The start of a new day brought fresh optimism. The evening before had been marked by self‑doubt, Jayne cajoling, trying to bring Dan out of his slump. He’d avoided wine, he needed a clearer head for any decisions he had to make, and instead they lay in bed and talked. And made love, of course.
That thought made him smile. They clicked in that way. Perhaps because they’d been friends for a few years, so they didn’t have any awkwardness, that it was just an extension of what they’d had before. They trusted each other.
Or perhaps they had been waiting so long for it to happen that they could sink into the blessed relief of it all.
Jayne had told him that everything about sex with him was full of meaning and emotion, so much more than anything that had gone before.
He didn’t know whether she was just making him feel better, but he latched on to the idea that it wasn’t frivolous. It felt like he always thought it would happen, even if he’d fought against it.
Jayne had been right about one thing though: that whatever his future held, Nick Connor’s case was a more immediate problem.
He was watching his curtains brighten, Jayne next to him, both naked.
She lifted her head, her hair tangled, her eyes bleary. ‘Do you still fancy me?’ she said, before laughing and collapsing back onto the pillow.
‘You’ve no need to comb your hair yet,’ he said. ‘I’ve had an idea.’
‘Sounds interesting, but what do you mean about my hair?’
‘I want you to make a written statement. Just a brief one, explaining your assault and exhibiting photographs of your bruises.’
‘But they’re fading now.’
‘If we get the light right, they’ll be visible, but it’ll come across better if you look dishevelled.’
‘You really are a charmer, Dan Grant.’
He laughed and put his arm round her to pull her closer. Her skin was warm and smooth as she hooked his leg over his. ‘It’s only for the photographs.’
‘What are you going to use the statement for? I won’t have to give evidence, will I?’
‘I’ll tell the prosecutor you’re willing to, but remember our case is that secrets were being uncovered by Mark Roberts, and it cost him his life. If we’ve suffered when we’ve followed the same path, it bolsters our case.’
‘I don’t want to give evidence though.’ She frowned. ‘It has bad memories for me.’
‘They’ll let me read your statement out, because how can they dispute it?’
‘Okay, if you’re sure, but I wish we didn’t have to go to work today.’
‘Yeah, me too, but I’ve got to work out the full detail of Nick’s defence. The trial has started and it still seems murky. Our case is that Leoni is a killer. She was back then, and she carried on with David Green by taunting and pushing him into suicide. Mark Roberts paid the price by discovering too much. Someone is trying to keep a secret hidden. Leoni most likely, or even Porter, although I don’t think a jury will think it’s him.’
‘But they’ll go for Leoni?’
‘She murdered two children. She’s got a lot to hide. You remember how we said that she might have carried on after David Green killed himself, because that case was a long time ago? For serial killers, if that’s what she is, long gaps don’t happen. They keep going, form a pattern, until they get stopped. Did she discover what she truly enjoyed, and knew how to get away with it? We were going to look at who else she might have killed, but Rodney shut us down. Without him, all we had was a wild theory.’
‘But now he’s back on board?’
‘We keep on looking. And I know who to ask.’ He smiled. ‘Photos first though.’
Porter wasn’t sure if it was the gulls that had woken him or the decision he’d made the night before; either way, he wondered whether he’d be able to carry it through.
The call from the investigator had unsettled him, with the threat that Rodney was going to talk. He couldn’t allow Walker to control the narrative.
Sleep hadn’t come easy, if at all. He’d stared at the ceiling, faintly illuminated by the turn of the lighthouse a few miles away, the North Sea’s giant searchlight. Before he knew it, he was staring at the ceiling again, except the lighthouse had stopped turning and a gull was wheeling just above his house. The early strains of daylight showed through the curtains.
He’d showered and left, not wanting to wake Linda.
No, it was more than that. He didn’t want to face her. He’d do what he had to do and deal with the fallout later. He’d stared at her sleeping figure, her hair across the pillow, the duvet up to her ears. They’d shared so much, but this was something he had to do alone.
He was outside Ken Goodman’s house, a three-storey house in the middle of what had once been a row of hotels opposite some bowling greens. The grass had been replaced by a car park and the hotels turned into small flats occupied by those people who drifted towards the coast, because being unemployed by the seaside was just about more palatable then being unemployed in an inner-city slum.
Ken complained about the deterioration around him, blaming the collapse of legal aid for his inability to move upwards. Porter just put it down to choosing the wrong side. He’d seen so many defence lawyers move to the prosecution, attracted by the hours and the pay, but Ken had stuck fast. That had always been Porter’s problem with him. The police had been about being on the right side of the law, being able to say that he’d been a good man, however much the job had blurred that line. Ken Goodman had only ever been about the money.
That was always the worst reason to do anything.
Porter had called Ken minutes earlier and he was about to ring again, the lack of sleep making him impatient, when the front door opened. Goodman waddled towards his gate, his hair sticking up, his stomach spreading in the gap between the bottom of his T-shirt and the top of his jogging bottoms, his slippers making loud slaps on the path.
The irony, Porter thought, of Ken Goodman in jogging bottoms.
He wound down his window as Goodman got close, and received a blast of stale whisky as he bent down to say, ‘What do you want this early?’
‘I’m going to Highford.’
Goodman rubbed his eyes and spluttered, ‘What the hell for?’
‘To deal with this. This needs to finish.’
‘Don’t you dare.’ He slapped the car door in frustration. ‘Don’t you bloody well dare.’
‘I’m going, but I wanted you to know that I’m putting a stop to this, whatever the cost.’
‘No, you can’t do this to me. To yourself either.’
‘What’s the panic, Ken? Your job is to keep your clients’ dirty secrets. The town won’t come after you.’
Goodman started to pace, his hand in his hair. ‘You don’t know that, because people won’t be bothered about legal ethics. They’ll think of how the two of us conspired to let a killer stay free.’
‘That’s the problem, Ken, because it’s exactly what we did.’
At that, Porter set off, leaving Goodman coughing into the fumes, looking after him, bewildered, his hands on his hips.
As he headed for the road out of Brampton, his mind was filled with fresh resolve, but with no idea about what lay ahead.