Mercy Killing (7 page)

‘No, not that. It’s about Gabrielle.’

‘Go on.’

She listened for a few seconds to the sound of the rain as it drummed on the car roof. Eventually she said, ‘Do you get the impression that she’s a bit odd?’

Tom rubbed his chin and thought about the question before he said, ‘Ye-es. But I think it’s only that – she’s a bit odd and possibly aloof. Maybe she’s got personal
problems at the moment, stuff that’s nothing to do with work. What exactly is your concern about her?’

‘It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. I watched her tonight when she was looking at the CSI photos of the scene and Albie Woodville’s body. She reminded me of
what was in that sick sod’s spare room too. Not that I needed telling again.’

Her colleague shifted in his seat, let out a slow breath and said, ‘I get little joy myself from working all hours to find the murderers of a man who spent most of his adult life sexually
abusing children, especially one who thought it was perfectly acceptable to fill a room with dolls and mannequins of children, dress them in hospital gowns and have his own children’s ward
for kids with sexually transmitted diseases. He was a sick bastard, but Soph, murder is murder.’

She sat and thought about Tom’s words for a moment.

She hated to criticize a colleague, even in the confines of a tatty police Skoda on a rainy Friday night with only Tom for company. Frequently tempers were raised on enquiries and within the
team. They’d sound off at each other, or behind each others’ backs, say their piece and move on. Each others’ integrity was never an issue, which meant that Sophia recognized when
she was speaking out of turn.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘I know you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to say, but the reason I’m reluctant to get this off my chest is because it involves her
suitability to be on this enquiry.’

‘OK,’ said Tom after a minute, and waited for Sophia to say more.

‘You don’t think that she’d deliberately do anything to mess up the investigation, do you? Such as not feeding information back that could point towards a suspect? No one likes
a sex offender, probably not even other sex offenders, but we can’t live in a society that thinks it’s OK to kill them off without so much as a trial.’

‘Albert Woodville was a paedophile but you’re absolutely right. What if whoever killed him thinks they’ve got away with it? Who do they murder next? An innocent person maybe.
It means if you’ve any concerns about Gabrielle, you have to do something about it. I get that you don’t want to seem to bitch about her but you’re not saying that she
shouldn’t be on the department, are you? All you’re saying is that she shouldn’t be investigating the murder of Albie Woodville.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said after weighing up his words for a second or two. ‘Shall we get out of the car now? We’ve managed to steam up every window and the
rain’s easing off a bit.’

‘If you’re worried, at least talk to her.’

Tom twisted back round in his seat. With one hand on the door release, he said, ‘And let’s be honest, it’s all hands to the pump on this one, but there’s always another
murder around the corner that Gabrielle can get her teeth into. I worked on three different murders in as many days. I keep track of the jobs I work on. In the last two months, I’ve been on
two rapes, an attempted rape, three murders, a kidnap, a blackmail and Greenpeace taking over a power plant. Never a dull moment.’

Following burgers and chips to line their stomachs, Leon Edwards and Toby Carvell made their way to a pub several streets away, each pausing to get money out from a different
cash point along the route.

Toby chose a bank he didn’t have an account with because it had a cash machine within its foyer. The foyer had a camera and he was keen to be on its footage.

‘Dilly,’ he said as he turned from taking his beer tokens from the slot in the wall, ‘the booze is on me tonight.’ He fanned the twenty-pound notes out and waved them at
his friend. ‘Give me a minute though; I need to ring the wife. It’ll save the moaning later.’

He took his phone from his jeans pocket and made a point of waving it in his hand at Leon. Toby had his reasons for using his mobile on camera. He wasn’t the brains of the outfit for
nothing.

Leon took his cue and waited in the street outside, pacing up and down as they had planned, well within the town centre’s CCTV capture.

He was joined a couple of minutes later by Toby, whose face showed only the signs of someone with no cares in the world, about to enjoy many libations with his best mate.

‘Where are we starting, Tobe?’ said Leon as they strolled along the High Street past its many pound and discount stores, charity shops and fast-food outlets.

‘I thought we’d try the Blue Bar to begin with.’

‘Bit wanky in there, isn’t it?’

‘Wanky but quiet this time of the night. We can sit at the bar and you can stare at that barmaid with the big tits.’

‘She thinks I’m creepy.’

‘You are creepy. You keep staring at her chest. Once she gets to know you, she’ll change her mind and be putty in your hands.’

Toby carried on walking, feeling as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, before he realized that Leon was not beside him. He slowed and looked back over his shoulder to see that
his friend had drawn to a stop and was being swallowed up by a hen party wearing little except for pink-fur-trimmed cowboy hats and their underwear on a chilly November evening.

Toby stood rooted to the spot, worried that he had underestimated the toughest, most resilient person he knew. Leon’s expression was a blank, although that was usually the first sign of
trouble.

He gave the twenty or so scantily clad women time to walk past as they whooped and shouted before he made his way back to his stationary friend.

‘Something is definitely wrong,’ Toby said. ‘You didn’t even glance at those girls and most of them weren’t wearing skirts.’

Leon looked down at his feet, or in that direction as his eyes probably only got as far as his burger-sauce-stained belly.

‘That’s the problem, you see,’ he mumbled.

‘What’s the problem? No skirts?’

‘No, no, you don’t get it, do you?’ he said, looking up. ‘You’ve got a wife and two fantastic kids. I don’t have anyone.’

It had been a difficult day and Toby usually had time for his friend’s maudlin attitude towards being single, but tonight should be the night of all nights that they let their hair down
and didn’t get depressed about anything.

Toby stopped short of sighing and put a reassuring hand on his friend’s arm.

‘There’ll be someone for you one day, Dill. I promise.’

‘It’s not that,’ Leon said, shaking his head. ‘You’ve got a wife who will probably forgive you for just about anything. How do I ever meet someone who’ll
understand and accept everything that’s happened to me?’

‘I don’t know, mate, I’m sorry. I really don’t know but let’s at least go and get a drink and talk inside.’

Toby watched Leon lumber towards the Blue Bar, worried more than ever about his friend and how life would be for him from now on.

One thing Harry knew only too well was that with every year that passed it was more of a struggle to recover from a missed night’s sleep. Even though he enjoyed what he
did, arriving at a crime scene, a dead body, sometimes more than one, trying to fit the pieces together and work out who thought they had the God-given right to take another’s life, it took
its toll. If he was honest, the groundwork was all done by the detective constables and civilian investigators anyway. Now that he’d been promoted, he managed and oversaw the investigation.
He was more than capable of nicking someone, but beyond that he only had a basic idea of how to put the paperwork together and get the investigation towards the court system. He always left that
bit to the DCs. Most of the time, it was for the best.

He pushed this thought from his mind as he turned off the engine and looked up at the front of his house. He could make out the dim light of his wife’s bedside lamp through a crack in the
curtains. That immediately annoyed him.

The memory of their row in the department store was engraved on his mind, despite it being over five years ago: she had insisted on ordering the most expensive made-to-measure curtains, fully
lined with blackout material to ensure eight hours’ shut-eye. And she never closed them properly.

‘Two bloody grand,’ he murmured to himself as he got out of the car and fumbled in his pockets for his door keys.

He tried to keep as quiet as possible, but he was clumsy and usually made more noise when he attempted to creep around the house. All too often, he was chided for not putting something back when
he had finished with it. Some of his wife’s complaints were well founded.

Harry glanced up at the kitchen clock, saw with surprise that it was after three in the morning and wavered between putting the kettle on and pouring himself a whisky. The trouble with whisky
was that one was never enough, and he was in need of sleep, so he opted for a glass of milk.

He stood leaning against the kitchen cupboard, eyes closed, thoughts turned to decades before when a glass of milk was a childhood comfort, no space in his head then for mutilated bodies, raped
children, sexually exploited young girls, paedophiles and their murderers.

He downed the rest of the milk, wiped his hand across his mouth and felt his way in the darkness of the hall to the stairs.

Three steps from the bottom, he was able to make out a sliver of light from under the master bedroom’s door. He hoped that by now his wife had realized that he was home and at least done
the decent thing and was pretending to be asleep. Luck clearly wasn’t with him tonight. He was going to have to talk to her.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he said as he pushed the door open. She was lying on her side, long blonde hair swept back, a book about the partition of India and Pakistan held in front of her
face. ‘You look both beautiful and intelligent, as ever.’

Her features hardened as she dropped the book and glared at him.

‘What’s made you late this time?’ she said.

‘Murder,’ he answered as he hung his jacket up.

The conversations always went like this when he got home in the middle of the night. She knew what his job as detective inspector involved, and so he couldn’t for the life of him work out
what it was she expected him to talk about.

Trying his best to avoid a row, he sat on his side of the bed, his back to her, as he removed his shoes, socks and tie. Harry dawdled deliberately, hoping that by some miracle by the time he was
ready to stand up and take his trousers off she would have lost interest in his day and would want to talk about something else. Or if the gods really were picking him as their favourite, would
even want sex. That last bit was too much to hope for, but avoiding a row still had a slim chance.

‘And don’t roll your bloody socks into a ball.’

Her words were accompanied by the sound of her turning over, then the click of the light switch.

Harry stood in the darkness next to the bed, the trousers he had already undone now around his ankles.

Sex was certainly off.

Saturday 6 November

The following morning’s briefing took some time. Both police officers and civilian investigators had been called in on their days off to supplement the meagre number of
staff on weekend cover. There was a time when the senior investigating officer would have had his or her pick of the entire department, but as the overtime rate was now slashed by twenty-five per
cent most preferred to keep their days off. So the conference room was made up of the usual people who never turned down a bit of extra pay and those who felt too guilty to ignore their ringing
phones when off duty.

Eventually the DI said, ‘We’ve covered all we need to and everyone’s had a chance to raise issues. Has anyone got anything else they want to say?’

Harry looked around the room at each member of staff in turn. Each of them shook their head at him.

Once again, DCI Barbara Venice had been in the conference room with them. It wasn’t unusual for someone of a higher rank to attend another officer’s briefing, but it was a little odd
for her to arrive after it had started, sit at the back, say nothing and then leave without a word.

‘If that’s it,’ he said, ‘you all know what you’re doing and I’d like to talk about staffing with the DS.’

He remained in his seat at the top of the table with Sandra Beckinsale, his stony-faced detective sergeant, next to him.

Once they were alone in the conference room, the noise of stampeding staff making for the toilets and kitchen in the background, Harry started with, ‘We need more staff. Six would do
it.’

‘No,’ she said with a shake of her head that made her jowl wobble, ‘we won’t get six.’

‘Well, let’s ask for six and we’ll probably get four. We ask for four, we’ll get two.’

‘Fine.’ She made a note in her book and looked at Harry with a blank expression.

‘How are you settling in to Major Crime?’ he said.

‘Fine.’

‘Any problems?’

‘No.’

For the couple of weeks she had been working in Major Crime, Sandra Beckinsale’s force-wide reputation for being professional and hard-working had already shone right through, unlike her
personality. No one so far had got a glimpse of that.

‘I’ll ask for more staff,’ she said as she closed her notebook. ‘I’ll get on to that as soon as I’ve given out these other enquiries. And DC Rainer’s
back from his holiday on Monday. I’ll earmark Pierre for outside enquiries and we’ve the new DC, Hazel Hamilton, starting then too.’

She paused.

‘That’s if you’ve finished, sir?’

Harry nodded as he wondered why some people were such hard work.

‘Yeah, of course,’ he said as she got up to leave the room.

Within minutes Sandra Beckinsale had almost finished giving out the work she wanted completed; that was all except two enquiries.

She found DC Delayhoyde at his desk searching through his notebook for something.