‘The authors thank the trustees of CARE for their support and assistance; in particular, they wish to acknowledge the contributions of trustees John Gandry and Sidney Thomas.’
She let the paper fall to her lap.
She’d heard the name, she knew she had. Sidney Thomas.
Fished out her phone, ran the name through a search engine. A picture of a silver-haired man popped up, along with a paragraph of Wikipedia text. So that was why she knew the name: Sidney Thomas was the solicitor general, one rung down from attorney general; his name cropped up now and then in news stories, legal briefings, that kind of thing.
What surprised her was that she knew the face, too. But from where?
She closed her eyes.
‘You okay?’ Wilson said, sounding concerned.
‘I’m fine. Just – just shush.’
She let her brain do the work – follow the threads, trace the connections. It was in there somewhere, she knew. That face, that wavy silvery hair, those broad shoulders, that stolid, dignified expression –
Sidney.
A memory, a barely-there memory, not old but overlooked, creeping to the surface –
This is my husband, Sidney …
Cox opened her eyes.
‘Stop the car. Stop the car now.’
Wilson hauled on the wheel, slewed the car leftwards, up on to the kerb; the exhaust rig clunked on the concrete; the car jolted to a grinding halt. Two overtaking cars, swerving across lanes, sounded their horns angrily.
He stared at her wide-eyed.
‘What? What is it?’
‘Sidney Thomas.’ She jabbed the page with her finger. ‘Sidney Thomas is Baroness Kent’s husband. I’ve met him – at a café, just the other day.’
Wilson rolled his eyes, let his head loll back against the headrest.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘I thought at least you were having an aneurysm or something. What the hell … ?’
A wave of dizziness hit Kerry; couldn’t breathe. The nerve endings across her body seemed to be firing all at once.
‘Kerry?’
She took a deep breath; tried to slow down her thoughts, but they were rushing headlong.
‘Look, it’s the MoJ that’s been trying to shut us down – trying to kill off this whole investigation, right from the start. Thomas is the solicitor general. To all intents and purposes, he is the MoJ. Now it turns out he’s not only married to the woman who tried to bury me at the inquiry, he’s got documented links with Allis and Merritt, too.’
Wilson was frowning.
‘I’m losing track. Can you draw me a diagram or something?’
But Cox didn’t answer. She was looking at the picture of Sidney Thomas. A clammy feeling had started to take hold of her. Thomas was getting on a bit now – in his seventies, at a guess. So in the 1980s he would have been in his forties …
Surely not. Surely.
She closed her eyes, and the image of the man in the mask rose up behind her eyelids.
‘So?’ prompted Wilson impatiently. ‘What now? Onwards to Ladbroke Grove?’
‘No.’ She was rooting in her bag – she knew she had Sam Harrington’s business card in there somewhere. Found it, drew it out; turned it over between her fingers. Read out the address.
Wilson looked nervous.
‘Whitehall?’ he said. ‘Christ, that’s worse than Walworth.’
Cox nodded firmly.
‘If we want answers,’ she said, ‘we’re going to have to take this to the top.’
26
‘We should take it to the press.’
They’d parked in a small pay-and-display near Petty France, central London. Cox was unbuckling her seatbelt. She looked at him disbelievingly.
‘The press? Are you kidding? The way they’ve treated me?’
‘Look, I understand the press. You – with all due respect, Kerry – aren’t a big story. This is a big story. If we break this, you’ll be off the front pages for good.’ He checked his watch. ‘I could get something in the evening papers, if we’re quick.’
Cox scowled at him.
‘Just another scoop for you, isn’t it?’
He sighed.
‘No. No, Kerry, it’s not. You’ve got to understand, it’s a two-way street. Sure, they’ll use you to sell papers. But you can use them, too.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Think about it. We’ve got the information, we’ve got the story. What’s the one thing they’ve got that we need?’
‘I don’t know. The moral outlook of Jack the Ripper?’
‘Think straight, Kerry. Power. Look what we’re going up against! The fucking MoJ. The two of us, against that?’ He gestured in the direction of the looming Whitehall office blocks. ‘The press has power, a terrifying amount of power. I say we give them the story; get them to do our heavy lifting for us.’
Cox hesitated with her hand on the door-latch. It was tempting; it would be good to have some serious weight behind them. But even now, she knew they didn’t have enough. Links, horror stories, but nothing tangible. If she went public with this, it would look like sour grapes – just an attempt to discredit the inquiry.
‘No,’ she said flatly.
‘Christ.’
‘I take your point, Greg. But I’ve got to do this the right way – and besides, I prefer to fight my own battles.’
Harrington’s building was a brutalist concrete tower, a sixties monolith squatting grey and rain-washed in the heart of Petty France. It was busy: men in suits – they were mostly men, Cox noted – came and went at a brisk, businesslike pace.
She didn’t much fancy presenting her credentials at the security-heavy front desk – let alone Wilson’s.
Instead, she dialled Harrington’s number.
He answered promptly.
‘Inspector Cox.’ She sensed an uneasiness in his voice. ‘Good to hear from you.’
She told him that she needed to speak to him – urgently, and in person.
There was a long pause. Cogs turning, she guessed.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ the MoJ man said at last, ‘but I’m in the office and I’m really snowed under, so –’
She saw her opening.
‘That’s quite all right. I’m just downstairs, in the lobby of your building. I only need two minutes of your time.’ Threw in the kicker: ‘I want to talk about Sidney Thomas.’ Rang off.
She took up a position by the door; waited. Wilson lingered outside, smoking a cigarette.
It took Harrington less than five minutes to clear a gap in his schedule. He came through the security doors looking harassed, walking quickly, his suave smile less self-assured than usual.
‘Inspector.’
‘Mr Harrington.’
They shook hands, each eyeing the other calculatingly.
‘I’m surprised to see you, I must say,’ Harrington said. ‘I thought you’d be keeping a low profile – considering your suspension. I take it you’re not here in an official capacity?’
Cox kept it vague: ‘I’d like to talk off the record.’
Harrington smiled.
‘I don’t doubt that you would,’ he said. He glanced up, over Cox’s shoulder – his smile stiffened. Shit – he’d seen Wilson. Cox kept her face neutral, polite, engaged.
‘I see you’ve brought a friend,’ Harrington said.
‘An associate.’
‘That’s an odd word for it.’ No smile now; his pale eyes were glazed and hostile. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘you had better have a very good reason for being here.’
‘I have.’ Kept her chin up, her voice level, her eyes on his. ‘Should we talk in private?’
Harrington folded his arms.
‘I think not. Here is fine.’
‘Okay.’ She shrugged. ‘Can you tell me on whose orders you’ve been trying to compromise our investigation?’
He smirked.
‘What a preposterous idea.’
‘If it’s so prepo
sterous, why did you come running down here like a well-trained puppy when I dropped the name of your boss?’
Harrington’s face was taut.
‘I came to see,’ he said, ‘if it was necessary for me to have security escort you from the premises. I see now that it is.’
He turned to signal to the nearest blue-uniformed officer.
Cox swallowed. This had escalated more rapidly than she’d expected. Nothing else for it – she only had one card left to play.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But don’t be surprised when Sidney Thomas turns up dead.’
Harrington looked at her sharply. He laughed – an unconvincing, mirthless gurgle – but he called off the security officer, waving him away with an open hand.
‘That’s quite a thing to say, inspector.’ He tucked his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels. Looked at her narrowly for a moment. ‘Are you serious?’
Cox ticked the names off one by one on her fingers.
‘William Radley. Verity Halcombe. Reginald Allis. Euan Merritt. All dead. All murdered.’ Let her hand drop. ‘I have good reason to believe that Mr Thomas is the next name on that list.’
Harrington tilted his head thoughtfully.
‘Why?’
He must be a hell of a poker player, Cox thought.
‘You tell me,’ she said.
He looked at her for a half-minute more – than he smiled, shook his head.
Dammit, thought Cox. She thought, for a second, she’d had him; now, she saw – in his smile, in his half-turn back towards the security desk – that her last chance had gone.
And who knew, maybe Sidney Thomas’s last chance, too.
‘As it happens,’ Harrington said, ‘Mr Thomas isn’t even here today – he called in sick; some sort of gastric trouble I understand. Had to cancel quite a few meetings. He’s at home, safe and sound. So no need to worry yourself, inspector.’
Worth a shot.
‘Home? Where’s that?’
Harrington’s smile was contemptuous.
‘Now if you’ll excuse me –’
He turned away decisively.
Something in Cox – some part of her that was sick of being turned away, being denied, lied to, ignored, talked down to and forced to compromise – surged up uncontrollably. Before Harrington had reached the security doors that led to the sanctum of the upper floors, she shouted after him: ‘Euan Merritt’s killer is still on the loose, Mr Harrington. He thinks your boss is a sex offender, he thinks your boss killed his brother, and he’s –’
Harrington had turned in alarm at her first words; now, red-faced, he raced back across the lobby, waving his arms furiously in a ‘cut’ gesture.
Well, that seemed to do the trick, Cox thought. She didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Folded her arms.
‘Keep your bloody voice down,’ Harrington hissed.
‘Do you know, you’re the second liar to say that to me today.’
‘You obviously make a habit of slander.’ Harrington looked about him, a little wildly. Buttoned his jacket. Gave her a glare. ‘I’d hate to see you up on trial for defamation, inspector, as well as unemployed.’
‘I didn’t say those things were true. I wouldn’t know either way. I said that’s what Merritt’s killer thinks.’ She watched Harrington’s expression grow thoughtful. ‘Just give me his address – I’ll have a patrol sent over.’
Harrington shook his head dismissively.
‘I can’t do that.’
‘But –’
‘We’ll keep this in-house. Last thing we need is a vanful of uniformed plods rolling up at the solicitor general’s home, sirens blaring.’
‘Well, quite,’ Cox said sarcastically. ‘What would people say?’
Harrington looked at her with clear dislike.
‘We’ll go there now. You and me. We’ll keep this strictly on the QT, inspector. Do you have a car?’
‘Mr Wilson does.’
The man didn’t bother to try and hide his disdain.
‘How cosy,’ he said.
As Wilson piloted the cramped car through the choked roads of the city, heading south-west, Harrington, in the back seat, tried to get through to Thomas’s home phone on his mobile.
‘No answer,’ he muttered. ‘That is unusual – he ought to be contactable, even if he is off sick.’
‘Tried his mobile?’ Wilson suggested.
‘Mr Thomas doesn’t use one. He’s a rather traditional man.’
Cox twisted in her seat to address Harrington.
‘What’s the set-up at Thomas’s house? Is it just him and his wife?’
‘Him and Baroness Kent, yes.’ Harrington – seated sideways, his knees squeezed in behind Wilson’s seat – frowned and brushed some lint from his tailored trousers. ‘It’s a large-ish place, south of Esher, detached, several acres.’
‘No neighbours, then?’
‘None within a hundred yards.’
Cox pursed her lips. Didn’t like the sound of it.
Harrington directed them via a route that took them some way off the main road. Cox suspected he was doing his best to delay them, so tortuous was the route he was taking.
After multiple turns through a series of picturesque villages, they wound up at a sprawling stone-built pile, thick with yellowing ivy, screened from the road by dense, dark-green holly bushes. The driveway, paved with pricey-looking pale stone, had the dimensions of a decent-sized car park; a bottle-green classic Jaguar was parked there, alongside a silver two-seater.
‘Nice his ’n’ hers,’ Wilson murmured, crawling to a halt at the roadside.
Cox climbed out, opened the back door.
‘Mr Thomas is a classic-car enthusiast,’ Harrington said, unfolding himself from the back seat. ‘He has several more in his garage.’
‘Nice for some.’
It was growing dark. A bird was making a racket in a nearby tree. There were a few cars parked along the road; Cox jotted down their numbers (‘You never know,’ she said to Harrington).
She felt tense, uneasy. As the three of them crossed the driveway she was checking out the layout of the place with a copper’s eye. Doors front and back, of course – probably a third, a kitchen door, at the side, too. The windows in the upper floor were whitewashed wood with leaded glass; here at the front they opened on to a sort of terrace – from there it’d be an easy scramble down to the ground.
Ops in old places were a nightmare, she knew. Too many ins, too many damn outs.
They reached the doorstep; Harrington rapped confidently on the door.
‘I’m sure this is all quite unnecessary,’ he said airily. ‘I’m sure Mr Thomas is perfectly all right.’
Cox said nothing. Who are you trying to convince? she thought.
No one came to the door.
Harrington looked at her, his expression caught between impatience and concern.
‘I do feel it’s somewhat out of order to bother a sick man at his home,’ he said.
Cox, hand cupped against the glass, was peering through one of the front windows. She could see the outlines of wooden chair-backs, a bowl of flowers on a table, photograph frames on a sideboard under the sill. No movement.
‘Try again,’ she said. ‘It’s a big place – maybe he didn’t hear you.’
Harrington sighed, rapped again on the wood.
This time there was a noise from inside – an interior door opening, Cox thought. A key was turned in the front-door lock.
Sidney Thomas opened the door.
Cox left the window, moved back to stand at Harrington’s shoulder. Her first impression of the solicitor general was of a very poorly man: maybe, she thought guiltily, they shouldn’t have bothered him after all. He was recognizable as the fragile but well-built old gent she’d met in the café – same silver hair, same arthritis-swollen hands, same regular, forgettable facial features. But that man had been well-dressed and urbane, had carried himself – for all his evident physical frailty – with a
certain amount of enduring dignity.
Now, in a dressing-gown, rumpled pyjamas and slippers, he looked weak, bowed-down, broken. His skin was greyish and mottled with sweat. His broad shoulders were bent. In the café he’d looked maybe six-two, six-three if he stood at his full height; now he slouched and seemed barely taller than Cox herself.
He didn’t look surprised to see Harrington – that was odd, Cox thought.
‘Ah. Mr Harrington. Ah,’ he croaked.
‘Good evening, sir,’ Harrington said respectfully, with a formal bow of his head. Cox thought back to her own encounter with DCI Naysmith the previous day – dead drunk, passed out on the sofa. So this is what it’s like to have a boss you really respect, she thought sardonically. It showed the kind of deference for rank you only learned at the better public schools.
‘I do apologize for the unwarranted intrusion,’ Harrington went on, ‘and I very much hope you’re feeling rather better, but if it isn’t too much trouble –’
We don’t have time for this. Cox took over.
‘Mr Thomas,’ she interrupted, ignoring a daggers look from the MoJ man, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Cox from the Metropolitan Police.’
The old man looked at her sharply.
‘Police?’ What was that quiver in his voice? Fear?
‘That’s right. We need to speak with you in connection with an ongoing –’
‘Unthinkable.’ Thomas cut her off. His voice wavered, and his eyes gleamed unhealthily. ‘You oughtn’t have come here. Didn’t I tell you I was ill? Terrible head cold.’
Cox squinted at him.
‘Gastric trouble, I think you said, sir.’
He waved a liver-spotted hand: ‘Bit of everything, bit of everything. Ghastly business – and the last thing I need is you people keeping me from my rest.’
Still that odd quiver in the man’s voice.
Harrington launched into a smooth, wordy apology. Greg Wilson, meanwhile, caught Cox’s eye; looked like he was signalling to her, behind Harrington’s back, doing his clumsy best to be discreet.
She frowned at him.
He was nodding his head downward – at the front step? At the hallway carpet?
She followed his gaze, trying not to be obvious.
Nothing on the step that she could see; nothing on the carpet.
Twelve Deaths of Christmas Page 27