The Shadows of Justice

by Simon Hall

  “When my leg’s better,” Newman went on, “I’m going to step back from the day-to-day running of Roger’s Rugs. I’m going to dedicate myself to my charity work. I plan to set up a foundation in Annette’s memory.”

  He bent down, shifted the weight of his plaster-bound leg and wriggled the protruding toes.

  “I should never have jumped. You were absolutely right. It’s not what Annette would have wanted and it’s not me. It was cowardly and I’ve never been a coward. I just wanted to apologise.”

  He reached out a hand. Dan was aware of Adam’s eyes, sharp upon him, but he shook it anyway.

  A nurse walked over and fussed around, straightened the blanket over Newman’s knees and offered the visitors a cup of tea. Adam declined, with just a terse shake of the head.

  “Anyway,” the businessman said, “I don’t expect you came here to listen to me going on about how sorry I am. How can I help you?” He smiled again. “Have you come to release me from arrest?”

  Adam still wouldn’t reply, so Claire said, “I think it’s a moot point whether you were actually under arrest. As I remember, we didn’t get through the caution before you… got a little upset.”

  “So, how can I help you then? Have you got some news about the investigation?”

  And now Adam did speak. But all he said was, “Kind of.” Just two words, but as ominous as a shark circling in the water.

  “Which means?”

  The detective folded his arms. “Here’s the problem, Mr Newman. We’ve investigated everyone who might have a reason to want to harm the Edwards. We’ve looked at their motives and their movements. And this is the same old issue we keep coming back to.”

  He paused while a cleaner walked by, pushing a broom back and forth.

  “No one has a motive and opportunity like yours. No one wanted the Edwards to suffer so much. I’ve heard what you say, about not killing them and it not being in your character. But frankly, I don’t believe it. So, in answer to your question – no, we haven’t come to release you from arrest. It’s quite the opposite.”

  Claire caught Dan’s look. Their differences were gone in a shared sympathy for this man. And there was concern too, at the direction in which Adam was forcing the investigation.

  He was working through the words of the caution. Newman said nothing, just stared at him. A hand grabbed at the crutch, propped by his wheelchair. He gripped it hard, as if he wished it was the detective’s throat.

  “Now, do you have anything you’d like to say?” Adam concluded.

  The businessman didn’t reply. He looked stricken, immovably static. It was perhaps disbelief, maybe anger, or a collision of the both.

  “In which case, we’ll leave you – for now,” Adam continued. “And in case you were thinking about another of your little disappearing acts, be it wheelchair bound or not, I wouldn’t bother. There’ll be a cop on the entrance to the ward.”

  Still, Newman said nothing. That hand was gripping and releasing, gripping and releasing the handle of the crutch.

  Adam headed for the door. Claire and Dan exchanged a glance and dutifully followed. Neither could look at Newman. But a noise made them stop.

  It began as a low growl, but grew fast to become a roar, like a jet preparing for flight. It was Newman, his face contorted in a frightening manner. What calm the man had found was turned to ash in the furnace of his fury.

  “You idiot, Breen!” he yelled. “You’re a fucking fool! You can’t catch any criminals, and now you’re persecuting an innocent man. You’re a prick man, an absolute arsehole! I’ll get you for this.”

  His hand scrabbled for the crutch, drew it back and sent it flying across the ward. It barely reached Adam, clattering forlornly at his feet, and he kicked it contemptuously aside.

  ***

  On the drive back to Charles Cross, the car was filled with silence. On several occasions, Dan thought about trying to break it, but the look on Adam’s face suggested that would be unwise. He was preoccupied to the point of reverie. Battles were being fought, time and again, in the detective’s mind.

  Dan tried to find some respite from the demons of the case in comforting memories. But all he could think of was the trick he’d pulled to spend the night with Katrina. What was a triumph of resourcefulness had now begun to feel like shameful deception.

  And here was Claire, just inches away. A woman who loved him and hoped for a future with him, however unworthy he may be.

  Just half a mile from the police station, as they reached the end of Mutley Plain, the car got stuck in a traffic jam. A delivery lorry had broken down, a small mishap leading to the predictable gridlock that is always the way with England’s overcrowded roads.

  Dan’s mobile rang. It was a withheld number and that meant work. He ignored it and then listened to the answer phone message. It was Lizzie, and in full ranting force.

  Newman’s solicitors had been on the phone. They were ringing all the media in the kingdom.

  Their client had called a press conference at the hospital to attack the police in the most forthright of terms. Incompetent, blundering and negligent were the words the solicitors were using. It would be highly newsworthy.

  As she reached the end of the message, Lizzie’s tone changed. Another point Newman would be making was that the police were so inept, they appeared to be relying upon the input of a journalist to help solve the case. She wondered if Dan might know anything about that?

  Lizzie’s voice was as subdued as Dan had ever heard it. Intensity and insanity he was used to, but this was disconcertingly different.

  Yard by painstaking yard, they neared the end of the jam. Adam rolled down a window, looked to Claire and finally spoke. “You don’t think Newman did it either, do you?”

  She let the car trundle on, before admitting, “No sir. I have to say, I don’t.”

  “Because of that reaction?”

  She nodded. “It just wasn’t like any I’ve seen before. It wasn’t that strange kind of relief that the game is over, or the standard defiance. It seemed… heartfelt.”

  Adam tapped a hand on the dashboard. He sounded so deflated it was painful. “I fear you may be right.”

  “That’s not to say he wasn’t involved,” Claire added. “I think he’s got the brains and the motivation. But I think he’d need someone else, to either help or encourage him.”

  “Which brings us back to the conspiracy theory,” Adam replied, thoughtfully. “But who could he be working with? The only one who doesn’t have an alibi is Parkinson. And I can’t see him being involved.”

  Claire guided the car around the lorry and onto the roundabout. She had something else to say, Dan could see, but was struggling with it. The gate at the back of Charles Cross ground out its guttural welcome.

  Adam moved to get out of the car, but Claire said, “Stop a moment, please, sir.”

  Her voice had changed. It wasn’t the usual measured calm, but instead had taken on a querulous tone. It was almost a fear of what she needed to release.

  “Yes?” Adam replied.

  “This is difficult for me to say, but I think I have to.”

  In the back of the car, Dan sat still and silent. Never before had he heard Claire speak like this.

  She flicked at her hair, and then said, “I think I have an idea who might have killed the Edwards.”

  “What?” Adam yelped. “Who?”

  “It’s difficult…”

  “Templar, you mean? Do you think it’s Templar?”

  “No.”

  “Ivy?”

  “No. Not Ivy either.”

  “What, Parkinson then? Surely you don’t think it’s him?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Adam looked baffled. “But they’re all the suspects we’ve got. There is no one else. Claire, what are you talking about?”

  She swallowed hard. “I think the killer may be one of us, sir.”

  “One of us? What? Who? Claire!”

  Once more she h
esitated, before saying, “I think it might have been Katrina.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Amongst the mass of the professions a detective is one of the hardest to shock, and an experienced investigator the toughest of all.

  It might be the years of prying into the terrible details of the foulest of horrors the human race can inflict upon its kin. The countless sleepless sights of bodies, dismembered in the clinical coldness of an insane killer, or in the bloody, slashing rage of passion. It could be the accumulations of corpses that many detectives have to face at some point in their careers.

  Or it can be the simple day-to-day corrosion of lies. The expectation of deception that picks away another little chip of humanity each time. Or the foul abuse that is whispered, shouted and screamed. Or the threats of a bloody revenge, no matter how long it takes, a criminal’s vengeance one day sure to come.

  All this Adam had known in his years as a police officer and so had become largely insulated from shock. But it was clear now, in the windows of his eyes.

  “I did say it wasn’t easy, sir,” Claire repeated.

  “You’re not wrong there,” the detective replied, with feeling. “Go on then, let’s hear the worst.”

  The first part of Claire’s argument was straightforward. Katrina had got to know Annette well – perhaps too well.

  “I noticed a real closeness between them. In court, when Annette was upset, it was Katrina she wanted to run to.”

  “Carry on,” Adam said, thoughtfully.

  “Look at Katrina’s reaction since the Edwards were murdered. She’s not exactly been showing great commitment to catching the killer. Not like she did when we were trying to get Annette back.”

  It was growing hot in the car. Dan wound down a window, but a glance from Adam prompted him to close it again. This was no conversation to risk being overheard.

  “She’s a cop,” Claire continued. “She knows how to commit a crime and not leave any traces. She could easily have seen a case like that gas explosion in Plymouth before and got the idea how to kill the Edwards from it. She knows a fire is the best way to destroy evidence.”

  “Ok,” Adam said slowly. “Anything else?”

  Now Claire hesitated. There was more difficult terrain to come. She looked straight ahead, out of the windscreen and up at the police station.

  “There’s her – well, character. There’s a kind of detachment about her. It’s a certainty, a conviction that what she thinks is right. It’s the sort of dissociation we’ve seen before in many killers.”

  Adam watched a police van reverse carefully from a space and head out of the gates. A patrol car followed it.

  “That’s all highly speculative,” he said. “Where’s your actual evidence? There’s nothing solid to it.”

  Claire waited for a few seconds, before saying, “Actually, there is.”

  And now she looked around, at Dan. Throughout the conversation he had been doing his very best to keep quiet – hoping the two people in the front of the car might forget he had ever existed.

  But Claire was a detective – a good one. And that meant he knew exactly what was coming next.

  One day he would have told her. He would have confessed it. He’d agreed that with Rutherford. One day, when he was able to stand before her, he’d finally tell her that his mind was clear. When he knew their future.

  He would apologise and ask for forgiveness. Say he didn’t know what he was doing. That he was confused, unbalanced, vulnerable – all the excuses so familiar to men throughout the ages. He had never imagined the confession would come in the back of an unmarked police car in the yard at Charles Cross.

  “Dan?” Claire prompted, gently. “There is evidence, isn’t there?”

  “Well, I don’t know – I mean…”

  “What Dan’s trying to say is that he’s been seeing Katrina.”

  Their eyes were fixed upon him. One set, the eyes of a detective and a friend, the other those of a detective and a lover. Dan could have been a naughty child, fetched by his parents and taken home from school. The fun was over and a mighty reckoning had begun.

  “I, err – well…” he gulped.

  “Haven’t you?” Claire persisted.

  The thinness of air had become curiously thick.

  “I don’t know about seeing. I mean, I might have just—”

  “I know,” Adam cut in, ruthlessly. “Of course I know. I was just hoping you didn’t, Claire.”

  “No, I knew too. I wasn’t sure whether to be angry, or pity him. But I don’t hold it against him – not too much, anyway. He’s never been the best when it comes to emotions.”

  “I hope he’s learned a lesson,” Dan’s newly appointed father replied.

  “Yes,” Claire agreed, before softening her voice and adding. “And I very much hope he sorts out that strange mind of his soon.”

  They both looked at him, as if parents united in their disappointment, ire and indulgent fondness. And amidst all this, the subject of their rue sat quietly because there was nothing else to do.

  “On the day Annette committed suicide, later that evening, Dan sent a text message to Katrina,” Claire said. “Ostensibly, it was a few words to share the shock of what happened and check she was coping. In fact, it was designed to get together with her that night.”

  Dan was still finding the way of a Trappist the only available option.

  “But he didn’t get a reply,” Claire continued. “Instead, the next morning, Katrina apologised for not texting back, saying she was preoccupied. It was when we were at Homely Terrace, after the explosion.”

  “I recall,” Adam said.

  “That, in itself, was an interesting insight into her character,” Claire went on, coolly. “I think it was partly to goad me. And looking back, I think she also couldn’t resist giving us a clue. That it was her who’d killed the Edwards.”

  Adam swore and loosened his tie. “You’re saying she didn’t want to see Dan because she knew she was going to kill the Edwards that night?”

  Claire didn’t reply. There was no need.

  A seagull swooped down and landed on the bonnet of the car. Adam waved an irritable hand. It gave him a contemptuous look, but deigned to fly off again. The detective stared at the air it had vacated, working away at Claire’s words. And they were everywhere, confined in the small space of this car.

  “This is bloody far-fetched,” he said, eventually. “Katrina’s got an impeccable reputation. She’s run loads of these cases.”

  “But never one quite like this.”

  “I know her track record. She’s handled some huge kidnappings.”

  “When the subject’s been a 17-year-old girl? Who she’s got so close to?”

  “Yeah, but – I just can’t see it.”

  “I don’t like it either, sir. But you must admit it’s feasible.”

  “Well…”

  “Which means we’ve got to check it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “She broke the golden rule. She got involved. And you know what that can do.”

  Adam rolled his neck and rubbed a hand over the stubble of his chin.

  “Ok, go check it out. Talk to the staff at her hotel. And get the CCTV, too. But Claire…”

  “Yes?”

  “Be damned discreet.”

  They got out of the car and headed towards the back door of the police station. They were only metres away when it opened and Katrina stepped out.

  “Afternoon,” Adam said brusquely, and pushed past. Claire followed, without a word.

  Katrina watched them go, one eyebrow raised. Dan put on the vaguest of smiles, mumbled a greeting and also edged into the corridor.

  Stepping out into the grey light of the afternoon, from the darkness of the police station, those eyes had looked particularly vivid. The brown was warm and burnished, the green as bright as a jewel.

  Dan wondered if, in the months to come, they would be captured on the front page of every newspaper and l
abeled the most beautiful eyes a murderer had ever possessed.

  ***

  The time was coming up to two o’clock, the scheduled start of Newman’s press conference. Dan rang Nigel and asked to speak to Phil.

  “I need a favour.”

  “Are you ok? I mean, Lizzie’s—”

  “I’m fine. I just need your help. You’re at the hospital?”

  “Yeah, they’re doing the conference in the garden.”

  “I need to hear what’s said. Can you leave the line open and put your phone down near Newman?”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  Dan switched on the phone’s speaker. There were a couple of bumps and thuds and some muffled, background conversation. Adam came to stand beside him, in the corner of the MIR.

  “Deputy Chief’s due in a couple of hours. I’d say we’ve got until five.”

  “Snap.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That’s as late as I can leave it before I miraculously resurface, hopefully to tell my editor I’ve been undercover but now I’m back with an exclusive on who killed the Edwards.”

  They were alone in the room, but Adam lowered his voice anyway.

  “What do you think about whether Katrina might have…”

  “I don’t know what to think. But I know we’ve got to check it.”

  “Yep.”

  “And if Claire’s right, apart from being a flash of genius, it might just save us. On the subject of which…” Dan nodded to a pile of papers in the other corner. “That’s Katrina’s stuff.”

  “No!” Adam protested. “It could be personal, it could be confidential. I can’t possibly start going through a fellow officer’s notes.”

  “You’re right. It’s only our futures at stake.”

  Another silence. Both men looked around the room. At the felt boards, the clock, the windows, but never the papers in the corner.

  “I could do with a coffee,” Dan said airily. He nodded to his phone. “It might ease the pain of what we’re about to hear.”

  “Good thought.”

  “But – oh darn.”

  There followed a vigorous pocket patting display, which would have prompted derision even from a junior school drama class. “I don’t have any money.”