‘Outstanding. DCI Naysmith had my back.’
‘But medically, psychologically?’
‘We were all under the supervision of an excellent specialist medical team,’ she said – a line McAvoy had fed her in the briefing. ‘They monitored us throughout the investigation.’
Or at least, they did if you turned up to the sessions.
The back-bencher – Cox had gathered that his name was Ridley – returned to the attack.
‘You mention this fellow DCI Naysmith.’ He peered theatrically at his notes. ‘I understand he was scheduled to appear before us today, but was unfortunately, ah, taken ill?’
Cox pasted on a poker-face.
‘That’s right.’
‘And he was your commanding officer during the time we’re talking about?’
‘Yes, he was.’
He took off his glasses, tapped one of the plastic temples against his teeth in a show of contemplation.
‘I’m wondering if there were any disagreements within the taskforce with regard to the investigation,’ he said. ‘I mean to say, a complex operation, high levels of stress, a lot of strong characters, no doubt …’
‘Of course there were,’ Cox nodded. ‘There were disagreements over strategy – that’s inevitable. But I wouldn’t call them personality clashes – we’re professionals. There are chains of command in the police service, and we respected that.’
‘You don’t recall any serious disagreements?’
Where was this going?
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’
Baroness Kent shook out a folded sheet of A4 paper.
‘I’m going to read something to you now, inspector. Afterwards I’ll ask you to comment on it.’ She cleared her throat. ‘A source close to the investigation revealed that notorious predator Warren Boyd was put under surveillance by Scotland Yard as part of the probe into the disappearance of little Tomasz Lerna, 8 – but that the bungling cops let the convicted paedophile get clean away.’ She set the paper down, looked up. ‘You’ll excuse the tabloidese, but I don’t believe the factual content of the piece has been challenged. Do you recognize that report, inspector?’
She’d recognized it within two seconds.
‘Yes, I do. It was a news report by Greg Wilson in one of the tabloids.’
‘And what’s your opinion on Mr Wilson’s version of events?’
‘Heavily biased. Highly selective. Utterly sensationalized.’ She shrugged. ‘Exactly what you’d expect from a tabloid news story.’
‘But the events Mr Wilson describes – did they in fact take place?’
‘No. We placed Boyd under surveillance after his release from custody, that much is true – but we didn’t lose him. We took the decision to call in the surveillance team.’
Another harrumph from Ridley.
‘That’s even worse!’
Cox stonewalled.
‘It was a strategic decision.’
‘A strategic decision to let Boyd get away scot-free.’
‘To focus our resources elsewhere.’
‘I have some simple questions,’ Baroness Kent said. ‘I’d be grateful if you could try to answer them simply.’ She folded her hands delicately on the desktop. ‘Who ordered that Mr Boyd be put under surveillance?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘We wanted to see where he might lead us.’
‘More guesswork,’ Ridley heckled.
‘An informed strategic decision. We called the team off, as I said, after a couple of days.’
Kent affected a puzzled frown.
‘But you had some suspicions about Mr Boyd, then? Even after you released him?’
‘I didn’t think he was responsible for Tomasz’s disappearance, if that’s what you mean.’
‘In view of subsequent developments, it seems that your judgement was flawed.’
‘Not in my view. I still don’t believe that Boyd knew where the boy was.’
Kent paused – then asked, with a barrister’s steel-edged precision: ‘Whose decision was it to call the surveillance team in?’
Cox shifted in her seat.
‘It was DCI Naysmith’s.’
‘Did you support his decision?’
‘Of course. He was my commanding officer.’
‘Then let me rephrase my question. Did you agree with his decision?’
‘I – I understood it.’
‘But you wanted to see where Mr Boyd would lead you. An informed strategic decision, you said. Did you argue with DCI Naysmith over his order to withdraw?’
We fought like cats in a sack.
‘We talked it over. It was a resource issue. As I say – I understood the decision.’
Baroness Kent nodded, reached for her glass of water. Cox let out a sigh. She’d fought on through another round; no one had landed a knockout blow on her yet. But there was a lot more scrapping to come.
She scanned the room with tired eyes. The press benches were fuller now, she thought, than they had been a few hours before; word must’ve got out that DI Cox was good box office.
Then, at the farthest end of the front bench, she saw a familiar face. Couldn’t place it for a second – was he one of the crime reporters on the regular west London beat?
Then it clicked, and her stomach lurched.
Harrington.
What the hell was he doing here?
When the answer struck her, like a slap to the face, she couldn’t believe she’d been so damn stupid. With this inquiry approaching, Harrington had been tasked with keeping tabs on her; he hadn’t been at the Radley scene because of who Radley was – he’d been there because of who she was.
She felt a yawn coming, covered her mouth. Saw Baroness Kent watching her wryly. With a thin smile, the baroness covered her microphone with her hand, and mouthed: nearly done.
Then the questioning began again.
‘Let’s return to an earlier point – your exhaustion during the investigation.’
‘Not exhaustion.’ Firmly, emphatically. ‘I was tired.’
‘Tired, exhausted. I feel we’re quibbling. Did your superiors ever suggest to you that you should take time off as a consequence of your tiredness?’
Cox hesitated. She saw where this was going.
‘I – I was given the option of taking leave on medical grounds. I didn’t take it.’ She shifted in her seat, forced herself to look the baroness in the eye. ‘And I’d be interested to know what prompted you to ask me that.’
Kent ignored her last remark.
‘Why did you reject the recommendation that you take sick leave, inspector?’
‘It wasn’t a recommendation, it was an option.’
‘You wanted to see the case through to its conclusion, I suppose?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I did. I wanted to see the case solved – and I believed that I was the person most likely to do so.’
Kent nodded, made a face that seemed to Cox condescending, even pitying. She took off her glasses and set them carefully on the desk.
‘I think we’re arriving at the crux of the problem,’ she said to the room at large, with a faint sigh in her voice. ‘Investigating officers pursuing their own agendas; critical, relevant intelligence not being properly disseminated; due diligence not being undertaken. A catalogue not, perhaps, of errors, but of fundamental, systemic operational shortcomings.’
Cox felt herself colouring. How to Rile a Police Officer #1: talk as though you know how to do their job better than they do. She knew that McAvoy, on her right, was giving her a warning look.
She ignored it.
‘If the baroness knows of a better way to conduct a police investigation, I’d be glad to consider her suggestions,’ she said.
The look Kent gave her was iron-hard.
‘The question of how the investigation might have been better conducted is what we are all here to address,’ she said softly. ‘I know it has been a long afternoon for us all, inspector –
but there is no need to raise your voice.’
That was an old trick: no quicker or easier way to undermine someone than to suggest that they’d lost their temper. She’d done it herself in the interview room. Suddenly, you were unstable, or panicked, or hot-headed, or worse …
She heard a noise, from up above, from the public gallery; shouting, and the sounds of a scuffle. The MPs all looked up sharply. Cox spun in her seat. Something struck her hard in the chest, on the left-hand side.
‘Unnhh –’
Her jacket, her desk, her notes were splattered with red. She put a hand to her breast – the red liquid was cold and thin.
Not blood – not even wine.
She saw that the rubbery rag of a burst water-balloon had fallen at her feet.
Looked up into the public gallery. Two uniformed stewards were tussling with a young woman, long raincoat, cropped chestnut hair, who was leaning far out over the balcony edge and staring with wide, dark eyes directly at her.
Cox recognized her. Oh, Christ.
‘Child killer!’ the woman screamed hoarsely as she was hauled away. ‘Murderer! Child killer!’
The room erupted; cameras flashed, chairs tipped over, TV lenses wheeled to capture the moment.
The woman’s name, Cox knew, was Kaisa. She was Tomasz Lerna’s mother.
21
‘We can request an adjournment,’ McAvoy said. ‘I’m sure the panel would be sympathetic.’
That’d make a nice change.
Cox was buttoning up a clean blouse she’d borrowed from McAvoy (‘Always keep a spare outfit in my car – presentation is everything’). Her arm ached badly.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘We’ve come this far, we might as well see it out.’
The barrister nodded, smiled briefly, moved away to speak to one of her colleagues on the legal team. Cox made use of the break to check her phone; wondered if there was any news from Wilson or Chalmers.
One missed call – and a voicemail. She didn’t recognize the London number.
‘You lying fucking cow.’
I’m popular today, she thought sourly.
It took her a second to place the voice: Stevie Butcher.
‘Have a word with the fucking Parole Board, you said. Now here I am back in-fucking-side and all the cunts in here think I’m a fucking nonce. What the fuck have you been saying?’ Must’ve been calling from a Pentonville payphone, she surmised. What the hell? ‘Listen, I want out. I’ll tell you what you want to know, all of it. Merritt was fucking nothing, you get me? The fucking mask. I’ll tell you, and only you, all right. If you can fucking get me out of here. I’ll tell you it all. I’ll –’
The voicemail service cut him off. Cox hit 7 to save the message, quickly dialled up Chalmers. Butcher was supposed to be cut loose, not banged up again. Must’ve been a breakdown in communication somewhere.
‘Cox. What’s up?’
She sketched out the message she’d just received; asked what the hell Butcher was doing in Pentonville. Had Chalmers forgotten to send over the recommendation to the Board?
‘Not me,’ Chalmers said. ‘I sent it over, is crossed and ts dotted. The Board were all set to let him off, till word came through that Butcher’s breach was under no circumstances to be overlooked. Orders from on high, I gather.’
Cox had a sinking feeling.
‘How high?’
‘Couldn’t say for sure, but from what my contact on the Board said I’d guess AC, maybe commissioner level.’
‘Christ.’
‘I know. How does a scrote like Stevie Butcher make enemies in such high places?’
From across the lobby, Serena McAvoy was signalling to Cox to cut short her call – the inquiry was due to reconvene. She thanked Chalmers quickly, rang off. Switched off the phone. All that could wait till later, she told herself. It’d have to wait. She’d need all of her focus to get through the rest of this session; she couldn’t afford to be distracted.
Still felt shaken, though, as she took her seat. The MPs were already in place. Baroness Kent smiled at her as she reopened the session – but Cox wasn’t buying the ex-QC’s act this time. She was getting a bit sick of being manipulated.
Kent asked if she felt all right to continue; she replied breezily that yes, of course she did – the implication being, she hoped, that a Met DCI wasn’t thrown off her stride as easily as they might think.
‘Very well,’ nodded Kent. Folded her hands in a down-to-business manner. ‘Is it difficult, inspector,’ she asked, ‘maintaining a police career and a family life?’
Here McAvoy cut in.
‘Is this line of questioning really pertinent to the matter at hand?’ she objected. ‘We aren’t here to scrutinize Inspector Cox’s personal life. And,’ she added bitingly, ‘I rather doubt that a male officer of Inspector Cox’s rank and experience would be asked such a question if he were in her place.’
Nicely done, Cox thought.
‘I was merely trying to clarify the inspector’s state of mind during the period in question,’ Kent said. ‘We were given to understand that the Tomasz Lerna case dominated her life. I was curious as to the extent of her preoccupation. But very well – your point is noted, Ms McAvoy.’ She veered sideways – came in on an unexpected tangent. ‘Inspector, is leaking information to the press a regular feature of your job, would you say?’
It caught her cold.
‘What? I mean, no – no, of course not.’ She sounded flustered, she knew. A flat, one-word denial would’ve done.
‘It’s not something you’d consider central to your duties as a police officer?’
‘It’s not,’ Cox said, ‘a practice I’m familiar with.’
Baroness Kent raised an eyebrow. That meant trouble; she had something up her sleeve, and Cox, her head beginning to ache, could guess what it was.
Kent let Ridley, the Tory back-bencher, take a turn.
‘It seems jolly odd to me,’ he said, ‘that all this stuff – the surveillance decision and suchlike – should find its way into the papers so readily. In fact, I seem to remember there being some criticism of this fact at the time.’
Cox nodded. So did she. But she’d no intention of helping the panel out here; Christ, they were more than capable of gutting and filleting her without her assistance.
‘Do you have a question?’ she stonewalled.
Baroness Kent sensed her moment.
‘I have here,’ she said, drawing a sheet of paper from her file, ‘a copy of a newspaper article published on the morning before Tomasz Lerna’s body was found. It includes several pieces of information that – one would imagine – would be known only to an individual with privileged access to the investigation. The piece was written by Mr Greg Wilson – the same journalist who covered the alleged escape of Warren Boyd from police surveillance.’ She looked at Cox beadily. ‘Do you have any idea, inspector, how Mr Wilson might have come by the privileged information in question?’
‘He’s a professional journalist,’ Cox said. ‘Those people have their sources.’
‘But in this case specifically – who do you think might have given Mr Wilson this information?’
‘There were dozens of officers involved in the investigation, without even taking into consideration the huge numbers of police support staff. In theory it could have been any one of them.’
Kent smiled coldly.
‘In theory, perhaps. But in practice?’
‘I couldn’t say.’
She could almost see Baroness Kent’s well-honed courtroom instincts kicking in, could sense her readying to strike – closing in for the kill. The glasses were high on the nose and gleamed white under the chamber lights.
‘Do you know Mr Wilson, inspector?’
‘A little.’
‘Elaborate, please.’
‘He took a considerable interest in this case, and several others. We crossed paths many times in a professional capacity.’
‘Always professional?’
/>
Cox swallowed. Where the hell had they got this from?
‘I’m – I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Sorry; I’ll clarify. Your relationship with Mr Wilson – was the relationship ever anything more than might normally be expected between a DCI and a crime reporter?’
She tried to stall, knowing how much good it’d do: ‘“Anything more”? What does that mean?’
The dark-haired MP interjected.
‘Baroness Kent means “more intimate”, inspector.’ He smiled nastily. ‘To put it more frankly still: did you have a sexual relationship with Greg Wilson?’
There was a noticeable stir in the press benches. Here it was, Cox thought. Tomorrow’s front page.
McAvoy – more out of duty, it seemed, than conviction – protested, argued that again the panel was seeking to pry into Cox’s private life, that the line of questioning was prurient and verged on the offensive, that Inspector Cox’s sex life had no bearing whatever on the death of Tomasz Lerna.
This time, Baroness Kent batted her aside like a fly.
‘It is thoroughly pertinent,’ she said calmly. ‘And I’d be grateful if Inspector Cox would furnish us with an answer.’
‘Inspector Cox is not obliged to –’
‘She is obliged to tell the truth.’ Kent’s voice was like a jagged edge of ice. ‘Inspector, I am losing patience. Please answer “yes” or “no”: did you have a sexual relationship with Greg Wilson?’
Cox paused. Every police officer knew it was a mistake to go into a hazardous situation without knowing where the exits were – without an escape plan. But right now, no matter where she looked, she couldn’t see a way out.
She took a sip of water. Set down the glass carefully.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Uproar.
Baroness Kent was a still point at the centre of the chaos, sedately pouring herself water as MPs called to one another across the semi-circular desk array, as the press pack broke apart, dashing off to find wi-fi signals, file their urgent copy, as stewards fought to maintain order in the public gallery. Cox could hear someone up there yelling shame, shame, over and over again.
She turned to McAvoy, who was sliding her notes back into her file.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
Twelve Deaths of Christmas Page 22