by Candy Denman
‘Nice way to go, really,’ Billy said. ‘When you are in your nineties, anyway.’
‘Yes.’ Jo smiled. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
‘You know,’ Billy said, ‘you could have just waited for the report. I would have emailed it to you later this afternoon.’
‘That’s very efficient of you.’
‘I’m guessing my predecessor wasn’t quite so fast at getting them out.’
‘We were lucky if your predecessor managed to do the PMs, let alone get a report done as well.’
Billy nodded again.
‘Speaking of which, is there anything further from the two cases the police were interested in? Giles Townsend and Adrian Cole?’
‘Nothing from me. I think we are all clear on cause of death in both cases. It’s down to the CSIs from this point on and I haven’t heard anything more from them, or the police.’
Jo tried to hide her disappointment.
‘You know, I did hear on the grapevine that you like to get involved in your cases, sometimes even turn up facts previously missed or ignored by the police.’
‘Yes, well, sometimes the police get one possible explanation into their heads and seem to become completely blinkered to everything else.’
‘I know exactly what you mean. I-’ he stopped as his phone started ringing. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and picked up the phone.
‘Dr Iqbal.’
Jo started to stand up.
‘Just a moment.’ Billy held up his hand to stop her.’ I’m just going to put you on hold for a moment,’ he said into the phone and pressed the button to pause the call. ‘Look, I’d love to continue our conversation. Discuss all the shortcomings of the local police and put the world to rights, but not at work. How about over a drink? What do you say?’
‘When?’
‘Tonight, if you’re free?’
Jo hesitated. She didn’t want to seem too keen and her liver could really do with some downtime.
‘Or later in the week if that’s better?’ he responded to her hesitation.
‘No, tonight would be fine,’ she said decisively. Her mother would have been horrified by her being so easy, but, she assured herself, it’s not like this was a date. This was just being friendly.
‘Excellent. You’re the local, you suggest somewhere.’
Jo didn’t want to say the Stag; she was too well known there, and she really didn’t want to bump into someone she knew, particularly Kate, after what she had said about not going out with someone she worked with following the gynaecologist incident.
‘How about the FILO,’ she said, then added, ‘First In Last Out,’ when Billy looked confused. ‘It’s on the High Street.’
‘Perfect,’ he smiled again. ‘Eight o’clock?’
‘Perfect.’ Jo picked up her bag and gave a little wave as she left and he returned to his call. She almost felt like skipping as she went up the corridor to the lift and had to rapidly rearrange her face as she saw Jim looking at her from one of the autopsy suites, with a knowing smile.
‘So why do you do the two jobs?’ Billy asked her as they sat in The FILO later. The evening was cool and Jo, who had been thankful that the fire in the centre of the room was lit when they first arrived, was beginning to feel a bit too warm. ‘I mean, surely one career is enough for anybody.’ He smiled to take any sting out of his words. Not that Jo minded; it was a question she was often asked and, indeed, often asked herself.
‘I could say that I feel that prisoners need someone like me to stand up for them or that the police do, but, if I’m being honest, I just like the variety. What about you? What made you get into pathology?’
Billy smiled. It was clear this was a question he was asked just as often as Jo was asked about her police work.
‘I could be flippant and say I like patients that don’t talk back or make complaints, but actually, it’s because I find it interesting,’ he told her. ‘No! Scratch that, I don’t find it interesting, I find it fascinating.’ Jo smiled at his enthusiasm. It was so refreshing to meet someone genuinely happy in their work. ‘I mean, sometimes you have a pretty good idea what you are going to find from the history: the enormous clot in the coronary artery like today, the bowel eaten away by a massive tumour, the multiple injuries from a car crash; but occasionally you get a real mystery that takes a lot of careful digging around before you manage to piece it all together and work out what actually killed them.’ He was surprised that Jo laughed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I just had this mental picture of you using a spade to dig around in a body and then trying to put them back to- gether, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.’
‘I haven’t ever used a spade,’ he admitted with a grin, ‘although sometimes it might be useful, but putting them back together can be very much like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Particularly when the skull has been shattered into a thousand pieces.’
They drank in companionable silence for a few moments and then Jo picked up her coat and bag.
‘Do you have to go?’ Billy seemed surprised.
‘No, not at all,’ she reassured him,’ it’s just that I noticed that a table further from the fire just became available and you have to move fast in here.’
‘Phew!’ Billy mopped his brow in mock relief as he collected his things together as well. ‘I thought it must have been something I said!’ ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Jo nodded at the fire. ‘Only it was get-
ting a bit hot.’
‘Of course not. I agree.’
They moved over to the newly free table and Billy put his things down opposite Jo, but didn’t sit.
‘Would you like another drink?’ he asked. ‘And a look at the menu?
I have to admit that I’m starving.’
Jo suddenly realised that she was hungry too. ‘Yes, please. To both.’
He gestured at her almost empty wine glass. ‘Same again?’
‘It must be my round.’ She fished in her bag for her purse.
‘No. I’ll get it,’ he insisted. ‘Consider it a bribe.’ She looked at him in surprise, wondering what was going to come next. ‘I want to hear all about your sleuthing when I get back.’
Jo was greatly relieved, and a little disappointed, to hear that was all he was after.
‘So you haven’t been able to find a link between the company where Adrian Cole worked and the company where Giles Townsend was working when he was reported for sexual harassment?’ Billy asked her some time later, between mouthfuls of bubble and squeak, ham and eggs. If Jo had been surprised by his choice from the menu, she hid it well, after all, she didn’t want him to think that she had made any assumptions about him or his beliefs.
‘No.’ Jo was busy tucking into her own plate of goat’s cheese tart and salad. ‘Getting hold of employee records is not easy in this day and age of data protection, unfortunately.’
He smiled at that.
‘And getting details of the complaint to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority and therefore the possible connection to John Dixon, is just as impossible because it seems to have been dropped.’ She looked a bit guilty. ‘And I may have made out that he was definitely there when the complaint was made, but it is a bit tight. He might well have started there later and therefore have had nothing to do with it.’
‘But you know Townsend was still actively harassing his colleagues and employees, so there could have been more than one complaint.’
‘Very true, but they are not being very helpful so I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t tell me even if there had.’ Jo thought for a moment. ‘It’s so useful being able to discuss this with someone who doesn’t just dismiss my ideas as barking mad.’
‘I absolutely do think they are barking mad,’ Billy said with a grin, ‘but that doesn’t mean I think they are wrong.’
‘You mean you don’t really believe that our murderer could be kill- ing people because of historic sexual harassment?’
‘It does seem a little excessive, don’t you agree?’ ‘Kil
ling someone is always excessive.’
‘True. But for this?’
‘This?’ Jo said forcefully and just managed to stop herself from do- ing bunny ear gestures. ‘This could be a case of day in, day out, inap- propriate comments, touching and pestering, even if it never goes as far as full-on assault or rape. How would you feel if it was your mother, wife, sister or daughter?’ Jo didn’t want to come across as some kind of harridan, and she had no idea if Billy had a sister or daughter, or, for that matter, a wife, but she genuinely thought that sometimes men just didn’t get it.
Billy held up his hands in mock surrender.
‘Whoa! I concede. I had never thought of it like that. You’re right, it is the worst form of bullying.’
‘Exactly. And it can drive someone to a breakdown. Ruin their lives, their careers. I think if you were driven to despair and you saw someone getting away with it, over and over again, then you might think about killing them.’
‘Or if you saw a member of your family, a loved one, affected like that.’
Jo had to concede he was right. It might not be the victim herself, but someone close to her. But step one was to find the person all these lawyers were connected to, and then they would be able to find the killer. And Jo had a feeling that the imposter in the downstairs flat could be both.
He could feel himself sweating. He had never been good at coping with stress, and this was the most stressful situation he’d been in for years. Normally he managed to sidestep any unpleasantness or difficult jobs, that or get someone else to do it. That’s how he had ended up where he was. But today, tonight, when he’d tried to ignore the email, then got caught trying to find out if the accusations were true, he’d ended up being given no choice but to be here, in Morrison’s carpark, as far away from the main entrance as he could get, at ten o’clock at night, to meet the blackmailers. They would find him, the email had said, and they would hand over the evidence of misappropriated funds. In truth, it wouldn’t be hard for them to find him; most of the cars had left or were leaving now that the store had closed. There were just a few remain- ing, huddled around the entrance, the drivers waiting to collect workers just finishing their shifts. He checked his watch; it was almost time. He looked nervously around the carpark. No one else was parked in the cor- ner where he was hiding, desperately hoping no one turned up, hoping that it was a hoax. His nerve was failing; he shouldn’t be here, no good would come of meeting them. He would leave but he was scared of her, letting her down, what she would say. Who was he more scared of? The blackmailers or her? It was hard to know.
His hand went to the ignition button, as he went to start the en- gine and drive away, again, but he hesitated. She would be so angry, and he couldn’t stand up to her, just like he couldn’t stand up to any bully, right back from when he was a schoolboy. His father had always said he should stick things out, no matter how hard it was, because it would get better once he left school. But his father had been wrong, they didn’t. Things didn’t change when you grew up and left school, they just changed tactics. Bullies still sought out their targets, and he was a perfect target for them. When one bully died, another took their place. That was the way things were and had always been.
He looked at his watch again. They were late. Perhaps they wouldn’t come. He looked around and saw a car which had stopped a short dis- tance from his. He couldn’t see into the car, because of their headlights, which flashed, once, twice, the signal for the handover.
He got out and walked towards the car, quaking inside, hoping they wouldn’t hurt him, and then there was a flash, and a bright light shining in his eyes. A noise, a scuffle, shouting, and he curled up in a ball, hands covering his head, a little boy again, expecting to be kicked.
‘So, a heart attack, natural causes, and not something that you
Chapter 20
Next day at the surgery, it wasn’t until her morning coffee break that Linda caught up with Jo in the kitchen and asked if she had heard.
‘Heard what?’
‘Clearly not if you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
Jo looked at her and waited. She knew that Linda was dying to tell her and didn’t need prompting.
‘About that chap who worked with that lawyer, the one who died when his equipment was tampered with.’
‘Do you mean Mervyn Bartlett?’ Jo put down her cup of coffee. ‘What’s happened to him?’
‘He was targeted by one of those paedophile hunting groups. You know, the ones where a grown man pretends to be an underage girl or boy and hangs about in chatrooms hoping to tempt men into making contact.’
‘And they say Mervyn responded?’ Linda nodded.
‘They said he had been grooming a child online and confronted him in Morrisons carpark last night.’
‘How on earth do you know all this?’ Jo couldn’t make sense of what Linda was telling her.
‘It’s been reported on the local radio news and it’s all on YouTube.
I’ve just watched it.’
Jo didn’t know what was more surprising, that Linda knew what YouTube was or that Mervyn Bartlett was a paedophile.
‘Are you sure it’s him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And does he admit it? On the video?’
‘Of course not.’ Linda hesitated. ‘Actually, he seems completely gobsmacked by the accusation. But he would do, wouldn’t he? After all, he was expecting to meet up with a fourteen-year-old girl, not a bunch of rugged male paedophile hunters.’
Jo hurried down to her consulting room and searched on the in- ternet for the video. It wasn’t hard to find and she sat back to watch.
The footage showed Mervyn Bartlett parking in a far corner of Morrison’s carpark, and after a while, another car arrived and flashed its headlights. Mervyn got out of his car and looking anxiously around him walked towards the other car. Jo had no doubt that it was him, despite the rather shaky and amateur filming. After a few moments, Mervyn’s nervousness increased as a middle-aged man approached him and the person filming the meeting got closer as well. It was hard to see in the dark corners not illuminated by the camera lights, but Jo thought there were other people there as well.
‘Mr Bartlett?’ the first man asked him, although the sound, like the film, was of a poor quality.
Mervyn seemed to nod his head.
‘Who are you?’ he asked querulously and belatedly noticing that he was being filmed, held up a hand to try and shield his face.
‘We are your worst nightmare.’ The man said as Mervyn sobbed and covered his head with his arms, as if to defend himself from blows rather than the filming, but made no move to get away from them. The camera turned more towards the man confronting Mervyn who went on to explain for the benefit of Mervyn, and viewers, that he had been corresponding with Mr Bartlett through an internet chatroom, posing as Angel, an underage girl.
‘Did you or did you not arrange to meet her here with the purpose of taking her to your home for sex, Mr Bartlett?’ the man asked and Mervyn backed away from him, horror writ large across his face.
‘This is madness! I never did any such thing! Go away! Go away!’
As Mervyn backed away, the man repeated his question, again and again, until Mervyn finally reached the safety of his car and jumped in, slamming the door. As he drove away, as fast as he could, his pan- icked face could be seen through the drivers’ window and horns blared when he nearly hit a car coming into the car park in his haste. Once the car had gone the man who had approached him turned to the person with the camera.
‘We shall, of course, be handing this film and all the evidence we have collected to the police.’ And the video ended.
Jo sat back in her chair and gave it some thought. It had never occurred to her that Mervyn could be a predatory paedophile. Had Giles sought him out because he recognised a fellow abuser? Mervyn seemed much too weak, but then, perhaps paedophiles were weak? Was that why they went for underage girls? Or, she wondered, could this be yet an
other event orchestrated by the killer, designed to cause maximum damage to the firm of Bartlett Townsend? To have one pervert in a firm was unfortunate, but two smacked of institutional problems. Did the killer know Mervyn well enough to know his sexual secrets, as she had known Giles’s? Well enough to exploit them, as she had done with Giles? Or had Mervyn been completely set up and was innocent, of paedophilia anyway? Either way, Miller could not ignore her views that the lawyers were being targetted, whether or not they were guilty, any longer. This time, he was going to have to listen to her.
As she sat outside the café on the Stade, soaking up the lunchtime sun and watching the tourists, Jo was pleased that once again Miller had agreed to meet her away from the police station, even though she knew he must be incredibly busy. Mindful that she had visits to do be- fore evening surgery she had already ordered herself scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, and sipped her tea as she waited for her food, and for Miller. Despite the sunshine, the air was still cool and she was glad of her coat, but there was a real promise of spring in the air again. The prospect of spring always cheered her, and she wondered if people who lived in warm countries ever felt the joy of feeling that winter was coming to an end, even knowing that summer often dis- appointed. Perhaps they had the opposite and looked forward to the rainy season or the cooler weather.
Miller arrived and plonked himself in the chair opposite her just as her food arrived and he looked at it hungrily as he checked his watch. ‘Go on,’ she encouraged him, ‘You have to eat and service is quite quick here.’
He smiled and acknowledged her point as he ordered a full breakfast, with added chips and a mug of tea to wash it down.
‘Don’t wait.’ He indicated her food and she tucked in hurriedly before it got cold and rubbery. Scrambled egg is not a dish that lasts well. ‘How are things going? With work, that is?’ Jo quickly added, because she knew he wouldn’t want to talk about his home life. ‘I take it you’ve heard about Mervyn Bartlett?’ he relied.