by David Wilson
“I could smash your nose right now and give you bruises you’d be wearing for months, make you look like the loser in some grubby drunken pub brawl late at night – see that guy, someone’s given him a good kicking – and then I’d declare self-defence, no one the wiser, just so you know.” Knight let him go. “You’re really going to have to start giving a shit sometime Sandel, or you’ll end up in this prison whimpering and crawling around in your own shit wondering when it’ll ever end.”
“I can see your point,” said Sandel. He rearranged his jacket, brushing it down.
Knight returned to his chair behind the desk. “I think you do give a shit,” he said.
“I’ll give it a try,” said Sandel.
“You’re not a psycho like your best friend Brock are you?”
“That’s a matter of opinion. I’ll willingly submit to Rorschach testing if you like, I used to love doing those as a kid, they beat colouring in Spot the Dog.”
“You know your True Crime, right?” said Knight. “All those evil fuckers throughout history with fancy stupid nicknames, well I want to spin the wheel and stop it on the Kray Twins.” He watched Sandel, but he remained as passive as a bored tutorial student. “You’d have studied the Krays at college,” Knight continued. “You remember the book, The Profession of Violence, sharp suits, David Bailey portraits, organized crime as slick as a tightly run business, then on an industrial scale, but home boys both of them, loved their mum, don’t mess with women or children, you hear that last one?”
Sandel nodded.
“Otherwise there’s hell to pay, broken teeth and heads, smashed limbs, hammered-in kneecaps, all that’s just for touching my girl but what’s the price for killing a child? No halfway house there, no half measures, revenge and retribution, it’s absolute. But why stop at one, why not kill them all?”
Sandel shrugged. “Law of the jungle, boss.”
“No my friend, law of sweet fuck all, because killing means more killing and no one wants to reside in a charnel house sewer. And that’s what happened to the hoodlums the Kray Twins, their Savile Row swank began to niff a bit, they couldn’t clean off all the blood, they were doing too much slaughtering, they were killing too many people.”
“Bad move,” said Sandel.
“Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Sandel shook his head.
“Reggie was the softer Kray, followed his brother like a lost soul, loved his home life and his wife Frances, but she committed suicide it is said, and some reckon it was Ronnie who murdered her out of jealousy, just because he could, because it was too easy for him.”
“Not a chance.” Sandel suddenly looked nervous. “It doesn’t happen that way, it’d never happen to me.”
“There's a girl who works in admin here, her father was involved with the Krays, she knows all about an eye for an eye, except her dad’s dead and her husband’s fucked off; she’s got no one to turn to. Eventually she meets the man of her dreams, someone who can heal her, her warrior in shining armour, he’ll do anything for her, her name’s Liz Duffield and she’s the mother of a two-year-old girl.”
“Not my game anymore, changed suit, chicks not my thing, you know what I mean?” Sandel was shifting in his chair, biting his bottom lip.
“It’s a matter of record,” said Knight. “And we have the facts in our possession, that you are the father of two-year-old Harriet whose mother is Liz Duffield who you met when you were training in Wakefield at the Prison Service Training College. You are that chivalrous knight Sandel and I’ll wager you’ll do anything to protect Liz and Harriet from all the appalling sins of the world. We are interviewing Liz Duffield as we speak.”
Sandel went white. “You lay off her, none of this is her doing.”
“But there’s some serious dynamite motive though isn’t there, Sandel, and you’re up to it to the hilt, and I’m guessing if you don’t tell me everything you know, Liz and Harriet are going to get hurt and they won’t be the only ones. Like I said, Ronnie Kray was a jealous guy, he was out of control, started killing the loved ones of those he loved. Where is Brock?”
Sandel sat on the edge of his seat with his head in his hands. “I don’t know Guv, seriously, after the Walker stunt he went missing, we were on nights, but he often does this, just disappears, could have stayed with a friend?”
“You two living together?” said Knight.
Sandel stared at him hard. “Yes.”
“Brock the jealous type?”
“And some.”
“So Harriet could be in danger?”
“I’ve never thought of it that way, he’s always been loyal to me, if he lost his head, then maybe nothing’s inconceivable.”
“Like he’s lost his head now and done all those things?”
“Done what?”
“Committed all these murders, want me to list them?”
“You have fuck-all evidence.”
“We have all the evidence we need.” Knight was lying. “We’ve spoken to Liz. We’re out looking for Brock, every cop in the country. Who’s looking after Harriet?”
“A childminder, name of Collette, she’s with her all day.”
“What’s the address? I’ll get a car round there now, in the meantime I want every scrap of your story either here or under arrest at the cop station where you’ll be interviewed by a couple of head bangers who might not be so considerate, who might take their time about things, might not be so concerned about collateral damage.”
“I don’t want Liz taken down by this.”
“She won’t be if we have an understanding.”
“If anything happens to Harriet…” Sandel was clenching his fists.
“She’s in your hands, only you can stop this.”
Chapter Forty-Five
“You’re not pulling in Sandel are you?” said Liz. She took a tissue from the box on the table in Kate’s office and dabbed her eyes.
“This is a police investigation,” said Kate, “I’ve no control over what they do, I’m just the resident shrink.”
“But they’re blundering idiots, they don’t have a clue about how things work between people.”
“How did you meet him?”
“In a pub, have you ever been to Wakefield? Well it’s grotty, but the people are friendly. An old guy stopped me in the street there once and said how pretty I was, and walked off, nothing creepy.”
“Well you are.”
Liz looked up and thought for a moment. “Sandel, I was on my own in a corner of the pub reading a book, I didn’t want anyone to think I wanted company, these two guys came over, sat down at my table with their pints, said do you mind if we join you, I said yes I do, please fuck off and one of them laughed, the other one said fair enough, but they both stayed. Sandel was gentle, dreamy, placid waters, attentive, sunny, I gave him no quarter, mocking his ridiculous garb, his leather jacket, his Dean/Brando rebel chic, such a cliché, everything about him was a cliché, his stupid job, but it was water off a duck’s back, I think he liked being beaten up, I was much older than him.”
“And Brock?”
Liz hesitated.
“The other guy was Will Brock I’m guessing,” said Kate.
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
“Quiet, serious, didn’t say much but when he did he cut to the bone, it was unnerving, he spoke quickly like he was running out of time, like there was a fight going on in his head and he was eager to get the knockout punch in. Then he’d stop talking and look at you like he was memorizing a deck of cards so he’d know which ones you were going to deal next. He had the same job as Sandel, but he said he was on a higher mission, which made Sandel snort into his beer which earned him a pretty hard dead arm from Brock. I thought they were gay. Obviously it was not as simple as that. I went back to their flat, stayed the night in Sandel’s bed. He was sweet, but I ended up pregnant the first time. Christ.” Liz gulped some air, but didn’t quite hold back her tears. “Fucking, fucking life,” she w
iped her eyes with the tissue. “Swings and roundabouts, the merry-go-round of hell. Sandel stayed with me though, for as long as he could, he’s loyal, a diamond. And I have Harriet, she is everything.”
“And then?”
“When Chris moved in with Brock we made an agreement with him about access, Brock was generous, he understood, he loves Harriet.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, why do you question that? What do you know?”
Kate held up her hands. “Go on,” she said. “Mazurski?”
“Fuck’s sake, I told Sandel all about that, he was incensed, he told Brock, that’s all I know.”
“So they decided to kill Mazurski for murdering your boy Sammy, natural justice?” said Kate. “That’s why they signed up to Greenbank?”
Liz was breathing heavily.
“You’re the prison psychologist, did you treat Mazurski?”
“I can’t say, I treat a whole host of people, my work is protected under client confidentiality.”
“But he’s dead for fuck’s sake.”
“The privilege still applies.”
“I sure as hell didn’t have that privilege when Sammy was murdered, every gruesome detail pored over by the press for months, we were doorstepped can you imagine that? The press salivating over the entrails of a story that had every juicy ingredient, like butchers in an abattoir, a feeding frenzy, then all over again when Mazurzki goes to trial, pleads not guilty so it drags on endlessly with evidence and microscopic examination of horror upon unspoken horror. What did you find out about Mazurski, how did his brain work, did it slither along the floor leaving trails of slime? How do you live with yourself? How do you sleep at night digging into the minds of these monsters?”
“I understand what you’re saying, but we’re trying to make them better, trying to make things better, that’s all we can do.”
“But you spoke to Mazurski didn’t you? Did you ask him how he felt when Sammy died?” Liz rose to her feet. “Did you? Did you say, ‘There, there it’s all right now.’?” Liz moved closer to Kate who remained seated. “Because if you did…” Liz suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Kate by the throat, pressing her thumbs into her windpipe. Kate fumbled for the panic button under her desk but couldn’t reach it. There were stars dancing before her eyes, she couldn’t breathe.
*
“The car’s in place,” said Knight. “Outside the house, there’s no sign of trouble. We have a PC and a WPC keeping an eye on things. They’ve spoken to Liz’s childminder Collette and they’ve chatted to Harriet who is in good spirits, it’s all as it should be. The cops will hang around until I tell them to leave. They are armed with batons only but I’ve alerted the firearms unit to the potential flashpoints of the situation and they are on standby.”
“And Liz?” said Sandel.
“She’s with our psychologist who you know, Kate Crowther, nothing formal, a gentle counselling session, she is safe.”
“I reserve the right to call on the services of our venerable legal profession should I wish to exercise that option,” said Sandel.
“Your choice, but if you do, that car outside Liz’s place mysteriously disappears.”
Sandel looked drained, from king of the universe to lousy grass, he’d taken too many wrong turnings and the full magnitude of his disorientation was beginning to dawn on him. He stared into space, his moral compass shot to pieces. There were two people he said he’d die for, his daughter and her mother, and he would do so still.
“Tell me about Will Brock,” said Knight.
“Met at the POINT course in Wakefield, you know all this, you’ve done your background research.”
“I want to hear it from you, I’m recording it all.”
“Bikes initially, anyone fanatical about motorcycling is an instant soulmate, you know what I mean? You just get it, life choices, risks, cheating the reaper, the style, the sound, the smell, you journey down a different road to everyone else. We had that. He’s wild though, pushing everything to its breaking point. I can’t keep up sometimes, he wants the essence of things, devours them whole, and wants more. People were magnetized by him, he had this other-worldly energy, they wanted some of his supernatural gold dust, they wanted to be changed by him, but he was a lone wolf, didn’t want any company.”
“And then you come along.”
“Yeah, he liked me. He needed a travelling companion, someone to set warp speed to the power of the sun.”
“You fall for that shit?”
“It’s a line from some crappy drone metal band song, hippie shit.”
“Liz and Harriet, how did he react?”
“Loved them both, initially. Liz is the funniest, smartest girl you’ll ever meet, takes no shit, gives it back tenfold, a temper on her mind, but Will loved that. Harriet he adored but there was tension sometime later. I could see it coming. I was torn in two. He didn’t want me to get hurt. I went with him.”
“Mazurski?”
“That’s when Will broke apart, drew me in, set up the iron circle binding us together. Liz told me the story about Sammy’s murder, Mazurski, the whole damn sorry state of it all, I told Will, he went a bit insane, went missing for three days, came back, said he was acting out his anger, took drugs and shit, concocting a plan, something had triggered inside him, he wasn’t the same. It was around this time he found out that his father wasn’t his father, he’d been brought up by his uncle, all his youth was a lie, he uncoupled then, like an express train losing its carriages, all those sweet memories were a fraud, no one could tell him who his father was, or no one would. He confronted his uncle and mother, he didn’t want to hurt them, he took a week off, went to the public records office, tried to track his father down, drew a blank, that’s what he told me. He laughed it off, ‘Now I’m accountable to no one, I’m free to do my thing, shape my destiny,’ that kind of crap. But he was deeply ashamed, he felt abandoned, I could tell. His father gave him away, he must have hated him so much to do that, do you know how that must feel? Brock’s a fastidious man, doesn’t like mess of any kind. He said if he ever found his father, he’d kill him.”
“You chose to live with that?” said Knight.
“I don’t cut and run, my friend, I’m a loyal partner, but I thought it was all talk.”
“Did he find his father?”
“I don’t know, if he did he never told me.”
“So when did the killing start?”
“Oh man,” Sandel clutched his temples and shook his head, trying to shake out the looming ugliness, stop his mind going blank, shutting down, denying everything. “The clock is never going into reverse, you look back and you say, ‘How did I get here?’ Decisions you make you’re not even aware you’re making them. Will loved the sixties thing, the promise of hope and love and peace, healing the wounds of childhood, standing up to your parents’ betrayal. His icon for a while was Charles Manson.”
“You’re kidding, the guy is a fruitcake, a dangerous, antisocial, murderous basket case. You were being led into some very deep waters, son.”
“It’s, it’s… one of those things, man, like a lunar eclipse, fucking weird and scary but you have to live with it when it comes along. Manson had a vision, he had followers, his cult extended to everything you ever dreamed of, but first he had to strip away the rottenness, destroy the bloated corpses of the system, dismantle the machinery that kept it alive. That’s why Manson targeted Hollywood, the factory of lies and charlatans, the low grade, the scum, the cheats, the spiritual thieves, they all thrived in that theatre of human baseness. I can hear his voice now, Will saying all this, pacing the room, a prophet of a new dawn, his ideas searing me like a brand on the skin.”
Knight looked at his watch. “Let’s jump forward. Mazurski, he was the reason you came to Greenbank? A liberal establishment promoting therapy, restoration, but full of lifers, not the obvious place for a guru of enlightenment.”
“Yeah, we came here to make a difference, a different kin
d of difference, teach a few lessons, some home truths, draw the lines. The new chap Munro, he was tough, a hardliner, we were going to fit in, spoke the same language, get access and promotion. But first we had a score to settle.”
“And you went along with it?”
“I did. But only Mazurski.”
“But why did you kill Danny? And Clark? And Walker? Did you assist in McCabe’s suicide? And what about Wooldridge and Penny? And tell me pal, and tell me quick, what about Bobby Lomas, why did you spring him, what’s his role in all this?”
Chapter Forty-Six
Lomas rolled himself into a ball clutching his hand. The water from the stream running down the middle of the room was flowing over his face, the grime entering his nose and mouth, threatening to drown him. He coughed and spluttered and roared at the top of his voice like a supplicant at an ancient godless ritual terrified of the malevolent spirits he’d called up. He crawled back to the staircase and hauled himself onto the bottom step where he rested his head on his arms.
Morag picked up the knife that Lomas had dropped to the floor. She was trembling. She felt its weight, touched the pinpoint of its tip. She looked over at Lomas, a pathetic weak old man, how many strikes would it take to kill him? Three, four, a dozen? Watching him die there, slowly, rivers of blood cascading along the brickwork of the damp floor. She walked towards him, the knife held out in front of her in both hands like a bayonet.
Lomas looked up. “Plucky girl. You don’t deserve to die.” He beckoned her forward. “Give me the knife, or stab me here, here and here.” He punched his chest around his heart. “Twist and lift on each stroke, destroy the flesh, make it a kill and do it quickly, you’ll never get a second chance. If you hesitate I’ll take the knife off you and all will be lost.”
Morag felt sick, rooted to the spot with terror. She held the weapon above her head and tried to move closer. No act like this could be premeditated. She wanted desperately to raise her anger, blank her mind, stop the world from spinning, stop the rain from falling, the sun from shining, allow an everlasting darkness to envelop her.