by Joel Hames
“I’m sure.”
As we let the front door fall shut behind us, my phone rang. Detective Inspector Martins. She wasn’t happy, but I doubted happy was a state she was familiar with.
“Mr Williams. I’ve had reports of further harassment. You need to stop whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Detective Inspector Martins. How lovely to hear your voice,” I replied. I wasn’t afraid of her. I didn’t know why, but the fear had dropped away. Blennard, Willoughby, Martins – everyone telling me at once to back off and back down, to drop it and step into line, to do what they were asking me to and not what I wanted to – I’d had enough of them. All of them. I’d had enough of their secrets and their incompetence and the way they allowed themselves to be manipulated so easily. I wondered who had reported this latest “harassment”, and decided it was probably Trawden himself.
“I’m serious, Williams. If you don’t stop it you’ll be seeing the wrong side of a cell. Nice little lawyer like you? I don’t think you’d like it very much in a police cell.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed so long and so hard I dropped the phone, and so uncontrollably my fingers couldn’t get a grip on it when I tried to pick it up. Brooks-Powell picked it up for me, and passed it to me, and when my laughter had finally died down, I put it to my ear and explained myself to Detective Inspector Martins.
“You don’t know me very well, Detective Inspector. You might think you do, but really? Leaking to the press? Threatening me with a cell? I’ve seen worse than that. I’ve seen worse than that this month. You’ll have to try a little harder if you want to protect your friends, Olivia.”
I killed the call. I didn’t like leaving Lizzy the way she was, but she’d insisted, and I had the feeling she was right. She had problems enough. But she knew how to handle them. It was time to go home and consider my next move.
21: A Good Man
I TURNED IT over in my head all the way home, over and over, again and again. The third man in the cell. The website. Trawden. I thought back to what Shapiro had told me. The mania. The things he did that even he regretted. I remembered all that solid ground, that invincibility, the certainty that Evans had killed Maxine Grimshaw and Trawden was an innocent man.
Nothing seemed solid any more.
Suppose Evans was the innocent man – innocent of this particular crime, at least. Suppose Trawden was the killer. Suppose he’d killed in one of those manic phases, and regretted it, but it had been too late by then. Suppose he’d wormed his way out of it, decades later, and lived another decade and more as a free man until it came back to haunt him. Suppose he’d killed again, rationally, this time, without compassion or humanity or any of those things society tells us we need, but rationally, nonetheless. Suppose he’d killed to protect his hard-won freedom. And suppose, after that second killing, the mania had struck again – because it could, then, because he was free and he was better than everyone else, cleverer than everyone else, and hadn’t he just proven it by eliminating his one point of vulnerability? And suppose, in the grip of that mania, he’d done something else he’d come to regret.
Suppose he’d written on a wall.
And after that? After the mania had subsided and he’d realised what he’d done, and what the implications might be, there was only be one thing a rational psychopath could do.
He’d killed again. And again. And again. Three more killings, three more bodies. He’d muddied the water and kicked over the traces, burnt all the links and buried the embers, hidden a tree in a wood and laughed while everyone looked the wrong way. And Elizabeth Maurier had something to say all along, and what she had to say was “Connor”.
I turned it over and at the same time I made some calls. I’d told Brooks-Powell to go home and wait to hear from me, and he’d started to argue, and then changed his mind and nodded, and walked away. I was regretting that decision now; I could have done with someone to bounce ideas off, to tell me if I was just going round in circles or homing in on something real.
I called Roarkes. I wanted to know how he was, how Helen was, whether she was still alive.
“No change,” he said, without asking who was calling, without me telling him. “No change, Sam. I don’t know how long this can go on.” That brief burst of cheerfulness I’d heard in him the day before had gone, and there was a hollow desperation in its place.
“I’m sorry, Roarkes. If there’s anything I can do.”
“There’s nothing, Sam. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
I thought maybe Roarkes could help me with my problem, maybe it would help him start to get out from under his.
“In that case,” I said, “come for a drink.”
“I don’t think so. I think I’ll stay here.”
“Come on. It’ll do you good. I could do with running some stuff past you, too.”
There was a short pause.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s this case. The Elizabeth Maurier stuff. I’m supposed to be working on her memoirs and I keep finding things that – well, I’ll have to show you, really. I’m adding up two and two and it would be good to have someone else tell me if I’m getting the right answer.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Come on. I can bring it all down your way. We’ll go to a pub.”
“My wife is dying, Sam,” he said, and I realised I’d misread him, his what do you mean? and are you serious? “I couldn’t give a fuck about you and Elizabeth Maurier.”
I heard the single high note of a call being disconnected and dialled his number again. I wanted to explain. I’d only meant to help. The phone rang for a minute and then went dead.
So I called Colman. She needed to know about my altercation with her boss, and she needed to know what we’d found. I brought her up to speed. Leave it with me, I’d told Brooks-Powell. Colman was my secret weapon. She was on shift, she had all the resources of the station at her disposal, and as long as she could keep out from under Martins’ gaze she’d be better placed than anyone else to track down whoever was behind that PO Box and the website. I even tried Maloney, because he had ways of finding things out that the police couldn’t. No answer from Maloney. That wasn’t a rare thing. I left a message and hoped he’d finish whatever it was he was doing and deliver me something golden before Martins made good on her promise and locked me up.
But before I’d called anyone else, and again between every call I made, I tried Claire. I could have done with Claire’s sideways style of looking at a problem. It had been Claire who’d cottoned onto the misdirection, the ABC Murders, the tree hidden in the wood. No answer from her, either.
I got home at half past nine and the phone was ringing, the landline, not my mobile. I reached it in time, hoping for Claire or Maloney or Colman, but what I got was Claire’s mother.
“Hello Mrs Tully,” I said. “How are you?”
“Not so bad, Sam,” she said. She’d called me Samuel the first time we’d met, and the second, and I’d not said anything to her or to Claire about it, but the Samuels had dried up, so Claire must have sensed my discomfort and had a word. She was still Mrs Tully as far as I was concerned. “The rain plays hell with my bones, but that’s England, isn’t it?”
I supplied the expected laugh, refrained from the half-expected dig about Yorkshire, and waited for her to go on.
“Is Claire there?”
“Sorry, I’m afraid she’s out. Anything I can help you with?”
“Do you have any idea where she is? I’ve tried her mobile, but she’s not answering it.”
I paused for a moment, and considered coming clean, considered telling her that I didn’t know where Claire was and hadn’t known much about what she was doing for days. That her daughter was flicking from low to high and back down again like a light switch, with the emphasis more on dark than light. But what good would it do?
“No, I’m sorry,” I repeated. I wasn’t sure what I was apologising for, but it was better than t
elling the truth.
“Has she been OK lately?” she asked, unexpectedly, as if she’d been reading my thoughts.
“I think so,” I said, automatically.
“Oh good. Only, it’s a difficult time. Fifteen years. I thought she might be feeling it.”
I was lost. What was she talking about? Fifteen years of what? Fifteen years since what?
“Sam?”
I’d fallen silent, lost in lines of thought that led nowhere useful, and the silence had stretched too far for comfort.
“Yes?”
“Sam, you do know about it, don’t you?”
Just a fraction of a second to decide this one, because if I lied, I’d be caught in that lie by the time I’d drawn my next breath.
“No. No, Mrs Tully. I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about this fifteen years. But I’ve got to say,” I went on, the decision made and pushing me further in a direction I hadn’t wanted to take, “Claire has been acting a little strange lately. Almost secretive.”
Another silence, but this time the ball was in her court. I waited.
“Oh,” she said, finally. “I really hadn’t expected that. I’m not sure I should tell you about it. I mean, if Claire hasn’t. It’s hers to tell, really. Not mine.”
The decision, I reminded myself, was made. No backing out now.
“Mrs Tully,” I replied, firmly. “I have to be honest with you. I’m worried about Claire. I don’t know where she is, and she’s been out a lot lately without telling me where. It’s not like I have to know. She’s entitled to do what she wants. But it’s not like her. And she doesn’t talk any more. She just sits and watches the news.”
“Ah yes. That case,” she replied, and then gave a long, deep sigh. “OK. I think I’ll have to tell you. It was fifteen years ago. Claire was just a teenager. Eighteen. She had a cousin. Not my side. Her father’s side. Mandy, she was called. Amanda. Just fifteen years old.”
There was a pause, another silence, only, I realised after a moment, it wasn’t silence at all. Mrs Tully was struggling to catch her breath. Mrs Tully was crying. I waited.
“Claire and Mandy were close. Very close. Mandy’s mother – that’s my husband’s sister, Georgie – we were all very close. They lived a couple of streets away and the girls played together from when Mandy was a baby. The age difference didn’t seem to matter. Mandy’s father left when she was four, but Mandy seemed fine, she was growing up to be an impressive young woman. A little wild, a little headstrong, perhaps, but always so sure of herself. I used to tell Claire, I used to say, you don’t have to do everything she does, but you could be a little more like her, you know. Just trust yourself. You’re a strong woman.”
Another pause.
“Are you alright, Mrs Tully? If this is difficult,” I began, but trailed off. It might be difficult but it had to be important, or she wouldn’t be going behind her daughter’s back to tell me about it. I waited, again.
“It’s fine, Sam. Hold on one moment. I’m just getting myself a glass of water.” Noises in the background, footsteps, a cupboard opening, a tap turned.
“That’s better,” she said, suddenly clear and matter-of-fact. She was telling a story. That was all. “Now, when Mandy was fourteen she became more withdrawn, spent more time alone. She still saw Claire a lot, they were like sisters, but she didn’t go out with all her friends the way she had. I remember Georgie worrying about it and I used to tell her it was fine, she was just a teenager, they all go through it. God. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
Another pause, but I wasn’t making the mistake of filling it. A dam had broken.
“We knew nothing until it all came out, but by then it was too late. Far too late. Georgie had a partner by then, Joseph Farrell, a regular sort of chap, painter and decorator. They’d been living together for three years. And the whole time, he’d been grooming her daughter.”
She took a deep breath and, by the sound of it, a deep drink. It might just be a story, but it wasn’t an easy one.
“We didn’t have that word back then, you know. Grooming. It sounds so innocent. Little girls playing with toy ponies. But that was what he’d been doing with her. Turning her into his toy. And when she turned fourteen, that’s when the abuse began. He raped her, Sam. He raped her over and over again, and he’d convinced her she couldn’t tell anyone about it, nobody would believe her, her mother wouldn’t believe her. He’d worked on Georgie by then, convinced her Mandy’s friends were trouble, and one by one she was cut off from them. The only friend she had left was Claire. And shortly after her fifteenth birthday she couldn’t take any more, and she told Claire.”
Another break. Another moment to take stock, even though I knew where the story was heading. I’d known from the beginning. She had a cousin. Past tense.
“Mandy begged Claire not to say anything to anyone. She was terrified. And Claire was a loyal friend, so she didn’t, she didn’t tell anyone, she didn’t even tell me, but she was sensible, too, and she finally managed to hammer some sense into Mandy’s head and convince her to go to the police. Fat lot of good that did.”
Claire had never liked the police. I’d put that down to politics, to idealism, to a hangover from the teenage years. In one way, I’d been right.
“They didn’t believe her. They were about as unsympathetic as they could be, they told her she should go home and think about it before making such serious allegations, that she could ruin someone’s life over a strop, they asked if he’d grounded her or told her she couldn’t see some boy and was this her way of getting him back, because if it was, well, wasting police time was an offence, they said, and anyway they didn’t have the time to waste. And they sent her back home. They said they’d say no more about it as long as she didn’t bother them again. So she went back home. And she went up to her room. And some time in the night.”
She stopped, again, and I could hear her breathing, fast, trembling. No amount of water could stop the tears now. But she wasn’t going to let the tears stop her.
“Some time in the night she killed herself. Hanged herself. In her bedroom. They found her body the next morning. The seventeenth of December. Tomorrow. Fifteen years ago tomorrow.”
“Oh God,” I said. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to interrupt, but I couldn’t just sit there listening to this poor woman tell this terrible story and pretend I wasn’t feeling it myself.
“She’d left a note. Told everything. Georgie didn’t know what to believe. She was a wreck. Joseph Farrell moved out, still claiming he was innocent, and three years later he was caught.”
“How?”
“Not for that. Not for Mandy. Someone else. He’d followed a girl home from school. Grabbed her. Tried to rape her. Failed. But when it hit the news others came forward. He’d been doing it for years. He got ten years, which we were furious about, we wanted him to rot inside, we wanted him to die in prison. We got what we wanted. He hanged himself. Just like Mandy. Couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle himself if there was someone bigger than a kid to deal with. He lasted six months, and I’ve got to tell you, Sam, when I heard, when we heard, Georgie came over and we drank two bottles of champagne.”
“Oh God,” I said, again. Fifteen years ago. Had she been trying to tell me about it? Had I been so wrapped up in everything else, had I been so absorbed with the here and now that when I wondered what was bothering her, I hadn’t bothered to look at her, just the things around her, her job, her story, me? Had I just sat there and not noticed a thing, like Mandy’s mother, all this pain going on inches away and me in my own stupid little world spouting stupid little lines like sit tight and don’t make it personal?
“That was why I wanted to come down, Sam. That was why I wanted to stay. Claire’s never forgiven herself. Do you understand? She thinks it was all her fault. Blames herself for persuading Mandy to go to the police. Blames herself for not going straight to me, or to Georgie, or to anyone who might
believe her. She doesn’t talk about it any more. She doesn’t mention it to anybody, it’s like she’s buried it in the past and doesn’t want it dug up. But I know she still feels it. I thought she’d need me.”
You think you know someone. That was all I could hear, in my head. You think you know someone. I’d known Claire. As well as I’d known anybody. And I hadn’t known her at all. I found myself casting about for things that might make everything better, sticks in the sea. I lighted on Adrian. At least she had someone to talk to, even if he did sound like a tosser. And then I remembered his message. He hadn’t heard from Claire for a while.
“So where do you think she is, Sam? Why isn’t she answering the phone?”
I paused, before answering. I didn’t want to alarm her. But it wasn’t like I had a bowlful of reassuring news to pour on the problem, either.
“I don’t know, Mrs Tully. But one thing I do know is Claire’s not stupid. She’s clearly still feeling it. You’re right. That explains her behaviour, the last week. But she’s not stupid. And she won’t do anything stupid, either.”
“Yes. Yes. That’s true.” She sighed. “I think you’re right. Even with the trial, and everything?”
“What trial?”
“Those people. The ones who put the migrants on the boats and let them drown. The trial. It’s happening at the moment.”
That was what she’d been watching. That was the news story she hadn’t been able to tear her eyes off for days. Yes. It would upset her, something like that. The kind of thing she’d get fixated on. Abuse of power. Abuse of trust. Coming fifteen years after what had happened to her cousin.
“OK, I’m going to do everything I can to find her, Mrs Tully. I’ll call if I hear anything. Anything at all. I promise.”
“Thank you, Sam. You’re a good man, I think. You’ll look after her, won’t you?”
“I promise,” I repeated.
I spent the next five hours trying to live up to that promise. I called everyone I knew who knew Claire. I left messages with her colleagues and her editor and the night shift at the Tribune. I tried Maloney, with no more luck than I’d got earlier. I called Colman and she was sympathetic but said she couldn’t do anything, since Claire wasn’t really a missing person, and if she tried to put out an alert Martins would find out immediately and get it shut down. I even left a message with Adrian, and as I signed off with a falsely cheerful “Thanks, bye!” I found myself wondering whether he knew all this, whether he knew about Mandy at all, and if he did, why Claire wasn’t better, or at least getting better.