I Know You (DI Emma Locke)

by Louise Mullins

  ‘What caused the fire?’ says Sinead, wearing a this-can’t-be-happening look on her face. Though it could be for show.

  ‘A lit piece of cloth.’

  An unspoken glint of knowledge forms in Gareth’s eyes at the same moment that Sinead retracts from their stand-off, eyes narrowed at the two men.

  ‘It was you.’ Gareth jabs his finger into Aeron’s chest. ‘You set your house alight hoping she’d be left nothing after the divorce. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d cancelled the home insurance too.’

  ‘What?’ says Sinead, glaring at the two men either side of her.

  ‘He’s talking shit,’ says Aeron.

  ‘I saw you this morning. Your van has the company logo on it.’

  ‘I was working in Cheltenham today. And it could have been any one of my drivers,’ says Aeron.

  ‘I never said where I saw you. But I know it was your van because I recognised the dent on the rear bumper.’

  How does Gareth know which van Aeron uses for work when he collects his chosen vehicle from the vehicle station in Avonmouth each morning?

  ‘Where did you see him?’

  ‘Carleon Road, about an hour ago. It was… right before I bumped into you,’ says Gareth, face set on Sinead’s concerned expression.

  Sinead turns on Aeron. ‘You saw him get into my car and you wanted to hurt me, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sinead, it wasn’t me,’ says Aeron, almost lazily.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  It dawns on me then that their trust issues go much deeper than her affair with Gareth.

  ‘I’d like a word with you both, in private. Gareth, could you wait in the car?’

  ‘Sure.’ He glances at the children, the house, then Sinead, and retreats to her vehicle, seemingly unsure where else to go or what to do with himself now his input isn’t needed.

  Gareth’s eyes scan the area. Sinead looks back at her old life, distracted by Gareth’s presence, and then forward to her children before settling on Aeron and the present.

  ‘You were in Cheltenham, Mr Griffith?’ I say, once we’re a decent enough distance from the fire officers and neighbours.

  ‘You know I was. I just told you.’

  ‘I can check it out, run your number plate through the system.’

  ‘I know. My w… She… Sinead used to be a detective, didn’t she? I know more than I care about criminal investigation. The last case she worked on was probably the biggest she’d ever…’

  We share a moment of recognition then he smiles and shakes his head. Sinead looks away. In shame or realisation?

  ‘It’s a repeating pattern, isn’t it? That’s what you call them, don’t you?’ he says. ‘The dog shit through the letterbox, the fire that killed DCI Evesham?’

  I turn my attention on her. ‘Was there anyone else, in Croydon?’

  ‘Do you mean, did I…? God, no. I’m not a slag.’

  Aeron stares at her as though he’s assessing a stranger.

  ‘No. Me and Gareth, I swear we never have, you know,’ she lowers her voice to a whisper, ‘slept together.’

  ‘An affair doesn’t have to involve sex,’ he says.

  ‘Are you suggesting that I brought this on myself? Put us and the children in the firing line for a quickie? You’re both mad.’

  ‘No, Sinead. We’re not, but someone is. Mad I mean. Mad enough to risk getting caught in broad daylight by one of your neighbours. Mad enough to endanger two small children’s lives. Mad enough to presume our resources don’t stretch as far as surveying your property to ensure your family’s safety.’

  ‘How? I mean, I’d notice if you had undercover hanging around the house. This cul-de-sac is one of the quietest places I’ve lived.’

  I let her reflect on her own words. ‘Logan,’ she sighs. ‘What did he see?’

  ‘Nothing, Sinead. You were the last person he saw anywhere near your house, leaving in your car, an hour and a half ago.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of arson?’

  ‘You knew no one was in the house. You thought no one would suspect you. You used Gareth as an alibi.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she says. But Aeron doesn’t look so sure.

  Though I suppose liars attract one another. Their relationship is built on fabrication.

  ‘You wanted to prevent Aeron getting his half of the house. You blame him, not yourself for the end of your marriage. You wanted revenge.’

  ‘No. That’s not true. You’re wrong.’ She darts a look towards Aeron who’s considering her with contempt. ‘You both are.’

  ‘Unless you can convince me otherwise, I’m going to suggest that you attempted to commit fraud for monetary gain.’ And if my suspicion is proved correct, I’ll need to question her about Evesham’s murder.

  With Newell locked up – responsible for posting dog faeces through their letterbox – and Terry incarcerated for having drenched the doormat with petrol before unlawfully entering their home and assaulting Sinead, who could have lit the flame if not one of the unhappily still-married couple?

  The FSO approaches us. He glances from Aeron to Sinead. ‘The property is uninhabitable due to the amount of smoke damage. Most of what was kept upstairs is okay to use, though it might smell. Unfortunately, no one’s going up there until the staircase has been properly inspected and signed off as safe to use. The assessor’s visit is something you’ll have to arrange with your insurers. I suggest you go and buy some snacks, a change of clothes, and some toiletries in the supermarket for now. Is there somewhere you can stay for a couple of nights?’

  ‘I’ve got the keys to the flat. Brandon and Mai can stay with me. It’s a one-bedroom. But I can sleep on the sofa in the lounge. I’ll book my ex-wife a hotel room.’ He raises his eyebrows at Sinead. ‘Unless your boyfriend is willing to put you up?’

  ‘You’ve already had furniture delivered there?’ She shakes her head and turns to leave.

  ‘Let me know where you’re both staying, in case I need to get hold of you. And be safe.’

  If Sinead is being honest regarding her innocence in lighting the fire, then someone really is after her. And what’s alarming is we haven’t caught the individual yet despite Logan’s excessive observation of her property.

  *

  I’ve been on tenterhooks since my return from Sinead’s, leaving her outside the Travelodge in Newport town centre to return to Cwmbran. Waiting to hear that Rawlings’ team have brought Callahan into custody, hoping Pierce was arrested with him. It’s a relief when after almost forty-minutes of agony I learn that Callahan was caught stumbling along the double garage roof at his exquisitely maintained Farnham property and apprehended while the search team barged through the five-bedroom house and began sifting through everything in sight.

  But what I’m not expecting to hear from Maguire is what she discovered in his small, self-contained summerhouse. ‘Keenan’s passport, a rucksack, and some clothes believed to belong to the missing man were strewn about the outbuilding. It’s got a kitchenette, en suite bathroom, and even a tiny bit of decking where we found a plant pot being used as an ashtray filled with evidential gold.’

  ‘Only if the cigarette butts have his DNA on them.’

  ‘Let’s hope they do.’

  ‘No sign of Pierce though.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Rawlings put him on investigative relief. But it seems that civilian administrative duties aren’t his thing. Immediately after he answered the phone to Sinead, he left the CID.’

  ‘And it was that conversation repeated to you by Sinead that led you to suspect Pierce was involved with Callahan and Newell.’

  ‘Rawlings already suspected.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘How long does it take to get to Newport from here?’ she says.

  ‘Two hours or more dependent on traffic.’ She goes quiet for a moment.

  ‘You think it was Pierce who set Sinead’s house alight?’

  ‘It makes sense. Like Aeron said to you earlier,
we seem to be following a pattern that was woven not by Sinead’s failure to charge Marley for Tyrell’s murder, the associated figures of authority preventing his arrest – the detectives investigating Tyrell’s death and the gangsters who pushed him to sell drugs – or the senior officers who’re continually putting obstacles in our way, but by Pierce. Low on the hierarchical chain of command, able to evade reprisal from both the law and the gang, whose members’ welfare he was responsible for.’

  ‘Have you got any tangible proof or is your theory purely hypothetical?’

  She sighs. ‘A teenage boy is stabbed to death. He’s believed to be involved in a gang. Someone he associates with sells cocaine. The drug dealer becomes a suspect after they disappear. Pierce fails to arrest the murder suspect when they reappear. Someone’s house is set alight.’

  When they get too close to the truth?

  ‘Someone instructed Pierce to travel across the country to scare Sinead out of her home?’

  ‘It’s possible Logan missed the perpetrator. He’s got to sleep, eat, and shit like the rest of us,’ she says.

  While collecting the SD cards from Logan I hinted that the individual targeting Sinead was a potential danger to anyone who’d recently visited her house or spoken to her. He then offered to informally inspect Sinead’s house much closer than usual. I didn’t say much to try and put him off.

  ‘The chicken restaurant’s the hub from where Atkinson conducts his business. It’s not far-fetched to assume he also determines who stays on the payroll and who’s eliminated from it.’

  ‘Without a confession from Callahan we have nothing to tie Atkinson in with ordering Marley to kill Tyrell,’ she says.

  And without an admission from Atkinson there’s no proof he arranged Steven or Natalie’s murders to protect his business. But our suppositions can be used as leverage to secure a reasonably grounded charge to build on the evidence Sinead acquired during her investigation into Tyrell’s murder. Something I would have pushed DI Rawlings for by now if I were Maguire. So why hasn’t she?

  ‘Who’s standing in your way?’

  HONOUR

  Croydon, London

  I carry a cup of tea and a plate of ginger biscuits into the living room. I sit and plump the cushion behind my tired spine, lying horizontal to rest my weary legs on the sofa.

  After a long day on my feet, snipping hair and feigning interest in my customers woes, the radio emitting background noise on top of the street theatre of the human and vehicular traffic, I want to experience only silence and solitude.

  I take a sip of sugary tea and chew on a tongue-warming biscuit, but as I take another bite there is a loud knock on the door that becomes more incessant even as I’m opening it.

  I’m surprised to find Carmen on the doorstep. We usually conduct our ritualised evening chat on the phone.

  Her hair is sticking to her face, her clothes are soaked through, and her black mascara has trailed down her cheeks. She looks as though she’s on her way to a fancy-dress party. I’m about to ask if she’s attending as Alice Cooper when I notice her eyes are pink and the drip-effect makeup hasn’t been caused by the rain at all. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Did you know?’ she says, her eyes examining my expression intently, as I close the door.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Jerome’s been arrested for Natalie,’ she chokes. ‘Maguire found his fingerprints on a gun. They think it’s the one… said the way it fires, or something leaves distinctive marks on the shells, matching those of a firearm they’ve been searching for years. It’s been used in at least seven crimes, all ending in… He’s being charged for her murder. His own sister.’

  Her sobs cause her to shake so hard I fear she might collapse so I grab her arms before she does and haul her into the living room. She drops onto the chair, Steven’s chair, and I bite back the tearful fury so that it sits in my throat like a badly swallowed chunk of apple.

  Of course his prints are on it. As are mine.

  Jerome passed the gun to me in the park, beneath the shadow of the water tower. The sky was pitch black. My senses were heightened to the scurrying of rats and windblown leaves shuttling along the concrete. I had to force myself not to run back to the car with the gun tucked into the waistband of my trousers. Terrified it might slip and fall onto the pavement with a clang, frighten a late-night dog walker, cause me to get arrested before I could exit the park and hand it over to the police.

  I waited two hours before calling Maguire, worried someone might be watching the house, might know what I’d planned to do with the cold metal object on my lap, the muzzle directed at the wall to my right. I didn’t retract my gaze from it until Maguire arrived to collect it from me.

  ‘Forensic analysis might take a couple of days,’ she said.

  There are many questions I won’t permit myself to ask Carmen, but it takes a lot of restraint not to.

  Did Jerome hang his head in shame when Maguire applied the handcuffs to his wrists? Did he tell his mother who he’d borrowed the gun from? The gun I paid Jerome to borrow.

  I tell myself the previous handler wiped it so thoroughly that his or her prints aren’t discoverable. That Jerome didn’t think of this when he handed it to me. Doesn’t understand the basics of disguising one’s own forensic profile. Isn’t used to undertaking criminal activities. Has never held a gun before. But I could be wrong.

  DS MAGUIRE

  Croydon, London

  The moment I put the phone down after my short and mostly hushed phone call, Rawlings sidles behind me, waiting for me to repeat my latest conversation with Locke. Except this time, I can’t. Not unless I too want to end up with a knife in my chest, a bullet through my head, or a lit microfibre cloth doused in petrol shoved through my letterbox.

  Whoever is replicating the events that forced Sinead from her home three years ago is doing a good job of convincing me I should stay silent about the knowledge I’ve just acquired. But it’s causing me a lot of moral discomfort just being in the vicinity with Rawlings.

  I replay the conversation I’ve just had with Locke, in my head, and realise how ridiculous it sounds that I ever gave Rawlings the benefit of the doubt when my first impression of him was that he was not to be trusted.

  ‘Who’s standing in your way?’ said Locke.

  She waited with bated breath for my reply, but I’d already caught Rawlings entering the incident room so I couldn’t.

  I watch him now, switching off his monitor, grabbing his coat from the back of his office chair, and giving me a side-glance and a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes before turning around and exiting the room forcibly slowly.

  ‘Sarge?’

  ‘Yes, Benson?’ I spin round as he charges towards me, grinning.

  ‘There was a partial on the gun Honour borrowed from Jerome. The lab results have just come in stating that it’s a side print of Atkinson’s thumb.’

  Just when I thought we weren’t getting anywhere with the nail-biting, silent teen, science prevails. Now we know who lent Jerome the gun he loaned to Honour.

  ‘Where’s Rawlings going?’ I flick a look at his retreating form.

  ‘Fag break probably.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I revert my gaze from the door. ‘Has Hodges finished interviewing Jerome?’

  ‘Not yet, Sarge.’

  ‘Callahan’s been inducted?’

  ‘About half an hour ago, Sarge.’

  ‘Go and get Callahan from the custody suite and escort him into one of the available interview rooms.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for R—’

  I give him a look that could cut clean through titanium. ‘If Rawlings isn’t here to refuse me a warrant to collect Atkinson from HMP Highdown for questioning then I’ll have to get the man I arrested this morning to talk.’

  I need to know what Atkinson’s relationship to Jerome is, why he gave a fifteen-year-old boy a gun. How Jerome knew he could get hold of one from him. I need to get Callahan to speak about Atki
nson’s business and disclose where Keenan might be hiding now his safe place has been rumbled.

  *

  Robert Callahan, like all the other interviewees I’ve sat opposite in recent weeks, stares blankly at me as though by wasting the hours we have available to hold him he can avoid having to explain his actions.

  I don’t want a repeat performance of our attempts to question Marley, Leighton, Marcus, Atkinson, or Jerome so I decide to do something different. I match Callahan’s body language and silence by mirroring his defensive posture and not speaking. This goes on for some time before he exhales in impatience and sits alpha style: erect in his plastic chair, legs wide, arms folded. Except he darts his gaze around the room, sighs a couple of times, and begins to fidget.

  Eventually he folds. ‘Are you going to say anything or what?’

  I shake my head slowly. ‘No. What’s the point? You’ll reply to all my questions with a “no comment,” won’t you?’ I continue flicking through the Amazon app on my phone, adding and removing items to my online shopping basket.

  ‘No comment,’ he huffs.

  ‘You know as well as I do that only makes you sound guilty.’

  He looks away.

  ‘Rather you than me in prison.’ I drop my voice. ‘The inmates don’t like us lot much.’

  ‘I’m not a copper.’

  ‘Being ex-CID is worse. They’ll all be hounding you for outside intel. I mean, look at what happened to Collins. He was knifed in prison just for being a detective. The inmate who stabbed him only learned he was a snitch after he’d killed him.’

  ‘You’re not getting to me.’

  ‘I’m not trying to.’

  I open the games app on my phone and start scrolling through them, choosing a Match Three Jewels to Win game.

  Five minutes later Callahan’s practically bouncing off his chair, and it’s then I note the telltale symptoms of what I suspect is drug withdrawal: itchy skin, overproduction of saliva, restlessness, hot flushes. Though it could be anxiety or norovirus. ‘Feeling alright?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘You look warm and you keep licking your lips. I’ll fetch you a drink.’