Dan realised how much he had been waiting for the trial to end, before everything came crashing down. He had been running on adrenaline, his anger about the attack and the arson keeping him going. Now that the trial had ended, and gone his way, his relief made him sag. He wanted to put his head back and fall asleep for a long time.
Barbara had travelled ahead, to pack her things and check out of her hotel. She didn’t want to stay in Highford any longer than she had to. Dan understood that. The town was where her son was murdered. He could hardly take offence. She was going to call in though, just to say goodbye before she headed for the motorway.
Jayne brought more drinks to the table, Nick grinning, enjoying his first taste of freedom, looking round constantly. Dan’s tie and collar were undone. He had lots of tough decisions ahead, his office, his firm, but for tonight he was going to enjoy the moment.
Jayne put another beer in front of Dan. ‘You did it.’
‘No, we did it, together.’ He held out his bottle to clink against hers. ‘Nick, how are you feeling?’
He grinned. ‘Just magic, man, like I thought I was done for.’
‘What’s next for you?’
His grin faltered. ‘Probably start somewhere new.’
‘A new beginning?’
‘Where no one knows me.’
‘You’ve been found not guilty. You can start again here.’
‘I don’t think so. My life will be just as shite somewhere new, but at least no one will think I’m a killer who got away with it.’
Dan laughed at that. ‘I suppose that’s a fresh perspective.’
‘See, that’s what I mean. I’ll leave the changed lives to those who’ve got all the fancy words and education.’
‘Where are you spending tonight?’
‘I’ll find somewhere. I always did.’
Barbara appeared in the doorway, looking around for them, and then waving as she saw them.
Dan raised his bottle as she bustled over. ‘You sure you’re not staying for one, Barbara? Or is this just goodbye?’
‘No, I’m heading off, all packed up, but thank you. I’m here to ask a question of Nick. A request, really.’ She sat down opposite him and took his hands in hers. She softened her voice and said, ‘Will you come with me, to the park?’
Nick looked wary, cocked his head as he considered her for a moment. ‘Why?’
‘Because it changed our lives. It was where I lost my son. It was where you lost your liberty, and almost your own life. I’m leaving Highford now, probably never to return, and I want just a few moments of reflection. I helped save you, Nick, and that means a lot to me.’
‘She’s right,’ Dan said. ‘Without Barbara, you’d be starting a life sentence tonight, not enjoying a drink.’
‘Please,’ Barbara said. ‘It’s my way of saying goodbye to Mark, and I’d like you to join me. We can both reflect and be better for it.’
Dan raised his bottle. ‘You owe her, Nick.’
‘Okay,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘But will you drop me here afterwards? I’m enjoying the beer too much.’
‘Of course, and thank you,’ she said, and sighed as she turned to Dan. ‘It’s goodbye, Mr Grant, and to you, Jayne. You believed in me. I’ll never forget.’
Dan stood to give her a hug, Jayne too, before they watched her leave, Nick shuffling behind her. An unlikely friendship.
Jayne was grinning. ‘I wasn’t expecting a happy ending.’
‘No, me neither,’ Dan said, laughing. ‘You don’t get many happy endings in my job.’
They sat and drank their beers together, Jayne leaning against him, her head against his shoulder.
‘What now?’ she said. ‘Me and you, I mean.’
‘Lover-boy not joining us?’
She lifted her head. ‘Chris, you mean?’
He raised his hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry, ignore me. It shouldn’t matter to me what you did in your life before this week.’
‘But it does?’
He laughed and patted his heart. ‘In here, yes.’
‘As long as you feel something, because I do. I have for a long time.’
He smiled. ‘Yeah, me too.’
She slapped him on the arm, laughing. ‘You kept that covered up well.’
Dan thought about that, before answering, ‘I had my reasons, but let’s just enjoy each other and see where it goes.’
‘I can live with that.’
Two men in suits rushed into the pub, looking around, agitated.
Dan and Jayne exchanged glances. He recognised one of them immediately. Graham Hogg, the Senior Investigating Officer.
‘What does he want?’ Dan said, before they saw him and marched over.
Hogg’s anger was evident from the flush to his cheeks and the tension in his stride.
‘DCI Hogg, what can I do for you?’
‘Do you know what you’ve done?’
Dan’s temper flared. ‘My job. What’s your point, because if you’ve come to bleat about losing a case you shouldn’t have run, save it. I’m not interested.’
‘You arrogant piece of shit.’
Dan put his drink down. ‘Just hold on, because you’re way out of line.’
‘Leoni Walker. Or Revell, as she is now. Did you ask your client about her?’
‘I’m not telling you what Nick said. Client confidentiality, you know that.’
‘Did Nick mention that he knew her?’
Dan was about to answer, but he faltered. Goosebumps popped onto his arms. ‘What are you talking about?’
Hogg leaned forward on the table and rested on his knuckles. Spittle flew as he said, ‘We keep intelligence on these people, however petty their offending is, because they all take drugs, and where there are junkies, there are dealers. Where do you think Nick Connor spent most of his time during the winter?’
Dan knew what was coming, but he asked anyway, his mouth dry. ‘Go on, where?’
‘Her house. We ran her name after the verdict came in, and there she was, listed alongside innocent little Nick as one of his associates. There were rumours that she was selling his stolen stuff for him, but she’s cute. Never been caught with anything, but we knew who she was.’
‘Hang on. Are you saying that Nick Connor was a friend of Leoni Walker? Or Revell, or whoever?’
‘What do you think I’m saying?’
‘But why didn’t you mention it during the trial? You’d have ruined my defence. You blew it.’
Hogg slammed his fist on the table. ‘Because you sprung it as a last-minute surprise. How were we supposed to know?’
Dan knew he was right, but what did this mean? His mind was whirring fast but nothing was making sense. Nick hadn’t given anything away.
He looked back to Hogg. ‘Why are you telling me?’
‘Because we heard you were in here, celebrating your win, and you don’t deserve the peace of mind. When you go to sleep, just know that you freed a murderer, because look at the coincidence now. The wrong-place wrong-time man turns out to be close to the woman you say was responsible for the murder. Join the dots, Dan Grant, and sleep well.’
And with that, they both turned and left.
Dan and Jayne sat in stunned silence, until they both realised the same thing at the same time. If Nick really was the killer, there was another danger.
‘Barbara,’ Jayne said.
They left their drinks and ran for the door.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Dan drove. He’d had just two drinks and didn’t think he’d be over the limit. And anyway, he knew the roads better than Jayne.
Jayne was sitting forward, straining her seat belt, trying to see the way ahead. ‘What’s happening, Dan?’
‘Like it sounds. Nick’s a killer. He was all along. He killed Mark Roberts for Leoni, because of course she wouldn’t do it herself, not now she’s learned better ways to do it. That’s why he’s moving away, because his case has exposed Leoni.’
‘Di
d you tell him about Leoni?’
‘I didn’t have time, and I don’t think he knew anything anyway. Leoni has a different surname now. Whatever reason Leoni gave for needing Mark dead, it didn’t have to involve her killing two children, but he must have seen her when she came into the courtroom. Leoni. She kept that first name, and she was there, in full view. That’s when he knew who she truly was. When I looked back, I thought he’d be more excited, but he had his head in his hands. But he’s still a killer. He fooled us and we freed him, and Barbara’s with him.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s going to harm her. He’s just got out of prison. He won’t want to go back. It’s something else. Like your conscience troubling you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You thought it had a happy ending. Now, you know that it’s just one more guilty defendant getting away with it.’
‘I’m allowed to feel let down.’ He drove faster, the terraced houses blurring past, his hands tight around the wheel. The park wasn’t far away. He didn’t know what to expect when he got there, but there was something slightly off-kilter.
Then he remembered.
‘Something Barbara said is bothering me,’ he said. ‘We were speaking at court, when we were waiting for the verdict. Porter was still there, and he asked her what she was going to do with the recording we made, where he told us about his part in it all. Barbara said that she was going to write an article, using the recording and her son’s notes. She made it sound like it might be cathartic.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
‘I thought so at the time, and I was too busy worrying about the verdict to think more about it, but it niggled me, and my mind kept going back to it, but I couldn’t work out why.’ He braked hard at some red lights, the dark shadow of the park ahead. ‘But now I can’t help thinking about which notes they are.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She said she was going to use Mark’s notes, but which notes would they be? Her whole involvement was based upon the murder being connected to whatever he was writing, designed to stop him writing it, but she didn’t know what it was. His laptop was gone, and his notes too.’
Jayne thought about that. ‘Perhaps she meant what she’d worked out since?’
‘No, she was very specific about it. Mark’s notes. Not my notes, but Mark’s notes.’
‘Are you saying she’s dodgy in some way?’
‘I’m wondering whether there is more going on with her than she is letting on. Think about it. Who’s been directing us in this investigation? Barbara, that’s who. Why did you go to Brampton?’
‘Because she’d discovered that Mark had been there.’
‘At every stage, it was Barbara who nudged us along to the next discovery.’
‘It was Chris who sent me to Wakefield though, told me to follow Leoni’s trail, just like Mark must have done.’ She frowned. ‘They seemed strange at court today.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Like they knew each other. Remember, the whole point about me going to Brampton was to find out why Mark had gone there; but if she’d met Chris, she’d already know.’
‘Are you thinking they were working together?’
‘It would make sense, because Chris didn’t believe in Rodney’s guilt, so he found an ally in Mark. And when you think about it, every part of the case has been led by Barbara or Chris, all explained by some invoice or bank statement she’d found, or Chris directing. It wasn’t about helping Nick. It was about us coming to the same conclusion she’d reached.’
‘But she did that to get Nick out of prison, so she could find the real murderer.’
Dan raised his eyebrows. ‘Except the police information suggests that he is the real murderer.’
The lights changed to green. Dan accelerated hard.
‘She wanted justice for her son,’ Dan said, shouting above his engine noise. ‘That’s what she’s always said. When Nick was acquitted though, I thought she’d look pleased, but she was the opposite. More determined, serious.’
‘She’s with Nick now.’
‘Exactly. She came to the pub and asked him to accompany her to the park. What was the phrase? For a moment of reflection?’
‘What, you think…?’
‘I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.’
He swerved across the road and scuffed his tyre along the kerb as he stopped outside the park entrance.
The park was semi-circular in shape, the entrance just a small alley at the end of a street of houses. They walked into it, slowly, wary of the darkness. A path ran along the top of the park to a similar entrance on a parallel street, with another tracing the edge in a wide loop. Highford lay below, so that during the day it became somewhere for dog walkers and young parents with prams to stroll with a view of the town. At night, the town below was set out in glittering lines and swirls of orange street lights. The struts of a climbing frame were visible as a skeletal silhouette over a cluster of bushes.
‘Where was Mark Roberts found?’ Jayne asked.
Dan pointed along the path that ran closest to the houses but hidden from them by the trees behind. ‘Just there, by a bench.’
‘Barbara can’t have gone in here,’ Jayne said, shaking her head. ‘I can’t see or hear anyone. Try calling her.’
Dan scrolled through his contacts until he found Barbara’s number. When he pressed call, there was a flicker of light in the distance and the sound of a light ring. It rang out twice before being cut off, the light extinguished. ‘She’s over there. Come on, we’ll go in.’
‘But why didn’t she answer?’
‘We ought to find out.’
As they walked along the path, the world behind them seemed to disappear, swallowed straight away by the dark and the silence. They had to focus to keep an eye on where the path was, the grass edges barely visible.
Dan shouted, ‘Barbara?’
No one answered.
‘I can’t see them,’ Jayne said.
Dan stopped and gripped her arm. ‘Listen.’
Low grunts and moans drifted towards them.
Jayne pointed. ‘That way.’
They increased their pace, every nerve on edge, tensed. The skeletal frames of the playground began to emerge as they got closer. A slide. A see-saw. The moans got louder. The sound of someone in pain.
Then a voice. ‘Don’t come any closer.’
It was Barbara.
They stopped. Dan called out, ‘You all right?’
She didn’t answer, so Dan stepped forward, trying to penetrate the darkness. An outline of a figure appeared.
Jayne pulled her phone from her pocket and flicked through the apps, until she found a flashlight app. She pressed it, and the playground was illuminated by the sharp beam.
She screamed, almost dropped her phone, before putting her hand over her mouth.
Dan said, ‘Oh fuck,’ before adding: ‘What have you done?’
Barbara was standing, breathing hard, her hair tangled, a hammer in her hand. Blood dripped from it and her face was spattered red, her eyes wild and bright in the light.
Someone moved by her feet.
Dan held his hands out as he got closer. He spoke softly, trying to calm her. ‘Barbara, put the hammer down.’
The figure moved again, tried to raise its head, grunted and collapsed again.
It was Nick.
‘Barbara, why?’ Dan was still edging forward.
‘I wanted justice for my son. I’ve always said that.’
‘Free Nick, that’s what you said.’
‘Free Nick and get Mark’s killer. That’s what I’m doing.’ She jabbed the air with the hammer.
‘But when did you think that? Today?’
‘All along.’
‘What, it was all just so you could do this?’
‘Do you think there’d be justice if he went to prison? Your kind of justice, maybe, but not mine. Not for what he did to my boy.’
�
��But how do you know that?’
‘I had Mark’s notes. I know what he found, because the police didn’t care about the whole story. The man who rented out the cottage where Mark was staying let me look around and his laptop was there. The police didn’t want his stuff, because it was a robbery gone wrong, correct?’
Dan stepped closer. ‘But Nick? How can you be sure?’
She raised the hammer and screamed, ‘Get away!’ Her eyes were wild.
The light wobbled as Jayne watched the scene.
‘You’d try to stop me,’ Barbara said, panting hard, animalistic. ‘That’s your world, where everything is just a process.’ She spat the word out. ‘For people like me, who’ve lost someone, it needs more than a process.’ A deep breath. ‘This pig would be out in fifteen years, with most of his life left. What about Mark’s life? Or my life? No, he had to feel what Mark felt. In the dark, scared, no one to help him. Except, here you are, superman, always the saviour.’
Jayne shouted as Nick moved, his hand reaching upwards, towards Barbara’s leg. His face glistened with wet blood, his hair matted, grotesque. He opened his mouth, blood covering his teeth.
Barbara screeched. She brought the hammer down. It thudded into his head. He went flat to the ground, his arms splayed. Barbara carried on, each strike wet, a sound like hitting fruit, three, four, five times, until she sank to the ground and dropped the hammer.
She was kneeling in Nick’s blood. She put her head back and let out a loud wail, before it turned into sobs and her head sank into her chest.
Blue flashing lights strobed the night, an engine driving hard.
Dan and Jayne didn’t move, both stunned. Barbara cried into her hands as she waited for the police to come. Running footsteps sounded on the path, a torch brightening the scene more than Jayne’s phone.
They stepped back as the police ran past. There were houses overlooking the park. Someone must have called them.
Jayne was about to put her phone away when she saw a text. Out of habit, she checked the message.
It was from Chris.
Got Leoni. She’s done something in an old folks’ home. Someone came out screaming. Police there.
The Innocent Ones Page 33