Here The Truth Lies

by Seb Kirby

  Ives interrupts. “You say he?”

  “Because of the strength required to do what he did next.” She uses the pointer to mimic the motion of a knife being plunged into the body and pulled up in a vertical direction while still inserted. “Probably carried out with a hunting knife or some similar instrument with a serrated edge blade.”

  “So that was the initial point of attack? While he attempted to run away?”

  ‘Yes.” They turn the corpse back over. “Then the slitting of the throat. And the ritualistic-looking cuts to the chest. Or in the reverse order. It’s not possible to say which came first.”

  “But he didn’t need to do either. Cavendish would have died anyway?”

  “No doubt.”

  “So, what did our attacker have to prove?”

  “Quite possibly a call for attention.” Julienne stands up. “But that’s your specialism, Inspector.”

  Once Julienne has left with the body en route to Westminster Mortuary, Ives and Lesley search the house.

  There are no signs of disturbance in any of the rooms. No sign that someone has been searching for something. They find valuable jewelry in Cavendish’s dressing room. Cash beside his bed. State-of-the-art personal communications gear in his study. Ives forms the opinion that, unless matters later prove otherwise, robbery is not a motive here.

  He voices his conclusions to Lesley. “We need to check on all Cavendish’s associates. Start by getting the technical boys to go over his computer.”

  CHAPTER 14

  We meet Alec Waring in his run down solicitor’s office above a hardware shop on the Tottenham Court Road.

  Time has not been kind to the man. He’s out of shape with belly fat hanging over his trouser belt. His eyes are bloodshot, his hair receding and greying, his face showing lines of thwarted ambition. It’s difficult to believe he must still be the right side of fifty.

  Sophie opens the conversation. “It’s good of you to see us, Alec.”

  His reply sounds pleasant enough. “That’s OK. I’m not due back in court again until the morning.” He pauses to look us over. “It’s not every day I get a visit from not one, but two attractive women.”

  Sophie moves on, introducing me. “This is Emma Chamberlain from the Herald. She’s interested in the Brian Cooper case.”

  He gives a wry smile. “Can’t see why anyone would still want to gnaw away at that. How long has he been inside for now? Seventeen years?”

  I correct him. “Eighteen. He has a chance of a parole hearing. Unless he can convince them there is some new development, he has no possibility of release. And he’s on an indefinite life sentence. Could spend the rest of his days there.”

  Waring curls his lip. “Most would say it’s no more than he deserves.” He pauses. “So, why the interest?”

  I come straight back. “Because I’m sure there’s been a miscarriage of justice.”

  “And I’m responsible for that?

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying. But you may have something that can help him.”

  “After all this time?”

  I appeal to him. “Cooper himself won’t say anything more. You’re our only hope.”

  Waring runs his fingers through his thinning hair. “Do you know why I’m still here in this scruffy office taking on legal aid work for no-hopers who have to have someone, anyone, to represent them? Just to make sure what’s inevitably about to befall them seems justified? It’s because of men like Cooper. Take on too many cases like that and you end up where I am. You start out as the bright eyed idealist who’s convinced they’re doing the world a favor by bringing the possibility of justice to those who deserve a defense no matter how terrible their crimes and you finish up disillusioned, just another cog in the system, one of those who puts the gloss on what’s bound to happen anyway. And by the time you realize that, it’s too late. You’ve represented one too many truly bad people in one too many open and shut cases to ever go back. It’s like being typecast, only this is no drama, this is real life, your real life.”

  He’s staring at Sophie, his eyes wide and piercing, pointing out the contrast with no need for words: I can never be the successful criminal defense lawyer that she is. Given that, why should I help?

  Sophie doesn’t show offence. “You do a great job, Alec. Don’t talk yourself down.”

  He doesn’t look convinced. “Easy to say from where you sit. Not straightforward where I’m coming from.”

  She brings him back one step at a time. “But you’re still in practice. Still helping those who have nowhere else to go.”

  “So why don’t you do more pro bono?”

  “I do all my company allows. Not as much as you. But I play my part.”

  “But you make what you need in life from all your other paying clients.”

  Sophie doesn’t deny it. “Yes. They subsidize the pro bono work.”

  He smiles. “But it’s all I have. There’s the difference between us. Why we live in different worlds.”

  I can see where this is going.

  Waring turns to speak to me. “So, if the Herald is interested in the Cooper story, there should be something in it for me. Call it a finder’s fee.”

  I nod. “I could consider that. Depends on what you have to offer.”

  “Enough to be worth a few hundred.”

  Sophie gives me a questioning glance. I give her a reassuring look back. MacLeish would have nothing to do with any payment but I’ve already decided to use my own money. “Make it one hundred.”

  Waring nods. “As I said, it isn’t much and I’m taking a risk by telling you. Breaking lawyer-client confidentiality. But here goes.” He pauses to take a deep breath, as if this was something he had wanted to unburden himself of for some long time. “When I was preparing Cooper’s defense, back then at his trial, I became convinced that he had an alibi all along that would have placed him somewhere else when the murders took place. I told him as much. When I did, he threatened to have me killed if I breathed a word of it to anyone.”

  I interrupt. “What convinced you about the alibi?”

  “It was the way he wouldn’t speak about what he was doing that night. He was never convincing. The feeling when you’re close up to someone like Cooper that he’s covering for someone or something. Whatever it was, he didn’t want anyone to know about it under any circumstances.”

  I cut in again. “Even if that meant he would spend a lifetime in prison?”

  “Even that.”

  “But you didn’t discover what he was so keen to hide?”

  Waring shakes his head. “After the death threat, I backed off. Wouldn’t you? Cooper is no angel. He knows some very bad people. The types to get you killed.”

  Sophie has forewarned me what’s likely to be involved and I have the cash with me. I pull out a bundle of notes from the purse inside my bag and hand over the money.

  “There’s another hundred if you remember anything else.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Checking where Lesley is set up in the incident room, Ives takes a seat beside her and looks over her shoulder as she works at her screen. “What have you found on Alastair Cavendish?”

  She calls up a summary of the information she’s collected so far. “Public school. A stellar career in the City heading up a hedge fund. Divorced his second wife two years ago and was living alone. No criminal record, though he came close to being hauled in for insider dealing more than once.”

  Ives gives a forlorn look. “Which, these days, passes for being a fine upstanding citizen who shows initiative.” He pauses. “Any enemies?”

  “A number of rivals, as you’d expect in his profession. But nothing to suggest a desire to see the man butchered.”

  “So what about his private life?”

  “Since the divorce, he doesn’t seem to have had much of a one. He was a member of The Saints rugby club and he supported a handful of charities. And that’s about it.”

  “No social media accounts?”<
br />
  “Nothing in his name. At least none traceable to him.”

  Ives raises his eyebrows. “How old was he?”

  “Fifty-five.”

  “So, old enough then for the Internet to have passed him by?”

  “I doubt it. There are still some pencil and paper types, the occasional prime minister, who’ve never felt the need to use a computer, but they’re few and far between these days. But for someone who worked in Canary Wharf, surrounded by trading desks running high end software, I don’t think so.”

  “Then, if he had accounts, why conceal them?”

  Lesley gives a disingenuous look. “Maybe he was an intensely private person.”

  “Or he had something to hide. Enough to get himself killed.” Ives swivels in the chair. “We need a deeper search on his Internet use. Has he been using a VPN to cloak his activity? And if so, why would he be doing that?”

  “That could take some time, Steve. Cyber security operations are backed right up.”

  “Then, give me the contact and I’ll see they push us up their priority list.”

  Lesley braces herself as she prepares to issue further poor news. “Nothing back from the cameras surrounding the Cavendish residence, I’m afraid, Steve. Our assailant was being careful.”

  Ives raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t the gear state-of-the-art? Internet of things savvy?”

  “Doesn’t matter how sophisticated it is if the intruder knows what he’s doing.”

  “So, tell me, how bad is it?”

  “The system reports unwanted activity but we don’t have a single image of what the perp looks like.” She pauses. “One positive, though. The timing of the activity confirms Julienne’s time of death.”

  “At least that’s something.”

  CHAPTER 16

  At home that night, I look long and hard at the bottle of scotch. I shouldn’t be drinking. Too much is happening. I need to keep a clear head to see my way through it.

  I took care to change my pattern on the journey back from Bankside, taking a later train. There was no sign of the man in the black coat.

  The golden glow of the liquid in the bottle is so appealing. I pour myself a small one, add water and take a first sip. Warmth and composure run through me. As if I need any reminder that whisky is so irresistible.

  The events of the day come closer into focus.

  Bill McLeish and his continuing demands.

  Margaret Hyslop’s arrogance.

  Alec Waring with his self-loathing.

  But emerging now are the thoughts I’ve struggled to hide all that time.

  Jenny’s words burn in my mind.

  I know who you are

  You’re not Emma.

  I’m still shocked at how much this poses a threat to whatever sense of well-being I’ve managed to manufacture around myself. A shiver of guilt runs down my spine. When I look down at my hands, they’re trembling. What makes me feel this way?

  I try to recall my parents, John and Mary Chamberlain. Nothing comes. Just distant, ill-formed memories of people I should know intimately but who are like strangers.

  Is this what Jenny meant?

  Or is this one more sign of pressure?

  McLeish’s complaints.

  The tall dark man following me.

  BACK OFF BEFORE ITS TOO LATE written in child’s crayon.

  The fact that, if I’m being honest with myself, I’m drinking too much.

  Are these things playing with my mind, making me believe I can’t do something as simple as recalling my own parents?

  I rifle through the dressing table drawers in the bedroom. I’m not the type to have any interest in displaying photographs in frames around the house nor on my desk at work. But somewhere here, there’s a small stack of photos in a cellophane packet that I keep but seldom look at. Something to reassure me in this moment of doubt.

  As I find them and begin searching through them, my first thoughts are, is this all? How old am I now? Twenty-eight. These ten photographs paint a paltry record of my life. Yet, I tell myself this is how I want it. People with children have every incentive to manufacture the thousands of images of themselves and their kids and offer them as trophies of their success on social media before printing and framing their favorites as more tangible tokens of the permanence of their lives. I’m not in this position, though I would in all certainty behave in much the same way if my life were different.

  I pause to take another long sip of the scotch. The warmth in my stomach brings with it more intense perception, I’m sure.

  Here is the photo of my parents, John and Mary. The only one.

  They look respectable enough. Endearing as they stand together with their winning smiles.

  But the longer I look, the more I convince myself I don’t recognize them. Maybe I’ve never known them. They are as much a mystery to me as any photo of any married couple taken years ago that I might have seen on TV or in a magazine.

  I leaf through the remaining photographs. None of me as a child. No images of me at play on holiday, no pictures of me as a schoolgirl.

  There are a half-dozen photos of London. Tourist places. Buckingham Palace. Horseguards Parade. Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. Places I now recognize with ease. But I can’t shake the perception that as a child I might not have known them, as if in encountering them as an adult I had seen them for the first time.

  And then there is a photograph of a house. A house somewhere in London. A tree-lined street with well-kept gardens. Unlike the other images, it feels like a place I’ve seen before. But I can’t recognize it. I can’t say I’ve ever belonged there, that this could be a place I had ever called home. I strain to find anything about the picture to allow me to identify the location. But there is no street name to be seen, no number on the gate or on the porch. It’s a typical semi-detached, one of the hundred thousand or so in the London suburbs.

  I copy the photo to my phone and take another slug of whisky.

  I have seen it before and I remember where. It’s viewed from a different angle but it’s the same house Sophie showed me at lunchtime at the Tate. The one that gave me an indistinct sense of recognition. The more I stare at it, the more certain I am this is the house where schoolgirl Marion Jones and her father Alan were killed. The crime scene where Brian Cooper is alleged to have carried out the murders.

  What is the photo doing in my personal items, objects I’ve kept for years?

  In bed that night I wait for Jenny. But Jenny doesn’t appear.

  Her words come back through the darkness instead.

  I know who you are

  You’re not Emma.

  What if Jenny is right?

  What if this is what she’s come to tell me?

  The more I dwell on it, the more it begins to feel as if my past is little more than a void.

  I know I must try to convince myself otherwise. If not, the very real prospect of being set adrift with no way back to reality awaits. What experts might call a complete breakdown.

  OK, I can recall when I started at the Herald. The interview with McLeish. The moment he told me I had the job. That’s real enough.

  And before that?

  Yes, I can recall days at University studying journalism. Placements with a TV news station and with a local paper in Reading. People there like my tutor Vince English. A charismatic lecturer whose enthusiasm convinced me that my future lay in journalism. Some student friends, now lost. What were their names? A boy I’d been keen on. Michael something. Yes, Michael Bingham, that was his name. I wonder where he is now. How have things worked out for him? And another friend from that time. Gemma. Gemma Astle. And, of course, that was where I met Sophie. Dear Sophie, my best and only friend.

  And before that? Before University?

  There is nothing. No memories that I can summon, no matter how I try.

  It’s as if before then I didn’t exist.

  Yes, this is what Jenny must have been saying.

  I sh
iver.

  I’ve never felt so alone.

  There would be no sleep tonight. Not when I feel like this.

  I get out of bed and turn on the light.

  I return to the dressing table drawer. There’s something else I need to see, packed away together with the photographs. I pull out the small bundle of papers that have been lying there and spread them out on the bed.

  The topmost document is my birth certificate.

  Emma Chamberlain

  Born at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, August 10, 1991

  Parents: John Chamberlain, Joiner. Mary Chamberlain (nee Jones) of Richmond Gardens, London E14.

  I read the slender document over and over. I need a certainty I can hold onto in this shifting, troubled world.

  I stare at the certificate, taking in the fabric of the paper. It looks genuine enough. But it doesn’t look old. Not as old as me. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. Documents get lost. Replacements are sourced. That must be it.

  Yet Jenny’s words play over and over in my mind.

  I know who you are

  You’re not Emma.

  DAY 3

  CHAPTER 17

  Next morning, I take comfort from the familiarity of the journey to work. If I belong anywhere it’s in this crowd of near silent commuters, wrapped up in the solitude of routine. I’m nothing special here. I fit in. I can blend into that oceanic indifference and shut down my most troublesome thoughts, at least for the duration of the journey.

  I look around the railway carriage from time to time for any sign of the man in the black coat but he’s nowhere to be seen.

  Today is a good day to revert to my older, more favored route. The arrival at London Bridge Station, the walk under the dominating shadow of the Shard, down to Southwark Cathedral and onto Bankside has a welcome familiarity.

  I’m within a few minutes of the Herald offices when I look round and see that the man in the black coat is now just behind me. He must have followed me all the way from the station, keeping just out of sight.