The Hanged Man (Bone Field 2)

by Simon Kernick

  As soon as she answered the door, Tina could see there was something wrong. I guess I wasn’t making much of an effort to hide it. The full reality of what had happened was only just beginning to sink in and, in the end, I only had myself to blame. Dan and Sheryl were both right. I was a liability, incapable of stopping my emotions from getting the better of me, and I’d let myself and them down. And the parents of Dana Brennan.

  On the way to Tina’s I’d stopped at the pub just down the road from her cottage. They knew me to say hello to in there as Tina and I occasionally popped in for a quick drink and a Sunday roast, and I think the landlord had been surprised when I sank two pints in quick succession.

  ‘Bad day?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Terrible,’ I’d replied.

  ‘That means tomorrow will be better,’ he’d told me with confidence, but that wasn’t going to be the case. Even if I brought in Hugh Manning, unscathed and ready to cooperate, it wasn’t going to get me my job back.

  But it felt good to see Tina, and as soon as we were behind closed doors we kissed for a long time. I think we would have gone further but she asked me why I’d turned up with such a long face, and that pretty much killed the moment.

  I gave her a rundown of what had happened since I’d seen her last while she made coffee and I poured myself a glass of red from a bottle I’d picked up at home. As I’ve said before, I didn’t make a habit of drinking in front of Tina, but I made an exception tonight.

  We sat down at the kitchen table, and she put her hand in mine.

  She really was a beautiful woman, I thought as I looked at her, with thick black hair that fell down to her shoulders, high cheekbones, and perfectly defined features. Considering she was forty, and the kind of life she’d led, there were very few lines on her face, and when she smiled, which she did much more these days, it created two small dimples on either side of her mouth. Even the hardness in her dark eyes, built up during a career in which she’d suffered some of the worst things life had to offer, had softened of late. I hoped this had something to do with me.

  ‘So you’re still waiting to hear from Manning?’ she asked.

  I nodded. ‘If I haven’t heard by nine tomorrow morning, I’ll hand it over to NCA, and they’ll have to deal with it.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a good idea anyway, you dealing with it now? You’re not a part of the investigation any more, so there’s nothing you can do to protect him.’ Her expression was sympathetic but there was an underlying edge to it. ‘Tell me this isn’t putting your own ego above the greater good.’

  I sipped the wine, thought about it. ‘It isn’t. According to the email you got, Manning will only give himself up to me, and the NCA will never let me meet him alone. They’ll want to micro-manage it, which means having dozens of other people involved to make sure he doesn’t escape. If Manning gets wind of that, he’ll run, and it’s possible we won’t see him again.’ I paused. ‘I don’t know what to do, Tina, frankly. But I’m going to wait for his call and see what happens. Then I’ll make a judgement.’

  I took another sip of the wine. Jesus, it tasted good. But I knew it was best to make it my last glass. I didn’t want to be drunk if Manning did call.

  ‘So what have you found out?’ I asked her.

  She tapped a folder on the kitchen table. ‘This is the report made by Brian Foxley, the private detective I was telling you about, hired by Kitty Sinn’s mother Mary to investigate whether or not her sister’s death was an accident, and who ended up dying for his troubles along with his wife.’

  ‘And you managed to find the report after all this time?’ I was impressed.

  ‘You’re not the only decent detective out there, you know.’ She smiled, showing her dimples. ‘It’s not the original document. Apparently that went missing after Foxley’s death.’

  ‘And did the detective find out anything conclusive?’

  ‘No, there was nothing conclusive in it at all, at least regarding Janet Sheridan’s death. But I think Foxley saw things – and people – he shouldn’t have seen. Robert Sheridan was a pretty unpleasant individual who probably did kill his wife. It seemed he was a friend of Volkan Kalaman’s so if he’d needed help he would have known where to get it. Either way, he certainly didn’t mourn her passing. Within a few months he had a young live-in nanny to bring up the children, with whom he was having an affair. He was also into sex parties and occult stuff, just like the Bone Field killers.’

  ‘Jesus. No wonder Alastair and Lola grew up like they did. Did you know that Anthea Delbarto, the woman we saw today who takes in vulnerable young women, including Tracey Burn, was the Sheridans’ nanny?’

  Tina frowned. ‘I was wondering what had happened to her. According to the report she was involved in the occult parties, so if she took in Tracey Burn, she’s probably involved in the killings now.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘The question is, what do you do about it? By the sound of things, you’ve already let her know she’s under suspicion.’

  And it was true. I’d messed up. I should have been there to help build a case against her piece by piece. Instead I’d put Delbarto on her guard.

  ‘There was someone else who attended an occult party at Robert Sheridan’s house who caught my eye.’ Tina reached over and opened the folder, flicking through it until she came to the page containing the photos of the house guests. ‘Have a look at this one,’ she said, tapping the one at the top.

  I leaned forward and inspected it. The colour had faded over the years but it was still a clear enough shot of an olive-skinned man in his twenties holding a hat in his hand. Beneath it in type were the words ‘Not yet identified’.

  ‘That was the man who tried to kill me in France,’ said Tina. ‘I’m ninety per cent sure of it. Is he the man you saw at the farmhouse in Wales? I never got a proper look at him there, but I remember him speaking, and he had an eastern European accent.’

  I looked carefully at the picture, searching for signs of familiarity. The shape of the man’s face was right, as was the hat, but three months had passed since that day at the farmhouse and I knew the tricks memory can play on a person. And four decades had passed since this photo had been taken.

  ‘It could be him,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Brian Foxley never did ID him. He died a week after this report was produced.’

  ‘Ugo Amelu talked about a Kalaman operative he saw at Alastair Sheridan’s house on the night the prostitute died, an older man in a hat. He called him Mr Bone. Is there any mention of a Mr Bone in there?’

  Tina shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Someone somewhere must be able to tell us who he really is.’ I got up from the table. ‘I need to speak to Dan.’

  I knew I was forbidden from having any contact with him but he needed to know about Anthea Delbarto’s involvement in the occult parties at the Sheridan family home, and he was probably going to be the best person to find out who Mr Bone actually was. I’d been forced to hand back my work phone but I had a second with all my numbers on it and I used it to call him now.

  It went straight to voicemail so I left a message saying there was some urgent information I needed to share with him, and requesting he ring back as soon as possible. I remembered him telling me in the car earlier that his youngest daughter had friends coming over, so he was having to deal with a houseful of teenagers. On almost any other occasion I would have left him to his family time, but not tonight. Maybe it was just another sign of my impatience but I called his home phone, and for a long time afterwards I wished I hadn’t.

  His wife Denise answered on about the tenth ring. I could hear kids shouting in the background. It sounded like they were having a good time.

  ‘Hey Denise, it’s Ray Mason, Dan’s partner. I’m sorry to bother you on a Friday night, but is Dan there? I need to speak to him urgently.’

  There was a long silence. ‘He obviously hasn’t told you, has he? We split up a while back. He d
oesn’t live here any more.’

  The news hit me like a hammer blow. I don’t know why. It was no more shocking than anything else I’d seen or discovered these past few days. And yet it felt like some kind of betrayal. Dan and I had worked well together these past few weeks, and I’d grown close to him.

  But obviously not close enough.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said at last. ‘Do you know where he’s living?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t,’ she said.

  I wanted to ask her what had happened between the two of them, but knew it was nothing to do with me. Instead I apologized for intruding and ended the call.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Tina when I came back into the kitchen.

  I slumped down in my seat, feeling utterly deflated, and took a bigger drink from the wine than I should have done.

  ‘He never said a word to me about it,’ I said after I’d told her about Dan and Denise. ‘Nothing. I thought we were good buddies. Not like Chris and me were good buddies, but close.’

  ‘He probably just didn’t want to talk about it.’ Tina got up, came round the table, and gave me a hug.

  I put my arm round her waist and drew her to me, kissing her through the material of her shirt.

  On the table, the folder was still open at the page showing the photos, with the man I now thought of as Mr Bone at the top. I hadn’t looked at the others, but now one of them grabbed my attention.

  I kissed Tina again then moved out of her embrace, pulling the file towards me.

  ‘Did you say the other people on this page attended one of Robert Sheridan’s occult parties?’

  ‘That’s right. Apparently it was one where they made animal sacrifices.’

  I looked at the photo that had grabbed my attention. It was of the top half of a well-built man with thick, dark hair, flecked with grey, and the type of full-face beard that was all the rage these days. The caption beneath it stated that, like Mr Bone, he too hadn’t been identified.

  But that didn’t matter.

  Even after all these years, I’d recognize my father anywhere.

  Forty-four

  Dan Watts rolled out of bed, grabbed his jeans from the floor, and checked his phone. He had a missed call and voicemail from Ray. He looked at his watch. It was almost eleven and the message had been left over three hours ago. Dan wasn’t bothered. Right then he had no desire to speak to Ray, and anyway, he was busy.

  Behind him on the bed lay the woman he’d been chatting to online for more than a week now, Gurl4fun, aka Vicky Smith. So far it had been a fun date. In the end they’d had a quick phone conversation early that morning before he’d gone into HQ in which she’d suggested they skip the pub altogether and just meet at her flat in Crouch End. Dan had had enough of these encounters before to know that there was nothing suspicious about that. It was simply the way things worked. Cut out all the fat and get straight down to the business of fast, furious, uncomplicated sex.

  Even so, when he’d been on his way over here, he hadn’t been able to shake the empty feeling that somehow this tryst wasn’t going to make him feel any better. It would just be like the others. Short, hollow, unfulfilling. It made him realize quite how much he missed Denise and the kids. He knew that if he’d been able to control his urges, and stick to the tenets of the Christian faith that had kept him going ever since he’d killed a young man in a boxing ring, then he would have been with them that night, enjoying the simple pleasures of family life, rather than spending an evening with someone who was probably living just as much of an unfulfilling life as he was.

  But of course that had all changed when she’d answered the door to him, opening it just enough so that he could see she was wearing black stockings and a black negligee.

  And in that moment excitement flooded through him and he remembered exactly why he did this.

  Sometimes the first kiss could be awkward – a reaction to the unnaturalness of the situation – but it hadn’t been tonight. It had been warm, deep and passionate, and Dan had immediately become lost in the moment. They’d had sex (it was never ‘making love’ in these encounters) three times that night, breaking up their bouts by lying in bed chatting idly about small things and drinking cheap white wine. Vicky was a nice girl. Attractive, funny, with a sweet high-pitched laugh. She hailed from a town in Lancashire but had been in London for almost ten years. But there was also a deep-seated melancholy about her that Dan had seen in a number of the single women he’d met who lived alone in the big city. As if they all knew there was something deeper they were missing.

  He also knew he wasn’t the man to help. He was just another stop-gap, and now, as he stood up and looked at his phone, he knew it was time to go. He felt sated, and it had been fun, but he wouldn’t be seeing Vicky again. He’d never seen a woman he’d met online twice, and he was sure there was an important psychological reason for this. The difficult part was extracting himself from the situation without appearing rude.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ asked Vicky.

  ‘Yeah, all good,’ he said, with fake jollity. ‘Just checking my messages. I’ve had the phone on silent.’

  ‘You’ve got a good body, you know.’

  He turned round and looked at her lying there, completely naked now, the lingerie strewn round the room, a thin sheen of sweat on her shapely, pale body. A few hours ago the sight of it had driven him wild with lust, and in a month’s time the memory of it would do the same, but right now, something inside him had moved on.

  ‘So do you. You look fantastic.’ He pulled on his trousers, no longer looking at her. ‘I’m just going to the toilet then I’d better think about making a move.’

  He was expecting some sort of protest, and was almost disappointed when none came.

  ‘No worries,’ she said. ‘I could do with some sleep.’

  He went back through the living room and into the bathroom, and while he was cleaning himself up he listened to Ray’s message. He wondered what the urgent information Ray had for him was, but since he hadn’t called a second time, Dan decided it couldn’t be that urgent and could wait until tomorrow morning.

  He splashed water on his face and stared at the dirty mirror, not especially pleased with the man who stared back at him. Suddenly he felt terribly depressed, standing in a stranger’s flat, about to head back to a place he hated even more. ‘What’s happened to you?’ he whispered, but of course he knew the answer to that question well enough.

  With a long sigh, he turned and walked back through to the bedroom.

  Straight away he knew something was wrong.

  It wasn’t so much the way Vicky was lying, facing away from him, her arm rolled back in an unusual position, one leg sticking right out, it was the way she was so very, very still.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked quietly, just in case she’d fallen asleep.

  But there was no answer. The room was silent bar the barely audible sound of Dan’s own breathing.

  With a growing sense of foreboding he put a hand on her shoulder and slowly turned her round.

  Which was when he saw the single, deep knife wound between her breasts.

  He froze, immediately going into police mode and trying to compute what had happened. The knife blow had been to the heart by someone who knew what he or she was doing. Death had been very quick, as was evidenced by the lack of blood, and the bedside lamp was still in place, which meant there hadn’t been much of a struggle. But how had it happened? He’d only been gone three, four minutes at most, and he hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

  He stood back up fast, looking round the cramped bedroom. There was a single wardrobe that didn’t look big enough to hide anyone. The doors were shut. Without giving himself too much time to think, Dan flung one of the doors open and looked inside. Nothing. Just clothes. He looked under the bed. Again nothing. The window, which didn’t look big enough to climb through, was still shut and locked from the inside.

  Dan had no idea how the killer had got in, but he
also knew enough about police investigations not to spend too much time thinking about that. The most important thing was to get out quickly.

  So, keeping his fear under control, he threw on the rest of his clothes, looked around to check that he hadn’t left anything, and strode out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind him, unable to look again at Vicky’s corpse.

  ‘You seem to be in a hurry, Mr Watts,’ said a voice in the gloom.

  Dan turned and saw the silhouette of a man sitting in one of the two living-room armchairs.

  ‘I think it’s time for us to talk.’

  Forty-five

  The man leaned over to switch on the lamp, and it took Dan’s eyes a couple of seconds to adapt to the sudden light in the room. He blinked twice, and then took a closer look at the man who was sitting only a few feet away.

  He was wearing a hat and an old-fashioned suit with no tie, his shirt buttoned to the top. Beneath the brim of the hat, Dan could see that he was an older man, in his sixties, with pale, waxy skin and vaguely Mediterranean features. He was wearing a benign smile and there was nothing threatening about him except his eyes, which were dark, cold and knowing, and the black evidence-handling gloves on his hands.

  Dan had never seen this man before but he knew immediately that this was the Mr Bone he’d heard about, and that he worked for Cem Kalaman.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Mr Bone.

  Dan shook his head and pulled out his phone. He didn’t want the shame of Denise and the kids finding out he was here, but he had to take control of the situation now before it slipped away.

  ‘Stay exactly where you are,’ he said. ‘You’re under arrest for murder.’

  Mr Bone was still smiling. ‘I don’t think so. Look behind you.’

  Dan turned and saw a second man in the shadows, much younger, with a shock of blond hair. He was dressed in black and also wearing gloves, and in his hand he had a large pistol with a suppressor attached. As he raised the gun, Dan saw a large fleck of blood on his temporarily uncovered wrist. So he was the one who’d taken Vicky’s life. He was chewing gum, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and grinning at Dan.