Death and Deception

by B. A. Steadman

  Through the window, Hellier watched the slow disintegration of the boy’s fragile poise as he waited for the solicitor to arrive. No sneaking in for a quick chat now, everything had to be done by the book. Hard to believe that the sobbing wreck behind the window, was a vicious, conniving little killer.

  Vanessa Redmond bustled down the corridor. She seemed subdued this morning, lacking her usual peremptory bluster.

  ‘It seems you were right, Inspector, you should have kept him in overnight. Still, no harm done, eh?’

  Dan glanced sideways at her.

  ‘No harm if you don’t count him being beaten up by the girl’s father as harm.’

  He saw her frown. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Redmond,’ before she got going, ‘I don’t blame you. You were just doing your job. It was my fault. I should never have allowed him out of the building. That won’t happen again on my watch, I can assure you.’

  Her raised eyebrow suggested he had made an enemy, but, frankly, he didn’t care.

  ‘Where’s Mrs May?’ said Vanessa.

  ‘She doesn’t want to be in the interview, so she’s in the little ante-room with a cup of tea. Shall we go in?’

  When they opened the door, the boy was slumped over the table, sobbing like a child. He lifted his head when he saw Vanessa Redmond.

  ‘I never meant to kill her, Miss. I loved her. She fought so hard and I didn’t know…I didn’t know she couldn’t breathe.’

  Jed Abrams sat in the Interview Room. He leant his elbows on the table and joined his palms as if in prayer. Dan checked his watch. It was 11.07 a.m. He observed Abrams through the window. Left it a bit late to ask for divine guidance, mate, he thought. Oliver arrived in the wake of the same duty solicitor that had appeared for Jenna the night before. Dan nodded at him,

  ‘Busy couple of days for you, Paul.’

  ‘Yeah, but got a feeling this one’s going to be a damn sight more fun than that poor kid last night.’ They laughed.

  Oliver sniffed at them.

  ‘Appropriate responses, please gentlemen. Fix your faces before we go in.’

  Abrams spun round as the door opened, relief at seeing his brief, mixed with loathing for the police officers.

  Dan smiled once more as he settled himself at the table and began the recording.

  ‘So, Mr Abrams, shall we start all over again? And, shall we have the truth this time? Because if you bullshit us this time, well, I guess it will go very badly for you, indeed.’

  Abrams licked his lips and tried to catch the solicitor’s eye. ‘Maybe we could do a deal, if I agree to co-operate?’

  ‘Oooh, no. Too late for deals. We’ve got the lot, DVD’s, recorders, the Latvians, the children, the paedophiles… What kind of deal could you offer us?’ Dan grinned and shook his head.

  ‘Mr Abrams,’ said DCS Oliver, ‘What we want from you is a full and frank confession, and then we will place you in the hands of the legal system, which has the reputation as being the best in the world for offering a fair trial to anybody, regardless of what they may have done.’

  Then she smiled, too. ‘Let’s make a start, shall we?’

  The buzz in the station seemed to be pouring out of the walls. The gossip machine had got cracking as soon as Dan had charged Jamie May, and he and Oliver had promised the gathered news teams a conference, before the day was out. They had stoutly refused to be bullied into giving anything away except that they had the murderer, and all those involved, under arrest.

  There was cheering and whooping as they walked back into the Incident Room. The whole team seemed to be back from their jobs, wherever they had been sent earlier in the day.

  Oliver took Dan by the elbow and walked him towards a corner.

  ‘Enjoy this feeling, Dan. Tell them how brilliant they were and make sure you buy them a drink. You don’t get many double results in this job. I’ll get started on your disciplinary interview, it should go better for you after such a good result.’

  She looked at his stricken face. ‘Trust me, it’ll be fine. Oh, and take a week or so off, so your feet get better, to give me time to sort things out. I’ll call you in as soon as I can fix a date. I’d better get this confession processed.’

  She gave him a wry smile, waved at the assembled team and headed alone up to her office, back held straight as usual.

  Dan looked around the room, crowded now with files and paper and people and waited for a semblance of quiet. He perched in his usual place on the edge of the table. Slowly, the team put down their papers, looked up from their computers and focussed on him.

  ‘You were fantastic,’ he said. ‘I could not have done this without you. I feel lucky and proud to have you all in my team, especially when I act like an arrogant twat.’ He nodded towards Sally Ellis. ‘Luckily, I’ve got Sally to put me straight, and I will listen in future, Sal, or you have permission to beat me over the head with the Code of Conduct.’

  Cheers rounded the room.

  ‘Drinks are on me tomorrow night. Not tonight, because I don’t know about you, but for some reason, I’m a little knackered. Oh,’ he added, ‘and get a late night pass – we need to give Ian a proper send off and no-one escapes sober.’ He swivelled his eyes towards the corner desk. ‘Yes, PC Singh, I am looking at you.’

  ‘I don’t drink, sir,’ she replied, and looked up at him under her eyebrows, brown eyes giving nothing away. ‘Just kidding- large vodka tonic will do nicely. I can almost taste it now,’ she sighed. ‘And can we go for a curry first, just so you blokes don’t get bladdered too early in the evening and have to be driven home by your long-suffering wives?’

  Dan laughed. ‘You’ll do, Lizzie. You’ll do very well. Lizzie is in charge of Friday night, folks. Get the kitty started.

  ‘Right, do your reports first, then bugger off home. I’m off with the Super to talk to the press.’

  ‘At least you didn’t sustain damage to your face in the carrying out of your duties, Boss,’ said Bill Larcombe. ‘Couldn’t have you on the telly not looking your best.’ He and Ben Bennett, sitting next to each other as usual, shook their heads in unison. ‘Wouldn’t do.’ They clanked their mugs and saluted him. Everybody else cheered and wolf-whistled.

  Dan felt a flush begin to rise up from his neck.

  ‘Alright, leave it out,’ he said. But inside he glowed. ‘Let’s put this to bed before we put ourselves there, eh? Sally, I want the results of the Jenna Braithwaite interview ready on my desk for when I get back. Half an hour, OK?’ And with that he escaped to the relatively normal world of the press conference.

  Sally had wound up the interview with Jenna Braithwaite as soon as she had heard about the arrest and charging of Jamie May. Regarding the murder of her sister, she had gathered enough from the weeping girl to make a witness statement that would stand up in court.

  She would leave it to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection team to get the statement they needed for the prosecution of the paedophile ring. That would be a much longer process. Jenna had a strong sense of loyalty towards those who had abused her, and as yet, little understanding of why what they had done to her, and to many other children, was so wrong.

  Time and counselling would help, she supposed. Although, she was not very hopeful for Jenna as she had seen too many young girls get a taste for the life before drug addiction and disease finished them off.

  Sally had left Jenna with her father and the social worker. A lot of talking would need to be done to heal some old wounds in that family.

  Quietly, before she left the room, Sally had handed the girl her mother’s phone number. It was up to Jenna now. She turned to her computer and opened a fresh page.

  Bill Larcombe caught Dan as he entered the Incident Room half an hour later.

  ‘Pelakais and Sarkov are going to co-operate fully with the police enquiry, in return for asylum for them and their families, and the Latvian Police are sending a senior officer to help process the case against Akis,
who looks like she will survive.’ He chuckled. ‘The Latvian officer was dead chuffed when I mentioned that we’d captured Irina Akis. They’ve wanted to close down her father for years, and now they might have the opportunity. Seems like Pavels Akis has police and ministers in his pocket, and runs his business like the Mafia - drugs, money-laundering, child and Internet porn you name it. If it’s filthy, he’s got his hand in it.’

  Bill shuffled the notes in his hands and looked down at them. ‘Good job, Boss.’

  Dan nodded his thanks as Bill added the report to the Mind Map. At least one part of this investigation had gone well, and everybody who mattered was safe. Part of him wished they had killed Irina Akis. He knew she would cause trouble when they tried to deport her.

  He surveyed the map on the whiteboard. All the links had been there from the start, but it was pulling together the strands that made him love this job, even when he was hating it.

  He headed for Sally’s desk. She’d finished her report and had left it for him with a KitKat balanced on top. He unwrapped the chocolate bar and ate it two fingers at a time while he scanned the transcript of the interview with Jenna Braithwaite. Maybe, his next case might give him time to eat a proper meal every now and then. They can’t all be so frantic, he thought. Can they?

  Reluctantly, he drew his phone from his pocket and perched on the edge of Sally’s desk. No time like the present, he thought, and thumbed through to his mum’s number. At least I can give her some good news with the bad..

  Chapter 41

  Date: Saturday May 6th Time: 11.00 St Michael and All Angels, Church Street, Heavitree, Exeter

  The funeral of Detective Chief Inspector Ian Gould took place in St Michael and All Angels Church, close to where he and Marilyn had lived for over thirty years. Dan arrived early and stood under the big old yew tree that legend said was where the last witches were hanged in Exeter. He didn’t believe it. The tree was too small to be that old. He stood back as dignitaries and the press trampled over old graves and crushed spring flowers as they made their sombre way inside. He liked the solid stone and square tower. He hoped Marilyn found some comfort in its cool stillness.

  The funeral car came last of all. Dan put his head down and slipped inside as the hearse drew up to the doors of the church.

  He found a space towards the back of the church, and listened to the organist playing something that sounded modern, maybe Debussy. Although not a believer, nor a churchgoer, Dan liked being in churches. The faintly musty smell and the stripes of dusty light through the long, ornate windows evoked something in him that he didn’t really have words for. It was the same with church music. He’d loved going to concerts in churches with his parents when he was young. Choral music gave him shivers in a way that the blues and rock he favoured nowadays never could.

  An Honour Guard of uniformed officers from the Exeter Police Service stood at the end of each pew and saluted as the coffin passed, followed by the family and the Vicar. Dan felt his emotions, so carefully battened down, begin to break free. He wanted forgiveness, but it wasn’t on offer from anyone in that building. He scrubbed at his eyes and examined the stained glass panel to his right until his breathing settled down.

  He spotted Julie Oliver at the front near the family, looking serious and commanding in her black uniform. She stood to give the eulogy and managed to raise several laughs and many tears with stories of Ian’s long career in the force.

  Marilyn Gould was flanked by her pregnant daughter and son-in-law. Dan had still not been able to speak to Marilyn. The hatred in her eyes was unrelenting, and he didn’t know what he could say to her to make it better. In her eyes, the death of her husband would always be his fault, and he would have to live with that.

  Assistant Chief Constable Pallister was there. In the front row, of course, standing next to the local MP. He’d obviously spotted a photo opp. Bill and Ben were to his right, with their wives. Lizzie Singh was standing with Sam Knowles and Adam Foster a couple of rows in front of Dan, their crisp and still-new dress uniforms shining black and silver in the barred light seeping into the shadowy side of the church.

  He craned his head to the right, looking for Sally, and registered a wheelchair parked in the aisle before he realised it was Chas Lloyd, there with her parents. Mr Lloyd, a lay preacher, sang all the hymns with a lusty verve and prayed as loudly as the Vicar. Chas flicked Dan a swift glance, but dropped her head before he could acknowledge her. He didn’t mind her being there. It was good that she wanted to pay her respects. She would have her whole life to atone, poor kid.

  Campbell Fox stood at least a head above everyone else in the church. He dabbed his eyes and blew his nose at each hymn and prayer, and Dan felt the clutch of shame round his heart once more. He would be a better policeman from now on. He would.

  From behind him, he heard the sound of a small child arguing with its sibling, and the urgent, quiet shushing of a parent. He realised that Sally had brought her family, but positioned herself for a quick exit near the rear door if they became troublesome. For a moment, he felt a pang of envy for her normal family life.

  Finally, his gaze came to rest on the shining gold head in the row in front of him. Claire Quick sensed that he was staring at her and looked round, giving him a small smile of sympathy. He had no idea why she had wanted to come to the funeral, but he was glad she had. He thought that maybe, if he was lucky and didn’t make a total tit of himself, she might agree to go out for a drink with him sometime. That thought carried him through the rest of the service.

  The service continued until at last the coffin was slowly wheeled down the aisle towards the waiting hearse.

  A ripple of soft sobs echoed around the church as the congregation stood to see him pass with his family trailing behind.

  The wake was to be held in Ian’s favourite pub, The Barn Owl, but Dan wasn’t intending to go, he knew he wouldn’t be welcome.

  With quiet insistence, Dan’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He lifted it out and put it to his ear as unobtrusively as he could. It was Sergeant White.

  ‘Sir?’

  Dan watched Claire leaving the church. She turned, waved and gave him a little questioning smile.

  ‘Sir? Are you there?’

  Dan waved back and, indicating the phone, shook his head and smiled, shoulders lifting into a shrug. Claire made a ‘call me’ gesture and his heart sang, as she walked out alone into the sunlight.

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Colin. What can I do for you?’

  White sounded relieved. ‘Some idiot teenager is shooting at passers-by with an air rifle. Refusing to put down the weapon. Has your sick leave finished yet, and if so, could you come back to the station straightaway, as there doesn’t seem to be any bugger about?’

  End of Book 1

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