Know No Evil

by Hampton Graeme

  She remembered a primary school teacher once telling her class of fellow ten-year-olds that a tidy desk was a sign of a tidy mind. She hadn’t appreciated the significance of the comment at the time, and if she was honest, probably didn’t see the significance of it now. A cluttered desk, she believed, was more likely the sign of an over-worked police officer.

  She blew some crumbs off her keyboard and logged on to the Police National Computer database, tapped in her username and password, then entered the name ‘Anthony John Ferguson’ and the date of his arrest.

  When his file came up, she clicked on the photo. There were several pages devoted to Ferguson and his murder spree, the greater and gorier details of which were now pretty familiar to her.

  She took a sip of acrid coffee and wished it was time for another cigarette.

  Within minutes of her slipping into the office that afternoon her DI had pounced; he wanted to know if there was any progress regarding Gregor Kane, and any likelihood of an imminent arrest. She’d fobbed him off as best she could with a half-truth about pursuing an active line of inquiry and something about following up a useful lead. It was the kind of tosh they fed the press whenever there was nothing noteworthy to share during a stalling investigation, and DI Broomfield wasn’t an idiot: at some point she would be expected to deliver the goods.

  Molly felt bad. She had intended to phone the hospital first thing that morning to see if there was any progress with Adam Sloane, but it had slipped her mind. Another thing to add to her guilt list.

  She skimmed over the pages, scanning the prosaic text for the piece of information she wanted. And there it was, a couple of sentences buried in a long, dull section about Ferguson’s defence:

  Ferguson claimed that on the night of the last murder on 21 July, he was in the company of a friend: Derek James Rodman of Darbly Road, Camberwell, SE5. When questioned, Rodman proved to be an unreliable witness.

  She sat back in her chair and let out a long, deep breath through her nose. It seemed the Bermondsey Ripper case wasn’t quite so cut and dried after all.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve spoken to Leanne’s best friend from school, Samantha Haddon. She reckons Bailey didn’t just teach Leanne, he was shagging her as well.’

  Denning had literally just walked into the MIT suite when Neeraj came running over with the news, like a child keen to impress one of the older kids.

  ‘Shagging?’ Denning sat down at his desk and tried to shift his focus from Alan Marsden back on to Daryl Bailey. He spotted a yellow Stick-it note with a message in what looked like Trudi Bell’s childish scrawl, saying that she’d found something interesting on the CCTV footage, but he decided to take one thing at a time. ‘Can you be a bit more specific, Deep? Is Samantha Haddon saying Daryl Bailey and Leanne Wyatt were having an affair?’

  ‘Not an affair exactly, boss. She just said they were “shagging”. Apparently everyone knew about it.’

  ‘Including the school?’

  Neeraj shrugged. ‘Don’t know about that. But she says all their mates knew what was going on. It seems our Mr Bailey was quite popular with some of his female pupils.’

  ‘Whilst she was still at school?’ He was thinking aloud. ‘So that was at least five years ago. Leanne would have been, what, sixteen, possibly younger.’ Denning forced his brain out of neutral. The friend could have been lying. But if she was telling the truth, then it told them Bailey was a liar and possibly a paedophile, depending on how old Leanne was when the alleged sexual relationship had started. He would be having another conversation with Daryl Bailey very soon, and this time he’d forgo the kid gloves approach. He thought for a moment. ‘I understand Bailey’s got an ex-wife out there somewhere. Get hold of her. Let’s hear what she has to say about her pervert of an ex.’

  Neeraj nodded and headed back to his desk. Denning caught Trudi Bell’s eye and waved her over. ‘Trudi, I understand from your scrawled note that CCTV has come up trumps.’

  Trudi smiled. ‘The footage from the street outside the Fleur de Lys shows Leanne getting into a taxi with an older man. Looks to be in his late thirties, possibly early forties. Certainly fits the description of the man she was seen chatting to at the bar the night she was killed. I’ll ping it over to you. You can clearly see that it’s Leanne.’

  ‘And the man?’

  ‘Hard to say. There are no clear shots of his face and he’s wearing a baseball cap.’

  ‘OK. Email me the footage.’

  She turned to head back to her desk. ‘Trudi, whilst you’re here: any luck with the mysterious white Transit van?’

  ‘Nothing yet, boss. I’m still waiting for the tech department to clean up the footage from Haggerston Park.’

  ‘Let me know as soon as they forward it to you.’

  A couple minutes later, Denning was staring at the images. Luckily the CCTV on Upper Street was digital rather than the now virtually obsolete analogue, which was notoriously poor. However, even allowing for that, the images were rarely one hundred per cent clear, especially if the footage had been recorded at night as too much extraneous light inevitably got in the way. The man with Leanne had been clever enough to keep his face away from the camera, or maybe he was just lucky. He was the wrong build for Gregor Kane, but the right general shape and age to pass for Daryl Bailey. Denning was sure the man in the CCTV footage climbing into the back of a taxi alongside their murder victim was the same man who’d lied to them the previous day. He noted the time stamp on the image: 23:12.

  As the taxi drove off, he could just make out the name of cab firm on the side of the car. He jotted down the number and reached for his phone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The hospital corridor stank of pine disinfectant and antiseptic handwash. And something sickly sweet that Molly couldn’t define.

  Adam Sloane was in a private room on the second floor. He was still wired up to a portable machine that made various bleeping sounds at irregular intervals. According to the nurse Molly spoke to when she arrived, there was no change in his condition, nor was there likely to be.

  She looked at his pale face. A thin dotting of post-pubescent stubble ran under his chin, and his hair had been brushed flat against his forehead. In the photos his mother had shown Molly his hair was gelled and spiky, his smiling face bursting with life. Lying comatose in a hospital bed, a tube protruding from his mouth, he looked like a ghost of the fun-loving boy he had once been.

  The soulless room was decorated with a splattering of Get Well Soon cards and an Arsenal scarf, which hung over the bed like a pendant.

  It was hot, the sun searing through the south-facing window with a view of nothing in particular. Molly went over to the window and pulled down a blind so it half-blocked out the sun. The room cooled slightly, as long shadows spread over the floor by the bed, casting awkward shapes across the polished linoleum.

  She looked over at Adam. Even if he recovered from the coma, he would be irreparably brain-damaged to the point where he would require permanent care for the rest of his life. His mother would do her best for as long as she could. Adam’s father, it seemed, was now living with a woman he’d met on a dating site and had little or no contact with his children. Molly had shared many conversations with Debbie Sloane over the past few weeks. There were times she’d felt more like an extended family member than a police officer. Debbie worked long hours as a secretary for a pharmaceutical firm and didn’t have many close friends. Molly had become part confidante and part counsellor in the short time she’d known Debbie, constantly promising to catch the person responsible for turning Adam Sloane from a lively, active teenager into a vegetable.

  Adam was seventeen. She remembered what she had been like at seventeen: wild and headstrong to the point of bloody-mindedness. But she’d learned the hard way that life could punch you in the guts when you didn’t expect it, especially if you pushed your luck too far; a lesson Adam Sloane was learning now. Only perhaps for him it had come too late.

  * *
*

  The taxi driver hadn’t been much help. He told Neeraj he recalled picking two people up from the Fleur de Lys on the night in question: a young woman and an older man. He remembered them because the girl seemed to be drunk and he was worried she would throw up in his cab. When presented with a photograph of Daryl Bailey, he’d been unable to confirm whether or not he’d been the male passenger in the taxi that night. ‘About as helpful as soggy toilet paper,’ Neeraj had said.

  What he could confirm, however, was where he’d dropped them off: a house on the borders of Highgate and Crouch End. Neeraj gave Denning the address.

  Denning despatched Ryan Cormack to the Fleur de Lys with a photograph of Bailey to show to the bar staff. Hopefully this would give them the confirmation that Bailey had been the man in the bar with Leanne the night she was killed. He wanted something concrete before he spoke to Bailey again, and proof he was seeing Leanne Wyatt despite claiming he hardly knew her would do very nicely.

  He parked the Focus on Hadley Drive, and headed to number 24.

  The street had a mixture of house types: a row of terraced cottages ran down one side, with larger, semi-detached 1930s properties lining the other side. There was a gastro pub at one end of the street, and an abandoned church at the other end.

  He wondered why Bailey would take Leanne here; his own house wasn’t so far away if he really wanted to impress her.

  Denning walked up the tidy gravel drive and rang the doorbell. The garden was alive with colour. He nearly whacked his head against a hanging basket chock-full of begonias and trailing trumpet plants, which hung precariously from a rusting bracket beside the front door. After a moment the door was answered by an elderly man with wispy strands of white hair floating around his balding head like a fluffy halo. He looked to be well into his eighties, maybe older, and was dressed in a fraying beige cardigan with leather patches at the elbows, and a checked shirt with a thin, polyester tie, complete with egg stain just below the knot. He eyed Denning suspiciously, nodding slowly when Denning showed his ID.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but I was wondering if you were at home on Monday evening, say around 11:30 p.m.’

  The elderly man continued to look at Denning’s ID for a moment or two before he answered. ‘Sorry? What did you say?’ He fiddled with a hearing aid in his right ear. Denning repeated the question. ‘I was in bed,’ the old man replied slowly. ‘Asleep. Why do you want to know?’

  Denning explained about the taxi. He showed him a photo of Daryl Bailey and another of Leanne Wyatt, but the old man just stared blankly at them and shook his head.

  ‘Could I ask your name, sir?’

  He stared at Denning for a moment, rheumy eyes blinking at the sunlight. Denning thought he was going to have to repeat the question again, but the old man suddenly spluttered back into life. ‘Andrews,’ he said. ‘Brian Andrews. Who did you say you were…?’

  Denning explained his identity again, slowly and loud enough for a passing dog-walker to hear. ‘A taxi dropped a man and a woman at this address at around 11:30 p.m. on Monday evening,’ Denning repeated. ‘Did you see anything, or—’ He was going to say ‘hear anything’ but realised that was unlikely. ‘Do you recognise either of the two people in the photographs, Mr Andrews?’

  Brain Andrews looked at Denning and thought carefully for a moment. ‘What two people in what photographs?’

  Denning felt a thin bead of sweat trickle down his back. Was Daryl Bailey using the old man’s house as an illicit love nest without his knowing? It seemed unlikely. ‘Is your wife at home, Mr Andrews? Maybe I could speak with her?’

  Brian Andrews fiddled with his hearing aid again. ‘She’s gone to stay with our daughter in Basingstoke. She won’t be back until Sunday.’

  Denning thanked the old man and apologised for disturbing him. Brian Andrews muttered something under his breath and retreated inside his house, firmly closing the front door behind him. Denning heard the rattle of a chain being slotted into place.

  After speaking to some of the neighbours and eliciting a similarly negative response as that of Brian Andrews, Denning concluded it was possible the taxi driver had made a mistake. Either that or he had deliberately misled them for some reason. Whatever the case, it seemed nobody had seen anyone fitting the description of Daryl Bailey or Leanne Wyatt in the vicinity of Hadley Drive on the evening in question.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Seriously? Sound like someone’s taking the piss.’ Denning couldn’t fail to detect the note of derision in Neeraj’s voice when he told him about Brian Andrews. ‘Are you sure he wasn’t having you on, boss? I mean he could have been in league with Bailey and the pair of them are using the house as a knocking shop.’

  Denning ignored the inane sniggering that followed, allowing Neeraj to get it out of his system. ‘I want that taxi driver checked out,’ he said. ‘Either he’s an idiot, or he’s lying. Whilst I wouldn’t rule out the former, I’d be happy to put money on the latter. In the meantime, Trudi, any luck with Daryl Bailey?’

  ‘No one who’s at West Ham now was there when he played for them. I spoke to someone at one of his other clubs up north, but apparently there was never any scandal whilst he was there. There may have been plenty of rumours doing the rounds about Daryl Bailey, but that’s all they were: rumours.’

  He turned to Neeraj. ‘What about the former Mrs Bailey?’

  ‘No luck there either, boss. Seems she remarried, but as to her present whereabouts…’ Neeraj offered another shrug.

  ‘Then keep digging. If Bailey lied about his relationship with Leanne, then what else has he been lying about?’

  ‘What first?’ asked Neeraj. ‘Taxi driver or continue digging for dirt on Bailey?’

  Denning decided to overlook the slightly impertinent tone in Neeraj’s voice. If he had more energy and less of a throbbing headache, he might have commented on it. ‘Bailey’s our priority at this stage. So you and Trudi keep looking into Bailey’s background. There has to be something dodgy there: it can’t all be rumour and speculation.’

  ‘What about Gregor Kane, boss?’ Kinsella asked.

  ‘His name stays on the board until we rule him out.’ He nodded towards the far end of the office, where a photo of a smirking Gregor Kane was pinned on the whiteboard next to one of a serious-looking Daryl Bailey.

  ‘Is there anything else anyone wants to add?’ He cast his gaze around the open-plan office and was greeted by a general shaking of heads. Only Neeraj had a hand half-raised in the air.

  ‘Sorry, boss. I forgot to tell you: the DCI wants a word.’

  * * *

  The cyclamen in McKenna’s office now looked like it was awaiting a priest to deliver the last rites. Denning shot it a pitying look and sat down opposite the DCI.

  McKenna was leaning back in her chair, fixing Denning with her steely stare, a guilty whiff of malt whisky faintly discernible on her breath. ‘What’s the story with Daryl Bailey?’

  ‘He lied about knowing Leanne, so he’s a person of interest.’

  She sat in silence for a moment, chewing matters over in her head. ‘This is according to one of Leanne Wyatt’s former school friends, yes? Although the school has yet to confirm it?’

  ‘To be fair, it’s in the school’s interests to keep quiet about any possible liaison between a pupil and a member of staff, especially one as high-profile as Daryl Bailey. If it were to become public knowledge, it wouldn’t do much for their reputation.’

  McKenna offered up a watery smile. ‘OK, what about Gregor Kane? Where does he fit into this?’

  ‘Kane’s not off the hook, not yet, not by a long chalk. But, for the time being, he’s on the back burner.’

  ‘You know CID are after him for dealing? Well, him and about half-a-dozen other scrotes, but he’s on their watch list.’ She shuffled uncomfortably in her chair, and Denning wondered if she suffered from back trouble. It was so easy to think of Betty Taggart as some kind of Terminatrix: indestructible and devoid of
emotion; sometimes he had to remind himself she was as subject to human frailties as everyone else.

  ‘If any evidence puts Kane back in the frame, then we’ll go after him. CID will just have to suck it up. I get that dealing is serious, but so is murder. Under the circumstances, I think that takes priority.’

  ‘All right, Matt, get back in your pram. I’m only saying try not to piss on their parade, that’s all.’ She began subconsciously picking at a blackhead on her chin. ‘Do you have anything else on Bailey, besides the vague rumours about his possible paedophile tendencies?’

  ‘We’re still looking into Bailey’s background, and I plan to speak to Bailey again tomorrow. We have evidence to suggest Bailey was with Leanne the night she was killed.’

  ‘Do we have enough to charge him?’

  Denning shook his head. ‘That’s still a long way off, unfortunately. We still need proof he was the man with Leanne the night she was killed, let alone anything that can directly link him to her murder.’

  ‘Any luck with forensics?’

  ‘Still waiting on their report coming through. They’re as overworked and short-staffed as the rest of us, but I’ll chase that up as a matter of priority.’

  McKenna’s hand dropped from her chin and she began drumming her fingers on the desk, a sure sign their meeting was coming to a close. ‘Just remember, Matt: the clock’s ticking on this, and an early result will be a definite bonus, for everyone.’

  ‘Once we have that proof, we can go after Bailey hammer and tongs. But we’ll need something solid before we can even think about touting this before the CPS.’