WHEN HE TURNED into Lambert’s street, Ellis couldn’t find a single space to park his car, unless he blocked someone’s drive. As it was the middle of the night, and he only intended stopping for one drink, half an hour at the most, he didn’t think it would matter. He parked his Fiat with two wheels on the kerb, squeezing in behind a BMW. He was about to cut his headlights when he realized something was trying to grab his attention. He stared at the BMW’s number plate for a while, until it clicked into place. It was the registration number of Gavin Lloyd’s car. He was sure of it. And he remembered it from earlier in the day, when he’d delegated Harry’s instruction to use a patrol officer to watch out for the car while Debbie was at Mrs Parry’s house.
So what was Gavin Lloyd doing at his boss’s flat?
Lambert’s head throbbed with pain. He knew he was dazed and not unconscious because he could hear voices, although he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Hands grabbed him roughly under the arms, pinching and pulling his skin, and he felt himself being dragged into the living room and turned over onto his stomach. With a massive effort he opened his eyes and struggled to turn over, but something hard slammed into the back of him and his head hit the floor.
Stunned and choking on carpet dust, he felt a rope being squeezed tight around his wrists. Hands grabbed him under the arms again and lifted him into a sitting position against the edge of the sofa. He forced his eyes open, and Gavin Lloyd’s face swam into focus, sweating and desperate. Lloyd fumbled in the pocket of his fleece, pulled out a roll of gaffer tape, peeled off a strip and gagged Lambert with it.
Over Lloyd’s shoulder, Lambert saw Collier, a metal bar in his hand, standing erect like a statue, his face a mask as he watched his boss. They both wore latex gloves and were clearly intent on committing another murder.
Lloyd, who had been bending over to secure the tape over Lambert’s mouth, straightened and stepped back several paces, surveying his handiwork. Still Collier hadn’t moved a muscle and Lambert sensed a reluctance to participate in this crime. If only he wasn’t gagged he might have a chance to negotiate with Collier. But Lloyd wasn’t going to give him that opportunity.
Lloyd turned towards Collier. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
An almost imperceptible shake of the head from Collier.
‘Just one hard crack,’ Lloyd urged. ‘He won’t feel a thing.’
‘It ain’t that. All the others deserved to die. This guy’s just a copper doing his job.’
Lloyd’s face reddened and his eyes blazed. ‘You’re forgetting my wife. She was no child molester. But I had to kill her. And whether you like it or not, you helped me. If she’d had her way, she’d have divorced me, and I’d have got fuck all. And you’d have ended up selling copies of Big Issue on the streets. So don’t start getting squeamish. We’ve come this far and this bastard’s not going to ruin everything I’ve worked for all these years. So if you won’t do it, I will.’
Lloyd walked over to Collier and reached for the crowbar, but Collier pulled his hand away like a child resisting a parent.
‘Don’t be stupid, Jack. D’you seriously want to lose everything?’
The doorbell rang. Lloyd’s startled head swivelled towards the door, but Collier hardly moved, his reactions deadened over the years by psychological damage.
Lloyd stared at Lambert. ‘Are you expecting someone?’
Lambert nodded. Lloyd froze, his brain trying to cope with the notion of Lambert having a visitor in the middle of the night.
The doorbell rang again, long and insistent.
‘It’s not going to go away,’ Collier told his boss, and moved to answer the door.
Outside the flat, Ellis had second thoughts about his actions. Perhaps he should have called for the armed response unit and waited. He was taking a great risk going it alone like this. Especially now he had everything to live for. He saw a morbid headline flashing through his brain, news of a young detective killed in the line of duty and leaving behind a wife and newborn baby.
But by now it was too late. He held his ID in front of him as the door swung open and he was confronted by Jack Collier, a crowbar in his hand.
‘I’ve got back-up,’ he bluffed. ‘An armed response unit will be here in less than ten minutes. So you may as well give it up.’
Collier turned his back on him and went back into the living room. Ellis closed the door and followed him. When Lloyd saw him, he must have known it was all over, and sank into an easy chair, his face drained of colour now.
Ellis, one eye on the metal bar in Collier’s hand, eased past him, went over to Lambert, peeled off the gag and untied his hands. Lambert, feeling dazed from the bang on the head, was helped to his feet by Ellis, and both men stood facing Collier.
‘I know all there is to know about you,’ Lambert said to Collier. ‘Con O’Sullivan, in 1975 Keith Hilden helped you murder your father. All these years he’s had a hold over you because of it. What did he do? Keep the murder weapon in that old banger outside his house, threatening to use it against you if you didn’t toe the line? But you went along with his recent plans because you thought he was helping you avenge all the abused children by killing those paedophiles—’
‘They were just like my father,’ Collier broke in. ‘Poisoning young children’s souls; destroying their childhood. When I was just seven years old my father started on me. The pain was … it stays with you for the rest of your life. I have no regrets about killing my father or those men.’
‘And what about Mark Yalding?’
‘What about him? He was downloading child pornography. How long would it be before he began abusing young children?’
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, Jack, but Mark Yalding’s only crime was in having an affair with another man’s wife.’ Lambert stared pointedly at Lloyd. ‘And the husband stood to lose everything, seeing as how he had never paid back his father-in-law for a loan. Mark Yalding was having an affair with Rhiannon Lloyd, and she was about to leave her husband for him. That was why he used you, contrived this whole sordid affair, so that you would think Yalding was a potential paedophile.’
‘But he was. The police found out he was downloading child pornography.’
‘Wrong. He was set up by your employer, who got a credit card in his name, found his wife’s key to his cottage and downloaded the porn on his computer.’
Lambert noticed the panic in Collier’s eyes, the look of a mistreated mongrel.
‘Your boss knew his marriage was over and needed to get rid of Yalding, and so he used your revulsion of sex offenders as a way of getting rid of him. Even the idea of the TV programme about the sex offenders came from him, as did the leak to the press. He used you to kill an innocent man, first torturing him for a crime he never committed. And when that didn’t work, when he discovered his wife still intended divorcing him, he decided to kill her, using you as his alibi. He used you, Jack, to murder an innocent man, and also to conspire in the murder of another innocent victim. Unless you think infidelity is grounds for murder.’
In retrospect Lambert almost wished he hadn’t pushed these accusations at a man yielding a crowbar. But he couldn’t wind back time, and it all happened so quickly they didn’t have time to react.
Eyes burning with white heat, Collier turned to look at his boss. Lloyd looked up at him at that moment, and smiled as if to say ‘so what’.
Collier swung the crowbar in a great arc and brought it down on Lloyd’s head. They heard the sickening crack. Ellis was the first to react, and dived for Collier’s waist, bringing him down on to the floor with a mighty crash. But it was all over. Lloyd’s chauffeur sobbed uncontrollably, and the cries of pain that came from deep inside him were like the torments of tortured souls condemned to an eternity of suffering.