by Steve Mosby
Another loss: we were going to be taken off the investigation.
Or I was, anyway.
I’d forced myself to watch the television coverage of my confrontation with Townsend. It wasn’t an edifying spectacle. The cameras hadn’t captured any of the dialogue, but even without sound it was obvious that I was being angry and accusatory, and that Townsend looked taken aback, even scared at one point. Without context or background, the images looked very bad indeed: a policeman apparently bullying the husband of one of the Red River Killer’s victims. And perhaps that was what it had actually been. Because while I remained deeply suspicious of Townsend, it was still difficult to pin down the reasons why, never mind justify my behaviour. I’d lost it. That was what it came down to. I was too close to the case, I hadn’t kept tight enough control of myself, and now I was going to pay the price for that.
Even worse, Emma was too.
I’m sorry, I thought.
We arrived at the department slightly early. Emma stalked off ahead of me, not looking back, locking her car with a beep aimed over her shoulder. She walked much more quickly than usual. I struggled with the balancing act of keeping up while maintaining the distance she obviously wanted between us.
‘You got the message?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
We took the lift together in silence. Emma folded her arms and kept her gaze fixed firmly ahead. But before we’d reached the floor for Reeves’s office, she reached out suddenly and hit a lower button. The lift came to a halt on the floor our office was on and the doors opened
‘Come with me.’
She didn’t wait for me to reply, so I followed her out of the lift and down the corridor until we reached our office. Emma put her bag and paperwork down on the desk and then, for what felt like the first time in hours, turned and actually looked at me.
I didn’t say anything. She was evaluating me: searching my face, as though she might find something there that would explain everything and show her some way forward. I let her. After a moment, she sighed to herself and looked away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Oh, I’m sure you are. But that doesn’t really cut it, does it?’
‘No. I know that. What are you going to do?’
‘I genuinely have no idea.’
She had clear options, of course, and neither of us needed to say them out loud. By not mentioning my connection to the case, I’d potentially placed the whole thing in jeopardy. The evidence against Blythe could hardly be stronger, but a defence counsel would still try to find even the smallest gap in which to insert a lever. An officer with a personal investment in the investigation was a problem, especially given my subsequent behaviour. I had wanted to be in that room; it had felt like I needed to be. But it wasn’t about me, and I should never have been there in the first place. I’d known that.
But Emma hadn’t known, and if she wanted to, she could use my revelation last night to separate the two of us now. She had every reason to. What did she owe me, after all? For her own reasons, aspirational rather than personal, she’d wanted this case as badly as I had, and there was a good chance that if she painted me black, she could keep herself in the room. If that was what she was working herself up to doing, I certainly wasn’t going to blame her.
‘I really don’t know,’ she said again.
Then she reached down and picked something up from the desk. Townsend’s book. She turned it over and stared at the photograph on the back.
‘You’re still suspicious of him, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re not even sure why.’
‘The question he asked when he first came in. The stories. Him turning up in Moorton. And a feeling. Call it intuition, if you like.’
‘I can call it bullshit if I like. Reeves certainly will.’
‘Yes. But I still feel it.’
I had nothing better to offer than that, and I was well aware that it wasn’t enough. Emma looked at me for another long moment. Then she nodded to herself, turned away and picked up her things.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and get this over with.’
*
Ferguson was already in with Reeves when we arrived. He was sitting slumped, with his arms folded and his blue shirt stretched tight across his back. He didn’t bother turning around to acknowledge our presence. Reeves himself was sitting bolt upright on the other side of the desk, hands resting to either side of a pile of paperwork in the centre. He glanced from Emma to me.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen him look calmer.
‘Detective Beck. Detective Turner. Please have a seat.’
Emma took the middle one, next to Ferguson, leaving me on the end. That was fine. I’d resigned myself to that by now. In my own way, I was calm too – or rather, I’d pushed the tumult of emotions I was feeling as far down inside myself as I could manage. There was nothing I could do about it all right now. It was a tangle I’d have to attempt to undo at some point in the future, but for now, I just had to deal with this and take what was coming.
‘Detective Turner,’ Reeves said. His gaze was unwavering. ‘You will have watched the news this morning, I assume?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How do you believe you came across?’
‘Not well, sir.’
Ferguson snorted. I forced myself to keep my eyes on Reeves.
‘Obviously,’ I said, T don’t have the benefit of DI Ferguson’s extensive experience with media relations.’
It got a reaction, at least. Ferguson unfolded his arms and leaned forward to stare angrily at me.
‘Who the hell do you think you are, Turner?’
‘Have you found the fourteenth victim yet?’ I said.
‘Not yet, no.’ He leaned back. ‘We’re still searching – doing our job. We’ve identified five sets of remains now. You’d know all this if you’d been paying attention to the case instead of assaulting relatives.’
‘I didn’t assault him.’
‘Still,’ Reeves interrupted, smiling politely and bringing the conversation back on point. ‘You appreciate, at least, that it didn’t go well?’
‘Yes, sir. Not well at all.’
‘I admire your ability to see your own flaws, Detective Turner, but it was considerably worse than that.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Can I ask what on earth was going through your head? What was it about Mr Townsend – the bereaved husband of one of the victims – that enraged you so?’
‘I wasn’t enraged, sir.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that. Explain, please.’
‘I found Townsend’s presence suspicious, sir. He drove right past the place where Blythe had been camping. I wanted to know what he was doing there.’
‘It doesn’t seem all that suspicious to me, Detective Turner. Blythe killed Townsend’s wife, after all. It would seem natural to me that he’d want to be close to the case.’
‘Yes, sir. But we’d just missed catching Blythe, probably by a minute or so at most, and I was frustrated with the efforts of the Moorton police. I think Blythe had help in escaping.’
Ferguson was shaking his head.
‘More rubbish,’ he said. ‘The search is ongoing in Moorton. I talked to a DI Warren there earlier and they’re confident Blythe is still in the area. There’s no evidence he had help getting away and it doesn’t make any sense. For what it’s worth, Turner, he also said he thought you were weird.’
‘I thought he was incompetent.’
Reeves tapped the desk gently with the knuckles of one hand.
‘Back to Mr Townsend for the moment, I think.’
‘To be honest, sir, I was suspicious of him before I saw him in Moorton yesterday.’
‘Well, tell me everything.’ He sounded almost kind.
I started with my first encounter with Townsend in the office downstairs, and the question he’d asked me about the bodies. I explained that he’d presented oddly, seeming too
nervous, as though he knew more than he was letting on and was holding something back. Just a feeling, I said – and ignored Ferguson shaking his head again beside me. I told him about the strange, sadistic stories Townsend had written about Melanie West, his missing wife, the beginning of each one using the same words as the Red River letters. And then I finished by repeating myself.
‘I can’t say much more than that, sir. I’ve got a feeling there’s something going on with Townsend. I don’t know what.’
Reeves stared at me for a moment, not speaking.
‘A feeling,’ Ferguson said. ‘You know, Turner, that’s exactly your problem. This is why nobody likes you. It’s all feelings with you. You walk around the whole time wrapped up in yourself, giving off this air that you care more than the rest of us do. And it’s bullshit.’
I ignored him. I was still watching Reeves as he stared back at me. There wasn’t anything else I could do now. Fie seemed to be evaluating me the same way Emma had downstairs. After a moment, he turned to her instead.
‘Detective Beck,’ he said. ‘What do you make of your partner’s behaviour?’
‘I think he lost his head, sir. I don’t think he’d deny that.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘And for the record, sir, this had nothing at all to do with Emma. Nothing about it is her—’
‘At the same time, sir,’ Emma inclined her head slightly, ‘I want to point out that it was Will who tracked Blythe down in Moorton. We can all laugh at the idea of intuition, but if we hadn’t followed Will’s, then the Moorton police would still be looking in the wrong place. I followed it back there because I trust him.’
She was still facing forward, as though I didn’t exist, but I felt a tingle in the air between us.
Oh Emma, I thought. You don’t have to do this. And for your own sake, you really shouldn’t.
‘And what about Mr Townsend?’ Reeves said.
‘I don’t know,’ Emma said. ‘I didn’t see Townsend when he came to the department. But I do think the question he asked is strange, given what we’ve found – or what we haven’t. I think the stories he’s written are strange. And when I saw him in Moorton, I thought there was something off about his manner. But. . .’
There was a moment of silence in the office. I waited for her to finish that sentence. To tell Reeves about Anna and Rob, and that I was too invested in the case. That she hadn’t known. That I was losing it and running with unsupportable hunches that were tripping us up, and that she was quite happy to cast me adrift if it meant she could remain part of the investigation.
‘The truth is,’ she said finally, ‘I can’t really explain about Townsend either. But I trust Will just the same. That’s what it comes down to, sir. I have complete confidence in my partner.’
‘Do you, DI Beck?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Reeves stared at Emma, but she said nothing more. After what felt like a long time, he looked down at the paperwork on his desk, then leaned forward and looked up at me.
‘Well then,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I said, as Emma and I walked down the corridor. Ferguson had stayed behind with Reeves for the moment.
‘Don’t thank me,’ she said.
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘Yes, I know. Although for the avoidance of doubt, everything I said was actually true.’
‘You could have told him about Anna. About Rob.’
‘Well, so could you, Will.’ She grimaced. ‘Maybe you even should have. It doesn’t have to all be up to me, does it?’
‘No.’
‘No. I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do about the whole thing. Okay? About your friend in the hospital and all of that. I’m going to pretend I don’t know a thing about any of it. If anybody asks, you never told me. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you at the beginning. I should have done.’
‘No reason for you to tell me everything, is there?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s your life. Nothing to do with me. Absolutely none of my business.’
I didn’t reply, even though we both knew she’d said it far too nonchalantly, and that she was hurt I hadn’t confided in her sooner. It stung to hear her frame our relationship as apparently meaning so little.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
‘You should be.’ She stopped suddenly and looked at me. ‘And do you know what pisses me off the most, Will? It’s actually not that you didn’t tell me. It’s what you told me. Because I always believed what Ferguson said just then back in the office. I always thought you did care a little bit more. And do you know what? That’s one of the reasons I’ve stuck with you all these years. I suspected from the start that this case would get to you, but I thought it might be because of the victims'
I looked back at her. Said nothing.
‘But no.’ She pulled a face. ‘It was because of you, and what it all means to you. You and your friend. Well, I’m sorry, but your friend made the decision to do what he did, and so did you. In the meantime, we’ve got fourteen dead women who never had any choice at all, and this case is about them. It’s not about your friend. And it’s certainly not about you and your feelings. Fourteen dead women, Will. Think about that.’
She stared at me for a few seconds more, then shook her head and started walking again.
‘So don’t thank me, and don’t say sorry to me,’ she said. ‘Just get your shit together.’
Thirty-Five
Although it was only mid-morning, it was obvious that the man who walked into my office had already been drinking. He wasn’t reeling drunk, but there was something awkward and over-careful about his gait. As he approached the desk, I stood up ready to shake his hand, and could smell the whisky from metres away.
He was a big, barrel-chested guy, with long, unkempt black hair that had been swept back and appeared held in place mostly by grease. It was his face that really gave the drinking away. His cheeks looked swollen and damp, as though he kept his body so filled with poison that it was constantly leaking out of his pores.
‘Detective Will Turner,’ I said.
‘Tom Clarke.’
Clarke’s palm was as clammy as his face, and I had to resist the urge to wipe my hand on the side of my trousers after I’d shaken it. He stood there on the far side of my desk for a moment, clearly lost.
‘Please.’ I gestured. ‘Have a seat.’
He did, albeit a little falteringly. I sat down opposite and was about to offer him a coffee when I realised he’d brought one in with him from the café across the street. His hand was shaking slightly as he put it down, and I suspected he’d doctored it before coming in here. Under the circumstances, I decided to turn a blind eye to that. Tom Clarke was – or had been – the husband of Ruby Clarke, the tenth known victim of John Blythe. Ruby had disappeared nearly five years ago. Unlike the relatives of earlier victims, Tom Clarke would have known almost immediately what had happened to her.
‘I’m really very sorry we have to meet like this, Mr Clarke,’ I said. ‘I can hardly imagine what a difficult time this must be for you.’
Clarke nodded miserably.
‘Have you found her?’
‘I have to be very careful what I tell you,’ I said. ‘I want to be honest with you, and to keep you informed, and I can’t stop you from talking to the press. But I’d prefer that you kept any details we discuss here between the two of us for the moment.’
‘I’m not going to talk to the press.’
He looked up at me now, and seemed much fiercer than the cowed figure he’d presented when he’d first walked in. There was contempt at the very idea of speaking to the media. I could understand that. While I hadn’t gone back and reviewed all the press coverage from the times of the abductions, I could imagine how it had been, for Clarke and all the others. While some outlets would have covered proceedings with tact, there would still have been numerous reporters trailing him, photographin
g him, harassing him for quotes and comments. It must have been intolerable.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘Have you found her?’
‘Yes.’
I’d had a chance to check the case file before he came to the office. We now knew the identities of five of the women found in the barrels in John Blythe’s basement: Angela Walsh, Rebecca Brown, Emily Bailey, Anna Parker and Ruby Clarke. Ruby’s remains had been identified overnight from distinguishing features listed in the file – in her case, an elaborate ankle tattoo.
Clarke was silent for a moment. It was difficult to read his expression. I wondered if he had even heard me. Perhaps he’d expected some kind of obfuscation on my part, and the speed of my answer had surprised him so much that he’d missed it.
‘Yes,’ I repeated. ‘I’m very sorry.’
Clarke continued to stare back at me, then nodded to himself. He took a sip of the coffee and frowned. Reaching into his coat pocket, he brought out a hip flask.
‘Do you mind?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you.’
He poured more whisky into the coffee, then screwed the cap back on the flask and put it away. He didn’t touch the drink immediately. Instead, he put his big hands on the desk on either side of it and took a deep breath, gathering himself.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I’ve spent the last five years wondering how I’d react when I heard someone say that. I imagined all kinds of things. That I’d break down in tears. Or maybe there’d be some sense of relief. Because at least then we’d have a body to bury. At least then I’d know for sure that it wasn’t all some kind of stupid mistake.’
‘That’s something,’ I said. ‘I know it’s not enough.’
‘But actually, the truth is I have no idea what I’m feeling. I don’t know if it’s anything different from how I felt before.’ He shook his head. ‘Are you sure it’s her?’