by Ed James
Savage stared into space, jangling coins in his pocket like he was wondering if the guy he’d been defending had gone bad.
Webster eyed up Mulholland like she was a lump of sirloin behind a butcher’s counter. He gave her a flirty grin. ‘You’ve aged well, Dawn.’
She just stood there, eyes wide.
‘Oh come on, don’t you remember me?’
Mulholland’s eyes widened.
‘We’re done here.’ Unwin shot to his feet, struggling to fasten his briefcase. ‘My client will say no more on the matter.’
‘Right.’ Fenchurch leaned over to the microphone. ‘Interview terminated at,’ he checked his watch, ‘ten forty-three p.m.’
Webster yawned, staring at the shut door. ‘I know her.’ He licked his lips. ‘Young DC Dawn Mulholland. What a lovely piece of skirt she was. Interviewed me, but it was more like making love, I tell you.’
‘But she won. She put you away.’ Fenchurch clenched his fists. ‘You were lucky to spend ten years inside for what you did.’
‘Oh, Inspector. I’m talking about a different case.’ Webster laughed. ‘Few months before. She thought I’d kidnapped this young girl from outside a flat in Islington.’
Fenchurch tightened his fists. ‘What did you say?’
Unwin seized Webster’s arm. ‘Desmond, I suggest you stop talking.’
‘I was there, though.’ Webster brushed a hand across his head, ignoring his lawyer. ‘Little girl. Beautiful thing she was. Like my Holly. Blonde hair. Wearing an England shirt.’
Fenchurch’s pulse was like drums in his head.
‘Desmond.’
‘Your mate there, Dawn? Sexy little thing. She’d heard I’d been in the area, and she interviewed me. I mean, I thought that was it for me. Game over, they’d fit me up for it. But Dawn Mulholland…’ Webster shut his eyes. ‘She let me go, didn’t she?’ He reopened them, focusing on Fenchurch with fire. ‘I gave some alibi, but I know she didn’t even check it because it didn’t hold water.’
Fenchurch stepped forward, ready to punch him. Ready to smash his skull off the table, harder this time, not stopping until it was like what he did to Amelia.
Webster folded his arms across his chest and spoke in a harsh whisper: ‘Dawn Mulholland could’ve rescued your little girl. But she didn’t.’
All this time, when everyone else was concerned about Chloe or my hunt for her, Mulholland was always sticking the knife in, trying to get a reaction.
And I’ve got this burning hatred of her, eating away at my gut. Every time I hear her voice, see her snarling face, even spot her bloody scarf on her chair in our office…
It just eats away at me. And I could never put my finger on why.
And now I know.
Now I know.
‘Desmond!’ Unwin grabbed him by the shoulders.
Webster shut him down with a look.
The door flew open and Docherty burst in to the room. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘Oh, you know who I am.’ Webster rocked back on his chair and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Chloe was such a sweet girl.’ Back down at Docherty. ‘Chloe Fenchurch.’
‘You piece of shite!’ Docherty raced over and shoved Webster, sending his chair back, cracking his head against the wall.
Webster screamed, primal and loud.
Unwin stood there, mouth open.
Docherty grabbed Webster’s wrist and twisted it, bending him over, face first.
Fenchurch jerked into action, tearing over to break them apart.
But Docherty tugged Webster’s arm, hard. ‘You filthy piece of shit.’
Something snapped, and Webster screamed. The terror of the East End lay there, face white, squealing.
17
Fenchurch slipped into his office and stopped dead.
His father was sitting at Mulholland’s desk, glasses on, squinting at the screen. ‘Simon.’ Then he went back to whatever he was working on.
‘Dad.’ Fenchurch sat at his desk and logged in. Muscle memory kicked in and, for the millionth time, he pulled up the case file for Chloe’s disappearance.
For the first time, he found exactly what he was searching for:
WILLIAM DESMOND WEBSTER, INTERVIEWED BY DC DAWN MULHOLLAND. TWENTIETH JULY 2005.
Jesus Christ.
Fenchurch sifted through the image-capture of the old file and found the scan of the action log, the list of to-do items captured from the interview:
FOLLOW UP ON D. WEBSTER ALIBI — AT CINEMA WITH M. EDWARDS AND S. INGLIS.
ACTION OWNER: DC D. MULHOLLAND
DATE: 20/07/2005
DUE: 21/07/2005
A cold sweat ran down Fenchurch’s spine. There it was, in black and white. Handwritten on a pro forma.
Mulholland’s… What? Ineptitude? Incompetence? Maliciousness?
Fenchurch logged in to two separate PNC windows and searched for Marcus Edwards and Susan Inglis.
Shit.
Both arrested three weeks ago as part of the crackdown on the organisation which took Chloe.
Arresting officer DCI H. Savage.
Fenchurch’s mouth was dry. He logged into HOLMES and found the original case’s action log. The whole thing was archived off, so he had to log in to the backup server. There. Action 94, raised by Mulholland:
STATUS: CLOSED
REASON: NO LONGER A VALID SUSPECT
Mulholland let that son of a bitch go.
The scumbag who kidnapped my daughter.
He sat back and looked over to Dad hammering at Mulholland’s keyboard. ‘Come here.’
Dad seemed to take an age of man to creak his way over. ‘What’s up?’ He stood there, massaging his back.
Fenchurch pointed at the PNC screen.
Dad squinted at it. ‘Ah.’
Fenchurch crunched back in the chair and let the breath slip out of his lungs. ‘You knew. Of course you bloody knew.’
‘Simon…’ Dad rested on the filing cabinet and tore off his glasses. ‘You need to stop this. Mulholland’s done nothing wrong. She’s just an arrogant arsehole. And you treat her like your worst enemy.’
‘This action.’ Fenchurch tapped the screen. ‘We had him, Dad. Webster. Right in our clutches and… And she let him go. Didn’t even follow up on the alibi. What else is it other than evil?’
‘Incompetence?’ Dad glowered at the screen. ‘She was just a DC, Simon. So she spoke to someone. Big deal.’
‘She spoke to Webster, Dad. He was a cabbie who was in that neck of the woods. Got lost. That was their MO. He was on a back street in Hoxton. He wasn’t picking anyone up at the time in question, he was dropping Chloe off to… to… Dawn let him go. If she’d asked the right questions, pinned him down, checked his alibis, his story would’ve fallen apart. He panicked and gave the names of two co-conspirators, knew his alibi was shit. We would’ve found her, Dad. Eleven bloody years ago.’
‘Simon, you blaming Dawn isn’t going to get you back all them years.’
Fenchurch stared hard at him. ‘She messed this up. Things could’ve been different.’
‘Simon, I knew the SIO on Chloe’s case and he told Dawn to focus on the door-to-doors. There’s a million people you could blame. Christ, I put Webster away not long after.’ Dad scowled at his son. ‘If you want to blame someone, blame me.’
Fenchurch didn’t have a response.
‘I’m not to blame for this, Simon. Just like Dawn Mulholland isn’t. You’ve spent eleven bloody years going through the “if onlys”. If only you’d never let her out of your sight. If only you’d been on the case. It just never ends. It never ends. The important thing is we’ve got her back, son.’
‘No. I need to make Dawn Mulholland pay for her slip up.’
‘You think Dawn screwed it up deliberately, don’t you? She didn’t know you then.’
He’s right. But…
If I go to Docherty with this, what’s he going to do? Just excuse it? He’s got enough fires to put out for him
self.
What if I go to Mulholland with it? She’ll just deny it even happened, or somehow turn the tables so that I’m the bad guy. Same as it ever was.
But if I do nothing, it’ll just eat away at me. Nibble away at my soul like the rest of it.
Is Dad right, though? Would everything have stayed the same?
Webster’s old-school. He would’ve always taken a fall for Flick Knife and the rest of that organisation. And it would’ve been some jump to go from him lying about his whereabouts to convicting him of Chloe’s abduction and of rescuing her.
But giving a false alibi… It would’ve opened the door.
Maybe they would’ve searched his car. Found her hair on the back seat, maybe. Skin cells. Fingerprints. Anything. Match that DNA to her profile and suddenly the whole case changes.
A prime suspect, someone implicated in a child abduction. Trace his movements, maybe get lucky. Find Connolly, find the others and—
Fenchurch caught himself. And here it is, eating at my soul. ‘I need to do something with this.’
Fenchurch stopped outside Docherty’s office and nudged the door open.
Broadfoot stood by the whiteboard, jabbing a finger in Docherty’s face. ‘You almost snapped his arm clean off, you stupid arsehole.’
‘Take that finger away from me or I will snap it clean off and shove it in your lug hole. Not that there’s anything between your ears to stop it coming out of the other side.’
Broadfoot stepped back with a laugh. ‘You always were a complete c—’ He clocked Fenchurch. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ He adjusted his suit jacket and left them to it.
Docherty watched him go, like he was going to tear off after him and snap his bones as well.
Fenchurch slumped in a chair and just felt everything deflate. ‘I’m happy to take the rap for it, boss, if you want me to. The number of times—’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Docherty punched his whiteboard, making it spin round a couple of times. ‘Of course I don’t! I’m wearing my big boy pants for once. Christ on a bike.’ He checked his watch. ‘Julian Loftus has called me over to the Yard. Midnight on a Sunday night and I’ve got a meeting.’
‘You did assault a suspect.’
‘Aye, funny.’
‘The offer’s there, boss. I would’ve done it, but you beat me to it.’
‘I appreciate it, Si. That prick really got to me. All the shite you’ve been through… You, Abi, Chloe, your old man. And that arsehole took her. And he acted like it was nothing.’
‘I’ve checked, boss. Dawn interviewed him when he came up as a suspect. She had an action to follow up on an alibi. Never did. Meaning he got off with it. Meaning she let the man who kidnapped my daughter go free. A few months later, he murdered someone.’
Docherty collapsed into his office chair with a groan.
‘Webster took her from outside my bloody house.’ Fenchurch tasted tears at the back of his throat. ‘We could’ve found Chloe eleven years ago.’
‘I’m sorry, Si.’ Docherty stared into space. ‘This is a bloody disaster. We had him. Now he’ll get away with it, won’t he? Ah, shite.’
‘We can still make a case here. Who’s the prosecutor?’
Docherty checked a notepad and scowled. ‘Neale Blackhurst.’
‘He’s good, boss. We can still make this work.’
‘Not so sure.’ Docherty stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds. ‘I’ve got an idea. We could stick a couple of irons in the fire here. We’ll prosecute him for murdering that lassie, but we can also do him for what he did to your family.’
Fenchurch paced around the Leman Street canteen, the place empty but smelling of raw onions, mobile to his ear. Just ringing and ringing and ringing and—
‘There you are.’ Dad staggered in and collapsed onto a chair. ‘Mulholland kicked me out of your office.’
Fenchurch caught a fresh whiff of stale booze from him. ‘Are you sure you’re sober?’
‘Sober as a judge.’
‘Most of the ones I know are borderline alcoholics.’ Fenchurch folded his arms to check his watch. Where the hell is he?
‘You need to relax, Simon.’ A cough turned into a hiccup. ‘Oh, Christ on the cross.’
‘How much did you have?’
‘Enough. Reminds me of when you was sixteen, seventeen. Me and your mother, God rest her soul, we’d wait for you to trundle in on a Saturday evening. Half four, one time. And you’d vomited everywhere. All over the bathroom. Even covered that little table your mother kept the phone on. You woke your sister too, put her in a right grump. I was due on shift at seven in the bleeding morning, so you can imagine how popular you were.’
Fenchurch checked his watch again. ‘Is there a point to this?’
‘Just saying that the tables are turned.’
The door opened and Savage waltzed through. ‘Just in here. Yes.’
Jeff I’Anson came in next, the social worker’s glasses still dark despite it being close to midnight. He stopped and smiled back out at the corridor. ‘It’s fine, come on.’
Chloe entered the room, her eyes shifting around. She avoided eye contact with Fenchurch, barely looked at her grandfather.
Fenchurch couldn’t help but smile. ‘It’s good to see you.’
Chloe skulked by the counter, arms clasped round her shoulders, her focus trained on the door.
I’Anson sat between her and Fenchurch. ‘Jennifer has agreed to come along to assist you with the investigation. But…’
‘I don’t want him here.’ Chloe didn’t even look at Fenchurch.
I want to grab hold of you and shake you until you remember who the bloody hell you are. Who gave birth to you. Who raised you. Who taught you to ride a bike.
Who let those animals kidnap you.
Who hunted for you for years, let his marriage fall apart, all while you were in bloody Dorset, thinking some of those animals were your parents.
‘It’s fine.’ Fenchurch walked over to the door. ‘I’ll give you whatever space you need.’
Dad made to follow.
‘He can stay.’ Chloe gave Dad another look.
‘I…’ Fenchurch let out a deep breath. ‘I’ll be in my office.’
Fenchurch stared into his tea mug, then looked over at Abi, surrounded by all the crap in his office. Box files and paperwork, nothing meaningful, just delayed busy work. He gripped her hand tight. ‘Wouldn’t even give me the time of day.’
‘Oh, Simon.’ Abi let go and sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’Anson said it’ll take time. We just have to trust the process. Maybe in a couple of months we’ll be in therapy sessions with her. That’s what I’m clinging to. That hope.’
‘Hope is a bastard.’ Fenchurch clunked the mug off the desk. ‘Feels like it’s killed me a few times over.’
The office door opened and Dad sauntered in, all spritely.
Abi got up. ‘Well?’
‘Hiya, Abi. You look well.’
‘I look like a whale, Ian.’ Abi held her belly. ‘Are you getting anywhere?’
‘You need to give her time.’ Dad sipped a machine coffee. ‘Okay?’
‘Okay?’ Abi stormed over to him. ‘What the hell do you think we’re doing? We’re giving her all the time and space she needs. Whatever it takes, I just need my daughter back. Is it going to happen?’
‘I don’t know.’ Dad was still hiccupping. ‘I really don’t know. I mean, she wanted me to stay. That’s progress, right?’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Fenchurch slumped back in his chair. ‘Have you got anything out of her?’
‘No idea. I needed to go to the toilet, so I left.’
‘Christ, Dad, she’s our only—’
‘Keep your wig on. Howard has ways and means. And that I’Anson fella, he’s good, him. I worked with him a while back. Decent bloke. Gets results. Bit of a smug arsehole, but then aren’t we all?’ Dad laughed at his own joke. ‘Here, hang on.’ He winked at Fenchurch. ‘I’m Ian and you’re my son. He
’s I’Anson.’
‘Great.’
The door creaked open and Savage slipped in, silent.
Dad waved a hand in front of his face. ‘Howard?’
Savage looked up at them, like he was surprised they were even there. ‘Oh.’ He took Mulholland’s chair. ‘Well, Chloe… Jennifer… Chloe… well, she says she recognises Webster.’
That bastard.
Jesus Christ. Five minutes in a room with him. Five bloody minutes and I’ll sort that prick out. He’ll be praying that I just break his arms.
Hope glittered in Abi’s eyes. ‘That’s good, right?’
‘She says he visited her parents a couple of times.’
Dad puffed out his cheeks. ‘Christ on a bike.’
‘Would’ve been not long before you prosecuted him, Ian.’ Savage gave Dad a dark look. ‘We can add this to the case against him, I suppose. Your daughter won’t need to testify given what’s… Well.’
Fenchurch grabbed Abi’s hand and held it tight. ‘Whatever it takes, we’ll be there for her.’
‘I know.’
I’Anson barged through the door, swinging his briefcase. ‘Well…’ He cleared his throat. ‘Good news, I suppose. Chloe has agreed to enter counselling with you.’
The good starting to outweigh the bad…
Fenchurch folded his arms. ‘Why? Ten minutes ago, she didn’t even want me in the room.’
‘Well, the presence of your father there was crucial. And she… She had a flashback of sorts. She remembers you. And you, Mrs Fenchurch.’
Abi screwed her face tight. ‘Jesus Christ.’ She let Fenchurch hold her.
‘Listen, I’ve got a friend at Southwark University, name of Paddy Mackintosh.’ I’Anson rested his briefcase on Mulholland’s desk and rummaged around inside. ‘He’s got a lot of experience of these sorts of things. Done a lot of work with Howard over the years.’ He passed Fenchurch a business card. ‘Anyway, I’ll be in touch with dates and times and so on. Have a good night.’
‘Thanks, Jeff.’ Savage showed him out of the office.
Fenchurch held Abi tight.
And there he is, that bastard called Hope, entering the room, needling me, pricking my sides.