Mercy Killing (11 page)

He couldn’t stop himself as his face got closer and closer to the pavement adorned with a white greasy wrapper housing half a doner kebab. Leon felt his own meal coming up and marvelled at
how he had managed to keep it together for so long.

There was an easy answer to that of course: this was the first time he had allowed his thoughts to sneak up on him and hijack his sanity. It was also the first time that he hadn’t merely
turned to Toby and got the answers and reassurance he needed from him.

His head was now only inches from the discarded takeaway. The smell of the chilli sauce was making its way to his nose, climbing inside his nostrils, telling his brain that his stomach ought to
reject his own late-night meal.

It was the image of food on the ground that brought Leon to his senses. He found himself drooling, the juices in his mouth reminding him how close he had come to vomiting over the pavement and
probably his own shoes.

Food shouldn’t be wasted and if it was there on the ground it should be eaten.

He pushed himself away from the rancid kebab, the fat from the meat white and congealed. He leaned back against the wall for support, knees still at an angle, palms resting on his thighs.

He closed his eyes and the blackness was filled with a memory, a terrible memory of being eight years old and made to eat food from the floor, Albert Woodville standing over him, pushing his
head down.

Early hours of Sunday 7 November

The black-clad figure kept to the shadows and shied away from the road side of the pavement. Anyone driving past or looking out of their window would see a dark shape hurrying
to its destination, probably away from the coldness of the night. Although a cloudless sky meant that the temperature had dropped by a degree or two, he was sweating as he made his way to the
outskirts of East Rise, away from the clubs and late-night drinking dens. Partly this was due to nerves, partly to the weight of the rucksack over his shoulders.

Previous experience meant that he knew where the CCTV cameras were, and his chosen calling of stealing other people’s property in the dead of night had taught him well how to hide from the
police. It wasn’t all that difficult as most of them drove diesel cars – he could hear them coming a mile away – and he was a local, knew all the alleyways. It wasn’t the
first time he had needed his wits about him, moments before breaking the law.

Unusually, tonight, it wasn’t what he was going to be carrying off from the scene of the crime, but what he was bringing to the party.

He really was upping his game, but they deserved what they got.

Fifty metres or so shy of his destination, he ducked behind a tree and ensured that his face was still covered, his gloves still on and no one was watching him. Breathing more heavily now, he
shrugged the rucksack from his shoulders, worked the drawstring around the opening loose and removed the one item he had transported with so much care.

He contemplated leaving the rucksack behind but dismissed the idea almost as soon as it had formed. He had learnt about DNA evidence the hard way: it was going home with him until he could
safely get rid of it.

This left only one thing to do.

He ran towards Norman Husband House, covering the distance in no time. He opened the letterbox, lifted the pesticide-sprayer nozzle and began pumping the petrol inside.

Twice his resolve to empty the five-litre container almost gave way. Driven by a desire to finish the job, he carried on, oblivious to all around him.

He was so carried away by the task in hand, he forgot why he was about to burn a building down with people asleep inside.

A noise in the street jolted him back to reality.

He froze.

The sound of a car coming around the one-way system made his heart beat faster than he thought possible. He could hear his own breath, raspy and uneven.

If he didn’t do it now, he never would.

He dropped the pesticide sprayer and pulled a cheap plastic cigarette lighter from his pocket along with a copy of that morning’s local newspaper. His hands were shaking as he lit the
corner of the front page. With some difficulty he pushed the paper inside the letterbox, not having thought through how he was going to get a burning wad of paper as thick as the opening itself to
the other side of the door. He definitely hadn’t taken into account that his own gloves, some of his clothing and the porch entrance he was standing in had petrol splattered all over them
too.

Panic began to set in and he turned from the front door and hurried away.

He stopped at the corner and looked back over his shoulder as the flames were beginning to rise up above the solid bottom half of the door to the frosted reinforced glass part.

With a satisfied smile, he ran off into the nearest alleyway, the smell of petrol and smoke chasing him.

Sunday 7 November

‘Are we the only two bloody detectives on this enquiry?’ complained Tom as he and Sophia made their way to their unmarked car for the day. ‘There
weren’t even many people at this morning’s briefing because of the arson at Norman Husband House.’

‘How about you stop moaning and we go and see these two blokes from the am-dram society?’ said Sophia as she threw her file onto the back seat.

‘OK, Soph, but the first “lovie darling” we run into, I’m off home.’

Once they were in the car, Tom produced a coin. ‘Heads we see Jonathan Tey first, tails we see Jude Watson.’

‘I must have been absent the day that was taught on the CID course,’ said Sophia as she reversed the car out of its space and made for the security gate. ‘Have you got anything
a little more professional that we could use to decide who to drop in on first?’

‘Tails it is. I’ll put Watson’s address in the satnav. So these two have come to light after the chairman of East Rise Players called the incident room yesterday and thought
they were possibly up to no good.’

‘He thought more than that,’ said Sophia pausing at a red light. ‘According to his call, Eric Samuels said that he knew who was responsible for killing Woodville, after he saw
the police at his flat on the news and it was Tey and Watson.’

She pulled away as the light turned green, then added, ‘You know what my problem is with what Samuels said?’

‘Let me guess,’ said Tom, ‘it came from Gabrielle who went out to see Eric Samuels last night and you don’t trust her to do a good job.’

‘It’s not so much that I don’t trust her to get it right, she’s a good detective, but she makes me feel uneasy.’

‘Whatever you think about her, Gabrielle wouldn’t deliberately lie about something a witness said. Besides, if she hates paedophiles as much as you think she does, then surely what
she’d do is underplay any information that was forthcoming from members of the public, and not take a twelve-page statement from them, then come along to this morning’s briefing and
talk about it at great length.’

‘So you’re another one of the blokes in the office who’ve fallen for her long legs and piercing blue eyes, not to mention her short skirts.’

‘Don’t get touchy. You still look OK for a woman of your age with wavy hair and a face shaped like a balloon.’

‘I’m younger than you.’

‘Really?’

‘Lucky for you, Delayhoyde, we’re here.’

She pulled up next to a row of modest mid-terraced houses, three doors down from Jude Watson’s home. The windows were closed, curtains drawn and a car was parked on the street close to the
front door.

The information shared at that morning’s briefing was that Jude, East Rise Planning Department employee, was married with two young daughters, so neither of the DCs about to knock on his
door were under any illusions that calling on a Sunday morning was likely to result in anything other than a houseful of people wanting to know what was going on.

They stood shoulder to shoulder on the pavement and Tom rang the bell.

Before too long, they heard movement and a man of about thirty years of age opened the door. His brown hair was dishevelled but his handsome face showed genuine surprise at seeing two people on
his doorstep at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Not wanting to be mistaken for anyone other than a police officer, Tom showed his warrant card and said, ‘Mr Watson? Can we come in and talk to you about the East Rise Players?’

‘Some of our performances were a bit pitiful, but I don’t think they’re actually a crime,’ he said as he let them in.

Two blonde-haired girls peered out at them round the kitchen door. ‘Finish your breakfast, you two,’ Jude said to them, ‘then we’ll get over the park in a bit.’

He shut the door on his family scene of wife and two daughters eating their cereal and showed the two police officers to the privacy of the front room.

‘I take it,’ he said, making himself comfortable in the armchair, ‘that this is about Albert Woodville?’

‘What have you heard about him?’ said Tom.

Both Sophia and Tom watched his face for any sign of guilt, a flicker that meant he was holding something back, or even a hint that he knew more than he should about their murder victim’s
demise.

Jude Watson leaned forward towards Tom. ‘You should know what he is – a kiddie fiddler. What are you doing about him being near kids in the first place? It’s disgraceful.
Fucking country’s going down the pan faster than bog roll. He better not have touched my daughter or I’ll fucking kill him.’ He rubbed the spittle from his bottom lip and ran a
hand through his hair. ‘Sorry, sorry, it’s that I love my girls so much I—’

He was interrupted by the door opening and one of the children put her face in the gap and said, ‘Daddy, we—’

‘For God’s sake, Charlie,’ he shouted, ‘bugger off and eat your bloody breakfast.’

The door slammed shut and Jude continued. ‘Yeah, I love my girls to bits, don’t know what I’d do without them. So what do you want to know about Woodville? I’m guessing
it’s urgent if it’s brought you here on a Sunday morning.’

Sophia and Tom didn’t want to miss a thing. They both knew that there was never a second chance to gauge Watson’s real reaction.

‘When did you last see Albert Woodville?’ Tom asked.

Watson let out a breath, glanced down to his left, eyes on the worn pink carpet. ‘Don’t know. About two or three weeks ago at rehearsals. Why? What’s happened?’

‘He’s dead,’ said Tom. ‘He’s been murdered.’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t sound very surprised.’

This was met with a shrug and raised eyebrows. ‘He was a horrible bastard. If you do that sort of thing, you’ve got to expect people to come for you. Parents especially.’

‘Parents especially?’ echoed Tom with a glance in the direction of the children in the kitchen who could be heard squabbling over Coco Pops.

‘I’d do anything for my kids,’ said Jude, fixing his stare on the detective constable, ‘but I didn’t kill Woodville. You want to arrest me, go right ahead but the
last time I saw him was long before he died.’

‘How do you know when he died?’ said Tom, his tone so soft and casual, he sounded nothing like a murder detective stalking his prey.

‘What?’ His mouth hung open and he seemed to run out of air. His lips smacked shut and then he smiled. ‘Nice one, nice one. When I last saw Woodville, he was still very much
alive. That was some time ago and since then, you’ve come round here asking about his murder. Well, I’m assuming you two’ – he waved his index finger back and forth at them
– ‘haven’t left it two weeks to come and see me. If I was a gambling man, I’d say that he’s only recently been murdered.’ There was a somewhat smug look on his
face.

All the while Tom sat, impassive, with only one thought in his head: he didn’t believe what Jude Watson was telling him.

It was some hours later that Sophia and Tom had finished talking to Jude and finding out exactly where he had been over the last few days, who he had seen and what had happened
the last time he was in close proximity to Albert Woodville.

When at last they had everything in writing, Sophia took a DNA mouth swab from Watson and Tom took his fingerprints.

‘It’s standard in an investigation like this,’ she said as she tried to lighten the mood that had got distinctly heavy over the last twenty minutes. It had seemed to go
downhill after she’d read out the declaration at the top of his statement that told him he might go to prison if he had misled them in anyway. He didn’t seem to appreciate getting ink
all over his hands from the mobile fingerprinting kit either.

The pair of them stood up with their paperwork, fingerprints and DNA sample and Tom said, ‘Thanks for your time.’

‘I didn’t really have much choice, did I?’

Tom stopped at the living-room door and considered his response. ‘To be honest, no you didn’t, but we’re grateful to have done it this way and not at the police station.’
He opened the door and called over his shoulder, ‘We’ll be in touch.’

From the living-room window, tucked behind the curtain, Jude Watson stood looking out onto the street, down the road to where the two detectives got into a tatty Citroën.
In one hand he held the edge of the curtain, and in the other his mobile phone.

‘Jonathan, we’ve got a problem.’

Afternoon of Sunday 7 November

‘Harry,’ said Martha Lipton, head resting against the front door’s frame. ‘How nice of you to come and see me at home.’

He held a piece of paper up to her face.

‘Well, I can’t read it properly as it’s only a couple of centimetres from my eye, but I recognize my own newsletter when I see it.’

Harry took a deep breath and resolved to keep the promise to himself that he’d made on the journey over: he wasn’t going to show this woman how much she wound him up.

‘Have you any idea what you and your mucky little bunch have done?’ he said, aware that he was over-enunciating every syllable.

‘What’s up? Spelling mistakes in an article?’

She leaned into the frame, arms crossed over the front of an impossibly tight T-shirt, one long leg in front of the other, bare toes tapping at the concrete step which separated them.