by John Fairfax
‘He’d already found that sachet of Spice from China with Kingsley Obiora and it gave him a flash of inspiration. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘He linked it to the death of Hugh Wellborn – who’d simply driven too fast into a bend – and he came up with a story. A bloody good story, frankly. One that fooled everyone, ultimately. Including me, my colleagues and a jury.’
Wysocki started bending her fingers back, one after the other. ‘I had nothing to do with this, I just went along with what he’d—’
‘Stop washing your hands, Miss Wysocki. The blood won’t come off. He started spreading a rumour that he’d been threatened by a Chinese gang, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. He told some other transport people and Roger Grange and Debbie. He let them all know that he was frightened and that he might just vanish one day and he was hoping the police would then start asking questions and they’d find out about the threat and that he’d tried to make sure Debbie was okay financially, with a trust, and they’d think he must have been disappeared, murdered, and after a few years he’d be declared dead anyway and we’d be free and there’d be no inquiry.’
‘Seven years, in fact.’
‘Yes.’
‘And while that story was being put about, Mr Bealing was shifting money abroad, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’ Wysocki was curling her fingers now, and making them crack, one after the other. ‘And I was to join him six months after he’d gone.’
‘The wait made comfortable by the twenty grand from Roger Grange?’
‘Yes.’
‘So Debbie would grieve and take more tablets. The nurse would come five times a week. Collingstone would crawl back under her stone. And you two would go for a walk in the Carpathians.’
Wysocki looked up. ‘I never knew Andrew was the father of Collingstone’s child, I swear. I only discovered that in the trial.’
‘Well, you can thank Collingstone’s child for the money in Zurich. Because Bealing was stealing it from him. Where is Bealing’s passport in the name of Alan Shaftoe?’
‘I don’t know. He kept it at Hopton’s Yard, away from Debbie.’
‘But it wasn’t there when the police found the body.’
‘Then someone must have taken it.’
‘I agree. You know the account number, don’t you?’
She hesitated a fraction too long and Benson turned to Tess. ‘Call Winter, I’ve had enough.’
‘No, stop, please.’ Wysocki pulled open a drawer and took out a brown envelope. ‘Take it. I don’t want it.’
Benson thought about the reply for a moment then he said: ‘You are a signatory to the account, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You do realise this makes you guilty of various offences – more than I care to spell out?’
‘I just went along with Andrew.’
‘A number of Germans said something very similar at Nuremberg. Coming from Poland, I’d have thought you were aware of that defence. It didn’t work at trial. And it won’t work at yours. If things go that far.’
He turned to Tess and Archie. Both of them were slightly open-mouthed. ‘Do you mind waiting outside a moment? I’ve got one last question, and it’s private.’
After they’d gone, he said, ‘If you went along with Andrew, will you go along with me? This time everything will work out fine. I promise.’
60
Benson sat in the front passenger seat. He was dying for a cigarette. He’d spent ages that morning trying to find a packet of Marlboro that he’d hidden somewhere, but all the usual places were bare. He’d vowed to stop smoking after the trial, expecting a drop in tension, but the passing of that landmark had merely increased his desperation. Because the trial of Sarah Collingstone wasn’t truly over. Neither Tess nor Archie were talking – they were staring into space, numbed – so Benson, craving a distraction, switched on the radio.
A thirty-seven-year-old man had been arrested in relation to the killing of Diane Heybridge. The so-called ‘Blood Orange Murder’. He’d been taken to—
‘I don’t get it,’ said Archie from the back seat. ‘If there was no Chinese gang shifting legal highs through Hopton Transport, who the hell was ‘Jock’, the undercover copper with an agent in the Hong Hua?’
Benson looked at Tess. Her hands were gripping the wheel as if she was shifting through Wimbledon like a bat out of hell.
‘I mean this Jock was for real,’ said Archie. ‘He gets Benson out of bed in the middle of the night. He gives him a monumental heap of crap so that you end up putting the screws on Grange and Obiora. And they then give evidence about the Chinese . . . evidence we needed if Collingstone was going to have any chance of being acquitted. But if there’s no Chinese gang, then Jock was no policeman. He must have been working with the killer. Why else go to the bother?’
DCI Stuart Goodshaw refused to comment on the inquiry save to say—
‘I know what happened,’ said Tess, her arms relaxing on the wheel.
‘Well, fill me in,’ said Archie.
‘The explanation has been there from the very beginning. Their names keep coming up all the time. They’re always on the edge of the evidence. I just didn’t see it.’
‘And I still haven’t.’
‘You have, Archie. Like Benson said, we got hooked on that DNA. Who benefited from Andrew Bealing’s death? And I mean really benefited.’
Archie thought for a moment. ‘Debbie. But she lost out, too, for God’s sake.’
‘Did she? Take another look. She knew Bealing had lots of affairs. She knew about Anna Wysocki. We know that Bealing was shifting money abroad and thinking of tying up the rest in a trust fund. Maybe Debbie found out. This was a business built by her father, and Bealing was planning to make her a powerless beneficiary. I reckon Debbie was pretty sick of being powerless.’
The dead woman’s family, speaking through their legal representative, had expressed relief that—
‘But she’s crackers,’ said Archie.
‘No, she’s not,’ said Tess. ‘She’s okay if she takes her medication. She uses her illness to her advantage. She’s used it to win arguments and she used it to keep herself off the suspect list.’
‘God, I must be stupid, I just don’t see it.’
‘She had no alibi for the night Bealing was killed, Archie. The police just accepted she was at home all evening, on her own, as usual. But she wasn’t at home all evening. She came to Hopton’s Yard and looked through the window and saw her husband with yet another woman. Not Wysocki, but Collingstone. The husband who was planning to squeeze her out of her dad’s business. She went home, all upset and then she came back later, sick of him, sick of being walked over. And Bealing, of course, let her in. She obviously went ape-shit. It was a pretty savage attack.’
Heybridge’s body had been found by—
‘You’re right, Tess,’ said Archie, leaning forward, a meaty hand gripping each of the back rests. ‘The police never questioned her. When they came round the next morning, she got herself sectioned. Winter just accepted that she was climbing the walls. He called a doctor.’
‘And a nurse,’ said Tess.
‘Meaning?’
‘She asked for him. She only needed a doctor, but she asked for Darren Weaver, probably the person who knew her best. He’d been coming to see her three times a week for years. They were close. When Debbie couldn’t make the Christmas party, it was Weaver who rang Kym Hamilton to say so. You’d have thought they were a couple, don’t you think? That’s what the gossip was, anyway. Remember? According to the office banter, he serviced her with his thermometer.’
Archie slowly sat back. ‘They were having an affair.’
‘Yes. And who’d blame her?’
According to a distressed neighbour, Heybridge had been a quiet and—
Benson turned off the radio and Tess turned the ignition. She pulled slowly away, flicking on the wipers. Rain had begun to fall. Benson wondered if the pac
ket of Marlboro was in the freezer. If so, he’d have to wait until—
‘Sorry,’ said Archie, tetchy, ‘you two might be up to speed but I’m not. Who the hell was Jock?’
‘Darren Weaver,’ said Tess. ‘From Edinburgh. And that’s in Scotland.’
‘I know, but still, what was the point of getting Grange and Obiora into court?’
‘Sarah Collingstone was looking a conviction in the face. She’d just been broken by Glencoyne. As for Debbie, she was in the clear – she’d got herself sectioned again, just to make sure – but she didn’t want to see Collingstone go down.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it? She’d had her revenge. Collingstone had been torn to pieces and that was enough. She didn’t deserve to go to prison. And don’t forget Daniel Collingstone was Andrew Bealing’s son. Debbie was his stepmother. She might be an angry woman and a hurt woman, but she’s not heartless. She got Weaver to trick Benson. And everyone else.’
‘She’s thought it all through,’ said Archie. ‘She’s sold everything up. She’s on the move. She’s going to disappear.’
‘Yes, with Darren Weaver, no doubt. She was released from hospital three days ago.’
Benson was fairly sure that the freezer was his best bet, and when Tess pulled up by the railings on Seymour Road, he was impatient to find out, but the planning wasn’t over. Arrangements had to be made. They sat together, listening to the distinctive rumble of a sixties engine, the wipers swinging back and forth. Benson waited for the reproach.
‘This is unheard of, Will,’ said Tess, after a while. ‘Counsel don’t fight the case inside court and then go outside and resolve it. Clients will never trust you in the future. You have to stay above the fray on the ground. Your fight is elsewhere. It’s not with the truth, with what really happened; it’s with the evidence . . . with what might have happened. Your fight is with doubt.’
‘And it’s unheard of for counsel not to make a closing speech,’ said Benson. ‘There is no legal or moral reason why we can’t resolve this case. Your reasons are practical and professional and you needn’t worry. No one is going to find out. The police aren’t involved. We’ll never do anything like this again. But believe me, this is the best way forward. And not only for Debbie.’
The wipers cut through the spattering of rain.
‘What do we do now?’ said Archie.
‘We confront the killer,’ said Benson.
‘When?’ asked Tess.
‘Tomorrow night.’
‘Whereabouts?’ said Archie.
‘Where it all began and where it should end.’ Benson got out of the car and leaned back inside. ‘Hopton’s Yard.’
61
Tess didn’t want to see Angela Temple. She didn’t want to know what she might have to say. She wanted to keep her admiration for Benson unspoiled by doubts or questions of any kind. But the recollection of the bearded man with the network of scars across his head made such avoidance impossible. This very vulnerable man had added a very different shade to the image of Paul Harbeton. He’d spoken with the anger of lost justice. He’d spoken with the ongoing grievance that a backstreet retribution can’t erase. There was more to Tess’s investigation now than a wager over cocktails.
Mrs Temple, now in her fifties, had been responsible for staff at the Radwell Brain Trauma Clinic in Norwich between 1991 and 1997. She’d then managed a hospice in Derry, Northern Ireland, for five years. She’d then taken a position at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, overlooking the Thames, which was where she worked now. She’d agreed to meet Tess for a coffee on the Southbank. And she seemed keen to talk. Like someone who had a confession to make, or information to share that she didn’t know what to do with.
‘Eddie Benson had been a patient at the clinic,’ she said. ‘I can’t give you any clinical information, obviously, so I’m only confirming what you said was in the pre-sentence report. Eddie came twice a week to see Dr Gardner.’
‘For how long?’
‘I can’t recall. He was already a patient when I came in ’91 and he was still coming when I left. So it’s over six years.’
Tess did a quick calculation. Eddie’s accident occurred in 1988, when he was nine. Therefore he’d been coming to the clinic, then, at least between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Mrs Temple was stirring her coffee as if making porridge, waiting for the liquid to thicken. She hadn’t even added milk and sugar.
‘William Benson did a sponsored walk in 1995 when he was seventeen. He raised over four thousand pounds. That’s the period I knew him, if you like. Only by sight. Because he’d often come with his brother.’
Mrs Temple had then gone to Derry, so she’d missed the news regarding William Benson when he was tried for the murder of Paul Harbeton. In fact, she’d next heard of him only a couple of weeks ago when she read the article about him in the Guardian. She followed the uproar afterwards with a strange feeling of unease. The papers variously dissected the crime for which Benson had been convicted. And that brought back someone else she hadn’t thought about since leaving the Radwell Brain Trauma Clinic – Paul Harbeton.
‘You knew Paul Harbeton?’ said Tess.
‘Yes. I got rid of him.’
Tess reached over the table and laid a hand gently on Mrs Temple’s, stopping the endless stirring of her coffee. ‘Don’t worry. Just tell me what’s on your mind. Tell me about Paul Harbeton.’
Since the Radwell wasn’t part of the NHS, the clinic relied on volunteers to help with basic admin, reception, outings, events, patient activities and, of course, fundraising. Mrs Temple had interviewed Harbeton and taken him on in 1992. But she’d asked him to leave after a few months.
‘The patients at the Radwell were vulnerable. Anyone with a brain injury is vulnerable. They can have damaged memories, no short-term memory . . . they can remember things that haven’t happened; they can say Gerry asked them to do something when it was Frank. And there was something suspicious about this Paul Harbeton. It looked like he’d been borrowing money off the patients, playing on the fact they wouldn’t remember. We couldn’t prove anything, so I just asked him to leave. And I thought that was the end of the matter.’
Only it wasn’t. Because five years later, in 1997, just before she went to Derry, William Benson came to see her.
‘He wanted to know where he could find Paul Harbeton.’
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘How could I be mistaken?’
It had been a silly question, but Tess didn’t want to believe what she’d just heard. She had another hopeless go: ‘You’re saying he knew Paul Harbeton?’
‘Well, he knew his name. He was looking for him. I told him I didn’t know where he’d gone.’
Tess and Mrs Temple were now on the same page. Because Tess knew from the trial and Mrs Temple knew from the Guardian that William Benson’s defence had been that he did not know Paul Harbeton. That he’d met him for the first time at the Bricklayers Arms in 1998. That they’d had a fight over Harbeton’s rudeness at the bar. That he hadn’t followed him into Soho. That Benson being found in Soho at the time of the killing was pure coincidence.
‘Do I need to tell the police?’ said Mrs Temple.
‘No. He was convicted, remember. It doesn’t matter any more.’
But it mattered to Tess.
‘Thank you, Mrs Temple, you’ve helped me enormously.’
She left Mrs Temple quite sure that Benson’s secret would remain safe. This staff manager was far too discreet to say anything to the press. She’d said nothing so far and she was unlikely to change her mind. Disclosing what she knew to Tess had been enough to salve her conscience. So, yes, Benson’s secret was safe.
Tess would keep it, too. She wouldn’t be blowing any whistle. But what difference did that make? Her problem wasn’t to tell or not to tell . . . it was finding out in the first place. She’d hoped Mrs Temple would ease her concerns, perhaps even surprise her with evidence that supported
Benson’s innocence. But the opposite had happened. She was devastated. She seemed to see his eyes, dark and pleading for understanding. Her chest grew tight and she turned away.
62
Before going out for that celebratory meal at Le Tour de Saint Martin, the small restaurant behind the British Museum, Benson had first tried to resolve the murder of Andrew Bealing privately. To settle what really happened with an admission. But it hadn’t worked. There’d been tears, shouting and accusations. The conversation had ended in minutes, so he had been compelled to force things. Tess and Archie weren’t to know that what was about to happen hadn’t even been Benson’s idea. He’d just accepted a challenge.
At midnight Tess arrived in her Austin Cooper. Benson sat in the passenger seat, intent on deflecting any questions that she might raise as to what was about to happen, but he needn’t have worried. She was evidently preoccupied. It had to be stress, he thought, because she remained just as self-enclosed after they’d picked up Archie from his flat above Congreve’s. And he, too, was in no mood for idle conversation, so they went south of the river to Merton without a word passing between them. Having parked on Effra Road, they walked to Hopton’s Yard where the security guard – now known to Benson as Greg – let them in. Benson had been at the premises earlier in the day, preparing the warehouse for what would hopefully now unfold. The tripod was in position, along with the torch. It was time to return them.
Four chairs had been arranged in a line. One of them was already occupied. Benson, Tess and Archie took their places. To their great credit, thought Benson, his two colleagues managed to conceal the shock they must have felt on entering the room and seeing the other spectator. They’d got it wrong; just like DCI Winter had got it wrong. Benson closed his eyes and the long wait began. He thought of Needles and he thought of Yeats: ‘Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.’ That was about to change.
Footsteps sounded in the darkness. A door opened. More steps echoed, closer now, slow and careful, coming down the corridor past Andrew Bealing’s office. The door by which he’d been stabbed opened. Someone entered the warehouse, walking where Andrew Bealing had crawled. A man called out: