‘I agree.’
‘So why isn’t that happening?’
‘I think his contact is limited. The pilot was more set up for terrorist offenders. There was concern that some cons were being radicalised in prison. We had a couple convert to Islam and then get involved in plotting terror attacks when they got out. Some white supremacists too — with the same end game. But Henry Roberts is such a high-profile prisoner that he has a bit of a following. I think some of the younger lags may even admire him.’
‘Jesus. It’s a sick world. But the easiest way is just to stick him in a cell and close the hatch. I heard they were talking about appealing again, to get him moved to a secure hospital. From what I know about them places, he’d be worse off at a luxury hotel. He needs to stay where he is. Or in some stinking hole somewhere.’
‘Again, I agree entirely. But if they don’t do that I need to know a bit of what you know. I want to limit his influence as best I can. I think you can help.’
‘I thought I knew evil, boss . . .’ Dennis flailed.
‘George. Just George is fine.’
‘George. I thought I knew evil. You know, when you start this job you very quickly have to confront things. People stabbing people, raping people — murdering people. I’ve seen all that. It never really bothered me. I mean, you have the shock value the first time over, right? We all get that. But I got numb to it.’
‘We have to.’
‘I wasn’t numb to Henry Roberts. That man, he got underneath my skin, George. He gets inside your soul. I thought I had seen evil — I hadn’t. You deal with these murders — victims shot, stabbed, beaten to death. Run down with a car, I once had. But there was always a reason. A jilted husband, a running feud, a pub fight. Roberts doesn’t need a reason. He just wants to hurt people.’
‘I like him more already.’
‘You know what he did, right? To that girl?’
‘No, actually. I mean, beyond the fact that he killed her. I read something about burns being found on the body, but the actual cause of death wasn’t in the briefing I got.’
‘She had burns, yeah. The one we did find.’
‘And that was the cause of death?’
‘You should know. If you’re part of this, if you’re dealing with this then how come you don’t know?’ Dennis’s voice carried anger again.
George shrugged, ‘I can’t tell you much more I’m afraid, Dennis. I got sent down here to find out what I could. I get the impression there is a lot about this fella that’s need-to-know.’
‘We all signed something. Something that said we wouldn’t talk about it.’
‘For this case specifically? We all sign the Official Secrets Act, Dennis. You mean when you walked away?’
‘No. When he was charged we all signed it. We agreed not to talk about this case. About the deaths. About what we knew. If you’re here just to find out about that then you’re wasting your time. You’re not press, are you? You know impersonating the police is a criminal offence, right?’
‘Blimey, Dennis! Of course I do. I’m not here to lie to you, mate. Let me tell you what’s happened here — the way I see it at least. I got a call yesterday from my chief inspector. I was at home. He tells me that he needs me to do a prison visit to get a feel for a prisoner as part of working out the influence he might have on other prisoners. I come out from the prison and give him a call, and he suggests I come up here to learn a bit more about him. I get no guidance on how that’s supposed to happen, who I should talk to — nothing. I get a list of a few names of people that were involved. You’re one of them. I can go if you want, Dennis. I’m not here to piss you off and I’m definitely not here to impersonate anyone else! I don’t need any information on what happened to those girls, I’ve got other people on my list. I can’t help but feel like I’ve been stitched-up a bit here! I’m unprepared and a little out of my depth and I just want to find out what I can. That’s it really. If you can help, great, if you can’t I’ll go back with whatever I have.’
Dennis was studying him closely. He stayed silent so long it was almost uncomfortable. ‘She was nineteen years old. The girl we found. She was burnt, yeah, that was part of what happened to that girl. But not all of it. I can’t talk about what happened. All I can say is, it’s some ancient thing I’d never heard of, cracking open heads to let demons out type stuff. Henry Roberts was playing God with their lives. And I’m certain he enjoyed every second of it.’
‘Sounds horrific.’
‘When they sat us down and made us sign to say we would never talk about it, I was relieved. I never want to talk about it. I’ve never said it out loud. I went through a real dip after it all. I didn’t handle it very well. You’re not dealing with a normal man. He is outside of humanity. Don’t ever lose sight of that. I spent a lot of time in the same room as him. I know you’ve met him. He might not have talked to me but he didn’t need to. Those black eyes . . . there’s nothing there but hate.’
‘We didn’t get on. I’ll tell you that much.’
‘I don’t know what’s going on down there but you can’t have him out in the general prison population. Not even for a second. He’s a big man. He has charisma. He could have an influence. I don’t know how much and I’m not saying he has the will or the ability to create another like him, but even if someone had a tenth of his evil rub off on them . . . I mean, you’d have a real problem there.’
‘Sounds like it. Sounds like you did a great job getting him off the street, too, Dennis.’
‘It was my last job.’
‘You’re retired?’
‘I wasn’t due to. I had eight years left when I started on that case and just five to do when I finished it. After the court case, I walked. I did try to go back to work. I lasted another few days but . . . I just lost it, you know? It was a tough time. The force did their best to get me back on the level but I couldn’t get past it. What that man did. That there is that much evil in the world, George . . . I had my eyes opened. Suddenly I felt like there was nothing I could do to combat evil like that. For a police officer that’s not something you can work through. I was scared of my own shadow for a while. I’m still trying to get past it. Once you get to that point, there’s no way back. I just want to stay here and pretend it doesn’t exist. It cost me forty grand of my pension and a wife.’
‘It does, though — exist, I mean. And it needs people like you and me to cage it. Imagine if there was no you, Dennis. If you hadn’t done what you did. If Roberts was still out there now.’
‘We wouldn’t have stood a chance. We got lucky as it was. Somehow his last victim got away. She was some athlete, a pro-biker. He got confident picking on her and it was a mistake.’
‘And what about him? Before all this I mean. I understand he is a man of means?’
‘Of means? Money? More than a hundred million, I heard, but no one’s really sure. The Roberts family are part of the history of this area. They’ve always had land, some had titles in the past. I think Henry might have had a title passed down. If so, he doesn’t use it.’
‘And he’s the only heir?’
‘He has a brother for sure, and I’d guess a fairly wide extended family who might have benefitted when his parents passed. They say a lot of the money was all offshore and buried in barely functioning companies and trusts. But Henry manipulated his dad and then worked on his mum. He made sure all other potential beneficiaries were written out. That was what I heard at least. Just him left at the end. Maybe it’s another example of his hunger for power. He wanted control of the fortune, for his relatives to have to knock on his door and ask if they wanted money. Money is power. People bow down to it. Perhaps Henry saw that as a way of feeling more like a god.’
‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ George mused.
‘I prefer evil bastard. Some people are just born that way. You couldn’t man-make a Henry Roberts. He was forged in hell itself.’
‘Now who sounds like the religious zealot?’
‘Y
ou need to spend a little more time with him. You’ll see, George. He’s not to be messed with and he’s not to be underestimated. If you came all the way up here for my advice be sure to take it back with you. This man has to stay locked up. Preferably in a windowless room. Evil like that . . . it can spread like wildfire. You can’t let that happen.’
‘Thanks. For your time, I mean. I’m sorry to drop in like this and to bring this all back to the fore. I didn’t realise it had left such a lasting impact.’
‘I loved my job. I always wanted to do it too. Good versus evil, right? Twenty-five years in, that man made me realise that good can never win. It can only hope to control. It sounds like you’re a part of that now, George. Now we’ve got him locked up, you throw away that damned key.’
George stepped back out into the sunshine. The door clicked shut behind him with no further word and before George had had time to say his goodbyes. He walked back to his car. His phone had an email from Whittaker. He wasn’t going to make it that day either. George was starting to accept that he wasn’t going to make it at all.
‘Another stitch-up!’ George muttered. He took in another elevated view of the river. This one was from the other side of the valley, back to Symonds Yat and was every bit as breathtaking. He turned towards the bungalow he had just left. The curtains were all tightly pulled shut. It had to take some sort of evil to convince a man to shut himself away from such beauty.
Chapter 5
Mary Pope sat still and straight in her daughter’s bedroom. She could hear the clock ticking in the hall downstairs, steady, unrelenting. Every tick had a slightly different tone. The sort of thing you wouldn’t notice unless you sat and really listened. She knew that she sat in here too much, that it wasn’t healthy. At first the counsellor had encouraged her to do so. He’d told her that it might help, that she should focus on the good times, the joy that Chloe had experienced in that room. She looked around it now. It was just as it had been left a little over three years before. The bed was as it had been made by Chloe, who had pulled the sheets roughly back and plumped the pillow so her mother wouldn’t moan. Some dirty clothes were kicked under the bed, out of sight. No doubt she intended on dealing with them later, but Mary knew that she would have ended up finding them, tutting at her daughter’s laziness and moving them to the wash bin that was no more than ten paces away.
Chloe Pope was just nineteen years old when she didn’t come home. Close to finishing a gap year before going off to read medicine at Cardiff University. She was very bright, the cleverest the Popes had ever produced. She would have made a great doctor too. She was smart, dedicated and had real attention to detail but, above all else, she cared — too much. Mary lifted heavy eyes to the posters still clinging to the wall: Greenpeace, anti-fracking, the animal rights protest marches she had attended in London. Mary had always said to her that if she picked up too many of the world’s problems they would start weighing her down. You have to look after yourself before you can go and start sorting out everyone else’s problems. Chloe would just smile. Her dad said she had a big heart. He also told her that she needed to be careful. ‘Such a big heart and caring for everyone,’ he would say. ‘Someday that heart might burst.’
Mary missed Chloe so much that her heart felt like bursting. Chloe had had a wonderful life ahead of her. Now it was gone. It had taken Mary a couple of years to accept that. She wouldn’t listen to anyone who said that Chloe wasn’t coming home. She held out hope that maybe she was off somewhere trying to make a difference in the world. Perhaps she’d slipped under the radar in case her parents wouldn’t approve. Then she would walk back through the door and announce that she was on the run for criminal damage to a Japanese whaling vessel or something. Mary knew that the people around her believed for a long time that she was still waiting. They were worried about her, worried that she would never be able to let go. But in truth she knew from day dot that Chloe was gone, that her giant heart had been snuffed out. She and Chloe had had that precious mother-daughter bond, and she had felt it break.
Colin had seemed to take it better. Her husband was pragmatic. He talked about turning her bedroom into an office from which to run part of his business. He said that he might as well use the space to create something good. To Mary it sounded callous, like he wanted to paper over her memory. She could appreciate now that it was all part of his coping, part of his moving on, and that it needed to happen. The counselling had helped them both with that. It helped her understand that everyone was different and that Colin was hurting just as much as she was. Though she felt less alone, counselling could only get them so far, only stop the pain so much, only dress open wounds. What they really needed was for their daughter to be found. They needed someone to bury. Closure. She couldn’t say how many times she had heard that word, how many people had told her how much better everything would be once she had it. Maybe they were right. Anything was better than how she felt now: lost and in limbo, her life frozen in time, like her daughter’s belongings, while she stared out of the window at the distant trees, wondering if one of them marked Chloe’s final resting place.
She could see the Forest of Dean from their window. In the early days, she had spent hours in that forest every day. She had been part of the search while she still clung to the hope that they still might find her daughter alive. Now, she couldn’t set foot in there. She was still convinced that her daughter was in there somewhere but, over time, she became unable to cope with being surrounded by the trees. Now when she saw the shuffling branches or heard the chorus of raindrops tapping against the leaves she imagined what her daughter might have experienced — the last things. That other girl, the police said, had been killed where they found her. They were pretty sure of that. So Chloe was likely to have been killed in the woods too.
The knock on the door nearly sprung her off the bed. Her body was so tense. She didn’t seem to be able to relax anymore. She was sitting at the bottom of Chloe’s bed and could see through the open door into the landing. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She couldn’t remember her last visitor. When Chloe had first gone missing there were people here all the time. The police, well-wishers, neighbours, friends — her sister. They stopped coming a long time ago. Mary knew why, she knew she was difficult to be around. She had forgotten how to relax, how to smile, too.
The door thumped again. This time it was firmer.
Mary stood up and walked through to the bedroom at the front of the house. She could see a figure. He had stepped back from the front door and was looking right up at the window. She ducked quickly to one side.
‘Mrs Pope?’ The smaller window was open. The blinds shuffled in the same breeze that had carried his voice. She was rooted to the spot and her breath quickened. She hunted around the room for her phone. She would call Colin, tell him to come back. She wasn’t very good on her own. He was out doing the shopping. He would only be ten minutes away.
‘Mrs Pope . . . I’m Inspector George Elms. I’m a police officer. I’m sorry to bother you. I was hoping for just a few minutes of your time. You can stay up there if you like? Just shout down. Or you could throw something if you would rather? You’d have an easy shot from there. No eggs, though. I have an allergy.’
She froze. There were a few second of silence, then the voice started up again.
‘. . . or cats! That’s another allergy. They make my neck itch. Please don’t throw your cat . . . or anyone else’s cat.’
Mary moved back to the window. She looked down through the blinds. The man was still standing a few paces back from the house, looking up at the window. ‘What do you want?’ she managed. She was aware that her voice was weak. The man lifted his hand to his ear, she took it that he couldn’t hear. ‘What do you want?’ she called out, louder this time.
‘I bought some biscuits. There’s a shop just down the way — you probably know that already. I’ve got nothing to drink them with, see? I wondered if you might be able to help?’
‘What? What are yo
u on about? Biscuits?’ What was this man talking about?
‘They’re Jammie Dodgers. Or a version of, I think. They were cheap. There, I said it! They’re not for you, anyway, Mrs Pope, if I’m honest. I was hoping you would give me five minutes of your time. Maybe a cup of tea. And I could eat the biscuits.’ She could see a wallet with a glinting metal badge in its middle.
Mary walked down her stairs. The man was an outline through her front door. He was still standing away from the house. He had a packet of biscuits held up in one hand when she opened the door. His police badge was in the other. She didn’t open it wide, she was ready to push it shut immediately. He kept his distance. Mary appreciated that. He was in a shirt and tie, formal trousers and a jacket. The tie hung low, his top button was undone. He had a warm smile.
‘Have we met?’
‘Well we have now.’
‘Before though? I met a lot of police—’
‘No. No we haven’t met, Mrs Pope. I am DI George Elms. I’m from another force, down on the south coast. We’re a bit late to the party but we now have some involvement with Henry Roberts and—’
‘You don’t speak his name! You don’t speak his NAME!’ Mary slammed the door. The glass rattled in the frame. Her legs nearly buckled under her and she struggled to breathe. She could feel the panic rising up; it threatened to consume her. She remembered what she had been told. She slammed her eyes shut and concentrated on her breathing. She got it back under control. It took her a little while, it always did. Maybe ten minutes. There hadn’t been another sound from the other side of the door. The police inspector must have left. Tentatively she pulled the door back open. He was still there. He was sitting on a wide tree stump, left over from when Colin had cut down a tree in their front garden. The policeman didn’t say anything. He gave her time to speak.
‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘You don’t need to be sorry, Mrs Pope. I do, however. I’m pretty sure no one has called ahead like I asked them to. I’m pretty sure you weren’t expecting me and I’m pretty sure that Jammie Dodgers might have been the wrong choice.’
The George Elms Trilogy Box Set Page 52
