by Mark Dawson
They had not discovered that he and Cassandra Mallender had been in a relationship. Robson would have been accorded much more interest if they had known that.
Mack knew Atticus all too well. If he had discovered that there was a reason to investigate him, what would he have done?
He would have gone over there to speak to him.
Jesus.
She tapped through to Atticus’s number and called it.
“It’s Atticus. Whatever unfortunate chain of events has led you to call my number, please leave your story here and I’ll call back if I find you sufficiently interesting. If you don’t hear from me… what can I say?”
Mack hit cancel. She called Lennox.
“Afternoon, boss. What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“At the nick. What’s up?”
“Atticus thinks Jimmy Robson might be involved in the murders.”
“The gamekeeper?”
“Yes. He’s gone to check him out, but he’s not answering his phone.”
“Seriously?”
“Look, Tristan, I’m worried and my car’s broken down—we need to get over there. Can you come and get me?”
“Give me ten minutes.”
77
Atticus found it difficult to keep track of time. How long had he been in here? There was no way of saying. The light that leaked beneath the line of the door had the yellow tinge of a bulb, but, even then, the corridor outside the storeroom had been gloomy even when Atticus had broken into the house. He doubted that he would have been able to detect any natural light, assuming that it was still daytime.
“Hey!” he called out again. “You’re making a mistake, Jimmy. People know where I am. They’ll come to look for me if I don’t get in touch with them.”
He heard the footsteps overhead again.
“You’ll go to prison,” Atticus yelled. “Let me out of here and we can pretend this never happened.”
The footsteps pounded across the floor above. They faded out as Robson moved across the room, and then grew louder as he descended the stairs and approached the door. Atticus tested the rope that secured his wrists again, but the knots were too tight and there was no play in the bonds.
There was a click as a key was turned in the lock and then the door opened. Robson had changed out of his overcoat and was now wearing a T-shirt that revealed muscular arms that were covered with full sleeves of lurid tattoos.
“Jimmy,” Atticus began, “come on. Let me go.”
Robson stayed in the doorway. “I don’t remember your name.”
“Atticus Priest.”
“That’s right. DC Priest.”
“I’m not police.”
“Bullshit.”
“I got fired,” Atticus said. “Months ago.”
“So what are you doing inside my house?”
“I’m working for Ralph Mallender.”
Robson’s lip curled up. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
Robson took a step forward. “What does that have to do with me?”
Atticus had known that question would come, and had wondered how he should answer it. There was a balance to be struck between tact and honesty. Not enough of the first might anger Robson; too much of the second would be dangerous.
“Ralph Mallender is on trial for murder.”
“I know that. Killed his family.”
“He says he didn’t.”
“He would, wouldn’t he.”
“He employed me to investigate the police’s evidence.”
“That still don’t explain why you’d be snooping around in my house. That’s got nothing to do with me.”
Robson was slow on the uptake. Atticus could see that he would have to nudge him in the right direction, but knew that he would need to do it very carefully.
He nodded to Robson’s right arm. “That tattoo,” he said. “Just above your elbow.”
Robson looked down at his arm. It was a mess of ink, with what looked like a likeness of an Alsatian drawn on top of something else.
“That’s Dave,” he said, laying his finger on his arm.
“Dave?”
“My dog. Dave.”
“I don’t mean the dog. You used that to ink over a name.”
Robson stared down at the tattoo. There was no name visible beneath it.
“Cassandra,” Atticus said. “Her name was there. I saw a picture of it. You were in a club in Bath with her and her friends.”
“Nah.” Robson looked as if he was going to say something else, but he shook his head instead.
“You were seeing her, Jimmy. I know. You were going backwards and forwards to Bath. One of her friends told me.”
His eyes narrowed. “That was ages ago.”
“What happened? Why’d you stop?”
“The girl died.”
“Stacey. That’s right.”
“But that weren’t my stuff. What happened to her had nothing to do with me.”
“I believe you.”
“I didn’t even have pills with me that weekend. I don’t know where she got it from.”
He was defensive and off guard. Atticus saw a chance to get him to talk.
“Did Hugo find out about you and his daughter?”
Robson nodded. “When she came back after the girl died. She told him about us.”
“And he wasn’t happy about it?”
“Fired me,” Robson said. “Worked for the family for ten years, ever since school, and he got rid of me, just like that.”
“Did that make you angry, Jimmy?”
“Course. Wasn’t fair.”
“How angry?”
Robson frowned, and, after a moment, realisation dawned across his face.
“You think I did it?” he said, gesturing in the rough direction of the farmhouse. “You think I killed them?”
His anger flared, and Atticus worried that he had gone too far. “I didn’t say that.”
“No! No. That ain’t got nothing to do with me. Nothing.”
“But you didn’t tell the police that you had a history with her.”
“They never asked.”
“Don’t you think you should’ve said something?”
“Would you have told them?”
Atticus nodded. “Probably.”
“I got a record,” Robson said. “Like you say—I been done for assault, more than once. I tell them about me and Cassandra and how Hugo and me didn’t see straight about it, and then I give them a reason to think that I might’ve done it. And someone like me, I can’t afford lawyers or private investigators to look into my evidence.”
He invested the term ‘private investigators’ with sarcasm.
“Hiding it from them ends up the same way. It makes you look guilty.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said with sudden heat. “You say that one more time and…”
The sentence drifted off, but his anger did not. His cheeks throbbed with blood, and he clenched and unclenched his fists as if he wanted to hit something with them.
“I’m sorry, Jimmy.” Atticus swallowed. “Tell me what happened. Maybe I can help. Did Hugo say something to you? Did he know what you’re doing here? Did he threaten to go to the police?”
Robson leaned in close enough so that Atticus could smell the odour on his body and feel the spittle that sprayed from his lips.
“I didn’t kill them,” he repeated.
78
Robson paced the room. Atticus could guess what was going through his head: he was wondering what to do.
“I’m not police,” Atticus said again. “And I don’t care about what you’re doing upstairs. I’m sorry for breaking into the house, but you gave me a pretty hefty whack by way of punishment. Can I make a suggestion?”
Robson kept pacing.
“Untie me and let me get out of here. This doesn’t have to get any worse—for either of us.”
He shook his head. “Can’t do that.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I need to talk to someone.”
“Who, Jimmy?”
“Bartley.”
“Bartley Cooper?”
Robson grunted.
Atticus knew that name. Bartley Cooper lived up on the gypsy site at Oak Tree Field at Odstock, near to the hospital. He was bad news, with interests in drugs and prostitution and anything else from which he could squeeze an illicit profit. Salisbury, like every other city, had an underworld. Cooper sat atop it: ruthless, cruel, and protected by the fear with which everyone—police included—regarded him. Atticus had arrested him three times in his brief career in the CID, and he had walked every time when witnesses decided it wasn’t in their best interests to give evidence against him. Cooper was mouthy and full of himself, and Atticus had taken pleasure in making the arrests as humiliating as possible. That seemed like a mistake now. Cooper would recognise him.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Atticus said.
Robson bit his lip, thinking.
“Please,” Atticus said. “I’m just going to piss all over the floor otherwise. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“Wait,” Robson said.
“I’m hardly going to go anywhere, Jimmy.”
Robson reversed out of the room, leaving the door open, and returned a moment later with his shotgun.
“I’ll untie you,” he said. “But if you mess me around, I swear to God I’ll put both barrels in you. Understand?”
“I do.”
Robson went around behind the chair, and Atticus felt strong fingers working against the knots. The rope loosened and Atticus was able to pull his hands free.
“Toilet’s down there,” Robson said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Atticus got up and stepped out of the storeroom. The light in the corridor was harsh, and it stung Atticus’s eyes after being in the gloom for so long. He turned right and walked along the corridor to the bathroom.
“Leave the door open,” Robson said.
Atticus didn’t protest. He held up his hands and looked at his wrists. The skin was abraded from where the rope had rubbed up against it, and the dog’s teeth had punctured it in three places. There was a dusty mirror on the wall, and Atticus turned his head to look at his reflection; the side of his face, from the corner of his right eye and up into his scalp, was discoloured with a livid purple bruise.
“Get on with it,” Robson said.
“You really hit me, Jimmy,” Atticus observed.
“Shouldn’t have broken into my house.”
“There’s something we can agree on.”
Atticus patted his pockets for his phone. It wasn’t there.
“I got it,” Robson said. “You can forget about calling for help. Now have your piss or don’t have it. Whatever, but make it quick.”
Atticus unzipped his trousers and relieved himself.
“I was here that night,” Robson said from the corridor.
“What night?”
“Christmas Eve. I saw Hugo when I was doing my late rounds, and then I came back here. I had… things to do.”
“With what I saw upstairs?” Atticus suggested.
“Kind of thing I can’t mention to the pigs,” Robson said. “All that matters is that I was here, not at the house. What happened to them has nothing to do with me.”
“You must have been upset,” Atticus said. “About what happened to Cassandra.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to her. But it wasn’t like we were serious or anything.”
Atticus zipped up and washed his hands in the grimy sink.
“And look at what she did to me. Her daddy tells her she can’t see me no more. It’s like I didn’t even exist.” There was bitterness in his words. “She didn’t care about me. I’m sorry about what happened to them, but it didn’t have anything to do with me.”
“So Hugo didn’t know about the dope farm?”
Robson shook his head. “Why would he? I keep it on the quiet.”
Atticus was wiping his hands on the back of his trousers when he heard the sound of knocking on the front door.
Robson heard it, too, and turned away.
A voice called out, “Mr. Robson?”
Robson froze.
“Help!” Atticus yelled.
Robson swung around. “Shut up!”
“Help!”
Robson surged into the narrow space, filling it, and clamped a big hand over Atticus’s mouth. The shotgun clattered as he dropped it onto the floor. Robson pressed down, muffling Atticus as he tried to call again.
“Mr. Robson? It’s the police. Open the door, please.”
The dog barked, the sound muffled; it must have been shut in another room.
Atticus jerked his head up so that Robson’s index finger was between his lips and bit down on it, hard. Robson bellowed in sudden pain and yanked his hand away.
Atticus yelled as loudly as he could. “Help!”
Robson drew back his fist, but Atticus was quicker. He raised his knee, driving it deep into Robson’s groin. The big man crumpled forward, but his bulk still blocked the way ahead.
Atticus heard the sound of something crashing against the front door.
Robson stumbled ahead, wrapped his arms around Atticus’s waist and hoisted him aloft. He rag-dolled him, yanking him left and right and then cracking his head against the mirror. The glass shattered and Atticus felt a sharp scrape against his scalp. Robson turned them around, and Atticus managed to get his feet up against the wall, shoving as hard as he could and sending them both staggering out into the corridor.
The crashing against the door came again.
The effort of bearing all of Atticus’s weight had unbalanced Robson and, despite his strength, he staggered back into the kitchen. Atticus felt warmth on his face and tried to blink the blood out of his eye. Robson still had his arms wrapped around his waist, and he drove him into the wall again. Atticus felt the edge of the stove bump against his hip and, recalling his investigation from earlier, reached down with his right hand. His fingers traced across the dirty surface of the stove, tracking through the crumbs and the grease until they brushed up against the cold cast-iron of the skillet that he had seen there. He reached for the handle, found it, gripped it, and, before Robson could stop him, he used all of the strength that he had left to swing it up and behind him.
The skillet cracked against Robson’s skull.
Atticus felt his grip loosen.
He hit him again.
Robson released Atticus and collapsed to the floor with a heavy thump.
Atticus fell to his knees and scrambled out of the kitchen into the corridor. He turned back, the skillet heavy in his hand; Robson was face down and unmoving.
The front door burst open and Tristan Lennox stumbled inside.
“Christ,” he said.
Mack was behind Lennox.
“It’s all right,” Atticus gasped as he tried to catch his breath. “I’ve got it covered.”
79
Atticus had knocked Robson out cold and, because of that, Mack decided to put him in the first ambulance that arrived. Bob Carver and Vernon Edwards had appeared just before the ambulance, and Mack sent Carver to the hospital with Robson, the latter cuffed to the trolley.
Atticus was sitting in the back of Lennox’s car. Mack went over to him.
“Let’s have a look,” she said, indicating the cut on his head that he was trying to staunch with a scarf that she had found in her handbag.
He took the scarf away. There were three distinct cuts, each starting up beneath his hairline and reaching down onto his cheek.
“How is it?”
She winced.
“Is it going to ruin my looks?”
“Women like a man to be scarred up a little.”
“That so?”
She rolled her eyes as he winked at her.
&nb
sp; Lennox came out of the house and walked over to them.
“You’re not going to believe it,” he said.
“You find it?” Atticus said.
Mack looked away from her inspection of his cuts. “What?”
Lennox gestured up to the first floor. “Turns out that Robson has turned his house into a cannabis farm. The whole first floor—he’s knocked the walls down, rigged up lights and irrigation.”
“What?”
“I know,” he said. “It’s a big one.”
“We didn’t go inside when we spoke to him after the murders, did we?”
Lennox shook his head. “We didn’t have any reason the first time; then he came to the station for the formal interview.”
“You think he could have anything to do with the murders?”
Lennox shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“It’s worth looking at,” Atticus said. “Maybe Hugo found out?”
“I’d rather we’d known about it a lot sooner than this,” Lennox said.
Mack said, “It gets worse. Atticus thinks Robson and Cassandra had a thing.”
“What? Seriously?”
“It’s true,” Atticus said.
Mack sighed as Atticus ran through what he had found for Lennox’s benefit. She had been confident of the case against Ralph Mallender—she was still confident—but there were shades of grey now that had the potential to complicate things. Robson had no alibi for Christmas Eve, and now he had two possible reasons for wanting harm to come to the Mallenders. Revenge and greed. Both seemed credible.