No forensics, no witnesses, no suspicious behaviour, no incautious remarks to barmaids. You not only haven't got any evidence that isn't circumstantial, you haven't even got any that is.”
“I have a witness,” insisted Deacon desperately. His last hope was that Fuller hadn't read further than the top sheet of the file.
But Dimmock's senior police officer had been in this business even longer than Deacon. He knew that being lied to by members of the public was the least of his problems. Being told half-truths by members of his own force was much more likely to get him into trouble with the Chief Constable. “A witness who states categorically that Neil Cochrane is not the man he saw!”
There was nowhere left to hide. Deacon had given the Police & Criminal Evidence Act a run for its money but it had caught up with him in the end. He sighed and took the chair he'd been offered minutes before. “Yes. I know. I'll send him home. I'll give him his Land Rover and his trailer back, and I'll apologise, and I'll send him home.”
Chief Superintendent Fuller was not an unkind man. And despite suspicions in the CID offices upstairs, he preferred to see criminals in prison rather than wandering the streets cooling their fingers in the breeze. “I can't spare the manpower for a full surveillance. I also couldn't justify it: not when the witness has effectively ruled him out. But the area car could do drive-bys. That ought to discourage him from
any extra-mural activity; especially if the drive-bys aren't too discreet.”
“Constable Huxley?” suggested Deacon.
Fuller gave an unctuous smile. “Seems the right man for the job.”
It was better than nothing and Deacon nodded agreement. In a perfect world he'd have had twenty-four hour surveillance on Cochrane, and he wouldn't have put Constable Huxley, who was six-foot-three with red hair and a voice like a fog-horn, in charge of it. The game plan would not have been to scare the suspect into staying at home but to catch him stalking another boy.
But a perfect world would have no need of detectives. If Deacon couldn't be sure of catching Cochrane in the act he had to make sure there would be no more acts. Constable Huxley and the area car would make no contribution to solving these murders, but they would buy some time in which Deacon might solve them.
Solid police work can achieve a lot in a few days. But perhaps not, Deacon thought glumly, on a case which it has failed to advance significantly in ten years.
 
 
Some crimes happen mostly in the day, some happen only at night. Some happen in the hour after the pubs close.
Daniel was sleeping. He'd been listening for the phone all day, waiting for Deacon to call. He hadn't dared go out for fear of missing him. He cancelled a couple of maths pupils who were coming after school because he wasn't sure he'd be here.
Even when the day waned he told himself that a murder squad can't work office hours, the detective would call when he was free to, day or night. At nine-thirty he made tea and toast, the first food he'd contemplated all day. He took it into the living-room and put his feet up on the sofa, and fell
asleep with his supper reproaching him from the coffee table.
The thunder of fists on his door jerked him awake. A surge of pure, primitive fear galvanised him in the second before he knew where he was and what was going on. He knew, at an emotional level, that terrible things had happened, and for that second he didn't know what they were. He didn't know what the fists meant. He fumbled for his glasses, knocking over the cold tea, and stared at the door in a terror that only began to dissipate as his senses caught up. This wasn't a fearful place, it was his home; the terrible things hadn't happened to him, not this time; and though he wouldn't have been astonished to find an angry mob on his steps in the middle of the night they'd hardly have addressed him this politely as they tried to beat down his door.
“Mr Hood? Mr Hood! Open up. I've got to talk to you.”
It was a young man's voice. The last time young men came here he was in trouble, but though there was urgency in the voice he couldn't detect a threat. After a moment's hesitancy he padded to the window by the door and pulled the curtain aside.
The wash of light spilling out caught the face of another tall young man standing on his steps, about the same age as the others, identically dressed in denim and leather, but alone. Still Daniel hesitated. But the idea of fear, of yielding to it and making himself its slave, worried him more than a reality which could be faced and dealt with. He didn't know that the youth outside was his enemy; but if he was, Daniel wasn't about to talk to him through a locked door. He took a deep breath and opened it.
No hiding hordes leapt from the shadows, nor did his visitor grab him by the throat. He just said, “You're Daniel Hood?”
Daniel nodded. “Who are you?”
“Nathan Sparkes. George Ennis sent me. You have to get away from here.”
“What? Who's George Ennis?” Then he remembered. “Why – ?”
The boy shook off Daniel's questions like a dog shaking water from its coat. His voice rattled like gunfire. “There's no time. There's going to be trouble. Not the guys from the gym – someone's been stirring it down at
The Rose.
Blaming you for … And now they're on their way. I've got wheels, I'll take you somewhere safe.”
Daniel stared at him more in astonishment than alarm. “I'm not leaving my flat to a mob! I'll call the police.”
“George is calling them, they'll be here in five minutes. But
The Rose
is closer:
they
can be here in three. If they find you they'll break your legs.”
It could have been a ploy – if he went with this boy he didn't know he could find himself up a dark alley where half a dozen more were waiting. But Nathan Sparkes certainly seemed anxious. He kept looking over his shoulder to the promenade. That he saw nothing didn't reassure him for long. “Please! You have to come. Hurry!”
Thinking too long would leave no time for action. Daniel snatched a decision out of mid air, grabbed his parka, kicked his feet into his shoes and turned off the light. Then he thought better of that, switched it on again and drew the curtains back. If they could see there was no one hiding in the dark they might not stay. He locked the door and followed Nathan's retreating back, entirely failing to keep up with him over the shifting shingle.
By the side of the road was a black van with the words
The Attic Gym
picked out in gold paint. Nathan was already behind the wheel. Daniel scrambled up beside him, panting. “You're another of these fell-runners, aren't you?”
The boy nodded, too distracted to reply. He revved the engine and wrenched the vehicle off the kerb. There was still no sign of a mob.
“Then you must have known Chris Berry.”
Nathan didn't glance at him. His voice was thick. “He was my best friend.”
“I'm sorry,” said Daniel quietly.
The young man kept his eyes on the road. “It wasn't your fault. I know you tried to save him.” The street-lights found tears on his cheeks.
He made a couple of quick turns off the promenade, checking the road behind them in the mirror. Daniel thought he wasn't used to driving something as big as this van: every time they passed a parked car he watched the wings.
When they were back in the centre of town and there were no signs of pursuit Nathan glanced at his passenger and said, “Where do you want to go?”
Daniel came up with the same answer he always did. Sometimes it embarrassed him how much he relied on Brodie Farrell. He felt sure he was a considerable nuisance to her at times. He hoped he gave her something in return, but was aware that if the friendship ended he would be the one left alone. He sighed and directed Nathan to the big house in Chiffney Road.
It was late: the doorbell got her out of bed. He could hear the annoyance in her voice. “Whoever you are, you'd better have a good excuse.”
He swallowed. “It's Daniel. I'm on the run. Can I come in?”
Immediately she threw the door open. “What do you
mean
you're on the run?” Then she saw the young man standing behind him, and remembered she was wearing only an oversized T-shirt with the words “Investigators do it in the dark” emblazoned across the front, and waved them in with a gesture that was more despair than embarrassment. There was a dressing-gown in her bedroom: she came back a moment later with it wrapped around her. “What's happened now?”
Daniel introduced his companion and repeated what Nathan had told him.
Brodie was reaching for the phone before he finished. “And George Ennis was calling the police?”
The youth nodded. “He thought it would save time if I went on ahead.”
She approved of that. “Good thinking.” But she phoned the station anyway. When the police confirmed they'd been called to a disturbance at the netting sheds she merely told them that Daniel was safe with her. She turned back to her visitors. “Who's wanting to beat the crap out of you this time?”
Daniel winced. “Some men in a pub got talking about the killings and decided it was all my fault. That's about the size of it, isn't it?”
Nathan nodded. “When George realised where it was heading he told me to collect Mr Hood in the van. He was calling the police, but he reckoned I could get there quicker than they could.”
The veteran of numerous phone-calls to police stations, all processed with the same meticulous attention to detail and conspicuous lack of urgency, Brodie agreed. But it wasn't the obvious thing to do. “Does he know something about the police?”
“He used to be a detective,” said Nathan.
Which explained a lot. Looking back, Brodie thought she should have guessed. The tall, strong frame; the ability to deal with an angry stranger without losing his own temper; his reluctance to have to explain himself to Jack Deacon. Even the fact that he was running a gym when most men of his age would be at the peak of their careers. Policemen have the option of early retirement. George Ennis had taken it and directed his energies into
The Attic Gym.
“Sit down,” Brodie said wearily, “I'll make some coffee.” It was a reflex reaction she shared with women the world over: in a crisis you look for someone to feed.
But Nathan shook his head. “I'd better go. George'll need his van back.”
“All right.” She showed him out. “Listen: thanks. We owe you one.”
Returning to the flat Brodie said, “Stay here tonight. I'll make up the spare bed.”
“It's probably all over by now,” said Daniel. “I'll ask the police if it's safe to show my face.”
“Just because this lot have been sent packing doesn't mean someone else won't get the same idea,” objected Brodie.
Daniel hesitated. “We don't know if anything actually happened. They may have got half way to the shore, sobered up and gone home. Beer talks big.”
Outside the gravel crunched again. They exchanged a tense glance. When the bell rang Brodie reached for the intercom but Daniel got there first. He tried to make his voice deeper. “Who is it?”
“Detective Inspector Deacon.” It was, too. No one could have copied that heavy, faintly disparaging tone.
Daniel opened the door. “Is everything under control? Can I go home now?”
The policeman gave that some thought. “Yes, in a manner of speaking, and not really.”
Brodie joined them. Deacon gave her dressing-gown a surprised glance and then avoided looking at her. “What do you mean?” she frowned. “Either you've dealt with the situation or you haven't.”
“We have,” said Deacon, gazing at the ceiling. “The Fire Brigade haven't. I'm sorry to inform you, Mr Hood, that the bastards burnt your house down.”
 
 
They went to have a look. Brodie didn't want Paddy to see this so she woke the long-suffering Marta to stay with her downstairs.
Daniel was quiet. Brodie wasn't sure what he was thinking. What
she
was thinking was that if it hadn't been Paddy's birthday he would probably have slept through the events on the pier and none of this would have happened. No one would blame him for anything, no one would be threatening him, and his house would still be standing.
The Fire Brigade were rolling up their hoses. The tarred timber shack had burnt alarmingly quickly, only the iron stairway and a few charred uprights remaining. Everything else was smoking, steaming ash. There was no one to rescue, no nearby buildings to safeguard and nothing to defend from looters. The destruction was total. But for George Ennis's intervention, probably Daniel would have died in the inferno.

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