When Anthony Rathe Investigates

by Matthew Booth

  “Bury your dead,” Kathy Marsden said. Rathe looked back at her, uncertain how to respond. “You must bury your dead,” she repeated.

  “I thought I could,” he replied at last. “By proving Nicholas Barclay innocent.”

  “You’ve done that. An eye for an eye, Mr Rathe. Kevin for this Mr Barclay. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  He waited there, too long perhaps, his own body pleading with him to move away but, stubbornly, refusing to comply with itself. What had he hoped to achieve by confronting Lanyon with his guilt? Justice? Rathe doubted such a concept existed. Redemption? If so, he felt none of it.

  Bury your dead…

  The words remained with him as he walked away from her house. He had no destination in mind and he gave no thought to any specific location. Simply, he allowed himself to move forward amongst the streets which stretched out before him, his head upon his breast and his thoughts alone with themselves. At last, he stopped outside St Augustine’s, staring first at its steeple and then at its entrance. Memories both real and imagined flooded his brain but he dismissed them. He left the spire of that place far behind him as he continued to walk.

  He thought about another church, a few miles down the road, but he shook his head. He would not visit Kevin Marsden’s grave, not right now.

  Whether he would ever again, he was not sure. Had his enquiry into the Temple murder made amends? He could not say. He did not feel it had, not especially, but he knew that he had secured justice, whatever the cost and however fragile. These thoughts and others began to collide within his head, with one idea in particular growing in intensity. That the Marsden woman had been right, that he had to find his redemption somehow, lay his ghosts to rest.

  Whatever else he did and however he could manage it, Anthony Rathe knew now that it was time to bury his dead.

  A Question of Proof

  The verdict was greeted with different passions. The press roared in satisfaction whilst the public gallery cheered with a now-satisfied lust for justice. There were sobs of released tension from the grieving parents and hisses of dissent from the guilty man’s supporters. Barristers, in turn, shook hands in congratulation and bowed heads in defeat; even the judge, as experienced in impartial stoicism as he was, seemed to allow himself a brief smile as he prepared to pass sentence. As he did so, the room fell silent once more. Afterwards, there was the excited bustle of movement accompanied again by the jeers and cheers of the assembled crowd, the sounds clashing with each other into a frenzied hum of voices. Amid it all, only two men remained in motionless silence, their eyes fixed on each other, their jaws clenched shut, prohibiting any reaction from either one of them.

  Cook had expected the verdict. It would have been foolish of him to consider anything else. The evidence had been collected, tested, and examined again. The lawyers had scrutinised it, deliberated over it, and agreed to present it. Throughout all the processes of bringing the case to Court, to this moment, Cook had sat tight-lipped, his thoughts never given voice and his emotions kept locked within him. And even now, as he stared back at Harry Mackenzie and heard sentence be passed on him, Cook refused to show any sign of triumph. Instead, he remained seated, as people passed by him, eager to leave behind this arena of law and to go about their own personal businesses. Cook could imagine the plaudits at the station when he went back with the news. He could almost hear the inevitable praise, taste the first pint of success, and feel the arms around his shoulders. Harry Mack was off the streets for a minimum of 22 years, all down to Cook and his team, and to those months of late nights and frustrated mornings. As though he, Cook, had saved all of London from its own worst nightmare.

  Mack had stared at Cook during the verdict, its response, and his sentencing. Like the detective, the criminal had remained still, his eyes glaring into Cook’s own despising stare. Cook had wondered, fancifully, if Mack had been able to read his thoughts, to know what was happening inside Cook’s own head, and whether the man who had killed so many people without compunction or punishment might accept this particular penalty as recompense for all those other crimes which had gone unchallenged. Cook doubted it, in his heart of hearts, and Mack’s eyes of defiance showed that the inspector’s instinct was right. Cook felt as though he was looking at Mack for the first time, although his features were too well known to him. But it seemed to Cook that for the first time he was seeing properly those dark orbs in the hooded lids and the collar length black hair, too obviously dyed and swept back from the bulbous forehead, and that only now was he seeing just how cruelly twisted those thin lips were and how livid the scar which sliced through the left side of them truly was. It was foolish to believe Cook had not seen that face in his dreams and in his reality more times than he had wished to, but the idea was vivid in his mind all the same.

  As Mack was led away from the dock, he shook his head slowly, tearing his gaze away from Cook only when it was impossible to retain it any longer. Mechanically, without registering the movement, Cook rose in deference to the exiting judge but he sat down once more, equally automatically, as soon as he was able to do so. For some time, he was alone in the Courtroom, seeing nothing but Mack’s shaking head and fierce eyes. When the usher requested that he leave, he obliged, but his thoughts were still his own, still hidden from all but his internal self. Those ideas had not changed in all these months, not since he was first called to the scene of Lenny Voss’s murder. From that moment to this, Cook’s opinion about Harry Mack had not altered. If anything, after the verdict that morning, it had grown in intensity and now, Cook felt certain his instinct was right.

  * * *

  “I don’t think he did it. I think he’s innocent.”

  It seemed strange to hear his darkest fears said out loud, as though they were the thoughts of somebody he had never met, ideas which he could never have had himself. He drained his glass, the amber lager soothing his throat and twisting his vision. He had had more than he intended to have, he knew that, but he seemed to have been talking for hours and the drinks helped to ease him through his story.

  By contrast, Anthony Rathe had said very little in the forty minutes they had been sitting in the bar. He had been surprised to get the call, if expressing it that way was not an understatement, and he wondered whether it was still that shock or his growing interest in what Cook was saying which was preventing him from speaking himself. It had been almost three weeks since they had seen each other over the St Augustine murder but, as ever, Cook looked exhausted, although his eyes were heavier now and Rathe knew it was nothing to do with the alcohol the inspector had consumed. His shoulders were slumped further under their strain than Rathe had known previously and the bitten fingers were red and sore. His cheeks were sallow, the day’s worth of greying stubble standing out against the pale skin beneath it.

  “When was the last time you ate something proper?” asked Rathe.

  “What do you mean, proper?” barked Cook.

  “Not fried or processed.”

  Cook sneered, although it might have been a grin. “I don’t go to many fancy restaurants these days.”

  “You can boil a vegetable at home.”

  Cook grunted in irritation. “I didn’t ask you here to lecture me about food.”

  “I know that. But you can’t do any good to anybody if you put yourself in hospital with exhaustion or malnutrition.”

  “You’re too dramatic.” Cook conceded the point when Rathe gave no reply. “Do they do steak here?”

  Rathe handed him a menu. “No fries. Baked potato and the salad.”

  “When did we get married?” scoffed Cook, but he said no more.

  The food was ordered and eaten before Rathe would listen any more to Cook’s problems. When he was done, Cook leaned back in his chair. Some colour had returned to his face, and he let out a satisfied sigh, stifling a belch as he finished. He had drunk a pint of water with his meal, which he felt entitled him to order another lager. Rathe ordered a second glass of Merlot.

&
nbsp; “Right,” he said. “Now, tell me about Harry Mack.”

  Cook’s expression of fulfilment at the meal altered now to one of frustration, as though he had forgotten the reason he had called Rathe there at all. While he had enjoyed the steak, it seemed that Mack had been a bad dream which Cook had erased from his mind but which now, without any remorse, came barging back into his mind.

  “I’m not asking you for help,” Cook stated. “I want to make that clear, right?”

  Rathe shook his head. “I didn’t expect you to.”

  “It’s just… ” Cook began uneasily, shifting in his seat. “You look at stuff in a different way to me. Something not right with your brain, or whatever, but you look at stuff – upside down. Like with that Lanyon case. And I just want someone to… ” But he gave up trying.

  “You don’t think Mack murdered Lenny Voss, despite the evidence?”

  Cook shook his head. “No. Simple as that.”

  “Even though you got that evidence yourself?”

  “Right.” Cook nodded. “Even so.”

  Rathe sipped his wine. “And you think a fresh point of view on the evidence might justify your conclusions. One way or the other.”

  “Something like that.”

  They sat in silence, an uneasy comradeship of sorts, neither one wanting to accept that this time they might need the other. Unlike Cook and Mack in the Courtroom, they avoided each other’s gaze until, at last, Rathe leaned forward and placed his arms on the table, latticing his fingers. His brows were drawn tightly over his dark eyes and his lips were pursed but he nodded his head like a man who had reached a decision.

  “All right,” he said. “Tell me everything, from the beginning.”

  “I’m not asking for help,” insisted Cook.

  “I’m not offering it,” replied Rathe and Cook nodded agreement with a smile.

  He took out a paper file and slid it across the table to Rathe. “A summary of the case.”

  Rathe let the file sit between them. “Give it me in your own words.”

  “Lenny Voss, from the same pile of filth which gave birth to Harry Mack, murdered three months ago. He had been Mack’s right hand man, his closest ally; the two of them were like brothers. They’d grown up together in the same neighbourhood, had each other’s backs since they were kids. But recently, things had turned sour. Rumour was that Voss had begun to get sick of playing second fiddle. Felt he was being taken for granted.”

  “But these were just rumours?”

  Cook shrugged. “Not so sure. Enough people have confirmed it and I got the feeling it was a bit more than Voss beating his chest.”

  “He was planning a revolution, looking to take over?”

  “And looking to get Harry Mack out of the way. That was the story. You can imagine how that sort of thing goes down with someone like Harry Mack.”

  Rathe could well imagine. He didn’t need to wade through the urban filth which Cook did in order to know that any sort of betrayal to people like Mack and Voss could only really have one outcome, assuming it wasn’t dealt with swiftly and effectively before anybody lost their life. “So Voss’s mutiny was your motive?”

  “Seemed to be. But there’s more.”

  Cook opened the file which lay between them and took out some photographs. He slid them over to Rathe. Post mortem images of a man lying on his back, close ups of the face mainly, those sallow cheeks and pinched features twisted by violent death. Lenny Voss hadn’t been a handsome man in life if the photos were anything to go by, but in death he looked worse than horrific. His left eye showed signs of a beating, corroborating the story told by the livid purple marks on the thin, skeletal torso. Rathe returned his attention to the photographs of the man’s face. There was a cruel, jagged gash to the throat, as livid as it was brutal, and on each cheek there were dark cuts, resembling the twin peaks of two mountains.

  “Those marks on the cheeks, like inverted Vs,” said Cook, pointing at each one. “Mack’s trademark, his signature. As though he was carving his initial into his victim’s face.”

  Rathe frowned. “A bit fanciful, almost theatrical.”

  “No one said Harry Mack was subtle.”

  “These marks were something else to point to Mack.”

  “We couldn’t ignore them,” was all Cook had for a reply.

  Rathe returned the image to the file, not wanting to have them in sight for longer than necessary. “What about an alibi?”

  “Over the past few months, Mack has been trying to get in with some big noise in Newcastle. Bloke called Frank Lovett, a proper case of the big guns. Drugs, extortion, prostitution, human trafficking, arms deals. All come as easy to Lovett as picking his own nose. But he’s worse than that. For Lovett, it isn’t just about home ground. He’s international. Real serious stuff that makes some of our boys look like Girl Guides. From what I hear, it isn’t just about money for him either, not even just about power and control. He enjoys it. It’s fun for him, like playing football in the park.”

  “That was never fun,” said Rathe. “How far had Mack got with this Lovett monster?”

  “Not far enough. Lovett had shown no interest. Almost every meeting Mack arranged was snubbed, fucked off.”

  “Almost all?”

  Cook nodded. “Lovett agreed to one meet, a week or so before Voss was murdered. Mack and Voss went. This was big news, a major breakthrough for Mack.”

  “I’m guessing it ended badly,” muttered Rathe.

  “Worse than badly. Voss put his foot in it, got riled because Lovett was looking down on them.”

  “Lovett, showing them who needed whom the most?”

  “Something like that.” Cook signalled for more drinks. “Lovett called time. A lot of talk about disrespect and flies on shit.”

  “Presumably you thought that might have been a secondary motive for Mack to kill Voss. Professional embarrassment, loss of opportunity?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “But how does this Lovett business fit in with Mack’s alibi on the night of the Voss murder?”

  The drinks arrived. For the first time, Cook didn’t begin drinking straight away. He seemed oblivious to the presence of the glass in front of him, his attention fixed exclusively on Rathe. “Mack claims that on the night Voss was killed, he got a phone call from one of Lovett’s associates. An invitation, telling Mack to go to a certain place at a certain time.”

  “Where?”

  “An industrial estate. That doesn’t matter too much, but the fact it was in Newcastle does. Mack drove up there, thinking he was about to meet Lovett, all his hopes for a twisted partnership of dirt reignited.”

  “But Lovett never showed.”

  “Claims never to have ordered the meeting at all.”

  Rathe leaned back in his chair. “You traced the call?”

  Cook lowered his gaze. “Mobile, pay as you go. Nothing came of it. But the call was made in London. Not Newcastle.”

  “But gangsters travel around, so there was no reason to think Lovett hadn’t made it just because it wasn’t from Newcastle?” Rathe nodded as Cook conceded the point with a shrug of his shoulders. “If the call was genuine, why didn’t you accept Mack’s story of the trip to Newcastle?”

  “They said just because the call was made didn’t mean he followed it up.”

  “If he thought it was from Lovett, why wouldn’t he follow it up?”

  Cook sighed. “That’s what I asked. And I found Mack’s car on the CCTV, bombing it up the M1.”

  Rathe raised his palms in surrender. “There you go then.”

  “Problem: there’s nothing to prove Mack was driving it. He was well known for loaning out his cars to his lads for business reasons. When he couldn’t be bothered doing that business himself, of course.”

  “They saw it as a fake alibi? One of the boys driving Mack’s car, to make it look as though he was out of the way?”

  Cook felt no reply was necessary. Rathe was silent for a moment, his mind
turning fact upon fact, looking under the stones of the story for any alternative theories which might be scuttling underneath them. The evidence was circumstantial, nothing concrete to say that Mack was guilty of Voss’s death, despite the motive, which to Rathe seemed to be the most compelling part of Cook’s account. The business with the car sat uneasily with Rathe. He would have argued Occam’s razor with that, taken it as a mechanism to say the case was closed on that principle. It was Mack’s car, so Mack must have been driving it. But, he realised that it would have been set off against the rest of the evidence, however circumstantial.

  Of that evidence, the trademark cuts to the cheeks were easily fabricated, especially if they were a well-known signature of one of Mack’s own crimes. Alone, they meant next to nothing. They became more damning when placed next to the motive, however, and that motive was the spectre at the feast as far as the case against Harry Mack went. Professional pride was a special deal for this type of person, the need to save face and demonstrate control over your people, just as important as loyalty. Combined with the rumour of Voss’s planned mutiny, Mack could be forgiven for thinking that his old friend had become a liability, a problem which had to be solved. But it wasn’t proof that Mack did anything about it. Rathe had a brief mental image of himself in the Courtroom with Mack in the dock. He thought how he might have torn the prosecution’s case to rags, almost involuntarily imagining the shake of the criminal’s hand as he walked free, cleared of the murder of Lenny Voss. Rathe had the whiff of his old arrogance, that feeling of conceit that he was almost unbeatable. It struck him so strongly that his mind seemed to reel at the memory, a spinning vortex of recollection which inevitably came crashing down amid the ruins of defeat. Now, yet again, his mind was stalking around the remains of his life, after the devastating effects of the Marsden trial, his arrogance and superiority humbled, torn down and scattered like the crumbling remains of a lost wonder of the world.