27

They’d taken him to the nick on Esher High Street. The house was being sealed, and two local officers were put on guard – no one, no one to be given access. Cox herself had taken photos of the masks.

She’d sat in the back with Thomas; he was silent, withdrawn – maybe suffering from shock. Well, let him suffer. It was an unprofessional way to think; she was in an unprofessional state of mind.

She’d made Harrington ride in Wilson’s car, despite his protests. The guy was Thomas’s fixer; no way was she letting him speak to his boss before she’d had a shot at him in the interrogation room. He was outside now, talking animatedly on his phone as they booked Thomas in with the custody sergeant.

Since they’d arrived, the atmosphere in the nick had been queasy, nervous. Excited, too. Short of hauling in the PM or the lord chancellor, it was hard to imagine how she could have caused more of a stir than by bringing them the solicitor general, handcuffed and still in his PJs.

The sergeant had looked up at her uncertainly when she’d presented the old man at the desk.

‘The – the charge, ma’am?’

She’d already told him once.

‘Child abuse. Trafficking. Rape. Murder.’

The sergeant had looked doubtfully at the silent, hunched old man; then back at her.

Thomas had finally broken his silence: ‘Preposterous,’ he’d muttered.

‘Just book him in, sergeant,’ Cox had said wearily.

While Thomas was being led to his cell, she grabbed a cup of machine coffee and went over to sit beside Wilson on the plastic chairs that lined one wall of the custody suite.

‘How’re the ribs?’ he asked solicitously.

‘Feel like I’ve been through a mangle. But I’ll live.’

He nodded towards the cells and the lean, tottering figure of Sidney Thomas, diminutive between two blue-jerseyed young PCs.

‘You’re sure about this, then?’

Cox nodded firmly, sipped her coffee.

‘Dead sure,’ she said.

‘You won’t have much to give the CPS.’

‘I’ll have enough.’ Looked at him. ‘I don’t have a choice, Greg.’

The local DI, a guy named John Meadowes, called her over; wanted to go over some details of their visit to Thomas’s place. He led her into his office – it was neat as a pin, smartly furnished, lined with labelled box-files.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ Cox said with a tired smile, taking a seat.

Meadowes shrugged.

‘Tidy office, tidy mind, so they say. Now.’ He opened a cardboard folder. ‘We ran the registration numbers you gave us – one match, a grey Merc, bought from a dealership in Newcastle at the end of October. Buyer gave his name as Trevayne.’

‘You’ve put an alert out for the plate?’

‘Yep – I’m sure he’ll ditch it as soon as he can, but we should at least get a lead on where he’s headed first.’ He looked up at Cox. He seemed anxious; she understood why. ‘What,’ he asked, tentatively, ‘did you have in mind as the next step?’

Her answer was prompt: ‘Search the house. Rip it apart.’

Meadowes looked panicky.

‘You do know who you’ve arrested here, don’t you? Sidney Thomas? The solicitor general? Look, I hold no brief for the old bastard – I’ve no reason to doubt what you tell me – but the guy could get every officer in this nick chucked off the force with a swipe of his pen. Come on, ma’am – give me a break.’

When did the backbone of the service turn to jelly?, Cox wondered bitterly.

‘How long,’ she asked, meeting Meadowes’s pleading gaze with a dour look, ‘do you think Thomas will remain as solicitor general?’

‘But – if the case falls through, or the CPS doesn’t like the look of it, or –’

‘I’ll nail him.’ She nodded, once, emphatically. ‘I’ll nail him, John, if it’s the last thing I do.’

Meadowes gave her a significant look. Sat back, folded his hands on his stomach.

‘Careful what you wish for,’ he said.

She stood – thanked him for his help.

‘Is it okay,’ she asked at the office door, ‘if I speak to Thomas now? I know his brief’s on the way. But I’d like a quick word.’

Meadowes shrugged. ‘Sure, but I doubt you’ll find him much of a conversationalist. I’ll tell PC George to sit in with you.’ Another pleading look. ‘Just please – go easy on him. At least for now.’

Meadowes was right. The solicitor general wasn’t much of a talker.

He sat calmly, dressed in a police-issue shirt and slacks, while PC George, a keen young constable with a slick side-parting, rigged up the video and sound recorders.

Cox sat down opposite the old man, introduced herself for the benefit of the tape and formally commenced the interview.

‘Could you state your full name, please?’

Silence – silence, and a blank, blue stare.

Cox repeated the question.

‘I will state nothing,’ Thomas said, ‘until such time as my solicitor is present.’

Cox looked sidelong at PC George.

‘Funny, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘The most senior legal figure in the country – and he needs a small-town solicitor to come and hold his hand.’

George sniggered obligingly.

When she looked back at Thomas, he was looking dyspeptically at her down his nose.

‘I’m not accustomed to handling trumped-up charges levelled by unbalanced over-promoted police officers,’ he said coldly. ‘And, as you will soon learn, Christopher Seaton-Jones is no small-town solicitor.’

Cox nodded, neutrally. She’d figured out one thing for sure: Sidney Thomas was easy to wind up.

She started in on the details of the case. She’d get nothing but stonewalling from hereon in, she knew, unless Thomas was a bloody fool – and the solicitor general of England and Wales was certainly no fool.

‘Do you know the man who was at your house today?’ she asked. ‘The man who held you at gunpoint?’

Silence.

‘Had you ever met him before? We believe his name was Robert Trevayne.’

Silence.

‘I would have thought, myself,’ Cox mused, twisting a pen between her fingers, ‘that these were pretty simple questions. I would have thought that the solicitor general would be quite capable of answering them without any help.’ She set down the pen, smiled brightly. ‘But what do I know? I’m just an over-promoted police officer.’

Silence.

‘I liked your house. Liked what you’ve done with the place, the furnishings and stuff. Interesting – decorations, would you call them? On the wall, in the drawing room? The masks?’

Thomas’s cold, reptilian expression didn’t change; his face froze, became rigid, a mask itself.

‘From a theatrical production, I expect. Am-dram, is it, down at the Walton Playhouse?’ She let the playful tone slip gradually from her voice. ‘Lots of fun, I expect. Enjoy performance, do you, Sidney? Being watched? Being on camera?’

Silence. Not a muscle twitched. The old man might’ve been carved in marble.

Cox talked on.

‘He had it in for you, I assume, this Robbie Trevayne. Any idea why that might be? Why he’d hold a grudge? No? Well, maybe it was a long time ago. I’m the same, terrible memory. God knows what I’ll be like when I get to your age. Well, maybe we can help fill in the gaps.’ She flipped open her folder, sifted her pages of notes. It was all for show – she knew every detail of this case by heart. ‘We know quite a bit about Mr Trevayne. About his childhood – he had a very hard time, you know. Raised in care homes. Abused, sexually abused; betrayed by the people who were supposed to be looking after him. Hard to believe, isn’t it? That kind of cruelty. That kind of breach of trust. But it got worse for Robbie Trevayne – his brother died, in tragic circumstances. There was a fire, supposedly. Place called Wolvesley Grange – and at Christmas, of all times.’ She sighed. ‘Poor kid. Didn’t have much of a chance after that.’

Thomas still said nothing – but he was listening, Cox knew it; she could tell, by the look in his glassy blue eyes. He was taking in every word.

But what was he thinking?

Let me in, you old bastard, Cox thought, biting back her impatience. Just a crack. Just give me a glimpse of the monster behind those eyes.

‘Maybe you could tell us what you remember about CARE,’ she said. She was getting sick of the sound of her own voice – reminded herself that Thomas must be pretty sick of it too. ‘Hampton Hall? The good old days. Your old friends, perhaps. Bill Radley. Verity Halcombe. Reggie Allis. Ian Merton.’ She tilted her head. ‘All dead and gone now, of course – such a shame.’ Leaned forward, linked her hands together on the tabletop. ‘Such – such good people, weren’t they, Sidney?’

He’d blinked at the mention of Ian Merton, aka Euan Merritt; the mask had slipped just a fraction. She could guess why, too.

She sat back. Gave him a hard smile.

‘It preys on your mind, doesn’t it, what Trevayne did to Ian Merton.’ She kept her tone flat, now, rough-edged, no-nonsense. ‘You saw the details in the police reports, I expect? The cigarette burns all over his body. The knife cuts, deep, nasty, right where he knew it’d hurt the most. That strange face cut into his chest – a bit like one of those masks of yours, come to think of it. And did you know he cut the poor man’s balls off, as well? Christ. It must haunt you, Sidney, what he did.’ Leaned slightly forwards, right in Thomas’s eyeline. ‘Imagine what he’d have done to you, if we hadn’t turned up. And if you walk out of here a free man – I don’t know, if someone upstairs pulls some strings for you, say – well, Trevayne will still be out there. Waiting for his chance.’ She sighed, shook her head. ‘I don’t know how you’ll sleep at night, Sidney, I really don’t.’

She gave it a minute or so – let it sink in.

Then: ‘Interview suspended, 22.19.’ She gave George the nod; the young PC switched off the recorders.

Thomas made to rise.

‘Just a second,’ Cox said, still in her seat, reaching for her bag. ‘We’re not quite done here.’

He scowled.

‘I’ve heard quite enough offensive nonsense from you already, thank you, inspector,’ he said.

Cox smiled.

‘It’s not me you’re going to listen to,’ she said.

Drew out Colin Carter’s mobile phone. Scrolled to the last incoming number; hit the green button. Laid the phone on the table and switched on the speaker.

Two rings. Then:

‘What do you want?’

A deep, nasal West Midlands voice, taut with aggression and hostility.

And now Thomas’s face did change – it contorted, contracted with fear. He shrank back in his seat, staring at the phone as if it were about to attack him.

Cox waited.

‘Hello?’ the voice barked.

She leaned forwards.

‘No, Mr Trevayne,’ she said, clearly, crisply. ‘It’s the woman whose ribs you smashed with a lump of timber, before you ran away.’

A long pause – then a soft sigh.

‘You shouldn’t have interrupted,’ Trevayne growled. He didn’t sound angry, Cox thought – he sounded sad. ‘You shouldn’t have stopped me. You’ve only made things worse.’

‘You might like to know I’ve got Sidney Thomas with me now.’

‘Have you now?’ A faint noise, like the ghost of a laugh. ‘Hello, Sidney.’

Thomas’s mouth was a puckered ‘o’ of horror, his eyes wild, his hands white-knuckled on the table edge. Petrified.

‘This is over, Robert,’ Cox said, simply, as if doing nothing more than stating a fact. ‘It’s finished. Give yourself up – let us help you.’

‘I’m all too familiar,’ Trevayne replied grimly, ‘with the kind of help provided by the British criminal justice system.’ An ominous pause. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘you can’t undo what’s done.’

Cox bowed her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, we can’t.’

She looked at Thomas; he was still frozen in a grimace of fear, a rabbit pinned by a predator. She hesitated. Trevayne was unstable, unpredictable; she was walking through a minefield here. One wrong step …

‘I can’t bring Stan back,’ she said carefully. ‘But I can bring the people who killed him to justice – with your help.’

‘Be honest, copper.’

‘My name’s Kerry. DI Kerry Cox.’

‘Whatever your name is, don’t try and muck me about. Don’t try and trick me. And don’t tell me you want to help. You don’t want to help the likes of me.’

There was a note of self-reproach, even self-loathing, in Trevayne’s low, husky voice. There’s something I can use, Cox thought – then hated herself for thinking it.

For thinking like a copper?

‘I know what you’ve done, Robert. You’ve done bad things, terrible things. I’ve seen it with my own eyes – the pain, the suffering you’ve caused.’

For the first time Trevayne raised his voice a fraction.

‘I’ll not be judged by you, woman.’

‘I’m not judging you. And d’you know why? Because I know what you’ve been through, what was done to you – what … they did to you.’ She leaned in towards the phone. ‘Robert, I understand.’

A long silence. Cox glanced up at Thomas; he was shaking now, all over, the loose skin of his throat trembling, the reflection of the ceiling-light vibrating on the lenses of his glasses. She hoped to God he wasn’t going to have a heart-attack, or a stroke – Christ, where would that leave her?

At last, Trevayne spoke again. He sounded composed, even polite.

‘I’m going to tell you two things, Inspector Cox. Two things I want you to be very certain about. One: you say you understand. You don’t. Hear me? You don’t. That’s one. Two: this, inspector, this is not over.’

‘What if I told you that Mr Thomas is here with me because he’s in custody? He’s under arrest, Robert – for all the things he did back then. He’s in a jail cell, and if I have my way –’ she glanced up balefully at the trembling solicitor general – ‘that’s where he’ll stay. You can’t get to him; you can’t touch him.’

Trevayne’s response was immediate, faintly amused: ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you.’ Then, in a brisk, businesslike voice, he said: ‘I want to talk to Thomas. Off speaker. In private.’

Cox hesitated – looked thoughtfully at Thomas. The man had heard what Trevayne had said, that was clear; he was staring at Cox abjectly, lost in fear and bewilderment.

She lifted her eyebrows questioningly. After a long moment, Thomas gulped, tilted his head an inch forwards. She’d take that as a ‘yes’.

She blipped off the speaker and handed Thomas the phone. He held it quaveringly to his ear.

‘Hello?’

Trevayne’s voice was audible to Cox only as a distant mutter.

‘Yes,’ Thomas said. ‘She’s here, but she can only hear me, not you.’

Then he listened, eyes downcast, for perhaps ten seconds. Passed the phone back to Cox. She glanced at the screen; Trevayne had ended the call.

‘So are you going to tell me what he said?’

Thomas seemed to be coming out of his funk, now he could no longer hear Trevayne’s voice. He nodded weakly.

‘He said, “There are no innocents,” and then Numbers fourteen, eighteen.’

Cox frowned. Didn’t ring any bells. Prison numbers? Numbers that signified something back at Hampton Hall?

‘And what,’ she pressed, ‘do you think he meant by that?’ To her surprise, Thomas smiled thinly.

‘Your ignorance is showing, inspector. That’s Numbers with an upper-case “N”. The biblical book, fourth in the Pentateuch? Our Mr Trevayne is, you’ll remember, a devout Christian.’ He clicked his tongue, looked to the ceiling. ‘The man’s hypocrisy takes one’s breath away.’

‘That’s a bad bloody joke, coming from you.’ She looked across at PC George, who’d been sitting silently, bug-eyed and enthralled, while Trevayne had been on the line. ‘Stay with him, will you? I’ll just be a minute.’

In the corridor she grabbed a passing uniform, asked where there was a computer she could use. The man directed her to a side-room, where four humming PCs were wired up. She sat at one, fired up a search engine. What was it again? Numbers, fourteen, eighteen.

It brought up multiple pages of results. Lots of religion on the web, Cox reflected; lots of violence, lots of porn, lots of hate, lots of religion.

The first link showed her that what she was after was written ‘Numbers 14:18’ – it meant Chapter 14, Verse 18, of the Old Testament Book of Numbers. She clicked through to an American website that brought up the relevant passage framed in a pop-up box.

Cox read it through. Shuddered – read it again.

The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers –

She felt a darkness closing in, cold and malevolent, as she read.

– upon the children unto the fourth and fifth generation.

Cox stared at the final line.

Oh, Christ.

Back to the interview room. Didn’t bother to take her seat or restart the tape. She slammed both hands down on the table.

Thomas looked up at her, taken aback.

‘Inspector, I –’

‘Family,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you know a threat when you hear one? What family do you have? Any nearby?’

He gaped, completely thrown.

‘I, well, there’s my son and daughter, of course, Dominic and Ginny, but they’re both overseas with their families. Ginny’s in the south of France – she’s got two children in school out there – and Dominic lives in New York; his boy Jeremy is grown up now, a little girl of his own, although –’ He broke up, looked up at Cox – fear, gut-deep terror, once again flooded his lined face.

‘What?’

‘My great-granddaughter. Abigail.’

Unto the fourth and fifth generation.

Cox gestured at PC George, indicating that he should get ready to put out an urgent call. Snatched up her pen.

‘Where is she?’

‘She’s only five years old,’ Thomas whimpered.

‘Where is she?’

Stammering, Thomas forced out the name of a boarding school, St Katherine’s – a high-end place just a few miles to the south-west.

‘Jeremy wanted to have her schooled here,’ he gabbled. ‘He and Anna are only in New York for a short while – he’s got a two-year internship with PwC. He didn’t want Abi flying back and forth, not at that young age. He thought it would be better, and Mary and I agreed – it’s about stability, we said, what a young child that age needs is stability …’

Cox watched him levelly. Thought of Stevie Butcher, Colin Carter, Robbie and Stan Trevayne – how much stability had they had?

Thought of poor little Tomasz Lerna.

Nausea threatened to overwhelm her.

George had already gone to put out the call. She gathered up her things and went out – left Sidney Thomas, solicitor general, sobbing and babbling to himself in an empty room.