26
‘We should take it to the press.’
They’d parked in a small pay-and-display near Petty France, central London. Cox was unbuckling her seatbelt. She looked at him disbelievingly.
‘The press? Are you kidding? The way they’ve treated me?’
‘Look, I understand the press. You – with all due respect, Kerry – aren’t a big story. This is a big story. If we break this, you’ll be off the front pages for good.’ He checked his watch. ‘I could get something in the evening papers, if we’re quick.’
Cox scowled at him.
‘Just another scoop for you, isn’t it?’
He sighed.
‘No. No, Kerry, it’s not. You’ve got to understand, it’s a two-way street. Sure, they’ll use you to sell papers. But you can use them, too.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Think about it. We’ve got the information, we’ve got the story. What’s the one thing they’ve got that we need?’
‘I don’t know. The moral outlook of Jack the Ripper?’
‘Think straight, Kerry. Power. Look what we’re going up against! The fucking MoJ. The two of us, against that?’ He gestured in the direction of the looming Whitehall office blocks. ‘The press has power, a terrifying amount of power. I say we give them the story; get them to do our heavy lifting for us.’
Cox hesitated with her hand on the door-latch. It was tempting; it would be good to have some serious weight behind them. But even now, she knew they didn’t have enough. Links, horror stories, but nothing tangible. If she went public with this, it would look like sour grapes – just an attempt to discredit the inquiry.
‘No,’ she said flatly.
‘Christ.’
‘I take your point, Greg. But I’ve got to do this the right way – and besides, I prefer to fight my own battles.’
Harrington’s building was a brutalist concrete tower, a sixties monolith squatting grey and rain-washed in the heart of Petty France. It was busy: men in suits – they were mostly men, Cox noted – came and went at a brisk, businesslike pace.
She didn’t much fancy presenting her credentials at the security-heavy front desk – let alone Wilson’s.
Instead, she dialled Harrington’s number.
He answered promptly.
‘Inspector Cox.’ She sensed an uneasiness in his voice. ‘Good to hear from you.’
She told him that she needed to speak to him – urgently, and in person.
There was a long pause. Cogs turning, she guessed.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ the MoJ man said at last, ‘but I’m in the office and I’m really snowed under, so –’
She saw her opening.
‘That’s quite all right. I’m just downstairs, in the lobby of your building. I only need two minutes of your time.’ Threw in the kicker: ‘I want to talk about Sidney Thomas.’ Rang off.
She took up a position by the door; waited. Wilson lingered outside, smoking a cigarette.
It took Harrington less than five minutes to clear a gap in his schedule. He came through the security doors looking harassed, walking quickly, his suave smile less self-assured than usual.
‘Inspector.’
‘Mr Harrington.’
They shook hands, each eyeing the other calculatingly.
‘I’m surprised to see you, I must say,’ Harrington said. ‘I thought you’d be keeping a low profile – considering your suspension. I take it you’re not here in an official capacity?’
Cox kept it vague: ‘I’d like to talk off the record.’
Harrington smiled.
‘I don’t doubt that you would,’ he said. He glanced up, over Cox’s shoulder – his smile stiffened. Shit – he’d seen Wilson. Cox kept her face neutral, polite, engaged.
‘I see you’ve brought a friend,’ Harrington said.
‘An associate.’
‘That’s an odd word for it.’ No smile now; his pale eyes were glazed and hostile. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘you had better have a very good reason for being here.’
‘I have.’ Kept her chin up, her voice level, her eyes on his. ‘Should we talk in private?’
Harrington folded his arms.
‘I think not. Here is fine.’
‘Okay.’ She shrugged. ‘Can you tell me on whose orders you’ve been trying to compromise our investigation?’
‘What a preposterous idea.’
‘If it’s so preposterous, why did you come running down here like a well-trained puppy when I dropped the name of your boss?’
Harrington’s face was taut.
‘I came to see,’ he said, ‘if it was necessary for me to have security escort you from the premises. I see now that it is.’
He turned to signal to the nearest blue-uniformed officer.
Cox swallowed. This had escalated more rapidly than she’d expected. Nothing else for it – she only had one card left to play.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But don’t be surprised when Sidney Thomas turns up dead.’
Harrington looked at her sharply. He laughed – an unconvincing, mirthless gurgle – but he called off the security officer, waving him away with an open hand.
‘That’s quite a thing to say, inspector.’ He tucked his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels. Looked at her narrowly for a moment. ‘Are you serious?’
Cox ticked the names off one by one on her fingers.
‘William Radley. Verity Halcombe. Reginald Allis. Euan Merritt. All dead. All murdered.’ Let her hand drop. ‘I have good reason to believe that Mr Thomas is the next name on that list.’
Harrington tilted his head thoughtfully.
‘Why?’
He must be a hell of a poker player, Cox thought.
‘You tell me,’ she said.
He looked at her for a half-minute more – than he smiled, shook his head.
Dammit, thought Cox. She thought, for a second, she’d had him; now, she saw – in his smile, in his half-turn back towards the security desk – that her last chance had gone.
And who knew, maybe Sidney Thomas’s last chance, too.
‘As it happens,’ Harrington said, ‘Mr Thomas isn’t even here today – he called in sick; some sort of gastric trouble I understand. Had to cancel quite a few meetings. He’s at home, safe and sound. So no need to worry yourself, inspector.’
Worth a shot.
‘Home? Where’s that?’
Harrington’s smile was contemptuous.
‘Now if you’ll excuse me –’
He turned away decisively.
Something in Cox – some part of her that was sick of being turned away, being denied, lied to, ignored, talked down to and forced to compromise – surged up uncontrollably. Before Harrington had reached the security doors that led to the sanctum of the upper floors, she shouted after him: ‘Euan Merritt’s killer is still on the loose, Mr Harrington. He thinks your boss is a sex offender, he thinks your boss killed his brother, and he’s –’
Harrington had turned in alarm at her first words; now, red-faced, he raced back across the lobby, waving his arms furiously in a ‘cut’ gesture.
Well, that seemed to do the trick, Cox thought. She didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Folded her arms.
‘Keep your bloody voice down,’ Harrington hissed.
‘Do you know, you’re the second liar to say that to me today.’
‘You obviously make a habit of slander.’ Harrington looked about him, a little wildly. Buttoned his jacket. Gave her a glare. ‘I’d hate to see you up on trial for defamation, inspector, as well as unemployed.’
‘I didn’t say those things were true. I wouldn’t know either way. I said that’s what Merritt’s killer thinks.’ She watched Harrington’s expression grow thoughtful. ‘Just give me his address – I’ll have a patrol sent over.’
Harrington shook his head dismissively.
‘I can’t do that.’
‘But –’
‘We’ll keep this in-house. Last thing we need is a vanful of uniformed plods rolling up at the solicitor general’s home, sirens blaring.’
‘Well, quite,’ Cox said sarcastically. ‘What would people say?’
Harrington looked at her with clear dislike.
‘We’ll go there now. You and me. We’ll keep this strictly on the QT, inspector. Do you have a car?’
‘Mr Wilson does.’
The man didn’t bother to try and hide his disdain.
‘How cosy,’ he said.
As Wilson piloted the cramped car through the choked roads of the city, heading south-west, Harrington, in the back seat, tried to get through to Thomas’s home phone on his mobile.
‘No answer,’ he muttered. ‘That is unusual – he ought to be contactable, even if he is off sick.’
‘Tried his mobile?’ Wilson suggested.
‘Mr Thomas doesn’t use one. He’s a rather traditional man.’
Cox twisted in her seat to address Harrington.
‘What’s the set-up at Thomas’s house? Is it just him and his wife?’
‘Him and Baroness Kent, yes.’ Harrington – seated sideways, his knees squeezed in behind Wilson’s seat – frowned and brushed some lint from his tailored trousers. ‘It’s a large-ish place, south of Esher, detached, several acres.’
‘No neighbours, then?’
‘None within a hundred yards.’
Cox pursed her lips. Didn’t like the sound of it.
Harrington directed them via a route that took them some way off the main road. Cox suspected he was doing his best to delay them, so tortuous was the route he was taking.
After multiple turns through a series of picturesque villages, they wound up at a sprawling stone-built pile, thick with yellowing ivy, screened from the road by dense, dark-green holly bushes. The driveway, paved with pricey-looking pale stone, had the dimensions of a decent-sized car park; a bottle-green classic Jaguar was parked there, alongside a silver two-seater.
‘Nice his ’n’ hers,’ Wilson murmured, crawling to a halt at the roadside.
Cox climbed out, opened the back door.
‘Mr Thomas is a classic-car enthusiast,’ Harrington said, unfolding himself from the back seat. ‘He has several more in his garage.’
‘Nice for some.’
It was growing dark. A bird was making a racket in a nearby tree. There were a few cars parked along the road; Cox jotted down their numbers (‘You never know,’ she said to Harrington).
She felt tense, uneasy. As the three of them crossed the driveway she was checking out the layout of the place with a copper’s eye. Doors front and back, of course – probably a third, a kitchen door, at the side, too. The windows in the upper floor were whitewashed wood with leaded glass; here at the front they opened on to a sort of terrace – from there it’d be an easy scramble down to the ground.
Ops in old places were a nightmare, she knew. Too many ins, too many damn outs.
They reached the doorstep; Harrington rapped confidently on the door.
‘I’m sure this is all quite unnecessary,’ he said airily. ‘I’m sure Mr Thomas is perfectly all right.’
Cox said nothing. Who are you trying to convince? she thought.
No one came to the door.
Harrington looked at her, his expression caught between impatience and concern.
‘I do feel it’s somewhat out of order to bother a sick man at his home,’ he said.
Cox, hand cupped against the glass, was peering through one of the front windows. She could see the outlines of wooden chair-backs, a bowl of flowers on a table, photograph frames on a sideboard under the sill. No movement.
‘Try again,’ she said. ‘It’s a big place – maybe he didn’t hear you.’
Harrington sighed, rapped again on the wood.
This time there was a noise from inside – an interior door opening, Cox thought. A key was turned in the front-door lock.
Sidney Thomas opened the door.
Cox left the window, moved back to stand at Harrington’s shoulder. Her first impression of the solicitor general was of a very poorly man: maybe, she thought guiltily, they shouldn’t have bothered him after all. He was recognizable as the fragile but well-built old gent she’d met in the café – same silver hair, same arthritis-swollen hands, same regular, forgettable facial features. But that man had been well-dressed and urbane, had carried himself – for all his evident physical frailty – with a certain amount of enduring dignity.
Now, in a dressing-gown, rumpled pyjamas and slippers, he looked weak, bowed-down, broken. His skin was greyish and mottled with sweat. His broad shoulders were bent. In the café he’d looked maybe six-two, six-three if he stood at his full height; now he slouched and seemed barely taller than Cox herself.
He didn’t look surprised to see Harrington – that was odd, Cox thought.
‘Ah. Mr Harrington. Ah,’ he croaked.
‘Good evening, sir,’ Harrington said respectfully, with a formal bow of his head. Cox thought back to her own encounter with DCI Naysmith the previous day – dead drunk, passed out on the sofa. So this is what it’s like to have a boss you really respect, she thought sardonically. It showed the kind of deference for rank you only learned at the better public schools.
‘I do apologize for the unwarranted intrusion,’ Harrington went on, ‘and I very much hope you’re feeling rather better, but if it isn’t too much trouble –’
We don’t have time for this. Cox took over.
‘Mr Thomas,’ she interrupted, ignoring a daggers look from the MoJ man, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Cox from the Metropolitan Police.’
The old man looked at her sharply.
‘Police?’ What was that quiver in his voice? Fear?
‘That’s right. We need to speak with you in connection with an ongoing –’
‘Unthinkable.’ Thomas cut her off. His voice wavered, and his eyes gleamed unhealthily. ‘You oughtn’t have come here. Didn’t I tell you I was ill? Terrible head cold.’
Cox squinted at him.
‘Gastric trouble, I think you said, sir.’
He waved a liver-spotted hand: ‘Bit of everything, bit of everything. Ghastly business – and the last thing I need is you people keeping me from my rest.’
Still that odd quiver in the man’s voice.
Harrington launched into a smooth, wordy apology. Greg Wilson, meanwhile, caught Cox’s eye; looked like he was signalling to her, behind Harrington’s back, doing his clumsy best to be discreet.
She frowned at him.
He was nodding his head downward – at the front step? At the hallway carpet?
She followed his gaze, trying not to be obvious.
Nothing on the step that she could see; nothing on the carpet.
But there was a coin-sized spot of blood on the toe of Thomas’s left slipper.
Cox moved fast.
‘We need to come in, sir,’ she said, speaking over Harrington. ‘It really can’t wait.’
‘Out of the question.’ The old man hadn’t opened the door fully; the gap between door and frame was only a foot or so. Now he clung to the door two-handed, as if he were drowning and it was all that was keeping him afloat. ‘You have to go. You really do have to go now.’
Cox took a step forward, placed the flat of her hand on the door.
Thomas’s voice wound up in pitch.
‘No!’ He sounded like an old woman. ‘No – please. No.’
She’d had enough of this.
She shoved at the door, pushing off from her back foot, putting the heft of her body behind the move. Thomas let out a sort of squeal. The door opened inwards, maybe another eight inches, then stopped with a bump – Cox heard a pained, angry grunt.
Sam Harrington had to take a step backwards as Thomas, whimpering, tumbled out of the door, down the step – practically flung himself into Harrington’s arms.
‘I’ve got you, sir, I’ve got you,’ she heard Harrington say – but now her focus was elsewhere. A man had lurched from behind the door, blood from his nose smearing his upper lip. He held a gun, a heavy revolver, in his right hand.
Tall, broad, muscular, murderous. Trevayne.
Carter hadn’t been kidding; the guy was a monster. His biceps, each ridged with a bulging vein, stretched the fabric of his blood-spotted T-shirt; his neck was bullishly thick, his torso a slab of muscle. His red-rimmed eyes focused on Cox – it felt like being caught in the crosshairs of a bomber plane.
She pivoted, bringing her right foot round in a fast half-circle; her boot connected cleanly with the inside of Trevayne’s wrist; the gun went skittering across the pale stone flags.
The big man spun, lunged back in through the door. He tried to slam the door behind him; Cox, leaping forward, managed at a stretch to jam her foot against the frame – the heavy wood crashed into her ankle.
She swore, yelled for someone to call 999 – pelted into the house after Trevayne. He was headed, she guessed, for the back of the house.
Too many damn outs.
A dining room, dark but bright with polish, flashed by, then a kitchen, country-ish and airy – she saw Trevayne, bald head slick with sweat, hauling open a door in the French windows.
‘Stop, police!’ she bawled – knowing how much good it’d do.
Trevayne was out the door and moving fast across the broad, up-sloping lawn. Beyond the end of the garden, by the look of it, was nothing much but stubble farmland; there were trees and a church steeple on the horizon.
As she followed Trevayne through the open door she saw him cut right, towards some outbuildings: a long, flat-roofed shed, a moss-stained greenhouse, a clutter of compost heaps, water butts and tall bamboo canes.
Saw him vanish into the shadows there, as she was crossing the lawn.
She moved forwards with caution, fighting painfully for breath. Maybe, she thought, he’d gone past the shed and carried on going, through the bordering hedgerows and the smallholding beyond – maybe she’d lost him.
A part of her hoped she had.
But Robert Trevayne, she knew, wasn’t a man who shrank from violence; wasn’t a man who’d turn and run if there was anything to be gained by standing and fighting.
She approached the nearest corner of the shed. There was a smell of mouldered wood, wet bark. The grass had been allowed to grow longer here; she could feel cold dampness seeping through the fabric of her trousers.
No sound, save the repetitive beat of water dripping on to a plastic dustbin-lid from a flaw in the shed’s guttering. No sign of Trevayne.
She moved close to the planked wall of the shed, edged warily along to her left. Felt conscious of her ragged breathing. He must’ve seen her coming after him – must know where she was –
Queasy with anxiety, she glanced back towards the house. She’d never ducked out of a chase, not once. DI Cox was a good copper to have on a manhunt, everyone knew that: fast, strong, tenacious as hell …
But then she’d never gone after Robert Trevayne before.
She held her breath – edged another inch towards the corner of the shed.
A blur of movement, a moment of shuddering impact. Her first, startled thought was: how the hell did a man that size move that fast? Then the pain kicked in.
She was dimly aware of Trevayne crashing away through the wet trees to the right – of Wilson yelling something, and running footsteps pounding up the lawn. But it was all nothing beside the burning in her lungs as she gasped, gagging, weeping, for air, and the jagged-edged pain ripping through her from her lower ribs.
The half-rotten log he’d hit her with lay in the wet grass beside where she lay, clutching her midriff, jaw working helplessly.
‘You’re okay, Kerry.’ Wilson, kneeling beside her, rubbed her heaving shoulders. ‘You’ll be okay. He’s gone.’
I lost him, she thought, rolling on to her knees, burying her face in the wet grass.
From the road near the house, she heard the furious roar and squeal of a car taking off at speed.
Sidney Thomas was shaking so hard he could barely hold the glass of water Harrington had brought him. He held it gripped in both hands, suspended between his knees, as he sat on the drawing-room sofa, a blanket around his shoulders, staring at nothing.
‘Thank you,’ he kept saying, tremulously, over and over again. ‘Thank you, thank you.’
Cox, standing facing him in the centre of the room, had stopped listening a long time ago.
Her mouth was dry; her ribs ached, but she’d stopped caring about that, too. She didn’t know what to say – barely knew what to think.
Ranged along the wall in front of her, above Thomas’s bowed head, were five masks of polished leather. Each had a different expression, of joy, of horror, of surprise, of confusion – and, on the last one, a grin of wicked mischief, horizontal slits for eyes, and devil’s horns curling upwards from the temples.
She looked across at Wilson; he was leaning in the doorway, watching her, his expression grave and troubled. Then she looked down at Sidney Thomas – an old, broken man in pyjamas, trembling and weeping in self-pity and fear.
She stepped forward, took a breath, and told the solicitor general she was placing him under arrest.