He walked through the office to the Operations Room, to Samira’s desk. He put the photograph down in front of her.
‘What?’ she looked up at him.
‘The twin of this pistol. It’s sitting in David Logan’s house. His wife’s just told me.’
She stared at him. She patted the seat next to her and he sat down.
‘Look,’ she said. There was a sheaf of papers on the table. ‘Bank records,’ she said. ‘David Logan’s bank account.’
Matt looked at the columns of figures.
‘He had an account that was separate from the one he shared with his wife,’ Samira said. She pulled a page towards her, pointed at the figures with a red-painted nail. ‘She seemed to know nothing about it when we spoke to her. It has very few records – a regular standing order into it, and weekly cash payments out of it, at the Yeadon branch. Fifty pounds, a hundred pounds, not huge amounts. But it goes back at least three years, look.’ She tapped one of the pages. ‘I’m getting the CCTV from that branch. Can you go through it?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
The quietness of the night settled around him, pierced from time to time by a siren and a slash of blue light from the car park below. Matt trawled through the images on his screen.
Dates. Times. Days, weeks. Thursdays.
The cashpoint camera feed was old and scratchy. People came and went. He saw hats, umbrellas, bald patches, numbers punched, cash counted, all in bad quality, jerky movements, like a silent movie without the laughs. Without the story either.
Unless … He wound back, played forward. Here we are … Cash withdrawal from the Logan account. 11.05 a.m. Thursday before last. Blonde-looking girl, denim jacket, short skirt. Thursday before, same girl. Denim jacket, jeans. Thursday before that. Same girl. Same jacket. She must be bloody freezing, he thought.
Zoom in. And again. The screen crunched into digital steps. He froze the girl’s image. He pulled up the ID picture they’d given to the press. Abbie Faiman, it said. Blonde hair. Same denim jacket.
So, every Thursday morning, Abbie Faiman would draw money out of an account that David Logan paid into.
His hand went to the internal phone. I’ll tell the SIO, he thought. He picked up the handset. He put it down again.
The photos he’d developed lay in a pile next to him. He looked at the tangle of her limbs in the powdery light. He felt a sudden wave of rage.
She’d been a child once. A child like his own.
The night faded into dawn. And in his mind, the story played again. Angie, the mother of his child. Sunny, Italian Angie. And then the London job, and Angie, homesick and lonely, turned away. He had taken refuge in the arms of someone else. Only briefly, and mistakenly, but it was enough. After that, there’d been rage, and guilt, and he’d found himself ejected. She’d stayed in London, always threatening to return to Italy. He’d limped back to Yorkshire, his home, once. If anything could be called home.
As the sky began to lighten, he looked at the image of the dead young woman and thought, you are someone’s child. And now, the windows bright with sunlight, he stands up, stumbling through the litter of coffee cups, goes down to the car park, gets into his car.
It was a busy Thursday morning. He parked the car. He sat, holding a photo in his hand. He watched.
People came and went. There was a queue outside the post office.
There. There he was. A distinguished, upright man, tailored wool coat. Thinning hair. The coat was missing a button. His shoes were thick with mud. Matt could see the stubble on his chin as he walked towards the cashpoint.
Alone, a queue of one, the man glanced around him, holding his collar up with both hands as if to hide behind it. Matt checked the image. He got out of his car and crossed the road.
The man saw him. For a second their eyes met. Matt went up close to him, very close. He spoke in his ear. ‘She won’t be needing your money any more. Not where she’s gone.’
The man was tall, Matt realized. Well proportioned. Elegant, even, despite the several days’ growth of his beard, the tear in his coat. He gazed at Matt, as some kind of comprehension filled his expression. He shook his head.
‘Seventeen,’ Matt said to him. ‘I have a daughter too. I’d have done just the same as you, Mr Logan.’
‘You would?’ His voice was rough. His eyes watered, with cold, with feeling, it was difficult to tell. He held Matt’s gaze.
Matt spoke. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would.’ The two men stood, their eyes locked.
‘I assume you’re police,’ David Logan said.
Matt nodded, waited.
‘Are you going to arrest me?’ The voice was low, authoritative.
Matt took his arm. ‘You look like you could use some breakfast.’
They sat by steamed-up windows with mugs of tea. David drank, thirstily, ate a large piece of toast.
‘How did you know?’ he said, wiping his mouth.
‘I couldn’t think why else …’
‘Oh, it was the usual story, to start with,’ David said. ‘She was called Linda. I met her at the tennis club. She was everything I thought I wanted. Glamorous. Sexy. Full of life. An affair, that’s what it was, cliché I know, it’s all bloody clichés.’ His voice was loud, and people glanced up from their plates. ‘In the end,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘I refused to leave my wife. The whole thing was over. I didn’t know anything about Abigail until …’ He stared at the table. ‘Linda, her mother, died, you see. Three years ago. Linda’s sister tracked me down, told me there’d been a child. My child. There she was, this orphaned girl. I didn’t know what to do. How to tell Sheila … it would have destroyed us. I was a coward …’ He covered his eyes with his hand.
Matt waited.
He composed himself. ‘You have a daughter?’ he said, suddenly.
‘Yes,’ Matt said.
‘Look after her,’ David said.
‘I don’t see her. Her mother and I … we’re estranged.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Twelve,’ Matt said. ‘Thirteen in seven, no, six, weeks.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Two years ago. Two years, two months.’
David stared at him.
‘The divorce, you see,’ Matt went on. ‘Acrimonious, it was. Never resolved. My fault, in many ways. They live in London. But her mother moved last year, wouldn’t tell me where. For all I know they’re back in Italy. All I’ve got is a mobile number which I’m scared to try.’
David was silent. Then he looked at Matt. ‘Cowardice, you see. It can be fatal, it turns out. All these years, and I did nothing. And now I’ve paid the price.’
In the car David told Matt the rest of the story, sitting quietly beside him. About the money. ‘It was all I felt I could do … the coward’s way out …’ How Abigail fell in with the wrong crowd. ‘She was a vulnerable girl. About a month ago, I tried to intervene, she was on my conscience, it was all I could think about. She would go to that cashpoint every Thursday. Sometimes I’d meet her there, try to talk to her. This time I asked her what I could do. “Nothing,” she said. She was terrified of him, she could barely speak from terror. I didn’t know what to do. I resolved to take action, I’ve no idea what, kidnap her, take her home, face the music … I don’t know what, I just knew I should do something. I began to follow her, from a distance. I saw her with him, around that estate where he lived. And I thought, I shall save her. I’ll be there on Thursday and I shall rescue her, whatever the cost, she’s my daughter.
‘And so last week, I went to the cashpoint … And she wasn’t there. And I knew, deep down, I knew in my bones that something terrible had happened. I went home, Sheila was out, luckily, she knows I go to Waitrose every Thursday, so I knew she wouldn’t miss me. I picked up my pistol, I loaded it, like the colonel had shown me. I went to the estate, and he was there. He saw me. I said, “Where is she?” And he was taunting me … He ran, and I ran after him, shouting, what have you done? And he wa
s laughing and jeering. And somehow, I caught up with him, I don’t know how, a young man like that, down on the industrial estate there. And he said, “You’ll never see her again.” And my hand was on the gun, and everything I felt, such loss, such grief, such … rage …’ His voice tailed away.
‘And you fired your gun?’ Matt said.
David fell silent. Then he said, ‘I knew he was dead. The blood … the pumping … twitching … then nothing. And all my anger left me. I stood there. I felt terribly terribly sorry for him. For them all … And I realized, the only person I was angry with, was me.’
They drove in silence. After a while David said, ‘I went looking for her after that. I knew I’d never find her. Not alive, in any case. When I couldn’t find her, I didn’t know what to do. I sat out in the woods there all night. After that, it was impossible to go home. Sleeping rough … Until you found me.’
‘Why did you go to the cashpoint again?’
‘Wishful thinking. Madness. I don’t know. Those were the times when I’d try to talk to her, try to get her to get help. All I know is that I failed my daughter. My only child.’ He fell silent, and then began to cry, a rough, male sobbing.
They arrived at the police station. Matt helped him from the car, walked him into reception.
Much later that day, Matt went to see him. He was sitting in a police cell. He looked clean and calm, despite the flat fluor-escent light.
‘They’ve charged you, I hear.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll appear in court tomorrow.’
Matt sat down on the single chair. ‘How are you pleading?’
David seemed surprised by the question. ‘Guilty. Of course.’
‘But—’
‘Sheila came to see me,’ David interrupted. ‘I have ruined my wife’s life. Of course I’m pleading guilty.’
‘Did she know any of it …?’
‘None. Entirely unsuspecting. She has an innocence … one of the things I loved about her.’ He breathed, then gathered himself. ‘We couldn’t have children ourselves, you see. It has broken her heart.’
Outside there was the slamming of a door, distant shouting.
‘I asked Sheila if she’d ever forgive me,’ David said. ‘She thought for a bit. Then she said, it was too much to ask, but that she would pray that I might be forgiven. I’m not sure what she meant, but it was a strange comfort.’ He leaned forward on the narrow bed. ‘I have been a coward. That’s what I’m pleading guilty to. Cowardice. Terrible, fatal cowardice.’
Novak stood on the steps outside the court, stamping his feet against the cold. The wind gusted through the pillars, blew across the banks of journalists who were waiting behind the barrier. A woman appeared from the side entrance. He saw her well-cut grey hair, a navy wool coat. She came up to him.
‘Mrs Logan … I’m sorry,’ he said to her.
She gripped his hand. She looked up at him. ‘What it is, you see …’ She struggled to find the words. ‘This is not the life I was leading. You think you’re living one life. And then … and then everything changes. Everything is lost …’ Her eyes filled with tears. She patted his hand, then turned away to a waiting car, as the reporters shouted and called behind her.
Matt watched her go.
To pray that I might be forgiven.
He turned and headed for his car.
Samira, leaving the court, saw him waiting there. He was holding his mobile phone, staring at it. As she joined him, he clicked the phone off.
‘Who’d have thought,’ she says. ‘A man like that. You just can’t tell, can you?’
‘No,’ he agreed, putting his phone away. ‘You just can’t tell.’
ANGELA’S ALTERATIONS
Peter Lovesey
Peter Lovesey is the author of four crime series, starting with the Victorian mysteries about Sergeant Cribb, which were adapted for television. In recent years, he has focused mainly on books featuring either the Bath-based detective Peter Diamond, or Hen Mallin. His stand-alone novels include the award-winning The False Inspector Dew, and he is a former Chair of the CWA, as well as a recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger.
Second time around for Marcus, first for Sophie. He was thirty-nine, she three years younger. The wedding was non-religious, held in a seventeenth-century barn with two hundred guests, a jazz band, delicious food and dancing until dawn.
But Sophie was realistic. She knew the wedding had been the fairy tale beginning. The rest of their married life would be more humdrum and she was prepared for the dull routine enforced by the need to earn a living in these tough times. The one shining thing was that she loved Marcus and he adored her. His first wife had not been worthy of him. That was Sophie’s opinion. He rarely spoke about her and resisted the chance to blame her for the break-up. But she must have been a rotten wife and a poor mother because the judge had given Marcus full custody of Rick, their son. Everyone knows the woman normally gets priority. It’s not sexist. It’s practical. She must have been wholly unsuitable as a parent.
Marcus had a steady job at a petrol station. He did a bit of everything there, keeping the pumps clean and functioning, seeing to the deliveries when the tankers arrived, working the till, stacking the shelves in the shop and sometimes mopping out the toilets. He said there was plenty of variety and he was reasonably secure in the knowledge that cars always needed filling up. The hours weren’t so good because it was an all-night place and he had to take his turn at the shifts. One week in three was the night shift. But as Sophie said, she was used to being alone at night. She’d lived all her adult life up to now as a single woman. Being separated from Marcus one week in three meant she really appreciated his company for the other two.
Sophie’s job had more sociable hours. She was a barista in the local branch of Costa, the coffee shop chain. When she’d first gone out with Marcus and he asked her what she did for a living he thought she said she was a barrister. He asked if she worked for the defence or the prosecution and it was some time before she guessed what he was on about. It had become a running joke between them with saucy remarks about silk and briefs and being called to the bar.
With two salaries they managed well enough, renting a small house in Derbyshire that they made into a cosy home. Good neighbours, a garden where they grew their own beans and tomatoes, and a corner shop that supplied almost everything else they needed.
The one problem was Rick, her new stepson. Maybe the divorce had upset him. More likely (in Sophie’s opinion) he’d been deprived of the love and attention he should have had from his mother. Certainly Marcus couldn’t have been a more caring father. Whatever it was, Rick was a difficult young man, and that was putting it mildly. Fifteen at the time of the wedding – which he refused to attend – he came with a history of antisocial behaviour. Sophie wasn’t told for a long time about the childhood misdemeanours. She was certain Marcus kept quiet from the kindest of motives. But gradually things filtered through. The boy had been excluded from nursery school for persistently attacking the other children, head-butting, spitting and scratching. He threw an old lady’s cat into a pond. He ran a kind of protection racket at secondary school, demanding regular money from certain children who feared having their bicycles smashed or their backpacks thrown over fences. As he got older and the hormones kicked in, he started pestering girls, touching them at every opportunity. When they objected he spread rumours about them though the social media. He was suspended from school for a time for rigging up a camera in the girls’ changing room. He tried drugs, got drunk, carried a knife. He was a constant worry for Marcus. And as the incidents grew more serious, he became known to the police. They called at the house twice and spoke to Marcus.
Rick left school at the first opportunity and joined the unemployed. Somehow he managed to fund the lifestyle he wanted, out most of the night clubbing, sleeping through much of the day and arguing with his father whenever they were in the house together. Mostly he ignored Sophie – apart from a few muttered obsceniti
es which she didn’t mention to Marcus. But she had a suspicion he was taking money from her handbag and she took to keeping it within reach at all times.
Her neighbour Paula called one Sunday morning when Rick was still in bed and Marcus at work. They enjoyed coffee and a chat.
‘What are you going to do about that stepson of yours?’ Paula asked out of the blue.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Anyone can see he’s getting you down. He’s trouble. I saw him yesterday shoplifting in Tesco. With that long blond hair of his he doesn’t seem to realise he stands out. He took a basket in and collected a magazine and slipped several packets of condoms into his pocket.’
‘Oh, don’t!’
‘Well, at least he’s taking precautions. I suppose you ought to be grateful for that. But I wouldn’t want a daughter of mine going out with him. He’ll end up in the courts if you’re not careful. Does Marcus have any idea what his son gets up to?’
‘I’m afraid it’s the usual story. A broken home, a mother who was never there when she was needed.’
‘Yes, but what about Marcus?’
‘He’s well aware of it. He tries, he really does.’
‘My husband wouldn’t stand for it. He’d beat some sense into the little perisher and kick him out if he didn’t behave. How old is he now?’
‘Going on seventeen.’
‘A lot of kids his age fend for themselves. Some look after disabled parents as well.’
‘We’re hoping he’ll come to his senses now he’s virtually an adult. He’s not without ambition. He wants to learn to drive.’
‘God help us all when he does,’ Paula said, and they both laughed.
Two evenings later, Sophie and Marcus had a visit from a clergyman. He was the vicar at St John’s, the local church. They were surprised to see him because they weren’t churchgoers, but Marcus invited him in.
‘You’re wondering what this is about,’ the vicar said. ‘I’m responsible for three churches altogether. Most of my time is spent at St John’s, and I conduct the occasional service at the other two, St Matthew’s at the end of North Street, and St Barnabas, the little one beside the green at Barn End. They’re lovely old buildings, of much interest architecturally, and people visit them just to look round. We put out leaflets just inside the door and there’s a box for contributions. Some people are most generous and pay more than the suggested token amount.’
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