Justice Mirror

by Simon Hall

  As she reached the end of the message, Lizzie’s tone changed. Another point Newman would be making was that the police were so inept, they appeared to be relying upon the input of a journalist to help solve the case. She wondered if Dan might know anything about that?

  Yard by painstaking yard, they neared the end of the jam. Adam rolled down a window, looked to Claire and finally spoke. ‘You don’t think Newman did it either, do you?’

  She let the car trundle on, before admitting, ‘No sir. I have to say, I don’t.’

  ‘Because of that reaction?’

  She nodded. ‘It just wasn’t like any I’ve seen before. It wasn’t that strange kind of relief that the game is over, or the standard defiance. It seemed… heartfelt.’

  Adam tapped a hand on the dashboard. He sounded so deflated it was painful. ‘I fear you may be right.’

  ‘That’s not to say he wasn’t involved,’ Claire added. ‘I think he’s got the brains and the motivation. But I think he’d need someone else, to either help or encourage him.’

  ‘Which brings us back to the conspiracy theory,’ Adam replied, thoughtfully. ‘But who could he be working with? The only one who doesn’t have an alibi is Parkinson. And I can’t see him being involved.’

  Claire guided the car round the lorry and onto the roundabout. She had something else to say, Dan could see, but was struggling with it. The gate at the back of Charles Cross ground out its guttural welcome.

  Adam moved to get out of the car, but Claire said, ‘Stop a moment, please, sir.’

  Her voice had changed. It wasn’t the usual measured calm, but instead had a wavering tone. It was almost a fear of what she needed to release.

  ‘Yes?’ Adam replied.

  ‘This is difficult for me to say, but I think I have to.’

  In the back of the car, Dan sat still and silent, wondering what was coming.

  Claire flicked at her hair, and then said, ‘I think I have an idea who might have killed the Edwards.’

  ‘What?’ Adam yelped. ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s difficult…’

  ‘Templar, you mean? Do you think it’s Templar?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ivy?’

  ‘No. Not Ivy either.’

  ‘What, Parkinson then? Surely you don’t think it’s him?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Adam looked baffled. ‘But they’re all the suspects we’ve got. There is no one else. Claire, what are you talking about?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I think the killer may be one of us, sir.’

  ‘One of us? What? Who? Claire!’

  Once more she hesitated, before saying, ‘I think it might have been Katrina.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Amongst all the professions, a detective is one of the hardest to shock, and an experienced investigator the toughest of the tough.

  It might be the years of prying into the details of the foulest horrors the human race can inflict. The countless sleepless displays of bodies, dismembered in the coldness of an insane killer, or in the bloody, slashing rage of passion. It could be the accumulations of corpses that many detectives have to face at some point in their careers.

  Or it can be the simple day-to-day corrosion of lies. The expectation of deception that picks away another little chip of humanity each time. Or the foul abuse that is whispered, shouted and screamed. Or the threats of a bloody revenge, no matter how long it takes.

  All this Adam had known in his years as a police officer and so had become largely insulated from shock. But it was clear now, in the windows of his eyes.

  ‘I did say it wasn’t easy, sir,’ Claire repeated.

  ‘You’re not wrong there,’ the detective replied, with feeling. ‘Go on then, let’s hear the worst.’

  The first part of Claire’s argument was straightforward. Katrina had got to know Annette well – perhaps too well.

  ‘I noticed a real closeness between them. In court, when Annette was upset, it was Katrina she ran to.’

  ‘Carry on,’ Adam said, thoughtfully.

  It was growing hot in the car. Dan wound down a window, but a glance from Adam prompted him to close it again. This was no conversation to risk being overheard.

  ‘She’s a cop,’ Claire continued. ‘She knows how to commit a crime and not leave any traces. She could easily have seen a case like that gas explosion in Plymouth before and got the idea how to kill the Edwards from it. She knows a fire is the best way to destroy evidence.’

  ‘Ok,’ Adam said slowly. ‘Anything else?’

  Now Claire hesitated. There was more difficult terrain to come. She looked straight ahead, out of the windscreen and up at the police station.

  ‘There’s her – well, character. There’s a kind of detachment about her. It’s a certainty, a conviction that what she thinks is right is right. It’s the sort of dissociation we’ve seen before in killers.’

  Adam watched a police van reverse carefully from a space and head out of the gates. A patrol car followed it.

  ‘That’s all highly speculative,’ he said. ‘Where’s your actual evidence? There’s nothing solid to it.’

  Claire waited for a few seconds, before saying, ‘Actually, there is.’

  And now she looked around, at Dan. Throughout the conversation he had been doing his very best to keep quiet, hoping the two people in the front of the car might forget he had ever existed.

  But Claire was a detective, and a good one. Which meant he knew exactly what was coming next.

  One day he would have told her. He would have confessed it. He’d agreed that with Rutherford. One day, when he knew their future.

  He would apologise and ask for forgiveness. Say he didn’t know what he was doing. That he was confused, unbalanced, vulnerable; all the excuses familiar to men throughout the ages. He had never imagined the confession would come in the back of an unmarked police car in the yard at Charles Cross.

  ‘Dan?’ Claire prompted, gently. ‘There is evidence, isn’t there?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know – I mean…’

  ‘What Dan’s trying to say is that he’s been seeing Katrina.’

  Their eyes were fixed upon him. One set, the eyes of a detective and a friend, the other those of a detective and a lover. Dan could have been a naughty child, fetched by his parents and taken home from school. The fun was over and a mighty reckoning had begun.

  ‘I, err – well…’ he gulped.

  ‘Haven’t you?’ Claire persisted.

  The thinness of air had become curiously thick. ‘I don’t know about seeing. I mean, I might have just—’

  ‘I know,’ Adam cut in, ruthlessly. ‘Of course I know. I was just hoping you didn’t, Claire.’

  ‘No, I knew too. I wasn’t sure whether to be angry, or pity him. But I don’t hold it against him – not too much, anyway. He’s never been the best when it comes to emotions.’

  ‘I hope he’s learned a lesson,’ Dan’s newly appointed father replied.

  ‘Yes,’ Claire agreed, before softening her voice and adding. ‘And I very much hope he sorts out that strange mind of his soon.’

  They both looked at him, like parents united in their disappointment. And amidst all this, Dan sat quietly because there was nothing else to do.

  ‘On the day Annette committed suicide, later that evening, Dan sent a text message to Katrina,’ Claire said. ‘Supposedly, it was a few words to share the shock of what happened and check she was coping. In fact, it was designed to get together with her that night.’

  Dan was still finding silence the only available option.

  ‘But he didn’t get a reply,’ Claire continued. ‘Instead, the next morning, Katrina apologised for not texting back, saying she was preoccupied. It was when we were at Homely Terrace, after the explosion.’

  ‘I recall,’ Adam said.

  ‘That, in itself, was an interesting insight into her character,’ Claire went on. ‘I think it was partly to goad me. And looking back,
I think she also couldn’t resist giving us a clue. That it was her who’d killed the Edwards.’

  Adam swore and loosened his tie. ‘You’re saying she didn’t want to see Dan because she knew she was going to kill the Edwards that night?’

  Claire didn’t reply. There was no need.

  A seagull swooped down and landed on the bonnet of the car. Adam waved an irritable hand. It gave him a contemptuous look, but deigned to fly off again. The detective stared at the air the bird had vacated, working away at Claire’s words. And they were everywhere in the small space of the car.

  ‘This is bloody far-fetched,’ he said, eventually. ‘Katrina’s got an impeccable reputation. She’s run loads of these cases.’

  ‘But never one quite like this.’

  ‘I know her track record. She’s handled some huge kidnappings.’

  ‘When the subject’s been a 17-year-old girl? Who she’s got so close to?’

  ‘Yeah, but...’

  ‘I don’t like it either, sir. But you must admit it’s feasible.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Which means we’ve got to check it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘She broke the golden rule. She got involved. And you know what that can do.’

  Adam rolled his neck and rubbed a hand over the stubble of his chin. ‘Ok, go check it out. Talk to the staff at her hotel. And get the CCTV, too. But Claire…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Be damned discreet.’

  They got out of the car and headed towards the back door of the police station. They were only metres away when it opened and Katrina stepped out.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Adam said brusquely, and pushed past. Claire followed, without a word.

  Katrina watched them go, one eyebrow raised. Dan put on the vaguest of smiles, mumbled a greeting and also edged into the corridor.

  Stepping out into the grey light of the afternoon, from the darkness of the police station, those hypnotic eyes had looked particularly vivid. The brown was warm and burnished, the green as bright as a jewel.

  Dan wondered if, in the months to come, they would be captured on the front page of every newspaper and labelled the most beautiful eyes a murderer had ever possessed.

  ***

  The time was coming up to two o’clock, the scheduled start of Newman’s press conference. Dan rang Nigel and asked to speak to Phil.

  ‘I need a favour.’

  ‘Are you ok? I mean, Lizzie’s—’

  ‘I’m fine. I just need your help. You’re at the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re doing the conference in the garden.’

  ‘I need to hear what’s said. Can you leave the line open and put your phone down near Newman?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  Dan switched on the phone’s speaker. There were a couple of bumps and thuds and some muffled, background conversation. Adam came to stand beside him, in the corner of the MIR.

  ‘Deputy Chief’s due in a couple of hours. I’d say we’ve got until five.’

  ‘Snap.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘That’s as late as I can leave it before I miraculously resurface. Hopefully to tell my editor I’ve been deep undercover but now I’m back with an exclusive on who killed the Edwards.’

  They were alone in the room, but Adam lowered his voice anyway.

  ‘What do you think about whether Katrina might have…’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. But I know we’ve got to check it.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And if Claire’s right, apart from being a flash of genius, it might just save us. On the subject of which…’ Dan nodded to a pile of papers in the other corner. ‘That’s Katrina’s stuff.’

  ‘No!’ Adam protested. ‘It could be personal, it could be confidential. I can’t possibly start going through a fellow officer’s notes.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s only our futures at stake.’

  Another silence. Both men looked around the room. At the felt boards, the clock, the windows, but never the papers in the corner.

  ‘I could do with a coffee,’ Dan said airily. He nodded to his phone. ‘It might ease the pain of what we’re about to hear.’

  ‘Good thought.’

  ‘But – oh darn.’

  There followed a vigorous display of pocket patting, which would have prompted derision even from a junior school drama class. ‘I don’t have any money.’

  Adam folded his arms. He somehow managed to produce a look which was both knowing and disapproving. ‘I suppose I’ll have to go, then.’

  From the phone’s speaker came the sound of chairs being shifted and background conversation. The door to the MIR clicked closed.

  Dan checked over his shoulder and walked nonchalantly across the room.

  ‘How messy,’ he said to himself at the hillock of papers. ‘These could do with tidying. But I’d better make sure there’s nothing important before I move them.’

  He checked through the pile. There were lists of the suspects’ alibis and details of which officers had been assigned to the various inquiries. Nothing interesting. But at the bottom he found a pocket notebook.

  It was full of the details of various cases, dating back a year. But towards the end, Dan found one page which was all doodles. In a variety of styles and sizes, time and again, were written the letters PP.

  The door opened and Adam returned, carrying two coffees. He made a point of shuffling in backwards.

  ‘Good timing,’ Dan said, from his seat on the windowsill. ‘The press conference is about to start.’

  ***

  A resonant voice broke from the phone’s speaker. It asked for quiet in a way that made it clear the words were an instruction, not a request.

  ‘Thomas Mortice,’ Adam observed. ‘The head of one of the local solicitors. They’re good – and expensive. Newman must be serious.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Mortice was saying. ‘You’ll be more than a little taken aback to learn my client, eminent local entrepreneur and tireless worker for a range of charities, is under arrest. Let me assure you, we believe this to be the most ridiculous folly on the part of the police. It is, perhaps, a bizarre reflex action which comes about because they are unable to bring to justice those who really did kill Martha and Brian Edwards. We will naturally be contesting the allegation robustly. However, given that Mr Newman is technically a suspect, I have advised him only to read a statement.’

  The speaker rustled and clicked. In the background, they could hear the whirring of camera motors. Dan could see each lens turning to find Newman. He would be sitting in a wheelchair, probably against a backdrop of flower beds, a sheet of paper in his hands, the smartly-suited figure of Mortice protectively by his side.

  Newman began in a voice which was quiet, but rang with indignation. It didn’t sound as though he was playing to the crowd.

  ‘I have always had the greatest respect for the law,’ he read. ‘I have always believed the British police have a very tough job, but that they do it marvellously well. When Annette was kidnapped I had every faith they would bring her home to me. I was indescribably grateful for their efforts.’

  Newman paused. Dan imagined him turning a page or working down to the next paragraph. Whoever wrote the script had done it well. First, build up your victim. Love them good. And then, in a second of turning, bring them crashing down.

  ‘But now,’ Newman continued. ‘Now…’

  Dan could see Mortice stretching out a reassuring arm, telling him it was right to go on, that what he had to say must be voiced. The cameras were tracking in their shots for the close up of Newman’s anguished face.

  These would be the words that counted. Repeated, time and again, on the radio, the television and the internet, reprinted in papers and magazines.

  ‘I’ve never committed a crime in my life,’ Newman went on. ‘But the police have somehow convinced themselves that I have. Despite the lack of any evidence wh
atsoever, they have accused me of killing the Edwards. Me, a grieving father. Me, without a stain on my character. Me. I have been accused of murder.’

  Again, his voice caught. The faint sound of trees whispering under a growing breeze slipped from the speaker. Adam was staring at it, unblinking, a hand pulling at his chin.

  ‘I hardly need say that I am entirely innocent,’ Newman continued. ‘I do, however, need to tell you that I find this accusation gross, disgusting and offensive. I have attempted to help the police in every way I can and this is how they react. It has shaken my faith in our police service terribly, which is why I asked you all here today. I felt I needed to speak out.’

  His voice was growing louder, the words more impassioned. Adam was shaking his head, but still staring at the phone’s tiny, grilled speaker.

  ‘I believe the police have accused me of this crime because they are too inept to find those actually responsible. I regret having to say this, but I feel I must. I believe the officers I have encountered are incompetent and should be removed from the case. I would also like to see disciplinary action taken, such has been their lamentable inability to do their jobs properly.’

  Newman paused for a breath, a drink of water. When he resumed the statement his voice was calmer, but the words no less powerful. ‘As an example of their incompetence, and I have personally witnessed this, the police appear to be relying not on experts in explosions, fires, experienced investigators, or any such thing… but instead on the advice of a local television reporter.’

  ***

  The rain began to fall, beating on the line of windows in the MIR. Dan and Adam stared out at the city. People were sheltering under briefcases and magazines, or with jackets pulled up over their heads.

  The rain poured into the ruined church as it had since those wartime years of destruction. Traffic began to tail back from the roundabout. Cars, buses and lorries switched on lights and wipers.

  On this September day, it felt as though summer was finally leaving the stage. Autumn was taking over, with winter waiting, gloating cold in the wings.