Behind Dead Eyes

by Howard Linskey

  Afterwards, there would be much discussion about the driver of the other car failing to stop. There were no cameras on this stretch of the road, so the car that hit his would never be traced and the accident – because it was still officially classed as an accident in the absence of concrete evidence indicating otherwise – happened on a part of the dual carriageway with no crash barriers in the central reservation. Graham Seaton’s car ploughed through to the other side, unopposed by anything until it smashed into a car travelling at eighty miles an hour in the opposite direction.

  The other driver was killed instantly, while three people in the second car that clipped the spinning wreckage of Seaton’s escaped with serious, life-changing injuries, but none of them was able to give police much of an account afterwards of what actually occurred that night, since it all happened so fast.

  Seaton’s car had rolled twice before it smashed into trees by the side of the road. Everyone, including his closest friends and family, prayed he had been killed instantly when he hit the other vehicle, before the spilled petrol ignited and flames took hold of the car, sweeping through it and charring everything inside.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Helen was running late, but she had good reason to be. She had just spent time with Graham Seaton’s widow, who looked like a hollowed-out shell with nothing left inside her now but pain. She had gone round to the house out of respect for Graham and a duty to the wife she had never met. She had thought that offering words of admiration for her late editor might provide some small crumb of comfort to his widow, but regretted her visit almost immediately.

  Though Helen’s grief at poor Graham’s awful, premature death could never have been as deep as his wife’s, it still burned intensely within her days after news of the so-called accident was broken to them all at the paper. Now she found herself stumbling to say anything worthwhile, when all she really wanted to do was express her anger at the men who killed him and rage at the unfairness of it all. Instead she had a solitary cup of tea with the devastated woman and ended up offering up weak platitudes about how proud his children would be once they were old enough to understand what their father had done with his life.

  ‘They’d rather have their dad back,’ snapped his wife.

  ‘Of course,’ said Helen, ‘I’m sorry.’ And she left as soon as decently possible after that.

  On the drive back she had an awful sick feeling that Mrs Seaton suspected she and her husband might have been something more than just colleagues, but how the hell could she put that idea from a widow’s mind without being hugely insensitive? Either way, it had been a terrible decision to go round there and all of a sudden the tears that Helen had been too shocked to shed on first learning of Graham’s death finally came. She had to pull over by the side of the road and wept openly until she was finally done.

  All of this meant she was very late when she parked in the dedicated space outside her newly rented flat and climbed out of her car. She would have a quick shower, change and be on her way again before too long. She had almost reached her front door when she spotted the note, which had been folded and pinned to the wood with a drawing pin. She looked around but there was no one near.

  Helen pulled out the pin and the note fell to the ground. She picked it up, unfolded the paper and read the words.

  ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE

  YOUR EDITOR GOT BURNED

  NOW WE’RE COMING FOR YOU

  ‘DCI Kane sends his regards,’ said Bradshaw as he handed Tom a pint. ‘What the hell have they done to this place?’

  ‘Mexican theme, dinosaurs in the garden, jelly beans on the bar.’ Tom was dismissive. ‘So Kane actually sent his regards, or are you making that bit up?”

  ‘He did.’

  ‘I’d have thought you and I were both persona non grata these days.’

  ‘Well, we have caused him an absolute mountain of paperwork,’ admitted Bradshaw, ‘and he did say we were both pains in the arse, but we resolved the disappearance of Sandra Jarvis and cleared up the burned girl case. Jimmy McCree is in custody for that one, which is a major win, and he’ll stay there if Frank Jarvis testifies against him.’

  ‘What about Annie Bell?’

  ‘I try not to mention her name around Kane,’ said Bradshaw. ‘It tends to affect his mood if he’s reminded that every journalist in the country wants to ask him if he sent the wrong guy to prison, but it could be worse. They could be asking who was the young bobby that allowed Frank Jarvis’s missus to walk away from a drink-driving charge twenty years ago,’ and he regarded Tom carefully. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

  ‘I guessed,’ Tom admitted, ‘and you worked it out too.’

  Bradshaw shook his head. ‘He told me. He said he was wet behind the ears back then and you didn’t do anything without asking the grown-ups first. He’d seen Frank Jarvis on the local news, saw Mrs Jarvis’s name on her licence and asked if they were related. Then he called it in and the adults told him to give her a bye so he drove her home.’

  ‘Then all of a sudden he had friends in high places.’

  ‘That was how it worked back in the seventies but I still think Kane isn’t corrupt, not really. You must think that too or you would have exposed him.’

  Tom shrugged. ‘No one’s interested in all that. They want to read about murder and high-level corruption.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bradshaw but he didn’t sound convinced. ‘On a lighter note, how’s Helen?’

  ‘Gone,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Found a flat and moved out days ago.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Bradshaw. ‘It must have been nice having her around.’

  ‘My place was a little cramped,’ he said. To change the subject, Tom asked, ‘How’s Karen?’

  ‘Gone too.’

  It was Tom’s turn to say, ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Bradshaw sipped his pint, ‘it was my decision.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Of course every guy in the force thinks I’m stupid or gay but you can’t have everything.’

  ‘At least you’ve got your freedom,’ Tom observed. ‘How’d she take it?’

  ‘Not well,’ Bradshaw admitted, ‘but then she got all her stuff, moved back into her mum and dad’s and now she’s seeing her ex again.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Tom, ‘that was quick.’

  ‘Karen doesn’t like to be on her own,’ observed Bradshaw, ‘and he’d been hanging round. I’m happy for her.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, not really,’ admitted Bradshaw. ‘I’ve woken in the night in a panic a couple of times wondering if I did the right thing. I almost rang her once …’

  ‘Then you realised you didn’t really want her back.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I reckon you liked the idea of being with her more than the reality, that’s all.’

  Bradshaw thought for a moment. ‘You know, that’s probably as good an explanation as I’ve managed to come up with.’

  Helen walked into the pub then and they took their drinks to a table by a window and sat down.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Tom.

  ‘No,’ she said calmly enough but he realised it was a stupid question. How did he expect her to be when her editor had been killed? ‘I went to see his poor wife …’ Her sentence remained incomplete. ‘The funeral is on Monday.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Tom told her and she squeezed his shoulder in gratitude.

  ‘Is your newspaper sorting out something for you?’ asked Bradshaw, and when she didn’t comprehend his meaning he explained: ‘Protection. Graham was the editor but you wrote the articles.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well they’ve asked me not to come in for a while, so I suppose I’m not suspended exactly but kind of on gardening leave.’

  ‘Is that all they are doing?’ asked Tom.

  ‘I think everyone there is in shock,’ Helen explained. ‘They’ve never had a situation like this before. I suppose
they think I’m responsible.’

  Tom was angry. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘No, it’s true. I am responsible. Like you said, Ian, I wrote the articles.’

  ‘I didn’t mean …’

  She held up her hand. ‘I know you didn’t. I’m just saying that if I hadn’t written those stories, Graham would still be alive, and I have to live with that.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ said Tom, ‘blaming everyone but the people who actually do the killing.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I want to go back there anyway. I’ll need some time.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I’m hoping you two have happier news.’

  ‘Not really. I saw Richard Bell again today,’ Tom told them.

  ‘How was he?’ she asked.

  ‘Not great. He’s even talking of copping for it.’

  ‘What?’ Helen was shocked. ‘But he didn’t do it and everyone knows he didn’t. Annie confessed!’

  ‘Says he doesn’t care anymore one way or another. He still blames himself for Annie’s death and Rebecca’s and reckons he deserves whatever he gets. He thinks his request for an appeal will drag on for months anyway, possibly even years, and he mainly clung to the innocent plea because he didn’t want his little girls believing he was a murderer. Now he thinks that might be better than knowing their mother was, so he’s trapped in another dilemma. His legal team aren’t helping.’

  ‘I thought they’d be going all out to get him released.’

  ‘They think it could be claimed Annie was depressed and suicidal, so maybe she wanted to take the blame to get the man she loved released from prison. That’s why she allowed herself to be taped confessing to me.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Helen, I bluffed her. She thought there was a witness but there wasn’t, not a credible one. She thought the police were coming to arrest her but they weren’t. We might have got somewhere with her if Ian had brought her in for questioning but she killed herself.’

  ‘Isn’t that evidence of a guilty conscience?’

  ‘It only shows she wasn’t of sound mind, which doesn’t help his cause.’

  ‘But what about the parking fine?’

  ‘He parked the car there and drove it to meet his lover then he killed her. She quietly paid it to suppress the evidence of his guilt.’

  ‘But that’s crazy!’

  ‘It’s what any lawyer worthy of his profession will tell a judge,’ said Tom. ‘Richard Bell is going nowhere in a hurry. There’s no real incentive to reopen the case.’

  The barman called Ian Bradshaw to the phone then and he went, muttering to himself about being foolish enough to have told people he was going to the pub, by which he meant DCI Kane.

  ‘Richard Bell is faced with a pretty stark choice. One I wouldn’t envy,’ said Tom. ‘Continue to deny guilt and face a full twenty-four-year sentence, by which time his kids will have grown up and forgotten him, risk everything on a new appeal or admit he did it, even though we all know that he didn’t, and hope he can get out in another six or seven years. Then of course he’ll have no job and no home and there’s no guarantee he will ever be allowed to see his children again.’

  ‘Who’s looking after them?’

  ‘Annie’s father, who would probably like nothing better than to see his son-in-law suffer, since he probably blames Richard for the death of his daughter. Do you really think he’ll allow the man to see his granddaughters?’

  ‘But he’ll have some rights, as their natural father.’

  ‘I suspect those rights will be eroded by the fact that he’s a convicted murderer. It could reasonably be argued he isn’t safe to be allowed near his own children.’

  ‘Does he know this?’

  ‘We talked about it, yes, but I don’t think he has the energy left to keep on fighting.’

  ‘But he’s not guilty,’ she protested.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘ “We’re all guilty of something.” ’

  Bradshaw rejoined them and his face was white.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Not really. I’ve just been given some news and you’re not going to like it.’

  Tom couldn’t recall the last time he’d received good news. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s Councillor Jarvis,’ said Bradshaw. ‘There’s no pleasant way to tell you this so I’m just going to say it.’ And he took a breath. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ said Helen. ‘How?’

  ‘Found hanged in his cell.’

  ‘He killed himself?’ she asked the detective.

  ‘Doubt it somehow,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘That was no suicide,’ snapped Tom. ‘He was killed to shut him up, just like your editor.’

  ‘Guards found him,’ said Bradshaw, ‘with sheets knotted round his neck and the other end tied to the metal bar in the window.’

  ‘Does anybody really believe it was suicide?’ asked Helen.

  ‘There’s plenty that want to believe it,’ admitted the detective. ‘It would be a lot more convenient.’

  ‘So who did it?’ asked Helen. ‘McCree?’

  ‘Who else has the contacts on the inside?’ Tom asked. ‘Where does this leave your case against Jimmy McCree?’

  ‘In tatters,’ admitted Bradshaw. ‘The only evidence we have linking Jimmy McCree directly to the murder of Diane Turner is from Frank Jarvis, who is no longer in a position to testify against him. McCree’s lawyers are already petitioning for his release from remand. They said all along Jarvis’s claims were a ludicrous attempt to avoid taking the full blame for his daughter’s murder and their client knows nothing about the other girl. The CPS won’t be able to pursue it now.’

  ‘So he gets away with it?’ said Helen.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Bradshaw. ‘We’ve been assembling quite the dossier on Jimmy over the years and his recent arrest on suspicion of murder gave us new warrants to search his home and a number of places associated with him.’

  ‘What did you find?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s enough to bring charges for money laundering and possession of illegal firearms at the very least plus tax evasion and possession of a small amount of class A drugs but not enough to do him on supplying. He’s probably looking at a couple of years inside if he pleads guilty.’

  ‘He’ll do that with a smile on his face now he’s avoided life,’ commented Tom.

  ‘But it will be his first actual criminal conviction. That’ll cost his new security business a lot of money. Alan Camfield has already slammed the door shut on him and pulled out of the Riverside tender, which has been ripped up so they can start it all over again without him. Joe Lynch is vulnerable too. He may have to stand down as leader of the council because everyone is openly talking about how corrupt he is. This is all very far from over. Every police officer in the north-east is in full agreement that Jimmy McCree is now our number one priority and he’ll slip up again one day. We’ll be waiting when he does.’

  ‘In the meantime, he gets away with murder,’ said Helen.

  ‘Believe me I am as pissed off about that as you are, Helen, but there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘There is one thing I can do,’ Tom told them both. ‘I’m going to write about it. I’m going to put all of this down in a way no one can bloody ignore. I’ll tell the story of the man who’s rotting away in jail even though it was his wife that really murdered his lover. I’m going to tell the world about the politician who abused his position to prey on young girls nobody would ever believe. I’ll write about his murdered daughter, how he was forced to end his political career and who gained because of that, then I’ll say how bloody convenient it was for everyone when he was found dead in his cell.’

  ‘You don’t mind who you upset, do you?’ said Bradshaw but he was smiling now.

  ‘I’ve still got contacts who love stories like these. There’ll be banner headlines on the front
pages of some very big newspapers and some people won’t like that,’ agreed Tom, ‘but by the time I’m done there’ll be dozens of other reporters queueing up with some very awkward questions for Alan Camfield, Joe Lynch and Jimmy McCree.’

  When Tom was finished, Bradshaw regarded him closely. ‘I quite like the sound of that.’

  ‘The power of the press,’ said Tom, ‘and no, I don’t expect to change the world, not even a small corner of it, but it’s a start.’

  ‘I’d like to help you,’ Helen told him, ‘but I may need a change of address,’ and she handed him the note that had been pinned to her door.

  He read it then gave the note to Bradshaw. ‘You sure about that?’ Tom asked. ‘They are already gunning for you.’

  ‘So I may as well fight back. Are you still looking for that lodger?’

  ‘Not anymore. The room’s yours.’

  ‘So it’s print and be damned?’ Helen asked him.

  ‘Print and be damned,’ he said emphatically and Helen smiled. She knew this time they both meant it.

  The End

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to everyone at Penguin Random House for publishing Behind Dead Eyes. In particular, a huge thank you to my editor Emad Akhtar for all of his great ideas and hard work helping me knock this book into shape. Thanks also to Viola Hayden for all of her help.

  I would like to thank the legendary ‘Agent Phil’ my literary agent. Phil Patterson at Marjacq has represented me for quite some time now. He is a huge support and an all-round top bloke. Thanks also to Sandra Sawicka at Marjacq for ably handling my foreign rights.

  Behind Dead Eyes enabled me to work with the amazing Keshini Naidoo for the fifth time now. Once again thanks for helping me get to the end of a book, Keshini.

  Thanks to Peter Hammans and all at Droemer Knaur, my publisher in Germany, and a very big thank you to the brilliant Ion Mills at No Exit for getting me started.

  Mark Birkett made a very generous bid at an auction to support a fine charity, the Alan Shearer Foundation, for which we all thank him. In return he is now immortalised as a fictional character in this book.