Mercy Killing (35 page)

‘Whatever you say,’ said Josh. ‘I’ll talk to you another time about how a uniform patrol was responsible for stopping the Yorkshire Ripper and catching him. Not a load of
suits in an office staring at paperwork.’

Harry was relieved to have grabbed back most of his staff as soon as Simon Terry was arrested. His choice of interview team was quite deliberate. He had an urge to do the
interview himself but other than not wanting to hear his team’s hysterical laughter at the idea of the DI leading a murder interview, it had been years since he had done one, so there was a
strong chance he would make a mess of it.

Instead, he made his decision based upon his observations of how Gabrielle and Sophia had interacted with one another in the incident room over the last couple of weeks, sometimes finding
himself spying out of the gap in the blinds at his window towards their desks. It was important to him to know that the team were working together well, and even if they weren’t exactly
friends, they needed to be able to communicate and rely on one another. They were professional people at the end of the day, and they had to behave as such.

He still found Gabrielle a little odd, and got the impression that most people did. Word had spread of the sad death of her young nephew and even if it wasn’t the reason for her aloofness,
it meant that the others now accepted her, where once they might have avoided her. They worked with her and tolerated her, and even knew her for what she was: a good officer with some strange views
and ideas about the world. Sophia’s snooping around after Gabrielle had seemed to stop as soon as he started sending them out on enquiries together, often fabricating reasons that relied on
their various skills to put them in a car together. He wasn’t sure they fell for it each and every time, but it at least meant that there was a bit more harmony in the office. Word had even
got to him that they had spent time together outside work, although he doubted this was true.

As soon as Sophia and Gabrielle went into the interview room with Simon Terry, Harry took himself to the remote viewing room to see for himself how the interview progressed. He wanted to observe
his two detective constables, but above all he was desperate to find out who had been driving the Renault Clio on Friday the 5th of November.

He took his seat at the point where Gabrielle had finished cautioning Terry and explaining everything he legally needed to know. She was about to ask her first question when the door beside
Harry opened and Barbara Venice came in and sat beside him.

‘Just starting, Babs,’ he said. ‘And Gabrielle is lead interview. That’s good.’

He had never bothered to explain the trivia and inner workings of his investigation team to the DCI so she merely looked over at him, gave him a nod, and, like Harry, waited to see what the
suspect was going to say.

If anything, Gabrielle was going to have trouble shutting him up. Terry spent the first couple of minutes explaining that he was a small-time crook, and there was no way he was involved in
murder.

‘Thing is,’ he garbled, solicitor silent beside him, ‘thing is, I let all sorts of people borrow my car. Yeah, I’ve done some drive-outs from petrol stations with nicked
and false plates on the motor. Who hasn’t?’

He gave a small laugh and then saw the look on Gabrielle’s face.

‘Well, you probably haven’t. Your job’s to nick people like me, ain’t it? What I’ve done, right, is I’ve changed the plates. I’ll put my hands up to
that.’

And he did put his hands up in the air to demonstrate to the two detectives how committed he was to that train of thought.

‘Now, the stolen EA52 plate I’ve since taken off,’ he continued, ‘I nicked that off some old dear who parked in the next street from me. I saw her get out and go indoors,
shut the curtains and I thought: I’ll be back later to have them away. It was similar to mine, see. They’re the sort I go for. The newer plates, they’re sometimes harder to get
off.’

He shook his head at this travesty that the vehicle trade was inflicting upon his livelihood.

‘You were still using another set of stolen plates when you got stopped this morning,’ said Gabrielle. It was in a matter-of-fact style, no accusations, not even a question. Harry
liked it. He nodded his approval. He saw Barbara look over at him. He winked back at her.

‘Well, I might have pushed my luck there,’ Terry said, face clouding over. ‘It was risky, I’ll give you that. I take a chance with the old dears that they can’t be
bothered to go to the police station to report it as it’s too far away and never open. If you’ve ever tried to report a crime and rung the public enquiries number, it’s always
busy, and old people are a lot less likely to have a computer and report it online. Thinking, see?’

He tapped the side of his head at his criminal genius. When he could see that the two young women weren’t particularly stunned by this piece of information, he continued.

‘I’ve got a couple of different but similar sets of plates that I change over from time to time, until I think they’re past their use, and then I throw them. When the officer
started to follow me this morning, I was shitting it. When he stopped me and didn’t arrest me straight away, I thought that I’d got away with it. Then he nicked me for murder. Fucking
murder. I’ve never killed anyone and I don’t even know who this Woodville bloke is.’

Gabrielle moved forward in her seat and pushed an A4 piece of paper with a black-and-white image on it towards him.

‘That, Terry,’ she said, ‘was taken from the camera outside the shop where Albert Woodville was last seen alive on the evening of Friday the fifth of November. I would say this
is your Renault Clio with the EA52 plate. Who was driving it?’

He bit his lip, moved in his seat and sat on his hands. At last he glanced across to his solicitor.

‘My client,’ she said, ‘understands the seriousness of the investigation. His reluctance is due to not wanting to simply hand you a name.’

‘I get that,’ said Gabrielle, ‘but we have your car following Albert Woodville minutes before he was murdered. Up until now, I haven’t told you how he died.’

Simon Terry met her stare.

‘Someone forced their way into his flat and put a plastic cable-tie around his neck.’

Terry put a hand to his own throat and lost some of the colour in his face.

Gabrielle continued. ‘The exact same type, length, thickness and colour as the one PC Roundtree found in your boot this morning. If you can’t give us the name of who was
driving—’

‘Ian,’ he said in little more than a whisper. Then louder. ‘Ian Hocking. He said that he and his mate, Dave, wanted to take his niece and nephew to a firework display. Give his
sister a night off.’

Harry had no idea how much longer the interview continued as he and Barbara were already making their way to the incident room, making calls on their mobiles, trying to scramble an arrest team
together. All the while, he was flying down the stairs, away from Simon Terry’s voice, closer to the arrest he had hankered after for nineteen days, he couldn’t help but wonder why he
hadn’t thought to examine Millie Hanson’s family more closely.

He recognized the name within a second of it passing Terry’s lips. It was that something that he knew he had overlooked after all.

Afternoon of Wednesday 24 November

Days had gone by without Millie having to worry about her brother. He had spent a lot of time with her and the children, helped them pick out a tree and, despite her insistence
that it was far too early, joined in decorating it. He even promised to come to her house early on Christmas morning and forgo his trip to the pub.

She glanced across at him as he sat on the floor with Max, helping him put some Meccano together. He caught her looking his way and smiled at her.

‘Ian,’ she said, ‘you know that I don’t want to nag you but have you taken today off? You haven’t called in sick?’

‘I realize it’s because you worry about me,’ he said, trying to find the piece he was after as his fingers sought through the array of nuts and bolts strewn over the carpet.
‘I hate working at that bloody—’

‘Uncle Ian,’ warned Max.

He grinned at his nephew and said, ‘That stupid recycling centre but until I get something else sorted in the new year, it’s what’s keeping a roof over my head. I haven’t
given up hope of that job in Sussex. I spent enough time travelling backwards and forwards down there so hopefully something’ll come of it.

‘Today, I booked time off to spend with you and see the kids after they got home from school. Once they break up—’

He stopped again, this time because of loud knocking at the door.

‘I’ll go,’ said Sian from her seat on the floor. She’d been learning her spellings, her legs resting on the coffee table in front of her.

‘No you won’t,’ said her mum. ‘It could be anyone. I’ll go.’

Millie got up and went to the lounge door. She stopped as she put her hand on the handle and looked back to take in the scene behind her: Sian doing her homework without a fight, Max interested
in something other than kicking a ball, and her brother the happiest she had seen him in a long while.

She put one foot in front of the other on her way to the front door, her head filled with happier thoughts than she had allowed herself in a while.

There was too much noise outside her house, there were too many people and shapes blurry through the glass. This wasn’t right. Panic gripped her. She knew what this was and felt the hairs
on the back of her neck stand up.

Millie froze in the hallway. She started to turn, thought of hurrying back to the lounge, telling Ian to run. At the same moment that the letterbox snapped open and someone shouted through it,
‘Millie, it’s the police. Open the door,’ she heard Sian say, ‘Why is there a policeman in our garden?’ Now she recognized what she was feeling perfectly: the familiar
sensation of being absolutely petrified. Once again, she felt that she was about to lose everything.

Unable to resist the urge to open the front door, she felt herself pulled towards it. She saw the back of her own hand as she lifted the catch, powerless to stop the events that were in motion.
There was always something about ignoring a ringing phone or someone at the front door that inevitably made her respond. She had been conditioned to behave a certain way all her life, and she
wasn’t about to break away from it now.

This was her fault. It if hadn’t been for her and the children, the police wouldn’t be here now. All the bad things that happened were her fault alone.

‘Mum,’ said Max from behind her in the hallway. ‘What’s happening?’

She turned. Her son stood a few feet from her, and directly behind him was her brother. Millie had no doubt that she had never looked at someone so in the grip of despair. Her fear for so long
had been that she would lose everything. Ian’s ashen face and hollow eyes told her that it had only just occurred to him, with half of East Rise police station at her front door, that he was
about to have all that he held dear ripped away.

‘You must have known this would happen,’ she said, barely audible above the rapping on the front door.

‘Millie,’ shouted the same voice through the letterbox. ‘You’ll force us to break the door down if you don’t let us in.’

‘I have to, Ian,’ she said. ‘I don’t want the children to see you dragged away, kicking and screaming. Please.’

She cast an eye towards Max and said to him, ‘The police want to speak to Uncle Ian. Go back in the living room with your sister.’

She was at least grateful that Ian stepped out of Max’s way and slowly walked towards her.

‘Do it, he said with a nod towards the front door.

The result was instant. A flood of police officers, uniform and plain-clothes, filled the downstairs of her house.

There was little to be thankful for, but Millie was hit with a surge of relief that Ian stood passively in the middle of her hallway, next to Clive’s grandmother’s wall clock,
waiting to be handcuffed.

She heard a ripping of Velcro as the officer pulled the cuffs from a harness somewhere, listened to the ratchet of the mechanism as they were snapped on to his wrists and stood there as the tall
officer, no more than twenty years old, said, ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Albert Woodville and Dean Stillbrook. You do not have to say anything but it may harm
your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

She tried to take in the name Dean Stillbrook. She failed. Her mind could not contain the information. It was full to capacity with horrors that she couldn’t even have begun to
imagine.

Harry sat at the wooden picnic table on the edge of the car park overlooking the sea. It was grey and angry. A little like his own mood. The sound of the seagulls screeching
was getting on the few nerves he had left.

He checked his watch and pulled the collar of his coat up to his ears.

The noise of the waves and the gulls covered the sound of Martha’s footsteps as she walked across the shingle towards him. He turned as she reached his table.

‘Take a seat,’ he said as he looked back at the Channel.

‘We must stop meeting like this, Harry,’ she said. ‘Not only will people talk about us, but you’re a detective inspector and this is the third time you’ve left the
confines of the police station to talk to me. Usually it’s only the lower ranks that have to speak to the likes of me.’

He looked sharply across at her.

‘I’d never ask any of my team to do anything I wouldn’t do myself, and that includes talking to you, as much as it pains me.’

She gave a chuckle. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re flirting with me.’

‘Martha.’ His movement as he twisted in his seat made the seat judder and brought a look of concern to her face. ‘I find you despicable. You are the worst type of human being
imaginable. Even so, I promised that, when this was finished, we’d talk about you and the bunch of idiots who call themselves the Volunteer Army.’