by Ed James
‘Sir, I know you’re under caution, but silence isn’t a defence in court.’ Ashkani was nowhere near getting Edward Summers to talk. Not even background material that could be contradicted or leveraged. Just nothing.
And it was Fenchurch’s strategy, pulled together while the shower scraped Wiley’s blood from his hair and neck and arms. Ashkani was his subordinate and she was following it to the letter. While Ashkani wasn’t yielding anything yet, it meant Fenchurch wasn’t leading an interview and he avoided the bollocking from Loftus.
Bugger it.
Fenchurch reached into the paper bag for his lunch, late as it always was these days, and tore off the first strip of foil. His mouth was watering at the prospect of that chilli burn. The street outside was darkening, the clouds that familiar golden red.
As he ate, Fenchurch looked around the office. As much as he had tried to personalise it with his West Ham scarf, a pot plant and some photos of his family, it still felt like he was squatting. The photos, though, they gave him some feeling of having a centre. One of Abi in Edinburgh, just after they’d renewed their marriage a few years back, smiling and looking in love all over again. Then Chloe’s graduation, the event he’d never expected to attend. And bucking the trend of second children, there were more of his son than his daughter. Baby Al as a baby, in the crib he’d grown out of, next to one taken from the video of his first steps, no longer a baby but still clinging to the name.
Maybe because calling him Alan reminded him of his namesake.
Docherty’s old Rangers tea mug still sat there, the Glasgow variety rather than the shower based over in Hammersmith. If it was a Queen’s Park Rangers mug, Fenchurch would’ve smashed it as many times as Docherty smashed the old one.
He finished chewing and took a mouthful of tea, but it didn’t mix too well with the chilli.
His office door opened and Bridge stood there, carrying her laptop. ‘Sir, you got a minute?’
‘Sure.’ Fenchurch swallowed down the rest of his food without chewing.
Bridge pushed the door fully open and entered the bear pit. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Starving, Lisa.’
‘Thought it would be burrito o’clock. Missing Jon fetching you one?’
‘Had to get my own. The temerity of it.’ Fenchurch smiled at her. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘When I left this morning, he could barely speak.’
‘You better not be spreading that bug around, you hear?’
‘I’m on so many pre-emptive drugs, believe me. And I had my flu jab.’ Bridge sat opposite him, perching forward on the chair. ‘But as much as I love hearing about your Mexican-only diet, I meant about…’ She nodded at the screen. ‘I heard that Uzma detained Summers while—’
‘Not my first race to hospital, Lisa. All part of the job.’
‘Do you want me in the interview?’
‘No, Uzma’s leading?’
‘Okay.’
‘Not really. Problem is, he’s not speaking. And he didn’t request a lawyer.’
‘Curious.’
‘Exactly. I saw him strangling Tom Wiley, but the doctor, she… Put it this way, she doesn’t necessarily agree that’s what was happening.’
‘She thinks he was trying to save Wiley’s life?’
‘Right. Unless he’s the kind of man who would leave a dying man in his home while he went to work.’
‘That’s dark.’
‘Right?’ Bridge rested her laptop on the desk and opened the lid. ‘This might help.’ Fenchurch couldn’t see the screen. ‘So, I’ve been over at Travis working with their security guys. I swear, that took a lot of persuading. But I’ve got access to their CCTV from yesterday.’ She swivelled the screen so Fenchurch could see it.
He had to squint to make it out. Two men in a parking basement somewhere, surrounded by electric cars. Looked like they were arguing. And yeah, it was Tom Wiley and Edward Summers. Looked like Summers was the aggressor, jabbing his finger in Wiley’s face.
‘Christ.’
‘I know, sir. But that’s not all.’ Bridge took the laptop back. ‘Edward Summers left the office at 20:48 and returned at 21:26.’
Right around the time of Damon Lombardi’s death.
18
Fenchurch sat down opposite and nodded at the Moon Walk T-shirt. ‘That’s a good cause, sir.’
Summers didn’t even look up.
Fenchurch took a sip of murky tap water and regretted it. Not like he could just spit it back out again. But he took his time swallowing it, trying to irritate Summers.
Not that it seemed to be working.
Summers stared at the desk, head bowed, his finger tracing a line in the wood only he could see.
Fenchurch looked round at Ashkani next to him. Both of them sat there with folded arms, in classic defensive postures. Maybe that wasn’t helping the situation. So Fenchurch ran a hand through the damp stubble on his head. Needed a fresh trim when Abi got back, maybe, but it still had that satisfying rasp. ‘It’s about time you started talking to us, Edward.’
No reaction from Summers, just that same finger plotting that same course over the wood.
‘You know the reason I arrested you, right?’
Still nothing.
‘Okay, so let me paint you a picture. We found a body in a brewery’s basement this morning. Dead. Lost most of the blood in his body thanks to a cut to his throat that severed his carotid artery and jugular vein. Not survivable.’ Fenchurch drew a line over his own throat, but it was only for Ashkani’s benefit as Summers didn’t look up. ‘That kind of wound leaves a lot of mess. Trouble is, the more we dig into this, the stranger this attack gets. See, that man we found had a friend. The two of them were meeting a third man at the brewery last night. Of those two men, one is dead, and one is in a coma.’
Summers clamped his eyes shut.
Fenchurch didn’t know if he was getting anywhere or not, but he had no choice but to plough on. ‘That man, the man in the coma, Mr Summers, we found him at your home.’
Maybe the slightest shaking of his head. But maybe not. Either way, he still traced the line on the table.
‘There’s a word called “serendipity”. You know it?’
Again, the slightest shake. Could be disbelief, or denial, or just Fenchurch’s imagination.
‘It means finding what you didn’t know you were looking for. My serendipity was in finding you, Mr Summers. At your home, with your hands around Mr Wiley’s throat.’
Summers looked up at Fenchurch. His eyes were ringed with red, and misty with tears. Then he looked back at the desk again.
‘You know why we were there?’
‘No.’
Bingo. Words were progress. Or rather, a word.
‘Do you want to talk to me? It’ll make this whole thing feel a lot easier on your soul, believe me. Sometimes just saying things out loud has a healing effect, believe me.’
But Summers wasn’t ready. His head slumped to his chest and he shook it, and this time it was maybe more about regret or self-pity.
How could he get himself into this situation? Why him?
Or how could he be so stupid to leave a victim in his home while he went to work?
‘You know, it takes a particular type of man to do what you did.’
Summers had taken his ball away now, and was back to stroking the tabletop.
‘Killing someone in your home and leaving them there. That’s cold.’
Summers swallowed.
‘When you went to work yesterday, you knew it was going to be a long one, didn’t you? And you told us you were there all night.’
Summers looked up again, his eyes narrowing.
‘But you left last night, didn’t you?’
Summers swallowed again, hard this time, like his throat had tightened up so much.
‘Edward, we’ve got it on CCTV, backed up with your security system. Forty-five minutes you were gone. Right in the window of opportunity for the attacks on our
two victims.’
Summers ran a hand over his mouth, then pursed his lips.
‘The first victim, you left him there at the brewery to bleed out. But Mr Wiley, he escaped, didn’t he? You’d attacked him, cut his throat with your knife, but he somehow got away. I can picture it so clearly, him grabbing his throat to keep the blood in his body, then resting his bloody palm on the door, then pushing through into the other room at the brewery, then escaping up the stairs and out into the rain.’
More swallowing, Summers’ Adam’s apple bouncing up and down.
‘And you followed him, didn’t you? At some point, you caught him. Night like last night, it was dark and wet. General Election night too, so everyone was glued to their TVs or their phones or their laptops, waiting for the exit polls to come in, so they could see how things were going to unfold and whether it was worth staying up to watch it, whether to get the champagne in the fridge or just drink it out of the bottle, warm to drown their sorrows. But it meant they weren’t looking for you chasing Mr Wiley through the streets of Limehouse.’
Summers shut his eyes briefly, and when he reopened them, his focus was on Ashkani, not Fenchurch. Not that she’d give him any sympathy.
‘And you caught him, and took him back to your house, didn’t you? Maybe you thought you’d killed him last night, but maybe you just decided to let him suffer longer. Or maybe you were called away. You cleaned yourself up, got changed and you went back to work, like you hadn’t just murdered two people. It takes a special kind of psychopath to do that. Leave a man dying in your hallway while you go back to work. Then to lie to the police about your movements.’
Summers frowned and his mouth opened, like he was going to speak, but he didn’t.
‘What I’m struggling with is the why, Mr Summers. Why did you do it? Why wait to kill him? Did you think it’d get easier with the passage of time? Did you think the guilt would evaporate? It never does.’
More swallowing and a snort. Not the derisory kind, but the sort that betrayed internal turmoil.
Fenchurch knew he was close. ‘And it’s a bit cruel to leave a cat in that house overnight with a corpse, isn’t it? Poor thing must’ve been terrified.’
Of all things, that got him.
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘We think it was, Edward. It’s just a matter of time before we find the murder weapon. Before we pair up your fingerprints or your DNA with what we’ve recovered from the crime scene.’
‘I didn’t kill him. I swear.’ Summers looked right at Fenchurch again. His eyes were like dark pools, with waves of liquid streaming down his cheeks. ‘I didn’t know that Tom was at my home. I just found him, I swear.’
‘You were strangling him.’
‘You really think that?’
‘It looked like that to me.’
‘I was putting pressure on the jugular vein to stop the bleeding.’
‘Quite the medical expert, are you?’
‘I am. I… I’ve done a lot of work with St John Ambulance. It’s a corporate thing at Travis.’
‘That you giving back to society, yeah?’
‘Is that so wrong? I’m not just there to code the platform, we get out and help people. Take the strain off the NHS. I mean, I’ve had the training, but I’ve never seen anything like that.’
‘Sounds like codswallop to me.’
‘I swear it’s the truth. I just got home from work and there he was. That’s it.’
‘We’ve confirmed that, sir. You leaving work is the first thing you’ve told us that isn’t a lie.’
That seemed to hit him like a cannonball to the gut. ‘I was telling you the truth this morning when you visited. I was working all night. I’m the only one who can solve the critical bugs in our platform.’
‘One other thing. Two, actually. We’ve got evidence of you leaving the office last night.’
‘So?’
‘Do you admit that you left the office last night?’
‘I mean, yes, of course. I went.’
‘And where did you go?’
‘I… I met someone.’
‘Male or female.’
‘Male. An ex-colleague. Look, the platform we’ve built is entirely custom designed, okay? But Alex, he was sacked a year ago, and he’d designed a part of the driver-tracking system, how we pair up the GPS data with the driver. And it was a mess. Or I couldn’t figure it out. So I met him, asked him to help me. My bosses can’t find that out.’
‘We’ll need his name, sir.’
‘Sure. Alex Graham. I can give you his mobile number.’
Ashkani walked over to the door and opened it, then spoke to someone outside. She came back and sat down. ‘Earlier, you called Mr Wiley “Tom”. You know him?’
‘I do.’
‘So you’re friends?’
‘Friends? Hardly.’
‘That figures.’ Ashkani slid a photo across the table. Bridge’s CCTV of them arguing. ‘Care to explain this?’
Summers folded his arms and shook his head. ‘Look, that was a friendly argument.’
‘With all due respect, sir, this is complete bollocks. You are in a deep, deep hole and need to start telling us the truth, otherwise you’ll spend a long time in prison. Your lies aren’t going to set you free.’
Summers stared hard at him for a few seconds, tears streaming down his face. He looked like he was truly upset, like the truth was bubbling up to the surface, like he was going to open up and confess to what he’d done. ‘Francine is my sister. Tom’s my brother-in-law.’
Fenchurch looked around at Ashkani. Bloody hell, she had no idea either.
And he’d been the one rushing into this without all the evidence he needed, thinking he could force a confession. Maybe it was still right, maybe Summers was still lying, but he was starting to feel deep in his guts that he was in the wrong here.
‘So why was he in your house?’
‘He’s got a key. Well, him and Francine do. I have to travel a lot for work, and I work long hours, like last night. They come in to feed my cat.’
It felt too neat. That, or his easy conviction was swimming away from him.
‘It was Tom’s turn. He drives around our area a lot, anyway. Trouble was, he’d lost the key. That’s what we were arguing about. I mean, I’ve been there two weeks and he’s already lost the key? So I gave him the one I keep in my desk at work.’
That was sounding plausible. Fenchurch would absolutely murder his sister’s idiot husband if he lost a key, not that he’d trust them with it. His old man had one, and he was actually good at looking after it.
Ashkani gave a kind, warm smile. ‘Was this a common kind of thing with Mr Wiley?’
‘He’s… Tom’s been off his game recently. A couple of minor bumps at work. And Francine’s been worried about him. He’s been obsessed with their son’s death. I mean, it’s natural, but… He really struggled, him and Francine both did, but when you lot didn’t find the killer? That was even tougher.’
‘Is that why Mr Wiley’s been hassling people?’
‘Hassling?’
‘Asking questions about his son’s murder case.’
‘I wouldn’t say hassling, but… Okay, maybe.’
‘And you’ve been helping him, haven’t you?’
‘I… Look, no. He talked to me about it, behind Francine’s back, but I tried to get him to stop.’
‘Who was he targeting?’
‘Some bloke called Damon. His surname was something Italian.’
‘Did Mr Wiley get anything?’
‘Not that I know of. The one time I was there, he swore blind to Tom that he knew nothing. And I believed him. That’s why I persuaded Tom to stop it.’
‘Did he leave him after that?’
‘For a while.’
Fenchurch sat back and took his time savouring the growing silence. Letting him sit there, festering. ‘It was Damon Lombardi’s body we found in the brewery.’
‘My God. That poor kid.�
�� Summers’s eyes bulged. ‘Did he attack Tom?’
‘It doesn’t appear that way. We think there was a third person present. A man, possibly, who attacked them.’
‘Christ. Look, I know you think it was me, but I swear, I was with Alex when this happened.’
‘Do you know if Mr Wiley had tried contacting Damon again?’
‘Not that I know of, but…’ Summers snarled. ‘Look, I used to be able to help Tom, to get him to talk about Micah, to help him see that what happened wasn’t his fault or Francine’s. But I’ve been so busy lately and… Jesus Christ, I’ve been taking beta blockers so I can focus on my work. I don’t have the mental capacity for anything else. Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen him in a while. He hadn’t told Francine he’d lost my key, but she asked him to look in on my cat. Deandra, she’s called. But Tom… He was a mess. He’s been on these drugs that helped him, but I think he’s stopped taking them. And…’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Not really.’
‘Did he mention anything that might help us track down his attacker?’
‘Well, he seemed to think he had proof that James Kent killed Micah.’
Hermione Taylor’s killer. ‘Do you know what “proof” he thought he had?’
‘No, but he said some journalist was feeding him some stuff about the case.’
‘You know his name?’
19
Sometimes you needed to open the door slightly, peer in, get the interviewer out, have a word in their ear, then take over.
But Jason Bell didn’t deserve any of that respect, so Fenchurch opened the interview room door and popped his head inside.
Bell was still sitting with Liam. At least they were still in Leman Street and Bell hadn’t taken him back to Castle Greyskull, instead realising that the grim interior here was more suited to his purposes. He huffed and puffed as he got up. ‘Back in a second.’ He left the room and joined Fenchurch in the corridor. ‘What?’
‘Charming.’
‘Simon, this better be something about my case or I swear to God I will…’