Hilary Bonner

by Braven

“Come on, Finchy,” he coaxed. “Don’t forget I first worked on the Marshall affair back in the seventies. I’m dying to hear what you think. Knowing you, you’ve got an opinion. And you’re not often wrong, mate, either. If the police had just a handful of guys as sharp as you, we wouldn’t have half the cock-ups.”

  “You’re right, you’re absolutely right, Johnno,” responded Finch with a gravity that suggested that Kelly had imparted some extraordinary truth rather than indulged in a buttering-up process which the sober Finch would at once have recognized for what it was.

  “So go on, then, waddya think?” Kelly persisted. “Has justice been done or not? C’mon, Solomon. Let’s have your wisdom.”

  Finch puffed up his chest self-importantly. It was that time of night. That time in his career, too. He leaned close to Kelly, everything about him conspiratorial. His breath stank of beer and Scotch. Kelly, born-again teetotal, albeit only because he had no choice, had to force himself not to recoil.

  “Actually, the bastard more or less told me he’d done it,” he said.

  Kelly felt a numbness that began in his belly and spread slowly throughout his body. It was a bit like a morphine injection except that it did nothing to relieve the tension in his neck and shoulders.

  “What do you mean?”

  Finch leaned even closer. “Well, you know how smug he is. I asked him if he really didn’t know where his other daughter was. He just sort of leered at me. ‘Oh, I know all right,’ he said. So I asked him if he was still in touch, in spite of what he’d said in court.”

  “‘Don’t be stupid, Jimmy,’ he replied. I could see it then, in his eyes. He’d had a few, you understand, we both had. But I was holding it better than him. More practice.”

  Kelly didn’t doubt it. Finch paused to take a deep swallow of his whisky. His hand was steady and he swayed only slightly as he lifted the glass. Kelly had no idea how much Scotch he’d drunk but he knew the old crime reporter had previously been on champagne for most of the day—and he was still functioning, although admittedly a little sluggishly.

  “Then I just asked him, outright, just like that, straight.”

  Finch took yet another drink.

  “Asked him what, Finchy?” prompted Kelly.

  “‘Did you do it, Richard? Did you kill her then, after all, her and her mother?’ Just like that I asked him.”

  Finch looked even more pleased with himself, nodded his head sagely and seemed disinclined to say any more.

  “So what did he reply, Finchy?” Kelly prompted again.

  “He said: ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’”

  “He said what?”

  “‘Is the Pope Catholic?’” Finch repeated. “‘Is the Pope fucking Catholic?’” And he smiled. “You gotta hand it to him, Johnno. That man has balls. Whatever else he is, by God, he’s got balls.”

  And with that Finch threw back his head and roared with laughter. It seemed a very long time before he stopped. This was one man who was completely untroubled by his involvement, albeit briefly, in the Marshall affair. Typical bloody tabloid hack, thought Kelly, conveniently forgetting for a moment his own turbulent tabloid past.

  “So did you tell anyone about this, Finchy?” he asked, trying to sound casual. “Did you tell the police?”

  “Are you frigging joking, Johnno? You’ve been out in the sticks too long, mate. We had a major story running.”

  “Yes, of course,” replied Kelly very seriously. “But we are talking murder here—”

  “Bollocks,” interrupted Finch. “None of my bleedin’ business.”

  “The murder of a young woman and her child, Finchy,” Kelly persisted. “The solving of a twenty-eight-year-old mystery. Wouldn’t that be an even bigger triumph for the old Soaraway?”

  “It’s in the too-difficult file, mate,” responded Finch. “Richard Marshall’s been up before the appeal court, for God’s sake, and the three wise men said that he’d been unjustly convicted and was innocent. Who am I to argue? Anyway, I didn’t have a tape on, it was late at night in the boozer. Who’d believe it?”

  Kelly looked the other man up and down. Drunk or sober, like him or loathe him, Jimmy Finch was a pro through and through.

  “I do, mate,” he said. “I believe it.”

  Midmorning the following day Karen received a phone call from John Kelly, who told her that he was calling from the train on his way home from London.

  “Wondered if you fancied a bite to eat tonight?” he enquired. “It’s been a while. It would be good to catch up. Anyway, I’ve something to tell you.”

  Karen accepted promptly. She was almost grateful. She knew Phil would not be able to see her at all that night. He had muttered something apologetic about a play at his daughter’s school. She didn’t like to think about those aspects of her lover’s life. It was enough that he could not be with her.

  It would be good, she thought, to spend time with Kelly. Their long friendship meant that they were easy with each other. He was one of the few people in the world she didn’t have to put on an act with. In addition, Kelly had said he had something to tell her. Kelly wasn’t a time-waster. Kelly knew how to give as well as how to take. And although his approach had been very casual, there had been something in his voice that had set her antennae waggling. Immediately she wondered if it had anything to do with the Richard Marshall case. It still weighed heavily on her mind, and she knew that it was important to Kelly, too. She might even find out why it was so important to him. There was certainly no doubt that Kelly cared. That had always been one of his problems, she thought wryly. He probably cared too much.

  Kelly suggested The Drum at Cockington, a pub in one of Devon’s prettiest thatched villages, which she had always liked in spite of the vast numbers of tourists who flocked to it. And he offered to pick her up in a taxi and take her there.

  “You may as well take advantage of me,” he told her. “As an enforced non-driver I don’t have any choice. Let me give you a lift in my cab, then at least you can have a drink.”

  Karen agreed with alacrity. So much so that she slightly worried herself. She did seem to be drinking more and more lately. A combination of the ups and downs of the Marshall case and her intense affair with Cooper seemed to be leading into what she knew was increasingly dangerous territory. She had always drunk for fun before. Nowadays she was all too often drinking to forget, or simply because she felt she needed alcohol.

  Her anxiety, however, was merely fleeting. She had put it firmly out of her head by the time she and Kelly arrived at the Drum, and she gratefully ordered a large gin and tonic.

  It was a fine May evening and she had enjoyed the brief taxi ride to picturesque Cockington which was yet to drown under the sea of another summer’s tourist wave. Things began exactly how she had hoped, with Kelly regaling her with old newspaper stories. Some of them Karen had heard before. It made no difference. Kelly was a great natural storyteller.

  They ordered steak-and-kidney puddings, individually cooked so that they arrived with their crusts unbroken, thus giving off a quite mouthwateringly aromatic burst of steam when you dug your fork in. She drank red wine with the meal. Kelly stuck to mineral water. Karen half-considered joining him. Then she told herself it would be a waste of his chauffeuring offer.

  It was only when they had both ordered coffee that Kelly became serious.

  “Look, Karen, I’ve got something to tell you,” he began. “I don’t know that it will do any good. But, well, you know I feel every bit as strongly about Marshall and all that has happened as you do, don’t you?”

  “I know you’re involved, Kelly, yes, I do.” She looked at him quizzically. “As for who cares most—well, it’s not a competition.”

  “Don’t be tricky,” he instructed.

  She grinned at him.

  He leaned back in his chair, and took a deep swig of his coffee before continuing. Karen knew him well. She guessed he was wishing it was a large Scotch. He had once told her that he didn’t think he would
ever stop missing alcohol.

  “I was up in London last night for a farewell do for one of my few remaining mates in The Street, Jimmy Finch,” he began. “Ended up having quite a conversation with him…”

  He paused, glancing at Karen to see if she registered the significance of what he had just told her. Karen looked blank. She didn’t have a clue who Jimmy Finch was.

  “He’s the Sun man who handled the Marshall buy-up.”

  Light dawned. Karen was interested now, all right.

  “Surprised you didn’t know the name from his byline—”

  “Just get on with it, Kelly,” muttered Karen. “Only journalists notice bylines. I’m surprised you haven’t learned that by now.”

  Kelly pulled a face at her.

  “Anyway, he was full of it,” he began. “It is the crime story of the year, after all, if not the decade, even if the Sun getting it was down to their chequebook rather than the skills of their journos. There was an element of gloating at first, but he’s sound, Jimmy Finch, and a bloody good reporter…”

  He told her all of it then. And although in many ways his story merely added weight to what she already believed, it was a whole different ball game to hear that Richard Marshall had actually damn near made a confession. Albeit in a pub after a skinful. There were, however, a number of points which bothered her.

  “The man’s not talked in almost thirty years,” she said. “He’s been interviewed again and again by some of the best in the business, he’s been cross-examined in court, and he’s stayed tight as a drum. Why on earth would he put himself at risk like that?”

  “I don’t think he saw any risk, and the bastard’s probably right, isn’t he?”

  “More than likely.” Karen sighed. “I don’t know if there’s any point, but this Jimmy Finch, if we looked him up would he go on the record with this?”

  Kelly shrugged. “I doubt it,” he said. “Finch is a wily old hand. He knows the law inside-out, and unlike prats like me and you, I suspect, he knows better than to ever get personally involved. He’s always just done his job like a sensible fellow. And if he and his newspaper go on record to say that Marshall has confessed, they put themselves in the wrong, don’t they? Newspapers aren’t supposed to pay money to criminals for anything, let alone a pack of lies about a murder. It’s a tightrope, Karen, and the Jimmy Finches of this world know exactly how to walk it.”

  Karen nodded. She knew the type well enough. “In any case, there’s no evidence, is there?” she said. “You’ve told me he didn’t tape what Marshall said.”

  “No chance. Marshall would never fall into that trap, even out of his brains.”

  “No.” She drained her red wine. “I’ll think about it overnight, Kelly,” she went on. “But I really don’t know what we’re going to be able to do about it, if anything.”

  The reporter shrugged again. “Neither do I,” he replied flatly. “I just thought you ought to know, that’s all.”

  “Thank you.” Karen stared at him hard. “There’s something else I’d like to know, Kelly. Why do you care so much about this one? You must have a reason.”

  Kelly smiled. “Not really. I just go back a long way with that bastard Marshall, same as you do.”

  He spoke easily enough, but Karen was somehow quite sure there was something he wasn’t telling her. The something that Bill Talbot had hinted at all that time ago in the pub. She made a mental note to call Bill the next day and find out exactly what her old boss had been getting at.

  First thing, though, she had another call to make. As soon as she got into her office she phoned the chief constable and passed on everything that Kelly had told her.

  “I just wanted you to be aware of this development, sir,” she told him.

  She could see no way that any action could sensibly be taken, but apart from anything else she was beginning to learn to play politics. Just a little. And about time, too, she reflected. She had a personal situation which might turn sour on her professionally at any time, and she had already had a very narrow escape over the Marshall affair. It could have ruined her career, and it still promised to do it little good. A good start in her determination not to let anything like it happen again was to try to improve her relationship with the CC, and at least keep him informed of everything, keep him up to speed at all times. That way triumphs and disasters were both at least partially shared and it was a lot less easy for the likes of Harry Tomlinson to make a scapegoat of her at will.

  Nonetheless, the chief constable’s response was exactly what she had expected.

  “Hardly a development, Karen,” he responded. “Even if this confession is kosher, we have no proof. And we don’t even know if the journalist is prepared to go on record. Isn’t that the sum of it?”

  “More or less,” she replied unenthusiastically. Put like that—and Harry Tomlinson would put it like that, of course—it did all sound a bit of a waste of time. She had, however, known that before she began her conversation with him.

  “Karen, even if this Jimmy Finch is prepared to go on the record about everything he was told, for God’s sake, indeed even if he had taped Marshall’s confession, well, the first question must be, is it a confession? ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ A good barrister would soon sort that out.”

  “Well, sir, maybe, but surely everyone understands the expression. It means you’re stating the obvious. It means, yes, of course.”

  “It’s ambiguous, at the very least. But, OK, even if you accept that, it still gets us nowhere. Not at the moment, anyway. Double jeopardy is still in place. You don’t overturn a six-hundred-year law overnight.”

  For once, Karen had to agree with her chief. And for once he was not even being his usual pompous belligerent self. Indeed, he sounded quite regretful. Perhaps some memories of what it was like to be a policeman did lurk in the recesses of his highly political brain after all, thought Karen. She also reflected that he’d been almost friendly. It seemed that her new approach, her expressed desire to keep her boss informed, had been remarkably effective. She and the CC finished their phone call on the best of terms, which, for them, in any situation let alone under the recent strained circumstances, was a real result, and Karen made a resolution to share her innermost thoughts with him more often. It was not, however, a resolution that she realistically expected to be able to stick to for long.

  Rather strangely, her conversation with the chief constable had cheered her up. Perhaps sharing the burden, even with Tomlinson, did work after all. She found herself chuckling as she picked up the phone to call Bill Talbot. The retired detective did not answer. Nether did his wife. And neither was any kind of message service connected.

  Karen replaced the telephone receiver on her desk and told herself that was fate. She would not bother Talbot again. What difference could John Kelly’s reasons for being so interested in the case make to anything, anyway? Particularly now. Talbot was probably being melodramatic. Kelly’s professional thirst alone was enough to drive him on with any story, as she knew perfectly well.

  There really was nothing more anybody could do about Marshall. It was infuriating, but that was that. The best thing for her and everyone else involved, including poor Sean MacDonald, was to try and forget all about it, to move on and get on with their lives. Hers was becoming quite complex enough without dwelling on the past. Apart from anything else, she needed to concentrate on her relationship with Phil Cooper and make sure that she was in charge of it rather than the other way round—although she feared it may already be too late for that.

  Her priority had to be the future. She could feel her life spiralling out of control and she didn’t like it. She needed to do some concentrated thinking, and not let her brain be entirely led by her heart and her body. She did not need the ghost of Clara Marshall, nor the ghost of a lost daughter she was equally sure had been murdered, to continue to haunt her. She had to exorcise them. And she also had to abandon the near-obsession with bringing Richard Marshall to justice which she
had harboured more or less throughout her career.

  It was over, she told herself. For better or worse, it was over.

  Part Three

  Chapter Sixteen

  Karen was, of course, completely wrong. It wasn’t over at all.

  Five weeks later, Richard Marshall was found dead in the apartment he still owned at Heron View Marina, Poole. He had been shot through the head with a single bullet from a revolver. No attempt had been made to conceal his body.

  Karen received the news by telephone from Dorset CID. It seemed that the alarm had been raised by the local postman, delivering a package, who had noticed that the front door to the flat was standing very slightly ajar. And when there was no reply from inside, after he had knocked several times and called out, he attempted to push the door fully open. It moved only three or four inches before he could push it no further. Something heavy seemed to be preventing it from opening. Peering through the gap, the postman had seen the body of a man lying just inside the hallway.

  “Oh, fuck,” muttered Karen to herself. And afterwards she sat very quietly and all alone in her office for several minutes. Her first reaction was shock. Pure shock. Her second, hard as she tried to prevent it, involved a certain sense of pleasure. She was glad Richard Marshall was dead. She couldn’t help it. She experienced a very strong feeling that a kind of justice had been done at last.

  For just a moment she indulged herself, allowed herself to revel in the knowledge of his sudden violent death. She hoped also that whoever had killed him had made sure that Marshall was quite aware that he was about to die, and why. She hoped he had known fear, just as his victims must have done. She hoped that when he had looked death in the eye he had been absolutely one hundred percent aware that his end had finally come.

  Karen sat with her fists clenched and her eyes closed, savouring the thought. After all this time, after all this heartache, she just couldn’t help it.

  Then, abruptly, her mind switched track. The police detective in her swung into action. “Whoever had killed him.” That was the rub. It was now her job and that of the Dorset police to find Marshall’s killer. And that thought brought her firmly back down to earth. She was suddenly acutely aware that Richard Marshall’s death could only be welcome if it did not create another victim. And there was little doubt that was exactly what it would do. Indeed, Marshall’s murderer was almost certainly a victim already, and probably about to become an even greater one.