Mercy Killing

by Lisa Cutts

  ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Albert Woodville.’

  She only got a few words into the caution when Toby said, ‘Hang on. Murder? Oh no, no. It wasn’t murder. He wasn’t dead. He was still alive.’

  Unfortunately for Toby, the door he tried to let himself out of needed a pass card, something that he didn’t have. He thought about struggling, making a run for it. He was the one who had walked in voluntarily. All he had wanted to do was support his friend, not get arrested for murder. The shock had hit him as soon as the officer told him what the reason was for his liberty being taken away. Fighting wouldn’t look good. Toby understood that. He surrendered to his circumstances after a brief pretence of trying to get back out again to the public area at the front of the police station.

  It took only seconds for the two detectives to escort him to custody where he allowed himself to be searched and put into a cell. His momentary panic left him and was replaced by despair.

  Things were not going according to plan now. Toby didn’t imagine for one minute that Leon had confessed to murdering Woodville. He knew that his friend wasn’t blessed with intelligence but he wasn’t entirely stupid.

  At the first opportunity, Toby got himself a solicitor who told him to wait until she got there before saying anything else to the police.

  As he waited for her arrival, he sat himself on the bench in his cell, read the graffiti, used the toilet and then ran out of things to do. He tried listening out for sounds of Leon but then wondered what on earth he was listening for. They would hardly be torturing him or beating him up. So far the police officers he had seen were no match for Leon and as for the jailers, they had the word Civilian embossed on their uniform. Surely they wouldn’t punch a prisoner.

  He glanced at his watch, one of the few things they had allowed him to keep. Only half an hour had passed. He was going to have to keep an eye on himself as he was aware he was already beginning to think total nonsense.

  Eventually the door opened and he was led to a room and introduced to his solicitor. Some hours later, they had finished discussing what Toby had done. Now it was time to tell the police about it.

  The two detectives from earlier took them to a police-interview room and Toby watched them unwrap the DVDs and put them in the recording equipment with a kind of detached fascination. On more than one occasion, he had to remind himself that this was indeed happening to him, a married man with his own business, and in spite of not having had the best start in life someone who’d always been on the right side of the law and had never been stopped by the police or caught speeding. Now he was under arrest for murder.

  After what seemed like a long time, the woman detective spoke. She went through question after question about his legal rights and his welfare and then at last, they got down to business.

  ‘OK. ‘You’re under arrest for the murder of Albert Woodville, Toby. It may sound like an odd question, but what’s your understanding of murder?’

  He held his hands up in the air. ‘Yes, it is a stupid question. It’s when someone kills someone but I didn’t kill him. Neither did Leon—’

  His solicitor intervened. ‘Toby, don’t concern yourself with Leon.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I know. When I got nicked I said me and Leon did it together. I think I need to explain—’

  Once again, his solicitor cut across him. ‘You know my advice, Toby.’

  ‘Yes, thanks, I do, but where Leon’s concerned, I’m not going to sit here and say no comment to everything Hazel asks me.’

  The somewhat dowdy-looking legal representative raised an eyebrow at the familiar use of the very attractive interviewing officer’s name. It was something that Pierre noticed, only Hazel herself seemed oblivious to it.

  ‘Go on,’ was all she said.

  ‘We didn’t kill him, we didn’t even hurt Woodville, the horrible fat bastard. Sorry about the language, love.’

  His solicitor put her pen down.

  ‘Oh, you and all,’ Toby said. ‘I’ll tell you a bit about me and Leon. We met years ago at Cuxington Children’s Home. He looked out for me and kept Woodville away from me. There were a couple of occasions when he physically stood in between me and Woodville and took slaps and punches that were coming my way. Up until very recently, I thought that Leon took a lot more for me too.’

  Toby’s eyes had begun to mist over. He continued with a catch in his voice.

  ‘For years I’ve been under the impression that all those horrible things he did to me, he did to Leon too.’ He started to rub his hands up and down his arms, shoulders hunched up to his ears, no eye contact now.

  ‘I still owe him though. He went through as tough a time as me, only in a different way. We used to talk about Woodville from time to time, how much we both hated him. Sometimes there were happier memories. It wasn’t all bad. There were some other really good kids in the home. A lot of them were little sods but we used to play practical jokes on the staff, not Woodville, never Woodville, but a few of them were great. I always thought that they knew what was going on, only no one spoke about it. Things are a bit different now, but it’s still the last taboo.’

  Toby looked up into Hazel’s eyes. ‘We spoke about what we’d do to Woodville if we ever saw him again, and then one day, I did see him in town. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He’d aged, of course, but it was him, as large as life.

  ‘I’d gone into Pets at Home to look for something for my daughter’s birthday, so I know it was about June time. She wanted a guinea pig, not that that’s important but I wandered around the corner and he was picking out a dog lead. He’s petrified of dogs. I remember that because I used to lie awake at night at the home, praying it wasn’t my turn, and it would be some other poor little bastard’s, and I used to fantasize that I’d buy a pack of dogs when I grew up and train them to chew his fucking face off. I never did though.’

  Hazel gave a small smile.

  Toby gave a big sigh, ran his hand across his brow and said, ‘Couldn’t help it, could I? I got straight on the phone to Leon. We met at the pub about half an hour later. I was a right mess. A fully grown man sitting in his local boozer on the verge of crying. I could barely put a sentence together. Have you ever heard anything more pitiful? Thing was, it took me right back there, see? I was seven years old again, a little petrified kid, being … being interfered with all over again.’

  For the first time in the interview, Toby looked across at Pierre who sat making notes, but glancing up from time to time.

  ‘Leon was great,’ said Toby. ‘I wanted to go round and give Woodville a kicking right away. Leon pointed out that not only did we have no idea where Woodville lived, but also that we’d both end up in prison for it. We decided that we’d find out a bit more about him and bide our time.’

  Toby glanced across at his solicitor. She repeated her advice to answer ‘No comment’ to the questions. Toby ignored her.

  ‘We weren’t ever going to kill him or physically hurt him, we were looking to put the frighteners up him. Send him some threats, so he didn’t know where they were coming from. We wanted to cause him pain up here.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Just like he did to us all those years ago. The physical stuff was bad enough, but it was the lingering effects of what it did to my mind. That doesn’t go away.

  ‘We followed him a few times, tried to—’

  ‘Toby,’ said his solicitor, ‘we’ve spoken about this. My advice to you is to answer “No comment” from now on.’

  He sat and mulled it over.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want you to think I’m not cooperating. We followed him home and knew he had a routine on a Friday night when he went to the Co-op on the corner and bought some grub.

  ‘I’m going to tell them this bit,’ he said to his brief, ‘and then no more. We talked about getting into his flat one night when he’d gone out, and then jumping out from behind the sofa or cupboard or whatever. I’ve never been in there so I do
n’t know what furniture he’s got. It was only to scare him, not beat him up and definitely not kill him.’

  ‘When were you going to do this?’ said Hazel.

  ‘That break you mentioned at the beginning,’ said Toby, ‘the one you told me I could take any time I like, I’d like it now, please.’

  Hazel set about turning off the DVDs and glanced over at Pierre. She had an idea that from here on Toby would choose to say nothing or very little in answer to her questions.

  Her train of thought was interrupted by Toby asking his solicitor if they could speak in private and Pierre leading them to a consultation room.

  When he returned, he pushed the door behind him and said, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘I think that’s all he’ll say, but for a minute I thought that his brief was going to let him confess to a conspiracy to murder along with Leon.’

  ‘I’ve dealt with his solicitor before. She’s a pretty switched-on cookie. I’m still surprised she let him say anything at all.’

  ‘I don’t think she had much choice. It was difficult to shut him up. Besides, it’s usually the ones who have, shall we say, “limited intelligence” who struggle with the concept of talking to a point and then declining to answer. I thought he did OK, not that it takes us much further.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Pierre. ‘He still hasn’t said where he was on Friday night when Woodville was murdered. We know from the CCTV he was still alive at 6.20 at night and by the time the patrols got there shortly after eight o’clock he was dead.’

  Toby and his solicitor’s arrival at the interview-room door put an end to the officers’ conversation.

  As Hazel had predicted, for the rest of Toby’s interview she and Pierre did most of the talking, with ‘No comment’ coming from the interviewee each time he was asked anything.

  That was more than could be said for Leon, although at that very moment an unexpected alibi was coming his way. His luck was about to change for the better.

  Chapter 66

  The automatic front doors of East Rise Police Station opened once again on the fading afternoon sunlight, attracting the attention of the front-counter assistant. She looked up and smiled at the young woman walking across the brightly lit foyer towards her.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I need to speak to someone about Dilly, well, Leon Edwards. Everyone calls him Dilly, but his real name’s Leon. He’s here, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know. Who is it you want to speak to?’

  ‘It said on the news that a bloke had been arrested for the murder of the old bloke in Pleasure Lane but I know it wasn’t Dilly. Let me speak to someone about it.’

  The incident-room phone rang and was answered by Harry. He didn’t usually make a habit of answering other people’s phones, but it was ringing on the desk he stopped at to talk to Sophia and Tom, who were taking a break from interviewing Leon.

  ‘Really?’ he said into the receiver. ‘I’ll get someone to come and speak to her. Thanks.’

  ‘It seems,’ he said to the pair sitting opposite him, ‘that a woman has given your prisoner, Edwards, an alibi for Friday night. Go and see her, will you? She’s at the front counter.’

  ‘What’s her name, boss?’ said Sophia.

  ‘Lorraine Butterfield. She works in some diner and said that Leon was there most of Friday evening.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Tom. ‘Shall we just let our prisoner go now?’

  ‘Less cheek and less sarcasm, Thomas,’ said Harry. ‘She may be lying, or mistaken. Come and let me know, would you?’

  Harry wondered whether his team would ever find out who had murdered Albert Woodville. He was certain that Leon Edwards and Toby Carvell had been doing more than passing by his flat to see how he was doing since his release from prison, but neither of them were daft enough to admit to planning to or trying to kill him.

  At the moment, all he had was two men in custody, one admitting to sending death threats to a man who was now dead, and the other claiming some of the responsibility for it, possibly through misguided loyalty.

  He made himself a cup of coffee and took the steaming drink to his office, glad of the chance to close the door and shut out the incident room. Only minutes before, he had heard that there was something else going on in East Rise and Harry knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold on to his staff for very much longer. It was one of the curses of dealing with major incidents – they all demanded immediate attention.

  The last thing he needed was to find Sandra Beckinsale waiting for him at his desk.

  ‘Sandra,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘You can get me more staff.’

  ‘No, I can’t. Anything else?’

  She handed him a printed piece of paper. ‘Not sure if this is relevant to us or not. A woman living near the seafront was on her way to the shops on Monday morning when she saw a man throw what looked like a black holdall or rucksack into the water.’

  She placed the sheet on the desk and they both stared at it.

  ‘Want me to get someone to go and see her?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ sighed Harry. ‘I’m sure we’ve got another box of coppers somewhere. Haven’t we got anyone?’

  ‘Gabrielle’s back.’

  For a moment, Harry wondered if he should speak to Gabrielle himself before sending her out on enquiries but then reasoned that she wouldn’t have come back to work after only taking a couple of hours off if she wasn’t fully up to being there.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Send Gabrielle but brief her fully. I don’t want her only knowing half the details.’

  Having been brought up to speed by DS Beckinsale, DC Gabrielle Royston sat in Joyce Slattery’s kitchen. Gabrielle hadn’t really wanted to come in to work this afternoon but her mood was lifted by the view across the harbour from the woman’s breakfast bar. She was aware that the witness was still talking to her, although she had to admit she hadn’t been paying her all that much attention.

  She wanted to get this right and put to one side her personal life and at the same time her outburst to Harry. Sex offenders would not be her downfall: she was going to do all she could to work as hard as possible to find the murderers, even if she really wanted to shake them by the hand. Gabrielle pushed the thought from her mind and smiled.

  ‘Beautiful view to start your day, Mrs Slattery,’ she said.

  ‘It is, dear. I couldn’t believe my luck when this flat became available. Hilda downstairs waited twelve years to get one of these at the top but then she had to get her hip done, and missed out. Anyway, that’s not why you’ve come here. Biscuit to go with that tea?’

  Gabrielle turned down the biscuit and concentrated on the task in hand.

  ‘Where was I?’ said the seventy-five-year-old widow. ‘Oh, that’s right. Most mornings, I’m up early at about 6.30. It doesn’t get light until later now, so I put the light on, but I always turn it off when the sun comes up, to save a bit, you see.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got my set routine and I don’t go to the shops until just after nine. I wait until the schoolchildren are out of the way and those going to work are wherever they’re supposed to be, and then I leave. If I time it right, I’m out of the flat and on my way to the shops by five past. From habit, I lock the balcony doors when I go out. Daft, I know.’

  She pointed her index finger at the glass balcony doors, five floors from the ground.

  ‘Not daft,’ said Gabrielle. ‘It’s sensible.’

  ‘Anyhow, I locked the balcony doors as normal and, as I did so, I glanced down and saw a man throw a bag into the sea. He was the other side of that bus stop down there so I didn’t get a good look at his face, and he was dressed in dark clothing. I could see, even from this distanceand with the rain coming down, he was quite a well-built man and if I had to say, I’d guess that he was a youngish fella. When I say young, I mean in his thirties or forties. That is young to me.’

  Sh
e laughed and Gabrielle smiled.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s of any help to you, but as they’ve sent someone out, and a detective too, I suppose it must be. Did you say you were from Major Crime? Is it important? Sorry, I shouldn’t ask, should I?’

  Gabrielle thought through her answer to the kind lady in front of her and stalled by taking a sip of tea.

  ‘You never know,’ she said in a non-committal fashion. ‘I’m very grateful that you called. It’s a good starting point – I can look into it further.’

  Gabrielle left the flat with mixed emotions: she was making inroads into an enquiry that she felt more passionate about not investigating than investigating. She understood that she had a job to do though, despite her doubts about the career choice she had made. She seemed to be fighting a losing battle when it came to separating her personal feelings from any ethics the police had tried to teach her.

  At least it made her human. At least it meant she cared.

  The rest of the afternoon she easily filled by making calls, attending locations and gathering exactly what she needed until she was ready to return to the incident room. She recognized it for what it was: she was keeping busy enough to stop her own grief from taking hold.

  It was early evening when Gabrielle made her entrance at the incident room, and was at least cheered to see the DI and DCI Barbara Venice talking to the interview teams who were on a break.

  ‘Gabs,’ said Harry. ‘How was the witness?’

  She took a seat and smiled. She waved her paperwork at him. ‘She was lovely, made me tea, has a great view of the harbour and so had a great view of a man chucking a bag into the water. I’ve got the CCTV, tracked most of the route he took to the seafront and back, and I’m pretty sure that I know who he is. The only thing I don’t know is what he was throwing in the drink and why, although I could have a good guess at that one.’

  The young detective surveyed the stunned faces of her colleagues. She couldn’t help but feel a little superior and extremely glad that she had been sent out to work by herself that afternoon. This glory was all hers.