by Mark Dawson
“Because they didn’t want to admit they messed up.”
“Again—possible. But, then again, maybe not. Mack?”
“The police use Tyvek suits from DuPont,” she said, “and the lab said that the sample definitely did not match that chemical composition. We had a look at your bank account. You paid £6.59 to Screwfix on the fifteenth of December. We looked at your account history and found out what you’d bought.”
Atticus took out a printout of a Screwfix sales page and read out the headline. “‘Disposable coverall with elasticated hood, full-length front zip and elasticated ankles and waist.’ The lab compared the sample with a suit that I bought. Both contained a very distinctive spunbond non-woven fabric. They’re confident that the sample I found in the cellar matches the material used to make the suit that you bought.”
“Coincidence.”
“Lots of coincidences,” Atticus said. “Shall we pick up the story again? Let’s go back to what happened here, in this room. You left in a panic and, in your haste, you put the pistol just a little too far away from Cameron Mallender’s body.”
“That was all explained,” Lennox said. “It could easily have ended up there after he shot himself.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “The involuntary twitch. The defence made much of that suggestion and, yes, I concede it is possible. But the prosecution’s evidence was that it was a stretch. I agree with them. It’s not likely. My explanation is more likely.”
“You’re full of it.”
“I imagine you took off the oversuit when you were outside. You went back through the woods to the car park where you’d left your car, muddying your shoes in the process. You stowed the suit and left enough time so as not to appear too quickly, but, nevertheless, you ensured that you were first on the scene. You met Ralph outside the house and then went to the door, where you observed Hugo Mallender’s body. You pulled back and waited for support. The two constables arrived and spoke to Ralph. This is where you diverged from the plan. You realised that it was entirely possible that the finger of blame might point at him. Perhaps you remembered that the gun has been left a little too far away from Cameron’s body. Perhaps you worried about the rip on your jacket or the mud on your shoes. I can’t say—I’ve never murdered four people before; I don’t know what might run through my mind. But what I do know is that I would want to do something to divert possible blame from anyone outside the property by making it seem as if someone is still alive inside the property. Because if someone is alive inside, then, quod erat demonstrandum, it must surely be much more likely that that person is the murderer, and not someone who is outside. The problem you had is that no one else—not Ralph, not either one of the constables who attended—saw anything. It was just you. And, in the absence of any other evidence, that small detail would be insignificant and easily overlooked. You might have considered it a necessary risk. But now we have the gun being too far from the body. The speed with which you reached the scene. The torn jacket. The material in the cellar that matches the coverall that you bought. A narrative is beginning to form.”
93
The tension in the room was palpable.
Lennox turned to Mack. “Really, boss? You’re allowing this?”
“Shut up, Tristan.”
Atticus continued, on the home straight now. “The case looks like it is going to go your way,” he said. “Cameron seems like a credible suspect—there isn’t anyone else, in any event. But then the family get involved. They demand that Ralph be investigated. They say that he didn’t get on with his parents. The argument that afternoon comes to light. Mrs. Grant says how vicious it was. The evidence against Cameron starts to look tenuous: the gun falling where it did is problematic; there’s no gunshot residue on Cameron’s hands; no blood other than Cameron’s own on his body, odd given that Hugo clearly tried to put up a fight; Cameron was not familiar with firearms, yet he was a perfect shot that night. The investigation widens. Ralph is investigated. Freddie Lamza sees the case on television and realises that he has a chance to get revenge for what he sees as poor treatment, while also making a large amount of money into the bargain. The case against Ralph looks more and more serious. He’s arrested, interviewed and charged.”
Atticus got up, reached across the table and collected the photographs.
“But this just won’t do,” he said. “This is the worst possible outcome. If Ralph is convicted of murdering his parents, he can’t inherit. He forfeits what he would otherwise have received.” He looked down at Allegra. “I can only imagine what you must have been thinking. You must have been desperate. The police had built a credible case against him. Good enough. You couldn’t risk it, so you hired me. A last throw of the dice. And it very nearly worked. I attacked the prosecution’s case. I showed Lamza for what he was, and then, after Ralph’s outburst undid all of that good work, I found out about Cassandra Mallender and Jimmy Robson. A second stooge for you to exploit.” Atticus crossed his arms over his chest. “And you were desperate enough then to take a foolish risk.”
“Do I need someone from the Federation to sit in on this?” Lennox said.
Atticus turned to him. “Are you guilty, Detective Sergeant?”
“Of course I’m not bloody guilty.”
“We can get a rep if you want,” Mack said. “Or you can hear Atticus out.”
He shook his head. “Whatever. I don’t care. Get it over with.”
Atticus turned and paced to the window. The snow was still falling, a shifting curtain that was suffused with the golden glow from an exterior light.
“I told Allegra about Jimmy and Cassandra. He was perfect—the idiot who could take the fall for Ralph. He had already testified to the fact that he had no alibi for Christmas Eve; he had a record for violent crime as long as your arm; and now we had evidence of a relationship with Cassandra, and the possibility that he might have been the bad influence that caused her mother and father so much grief. We know he was dismissed from the farm around the time that Cassandra had her religious conversion. Isn’t it possible that Hugo might have warned him off and told Cassandra she was forbidden from seeing him? And, if he had done that, isn’t it possible that a man like Jimmy might bear a grudge?
“You hoped that the suggestion that there was a better suspect might have been enough to cast enough doubt on the prosecution’s case, but then I got into trouble while I was investigating Robson and you decided to go for broke. You took Cassandra’s necklace from her body for specifically this purpose. A last-ditch strategy when everything else had failed—fit up someone else. Robson was perfect, and I had given you the ideal opportunity to roll the dice. Allegra—you told DCI Jones that you thought I was in trouble; then DCI Jones saw DS Lennox, who was conveniently at court that afternoon and able to get there with her. Robson holding me inside was justification to break in and, in the confusion that followed, you”—he pointed at Lennox—“planted the necklace and the nine-millimetre rounds that were from the same box as the ones you had used to murder the family.”
“Really?” Lennox said. “You can’t prove any of it.”
“I’d already searched the property,” Atticus said. “I know that the necklace and the rounds weren’t there before. I have video on my phone that shows that they weren’t under the bed where they were found. It’s possible that Robson could have deposited them after he had locked me up, but why would he do that then? It’s more likely that someone who entered the property between then and the start of the full search did it. You could have done it, Lennox. The ripped jacket. The target practice. Being at the farmhouse first. Being at Robson’s house first. So many little coincidences. When you add them up and look at them, they don’t look like coincidences anymore. They look like a pattern. Add in the relationship with Allegra, a woman who has already killed two men, and they look like motive, means and opportunity.”
“Bullshit,” he exclaimed. “None of that proves anything.”
“There’s one other thing,” Mack
said.
She reached into her pocket and took out a digital recorder. She put it on the table, stared at Lennox, and pressed play.
Lennox’s voice played back. “Allegra.”
“What is it?” Allegra replied.
“We’re in trouble. I just spoke to my boss. They’ve been investigating you.”
“Why?”
“She says that she can prove you stole someone’s identity. Is that true?”
There was a pause.
“Allegra—is that true?”
“Yes. When I got here. So what?”
“That’s fraud. And it’s made her suspicious. She’s going to come over this afternoon and question you.”
“Shit. Shit.”
“You should’ve told me.”
“Shit.”
“It’ll be fine. It’s just this, as far as I know—she doesn’t know anything else.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You were supposed to stop this from happening.”
“Relax. I’ll find out if she knows anything else. I don’t think she does.”
“There’s more,” Mack said, “but you get the idea.”
She pressed stop.
“You bugged me?” Lennox said. “You can’t do that.”
“We asked the chief constable and the surveillance commissioner. They said we could.”
“No,” he said, vigorously shaking his head. “No bloody way.”
“Your car, your house, the office,” Mack went on. “Your work emails. Everything you’d expect. It was Atticus’s idea. Give you something to worry about and wait to see what you do. You went down to your car this morning and called from there. Fifteen minutes after we’d spoken. And on speakerphone—that was helpful.”
She reached over and collected the recorder just as there came a heavy knocking on the front door.
“What now?” Ralph said.
“Let me guess,” Lennox said. “Some of the lads from the nick?”
“Bob Carver and a couple of others,” Mack said. “Ralph—could you go and let them in, please?”
“Lawyer,” Allegra said, a little pointlessly.
“You’re under arrest, Lennox.”
What happened next took Atticus completely by surprise. Lennox sprang out of his seat, reached around his body and pulled out a pistol. Atticus recognised it: the Smith & Wesson that had been stolen from Hugo Mallender’s gun safe at the same time as the Browning.
The one that they had never found.
Allegra screamed.
Lennox backed away from the table, pointing the gun at Mack and then at Atticus.
“Put it away,” Mack said. “You’re making things much worse.”
The hammering at the door came again.
“Lennox,” Mack said. “Tristan, come on—put it down. There are three big blokes outside. How far are you going to get?”
Lennox aimed at Atticus again. His finger was around the trigger. Atticus could see the tension in his body: the clenching of his jaw, the knotted cords in his neck, the tremor in his outstretched arm.
“I told you,” he said. “I told you, but you didn’t listen.”
It took Atticus a moment to realise that Lennox wasn’t talking to him. The gun was trained into his gut, but Lennox flicked little glances across at Allegra.
“I told you,” he said. “I told you that Robson was a step too far. You didn’t listen. You never bloody listened to me and now look what’s happened.”
“I’m sorry,” Allegra said. “I should’ve. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you should’ve listened. You should’ve left it as it was, taken your chances with the trial. Ralph was going to get off. We didn’t need to make sure. It was already done.”
Mack stood up slowly. “Put the gun down, Tristan.”
Lennox was crying. He swung the gun back to cover Mack.
“I’m sorry, boss. I got caught up in it all and now I’m lost.”
He backed away from them, covering the room with the pistol.
“Don’t,” Mack said. “It’s over. Put it down.”
He backed out of the room and they heard running footsteps.
“Shit,” Mack said.
Atticus got up. “He’s going to run,” he said. “Carver doesn’t know he’s got a gun. He’ll get shot.”
He ran to the door.
94
Atticus remembered the layout of the house, and guessed that Lennox did, too. There were two main entrances—the front door and the door to the kitchen—and a third, used less often, that opened from the study into the garden. Carver had knocked on the front door, and Lennox would have expected him to have put a man on the kitchen door, too. Perhaps not the study door, though.
Lennox had a head start, and he was armed; Atticus followed carefully. He heard the sound of a key turning in a lock and then the squeak of unoiled hinges and knew that he was right.
“Atticus!” Mack called out from somewhere behind him.
Atticus ignored her.
He reached the door to the study and pushed himself against the wall, edging to the opening and then risking a glance around the frame and into the room beyond. The study door was open, the wind rustling the curtain that shielded it from the rest of the room. Atticus gulped a breath, and, without thinking too much about the fact that Lennox might still be inside, he stepped into the room.
It was empty.
He crossed it at a trot and, ignoring a second warning from Mack, he parted the curtain and stepped outside.
His feet crunched into the thin layer of snow that had fallen while he had been inside the house. It was dark, with the only light coming from the exterior lamp that he had seen from the sitting room window. The light did not extend far, quickly swallowed up by the gloom and the snow that was falling heavier and heavier. There was enough, though, for Atticus to see the footprints that extended from the doorway and into the vegetable patch at the side of the house.
Atticus heard another vigorous rapping on the front door.
“Carver!” Atticus called out. “He’s made a run for it.”
He didn’t wait for the uniform to respond. Lennox was running, and, unless someone went after him quickly, they would lose him in the woods.
He followed the tracks, clambering over the uneven ground of the vegetable patch and sprinting hard into the inky black that was thick between the trees. His feet slipped on the ice beneath the powdery snow.
The footprints reached the track and then, with no light, they disappeared. The snow had fallen heavily here, and Atticus almost tripped as his feet ploughed through it. He kept on, just able to make out the boundaries of the track, hemmed in on both sides by the darker shapes of the trees.
His thighs started to burn from the effort and the cold air stung his lungs as he gasped it in.
He staggered to a stop and turned. He couldn’t see the house anymore. There was no light. The trees crowded in, shades of black and the darkest grey, absorbing him.
He closed his eyes, listening.
He heard steps, crunching through the icy surface somewhere ahead of him.
“Lennox!”
The footsteps stopped.
“Lennox! There’s no point in running.”
He heard the crunch of footsteps.
He thought he saw movement.
A grey shape sliding through the black.
The shape stopped.
Atticus stumbled and fell, tripping over a frozen rut in the track and crashing down onto the snow.
There was a flash.
Something sliced through the air just above his head.
The crack of the gunshot was accompanied by an impact behind him—the bullet blasting into a tree, perhaps—and the panicked shriek of an animal nearby.
“You should’ve kept your nose out of my business,” Lennox said.
Atticus tried to move to his left, to get into the bushes that he knew were at the side of the track, but his feet and hands scrunched through the
hard snow, much too loud, and he froze.
“You never knew when to stop, did you?”
Atticus bit his lip.
The footsteps started again.
Coming down the track toward him.
One.
“Always putting your nose where it didn’t belong.”
Two.
“You didn’t know when to stop then and you still don’t know now.”
Three.
Atticus was frozen to the spot.
“You’re going to regret you ever—”
He was interrupted by a solid thwack, the sound of something striking against something solid, and then a crunch as a heavy weight collapsed onto the snow.
“Atticus?”
It was Mack.
“Atticus? Shit, Atticus, where are you?”
He spat snow. “Over here.”
Light shone out as Mack activated the flashlight on her phone. The light shone downwards onto Lennox’s motionless body and then reached down the track to where Atticus was sitting. He blinked his eyes against the light until he could make out more. Mack had a thick branch in her right hand. It ended in a knuckle of gnarled wood.
“Are you all right?”
“He missed,” Atticus said. “I’m fine. What about him?”
Mack knelt down and pressed her fingers against Lennox’s neck. “Still with us,” she said. “It was just a love tap.”
“‘Just a love tap?’” He got up and brushed away the compacted snow that had adhered to his clothes. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
“Bit late for that,” she said, although he could hear the smile in her voice.
She searched Lennox for additional weapons, running her hands up and down his torso and over his pockets.
“Anything?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Where’s the gun?”
“He’s dropped it.” She shone the flashlight over the snowy ground until she located the weapon. “Here.”
Atticus exhaled. “What a mess.”
“I can’t believe Lennox would be so stupid as to have done something like this.”