“Yes, son, you should – and you will. Because you’ve got no bloody choice.” Hogarth stomped off towards the ramp. A moment later Cruddas chased off after him.
Luker Close, eh? The same little road which housed a nightclub called Club Smart. Maybe it was a coincidence, but Hogarth was a detective by trade. He found it hard to believe in things like coincidence. And, coincidence or not, Hogarth was going to pursue this particular rabbit hole to the very end. Until then Sue Palmer would rub along just fine by herself. After all, nothing much could have happened in the last couple of hours, could it?
Chapter Twenty-six
It was almost four pm when Hogarth and Cruddas reached the middle of the high street. Pure habit made Hogarth’s eyes focus on the faces in the high street as he passed them by. It was a rogues’ gallery. Between every anonymous face Hogarth caught sight of countless disreputables he’d encountered through the job. He’d almost forgotten what it was like not to see other people as a mess of problems, threats, and danger. And somewhere among them lurked Ali’s stalker, another problem blending in with all the rest. The thought made him feel queasy. But Hogarth forced his mind back to the issue at hand, determinedly scanning the streets for one particular homeless man instead of an unknown stalker.
“He’s not here,” said Cruddas. “I told you that already.”
“But what you tell me doesn’t count for much,” said Hogarth. “The guy in the homeless shelter gave us a steer in the right direction.”
“He said the man was called Wilbur. And that helps us how?”
“He said the man was seen on Luker Close. Can you remember what else is down Luker Close, Andy?”
He blinked. “Club Smart. But what does that mean?”
“At the moment, nothing. But it soon might…”
They passed a string of stores on the high street. There was some kind of hysteria going on inside the SavaPenny store, but then nothing was unusual in Southend. He’d have to
leave that one to the uniforms. They soon reached the big Coffee Italia coffee shop on the corner of Luker Close. Hogarth felt a twinge of anxiousness and excitement. Coffee Italia’s edifice retreated at the side, giving way to the canopy over the side of JV Sports. Pressed low against the window was a scruffy set of well-flattened cardboard boxes, and squashed and torn winter coats with their white linings exposed. The coats had been crushed into pillows, and there was a mess of crushed beer cans and rag-tag belongings left at their side. Hogarth counted three deserted homeless plots. Further ahead and just out of sight was the doorway of Club Smart. Hogarth looked around and wondered about that night. Had he seen Free Willy there that night? It was possible, but he’d been tired and stretched. These days he barely saw the homeless. They were so much a part of the scenery that they faded into the background.
“There’s no one here,” said Andy.
“Well done, mastermind,” said Hogarth. He paced around, checking both ends of the street before he walked to the little kiosk positioned in the middle of Luker Close where it joined the high street. The guy inside looked like a typical, shady market trader. When their eyes met it was like magnetic forces repelling one another, but Hogarth asked his question anyway.
“Do you know where those homeless fellas have gone?”
“What for? You lot gonna bully them again?”
“No one’s getting bullied here, pal. I’m trying to reunite father and son.”
The kiosk man scratched his balding head.
“I dunno. They go drinking in Warrior Square park sometimes. Could be there.”
“Oh…” said Hogarth. But that didn’t sound right. Free Willy wasn’t a social person. The kiosk man stepped out of his booth.
“Hang about…” he said, looking into the coffee shop window. “One of them is in there. Is that your man?”
The guy pointed through the window of Coffee Italia. A tall man wearing a scruffy green parka was at the front of the queue, ordering his coffee. The hood was down, and he wore a beanie hat underneath. But they couldn’t see his face.
“He’s homeless. How can he afford those prices?” said Cruddas.
“That place gives the homeless free coffee. And he’s always in there, that one. It’s like he’s their pet or something.”
Hogarth walked to the side window, eyes wide, waiting. He watched as the man took his coffee and turned to the side, taking a stirring stick from the condiment counter. Hogarth studied the man’s profile. He was ruddy faced, but gaunt. His cheeks were sunken, and his face lined. There was no way he would have picked the man as Andy Cruddas’s father… and yet his large eyes, and prominent cheekbones said there was a resemblance. Hogarth stared on. The man turned to pick a seat. Their eyes met through the glass and the man froze in shock. It was the same man who had been outside the Cruddas house. Hogarth didn’t need any further confirmation. He moved like lightning, forgetting Andy Cruddas altogether.
“Hey!” said Andy. The young man’s eyes landed on the man behind the glass. His mouth fell open and he froze. Andy Cruddas walked slowly into the coffee shop to face a man who should have been dead.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The haggard man in the parka watched as they entered. He stood rooted to the spot, his hands shaking so much that a tongue of black coffee slopped over the side of his white mug. The spillage seemed to wake him up. His eyes flicked across the busy coffee shop towards the doorway in the back. Hogarth read his intentions.
“Mr Cruddas!” said Hogarth, in warning. But he didn’t listen. The hobo plonked his mug down on the condiment shelf. He ran past the tables. Heads turned as he buffeted past them.
“What’s he done wrong?” called one the coffee drinkers.
Another woman called out. “Why don’t you leave him alone!”
Hogarth grimaced. These people didn’t have a clue. Once again good old human nature was getting in his way.
“Stop running, Cruddas. We need to talk to you,” said Hogarth.
“Dad…” called Andy Cruddas. “Dad?!”
The hobo reached the back door first, but Hogarth followed, pursuing him into a dark wooden panelled corridor. The man stopped by a fire exit door looking out onto Luker Close. He put a grubby hand on the fire exit door, ready to push it open but Hogarth was almost upon him, and his lip trembled.
“I’m sorry…” he muttered.
“But it’s not me you need to apologise to, is it, George?” he said. “It’s all those others.”
The old man pushed the door open into the street. As he stepped out, Hogarth wrapped a hand under his arm and dragged him back inside.
“You’re not disappearing this time, George. You’re coming with me.”
“I can’t! You don’t get it, do you?” said the man, his eyes fearful, his stubbly chin quivering. “Oh, I think I get it, alright,” said Hogarth. “But it still ends here.” Suddenly the fight went out of him. Hogarth looked back over his shoulder, following the old man’s gaze. He found Andy Cruddas staring. There was no denying it now. They were father and son.
“Why don’t you come back and finish your coffee, Mr Cruddas? We don’t need to make more of a scene than we did already, do we?” Slack-shouldered, the man did as he was bid.
They sat down on one of the tan leather sofas at the very back of the coffee house, getting furtive glances from some of the coffee shop staff and coffee drinkers. Hogarth turned their gazes away with a few choice looks. George Cruddas wilted under his son’s unrelenting gaze. He scratched his chin, shuffled in the chair and looked at Hogarth. It was easier to stare at the hard eyes of a seasoned cop than it was to face his own son.
“You know, Andy, don’t you?” said the older man. His voice was a whisper.
Hogarth kept quiet. If he played his cards right, there was a chance of a full confession without pushing. “Know what, Dad? Know that you ran out on me? On your family? That you let us think you were dead. Yeah. I know all that right.”
The older man leaned forward. “But I only did all that for y
ou… so you could continue to enjoy the life you’d become accustomed to. The life you and your mother deserved before I went and ruined it all.”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare play the self-pity card. You walked out. You pretended you were dead. Did you ever think I would thank you for that?”
“Thank me? No. I sincerely hoped you would never see me again.”
“But then you came back.”
“But I didn’t come back for this. I didn’t come back to see you in trouble…”
“Then what did you come back for, eh? To watch us? Like we were on some bloody reality TV show where you didn’t have to get involved?”
George Cruddas dipped his head.
“No. I came back because I didn’t have any choice.”
Hogarth tensed, ready to seize upon the words he wanted to hear.
“Choice?” said Andy. “You’re the only one had any choice! Seeing you now, knowing what you did to Mum… that the accident was a fake – and about those poor people who died out there in that crash, how the hell can you live with that? Those people were killed because of what you did. You’ve hurt everyone you touched.”
“It was the law of unintended consequences, Andy. I’ll have that on my conscience for the rest of my life.”
“Seeing you now… I almost wish you were dead.”
The old man sighed.
“I know… but this has been worse, believe me.”
He had an admission of guilt for the M25 deaths. But Hogarth needed more. He needed the confession for Jake Drummond. Hogarth couldn’t hold back any longer.
“You said you had no choice but to come back, George. But you did have a choice. You were invisible. Everyone thought you were dead. You’d won. You could have stayed away and it would have all been hunky dory. But when you showed up at Club Smart a year back you were caught on camera. You blew your cover apart. I don’t get it, George. Why did you do it? And a year later you’re still here risking your skin, hanging around outside the family home. Tell me, George. Was it a sense of guilt? Or did you come back for revenge, George? Was that it?”
George Cruddas looked at Hogarth with watery eyes and shook his head.
“He found me, didn’t he?
“Who?”
“Come on. Who do you think?”
“Jake Drummond?” said Hogarth. George nodded.
“How?”
“Because he was smarter than I ever gave him credit for. He had a true crook’s mind. By the time I died in that crash, Jake Drummond had drained me dry. I literally had nothing left to give him, but he still wouldn’t stop coming after me. I was afraid he would turn on Barbara. In the last few meetings I had with Drummond, I was already working on my exit-plan. I was jittery. It must have shown. I don’t even remember what we talked about. By then I’d confessed all to Barbara and I was suffering in all kinds of ways. I think I started blabbing something to him about an away trip. I mentioned Stockton because it was easy to say. My family lived there when I was young. By then we had a strange kind of relationship. It had even become polite. I hated him, but we still had to talk. Maybe I told him my family hailed from Stockton before, or I let it slip somehow. Either way, a few months passed after I disappeared. I thought I had gotten away with it. Then I saw a notice in the local paper saying a man called Jake Drummond was looking for his long-lost brother. George Drummond. It was a threat, pure and simple. I was terrified because I was sure he would expose me to the police. But that wasn’t what he was after, was it? Drummond saw me as a prospect for a better blackmail. He had more leverage on me than ever. The moment I responded to his newspaper ad, I was done for. He told me to send him more money and I did, just once, even though I was skint. I robbed a corner shop to make that payment. But I couldn’t go on like that. I came back. I told him it was over… but he wouldn’t have it. He made me stay in contact with him, made me send him the pittance I could afford, because that way I was still his. He owned me. But if he kept my secret I didn’t care. I came back last year because he was threatening to expose me again. I asked him to stop, and he went quiet. But I stayed because I was afraid. I had to keep him calm. How was I to know he was bleeding Barbara dry of the life insurance payout?!
Hogarth leaned forward.
“And how exactly would you know about that, George?” Hogarth scented blood.
“The life insurance? Because I got curious. I wanted to see if all my suffering had been worth it. I used my old pin numbers to look at the online accounts. They worked. I needed to know the money was there. But when I saw what was left, I was devastated. I saw money had been transferred out on a regular basis. Before I even checked where the money had gone, I knew. The money was going to Drummond every month without fail. He’d taken my whole life, and now he was taking the last thing I could ever give my family.”
Hogarth leaned forward, lowering his voice. “And that must have driven you mad… this man who had driven you to commit fraud, to fake your own death, to kill others… all you did for your family… then you learned he’d even stolen that. If I was in your shoes, I don’t think I could have handled that – not without taking some measure of retribution.”
Light glimmered in Hogarth’s eyes.
“But it was far worse finding out what he had done to Andy… I begged him to stop blackmailing Barbara… and I stayed close because he wouldn’t listen. I kept begging him to stop week after week. It was all I could do. I hoped against hope he would give in, seeing he had taken enough…”
“Was it really all you could do, George?” said Hogarth. “Come on. You spent your time dressed as one of the tramps outside JV Sports, living on scraps, sleeping on pavements just to watch a cruel man siphon your family’s money? Is that all you did? Or maybe you were there, biding your time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to end Drummond’s blackmails once and for all…?”
George Drummond’s eyes flared.
“Drummond knew I was in town, but I was careful. He didn’t know I was living on the streets. It was my last advantage. I was able to hide from him in public places… because no one really looks at a homeless person. And I worked out that if kept away from giving my name to the homeless services, I could stay hidden for good. So that’s how I did it. I watched Drummond from near and far… and I begged him to stop. But he sneered and carried right on.”
Hogarth nodded, urging the man forward with his confession.
“I might have coped with that. But when I saw him driving around with Andy… I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even warn you, Andy. I wanted to, but it would have exposed everything. It would have ruined your mother’s life…”
“What?!” said Andy. “You saw Drummond with me? You knew he was pressuring me? And you still didn’t even try to help me?”
“Yes, of course I tried. I pleaded with him to leave you alone. I offered him money I didn’t have. But he just laughed in my face…”
“That must have been the ultimate insult, George… that must have been the moment when you could take no more. How did you do it, George? Tell me.”
The old man looked at Hogarth. He looked empty and spent.
“I know what you want from me detective. But I’m sorry, I can’t give it to you.”
Hogarth grimaced.
“The lies have to end, George. I’ve got the shadow of a killer on CCTV, and I want to put a name to that killer. Tell me what you did…”
“I didn’t kill Jake Drummond.”
“But George… you knew where he was. You knew how he operated… you were in the area. That’s motive. You know how to hide, how to get into a sleazy club like Club Smart under the radar. And you’d killed before. The taboo was gone…” said Hogarth, whispering. “Blood was already on your hands. It must have been so easy to cross that line. All you needed to do was slink into that club and hide and wait. You’d become an expert at skulking, hadn’t you?”
“I wanted to do it, yes, damn it, of course I did. But I couldn’t.”
Hogarth
blinked. A sinking feeling was taking hold of his gut.
“Where’s the knife, George? What did you do with it?”
“It wasn’t me. I wasn’t even there.”
Hogarth shut his mouth tight and gritted his teeth. He leaned back in his seat.
Andy Cruddas shook his head.
“I really don’t care if you put my father in jail for the rest of his life. It’s what he deserves. But no matter what motive we may have had to hurt Drummond, I wasn’t there when that man died and neither was he,” Andy nodded at his father. “You thought we worked it together, didn’t you?”
The wind had been taken from Hogarth’s sails. Both men were guilty of terrible crimes, but they hadn’t killed Jake Drummond. He was getting nowhere fast. And a killer was still at large.
“Sorry to disappoint you, detective,” said Andy.
“Maybe you didn’t kill the man, but I think you may still know who that killer is.”
“What? Of course I don’t know who it is,” said George Cruddas.
Andy Cruddas shrugged. “If I did, then this farce would be over. You’re clutching at straws.”
“No, I don’t think I am. You both know Club Smart very well. And so does the killer. He knew exactly where to find Drummond, he knew where best to attack him. The killer knew how to get away unseen. He knew how to hide his face from the CCTV. I think it’s very possible that the killer is someone you know very well. My advice to you, gentlemen, is that you’d better start thinking if anyone you know could fit that bill. Because right now, even without a confession, you two are still my best fit for the kill.”
Hogarth sighed and stood up. “I think it’s time I gave you both a tour of the station.”
He steered them through the doors onto the busy high street and as soon as he got outside, he heard the loud wail of police sirens. They were close. They stopped nearby, just out of sight. Car doors slammed and he heard the sound of running feet. A jab of panic hit Hogarth in the chest. He plucked his phone from his pocket and saw the missed message from Palmer. There was another body. Damn it! Another one! And it was just around the corner. Hogarth felt as if he’d been punched in the guts. He looked at the Cruddases, unable to speak. He worked hard to snap himself out of it. “You two. Come with me. Come on! Now!” Hogarth pushed both men away from the high street, turning them back onto Luker Close. With Gary Grayson’s death Hogarth’s theories had come apart at the seams. Another suspect was dead and he was nowhere near solving the case. Halfway down Luker Close, Hogarth saw two police cars parked by the bollard outside Club Smart. He recognised one of the uniforms by the cars as PC Jordan.
The Darkest Lies: A Gripping Crime Mystery Series - Two Novel Boxed Set (The DI Hogarth Darkest Series Boxed Sets Book 1) Page 18