Cody finds himself nodding as he listens. It explains Prior’s sudden change in behaviour, and why he couldn’t focus on his marriage. He couldn’t live with what he’d done.
‘So you murdered Prior. Why not just bump off Keenan at the same time? Why the run-around?’
Waldo laughs. ‘Do you really need to ask, Cody? I’m a clown! I’m all about fun, fun, fun! I need games to play, people to manipulate.’
‘And so you thought of me. Should I be flattered?’
‘You were intimately connected to Prior and Keenan, so of course you were a natural choice. But I also thought that Sara Prior would make an admirable contestant.’
‘Contestant? Is that what we were?’
‘Certainly. It was a race, which Sara won. Your own goal was to find me – Where’s Waldo?, remember? – but you failed miserably at that. Sara’s goal was to find the person responsible for her husband’s death.’
‘Meaning you again.’
‘Meaning you, Cody. Prior died because of his pangs of conscience about you.’
Cody ignores this latest attempt to shift the blame on to him. ‘So then how did Sara win?’
‘She was given a puzzle to solve. That initial phone call from her husband wasn’t made of his own free will. He was already in my hands at that stage. He was told exactly what to say. That in turn led her to a letter, written by me but signed by Prior. I won’t bore you with all the other details, but to win the game, Sara had to turn up at an address given to her by a man called Metro Mackenzie. I assume you’ve heard of him?’
Cody’s head is swimming. It all makes sense now. It explains why Sara was getting into fights with Mackenzie’s lackies, why her house was trashed.
‘How did you persuade Metro to go along with this?’
‘Persuading anyone to do anything isn’t hard when you have the right information. In Metro’s case, I found out that he has been skimming money from his employer, one Joey Pearce. My deal with Metro was that I wouldn’t tell Pearce about him if he played along. All he had to do was hand over the address if and when Sara got to him and forced him to do it. He thought Sara didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance, but she proved him wrong. When she got to your address, the game ended, and so did your opportunity to find me.’
‘Wait. My address? She came here?’
‘Yes. While you were out looking after your computer nerd friend. Which, by the way, was also set up by me. There never was anything on that computer for her to find. And that label on Keenan’s shoe?’
Cody’s heart sinks. ‘You deliberately chose not to remove it.’
‘Quite. Well done for using it to find his address, though. I had faith in you.’
Cody feels numb. It’s almost as if his every action has been predestined, or at least anticipated. As though he has had no control whatsoever.
‘How did you make sure that Keenan didn’t just confess everything to me?’
‘Simple threats. He knew what I’m capable of. Remember when you handed him your phone so that I could speak to him? At that point I gave him a little reminder of what he would face if he didn’t obey me. I played him a recording of Matthew Prior’s screams as the nails were being driven into him.’
‘You really are a charmer, aren’t you?’
‘I have my moments.’
‘All right. So we played a game, and I lost. Now what?’
‘There will be other games, other chances. But don’t feel so badly about this one. Two of the men who attacked you are now dead. You must take some satisfaction in that.’
‘There are still two more to go. When I’ve got you, then I’ll be satisfied.’
‘The glass is half empty, eh, Cody? Look at it that way if you must. But, as I said, there will be other opportunities for you to redeem yourself. Not for quite a while, though. I’ve got other fish to fry. In the meantime, I’m sending you two consolation prizes. Keep an eye out for them.’
‘What kind of con—?’
‘Until the next time, Cody.’
The line goes dead. Cody stares at the phone. Waldo was right: two clowns dead could be considered a victory of sorts.
But somehow Cody isn’t feeling triumphant.
66
He gets into work much later than usual, but everyone seems too busy to notice. Something has happened, and Cody suspects it owes much to the actions of Waldo.
His eyes are drawn to Grace first. She looks up from her computer, nods, then gets back to work.
When Webley realises he has arrived, she rushes over to him. He tries to straighten his posture, to hide the fact that his body is covered in bruises and that it feels like his intestines are about to prolapse.
‘Hey,’ she says.
‘All right,’ he answers. It’s not much of a reconciliation, but it’s a start.
‘You’ve missed it all.’
‘Missed what?’
‘Suicide. Guy by the name of James Keenan. He put a chain around his neck, padlocked it to a railway bridge and then jumped minutes before a train came through. He obviously wanted to make doubly sure.’
Clever, thinks Cody. Hang him with the same chain to explain away any marks I might have left on his neck, then smash him to bits to help mask the injuries he sustained in our fight.
Cody pulls a face. ‘Nice. But isn’t that one for BTP?’
Webley smiles. The British Transport Police would normally handle an incident at a railway track, but she clearly has a surprise up her sleeve.
She hands Cody a sheet of paper. ‘Copy of the suicide note he left.’
Cody takes it from her. It’s a scan of a document that has been handwritten, presumably by Keenan while under the watchful and threatening eye of Waldo.
I have killed a man, and now I need to pay the price.
He was a beautiful man, and his name was Matthew Prior. The mistake I made was falling in love with him, but for a short time I really thought we might be happy together. In the end, Matthew decided he wanted to go back to his wife, and I couldn’t accept it.
I killed him in the most horrible way possible, and then I tried to make it look like a burglary.
What I did was wrong, and I’m deeply, deeply sorry.
I can’t make up for what I did, but I hope I can be forgiven.
‘Short but sweet,’ Cody says. ‘Does it all add up?’
Webley’s look tells him it’s an odd question. ‘So far. We’ve found a maroon woollen sweater at his home address, plus hair wax that matches the type found at the scene. His hair’s the right colour, but we’ll have to wait for the lab to get back to us on a precise match, along with a DNA comparison.’
Cody nods. He knows the hair and DNA will match. Waldo will have made certain of that. There will also undoubtedly be a pair of shoes in Keenan’s closet that match footprints left at the murder scene.
‘What about the fingerprint?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one fly in the ointment. It doesn’t belong to Keenan.’
‘Really?’
Cody is genuinely puzzled. It’s not like Waldo to make such a basic mistake.
‘We think maybe Keenan had help. God knows if we’ll ever work out who it was.’
You won’t, thinks Cody. You won’t.
‘So Lewis Fulton is in the clear, then?’
‘Yup. Ann Staples came clean. She had it in for him. She told lies about the sweater and about Fulton going round to Matthew’s place in Aintree, purely to drop him in the shit. He was a workplace bully all right, but not to the extent she made out.’
Cody looks round the room. He wonders if it’s his last day here. He’ll miss it so badly, but perhaps he doesn’t belong here anymore. The team hasn’t changed, but he has.
‘Sara needs to know about this,’ says Webley.
‘Yes. Yes, she does.’
‘I thought . . . well, I thought you might prefer to tell her yourself.’
Cody looks her straight in the eye, and the rest of the room blurs and fades.
>
‘Yes, it’s probably better coming from me.’
‘Cody, are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘And us? Are we okay? You and me, I mean.’
‘We’re more than okay. We’re great.’
Webley blinks, and a tear escapes.
‘That’s what I hoped you’d say.’
67
This is hard, Cody thinks when Sara Prior opens her door. Hard pretending I know nothing when in fact I know everything.
He feigns surprise at seeing the wound on her cheek, feigns shock when he sees the state the house is in. When he asks her about it and she says it was nothing, he doesn’t press it. What would be the point?
In the living room, he gets straight to business.
‘There’s been a development in the investigation into your husband’s murder,’ he says.
‘I see,’ Sara answers.
‘In the early hours of this morning, a man called James Keenan committed suicide. He left this note.’
Cody opens up his folder, slides out the copy of the note, and passes it across to Sara.
She reads it quickly. Hands it back. She seems dead to its content.
‘You, er, you don’t seem surprised.’
Sara stands up. ‘I’ve had a note of my own.’ She crosses to the sideboard, picks up a folded piece of paper, brings it back. ‘This was put through my letter box last night.’
Cody opens up the note and reads it.
Dear Sara,
My name is James Keenan. You don’t know me, and we have never met. This is difficult for me to write, but you need to know the truth.
I am responsible for the death of Matthew.
There, I’ve said it. If I could undo it all, believe me I would.
I also need to tell you that Matthew and I had a brief relationship. In hindsight, I realise that it was just a fling. Matthew was experimenting, I think. Testing his own boundaries. But I thought it was much more than that. I fell in love with your husband.
The problem was that Matthew wasn’t prepared to return that love. After much soul-searching, he decided that what he really wanted to do was come back to you.
I couldn’t have that. In a fit of rage, I killed him in the most brutal way possible.
I know that was bad enough, but I was also jealous of you. I wanted you to suffer for taking him away from me. And so I played a terrible game with you.
I forced Matthew to make that phone call to you. I left the letter for you in the library, after forcing Matthew to sign it. I paid Metro a lot of money to give you that address when you found him. And I paid men to attack you when you got there.
I don’t know why I did all those things. I thought it would bring me some kind of satisfaction to play with you in that way, like a cat with a mouse. But the only thing it taught me was how much you loved him, and I know now how much he truly loved you.
I am deeply sorry for what I have done to you and Matthew. I know that’s not enough, but by the time you read this note I will be dead.
Perhaps that will help to ease the pain.
Yours in repentance,
James Keenan
When he has finished reading, Cody says, ‘I’m not going to ask you about the letter in the library, the man called Metro Mackenzie, all of that.’
There is a flash of surprise on Sara’s face. ‘Thank you.’
‘But I take it that it explains the fight on video, the cut on your cheek, the mess your house is in.’
Sara says nothing in response.
‘Strictly speaking, I should turn this note in as evidence, but then you’d have a lot of questions to answer. So I’m not going to do that either.’
She nods her gratitude.
‘How do you feel about this?’ he asks. ‘The note, I mean.’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think it’s bullshit.’
‘I, er, I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘I mean what I say. Matthew didn’t have a sexual encounter with a man. That’s ridiculous.’
‘Sara, we found a heap of forensic evidence at Matthew’s place to suggest that this man Keenan was there.’
‘I don’t care. Maybe he was there. Maybe he killed Matthew. But not because of any relationship gone wrong. I knew Matthew too well. That letter is pure bullshit.’
Cody finds himself on the verge of confession. He wants to tear the letter into shreds and share the real story with her.
But an important element of that truth would be that her husband was involved in the murder of one police officer and the torture and mutilation of another. It would entail informing her that Nathan Cody, the man now sitting in front of her, was a victim of her husband’s desire for adventure and experience.
And so he keeps that truth contained within himself, like a radioactive element held behind a lead shield. Lets her live with the tissue of lies while he decays on the inside.
‘So what now?’ he asks.
‘What now? You tell me. You’re a detective on this case. You have your so-called evidence, you have your murderer, you have an explanation that ties everything up with a pretty bow. It makes a great story. I imagine that this is case closed as far as you are concerned. Or are you going to listen to the objections of an unconvinced, grieving widow and keep investigating?’
Cody issues no reply.
‘I thought not,’ she says.
He locks eyes with her for several seconds. ‘What about you? What will you do now?’
‘I think . . . I will go home. Back to Copenhagen. There is nothing here for me now.’
He simply nods, while trying not to show his sadness. He feels that he has let her down, that he has taken the coward’s way out by adopting the official police line.
‘I want you to know,’ he says, ‘that I did everything I could.’
He could say more, a million things more, but he leaves it there.
‘I believe that,’ she answers. ‘And I’ll never think otherwise.’
He smiles. Stands to leave. Says goodbye. When he gets to the front door, she gives him a hug and whispers to him that everything will be all right.
And for ever afterwards he will wonder what she meant by that.
68
The next few hours back at the station are spent tidying up, now that the case has been cracked. There are countless reports to file and phone calls to make, but there is an air of ebullience in the incident room. Detectives love to see a conclusion to an investigation, even when one or two loose ends remain. Cody notices that even Grace appears to have managed to budge her traumatic experience over to one side.
The phone call comes in the late afternoon.
‘DS Cody.’
‘Hello, Detective. It’s Gem Falstaff here. I’m in the process of writing up my report on you, but I think it only right that I have a quick chat with you first.’
Shit, Cody thinks. This sounds ominous. And she’s gone all formal on me: Detective instead of Cody.
‘When were you thinking?’
‘I need to submit my report tomorrow, so I was hoping we could do this as soon as possible. I can stay late in my office if you could pop in on your way home?’
‘Uh, yeah, sure. Can you give me some indication—?’
‘See you later then.’
She hangs up. Cody thinks that, for a psychologist, her ability to salve the mind of her client leaves much to be desired.
*
Cody doesn’t put a spurt on to get there: he knows it’s not going to be worth the effort. When he eventually arrives, Falstaff appears to be the only one left in the building.
She shows him brusquely into her consulting room. Not so much of the smiling now. Not so much of the attempts to make him feel at ease.
Just get it over with, he thinks.
Falstaff seems to receive the mental hint. She holds up a sheaf of A4 paper.
‘This is my report on you. As you can see, I had a
lot to say.’
‘Should I take that as a compliment?’
She ignores the question. ‘I won’t bore you with all the technical jargon. In layman’s terms, you’re a mess.’
Her bluntness takes him by surprise.
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘It’s not. You have exhibited distinct signs of emotional instability, mental fatigue, delusion and anxiety. And that’s in just two sessions. My considered judgment is that I have barely scratched the surface, and that there is a high probability you are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.’
Cody swallows hard, forcing back his objections. There really is no point in arguing the toss. Falstaff is the expert here, and moaning about her appraisal will only serve to antagonise a professional who already seems to have had a shitty day.
‘I see.’
‘I’m glad you do. That in itself makes you unfit to be doing the job you’re doing, but you know what’s worse?’
‘What?’
‘What’s worse is the fact that you have the sheer temerity to sit there and pretend you don’t know what’s going on.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Frankly, I think you ought to be ashamed to carry a warrant card. It’s the bad apples like you who bring the police force into disrepute. You’re an embarrassment, and if I had my way, you’d be in prison.’
Cody finds it almost too difficult to speak. ‘Now hold on—’
‘No, you hold on! You don’t think you fooled me for a second, do you? Disguising your voice like that. I knew it was you all along. How did you find out, anyway?’ She holds up a hand, stopping him from a reply he doesn’t have. ‘Don’t bother. You’re a detective. You have your seedy little ways of digging up the dirt on people. So well done, Sergeant Cody. Nice fucking job.’
It becomes clear to Cody then. At least partially.
Waldo.
This has all the hallmarks of the master clown’s devious little fingers. He has unearthed something about Falstaff, something she doesn’t want made public – an affair? Embezzlement? Professional misconduct? – and is using it against her.
Falstaff reaches down for something next to her, and for a second Cody fears she’s going to bring up a shotgun. What she actually produces is a paper shredder. She slams it down on her desk, then holds up the sheaf of papers again.
Your Deepest Fear Page 28