by Ed James
Taylor stared deep into Fenchurch’s eyes and it was like looking into the headlights of an underground train hurtling down the tracks towards you.
‘And if Tom Wiley dies, then his wife has suffered the same as you. She lost her son, but she has lost her husband too. She’s alone. And she’s never had the answers you think you’ve had.’
Taylor shut his eyes for a few seconds, then rubbed away at them. He blinked hard a few times. ‘I’ve no idea about these abductions. Barney or Kent.’
‘Of course you do. Tom Wiley thought that the same person killed Micah and Hermione. James Kent. But it wasn’t him. And if it wasn’t Kent, then who was it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Sure?’
‘Of course. You’re right about Tom Wiley, and about Francine Wiley. They’ve suffered the same as me. They deserve justice as much as I do.’
‘You can blame a lot of people for what happened today. Like Liam Sharpe. I mean, his work helped Mr Kent get off.’
Taylor let out a slow breath. Whatever he’d done, he was clearly a man who had focused on controlling his emotions.
‘You tried to kill Liam instead of just abducting him like the others.’
Taylor sighed. ‘That little shit has been sniffing around me, asking questions about Minnie and Kent. It’s not on.’
‘What kind of questions?’
‘Stuff I don’t want to think about. He’s just dredging up the past for a story.’ Taylor sat back, sucking in deep breaths.
‘Were you meeting with Tom Wiley last night?’
‘No.’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘No!’
‘Did you expect Damon to be there?’
‘I wasn’t… I wasn’t…’
‘Why did you abduct Barney and Kent?’
‘I didn’t. I haven’t.’
‘What are you planning on doing with them?’
‘Nothing!’
‘Come on. You trusted Barney Richardson. He was your daughter’s boyfriend. The one who you confided in all of your memories. Every year, right? One of you contacts the other. Must feel like such a harsh betrayal to see Barney providing the evidence that freed James Kent.’
‘Not for a long time.’
‘I thought you kept in touch. Every year on the anniversary of Hermione’s death, you’d have a drink in her honour.’
‘Look. I’ll admit that Barney’s evidence made me want to… To… The betrayal, everything. But I know him, he’s a good kid, trying to do the right thing.’
‘Such as back up Liam’s evidence, right? His statement corroborated the video.’
‘That was complete bollocks. None of that proves anything. People can lie, videos can be faked these days.’
‘You know that’s nonsense. You’re trying to deflect, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘But that’s why you attacked Liam, wasn’t it? Because of his digging, he unearthed that ancient CCTV footage. All of his work just served to get Kent off.’
Clive Taylor had assaulted Liam twice now. He’d killed Damon Lombardi and tried to kill Tom Wiley. He’d abducted Barney Richardson and James Kent.
And Fenchurch had no idea why.
But he knew who might.
29
Liam was lying in his bed, leaning back, arms and legs crossed, all hooked up to monitors by a system of wires. He looked over at Fenchurch. ‘Si, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I might have.’ Fenchurch took the empty chair next to the bed. ‘How are you doing?’
Liam looked down at the big patch of pale fabric taped down to his hairy chest that ran up and over his shoulder. He laughed. ‘I’ve no idea, but morphine is the best.’
Fenchurch joined in with the laughter. ‘Just make sure you don’t get a taste for it.’
‘Trying not to.’ Even with his eyes rolling back in his head, Liam could still frown. The morphine seemed to make him more lucid than several pints of craft beer had. ‘So why are you here, big guy?’
‘Just wondering if you wanted to tell me the truth about what’s going on. About why you’re getting attacked by Clive Taylor. About why he’s abducting people. Barney and James Kent. Why?’
Liam seemed to think it through, but he could’ve just been counting the dust motes floating in the room. ‘Well, Clive Taylor was always going to blame me and Barney Richardson for James Kent going free.’
Fenchurch had figured as much. Maybe Liam had no further insight. But maybe not. ‘Trouble is, I don’t know where he’s taken them.’
‘You’ve got him in custody?’
‘Right. But he’s denying taking them. Meanwhile, James Kent and Barney Richardson are somewhere. Trussed up, maybe? Dead, maybe? I don’t know.’
‘I wish I could help, but I can’t.’
‘Liam, two people’s lives are at stake here. Anything you can give me might—’
‘If Clive Taylor has them, he certainly won’t talk to me. He’s tried to kill me twice this evening, already.’
‘Look, do you know if Damon was speaking to him?’
‘Damon, why?’
‘It’s the bit I can’t figure out. I can see why Clive Taylor would target you. You broke the story, passed evidence to Dalton Unwin. Fine. And James Kent, sure. Taylor thinks he killed his daughter. Fine. Barney betrayed his trust by taking the stand and letting Kent go. Perfect. And I can sort of see why he’d attacked Tom Wiley, because he started this whole thing off. If he hadn’t spoken to Damon about you, then he’d—’
‘Si.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘Explain.’
‘Why would Taylor attack Tom Wiley? Think about it. He had no idea that there was any possibility of James Kent even getting a hearing, let alone getting off with the murder. He had no idea about any of this.’
Liam was right. Even under a rug of morphine and beer.
And Fenchurch was struggling. The timeline in his head, the one he’d been throwing around on the short drive from the station to the hospital, was wrong. There was no causal link between Clive Taylor attacking Tom Wiley and Damon Lombardi.
‘You think Clive hasn’t taken them?
Liam shrugged. ‘It’s possible. All you know is he tried to attack me. The rest you’re adding in, just like Julian Loftus and his team did with James Kent.’
That stung worse than the acid bubbling away in Fenchurch’s gut.
‘Si, you don’t know why Clive Taylor would attack Damon or Tom. And whoever met them last night, they tried to kill them. They succeeded with Damon. And nobody alive knows their identity. Except for Tom Wiley.’
Fenchurch’s feet squelched as he ran down the long hospital corridor, two over from Liam’s room, and clutched his phone to his head. ‘What do you mean he’s still not answering?’
He could barely hear Reed down the line. ‘The uniform posted outside his room isn’t picking up, guv.’
‘Shit.’
An orderly stepped out of a door and Fenchurch swerved around him. He dropped his phone. ‘Christ.’ He reached down to pick it up, then started off again. If he didn’t push it too hard, he could still run. ‘Sorry, Kay, what did you say?’
‘Nothing. I’ve tried the ward, but they’re not picking up.’
‘I’m almost there. Get Uzma to head around.’ Fenchurch ended the call and stuffed his phone into his pocket as he slowed for the ward.
No staff visible, no one to help him track down Tom Wiley’s room, so he just had to rely on his own memory from earlier in the day.
He took the left, then the right. Bingo, there it was. Like Liam, Tom Wiley had his own room rather than a bed on a ward.
And no sign of the guard, just an empty chair outside the hospital room.
Bloody typical.
But also terrifying. No guard meant anything could be going on in that room.
There was a bathroom door opposite. Figured. Fenchurch had seen that l
ogic a few times, a bursting cop heading off for a quick pee when he thought nobody would notice.
Footsteps rattled behind him and Ashkani came to a stop. ‘Well?’
‘Stay here.’ Fenchurch opened the bathroom door and stepped inside. Two urinals and a closed cubicle door. He crouched down with a creaking knee and sure enough, a uniformed officer lay unconscious on the floor.
Fenchurch had seen that before, many times. As good as any officer was, they were no use as a guard if they were on the crapper, asleep or not. Could be anything, from the old “brought you a tea and biscuit, albeit laced with fentanyl”, to the simple act of just waiting for him to go to the toilets before overpowering him in a tight space.
Fenchurch stepped back out into the corridor.
Ashkani put a finger to her lip, then nodded at the door.
Someone was in there. Shadows moving around.
Shit.
Fenchurch found his baton and gripped it tight. He positioned himself on the other side of the door from Ashkani, his hand on the handle, and gave Ashkani a nodded three count, then opened it.
Barney Richardson was standing over the bed, a knife poised over Tom Wiley. He looked over at them, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.
Before he could act, Fenchurch lashed out with his baton. The mechanism snapped out mid-swing and cracked off Barney’s wrist. The knife dropped and clattered off the floor.
Fenchurch shifted forward, ready to strike again, but Barney punched, hard, connecting like a train with Fenchurch’s jaw. Fenchurch collapsed onto the bed, his shoulder blade landing on Tom Wiley’s knees. Then Barney leapt on top of him, resting on the bed, grabbing Fenchurch by the throat, and he couldn’t move, pinned down by the weight of the man and he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t move and everything was feeling too bright and—
Barney dropped to the floor with a loud clatter.
Fenchurch jerked to his feet and sucked in shallow breaths, his fingers caressing his throat.
Ashkani stood over Barney, her baton held low. ‘Bernard Richardson, I’m arresting you for the attempted murder of Tom Wiley.’
30
Even three hours later, Fenchurch still felt the ring of bruises around his throat.
He could only take Arnica gel for it, and that didn’t cut the mustard, pain-wise. And he was already on the maximum dose for ibuprofen and paracetamol.
But Barney Richardson looked like he’d walked off a bridge. Dark bruises covered his face.
Fenchurch swore that Ashkani had only hit Barney once to get him off, but it looked like she’d hit him with a golf club.
Fenchurch didn’t recognise the lawyer defending Barney Richardson. Some kid just out of law school, dressed in his dad’s suit, maybe shaving with his dad’s razor judging by the knicks on his throat.
Fenchurch sat back, arms folded. Not so much defensive as satisfied he’d done enough. ‘So, I’m piecing it all together, and it just seems to be falling into place so nicely. We found three separate blood types on the knife you were trying to kill Tom Wiley with. And, while we haven’t had time to run the DNA yet and identify who else you’ve killed, I’ve got a good idea who it is.’
Barney had nothing. He was leaning forward, rubbing his fingers off his palms. His left wrist was all swollen from where Fenchurch had hit him.
‘The blood types match both Tom Wiley and Damon Lombardi, so that’s looking like a win. Our CSIs are bloody good, though. Better than your average murderer. Most are good at wiping the blade, even bleaching helps. But few actually dismantle the knife and remove it from the handle… Lots of places for DNA to hide in there. And, while we’re waiting on a DNA trace to complete, the blood type at least is a match for Micah Wiley.’
The lawyer looked over at his client and dropped his pen. Maybe he realised how deep in the shit Barney was. Maybe he already knew and just didn’t care.
‘You want to explain how almost four and a half years after Micah’s murder, you happened to have a knife with his blood on it at his father’s bedside?’
Barney shook his head like a petulant toddler. ‘Not really.’
But he was talking. One of those types who brag about everything they’d done. Get some notoriety, maybe, to protect themselves in prison. Or they just couldn’t help themselves.
‘Barney, does the name Edward Summers mean anything to you?’
‘A bit.’
‘It’s not someone else you’ve killed or tried to, though that feels like half of London. No, Mr Summers just gave us the final piece of the jigsaw. He explained how you were connected to Damon.’
Barney sighed.
‘Hard to piece together. Opaque. He consulted at Travis, so you weren’t on the record as an employee and didn’t really show up on our searches, but when we sat down with Edward Summers, just after you tried to kill his brother-in-law, well. He knew your name. Is that where you befriended Damon?’
‘Sure.’
‘They all must’ve known who you were. Not exactly difficult to find. Just google your name and there it is. That you were Minnie’s boyfriend. But Damon made a mistake, didn’t he? He thought you’d have sympathy for Tom Wiley’s plight. I mean, he worked there too. Got close to Damon, didn’t he? And when you learned that he was working with an investigator to find the killer of his son, well that set off alarm bells, didn’t it? And you know the investigator’s name. Liam Sharpe, a reporter. Liam had been speaking to you, and you thought you’d fobbed him off. And it was only a matter of time before he pulled it all together, so you had to kill them, didn’t you?’
‘Did I?’ Barney rolled his eyes.
‘As if Tom Wiley hasn’t suffered enough, right?’ Fenchurch shrugged. ‘I mean, his son died. That’s tough. Everything must feel fairly bleak after that. But then he starts to hear whispers that maybe, just maybe, someone knows who killed him. That it might be James Kent. Then he’s so blinded by his search that he didn’t even think that going to a brewery’s basement to meet that someone was a stupid idea. But then I suspect you came out of the shadows with that knife. Did you attack him first?’
‘Damon.’
It felt like the words echoed round the room, despite being whispered.
‘You killed Damon first?’
Barney nodded. ‘I’d drugged them both, but you don’t seem to know that.’
It hadn’t come up in the blood toxicology, but then sometimes it took up to four days to find the exact toxin. Fenchurch looked over at Ashkani. News to her too. She got up and left the room.
‘I knew Damon would seem like the main victim. He had so many debts, owed favours and money to so many people. You’d waste your time there. With Tom Wiley, it was doing him a service. I’d seen him driving that Travis car, heard he was searching for his son’s killer. And that’s no life. I was putting him out of his misery.’
That was the coldest Fenchurch had ever heard. ‘What was with taking their shoes off?’
Barney shrugged. ‘Just thought it would mess with you. Confuse who was there. Make it look like Tom and Damon fell out.’
‘Your problem is that Tom wasn’t completely out of it, right?’
‘No, he came to just as I tried to make the first cut. There was a lot more blood from Damon than I expected, and it was a complete mess. Tom pushed me and I tripped up. The next thing I knew he’d escaped. Ran off up the stairs. The tap room was shut, so nobody could see us, but he’d managed to get outside into the rain. I tried to follow, but it was dark and I lost his trail… I panicked. I went back down there and nailed the wood over the door.’
Everything clicked into place. The leaps of logic Fenchurch couldn’t follow, the missteps he’d made. Now he could see the full picture, the jigsaw pieces were easy to put together. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘It’s a long story.’ Barney leaned forward, rubbing his wrist. ‘Kent caught Hermione plagiarising an essay, so she was in deep trouble.’
‘That was true?’
‘It was. And it was bad news f
or her. She’d fail the year, and have to re-sit history the next summer. It would delay her going to uni and it’d be a black mark on her record. But the headmaster offered to let her catch up if she went on a remedial course over the summer. It was this multi-school residential thing in the Berkshire countryside. And it’s where she met Micah.’
Fenchurch blew air up his face. Loftus had really screwed up the victimology here. Or someone on the team did. Either way, it was his fault. ‘This didn’t come up in the case.’
‘Right. That course… It’s kind of a secret. People didn’t shout from the rooftops. I think it was to protect their reputations.’
‘Go on.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Can’t, or won’t?’
Barney shut his eyes. ‘And he fell in love with her.’
‘Did they keep in touch?’
‘On Schoolbook. It’s how I found out. She didn’t know it, but I’d been reading her messages.’
Fenchurch frowned. ‘I’ve been through the case files. We had a warrant for her messages. There were none from Micah.’
‘That’s because I deleted them. Schoolbook… Their data security and auditing is a joke. Weirdly enough, my firm consulted there and I’ve seen their system. It’s a pigsty. The thing is, I was stupid and naive. If you’d gone to the server, you would’ve got the messages, but that Post-it note with her password on? I lucked out there. It meant you didn’t need a warrant or server access, and it meant you found the messages Kent had sent her.’
‘They were from you?’
‘Naturally. I hacked his Schoolbook account. Trivially easy. Sat outside his house one night, waited until he logged in and I videoed him typing in his password. Dumb. I just had to play it back in slow motion and I was into his account too. So I sent messages to Hermione to get him in the shit. And it all worked. They were going to fire him.’