by Karla Forbes
***
Wilson looked disapprovingly in his rear view mirror. “Bloody maniac,” he muttered. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” Fox asked drowsily.
“Some idiot just cut across two lanes of traffic. I wonder how people like that pass their driving test.” He gave Fox a sharp look. “You weren’t asleep were you?”
“No,” Fox said guiltily. “I was resting my eyes.”
“Rest your eyes when we get to Ramsgate,” Wilson snapped. “I need you awake to tell me where this pub is.”
Fox sat upright and peered through the windscreen at the road signs. “Keep heading for Chatham. I’ll direct you when we get there.”
“I’m not so sure about this,” Wilson said dubiously. “We should have gone back to Kingston like we originally planned.”
Fox rolled his eyes. “Stop whinging. I told you, this’ll work just as well. And anyway, I’ve been waiting long enough to pay that bastard back for what he did.”
“So what did he do?” Wilson asked, curious in spite of himself.
“It’s nothing; forget it,” Fox muttered, turning to look out of the window.
“No tell me,” Wilson urged. “If you want to dump the rest of the plutonium on him, he must have seriously pissed you off.”
“He did.”
“How?”
Fox scowled. “I was working as a dive instructor for a club down in Portland; the best job I’d ever had. The money wasn’t bad, the diving was great, and there was never a shortage of women. They seemed to like the idea of shagging the teacher.”
“So what went wrong?” Wilson asked.
“There was this little tart, Cathy Roberts her name was, coming on strong all day. You know, always hanging around, asking questions as though she was keen to learn, but I saw through it. I knew what she was really after. I played along with it… spent more time with her than the others… gave her special tuition. I was even her buddy for some of the dives, and when I asked her out for a drink in the evening, we both knew what was going to happen.”
“I think I can guess where this is going,” Wilson said, with distaste.
Fox ignored the comment. “I forked out for a nice meal, kept the booze flowing all evening, but then when I start giving her a bit she comes over all coy, starts claiming that she had a husband at home and I’d ‘misread the signals’.”
“Perhaps you did,” Wilson suggested with exasperation.
“Misread the signals, my arse. It didn’t stop her eating my food and drinking my booze all evening, did it?”
“So you raped her,” Wilson stated flatly.
“No, I didn’t rape her,” Fox snarled. “I gave her what she wanted; what I’d spent all fucking evening paying for!”
Wilson curled his lip with disdain. “This is all very interesting, but what’s it got to do with the licensee in Chatham?”
“The stupid bitch ended up in hospital. He’s her husband. He came down to Portland with a couple of his mates and kicked the shit out of me.”
“It sounds to me as though you deserved it.”
Fox turned on him. “Oh yeah? If she was so innocent, why did she withdraw the allegation?”
“I neither know nor care,” Wilson said, shaking his head.
“The police turned up on my doorstep at six in the morning, dragged me off to the station and charged me with raping her, but then, just a few weeks later, without any explanation or apology, they wrote and told me that the charges were being dropped because she’d changed her mind.”
“She probably couldn’t stand the thought of facing your ugly mug across a courtroom,” Wilson said philosophically.
“No,” Fox argued, “it’s because she knew she’d wanted it as much as I did.” He narrowed his eyes with bitterness. “The filthy little whore; she and that oaf she’s married to deserve everything that’s coming to them.”
“You’re a sick bastard,” Wilson said, slowing as he came to a junction. “Where the hell am I supposed to be going?”
“Turn left here,” Fox muttered sullenly. “I should have guessed you’d take that attitude.”
“That’s because I know you,” Wilson pointed out. “You’ve never been able to keep your dick to yourself. I’m surprised you managed to keep your hands off Feltham’s wife.”
Fox fell silent. “Turn right here,” he said after a moment.
“You did keep your hands off her…didn’t you?” Wilson asked sharply.
“Second exit on the roundabout.”
“Answer me!” Wilson demanded. “Did you touch her?”
“What if I did?” Fox asked defensively.
Wilson smashed his fist into the door window with frustration. “You stupid moron. You were told to stay away from her.”
“It was just the once,” Fox muttered. “Where’s the harm?”
“The harm, you cretin, is that you would have left DNA behind, and you’ve got a record. As soon as they’ve carried out the post mortem they’ll know who you are!”
“So what?” Fox threw back at him. “I’m not hanging around this shitting country any longer than I need to, so what does it matter if they know it was me? I’ll be living it up very nicely somewhere where they can’t touch me. Second right and then first left.”
Wilson looked murderous. “The idea was that if something went wrong, at least they wouldn’t know who we were. You’ve really gone and screwed up, haven’t you!”
“So what? If it goes wrong, we’re fucked anyway. The pub’s two hundred yards down this road by the way.”
“Not necessarily,” Wilson said, desperately trying to make Fox understand. “At the first sign of trouble, we could have aborted the whole thing and disappeared without trace.”
“And you think they’d give up looking for us, do you? Get real. They know we’ve got plutonium. They won’t stop until they find us.”
“That won’t be so difficult for them now, will it, thanks to you?” Wilson bellowed, resorting to decibels where reason had failed. He turned into the pub car park and screeched to a halt.
“Park over there in the shadows,” Fox told him. “I don’t want that mad bastard seeing me.”
Wilson took several deep breaths, struggling to keep his temper under control. When he next spoke, his voice was unnaturally calm.
“If it’s not a stupid question, how do you intend dumping the plutonium on him if you don’t want him recognising you?”
Fox gave an ingratiating smile. “I assumed you’d do it.”
“Me!”
“Yeah, why not? I obviously can’t.”
“This was your idea, remember. You go in there; I’m not.”
“So you want to drive all the way back to Kingston, do you?” Fox asked slyly.
For a moment Wilson looked as though he was going to lash out. He clenched and unclenched his fist but then let it drop to his side.
“Did you actually have a plan? Or am I supposed to wander up to the bar and offer them some cheap plutonium, no questions asked?”
Fox ferreted around in the glove compartment and pulled out a pen and paper. “There you go,” he said, scribbling. “Stick this on the outside of the box and leave it on a seat. At this time of night there’ll be a crowd. You’ll get in and out without being noticed.”
Wilson took the paper and read. “This is your plan?” he asked scathingly.
“Have you got a better one?”
With gritted teeth Wilson reached behind him for the box, folded the slip of paper and tucked it into the lid. Without another word he stepped out of the car and walked into the pub. Three minutes later, he was back out again.
“All done?” Fox asked.
“How the hell do I know?” Wilson snapped. “I left it and got out fast. I wasn’t going to announce my presence with a loudhailer and hand out free samples.”
Without another word he flicked the key in the ignition, slammed the car into gear and pulled out of the car park at high speed.
***
From his vantage point at the other end of the car park, Nick watched the proceedings with growing confusion. The whole situation was becoming more surreal by the minute, and he still hadn’t managed to gather a single shred of evidence. As he pulled out of the car park and gingerly nosed his way through the traffic behind them, he imagined the conversation he could be having right now with Detective Inspector Mason.
“Good news! I found the three men who murdered Tim.”
“We’ve heard this before. What proof do you have of their guilt?”
“They spent several days in a holiday lodge on the Sussex-Hampshire border and then drove around the London suburbs visiting various parks and commons before tanking up with petrol, buying a takeaway and calling into a pub.”
“What can I say? In the face of such irrefutable evidence I can only apologise for our earlier misunderstanding and inform you that you’re free to go.”
Somehow, Nick thought, the reality might be different.
***
Time hung heavily at the hospital. Ed had read the newspaper, stared at the ceiling, counted the stripes on the curtains and finally fallen into a light doze. He hated hospitals. Over the course of his career he had spent too many hours waiting for victims to recover consciousness, or trying to get sense out of shocked witnesses and grief-stricken relatives. Hospitals were places of misery where lives were viciously and unexpectedly disrupted, and all too often abruptly ended, but never before had the drama seemed so close to home.
He had been sitting by her bed for hours, waiting for her to wake. Even now their parents were flying home from their retirement villa in Portugal to be with her, and he was dreading their arrival. He felt responsible, and wondered how he was going to look them in the eyes. He pondered what he was going to say and found that whatever he came up with was inadequate. His sister, their daughter, was lying unconscious in a hospital bed fighting for her life, and no amount of well-rehearsed speeches was going to change that fact.
He woke with a start and looked guiltily around him, realising that he had fallen asleep. He wondered what had woken him, but at that moment she gave a gentle moan and he was at her side in an instant.
“Annie,” he urged, “it’s Ed. Can you hear me?”
Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him, her expression slowly changing from vacant to aware. She opened her mouth to speak, but instead stared around her in confusion.
“Hush, Annie,” he said. “I’ll call the nurse.” He reached over her to press the red button, but his hand stopped in mid-air. Once the nurse was here he would be swept aside, and might not get the chance to talk to her again. He had to know.
“Annie, love,” he said gently, “you’re in hospital. Can you remember what happened?”
She gazed into the middle distance as though struggling to bring her mind back into focus. When she opened her mouth to speak, her whispered words were almost inaudible. He brought his ear nearer to her.
“Annie?” he prompted, “it’s me, Ed. Can you remember what happened?”
She turned to him in distress. “Nick?”
“He’s not here,” Ed snapped bitterly. “Did he run out on you, Annie?”
She seemed not to understand the question. “Nick went away. I was on my own…” Her hands clutched at the cover in distress.
“Don’t upset yourself, love,” he told her. “Why did Nick run away? Was it because he saw you get run over?”
“There was a woman…”
“What woman?” Ed demanded.
“Nick had gone... I didn’t know what to do…”
Ed caught her hand and held it tightly. “Are you saying that Nick and this woman went off together and left you on your own?”
Annelies’ eyes widened as she struggled to remember. “There was a woman... I was scared... I ran away from the van...” She began to raise her voice in anxiety. “Where’s Nick?” She clutched at Ed as she tried to sit up, and he was on his feet easing her gently back against the pillow.
“Stop it Annie,” he urged her. “Please don’t get upset. He’s not worth it, the bastard!”
“You should have called me,” said a sharp voice behind him, and he whirled around to see the nurse glaring reproachfully as she took in the scene. “How long has your sister been awake?”
“Not long,” he muttered contritely, “I was just about to call you.” He hurriedly got to his feet and stepped aside as the nurse swept past him and began checking Annelies’s vital signs. He felt useless and superfluous, and as he melted away the nurse was already closing the curtains. His exit was barely noticed.
The anger welled up inside him; the sense of betrayal was overwhelming. He couldn’t be sure of what had happened, but one thing was clear: Nick had let Annelies down. First he had involved her in his shabby little problems, and then he had upset her so badly that she had run blindly into the path of an oncoming car. Somehow the mystery woman was key to everything. Had Annelies been jealous? The more Ed thought about this, the more it made sense. His sister had fallen for Nick, and instead of letting her down gently, he had hurt her.
Ed allowed his bitterness to wipe away his guilt. It was so much easier having someone else to blame.
***
Something important was going on. Since Mark Anson had walked in the door, the shock waves had swept through the entire police station. An air of suppressed urgency was permeating every corner, and gossip was rife. Despite the lateness of the hour, Detective Inspector Mason had been recalled to work. His face was grim, and his usual dapper appearance was in disarray.
“What’s going on?” he asked a colleague nervously. It wasn’t often that he was summoned in the middle of the night to explain himself to the Chief Constable.
The question was met by a shrug of bemusement. “Sorry, no idea. It’s been like this for a couple of hours. Someone turned up a while ago demanding to talk to whoever was in charge, and it’s been mayhem ever since. Whoever he is, he carries some clout. If he wants to talk to you, you’d better not hang around.”
Heeding the advice, Mason hurried away, stopping only to knock on the office door of Chief Constable Webber. A curt “Come in” bade him enter. He stepped inside to see two men, one of whom he didn’t recognise.
Webber glared at him, owl-like, over his glasses. “Don’t hover,” he barked, gesturing impatiently for Mason to come in. “Sit down. This is Mr Anson from MI5. He’s got some questions he wants answered.”
Mason looked nervously towards the younger man. What the hell did MI5 want with him? He mentally shuffled through the cases he was currently working on, but none of them had anything to do with national security. He fixed a smile on his face that was meant to be patronising, but Anson regarded him with detachment and was clearly unimpressed.
“Inspector Mason,” he began, “what can you tell me about Malcolm Fox?”
Mason searched his memory and drew a blank. “Malcolm Fox?” he repeated vacantly.
“Let me help you,” Anson said evenly. “Earlier this evening, I contacted Croydon Police asking them what they knew about a man named Malcolm Fox, who lives on their patch. They told me that he’s known to them. By all accounts he’s a vicious bastard who’s done time, the last occasion for burglary and rape. They also told me that four days ago, in response to a request from you, they sent an officer around to Fox’s address to check him out. Can you explain this please?”
Realisation dawned. “Oh, that,” Mason said. He turned to the Chief Constable. “That case I’m working on; the Tim Wellerby murder.” He turned back to Anson. “Our chief suspect, a man called Nick Sullivan, went on the run before I could bring him in. He called me from Fox’s home telling me that it was Fox who had killed Wellerby.”
“He called you from Fox’s home?” Anson asked with shock.
“Yes. He’d broken in there and telephoned me to say that Fox was one of the three men who murdered his friend.”
Anson and Webber exchanged glances. “One of
three men?” Anson asked quickly.
Mason felt his confidence faltering. “Yes. He claimed that he was innocent, making up this story about three men killing Wellerby even though they had no reason or motive.”
“Tell me exactly what he said,” Anson demanded.
“But it was rubbish,” Mason protested.
Anson regarded him impassively. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Mason felt himself bridling, but with the Chief Constable’s eyes boring into him, he had no choice but to comply.
“He said he had been out sailing with Wellerby. They came across three men adrift with a broken engine, and when they went to their aid, the men killed Wellerby.”
“But you didn’t believe him.”
“Of course not,” Mason said scathingly. “The whole thing was a complete fabrication. We didn’t find any trace of the men or their boat, and what would the motive have been? People don’t generally commit murder for no reason.”
“Perhaps they did have a reason,” Anson suggested neutrally.
“No,” Mason argued. “Sullivan killed Wellerby. He had the opportunity and the motive.”
Anson ignored this. “Go back to Sullivan’s version of events. Why did he think it was Fox?”
“No idea,” Mason said sulkily. “You’d have to ask him that. All I know is that he called me from Fox’s house, but by the time someone got around there, he was gone.”
Anson considered this information for a moment. “What did you do then?”
Mason looked nervously towards the Chief Constable, instinctively fearing that he was about to enter dangerous territory. “Well, nothing,” he admitted. “There was evidence of a break-in, but Sullivan had gone and Fox wasn’t around. What should I have done? I told you, it was Sullivan who killed Wellerby.”
“So you didn’t think that it was worthwhile investigating Fox?” Anson suggested with a hint of sarcasm. “Perhaps look into why Sullivan was so sure that Fox was the murderer that he felt the need to break into his home and call you to tell you what he’d done?”
