Shed No Tears

by Caz Frear

  The exception, not the norm.

  It therefore comes as a relief—and a shock, if I’m honest—when, after what I’d imagine was an exceptionally dark night of the soul, Dyer agrees to tell us everything in exchange for fifteen minutes face-to-face with her sons, Ewan and Max. A noble act, she clearly thinks, judging by the pious expression she’s maintained for the past two hours, as we’ve painstakingly checked, then double-checked, every part of Fellows’ statement against hers.

  In summary: they tally. Once we’re happy we’ve got what we need, we let silence fall over the room, giving her the space to fill it with anything else she’d like to hang herself with.

  “Thanks for letting me see the boys,” she says after a moment. “I know you didn’t have to. They deserved to hear it from me, though, not some tabloid journalist.”

  Steele’s leaning against the wall; she has been the whole time. As if sitting down with Tess Dyer is too civil a gesture for her to stomach.

  “You lured a young woman to your house, Tess. You attacked her and you made plans to kill her in the same room where you pack your boys’ lunchboxes, so spare us the Mama Bear routine, hey?” Every word laced with disgust. “Where were the boys that night? Packed off to a sleepover so you had free rein to end someone’s life?”

  “At my mum’s. They often stay at her place during the week—so do I sometimes, just so I can sleep under the same roof as them.”

  It doesn’t need saying that she won’t be doing that again for a very long time. She bows her head, picking up her vending machine coffee, sipping it then wincing.

  “You’d better develop a taste for bad coffee,” I say. “They might claim prison’s like a holiday camp these days, but I don’t think Ethiopian blend is high on the menu.”

  “It’s never a holiday camp for one of us, is it?”

  Underneath the bravado, she’s petrified and she should be. For most ex–police officers in prison, it’s a case of surviving one minute to the next: zoning out the threats, turning a blind eye when your food’s been spat in for the fiftieth time, rolling your eyes and requesting a J-cloth when someone’s smeared shit on your cell walls.

  If I could put the horror of Holly Kemp’s final hours out of my mind for one single second, I might almost feel sorry for her.

  “You’ll get protection,” says Steele, unmoved. “There’s always the Vulnerable Prisoners’ Wing.”

  Dyer makes a harsh scraping sound. “Half an hour out of the cell every day? That’s not protection, that’s isolation. Big difference. But thanks for the words of comfort, Kate.”

  “You think you deserve comfort?”

  “I think you don’t know a thing about me, so who are you to judge?”

  “You’re a corrupt officer and a killer. That’s all I need to know.”

  “A killer.” Remarkably, her tone suggests she’s never seen it that way. So how has she been framing herself all these years? An avenging angel? A vigilante? “You know, I’d never been violent before that night, not ever. I’d never had a fight at school, never smacked the boys. Paul loved boxing, but I wouldn’t have it on in the house. I always said violence was no way to settle anything. But then you meet someone like Holly Kemp and you realize sometimes violence is the only way, and that violence is in you. It’s in any of us if we’re pushed far enough.” She stops, lost to herself for a moment. “I just hated her so much, you see. The complete disregard she had for my family. Her fucking greed. I hated her that much I honestly thought I could kill her with my bare hands, no problem. I mean, she was tiny. I had eight inches, probably thirty pounds, on her. But when it came to it, I couldn’t do it—not on my own, I mean. See, I’d hit her and she’d fallen back, and just the sound of her head smacking on the floor . . . I’d actually puked in the sink. That’s when I knew I had to call Simon.”

  I can’t stop myself. “So the sound of the trigger wasn’t so bad, no?”

  “I’m not going to lie, it was easier. And I was so frantic about Paul by that point, I think I disassociated from it.”

  A scornful sniff from Steele. “Oh, here we go. Disassociation, that old defense.”

  “I’m not trying to defend myself, Kate. I’m trying to explain. Holly Kemp was bleeding us dry—£2,000 a month in the end—and she had to be stopped. I’d tried reasoning with her, begging her, I’d set Simon on her. I’d even threatened her myself. I said I could plant something on someone she loved any time I liked, but nothing worked. She was relentless. I’d even offered her a lump sum the week before—£10,000. She just laughed and said she’d spent more on a holiday to Dubai. That was what I was up against. That was what she was like.”

  “Shall I tell you what she was like?” I thumb through my file, finally landing on Holly’s Social Services record. “A happy, bright, well-adjusted child, by all accounts, until her dad took a corner too fast and his motorbike collided with a lorry when she was nine. Twelve months later, her mum, who didn’t touch drugs before the accident, dies from a heroin overdose—oh, and Holly found her, there’s the kicker.” I look up, expecting to see some flicker of emotion, some sign of humanity. All I get is indifference. “Then the only other family she has, an aunt, declines to take her in because—and the social worker made a note of this beauty—she felt it would be ‘too much of a hardship for her own children to have to share a bedroom.’ So that means Holly’s shoved around various care homes and foster homes until she’s sixteen, followed by two years in a hostel.” I hold up another document. “Her medical records show evidence of several severe beatings between the ages of eleven and sixteen.”

  “She probably asked for them.”

  There’s no point in arguing with her, she’s too far gone. Holly was understandably cast as the villain six years ago and her legend will have been growing in stature ever since.

  “Can I tell you what Paul was like now?” she asks, every word laced with indignation.

  I look over at Steele, who shrugs. “Sure, why not?”

  “A lot of people say about their partners, ‘Oh, he’s not perfect, but he’s mine,’ but Paul was perfect. He was the kindest, funniest, most down-to-earth, compassionate person you could meet. Everyone loved him—everyone. Old ladies, young babies, all the boys’ friends, the bloody postman, you name it. I was always in his shadow, in that sense. Wherever I went, it was always, ‘Where’s Paul?’ ‘How’s Paul?’ ‘Tell Paul I was asking after him.’ And even when he was at his lowest, he’d still try to cheer everyone else up. He never complained once about being ill, and God knows he had every right to because it was so unfair. He had everything to live for, but his heart was failing him and there was nothing he could do. And then just when you think he’s had enough bad luck for one lifetime, he runs into that parasite, Holly Kemp.” Her chin lifts, eyes challenging mine. “Well, I might not have been able to fix his heart, but I could fix that problem for him.”

  “Did Paul know what you’d done?” I ask, wondering—unfairly, I admit, and without any medical knowledge whatsoever—if the shock of Dyer’s “fix” could have hastened his demise.

  “He didn’t know anything, but I’d say he suspected something. The woman who’d been blackmailing us, murdered by the very person I’d been hunting? There’s coincidence and there’s convenience. Paul was a smart guy, he knew the difference. He never said anything, though.”

  Steele says, “So not quite the saint then? He wasn’t too concerned about brushing a coincidence like that under the carpet.”

  A flare of anger. “He was too concerned with the fact he was dying, Kate. He knew by then—we knew—that the end wasn’t too far off. He’d had infections before, but this one: subacute infective endocarditis—God, the lingo trips off my tongue even now—had weakened him so much. We didn’t think it would happen so soon, though—he died in the October. I thought we’d have another birthday, Christmas, maybe one more holiday.” She looks at me, then Steele. “I suppose you think that’s karma.”

  “We’re very sorry abou
t your husband, Tess.” Steele’s voice is flat but genuine.

  Dyer nods, staring at a spot on the table. “You know, I wasn’t even angry when he told me what had happened with her, how he’d gone back to her hotel room.” Her eyes fill but she blinks away the tears. “I was hurt, I suppose. Shocked, but not angry. He’d had some bad news from his consultant that day, you see. They’d told him he had to stop playing sport. Basically, he had to stop doing anything beyond gentle exercise. It knocked him for six. It wasn’t just that he loved sport, it was that another part of him was being stripped away by his illness. The night she approached him in that bar, he was drunk and feeling like he needed to prove something to himself. That he still had it. That he was still a virile man. The bloody idiot.” Even this is said with affection, as if his only crime was forgetting to fill the car up or put the washing on. “It was bullshit macho thinking, I know. But I got it. I understood. One moment of weakness in sixteen years and God, was he paying for it. You couldn’t not feel sorry for him.”

  “When was this?” I ask.

  “When did he meet her, or when did I find out?”

  “Both.”

  “Twenty eleven. He’d met her early in the year—February, maybe March? He’d been paying her off for months by the time I found out. That was definitely early September—I know because he was in the hospital again. Ewan had just started school and was telling everyone on the ward about his first day.” The image nearly topples me. “He told me that night—he had to. He’d missed a payment and she was threatening all sorts. That’s when I took over. He didn’t need the stress.”

  “What did she have on him that was so bad?”

  “That was worth killing for?” adds Steele.

  “The photos, the sex stuff, that was bad enough—S&M stuff, dark S&M . . .” She shudders, not wanting to go any further. “I know for a fact he wasn’t into that sort of thing, but whatever she’d given him, he was out of it. He didn’t know what he was doing and he didn’t remember any of it. Nothing. My guess is she slipped him Rohypnol, maybe GHB. With all the medication he was taking, it’s pure luck she didn’t kill him.”

  Her rage is still raw, even six years later.

  “But what was worse was that she told him afterward—when she was demanding money, laying out the rules—that she was a prostitute. She had a web page and she’d brought it up on his phone while he was comatose and taken photos—proof he’d been looking at her page, I suppose. Then she’d sent texts from his phone to her number, and taken photos of those too—more proof.” She takes a deep breath. “The drugs were the worst bit though, the cocaine. Paul had never taken drugs in his life—he hardly would with his heart issues—but there were a few photos where you could see residue around his nose, wraps of coke in the background, rolled-up notes. I honestly don’t believe he took any; it was staged. But it’s the appearance, isn’t it? He was a Chief Press Officer for the Ministry of Justice. The tabloids would have had a field day. He’d have been sacked, shamed, held up as a hypocrite and a deviant in front of everyone who loved him. There was no way I was risking the boys seeing their father like that. That wasn’t going to be their lasting memory of him.” That proud tilt of her chin again. “And it wasn’t. Paul’s last six months were peaceful, at least, because of me, because of what I did. But more importantly, he died with our boys still believing he was the best man in the world. Preserving that memory for them was all that mattered.”

  “God, you really don’t regret anything,” I say, appalled but kind of fascinated by her absolute belief that she did the right thing.

  “Oh, I do, Cat. I might not have shed any tears over that two-bit con woman, but I regret dragging Olly into all this, asking him to lie for me. It wasn’t fair.” She slopes forward, hands tucked between her knees. “Mainly though, I regret ever asking Simon to go anywhere near Holly Kemp. He had me over a barrel then, you see—before that, it had been more or less an equal partnership, both of us getting what we want most of the time, both of us saying no to the other very occasionally, if the price felt too high. Worse than that, though, Holly had me over a barrel once she clapped eyes on Simon. She could link me, a senior police officer, to him, a serious criminal. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a stupid mistake, but then I’d underestimated her. I honestly didn’t think she’d do her homework on him, but she did, and then she turned around and threatened me with it. Threatened to finish my career too.”

  “So you were protecting yourself, not Paul’s memory, when you killed her?”

  “No,” she jumps straight in, setting the record straight—her own warped record, anyway. “No, I was protecting my sons. They were going to lose their father soon enough. They couldn’t lose me too.

  “And to be quite honest with you, Cat, some people really do deserve to die.”

  33

  One week later

  I’ve visited worse hospitals. I’ve stayed in worse hotel rooms, to be perfectly frank. Even the name itself, The Earl Shilton, calls to mind Egyptian cotton bedsheets; pristine, fluffy bathrobes; and extensive room-service options—and this medical mecca has all three. You can even request a pedicure, although I don’t want to dwell too much on Oliver Cairns’ feet.

  “Are you going to use these?” I call from the en suite, aka My Dream Bathroom, complete with enormous heated towel rail and an overhead shower fitting the size of Wales. “Seriously, I’m not joking, this is top-brand stuff.”

  Cairns rasps, “Knock yourself out,” and Steele’s in faster than a freight train.

  “Bugger off,” I say, laughing, quickly scooping the spoils into my bag. “You can afford to buy the proper stuff. I’m still at the pay-grade where I have to steal from hospital bathrooms.”

  “Dear God, Katie, love, are you trying to finish me off altogether . . . ?”

  Cairns’ voice pulls us back into the room. He’s sitting up in bed, a hollow-cheeked stick man, his skin the same color as the plump white pillows that are keeping him upright. On his bony lap there’s a carrier bag. He’s not enamored with the contents.

  “Christ, death can’t come quick enough if this is all I’ve got to look forward to. Have you never heard of crisps or chocolate biscuits?” He holds a packet up to the light, squinting over the rim of his glasses. “What in God’s name is a hemp seed, anyway?”

  “They’re high in iron,” Steele says.

  “And low on flavor.” Cairns tosses them back in the bag, throwing me a wink in the process. “Would you be a love, Cat, and pass me those Jaffa Cakes? ’Twas far from hemp seeds I was raised, and it’ll be far from hemp seeds that I die.”

  For a man supposedly dying, Oliver Cairns is on mighty form this morning. Cracking jokes, demanding biscuits, waxing lyrical about the thickness of the curtains.

  “Hands down, that’s the worst thing about most hospitals: they scrimp on the curtains. You’d think it’d be the food, or the boredom, or well, the bloody sickness everywhere you turn, but it isn’t. It’s the fact the sunlight’s streaming in before you’ve even got to the end of your bedtime prayers.” He points toward the window. “Now those, they’re those blackout yokes. You’d swear it was the dead of night at half nine in the morning. They’re worth the cost alone, I’m telling you.”

  I don’t want to ask what the cost is, but I really want to ask what the cost is. Steele saves me from my inherent nosiness.

  “Bedtime prayers, eh?” She sits down on the leather sofa, throwing her arm along the top, brochure-ready. “So you’ve found God again?”

  “Never lost him, Katie, love. You don’t have to go to mass every Sunday to have a hotline to the big fella. And trust me, there’s nothing like facing death to make you hedge your bets.”

  She casts him a stern look. “Can we dial down the death talk, please? You’re getting your pain managed, Olly, and about time too. But you’ll be back home in no time.”

  “And to what?” he says, without a shred of self-pity. “Sure, I’m better off in here. I’ve company. The
mattress is a damn sight better than the one I have at home. And I get to eat . . .” He turns slowly, very slowly, picking a fancy embossed menu off the nightstand. “Cajun-spiced chicken with corn and pumpkin hash, instead of something-on-toast every night. Only benefit of being at home is I can have a smoke without a nurse giving out shite.”

  Another joke cracked to stave off the inevitable. To make sure the elephant in the room keeps its back to us, at least.

  Fearing we’ll still be here at Christmas if someone doesn’t bring it up, I bite the bullet.

  “Did you ever suspect she was involved, sir? With any of it?”

  If the question catches him off guard, he doesn’t show it. Years of interviewing, I guess. The ability to change tack, field curveballs, deal with anything that’s thrown your way, doesn’t dwindle just because your cells are mutating the wrong way.

  “Not for one second. I’d have sooner believed that Elvis himself had come back and killed that girl before I’d have believed Tess Dyer could be capable of . . .” He breaks off. I look at Steele, wondering if we should drop it, but then he rallies again. “I still can’t believe it. I mean, I do believe it, o’course. I’ve no choice, she admitted it. But still . . .” He stares down at his hands. “I don’t know why she didn’t come to me back then. I’d have given her the money to pay that girl off once and for all, she should have known that. She knew she was more than a colleague to me. I’m Ewan’s godfather, for crying out loud. She was always more like a . . .” He halts again.

  “A daughter?” I say. It seems the logical answer.

  He hesitates, his face pinched. “A few weeks ago, I’d have said yes. But the fact I can hardly say her name, hardly bring myself to think about her . . . you know, I’m almost glad I’m ill, because it gives me the excuse to stay well away, to never have to look at her again.” Another pause. “And I think the parent-child bond is a bit hardier than that. Unconditional, they say.”