by Peter James
‘Terry. I got his message about keeping my mouth shut – surely he wouldn’t have killed my brother. He’s a bastard, but he wouldn’t have killed Stuie.’
As he said the name, he noticed the very faint upwards curl of Fox’s eyebrow.
And suddenly he knew for sure.
‘Terry?’ Fox replied. ‘No way.’ He shook his head. ‘Never!’
Mickey let it drop, and they chatted on. But all the time he was thinking silently, burning inside as if the blood in his veins had turned into a corrosive acid.
After Fox left, promising to update him the moment he had further news, Mickey was escorted back to his wing. He was deep in thought, replaying over and over in his mind that twitch of Fox’s eyebrow when he’d suggested Terence Gready might be behind this. Had he touched a nerve? Did Fox have the same suspicions?
For sure he did. That twitch was the giveaway. Maybe he even knew?
Hiding behind the carefully constructed artifice of respectable citizen, family man, champion of the underprivileged and charitable benefactor, Lucky Mickey was aware, better than anyone, what an utterly ruthless man Gready was. The invisible mastermind behind a string of children and vulnerable young adults, many with mental health issues, coerced through drug addiction – engineered by him – into acting as his dispensable foot soldiers. He had cuckoos in towns across the South Coast – addicts forced by the threat of withdrawal of their drugs into using their residences to deal from. Mickey knew this because he ran the whole operation on behalf of Terry.
Just as Gready had used a bent copper in his pay to get him acquitted eighteen years ago – and to ensure his ongoing loyalty – perhaps the solicitor had his eyes and ears throughout the police and prison system today. Had word got back to Gready that he had been in discussions about grassing him up to further reduce his own sentence?
Although he’d been using a different brief to broker this, had he or someone else told Fox? They were both from the same firm, after all.
By the time he was back in his cell, which stank of shit, and the door had banged shut behind him, he had convinced himself.
‘Sorry,’ his cellmate said, from the other side of the plastic curtain which screened off the toilet. ‘Got the runs.’
But Starr barely heard him. He perched back down on his bunk. Terence fucking Gready. There was no one else. He’d seen it in the twitch of Fox’s eyebrow. He was certain.
And he knew the one thing he could do to take revenge.
43
Saturday 11 May
Meg stood in the kitchen, staring at the photograph, still holding the planted phone. Laura and Cassie.
ECUADOR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD
At the far end of the world, it seemed at this moment.
She was shaking. Shivering. The room felt icy as if a ghost had entered. Rain tapped hard on the windows and the glass of the conservatory off the kitchen. Her eyes darted around.
Someone had been in here. They might come back at any time. She hurried, stumbling up the stairs and into her den. Then she googled ‘Hotels in Brighton and Hove’.
Twenty minutes later, having fed the animals, Meg left the house with a few things in an overnight bag, including her own phone and the new phone, and checked into a budget hotel she had found just off the seafront, a mile from her house. The interior was as gloomy as the exterior was drab, the room furnished with a small double bed, a side table, an ancient television, a clock radio and a Corby trouser press, and there was barely enough light from the feeble bulbs to be able to read.
She sat down on the hard bed with her things beside her, shaking and crying, a terrible sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. What to do? God, what to do? Go to the police? And risk Laura’s life?
She had never missed her husband more than at this moment. What would her lovely sensible Nick have done, she wondered?
So often he used to quote an old saying of his father’s – that life could turn on a sixpence. He was also fond of quoting, ‘Live every day as if it’s your last, because one day you’ll be right.’
And he had been right. The day their lives had turned on a damned sixpence, or rather on that sodding van driver’s mobile phone screen, and whilst he would be out of prison in just eighteen months, for causing death by dangerous driving, she and Laura were doomed to a life sentence.
Yes, my darling, darling Nick, you were so right. And, God, I need you here now so badly. I need to talk to you. I need your advice. What would it have been? You were always so wise, you’d have found a solution, the one I hadn’t thought of. I know you would.
She eventually undressed and went to bed, but sleep for a long while was impossible. The clock radio filled the room with a green glow and there was a loud, persistent drip-drip-drip from a broken pipe or gutter just beyond her window.
The night ticked by, one slow minute at a time. Finally, she dozed off, only to wake with a start and a terrible feeling of dread.
3.38 a.m.
Then 3.39 a.m.
What to do? What the hell should she do?
She and Nick had tried to instil in their children always to do what they felt was the right thing, despite what anyone might think or say to the contrary. Will and Laura had been very close. He had been a huge champion of the issue of climate change, which was why Laura now, bless her, had become almost messianic in her zeal to stop the use of plastic bags and any single-use plastic items, among other things she tried to do for the environment. She cared, really cared, about her fellow human beings and all animals, and Meg loved that about her. She was proud of the kind and thoughtful young woman Laura had become.
But now she was faced with a dilemma she just could not get her head around. A dilemma that so wracked her with fear she struggled to think straight. It felt as if her brain was revolving like a tombola drum, tossing all her thoughts around like the raffle tickets inside. The only good way out of this situation would be if Terence Gready was so obviously innocent of all charges that the verdicts on every count could not be in doubt.
And what were the chances of that? She’d be better able to assess the trial after the next couple of days, when they’d heard the prosecution’s opening case on each of the counts, and the defence’s response. But they were very serious offences, and she doubted she’d ever have received that phone call if the defence had felt truly confident.
Earlier in this endless night she’d done an internet search to see how juries worked, and found out that a majority jury verdict of 10–2 would normally be accepted by a judge. So, regardless of the evidence, she was going to have to coerce at least nine of her eleven fellow jurors into giving the verdicts she needed on each count.
Just how morally wrong was it to potentially let a major criminal, whose drugs probably killed dozens of people every year, according to the indictments, go free? In order to save her daughter? And in doing so to go against every principle she believed in and had instilled in her kids?
And she knew exactly how Laura would react if she knew. She’d be livid if she believed her mother was prepared to do anything to pervert justice. Which was why, if she succeeded – and at this stage, God only knew how – Laura must never ever find out. This dilemma she faced struck at the heart of her conscience and her very being. What would anybody do in this situation?
She so badly needed someone she could talk to, confide in.
You tell any friend or go to the authorities and you will find them dead.
4.01
4.02
Through the curtains, the sky was now starting to show the first signs of daylight. Outside, the first tentative chirrups of the dawn chorus began, like first arrivals in an orchestra pit tuning their instruments.
You tell no one. No one at all. You don’t breathe a word to any of your friends. We will know, trust me.
Was he bluffing or would they really know?
If so, how?
The man who had put the photograph on the kitchen table had been in her house, and she had
no idea for how long. It could have been less than sixty seconds, or he could have spent hours there. Perhaps with colleagues? Planting bugs in every room? In her computer? In phones?
Meg reached for her own phone and went to the Google app. Was it dangerous typing anything? Would they have some way of knowing what she was looking for? Was even just doing this putting Laura’s life in danger? But she had to do something. And, she reasoned, her mind suddenly very clear, the power Terence Gready’s people had over her at this moment was the threat to Laura. If she did something that angered them, they would let her know. They weren’t going to harm Laura all the time there was a chance she would comply with their request.
She entered: How to find hidden electronic bugs.
After she had done that, she did another search, this time for local locksmiths.
Then she made the decision that she could not stay here, it was too depressing. And besides, what could she achieve by becoming a fugitive from her own home?
44
Sunday 12 May
The rain had cleared overnight and it was now one of those rare, glorious, early-summer mornings, full of promise, with a cloudless sky and not a breath of wind. Roy Grace had worked in the incident room until late last night and was going back after lunch with Potting holding the fort this morning. He ran down the side of the steep field, exhilarated and excited.
Almost intoxicated by the sheer beauty of the rolling Sussex countryside in which he always felt he was lucky to live, he sprinted the last couple of hundred metres back down to the cottage as the ground levelled out. Humphrey, unusually, was dragging behind, to Grace’s surprise. Entering the gate into their garden, feeling pretty all-in after his run, he stopped to get his breath back and to do his stretches. Humphrey caught up with him, limping a little.
Grace stroked his head. ‘You’re not knackered, are you, boy? You’re just warmed up! The thing is, you’ve got four legs against my two, so it’s like you have four-wheel drive up those hills, right? Unfair advantage!’ Humphrey cocked his head and Grace stroked him again. He adored this creature, envying him, as he so often did, the apparent simplicity of his life.
When he went inside, he saw Bruno seated at the breakfast bar, glued to the television, on which a documentary was playing. The logo of the Discovery Channel was in one corner of the screen. Noah was sitting in his high chair, banging a spoon, a mess of food all over the tray and on the floor around him. Cleo, cracking eggs into a bowl, turned round with a smile.
‘How was your run?’
‘Eight miles!’ He kissed her.
Humphrey sat in front of her, head up, expectant.
She popped half an eggshell into his mouth, and he crunched on it contentedly for several seconds before it was gone, then looked up for another. ‘Eight miles – brilliant!’
‘How did you get on with the lots we’ve bid on at the auctioneers?’
‘Someone from Bellman’s left a message to say we’ve won three bids – two paintings and a runner for the hallway! I’ve arranged for Kaitlynn to collect them for us.’
‘Fantastic!’ He hesitated. ‘You’ve a PM tomorrow with Frazer, right?’
She nodded. ‘A woman in her thirties brought in yesterday. Looks like she fell from a balcony.’
He looked at the pile of mashed bananas on the wooden board beside her.
‘Are you making banana bread?’
‘Nope, a new recipe I saw in the paper. Banana pancakes! Less than 150 calories a serving. One banana and two eggs, with some berries on top.’
‘Sounds delicious,’ he said, a tad dubiously.
‘Well, as we’re having a blow-out fish and chips lunch on the pier, I thought a light breakfast made sense.’
‘Anything I can do?’
She touched his face tenderly with one hand. ‘Yes, have a shower and be prepared for a taste sensation!’
‘I’m ravenous!’
He was about to head upstairs when a face he recognized appeared on the television screen. A pensive, good-looking man in his thirties, with dark, wavy hair and a side parting, wearing a beige jacket and open-neck shirt. Chin resting on his hand. A clipped American accent.
He knew that face and not in a good way.
Born Theodore Robert Cowell, the man had at some point early in his life changed his last name to Bundy. A former law student, Ted Bundy had become America’s most notorious ever serial killer.
Why was his eleven-year-old son watching this, and looking so absorbed? And why was Cleo letting him, or had she not noticed?
He gave her a look and pointed at the screen. She gave him an I know shrug back.
‘Enjoying the programme, Bruno?’ he asked.
His son nodded. ‘This guy’s ace! I mean, a douche bag, but ace!’
‘Really?’ The boy’s enthusiasm worried him.
‘Sure, like he confessed to thirty victims on his deathbed, but the FBI detective, Bill Hagmaier, reckons his total could be loads more – isn’t that awesome?’
‘Awesome? Why do you think that, Bruno?’
‘It’s – like – sick!’
The more time he spent with his son, the more Roy Grace thought the boy’s moral compass was a little skewed. But at the same time, he was aware he needed to tread carefully to avoid further alienating the boy. ‘What about all the victims? And their families?’
Without taking his eyes from the screen, Bruno said, ‘You can choose to be a victim, or not. It’s Darwinian, yes?’
‘Darwinian?’ Grace frowned.
‘Ted Bundy was an innocent victim of natural selection. Don’t you agree?’
Grace was struggling to get his head around the boy’s logic. ‘Want to tell me how you arrive at that conclusion, Bruno?’
‘Aren’t we all prisoners of our genes?’ he said, again without turning from the screen. ‘Don’t you think so, Papa?’
‘No, I don’t, Bruno. We are all born with the capacity to do evil, but whether we do or not is a choice we make – a conscious choice.’
Bruno shook his head. ‘That’s not what Mama told me.’
Grace glanced at Cleo, who was listening with interest. ‘What did your mother tell you?’ he asked.
‘That sometimes the choices are already made for us.’
‘And have any choices already been made for you, Bruno?’
For some moments his son concentrated on the screen. Bundy was talking to the camera and he realized, uncomfortably, that Bruno was echoing what this monster was saying. He was tempted to grab the remote and switch the television off, but he held back. Let him continue and he would try to engage with him after the programme was over. He turned to Cleo again. ‘How long till breakfast?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘I’ll go and jump into the shower.’
‘Yes, one choice has been made,’ Bruno said, suddenly. ‘What I can and cannot eat, apparently.’
‘What you can and cannot eat?’ Grace asked him.
‘Jah. I’m blood-type A positive, which Mama told me was a meat-eaters’ group. Now my new mother tells me she was wrong. I should be eating vegetarian – and vegan.’
‘Well, we’re all trying to eat more healthily, Bruno.’
‘You’re making a value judgement based on an unproven hypothesis,’ Bruno said.
Grace glanced at Cleo, who caught his eye with a silent what? Both of them were constantly startled by the very adult expressions and opinions Bruno regularly came up with. Was this the result of things he had picked up from his mother Sandy – Grace’s former and estranged wife – in first ten years of his life, or was it how kids his age were today, Grace wondered?
As he went upstairs, he was thinking back to a parents’ evening at Bruno’s school last autumn. To something the bemused headmaster had told them. He’d said that when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Bruno had replied, ‘Either a chemist or a dictator.’
They understood the peripatetic upbringing Bruno must have had with his erratic mother, befo
re coming to live with them in England after her suicide.
Both he and Cleo hoped that by introducing him to a stable, loving family environment, they could, in time, change him. But so far there was little sign of that happening. It probably hadn’t helped that he’d been a largely absent father during these past six months, and he determined now that he was back down in Sussex to spend more time with him.
They had an ally in a forensic child psychologist called Orlando Trujillo, who had been giving them advice on how to handle Bruno. Trujillo had warned them against trying to intervene too much at this stage, but rather to simply observe and gradually try to instil in Bruno new values. They were doing their best, but God, it was hard. And to compound their difficulties, with one major trial running at Lewes Crown Court starting tomorrow, and a murder investigation he was leading, in addition to all the preparations he needed to do for the Chief Superintendent boards, he was going to be desperately squeezed for time.
He was about to step into the shower when his job phone rang. Although not on-call today, he glanced at the screen and saw it was Glenn Branson. ‘Hi,’ he answered. ‘What’s up?’
‘Not sure if you’re going to like this or not, boss. Your good buddy, Edward Crisp, has been attacked in Lewes Prison. Stabbed in one eye with a ballpoint pen by a fellow inmate who apparently doesn’t like men who hurt women.’
‘Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Was the pen damaged?’
‘I didn’t ask, boss!’
‘How badly injured is he?’
‘He’s being taken under guard to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. The prison doctor thinks he may be permanently blinded in that eye. So, it doesn’t look like the trial’s going to be starting tomorrow after all.’
‘How many officers are with him?’
‘Dunno, boss.’
‘Make sure he’s properly guarded, it could be another of his ruses to escape.’
‘Not from what I hear – the pen’s still stuck in his eye.’
‘Too bad the bastard didn’t push it further, into his twisted brain, and spare us all a lot of wasted time in court,’ Grace said.