by Tania Carver
‘You went to her flat, didn’t you? You crept in and killed her.’
Phil waited. Here it comes, he thought. The confession. The climax he had been working for, building towards. Brotherton looked up, eyes shining, face wet.
‘Didn’t you, Ryan?’ Phil’s voice was gentle, coaxing. ‘You killed her.’
Brotherton shook his head. ‘No. I didn’t. I swear I didn’t…’
Phil studied him. Watched his eyes for deviation.
‘You killed Claire, Ryan. And Julie. Didn’t you?’
Brotherton shook his head once more.
‘Yes you did. Claire. And Julie. And Lisa. And Susie. You did. Didn’t you?’
‘No… no…’ Brotherton’s eyes slid down to the right.
‘Didn’t you…’
‘No…’
Phil sat back, exhausted. He had seen it. Marina’s voice in his ear just confirmed it.
‘Oh my God. He’s telling the truth, Phil. He didn’t do it.’
Then, just to emphasise the point, Brotherton started talking. ‘Yes, I was out. There’s this… this girl that I’ve been seeing… a young girl. I… I didn’t want Sophie to know…’
Phil stared at Brotherton until he could look at him no longer.
Marina was right. Brotherton was telling the truth.
49
Graeme Eades felt like Superman.
He parked in front of his own house in Stanway, switched off the engine, sat back, closed his eyes and sighed contentedly. The afternoon with Erin had been beyond fantastic. She had joined him in the hotel room not long after he arrived, seemingly delighted at what he had bought for her. Cooing and squealing, she had gone straight into the bathroom and changed into the first outfit, telling him to just lie himself down on the bed and get comfortable, and she would give him a treat.
And what a treat. She came out, filling the basque beautifully, walking slowly and predatorily in her heels, a lascivious smile on her face. Once in the bedroom she moved the armchair to the end of the bed and proceeded to put on a show for him involving at least half of the toys he had just bought. He was pleased he had remembered the batteries.
He was so excited he almost came there and then but she wouldn’t let him. A quick change of costume and she joined him on the bed, making use of the lotions and oils. She smiled all the while at his reaction to her perfect and surprisingly gymnastic body as she joined it with his rather less than lithe one.
As he was about to come, Erin controlling and restraining the juddering, electric orgasm that was ready to burst from within him, she asked once again about promotion. Yes, he had gasped. Whatever. She went on to tell him how good she was at her job and whose job she thought she should have. Naturally, he agreed. That person needed sacking. Would he do it? He would. And give her the job instead? Yes. Yes. Yes. She smiled. Good. And allowed him to come.
He pulled the key out of the ignition, grabbed his briefcase, got out. His senses had been left reeling from his encounter, with more than his mind blown. As he walked up the drive he thought back over the promise he had made. He had known it wasn’t in his power to hire and fire. But Erin didn’t know that. Okay, perhaps he had exaggerated his importance and position in the company. So what? All men did that. Especially to impress women. He had promised her the job, yes, and she had reminded him of that promise as he had left, but again, so what? What could she do about it? He would tell her that, boss or not, these things took time, there were procedures to be gone through, but not to worry. She would get the job. No hurry. Yeah. String her along. And in the meantime…
He smiled. Best of all, he had put the whole afternoon, including his purchases, on expenses. Whatever, it was definitely better than paying for it.
As he approached the house, it felt like a black cloud was descending over him. With every step that took him nearer to his front door, the cloud darkened until it was almost pitch black as he put his key in the lock. He reluctantly tried to force Erin out of his mind as he prepared to confront Caroline. He had an excuse ready for being late – a meeting went on longer than expected, a client turned up he had to see, something like that, the usual – but to be honest, he didn’t care. He’d had enough of seeing her pained, pale face haunting the house as she dragged her lumpen body around, never happy. Put her next to Erin and there was no comparison. Before the pregnancy, maybe. The first one. But not now. Perhaps he should do something about that. Something to seriously think about.
He opened the door. He sighed, shook his head and entered. Should he shout? Tell her he was home? No. She might be sleeping. Hopefully.
He put his keys on the table as he always did. The hallway was in darkness. He tried the switch. It didn’t work. Puzzled, he walked down the hall. Opened the living room door. Ready for arguments, ready for misery. Ready for any of the normal responses he was greeted with when he arrived home.
But he wasn’t ready for this.
The lights were on in here.
He screamed.
And screamed and screamed and screamed.
50
Clayton pulled deep on his Marlboro Light, held it and exhaled slowly, feeling his body relax against the side of his BMW as he did so. He was in the car park behind the police station. It was freezing. He was trying not to let the cold get to him. But his chattering teeth betrayed him.
What a balls-up. The whole thing. What a balls-up.
Sophie in the interview room, and then Brotherton. Phil hadn’t been able to break him. Even with all the circumstantial evidence, CCTV footage, everything, he still couldn’t do it. They were all coming to the conclusion that maybe Brotherton actually was innocent. And Clayton was off the case. Unable to influence it. His future in everyone else’s hands. He hated that most of all.
Another drag, and another exhale. Movement at the back of the police station caught his eye. Anni was striding out of the building, wearing her usual T-shirt and jeans but with no jacket, arms tightly wrapped around her body in a vain attempt to keep out the cold. She approached him, slowed. Stood opposite him as he smoked. Said nothing.
Clayton swallowed. Again. Took another drag. She was making him nervous. He was letting her. He had no choice. He looked at her. She was waiting for him to speak. He noticed that his stomach flipped and his breathing had quickened. His teeth were still chattering. He tried to stop them.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
Anni’s face remained impassive. ‘What for?’
‘You know.’The wall to the left of her shoulder was fascinating; he kept his eyes on it.
‘Yes,’ she said, a trace of angry emotion seeping into her voice, ‘I know. But I want to hear you say it.’
He took another drag of the cigarette, tried again to keep his teeth still in his mouth. Exhaled. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For not grassin’ me up to Phil.’
She said nothing. Waiting once more.
Clayton felt that since it had now been acknowledged between them, he was expected to say something further. ‘I recognised her straight away,’ he said. ‘At the metal yard. And I thought…’ He sighed. ‘Maybe I could get something from her, something important that I could use for the investigation. Now, I know I was bein’ selfish, not thinkin’ of the team-’
‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Clayton, I saw what happened. ’
Another sigh. ‘It was just the once,’ he said. ‘Last night in the car.’
‘I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know.’ She still wouldn’t look at him.
‘Yeah… just the once. That’s all it was.’ He fell silent. Risked a glance at her. He was sure she had been looking at him when he had been looking elsewhere, sure her eyes had just darted away from his. ‘It was… I’ve never done anything like that before.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Whatever, but look-’
This time she looked at him. Directly at him. And her eyes were so fierce and strong, he wished she hadn’t. ‘Clayton, when I say I don’t care, I don’t care. It
’s none of my business what you get up to in your own time.’
Clayton frowned. Wasn’t she angry because she had seen him with another woman? Wasn’t that it? ‘I just thought because of, you know, the other night, that you were-’
She gave a laugh, harsh and abrasive. ‘What? You think because we had a fumble that somehow we’re… what? Lovers? That I’ve caught you cheating on me? Is that it?’
‘Well, yeah…’
Another laugh, just as harsh but more disbelieving. She shook her head. ‘That’s what you think this is all about? Really? You arrogant bastard.’
‘So… why then?’
She gave him the pitying kind of look she would reserve for a backward child. ‘Think about it. Because, Clayton, you were spotted in a car with a witness who was, as the tabloids say, performing a sex act on you. While under surveillance. Doesn’t that scream unprofessional conduct to you? Conflict of interests, at the very least? Don’t you think it’s the kind of thing that could put a conviction in jeopardy? Not to mention this shining career you think you’re going to have.’
‘Well, yeah. When you put it like that, yeah.’
‘So?’
‘I know that. I just thought, you know. You were mad at me because of, you know. Us.’
Anni looked him directly in the eye. There were things she was about to say but she stopped herself. Instead she shook her head and walked off. ‘I’m going back inside.’
Clayton flicked his cigarette away, turned to follow her. ‘Me too.’
She turned to him as she kept walking, her arms still wrapped tightly round her body. ‘Piss off, Clayton. Leave me alone.’
She reached the door before he did. He ran towards her, stopped her from opening it with his palm against it. She turned and faced him, angry.
‘Let me go. Now.’
‘What you goin’ to do? About what you saw?’
‘Let me go.’ She struggled to open the door. He still wouldn’t let her.
‘Please, Anni, I need to know.’ Clayton’s voice had dropped to a begging, wheedling tone. ‘Look, it was just a one-off. I’ve never done it before, I’ll never do it again. Please.’
‘I don’t know… I don’t know what happened…’
She pulled the door again.
‘Please, Anni. You have to tell me. Are you goin’ to tell Phil?’
‘I should do.’
‘Yeah, I know.You goin’ to?’
She stopped struggling, looked at him. Sighed. She was still angry, he could tell. But her features had softened slightly. ‘I don’t know. I should do. But I don’t know.’
He took his hand off the door. She walked through it and strode away from him. Clayton looked back into the car park, saw his BMW sitting there, gleaming. He sighed, shook his head.
What a balls-up.
He followed her back in, letting the door swing shut behind him.
51
Marina sat in the canteen in the police station, notebook open before her, a cup of something at her lips. Someone had made a vague attempt to cheer the place up, make it appear welcoming by providing primary-coloured chairs and tables and non-institutional colours on the walls. But it still looked like what it was. A fuelling station for time-poor public employees.
She took a sip of her drink, not knowing whether it was coffee or tea, suspecting it was veering towards coffee because that was what she had ordered. But not really caring. She sighed, pen poised above her notebook, ready to write something. Process what had just happened, what she had just witnessed, find a way to move forward. She looked at the blank page. Willed the words to appear. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t think of anything to write. With a sigh she placed the pen back on the table, took another sip of coffee.
She had been right all along. Brotherton was not the killer. Phil had tried to break him down, kept going even after she had spoken to him, told him he wasn’t the killer. He’d repeated the evidence back to Brotherton, over and over again, like a mantra of guilt, asked him to confess, shouted at him to confess, even tried to cajole him into confessing. But he’d got nowhere. Nothing. Not because Brotherton couldn’t be broken down, but because, as Marina knew, he wasn’t guilty.
Eventually Phil had given up, terminated the interview. She hadn’t seen him since. Nor, for that matter, had she seen Fenwick, Anni, any of them. They had all gone straight down the hall once Phil had emerged from the interview room. She didn’t know whether she was supposed to follow them, but none of them had looked back, made any attempt to include her. So, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, she had come to the canteen, planned what to do next.
Go home, she thought. Get back to her day job, back to her life. Just have her baby, build up her private practice, live happily ever after with Tony and never work with the police again. Fenwick had made it quite clear that her expertise wasn’t appreciated and her points weren’t going to be listened to. So why didn’t she just go home? She already had a career. She didn’t need to do this. Leave them to get on with it, sort it out themselves. Forget them. All of them, even Phil.
As soon as the thought was formed, she felt a deep stab of discomfort and instinctively put her hand over her swelling belly. The baby seemed to be registering displeasure at something. Probably the coffee, she thought. Or maybe something more. Like it was reminding her that there was more at stake than the careers and reputations of a few police officers. Dead babies and their mothers. Giving them a voice. Jesus Christ, she said to herself, I must be getting superstitious. Not to mention simple-minded. She moved around in her seat, tried to find a comfortable position to sit in. Couldn’t. She took another mouthful of warm brown liquid, began to pack her notebook away.
So engrossed was she in doing so that she wasn’t aware of another person at her side until he spoke.
‘May I join you?’
She looked up. Ben Fenwick was standing there. She wouldn’t have recognised him from the contrite voice. But it matched the general state of him. He seemed to be disintegrating before her eyes. She hadn’t paid his appearance that much attention in the dark of the observation room, but she looked at him now. The smug political air that he usually affected had now unravelled and dissolved as the pressure of the case increased. He needed a shave, his hair was messed up, and so was his suit. His tie was askew and there were dark half-circles beneath his eyes. She hadn’t noticed it at his press conferences; maybe he saved his grooming for then. Perhaps, she thought, this was what actors looked like when the camera wasn’t on them. She thought again of the seminar she would have been delivering had she still been teaching: Chimerical Masks and Dissociation in the Perception of the Self. How true, she thought.
‘Feel free,’ she said, still packing her bag. ‘I was just leaving. ’
‘Where to?’
‘Off.’
‘Where?’
‘Back to work.’
He nodded. ‘You mean leaving us? For good?’
She stopped what she was doing, looked at him. ‘Why not? I don’t get paid enough to put up with the abuse you give me. To say you haven’t valued my professional opinion or input barely covers it. You’ve belittled and derided anything I’ve said. And in front of the whole team as well.’ She felt her voice rising again, knew that people were starting to stare. She didn’t care.
‘Well, I…’
She didn’t want to let up. Time for some home truths, she thought. ‘You ask me what I think, and when I tell you you ignore it because it doesn’t fit in with what you want to believe. And now you’ve got an innocent man sitting in an interview room-’
‘He’s hardly innocent.’
She felt her face reddening, her anger deepening. She kept her voice down but focused. ‘Innocent of the crime you want him to be guilty of. Well, good luck.’ She stood up, swung her bag on to her shoulder. ‘I’ll invoice you.’
‘Wait.’ He placed a hand on her arm. She stopped, looked down at him. There was more than contrition in his eyes. There was also a desperate
hope. The kind a shipwrecked man has when clinging to a piece of wreckage. ‘Please. Sit down again. Don’t go yet. Let’s talk first. Please.’
Marina knew what she should have done. Just shaken off his grip, walked out of there. But she didn’t. Instead she took the bag from her shoulder and, anger barely abating, resumed her seat. She said nothing, sitting upright, waiting for him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She waited, still said nothing. Made him work. Knew there would be more.
There was. ‘I was… I was wrong.’ He sighed. ‘Yes. I was wrong. And I admit it. I was wrong to ignore your findings. And I was certainly wrong to speak to you like that in front of everyone at the briefing. That was unforgivable. I was… out of order.’
‘You were.’
He nodded. ‘And I’m sorry.’ Another sigh. His shoulders drooped as the air left his body, like he was deflating. ‘I’m very sorry.’ He rubbed his eyes, his face. ‘But we just… We need a result on this one. A quick result. It feels like… the eyes of the world are upon us.’
Despite the situation, Marina stifled a smile. King Cliché rides again, she thought.
‘So that excuses it. Your behaviour towards me, your grasping at straws…’
‘It wasn’t grasping. It was good, solid police work.’
‘It just wasn’t the right man.’
Fenwick sighed. ‘We need to find him. It’s as simple as that. We need to find him. And I thought we had him.’ He balled his hands into fists as he spoke. ‘I wanted, really wanted to believe we had him…’ He let the fists go. ‘But we didn’t. And I think that maybe, deep down, I knew it.’ Another sigh. ‘So I’m sorry. I’m afraid you were just a casualty of… that.’
Marina nodded, her anger ebbing slightly. Not that she would let him see that, though. ‘They say that when you’re under stress your true character is revealed,’ she said.
He offered a weak smile. ‘Then I’m a twat. And an obnoxious one at that.’
She couldn’t return the smile. ‘You’ll hear no argument from me.’