Room 15: a gripping psychological mystery thriller

by Charles Harris

  ‘I’ve remembered now. Does Gerry know?’

  ‘Not yet. He phoned me a short time ago and said you’d be here, he’s worried about your state of mind. So we probably don’t have much time.’

  And it’s almost like I’m watching myself. I contemplate Amy Matthews’ phone on the bed. The phone that holds the video of what she saw.

  I know now, because I remember she played it to R, in a café near Camden General Hospital, late on Thursday evening, just three nights ago. Blurred, dark and wobbly, taken two weeks before through the door of one of the private rooms at Lonely’s, what it shows is nevertheless unmistakable – a man being handed three one-kilo bags of heroin, with three 9-millimetre Baikal guns and cartridges. Two of those bags and two of the guns would be found a week later by police after he’d planted them in the Kleizas’ office in the Lithuanian Centre. I found the rest of the heroin and all but seven of the cartridges this evening in the tin box buried in the wasteland where we used to live, and they’re sitting right now in my jacket pocket, carefully wrapped in many layers of plastic. One of the missing seven rounds grazed me in the neck, one hit the wall and the other five killed Amy Matthews. The third gun – the third Baikal – lies on the bed.

  This is the evidence I was searching for. The identity of the man who set the Kleizas up. She’d been blackmailing him. She’d pretended to R that she didn’t have the phone, that she’d hidden it so as to keep it safe, but in fact she’d kept it with her and hoped to hide herself, here in this nondescript little King’s Cross hotel. And that was what got her killed.

  Then, with a deliberate movement, Paul sweeps the phone onto the floor and breaks it with his heel, stamping on it hard. And to make sure, he bends down and pulls it apart and smashes it again, and then he takes out the SIM card and bends it and breaks it, and when he’s satisfied that nothing usable remains, nothing workable, he turns.

  I can smell the cigarettes on his clothes. He sits on the bed with a weighty creak. My father is sitting on the bed, like Amy Matthews was last night, and he watches me with his piggy eyes.

  I unwrap the ounce bags of heroin and throw them onto the bed too. Paul recognises them.

  ‘You were always a good detective,’ he says.

  And despite myself I feel proud to have earned his admiration. ‘You could have told me. Last night, early this morning, when I came to see you, you could have said then.’

  ‘You said you couldn’t remember what happened. I hoped maybe you never would.’

  ‘You hoped?’

  ‘To the end there’s always hope.’

  He picks up the gun.

  Gerry shouts from outside, and R shouts back to get in quickly. The pistol is in Paul’s hand, and the ounce bags of heroin and cartridges are on the bed and the broken mobile phone is on the floor. And Gerry says, ‘Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh no.’

  He’s followed by the cordon PC from downstairs and Dave Haskins and Winstanley.

  R says, ‘It’s too late. It’s all my fault.’

  R says, ‘I should have known. I tried to stop him.’

  And there’s blood on the wall behind Paul’s head and shouting and flashing blue lights. I wait for R to say more, but he doesn’t and Gerry leads me into the corridor. I sit patiently as more policemen arrive and a cordon tape is stretched across and I can hear more sirens approaching.

  After a minute or two, I look through the window. The snow has stopped, exactly as forecast.

  51

  After

  On the first morning after my father died, there are six of us in the interview room. The Police Federation have sent a rep to support me, a slim nervous woman in a pinstripe jacket and skirt, who introduces herself as Jennifer Wasunna. She’s brought a middle-aged lawyer called Gupta, who seems as on edge as her, and whose head seems to nod and shake at the same time.

  On the other side of the table is DCI Jagger from the Directorate of Professional Standards, with her number two, a stringy young detective sergeant called Franks. Jagger herself is in her late thirties, broad-shouldered, rather pasty-faced, and, I soon discover, very old school. There’s me – and then of course, unknown to them, there is R. He’s here all the time now.

  After they start the tape, Jagger says, ‘Are you all right after yesterday, DI Blackleigh?’

  ‘Yes, just about.’

  ‘You slept well in the cells last night?’

  I’m concerned about where this is going. All these pleasantries. ‘No, not well. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with everything so I can get out of here. To be honest, I’m shattered and the quicker we finish the better.’

  ‘It won’t be quick. And you may not be getting out of here for a long time.’

  I don’t know how to respond to this.

  ‘It’s a mess, isn’t it,’ she says with a heavy sigh.

  With that, certainly, I can’t disagree. At least, I can remember most things now, or to be precise I can access most of R’s memories, and the few that remain hidden are slowly coming into view.

  Jagger invites me to tell everyone what happened in the hotel room last night and I take a deep breath. ‘My father shot himself. I tried to stop him, but I was too late.’

  Franks making a note on a sheet of paper in front of him. ‘Why would he do that, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘Because he killed Amy Matthews, the nurse shot in the same hotel on Saturday night. Because he knew that I knew and there was no escape. I blame myself. I pushed him into a corner and he couldn’t see any other way out. I feel… I should have realised. I should have seen what he was going to do and moved that gun… Fuck, should’ve, would’ve… No, it’s not been a good night.’

  Franks takes a document from his file and slides it across to me, with copies for Gupta and Wasunna. It’s a set of forensic lab test results. He speaks formally, for the tape.

  ‘You’ll remember, DI Blackleigh, that your clothing was taken from you last night as well as swabs from your skin. We have tested these for gunshot residue and blood spatter. There is GSR on your hands, your jacket sleeves and front, as well as substantial amounts of blood which on fuller testing I fully expect will be your father’s.’ He stops and looks straight at me. ‘Before we go any further, would you like to confess as to what really happened?’

  Gupta leans over and whispers in my ear, telling me to no comment.

  ‘No,’ I say to him. I can feel R, inside me, growing heated. It’s a very strange sensation, now I know he’s there the whole time. I shake my head and push the test results back across the table. ‘I have nothing to hide. Of course, there’ll be GSR and blood from Paul. I was struggling with him, for God’s sake.’

  Franks makes a note. Jagger asks, ‘What made you think your father killed Matthews?’

  ‘Because I was in the room trying to save her. Then last night, I set a trap and he was the one who turned up. With the gun. And her mobile.’

  ‘You say you tried to stop him killing himself?’

  ‘He’d thrown the gun on the bed. He was sitting right by it while we talked and then he picked it up. I didn’t move quickly enough. It hadn’t occurred to me that… I tried to get it away from him but he fired first. You think I’m proud of that? If I’d been faster, he’d still be alive.’

  Jagger shakes her head. ‘DI Ross Blackleigh, I have reason to believe that you murdered your father, Paul Blackleigh, making it look like suicide. Further that you murdered Amy Matthews and Darjus Javtokas and also attempted to murder Shannon Powney, known as Crystal–’

  ‘No,’ I interrupt. ‘For Christ’s sake, that’s bullshit. I was trying to save them. Fuck it. Has Winstanley got to you, then? Is this her idea?’

  ‘Let’s stay calm. I shall be talking to DI Winstanley in due course.’

  ‘I’m being set up, don’t you see that?’

  ‘It’s you who did the setting up,’ she says and taps a stubby finger on the thick file in front of her. She’s just like everyone said about Winstanley. I’ve seen her typ
e throughout my career, one of those officers who believe they know the answer, and digs her heels in when confronted. ‘Amy Matthews was trying to blackmail you, using the phone which we found destroyed in the hotel room where you killed your father.’

  ‘He broke it, not me.’

  ‘We also have evidence that the blackmail was connected to the possible planting of heroin and firearms in the office belonging to Petras and Karolis Kleiza two weeks ago.’

  Jagger nods to Franks, who shows me photographs of the smashed phone, the gun and the ounce bags of heroin. ‘Do you recognise these?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you accept that they were all present in the hotel room where your father died?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but he was the one who planted the gear on the Kleizas, attacked Crystal, and killed Matthews when she tried to blackmail him.’

  ‘Interesting that all the evidence showing who she was blackmailing has been destroyed, hasn’t it?’

  ‘My father did that.’

  ‘And of course he can no longer tell us one way or the other.’

  ‘He shot himself. I tried to stop him. The moment I saw him pick up the gun, I realised what he was going to do. I tried to get it off him. But I was too late, he had his finger on the trigger. We fought, but the gun went off and – you’ve seen the pictures. You saw my father’s brains all over the wall. You think I did that? You think I’d want that?’

  Their aggressive tone has shocked me and thrown me off balance. It’s not how I’d have conducted an interview, but presumably that’s Jagger’s intention. She’s used to interrogating police officers and knows what they expect. Unlike most suspects, I’m at home in an interview room, I know the procedures and am prepared for most of the tactics that might be thrown at me. Her job is to surprise me and make me feel vulnerable and so far she’s succeeding. I can see her watching my reaction, sizing me up as she prepares her next move.

  She nods to Franks, who hands me a sheaf of telecoms printouts. ‘This is a list of calls made to and from Amy Matthews’ phone over the last week. Do you recognise the number highlighted in yellow?’

  I hardly have to look at it. ‘Yes, of course. That’s my personal mobile. Matthews phoned me because she was scared. She knew I was chasing down corruption and said she was being threatened by someone, though she didn’t initially say who it was. When I met her on Thursday night, she showed me a video she’d secretly recorded of my father, in an illegal nightclub known as Lonely’s. It was taken on her phone, through a half-open door, and showed him receiving those guns and bags of H from a man called Rahman, who runs a Bengali crew here. It’s obvious Rahman paid him to plant the guns and drugs on the Lithuanians, with whom he’s in the middle of a turf war. Matthews saw her chance and tried to get money from my father in exchange for not exposing him. When he threatened her with violence, she turned to me for help.’

  ‘Do you have any proof of this? Any evidence whatsoever?’

  I’m tired. Maybe I should ask R to do the talking. He’s always been stronger than I am, tougher, and now I can sense him more clearly. He’s inside and yet he’s somehow also a separate person, like I’m possessed and yet I’m not. I can reason with him, argue with him. It’s not a hallucination – I’m totally sane and while I can’t quite see him, we can talk to each other. Last night, in the cells, he reassured me that he could take charge again any time I need him to, but I’m worried about his temper. Right now, he’s telling me he wants to tell Jagger and Franks where to get off and I’m trying to calm him. They have no idea this is going on silently inside, of course, and they just watch me, waiting for me to speak.

  Instead, I scan the list of calls to and from Matthews’ phone and find the number I’m expecting. ‘Look, there’s Paul’s number. She was phoning him too.’

  Franks takes the list back and examines it. He shows the number to Jagger, who contemplates it for a few seconds.

  ‘The calls to Paul Blackleigh only begin after the first call to yourself. She called you first because it was you who she was blackmailing. You threatened her in return and she turned to your father for protection from his own son.’

  ‘No, you’re twisting the evidence. It was the other way round. She must have spoken to him first in person. Probably she approached him at Lonely’s and told him about the video there.’

  ‘That’s what you say,’ Jagger says. ‘But it’s a wild guess, isn’t it?’ She turns a page of notes. This is a woman who prepares her interviews with care, like the manual says. ‘Tell us about the other woman: Shannon Powney, otherwise known as Crystal. Where were you between eight and nine o’clock on Saturday evening? Did you go to her home?’

  There’s no way round this. ‘Yes. I was looking for Matthews. I was concerned she was in danger from Paul. I discovered the address of the flat they shared and drove there as fast as I could, arriving shortly after eight. Crystal was there alone and I asked her to tell me where Matthews was.’

  ‘You beat it out of her.’

  ‘I was heavy-handed, I admit. I hit her once but immediately regretted it. It was a stupid thing to do. I was worried and frustrated, and she had information that could have saved Matthews’ life. Paul must have got to her after I left.’

  ‘How did you hit her?’

  ‘I punched her on the jaw.’ There’s a silence in the room. Inside, I’m furious with R. He lost his temper with Crystal and he should have known better. ‘Hitting women is not my style.’

  ‘So you say.’ Jagger sits back in her chair. ‘We’ve spoken to DCI Gardner who says that over the past year and a half you’ve become increasingly aggressive. With fellow officers, including women, as well as members of the public.’

  R again. I want to thump the table in frustration. ‘That’s exactly what Gerry Gardner wanted from me. He brought me in because he felt CID had got too lax in the borough. I was doing my duty. I confronted officers who’d broken the law, but never physically.’

  She purses her lips and waits for Franks who passes new documents across the table. ‘These,’ he says, ‘are the result of tests made on blood and skin particles taken from Shannon Elizabeth Powney, known as Crystal, after she was transferred to hospital and the clothes taken from yourself yesterday morning at their flat. You’ll see that they match. You left evidence on her when you beat her almost to death and she left evidence on you.’

  ‘Of course she did. Those particles were transferred when I found her in the morning. I thought she was dead and checked her pulse. Then I discovered she was alive.’

  ‘You say that Crystal was unharmed when you left her.’ Franks hunches his shoulders. ‘Aside from you having hit her, of course.’

  ‘Like I told you, I hit her just the once, I lost my cool, but I regret doing that.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I left Crystal at around eight twenty-five and drove to the hotel as fast as I could. I got there at around a quarter to nine. Amy Matthews was in one of the rooms.’

  ‘Why did you stay there? Why not take her somewhere safer where Paul wouldn’t find you? Or call for police backup? Why simply wait for Paul to arrive?’

  ‘I didn’t wait. He was already there.’

  Jagger looks up at me. ‘So you’re saying he attacked Crystal after you left her flat but nonetheless reached Matthews in the hotel before you. I thought you were in a hurry. “As fast as I could,” you said. What did you do, stop off for a McFlurry?’

  Gupta breaks in, saying these are serious charges and no place for levity. However, I wonder what I’d do if I was on their side of the desk. The trouble is, all the evidence can be taken both ways. Everything that proves Paul’s guilt could also prove mine. I try to speak evenly, but I can feel sweat running down my back.

  ‘I had reason to believe that my car was being tracked by the rogue officer I was trying to catch. I stopped on the way to check for hidden devices. Then, when I reached the hotel, I discovered that a number of rooms were occupied. I had to find out whic
h one she was hiding in. I can only think he overtook me during one of those delays.’

  Franks raises his eyebrows. ‘Convenient.’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ I say, but I’m only too aware of how weak it all sounds.

  He takes out a new document and slides copies across. ‘For the record, we found no trace of Paul Blackleigh on Crystal’s skin or clothing although we did find fibres from a police coverall. As an acting DI do you have access to such items as part of your work?’

  ‘You know I fucking do. And so would Paul. He had enough contacts.’ I’m growing as angry as R himself. ‘And which is it? Either I’m splashed with her blood when I beat her almost to death or I’m clever enough to cover myself up. Make up your mind.’

  ‘I’d appreciate some respect, DI Blackleigh,’ Jagger says stiffly. ‘We just want to find the truth. Which we don’t seem to be getting a lot of at the moment.’

  ‘So have you found this coverall I’m supposed to have been wearing?’

  ‘We’re still looking,’ is all Franks can reply.

  Jagger turns pages in her folder. Gupta and Wasunna are desperately writing notes, but I sense I’m losing them too.

  Jagger settles back, arms crossed, as if to say she has all the time in the world. I know that trick. ‘What about Darjus Javtokas?’ she asks. ‘I suppose he slipped accidentally into the canal?’

  ‘That was terrible. But Javtokas was resisting arrest. He tried to knife me in the hospital, then when I found him and tried to arrest him, he attacked me with a metal bar. I tried to save him but he went under the ice and there was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Too late, again. Like your father, and Amy Matthews, and Crystal.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I was defending myself. It’s all in my verbal report to DCI Gardner after we left the scene.’

  ‘DCI Gardner has indeed told us what you said to him. But why did Javtokas try to stab you in the first place?’ She warms to her theme. ‘He wasn’t a member of any gang. There was no other rogue officer. What really happened was that he simply followed you to the hospital and attacked you because he knew you’d killed Amy Matthews, didn’t he?’