Mercy Killing

by Lisa Cutts

  ‘Have you got a minute?’ he said. ‘Bring your drink, although it won’t take long.’

  He stood by his office door, Gabrielle seconds behind him, and waited for her to go inside.

  With the door shut, he sat behind his desk and watched her place her cardboard cup on the table and take a seat.

  ‘After our chat, I wanted to make sure that now you’ve had time to think about things you’re still OK on this murder investigation,’ he said. ‘It is a difficult one, I’ll be the first to admit. No one likes paedophiles, but most people aren’t overly fond of murderers either. I want to make sure that you’re comfortable dealing with this because it hasn’t escaped my notice that you may not be. I’d be a pretty crap boss if I didn’t pay attention to my team.’

  Harry saw her eyes widen as he spoke, her lips parted as if she was going to say something, and then she looked down at her hands in her lap. From the corner of his eye, he saw her clasp them together.

  ‘Has someone said that I’m not pulling my weight?’ she said, eyes still down.

  ‘No, no. It’s nothing like that. I know that you’ll get on with anything you’re given but with your background in child investigations, it’s natural that you’ll have more of an insight into these things. I’m the same; I don’t sympathize with people who get their sexual gratification from hurting and abusing children although I don’t want to see them murdered either. Especially in our county.’

  He found himself looking at the top of her head as she seemed to be folding into her own lap. She really was a strange young woman. Harry was on the verge of asking her if she was all right, when she sat up straight and said, ‘I loathe them all. I know now that I probably stayed on child protection for too long. It got to me, got under my skin. I saw so many children whose lives and futures were ruined by lowlifes not fit to walk the earth, let alone be amongst babies and kids, it made me sick. Properly, physically ill. I couldn’t stand it any longer, though I should have seen the signs and moved on. You know what it’s like. You’ve been there. Trouble is, walking away seems like giving in and letting them win. I know that my attitude should always have been that I had the best job in the world. I got to arrest and lock up people who rape children, but when you do it constantly, week after week, disgusting pervert after disgusting pervert, you know that however hard you work, whatever you do, you’ll never stem the tide. It won’t stop, will it? More and more cases are coming to light, especially involving those who hold positions of authority, and should support the children in their care. Kids who have no one else to turn to. Who are isolated and vulnerable. It’s the tip of an enormous iceberg, except instead of ice, it’s made of the torment of children.

  ‘Some days, it was difficult to get out of bed and go in to work. I thought about resigning constantly and making it all someone else’s problem. Why should I go through so many innocents’ horror with them, reliving it all, feeling the way they do and damage my own sanity? I could simply walk away. But then, I couldn’t, could I?’

  She stopped talking, eyes glistening, her face immobilized by a mask of misery.

  The room was still. Harry gave her a moment before he said, ‘I know, Gab, I’ve been there. You leave, who takes on your caseload? The problem is, it won’t ever disappear completely, no matter how hard you work at it. You aren’t responsible for the entire planet’s ills. I think, for your sake as much as anything, you should be on another investigation. You see this?’ He pointed towards the wall, adorned with a whiteboard with a list of twelve other operation names written on it.

  She nodded.

  ‘Pick one of them, any one of them, and there’ll be plenty to do. I’ll speak to one of the detective sergeants, Sandra probably, and she can give you some work on something else, something that’s not going to cause you sleepless nights and internal conflict. In the meantime, I think that a trip to welfare is probably in order.’

  Gabrielle opened her mouth, then nodded at him again.

  ‘And you know,’ he said, ‘if you need some time off, I can give you a day or two at home, but only if you’d rather not be around people. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ll let Sandra know if you want to disappear off for the rest of the day.’

  He was unsure whether he had overdone it as she looked like she was going to burst into tears. Harry definitely didn’t want it getting out that he was losing his touch and had gone soft, but he could tell when someone was in distress. He felt guilty that it came as a relief to him that this went some way to explaining her odd behaviour. There was nothing more sinister involved.

  Right now, he was probably looking at a woman on the edge and in need of help. He knew how difficult it was sometimes to ask for it, and Gabrielle was showing all the signs of heading for depression, if she didn’t have it already.

  ‘Promise me one thing,’ said Harry as she stood up to go, dabbing the corner of her eyes with a tissue. ‘If you feel like this, talk to someone about it.’

  He thought he heard her mumble ‘OK’. There was possibly the beginning of ‘Thank you’, and then as she turned to go back into the incident room, she said, ‘I need to nip into town. OK if I go before the briefing?’

  ‘Course.’

  She shut the door behind her and he watched her through the small glass panel reinforced with chicken wire as she made her way back across the bustling incident room.

  Harry leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

  ‘Never underestimate people’s emotions and what makes them tick,’ he said to the ceiling.

  He was about to throw himself back into work, tired already so early in the day, when a Tannoy announcement from the police station’s front counter assistant caught his attention.

  ‘Visitor for DI Powell at the front counter, visitor for DI Powell at the front counter.’

  He sat for a moment as he decided whether to call and find out who it was or face the music. His hand hovered above the phone, then he sprang from the chair, took his suit jacket from the hook on the wall and walked out through his incident room.

  Once again, he ran an appreciative eye over his staff as they typed reports, made phone calls and rushed to each other’s assistance over queries, and listened to the good-natured banter between them all.

  He let himself out of the department’s security door and walked down the stairs towards his visitor.

  Through the security glass, Harry saw the familiar figure of Martha Lipton poised on one of the plastic seats inside the public entrance.

  She sat with her legs crossed, black stiletto dangling down from her foot as she absently waved it backwards and forwards. She glanced down at her watch with a frown but, as she looked up, she caught Harry watching her and gave him a wink.

  He pushed the door open with enough force to take the front-counter assistant off guard.

  ‘Thanks, Julie,’ he said to her. ‘I’ll take Miss Lipton here into one of the side rooms.’

  Martha picked her bag up from the floor and followed him across the foyer to a small windowless room furnished only with a desk, three odd chairs and a mess of blank statement forms and leaflets offering all manner of advice from how to spot extremists to security-marking personal property.

  ‘Morning,’ said Harry when they’d sat down opposite each other.

  ‘Good morning. I expected you to send one of your underlings.’

  ‘I think you mean my team. And they’re very busy. They’ve not only got a murder to investigate, but now an arson with intent to endanger life.’

  She bristled.

  ‘I’ve come here about both matters.’

  If Harry wasn’t very much mistaken, Martha did have the good grace to seem as if she’d been knocked off her pedestal.

  ‘Please, Harry,’ she said, hand outstretched across the table towards him, ‘I knew nothing about the fire. It could have been anyone. What I can help you with is the name of a new member of the Volunteer Army who might have been involved with the murder of Woo
dville.’

  ‘Go on.’

  She drummed her fingertips on the smooth surface of the table, deftly avoiding a tea stain from a previous member of the public.

  ‘You didn’t get this from me and I’ll deny I ever told you this. You know that I can’t be seen to betray my members.’

  Harry held in a laugh.

  ‘Give me a name,’ he said, ‘and leave the rest to me.’

  ‘I was in the High Street handing out leaflets. I gave one to a fella called Jonathan Tey. He came along to one of our meetings and afterwards we got chatting. He knew Albert Woodville and had a real problem with him, said he was in an amateur dramatic society with him and Woodville was using it to gain access to kids. Tey seemed quite, well, volatile. Possibly dangerous.’

  Harry pinched the pleats in his trouser legs, leaned forward and said, ‘Let me get this right here, you run a group of vigilantes who want to alert the public to the whereabouts of sex offenders in their neighbourhood, and you’re acting all surprised that someone’s come along to one of your shindigs and may have a propensity for violence.’

  ‘If you don’t need my help, there’s no point in my being here.’

  She stood up to go.

  ‘Martha, thank you for your time and for coming to see me.’

  He felt the words sticking in his throat but he knew a useful source when he saw one.

  ‘One last thing,’ he said as she turned towards the door, ‘the fire …’

  He watched her take a large breath and her shoulders inch a little higher. He had no idea why he wanted her to feel better about herself when he said, ‘We’ve got someone in custody for it. He said he acted alone, thought he’d teach a few people a lesson. He’s got no idea who or what the Volunteer Army are. He’s well known to the police, carried out a spate of crimes, including low-scale arson.’

  She turned back round to face him. ‘Thanks, Harry.’

  ‘What I need from you now,’ he said, benevolent feelings all but forgotten, ‘is a statement that you didn’t have anything to do with the fire and don’t know anyone by the name of Chris Enfield.’

  She raised a plucked eyebrow at him. ‘The fire-starter, I presume?’

  ‘Think about it,’ he said as he pulled the pile of statement sheets towards him. ‘You’ve come down the nick and given me a name in a murder investigation. What better way to justify your actions than making a statement about a completely different crime that possibly would implicate you if you didn’t cooperate?’

  Martha Lipton, convicted sex offender, sat back down and smiled at Harry.

  ‘Under different circumstances,’ she said, ‘we might have got along together. It would only take the small matter of you forgetting my past.’

  Glad that he could turn his attention to the task of finding a pen and flattening out the edges of the paper, Harry looked away from her.

  One of the biggest personal torments of being a police officer was cajoling those you loathed when you needed their assistance. Some days, Harry just knew he had to break bread with a monster to get what he wanted.

  The sacrifice to his own self-respect at least meant that he now had Jonathan Tey very much in his sights.

  Chapter 51

  ‘If I’d realized you were going to have coffee,’ said Jonathan Tey when he came back from the bar, ‘I wouldn’t have suggested meeting in a boozer.’

  He shoved the cup and saucer down in front of Jude whose face was now demonstrating equal displeasure at the latte as it spilled into the saucer.

  ‘It’s only a quarter past eleven,’ said Jude. ‘We’re not even having lunch. I can’t go out and get drunk at lunchtime. I’ve got a council planning meeting this afternoon at the Town Hall.’

  ‘It’s hardly Cobra, is it?’

  ‘If you’re going to take the mickey, I’m going.’

  Jonathan rested his arm on the back of the chair next to him, untouched pint on the table. He kept his voice as low as possible and said, ‘We’ve got things to discuss.’

  He had got to the pub first and chosen a table near the window with the bright November sun on his back. When he leaned forward to pick up his drink, he cast a shadow across Jude’s face. Fully aware of what he was doing, Jonathan added, ‘So it’s a really good idea if you stay put.’

  ‘Well, I’m getting a serviette first,’ said Jude.

  He walked over to the end of the bar to the condiments and cutlery and made a great show of taking three paper napkins, one at a time, before he took his seat again.

  Jonathan waited whilst his unlikely partner in crime mopped up the spilt drink from the saucer, wiped the bottom of the cup twice, stirred the latte, added sugar and then stirred it again.

  He was showing no signs of the angry outburst he had displayed at the East Rise Players’ emergency meeting when Eric Samuels had dropped his sexual-offender bombshell. It was the only reason that Jonathan had considered Jude for sorting out Albie Woodville. He was now beginning to think that he might have made a very grave mistake. There appeared to be extremes to Jude’s character but right at this moment, all he was experiencing were the prissy and lame parts.

  ‘Finished?’ asked Jonathan when the white serviettes were brown and sodden.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Now what are we going to do? We’ve both had the police round and I certainly don’t want them coming back.’

  ‘We do nothing,’ said Jonathan. He picked up his pint and gulped half of it down, smacked his lips and leaned forward again. ‘We stick to what we’ve already decided. Nothing can go wrong if we do that. Remember that, if we start to panic, we’ll draw attention to ourselves and that’s the worst thing that can happen. Agreed?’

  Jude shot him a dark look, drained the rest of his coffee and said, ‘That was about the worst latte I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Why are you being such a dick? We’ve got much more important things to worry about.’

  ‘You told me to behave normally. I’m drinking coffee and commenting on it. That’s normal. Meeting you in a pub before noon and us whispering across the table to each other isn’t normal. We’re not gangsters. You’re an accountant and I work for East Rise council’s planning department.’

  This was proving to be more difficult that Jonathan had envisaged. He cast his mind back to the moment he left the Cressy Arms with Jude when they had vented their anger about Albert Woodville and all that he represented. Neither of them at the time had seriously considered their intentions to be more than simply words spat from their lips in a rage as they’d goaded each other on with their fantasy of what they would do to the man if they were left alone with him.

  Then of course, they were alone with him. And it was no longer only words.

  The thought of what they had imagined doing to him forced Jonathan to fidget in his hard wooden pub chair, bothered by the memory of his own channelled hatred.

  If he was being honest with himself, he had enjoyed discussing the pain they’d wanted to cause Woodville. Few people knew the real Jonathan because he understood it was better that some things stayed hidden. One stupid mistake many years ago had almost been the undoing of him, but his wife Elaine, his girlfriend then, had come to his rescue. Only the two of them knew the truth, and he certainly wasn’t about to share it with Jude. Jonathan wasn’t entirely sure he could trust him to keep quiet about his own crime: he most certainly couldn’t risk a twenty-year-old secret getting out on top of an attack on a sex offender.

  ‘You’re staring at me,’ said Jude. ‘If I’m honest, it’s alarming me. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, so long as you’ve sorted your clothes from that night, like we agreed, and you don’t tell anyone about Woodville, and us going to his flat. If you’ve done that, we’re home and dry.’

  ‘It’s done,’ said Jude. ‘If we’re to act normal, that means going back to the East Rise Players. Do you think we’ll be welcome there?’

  Jonathan shrugged and said, ‘I don’t see why not. Samuels can’t afford to kee
p losing members. He’s already down one costume assistant. Don’t pull that face.’

  ‘It’s a bit distasteful, Jonathan.’

  ‘I’m distasteful? If you’d had your way, we’d have strung him up from the nearest lamp-post. At least I wanted to be discreet.’

  Jude drummed his fingers on the table and said, ‘It doesn’t really matter now. It’s done. He’s dead.’

  ‘I’m glad that you understand that there’s no point in overthinking this. What’s done is done and nothing can change it now.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Jude. The thing is, I’m racked with guilt over what we did, so someone somewhere is sitting with the weight of the world on their shoulders. I’m not really sure how they’re coping.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Jonathan. ‘There’s one thing I’m clear about and that’s if we ever find out who it was, I’d like to shake them by the hand.’

  Chapter 52

  DCI Barbara Venice checked her phone for messages as she crossed the police station’s back yard. A number of marked and unmarked cars were parked in the bays, a number next to the custody entrance. She nodded and said hello to some of the officers, a few addressing her as ‘ma’am’, a few clearly not having a clue who she was though her security badge allowed her unhindered access.

  She let herself out with the same badge, unlocked the ten-foot-high metal gate and surprised herself at how different she felt on the civilian side of the fence.

  Within minutes, she was outside the florist’s shop where she had arranged to meet her daughter. It was the largest one in East Rise and gave over half its floor space to unusual Christmas gifts at this time of the year. Feeling a touch chilly and arriving a little ahead of the arranged time, Barbara ducked inside the shop, keen to start her shopping early this year and not leave it all to the last minute and allow the internet to take care of it.

  Lost in thought and browsing Christmas pomanders and wicker reindeer at the back of the shop, she heard a familiar voice from the direction of the till.