‘This call’ — Rickman indicated one of the highlighted rows — ‘lasted fifteen minutes.’ He looked Shepherd in the eye. ‘He must’ve had a lot to talk about.’
Shepherd swallowed. For half a minute, the only sound in the room was his breathing. ‘I tried to persuade him,’ he said. ‘I told him he should turn himself in, but—’
‘He wanted to see you.’
Shepherd nodded, tiredly. ‘I was afraid if I pushed too hard, he’d disappear.’ His eyes were dark and troubled. ‘He kept saying he needed a safe place for Bryony. “They killed Jasmine, and now they’re after me,” he said.’
‘“They”?’ Rickman repeated.
‘He was raving, Mr Rickman.’
‘So he didn’t give a name.’
Shepherd shook his head. ‘But the people he mixed with . . .’ He twisted the wedding ring on his finger.
‘You know the people he mixed with?’
‘Not personally. But Mark was an addict. His friends were dealers and addicts.’
‘So he did stay in touch after he left Black Wood.’
Shepherd looked down at his wedding ring. ‘Sporadically. Usually when he needed something.’
‘What did he need this time?’
‘He wanted to leave Bryony with us — God, I wish he had.’
‘He wanted you to find a family for her?’ Rickman asked gently.
Shepherd stiffened. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Rickman let that one bide. ‘Did he ask for money?’
‘This wasn’t about money,’ Shepherd said. ‘Mark just wanted somewhere safe for the baby.’
‘I think it was all about money — at least for you.’
‘This is preposterous!’ Shepherd rose to his feet, leaning on his knuckles.
The DC shifted in her seat, but Rickman lifted one hand, warning her off. He looked down at the folder in front of him and turned the page. ‘Yesterday, as you were being taken into the ambulance after your asthma attack,’ Rickman said. ‘A woman drove into the grounds. Your wife called her Anna — asked her for a lift to the hospital.’
‘What of it? Anna’s an old friend.’ Despite the gruff irritation, Rickman sensed a wariness in the man.
‘I was troubled by her reaction when we introduced ourselves,’ Rickman said. ‘A nice, middle-class woman with a lovely little girl. A well-educated woman, judging by her accent, yet she seemed nervous of us — the police, that is — resentful, even. Now, I’m like a dog with a bone when something like that doesn’t sit right, Mr Shepherd.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I made a note of the car’s licence plate.’
A tremor ran down Shepherd’s arm, but he remained standing.
‘Fiat Punto,’ Rickman said, reading upside down from the DVLA printout. ‘Registered to Annabelle Kirkham. Now with that information, it was a short step to find out the rest. Married to Mike Kirkham. Three-year-old daughter, Bella. It’s funny — I thought the little girl was younger.’ He smiled. ‘Small for her age, huh?’
Shepherd’s legs seemed to go from under him and he sat down heavily in his chair. His gaze darted wildly around the room, as though he was suddenly aware of its confines. He reached for his inhaler and took a hit from it, closing his eyes.
Rickman recited the official wording of the caution. ‘Do you understand?’ he asked.
Shepherd nodded, shakily.
If he went straight in with questions about illegal adoptions, Rickman knew that Shepherd would close down. An indirect approach might yield more. ‘Tell me about Annabelle Kirkham,’ he said.
Shepherd remained silent for a moment, concentrating on his breathing. Rickman waited.
‘What do you want to know?’ Shepherd said at last.
‘What relation is she?’
‘To us? No relation.’
‘An ex-resident?’
‘No.’
‘So, give me a clue here, Mr Shepherd.’
‘She — we got to know her through the playgroup Hilary helps to run.’ Rickman maintained eye contact. ‘You can check if you like.’ The two angry blotches on his cheekbones were the only colour in Mr Shepherd’s face.
‘Oh, we will,’ Rickman said softly.
Shepherd wiped the sweat from his face. Rickman again noticed the slight tremor.
‘D’you think if we request DNA tests on their daughter, we might come up with a couple of surprises?’ Rickman asked. ‘Little Bella’s DNA not matching either Mummy’s or Daddy’s, for instance?’
Shepherd stared at his hands, frowning hard, the furrow deep as a fault line between his brows, his eyes red with unshed tears.
‘We know about the babies, Mr Shepherd.’ Rickman waited for Shepherd to deny it. He didn’t. ‘We have a witness who says you bought babies for adoption.’
Strictly speaking, they didn’t have their witness — only an uncorroborated phone call from ‘Melanie’ and Kate Nolan’s belief that she’d heard babies crying in the night. But he hadn’t heard a denial from Shepherd — yet — and that encouraged Rickman to push harder.
‘I think Mark knew about your illegal adoption agency. He needed money to get away, and he tried to blackmail you.’
Shepherd shook his head. ‘No . . .’
‘I think you agreed to meet him,’ Rickman said.
‘No . . .’ Shepherd laced his fingers, but still they shook.
‘Look at the facts,’ Rickman said. ‘Mark called you six times on the night he died. He was found on your premises. Your fingerprints are on the padlock. You’ve lied and lied and—’
‘That’s not how it was,’ Shepherd said.
‘He demanded money,’ Rickman went on, hearing Shepherd’s desperation, knowing that he was at breaking point. ‘You argued.’
‘No.’
‘There was a struggle and Mark fell.’
‘No.’
‘The stairs were dangerous. It was probably an accident—’
‘You’ve got it all wrong!’ Shepherd exclaimed, striking the table with his fists. ‘I was trying to help him.’
Shepherd wiped tears from his face with a trembling hand. Rickman waited, once more allowing the silence to do the work for him, waiting for the pressure to build until the less-experienced man had to break it.
‘He offered me money,’ Shepherd said at last.
‘How much?’
‘A hundred thousand,’ he said.
Rickman gave a low whistle. The drugs raid. So, Davis was there. ‘Did he tell you where he’d got it?’
Shepherd shook his head. ‘He never named the people who were after him — said it would be safer if I didn’t know. I can tell you that he said there was more if we needed it.’
‘You believed him — that he had the money?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘I really was hoping to persuade him to give himself up.’ Shepherd took a long, slow breath, and Rickman heard a slight asthmatic crackle in it.
‘When he didn’t turn up, I went looking for him.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I wasn’t entirely honest about that. He should have been with us just after dark — around six p.m.’
‘So you went looking . . .’
Shepherd gave a jerky nod, staring past Rickman, his face exhausted and empty. ‘It was cold. I . . . don’t do so well in the cold.’ He rolled the inhaler between his thumb and forefinger. He seemed to brace himself. There was more. ‘I found the lock, just as I told you. I shone the torch into the basement, but I couldn’t see anything.’
Rickman gave no response — not even a flicker of a facial muscle.
‘There wasn’t anything to see,’ he said, as if Rickman had questioned his poor observational powers. ‘You saw the place — it was a mess. The timbers shifted. I felt the whole house move. I thought it was going to collapse.’ He glanced at Rickman, then swiftly away again. ‘I got the hell out of there.’
Had he known they were in there? Did Shepherd leave Davis and the baby, knowing they had been buried alive? Rickman fought to keep the anger and disgust out of his voi
ce. ‘And when Mark still didn’t show?’
‘We thought he’d found a better prospect, changed his mind, recovered from whatever drug-induced delusion that had him in its grip.’
‘We?’ Rickman said.
He blinked. ‘Sorry?’
‘You said “We thought”.’
Shepherd swallowed. ‘You’re mistaken.’
Rickman smiled. ‘Shall we replay the recording?’
Two spots of high colour appeared again on Shepherd’s cheekbones. ‘I meant to say I. Hilary knew nothing about it.’
Rickman let it pass for the moment. ‘You said you wanted to persuade Mark to turn himself in.’
‘Yes.’
‘A nationwide appeal for help, a missing baby, her mother murdered — you had direct contact with the prime suspect, yet you didn’t see the need to report any of this to the police?’
‘You’ve no idea the strain we’ve been under,’ Shepherd exclaimed.
‘I think I do, Mr Shepherd,’ Rickman said. ‘You’ve watched the place you built up over thirty years being slowly dismantled. You’re facing the loss of your jobs and your home — I think you were more than happy to take Mark Davis’s money.’
‘But Mark didn’t show up.’ Shepherd stopped, perhaps hearing the accusation in Rickman’s tone, and a succession of emotions chased over his features. ‘You think I took the money from him? That I harmed him?’
‘Did you?’
‘No! God, no!’
Rickman had to admit that the theft of his drugs and money made Maitland a stronger suspect for the murders, but Shepherd was in a tight spot, and Rickman had seen ordinary people turn to violence for smaller prizes than a hundred thousand pounds. He watched Shepherd calmly. ‘Look at it from my point of view.’
Shepherd sat back, hollow eyed. His outrage suddenly dissipated, and his hands slid into his lap. ‘I know what you think, Mr Rickman, but I’m not a bad man.’ He looked up, his face tormented. ‘I never harmed anybody — I swear on all that’s holy to me, I did not know that Mark and Bryony were in that basement. Mark was vulnerable — easy prey for the jackals of this world. I would never exploit that.’
Rickman felt a slow, powerful surge of anger. ‘Tell that to Annabelle Kirkham and all the other desperate couples you sold babies to,’ he said, sick of Shepherd’s self-pity, his whining self-justification. ‘Tell it to the young women who gave up their babies for the promise of money or a better life. Mark Davis is dead. His daughter, Bryony, is dead. And the killer could well go free because you wanted to protect your sordid scam.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ Shepherd said.
Still no denial, but that wasn’t enough — Rickman needed an admission, and for a man with no police record, Mr Shepherd certainly knew how to manipulate an interview. How many of Shepherd’s clients, Rickman wondered, were police or lawyers or barristers — people who knew how the system worked? Was Shepherd just bringing in to play all he had learned from drills and simulations conducted by the experts?
Rickman tried another tack. ‘You knew that Davis was on his way to you. You knew he was on the run from far more than just the police — and you said nothing.’
‘I had others to think of,’ Shepherd replied. ‘Others to protect.’
‘You mean your illegal adopters.’ Shepherd stared at him, refusing to confirm or deny. The hurt and resentment on the man’s face fuelled Rickman’s anger. ‘You as good as watched Mark Davis walk to his death.’
Shepherd frowned at his inhaler on the tabletop. ‘I was trying to help,’ he repeated dogmatically. ‘I was only ever trying to help.’
Rickman shook his head in disgust. ‘The law draws a line at your kind of “help”,’ he said.
He saw a flash of anger in Shepherd’s gaunt face. ‘The law leaves children with parents who are barely able to provide for their own needs, let alone a child’s,’ he said. ‘It returns children to abusive households — to violent fathers and incompetent mothers. The care system is shored up by the goodwill of underpaid and poorly trained staff, in facilities that are crumbling from lack of investment. So don’t try to tell me about the law, Mr Rickman. The law is as neglectful and incompetent a guardian as the parents we remove children from — more so, because it damn well ought to know better.’ He finished out of breath, his voice a harsh rasp, but this time the asthma was not to blame.
Shepherd’s passion, his absolute belief that what he’d done was right, gave Rickman a twinge of uncertainty. He hesitated, inadvertently giving Shepherd the upper hand. But the gleam of triumph in the man’s eye reduced all the persuasiveness of his arguments to meaningless cant.
‘You treat children like something you’d pick up off the shelf at Tesco,’ Rickman said.
‘I protect them from falling into a cycle of deprivation and failure.’
‘How can you be sure of that? Do you know that the men and women you sold children to always had the best intentions?’
Rickman saw a flicker of uncertainty, but Shepherd rallied. ‘I’m satisfied that—’
‘What gives you the authority to judge the suitability of people to be parents?’ Rickman interrupted. ‘You sold children for money, for God’s sake!’
‘It’s what the courts do.’ This was close, tantalisingly close. ‘It’s what Social Services do.’
‘Not,’ Rickman said, ‘for money.’
Shepherd snorted. ‘Don’t kid yourself.’
‘Social Services are accountable,’ Rickman countered. ‘The courts are accountable. They have strictures and rules, checks and balances. Who the hell are you accountable to? Your God?’ He wasn’t shouting — not quite — but his voice was roughened with emotion, and he was breathing hard.
‘I’ve made my peace with God,’ Shepherd said, suddenly calm again. ‘I won’t be afraid to face His judgement.’
Rickman stared at him for some moments. ‘People with your kind of certainty terrify me,’ he said.
Shepherd gave him a wan smile. ‘Then you’re afraid of the wrong people.’
Chapter 31
Hart met Rickman in his office an hour later.
‘Mrs Shepherd has asked for a brief,’ Hart said.
Rickman leaned against the wall, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his arms folded. He looked exhausted. ‘Did you get anything out of her?’
Hart shook her head. ‘The woman’s got nerves of steel.’ In an interview, Hart would use her good looks, lulling macho male suspects into underestimating her, coaxing the susceptible into her confidence. Mrs Shepherd had not been susceptible.
‘When I accused her of being a baby broker, she said, “This isn’t America, young woman.” That was it — I must have asked the question in twenty different ways. Not even a “No comment”.’
‘I listened to the tape while I was waiting for you,’ Rickman said. ‘If it’s any consolation, I think they’ve been coached.’
Hart exhaled in a rush. ‘If they’ve got lawyers and police on their client list, we’re sunk.’ She caught his glance of approval that she had made the connection. It was almost enough to make up for her fruitless questioning of Mrs Shepherd. Almost.
‘So,’ she said. ‘No joy from Ed, either.’
Rickman shifted positions. A finger went to the scar over his right eyebrow as he thought. ‘It’s debatable. He admitted that Mark telephoned him the day he died. He claims Mark offered him money.’
‘He offered them money? That could only mean—’
‘Mark took the cash that went missing from Operation Snowplough.’
She thought about it for a moment. ‘But no confession?’
Rickman titled his head. ‘A few suggestive responses, but certainly no confession. And he’s insisting that Hilary isn’t involved.’
Hart shot him an incredulous look.
‘I know.’ He fell silent. When he spoke again, it was as if in response to some internal debate. ‘We need access to the children’s home, but all we have right now is an infor
mant’s uncorroborated word that these two deal in babies.’
‘Which won’t get us a warrant.’ Hart recalled Mark’s mobile phone records, the six calls to the Shepherds’ landline. ‘We can prove that he lied about speaking to Mark the night he was murdered.’
‘That’ll help,’ Rickman said. ‘And if I can persuade the magistrate to listen to the interview tapes, I might be able to swing it for us to get that search warrant.’
‘Can’t we get it on the basis of obstruction? Perverting the course of justice?’ Hart asked, her frustration evident. ‘Shepherd took those phone calls from Davis and did nothing.’
‘If I have to go with that, I will,’ Rickman said. ‘But it would limit the scope of the search.’ He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it tousled. ‘D’you think you could buy us some time? Delay Mrs Shepherd’s solicitor?’
‘Oh,’ Hart said with sly satisfaction, ‘I can do inefficient.’
‘I very much doubt that,’ Rickman said with a smile, and she again felt the motivating warmth of his approbation. ‘But if you can manage slow, that will be fine.’
* * *
Rickman took the recordings to the magistrates’ court himself. The rest of the team worked on existing leads, interviewing Black Wood’s ex-residents, following up calls to the hotline. Hart arranged for Hilary Shepherd to have private access to a phone — the delay, she said, was caused by the huge influx of witnesses in the drugs investigation. Hilary seemed patient and understanding. North West Newsbrief agreed to put out another appeal on the evening bulletin for the mystery caller to ring back. Hart spent the next half hour shredding her nails and watching the clock while she pretended to catch up on paperwork.
At twelve thirty p.m., Rickman returned, and the room fell silent as every pair of eyes focused on him. ‘We got it,’ he said.
A cheer went up, followed by the rustle of twenty CID officers dropping paperwork and reaching for their jackets.
‘The warrant takes in any adoption papers, suspected counterfeit documents, photographs of possible adoptees — and the missing money.’
Someone said, ‘Bloody hell, boss, you must’ve caught him in a good mood.’
Rickman recognised the voice and located the speaker. Will Garvey — he’d worked with Will on a couple of cases and knew him to be experienced and reliable. Good — Rickman had a job in mind for DC Garvey. ‘Let’s just say we established a rapport,’ Rickman said.
DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3) Page 21
