Mercy Killing (29 page)

He knew that it was standard television-speak but this time it related to someone he knew. That someone was a lifelong friend.

‘Toby Carvell?’ said a voice. He wanted to play the part so he counted to four, opened his eyes, uncrossed his ankles and said, ‘That’s me, darling.’

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Beckinsale,’ said the owner of the stern voice. ‘Would you come through?’

He got to his feet, followed her to a side room and was about to speak when the door behind her opened and a man Toby guessed to be in his late thirties walked in.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Pierre Rainer, a detective constable here at East Rise Police Station. Please take a seat.’

Detective Sergeant Beckinsale walked out of the room and Toby couldn’t help but notice that the look on the detective constable’s face was a picture.

Toby was about to make a comment when the door opened again and a blonde woman walked in.

‘Sorry about that messing around,’ she said. ‘I’m Detective Constable Hazel Hamilton. The sergeant was waiting until I was free.’

As far as Toby was concerned, he couldn’t care less if he spoke to a sergeant, inspector or the chief constable. All he wanted was to tell someone what happened.

‘I need to tell you that whatever my mate Leon Edwards has told you, I was there too.’

He half expected the two detectives to exchange some sort of glance. Instead, the man moved towards the door. It hadn’t escaped Toby’s notice that it was the one behind him that led
onto the street and his freedom.

‘Take a seat,’ were the woman’s only words.

Now he was here, he wasn’t entirely sure how things were going to go, but he wasn’t leaving until he had told them what he came to say.

‘My friend, Leon Edwards, is here,’ he said, switching his stare from one impassive face to another. ‘Whatever he’s told you he’s done, I’ve done it
too.’

This was the moment that they actually did exchange glances.

‘What do you mean by “whatever he’s told you he’s done, I’ve done”?’ asked the male detective.

‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? About Albie Woodville. Me and Leon, we did it together.’

It took a few seconds for the matter to sink in with the two police officers in the room with him, but the woman was the first to her feet.

‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Albert Woodville.’

She only got a few words into the caution when Toby said, ‘Hang on. Murder? Oh no, no. It wasn’t murder. He wasn’t dead. He was still alive.’

Unfortunately for Toby, the door he tried to let himself out of needed a pass card, something that he didn’t have. He thought about struggling, making a run for it. He was the one who had
walked in voluntarily. All he had wanted to do was support his friend, not get arrested for murder. The shock had hit him as soon as the officer told him what the reason was for his liberty being
taken away. Fighting wouldn’t look good. Toby understood that. He surrendered to his circumstances after a brief pretence of trying to get back out again to the public area at the front of
the police station.

It took only seconds for the two detectives to escort him to custody where he allowed himself to be searched and put into a cell. His momentary panic left him and was replaced by despair.

Things were not going according to plan now. Toby didn’t imagine for one minute that Leon had confessed to murdering Woodville. He knew that his friend wasn’t blessed with
intelligence but he wasn’t entirely stupid.

At the first opportunity, Toby got himself a solicitor who told him to wait until she got there before saying anything else to the police.

As he waited for her arrival, he sat himself on the bench in his cell, read the graffiti, used the toilet and then ran out of things to do. He tried listening out for sounds of Leon but then
wondered what on earth he was listening for. They would hardly be torturing him or beating him up. So far the police officers he had seen were no match for Leon and as for the jailers, they had the
word
Civilian
embossed on their uniform. Surely they wouldn’t punch a prisoner.

He glanced at his watch, one of the few things they had allowed him to keep. Only half an hour had passed. He was going to have to keep an eye on himself as he was aware he was already beginning
to think total nonsense.

Eventually the door opened and he was led to a room and introduced to his solicitor. Some hours later, they had finished discussing what Toby had done. Now it was time to tell the police about
it.

The two detectives from earlier took them to a police-interview room and Toby watched them unwrap the DVDs and put them in the recording equipment with a kind of detached fascination. On more
than one occasion, he had to remind himself that this was indeed happening to him, a married man with his own business, and in spite of not having had the best start in life someone who’d
always been on the right side of the law and had never been stopped by the police or caught speeding. Now he was under arrest for murder.

After what seemed like a long time, the woman detective spoke. She went through question after question about his legal rights and his welfare and then at last, they got down to business.

‘OK. ‘You’re under arrest for the murder of Albert Woodville, Toby. It may sound like an odd question, but what’s your understanding of murder?’

He held his hands up in the air. ‘Yes, it is a stupid question. It’s when someone kills someone but I didn’t kill him. Neither did Leon—’

His solicitor intervened. ‘Toby, don’t concern yourself with Leon.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I know. When I got nicked I said me and Leon did it together. I think I need to explain—’

Once again, his solicitor cut across him. ‘You know my advice, Toby.’

‘Yes, thanks, I do, but where Leon’s concerned, I’m not going to sit here and say no comment to everything Hazel asks me.’

The somewhat dowdy-looking legal representative raised an eyebrow at the familiar use of the very attractive interviewing officer’s name. It was something that Pierre noticed, only Hazel
herself seemed oblivious to it.

‘Go on,’ was all she said.

‘We didn’t kill him, we didn’t even hurt Woodville, the horrible fat bastard. Sorry about the language, love.’

His solicitor put her pen down.

‘Oh, you and all,’ Toby said. ‘I’ll tell you a bit about me and Leon. We met years ago at Cuxington Children’s Home. He looked out for me and kept Woodville away
from me. There were a couple of occasions when he physically stood in between me and Woodville and took slaps and punches that were coming my way. Up until very recently, I thought that Leon took a
lot more for me too.’

Toby’s eyes had begun to mist over. He continued with a catch in his voice.

‘For years I’ve been under the impression that all those horrible things he did to me, he did to Leon too.’ He started to rub his hands up and down his arms, shoulders hunched
up to his ears, no eye contact now.

‘I still owe him though. He went through as tough a time as me, only in a different way. We used to talk about Woodville from time to time, how much we both hated him. Sometimes there were
happier memories. It wasn’t all bad. There were some other really good kids in the home. A lot of them were little sods but we used to play practical jokes on the staff, not Woodville, never
Woodville, but a few of them were great. I always thought that they knew what was going on, only no one spoke about it. Things are a bit different now, but it’s still the last
taboo.’

Toby looked up into Hazel’s eyes. ‘We spoke about what we’d do to Woodville if we ever saw him again, and then one day, I did see him in town. I couldn’t believe what I
was seeing. He’d aged, of course, but it was him, as large as life.

‘I’d gone into Pets at Home to look for something for my daughter’s birthday, so I know it was about June time. She wanted a guinea pig, not that that’s important but I
wandered around the corner and he was picking out a dog lead. He’s petrified of dogs. I remember that because I used to lie awake at night at the home, praying it wasn’t my turn, and it
would be some other poor little bastard’s, and I used to fantasize that I’d buy a pack of dogs when I grew up and train them to chew his fucking face off. I never did though.’

Hazel gave a small smile.

Toby gave a big sigh, ran his hand across his brow and said, ‘Couldn’t help it, could I? I got straight on the phone to Leon. We met at the pub about half an hour later. I was a
right mess. A fully grown man sitting in his local boozer on the verge of crying. I could barely put a sentence together. Have you ever heard anything more pitiful? Thing was, it took me right back
there, see? I was seven years old again, a little petrified kid, being . . . being interfered with all over again.’

For the first time in the interview, Toby looked across at Pierre who sat making notes, but glancing up from time to time.

‘Leon was great,’ said Toby. ‘I wanted to go round and give Woodville a kicking right away. Leon pointed out that not only did we have no idea where Woodville lived, but also
that we’d both end up in prison for it. We decided that we’d find out a bit more about him and bide our time.’

Toby glanced across at his solicitor. She repeated her advice to answer ‘No comment’ to the questions. Toby ignored her.

‘We weren’t ever going to kill him or physically hurt him, we were looking to put the frighteners up him. Send him some threats, so he didn’t know where they were coming from.
We wanted to cause him pain up here.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Just like he did to us all those years ago. The physical stuff was bad enough, but it was the lingering effects of
what it did to my mind. That doesn’t go away.

‘We followed him a few times, tried to—’

‘Toby,’ said his solicitor, ‘we’ve spoken about this. My advice to you is to answer “No comment” from now on.’

He sat and mulled it over.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want you to think I’m not cooperating. We followed him home and knew he had a routine on a Friday night when he went to the Co-op on the
corner and bought some grub.

‘I’m going to tell them this bit,’ he said to his brief, ‘and then no more. We talked about getting into his flat one night when he’d gone out, and then jumping out
from behind the sofa or cupboard or whatever. I’ve never been in there so I don’t know what furniture he’s got. It was only to scare him, not beat him up and definitely not kill
him.’

‘When were you going to do this?’ said Hazel.

‘That break you mentioned at the beginning,’ said Toby, ‘the one you told me I could take any time I like, I’d like it now, please.’

Hazel set about turning off the DVDs and glanced over at Pierre. She had an idea that from here on Toby would choose to say nothing or very little in answer to her
questions.

Her train of thought was interrupted by Toby asking his solicitor if they could speak in private and Pierre leading them to a consultation room.

When he returned, he pushed the door behind him and said, ‘What do you think?’

‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘I think that’s all he’ll say, but for a minute I thought that his brief was going to let him confess to a conspiracy to murder along with
Leon.’

‘I’ve dealt with his solicitor before. She’s a pretty switched-on cookie. I’m still surprised she let him say anything at all.’

‘I don’t think she had much choice. It was difficult to shut him up. Besides, it’s usually the ones who have, shall we say, “limited intelligence” who struggle with
the concept of talking to a point and then declining to answer. I thought he did OK, not that it takes us much further.’

‘You’re right,’ said Pierre. ‘He still hasn’t said where he was on Friday night when Woodville was murdered. We know from the CCTV he was still alive at 6.20 at
night and by the time the patrols got there shortly after eight o’clock he was dead.’

Toby and his solicitor’s arrival at the interview-room door put an end to the officers’ conversation.

As Hazel had predicted, for the rest of Toby’s interview she and Pierre did most of the talking, with ‘No comment’ coming from the interviewee each time he was asked
anything.

That was more than could be said for Leon, although at that very moment an unexpected alibi was coming his way. His luck was about to change for the better.

The automatic front doors of East Rise Police Station opened once again on the fading afternoon sunlight, attracting the attention of the front-counter assistant. She looked up
and smiled at the young woman walking across the brightly lit foyer towards her.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I need to speak to someone about Dilly, well, Leon Edwards. Everyone calls him Dilly, but his real name’s Leon. He’s here, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t know. Who is it you want to speak to?’

‘It said on the news that a bloke had been arrested for the murder of the old bloke in Pleasure Lane but I know it wasn’t Dilly. Let me speak to someone about it.’

The incident-room phone rang and was answered by Harry. He didn’t usually make a habit of answering other people’s phones, but it was ringing on the desk he stopped
at to talk to Sophia and Tom, who were taking a break from interviewing Leon.

‘Really?’ he said into the receiver. ‘I’ll get someone to come and speak to her. Thanks.’

‘It seems,’ he said to the pair sitting opposite him, ‘that a woman has given your prisoner, Edwards, an alibi for Friday night. Go and see her, will you? She’s at the
front counter.’

‘What’s her name, boss?’ said Sophia.

‘Lorraine Butterfield. She works in some diner and said that Leon was there most of Friday evening.’

‘Oh good,’ said Tom. ‘Shall we just let our prisoner go now?’

‘Less cheek and less sarcasm, Thomas,’ said Harry. ‘She may be lying, or mistaken. Come and let me know, would you?’

Harry wondered whether his team would ever find out who had murdered Albert Woodville. He was certain that Leon Edwards and Toby Carvell had been doing more than passing by his flat to see how
he was doing since his release from prison, but neither of them were daft enough to admit to planning to or trying to kill him.