by Seb Kirby
Marshall was first to call out. “Here’s what she’s saying about the slime ball who’s supplying her with the drugs that killed her.”
“April 11. Expecting TM tonight with my goods. Can’t tell you how wired I am waiting.”
Brogan cracked the knuckles in his right hand. “If I get hold of him, you know what I’m going to do.”
I didn’t need to reply. His anger spoke for itself.
The next thing he noticed brought me to a halt.
“April 9th. Another meeting with the paper. TM is one of the best. One of the few men I really trust.”
Brogan glared at me. “What do you think she means by that?”
I looked away. I had the idea that Brogan had seen these entries earlier in the day, long before I arrived back at his apartment, and that, as I’d suspected, he’d been biding his time, drawing me out, playing with me to find out as much as he could from me before revealing what he’d discovered. And that there was more to come.
He continued to stare at me. “You’re not saying you knew Della?”
I hesitated. “I didn’t know, Marshall. I promise you. But some of the entries I’ve seen looking through Della’s diary are making me think I must have. I was part of the investigation into wrongdoing by Montague and Della was a contact who had information on him. I’m starting to recall my meetings with her now, Marshall. It’s like a mist is clearing and the details are coming back into view.”
“How many times did you meet her?”
“I don’t know. The diary says dozens.”
His voice was now louder, more animated. “Or maybe I should be asking how well did you know her?”
“It was nothing like that, I promise. You’ve met Janet. You know I’m loyal to her.”
“So, you’re not the TM who’s been supplying Della with drugs?”
“Come on, Marshall. Do I look like the kind of person who would deal heroin?”
He shook his head. “I don’t expect you’d know where to start.”
“Another TM, dealing the drugs?”
“I guess so. So, don’t dodge the question about Della.”
“I told you. I’m loyal to Janet.”
“As you say. But how do I know that when there’s so much about what’s happening here that you don’t seem to know about yourself. So, tell me. Just what do you now remember about Della?”
I tried to move away but he gripped my forearm and pinned it to the table.
The words came from a part of my mind that had been closed to me up to now. I was startled by what I found myself saying. “I think Della liked me. She wasn’t just a journalism contact. More a friend. We would meet for coffee. In the afternoon, in a coffee bar somewhere, or on Paddington Station. I was interviewing her for the paper, seeking the final links that would blow open the OAM story, but she was reaching out for something more.”
He snarled. “You mean you were involved with her.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You sure?”
I wanted to reply but I didn’t know how. I was getting a piece of my past back that I couldn’t deal with. Everything about these recollections of Della made me want to shudder but I knew I couldn’t let Brogan see that.
He stood and paced the room. I could see that he was trying to control a seething anger that was all but consuming him. Just as it was all those years ago when as a young boy he’d lived through a similar struggle to avoid the violence he’d inherited, unchosen, from a world he’d been born into.
He turned and faced me. “There’s something else, Tom. Something I’ve been waiting to tell you.”
He pulled out one of the pages from the pile he’d earmarked and held it up to my face.
“April 25th. I’m sure TM is going to kill me.”
“That’s two days before she died. I knew her death was more than an accident. Now, here’s the proof that she knew her life was in danger. And that she knew her killer.”
I could see from the steel cold stare in Brogan’s eyes that he was losing the battle to control the rage he was feeling and that all that destructive energy was being directed at me.
“You’re not saying it was me?”
“Ives thinks so. He must have his reasons. And then there are the visions you’ve been seeing of those girls being killed.”
“Why would I tell anyone about them if I was a killer?”
“A way to draw attention away from the fact that you’ve killed Della.” He raised his ring encrusted fist and held it an inch from my face. “What was she to you, Tom? Tell me or I swear I’ll beat it out of you.”
I was thrown back to thinking about Ives and the accusations he was making that I must be involved in the disappearance of those girls.
Was I a killer?
Is that the reason I’ve been see the visions of the girls?
Why was I having all those meetings with Della?
Was I the TM she knew was going to kill her?
I tried to reason with Brogan. “It’s not me, Marshall. You have to believe that.”
He crashed his clenched fist into my face and I felt the sickening pain as my lip split and blood streamed down my face.
I fell back onto the floor but before I could get up, he was on me, pinning me down.
I was back in Nottingham in the life and death combat that marked our time together as young boys. Brogan was always the stronger. He always had so much more of the fight in him. I had to plead for mercy as the code of conduct of boys’ fights allows.
But matters were different now.
I knew then that this had dogged me all my life. The desire to give in, to walk away, to avoid conflict at all costs, was a weakness I should have faced up to but had concealed from myself all these years. I’d tried to turn it into a virtue. I’d told myself that reconciliation was always best; that this was the code of life that I’d grown up with and I’d convinced myself that it had served me well. I’d met Janet. She’d told me that my gentleness was what attracted her to me and I loved her for that. But for all that, conflict was, in the end, unavoidable. And I’d chosen to walk away rather than fight.
I knew now that this had to change.
Brogan hurled himself upon me with a wild display of brute force, an outpouring of the bottled up anger that had blighted his life since his father’s death, his separation from his sister and all the hardship and disappointment that followed. Crystallized, shining bright, in this moment. He was shouting abuse at me yet what emerged was just one long, high decibel bellow of anguish.
The next two blows were at my solar plexus. I could feel the will to resist deserting me as the sickening shock of those blows expelled the air from my lungs.
He meant to kill me if I couldn’t resist, I knew that.
I reached out. There was a cast metal replica of a statuette of an Irish sports star just out of my reach. It looked heavy enough. If I could just reach it.
Three more blows rained in. Brogan was verbalizing again now. “Tell me! Tell me why you did it?”
The fist was held back again, inches from my face, threatening a final blow that would drive me into unconsciousness.
I had the statuette in my hand. It was heavier than I thought. Lying prone, under Brogan’s body, I wasn’t sure I would be able to lift it but I knew I must try.
Brogan leaned back to wipe some of my blood from his eyes. It must have spurted from my mouth.
That gave me my chance.
I struck with as much force as I could muster and crashed the statuette against Brogan’s head.
He fell back and slumped on the floor, motionless.
The blow I aimed must have taken him on the temple.
I began to think I might have killed him.
I turned him over and checked his breathing. It was shallow and slow but present.
He was unconscious.
I staggered to the small bathroom and looked for something to staunch the flow of blood from my lips. The only thing available was an old, s
tained and frayed towel but I had no choice but to use it.
I sat on the edge of the bath with my head held back, hoping that the flow of blood would stop.
When would Brogan come back round? I needed to escape before he did. But where could I go, looking and feeling like this?
In a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and I became aware of the searing pain that told me my lips were swollen and would take time to heal.
I checked Brogan again. His breathing was becoming stronger. He would soon be coming round.
I knew then that he had been playing me all this time. Ever since he turned up in Lichfield and pretended to be my friend. Right from that first moment, he was clever enough to say that he didn’t want to burden me with his troubles as a way of drawing me in. All along he must have known about my contacts with Della. Long before I did. Maybe she mentioned something about me in her meetings with her brother. In the guise of being a blood brother, he’d used me to discover what was held in Della’s diary and found enough there to confirm his suspicions.
Looking down at my own blood staining Brogan’s face and shirt, I thought of the ironic meaning of that bond we’d formed all those years ago.
I headed for the door but before I left I collected up both of the printed copies of the diary and stuffed them into the file case I arrived with.
As I closed the door, I could hear Brogan groaning as he regained consciousness.
CHAPTER 62
As I was about to enter the staircase that led away from Brogan’s apartment, I looked down and below could see DI Ives and DS Lesley getting out of a police car, heading my way. Before they saw me, I doubled back and hid behind a wall until they passed. They were on their way to Brogan’s apartment.
I was struggling to understand why they were here. If they’d come for me, why would they expect me to be here? Brogan wouldn’t have called them, not when he must have been planning to attack me all along. Or maybe they hadn’t come for me at all but for Brogan. Either way, I had other priorities. Getting away, establishing myself somewhere, anywhere else, was more important.
Ives or Lesley must have been driving the car because it was now unattended and I made my way unobserved along the narrow side street and onto the busy Commercial Road. From Shadwell station I took the DLR to the end of the line at Bank and took an underground train from there to Charing Cross where I left the print outs of the diary in the safe keeping of the left luggage office. Then I hopped another train and made my way to London Bridge. On the journey I spent most of my time reading the free newspaper I picked up at the station and tried not to look like a man on the run, though my stomach churned at the thought that this was now a precise description of who I was.
On London Bridge Station, I called Janet.
She picked up. “Tom. Where are you?”
I tried to keep my voice calm and even so as not to worry her. “Some complications, Jan. But I’m all right. No need to worry.”
“Come home. We can sort everything out from here.”
I knew I had to tell her. “That’s not going to happen, love. Ives is planning to arrest me.”
Her voice sounded comforting, but I could tell she was shocked by what she’d just heard. “That can’t be. And, in any case, what could you have to worry about? You’re an innocent man. You’ll have an alibi for anything you’re accused of.”
“It’s not that simple, Jan. How many innocent men are behind bars right now with or without an alibi, as if anyone can be expected to be able to account for every waking minute of their lives? Sooner or later the police get lucky and an innocent man can’t give proof of where he was. All of a sudden all the facts in the matter start to point towards him.”
Janet interrupted. “You’re worrying me, Tom. What is it you’re not telling me?”
I heard a noise in the room that Janet was calling from. “Who’s that with you?”
“It’s no one.”
“It’s the police, isn’t it?”
“They just want to talk to you.”
I understood now why Janet had found it so difficult to show her expected understanding. “Tell them it’s no use trying to trace this call. I’m in a public place and I’ll be putting the phone down in a few moments.”
“I wish you’d listen to what I’m saying.”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course I do.”
I closed the line and replaced the receiver.
Before I left Lichfield I’d made a plan with Janet. If I phoned and said Do you love me? she should act on what we’d arranged.
I knew she’d be careful in slipping away from the police, in withdrawing as much cash as the bank would allow and in making her way to meet me in London. I just had to wait and avoid being seen by Ives or his men.
CHAPTER 63
The front door of the Shadwell apartment was not closed, which meant someone had left in a hurry and that meant caution was required.
Ives signaled to DS Lesley to stay close behind as he pushed open the door and went inside.
Brogan was lying flat on the floor with blood seeping from an open wound at his right temple. It was at times like this that Ives wished he’d signed out a weapon as a matter of course, like so many of his colleagues. There was no way of knowing if Brogan’s assailant was still in the apartment. Anything could happen next.
He shouted a warning. “Police. Come out with your hands raised.”
When no reply came, he edged his way into each of the other rooms. He found no one.
He returned to the room where Lesley was caring for Brogan, wiping the blood from his head with the towel she’d found nearby. “No one here, June.”
She gazed up. “That would explain the open door, sir.”
Ives stooped to look at Brogan. “How is he?”
“Concussed. Looks like the aftermath of a fight. There’s blood on this towel I’m using. Maybe not all his.”
Ives picked up the statuette with care. “Looks like this was involved. There’s blood and skin tissue residue on the base and I’d lay money that matches the damage to Brogan’s temple.”
Brogan groaned.
“He’s coming round, sir.”
Ives was quick to respond. “Don’t move him. Call the medics and keep him still until they determine the extent of the concussion.”
Brogan ignored this and began to struggle to his feet. “I don’t need a doctor. Just leave me alone.”
Ives helped Brogan to sit in an armchair and drew up a dining chair to sit facing the man. “So, you’re OK to answer questions.”
“Why are you here? I don’t need the police.”
Ives smiled. “Come on, Marshall. What happened here? The room’s a wreck and either someone decided to take it out on you or you were after someone. And I know which one of those is the most likely.”
“I told you. It’s not important. What’s happened here. It’s nothing I can’t handle. And I don’t need you, get it?”
“But we need you. Where’s your sister’s diary?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Accept that we do. Where is it?”
“You should ask Markland.”
“Tom Markland?”
“He was here. He did this to me. A lucky blow. I should have destroyed him when I had the chance.”
Ives cast a glance around the wreckage of the room. “Why were you fighting with him?”
“Because.”
“You need to tell me what the fight with Markland was about.”
“I told you, I can sort this out for myself. I don’t need any help.”
“You know where Markland is?”
Brogan shook his head. “Do I look like I know where he went?”
“OK. The diary then. Where is it?”
“I don’t have anything more to say.”
DI Lesley interrupted. “Marshall, it’s true what DI Ives says. We’re here to help. You want to find your sister’s killer, don’t you?”
Brog
an looked away. “That’s rich. All I’ve been told is she died from an overdose.”
“We’re not so sure of that any more. You’ve never believed that, either, have you Marshall? So, open up. Tell us what you know about Markland. We know about Della’s diary. We think it’s important in another investigation and that it might be connected to Della’s death.”
“So how come you’re here asking about my sister after all this time?”
“As DI Ives told you, it’s in response to another case.”
“Cathy Newsome. What’s her case got to do with anything about my sister?”
Ives came back in. “What do you know about Cathy Newsome?”
“Just what Markland told me.”
Ives glanced at Brogan’s bleeding temple. “Did he do this?”
“A lucky blow, like I told you?”
“So why was he here?”
“Because I drew him here. He knew things about my sister that he wouldn’t own up to. Said he didn’t know her but, before she died, she told me he did. So I found him in Lichfield and brought him here. And together we found the diary.”
“So where’s the diary now?”
Brogan struggled to focus on the table where his print out of the diary should be. “It was over there. But Markland must have taken it with him.”
“And you had a chance to read it?”
“Some of it. Enough to know that if I see Markland again I’ll kill him.”
“Is that what was going down here?”
“Think what you like.”
“So why did you want to kill him?”
“Because he killed Della.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s in the diary. It proves she knew he was going to kill her.”
“And Markland now has it?”
“Yes, but it’s also online. Markland made print outs but he must now have them both.”
“But you know how to access it?”
“There’s a password and a login.”
“Where is it?”
“Markland kept it.”
“But if you’ve seen it, can you recall it?”
Brogan held his head in his hands. “It was something like DaSilva999 and Bashtree999. But that’s as close as I’m going to get. Markland did all the logging in.”
