22

We both agreed that this sort of story wasn’t going to get Mark Wells very far in court, especially as, conveniently, the person he’d supposedly given it to had disappeared into thin air. I wasn’t entirely sure whether this new information cemented the case against him or not. The fact that I’d only just woken up, having not long consumed nearly half a bottle of brandy mixed with beer, didn’t make matters any easier.

‘Have you seen Carla Graham yet?’ he asked.

‘No, not yet.’ I resisted the urge to tell him I’d made an appointment with her. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll bother now. It doesn’t look like there’s much doubt it’s Wells, and there’s no point raking up stuff that’s got nothing to do with the murder.’

‘It’d be interesting to see why she lied.’

‘Yeah. Maybe I’ll ask her if I ever run into her again.’

The conversation moved on to other things, all of them brutal. Malik told me that we had another possible murder inquiry on our hands. An eighty-one-year-old lady had held onto her handbag after a gang of young muggers had decided to relieve her of it, and had fallen on her head during the struggle. She was now in intensive care and the doctors were doubtful she’d pull through. Two people had been glassed the previous night in a pub fight, and one was going to lose his eye. One arrest: a nineteen-year-old who was already on bail for another assault. I recognized the name but couldn’t picture his face. Three more suspects were still at large.

I asked Malik about the Traveller’s Rest case. Had he spoken to his mate about it again? He said he hadn’t, and laughingly told me that the e-fit and my face bore a startling resemblance.

‘Do you think so?’ I asked him.

‘What? Don’t you?’ He said it in a manner that suggested he couldn’t believe I couldn’t see it.

I reluctantly agreed that there were similarities, but assured him I’d had nothing to do with it. ‘But if you don’t see me Monday, it means I’ve fled the country.’

‘Somehow I think I’ll be seeing you Monday, Sarge.’

I told him he didn’t have to call me that any more, not now he was DS.

‘Oh yeah, I suppose I don’t. See you Monday then, Dennis.’

I think I preferred Sarge.

I said my goodbyes and rang off. It was almost six o’clock, and I had nothing to do. I don’t really have many friends, as such. It doesn’t usually bother me. I’m not the sort to get bored. I work fairly long hours and I don’t mind my own company. But tonight I didn’t feel right. I wished there was someone I could talk to about my predicament, though Christ knows what I’d say. That I was a part-time professional killer as well as a copper, that I’d murdered more people in the past week than some self-respecting serial killers manage in the whole of their wicked careers; and how things were now spiralling out of control and my life was in danger. I’m not sure I’d have got much in the way of sympathy. I certainly didn’t deserve any.

I’d bought myself some more of that creamy prawn risotto, so I made that for my supper, and washed it down with a couple of glasses of sparkling mineral water. Then I had a long shower, cleaned my teeth, and put some fresh clothes on.

In the end, I didn’t bother going anywhere. It was raining too hard, although on the weather forecast they said it wouldn’t last. Apparently a cold spell from Siberia was on the way. Nice. Die Hard 2 was on one of the Sky movie channels so I watched that for a while, glugging steadily on a bottle of red wine until I finally fell asleep at about the time the evil South American dictator murders his guards.

I’d seen it twice before, so I wasn’t worried. I knew he’d get his comeuppance and Bruce Willis would see that justice was done, just like a true copper should, not by following a load of bureaucratic rules and resigning himself to remaining a shitty little cog in a large and inefficient machine, but by bypassing the courts, the probation service and the prisons – those eternal obstacles to true punishment – and just blowing the heads off the baddies instead.

Which, if you’re honest with yourself, is much the best way.