Mercy Killing (15 page)

Harry waited a few seconds for her to continue and when she kept quiet, he said, ‘The interviews were fine. Of course I’ve read them. What’s the problem, Barbara?’

‘At the time, he pretty much confessed what he did to Toby Carvell.’

‘There you go then,’ said Harry, not clear where she was going with this information.

He watched her wind her wedding ring around and around her finger.

‘I wasn’t Barbara Venice then,’ she said. ‘I was Barbara Jones, a few years younger, but I really should have known better.’

Harry found himself wondering if his friend was going to admit some kind of years-old police corruption and hoping that he was wrong.

‘From the look on your face, you think I’m about to say that I stitched him up.’

‘Fucking Nora, Babs. Not in a million years would I think such a thing about you.’

Nevertheless, he saw her raise an eyebrow at him.

‘The interview was fine. He was cautioned and asked if he wanted a brief. You know, the usual. He declined a solicitor and I went through everything I was legally obliged to tell him. It
all went a bit wrong though later on down the line.’

The glare of the overhead strip light showed the lines and wrinkles in Barbara’s face with little mercy. Harry was still able to remember the beautiful fresh-faced young woman he met years
ago at training school as Barbara sat before him now.

He had already abandoned his idea of trying to get her out of his office; it was clear she needed someone to talk to.

Barbara breathed through pursed lips. ‘It was the usual pressure of get the job done and move on to the next thing. It seemed as though it was going to be a straightforward investigation,
especially when he admitted to what he’d done.

‘I remember it very clearly although it was so long ago. Partly because it was one of those jobs that got to me. We came out of the interview room, me, Woodville and the other DC I was
working with, Jon Newton. Jon went off to get Woodville a coffee and update the custody record that we’d finished.’

Harry watched her pinch the top of her nose with her thumb and forefinger and take a pause.

‘We walked around the corner to his cell and Woodville said to me, ‘I won’t go to prison for all of this.’ He had such an arrogance about him. I hated him all over again.
What he’d done to those children was bad enough and now he was telling me he wouldn’t go to prison. The fucking audacity.’

Harry sat and watched her, unaware that she was replaying in her mind the same scene that had kept her awake and up long before the sun.

Whatever the struggle going on in her head, he could tell it was eating at her.

Over the years, few things had got to Barbara so much that she made a point of speaking to anyone, least of all Harry. Most police officers were terrible gossips and Harry had an ear to the
ground at all times. He thrived on the gossip and the speculation about others’ reputations. This was something different though: he was watching an old friend fall apart and that
wasn’t something he relished. She needed a confidant, not a fishwife.

‘So what happened?’ he asked.

Her eyes snapped open and she peered out through a watery gaze. For a moment Harry worried she might lose it. He had never been one for crying women. If he was honest, they petrified him.
He’d rather face a drunk armed with a blade or broken bottle than deal with an emotional female. They were uncharted territory for him and possibly part of the reason that his marriage was
going so wrong.

Unlike his wife’s stony tantrums, he really wanted to find out what the issue was for Barbara. Only he didn’t know how to.

He tried the only option he could think of – he sat and listened.

‘I hated Woodville,’ she said. ‘I hated him before I met him. He represented everything I despised, I simply didn’t know it yet. When I joined the police, and I expect
it’s the same for most people, I had this starry-eyed notion that I’d impact on the world, get it in a headlock and make it behave. Exactly how long is it before someone pisses on that
idea? The first day you put on your uniform, walk outside and someone assaults you and the court hands them a fine that they never pay? Or is it the first time you see a decomposing corpse
that’s been there for weeks with no one to care that the flesh and skin have melted into the carpet? Or perhaps it’s the first time that someone with HIV bites you? Remember that time I
was stabbed with a used needle and I was off sick for weeks until I was cleared to come back to work? That was fun.’

Harry watched as it all moved across her features, some of it fleeting and some of it etching itself into the creases of her face and attaching itself to her very being. His own visage was full
of cynicism and distrust. Some would call it character. He would call it horror.

Before his eyes, Barbara’s face hardened.

‘He surely couldn’t have known what he was doing, what he was orchestrating, but Woodville stopped me just around the corner from the interview room and he leaned forward to whisper
in my ear.’

A hand went up to her throat, toying with the thin gold chain there adorned with a small cross.

‘Stupidly, I didn’t think further than don’t make direct contact with his head. I’d already had head lice twice since joining up. I moved back and he cackled at me.
“I won’t go to prison for Toby Carvell,” he said.’ She slowly shook her head. ‘I didn’t get it, Harry. We’d spoken in interview about five children who had
accused him of sexually abusing them and he only denied touching one of them.’

‘But he admitted to what he’d done to Toby Carvell,’ said Harry.

‘Exactly. He admitted it all. It was one of the gut-wrenching things he seemed glad to get off his chest. He was adamant that he wouldn’t go to prison for it. I didn’t
understand at first.

‘It was the look on his face, you know. He said to me—’ She broke off and shook her head. ‘
 
“He liked it. Toby liked it.” I wanted to punch him but I stood
motionless, completely stock-still. Never before or since have I wanted to hit anyone, prisoner or otherwise. And he deserved it, but I didn’t.’

There was something about the way Barbara leaned forward and placed her hands palms down on the desk that made Harry push himself back in his seat, suddenly unsure how he was going to handle the
fallout of whatever she was about to tell him.

Seconds later, he let out a breath. ‘What’s really the matter?’

‘Later on, he made out that I’d lured him round a corner out of earshot of Jon and out of the gaze of the custody staff so I could speak to him in private.’

Other than telling her that she was talking nonsense, Harry was short on words. There were so many questions going through his head.

The first was, ‘What about the cameras?’

‘This was before the days of digital recording and everything being centralized at Police Standards Department. In those days, as you know, if you needed the custody footage, you took the
tape.’

‘And?’

‘And I seized it and didn’t look at it until three weeks later. It was the wrong bloody date.’

He watched as Barbara hung her head as she made her confession.

‘Oh fuck,’ he said. ‘You lost the footage of what he’d actually said to you?’

His question was met with a miserable look and a weak nod of the head.

‘We went to court some months later,’ she said. ‘He pleaded not guilty and then his defence barrister ripped me up for arse paper in the witness box. She made out that
I’d threatened him and even told him that if he confessed he wouldn’t go to prison but be let off with community service and some behaviour therapy. Well, I couldn’t say under
oath that I’d never been alone with him because I’d been in the custody block. The only thing that could have backed me up was the custody CCTV and it was gone. It was my word against
his and the jury believed him. He was acquitted of some of the allegations because of something I’d done. I have to live with that.’

She continued to slide the cross on her chain from left to right.

‘What if my mistake all those years ago has propelled someone to murder him? What if that someone is Toby Carvell? That means that this is all my fault.’

For once, Harry didn’t have an answer.

When DC Gabrielle Royston arrived for work and made her way across the incident room to her desk, she noticed that her DI Harry Powell was deep in conversation with DCI Barbara
Venice. Both had seemed pleasant enough when Gabrielle had started in the department and she had no particular problem with either of them. However, now she watched the two of them talking, heads
together in Harry’s cramped office space, she felt the old familiar feelings of paranoia that they were talking about her.

There was no rational explanation for why they should be doing such a thing, but Gabrielle felt that, wherever she worked, her colleagues spoke about her behind her back. She knew that she could
sometimes come across as a little odd but that was mainly because she was a little odd. She never really fitted in anywhere and she had never been able to work out why that was. No one had ever
explained it to her either which only made her worry all the more. She had joined the police at the age of twenty-one and had few friends to speak of. There seemed to be something about the other
police officers that gelled them as one, but however much of an effort she made she still felt as though she was an outsider.

By the time two years of not being welcomed into the fold had passed, she had decided that it would no longer bother her. She had long since looked on the bright side and now she had been a
police officer for eight years she considered it a blessing. She wasn’t part of or privy to the gossip and rumours that she found childish, she wasn’t part of the office nights out
where certain individuals were embarrassed about their antics the next morning, and she didn’t have to put up with endless questions about her private life and background. There wasn’t
very much to tell but what there was, she held back for a reason. She didn’t like people very much and she didn’t trust them.

She positioned herself at her desk so that she could see the outline of Barbara Venice as she leaned across to talk to Harry. She found herself inching forward in her seat so that she could see
Harry’s face a little more easily and felt her stomach lurch as he looked up and caught her eye.

It was a weird sensation for the young officer to experience, especially in a working environment. It momentarily confused her as to what it might actually mean. She might have been a bit
strange but she wasn’t daft and realized that it wasn’t likely to do her career much good if she mooned about all day over her inspector.

On the other hand, so many of her peers were having affairs with their colleagues perhaps that was why they thought of her as peculiar. Maybe she was the only one not sleeping with someone
else’s spouse.

These obscure thoughts ran through her head as she sat absent-mindedly in front of her computer screen, tapping her pen against the side of her head.

Gabrielle wasn’t sure how long she had sat pondering having sex with her detective inspector, but it was long enough for Harry and Barbara to finish talking and for him to make an
appearance and say her name more than once.

‘Sorry, sir,’ she stammered, dropping the pen to the desk. ‘I was miles away then. What can I help you with?’

She blushed at her own words even though Harry couldn’t possibly guess what it was that she had just been fantasizing about assisting him with.

‘Can you come into my office and speak to me for a few minutes whenever you’ve finished doing what you’re doing?’

She saw him look down at the pen on the desk which had come to rest next to her blank computer screen, still switched off from the night before. She was not about to impress him with her work
ethic if she got to work half an hour before everyone else but then sat daydreaming.

Gabrielle was aware that without intending to she was behaving a little differently from the way a detective constable should, especially when her superior was standing a couple of feet away,
waiting for her to answer.

‘Of course I can. I’m free now,’ she said.

Harry nodded at her and walked back to his office.

She closed her eyes and shook her head at her stupidity in front of the man she had been trying hard to impress with her professionalism, and now had a crush on.

As he made his way back to his office, Harry regretted asking Gabrielle to speak to him before anyone else arrived. The girl was odd and had gone almost as red in the face as
Harry’s hair when he spoke to her. He put it down to being caught by the inspector staring into the distance and banging a biro against her head. He had worked with some weirdos in the past
but he hadn’t thought of Gabrielle as anything other than quiet and reserved up until now. The reservations that Sophia Ireland had brought to him about Gabrielle’s attitude
hadn’t caused him much concern at the time, although he would be the first to admit to himself that he had been wrong before.

He considered calling Barbara back to sit with him while he spoke to Gabrielle and then ruled it out. Apart from the DCI having enough on her plate at the moment, if he couldn’t handle one
woman detective constable, he didn’t deserve to be the rank he was.

As he reached his chair, Harry turned to sit down and saw Gabrielle standing in the doorway.

‘What are you, a cat? I didn’t hear you move.’

He saw her smile and shift her weight from one foot to the other.

‘Have a seat but don’t worry about closing the door. This will only take a few minutes.’

She sat in the chair opposite him, crossed her legs and he had to try hard not to look at them, short skirt riding up over her thighs. With sadness, he realized how old he was getting as his
initial thought was that she should wrap up a bit warmer at this time of year. Perhaps that was why his wife had had enough of him: he was past his prime.

‘How are you getting on here, Gabrielle?’

‘Good. Really good. I’ve enjoyed it so far. It’s very different from child protection, but that’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here.’