The Bad Things (23 page)

‘I do.’

They listened to the sound of the wind.

‘So Glithro’s coming on board then?’ said Steve.

Kate rolled her eyes. ‘Seems so. God, things don’t get any easier, do they? Bloody Glithro.’

‘Hmm. He’s not a bad copper.’

‘If you were policing in the last century.’

Steve barked out a laugh. ‘I know what you mean – he doesn’t have a lot of time for the pc brigade but he’s got good instincts. It could be worse.’

‘How?’ she asked gloomily.

‘The Artist might have wanted to get his hands dirty.’

Kate shuddered. ‘Get more involved you mean? Thank Christ it hasn’t come to that is all I can say.’

‘There you are, you see. Could have been worse. Here’s Clements now.’ He pointed as another car drew up beside them in the car park. ‘I’d rather you didn’t venture too far though; I don’t trust him further than I could throw him.’

Kate laughed. ‘I think you’d have to get in better shape if you wanted to throw Jez Clements anywhere.’ She pulled on her gloves before opening the car door and getting out, gathering her trench coat around herself in a vain attempt to keep out the cold.

‘Maybe. He patted his not inconsiderable waist. ‘But at least the padding keeps out the cold. Look, he’s a slippery bugger. And why he wanted to meet here in the forest is beyond me.’ He shook his head in disbelief.

‘Neutral territory, Steve. Not the office, not the town, or anywhere we might be seen. That was the deal. I think he already feels compromised and being seen with me could put the final nail in his coffin.’

‘Hmmph. As I said, be careful, Ma’am. It gets a bit isolated once you get out of the car park area.’

Kate looked up at the trees that surrounded them. ‘I know. It’s almost like something from Stephen King, but don’t worry I will be fine – I’m not sixteen anymore, you know.’ She grinned as she shut the car door, then turned to meet Jez Clements.

He had obviously scrubbed up for his meeting with her – clean jeans, walking boots, a decent duffel coat. He’d had a shave and washed his hair, and Kate could see what it was that women liked about him.

‘Thanks for agreeing to meet here, Detective Inspector.’

Even his manner was different – less confrontational, more deferential. ‘That’s okay. I can understand you not wanting to meet at HQ or in Sole Bay.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And you may as well call me Kate while we’re out here.’

He nodded. ‘Okay. What about the goon?’

‘The goon?’ Then she realized who she meant, particularly, as when she glanced over Steve was glaring at them. ‘He just likes to look out for me, that’s all. Says if I’m not back before dark he’ll come looking for us. Just so you know.’ She gave him a brief smile, then looked around. ‘Shall we go up this path here? If we follow it round we’ll eventually get back to the car park.’

The forest-floor detritus crunched beneath their feet and the wind whistled through the trees as they walked.

‘I love it here,’ said Kate eventually. ‘You sort of feel as though you could get lost but you don’t really because all the paths eventually lead to a road. Sometimes you see deer, too.’

‘And you get ticks from them that suck your blood.’

She glanced across at him. ‘Well, yes, I suppose. I don’t tend to think about that.’

‘Ah, well, Detective Insp…I mean Kate…for every good thing there is the opposite. I’ve learned that over time.’

‘Look,’ she said, stepping over a pile of horseshit and thinking she might as well get on with it, ‘I’m sorry you feel that you have been kept out of the loop. That’s what you said, isn’t it? That nobody was telling you what was happening?’

Jez put his hands in his pockets. ‘It’s bloody freezing here, isn’t it.’

‘Yes. Well?’

Jez stopped, looked up at the sky. ‘Have you got children, Kate?’

Her heart gave the familiar clench that happened whenever she was asked that question. ‘No.’

He turned and looked at her. ‘Pity. Might make you less hard.’

She blinked at him. Was that how she came across? Some sort of hard bitch? She had never imagined herself in that way. ‘Really?’ She tried to inject sarcasm into her voice, though she wasn’t sure whether she succeeded.

‘You’re known as the ball-breaker by some, did you know that?’

‘Really?’ she said again. ‘I think that’s their problem, not mine. Next time you hear that, tell them to look at their own inadequacies.’ For fuck’s sake, this was the twenty-first century; she couldn’t be doing with those sorts of views. She thought they’d got past that – evidently not.

‘If you did have children you might know something about what we felt, what we still feel. About Harry and Millie.’ He walked on. The noise of the wind changed from a whistle to a moan and the sky looked even more threatening. ‘You don’t know what it was like, what it’s still like. The questions, the memories. I not only lost the children, but I lost Sasha as well. I loved those children. Loved them. I would have died for them. Now there are no birthdays to celebrate, no weddings to plan or partners to like or hate.’ He shook his head. ‘You lose your future when you lose your children.’ There was raw suffering on his face.

She didn’t say anything.

‘Sasha’s parents didn’t approve of me, you know.’

‘Oh?’ She wanted to let him talk.

‘No. We met while Sasha was still at school. I’d been going out with Alex. Not in any serious way. Her parents had tolerated me because she was going off to university and they thought it would fizzle out. And it would have done. But then I got with Sasha. She was fed up of having to follow in Alex’s footsteps, of Alex being held up as an example to her, a goody two shoes if you like, so she latched on to me.’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘I was from the council estate and wanted to be a copper. Her parents went apeshit and did their best to dissuade Sasha from being with me—’

‘But the more they tried, the more she wanted to be with you.’

Jez looked at her. ‘Yeah. How did you guess?’

‘It’s an old story, Jez. Trying to dissuade your daughter from being with the bad boy drives her even further into his arms.’

‘That certainly happened. Then she got pregnant and…’ He fell silent.

‘And?’

‘Nothing. And nothing.’ He shook himself. ‘Look, I get that you’re sorry if me and Sash feel out of the loop. The truth is, we do feel as though things are going on and nobody’s telling us. Maybe we don’t really have a right to know how the investigation into Wood’s murder is going as it’s probably got nothing to do with what happened fifteen years ago.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Kate said sharply.

He stopped. ‘What do you mean?’

How much of her hand to show? ‘I heard that Martin Jessop had another lover, mistress, whatever you like to call her, and that there was a cover-up so that the fact didn’t get out into the public domain. I heard that you were involved in the cover-up.’ All her hand, obviously.

He laughed and shook his head. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got that one from, I really don’t, but it’s bollocks. Me involved in a cover-up? I was just a green constable then, how could I have done that?’

‘Is it bollocks?’

‘Complete and utter bollocks. And why would I want to cover anything up anyway?’

‘That’s the question I’ve been asking myself, Jez. What is it you wanted to keep from people?’

‘I didn’t want to keep anything from anybody you stupid—’ He managed to rein himself in. ‘All I wanted was to bring the murderers to justice. But then Jessop topped himself and fifteen years later Wood gets let out on a technicality. What do you think that’s done to Sasha? And now you’re accusing me of some sort of cover-up. Though what Martin Jessop having some other fancy woman besides that bitch – if he even did – has got to do with anything, I don’t know.’

‘It’s the cover-up I’m most interested in at the moment.’

‘What fucking cover-up? Who was the sad fuck gave you the idea there was any cover-up in the first place?’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes and she thought he protested a bit too much.

‘I have it on good authority,’ she said patiently, hoping she didn’t sound too pompous.

‘Fuck that.’

She sensed she wasn’t going to get any further with that line of attack so tried a different approach. ‘Jez. I want to help you, I really do, but I can’t unless you give me something. If you are involved then, well, perhaps there’s a good reason. But I can’t help you and Sasha unless you tell me.’

‘Leave Sasha out of this.’ He was breathing hard now.

‘I will as far as I can, but I can’t promise anything.’

‘This has brought back all the bad memories for her, you know.’

Kate thought of the cuts on Sasha’s arms, of her hollow eyes and haunted look. ‘Do you really think they ever went away?’

He walked on ahead of her.

Bugger. She wasn’t handling this at all well. ‘At least give me the name of the woman you say you were with on the evening Jackie Wood was murdered,’ she called.

He stopped, turned and walked back, taking his phone out of his pocket. He thrust it underneath her nose. ‘There it is, there’s the number. And I don’t
say
I was with her, I bloody well was with her. You can call her now. Her name’s Alice, Alice McSweeney. And then let that be an end to it because I don’t want her name dragged through the mud.’

She looked at him. ‘Don’t be stupid, Jez, it doesn’t work like that as well you know. She could say anything over the phone, I’d still have to send someone round to see her. You need to tell me where she lives. If you’re telling the truth and she’s telling the truth then we can rule you out of the list of suspects for Jackie Wood’s killing.’

‘Fine. It’s The Lodge on the Leiston Road. You can’t miss it. Please be discreet, for her sake if not mine. Her husband’s a councillor or something.’

‘We will be. Thank you.’

‘So you haven’t got anyone for the murder then? No one’s in the frame? Not that I particularly care. Better now she’s dead.’

‘She was innocent.’

‘Good old British justice, hey?’

‘We will find who killed her.’

‘Good luck with that.’ He stamped his feet. ‘Are we done now?’

Their walk had brought them back round to where the cars were parked. ‘Unless there’s anything else you want to tell me? Anything that might help?’

‘No.’ He pointed his key fob at his car, unlocking the doors, and began to walk towards it.

‘What about Edward Grainger?’ she said to his departing back.

Was it her imagination or did he break his stride? ‘What about him?’ he asked, getting into his car.

‘He tried to bury the fact that Jessop had someone he was seeing. In secret. You helped him, I heard.’

‘Bollocks, Detective Inspector.’

‘I don’t believe it is.’

‘Tough.’

He drove off.

24

It was a miracle that Alex managed to drive back to Sole Bay without crashing into anybody or being stopped for careless driving, such were the myriad of thoughts going round and round in her head. There was one sombre moment when she found herself drifting into oncoming traffic, and it was only the screeching blare of a horn that made her wrench the wheel over at the last minute. She had to stop by the side of the road then, body drenched in sweat, heart racing, unable to stop thinking about Angela Jessop. All these years on her own, bringing up two children, coping with the stigma of having a murderer as a husband. And the diary – what had Martin written in that goddamn diary? What secrets might it reveal? Not just about their relationship, but the things she used to tell him. Maybe he’d written those down too.

She was still in a world of her own when she pulled up outside her house, the streetlight reflecting off the wet pavement.

‘Mum.’ Gus hissed at her as she opened the front door. ‘We’ve got visitors.’

‘Visitors?’ She hung up her coat and gave Gus a kiss on the cheek before he could flinch away. ‘Who’s that? Carly? Did you have a good time? What did you see at the flicks? How did you get back?’ She gave him what she hoped was a bright smile, wanting to banish the dark thoughts from her head.

‘We walked from the station. Look Mum, never mind that. It’s that journalist guy who stopped me when Jackie Wood first got out of prison. And some woman who says she knows you from the caravan site. Who are they Mum? What are they doing here?’

Alex’s heart began to flutter and she felt sweat on her palms. ‘Ed Killingback?’

‘Yeah, that’s his name. He wanted to speak to me but I told him to fuck off.’

‘Gus.’

‘Sorry, Mum, but that’s what you’d have said. Anyway, he said he’d wait for you.’

‘And he’s in there with that woman Nikki?’ At the thought of the woman from the caravan opposite to Jackie Wood she felt sick. Her stomach swooped and dived. Alex had known at the time she hadn’t heard the last of her, and now Nikki Adams was here, closeted in her house with a fucking tabloid journalist.

‘She didn’t tell me her name. Mum, are you okay? You’ve gone as white as a sheet. What are they doing here, Mum?’

‘Did they come together?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s a simple question, Gus.’ Fear made her short-tempered. ‘Did they arrive together?’

‘No, I don’t think so. The journalist guy came in a car – I saw him park it – and I think the woman walked here. Said she’d found the house easily.’

That was something, at least. ‘Where’s Malone? Have you seen him?’

‘Yeah. He’s in there with them.’

Her heart settled down to a less frantic beat and she began to breathe more easily. He would keep the lid on things.

‘Mum? What is it? You’re scaring me.’

Alex looked at his anxious face and found her voice. ‘I just don’t like journalists bothering us at home, especially not him. He’s a parasite and I don’t trust him. He keeps wanting my story, our story, and I’m not giving it. Thank God Malone’s there. Were they on their own for long before Malone arrived?’

Gus shook his head. ‘No. He came in a couple of minutes after me and Carly got back.’ He blushed furiously.

‘That’s all right, darling. Are you two okay?’

‘We’re just upstairs listening to some music.’