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I Know You Know

Page 17

by Gilly MacMillan


  The fraud team struggle to help Fletcher. He gets passed from pillar to post while they try to find somebody who can talk to him about the case. “The problem is,” says the old-timer they eventually put him through to, “there’s nobody here any longer who worked on it. I was around at the time, but it wasn’t my case. From what I recall off the top of my head, they worked bloody hard, but the money was untraceable and so was Dale.”

  “I can’t find any mention of it in the file, but I heard Dale got divorced previous to disappearing. Could he have hidden some of the money that way?”

  “Yes. He absolutely could have. We see that occasionally. Money’s almost impossible to trace after a divorce, but if you hide it that way you have to be sure you can rely on your ex to be willing to give it back later.”

  “So he might have had a sham divorce?”

  “Exactly. Otherwise you might never see a penny of your money again! There has to be a lot of trust involved.”

  When Fletcher puts down the phone he feels pleased because it’s a lead of sorts. After only a short time on the case he has already discovered something that seems to have been missed twenty years ago. This small success doesn’t do much to mitigate Fletcher’s irritation with himself for his slip of the tongue with Swift, though. He cannot believe he let down his guard and was stupid enough to suggest that the witness had seen Noyce walking away from the boys instead of following them on the night they disappeared. It is possible Swift will be like a dog with a bone on this one, and it was entirely avoidable. He sighs. Watchful waiting might be the best tactic, he thinks. No point in drawing more attention to it at this stage. Best to hope it goes away, and if not, he’ll deal with it somehow. Cody Swift will not get the better of John Fletcher.

  Fletcher cricks his neck before standing up and stretching. The office is quiet this morning. Danny is frowning at his computer monitor.

  “The on switch is on the side,” Fletcher says.

  “You finally took Computing 101? Congratulations!”

  Fletcher smiles. “What have you got?”

  “The name of Dale’s ex-wife. They divorced in June 1996, two months before he disappeared.”

  “Promising,” Fletcher says.

  “I know. That’s what I thought at first, but now I’m not so sure. Meet Peter Dale’s ex-missus.”

  “Are you having a laugh?” Fletcher says. The face on Danny’s computer screen is a woman called Rhonda Street. She is the police and crime commissioner for Avon & Somerset. She was elected only three years ago but is known to be ambitious and has already flexed her muscles, gaining a measure of infamy by having at least one chief constable moved on since she’s been in office. Her position is powerful and her remit is extensive.

  Fletcher pulls up a chair beside Danny and lowers his voice, even though nobody else is around. “What do we know about her background?”

  “She married Dale in 1995, so they didn’t last long. No kids. She was working for a property business when they met and carried on working there throughout the marriage and afterward. It was a family business her dad built up. Seems to be totally legit. Her husband and kids run it now and do very well out of it, apparently.”

  “We need to find out if she profited from the divorce from Dale,” Fletcher says.

  “How?” Danny asks. “We can’t take a detailed look into her affairs without permission. It’s a fucking minefield.”

  “I’ll have to speak to David,” Fletcher says. Normally, he avoids Chief Constable Tremain like the plague, but Fletcher has dodged enough bullets in his years of service that he recognizes one when it’s coming straight at his chest. He hasn’t fought for his position in CID so hard and for so long that he’s going to stand in front of it and wait for impact.

  Fletcher heads up to Tremain’s office. He gets lucky. “He’s in,” Tremain’s assistant tells him, “but he’s only got five minutes.” She holds up her hand with the five pudgy digits spread wide to illustrate her point, as if Fletcher is simpleminded.

  “Come in!” David Tremain has an unpleasantly high-pitched voice. Fletcher winces at the shut door but recomposes his expression before he enters. Tremain is sitting at his desk peeling the top layer of flaccid white bread off a cheese and pickle sandwich. He sniffs the filling. The smell is pungent even from where Fletcher’s standing.

  “Do you think the catering department is trying to kill us all?” Tremain asks, indicating the sandwich.

  “Probably,” Fletcher says. He doesn’t care for small talk but knows he must make an effort with his superior officers. Tremain slaps the bread back on the sandwich and takes a big bite out of it. “Not too bad, as a matter of fact,” he says. “What can I do for you, John?”

  Fletcher fills him in on the situation with Rhonda Street. As he speaks, he observes Tremain’s color rise and the rhythm of his chewing becomes increasingly mechanical. When Fletcher has said everything he needs to say, Tremain swivels his chair toward the window. Daylight filtered through a grimy windowpane settles on his features, graying his profile. He stays there long enough that Fletcher clears his throat.

  “Leave it with me,” Tremain says to the view.

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  Tremain swivels to face Fletcher and plants his elbows on the desk. His fingertips meet and his fingers slide neatly between one another. His knuckles whiten. “I’m sure. Does anybody else know about this?”

  “Just Danny and me.” The back of Fletcher’s neck feels as if something is crawling there.

  “Keep it that way. Not a word to anybody else. It’s too sensitive.”

  “Should we—”

  “What did I just say?”

  Fletcher swallows. He and Tremain share a difficult history, and meetings between them are never easy. Fletcher particularly doesn’t appreciate being spoken to as if he is a child, but it’s something he has to endure from this man. “You said we would be keeping a lid on this,” he replies.

  “Exactly. Is that difficult to understand? Can you toe the line on this one?”

  “No, boss.”

  Tremain raises an eyebrow and Fletcher explains, “I mean no, it’s not difficult to understand, and yes, I can toe the line.” His mouth tastes as bitter as if he’s sucking lemons.

  Tremain dismisses him. He picks up the phone before Fletcher has left the room. Fletcher exits, feeling irate and aggrieved, and of course Tremain’s assistant has to rub in the humiliation by peering at him over her reading glasses as if he’s something the cat has dragged in. Fletcher feels his anger rise. “Cheer up, darling,” he tells her. “It might never happen.” He winks. Guaranteed to annoy.

  “Prat,” he thinks he hears her say as he walks away. He turns around. “What did you say?”

  She looks at him, head inclined cockatoo-like. “I said you’re a prat, John Fletcher. Always have been, always will be. I’m fed up of you strutting about like you own the place when you passed your sell-by date years ago. The only time I’ll look forward to seeing you will be at your retirement party.”

  Fletcher is at a loss for words. He blinks and turns away. In the elevator he punches one hand heavily into the palm of the other. “Bitch!” he spits at the sliver of mirror that reflects a slice of his face. He hits the stop button and the elevator halts. He leans against the wall. She’s a nobody, he tells himself. Get over it. He finds it harder to ignore Tremain’s treatment of him, though, and it seems to take forever for the tremor in his fingers to begin to subside. When, he thinks, will Tremain think I’ve laid on my back for long enough? Never?

  As he calms down, Fletcher wonders if he shouldn’t make some discreet inquiries of his own about Rhonda Street, in spite of Tremain’s instructions. It would give him some pleasure to subvert Tremain in some small way. As if it’s meant to be, an idea of whom he could speak to dawns like a revelation. He straightens up and hits another button. The elevator lurches into life. Just before the doors open, Fletcher sinks his still-shaking hands into his jacket pockets and his f
eatures harden as he puts his game face back on.

  Fletcher sweeps a dog-eared logbook and a few empty coffee cups off the back seat of the car and gets in beside Noyce for the drive to Southmead Station. He tries to smile and maintain a casual posture while the pressure of the gamble he’s taking dries his mouth and creates a tension headache. He tells himself they are the symptoms of a man who might be about to chance his luck, but who knows that he is skillful and the odds are good. As they leave the estate they see a group of reporters huddled around Howard Smail and David Tremain at the far end. Good, Fletcher thinks. Let’s hope Smail is kept there for as long as possible.

  The traffic is fairly heavy, which pleases him because it buys him more time. Danny drives and leaves the talking to Fletcher. It’s a well-rehearsed routine. Danny’s not big on ideas, but he has always been willing to follow and execute a plan that Fletcher devised just as long as he gets to enjoy some of the benefits afterward.

  “Can I see your badge?” Noyce asks. He’s grinning like the cat who’s got the cream. Fletcher begins to reach for his wallet, where his warrant card is tucked unobtrusively beside his bank cards, but has a better idea. “You should see Danny’s,” he says. “It’s much smarter than mine.” Fletcher always enjoys an opportunity to rag on his partner for the fact that Danny ordered a fancy official folder to keep his warrant card in. It’s a smooth black leather case with the force badge printed on the outside. “In my jacket,” Danny says and Fletcher finds it in the inside pocket, where he knew it would be. Danny loves to pull it out and flip it open with a flourish.

  Noyce examines it as if it is a precious relic. He opens and closes the folder and turns it this way and that. He pulls the card out. It gives Fletcher time to think. His heart is thumping in his ears, but he shuts his eyes and runs through the situation in his mind. There’s so much about Noyce that’s screaming guilty at Fletcher. Noyce is obviously mentally limited, he’s got a provocative history with the boys, and there’s the red-hot and smoking fact that he admits to seeing the bodies.

  Fletcher shuts his eyes and runs a scenario through his head. It’s the one where they inform Smail that they’ve brought Noyce in as soon as they arrive at Southmead. Fletcher thinks he knows what will happen if they do that: Smail will take over and he, Fletcher, will be sidelined. Smail will probably describe Noyce as “my” suspect, and it’s a short leap from there to “my” arrest. Fletcher will get no credit, and he badly doesn’t want to spend the rest of his career as Smail’s wingman. His career has been on a steep and successful trajectory thus far, and he wants to stay on it. He’s made his name by putting in the hours, by going above and beyond, by holding his nerve, by keeping his processes to himself, and by making smart decisions that serve the interests of justice—as he sees it. He knows that if he does what he wants to do, there may be questions about this journey, but he thinks he knows how he will answer them. There is no time to waste. It is time to throw the dice. He turns to Noyce. “Sid, do you know that feeling of when you want something to be nice, but you’re scared that it won’t be?”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “After we’ve had a look around the police station, where the detectives work, I know some of them might want to have a little talk to you about Charlie and Scott.”

  Noyce’s finger works around the rim of Danny’s warrant card.

  “They’re really nice, but I want to tell you something about them because you don’t know them as well as you know me.”

  “Stranger danger,” Noyce says.

  “Yes. Except they’re not strangers, they’re police officers.” Fletcher works to hold his nerve. He needs to find the right angle to persuade Noyce of something before they arrive, but they’re already well on their way to the station.

  “Charlie and Scott got hurt by stranger danger,” Noyce says. His eyes widen, and for a second they seem to Fletcher to be bathed in innocence. It startles him. He must gather himself and regroup mentally. Stick to the plan. It’s the man’s simple mind fooling him, he thinks. He has committed the worst possible crime, but he can’t process it like normal people. Momentarily, he thinks of his own baby son, and the thought of anything happening to him is unendurable. He presses on. “What worries me,” he says, “is that the other detectives haven’t seen what a nice bedroom you’ve got, so they might not understand that you definitely want to go home later today.”

  A small furrow appears between Noyce’s eyes.

  “Not many people are lucky enough to have a big telly in their bedroom like you,” Fletcher says.

  “It’s just for me.”

  “That’s nice. That’s very nice. The thing is, I’m worried that you might not be able to get back to your room today if you give confusing answers to the detectives who talk to you. That’s the problem with detectives, they ask a lot of questions, and if they don’t understand the answers they can keep you at the station for a very long time. They don’t mean to be horrible, they’re just trying to understand your story.”

  “Tell the truth,” says Noyce.

  “Exactly. You’re right. So before we get to the station I think it’s a good idea if you and me have a chat about what the truth is. That means you will know what to say to the other detectives.”

  “Can I go home now?” Noyce says.

  “Your mum and dad are meeting us at the station, so we’d better go there, don’t you think? You will like it. You can look at one of the squad cars with the lights on it.”

  Noyce makes the sound of a police siren and Fletcher forces himself to smile even though he feels as if his head’s going to split in two.

  “Here’s a question the detectives might ask you,” Fletcher says. “They might say, ‘Did you hurt Charlie and Scott?’ What would you say to that?”

  Noyce shakes his head. “I didn’t hurt them. They were already hurt.”

  “I think you did hurt them.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you left them there when they were all damaged and cut and bruised, with blood on their faces and flies buzzing. Isn’t that the same as hurting them yourself?” Fletcher knows how this sounds. He could blame this vivid recitation of the boys’ injuries on his memories of Scott’s pulpy face and the blood pooling in Charlie’s mouth as he cradled the child, but he doesn’t. In this moment, he prefers to face up to his own capacity for cruelty because the end justifies the means. He wouldn’t do it otherwise. He is using cruelty like the controlled cut of a sharp blade: just enough. Then stop.

  Noyce recoils at his words but Fletcher continues: “You hurt them, Sidney, you hurt them because you didn’t help them. Do you know how many hours Charlie lay there for, hurting? And Scott? How many blows did it take to make his face like that? How many times did you hit him?”

  It feels to Fletcher as if the world has shrunk so nothing else exists except the two of them in the car, their hot breath and the possibility of a murder confession hanging between them. He takes Danny’s warrant card back from Noyce. Noyce begins to shake his head, then bats at his own face. His knuckles make contact with his cheek, but only softly. He does it again with a bit more force. Fletcher seizes Noyce’s hands. “Sidney, the other detectives are not going to understand what you mean if you say you didn’t hurt the boys. They’re going to keep you in a room and ask you questions over and over until you tell them what really happened. They’re not going to let you go home until they think they understand what the truth is, so it might be a long time before you see your bedroom, your television, or your family again. It could be questions, questions, questions all night long.”

  “You’re hurting me,” Noyce says, and Fletcher drops his hands as if they were hot coals.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to. I’m very sorry, but you mustn’t hurt yourself.”

  Noyce rubs his hands together in a circular motion that starts to annoy Fletcher when it seems like it’s going on too long. He stares at Fletcher reproachfully. “Perhaps I did hurt Charlie and Scott,” he
says, “because I didn’t help them?”

  Fletcher’s lips are dry as the desert. He licks them and nods slowly. Noyce mirrors his actions.

  “Yes. The detectives will understand that. You hurt the boys. It’s best to be honest,” Fletcher speaks as calmly as he can manage.

  “And I can go home after that if I say it?”

  “They’ll let you out of that interview room, definitely.”

  The radio crackles into life with a request for their location. Fletcher tenses and then relaxes when Danny ignores it. They don’t want to broadcast the fact they’re bringing Noyce in. Easier to claim later on that they didn’t hear the request.

  Fletcher debates pushing Noyce further—he wants this man-child to admit outright what he did, because Christ knows, he has to have done it—but this is as far as he thinks they can go for now. Even though Danny’s taken a bit of a roundabout route, they’re already in Henleaze. He checks his watch as Danny gives way at the roundabout and flips the indicator for the right turn into Southmead, yards from the entrance to the station. It’s fourteen minutes since they left the estate. He had fourteen minutes to own this case. He hopes he has done enough.

  Chapter 15

  Erica throws a curveball regarding the Morocco plan: she doesn’t want to go.

  “What about Guys and Dolls?” she whines.

  “Would it kill you to miss it?” Jess feels especially irritated because Erica doesn’t have a big part in the production. She’s in the chorus. It’s fun, but it’s not Broadway.

  “Yes!” Erica’s lip quivers. “This is all I’ve been looking forward to this holiday. It’s the final performance and the cast party.”

 

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