Twelve Deaths of Christmas
Page 30
Trevayne braked, hard, sudden, brake lights bright and terrifyingly close. The Merc skidded sharply through ninety degrees, jolted to a halt, jammed across the track.
Another roadblock. No turning away from this one.
She had a half-second’s sight of Trevayne’s face framed in the driver’s window, grimacing in the white blaze of Cox’s oncoming headlights. Cox took her hands off the wheel, covered her face with her forearms.
The Renault bounced over a hump in the path, crunched, off-side first and halfway airborne, into the Merc’s driver’s door.
Shudder of impact. Scream of crumpling metal. Hiss, bang of the little car’s airbag. A dizzying lurch, a hard thump.
Blackness.
Cox awoke. Gagged, spat blood. Her right wrist, cramped between her hip and the car door, was twisted, unnatural – the pain of it cut through the fog of her concussion.
‘Jesus. Jesus Christ.’
She lifted her head – her neck screamed at her, her vision swam in and out of focus. Fumbled with her left hand to unfasten her seatbelt; reached over, elbowing painfully past the inflated airbag, to unlatch the door.
Freezing cold night air, spatters of sleety rain. She gasped, drew a deep breath. There was light, faint light – how, where? She clambered from the car, clinging to the wet metalwork of the roof, the bonnet – saw that the little Renault still had battery-power, that the headlamps, crushed against the ruptured flank of the Merc, were still gleaming faintly.
She looked up – saw the face of Robert Trevayne, looking straight at her from four feet away.
Cox gasped, stumbled backwards, lost her footing on the mud-slicked path – hit the ground hard, her lower back thudding into an outcropping stone.
Trevayne hadn’t moved.
The dim, low-angled light of the headlamps drew out the dark hollows of his face. His nose and mouth were black with blood. As Cox’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out a ragged seam, a slash in the skin, running from Trevayne’s right eyebrow to the back of his head.
She swallowed. Bile and blood in her throat. Over Trevayne’s right ear, the seam split wider, opened out … She saw an edge of off-white bone. A dark mess of blood and brain.
The metal frame of the driver’s window, she noticed, was drenched with viscous gore.
She let her gaze track downwards. The impact of the Renault had split apart the aluminium of the Merc’s door; a sharp-edged horizontal rip had opened in the pit of a deep v-shaped dent.
Thick vertical stripes of blackness cut across the grey on the lower half of the door, beneath the rip. Cox, her belly roiling, squinted through the flickering half-light – then looked sharply away, gulping down vomit.
She’d seen something glistening between the halves of split metal; a bulge, ribbed, glossy with blood. A section of intestine. A good eight inches of Robert Trevayne’s gut.
Cox fought her way on to her hands and knees. Scrabbled for purchase; the path was slippery underfoot, gritty and cold between her fingers.
Take nothing for granted. Finish this. Do this right.
On her feet now, uncertain, swaying. A smear of light in the darkness behind her made her turn, narrow her eyes: a car, a patrol car, lumbering down the track. It was maybe half a mile away. Too far off to make a difference now.
She turned back to the Merc, to Trevayne.
Found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.
She took a step backwards. Thick hawthorn, dense and spiny, pressed up against her legs and back. Downhill, the Merc, its nose deep in the hedge, blocked the way; up the slope, in the wet, the dark, she hadn’t a hope in hell.
Trevayne was looking at her. There was a defiant gleam in the one eye she could see. The barrel of the gun was propped on the car door. What he must’ve been going through, she couldn’t imagine – just to grip the gun’s butt must be causing him agonies.
And for what? What would it achieve? What did he want?
She faced down Trevayne, faced down the black eye of the gun barrel. It was all she could do. The only option she had left.
Trevayne cocked the gun.
Cox shook her head – felt helpless, knew it could do no good, knew there was no use in asking Robert Trevayne for mercy – but shook her head, blinking in the rain, and mouthed, ‘No. No.’
Trevayne just smiled. The muscles of his jaw tensed. The trembling gun barrel lifted, tilted upwards – and, once it was pressed to the bloodied, sweat-beaded skin of his own forehead, Robert Trevayne pulled the trigger.
Cox hurled herself forward. It was too late to save Trevayne – it’d always been too late to save Trevayne. But that’s not why you’re here, Cox. She threw herself hip-first on to the bonnet of the Renault, skidded across to the near side, stumbled, staggered, found her balance – grabbed for the catch of the Merc’s boot, flipped up the tailgate –
A child, a young child, skinny and pale, cold and folded in a foetal curl.
The memory of poor Tomasz Lerna hit her like a physical impact. She bit her lip; reached out a shaking hand.
Abigail Thomas looked up at her. Her dark eyes were wide, her face white and wet with tears.
Took her a second to find her voice.
‘Are you rescuing me?’
Cox smiled, felt a hard lump in her throat. Wiped her lank, drenched hair out of her eyes. Christ, what she must look like to the poor kid.
‘Yes, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m rescuing you.’
She bent down. Gathered the child up in her arms.
29
9 September 2015
Cox waited and watched: the kids, smart in matching yellow polo-shirts, running, walking, laughing, scrapping, in twos, threes, fours, out of the gates; and then the adults, waiting for them – some men, mostly women, most in their late twenties, early thirties. Some she knew, some she didn’t.
Her phone, on the passenger seat, buzzed. She snatched it up.
‘DI Cox.’
A pause – then a laugh, Greg Wilson’s laugh.
‘Are you sure about that, Kerry? Want to try again?’
She grinned, put her hand to her brow.
‘Jesus, sorry Greg – old habits die hard.’ Shook her head. ‘What’s the news?’
‘I just left the courtroom. Guilty on four out of seven charges.’
Cox pressed her lips together, nodded firmly.
‘That’ll do,’ she said.
‘It’ll do for life without chance of parole, yeah. We won’t be seeing Sidney Thomas again.’ He paused. ‘No whooping and cheering? No hallelujah chorus?’
She managed a weary smile.
‘I’m happy, I promise. Or anyway, I’m satisfied. It’s been a long time coming.’
It’d been a long, wearing trial – but for all the solicitor general’s friends in high places, it’d been pretty much a foregone conclusion after the lab matched Thomas’s DNA with samples taken from Tomasz Lerna’s body.
What should I feel? she wondered. Elated, triumphant? No. Six people were dead, and a jury’s ‘guilty’ verdict wasn’t going to change that. There were no happy endings here.
‘Surprised you weren’t there to see the last act,’ Wilson said.
Cox shrugged.
‘I kind of lost my appetite for hanging around with lawyers.’
‘How about with writers? I want to buy you dinner tomorrow night. I’m celebrating.’
‘Finished the book already?’
‘I’ve just rattled off the final chapter. It’ll be in the bookshops in the blink of an eye.’
Cox rolled her eyes. You can take the man out of Fleet Street …
Still, after everything they’d been through – the horrors he’d witnessed, the dangers he’d fronted up to – she couldn’t blame Wilson for wanting a bit of payback. His insider’s take on the downfall of Sidney Thomas was going to be a big seller, there was no doubt about that – power, conspiracy, perversion, murder, heroism, it was a great story.
Great to read about, anyway, she s
upposed. Fucking terrible to have to live through. That was the thing with stories – they were only entertaining from a safe distance.
At least Wilson’s version would be true – she’d make damn sure of that.
She was about to suggest that he might want her to read the book before he delivered it to his publisher when she saw a face she knew, passing out of the school gate. Funny how that worked, how that one face – just the same old eyes, nose, smile – stood out in any crowd, like a single lit bulb in a dark room. Unmissable.
‘I have to go,’ she said to Greg.
‘The Met begging you to return?’
‘Something like that. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
She pocketed her phone, jumped out of the car. Called out his name – and here he came, at a run, sports bag over his shoulder, wad of crayon drawings in his hand. Matthew.
‘Mum!’
‘Hiya, love.’
She reached down and tousled his messy brown hair. What she really wanted to do was pick him up and give him a proper hug – but she’d been given a proper telling-off the last time she’d tried that in front of his mates.
‘What’ve you been up to today?’ she asked as they walked hand in hand to the car.
‘We played football in PE,’ Matthew said breathlessly. ‘I got picked second, only after Jermaine, who’s brilliant, and I wanted to play centre-forward, but Mr Walsh said I had to play in midfield, and I did and I still scored two goals and …’
He gabbled on. Cox half-listened, a distant smile on her face, as she manoeuvred carefully out of the busy school car park. Just glad that he was there; just glad that he was hers.
She drove slowly through the new-build estates between the school and the main road back to London.
The tale of his football heroics concluded, Matthew had fallen silent.
Cox glanced at him in the rear-view.
‘What’re you thinking, love?’
He looked up.
‘Am I spending the night at yours tonight, Mum?’
Cox laughed. He’d developed an oddly grown-up way of putting things lately.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are spending the night at mine. I’ve put your Iron Man bedsheets on and everything.’
‘Oh.’ Matthew looked a bit put out.
‘What’s up? You like Iron Man, don’t you?’
He pouted.
‘Not as good as Minions.’
Cox shook her head. Kids. It’d be something else next week. All depended on which TV ads Matthew saw between now and then.
‘Pizza for tea?’
His face lit up.
‘Yes.’
Still, it was never too hard to win him round.
She switched on the radio. It was tuned to Radio Four; the hourly news bulletin had just begun.
‘The solicitor general, who is married to the Tory peer Baroness Kent,’ a man’s voice was saying, ‘was given a sentence of life without the option of parole after being found guilty of –’
‘Bo-ring,’ bawled Matthew from the back seat. Kerry smiled.
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ she said. Retuned the radio. The first station she came to was playing a tinny pop song – that’d do.
But Matthew must’ve picked up an idea of the content of the bulletin, because he piped up again a minute or so later.
‘Mu-um.’
‘Ye-es.’
‘You’re not a policeman any more, are you?’
She tutted at him.
‘I was never a policeman, was I, Matthew? I was a policewoman.’ She shifted gear, keeping her eyes on the road. ‘But no. No, I’m not a policewoman any more.’
In March she’d taken a job with a charity in south-east London, a small outfit that worked with women who’d been trafficked to the UK. It was fulfilling work – frustrating sometimes, sure, but it felt like it made a difference.
‘What are you now, then?’ Matthew pestered. ‘For example,’ he added helpfully, ‘Oliver’s mum is a decorator.’
‘Good for Oliver’s mum. I’m – well, I help people, love. People who need help.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘I do.’ Felt the need to throw in a moral lesson. ‘It’s good to help people.’
‘Yes, but do you like it as much as being a policeman?’
‘Policewoman.’
‘Yes, that.’
Good question.
‘D’you know, love, I’m not sure. It was scary, sometimes, being a policewoman – and it meant I didn’t get to see you as often as I wanted to.’ Ahead, to her right, the clouded London skyline, dour and doomy, was looming into view. She shifted lanes, ready for the turn-off. ‘But then, it was exciting, too – and I got to stop bad people doing bad things, and help people who were in trouble. Sometimes it was really hard, but at other times –’
Matthew cut her off.
‘Doesn’t really matter, Mum. I like this one.’ He was pointing at the radio; the DJ was playing some godawful bubblegum teen-pop track. ‘Turn it up. I like this one.’
Cox smiled.
‘I like it too,’ she lied. What the hell.
She reached for the volume dial. Did as she was told.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2015
Copyright © Working Partners Two Limited, 2015
Cover images: Cemetery © Getty Images; Foreground cross © Stephen Smith/Alamy Stock Photo
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-405-92029-2