by Tim Weaver
A momentary flicker of pain in Franks’s face, and then a slow solidification, like concrete setting. ‘I understand,’ he said, eyes back on her. ‘But the thing is, that wasn’t even the worst thing I did.’
75
‘After Lucas died, Casey went downhill fast.’
Franks was forward in his seat now, hands in front of him, elbows on his knees. I glanced at Craw. She’d reined her emotions in but it had come at a cost: she was slumped back, binds locked tight, head against her shoulder, staring at the floor. For the first time there was a hint of a smile on Reynolds’s face, behind her. This was what he wanted.
‘Speak up, Leonard,’ he said. ‘This is the good bit.’
Franks’s eyes lingered on Reynolds, as if he were contemplating making a move. But then Reynolds placed the gun against Craw’s head again, his smile dropping away.
‘Start talking,’ he said.
Franks wavered for a second, then began again: ‘Her marriage fell apart and she stopped returning my calls. About a month later, the hospital phoned me, telling me she’d been found at Lucas’s grave, with her wrists cut. The doctor said it was lucky that she’d been found by someone. Five minutes more, and she would have been dead.’
I watched something move through him, like an aftershock; a tremor passing from arm to arm, from pelvis to throat.
‘Eventually, she told them to call me. When I turned up there and looked at her, I tried to convince myself it was a one-off, that she’d get better. But then she tried to kill herself twice more, and I knew it would never end until I ended it. I knew I had to get her somewhere safe, somewhere she could be treated. I wanted her away from London too. She’d become unpredictable. Some days, she was catatonic. Others, this person I’d never seen, this ball of rage. All her anger, her grief, that put me at risk. So I suggested to her that she go back home to Devon. She resisted it, but I kept chipping away at her. And that was how she ended up here. My head told me it was the right thing to do, but I was just torn up inside.’
He stopped, looking around the room, and then continued: ‘The first time I brought her here, they gave me a map of the hospital, with the location of her ward circled, with contact numbers and visiting hours. I remember I binned it as soon as I got back to the mainland. I mean, how could I take it home with me? What if Ellie had seen it? But when I wasn’t with Casey, it felt like, when I’d got rid of it, I’d thrown away my only connection to her. So I developed this … habit. I’d draw the layout of this place, over and over, sometimes without thinking about it or realizing I’d done it, to try and remind myself that it was for the best. I could never tell anyone she was here, never write down her name, or speak of her. Drawing this place, it became a way of reassuring me that I’d done the right thing.’
Gently, the silence was broken, a breeze passing across the greenhouse, one side to the other. Above us, the sun emptied in, clearing out the shadows that lingered. And yet there remained a kind of darkness to Franks, to this man who had expected such high standards of others, who had taken cases like Pamela Welland’s so seriously, and so personally, but who had been drawn so rapidly into a knot of lies.
Even so, something still didn’t make sense: what was Reynolds’s endgame? He was getting a taped confession of Franks’s crimes, and ensuring the people who loved Franks the most were seeing who he really was – but why did he care about any of that? This had to be more personal.
As if sensing my thoughts, Reynolds moved, and the silence shattered: he grabbed a handful of Craw’s hair and yanked her head back. Franks came forward on his seat, an automatic response, then stopped. But Craw hardly reacted. She seemed to have lost something: her fight, her fear. She just looked at her father, expressionless, inert.
‘Let’s speed things up,’ Reynolds said, waving the gun at Franks. ‘Casey went to the nuthouse for a year, and then when she got released at the end of 2000, she said she wanted to see a shrink more often than just the once every two weeks that the NHS were willing to fund. So you fronted up the cash – basically, as a way to buy her silence – and she started coming back here three times a week.’
Franks didn’t say anything.
‘Does that sound about right?’
He nodded.
‘Does that sound about right, Leonard?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I started setting aside money for her, withdrawing cash often, but in small amounts, so it wouldn’t raise any flags and its purpose couldn’t be traced.’
It was why I’d never seen any anomalies in his financials.
‘Your mum was very special to me,’ he said quietly, looking at Craw.
Reynolds smiled. ‘Is that why you fucked someone else?’
Franks glanced at Reynolds and then back to Craw. ‘They were just very different people. Your mum is so much like you. So strong and … and …’ He faded out. He can’t find the words to describe Ellie. It was clear then, if it wasn’t already, that he liked her company, the stability she brought. He loved the family they’d had together. But his love had changed for Ellie. He didn’t love her like he loved Casey Bullock.
‘I opened a post-office box in Brompton Lee,’ Franks went on, face half turned in my direction. ‘I used to keep the key at work when I was still at the Met, and drive down once a month to deposit her money. But when we moved to Devon, I had to keep the key somewhere Ellie wouldn’t find it, so I buried it out on the moors. She was always finding things I’d forgotten I had.’ A brief, fleeting smile. ‘I’ve been using that PO box as a place to store cash over the past nine months … and other things that are important to me.’
He meant the mobile phone.
He meant the footage of Bullock.
I knew already why Franks had called Paige and Murray about getting hold of the CCTV tape. He wanted a better version. But now I was starting to see why he’d been in such a state: by that time, Bullock was dead, and Franks realized that the only way he could hope to remember her was through the footage of the night she’d – by chance – passed Welland and Viljoen in the pub. When he finally accepted he was never going to get sent a newer version of the footage from Paige and Murray, he recorded his original VHS copy using the Nokia I’d found with the money, just so he had something preserved on film.
Two days later, he disappeared.
Something else made sense now too: his constant sketching of Bethlehem’s layout. The fact that – on the scrap of paper I’d found in his Moleskine notebook – his sketch also had ‘BROLE108’ written on it, suggested it was one of his earliest repetitions, made in the weeks and months after she’d started collecting cash from the PO box.
He was thinking of her the whole time.
He just couldn’t write her name down.
Reynolds made a couple of adjustments on the camera, then came forward. ‘Why don’t you tell us about Simon Preston?’
Franks glanced at Craw.
Silence.
Reynolds sighed. ‘Okay. I’ll start then. Simon Preston was becoming increasingly problematic on the Cornhill estate in south London – wasn’t he, Leonard?’
‘You tell me. You were in bed with Kemar Penn.’
‘Simon was a microscopically small fish in an immensely big pond,’ he went on, not giving anything away in his face. ‘He thought he could run the same kind of amateur operation up in the big city that he ran down here in sleepy Devon. K-Penn didn’t like it, so he set his minions into motion and – boom – next minute, Simon’s had his throat cut open.’
‘You were one of those minions, Neil.’
Reynolds smiled. ‘Not that day I wasn’t.’
A look passed between them, an unspoken conversation – and then it hit me like a punch to the stomach. I tried to say something, forgetting I was gagged, and when Reynolds saw that I understood, he crossed the greenhouse towards me.
‘I think David here has seen the light.’
He wriggled the gag free from my mouth.
I glanced at Craw.
Sh
e was staring at me, a frown on her face.
Then I turned to Franks. ‘Reynolds didn’t kill Simon Preston. You did.’
76
His eyes lingered on me for a second – and then he gave a fractional nod of the head.
Across the room, Craw reacted instantly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Dad. Not this. No.’
Behind her, Reynolds just watched.
‘Casey told me she’d started dating someone,’ he began, head forward, turned in my direction, ‘but she never talked about him. I didn’t ask. I started to appreciate what it must have been like for her, having to watch me appear once a month at that post office in Brompton Lee. I’d spend thirty minutes talking to her and then I’d disappear back to Ellie. I didn’t blame her for trying to move on.’
‘Get on with it,’ Reynolds said.
‘They’d been dating five years when Preston found a box she kept in the attic,’ Franks continued, not taking his eyes off me. ‘It was full of things from her time in London, full of things he could use. He saw an opportunity.’
‘He blackmailed you?’ I asked.
Franks nodded. ‘He collared me outside work one night. This was the middle of January, three months before I was due to retire. He tried to stop me, and I shrugged him off. I was late for the train, I wanted to get home. But then he called out from behind me, “Casey says hello.” ’ Franks stopped, his past shivering through him. ‘He told me if I gave him a grand, I’d never see him again. So I did. A grand wasn’t all that much. It seemed worth it. All I wanted was for him to go away.’
‘But he didn’t.’
‘No. A month later he returned, and then again a week after that. He was threatening to tell the world about Casey and me, about Lucas. I took a big lump sum from my pension when I hit sixty in the February, and I started using that money straight away to pay for down payments on the renovations. So, after he came back again, I managed to hide what I was giving him in the housing fund. I just kept paying – a grand, then two, then three.
‘I’d been at the Met thirty-five years, I had a lot of money in my pension. The lump sum I’d taken was six figures. But sooner or later I knew Ellie would start noticing. She’d start to see that the costs of the house weren’t tallying up with what I was spending. After the third time he came back, at the start of March, after I watched him leave with even more of my money, I had this sudden moment of clarity. I thought to myself, “This is going to go on for ever. It’s never going to stop until I make it stop.” ’
I glanced at Craw. She was watching us, pale and unmoved.
‘So you killed him?’ I said.
A long, painful pause. ‘Yes.’
‘Speak up, Leonard.’
We both looked at Reynolds. He was back behind Craw, the gun at the side of her head.
‘And say it clearly. This is what I came to hear.’
‘Yes,’ Franks said, louder, eyes on Craw. ‘I killed Simon Preston.’
‘You cleared everything out of Preston’s flat that he had on you and Casey,’ Reynolds went on, ‘and you made it look like a drug murder. Is that right, Leonard?’
He nodded.
‘Is that right, Leonard?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why did you make it look like a drug murder?’
‘I just wanted him to go awa –’
‘No,’ Reynolds hissed. ‘I want you to start your answer by saying, “I made Simon Preston’s death look like a drug murder because …” ’
Franks flashed a look at him. Anger. Hatred.
But then Reynolds pushed the gun in hard against Craw’s temple, her head jerking sideways, and said, ‘You believe I won’t do it, Leonard? You really believe that?’
Franks backed down, an acquiescence taking hold, his eyes lingering on Craw. As he shuffled back in his seat, like an animal retreating to cover, I looked between the four of us, light streaming in, the crumbling walls of the hospital wrapped around us, and I wondered how this ended. With blood. With death. A confession, and whatever he hoped to achieve with it, would never be enough for a man like Reynolds. Even if he didn’t kill Preston himself, he was still capable of it. He just buried his secrets better than Franks.
‘Let’s have it, then, Leonard.’
Franks swallowed again. ‘I made Simon Preston’s death look like a drug murder because I knew I could blame it on Kemar Penn. I killed Preston how Penn – and Penn’s lackeys – killed: I cut his throat, and removed his identity. Preston had a load of cocaine hidden under the floorboards. It took me a while to find it, but I found it eventually, and then I took it out and placed it where it would easily be found in the kitchen.’
‘Did Casey know?’ I asked.
‘No. She and Preston had split up by then. She didn’t know he was dead until …’ He stopped, looking across the room at Reynolds. ‘Until you told her on the beach that day. But after Preston began blackmailing me, I called her and – in a roundabout way – tried to find out more about him. But it was like she didn’t even know him.’
‘Because she was protecting you,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘How do you figure that?’
‘She never asked Preston to share anything, because she didn’t want to have to share anything back. If no one knew anything about her, no one knew anything about you.’ I thought of Carla Murray. ‘That’s why her neighbours in Kingsbridge didn’t even know her full name.’
‘Very touching,’ Reynolds said. ‘But I think we’ve missed something.’
Franks eyed him.
Reynolds came forward a step. ‘Detective Inspector Cordus took charge of the Preston murder, but he was a bit too clever for your liking, which is why you had to invent an excuse to take on the running of the case yourself.’
Franks seemed to slouch. ‘Cordus barely looked at Penn. He saw anomalies, things I hadn’t done to the body that had been done at other drug murders on that estate. So I had to step in. I told him that we were stretched, that I needed him on bigger cases – and I took it on. I worked his angles long enough to make it look convincing, but not deep enough to go anywhere. I brought Penn in and used him as a patsy – and I closed off any avenue to those potheads in the flat opposite who heard Preston call himself Simon.’
‘And?’ Reynolds said.
‘And Casey remained off the radar.’
‘No, not that.’
Franks stared at him for a long time, defiance in his face. But then his eyes flicked to the gun pressed against his daughter’s head, and he seemed to remember that he didn’t hold the cards here. Quietly, he said, ‘After I retired, I ended up talking to Carla Murray on the phone one day. I can’t even remember why she called. But we were just chatting when she mentioned that Cordus had decided to take another look at the case –’
‘What case?’ Reynolds snapped.
‘The Simon Preston case.’ Franks turned to me, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Craw – but especially at Reynolds. ‘ “Cordus thought he’d take another shot at solving it,” she said to me. I just froze. By that time, Casey was okay, living above this old woman who used to watch quiz shows all day. I had … I hadn’t forgotten her, but we’d both … Anyway, Ellie and I had retired, we were in a lovely part of the world. We were happy.’
‘It was a lie,’ Craw said.
He looked at her. ‘It wasn’t a lie. I was happ –’
‘Get to the fucking point,’ Reynolds interrupted.
Franks leaned forward into a shaft of sunlight pouring through one of the glass panels above his head. ‘There were all sorts of rumours about Reynolds being dirty.’
I glanced at Reynolds. His eyes were fixed on Franks.
‘When I retired, Jim Paige took over the running of the command, and when Carla called me, and mentioned the Preston case being looked at again, I got on the phone to Jim and said, “You need to take a closer look at Neil Reynolds’s involvement with this.” It was the only way I could think to deflect attention away from me, and I knew Jim would be respons
ive to it. I’d complained about Reynolds to him. I’d had Reynolds in a meeting room six, seven months before then, and told him I knew he was dirty.’ His eyes turned to Reynolds, a flash of aggression in them. ‘You were in with Kemar Penn, we all know that. You were in with him all over the city. I was doing the Met a favour.’
Reynolds smiled. ‘So you lied?’
‘It wasn’t a lie. You were guilty.’
‘I wasn’t the one that killed Simon Preston.’
‘But you’ve killed others.’
‘Did you ever find any evidence that I was involved in anything?’
Franks said nothing.
‘For the camera, Leonard.’
‘No.’
‘No what?’
‘No, I never found any evidence you –’
‘Neil Reynolds,’ Reynolds said.
Franks took a long breath. ‘I never found any evidence that Neil Reynolds was involved in anything untoward.’
‘So why did Paige fire you?’ I said to Reynolds.
He looked at me, as if he saw my question as some kind of trap. ‘He didn’t. I walked. Paige was never going to give me a chance, not after Leonard had finished bending his ear. Paige was in my shit from day one. It was only a matter of time …’
‘Before someone found out you were dirty.’
He didn’t reply to me. Instead he reached over and pushed the Pause button on top of the camera. It made a whirr as it stopped recording.
‘And the file?’ I said to Reynolds.
He looked at me.
A blank.
‘The file that got sent to Franks at his house, the file that started all this – you sent it to him to draw him out, right?’
Again, he gave me nothing.
But it was the only thing that made sense.
‘You were familiar with Preston,’ I went on, ‘because you’d been asked to scope him out by Kemar Penn; as a rival to Penn. But then you really started digging into who he was and you hit the jackpot. You found Casey Bullock. And then you found Franks.’
I stopped again, giving myself a moment to catch up, and remembered something Murray had told me: There was never any talk of Reynolds being dirty in Trident, back when he was working gangs; not really any talk of him being dirty in Sapphire either. I mean, there was a lot of smoke, but no fire. Once he was put on a Murder Investigation Team, though, things changed.
