by Mark Dawson
He stared at the screen.
“Atticus?”
He laid his thumb and forefinger on the screen and moved them apart, zooming in on the bag.
“What is it?” Mack pressed.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Come on,” she said. “What is it? Something’s bothered you.”
“It’s nothing,” he repeated.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Where is he now?”
“Robson? In custody.”
“What’s he saying?”
“He’s denying it.”
“How does he say he got the necklace?”
“Says he has no idea how it got there.”
He slumped down next to her. “What are you going to do next?”
“I spoke to Abernathy last night. We’re going to apply for the case against Ralph to be dismissed. We can’t proceed after this.”
“Have you told the defence?”
“Not yet. Abernathy is going to speak to Crow at seven. Have you told Allegra?”
“About what happened last night?”
She nodded.
“No. Not yet. I was waiting for you.”
“You might as well get the credit for it. You found out about Robson and Cassandra. This is all your work.”
She reclined against the back of the sofa and he did the same. She turned to look at him and he turned to her.
He spoke first. “Are you okay?”
“Just tired,” she said. “I interviewed Robson for three hours last night.”
He could see that she was blaming herself for the way things had played out. “Don’t beat yourself up. There was no way that you could have known about Robson and Cassandra.”
“You found out,” she said.
“I got lucky.”
She smiled. “I could say a lot of things about the way you work—not all of them complimentary—but I wouldn’t call it luck.”
“Have you told Beckton?”
“No,” she said, getting up and smoothing down her trousers. “I’m saving that particular pleasure for when I get back to the station. He’s not going to be happy. I wouldn’t say that I know Allegra and Ralph particularly well, but they strike me as the vindictive types.”
“Hmm. I think so, too.”
“They’ll go straight to the press; then they’ll get Cadogan to come after us. I can see an enquiry into how this investigation was run in my not-too-distant future. And that is all I need right now. Things between me and Andy aren’t the best…” She stopped, looking away.
“Mack?”
“Forget it. I shouldn’t have said.” She straightened up. “Right. Back to it.”
Atticus got up, too. “Thanks for coming over,” he said. “I appreciate being kept in the loop. I’ll do the same for you.”
“Something is bothering you, isn’t it?” she said.
“I just want to think about it a little,” he said. “Is that okay?”
“Don’t keep me in the dark again. Please?”
“I won’t,” he said.
84
Mack drove to court after leaving Atticus. A conference had been scheduled for eight. Abernathy was irritated and made no attempt to hide it. He reported that he had just endured a humiliating meeting with his opposite number, during which the two of them had concluded the procedure for bringing the trial to a close.
“What a waste,” he said. “Three months’ work and all for nothing.”
He said it while he looked at Mack. She was shedding allies left and right. She saw it for what it was: Abernathy was abandoning her, leaving her to carry the can for the wasted resources that had been invested into a trial that should never have begun. Like rats, they were fleeing the sinking ship.
Allegra Mallender was already in her seat when Mack came into the courtroom that morning and took hers. Allegra stared gleefully across the room; Atticus must have told her about what had happened, and now she was ready to enjoy her moment of vindication.
Allegra got up, crossing the floor until she was next to her.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “This last year has been the worst year of my life, and that’s just me—think of what your incompetence has cost my husband. He’s been in prison for months because of you. I told you there was no way that he could have done what you accused him of doing. I told you, again and again and again: my husband is not a violent man. He never has been. But you wouldn’t listen, would you? And now, here we are. Ten months later, ten months of our lives wasted, goodness knows how much money wasted, and we’re right back where we started.”
“I’m very sorry about how things turned out,” Mack said. “If we’d had this evidence earlier, things would have been very different. As it is, as soon as we found out what we did last night, we made sure that the case was dismissed as quickly as we possibly could.”
“That’s it? That’s your apology?”
“I am sorry,” she said. “We’ve conducted this case with the same amount of care as any other. That’s all I can say.”
“That’s not good enough,” Allegra said.
“I understand.”
“We’re going to want compensation for what you’ve done.”
“Of course.”
“Compensation and a formal apology.”
“I’m sure Mr. Cadogan will be able to help you with that.”
The associate came inside. “All rise.”
Allegra looked as if she wanted to say more, but, instead, she shook her head in disdain and went back to her seat.
Somerville sat down and invited the court to do the same. Mack looked around: it was full to the rafters, with the journalists who had been declaiming against Ralph Mallender for the last nine months now ready to write the story of his acquittal and the disgrace of an investigation that had gone so badly wrong.
85
Mack followed the crowd of people out of the court, aware that they were looking at her. Some were curious, others derisive; she was the public face of a botched investigation that had cost a man his liberty for ten months and might have cost him even more. She wanted to get away from them.
Atticus was waiting outside the court when Mack emerged. He looked across the crowd, held her eye and then nodded towards the corner of the building. He disappeared around it and Mack followed.
He made his way to the back of the building and waited for her outside the custody entrance.
“Atticus?” she said. “What is it?”
“You’re right. Something is wrong.”
“With what?”
He gestured to the building with a flick of the wrist. “Everything. Robson. Mallender. Everything.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked straight into her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
He was earnest, his characteristic playfulness—that ready sarcasm that was attractive and irritating in equal measure—was all gone.
“You know I trust you,” she said. “What is it?”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”
“About what?”
“Everything, Mack—everything you told me. It’s all so convenient. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems obvious now.”
“Exactly. It’s too neat. I don’t buy it.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think we’ve been set up.”
She put a hand to her head. “Now you tell me. We just had the case against Mallender dismissed.”
“Ralph didn’t do it,” he said. “That’s the only thing I’m completely sure about.”
“Well, at least that’s something.”
“I need you to help me. There are going to be some questions I can’t ask—but you’ll be able to.”
“Like what?”
“Give me a couple of days to get my thoughts straight,” he said. “I think I know what happened, but it’s not going to be easy to prove. I’ll call you when I’v
e got everything straight in my head—you’ll be able to help me then.”
He had a faraway look on his face. She had seen him like that before. He retreated into himself when he was obsessed with a problem, as if the act of unravelling it required him to withdraw, to close down and remove himself from all external distractions.
“Atticus,” she said, waiting for him to click back into the now.
“Sorry,” he said. “Million miles away.”
She put a hand on his elbow. “I trust you. Be careful. Call me when you’re ready to talk.”
Part III
86
Atticus was up early. He had found it difficult to sleep and, as he turned to and fro with no prospect of drifting off, he had eventually given up. Bandit had trotted over to him as he brandished his lead, and had wagged his tail enthusiastically as Atticus clipped it to his collar. Atticus swallowed his pills, grabbed his overcoat, added a thick scarf to ward against the freezing cold, and led the way outside.
The gates to the Close were still locked, so Atticus continued on to Crane Bridge, crossing over it and then taking the hard left turn onto the path that followed the Avon into Queen Elizabeth Gardens. There had been a hard frost overnight, and the trees and plants were heavy with ivory rime. The forecast was for snow by the end of the week, and as he looked up, he saw that the clouds were dark, suggesting that the snow might arrive a little sooner than had been advertised.
He unclipped Bandit’s lead from his collar and watched as the dog hared away. They had spent a lot of time together in the week since the conclusion of the trial. Atticus had needed time and space to think, and he had always found that one of the best ways to do that was to go on a long walk. Bandit was always happy to come along, and the two of them had enjoyed ten-mile hikes through the countryside around the city. They had been back in Grovely Woods on three separate occasions, visiting the farmhouse that still stubbornly held onto its secrets.
Atticus had broken into the house again on the first visit, going down to the cellar to check the coal hole and, in particular, the nail that he had noticed the first time he had been there.
He noticed activity inside the house as they strolled past it the second time and, as he watched from behind the cover of an old wide-boughed oak, he had seen Ralph and Allegra as they made their way around the rooms, opening the curtains and letting the light back in.
He had returned a final time yesterday afternoon and had seen a white van embossed with the logo of a local painter and decorator parked up alongside Allegra’s car. The front door was open, and Atticus watched the tradesman as he ferried his equipment—a trestle table, pots of paint, brushes and brooms—inside. Atticus made a call to a contact at a local estate agency and was told that the house, and the associated farmlands, would soon be put on the market with an indicative price of six million pounds.
A lot of money.
He had spent a lot of time with Mack, too. They had assembled the information that he analysed on those long walks. He had been to London, visiting the American Embassy in Wandsworth. They had both worked with the CPS before making an application to court for two separate search warrants. Mack had pulled information from the Resource Management Unit that administered the comings and goings at the station. She had liaised with the forensics laboratory in Exeter so that the fragment of Tyvek that Atticus had found beneath the coal hole at the farmhouse could be analysed, and then had reviewed the scene log for anything that might have explained how that material had come to be there.
Mack had also collated every single photograph that had been taken at the farmhouse by the crime scene examiners. There had been over a thousand of them. Atticus had spent an entire day isolating those that he wanted—whittling the total down to eleven, when he was finished—and then analysed each of those in close-up detail.
The problem was a difficult one to solve. He had an idea of what the solution might look like, but it was no more than a sketch. It was a jigsaw with missing pieces, and it made it difficult to imagine the whole picture. He worked at it, adding in pieces as he found them and taking away pieces when he realised that they didn’t fit. He kept at it until he had a better idea of what he was looking at and, once the outline was in place, he started to extrapolate. Disparate pieces of data—dates and times, relationships, possible motivations, records pulled from various administrative databases, not all of them in the UK, post-mortem and autopsy reports—were gathered, assessed, tested, tested again and, once he was confident that they were relevant, slotted into place.
It had taken him ten days to find certainty, but he was there now.
The picture was complete.
He knew what had happened that night, and he was ready to bring the whole sorry charade to a close.
There had been extensive preparation for what would happen later today. Mack had made an urgent request to the chief constable under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and, following his assent, a tech support unit had been deployed to gather the evidence that Atticus expected to find when his trap was laid.
All that was required now was to bait the trap.
He was lost in contemplation again and snapped back as Bandit launched himself into the river in pursuit of a duck who had had the temerity to cross his path. Atticus put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, then waited as the dog changed course and paddled back to the bank. He clambered out, shook himself dry, and trotted over. Atticus knelt down to rub his damp fur.
“Let’s get back, boy,” he said. “Busy day today. I’ve got things to do.”
87
Mack went downstairs and bummed a cigarette from Cathy, the civilian who worked the front desk. She didn’t really smoke anymore, except for moments—like this—when she was particularly nervous. Trials didn’t do it to her anymore, nor interviews that she knew would be important. She had a modicum of control over those, through careful planning and preparation, and she could find solace in that. This, though, was different. She wasn’t in control here, and never really had been. She had allowed herself to be swept along with events, tricked and fooled every step of the way, and now the only possible way to find resolution was to invest all of her trust into a man she had promised her husband she would have nothing to do with ever again. She felt guilty and vulnerable, her career and her personal life at stake without any ability to influence how things might play out.
So, yes, she was nervous. Very. And she needed a moment to think.
She went outside into the cold, wrapped her coat more tightly around her in a futile attempt to stay warm, put the cigarette to her lips and lit it. She set off, headed into the Greencroft, and walked in the direction of the children’s playground.
The days following the collapse of the trial had been difficult. Abernathy had abrogated himself of all liability for what had happened, with his rejection quickly mirrored by the CPS. Both blamed the quality of the evidence that had been assembled by the police and, as the senior investigating officer, responsibility for that attached to Mack. Chief Superintendent Beckton had been bollocked by his boss, and now there was talk that Mr. Justice Somerville was going to order an enquiry into the conduct of Wiltshire Police.
Mack knew it: shit rolled downhill, and she was going to get all of it.
She sucked on the cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs and then exhaled it, coughing a little as she did. Work was bleak and she found no solace at home, either. The work with Atticus had necessitated late nights, and Andy hadn’t even protested when she had told him that the long hours would have to continue for another week or two. He was still resentful and the atmosphere between them remained chilly. They put on a brave face for the sake of the children, but she knew that they were going to have to work at it if they were going to put things back the way they had been. She had looked online for couples’ therapy, but had decided against suggesting it; she would have given it a try, but Andy had never had much interest in things like that. Instead, she had tried to leave her worries about w
ork at the nick, to minimise the late nights as much as she could, and to concentrate on being present when she was at home.
She reached the playground, watched a single kid swinging back and forth under the jaded supervision of her mother, and then turned back.
Mack had tried to distract herself from her troubles by wrapping up the file for the CPS on an assault that she had been overseeing, but the exercise had been only partially successful. The Mallender case loomed large, always just a moment away from occupying her thoughts, and, as today had approached, it had been difficult to ignore. She had spoken with Atticus the night before, taking the call on her mobile away from the office, and knew that what was likely to happen this afternoon had the potential to be difficult. Their planning had been thorough. She had second-guessed herself over and over about the good sense of taking his advice, vacillating between confidence that the course of action that they had chosen was the right one, and the fear—despite everything that they had put together—that they were wrong.
She reached the station, dropped the cigarette and ground it underfoot.
It all came down to trust. She had to trust in her own assessment of Atticus’s talent, in her ability to separate the professional and the personal, and in her judgement that what they were proposing to do would bring the case to a close rather than just make it worse.
She looked at her watch.
Ten minutes to eleven.
She had already waited too long.
She had to do it now.