‘It’s fine. If you’re treading on toes then you must be getting close to something,’ he told her, ‘so what have you got for me?’
‘From the golf course? Nothing,’ she admitted.
‘Nothing? I was hoping it was something.’
‘I couldn’t get near the man himself,’ she said, ‘too much security, but I did see him walk over the horizon with a bunch of bigwig businessmen and Jimmy McCree.’
‘McCree again?’ And he frowned at this. ‘You know what bugs me, Helen?’
‘What?’
‘When a gangster becomes a household name and suddenly everybody wants to be their friend. You start seeing them at parties with their arms around actors and footballers. Now it’s rich businessmen and even the head of the council who conveniently forget the victims. At least when Frank Jarvis was leader he was openly critical of McCree, now there’s no one willing to take him on. Jimmy McCree has left widows and orphans for God’s sake.’ Then he took a breath. ‘I’m ranting now, sorry.’
‘I agree with every word,’ Helen told him.
‘It’s partly our fault, I suppose. We write about them.’
‘Only to hold them to account.’
‘Do you really think they care about that?’ asked Graham.
‘Yes, I do.’ And she wanted to say ‘If they didn’t, they wouldn’t send their thugs to knock me over in the car park,’ but she couldn’t admit that to Graham; not without running the risk he might tell her to stop investigating McCree, Lynch and Camfield. Maybe he would even hand the task to somebody more experienced, probably a man, in a misguided attempt to protect her. The attack proved her investigation was beginning to worry someone and she was determined not to allow those thugs to deflect her from reporting the truth. ‘I do have something else,’ she said quickly, ‘take a look at this.’ And she handed him a folder containing some photocopied documents. ‘They’re from the land registry.’
Her editor blinked at the papers she placed in front of him. ‘What is it?’
She pointed at an address on the first document. ‘That’s a house that used to be owned by Councillor Joe Lynch.’
‘Right.’ And he scanned the details.
‘It forms part of the information openly available to potential buyers of the property, which incidentally is up for sale again. It’s now owned by a Mr Cooper, who has had it for just over a year.’
‘So it’s back on the market,’ he said, ‘and was previously owned by Lynch?’
She nodded. ‘Mr Cooper bought it from Councillor Lynch. What do you notice from the information on that first sheet?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the councillor picked it up for a song back in 1979 and he’s made a tidy profit on it in around fourteen years, so fair play to him I suppose.’ And he looked at his reporter. ‘He’s not the first to make a few quid on a property in Newcastle. Some of the outlying areas have really come on. I know he’s meant to be a socialist, Helen, but I doubt we could run a story criticising him for cashing in on a mini north-east housing boom.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘we couldn’t – but I did some digging. Three other similar-sized houses sold in his street at around the same time. They both went for less; a lot less.’ She could tell her editor was interested now.
‘So the councillor knows how to drive a hard bargain?’ he offered.
‘He must do,’ she said, ‘because he managed to get thirty grand more than the market rate for his house when he sold it.’
‘Thirty grand?’ said her editor in disbelief. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m certain,’ she said ‘and I have all of the land registry documents to prove it.’
‘So what do we know about the man doing the over-paying?’
‘Mr Cooper? Very little and, strangely enough, there was no estate agent involved in the purchase. It was an entirely private transaction.’
‘Well I never,’ he said dryly.
‘But Mr Cooper had a change of heart, because he never moved into the place. The property has been standing empty since the day Joe Lynch moved out. I checked with the neighbours. They haven’t seen a soul at that house in more than a year. I looked through the windows and there’s nothing there. It’s a shell.’
‘And what does Mr Cooper hope to get for it this time, I wonder.’
‘That’s the really interesting bit. This time there is an estate agent involved so I went down there posing as a potential buyer. I asked about the price and they confirmed it is on the market at the going rate, meaning our man will lose just under thirty grand in a year, if he holds out for his full asking price.’
‘That’s quite a hit he took,’ and her editor smiled, ‘considering he never lived in it or rented it out to anybody in the intervening period. Any luck in tracking down Mr Cooper for a comment?’ She shook her head. ‘Thought not.’
‘He’s abroad apparently, according to the estate agent. Mr Cooper is a very private businessman and they only deal with him over the phone or by fax machine but of course everything is all above board.’
‘Of course.’
And she laughed. ‘The estate agent actually said to me, “Don’t worry, love, it’s all cushty.” ’
And the editor’s smile grew broader. ‘So what’s your conclusion, as if I didn’t know already?’
‘Someone paid Lynch off,’ she said, ‘and whatever he did for them, it was worth thirty grand but Joe Lynch didn’t want anything as grubby or incriminating as cash in a brown envelope. So instead they bought his house at a vastly inflated rate and he pocketed the difference. Whoever the buyer really was, they waited a year to avoid suspicion and now they are quietly disposing of their asset.’
‘But what did the buyer of Joe Lynch’s house get in exchange for his generosity, I wonder?’
‘Whatever it was, they got lucky with Lynch because he’s leader of the council now and head of the planning committee, so he has a big say in the Riverside development.’
‘In that case his price will have gone up considerably.’ And he regarded the documents as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was holding. ‘And this buyer, Mr Cooper?’
‘He’s probably just a set of papers or a front for someone like Camfield or McCree,’ Helen said. ‘Who else can afford to blow thirty grand to buy a councillor? Even if we could track an actual person down, it won’t get us very far because he’ll never talk.’
‘So how can we run this story?’ Graham seemed to be addressing the question to her while simultaneously mulling it over in his own head.
‘Put down the bare facts. The leader of the council has made a very tidy sum out of property while others in the same area had to settle for much less.’
‘There’s just enough in there for people to draw their own conclusions,’ said Graham. ‘His own party will want to burn him at the stake when they read this.’
‘Lynch Mob?’ she offered as a joke headline.
‘I like that,’ he chuckled.
‘We should ask Councillor Lynch to tell us all about Mr Cooper,’ she went on. ‘If he gives us some proper information, we can use it to track the man down. If as I suspect he tells us nothing, we can say he refused to tell us anything about his mystery buyer. I’m hoping he’ll say he never met the bloke personally, which will make him sound like those guys who get sent down for possessing stolen goods. They usually say they bought them from a man they met down the pub but they can’t remember his name.’
‘Even better,’ he said. ‘Are you going to phone the councillor now?’
‘Not yet,’ she said, ‘a wise man once told me not to give a guilty party too long to come up with excuses or call in the lawyers. I was thinking an hour before deadline. Meanwhile, I’ll write up the rest of the story and leave a gap at the bottom for the councillor’s flustered denials.’
‘Then get writing and I’ll hold the front page.’ And he grinned at her. ‘Again! You realise I’ve got grizzled veterans in this newsroom who are beginning to look at you with hostile eyes because you’re star
ting to make them look bad.’ Then he placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Seriously, this is really good stuff, Helen. Well done you. I mean it.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, for his support was beginning to mean a lot to her.
When he had gone it struck Helen he no longer asked where she was getting her stories from. Perhaps he knew she wouldn’t tell him about her anonymous source. Someone was very unhappy with the way Joe Lynch was going about his business as council leader and they were more than happy to tell Helen all about it. The latest note to land on her desk had been typewritten, just like the rest. Ever wonder why Joe Lynch sold his family home? it asked her. Or how he managed to get so much more for it than anybody else?
It took a while for Tom to persuade Nixon to discuss Richard Bell’s case at all. In the end he was forced to agree to write his piece with no mention of the law firm, in exchange for their version of what actually happened in court. This Tom did reluctantly but only out of principle. Unbeknown to Nixon, Tom wasn’t actually writing a piece for the largest tabloid in the country, merely investigating Rebecca’s Holt’s murder on behalf of her supposed killer.
‘I want to talk to you about the advice you gave your client before the trial,’ Tom began.
‘I gave him a lot of advice,’ said Nixon as he broke a digestive biscuit into two equal halves with absolute precision, ‘some of which he chose to ignore.’
‘I’m talking specifically about the revelations surrounding his private life.’
‘Oh that.’ And he took a tiny bite of his biscuit.
‘You got him to admit to a whole series of … you called them assignations with women other than his wife,’ Tom reminded him, ‘which did not exactly endear him to the jury.’
The barrister sighed, ‘Yes, well, we were between a rock and a hard place there. We quizzed him about his affair with Rebecca Holt and decided there was little point in denying it. The police knew about it already and if he lied about it again in front of a jury, the prosecution could bring proof of the relationship into court – then the rest of his testimony would lack any credibility.’
‘I get that,’ said Tom, ‘but did he really have to stand in the witness box and list every conquest he’d ever made?’
‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ argued the barrister.
‘Serial Shag-Around and Lying Love Rat were just two of the following day’s headlines.’
‘The gutter press misrepresented him,’ said Nixon, ‘as they are apt to do. Some of the coverage was scandalous.’
‘I don’t think they did,’ said Tom.
‘Well, you’re a journalist.’
Tom reached for his notebook and began to read aloud from his shorthand notes of the trial coverage. ‘ “I’ve always liked women and very often they have been attracted to me. I enjoy their company and usually find sex easy to come by. I know I should not have continued seeing other women once I was married but I became convinced I was somehow entitled to do this because of the stresses of my life. I enjoyed the thrill of the chase and freely admit I was attracted to the forbidden nature of these affairs. I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t help myself. I enjoy sex and, from what I have been told I am good at it. I suppose I must be, because they usually come back for more.” ’ Tom raised his eyebrows at that. ‘Now tell me he doesn’t sound like a narcissistic prick who thinks he is above society’s norms and therefore capable of murdering his inconvenient mistress?’
‘On reflection …’ began the barrister ‘… this is off the record, right?’
Tom nodded. ‘Entirely.’
‘… it was a mistake. You have to understand our biggest fear before the trial was that the prosecution might uncover Richard Bell’s double life and use it against him. It seems he was addicted to having affairs left, right and bloody centre and if we could discover this, it was highly likely they would too. If we got him to stand up in the witness box and say he was a family man who had strayed once in having this affair then the prosecution produced evidence of all of his other … misdemeanours, we would be dead in the water. We thought it was better to grasp the nettle and get it all out in the open early on, so the jury knew the kind of man he was and maybe they could deal with it.’
‘But instead?’
‘They hated him,’ admitted the barrister. ‘I could see it in their eyes the whole time he was up there. We advised him to throw himself on the mercy of the jury, admit he had done some very bad things and beg his wife for forgiveness.’
‘But that’s not how it went.’
‘I think he just couldn’t help himself. He’d been successfully seducing all these women on the sly but he had no one to tell it too. I think you’re right, Mr Carney, he is a narcissist and he wanted the world to know about it. Once his affair with Rebecca was known, the dam burst and he figured what the hell; might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.’
‘You were playing a high-risk strategy,’ said Tom, ‘but there was logic behind it and Bell didn’t help himself.’
‘You can only lead a client in a certain direction if he chooses to follow you. Nobody was more frustrated by the outcome than me, I can assure you. I don’t like to lose.’
‘That alibi of his. You were never able to trace the girl.’
‘There were vague reports she may have gone to Ko Samui or Bali but she never told anyone where she was off to. She was just an Aussie girl who’d been all over Britain and was now off seeing the rest of the world. We knew that if we did find her she would probably just say she never wrote the note Richard claimed to have received from her. She was long gone by the time he received it, so it wasn’t much of an alibi. If anything she would probably have harmed his case.’
‘Who did write it then?’
‘If it really existed? Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Thank you for your time. It’s been useful,’ Tom told him, ‘I do have one last question though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Did he do it?’
The barrister snorted. ‘How should I know?’
‘Alright then,’ Tom corrected himself, ‘do you think he did it?’
Nixon seemed happier with the rephrased question, so much so that he allowed himself a lengthy period of reflection. Tom became conscious of traffic noises outside then the voices of a couple of teenage girls from several floors below.
Finally the barrister spoke. ‘If you are asking me whether I think he did it, then I genuinely don’t know. If you are asking if he is capable of the act, then my answer has to be an emphatic yes.’
Tom was taken aback by this. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I think that Richard Bell shows all of the signs,’ Nixon said to him, ‘the absence of regret or remorse, the inability to play by society’s rules, the tacit enjoyment of risk and the lack of inhibition in his sexual behaviour. Most of all, I suppose, his lack of empathy.’
‘All the signs?’ asked Tom.
‘Of a psychopath.’
Chapter Fourteen
Ian Bradshaw was surprised to be summoned straight to DI Tennant’s office as soon as he arrived at headquarters. He figured she was about to ask him where he had been that morning and was about to rummage for his excuse when instead she quizzed him about Kane.
‘Did the DCI have a reason for nabbing you like that?’ She sounded suspicious as if he had brought this upon himself somehow.
‘It was like you said, ma’am, he just wanted a lift home.’
‘And why was he unable to drive himself home?’
Bradshaw got the impression she already knew the answer to that question. ‘He said there was something wrong with his car.’
‘He said or there was?’ she asked, but he wasn’t daft enough to go there.
‘Both, I assumed.’
‘Mmm. And what did you talk about on the way to his house?’
‘Ma’am?’ He put deliberate bafflement into his tone, as if he couldn’t imagine why she would want to kno
w that. Bradshaw wanted to tell her it was none of her business but he suspected that would get him into a whole new world of trouble. ‘Nothing much, but he did ask me about my future and aspirations.’ Bradshaw hoped he might be on safe ground with that.
‘Did he now? And what did you say?’
‘I said I was happy where I was for the time being.’
‘Why? Don’t you want to get on?’ Tennant asked sharply.
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘So when a senior officer asks you about your future you tell him you’re happy to stay put?’ The raised eyebrows told him she was unimpressed.
‘I just meant I was in no particular hurry.’
‘DCI Kane won’t mistake you for an overly ambitious officer then.’ And she left that thought hanging. ‘So where have you been this morning?’
‘Following up on a lead.’ He wasn’t about to tell her he was staking out Tom Carney’s home for DCI Kane so instead gave her his theory about the burned girl having a tattoo. He had been keeping this to himself until now but it was a useful smokescreen
She listened and when he had finished his explanation said, ‘That’s useful,’ though she sounded uncertain, as if surprised he could have come up with it. ‘That’s good work.’
‘Will that be all, ma’am?’ he asked stiffly.
Kate Tennant sighed her exasperation. ‘Just get back to work, Ian.’
Mark Birkett lived on a building site. His house was the only completed property in a cul-de-sac full of newbuilds. There were twenty houses on the development, in varying stages of completion, and they flanked a curving, half-finished road that had rough foundations but no tarmacadam to smooth it over, so the drainage and manhole covers stuck up out of the road, causing Tom Carney’s car to bump all the way along Runnymede Lane. It had rained that morning and slick wet mud clung to Tom’s tyres. He parked outside the only house with a roof, got out of his car and knocked on the door.
‘You found me then,’ Birkett observed sullenly. ‘Most people don’t.’
Tom had phoned to explain his interest in Richard Bell’s case. He got the impression Birkett had allowed him to come round because he couldn’t think of a good reason to prevent it but he didn’t look pleased to see Tom.
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