by Tony Parsons
‘Ruben was never going to hurt me,’ Jessica said.
‘Ruben Shavers is dead,’ I said. ‘But you’re safe now. Nobody can hurt you now.’
‘No,’ she said.
It was not a denial of his death. It was a denial of her safety.
We stared at Jessica Lyle, still not quite believing it was her, and yet somehow having no doubt, and she looked at us and then past us, as if Ruben Shavers might walk through the door to his secret flat.
I took a breath and let it out.
‘The night they took you,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘They drove to some graveyard,’ she said. ‘But there was a police car parked outside. So they kept driving. And took me to the fat man’s flat.’
It must have seemed like the perfect crime.
A grave beneath a grave that had been freshly dug and would never be found after the weeping mourners had gone home. A grave beneath a grave that nobody would even know about.
And like most perfect crimes, the plan fell to pieces almost immediately.
Because a squad car was routinely parked outside Highgate Cemetery, there to watch for speeding cars on Swains Lane and put off kids who fancied partying in the graveyard. And that one parked squad car meant the kidnappers suddenly had to improvise.
‘They were arguing,’ Jessica said. ‘Ruben and the fat man. Ruben wanted to call it off – to let me out of the car. I was trying to talk to him. I told him I had a little boy. He seemed – he seemed like he was listening to me. He was looking after me.’
And I took her in for the first time. Yes, she was a woman that people would look at. They would look at her twice, and they would look at her for far too long. Because you can never quite believe it, that rare beauty. She had the bluest eyes I had ever seen in my life – eyes like frozen fire. But is that what all this grief and death had been for? A pair of blue eyes?
‘The fat man was calling Ruben all sorts of names. They were hitting each other. It was horrible. We went to the fat man’s flat, and I was trying to talk to Ruben and the fat man was telling me to shut my mouth, and calling me names, and there was a woman there. The fat man’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. I don’t know. She had a key and she had let herself in. She wasn’t meant to be there. She was collecting some things – these awful cheap, tarty clothes. And she saw me and she lost her temper with the fat man.’
In my mind I saw Minky attacking Derek Bumpus, her fists flying.
‘The fat man hit her. She went down and she wasn’t moving. I don’t know what happened to her after that because then Ruben took me away. And brought me here.’
Whitestone exhaled.
Because we knew what happened after that.
Minky had died.
Either Minky died when her head hit the floor or Derek Bumpus killed her before she could leave. The actual cause of death had dissolved long before Elsa had a chance to examine the body at the Horseferry Road mortuary. But either way, Minky had seen Jessica Lyle and it was her death sentence.
The freshly dug grave had been meant for Jessica Lyle.
And then there had to be a change of plan.
‘Ruben brought me here,’ she said. ‘And he said he had children too. And then he went away and when he came back he said he had told his boss and the fat man that it was all taken care of.’
She was wearing a man’s white shirt.
I remembered three evidence bags in West End Central and what they contained. A sweatshirt, a pair of yoga trousers and a pair of pants. All black apart from the slogan in lurid pink on the sweatshirt.
Last Chance to Dance.
‘Your clothes,’ I said. ‘Someone sent us your clothes.’
‘Ruben’s idea,’ she said. ‘To make them believe that it had been done. That I was gone.’
Whitestone touched her arm.
‘Did Ruben Shavers assault you, Jessica?’
‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head, appalled at the idea. ‘He would never hurt me that way. He would never try to touch me. I think … I know he liked me.’
She looked at us with her blues eyes.
Everyone loves Jessica.
‘And now he’s dead?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘An armed policeman shot him.’
There was sadness in those huge blue eyes. But she had no tears for Ruben Shavers.
‘But, Jessica,’ Whitestone said. ‘Why didn’t you try to escape? Why didn’t you smash the door down, break the windows, scream the roof off? Why didn’t you come home? What about your baby? What about Michael?’
‘Because Ruben told me that the person who hired him and the fat man would hurt my family,’ she said. ‘Ruben said that if they knew that I was alive, then my family would all be hurt. Even Michael. Even my baby boy.’ There were tears in her eyes now. ‘He said my family would all be burned.’
‘The pills,’ I said, indicating the coffee table. ‘Did Shavers make you take them?’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He didn’t make me. He said they were good for my panic attacks. Because at the start – it was very hard.’
A regular supply of Xanax and terror, I thought.
That would make anyone a willing prisoner.
‘My little boy,’ Jessica said, her voice racked with sorrow. ‘My parents. They must have thought …’
The tears came now and Whitestone went to her, wrapping Jessica Lyle in her arms. They stood like that for a while. I waited until the two women broke their embrace and then I smiled at that perfect face.
‘Let’s take you home to your family,’ I said.
34
In summer it was never too early to get up.
Our little family woke and stretched and rose from our beds and dog basket as the sky lightened and poured through the wall-to-floor windows of the loft.
We brushed our teeth and pulled on our clothes and went down to the old BMW X5, Stan dozing on Scout’s lap as we drove north to Hampstead.
At the top of the hill above Hampstead village, we parked behind Jack Straw’s Castle and crossed the road to walk through the thickly wooded Vale of Heath to the big green meadow beyond, the day still so new that the entire meadow was teeming with rabbits.
Scout slipped Stan off his lead and, endlessly tolerant to all living creatures, he trotted hopefully towards the rabbits, ready to play, but they stood on their hind legs at our approach, their noses twitching at the presence of human and dog and danger, and ancient instincts sent them scurrying to their burrows, so fast it felt like a disappearing act. And then we were alone.
It was still too early for the serious runners, and even too early for the other dog walkers. Even the young yoga woman who came to the meadow to perform her surya namaskar, her daily salute to the rising sun, had not yet arrived.
Having the Heath to ourselves always felt like a winning Lottery ticket.
We walked deeper into the Heath, Scout and Stan and I, and all three of us knew those trees and paths and fields as well as we knew our own home. Without discussing it, we turned right into the thick woodland of East Heath, cool and dark under the canopy of trees, and came out on Pryor’s Field, the series of linked ponds in the distance glinting like a string of pearls. We headed for the dazzling water, watched by a solitary kestrel gliding high above us.
By the time we got to Hampstead High Street, they were just opening up at the Coffee Cup, and we ate pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup at one of the outside tables, Scout slipping Stan morsels of pancake under the table as we watched the world wake up. Our walks on the Heath were always the best part of the day.
There are churches all over Hampstead, up on Heath Street and down on Church Row, and two of them on either side of Pond Street leading down to the Royal Free Hospital, and a small Roman Catholic church tucked away on Vernon Mount and a large white church on the corner of Downshire Hill and Keats Grove.
And as I was paying the bill at the Coffee Cup, they all began to ring their bells at once.
I looke
d at Scout. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving.
She felt me watching her and opened her eyes.
‘I’m not making a wish,’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘Don’t let me stop you wishing, Scout,’ I said. ‘I would be very sad if I thought that I had stopped you wishing when you hear the sound of the bells. OK?’
‘OK,’ she said, closing her eyes.
My phone began to vibrate.
JOY ADAMS CALLING, it said.
‘I’m at Broadmoor Hospital, sir,’ she said. ‘The doctors called me and asked me to speak to Liam Mahone.’
Liam Mahone – the only surviving member of the Mahone family.
Little Liam who was four years old when someone came to his house one Sunday lunchtime with a can of petrol and emptied it over Liam’s family before threatening to set them all alight.
Liam Mahone who had been catatonic for all of his adult life.
‘I thought Liam didn’t talk,’ I said.
‘He’s talking now, sir. He saw a face on TV. And it brought it all back. All of it.’
‘Can’t you get a statement?’
‘You are going to need to come down here, sir,’ Adams said. ‘And the boss. Now.’
I looked at my watch. Broadmoor Hospital is a forty-mile drive from London.
‘We have a press conference at West End Central at ten a.m.,’ I said. ‘The boss wants to tell the world that we found Jessica Lyle.’
After we had found Minky’s body, the mood had turned sour against the police. There were disapproving hashtags on social media – #WrongBody, #DumbPigs, #HighgateGaffe – and an online petition for us to prioritise missing children instead of missing adults.
Because in the end they always lose faith if we search in vain. Give it long enough and the press and the public and the social media sites who were initially so keen for us to find the missing one – the angelic child, the beautiful woman – in the end they lose patience with a fruitless search, and they give up on us, and they give up on the special missing one, and they complain about the wasted money and wasted time and the wasted effort and, above all, the rank stupidity of people like me.
‘The press conference is the boss’s idea,’ I said. ‘She wants to tell them all – the press, the public, the snowflakes with their hashtags and online petitions – that we found Jessica Lyle.’
I could hear Joy Adams breathing.
And in the background, beyond the sound of her breathing, I could hear a man screaming.
‘Cancel it,’ she told me.
Broadmoor Hospital.
The big, sprawling red-brick Victorian building that sits beyond the green, gently sloping hills of Crowthorne, Berkshire, and high walls of razor wire. Whitestone and I passed through two full body searches and into the hospital’s inner courtyard, and then under an arch where the old red brickwork of the Victorian lunatic asylum finally gives way to newer buildings.
Broadmoor is not a prison.
But it is more secure than any prison I ever saw.
Two massive guards led us down long corridors the colour of buttercups.
Heavy reinforced doors were opened and then closed and locked behind us before the next door was opened. That was the sound of Broadmoor. The sound of doors being slammed shut. And distant sounds of deep distress.
Finally we came to the Paddock Centre where a man wearing a personal attack alarm was waiting for us with Joy Adams.
‘Professor Tomlinson,’ he said. ‘I’m Liam’s clinician. He’s waiting for us.’
We followed him further down the bright canary-yellow corridors, and the massive set of keys attached to his waist jingled softly in a quiet that was broken only by the sound of a TV programme about the pros and cons of moving to the countryside.
The corridor opened up into a communal space where a group of men sat under the TV set. They were all massively overweight. They showed no interest in us, or even awareness of our presence.
Beyond the TV area there were doors with no windows.
‘Isolation cells,’ Professor Tomlinson said, and beyond one door I heard a low moaning sound. ‘Patients stay in these when they become over-excited. Liam is resting in one of these cells right now. As I explained to TDC Adams, he has been a little upset by what he saw on the news.’
At the end of the yellow corridor, a huge guard waited outside a locked door.
Professor Tomlinson gave him a nod and he opened it up.
Inside, a slightly built man sat watching a TV set that was not turned on.
He was uniquely thin in that place of morbidly obese men.
‘Good morning, Liam,’ Professor Tomlinson said in his soft sing-song voice. ‘You remember TDC Adams – Joy. And these are her colleagues. DCI Whitestone and DC Wolfe. Pat and Max. If it is all right with you, Pat and Max would appreciate it if you could tell them exactly what you told Joy.’
‘Hello, Liam,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to meet you.’
Liam Mahone sighed.
He lifted his right arm and he sniffed it.
‘What’s he doing?’ Whitestone asked Professor Tomlinson.
But we knew what Liam Mahone was doing.
He was smelling the petrol that he had been doused with at the other end of his lifetime.
I tried to picture him as a four-year-old child, and I tried to imagine the terror that had come calling that day. But that child was gone now and there was only this damaged man.
‘Hi, Liam,’ Joy said. ‘Remember me?’
He exhaled again, not looking at us. He gave his arm another tentative sniff, as if making sure the imagined stink of death was still there.
‘What exactly is wrong with Liam?’ I quietly asked Professor Tomlinson.
‘DPSD,’ he said. ‘Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder. Many psychiatrists dislike the term because it is not a clinical diagnosis. It covers a group of patients who are considered to be a danger to the public.’ He crouched by the side of Liam Mahone. ‘Do you feel like talking, Liam?’
Liam continued to stare at the TV without seeing it.
I crouched by his side.
‘Look at this picture, Liam,’ I said.
He moved his head to stare at the A4 printout of Derek Bumpus, the tip of his index finger warily tracing the four creases where it had been folded inside my jacket. Bumpus’s great round face stared belligerently at the camera in the police mugshot.
‘Joy told me you saw this man’s picture on TV and you became very upset,’ I said. ‘And I think that’s because this man once threatened to hurt you and your family. Have I got that right, Liam?’
Liam Mahone looked at Joy. Then he looked at Professor Tomlinson. And finally he looked at me, then quickly looked away. He sighed and nodded.
‘What did you tell Joy?’ I asked.
‘That man said that he was going to burn us,’ Liam Mahone said. ‘My brothers. My sisters. My mum and dad. And me. He meant it, too! He wasn’t just saying it! He was going to burn us up and he poured this stuff – the stuff that you set fire to and it burns you – all over us. And then the woman with him struck a match and said she was going to do it.’
I looked at Joy.
She nodded.
‘Liam,’ I said. ‘You mean the man.’ I showed him the print of Derek Bumpus. ‘You mean the other man with this man in the picture. The second man. The man who was in charge. Harry Flowers. That’s the name of the other man. The man who gave the orders. You mean the man in the picture – Derek Bumpus – was with the other man. Isn’t that what you mean, Liam?’
He frowned with impatience.
And then he sniffed his arm, more forcefully this time.
‘The woman was in charge,’ he said. ‘The lady told him what to do and he did it. Anything she told him, he had to do or else. This man’ – indicating the mugshot of Derek Bumpus – ‘he did what she told him to do.’
And at last Liam Mahone looked me in the eye.
‘It was the woman,’ he said.
>
Then he sighed more deeply than he had sighed before, and closed his eyes, as if ready to slip into a heavily medicated sleep.
And I understood now that a lot of people hated Harry Flowers. But nobody – not the Mahone family, not his embittered employees, not any business rivals, not any abandoned mistress – hated him quite as much as the woman who had helped to build his empire, and stood by his side, and turned her face away from every betrayal.
Nobody hated him quite as much as his wife.
35
Snezia Jones was ready to run.
There was a black cab waiting for her outside the small modern block of flats overlooking Highbury Fields.
She came out of the apartment block’s lift with a small travel bag in either hand and suddenly stopped dead, staring at us through the tastefully tinted glass doors.
Joy cancelled the cab. The driver angrily flicked on his yellow For Hire sign, not happy at all. We went inside. Snezia led the way into the lift. Joy took her travel bag. She wasn’t going to need it after all.
It was a beautiful flat. We paused to take in the view across Highbury Fields. The remains of a Mexican takeaway for one was scattered on the coffee table. The roadside chicken tacos had hardly been touched. No sign of the boyfriend.
‘Anyone else at home?’ I asked.
Snezia shook her head.
‘Most people can’t do it,’ Whitestone told her, looking out at the rolling green field that stretched to Highbury Corner like a dream of the countryside. ‘Take a life, I mean. People say – I’ll kill you. But it’s not that easy.’
She turned to look at Snezia to make sure she was paying attention.
‘I never …’ she began. We waited. But she could not finish the sentence.
‘They can’t take a life and then carry on with their own life as though nothing has happened,’ Whitestone said. ‘Most people normal can’t do it. And when they do – if they do – then it stays with them forever. Always there. Every day. In their dreams. And that is what happened to you, isn’t it? No matter how much you may have hated Jessica Lyle.’
Snezia sank into a white leather armchair, so new that it still smelled of the showroom, and shook her head briefly, a final half-hearted denial of everything.
