by Mark Roberts
‘I – I’ll open the door. You’d better be who you say you are.’
‘Or else?’
‘I’ve got a knife and I’m not afraid to use it.’
‘Open the door, let me in, or I’m going to get into my car and you can take your chances on your own. Three life-and-death seconds, Edward. One.’
‘Don’t do this to me...’
‘Two. You’re in deep shit, my friend.’
‘What do you mean?’
The intercom buzzed and he pushed the front door open. Rap music and an unnecessarily loud television set blasted from Flats 1 and 2 on the ground floor.
He closed the door after himself, smelt damp, fried food and despair.
Ascending the stairs to Flat 4 on the first floor, he stretched his fingers inside his white leather gloves, and imagined sunshine and a mariachi band, following a procession of human skeletons marching together to celebrate the Day of the Dead.
He knocked at Flat 4 and heard someone moving behind the door. Through the wood, he drew in the stale odour of a body cooped up for too long in a confined space, a slow death by premature burial.
‘You’re wasting my time, Edward.’
On the other side of the front door, Edward fumbled with a bolt and a chain. ‘But I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘You haven’t been caught for a few years, that’s for sure.’
The door opened and he watched as Edward walked backwards into the darkness of the flat, the carving knife in his hand shaking.
He walked into a windowless corridor with closed doors either side.
Opening the door to the left, he shut it in the same moment against the stench of a bathroom that couldn’t have been cleaned in years. The door to the right revealed a kitchen piled up with layers of junk that made access to the cooker and sink like an assault course.
‘This isn’t safe, Edward. You really need a big spring clean.’
‘What do you want?’ His voice came from the bedroom at the end of the corridor, where the brightest light in the flat shone.
He braced himself.
Edward stood by his unmade bed, across a sea of clothes tossed on to the floor, the knife still in his hand. On the table next to the bed, an electric arc light picked out a framed photograph, the picture obscured by a black sock draped over the top of the frame.
‘Put the knife down,’ he said, advancing, holding his hands in the air. ‘I come in peace.’
The knife fell from Edward’s trembling hands.
He weighed Edward up.
Bald, body like an over-full sack of potatoes, unshaved, eyes watering and looking much older than his fifty-six years.
‘Was it you or time that was so unkind to you?’
He picked up the photograph frame and, discarding the sock, examined the small snapshot of Edward when he was younger, with a head full of blond curly hair that could have put him in a young Roger Daltrey lookalike contest and a smile as bright as the sunshine.
A mouse skittered past his shoe, pissing as it moved.
Hunched inside a set of greasy clothes, Edward’s face had the stamp of someone persecuted on the inside and out.
Not an easy life, thought Arturo, being a paedophile.
‘What are you smiling at?’ asked Edward.
‘There’s a coat at the bottom of your bed. Put it on. You’re coming with me to Wavertree Road police station.’
‘But I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘It’s for your own protection, Edward.’
Edward shuffled to the bottom of the bed and picked up the grey coat. ‘What’s happened?’
‘We had a tip-off. We were given three names, yours was one of them. The caller said the Vindici copycat was going to target the three of you. We can’t be sure how true this was but we can’t take any chances either. We have a duty to protect you so I’m taking you into protective custody. Make your way to your front door and no more talking until we get into my car. We need to leave as quickly and discreetly as we can. We can’t be sure who’s watching or listening, can we, Edward?’
Edward’s eyes filled up with tears. ‘I just want to say...’
‘Stop! Walk!’
Edward walked out of the bedroom.
He picked up the framed photograph and, with his iPhone, took three snaps of the young Edward, a man not as yet broken by life and his own deepest weaknesses. He slipped the frame inside his coat’s inner pocket.
He walked in silence and found Edward sobbing with relief at the front door of the flat.
‘Thank you!’
‘Shut up, Edward Hawkins!’
86
8.50 pm
If she hadn’t been on the brink of exhaustion, the expression ‘the Devil is in the detail’ would have made DCI Eve Clay laugh her head off.
She caught Aaron Brierley’s eye as he arranged his damp Armani coat over the back of his chair in Interview Suite 1.
Catching the buzz of an incoming text on her iPhone, she hung on to Brierley’s stare, and thought, You think you’re going to intimidate me after the places I’ve been to and the people I’ve faced? Pussy!
‘Yes?’ he challenged.
‘Sit down, please,’ Clay retorted.
As Brierley sat next to his client, Daniel Campbell, and looked away, Clay looked at her phone, saw the text was from Poppy Waters.
Eve, I’ve cracked Christine Green’s hard drive. So far nothing to write home about. I’ll wait for you in the incident room. I’ve just unlocked Lucien Burns’s phone.
She formally opened the interview and made a little hay with the silence that followed it, smiling at Lesley Reid and DS Bill Hendricks flanking her.
‘To begin with, Daniel,’ said Clay. ‘I’m sorry for the loss of your close friend Steven Jamieson.’
‘He was not a close friend. He was not a friend. He was a client.’
‘It was purely business then, your relationship?’
‘I don’t understand the relevance of your initial questioning,’ said Brierley.
‘Oh, you will do!’ said Clay. ‘Just sit back, make yourself comfortable and let’s let matters unfold. Steven Jamieson trusted you, didn’t he?’
‘I was his legal representative for many years so, yes, he must have trusted me,’ replied Daniel Campbell.
‘How did you meet him?’
‘Through a mutual friend, at a charity event hosted by Sheffield Wednesday FC. We knew of each other before we met.’
‘So did you know he was a predatory paedophile when you had your first meeting?’ asked Clay.
‘No.’
‘When did you first find this out?’
‘When he was first charged by South Yorkshire Police.’
‘You had no idea at all, whatsoever, about his sexual preferences for children until he was charged?’
‘Correct.’
Clay tilted her head towards Lesley Reid, met her eye and then looked directly at Daniel Campbell.
‘That’s not right,’ said Reid.
‘This isn’t right,’ said Brierley. ‘You bring in a retired police officer from a different constabulary to act as a chorus on an interview with my client?’
Clay ignored him. ‘Daniel, this interview is only going to go one way.’
‘Yes, my way, right back to Sheffield while you waste time during the crucial earliest hours of a murder investigation on ephemera. You’ve got nothing on me.’
Clay looked at Hendricks and Reid. ‘The gloves are off then? OK!’
Hendricks stood up, walked to the corner of the room and returned with a Tupperware stacker box.
‘How much money a month was paid into a bank account that you managed on behalf of Steven Jamieson?’
‘How is that relevant to your murder inquiry?’ asked Brierley.
‘Mr Campbell, I’m trying to establish how your client’s dubious lifestyle may have contributed to his unlawful death. How much money per month was paid into an account managed by you?’
> He looked at the box on the table. ‘There was no such account.’
Hendricks lifted the lid of the box and took out a file fat with bank statements. ‘Our Scientific Support officers found this in a filing cabinet in Steven Jamieson’s house as they searched it following his murder,’ he said. ‘Would you like to have a look at the bank statements?’
Campbell looked at the statements with barely concealed horror. ‘No comment.’
Hendricks took out the top statement, a single sheet, and placed it in front of Campbell and Brierley, and then flicked through the thick wad. ‘Every single one of these tells the same story as the one sheet in front of you.’
Brierley picked up the bank statement.
‘How much each month was paid into this account in your name?’ pressed Clay.
‘These bank statements have nothing to do with me. No comment.’
‘All right,’ said Clay. ‘Bill...’
‘There are three areas we want to explore with you, Mr Campbell.’ Hendricks placed the bank statements on the table. ‘We’re thinking, amongst other criminal activities, police corruption in this heap of bank statements.’
He looked at Lesley Reid.
‘The missing link and Holy Grail all in one bundle,’ she said. ‘We’re pretty much 99.9 per cent sure of who the bent police officers Jamieson had in his pocket are but this is just magic.’
Hendricks took out the paperwork relating to surgical procedures. ‘Dr Warner?’
‘No comment.’
‘Since when do gynaecologists, even those who’ve been struck off the medical register for sexual molestation of a minor, perform cosmetic surgery?’
‘No comment.’
Hendricks produced the third set of documents. ‘Do you want to tell us what these are, Mr Campbell, or do you want to tell us what’s going on with these confidentiality payoffs?’
‘No comment.’
‘Why did Steven Jamieson employ you to buy such vague silence from so many children?’
‘No comment.’
‘The CPS view of these confidentiality contracts is that they are laughable in their lack of detail. Did you set out to intimidate Steven Jamieson’s victims while disguising the nature of his wrongdoing?’
‘No comment.’
‘Are you a paedophile, Mr Campbell?’
‘No comment. No! No, no, I am not a paedophile.’
Clay looked at Aaron Brierley.
‘I’d like to request a suspension. I need to talk with Mr Campbell.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Clay.
She watched Campbell looking at the three sets of paper as if he was staring into a void.
‘I’m going to give you a chance here, a way forward. Is there anything you want to say in your own defence before I formally suspend this interview, Mr Campbell?’
Clay looked into his eyes and imagined him laid out on ice on the fish counter in a supermarket. Within the deadness of his eyes, she detected a deep internal struggle between an impulse to speak and the desire to keep silent.
‘I...’ Campbell pointed at the bank statements. ‘I know nothing about this. Nothing. He’s stolen my identity. He’s used me as a human shield without my consent.’
Clay said nothing, sensed more, pulled a benign face, OK...
Campbell slammed the flat of his hand down on the bank statements. ‘This’ll have been Frances’s doing, the duplicitous bitch.’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Clay.
‘You could never describe Steven as a saint...’
‘That’s enough, Daniel,’ said Brierley.
‘She was ten times worse than him on every level.’
‘Enough!’
Clay took out a clear plastic carrier from her bag. There was an object inside it.
‘Give me back my phone!’ said Campbell.
‘Given the evidence against you on the table, I’m seizing your phone, Mr Campbell, and handing it to our IT specialists,’ said Clay. She called Poppy Waters on speed dial. ‘I’ve got another iPhone for you to look at. I’ll bring it to you directly.’
Campbell looked at his solicitor.
‘Daniel, I think we need to talk,’ said Brierley.
87
8.50 pm
When he woke up, for a split second Detective Constable Bob Rimmer thought he was at home in bed and wondered why it was so cold. He guessed Valerie had left the window open because she always needed fresh air even during the depths of winter. He patted the surface of the bed and felt something spongy and damp, the texture of grass.
He opened his eyes and the room was a blur, only it wasn’t a room and he wasn’t at home. As his vision came into focus, the hiss of wind and water made him realise where he was: lying diagonally on a sloping bank of grass overlooking the River Mersey.
Rain pounded Rimmer’s head and body as the wind blew from the water.
Across the river, he saw hundreds of specks of yellow lights illuminating the Wirral Peninsula where life carried on irrespective of his escalating despair, and he knew that he was less than invisible.
His heart was no longer his heart but instead was a landline telephone on Eve Clay’s desk. It rang and, when it stopped ringing, he heard his own voice inside his head, echoing, ‘Hello?’ And another voice from the River Mersey crashing against the promenade wall.
‘Is that Barney Cole?’
He wasn’t sure what the answer was but he said, ‘Who am I speaking with?’
‘Sergeant Eduardo García, Puebla City police,’ replied the water.
In the distance the rotating blades of the police helicopter sliced the cold night air and Rimmer turned on to his side away from the noise, seeing the world now with one eye, a fox looking left and right before scrambling up the bank and away from the Mexican cop whose voice lived in the water.
‘I have good news for you, Barney!’ he spoke again from the swell.
He felt the imprint of his wife’s fading body, so thin now she was just a bag of bones, saw death in her face and knew he could never bear to look at her or feel her again.
Murder.
He reached into the darkness, towards the stars and heard his own voice, ‘Let me get my pen.’
Rimmer rolled over, heard the sound of three children crying, recognised the unique sadness of his own sons and, looking up at the top of the bank, saw three statuettes of Weeping Children, each with a finger pointing down at him while their other fist knocked on the door of night.
The sound of their tears echoed back from the river and Rimmer cursed the power in the universe that allowed paedophiles to remain alive and healthy while his wife died a slow and agonising death.
The statuettes melted from ceramic into flesh, singlets rippling around their bare knees in the chill wind that blew in from the River Mersey.
Slowly they descended the bank, their dark hair fluttering as they came closer to Rimmer, closer to him but not seeming to be aware of his existence as they wept their way towards the water. As they passed on either side of him, he smelt a cocktail of sugar and incense. The perfume spiked his drunken senses and made him sit up on the bank and watch them walk from the grass and on to the concrete pavement that led to the railings.
They stopped at the railings, turned as one and mourned, ‘Daddy? Daddy. Daddy...’
In one acrobatic and unified motion, the three Weeping Children climbed on to the top of the railings and the water enquired, ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, thank you for that.’ He spoke to the backs of the children, saw them shiver as they waited on the rails and stared down into the darkness of the water.
Standing up, he heard the voice in the water soar to the sky and sing from the stars, ‘No problem. Keep me informed and good luck, Barney.’
He took a step towards the Weeping Children and the first child jumped into the water. With the next step, the second child followed and, with a third step, the last of the children descended.
Rimmer watched as the three c
hildren sank beneath the cold black water, without struggle, their weeping fell into a silence that made him think the world had almost ended.
He removed his shoes and, climbing on to the rail, felt the cold metal of the bar beneath his feet. Raising his arms into the air, he gave himself up to the sky and stars and tumbled head first into the water, eyes and ears wide open as he broke the surface and fell like a boulder past his lifeless, silent children.
Opening his mouth wide, his lungs filled with water and the bitterness of salt and oil and fish took over his senses.
He stared into the water, saw the shifting ceiling of the river, sank and became one with the thing that filled and surrounded him.
Darkness.
88
9.01 pm
As Arturo Salvador turned his hire car from the top of Smithdown Road on to Tunnel Road, the storm picked up force. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and caught Hawkins looking at him as the rain pounded the roof of his hire car.
‘Will you pull the window up? It’s very cold here in the back,’ said Hawkins.
‘I can’t do that no more,’ he mocked.
‘Why?’
‘Because you stink of sweat and cheap fried food.’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Hawkins.
‘Why? Are you going to put in a complaint about me because I was truthful about your lousy personal hygiene? Shut up, Hawkins.’
‘But I—’
As he crossed the junction with Wavertree Road and on to Durning Road, he looked over his shoulder as Hawkins fiddled with the lock in the door. ‘It’s child-proofed. It can only be opened from outside. There’s no way you can open that door from inside.’
‘I wasn’t trying to get out no more.’ Hawkins looked sideways and back. ‘Isn’t the police station on Wavertree Road that way?’ Fear and dread crept into his voice.
‘I can’t take you that way for security reasons. I have to take you a long route. Seeing as you couldn’t be bothered asking, let me ask you a question, Edward. Do you know it round here, Edward?’