by Tom Weaver
She placed her hands on the table. 'Have you got anything to barter with?'
'Maybe.'
'What?'
I told her about the women, how they'd been linked by the task forces — and how the police had kept all the information buried.
'Bloody hell,' she said when I was finished. Her dark eyes were fixed on me, her mind turning things over. She read a couple of lines of whatever she'd written on her laptop, then looked at me again. 'Can I ask you something?'
'Of course.'
She paused. A finger moved to the laptop's screen. 'Why do you do this?'
I frowned. 'It's my job.'
'No, I don't mean that. I mean…' She stopped for a second time and pulled her hair away from her face. 'I understand it's your job to find people. I understand that.'
She looked at me, her eyes focused, but didn't say anything. I smiled at her, and she smiled back — but not in the way she normally did.
'What's the matter, Liz?'
Her eyes flicked back to her laptop.
'Liz?'
Finally she looked up. 'You remember the last time we were in a room like this?'
'Sure.'
'Last year, on that case up north. You remember that?'
I held up my hand and showed her my nails. 'I've got the scars here to remind me,' I said, smiling, trying to cut through whatever it was that had settled between us.
'After we were done with that, I thought about what you did, about how far you were prepared to go to finish what you started on that case.' She glanced at me. 'I know you weren't completely honest with me about what went on. I know that. But that's fine. You gave me enough to work with, and we got you off, and that was all that mattered. I kind of filed it away as something that we might need to revisit later on down the line, if anything ever… happened between us.'
She traced a finger along her bottom lip.
'But even if you never did tell me what happened there, it wouldn't really bother me if it was just a one-off.' She faced me. 'But it's not going to be a one-off.'
'Liz, it's my job. This is what I do. I don't…' It was my turn to pause this time. I reached across the desk and took her hand. She pulled it away. 'I find people.'
'You find screwed-up people, David. You put yourself on the line, your body on the line, and you hope, somehow, you're going to come out the other side still breathing. And I don't care about the lies and the details you leave out. What I care about is why you do it.' She stopped and looked at me for a long time. 'Why do you do it?'
'I have other cases.'
'Do you?'
'Of course I do.'
'How many since that last one?'
'Four.'
'In ten months?'
'That last one…' I looked down at my fingernails. 'It took a lot out of me. I needed time to recover. But cases like that, cases like this…' I smiled. They're unusual.'
'But you still take them on.'
'I can't predict how they're going to turn out. If I could do that I wouldn't be finding missing people, I'd be doing the Lottery every week.'
'Yeah, but most people would turn around and walk away when things started going south,' she said. 'Do you think anyone else would have teamed up with Healy, stuck two fingers up at the police and headed right into the lair of a psychopath like Glass?'
'He needed to be stopped.'
'By the police.'
I reached for her, and this time didn't let her wriggle away. 'Sometimes you need to do things because they're right — even if they're not legally right.'
She had her head down, facing the table, hair spilling past her ears. I squeezed her hands, trying to get her to look at me. But she didn't. She stayed still. Silent.
'Liz?'
Then she looked up. 'I can't compete with her.'
I frowned. 'What are you talking about?'
'Derryn. I can't compete with her, David.'
'What? You don't have to compete with —'
'You don't have that mechanism that tells you when enough is enough. You don't know when to stop. You're trying to plug holes in the world because you know what it's like to lose someone, and you think it's your job to stop anyone else suffering the same way. You're doing this for her, David. That case up north was for her. And this one is too. You're plugging the hole she left behind by taking on other people's pain. And I can't compete with that.'
I let go of her hands. She looked at me, a tear breaking free, a watery streak of mascara following in its wake. I stared back, unable to articulate. Unable to come back with any argument.
Because I knew, deep down, she might be right.
Chapter Seventy
The interview took two and a half hours. Liz sat beside me the whole time, stopping me if she felt I needed to be redirected away from something harmful. Hart and Davidson came at me hard, like attack dogs, trying to catch me out, trying to lead me into blind alleys and oneway streets. They both played on my relationship with Healy. They tried to make it sound stronger and more purposeful than it was. They used the moment outside the safe house when Healy had pulled a gun to underline their case, Hart making mention of how I'd done nothing to dissuade Healy.
'I told him to put the gun away.'
'Once,' Hart said. 'Half-heartedly. The second time, when you saw what I was telling you to do, you ignored me. Then you ran off into the sunset with him.'
'I felt—'
'You felt a kinship for him, David.'
'No.'
'You believed what he was doing was right.'
'No.' I sighed.
'Then why did you do it?'
I paused, glanced at Liz and then back to them. 'I felt his actions were wrong — but his reasons were right.'
Davidson snorted. 'How do you figure that?'
'I think he was frustrated.'
'With who?'
'With you.'
Silence descended. It was hot in the room, and the only sound now was the whirr of an air-conditioning unit.
'Look at it from his point of view,' I continued. 'You brushed his daughter's disappearance under the carpet with the other seven, but you didn't even have the decency to link her to Glass.'
A tremor passed across the room.
Davidson whitened. Hart crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. 'What are you talking about, David?'
'You know what I'm talking about.'
No reply. They didn't want anything committed to tape. In their faces, I could see they were trying to figure it out. How I knew. Whether Healy had told me. How he'd found out so much. I had them by the balls and there was no backing out now.
'I get it,' I said. 'Deny all knowledge, maintain the silence. Trouble is, your circle of trust has been breached. You're not the only people who know what really happened any more. The rest of the world might think it's a one-in-a-million chance that we stumbled across seven women in that place, but all of us here know different.'
Davidson looked away. Hart maintained eye contact, but his hand was hovering close to the tape recorder, desperate for this to end. I nodded for him to push the button.
He stopped the tape.
Liz leaned forward. 'Okay,' she said. 'Here's the deal: David walks out of here, without charge. You leave him alone. You don't come back for him. Anything to do with his part in this investigation is over. In return, he maintains a dignified silence.'
They looked between us.
Finally, Hart nodded. 'Let me make some calls.'
They left me alone in the interview room with a cup of coffee and a bland ham and cheese sandwich. Liz disappeared to call the office and see what she'd missed out on. She smiled as she left - touching my arm and telling me I'd done brilliantly - but she didn't mention anything we'd talked about earlier. I was too tired, too drained, to figure out if the fissure that had opened between us could ever be pushed back together again. But I was glad, at least, to have got some kind of reaction out of her.
There was no clock in the interview roo
m, but it felt like about fifteen minutes had passed when the door opened again. I turned, expecting to see Liz.
But it was Phillips.
He looked at me, closed the door behind him and walked around to the other side of the table. I felt like grabbing him by the collar and smashing his face through the wall.
'How are you, David?' he asked, sitting down.
I smirked. 'Oh, just great.'
'Can I get you anything else?'
'Yeah,' I said, pushing the coffee cup across the table. 'Another one of those — and an explanation of what the hell you were doing at Jill's.'
He nodded as if he'd expected that straight off the bat. 'She called me.'
'Why would she do that?'
'Because Frank and I went way back. We came up through the ranks together and then I basically got him the job here at the Met. I've known Jill for years.'
'So, what - you just hang around outside her house?'
'She left a weird message on my phone. She didn't say anything — it was just ten seconds of silence - but when I called her back she didn't answer.'
And then it all shifted into focus: the night before, she phoned and didn't answer, and then she'd been odd when I'd called her on the landline. Because Crane had come for her at home. The first one had been a distress call. She must have made the same call to Phillips as well. But Crane had found out — and the next time I rang her, Crane had made her tell me everything was fine. Probably with a knife at her throat.
'I didn't like it,' Phillips continued. 'So I went round there…' He glanced behind him, even though the door was closed. 'And I managed to get into her house'. Just like Ewan Tasker had suspected. 'But she wasn't there. She was gone.'
I looked at him. 'She called me in a panic one night and said she thought someone had been watching her place. It was you. She saw your car.'
'It was me. It was my car.' He paused. A long-drawn- out breath. 'Frank and I had a kind of… arrangement. A promise we made.'
'You'd look out for each other.'
'Right. If either of us…' He stopped briefly. 'Look, when I made that promise to Frank, when we made that promise to each other, it was one I never believed I'd have to see through. But now I do. So from time to time, I check in on Jill. I went past her place a couple of times on the way to the station yesterday evening. That night you're talking about, when you went round, I guess I didn't hide well enough. It had been a long day.'
I didn't say anything. Just stared at him.
'You're pissed off,' he said. 'I get it.'
'Do you?'
He nodded, trying to defuse the situation. 'Believe it or not, I do.'
'So where's Jill?'
'We don't know.'
'She wasn't in his place in the woods?'
'No. Seven dead women were recovered from there - none of them her.'
'Seven?'
'We found Susan Markham's body in a wall cavity.'
She hadn't been placed with the others. No coffin. No formalin. Which meant he obviously didn't see her as part of his plan. She was just bait to reel Markham in. The other women — even Leanne — were something else. All blonde. All blue-eyed.
All worth keeping.
'Anyway,' Phillips said. 'Jill wasn't there. We tore that place apart.'
'She's not back home?'
'Hasn't been back. Hasn't been anywhere as far as we can tell. Not home, not to work, not with her family.'
Crane knows where she is. 'He won't tell you?'
'He's not said a word. But we found photos of her in his hideout. Pictures of her, her house, her friends. You were in some of them.' His fingers drifted to his wedding band and he leaned back in his chair. 'He took her, I think we both know that.' Finally his eyes moved back to mine. 'Look, David…'
I knew what was coming, and I wasn't about to make it easy for him.
'I know you could use what you know against us.'
'You're damn right I could. What you did with those women…' He didn't say anything, just looked at me. I felt the anger prickle beneath my skin as I watched him, waiting for him to justify what he'd done. 'It was wrong.'
'Agreed.'
'But you did it anyway?'
'By keeping Glass unaware we were on to him, we were within touching distance of the Russians. That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t erase those women. But now we have everything, murders, drugs, prostitution, people-trafficking, gunrunning, money-laundering. Was it a sacrifice worth making?' He shrugged. 'It depends where you're standing.'
'You had a legal and moral obligation to tell their families.'
'Try standing next to the body of a ten-year-old prostitute who has had every hole in her body ripped to shreds. Or at the back of a van that's just brought seventeen women and kids into the country, all of whom have suffocated to death because the van has no ventilation. Or next to the imported guns or the shitty drugs that are killing people, day after day. Things aren't so clear.'
'They look clear.'
He leaned forward. 'Seven women, or seven ten-year-olds?'
'It's not about choosing — it's about doing it all.'
Phillips smiled. You're an idealist.'
'Maybe so. But you were wrong.'
Phillips started turning his wedding band again. Then he glanced at his watch. We haven't got time for this. We need to find Jill.'
'So find her.'
He eyed me again but didn't speak.
What's going on here?
'Hart tells me we should cut a deal with you,' he said eventually, 'and, given what you know, I think he's right. But what about your new friend Healy?'
'What about him?'
'You willing to help him?'
'Help him how?'
'He's going down, David. Once he's well enough to walk out of that hospital, it'll be in a set of cuffs. Then he'll be up in front of a judge. Then he'll be behind bars. You know what they do to bent coppers on the inside?'
'So?'
'So, we're willing to go easy on Healy in return for a favour.'
'Which is?'
Phillips paused. 'We need you to interview Aron Crane.'
Chapter Seventy-one
Phillips led Liz and me to a small room with a metal shelf full of electronic equipment and a huge one-way mirror. Through it, I could see Aron Crane seated in the interview room, alone, handcuffed to a metal arch welded into the table. He was staring at the wall, his nose broken and bruises dotted down the side of his face where I'd connected with the shovel. If nothing else, it made me feel good to have hurt him.
Next to the audio equipment an officer sat at a computer, headphones on, a live colour CCTV image onscreen. Also inside the room were Jamie Hart and a uniformed superintendent. I recognized him from the last time I'd been brought in for questioning. He stood and came across to meet us. Shook hands with Liz, but not with me. He introduced himself as Ian Bartholomew. The top cop at the station. He thanked me through gritted teeth for my co-operation, but didn't seem keen on the idea of turning a blind eye to what had happened with Healy and me. It was obviously Hart and Phillips who had persuaded him to go this route. After Bartholomew was done, he seated himself at the back of the room and nodded at Phillips.
'He's only spoken for about a minute since we brought him in,' Phillips said.
The door to the room opened up and a uniformed officer brought a trayful of shop-bought coffees in. I didn't have to put up with machine effluent now they needed my help. I took one, peeled the lid off it and watched Crane. He was absolutely still.
'Play it,' Phillips said to the man at the computer.
The officer clicked a couple of options on the screen, and seconds later a square of CCTV footage appeared. Phillips and Hart in the interview room with Crane.
'You can't stay silent all day,' Hart said.
Crane was looking down. He glanced at Hart, held his eye for a moment and then turned his attention back to the surface of the table. In the corner of the screen was a counter. 01:57:4
3. One hour, fifty-seven minutes into the interview and he hadn't spoken once.
'You can contact a lawyer any time you want,' Hart added. 'It's your legal right to do that.' Nothing. No response. 'Come on, Aron - where's Jill White?'
Crane sniffed.
'Why don't you tell us about David Raker instead?' Phillips offered.
I turned to Phillips. He didn't meet my eye.
On-screen, Crane finally looked up. 'Why would I do that?'
'He interests you.'
'Does he?'
'In your hideout you had pictures of him on your wall.'
Crane pursed his lips, as if he suddenly realized Phillips was right. 'I'll tell you what,' he said. You get Raker in here to talk to me, alone, and you get your confession.'
'You know we can't do that, Aron,' Phillips said.
Crane shrugged. 'Then I guess I don't talk.'
'Why do you want to talk to David Raker?'
Nothing.
'Aron?'
Zero. Crane's head had dropped again, and he was looking down at the table. A couple of seconds later, the video froze. The clip was finished.
'What Does he want to talk to you about?' Bartholomew asked.
'I've no idea.' I looked back at Crane. 'But he seemed to think we had some kind of a connection. Something in common.'
'Like what?' Phillips asked.
I shook my head. 'I don't know.'
'This is highly unusual,' Bartholomew said. Next to him, Hart shuffled in his seat, two thin hands together on his lap. 'We're not running a circus here.'
'So I won't talk to him.'
Bartholomew and Phillips looked at one another. The superintendent got to his feet and came across to me. 'I don't like this, Mr Raker,' he said. 'I don't like any of it.'
'That makes two of us.'
'What could possibly make you so special to him?'
'I don't know,' I said, sipping my coffee and stepping all the way up to the glass. 'But I've got a feeling I'm about to find out.'
Chapter Seventy-two
Aron Crane looked up as I entered. Behind me, a uniformed officer closed the door. The room was warm and had no windows. No clocks. No daylight. It could have been any time of the day. Crane remained perfectly still, both his hands flat to the table, eyes fixed on me. I sat down. He took a quick sideways glance at the one-way mirror.
