The Price Of Darkness

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘You live here alone, Ms Greetham?’

  ‘No, I have a partner.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Surname?’

  ‘Freeth.’

  ‘And is he …’ Faraday frowned ‘… upstairs? At work? Away somewhere?’

  ‘He’s away. Up north.’

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘So when do you expect him back?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He mentioned tomorrow but it might be longer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It just might. He changes his mind sometimes. That’s not a crime, is it?’

  ‘Not at all, Ms Greetham. Why would you think it could be?’

  Faraday was looking at the heap of laundry. It was feasible that she hadn’t done a wash for a couple of weeks. It was equally possible that there might be corners of the house concealing a hoard of other forensic clues. Traces of sulphuric acid. Fluff or hairs from Mallinder’s house. Maybe even the bloodied pillows from the dead man’s bed.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the Bridewell with us, Ms Greetham.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we need to ask some questions in connection with a major inquiry. We’re investigating a murder, Ms Greetham. The victim’s name was Jonathan Mallinder. He was killed in Port Solent a couple of weeks ago.’ He paused. ‘You‘ll know the name Mallinder.’

  ‘Of course. It was in the note my dad left.’

  ‘And you know he was murdered? Shot to death?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I expect you’ll appreciate our interest.’

  She was doing her best to look blank. Neither Faraday nor Suttle were fooled. This might be simple, Faraday thought. Protestations of innocence. Followed by everything she knew.

  ‘And what happens if I don’t want to come?’

  ‘I’m hoping that situation won’t arise but I’m afraid we’ll need to go through the house.’ He produced a folded sheet of paper from his jacket. ‘This is a Section 8 warrant, Ms Greetham. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, it gives me the power to search these premises.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘The magistrate. His signature’s on the bottom.’

  ‘But why? Why the search?’

  ‘Because of the contents of your father’s note. And because of what happened to Mr Mallinder.’ He paused. ‘Is the house yours?’

  ‘It belonged to my father. He’s left it to me but we’re still waiting for probate.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and Charlie.’ She turned to Suttle, increasingly desperate. ‘What’s going on here? What am I supposed to have done?’

  Suttle didn’t answer. Faraday looked at his watch. Scenes of Crime were due any time now. Already there’d be a uniform on the gate.

  ‘Shall we … ?’

  It was nearly an hour before Faraday was prepared to begin the interview. Julie Greetham had declined the offer of the duty solicitor, preferring to phone her own brief. It was rare for Hillary Denton to make an appearance at the Bridewell. Most of the time she devoted herself to employment tribunals.

  ‘She’s represented me before,’ Julie said by way of explanation. ‘We’ve got to know each other a bit.’

  Denton, when she arrived, wanted to check that her client hadn’t been arrested.

  ‘Absolutely not. She can leave whenever she likes. We simply need information. Your client may well be in a position to help.’

  The interview began shortly after seven. Suttle quickly established the nature of Julie’s relationship with Freeth. She’d met him a couple of years ago at a Youth Offending conference in Winchester. He’d been the voice behind a PowerPoint presentation on Positivo. Afterwards, over a buffet lunch, they’d found themselves chatting. Later that month he’d phoned her in Pompey. They’d gone out a couple of times, argued fit to bust, laughed a good deal and got drunk. Listening, Faraday found it difficult to associate the picture she was painting with the tense, watchful figure across the table. Something’s happened, he told himself. Something with which she can no longer cope.

  ‘Were you living with your father at that point?’ Suttle asked.

  ‘Yes. I’d been married before but it didn’t work out. Dad wasn’t very well, even then, and it made sense for us all to … you know … muck in together.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Me and Dad. Then Charlie.’

  ‘So Charlie moved in with the pair of you?’

  ‘Yes. He and Dad always got on really well. Dad had been with the paras for a bit when he was young. Charlie’s a war freak. They had a lot in common.’

  ‘Your dad had a long spell in the army?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He broke a leg in a practice jump. It was a bad break and it never set properly. He was invalided out.’

  ‘Did he get a disability pension?’

  ‘Just a bit. A pittance really. Dad always worried about money. That’s why he went into Gullifant’s in the first place. Ever since I can remember, he was telling my mum what a safe job it was. He was good with his hands, Dad, always had been. He had lots of patience too, with the customers, spent loads of time with them. After it all collapsed, he got cards by the sackful. I think even he was amazed. Not that cards make any real difference. You can’t live on fresh air, can you?’

  Her dad, she said, had gone into what she called ‘a dark place’ after the news came through. It was a bad time anyway, because the anniversary of his wife’s death was just round the corner and he’d never been able to cope with that, but the morning he’d brought the Gullifant’s letter home was the day he began to give up.

  ‘It happened during the holidays. Thank God I was at home. He was in a terrible state. I’d never seen a grown man cry before, never, least of all my own dad. I just felt so sorry for him. He knew that times were tough in the shop but I don’t think it ever occurred to him that everything would go, every last penny. But then you don’t, do you?’

  His mates from work, she said, had been great, Sam Taylor in particular. Sam was the one who’d managed to keep his head above water, organise a protest, raise a petition, write letters to more or less anybody who might have been able to help. He’d sent her dad copies of all this correspondence but as door after door began to close, his mental state - already fragile - got worse and worse.

  ‘We’d got him to the doctor by then. He diagnosed clinical depression. Dad hated medication. At first he refused point-blank to take any pills, told us he could cope by himself, but that simply wasn’t true. In the end he took them as a favour to us, just to shut us up, but it was awful. They must have been really heavy. They turned him into a zombie. He wasn’t my dad at all.’

  Mention of pills prompted an intervention from Faraday. When, exactly, had it got to medication?

  Julie thought hard about dates. She was looser now, more relaxed, far less defensive. The very act of telling the story, of satisfying the detectives’ voracious appetite for detail, seemed to have touched a nerve. The least her father deserved, after all, were the right facts in the right order.

  ‘That would have been June time. I remember the weather being brilliant. Charlie and I used to try and take him out every night. We’d go down to the seafront, to Old Portsmouth. There’s a little quay down there, looking out over the Harbour mouth. There are seats and you can watch the sun go down over the water. There’s lots going on, lots of boats, lots of movement, and I think I had this feeling that it might be a distraction for Dad, that it might help him, but I’m not sure it did. He just used to sit there, staring away into the distance, not saying a word. Charlie was getting angrier and angrier. I think it probably hit him harder than me, to tell you the truth. The fact that someone he knew, someone he loved, someone he respected so much had been reduced to this.’

  ‘You say Charlie was getting angrier and angrier.’

  ‘Yes.’<
br />
  ‘Did he blame anyone?’

  ‘I don’t know. To be honest I’d just shut off by then. I think maybe he had too.’

  Towards the end of July she and Charlie had thought of taking her father away for a holiday, Cornwall maybe, somewhere he’d always enjoyed when he was younger, but in the end Charlie’s work had made that impossible so she’d decided not to go.

  ‘That was a huge mistake. I should have taken him by myself, just me and Dad, but I didn’t. I told myself he’d be too much of a handful and I thought he’d miss Charlie too, because he was back home most evenings. Then …’ she looked at her hands ‘… that last letter arrived.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘From Sam again. It was a photocopy, like the rest of the stuff he sent. Dad was much more stable by this time. He was taking different medication by this time and I think he’d convinced himself that the government were going to bail them all out. There was some sort of fund. Charlie’s got the details.’

  ‘And the letter?’

  ‘It came from the Department of Work and Pensions. Some minion. I can’t remember the name.’

  ‘But what did it say?’

  ‘Basically it said that there was no money.’

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘No, not in the sense that Dad wanted. According to the letter, demands on the fund had made things difficult. There’d be a possibility of some money in the end but that wouldn’t be until 2008. It was pathetic really. All the fuss, all the hype, then it turns out there’s nothing in the pot. Bastards.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Dad just folded up. It was the saddest thing I ever saw. He wouldn’t speak to us, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t go to bed, wouldn’t sleep properly. He just spent all night in his chair downstairs with the cat. We tried to get through to him. We tried telling him not to give up. We said he’d be safe with us, that we’d look after him, make sure he never went short, but it was hopeless. You know what? In the end I don’t think it was even the money. It was something else. Not the fact that this whole thing had happened but that it could happen. That’s why he wrote the note, the one he left in the car. I’m convinced of it.’

  Faraday nodded. People like you shouldn’t be allowed.

  ‘I understand your father killed himself in the garage. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. He did it in the middle of the night. It was Charlie’s car. He’d rented a little lock-up round the back. Dad knew where the key was. He’d got it all sorted, a length of pipe, clamps, duct tape, the lot. Some of the stuff even came from Gullifant’s. Horrible.’

  ‘And Charlie?’

  ‘He’s never forgiven himself.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For not hiding the key.’

  At Faraday’s insistence they took a break. Suttle organised some coffees while Faraday made a couple of calls from a nearby office. When Suttle joined him, he was just putting the phone down.

  ‘That was Tracy Barber,’ he said. ‘MI5 think they’ve got a line on a terrorist cell. There’s evidence of some kind of recce, couple of guys, the week previous to the hit. Everyone’s getting really excited. Stiffie time.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Suttle gave Faraday his coffee. What interested him more was Julie Greetham. ‘What do you think, boss?’

  ‘Me?’ Faraday sat back in the chair, gazed up at the ceiling. ‘I think the same as you, Jimmy. I think she knows everything. And I think it’s bloody tragic.’

  When the interview resumed, Faraday brought up the issue of Dermott O’Keefe. He wanted to know when the lad had first come to Freeth’s attention.

  ‘I can’t tell you that. Charlie deals with dozens of kids, probably hundreds.’

  ‘But when did you first become aware of him?’

  ‘I didn’t. Not in any special sense.’

  ‘Charlie never brought him home?’

  ‘Never. He never did that. Never mixed work and us.’

  ‘But I thought you sometimes helped out? Over at Tile Barn?’

  ‘I did. Occasionally. But that was different. That was their territory, not ours.’

  ‘So you never met O’Keefe?’

  ‘Of course I did. I showed him to you on the photo back at the house. But you’re asking something else. You’re asking if there was some kind of special thing going on there. And the answer is no.’

  ‘And Charlie never talked about him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He never mentioned how much potential he had? He never talked about the lad making the Junior Leader course?’

  ‘Yeah, OK, he did mention that. I remember now.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said the boy was outstanding.’

  ‘So he did talk about him?’

  ‘Yes, he did, a bit, once or twice. Now you ask.’

  ‘So why pretend he didn’t?’

  Hillary Denton, sitting beside Julie, told her she didn’t have to answer that question. Her client, she reminded Faraday, was here to deal in facts. The question he’d just asked was an accusation.

  Faraday accepted the objection but said he wanted to be clear in his own head. Charlie had been impressed by Dermott O’Keefe. But there’d never been any suggestion that the relationship had ever been closer than that.

  ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’d never meet outside the confines of the course?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Faraday nodded, scribbled himself a note. He wanted Julie to go over the last couple of weeks and to think very carefully before she answered. Julie glanced at her solicitor but said nothing.

  ‘Does Charlie spend every night with you?’

  ‘Yes. Except when he’s doing residentials. Then he’s with the kids.’

  ‘Have there been any of these residentials since the beginning of this month?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So he’s been home every night? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Faraday sat back, signalling to Suttle to take over.

  ‘Monday the fourth of September,’ he said. ‘A fortnight ago today. Can you remember what you were doing?’

  ‘Why that particular date?’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you could answer the question, Ms Greetham.’

  ‘Is that when he got killed? Mallinder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think … ?’

  ‘I think nothing, Ms Greetham. I’m simply asking you what you were doing on the night of the fourth. Like I say it was a Monday.’

  She frowned, picked at her fingers. For the first time Faraday noticed the scarlet blotches on the backs of her hands, on her wrists. Eczema, he thought. Often a nervous complaint.

  ‘Mondays I go to yoga,’ she said at last. ‘I’m normally back by about nine. Charlie cooks. We eat after I get back.’

  ‘And that Monday?’

  ‘I’d have gone to yoga.’

  ‘And afterwards? After the meal?’

  ‘We’d talk a bit and then we’d go to bed.’

  ‘So that’s what happened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re absolutely certain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK.’ Suttle glanced down at his notepad. ‘So when did you find out about Mallinder?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I think it was the following day. It was in the News.’

  ‘And what did you feel?’

  ‘Feel?’ Her laughter failed to mask the bitterness in her voice. ‘How do you think we felt? We were delighted. We couldn’t believe it. If anyone killed my dad it was that horrible man. And when we realised that someone had done it to him it was brilliant news, absolutely brilliant. In fact I couldn’t believe it. I remember phoning Sam up, Sam Taylor. He thought it w
as brilliant too. Maybe you ought to arrest us all. Get it over and done with.’

  ‘We haven’t arrested you, Ms Greetham.’ Suttle reminded her.

  ‘No, but you’d like to, wouldn’t you? That what all this is about. That’s why you want to poke round the house. That’s why you’ll be talking to Charlie. He was a policeman too. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you really think a policeman, even an ex-policeman, is going to get himself involved in something like this? Knowing what he knows? Knowing the way you people work? Knowing about …’ she gestured at the bank of whirring audio cassettes, at the video camera mounted on the wall ‘… all this?’ She stared Suttle out, demanding an answer. When none came, she pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘I know I shouldn’t be saying this, I know it’s irrelevant, but you’ve really upset me. Losing dad was bad enough. Now I’m supposed to have killed the bloke who took him away from us. That’s what you’re saying. You’ll never admit it but that’s what it boils down to. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go home now. Is that OK with everyone?’

  Home wasn’t an option. Faraday brought the interview to a close, making a note on the tape of the time and the circumstances. The Scenes of Crime team, he told Julie, had already taken possession of number 72 Westbourne Road, and if she had nowhere else to go accommodation would be made available at the Travelodge on the seafront.

  Julie stared at him. It hadn’t occurred to her that she’d be locked out of her own house.

  ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘I’m afraid we can.’

  ‘But what am I supposed to wear? Wash with? Who feeds the cat?’

  Faraday assured her that the cat would be fine. A WPC would accompany her back to collect whatever she’d need until the house was released.