Anna’s hopes of a trouble-free journey to Richmond were dashed within minutes of leaving MIT headquarters.
She made the mistake of taking the obvious route through Putney, and discovered too late that part of it had been turned into a raging inferno of cars and vans.
Mounted police were being deployed to beat back a mob of manic youths wearing military-style balaclavas.
So for the second time that evening Anna was forced to make a detour to avoid getting caught up in it.
‘Surely it’s time the army was brought in to help,’ Benning said. ‘At this rate the whole fucking city will be flattened by morning.’
Anna too was becoming increasingly alarmed. She was no longer confident that the Met would be able to bring the disturbances under control without help. Too many people were jumping on the bandwagon. There were those with an axe to grind who saw it as a way to vent their anger and frustration. Those who viewed it as a bit of fun. And those who were getting off on the sense of power they were able to wield.
It was clear to Anna now that what was happening was a seismic event that was going to be costly in terms of both lives and money. It would also have serious implications for the future of law enforcement, community relations and crisis management in the capital, and beyond.
The pool car was equipped with a police radio, and the number of ‘urgent assistance’ calls they were hearing was staggering. Officers all over the city were being threatened and attacked, and there were now reports that rioters had even turned their attention to Buckingham Palace.
‘It’s like a blinking war zone,’ Benning said, which was exactly how DCS Nash had described it when he called Anna at home earlier.
Was that really only a matter of hours ago? she wondered. So much had happened since then. She’d stood over a dead boy chained to a wall in a cellar. She’d interviewed a vile paedophile. And she’d encountered scenes of carnage that had made her blood run cold.
It was frightening to think that the night was still so young.
*
The streets of Richmond were busy but calm, which came as an immense relief to the two detectives.
Benning directed Anna to Gavin Pope’s house, a mid-terrace property close to the famous Royal Park.
‘When I interviewed him he didn’t try to hide his sheer contempt for Mark Rossi,’ Benning said. ‘He described the guy as being very different to the clean-cut family man image that he likes to project of himself.’
‘Did you ask him to explain what he meant by that?’
‘Of course, but his response was vague, like he didn’t want to be drawn on it. He just said he’d worked on various programmes with the man over five years and the more he got to know him the less he liked him.’
‘There are two sides to every story,’ Anna said, as she parked the car in front of the house. ‘So maybe Rossi wasn’t too fond of him either.’
It was a woman who answered the door. Fiftyish, with unruly blonde hair that dropped onto her shoulders, and a slightly bloated face that was at odds with her trim figure. She was wearing a tight button-up white blouse, denim shorts and fluffy pink carpet slippers.
‘Hello again, Mrs Pope,’ Benning said. ‘I know it’s late, but we need to speak to your husband again. Is he in?’
Her eyes flashed with annoyance. ‘Well I hope you’re going to say sorry for accusing him of kidnapping that young boy. He’s been in a dreadful state since then.’
‘I did not accuse him of anything, Mrs Pope. I asked him some questions pertaining to his relationship with the boy’s father.’
‘You mean his dad told you that Gavin probably did it.’
‘That’s not what I mean, Mrs Pope.’
Anna was about to intervene when a man stepped into the hallway behind her, and said, ‘What’s going on, love?’
Anna recognised him at once from the photo that was now pinned to the whiteboard in the ops room. Gavin Pope was of medium height with short brown hair liberally streaked with grey, a designer beard, and sharp features. He was ruggedly good-looking and it appeared to Anna as though he kept himself in shape.
‘Oh Christ, what is it now?’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing to add to what I’ve already told you.’
‘There’s been a development in the Jacob Rossi case, sir,’ Anna said. ‘As a result I am now the senior investigating officer and there are some questions I need to ask you. My name is DCI Anna Tate. I’m a detective chief inspector with the Major Investigation Team.’
Pope cocked his head to one side and frowned.
‘So what is this development? Has the kid been found?’
‘I’m not prepared to have this conversation on the doorstep, Mr Pope. May we come in?’
Pope rolled his eyes and clucked his tongue.
‘I suppose you’ll have to. Let’s get it over with. My wife and I were just about to go to bed.’
They were shown into the living room where the couple had been watching the television. It didn’t surprise Anna that the screen was showing news footage of the riots. She turned her back on it so that it wouldn’t be a distraction.
Pope sat on an armchair and his wife, whose first name was Laura, stood behind him, fidgeting nervously with the top button of her blouse. Anna and Benning lowered themselves onto the sofa.
‘I’ll start by answering the question you just asked, Mr Pope,’ Anna said. ‘Jacob Rossi has indeed been found, but not alive, I’m sad to say. His body was discovered earlier today.’
Pope’s jaw dropped and the breath whistled out of him. His wife’s hand flew to her mouth and she spoke though her fingers.
‘That’s awful. Please don’t tell us that the boy suffered in any way,’ she said.
‘All we know for certain is that Jacob was abducted on Monday and has been held captive since then,’ Anna said. ‘But the derelict building he was in was set light to by rioters and he died in the fire because he couldn’t escape. So our job is to find out who put him there.’
Mrs Pope shook her head as a sob rose in her throat.
‘That is so terrible,’ she said.
She placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder and squeezed it as the colour drained from his face.
‘I swear I had nothing to do with it,’ he said, his eyes locked on Anna’s. ‘There’s bad blood between Rossi and me – I admit that. But I’m not some nutcase who would snatch a child. You have to believe that.’
‘Right now I don’t know what to believe,’ Anna said. ‘All I know for sure is that you’re a man with a serious grudge against Mark Rossi. You want him to take responsibility for the impact the closure of his stepfather’s company had on your life. And because he won’t you’ve tried to make life unpleasant for him with threats of legal action and menacing phone calls and emails. Then two months ago you confronted him at an event and threatened him.’
‘I was drunk that night,’ Pope said. ‘I got carried away. But it was hardly a serious threat. He’s exaggerating if he says it was. Just like he’s exaggerating when he says I’ve pestered him with calls and emails. I phoned him a few times and fired off a couple of emails, but that’s all. You can check my phone record and see for yourself.’
‘When was the last time you had any contact with him?’ Anna asked.
‘It was at the do. I didn’t even know he was going to be there.’
‘I was with Gavin that night,’ his wife said. ‘Mark was prancing around as though he was the most important person there and even I felt like giving him a slap. He’s always had that effect on people, especially those who’ve worked with him.’
‘So were you also on the payroll of Glory Entertainment, Mrs Pope?’ Anna asked.
‘No I wasn’t. I work for a recruitment agency. But I met Mark on several social occasions.’
Anna turned back to Pope. ‘And where are you working at the moment, Mr Pope?’
‘I’m between jobs,’ he said. ‘As a freelance producer-director I go through dry spells.’
‘Is that why you were at home by yourself on Monday when Jacob disappeared?’
He licked his lips and swallowed hard. ‘That’s right. I didn’t go out all day.’
‘And what about since then? Have you been out at all?’
‘Of course, but only to the shops and the pub. I’ve spent most of the time working on some programme ideas and watching the news.’
‘But I take it that you’ve been alone so there’s no one who can verify that.’
‘During the day my wife works at the agency in Bromley,’ he said. ‘But we’ve been together every evening.’
Anna turned to Pope’s wife. ‘And is it just the two of you who live here?’
The woman nodded. ‘We don’t have any children. We gave up trying years ago.’
‘But that’s none of your business anyway,’ Pope said. ‘This is absurd. I can’t believe I’m a suspect.’ He switched his gaze to Benning. ‘When you were here the first time I answered all of your questions and let you search the house. What more do I have to do to convince you that I’m not in any way involved in this awful business?’
It was Anna who responded. ‘You can start by being totally honest with us, Mr Pope. When you last spoke to DI Benning you told him that Mark Rossi is not the clean-cut family man that his fans think he is, and your wife has also been less than complimentary about him here tonight. So if there’s something you’re not telling us about the man – or why you dislike him so much – then you need to open up because it might well have a bearing on what’s happened to his son.’
Pope ran a hand through his hair and started to say something, but then thought better of it. This prompted his wife to step out from behind the chair and crouch down on her knees in front of him. A look passed between them and Anna felt her pulse accelerate.
‘This is an informal interview, Mr Pope,’ she said. ‘So you are not obliged to answer our questions. But if you don’t we will have no choice but to assume that you’re withholding information and that’s an offence. And I can assure you that whatever it is we will eventually get to the bottom of it.’
There was a long, pregnant pause, which ended when Pope said to his wife, ‘I’ll leave it to you to tell them.’
Mrs Pope stroked the back of her husband’s hand and slowly stood up. Then she turned to face Anna and breathed in deeply through her nose before speaking.
‘The reason my husband hates Mark Rossi so much is that I had a brief affair with the man some years ago,’ she said. ‘Gavin has managed to forgive me and for my sake he hasn’t told anyone else. He can’t forgive Mark, though, and for that I don’t blame him. But before you jump to the conclusion that Gavin has even more reason for wanting to punish Mark, you need to know that I’m not the only woman the bastard has played away with. And Gavin is not the only husband who found out.’
It was certainly a turn-up for the books as far as Anna was concerned. For no particular reason she had assumed that Mark Rossi was a happily married man. But she should have known better than to take anyone at face value. Her own husband, Matthew, had made her and everyone else believe that he was content with the life they shared while behind her back he was shagging a work colleague.
‘OK. Tell me about this affair,’ Anna said.
Mrs Pope looked at her husband for approval and he nodded.
‘It lasted for three months and it’s something I bitterly regret,’ she said. ‘Gavin and I were going through a bad patch after I’d learned that I couldn’t conceive. Mark flirted with me at a company Christmas bash and I stupidly gave him my mobile number. I didn’t expect him to ring, but he did and, well, you can probably guess the rest.’
Anna looked at Pope, who was chewing on his bottom lip.
‘And when did you find out about this, Mr Pope?’ she asked him.
His voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘It wasn’t until a year after it had ended. My wife went to work one day and left her phone behind. Out of curiosity I picked it up and scrolled through her messages. There were two from Rossi that she hadn’t deleted.’
‘And what happened then?’
‘I confronted her and we had a big row. But she convinced me it was a one-off and only happened because of the problems in our marriage at the time. I threatened to punch Rossi’s face in but she talked me out of it and begged me not to let on to him or anyone else that I knew. She wanted us to stay together and for me to forgive her. So I did. My love for her proved stronger than my hatred for him. That’s why I used the excuse of the company liquidation to get at him. I couldn’t stand the thought that he could just get away with it like that.’
Anna turned back to Pope’s wife. ‘So to your knowledge how many other extramarital affairs has Mark Rossi had?’
Mrs Pope shrugged. ‘We only know for certain about one because both the woman and her husband worked for a short time at Glory Entertainment with Gavin. His name is Roy Slater and he left the company just before it went bust because his wife Ruth had a fling with Rossi. Roy found out about it on the same day she announced that she was leaving him. Days later she packed in her job and moved to France to live with her parents who’d retired there. Roy took it really hard and fell into a depression.’
‘So why did this never attract press coverage given Rossi’s high profile?’ Benning asked. ‘Surely it would have been fodder for the tabloids. And yet I haven’t come across any mention of it.’
‘That’s because Rossi’s stepdad paid him off to leave the company and not to tell anyone,’ Pope said. ‘His friends and colleagues were told about his wife’s affair with some man, but not who he was. I was the only person Roy confided in about Rossi and that wasn’t until a few months later when we met for a drink.’
‘Was this before or after you saw the message on your own wife’s phone?’ Anna asked.
‘This was sometime after.’
‘And did you tell him about your own experience?’
‘I chose not to because I had always made him and others believe that my own marriage was rock solid … I didn’t want him to know the truth.’
Anna mulled this over for a few moments, then said, ‘So when was the last time you saw Roy Slater?’
‘I haven’t seen him in months.’
‘We will obviously want to talk to him. Do you have his address?’
‘I’ve got it written down somewhere. I haven’t spoken to him for a while, though, either.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Do you know where he works, for instance?’
‘He was unemployed when we last got together. And he said he was struggling to make ends meet, partly because he had fallen back into his old ways.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘He was betting again. Roy was a compulsive gambler all the time I knew him. I reckon it was one of the reasons his wife strayed. He used to spend most of his time in betting shops, casinos, and on gaming machines, but more often than not he was unlucky.’
Anna thought about this and it occurred to her that Roy Slater might have been desperately searching for a way to hit the jackpot.