Dead Water

by Matt Brolly

  ‘In the end, I think that was why Devlin and Kirby left the force,’ said Hogg.

  Lambert had forgotten the journalist was still in his room. ‘You think Tillman pressured them to leave?’

  ‘I know he felt guilty for what they’d done. That he didn’t report it.’

  ‘You ever get these events verified from anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  Now the only person aside from Tillman who could verify the story was Alice Fowler and according to Hogg, and the original police report, she’d been unconscious after Tillman had rescued her. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Dan?’

  ‘I’m telling you everything I know. More than I should.’

  ‘More than you should? Two men are dead and your friend is missing. You should have volunteered this information much sooner.’

  ‘So should Tillman.’

  ‘That doesn’t make this right. If you’re withholding something from me now there will be consequences, do you understand?’

  Hogg squirmed. At the bar, on the day of Wyatt’s parole hearing, Lambert had sensed the tension between Hogg and the other three men. He was beginning to see something in the journalist he didn’t like which would explain the animosity from the other three men. ‘Did you hold the knowledge over them, Dan?’

  Hogg repeated his squinting gesture. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Devlin and Kirby’s attack on Wyatt. When I met you all, Kirby and Devlin didn’t appear to have any issue with Tillman. They were getting along fine, each with a common enemy. You.’

  Hogg shook his head as if Lambert had missed something obvious. ‘It wasn’t that type of relationship. We were thrown together at university. I never really considered myself their friend. Of the three of them, I got along with Glenn the best.’

  ‘Why did you hang round with them then?’

  ‘Force of habit. You fall into these types of unhealthy relationships. In retrospect, Kirby and Devlin were bullies. I hadn’t realised it at the time. I saw it when they joined the police and I reported their cases.’

  ‘You not keen on the police, Dan?’

  ‘I have nothing against the police but people like Kirby and Devlin had no place in such an organisation.’

  ‘And Tillman?’

  ‘I don’t think Glenn really understood what they were like until the night of Wyatt’s arrest.’

  Lambert caught the DLR back towards the city. In its place was a growing melancholy. He wished Tillman had told him what had happened that night by the river. Did he think Lambert would judge him? Lambert had seen many officers lose their rag at a crime scene, especially when something horrific had occurred to a victim. It was human nature. But there was a line, and if Kirby and Devlin had really threatened to kill Wyatt then it clouded things.

  He’d arranged to meet Aaron Davenport, Wyatt’s parole officer, at a small coffee shop in Islington. Tillman had met the man after Wyatt absconded, and twice more after Devlin and Kirby’s murders but Lambert hadn’t been present either time. Lambert recognised Davenport’s face from a photograph in Wyatt’s file. He was a gaunt, nervous-looking man sitting at the front of the shop, his finger tracing the circumference of the top of his coffee cup. ‘Aaron Davenport?’ asked Lambert.

  Davenport looked up from his cup. ‘Yes, yes,’ he stammered. ‘DCI Lambert?’

  Lambert nodded. ‘Another one of those?’ he asked, pointing to Davenport’s empty cup.

  ‘Yes, ok, caramel latte please.’

  Lambert ordered a black Americano and the latte. The parole officer twitched as he placed the cups on the table, and failed to meet Lambert’s eyes as he sat down opposite him. Lambert was surprised the man was so nervous. Some of the toughest people he’d encountered worked as parole officers. It wasn’t easy dealing with convicts and if Davenport acted this way with them he would be walked all over.

  Tillman had never mentioned this side to the parole officer before. ‘Everything ok?’ he asked.

  ‘Bit of a bad day actually,’ said Davenport, finally making eye contact. ‘Personal, you understand.’

  Davenport looked unkempt. His shirt was crumpled and a day’s worth of stubble was scattered around his face. If Lambert were to hazard a guess he would say the man was wearing yesterday’s clothes and had spent the night away from home. He didn’t indulge him with small talk. ‘Glenn Tillman is missing.’

  This got the man’s attention. ‘Jesus, I haven’t heard about this.’

  ‘It’s not official and it’s not to go any further than this.’

  Davenport winced as he drank his latte, wiping a line of froth from his mouth with the palm of his hand. Twice he went to speak but held his tongue. ‘I just can’t believe this,’ he said, finally.

  ‘Tillman must have asked you before but how could Wyatt have staged this? He didn’t have any money and was holed up in that cesspit of a halfway house.’

  ‘I still don’t believe he is responsible for killing your former colleagues. You learn to tell after a while in this business which of them are genuine. I thought Wyatt had put this all behind him. His counselling helped him understand why he’d acted the way he did, that it all stemmed from what happened to his mother. Remember, he’d still been relatively young when he’d killed those poor girls. He hadn’t understood his actions then and I truly believe that by the time he’d left prison he’d come to terms with the enormity of what he’d done and why.’

  ‘You weren’t the only one fooled. The prison system, the parole board… Looks like Wyatt hoodwinked you all. You know who didn’t believe him? Glenn Tillman.’ Lambert drank his coffee, annoyed with his outburst but infuriated further by how this could have been prevented.

  Wyatt was highly intelligent. He’d been studying economics at the University College London, having turned down on offer from Oxford. In prison he completed three degrees including his PhD. He’d been seen as a model prisoner who’d used his time inside constructively.

  Davenport went on the defensive. ‘I am sorry this has happened to your colleague, truly I am, and I hope you find him but I’m not sure what this has to do with me. Up until the day he disappeared, Wyatt had reported to our meetings on time. He’d managed to find work, his behaviour was exemplary. There is no way we could know what he was up to.’

  ‘No one’s blaming you. I’m looking for solutions. Where could he have taken Tillman?’

  Davenport gave him a list of possible locations - the house where his mother lived before she died, the flat of a former jail mate in east London, his old university address - but these places had already been exhausted during the search for Devlin and Kirby.

  ‘I need something new,’ demanded Lambert. ‘Had he developed any relationships since he’d left prison?’

  ‘You have everything already. I truly am sorry,’ said Davenport, getting to his feet.

  Lambert controlled his temper as the parole officer walked away. If what had happened to Devlin and Kirby was anything to go by there was still a small possibility Tillman was alive somewhere, but already time was slipping by.

  ‘Fuck,’ he shouted, startling a young woman engrossed on her laptop as he remembered he had to pick up Chloe from the child-minder’s today as Sophie had a work function. Fortunately he still had time. The childminder picked Chloe up from school and looked after her until 6pm. He caught first the tube then the train to Clock House, his mind still focused on the case. There was something he was missing, an anomaly that would prove to be obvious later in the case.

  Chloe wore the same disgruntled look she wore every time he picked her up this late from the childminder’s. It hadn’t been so bad when she’d been in preschool, but now she was in primary school he felt guilty she had to attend the childminder’s as well. Sophie was working towards a partnership at her city-based solicitors firm and with Lambert’s unpredictable work patterns it was a wonder they managed to manage the child care as well as they did. As it was, they often had to rely on Sophie’s mother to help out.

 
The tears started as soon as they left the house and began the short walk back to their house. ‘I’m tired, carry me,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Come on, now, it’s not that far,’ said Lambert, trying not to take the day’s concern’s out on his daughter.

  ‘I’m tired,’ insisted Chloe, stopping dead still.

  ‘You’re too big to be carried, now, Chloe. You’re in school.’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  The stand off lasted five minutes, Lambert ashamed at having to resort to bribery over dessert to get his daughter to move. Thankfully, her mood picked up when she was in the house and he’d fed her some beans on toast - the childminder provided her with dinner but the portions, and menu, didn’t always suit Chloe’s tastes. ‘When’s Mummy coming home?’ she asked, once she’d finished, her mouth coated in orange sauce.

  ‘Not until late,’ said Lambert, replacing her plate with a bowl of ice cream. Although Chloe had been planned, neither Lambert nor Sophie had appreciated the full impact having a child would have on their lives. The first eighteen months had been manageable, Sophie receiving a generous maternity leave from her firm, but Sophie had been itching to get back to work within weeks of Chloe being born and had started taking on some work at home from month six. Numerous times, Lambert had considered leaving the force to spend more time his family but as Sophie liked to point out to him, the police force was a part of him he would never be able to walk away from.

  As Lambert put his daughter to bed, he thought about his old university friend, Billy Nolan, who’d been murdered in the halls of residence during their time at Bristol University. Lambert was self-aware enough to know that part of the reason for him joining the police was a never-ending search to atone for Billy’s death, even though he’d been helpless to stop it. He lived with Billy’s death on a daily basis, pictured the murder scene – the blood-splattered room, the empty sockets where his friend’s eyes were removed, the Latin phrase, In oculis animus habitat, hacked into his flesh – every night before he fell to sleep.

  And now, if Wyatt’s timetable was reliable, he was six days away from experiencing that very same trauma. Remembering Devlin and Kirby’s murder scenes, he pictured fishing Tillman’s bloated corpse out of the Thames and swore to himself he wouldn’t let it happen this time.

  6

  The silence was the worst part. Aside from the gentle hum of an electrical appliance somewhere behind him, Tillman couldn’t make out any sounds that might give away his location. Tillman was never sure when Wyatt would strike. He tried to measure time but it was impossible in the darkness of the locked room. He was chained, hands behind his back, to metal railings. Still gagged, his clothes were damp from where Wyatt had water boarded him.

  The thought of the torture made Tillman shake. He’d trained for such eventualities. First in the military, and latterly whilst heading up his specialised division of the SOCA, the Group. The Group was cross collaboration between the SOCA and MI5. They’d worked on hostage-taking scenarios during training, an ex-SAS operative managing the program. During that time, Tillman had spent over forty-eight hours, on three separate occasions, under simulated conditions. He’d been bound and tied like now, but then only a hood had been placed over his head depriving him of his sight. And although those times had been some of the hardest he’d ever experienced, pushing his sanity to the brink, at the back of his mind he’d always had the comfort of knowing it was training; that if he gave the word it would stop. He didn’t have such luxury now, and he knew how this ended. He’d seen the bodies of his two old colleagues, Devlin and Kirby.

  He’d had the chance to end this twenty-five years ago. Kirby had wanted Wyatt dead and Devlin, ever the helpful accomplice, had been willing to help him. At first they’d ignored Tillman’s interjection, his threats that he wouldn’t go along with their story. Kirby had said it would be his word against theirs but when Tillman cracked his baton against Devlin’s lower back, the two men had soon understood his will out matched theirs. They’d left the force a few years later and Tillman hadn’t seen them since that uneasy day in the bar during Wyatt’s parole hearing, and then at their murder scenes.

  Conflicting thoughts had occupied Tillman ever since his imprisonment. If he’d let Kirby and Devlin kill Wyatt all these years ago then they would still be alive but that wasn’t what troubled him. It was his own silence. He’d done it to protect his friends, and to ensure that Wyatt was incarcerated with no difficulty. Had he made the right choice? One things was for sure: their deaths would hang over him for the rest of his life, however short that might prove to be.

  The door of his prison rattled, a gentle cold breeze billowing from outside as Wyatt, still masked, stepped inside and shone a torch directly into Tillman’s eyes. Specks of light danced in front of Tillman’s eyes as Wyatt moved towards him carrying a rag and a water container.

  Tillman shifted, the cold metal of his cuffs tearing against his flesh as he tried to pull free from his restraints as Wyatt edged nearer. ‘You don’t need to do this, I can help you, Wyatt,’ he said, pleased to hear some determination in his voice.

  Wyatt paused before pulling his legs away and pinning him to the floor. Tillman’s last thought as the rag was placed over his face was a silent prayer to Michael Lambert. He’d never told the man, probably never would, but he was one of the most astute officers he’d ever worked with. If anyone could get him out of this situation, it would be Lambert.

  The thought disappeared as soon as it arrived, all sense leaving his mind as the water fell onto his face.

  7

  The front door clicked open sometime after midnight, Sophie returning from work. The noise woke Lambert from a fitful sleep and he listened to her move around the house, first upstairs to Chloe’s room, then the bathroom, before joining him. She always tried her best to be quiet when she returned but never failed to wake him. ‘What time do you call this?’ he joked, as she crept into bed her cold feet touching his legs and making him jump. ‘Jesus, you been out in the snow?’

  ‘You shush up,’ said Sophie, moving towards him and his body heat. ‘I’m knackered. I need to be in for nine again. Can you take Chloe?’

  ‘I’ll have to drop her to the breakfast club again as I need to be in early as well.’

  Lambert hadn’t yet told her about Tillman. It would be an understatement to say she wasn't a fan of Lambert’s superior. She liked to call him a throwback, an old- style bully and this was after meeting him on only a couple of occasions. Sophie had an unnerving knack of getting to the root of someone’s personality but he’d always thought she’d misread Tillman. Yes, he was loud and obnoxious but Lambert had learnt to ignore some of his behaviour especially his over-zealous motivational talks. Sophie’s opinion of Tillman was distorted as she heard about him only when Lambert was having a bad day. Tillman had another side, and the part Lambert admired the most was his loyalty. He was a leader and every one of his team knew the man would do anything to protect them. Lambert understood first-hand how difficult it was to manage the disparate members of the Group, especially the MI5 agents who initially hadn’t taken kindly to being led by a SOCA officer. Tillman had succeeded in changing their minds and, in turn, he’d earned the unwavering loyalty of his team.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I had to go in early this morning.’

  ‘How did Chloe like that?’

  ‘I’ll think she’ll forgive me in a few months,’ said Lambert, as Sophie fell asleep.

  Sleep didn’t return so easily for Lambert, his mind playing the case over and over in his head until it stopped making sense. When he did fall asleep, his dreams were blighted by nightmares of drowning and the bloated images of Devlin and Kirby’s corpses washed up on the shore.

  It was a relief when daylight pierced the curtains of the bedroom. Sophie was already downstairs with a sleepy looking Chloe, who scowled at him as he entered the kitchen. ‘And good morning to you,’ said Lambert, kissing his daughter on the forehead.

  ‘S
he doesn’t want to go to the breakfast club,’ said Sophie.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ said Chloe.

  ‘I’m sorry, Chloe, but I don’t have any other option. I have some very important work on at the moment.’

  Chloe grimaced before biting down on some toast.

  ‘We should ask my Mum to come over if you’re going to be busy,’ said Sophie.

  The insinuation was obvious– he’d promised to take Chloe to school all this week – but he refrained from getting into an argument. ‘If you think she wouldn’t mind. The next few days are going to be difficult for me,’ he said, thinking about the time he had left to find Tillman.

  Despite the early rise, he didn’t reach the office until 8.30am. Adrienne was already there but didn’t comment on his timekeeping. ‘There’s coffee,’ she said, once he’d settled.

  ‘Lifesaver,’ said Lambert. The coffee was piping hot and flavourless. Lambert squirmed as he drank it, receiving a look of amusement from his colleague.

  They updated each other on their work. Adrienne had spent the previous day exploring the previous crime scenes, working through the DNA records they had from the Devlin and Kirby crime scenes. Wyatt had been extremely careful. No traces had been found of him at either scene.

  ‘The two scenes were less than a mile apart,’ she said, telling Lambert something he already knew.

  ‘We have search teams down there at the moment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are we telling them?’

  ‘That Wyatt may have struck again. No need for them to know about the boss just yet.’

  ‘We may not have that luxury for much longer,’ said Lambert, sharing details of his meeting with Hogg.