by Joel Hames
“OK,” I said. “That’s great. I’ll take a look as soon as I get back.”
“Right. Thanks.”
There was still an edge to her voice. She might have got used to that as soon as, but it didn’t mean she liked it.
Somehow or other I managed to change the subject, and a few minutes later we said our goodbyes in a tone that was frosty, but not quite frozen. I put down the phone and tried to remind myself why I’d come up in the first place. I needed a big break. I needed a major case, and I needed it now, not in six months or two years or whenever it decided to pop up. Carson was here, and now, and so big that even hanging off the ends of Serena Hawkes’ four hundred dollar shoes I might make a name for myself. Fearless lawyer, scourge of the corrupt, defender of the righteous. Not a guns-and-gangs expert. And not a psychologist either; the helpful people who ran Folgate Police Station had seen right through that before I’d even presented myself for processing.
I’d marched up to a little second floor office just before leaving the station, as per Roarkes’ instructions. There was a woman sitting behind a window, middle-aged, dark roots showing on her blonde hair, a look on her face that suggested she’d woken up chewing on a lemon and only taken it out to knock back a pint of vinegar. She glanced up at me as I approached, alerted by my footsteps, and then returned to the contemplation of her fingernails.
“I’m with Detective Inspector Roarkes,” I said. I forced a smile onto my face and tried to look as friendly as I could, but she wasn’t budging from those nails.
“I know who y’are,” she replied. “Sam Williams. Human rights lawyer.”
She said those last three words in the same way you’d expect someone to say “child abuser” or “estate agent”.
“Yes,” I replied. “I’m here to help in the investigation. I’ll be working as –”
“Legal adviser. You’re Roarkes’ legal adviser.”
I’d been about to say “psychologist”, like Roarkes had told me to, but she looked up now, finally, and her face was set. I nodded, instead, and filled in the forms she’d pushed towards me. So I was Roarkes’ legal adviser, which I knew he wouldn’t be happy about. If the closest I was getting to Carson was the wrong side of that glass window, I couldn’t see myself getting the facts out of him any time soon.
Alone in that hotel room, with the evening stretched out in front of me like a bed of nails, and desperate for something to do, I’d called Maloney. Ex-gangster, ex-crime lord, ex-client, one of those clients whose connection with human rights was difficult to put your finger on, but when you’ve lost your job, you take what you can. Maloney and I were bound together by a complex web of favours and gratitude so multi-layered I doubted either of us knew who owed what to who any more. When I’d engineered his acquittal nearly a decade earlier, the result of a half hour of Sam Williams magic and two pints of bitter in a dirty Walthamstow pub, that was just me doing my job. What counted came later, when I told him which of his staff he could trust, and who was running dirty drugs and underage girls behind his back while he tried to keep his operation as clean as organised crime could get. On the other side of the beam, Maloney was handy with information, and he’d looked after me more than once when I’d got myself into more than the usual amount of trouble.
Maloney was retiring, going straight, but he’d been retiring and going straight for the last ten years and there was always something keeping him in. He joked that they’d be engraving Almost Ex-Crook on his headstone, but I could tell the bastard didn’t mind one bit. And nor did I, because while he was still in, Maloney knew crime and criminals like I knew North London kebabs. But even he couldn’t help with Carson. Only Carson could help with Carson, and Carson wasn’t in the helping mood. Maloney said goodbye with a friendly expletive, and it was just me, and that empty bed, and too many hours left in the day for me to call it a night.
Just as I was starting to make peace with the silence and the occasional burst of noise from the evening traffic, my phone rang. I didn’t recognise the number, but I answered it anyway, and there was Hasina Khalil, wailing and wheedling and about as welcome as an American in Pyongyang.
The lesbian story was, as I’d suspected, Grade A bullshit. Hasina Khalil had decided to come clean.
“I am sorry,” she said, “but it was not like I have much choice.”
“Why are you here, then, really?” I asked. She’d already spent two minutes ranting incoherently about the dangers of Egypt and how the English people loved the gays and the lesbians so much that she had to pretend to be one if she wanted to survive.
It was all about politics, she told me. Her husband had been a high-ranking official in the Mubarak administration. He’d been seized “by the scum that took over”, and executed, and things didn’t look good for Hasina Khalil if she was sent back to Egypt.
I sighed and told her that if she wanted me to represent her, she’d have to be straight with me. I’d decided not to dump her even while she was still ranting, because a lying client was better than no client at all, and politics wasn’t a bad angle, either. Of course, this whole story might just be another lie, but I had ways of finding things out.
I put the phone down and sat on that cold, narrow bed. The best thing I could have said about the whole day was that my Fiat had been where I left it when I emerged from the police station, with no obvious new marks on it.
Despite Roarkes’ pronouncement, there was no chance of a good night’s sleep in the First Quality Inn. I woke, periodically, with an uncomfortable sense that there was something there in the room with me, something sliding in through the window and curling malevolently under the curtain towards me. Morning brought a thin, watery sun and a familiar headache, but my cold, at least, seemed to have faded into the background. The room was freezing, though; the chill outside had crept in overnight despite my turning the thermostat up to maximum. The double glazed window (blown, view over dual carriageway) hadn’t put up much resistance, but that wasn’t particularly surprising since the damn thing wouldn’t even shut. There was half an inch of clear air when there should have been solid glass, and I thought this might account for the weird images that had come to me during the night. I tried to wedge a towel in there but the angles weren’t right and it kept falling back into the room. I called down to reception to ask about getting the window fixed or changing my room, and the woman who answered sighed in frustration, like it was all my fault, and told me they’d see to it as soon as they could but that they might not get to it today. It sounded like something she’d had to say before, many times, a flat, bored tone that suggested they probably wouldn’t get to it this week, either. “Quality” clearly meant something different up here.
I decided to give up on the shave. Better stubble than blood. I backed out of the bathroom, four steps to the bed, sat down, and asked myself again what the hell I was doing here when just a couple of hours away in London there were any number of rooms that offered complete insulation from the outside world.
The big break. That was it. Crack Carson, get famous, surf that fame for the whole week and a half it lasted all the way to a client who would pay me more than Hasina Khalil and lie to me a little less, and wouldn’t make me hate myself as much as Atom Industries would. Top ten. There were other things, too. There was Roarkes, who I liked, however rarely I might show it, and who’d clearly gone to some trouble to get me in. And there was Serena Hawkes. I was intrigued by Serena Hawkes, there was no point denying it, unless it was Claire asking, of course, in which case I’d deny it as long as I had breath. I’d looked her up when I’d got to the room (it was the room, not my room, because I didn’t intend to be in it any longer than I had to), using the slow and intermittent hotel wifi. Serena Hawkes wasn’t top ten, either. She was no closer to it than I was. But she seemed to be taking Carson in her stride. She’d made half a dozen TV appearances already – local, which was why I hadn’t seen her before she walked into Roarkes’ office with her designer face and her surprising smi
le – and even on the tiny smudged screen on my phone I could tell she’d handled them like she’d been on TV all her life. I couldn’t figure Serena Hawkes out at all. What did she really feel about my involvement, about her own relationship with Roarkes? There was something in the way she’d acted at the police station. Alert, involved, but somehow removed from it all. Like she was in control, but in control from a great height and a vast distance. It was certainly an interesting style.
Finally, there was the silent man in the cell, the everyday guy with two dead cops on his hands. He was the challenge, he was the test I’d set myself. Was I a fool or a genius? A fool would be wasting his time. A genius would open up Thomas Carson’s head like a book. Carson was facing the distinct possibility of life in prison, and he wouldn’t talk to a soul.
I might not have got past the glass yet, but I wanted him talking to me.
I reminded myself of that two hours later, sat outside the room, watching through that big glass window, with Roarkes in there opposite the guy and Serena Hawkes smiling quietly to herself beside him. Carson hadn’t said a word. I wasn’t sure he’d even opened his mouth. Since they’d walked him to the interview room from his cell straight past the hidden window, he could hardly have missed it. He knew someone was watching him. Maybe that was why he wasn’t talking.
Today’s adventure at Folgate Police Station hadn’t begun well at all. Roarkes had strolled past the custody desk, Serena and I trailing in his wake, and the custody sergeant had jumped up instantly, as though she’d been waiting for this very thing, had run around us and stood in the corridor blocking our path.
“We need to speak to Carson,” Roarkes had announced, sharp and authoritative. The authority hadn’t meant a thing. The custody sergeant, a woman with short dark hair and an elfin face who might have been pretty if she’d chosen to smile instead of glowering at us, had shaken her head.
“I don’t think so. I’m the custody officer and you have to go through me. I’ve got to consider the suspect’s fitness to be interviewed.”
Roarkes turned and stared at me, and then at Serena. I shrugged. Serena, who’d looked like she was on the verge of a smile herself, wiped it clean off her face the moment Roarkes’ eyes fell on her, and copied my shrug.
“She’s right, you know,” she said. “Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Code of Practice.”
I nodded. I’d used PACE myself, often enough, to delay an interview, to make things awkward enough for a custody sergeant to give up and send my client home. Roarkes turned back to the woman standing in front of us, who had watched our short discussion in silence.
“What’s your name?”
“Sergeant Forrester, sir.”
“What grounds do you have for suspecting that the suspect may not be fit for interview?”
She smiled, now, suddenly, and I was right, she was pretty. Still hard as nails, though. The smile didn’t reach her eyes. This was all about Roarkes. Sergeant Forrester didn’t give a damn about Carson’s fitness for interview.
“He’s not talking, is he, sir? There’s a good chance we could class him as mentally vulnerable. I mean, does he even understand what you’re saying to him?”
“He understands all right,” growled Roarkes. Sergeant Forrester was undeterred.
“And even if he does, I have to consider the risks to his mental state.”
It was like she’d learned the bloody code off by heart. Which suited me down to the ground. Time to start paying my way.
“You do understand, Sergeant Forrester, what the implications might be if Detective Inspector Roarkes is not permitted to interview the suspect?”
She turned towards me, head tilted to one side.
“Tell me, Mr Williams.”
“You know PACE, Sergeant Forrester. And this isn’t a burglary or a bit of joyriding. If there’s any chance this delay could hinder the investigation – well, we can always go and talk to your superintendent about that, can’t we?”
The smile dropped away, and for the first time she faltered. I’d taken a chance – for all I knew the super would take her side, take the same side as everyone else in Folgate, by the look of it, which was whichever side Roarkes wasn’t on. But I was gambling on this little stunt being Sergeant Forrester’s own game, and at a certain point, the game stops being worth playing.
She took a step to the side and nodded.
“OK,” she said. “You can go in. Not you,” she barked, pointing at me and clearly bitter at being beaten. “You’re not a psychologist, you’re not Carson’s lawyer, there’s no provision for you to be in there at all. You can wait outside.”
I opened my mouth to argue, and then realised she was right. I had nothing.
“Is there any way I can see what’s happening in there?” I asked. “CCTV or something?”
There were cameras all over the station. It was a fair question, but Sergeant Forrester just laughed.
“Most of the cameras don’t work. The one in the canteen does, and in medical, but you can’t interview him there. You can watch through the window.”
So I stood there and watched Carson ignoring Roarkes and his own lawyer, unable to hear a word they were asking him but not really caring. They could have asked him the capital of Mongolia or whether he took sugar in his tea. Either way, they weren’t getting any answers.
After fifteen minutes of this Roarkes decided to take a break, and he and Serena left Carson alone in the cell.
“Can we do this somewhere else?” I asked as Roarkes closed the door behind him, and Serena shrugged. I knew what that shrug meant. It meant he hadn’t said a word to anyone for days, no matter where he’d been or who’d been watching him. We could move to the Black Hole of Calcutta for all the good it would do. Thomas Carson still wouldn’t talk.
A suspect not talking isn’t exactly an unusual thing. When the other side has nearly enough to send you down, the worst thing you can do is open your mouth and hand over that last little detail to complete the job. I advised half the people I acted for to keep their mouths shut, and I’d have given the same advice to the other half if they hadn’t already blown it. But with Carson it was different. The police had close to nothing. All he had to do was say “I didn’t do it,” and sit quietly in his cell until they gave up and sent him home. And he wouldn’t even say that.
But I couldn’t think of any other way to get him talking. I left them to continue their one-way conversation, and retired to Roarkes’ office to think.
There were crumbs on the desk and the usual heap of papers. I sat down and closed my eyes, and waited for a flash of inspiration. After five minutes I caught myself dozing off to visions of Sergeant Forrester slapping me across the face with a copy of the PACE Code of Conduct.
I blinked, frowned, blinked again.
When Serena and Roarkes broke off for a second time, just twenty minutes after they’d restarted, I was waiting for them. I walked past them to the cell door and put my hand on its handle and Sergeant Forrester was up and shouting before I’d even started turning it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t go in there.”
I turned to her, slowly, concentrating on keeping my face straight and my voice level.
“I think you’ll find I can, Sergeant Forrester.”
She shook her head and I continued.
“You need to read your PACE, Sergeant. You’ve stood there and told us Thomas Carson’s vulnerable or mentally disordered, and sure, he’s got his lawyer here, and I’m certain Detective Inspector Roarkes means him no harm, but where’s his appropriate adult?”
Sergeant Forrester turned and looked behind her, as if expecting to see an appropriate adult walking towards us. There was no one, of course.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. But she didn’t try to back it up. It was another long shot I was playing, but I was starting to feel the odds moving my way.
“And really, it’s not up to you, is it, Sergeant? You know the rules. If the detainee is
mentally disordered or vulnerable, he can’t be interviewed without an appropriate adult present. Since the suspect’s wife isn’t here, and I am, and I’m not employed by the police, I’m perfectly placed to perform that role.”
She hesitated, and I played my ace.
“If you take a look at my client history, you’ll see I’m very experienced in dealing with vulnerable people.”
There was an element of truth to this, but the vulnerable people were more likely to be my clients’ victims than my clients. I was counting on Sergeant Forrester not going into that kind of detail.
She frowned at me, started to say something, stopped, started again.
“I’ll have to think about it. Got to get Carson checked out by the doctors, first.”
The smile was back on her face. She didn’t care about Carson’s mental state any more than she cared about mine. Roarkes had left it to me so far, but now he stepped in.
“We’ve already been through that. We need to do this interview now. Do you want more dead cops on your hands while we fanny around poking Carson’s head?”
Sergeant Forrester stared at him, and I rejoined the fray.
“And if Carson’s own lawyer isn’t objecting…”
We turned, the three of us, to look at Serena. I could see her mulling it over, and for a moment I wondered why. Then she nodded and I decided it had just been for show. She was local, after all. She’d have to carry on working with these people long after Roarkes and I were gone. There was a long silence, twenty, maybe thirty seconds, and then Sergeant Forrester gave a short, fast nod.
“OK,” she said, and stomped back to her desk.
“Good work,” said Roarkes. “But don’t forget what you’re here for. You’re not a lawyer now, Sam.”
No, I thought. I wasn’t a lawyer, and I wasn’t a psychologist, either. I was an appropriate adult, and that meant I could join in the interview as much as I damn well wanted. I was back on a high. Maybe a few minutes of carefully-chosen questions would be enough to prise open Carson’s mouth.