Fall From Grace (19 page)

I circled the case on the printout. ‘No dental records?’

‘His teeth were removed.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘And his prints didn’t lead anywhere?’

‘No. Prints, DNA, nothing.’

Just like the builders’ dispute, Franks had only mentioned it in the loosest possible terms. His notes said, ‘UnID’d victim + CB?’, and he’d listed the home address for the victim: a council estate in Lewisham. When I’d filled in further details the previous evening, using what little there was online about it, I’d been unable to find out what the
CB
part related to. Still, it was difficult to picture Franks becoming so affected by a drug murder, two years after it happened, that it ended up being the reason he left.

I looked at what I’d written down.

The murder of Mary Swindon seemed the most immediate fit but, in truth, when I looked closer, there were few similarities between the two killings. There was certainly no question that Viljoen was involved. The DNA at the scene didn’t belong to him, and by the time Swindon was killed in 2002 he’d already been locked up for six years.

‘You got any idea why he was running the case?’ Task said.

I tuned back in. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘Franks.’

‘What about him?’

‘Says here he was running the case.’

‘Running what case?’

‘This drug murder.’

Task was talking about the fourth case: the unidentified white male who’d had his throat cut. ‘Wait, Franks was
running
it?’

‘Yeah. Franks was the SIO on it. The file indicates that he was running point, and that it was his last ever case at the Met. Bit below his pay grade, I’d have thought.’

‘What else does it say?’

Silence.

‘Task?’

‘Shit. I’ve just seen the time. I’m supposed to be meeting some friends for lunch.’ Another long pause. ‘I’m going to have to go, Raker. You want a copy of these files?’

My mind was already ticking over. ‘Where are you meeting them?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, could I come and collect the files from you?’

‘Why, are you in town?’

‘I can be.’

‘We’re having lunch at a place near Waterloo.’

‘How about we meet on Westminster Bridge?’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you there at one.’

24

By the time I’d finished up with Tasker, Annabel was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating breakfast. I poured us both some coffee and perched myself on a stool opposite.

‘Ready to get back to Devon?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Yes and no. I’m looking forward to seeing Liv. We normally go out for a milkshake on a Saturday afternoon.’ A pause, and then a second, smaller shrug. ‘But sometimes, returning … I don’t know, it brings back a lot of bad memories.’

I nodded. ‘It’ll get easier.’

She looked up at me, and then her eyes moved around the kitchen. ‘Do you ever feel that way about this place? I mean, this is where you were supposed to, you know …’

When she didn’t continue, I let her know that I understood what she was asking. ‘Some days, I imagine what it would have been like to share this place with Derryn. I often think about how she might have done things differently, in the garden, in the house, whether – if we’d ended up having kids – we would have even stayed here long term.’

‘It’s not painful living here?’

‘It was to start with.’

‘But not now?’

‘Over time, the pain dulls. It doesn’t go, but it dulls.’

After that, without my intending it to, the conversation moved on to my work, and to Colm Healy. He was the former cop I’d been talking to Craw about the previous day.

Annabel’s train back to Devon left in two hours, and the knotty nature of Healy’s and my history felt too ambitious for the time we had left. Yet, as I tried to move the conversation forward again, her eyes lingered on me and I got the sense that, once more, she’d glimpsed where my thoughts were. All I could see of myself in her, physically, was a smile. But beneath the surface there was something more, some kind of instinct, a sense of people that seemed to echo who I was more closely than anything aesthetic.

‘Why don’t you call Healy?’ she said.

‘I’ve tried before.’

‘Do you think it might be worth trying again?’

‘You sound like my conscience.’

She smiled. ‘He’s a cop, right?’

‘Ex-cop, yeah.’

‘Does he ever make an effort to call you?’

‘Only when he’s in trouble.’ I looked at her for a moment, realizing what sort of picture that must have painted for her. ‘All I mean is, social calls aren’t exactly his style.’

‘Has he always been like that?’

I cast my mind back across the two years we’d known each other, and then to everything I’d learned about his life before that. ‘Not always. People at the Met tell me he was up there with the best of them once. But then he had this case, and after that it all kind of …’

‘Unravelled.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s exactly the right word.’

‘What sort of case was it?’

‘Three murders. A mother and her daughters.’

‘Daughters?’

‘Eight-year-old twins.’

Something moved in her face, and as she placed her hands flat to the kitchen counter I realized what: Olivia was the same age as those girls. This was everything she’d been talking to me about the day before.
I get scared. I get scared I can’t protect her
.

‘Maybe this is something for another day.’

‘What happened to them?’

I hesitated for a moment, keen not to play on her insecurity – perhaps, deep down, instinctively looking to shield her – but then reality hit home: she was twenty-five, and she knew as well as me that this was how the world was, even if it was hard to stomach.

‘He talked about it once,’ I said. ‘He told me the hunt for their killer consumed him to the point where he couldn’t think of anything else. Every second of every day. It cost him his marriage, it cost him his kids. Literally in the case of his daughter, Leanne.’

‘She was murdered as well?’

‘Different time, different case – but yes.’

‘That’s awful.’

I nodded again. ‘Leanne and Healy had this massive row the day she disappeared, and the next time he saw her she’d been left in a place so terrible sometimes I wonder how he ever sleeps at night. He’s got so much anger, bitterness and grief, all he knows how to do is hit out. But you know something? Sometimes I don’t blame him for that.’

‘And the twins?’

I looked across to Liz’s garden, bereft of furniture and pot plants, and wondered if there was a way of cushioning the truth. ‘Nothing ended up the way it should have done,’ I said, imagining the horror that Healy must have walked into the day he found those girls and their mother. When I finally turned back to Annabel, there was a flash in one of her eyes. ‘Are you okay?’

She blinked. ‘I’m fine. I just …’

I slid an arm around her and brought her into me. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ she said.

‘Olivia’s fine.’

She nodded gently.

‘You’re both safe. I promise.’ We stayed like that for a moment, the house quiet, the world beyond even quieter, its noise quelled by the snow. ‘I shouldn’t have talked –’

‘Was the case taken away from Healy?’

When I didn’t reply, she looked up at me. Despite the tears forming, there was an unexpected determination to her now, a sudden fortitude.

‘Was it taken away?’ she asked again.

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone solve it?’

I looked at her, but didn’t reply. I didn’t know how to make this better. She wiped the tears away, and for a second I could see my reflection staring back at me.

‘Did
they?’

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘There was no happy ending.’

25

There was barely any evidence of snow out on the main roads, pavements almost cleared, roads slick with water and crumbs of grit – but it was still bitter. By the time Annabel and I had got to Ealing station, I was cold right through to my bones, skin raw and aching from where the wind kept snapping at us. We rode the train to Paddington and, at the gateline, I hugged her and told her I’d see her soon.

After she’d boarded, I headed back to the Tube and worked my way down to the District line platform. The snow had long since ceased to fall, but as I stood there in the freezing cold, it blew in through the open spaces above: off the rooftops and windowsills high up on Praed Street, and from the arches, closer in, that ran along the back walls of both platforms. I moved for cover, where an arced roof straddled the line, perched myself on one of the benches and started checking the messages on my phone.

A couple of minutes later, I looked up again.

Instinctive.

Automatic.

An odd sensation ghosted through me – a brief shiver, but not instigated by the cold – and as I looked from my phone, along the platform, I realized what it was.

It feels like I’m being watched
.

The platform was busy, lined three-deep with people waiting for an Earl’s Court connection: mostly tourists, clumped together, and businessmen in interchangeable suits. My eyes moved between faces. No one seemed to be paying me any attention, either on this side or across the line. I stood, giving myself a better view of the crowd, but as the train squealed to a stop, I started to doubt myself and eventually cast the thought aside.

I found a café, nursed a coffee and an overcooked melted cheese sandwich, and watched traffic feed off Westminster Bridge for forty-five minutes. I thought of Annabel, of what we’d talked about, and vowed – once this case was over – to give Healy a shout. Then my mind switched to the cases I was about to pick up from Tasker. Four unsolveds Franks had a confirmed connection to, one of which didn’t sit right at all: the drug murder.

Why did Franks decide to step in and run it himself?

I’d made a timeline of events for the start of the year – from when the file arrived with Franks, to that last call from the phone box – but now I constructed one in parallel:

Between May 1995 and May 2004
–
Franks writes ‘BROLE108’ and makes ‘stick man’ sketch on scrap of paper
.

April 1996
–
Pamela Welland is murdered by Paul Viljoen
.

May 1996
–
Viljoen arrested and charged by Franks/Murray
.

1997
–
Viljoen sentenced to 20 years
.

2001
–
Murray finds Franks watching CCTV footage of the night Viljoen picked Welland up in a bar. Unrelated to case they were on. So why was he watching it? Why after all that time?

March 2011
–
Unidentified victim is found dead (apparent drug murder?) in Lewisham. Franks writes ‘UnID’d victim
+
CB?’ in notebook. What is CB? WHY WAS FRANKS SIO ON THE CASE?

February 2013
–
Franks writes ‘Milk?’ and ‘108’ on flyer
.

As I looked at the timeline, I thought again about Franks acting as SIO on the drug murder. By March 2011, he was weeks away from retirement and had already spent years as command lead, way beyond the day-to-day running of individual cases like that. Why not leave it to Murray, like he’d done with countless other cases in the years before?

Grabbing my phone, I dialled the Met and asked to be directed to Murray. She answered after a couple of rings. I told her who it was, and I could immediately sense her stiffen.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ve got a question.’

‘Don’t
ever
call me here.’

‘It’s about another case.’

A pause. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Does this case from March 2011 ring any bells with you? A guy had his throat cut in what looked like a drug-related killing. Cops found about five kilos of coke in his flat.’

Silence.

‘Murray?’

‘It rings a bell. So?’

‘So I’ve been going through Franks’s notes and I’ve found mention of it. Weird thing is, he seems to have taken the lead on it. Why would he take the lead on a case?’

‘Why
wouldn’t
he?’

‘Because he’d stopped running cases ten years ago. He was the command lead, not a foot soldier. Plus this was six weeks before he retired.’

‘So?’

‘The murder of this guy wasn’t high profile. The media didn’t care. The general public barely bat an eyelid at that type of crime. I find it hard to believe that Franks was actually
asked
to step in and run it by the top brass. And yet he stepped in nonetheless.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t remember?’

She sighed. ‘Let me tell you how these things work, okay? Someone gets killed, we get assigned cases, that’s it. This isn’t like clothes shopping. You don’t take one case off the rack, decide you don’t like the look of it and then put it back again. So did I ever question what I got given? No. Did I ask the Boss the reasons why he decided to deal with the fallout from some random drug murder? No. Here’s what I was thinking: the recession was in full swing, we were underfunded and understaffed, we were all waiting for the axe to fall. I cared about keeping my head down and not getting my P45.’

I made a couple of notes.

‘Did he take on many cases himself?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘That’s what I figured. So this was pretty unusual?’

‘The Boss mucked in when he needed to, especially around that time when the government were busy ripping the heart out of the force. Now, are we done?’