With A Vengeance

by Adam Croft

  ‘Sir, sorry for interrupting your meeting. But we’ve just been to John Lucas’s house to return some items to him after their forensic examination. We found something you might be interested in.’

  43

  ‘How the fuck did that not come up at the start?’ Culverhouse yelled, as he slammed the car door behind him and started up the engine.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Wendy replied, fastening the passenger seatbelt. ‘It clearly slipped through the net somewhere. We’ll sort out the details later. The most important thing is that we get on it now.’

  The news that PC Rashid had imparted was that when they’d gone to John Lucas’s house to return his belongings, a woman had answered the door. It transpired that the woman was called Valentina Kuznetsova, and had been John Lucas’s mother’s cleaner for a number of years. She’d been kept on for a few hours a week after his mother had died, to keep the house clean.

  ‘He never mentioned anything about anyone else having access to the house. He lied to us, Knight.’

  ‘Can you be sure we even asked him? I’d have to go back and look through the notes. It might have been overlooked.’

  ‘Overlooked my arse. If the police find a pile of evidence from a murder in your garage and you know damn well someone else has had full access to the house for the past however many years, would you not say something? Why would he keep that from us?’

  ‘He might not have thought of it.’

  ‘That’s bollocks and you know it. If he knows he didn’t kill Freddie Galloway, and he knows the evidence from the murder scene is in his garage, he’s going to bloody well think of who else might have had access to that garage. Cut and dried. If anything, that has just convinced me that John Lucas was the killer after all.’

  Wendy was still less than sure. ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’

  Culverhouse rang the doorbell and waited for Valentina to answer the door. When she did so, she looked to him to be the stereotypical Russian babushka — a headscarf tied around her chin and a pink apron covering the front of her dress.

  She welcomed them into the house and stood in the living room as she watched the two detectives sit down.

  ‘Please, take a seat,’ Culverhouse said, feeling a little strange that he was the one trying to make her feel at home, despite the fact she’d been spending a few hours a week here for many years.

  ‘I am afraid Mr Lucas is not here right now,’ she said, her accent still very evident, but having softened over her years in England.

  ‘That’s fine. It’s you we’d like to speak to, actually,’ Wendy said. ‘You’ve been working here for a while, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, I have many clients but John’s mother, Mrs Lucas, she hired me many years ago, just before her husband died.’ As she mentioned Mrs Lucas and her husband, Valentina made the sign of the cross over her chest.

  ‘And there was provision in Mrs Lucas’s will for you to keep the house clean while her son was in prison, is that right?’

  ‘That is right, yes. Although now when John is back here, I wonder if maybe I will not work here much longer.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, I get the impression that he does not want me here. I think it is a reminder of how things used to be. I think soon he will want to sell the house.’

  ‘He said that to you?’

  ‘Not in so many words, no. But I have a feeling.’

  The two detectives shared a glance. They both knew that ‘having a feeling’ didn’t butter any parsnips in policing any more, despite how often that feeling tended to be right.

  ‘And did anyone else have access to the house at all?’ Culverhouse asked.

  Valentina seemed to consider this for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No, only John had a key, but he was in prison, and his mother before she died.’

  ‘What about people coming into the house, though? Not just people with keys, but anyone who might have been let in, even if only for a minute or two.’

  She started to shake her head again, then stopped. ‘Well yes, there was one quite recently. Maybe two weeks ago, I think. No, less. One week ago. A man came round to look at the meters for the gas and electricity. I thought it was a little bit strange because the company only came round about one month before. It is usually twice a year. When I asked him, he said there was a problem with the reading they look last time and he had to do it again.’

  ‘And where are the meters?’ Culverhouse asked.

  ‘The gas meter is on the front wall of the house, by the holly bush. The electricity meter is in the garage.’

  Both detectives tried to hide their visible shock and excitement, and briefly exchanged glances.

  ‘Did he have anything with him?’ Wendy asked her.

  ‘Yes, a large bag. I presumed maybe this was things to fix it if he found a problem.’

  The two detectives shared another glance. Both knew that meter readers weren’t there to look for problems, much less to carry out repairs.

  ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’

  ‘Yes, a little. He was well built, maybe a little fat. I remember he was a little old for working still. Maybe he was around retirement age or he chose to work longer.’

  ‘Hair colour?’

  ‘Quite light, I think. Maybe going grey, but it was difficult to tell because it was a light colour anyway.’

  Wendy typed a couple of words into her police-issue tablet computer, waited for the screen to load, and showed Valentina the photograph on the screen.

  ‘Do you recognise this man at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ Valentina said, nodding. ‘Yes, that is him. That is the man who came here.’

  44

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ Culverhouse said, as the pair sat silently in the car outside John Lucas’s house. ‘Why the hell would Freddie Galloway come over to John Lucas’s house, pretending to be from the gas board?’

  ‘Well, I think we have to stick with our original theory: that our man came to the house on the pretence of reading the meters, but was actually there to plant the evidence we found when we came to speak to Lucas. Just because we now know that man was Freddie Galloway himself, that doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘But that makes no sense. You can’t frame someone else for your own murder.’

  ‘You can if it’s not murder,’ Wendy mumbled. She unlocked her mobile phone and called the incident room. After a few rings, DC Ryan Mackenzie answered the phone.

  ‘Ryan, it’s Wendy. Listen, can you do me a favour? We need immediate access to Freddie Galloway’s medical records. Not just the NHS ones, either. I imagine he’ll have had private healthcare. You’ll probably need to speak to the Patients’ Association and the British Medical Association. Get onto the major private healthcare providers, too. BUPA, Spire, the lot. Get everyone on the case. We need to fast-track them urgently. Alright?’

  ‘Sure, whatever you say.’

  Wendy hung up the phone and looked at Culverhouse. They shared a look that said they both knew what the new theory was, and that the result of Ryan and the rest of the team’s calls would confirm it. In exceptional circumstances, healthcare providers could provide almost instantaneous access to reports if demanded by the police. Some were better than others, though, and Wendy hoped Freddie Galloway used one of the quicker ones.

  It was just under an hour before Wendy’s phone rang, the familiar number on the screen letting her know it was Ryan Mackenzie calling.

  ‘Ryan. What have you got?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how interesting or useful it’ll be to you, but it seems Freddie Galloway was seeing a private doctor. His latest records show he’d been living with liver cancer. The prognosis was that it was terminal. Looks like the poor bloke was going to be dead before long anyway. Does that help at all?’

  For the first time in a few days, Wendy smiled. ‘Oh yes. More than you know.’

  45

  Heather Bateman looked up from her mobile phone at the elect
ronic noticeboard. Platform one at Middlebrook station was a boring place at the best of times, but there was another eighteen minutes until her train was due to arrive. She was glad it wasn’t raining.

  She tried to calculate how many hours she’d spent waiting on this platform. Her job meant she had to commute into London at all sorts of hours of the day. The morning rush hours weren’t so bad, as the trains came through every few minutes. At other times of the day, though, you could be in for a long wait — especially if there were delays or station closures.

  Heather had the unfortunate situation of living near the worst-performing train line in the country, according to official figures. Well, at least the area was finally famous for something.

  She’d been a shift manager on the London Underground for almost twelve years now. It was true that the network was staffed by only two types of people: those who worked for London Underground for a very short period of time, and lifers. They said if you got past your first six months, you’d be there until the day you retired. Retirement seemed a long way off for Heather, but she could see the truth in it. It was a job you either loved or hated, and although Heather wouldn’t admit it out loud, she actually quite enjoyed her job.

  It was something that gave her a huge amount of variety in her days. The job was always the same, but what it threw at you changed every single day. In the past couple of days alone she’d had to help coordinate the response to a woman having a heart attack at Canning Town station, an infestation of rats at Green Park and a child whose Batman outfit had got caught in the escalator at Baker Street. It certainly wasn’t a job where any two days were the same.

  She looked up at the electronic noticeboard again. Sixteen minutes. She leaned back against the cold metal seat, hanging her head back over the edge as she felt the sun on her face and the top of the seat digging into the back of her neck. Only for a minute, though. She’d fallen asleep in this position on one of these seats once before after a stretch of long shifts, and couldn’t get back up again. Her neck had locked into place.

  Remembering this, she brought her head forward again a little sooner than planned, and looked around her for something of interest. There was never anything of interest at Middlebrook station. Situated in a village of two thousand people — most of whom lived on the far side of the village and were already at work in London by now — it was a quiet station at the best of times. Unless she was here at rush hour, she rarely saw another person on the platforms, even less often a member of staff milling about. The station was completely out in the open, and you could see for miles in either direction up and down the tracks.

  It was then that the figure caught her eye, on the bridge that connected the four platforms.

  She put her glasses on to get a better look, and could see that it was a man. He was standing in the middle of the bridge, looking over the edge, up the tracks. It was an odd thing to be doing, she thought. There were occasionally trainspotters at the station, but they usually worked in pairs and stood on the platforms with cameras. This man just appeared to be peering over the edge, motionless.

  She noticed movement further up the tracks, on one of the fast tracks. On this line, platforms one and three were southbound; two and four northbound. Two and three, the middle lines, were for fast, overtaking trains which only stopped at a handful of stations along the line — usually in the cities and major towns.

  The train barely seemed to be moving at all — an optical illusion, she knew, as she was watching it from an almost head-on position. She knew the train would actually be doing well in excess of eighty miles an hour.

  Just as she noticed the train, she heard the automated station announcement over the tannoy.

  The train now approaching platform three does not stop here. Please stand well clear from the edge of platform three.

  Heather watched as, far from keeping clear of the edge of anything, the man hung his arms over the top of the bridge and hoisted himself up, swinging a leg up onto the top of the wall before clambering onto his knees. She looked on in horror, frozen to the spot, knowing exactly what was going on, as the man slowly and carefully got to his feet.

  She knew the breeze would be strong up there, even though the air was still at platform level. She watched as the man put his arms out to the side to steady himself, waiting for the perfect moment.

  She broke free from her terror and shouted out. ‘No! Stop!’

  The man turned his head in the direction of the noise, saw Heather, and turned his head back to look up the train line as Heather watched the train hurtle down the track towards him.

  46

  John Lucas swallowed hard as he felt his legs wobble beneath him. He looked down at the steel rails, wooden sleepers and chipped stone beneath him.

  So this was it. This was where it all ended. This was to be his final resting place. Or, more accurately, some of him would rest more or less below where he now stood and other parts of him would be spread along the track and the front of the train — if he timed the jump right.

  He knew what was going to happen and he knew it wouldn’t be pretty. But right now he didn’t care. Yeah, the train driver would need counselling and might never work again, but as far as John was concerned he could go fuck himself. He didn’t care about anything any more. He didn’t even care about his own life, never mind that of some bloke driving a train.

  It would hurt. He knew that. But it would only be for a split second, if that. His skull would almost instantly crack or blow open, leaving him completely braindead within a second at the very most. It would be instantaneous relief from this life.

  That word made him laugh. Life. It hadn’t been a life. He’d been dragged up on a shitty estate and had fallen into a world of crime — something he’d later found out he wasn’t particularly good at. He’d spent his time inside looking back rather than forwards, always thinking about the stupid mistakes he’d made, the things he’d done and wished he hadn’t. He could’ve started writing a list on the day he was banged up and still be writing it now.

  He was a man who alway seemed to make the wrong decision. He didn’t know why; it was just something that happened. And each of those decisions had, in turn, led to him standing on the edge of the bridge at Middlebrook station, staring at a train he’d never seen before, but which he knew was about to end his life.

  There was no point in trying any other way. All he’d ever had in life was his mum — the one person who’d really cared for him.

  He’d never known close family, other than her. When his mum had become pregnant not long after leaving school, her family had disowned her. His father was a married man, a friend of the family. He never knew his name. He didn’t want to. John had assumed for many years that he’d grown up on a council estate because that was his place in life.

  He thought, like so many of his friends’ families, that this was his background. It was only years later that his mum had told him she’d actually been from quite a well-off family, but on being disowned when falling pregnant she’d been forced into council housing just to put a roof over her and her son’s heads.

  She was as astonished as anyone to find out that her Aunt Iris had left her a decent inheritance. Not a fortune, but enough to enable her to buy her own house and set her and John up with the life she’d wanted him to have. John had his own theories on that one. In his mind, his father had been Iris’s husband, his great-uncle Frank.

  His mum had mentioned something in passing about Frank being a not particularly pleasant man. The inference was that he was physically abusive towards Iris. John wondered whether Frank had raped his mother — Frank’s niece — and that John himself had been the product of that crime. That would, in his mind, explain why Iris had left her estate to his mum. Perhaps it was her way of apologising, of ensuring that John — her step-son, to all intents and purposes — had a half-decent upbringing.

  They’d moved out of the council estate and into their own house when John was thirteen. By then, the dam
age had already been done.

  He wondered how much of it was down to that upbringing and what was in the genes. To exist purely because one of the vilest of crimes had occurred had to affect you in some way.

  In any case, it was all irrelevant. That sad, shitty little life would all be over in a few seconds. He’d be able to join his mum, wherever she was, and ask her to tell him everything. He wondered if at the moment of his death he’d suddenly know it all anyway, ascend to some all-knowing plane where everything becomes clear. That was the thing about death — no-one really knew what happened. There was no way of coming back and telling everyone what it was like. No-one would ever know until it happened to them.

  Whatever it was like, it would be infinitely preferable to living this shitty life.

  He looked down over the edge again, the tips of his toes protruding over the precipice as he started to hear the train rushing down the tracks.

  He swallowed again, then heard a voice behind and below him. He turned round to look and saw a woman on the far platform, looking shocked and panicked.

  He turned his head back towards the train and scrunched his eyes shut tight.

  47

  The major incident room at Mildenheath CID was buzzing as Jack Culverhouse updated the team on what they’d discovered. Steve Wing was the first to ask questions.

  ‘What, so he decided that rather than let the cancer get him, he’d rather die in a house fire and frame someone else for it? That don’t make sense to me, guv.’

  ‘He didn’t die in a house fire, though, did he? He died from jumping off the balcony and hitting the slabs.’

  Culverhouse watched as the cogs whirred in Steve’s brain, a gradual look of realisation creeping across his face.