‘You’re a cautious man,’ commented Sinclair, at Stark’s detours and double-backs.
Their charge remained surly from their encounter in the early hours, though sadly not enough to ask for someone else. Nevertheless, Stark was leaving nothing to chance, following counter-surveillance precautions, before, during and after extraction, slipping Sinclair out of the hospital via a connected drop-in clinic while Dearing’s rookie ran interference out front with the ARV boys, blue lights flashing. Emily’s name and connection to Sinclair had detonated another explosion in press interest. The hospital bigwigs wanted Sinclair gone, and too many people still wanted to hospitalize him further, or worse, to simply turn him loose. When offered transfer under wraps to a Met safe house he’d demanded Stark, and either someone up-chain was so keen to keep Sinclair from the press that they capitulated, or that person was DAC Stevens and this little sideshow had already been leaked. ‘When need arises.’
Sinclair was also alluding to the fact that Stark had made him sit in the passenger seat, with the giant Sergeant Dearing wedged in the back. It might seem unorthodox, but Stark considered it imprudent to let a suspected strangler sit behind him as he drove, and anyone ambushing them for their VIP would be in for a sizeable surprise if they went for the man in the back. Sinclair glanced sideways at Stark’s terse response. ‘Good to see a friendly face, at least,’ he said sarcastically, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper pitched to be overheard. ‘That one doesn’t like me.’
‘We’re not here to like you,’ replied Stark. A cheap shot. Fatigue and irritation at being plucked from R&R for tedious guard duty.
‘Good job too,’ muttered Dearing, whose inestimable patience was seemingly reaching its limits too.
‘Said the sergeant who let an armed serial killer breeze into my hospital room unchallenged,’ riposted Sinclair.
‘Said the man who invited him, and let him walk out without alerting us.’
‘You’d rather I let him kill me, kill you, shoot up a hospital?’
‘I’d have taken my chances, and we had armed officers outside,’ countered Dearing. ‘But now another girl is dead.’
‘And that’s on me too, is it?’ snapped Sinclair, rounding on him. ‘Did I slip past you? Did you and your under-aged newbie slip off into the toilets for a bit of on-the-job training?’ Dearing had no answer, and Sinclair settled back into his seat with a huff of satisfaction. ‘I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill any of them.’
‘Doesn’t make you any more likeable,’ growled Dearing.
‘They teach that diplomacy in police school?’ Sinclair shot Stark a cross glance. ‘And what about in the SAS, Mr Strong and Silent? You going to let him talk to me like that?’
‘He outranks me,’ replied Stark evenly. ‘And I was never in the SAS.’
‘Oh yes … Sorry, I forgot. You didn’t make the cut.’
Stark didn’t rise to the bait. Such things were not discussed. In the wake of the shootings, some tabloid hack had got wind of it. Another news cycle – more talking heads and Regiment-turned-novelist experts, suppositions and exaggerations. His subsequent refusal to discuss it during his interview with Gwen had only made it worse. Skin-deep media outrage at his special forces rejection after collapsing with malaria during the final test was offensive. You made selection or better luck next time, if there was one.
Sinclair didn’t mention the malaria. ‘You’ve gone backwards since then,’ he mused instead. ‘Weren’t you a sergeant in the army, or was it only acting? Happy as a grunt.’
‘Gleaming.’ Sinclair could think what he liked. Of the growing regrets in Stark’s life, serving in the ranks rather than command was not one. It might have been different. He had good university offers, in English, but his applications were never more than an exercise in self-knowledge. His father’s death and lack of life insurance had long ago plunged the family into penury and put paid to such aspirations. If Sinclair had signed up, his first in economics would’ve funnelled him straight into officer training, emerging Stark’s superior, and he knew it. Classic narcissist – one moment craving sympathy, the next belittling for dominance – just as Fran described. Or just a scared and put-upon creature, curled inside his coat of spines. There was little doubt he remained in danger, and he knew it. Behind passive-aggression lay a man denuded by prison and visibly jumpy, reminding Stark that he wasn’t the only one to catch a bullet recently.
‘I’m sorry. That was cheap,’ Sinclair sighed, seeming to deflate, rubbing his eyes. ‘I’m sorry about this morning, too. I was exhausted. I shouldn’t have snapped. It’s just … hard. Two years in prison terrified of another beating or being stabbed, and then I get out … Bad enough the world sniping at you from all directions, but I never thought I’d face real bullets. I know you understand, so I apologize.’
‘Police officers develop thick skins, Mr Sinclair.’
‘Soldiers too, I expect.’ When Stark didn’t answer, he stared disconsolately outside. ‘I used to have family, friends, a future. For so long, all I could focus on was proving my innocence, being free. I thought that would be it. That this nightmare would end.’
Welcome to the club, thought Stark uncharitably. ‘Life doesn’t work like that.’
Sinclair glanced at him. ‘No, I suppose not.’ He sighed again. ‘Does it get to you, the notoriety?’
‘If you let it,’ replied Stark. ‘But they mostly say nice things about me,’ he added, paraphrasing Leah Willoughby.
Sinclair nodded at that. ‘Even so, perhaps we’re more alike than you’ll admit.’
I only share willing female company, thought Stark, but said nothing. Little point adding to Sinclair’s litigious grievance, giving the snake what he wanted. If Fran was right.
‘Do you carry a weapon, Joe?’
Detective Constable or Officer to you. ‘I prefer a disarming smile, these days.’
Sinclair seemed disappointed. ‘I would’ve thought a man of your skills would carry a gun.’
‘Perhaps your majesty would prefer an armoured car and SWAT team?’ muttered Dearing.
Sinclair ignored him again, bored of the old toy, testing the new, perhaps. ‘You’re a private man too, I think.’
Stark focused on the road and his mirrors. ‘If you say so.’
‘I was too. Before all this.’
‘You preferred to avoid detection?’ muttered Dearing.
Sinclair wrinkled his face in disgust. ‘You can’t still think I’m guilty?’
Dearing didn’t reply. Emily’s murder shook such convictions. Fran remained certain. But Stark had seen enough indiscriminate horror and ambiguity to lean more towards abductive reasoning than deductive; Occam’s razor over Sherlock Holmes; thus: When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is mostly likely true, based on the evidence available and the quality of your investigation, and should be presented thus to a fair and impartial jury to deliberate. Not as pithily quotable as Conan Doyle. ‘Right now, we’re just here to stop anyone taking another potshot at you.’
That closed the conversation for a few minutes, before the silence got the better of Sinclair again. ‘I thought about joining the army.’
‘Fascinating.’
Stark’s disinterest owed more to his concentration on the outside of the car than the conversation within but seemed to irk Sinclair anyway. ‘You think you have something I don’t?’
Empathy? Restraint? Remorse? mused Stark, but again, the thought felt more like irritation than conviction, and not a little hypocritical. If this man really was innocent, he’d every right to bitterness. ‘I don’t know you.’
Sinclair didn’t take the hint to change subjects. ‘I’d have been good at it, I think.’
‘A natural born killer?’ suggested Dearing from the back.
Sinclair shook his head. ‘Clear-sighted. Someone who can see what needs doing and won’t hesitate.’
‘And that’s you?’ Stark watched a van in the mirror turn off into a side road. His eyes were tired. Busy night streets could make it easier to ditch a tail, but harder to spot one.
‘That’s the nature of my job, too, or was …’ Sinclair shifted in his seat, checking the wing mirror, nerves showing. This whole conversation felt like a mask for his fear, and perhaps loneliness. ‘The press called me a vulture, profiting off my clients’ misfortunes. But my job was to help them see clearly, make the hard decisions to survive.’
‘Or pick over the corpse.’
‘Make the most of bad situations. Creative destruction. It’s a harsh world.’
Stark could hardly disagree. But there seemed nothing the press liked better than to vilify a suspect, trawling their past for any hint of darkness – and God help anyone cursed with an ugly face or crazy hair or even just caught on camera with a momentary sinister expression. One such image of Sinclair had become a staple of every news feature, alongside his smarmy good looks, flash lifestyle and business dealings. Prosecution by press; verdict by vox pop.
Sinclair mistook his silence. ‘You think you’re better than me.’
‘At being human,’ muttered Dearing.
Sinclair clicked his tongue, staring out the window as if he meant to pretend Dearing no longer existed. ‘I’d have it in me, I think, to kill. Not what you’re thinking,’ he added before Dearing could scoff, ‘not like the Strangler. God knows I’ve had too long to think about what it must take for someone to do what he did to those poor girls. What must’ve snapped. How that differs from killing in the name of duty or justice. Whether there might be a monster in us all.’
Stark glanced at Sinclair, wondering what really was going on in his head. He’d sat with tribal elders, interpreters and members of the Afghan National Army, all the while knowing they might be Red dressed as Blue or Green. Vigilance and suspicion were as necessary as they were, for the most part, unfair.
Dearing merely huffed, not buying a word.
‘Perhaps Sergeant Dearing is a family man,’ postulated Sinclair for the jury. ‘Perhaps he has a beautiful wife and children. Perhaps he’d snap my neck like a twig if he thought I’d hurt them …’
‘Damn right I would,’ admitted Dearing, husband and father to two girls.
Sinclair nodded. ‘And you, Joe? What creature did war let slip in you?’
Pray you never find out, thought Stark. The willingness to kill was a nebulous thing. Under sufficient stress, most may indeed have it. Only in the action itself would a soldier, armed with training, clarity of purpose and legitimate justification, confirm if they did or not. But there was a word for people who needed no inducement and the military did its best to screen out psychopaths – or at least steer them towards special forces selection …
Sinclair nodded at his silence. ‘A natural born killer.’
Many times over, agreed Stark silently. Justified or otherwise by duty or right; a twisted amalgam of ice-cold logic and burning fury. A psychopath in all but conscience.
‘You’d be a worthy adversary,’ said Sinclair. ‘Hypothetically speaking. I didn’t hurt those girls, whatever Sergeant Sunshine back there thinks, or Groombridge, Harper and Millhaven, the press and families or any of them. But whoever the Greenwich Strangler really is, they must be licking their lips to be up against the famous, formidable Joseph Stark, VC.’
‘You talk too much,’ announced Dearing, giving voice to Stark’s own sentiment.
They pulled up outside the safe house, one of a small number the Met kept hidden for such eventualities. Parked opposite, an unmarked car containing armed officers. Need to know, and Sinclair didn’t, though the fools could’ve made some effort to be less conspicuous. Stark was just glad there was no sign of press or betrayal.