Grace had plenty of training and experience in how to finesse forensic interviews, but this was different. When she’d spoken to Ivo the day before, he had volunteered his advice on how to tease stories out of people. Find out what they want, he’d said. And give it to them in return for what you want. Keep telling them it was their idea to come to you, then block off all the exits. Never, ever offer them a choice, because that’s giving them a way to back out. She’d heard rapists and fraudsters boast about how easy it had been to manipulate their victims into submission, and it felt creepy to echo their verbal techniques like this, but she daren’t indulge in self-examination or she’d end up telling Robyn to get the hell out of here and take the bus straight home.
‘You’re worried about your father,’ she said, ‘and you must feel loyalty to your friend Angie Turner too. You said you needed to talk to someone. Maybe you’ll feel better if you do.’
Robyn raised her chin to stare at her. Grace could see both doubt and defiance in her eyes.
‘It may be that all your fears are completely unfounded,’ said Grace. ‘But you obviously love your dad, and you don’t want to be stuck with such an awful burden of suspicion between you. I’m sure he doesn’t either.’
‘No,’ Robyn conceded.
‘I saw Angie’s parents at the inquest this morning,’ said Grace. ‘Her father lost his mother as well that day. Angie’s grandmother. All the relatives just want to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.’
‘My father sells sporting guns,’ cried Robyn. ‘That doesn’t make any of this his fault!’
‘But it’s why we have such strict regulations around firearms. And if he’s sticking to the letter of those regulations, then there’s no problem, is there?’ Grace couldn’t help picturing herself in her last year at school, how unformed she’d been and how much her own father had meant to her, how much of her world she’d seen through his eyes. She steeled herself to keep going. ‘It was you who said you were worried he might be a criminal.’
‘Do you think he is?’ Robyn demanded. ‘Is that why you keep coming to the house?’
‘A lot of people die in this country because of illegal firearms,’ said Grace.
‘It’s got nothing to do with my dad! He’d never let anything like that happen!’
‘Not deliberately, perhaps. But you know the true cause of most crime, Robyn? It’s horribly simple. Money.’
‘Then why don’t you go after all the bankers and the people who want to frack everywhere and those sorts of people? Leave us alone!’
‘Maybe we should, but that’s not my job.’
‘I’m going to miss my bus.’
‘Think about it, Robyn. Think about the money. Think about the food you eat, and your private school fees, and probably your foreign holidays. Think about what pays for all that, and what that means. You’ve got my number.’
‘I have to go.’ Robyn darted around Grace and ran towards where the buses were about to depart. Grace couldn’t bear to watch her go. She turned away, a steadying hand against the rough ridges of the tree trunk beside her, and hated herself.
42
Most of Robyn’s classmates who took the same bus had shorter journeys, and so she was used to spending the last twenty minutes or so without company. The sun had not yet entirely set, but the lights inside the bus made the passing countryside appear already dark. Usually she quite liked this final part of the journey; it marked the transition from school to home, from constant noise and activity to stillness. But today she was in a state of panic. What right did that horrible interfering woman have to ambush her like that? Surely police detectives weren’t supposed to sneak up on people in such a creepy way? She hated her and wished she’d never called her!
But, said the little voice of reason, she had called her. She had brought this avenging angel down upon herself when she’d fished the card DI Fisher had handed to her dad out of the rubbish bin and hidden it at the bottom of her school rucksack. How could she have been so stupid? How could she ever face her dad after such terrible, terrible disloyalty? Exactly what kind of damage had she done? No matter how much she now regretted her impulsive phone call, it was sinking in that it was beyond her power to stop what she – stupid! stupid! – had started. She had let the evil genie out of its bottle and would have to live with the consequences.
She wished she had a comforting older brother or sister to turn to, someone who had grown up seeing and hearing all the same things as she had, who could now reassure her that she was seeing demons where none existed, and that their father remained the man she so desperately wanted and needed him to be. And people like Kenny too. Surely she’d have to be crazy to suspect Kenny of being some cunning arch-criminal?
Yet what was her father doing, thinking he could bring a third person, a child, into this? The anguished question burst unsought into her head. Was the true reason she had no siblings a pragmatic move to limit prying eyes and inconvenient questions? Was any part of her life not moulded around her father’s larger, secret concerns?
If she put her face close to the glass she could peer out at the houses and gardens and parked cars as the bus passed through a village. Lights were coming on in windows where curtains had not yet been drawn. How unknowable we all are, she thought, as her mind’s eye zoomed upwards until the travelling bus became a speck, like in one of those satellite images they showed of drone strikes or in photographs taken from outer space. Only now the destructive force about to be unleashed on her home lay right inside her own suspicious mind.
Every lighted window they passed represented at least one individual life. These were people Robyn didn’t know and would probably never know. Did it matter if any one of them was snuffed out? Before Angie’s death, she would have said, if she were being honest, that their lives meant no more to her than the starving children and disaster victims and refugees that the charity TV ads tried to raise money for. But now that she had experienced for herself the relentless silence of death she could no longer think like that. People mattered. Every person mattered to someone. Would the crazy guy who had shot Angie and all the others still have killed them if he’d had to do it with a club or a knife or his bare hands? How many of those in the murder statistics she’d looked at online would still be alive if someone had not placed a gun in the hands of their killer? Could that person really be her father?
The bus dropped her at the end of their lane. She stood listening until the noise of its engine had floated away, and she could retune her ears to the familiar sounds of the gloaming. She was scared. Never had she stood here at the approach to home and felt afraid. Who was the Leonard Ingold the police came to visit? What was he capable of? What would he do if he found out what she had done? Was he capable of hurting her physically? Dumping her in a sack in the creek like the incriminating evidence from his workshop? For she was certain now that that’s what he had been doing that day she came home early from school. Kenny had come and taken something away in his van, and then her dad had gone off down to the creek with two heavy bags and returned without them.
The thought of what would happen if she told DI Fisher about that made her feel dizzy and sick.
Robyn was convinced that, if she walked on down the track and went into the cosy kitchen and stood by the warm Aga, her father would take one look at her and read her mind. That thought was worse than anything she’d ever felt in her life. Physical torture was preferable to this, and she experienced a crushing insight into why one of the girls at school had an endlessly replenished row of diagonal scars up her left arm. But such a release of tension would not help her. Nothing could.
Only now did the full enormity of what she had done by speaking to Grace Fisher hit her. What had she been thinking?
But it had seemed impossible, just as DI Fisher had warned, to do nothing and yet continue with the gnawing suspicion, not to know the truth for sure. But, now that she had made everything so much worse, mere suspicion seemed a safe and benign stat
e. She had turned herself into a traitor who had to go home and lie to the two people she loved most in the world.
A little voice inside her protested that she had been brought up to obey the law, to respect teachers and other people in authority, to be scrupulous about the legal constraints of her dad’s business. More than anyone it was he who had taught her how to tell right from wrong, how important rules and regulations were. So how could it possibly be that he was some kind of felon, unable himself to do what was right? And what about her mum? Where did Nicola fit into all this?
Her mother spent a good part of each day in the little office that opened off the reception area in Leonard’s workshop. She kept the accounts. She was not a flashy person, not the type to want expensive shoes or handbags, but there was the Aga, her new Suzuki four-by-four, the holidays in Portugal. Her parents had taken her to Disney World in Florida once, and not flown economy. Although she’d been too young then to think about the cost, she wasn’t like most of the other girls at school who didn’t care where the money came from as long as their parents bought them all the clothes and latest phones and shoes they asked for. But now Grace Fisher’s words would haunt her every time her parents paid for anything. Until she knew for certain where the money really came from, she couldn’t even accept their offer to help out when she went to uni. It would be like having blood on her hands.
Maybe her parents intended to initiate her into the reality of the family firm when she turned eighteen? But she knew that wouldn’t happen. Her hand went unconsciously to the cheek that Nicola had slapped. It wasn’t the physical memory of the blow that burned inside her, but the significance of the gesture: it was her mother’s unintended admission that Robyn’s suspicions were accurate. That was what hurt the most, what had given her a pain deep in her chest, an ache around her heart that made her feel fragile in a new and scary way.
She was getting cold and realized with a start that the last rim of the sun was about to disappear below the horizon. They kept a torch in a plastic-lined box hidden in the hedge in case one of them had to negotiate the lane in the dark, but even with the torch it was annoying to stumble about and risk twisting an ankle. The later she was, the more questions they’d ask, so, unless she was going to run away altogether, she’d better get moving.
She wished Angie was alive: she was the one friend she could have called and gone to, the one friend who would have listened without making a drama out of it, and then asked all the right questions.
Robyn’s anger at Angie’s futile death drove her down the track towards the lights of a home that now felt like a place of danger and distress.
But was it? Was it? Surely she must be wrong! None of this could be anything more than her ridiculous imaginings.
But there was the bit that didn’t fit, the bit she knew deep down wasn’t wrong. It was the insight she’d had, sitting beside her father in the Land Rover, into how he liked to be unknowable; how he derived some kind of perverse satisfaction from the performance he put on in order to evade and deflect and elide the truth. Maybe the risk of being unmasked gave him a thrill. Maybe none of it had ever been, as he told her so often, about caring for his family, about love.
Robyn pushed open the back door and, as she hung up her coat, called out to let them know she was home. She found Leonard sitting at the kitchen table, mending the torn pocket of his heavy waxed jacket. He looked up and smiled.
‘Good day?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’
‘Never mind, Birdie. No one likes January, do they?’ He smiled again – the smile that usually made a bad day instantly better – and she saw that she ran no risk at all of him reading her mind. It wouldn’t occur to him to guess at his daughter’s inner thoughts, let alone to suspect that she was capable of betraying him. He simply failed to see her as separate, her own individual self, not merely some kind of extension of himself. It was the saddest thought she’d ever had.
43
As Grace passed the door to Colin Pitman’s office the following morning, she glanced in and saw him standing in earnest conversation with John Kirkby. Colin didn’t notice her, and Kirkby had his back to her, so she quickly made for her own corner of the office. It was early, and today’s inquest hearing would not yet have started, but it must be something important to have diverted the retired custody sergeant from his journey to Chelmsford. She was flooded by the fear that Kirkby had somehow been made aware of her interest in his family, and was mounting a counteroffensive with her boss. She longed to be a fly on the wall, to hear what Kirkby might let slip of how much he knew about the corrupt and illegal activities of his murdered son – or what his younger son had been doing in Vale do Lobo.
From her desk she kept a wary eye on the two men, but it was not long before Colin courteously walked Kirkby to the main office door before coming straight over to Grace’s cubicle.
‘Poor bloke,’ he said. ‘Remind me, when I retire, never to come back and haunt the place like that.’
‘What did he want?’ She made her question sound as casual as possible.
‘Nothing really. A few questions about the inquest. I reckon he just appreciates the comfort of familiar surroundings.’
Grace gave a tight smile of agreement: it seemed to her that the tense body language of the two men had suggested more than merely a nostalgic chat.
‘He said Lance Cooper gave his evidence yesterday,’ said Colin.
‘Yes,’ said Grace, again feeling the prickling of fear: just what had Ivo’s trip to Vale do Lobo unleashed?
‘There’s no need for him to come straight back to work,’ said Colin. ‘He should take his full compassionate leave, if that’s what he needs.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
Never had Grace been more grateful to a ringing phone. Mouthing, ‘Sorry,’ she picked up the handset from her desk. ‘DI Fisher.’
After a brief conversation and some scribbled note-taking, she looked up again at her boss. ‘There’s been a fatal shooting at the hospital. Seventy-year-old male crossing a footbridge from the visitor car park. Single bullet to the heart. No one realized at first what had happened, so he was rushed into A & E, where he was pronounced dead.’
‘Anyone apprehended?’ asked Colin.
‘No,’ said Grace, getting up and heading past him out to the main MIT office. ‘No report yet of anyone actually seeing a gunman. Sounds more like a sniper shot. Hospital security have the place in lockdown in case the shooter’s still out there.’ She clapped her hands and waited for the team to turn and face her.
‘Listen up, everyone. Fatal shooting in the area of the visitor car park at the hospital. I want a firearms team and a surveillance helicopter with thermal imaging over there right away. As soon as we know the area is safe, I want it cordoned off and a forensic team on the ground. I want all CCTV footage secured as soon as possible. Duncan, start a crime scene log.’
‘I’ll give Samit a call,’ said Colin. ‘Sooner we retrieve the bullet and can get started on ballistics, the better.’
‘Thanks,’ said Grace. ‘I’ll get the body secured in the hospital mortuary. It’s already been moved, so we’re not going to get an accurate trajectory for the shot.’ She turned back to the team. ‘Someone must have seen something, and I don’t want anyone leaving until we’ve identified and positioned every single witness.’ She held up a hand as she saw Duncan about to object. ‘Yes, I know, it’ll be a logistical nightmare for the hospital.’ She turned to Colin. ‘Perhaps you’d be the best person to speak to the managers, sir? Explain why they can’t have their car park back until we’re finished with it.’
Colin gave a wry smile. ‘You spoil me, DI Fisher.’
His response broke the tension, reminding Grace of why he was to many people an effective and popular boss. He loved to be out front, rallying the troops, whenever a new case kicked off; only when the mundane drudgery of an inquiry kicked in did he tend to melt into the background, content then to let the infantry get on with the wo
rk. Which was fine by her.
‘Hilary can ask the local radio stations to put something out and keep people updated,’ he said. ‘You’d better get over to the scene. I’ll hold the fort here.’
No further shots were reported in the time it took Grace to reach the hospital, a couple of miles north of the city centre. The helicopter had scanned the area, and Ben Marrington, the uniform inspector who came to meet her in a staff car park, well away from the crime scene, felt sufficiently confident that the shooter was no longer on site to dismiss the risk that he was lying in wait to ambush the police or crime scene examiners. Although she and Ben had only worked together a few times, she knew well him enough to believe that his quiet composure was entirely natural – not like the passive-aggressive air of calm that some officers thought they could get away with – and she was content to rely on his judgement and trust to his thoroughness.
‘It’s possible he fled on foot,’ he said. ‘The car park is a pay-as-you-leave barrier system, and I very much doubt he’d have hung around to feed the correct change into the machine.’
‘Which means that the weapon may still be here, stashed in one of the cars,’ said Grace.
‘We’re talking about fifteen hundred parking spaces,’ Ben pointed out.
‘I realize it’s a big job,’ said Grace. ‘We’ll draft in as much manpower as we can. But I want the crime scene examiners in there first. If we can find a shell casing, then we’ll have a lead on the shooter’s position, and that will help narrow things down.’
‘The hospital managers are already antsy about the disruption to their appointments system.’
Grace grimaced and held out her hands. ‘What else we can do?’
Ben answered with a half-smile. ‘Not a lot.’
‘Not to worry,’ she said. ‘Superintendent Pitman is dealing with the hospital. You can concentrate on keeping the area safe and nailed down.’
Shot Through the Heart: DI Grace Fisher 2 Page 23
