Sharp was waiting for Kay when she walked out of the interview room, his arms crossed while he leaned against the wall and stared at the low ceiling.
He looked exhausted and after she sent Gavin back to the incident room with a murmur of thanks, she wondered if her eyes held the same fatigued shock.
‘How did it go?’ he asked, stretching his back and cricking his neck.
‘Well, I’ll award him ten out of ten for stupidity.’
‘Where’s Roman?’
‘He should be here any minute. According to the treating doctor at Maidstone Hospital, he needed stitches in his leg but it’s all dressed and he’s only going to need some painkillers and antibiotics for the next week.’
‘More’s the pity.’
They turned at the sound of the security door opening at the end of the corridor to see Roman MacFarlane being led towards them by Harry Davis.
The constable’s grip on the man’s arm was none too gentle, and Kay recalled how Phillip had been under the older officer’s tutelage for his first shifts at the station.
Seeing the pain in Harry’s face as he guided Roman into the next interview room, she vowed to speak with him before the roster changed at daybreak to offer her condolences.
Sharp ran a hand over his face as the door swung closed behind them. ‘Are you going to be all right to run this one, or do you want me to?’
‘I’ll do it.’ Kay looked at the stack of folders on the floor beside his feet, then crouched to pick them up. ‘Is this everything?’
‘Including CCTV footage from a farm on the junction with the main road and the lane leading to the MacFarlanes’ place.’ Sharp grimaced. ‘I pulled in Aaron Stewart and Dave Morrison to go through it earlier. They’ve already identified two cars that travelled in the direction of Porter’s place since June that are registered to known criminals – one with an armed robbery conviction from fifteen years ago.’
‘Christ.’ Kay fluffed her hair with her fingers, then buttoned her jacket and turned towards the interview room as Harry emerged.
When she entered, she glared at the two men who sat side-by-side on one side of the table, her gaze falling to the bandages that swathed Roman MacFarlane’s thigh.
Despite the mild painkillers administered at the hospital, he still appeared to be in a lot of discomfort, and she fought back the urge to kick him as she took her seat.
The solicitor, who Kay recognised as a hardened duty solicitor from Tonbridge, kept a poker face while she and Sharp arranged their files and started the recording with the formal caution.
‘When did you start dealing illegal firearms, Roman?’
Kay watched the man opposite her, dark shadows under his eyes and a taut line across his brow, while he nibbled at a thumbnail and kept his gaze lowered.
‘I asked you a question,’ she snapped.
He jumped in his seat as her hand slapped the table.
‘When did you start selling the guns?’
‘A while back.’
His voice was low, and she leaned closer to hear him.
‘When?’
He shrugged, then dropped his fingers from his mouth before spitting the remnant nail to the floor. ‘July last year, maybe.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the business is fucked.’ Now he looked up, his gaze holding hers. ‘I’m the only one doing anything to make sure it survives. You’ve seen the state of Porter?’
‘Your father?’
He snorted. ‘Whatever. He’s as bad at that as he is trying to run a fucking business. Pissed all the profit away years ago. Some inheritance I’m going to have.’
‘Is your father dying?’ Kay couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice.
Porter had looked overweight, yes, but––
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ said Roman. ‘And if he goes before the mortgage is paid off, I lose everything. I can’t even sell the business, the state it’s in at the moment.’
‘If you were selling illegal firearms, why were you urging your father to audit the stock?’
‘Because I could add the new stuff without raising suspicion, of course.’ He smirked. ‘Hide it in plain sight.’
‘Tell us about Dale Thorngrove.’
‘All Mark Redding’s fault. Ask him.’
‘I’m asking you.’
Roman scowled. ‘I didn’t know him personally. Thorngrove, I mean. Redding bought a rifle from me a while back – said he’d lost his licence after a drink driving ban and was only going to use it on private land. I don’t usually sell to people like him, but a sale’s a sale, ain’t it? And we needed the money. Then he comes to me and says he’s got a mate, wants to buy a gun too and I’m like, who the fuck are you telling about my business?’
‘But you sold it anyway.’
‘No. I didn’t. I told him to get stuffed. And I told him he needed to stop talking about where he got his bloody rifle from. I told him to tell his mate to go to one of the local licensed dealers. Do it properly. That’s when he said he couldn’t – his ex-wife was making up stuff about him so he’d never get approved.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘Redding tells this Thorngrove bloke I’ve said no, and that’s when he starts trying to blackmail us both.’
‘Redding told Thorngrove your name?’
‘Yeah.’ Roman choked out an incredulous snort. ‘Just shows what sort of a dickhead he is, right?’
‘Right,’ said Kay, sensing a chance to side with the man opposite her. She bit back her disgust. ‘What happened then?’
‘Redding arranged to meet with him to try and talk some sense into him. I told him he’d better, ’cause otherwise I’d deal with them both. That’s why I went, see? I didn’t trust him to sort it out.’
‘When we last spoke to you, you told us you were cleaning a carriage that was being hired out.’
‘That only took a couple of hours.’
‘So you went to the White Hart?’
‘Yeah. Parked a mile or so away and walked there. Waited until they came out.’ Roman sneered. ‘I was right. They were arguing walking back to Redding’s car.’
‘Which one?’
‘That shit heap of a four-by-four his wife drives.’ He smirked. ‘I figured he didn’t want to be recognised. Rest of the time, he’s driving around in that sports car of his.’
‘What were they arguing about?’
‘I really thought Thorngrove would have more sense and back off once Redding spoke to him, but it was pretty evident that wasn’t going to happen. So I dealt with him.’
Kay sat back, shocked at the matter of fact way in which the man spoke of cold-blooded murder.
Roman gave a malicious grin. ‘What’s the saying? Killing two birds with one stone, isn’t it? I figured Redding wouldn’t be telling anyone else where he got that rifle from after he saw that.’
‘Which rifle did you use to kill Thorngrove?’ Kay asked, recovering. ‘The one you sold to Redding?’
‘No – that was another problem. I took an identical one from our stock. Figured if you lot thought two were stolen, it’d slow you down a bit.’
‘Which is why you destroyed it and chucked the parts in the bin outside the White Hart?’
‘Yeah, well. That Len was starting to poke about as well on the sly. I heard he was asking his regulars whether they knew what was going on. I reckoned if I made it look like he was involved then he’d lose some customers and keep his mouth shut.’
‘Why did you take Patricia Redding hostage?’
Roman paused, turning to his solicitor.
‘My client would like it noted on the record that he didn’t intend for the young police officer to die,’ said the man. ‘It was an accident.’
Kay’s heart punched her chest, and she slid her hands to the edge of the table, gripping it until her fingers whitened.
‘Carry on,’ said Sharp. ‘What happened?’
‘I went there to speak to Redding.’
‘Speak to him, or kill him?’
‘Detective!’ The solicitor leaned forward.
Sharp ignored him and glared at Roman. ‘Answer the question.’
‘To speak to him. I wanted the other rifle back, and I was prepared to pay him for it.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t want him trying to blackmail me next. He’d already phoned me in a state because you lot were asking him all them questions, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he let slip my name.’ Roman paused, chewed at his nail for a moment, then dropped his hand. ‘Too late by then, wasn’t it? Your two boys turned up five minutes after I’d arrived. I panicked, I s’pose.’
He gave another shrug. ‘Sorry.’
‘You got one thing right,’ said Kay, her voice little more than a croak. ‘They were both just boys. And one of them is dead because of you.’