Relentless: A Novel

by Simon Kernick

  I nodded and shook her outstretched hand. The male detective didn’t bother putting out his. It was clear he didn’t believe everything I’d told him. Well, fuck you, laughing boy, believe what you want. When you’d been through what I’d been through in the past day, it took more than some fast-track graduate with a sharp suit and a cocky attitude to scare you.

  When I was outside in the main reception area, I sat down on one of a row of empty seats to wait for the lift back to town the female detective had promised me. The place was quiet, courtesy, I suppose, of it being a Sunday morning – not a peak time for criminal activity. No-one was being booked in and there was only the odd hooded delinquent hanging around, waiting to be seen by his bail officer. I remembered that I’d started smoking again, and experienced an unwelcome urge for a cigarette, although even if I’d had any it wouldn’t have made any difference. This part of the station was non-smoking, which seemed a little unfair to me. The least you could offer a person you were incarcerating, potentially for some time, was a smoke to ease them through the situation.

  ‘Mr Meron, how are you doing?’ said a voice nearby, interrupting my thoughts.

  I looked up to see DCI Rory Caplin, one of the two men who’d interviewed me about Vanessa Blake’s murder, seventeen hours and a lifetime ago. His red-grey hair was looking even more dishevelled than usual and he was dressed casually in jeans and a black leather jacket that was too short to be fashionable.

  ‘I’m here to give you a lift over to the hospital to see your kids,’ he said with the kind of sympathetic smile I’d been getting from people all morning. On him, though, it could just about pass for genuine.

  I yawned. ‘I’m surprised they’re using a man of your seniority for that.’

  ‘My colleagues are interviewing your wife, and doing a fine job of it. I’ve got to get back to the station, and it’s on the way.’ He had his keys in his hand. ‘Come on. I’ve got a lot on today.’

  ‘Have you found the guy who attacked me in the library yet?’ I asked as we walked out together through the main doors.

  ‘Not yet, no. We haven’t had any witness sightings of him either, and we’ve already taken a number of statements.’ He made little attempt to hide the scepticism in his voice.

  ‘I’m not making it up, Mr Caplin. I was attacked by a man who was holding the murder weapon. The filleting knife you showed me yesterday in the interview.’

  ‘The one with your wife’s prints on it. Yes, I know. But the answer remains that we haven’t found him yet.’

  We walked towards Caplin’s car. It was a green-gold Toyota saloon with plenty of mud stains up the sides. He unlocked it, and we both got inside. It smelled of air freshener and smoke.

  ‘Have you found any other clues that might lead you to the killer?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, we have,’ he said, starting the engine and pulling away.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Care to elaborate?’ I said eventually.

  ‘Vanessa Blake was having an affair. We discovered correspondence at her house that suggested very strongly that she and her married lover were going to be moving in together in the very near future.’

  ‘And have you questioned him yet?’ I asked as we pulled out onto the road.

  ‘We’re questioning her now,’ he answered, and this time the expression on his face really did convey genuine sympathy. ‘I hate to have to say this, Mr Meron, but the lover in question was your wife.’

  52

  Mike Bolt had interviewed dozens, scores, hundreds of criminals down the years and he knew every interrogation technique backwards. Just like, he suspected, the man he’d killed an hour earlier. The secret was to believe the story you were telling. And if you go over it in your head enough, you will do, even if it’s a lie. And what Bolt was saying was definitely a lie.

  When they brought him to Reading police station for questioning – he wasn’t actually arrested, but realistically he’d had little choice in the matter – his interrogators, men from Reading CID, had questioned him repeatedly about his version of events, trying to sound like they were his friends, but also trying, like any good coppers, to find holes in his story. But he’d stuck to it like glue. The man he’d shot – armed, and dressed in a balaclava – had jumped through the kitchen window and fled through the garden of the property and into the field beyond. Knowing that the suspect had a gun and was prepared to use it, he, Bolt, had picked up the Browning with the silencer that Tom Meron had allegedly fired in an exchange of shots with the suspect, and given chase. Because the suspect was already wounded, his progress was slow and Bolt had quickly got to within a few yards of him. At this point they were in the field and he had already shouted to him twice to drop his weapon. The suspect had then swung round, gun in hand, looking as if he was going to shoot. Bolt, still moving, had fired off a round that had caught him in the belly. However, the suspect was still upright and pointing his own weapon in Bolt’s direction, so he’d come to a halt, taken aim and fired again, this time hitting him in the head. The suspect had fallen and, hearing the arrival of police reinforcements, Bolt had walked briskly back in the direction of the house to call for first aid.

  It was a plausible enough sequence of events, and with Bolt making no mistakes in his recounting of it, the interrogating officers had no grounds for further action. It was an extremely unorthodox situation however, and no-one in the British police service likes those. He was informed that the matter had been referred automatically to the IPCC, the Independent Police Complaints Authority, and that he would have to make himself available to them whenever they wished to speak with him. He told them that he understood all that, and was advised to remain in the interview room because his boss from the NCS, DCS Steve Evans, had just arrived at the station and would shortly be on his way over to speak to him. He took the cup of coffee on offer, his third, and waited.

  He didn’t feel bad lying, but he did feel depressed that he’d been put in a position where he’d had to kill a man, essentially in cold blood. He felt a sense of shock at what he’d done because ending someone’s life, however much they might deserve it, is always a terrible act that hits any man with a conscience very hard. You have destroyed someone, taken away every dream, emotion and memory that person ever had. It was an awe-inspiring thought, and for Bolt perhaps even more so, as it went against all his training as an enforcer of the law. But it had been done, and he hoped that as a result two innocent lives had been saved.

  They hadn’t told him whether or not the Merons’ children had been freed safely, and he hadn’t asked, because in his version of events he hadn’t spoken to the gunman, but his gut feeling was that they were OK. No criminal wants to murder two young children unless he absolutely has to. The fall-out is simply too great. But Bolt hadn’t wanted to take the risk. He told himself once again that he’d done the right thing. He kept repeating it. Staring at the coffee and repeating it over and over in his mind. You did the right thing. He deserved it. You did the right thing.

  There was a knock on the door and DCS Evans came into the room. He was a short, compact man in his late forties with a well-groomed military-style moustache. Even today, on his day off, he was sporting a neatly pressed suit, shirt and tie. If either his first or last names had begun with a D he would forever have been lumped with the prefix ‘dapper’, but Dapper Steve didn’t have much of a ring to it, so he remained plain old DCS Evans. Bolt had met him on several occasions and was confident that, unlike a lot of the senior figures in the police service, he had the best interests of his men at heart, and was prepared to stand up for them. Which, under the circumstances, was no bad thing.

  Bolt stood up as he entered and they shook hands. The DCS’s grip was only one rung down from painful, his palm dry.

  ‘Hello, Mike,’ he said, looking Bolt squarely in the eye. ‘Bearing up?’

  ‘Just about. It’s not a lot of fun being on the wrong end of the questions for once.’

  Evans moved past him and to
ok a seat at the other end of the table. Bolt took a sip from his coffee. It was tepid and weak, but he took another sip anyway.

  ‘It’s always a tough call having to make the decision to pull the trigger,’ said the DCS. ‘Very few of us ever get put in that position. Even fewer get put in it twice.’

  Bolt didn’t say anything. There wasn’t a lot he felt he could say. He knew that as a young man Evans had served in the Falklands, and was a veteran of the battle of Goose Green, where he’d undoubtedly had to make the decision to pull the trigger, so at least he wasn’t spouting the usual ‘I feel your pain’ bullshit you got from some of the Brass.

  ‘Because this is the second fatal shooting incident in your career,’ Evans continued, ‘and because you were using an unauthorized weapon when you opened fire, there’s going to be even closer scrutiny of your actions than would otherwise be the case. The PCC are going to be going over your story again and again. You’ve got to be prepared for that.’

  ‘I’m prepared, sir,’ said Bolt. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘I’m not saying you did, Mike. In fact, I’m sure you didn’t. You’ve had an unblemished career spanning seventeen years, and you’re a hugely valuable member of our team. But not everyone thinks like we do, and at the moment, given the circumstances, I’ve got no choice but to suspend you from duty on full pay.’

  Bolt shook his head angrily. ‘Don’t do this to me, sir. You know how long the investigation’ll take. Those bastards don’t do anything quickly. I could be off duty for months. Years even.’

  ‘Once the air’s cleared, we’ll petition to put you back on the job, but we’ve got to be seen to be acting decisively.’

  ‘The guy was armed. He was pointing a gun at me. What the hell was I meant to do? Stand there and let him use me for target practice, so that everyone could turn round afterwards and say what a hero I was for acting with such restraint? He can be proud of himself except, oh shit, he’s dead.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Evans, sitting forward and raising his voice, ‘my sympathies are with you, Mike. They are. I’ve got no doubt the bastard deserved it. There you are, I’ve said it. But that’s my personal opinion, not official policy, and my job, unfortunate though it may be, is to follow official policy. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’ He sat back again and sighed. ‘I’ll do everything I can to get the suspension lifted over the next few weeks, so bear with me, OK? In the meantime, have a rest, and make sure you have a federation representative present whenever you talk to the PCC. Co-operate, but don’t make it easy for them.’

  Bolt was surprised by his words. Not because the DCS’s opinions were particularly controversial, but because he was prepared to speak his mind, and you didn’t get that very often from senior officers. Most of them believed one thing and spouted another. He was also relieved that Evans was coming out so obviously on his side.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a rest, but I don’t want to be resting for too long. We’ve got a lot of work to do.’

  Evans nodded. ‘One other thing I think you ought to know,’ he said. ‘Because of the tangled nature of this case, the NCS are taking overall control of it. We’re now in charge of the investigations into the murders of Jack Calley and Vanessa Blake, and all the other investigations linked to it, including the suicide of the Lord Chief Justice.’

  ‘And I’m not going to be a part of it?’

  ‘As soon as I get you back from suspension, you’ll be involved.’

  ‘I know as much as anyone, probably more than anyone, about what’s been going on. You need me.’

  ‘I know that, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve explained the situation.’

  Bolt knew there was no point arguing. ‘If that’s how you want it,’ he said, picking up the coffee.

  Evans’s mobile rang. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, looking vaguely embarrassed.

  He was on the phone for maybe a minute, no more. During that time his expression became progressively more concerned, and the lines on his face deepened. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked once. Then he sighed, cursed, and ended the call.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Bolt, intrigued.

  Evans got to his feet. He looked worried and just a little unsure of himself.

  ‘We’ve got a situation,’ he said. ‘A potentially serious one.’

  53

  DCI Rory Caplin’s revelation about Kathy, the latest in a long line, was the final straw for me. What next? I thought. The news that she’d been bankrolling al-Qaeda for the past ten years? That she was hiding Nazi war criminals? For one of the few times in my life I was shocked into absolute silence.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ declared Caplin as we drove through Reading’s deserted town centre in the direction of the M4. ‘I suppose you would have found out sooner or later, but it might have been easier once you’d recovered from everything else.’

  I stared out of the passenger window as we passed the drab, redbrick Huntley and Palmers biscuit building. The sight of it seemed to suit my mood.

  ‘You said you discovered correspondence at Vanessa Blake’s house.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What kind of correspondence?’

  ‘Among other things a joint mortgage application in both their names, which they’d both signed. We checked the signatures. They were genuine. There were other bits and pieces as well. Photographs of them together. One or two of them, er . . .’ He cleared his throat for maximum effect. ‘Intimate.’

  ‘All right, all right, I get the picture.’

  But I didn’t. I didn’t get the picture at all. I thought that Kathy had been in love with Jack Calley. That’s what she’d admitted to me the previous night. Their relationship had been so intimate that he’d entrusted her with that fateful key. She’d even wept over his passing. But had she? Maybe she’d been weeping not for Jack but for Vanessa. Maybe she hadn’t even been seeing Jack. The only confirmation I had that she had been was what she’d told me, but it could just as easily have been a lie. In the end, it was impossible to know what to believe.

  All I knew for certain was that I needed to see my kids, kiss them both, and then go to sleep for twelve hours. And maybe, just maybe, I’d feel a lot better about everything when I woke up.

  An unwelcome image of Kathy and Vanessa in bed together crossed my mind, slowed down and stayed where it was. Vanessa had never been my cup of tea. Knowing that she couldn’t stand me and wouldn’t touch a man if her life depended on it had seen to that; but in fairness she wasn’t unattractive, and unwelcome or not, for a few moments I couldn’t get the sight of the two of them naked out of my mind.

  Shaking my head at the baseness of my instincts, I turned to Caplin. I wondered if he and his colleagues had had a laugh about my wife’s extracurricular activities. I suspected that they had, and felt vaguely embarrassed that I was going to be stuck in the car with him all the way back to London.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t think you smoked,’ he answered, reaching into the waist pocket of his leather jacket and pulling out a crumpled pack of Rothmans and a lighter. He pushed them in my direction, asking me to light one for both of us.

  I did, and handed his back to him. He put it to his mouth and took a long, tight drag that seemed to hollow his cheeks. At the same time, his jacket sleeve rode up, revealing a thick white bandage, yellowing in places and still flecked with vivid droplets of blood, wound around his wrist.

  That bandage hadn’t been there yesterday afternoon in the interrogation room.

  Caplin moved the cigarette away from his lips. He winced slightly as if he’d been stung, then, as casually as possible, rested his hand on his thigh. The sleeve rode back down. I stared at it for several seconds before looking away. My chest felt tight as the adrenalin began to kick in.

  We came to a set of red lights. There were two cars queueing in front of us. Caplin dragged again on the cigarette and put his hand on the wheel. The sleeve rode up fo
r a second time.

  The bandage had darkened on one edge.

  Drip.

  A perfectly rounded droplet of blood fell down from it and landed on his jeans. He looked down at it. So did I. Then we both looked up and our eyes met. And I knew without a doubt that he’d been the man Kathy had cut with the kitchen knife at the holiday cottage last night.

  And that was the moment the whole thing came together. Suddenly I knew who’d killed Vanessa Blake, who’d attacked me in the library, and very possibly who’d been involved in the kidnapping of my children.

  But it was too late, because the fact that he also knew that I knew all this was now written all over his face.

  Drip. A second drop of blood fell onto his jeans. Once again we both watched its descent through the stale, smoky air of the Toyota. Ahead of us, the lights turned green and the first car pulled away.

  I went for the door. Fast, the cigarette falling from my hand. But not fast enough. He clicked on the central locking and I found myself pulling uselessly at the handle. The car in front of us moved forward. I turned back towards him and saw that he’d shoved the cigarette into his mouth and was going for something in his inside pocket. I’d been through enough to know what it was going to be. I’d also been through enough to know that I had to react. So, as he pulled the pistol free, I punched him in the side of the face with one hand and grabbed his injured wrist – the one holding the gun – with the other, squeezing with as much force as I could muster.

  He let out a squawk of pain and the gun went off with a deafening blast, putting a hole in the middle of the windscreen. He reached round with his other arm to land a punch on me but I didn’t give him a chance, hitting him again with an uppercut, this time in the jaw. His head was knocked to one side, and he cursed loudly. I punched him a third time, pressing my advantage, feeling a terrible elation, wanting to knock the living shit out of the bastard who’d sat interrogating me less than twenty-four hours ago, even playing the role of good cop, while all the time knowing that I was completely innocent. I imagined him taking my kids from Irene’s house, and that really got me. I grabbed at his hair and gave it a vicious tug, then tried to slam his head into the window, but this time I over-reached myself, and I wasn’t prepared for the way he lurched forward in the seat and drove his gun arm round in a sudden movement that caught me off guard.