‘So Duggan was investigating something for Emily Bowman. But what?’
‘I asked her that myself,’ McAllister said. ‘As part of my job to put together a profile of the victim. She told me that he was hired to look into historical records and gather research information on past members of her family. Mainly to do with her grandmother, but she wasn’t any more specific than that and I couldn’t press her for details.’
‘Why Duggan? Was he a genealogist as well as a detective?’
‘He seems to have had some expertise in that field. Four years ago he cracked a cold murder case dating back to the late eighties in Victoria, Canada. Frig, I can’t talk with an empty wine glass in front of me. Hold on while I fetch another bottle.’
McAllister was back a moment later, ripping the cap off the second ice-cold Sauvignon and sploshing it into their empty glasses. ‘Where was I? Oh, aye. It’s something called genetic genealogy. Had to look it up. The idea is that if you go back far enough, everyone’s related to everyone else. If the average family has two to three kids, then a typical individual could potentially have nearly two hundred third cousins, almost a thousand fourth cousins and nearly five thousand fifth cousins. What Duggan did was use family trees to ID a previously unknown suspect, who then turned out to have DNA matching samples on the victim. It was a brilliant bit of work and got some media attention at the time. That’s how she must’ve found him. And being rich, it was no big deal to fly him over to England and put him up in posh digs for a few weeks while he did the job.’
‘But you don’t know the specifics?’
McAllister shrugged. ‘It was a private matter between her and Duggan. Unless I have reason to suspect they were up to something fishy, it’s none of my business.’
‘Fair enough. But you still haven’t told me what happened today.’
‘Ms Bowman called the police late yesterday evening to report that a strange black Mercedes was hanging around outside her house. Didn’t manage to get the registration but she claimed she’d seen the same car following her earlier in the day, too. Coming so soon after Duggan’s murder, it freaked her out and she was scared someone was watching her.’
Ben felt a tingle of excitement. This could be important. ‘And?’
‘A patrol unit was sent out to take a look around. No black Mercedes. No sign of anything suspicious. Official conclusion is that Ms Bowman just got an attack of the jitters and fell prey to her own imagination. Which could be right. But all the same, I suggested to Forbsie this morning that maybe we should post a surveillance car at her home for a couple of days, just to make sure.’
‘I take it he didn’t agree to that.’
‘Apparently our resources are stretched paper-thin as it is, what with police budgets getting slashed every year, and we can’t be expending precious manpower every time a member of the public gets it in their head that there’s a bogeyman lurking in the garden. I said fine, but what if she’s not just imagining it? He demanded to know if I was implying there was a connection to the Duggan case. I told him that until the suspect in custody is properly convicted, that’s all he is, a suspect, and that we can’t afford to jump to conclusions or rest on our laurels. That didn’t go down too well with old Forbsie. Stirring up trouble as usual, McAllister. Not a team player. A maverick who likes being perverse just for the hell of it. Undermining the integrity of the force. Wasting police time and taxpayers’ money. Yadda, yadda. I walked out of his office.’
‘Are you going to pursue it with Emily Bowman? What if there’s something going on that we don’t know about?’
‘Forget it. Until the black Mercedes comes back, if it ever does, I’m officially warned off. I might not love my job sometimes, but I’d prefer to keep it.’
Now Ben was getting a clear picture of what McAllister was thinking. The cop wasn’t saying so openly, but he was privately doubtful that Jude had killed Duggan, and was pissed off that his superiors, Forbsie in particular, had been so quick to accept the mantra of Jude’s guilt. That was the real reason why he was so willing to feed information to Ben. McAllister needed a capable ally to get to the bottom of Jude’s case. Partly for the sake of proper justice, but also partly to get the upper hand over a superior officer he’d been at loggerheads with for years.
Ben said, ‘You might have Forbes hanging over you watching every move, but I don’t.’
McAllister smiled. ‘As long as you behave yourself, then I can’t stop you. More wine?’
Much later, after McAllister had finally retired to bed, Ben went outside and walked back down to the river’s edge to drink in the sounds of the night. He loved the darkness, always had. The air was thick and sultry and tingling with the subtle electrical charge of a coming storm. Sporadic dull flashes illuminated the clouds many miles off to the north and a softly menacing rumble rolled across the horizon, like the light and sound of a tank battle in the distance. It felt to Ben as though something far greater was stirring up there in the starless sky. Elemental forces gathering their power, slowly building in intensity as they waited for the moment to unleash their fury, when the strobing violence of the lightning would shrink your pupils to pinpricks and the thunder felt as though it could split the earth in two.
Ben wondered if Jude could sense it too, and if he could see the faraway flashes from his cell window.
Something was coming. Something deadly and terrible. It wasn’t here yet, but it would be soon.
Ben gazed at the dark river, and wondered if that something lay within himself.
Chapter 12
From the moment he’d arrived, Jude had been discovering that life in prison was all about strict routine. HMP Bullingdon operated a twelve-hour day, with prisoners unlocked from their cells between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., and kept closed up for the remaining twelve. Meals were served in the large mess hall, and with a daily catering budget allowance of around £2 per prisoner, the food was as revolting as he’d expected it to be.
He was by no means the first newbie finding his feet in this stark, bewildering and sometimes terrifying new environment. About a quarter of Bullingdon’s residents were, like him, remand prisoners still awaiting trial for a whole variety of crimes, alleged or actual. For the first week of their stay, inmates were put through an induction process where they were able to share problems and concerns, were schooled in the rules and ways of prison life and required to sit basic tests to decide what kind of educational courses they might pursue while inside. Shortly after his arrival Jude was interviewed by a prison counsellor who asked him how he was feeling. He replied, ‘Oh, wonderful. Never been so happy,’ and afterwards wondered whether his sarcasm had got him listed as a potential troublemaker. To hell with them.
A facility originally designed to contain just seven hundred inmates was now crammed with over eleven hundred, with the result that fewer and fewer cells offered the luxury and privacy of single-person accommodation. Before getting here Jude had been fervently hoping that he’d be allocated a cell to himself, and had been dismayed to be told he’d be sharing. As it turned out, though, Jude’s worries were quickly relieved when he was introduced to his new cellmate. Big Dave Flynn was a soft-spoken man in his early forties, and the kind of person Jude might have described as a ‘gentle giant’ if not for the fact that Dave readily admitted that he was here because he’d badly mangled and almost killed, with his bare hands, a drug dealer who’d been selling crack to his fifteen-year-old daughter, Charmaine. The dealer, once he’d eventually limped out of hospital, got off virtually scot-free (in terms of legal justice, at any rate), while Dave was sentenced to six years for grievous bodily harm with intent. He’d settled peacefully into prison life, kept himself largely to himself and read the Bible a lot. His wife and his daughter, now nineteen and happily drug-free, came to visit him every week.
Dave listened calmly and patiently to Jude’s story. He was fascinated to know that Jude had grown up as the son of a vicar, and appeared to sympathise deeply with his plight though he offe
red no comment on Jude’s protestations of innocence.
In truth, Dave told him, life here wasn’t really all bad. Everyone was kept busy, with a variety of jobs and activities on offer. The most popular job was working for the DHL mail service, for the whopping pay of £30 a week. Others worked in the prison garden, in the kitchen or helping to maintain the buildings while learning trades like carpentry and plastering. ‘There’s a decent enough library, too,’ he said, ‘and if you’re into that kind of thing you might get a job there.’
As to the darker side of life here, Dave was able to fill Jude in on the finer points you’d never be told by the officers. Drug smuggling was far more of a problem than the authorities would admit, even though the prison was full of signs and posters discouraging their use. The place was awash with them, and prisoners used whatever they could get hold of. Dave hated drugs, after what had happened to his daughter, and he was quite an authority on the subject. He explained that some of the most popular, cheap and easily obtainable illicit substances in circulation among the inmates were synthetic lab-made concoctions such as ‘black mamba’, and especially ‘spice’, Bullingdon’s number one favourite, which users smoked, ate or made tea with.
‘I’m not into that stuff,’ Jude assured him.
‘Keep it that way,’ Dave replied, in a voice that suggested that, if Jude had been into that stuff, his cellmate’s gentle demeanour might be liable to do a sudden polarity-flip. Dave explained that spice was highly addictive and harder to come off than heroin. Such ‘zombie drugs’ were also known to have an unpredictable effect on the user, including triggering psychotic episodes and terrifying hallucinations. As a result the prison had a growing problem with violent outbursts, self-injury and attempted suicide. ‘What makes it even worse,’ Dave told him, ‘is that the prison’s badly understaffed because of all the bloody budget cuts. More and more of the senior officers who knew their jobs and kept a lid on things are leaving, and they’re being replaced by inexperienced staff who aren’t up to the job.’
Which was bad news, as Dave went on to warn Jude, considering the fact that, on top of the drug problem, bullying and intimidation were part of the darker reality of prison life. ‘It means you’ve got to look out for yourself, ’coz if something kicks off, half the time there ain’t gonna be a guard around to break it up. You need eyes in the back of your head.’
Jude had come to Bullingdon knowing that he’d be mixing with a lot of nasty characters, and he counted himself highly lucky to have found a friend and mentor on his first day. His next close encounter wasn’t such a positive experience. It happened that same afternoon, as he was heading over to the prison mess hall for dinner after an exploratory tour of the prison library. Half his mind was engaged with making his way through the confusing maze of corridors and metal stairways; the other half was reflecting sadly on his meeting with Ben earlier. He had sensed Ben’s contained anger, hidden behind a veneer of tenderness and patience and love, but simmering like a pressure cooker. Jude had not only let himself down badly; he’d let Ben down too.
Those were all the thoughts tumbling around in his head when, caught unawares, he was suddenly cornered against a wall by an inmate he instantly sensed didn’t have friendly intentions. The man was a good ten years older than Jude and a few inches shorter, but lean and whippy and dangerous-looking, like a ferret. There was a nasty gleam in his eyes and he had a missing ear, as though it had been slashed off with a razor. The scar extended all the way across his cheek to the corner of his mouth, giving his lip a ferocious curl.
The ferret planted an accusing finger in the middle of Jude’s chest and snarled, ‘Hoi, new boy. I seen you comin’ in and I don’t like your fuckin’ face.’
Jude might have replied, ‘Look who’s talking.’ Instead he wisely remained silent. He didn’t much like the guy’s finger poking at his chest, either, but sensed that to grab it and twist it away from him would quickly lead to violent consequences.
‘What are you gonna do about that?’ the ferret rasped. The scar made him spit when he talked.
‘Look, I don’t want trouble,’ Jude said. ‘I’ll stay out of your way, if that’s what you want. Please, let me pass.’
But the ferret wasn’t ready to let him go. ‘How’d you like to have your fuckin’ teeth smashed down your throat?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Just remember, new boy. I’m watchin’ you. You see me comin’ you better get out of my fuckin’ way. Get it?’
‘No problem,’ Jude muttered. ‘I get it.’
The ferret held the finger there a moment longer to make his point, then dropped it and allowed Jude to slip away from him. He laughed loudly as Jude hurried off, feeling humiliated and shaken.
In the crowded, noisy mess hall a few minutes later, Jude spotted an empty seat next to his new friend Big Dave and carried his tray over to join him. The pile of grey slop on his plate was meant to be scrambled eggs, but it looked more like wet mortar. He wasn’t feeling remotely hungry, and not because of the terrible food. ‘What’s the matter?’ Dave asked, seeing his expression, and Jude related the encounter with the ferret.
‘That’s Mickey Lowman,’ Dave replied, recognising Jude’s description of the scar and the slashed-off ear. ‘Real nutjob. Guy’s high on spice most of the time. He was three years into an eight-year sentence for armed robbery when they caught him with a knife he’d engraved with the name of a guard he wanted to kill. When the judge was slapping a couple extra years onto his sentence, he threatened to kill him, too.’
‘I’ve never seen the guy in my life before,’ Jude protested. ‘What the hell did I ever do to him?’
‘You didn’t need to. He’s just a psychotic moron. You’re not the first remand newbie he’s collared that way.’
‘Has he ever hurt anyone?’
Dave shovelled a massive forkful of curry into his mouth. It looked and smelled like dog food. He nodded. ‘One or two.’
‘Great start,’ Jude groaned. ‘Just my luck to fall foul of the most dangerous man in Bullingdon.’
‘Oh, no,’ Big Dave replied with a chuckle. ‘Forget Mickey Lowman. You want dangerous? There’s dangerous.’
Dave discreetly pointed out a middle-aged man who was sitting quietly hunched over his plate at another table on the far side of the room. The man was almost as large as Dave, with shoulders like an ox and a shaven head that gleamed in the harsh neon lights of the mess. He was surrounded by a gang of companions who seemed to defer to him while huddled protectively around. The group exuded an aura of menace and Jude noticed the way that other prisoners seemed to give them a wide berth.
‘Who is he?’ Jude asked.
‘You’re looking at Luan Copja,’ Dave told him. ‘The man, the legend. An Albanian crime boss who used to be the head of a sixty-million-pound organised crime empire, until they banged him up. He’s serving twenty-three years without parole for human trafficking and involvement in various grisly murders, extortion and torture. They say he once tied a rival drug lord into a chair and pushed red-hot skewers through his eyeballs. On another occasion he apparently disapproved of his daughter’s choice of fiancé, because Prince Charming had a habit of showing his arse to people. Old Luan had his men teach him the error of his ways, by beating the poor bugger so badly with steel pipes that he’ll be spending the rest of his life sucking baby food out of a tube.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Not that Luan’s allowed being inside to slow him down too much. Rumour has it that he’s proved quite capable of running his business from behind bars. His gang of bodyguards are all killers who’ll slice your head off in a heartbeat if you even look at him sideways.’
‘I won’t look at him at all.’
‘Hey, it’s only prison gossip,’ Dave said, shovelling down more of the unspeakable food. ‘Could all be bullshit, for all you know. But all the same, that is someone you definitely need to stay well away from.’
Chapter 13
Just four miles fr
om Oxford city centre, set against a sweeping panorama of hills and woodland under a perfectly unbroken pale blue sky: this was Boars Hill, one of Oxfordshire’s most exclusive residential areas, whose stately mansions and rambling historic cottages were surrounded by scenic views people gave millions for. Ben had set out early from McAllister’s place half an hour ago. Last night’s promise of a storm had passed over to make way for a clear and beautiful morning and the climbing sun peeked brightly through the trees as he neared his destination, but the residue of its sullen menace was still hanging over his mind, like the aftermath of a bad dream.
Ben had decided to pay Emily Bowman an unannounced visit, in the hope of catching her off her guard and more amenable to talking to him. The grand house had once been part of the Berkeley Castle Estate and now stood within its own well-tended acres, which included a tennis court, indoor pool, stable block and an emerald green, white-fenced meadow with some horses peacefully grazing. Being the founder and CEO of the Culture Collection obviously paid well. Ben rolled through the gates into a courtyard flanked by a triple garage on one side and a range of converted cottage buildings on the other. A Volvo estate and a smaller hatchback were parked in front of the house. Ben slotted in next to them and walked towards the entrance, rehearsing in his mind what he needed to say. Getting Emily Bowman to talk to him might not be easy.
The doorbell was a heavy brass affair nestling among the ivy that surrounded the carved oak front door. Ben pressed it with a knuckle and stepped back. A minute later the door swung open, somewhat tentatively it seemed to him, and he recognised the face of Ms Emily Bowman from her company website. She was tall and thin in a sporty kind of way, and could easily have passed for the ladies’ captain at a swanky golf club – which, Ben thought, she possibly was. Her hair was nicely swept back in a silver wave and she wore a tweedy kilt skirt and a buttercup-yellow silk blouse with a string of pearls. Her expression was more severe than in her website photo and Ben thought she looked nervous and agitated, but that could just have been the combined effect of her state of anxiety and finding a slightly tousled, rumpled blond stranger in sunglasses and a leather jacket standing on her doorstep. He suddenly wished that he’d shaved and paid more attention to his hair that morning.
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