Sweeny knew the way to Devlin Street so they got in the car and headed there. By the time they reached it three minutes later, Walker had already sent her a text confirming that Benning lived there and giving her the house number.
Twelve.
‘That’s Benning’s Audi parked outside,’ she said as they drove up behind it. ‘I saw it in Bromley this morning. So he must have arrived back here while we were in the café.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for back-up?’ Sweeny said.
Anna nodded. ‘We probably should, but we don’t have time.’
It was a Victorian terraced house with bay windows and a small front garden. Anna led the way along the path to the front door, her heart pumping like a turbine.
‘Joe’s not in,’ someone shouted. ‘You’ve just missed him.’
It was an elderly woman and she was in the garden next door. They hadn’t spotted her because she was kneeling on the paving slabs behind the hedge while picking weeds out of a plant pot.
Anna asked her how she knew.
‘He came home about ten minutes ago and then rushed straight out again,’ the woman said. ‘I tried to speak to him, but he was in such a hurry that he ignored me and walked off along the street.’
‘Was he carrying a case or bag?’ Anna said.
‘No, but he was holding a bottle of what I think was whisky.’
‘Do you have any idea where he was going?’
‘None at all, but he didn’t take his car so it’s probably not far.’
Anna was now convinced that Benning was their man and it rattled her to the core.
‘So what do we do, guv?’ Sweeny asked her.
Anna made a quick decision and showed her warrant card to the neighbour.
‘We need to get inside Mr Benning’s house,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you have a key.’
The woman shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
Anna turned back to Sweeny. ‘In that case we’ll force our way in.’
But in the event, they didn’t have to. The door had been left ajar so all Anna had to do was push it open.
There was a large hallway with stairs and two rooms leading off it, one the lounge, the other the kitchen. And it was in the kitchen that Anna saw the note that Benning had left for her to find. It had been hastily scrawled on a sheet of white A4 paper.
Detective Tate
I’ve been preparing for this day since my diagnosis, but it’s come sooner than I thought it would because of what’s happened. I want you to know that Jacob wasn’t meant to die. So please tell his parents that I’m so very sorry that he did. I just wanted to see his father suffer like I have all these years. No one else was involved so you can stop wasting precious police resources on the case. I know that you’ll be coming for me after you talk to old George, so it’s time for me to go.
DI Benning
Anna’s mind seized again on that memory of when Benning entered the cellar and was told that the dead boy on the mattress was Jacob. She remembered him blurting out: ‘Oh my God this wasn’t supposed to happen.’
He had then gone on to say that he had promised to bring the boy home to his parents, which was why Anna hadn’t considered it to be a strange reaction.
Threads were now beginning to weave together in her mind and hopefully there would soon be answers to the questions that had been plaguing her. But at the same time she was confronted now by two new questions. Where had Benning gone? And was he planning to run away or top himself?
‘Sounds to me like he’s planning to take the easy way out,’ Sweeny said after reading the note. ‘Or in his case the only way out.’
They carried on looking around the house, and in the room that Benning used as a study they came across a file folder full of newspaper cuttings featuring Mark Rossi and going back years. They also found the rucksack that Jacob had been carrying when he was taken.
‘Well that’s another mystery solved,’ Sweeny said.
Anna called Walker and got him to put out an alert for Benning. However, she knew that with the riots kicking off again not much effort would be put in to trying to find him.
‘I’ve spoken personally to the Australian embassy, guv,’ he said. ‘They’re adamant that nobody there has been in contact with Benning or anyone else from the team. Seems he made it all up to make us think he was looking in to that angle.’
Anna told him about Benning’s note.
‘Well if he is planning to kill himself then he could have stayed at home and slit his wrists or taken an overdose,’ Walker said. ‘So maybe he wants to make more of a drama of it and is heading for a tall building or a bridge over a railway line.’
But Walker’s words prompted another thought to pop into Anna’s head.
‘I actually think I know where he might be going,’ she said.