Yet, when he’d needed it the most, his luck had finally run out. I thought back to that day in the park. How we’d returned home bruised and battered, arms round each other’s shoulders, united and triumphant, with me thinking how glad I was that he was my friend. Even now, after everything he’d done to me, I couldn’t help but mourn his passing just a little. Underneath it all, he’d been a good man. When he could have kept his mouth shut about the terrible crimes his biggest client had committed and carried on taking his money, he’d done the right thing, and the right thing had cost him his life. And in a way this made his betrayal even harder to take. The fact that, in my case, he’d allowed his honour to slip, as if I wasn’t an important enough person to justify it. That was what hurt the most.
‘Have I really been that hard to live with these past few years?’ I asked.
She sighed and flicked a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s not just been you. It’s been both of us. We’ve grown apart. We don’t talk, and when we do, it’s usually shouting.’
I hadn’t remembered it being as bad as this, although I think my ignorance owed more to a desire not to confront the truth of the situation rather than a better reading of it. We had had some pretty big fights of late.
‘I suppose,’ she continued, ‘it was inevitable that something would happen, but I never intended it to be as bad as this. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Tom. If I could turn back the clock, I would.’
‘Is there any way we can get back to how we were?’
The $64,000 question. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. More than anything, I wanted to go back in time to the point when we still loved each other. I needed her. I needed my whole family. Without them, I was nothing.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered, which wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.
‘Well, I want to try,’ I said, leaning forward like a kid on a first date. I went for the full-on lips kiss, and saw with a heavy heart that she was inclining her head slightly and I was being presented with the old platonic cheek.
As I gave it a peck and she squeezed my hand once again, the phone rang a few feet away. It was the first time I’d heard it ring since Jack’s fateful call the previous afternoon. That call seemed like a lifetime ago now. Slowly, I got to my feet, feeling inexplicably nervous. I knew it was all over, but if nothing else, my experience had taught me that life is never predictable. It can throw up plenty of surprises, many of them extremely unwelcome.
‘Hello?’ I could hear the nerves in my voice.
‘Tom, how are you?’ came a loud, confident voice with artificial American inflections that made it sound like the person it belonged to was stuck somewhere out in the mid-Atlantic. Wesley O’Shea had always wanted to be American, and it was a source, I suspect, of everlasting shame to him that his place of birth was actually Leamington Spa. ‘Are you OK, bro? I’ve just heard all about what’s happened to you. The cops just called me, and frankly I’m speechless.’ Wesley then showed me exactly how speechless by launching into a long series of questions about my ordeal, and when my answers were deemed too brief and evasive, he responded by telling me about a supposedly similar incident that had happened to a cousin of his in New Jersey back in the early 1990s.
‘Wesley, thanks a million for your call,’ I said, interrupting him as he got to the bit where the SWAT teams were just about to go in, ‘but I’m extremely tired, as you can imagine. Do you mind if we talk about this later?’ I turned to Kathy and made the universal jerk-off gesture, and she smiled.
‘Sure, Tom. I understand. Listen, take the day off tomorrow. Maybe even Tuesday as well. Ezyrite Software wants you back on the job fit and well.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Wesley.’
‘Please, Tom, we’re friends. Call me Wes.’
‘Well, that’s very kind of you, Wes. I appreciate it.’
‘Er, also, Tom . . .’ His voice suddenly sounded uncharacteristically shaky.
‘Yes, Wes?’
‘Er, is it true what I’m hearing? That, you know, you actually shot someone?’
‘Twice,’ I said, and hung up.
When I put the phone down, I looked at Kathy, knew that one way or another we’d make it, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, actually laughed out loud.
57
When DC Ben Sullivan got out of the car, he looked nervously both ways down the deserted night street before running up the steps that led to safety. He opened the front door to the flats and stepped inside, waiting for the click of the automatic lock as the door shut behind him. He was in trouble, big trouble. He was sure that after Caplin’s death they would be looking for him; they might also have him down as Vanessa Blake’s killer. He knew the evidence against him was flimsy, but he wanted some time to think before he answered any of their questions, and that meant getting out of the country for a while.
A part of him knew this was a foolish move, an obvious declaration of guilt, but he wasn’t in the right frame of mind for an interrogation. Yesterday afternoon he had killed for the very first time, stabbing to death a woman for money. They’d promised him £20,000 in cash for the job, and he’d received ten grand already. It was a lot of money. But there was no way he was going to be getting the other ten, because Vanessa Blake, his actual victim, was the wrong person. He’d been sent to the university to intercept a woman he’d never met before called Kathy Meron, having been told that she was possibly in possession of a key to a safety deposit box. If she was there, he was to get the key off her, get the box’s location, and then kill her; if she didn’t have it, he was to find out who did, then despatch her. He was told that he’d be supplied with a pair of her husband’s gloves which had been taken from the family home, and which could then be used to frame him.
But everything had gone wrong when he’d been disturbed by Vanessa Blake and, in the ensuing struggle, had killed her with her own kitchen knife.
And now the guilt was kicking in. He wished he’d never got involved. He blamed his former colleague and mentor, Rory Caplin, for tempting him with talk of earning large amounts of money on the side, and he also blamed his girlfriend, Janet, for her expensive tastes. If she hadn’t wanted all those clothes and furniture and exotic foreign holidays, he would have been able to get by. In fact, Ben Sullivan blamed everyone other than himself. It was a long-standing trait of his that did little to endear him to people.
He flicked on the hall light and walked down the corridor past the staircase to the door to Flat One, Janet’s pad. They didn’t live together – Sullivan preferred his independence – but he paid the rent on the place, and had done ever since she’d lost her job in the hotel months earlier. Stupid cow, he thought irritably. How the hell do you lose a job as a receptionist in a hotel? It was hardly a challenging role. All you had to do was answer the fucking phone. And this place wasn’t cheap either. Seven fifty a month, even though it was only one bedroom, and in one of the cheaper areas of Hendon. The cost of living in London was extortionate. No wonder he’d had to do other, more lucrative, work.
Janet was out tonight, meeting friends in the West End, a situation that suited him fine. The ten grand was in a holdall in the top of her bedroom wardrobe, underneath a pile of blankets, along with a further four thousand in cash he’d made for other tasks he’d performed on behalf of his unofficial employers. More than enough to get him out of the country and somewhere warm, where he could plan his next move. She’d be getting a shock, though, when rent day came round. From now on, he wasn’t paying it. Fuck her. Let her get off her arse and find another job giving out room keys. Consider this goodbye, love, he thought.
But as soon as he’d shut the door to Flat One and flicked on the lights, he knew something was badly wrong. The living-room carpet had been covered by a thick sheet of black tarpaulin that crinkled underfoot. More tarpaulin had been taped to the back of the door and the adjacent wall. It even covered the sofa in the middle of the room. A man was standing behind the sofa, facing him. As t
heir eyes met, the man let slip a thin, humourless smile and raised a gun with silencer attached, pointing it at Sullivan. Eight feet separated the end of the barrel from its target.
‘You,’ said Sullivan, recognizing his killer straight away, even though his hair was now a different colour and he’d taken to wearing thick-rimmed glasses.
‘It’s always me,’ said the killer, and shot Sullivan once in the leg, just above the kneecap, the bullet making barely a sound.
Sullivan fell backwards against the door, grabbing at his injured leg as it went from under him. He ended up in a sitting position, his teeth clenched against the pain.
‘You’ve got something I want,’ said the killer calmly. ‘Two things, actually. A tape and a laptop. Where are they?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ hissed Sullivan.
‘Yes, you do.’ The killer shot him in the other leg, and Sullivan gasped painfully.
‘They’re in my car. I was going to bring them back.’
‘Sure you were,’ said the killer, and pulled the trigger for a third time, sending a bullet into Sullivan’s forehead. The dead police officer slumped forward with his head bowed, the blood splash from the bullet’s exit wound caught by the tarpaulin on the door.
The man Tom Meron had known only as Daniels unscrewed the silencer and placed it and the gun in the pocket of his jacket. He knew the value of the tape and laptop that Sullivan had liberated from the deposit box at King’s Cross station, and knew too that they implicated his employer, multi-millionaire businessman Paul Wise. It was why from the start he’d wanted them for himself. It was why he’d risked his life to get hold of them. Because he knew they represented the biggest potential pay day of his career.
Things had very nearly gone disastrously wrong at the Merons’ cottage, when they’d been ambushed by Lench and his men, and he had to admit that Lench had proved a worthy and resilient foe who’d almost hit him with the shot he’d fired in the cottage driveway. But now he, Mantani and the rest of the employer’s people were dead, and Paul Wise no longer had any protection.
Which made him rich pickings.
When Daniels had finished wrapping Sullivan’s corpse in the tarpaulin, he tied it up at both ends and with some effort carried it out to Sullivan’s own car, depositing it in the boot. He had a contact in Essex who disposed of bodies with no questions asked, and who would also get rid of the car. Daniels had called ahead and told him to expect a delivery.
The laptop and tape were under the front passenger seat. He started the engine and placed the tape in the car’s player. Five minutes later, and two miles away, he was convinced he had all he needed. He parked up at the side of the road and dialled a number on his mobile.
If Paul Wise thought his problems were over, he was in for a major shock.
They were just beginning.
Epilogue
THREE WEEKS LATER
Bolt had done a lot of thinking since his suspension. It was difficult to avoid it when you had so much time on your hands. You get the full understanding of what it’s like to be lonely when you’re at home all day, and most evenings too. He’d made it across to Cork for some fishing, which had taken his mind off things a little, and he’d spent more time in the Feathers than he was used to, putting on close to half a stone in the meantime, even though he’d doubled his visits to the gym. And all the time he’d been thinking. Thinking about the man he’d killed, thinking about the case he’d been involved in, thinking about the individual alleged to be behind it all: Paul Wise. The man who’d got away.
More details had emerged about Wise’s operations over the past three weeks. There had actually been an NCS investigation into his business dealings some months earlier which had inexplicably been wound up, even though Mo had said that he was suspected of involvement in as many as five murders – and this before the events of three weeks ago – as well as extortion, fraud, even non-payment of tax. It was amazing that someone so crooked could not only rise so high within the establishment, but also remain there unmolested. Not quite a pillar of the community, but not far off it either. But then, Wise had some powerful friends, people who did him some big favours. Bolt wondered how many more there were like Parnham-Jones, people right at the top of the pile who shared his perverted tastes. It was a thought that pissed him off, because he suspected there were a few.
There was something personal about all this too. It was Paul Wise who’d given Bolt sleepless nights by putting him in a position where he’d had to shoot dead an unarmed man, and where he’d had to break the very law he’d spent so much of his adult life upholding. He wanted to make the bastard pay for that. But it looked like he was going to have to wait. Wise was clever, and he kept his hands scrupulously clean. What evidence there was against him was still so patchy as to be unusable. For the moment, at least, he was safe, although, as Mo had said, now that he was suspected of a whole new raft of killings it meant that the investigation into his affairs was going to be reopened, and with significantly more resources. One day, like most criminals, he would pay a price for his crimes. It was just that it might not be any time soon.
Three weeks into his suspension, on a warm summer’s afternoon in June, Bolt walked into a café on Camden High Street. The interior was quiet, and once again she had arrived before him, and was sitting at a corner table at the back. Bolt gave her a nod, ordered a regular filter coffee from a young eastern European girl behind the counter, and made his way over.
‘You’re looking well,’ he said as they shook hands.
And she was too. Her skin was tanned and healthy-looking, her black hair a little longer and a lot more lustrous, and the eye shadow she was wearing seemed to accentuate the brightness in her eyes. She was dressed in a white lace top with short sleeves that showed off the tan, a simple silver chain with one of the smaller Tiffany hearts around her neck.
‘Thanks,’ said Tina Boyd, and sat back down. ‘You’re not looking so bad yourself.’
‘So, where have you been?’
‘Holiday. Two weeks in Mexico. I felt like I needed the break.’
‘I think you did. It seems to have done you a lot of good.’
‘I heard what happened to you. I’m sorry.’
‘The suspension is a formality. I’ve done my interviews with the PCC, and it doesn’t look like they’ve found anything untoward, so I’m starting back on the job next week.’
‘Same rank?’
‘Exact same rank.’
She smiled. ‘Good. The Brass spend too much time hanging good officers out to dry. It’s a wonder they’ve got any left.’
‘You thought any more about coming back?’
She considered that one for a moment. ‘Part of me has. But I’m still not sure.’ There was a pause. ‘So tell me,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘Parnham-Jones. Was it suicide or was it murder? I’ve fallen behind on everything.’
‘No-one knows for sure,’ answered Bolt truthfully as the coffee arrived.
He then told her what he knew of the story, but didn’t mention Paul Wise by name. As he spoke, she listened raptly, occasionally shaking her head at some of the grimmer details.
‘So John was right. There was a paedophile ring involving Parnham-Jones and others.’
‘It certainly looks that way.’
‘And one of them’s still out there evading justice. And you know who he is.’
Bolt nodded. ‘We’ve got a suspect who could have been behind John’s murder,’ he said carefully, ‘but we’ve got no proof.’
‘And you also think he had Parnham-Jones killed. Is that right?’
Once again, Bolt nodded. ‘I think the Lord Chief Justice was the weak link. He had to go. Let’s assume he had been involved in the murder of that child years before. He thought he’d got away with it, then a few months ago it becomes clear that the secret’s out, and that there’s a detective sniffing around, asking questions. He calls on one of his associates, someone who was also involved in
the murder – let’s call him Mr W – and asks him to sort it out. A few weeks later, the detective ends up dead. Now the judge can breathe a sigh of relief, but not for long. Because word gets out that there’s a tape recording of him confessing to the crime, or at least to being involved with child abuse, and then, to top it all, he gets an anonymous email from someone telling him they know the details of his crime. We found it on his desktop PC. So, more sleepless nights. My guess is he was beginning to panic as his murky past finally caught up with him, and his associate finally decided that it was simply too dangerous to keep him alive. They use the same people who killed John, and rather than vary their modus operandi, the perpetrators stick with a formula that’s worked before and kill Parnham-Jones in exactly the same way, trying to make it look like suicide.’
‘And someone’s got away with it,’ said Tina, taking a pack of Silk Cut from her pocket. ‘Your Mr W.’
‘The people who actually carried out John’s murder are almost certainly dead. As for Mr W himself, his card’s marked. He won’t get away with it for ever.’
‘Well,’ she said, lighting a cigarette, ‘our Lord Chief Justice certainly deserved what he got, the bastard. He ruined a lot of lives, but at least John can rest in peace now.’
Bolt nodded. He agreed with her. ‘There’s only one mystery left,’ he said, taking another sip from the coffee.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Who sent the email to Parnham-Jones a week or so before he died? The one saying they had all the details on his crimes?’
They looked at each other for a long moment. Tina held his gaze, giving nothing away, the expression behind her eyes impossible to read. Then she let slip a small smile that managed to be both confident and vulnerable at the same time.
‘You know I sent it, don’t you?’
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