by TM Logan
‘We’ll get through it, Mel. Together. The three of us.’
‘The three of us.’
I stood up, holding out my hand to my wife.
‘Come on. I’ll walk you back to your office.’
55
William and I went to the sweet shop on the way home from school. Buying him sweets usually cheered me up. Then the park for a quick go around the swings, slides and climbing frames. While my son played, I called Adam’s number. I needed to talk to a friend, someone who knew me. Someone who would always have my back. He was a smart guy and I needed his take on everything that was going on.
His mobile rang three times and went to voicemail. Second time it rang only once before Adam’s recorded voice kicked in. I left a message asking him to call me.
William and I made our weekly visit to the library next, where I had been trying – without success so far – to get him interested in books other than those he was reading at school. We went along the shelf on the 5–7 bookcase, me pulling books half out and testing the titles on him.
‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea?’
‘Got.’
‘101 Fairy Tales?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Grumpy?’
‘Had that one at school.’
‘Well, what would you like?’ I asked.
‘’Spicable Me.’
‘That’s a film, matey.’
‘Can we get the film, then?’
‘They don’t do films here, just books.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a library.’
He frowned as if this was a ridiculous answer.
‘Lucas has ’Spicable Me.’
I was about to tell him why a good book was better than Despicable Me any day when my phone rang in my pocket, vibrating against my thigh. A library assistant gave me a stern look as I took my phone out and checked the display, thinking it would be Adam calling me back. But it wasn’t.
‘Joe?’ It was Mel, tension in her voice. We had not spoken since lunchtime at Regent’s Park, but now she sounded stressed again.
‘Hi,’ I said quietly. ‘You OK?’
‘The police are here. They want to talk to you.’
I suddenly remembered Larssen’s text from earlier. Shit. I’d forgotten to call him back again.
‘Where are you?’
‘At home.’
I put my hand out to William. Obediently, he put his small hand in mine and we walked quickly out of the library, past a sign on the wall that said Mobile phone-free zone.
‘They took their time,’ I said. ‘I called them yesterday.’
‘You called them?’
‘Yes. To report the break-in.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘We had a break-in yesterday, someone came into the house. Not someone: Ben.’
‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’ She sounded frightened.
‘I was going to tell you, when the time was right. But I didn’t want to freak you out.’
‘Well I’m pretty fucking close to freaking out now, Joe! The house is full of police!’
Her voice was edged with panic, close to hysteria.
‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘Try to calm down. How many police are there?’
‘A lot. A dozen, maybe more. They’re going through everything.’
I didn’t like the sound of that at all.
‘Looking for what?’
‘They won’t tell me. They’re taking things away.’
‘What things?’
‘Our things.’
‘All right, I’m leaving now. Be home in ten minutes.’
William climbed up into his car seat in the back of my Hyundai.
‘Can I eat my Haribos, Daddy?’ he said, holding the packet up.
‘No. Yes. Just have half, OK?’
‘How many’s half?’
‘Just don’t eat them all, Wills.’
We pulled out onto the High Street, a numbness in my chest. I felt like I was going to be blindsided again.
Not this time. This time I’ll be ready.
I slotted the mobile into its hands-free cradle and rang Peter Larssen, leaving a message to call me urgently.
Mel had not been exaggerating about the police – they were all over the place. Milling about in the front garden in white overalls, a couple of them examining Mel’s car, a steady stream going in and out of the open front door like worker ants. A low-loader was parked at the kerb, its flatbed empty, ramp laid down to the street ready for a car to be taken away. William was wide-eyed as I unstrapped him from the car seat. He took it all in, mouth slightly open.
I held out my hand, but he didn’t move.
‘Police,’ he said quietly. ‘Police are here.’
‘Come on, Wills. Let’s go inside.’
‘Why are police at my house?’
‘They’re looking after Mummy,’ I said.
He still wouldn’t get out of his seat.
‘Who are the white men?’
I didn’t know who he meant for a moment, then he gestured towards one of the scene-of-crime officers in white overalls.
‘They’re police too, matey. Come on.’
I lifted him out of the car seat and set him down on the pavement. As we walked up the drive to my front door, a scene-of-crime woman emerged wearing full protective gear including gloves, face mask and plastic overshoes, as if she was coming out of a serial killer’s house. She had something under her arm, wrapped in a clear plastic Ziploc bag.
My laptop.
I held both hands up to stop her, and she moved to walk around me.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘That’s my laptop. What are you doing?’
The white-suited policewoman gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. I followed where she was pointing and saw DCI Naylor in the hallway of my house, white plastic overshoes on. He had his arms crossed and was talking to Mel.
‘Gaffer’s orders,’ said the policewoman carrying my laptop. ‘You better talk to him.’ She walked away from me down the garden path, towards a parked police van that said Scientific Support Unit on it in large blue letters. William clutched my hand tightly.
A uniformed officer by my front door stepped in front of me and put a hand up as I approached.
‘Sorry, sir, that’s far enough.’
‘What?’
‘You can’t go inside.’
‘I live here.’
The officer scrutinised me for a moment.
‘Name?’
‘Joe Lynch.’
‘The owner of the property?’
‘Yes. Now could you let me in, please?’
He hesitated, then moved out of my way.
56
I stepped inside, William still clutching my hand. Yesterday I had stood here in the silence, knowing that someone else had been there without my permission. I had that same feeling again – but now the house was filled with noise, muffled conversations, footsteps, strangers, smells that didn’t belong here. My home had become public property.
A white-suited officer came down the stairs, carrying the base unit of our PC wrapped in plastic.
‘’Scuse me,’ he said as he came past. Another officer followed after him, carrying a load of clothes in a clear plastic sack. I could see my work shirts, socks, William’s red school jumpers and grey trousers: the contents of our washing basket.
‘Who’s that man?’ William said in a loud stage whisper.
‘He’s a policeman too. Come on, let’s find Mummy.’
The kitchen was also a hive of activity, crowded with forensic people brushing and scouring, swabbing and taking samples. One of them was removing both the regular bin and the recycling bin, putting them into clear evidence bags.
Mel looked upset, a smear of mascara around her eyes. She was still dressed smartly for work – she’d not even taken her jacket off – and threw her arms around me like she’d not seen me for a year. She folded into me and held on tightly, head against my c
hest, like a lost child. There was still something about that embrace – the way our bodies fitted perfectly together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle – that felt so right, despite what had happened between us. Painfully, achingly right.
‘Are you OK?’ I said quietly into her hair. ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded, but said nothing. When she couldn’t speak – when she didn’t trust her voice – she was really really upset.
‘What’s going on?’
She shook her head. Don’t know.
William held his hands up to her and we separated so she could pick him up, balancing him on her hip. His gaze switched back and forth between his mother’s tears and the strange men in our kitchen, as if he couldn’t decide which was the more worrying.
I turned to DCI Naylor.
‘What’s happening? Why are all these people here?’
‘We’re executing a search and seizure order, Mr Lynch.’
‘I can see that, but why? We were broken into yesterday and I reported it, but this seems like a bit of an overreaction.’
‘We’re not here because of a break-in’
‘So why are you here?’
‘Benjamin Delaney.’
‘Ben sent you here?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’
‘You know he’s playing you, don’t you? He’s sitting in a bar somewhere, laughing at how easy it is to hoodwink the police.’
Naylor just stared at me, unblinking.
‘Fresh evidence has come to light since our chat yesterday.’
‘Evidence of what?’
‘We’ll get to that. All in good time.’
There was a silence between us for a moment as I waited for him to expand on this. But he didn’t elaborate.
‘That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?’
‘Not quite.’
DS Redford appeared at his side, as if summoned by a secret signal.
‘Well?’ I said.
Naylor’s next words hit me like a breeze block.
‘Joseph Lynch, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.’
57
Murder.
For a moment I couldn’t breathe out, the air trapped in my chest, hot and heavy, as I thought about the word Naylor had used. The oldest and gravest sin. The worst thing that one human being could do to another.
Two days ago it had been about a missing person. Now it was a murder investigation.
The bustle and noise of police activity and of Naylor reading me my rights receded as I scrambled to think what had changed since yesterday, since they had told me they were simply trying to get a missing man back to his family. And in parallel, at the corner of my mind – right on the edge – another thought was putting down dark and twisted roots.
What would it be like in prison?
What would it be like to spend twenty years behind a wall?
To be absent when my son sat his GCSEs, passed his driving test, graduated from university?
But that wasn’t going to happen. Because I was innocent. This was all some giant mistake, Ben wasn’t even –
‘Mr Lynch?’
It was Naylor. I blinked, stared at him.
‘Mr Lynch,’ he said again. ‘Do you understand what I just said to you?’
I nodded, dumbly.
He held out a white-gloved hand.
‘I’m going to need your car keys.’
The room came back into focus. Mel looked stricken. She wouldn’t let go of my hand, clutching it to her stomach as if she could keep me in the house by the sheer force of her desperation.
Naylor took the car keys from me and passed them to DS Redford.
There was an audience in the street as I was led out to a police car. Bystanders, spectators, neighbours. A woman across the street, standing in her open front doorway, talking on the phone as she looked at the scene unfolding in front of my house. We babysat her kids sometimes. The softly spoken widower who lived opposite, half hidden by lace curtains in his front window as he peered out on all the police activity. I fed his three cats when he went to visit his grandchildren up north.
Despite my protests, Naylor insisted on handcuffing me.
A teenage boy on the pavement opposite filmed the whole thing on his mobile phone. He was in Year Ten at Haddon Park and I wondered how long it would be before his video appeared on Facebook. They wouldn’t use handcuffs if he wasn’t guilty as sin.
Redford stayed with me, a silent presence, as I was booked in with the custody sergeant at Kilburn Police Station and told to empty my pockets. It all went into a clear plastic bag: two mobile phones – both mine and the secret phone that I’d found in Mel’s handbag – wallet, keys, a ballpoint pen and loose change, before I signed at the bottom of a form and it was sealed for storage in a custody locker behind the counter.
The custody sergeant slid two more forms across the desk. The first was basic information about my name, address and any medical conditions. The second form requested consent for the police to take fingerprints and DNA samples from me. I had done nothing wrong, and yet . . . there was something about this that felt like crossing another line. In the system, forever, my unique set of numbers stored in a computer waiting for the day when I stepped out of line. It felt like giving up a small piece of freedom.
Being arrested was starting to feel very real indeed.
I signed the form and the sergeant fingerprinted me, carefully and methodically. He led me into a side room where another officer took a sample of DNA, a swab in my cheek for saliva. Left cheek, right cheek, sealed tight inside a labelled tube, job done. Then another one: identical procedure, identical routine.
‘Why do you need to do it twice?’ I asked the policeman, a young officer who looked barely old enough to drive.
‘One’s the control sample, one’s the secondary,’ he said. ‘We test them both to make sure they’re consistent with each other before we put them into the database. It’s like a back up.’
‘In case of mistakes?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s about our procedures being watertight. A match is a match: DNA doesn’t lie.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Unlike people.’
Redford swiped us through the reinforced door that led into the back of the station, showing me into a small interview room, smaller and shabbier than the one I’d been in yesterday. She disappeared. There was no offer of tea or coffee this time.
Forty minutes passed.
Redford was the first to return, a laptop under her arm, her face as blank and expressionless as marble. She was followed by Peter Larssen, who sat down next to me in a cloud of aftershave. Naylor was last to arrive, his tie pulled down below an open top button, folder in hand, hangdog expression firmly in place.
Larssen asked for five minutes alone with me before we got started. The two detectives left us and I told him about my discovery of Mel’s secret phone – her link to Ben during their affair – and that I had surrendered it with my own phone at the front desk.
‘Naylor should have his people look at it,’ I said. ‘Maybe it will help to track Ben down.’
‘They’re going to want your wife’s normal mobile as well.’
‘OK. Why?’
‘The texts from Ben last night, when you were setting up the meeting between him and Mel at the shopping mall. There could be something in the phone records that they can use.’
He made a note to that effect on his pad, then capped his fountain pen and spoke quickly and quietly, laying out the rules of engagement: he would deal with questions, I was not to comment or respond unless he indicated it was OK to do so – and then only with short, factual responses that related directly to the question. There were to be no exceptions to this rule. I was to remain calm and courteous, not let them rattle me, and not introduce new theories about Ben’s whereabouts. That’s their job, not yours, he said with some force. Above all I was to say nothing about my relationship with Ben, Beth or my wife.
His rules seemed clear enough.
‘I don’t get it, though.’
‘Don’t get what?’ he said.
‘How they’ve got to this stage already. What evidence can they possibly have to justify arresting me?’
‘We’re about to find out, Joe.’
Naylor and Redford came back into the interview room and sat opposite us. There were butterflies in my stomach, but it felt good to have Larssen riding shotgun beside me. Redford pushed a button on the Dictaphone.
‘Interview with Joseph Michael Lynch commenced at 5.51 p.m., 11 October.’ She turned her dark brown eyes on me. ‘Please state your full name, date of birth and current address for the recording.’
She went through various formalities and the names of the other three people present in the interview room. Naylor reminded me again that I was under caution and that anything I said could be given in evidence, but it might harm my defence if I failed to mention something now which was used later in court. He gave me his we’re-all-friends-here smile.
‘So, Mr Lynch,’ he said. ‘You know why you’re here, correct?’
Larssen said: ‘My client is here because you arrested him.’
‘Of course,’ Naylor said. ‘I’m merely asking about Joe’s knowledge of the bigger picture.’
‘Please fill us in, detective,’ Larssen said.
Naylor ran through the spiel he had given me on Monday morning, about the missing persons report being filed on Ben Delaney, and the proof-of-life enquiries they had been carrying out over the last forty-eight hours. Since yesterday new evidence had come to light, he said, which had altered their focus on the case.
‘As I mentioned, this is not being treated as a missing persons inquiry any more.’
He let it hang in the air for a moment, waiting for either me or Larssen to bite. Neither of us did.
‘It’s now being treated as a no-body murder inquiry.’
That word again. Hearing it once, in front of my wife and child, had been bad enough. But to hear it again inside a police station, with my DNA sample on the way to a lab, was a whole lot worse.
One word. Two syllables. Enough weight to send you to the bottom of the ocean.
Murder.
‘On the basis of what new evidence?’ Larssen said.
‘We’ll get to that in a moment. Suffice it to say we now have enough to elevate the status of the investigation.’
