No trace bak-8

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Not regularly, no. Frankly, there was no point. We had nothing in common. I hated his work and he had no conversation.’

  ‘He must have talked about something. Didn’t he tell you about his work, his methods?’

  ‘Not really. I wasn’t interested. Too grotesque for my taste.’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you where he got his models from?’

  ‘Models?’

  ‘For his sculptures.’

  ‘No, can’t say he did. Why, where did they come from?’

  ‘From a mortuary.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Gilbey made a face of disgust.

  ‘Rembrandt did that too, didn’t he?’

  ‘Rembrandt wasn’t obsessed by death.’

  ‘So Stan talked about death, did he?’

  ‘A bit.’ Then something struck Gilbey. He stared off into space, thinking.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I just remembered the last time I saw Stan. It was in The Daughters, a couple of nights after Tracey disappeared. He was particularly gloomy, even by his own low standards. He asked me if I thought children felt death more keenly, being newer to life.’

  ‘What did you say to that?’

  ‘I told him to bugger off. Look, I don’t think I can take any more of this. I’m not feeling well. I want to stop now.’

  ‘All right, Reg. If you think of anything else we might want to hear about, you’ll let us know, won’t you? Incidentally, what happened to Tracey’s self-portrait?’

  ‘Eh?’ He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Betty took it with her when she and Tracey left. She told me later that Tracey gave it to her as a present.’

  ‘Well, it’s not in Betty’s house now.’

  He shrugged.‘I don’t know where it is.’

  Afterwards Brock looked pleased. ‘Well done, Kathy. You did well.’

  ‘Thanks,’she smiled back but felt uneasy.‘What he said about the judge advising him to keep quiet… well, it doesn’t really mean anything, does it? It’s the sort of advice you might give a friend.’

  ‘Yes, but it had the effect of protecting him as much as Reg, didn’t it?’

  When Brock had gone, Kathy said to Bren,‘He seems to have it in for the judge, doesn’t he? I hope he knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Judge or not, he’s as accountable as everyone else.’

  ‘Yes and no. You know this new review of Special Operations that’s under way?’

  Bren rolled his eyes.‘Another one?’

  ‘Yes, and Sir Jack is the chair of the review committee.’

  ‘Really? Brock never mentioned that to me.’

  ‘No. We’re not supposed to know. Senior management only.’

  ‘And Brock knows?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘So… it’s like the judge is investigating us while we’re investigating him.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Tricky.’

  Kathy was working late that evening when the call came from Nicole Palmer. She listened carefully, taking notes, then thanked her and rang off. She thought for a moment, then tapped out Brock’s home number.

  ‘You owe someone some theatre tickets,’ she said.

  ‘Ah. Where are you?’

  ‘Shoreditch.’

  ‘Still? Can you talk?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Have you eaten? I’ve got a nice steak here, if you’re interested. Or I could come to you.’

  ‘Steak sounds fine.’

  It took her the best part of an hour by the time she’d caught the tube across the river, then waited for a connection on the surface electric rail at Elephant and Castle to continue south. She walked down the high street, almost deserted in the cold night, and turned into the arched entrance to a cobbled courtyard. A big old horse chestnut tree stood in the far corner, brown conker shells scattered on the ground beneath its branches, and beyond it the beginning of a lane, with a hedge on one side and a row of old brick houses on the other. Kathy rang the bell and after a moment Brock opened the door and ushered her in.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Brock said when they reached the living room on the next floor, taking her coat, ‘I should have come back up to town, or waited till tomorrow.’

  ‘No, it’s better done tonight, away from everybody. Unless your house is bugged.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Are you sure? He’s got Special Branch protecting him, remember.’

  Brock looked to see if she was serious, and saw she was. ‘Well, that is a nasty thought.’

  He watched her reach into her shoulder bag and pull out a folded sheet of paper, which she handed to him without a word. It read, ‘Robert John Wylie appeared before Justice John Beaufort in May 1996 in the company of three other defendants on a variety of charges under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, the Obscene Publications Act 1959 and the Indecency with Children Act 1960. The judge dismissed the case against Wylie. The other defendants went on to trial, were found guilty and received sentences of between three and six years. They are known to us as business associates of Wylie.’

  Brock looked up with a grim smile.‘Well done, Kathy. Now, let’s do something about that steak, shall we?’

  22

  Brock watched several rooks burst cawing from the copse on the hilltop as three men appeared over the rise. They made their way steadily down the slope, towing their equipment behind them, untroubled by the fine rain. Coming to a stop, the leading figure, wearing a red tartan peaked cap, drew a weapon from his bag. It flashed through the air and for a moment all three men stared motionless at the sky. Then a white ball landed with a plop on the green in front of where Brock was sheltering, and came rapidly to a stop on the wet grass, barely a yard from the pin with its soggy red flag. A muted cheer went up from the distant group.

  They noticed Brock watching them, of course, as they converged on the green, for they were all observant men, and when he moved out from beneath the eaves of the clubhouse to intercept them on the path they each gripped the handles of their clubs a little tighter, out of habit.

  ‘Roy?’ Brock asked, and the one with the red tartan cap peered at him more closely before exclaiming, ‘Brock? Why yes, it’s young David Brock!’

  They all shook hands and proceeded together to the clubhouse door. Later, showered, changed and seated around a table in the bar, the three retired police officers seemed keen to hear about Brock’s current case, but when he began to describe how it had turned into one of those difficult ones, a sticker, he sensed their interest fade to polite indifference.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t know how I ever had the time to work,’ one said, and the others nodded sagely. ‘I’m so busy, I just don’t know where the time goes, the days, the months, the years… I’ve got six grandchildren now. Do you want to see their photos?’

  ‘Roy,’ another remonstrated, ‘he hasn’t got time for that; the man’s working. Although I can’t imagine why. You’ll be entitled to your two-thirds pension aren’t you, Brock? Why do you bother? There’s another life out there.’

  ‘Actually, I came about one of your cases, Roy,’ Brock managed to get in.

  ‘Course you did. Robert Wylie, right? You’ve finally got him for a big one. Knew it would happen eventually. Slippery customer. I almost had him in ninety-six.’

  ‘That’s the case I’m interested in. Before Justice Beaufort.’

  ‘Old Jugular, that’s right. He threw it out. I got the other three bastards though.’

  ‘Was he right to throw it out?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think so, of course, but the CPS had warned me. They really didn’t want to proceed against him on the basis of what we had, but I was so revved up to get that slimy bastard-too keen, in retrospect.’

  ‘So Beaufort acted fairly?’

  The three golfers stared at Brock.‘That’s an interesting question,’ Roy said.‘Are you after Jugular Jack now?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing specific, but Beaufort’s appeared on the sidelines in this case-not really
involved, you understand, but it did seem a coincidence, remembering your experience.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory,’ Roy said, with a quizzical smile at Brock, ‘because that case wouldn’t be on Wylie’s record, would it, what with him having got off scot-free?’

  ‘I was hoping your memory would be pretty good too, Roy.’

  ‘Well now… I do recall something one of my snouts said to me after that case. He said that he’d heard Wylie bragging that he’d had influence with the judge. I didn’t believe it, and still don’t. Not Jugular Jack, the scourge of scum like Wylie.’

  ‘He didn’t say what kind of influence?’

  ‘No, nothing specific. One thing I will say, though-if you’re after old Jugular, you might be well advised to check out your pension entitlements.’

  ‘Thanks, Roy. Now, let me buy you gentlemen another shandy.’

  Kathy had seen Brock like this before-secretive, unwilling to share what he was thinking or planning concerning the ex-judge. And because she had seen it before, she thought she knew the reason. It was protection, not for himself but for the rest of them, in case things went wrong. It was a measure of how risky he knew the enterprise to be, like a bomb-disposal expert ordering his colleagues out of range of the volatile thing he was probing. But it was a dangerous manoeuvre, separating himself from the support of the team, keeping them in the dark. She felt instinctively that it was wrong and wanted to circumvent it, which of course was precisely why Brock felt obliged to act the way he did. That morning, for example, with the press office clamouring on one phone and Commander Sharpe’s office on the other, no one seemed to know where he’d gone, off on some mysterious trail apparent only to himself.

  All she could do was try to find grist for his private mill-facts, observations, or failing that rumour and gossip. So she had come back to the source once again, Northcote Square, where everyone was connected to everyone else by invisible threads of history or loss, business or desire. On the north side, on Urma Street, she could see the light shining through the glass wall of Gabe’s studio on the top floor, where he and Poppy had spent the night together in the fold-out bed. She knew this because the duty sergeant had told her that their police bodyguard had said as much in his morning report. It must have been a great relief for them both after Gabe’s idiotic vigil in the glass cube, Kathy thought with a touch of envy. If she turned one hundred and eighty degrees she could see the cube illuminated through the gallery window, with its untidy workstation and crumpled bed still as they were when abandoned twenty-four hours before, like a shrine for pilgrims, to judge by the queue waiting along the footpath outside.

  But she planned to begin elsewhere, at Betty’s house on West Terrace, for which she had signed out the keys. She started in the attic at the top of the house and worked carefully down through each room, each closet, each cupboard and drawer. She was looking for Tracey’s self-portrait, and it took her two hours to work her way down to the basement floor. Along the way she had uncovered glimpses of Betty’s life-a photograph of her husband Harry in army officer’s uniform, an ancient West End theatre program for Irma La Douce, a snapshot of ‘Helga’s children at Broadstairs, 1963’-but no sign of what she was looking for.

  She stepped out into the tiny sunken courtyard beneath the footpath on West Terrace, remembering that she hadn’t searched the kitchen on the floor above, and climbed the stairs back up to the front door. As she opened it she glanced up at the projecting bay window beneath the turret on Reg Gilbey’s house next door and saw a figure staring down at her. With a sense of apprehension she recognised the judge. She walked quickly into Betty’s hall and closed the door behind her, wondering what excuse she could use to bump into DI Reeves again, who was no doubt sitting on the other side of the wall in Gilbey’s kitchen at that moment, reading one of his books. She turned this over in her mind as she began searching the kitchen cupboards. Then the phone on the little mahogany table in Betty’s hall began to ring, and when she picked it up she was startled to hear his voice.

  ‘DS Kolla? It’s Tom Reeves. I’m next door as it happens, with the judge, completing the session with Mr Gilbey that was interrupted yesterday. He wonders if you’d care to pop over for a cup of coffee in, say, half an hour?’

  ‘Reg Gilbey?’

  ‘No, Sir Jack Beaufort.’

  ‘Oh… well, yes.’

  She replaced the phone, astonished. For a moment she wondered if she should contact Brock, then decided against it.

  Brock took his seat in the same prison interview room as before. Wylie and his solicitor came in, and he looked at them carefully as they took their seats, trying to interpret their moods. Unlike the lawyer, who seemed preoccupied and agitated, Wylie looked casual, sitting back in his chair, arms folded. But he was paler than the previous time, hair lank, eyes puffy, as if he wasn’t sleeping so well, and there was the trace of what might have been a bruise on the side of his head.

  The solicitor glanced anxiously at his watch and said, ‘I was reluctant to agree to this meeting, Chief Inspector, given that my client will be released today, but he felt we should hear you out. You’ve read his statement, I take it? I really don’t think there’s anything we can add.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Brock said.‘I thought I should give Mr Wylie one last opportunity before we proceed to court.’

  The lawyer frowned. ‘To court? If you’re thinking of pressing some lesser charge in the Magistrates’ Court…’

  ‘Magistrates’ Court?’ Brock looked at him as if he’d made some kind of legal gaffe.‘Murder and abduction have to be tried in the Crown Court, you know that.’

  Now the lawyer was incredulous. ‘Haven’t you spoken to the Crown Prosecution Service? There’s no possibility of you proceeding to committal on those charges.’

  ‘Perhaps you misunderstood them. We’re not talking about committal, we’re talking about a notice of transfer to take the case directly to trial at the Crown Court without committal proceedings taking place. As you would know, we’re entitled to do that where violence against children is involved and where, as in this case, a child victim is at risk from your client.’ Brock gave him a patient smile. ‘Maybe you’d like to explain the legal processes to Mr Wylie.’

  ‘But…’ The solicitor was perplexed but also wary. He knew Brock was no fool. He scanned his face and saw only confidence. ‘You have no evidence. The CPS knows that. You can’t go to trial.’

  ‘Well, things are continuously developing, as you well know. Evidence is often buried in shifting sand.’ He guessed the metaphor would register. Any lawyer representing Wylie would be painfully conscious of it. ‘Mr Wylie’s and Mr Abbott’s email records, for instance…’ He deliberately wasn’t looking at Wylie as he said it, but he saw an involuntary twitch at the edge of his vision.‘They were lost along with their computers, of course…’

  The solicitor glanced at his client, whose face was blank, then back at Brock.‘So?’

  ‘But fortunately we can do something about that.’

  ‘How?’Wylie couldn’t help blurting out the question.

  Brock turned to look at him as if for the first time. ‘Microsoft keep servers in California which store information on all their email accounts around the world, including a copy of every email that passes through them.’

  ‘You’re joking,’Wylie said in disbelief.

  His solicitor, who had obviously come across this before, said, ‘You’ll need a US court order. Have they agreed to release them to you?’

  ‘It’s in train. That’s why there’s been a delay in our proceeding. I’m afraid there’s no question of bail, though.’ Again he picked up a signal from Wylie, a clenching of fingers.‘As I said, we’re convinced that the victim’s welfare would be prejudiced.’

  ‘You bastard.’ Wylie stared at Brock, his face white, breathing becoming more laboured.

  ‘I’d like some time alone with my client,’ the solicitor said, fingering his watch again.‘Two or three minutes
?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ Brock said. He got to his feet and knocked on the locked door.

  Outside, he asked the prison officer to let him use a vacant interview room to make a confidential phone call. He got through to Virginia Ashe and explained what he was doing. She listened without interruption but with several sharp intakes of breath. When he had finished she made her points in the quick, decisive manner of hers.

  ‘One, a notice of transfer has to be served on the court by the Director of Public Prosecutions.’

  ‘You act for him. You can do it.’

  ‘Not on something like this. I’d need approval, which I certainly won’t get on the basis of what we currently know. Two, to be valid it must be served before the magistrates begin committal proceedings. Now you’ve disclosed your tactic, Wylie’s legal representatives will press for those to begin.’

  ‘You’re the lawyer, Virginia. That’s your field.’

  She sighed. ‘Three, since you’ve disclosed your subpoena for the emails, they will also fight to block their release. Do you know that they contain anything incriminating?’

  ‘I didn’t before, but I do now. It was written all over Wylie’s face.’

  ‘That’s not evidence.’

  ‘Microsoft refer requests from foreign police services to the FBI for approval. It’ll be up to them. If there’s the faintest hint of violence against children, I’m sure they’ll be sympathetic.’

  ‘But why did you warn Wylie of all this?’

  ‘I want to panic him, Virginia. I want him to react before he knows for sure how we stand.’

  ‘His solicitor will be straight onto us. My boss practically promised that Wylie could expect to be out of goal today.’

  ‘That’s why I’m ringing you now. I want you to stall them. Talk to Wylie’s brief about shifting ground-the poor bloke looks as if he’s balancing on a pile of shale. Just play for time. I think gaol is beginning to get to Mr Wylie.’

  ‘I do hope you know what you’re doing, Brock.’

  ‘Of course I do, Virginia,’ he said, sounding as confident as he could.

  As he finished the call his mobile rang. It was Bren, his voice sounding unnatural, tight.