The Reckoning Page 4

‘I thought the two of you got on.’

  ‘We did. But he was always quiet. Only spoke when he had something to say.’ He pulled the plug out of the sink. It made loud choking sounds as the water drained out. From the look on Gordon’s face, he had approved of his brother-in-law’s reserve. Derwent stepped closer, making Gordon move back until he came up against the cooker and couldn’t retreat any further.

  ‘You can’t have trusted him though. Given what he was. Did you really want him living here or was that just something you said to keep the peace with the missus?’

  ‘I’d have been all right with it.’

  ‘All right with it? All right with leaving him alone with your daughter? Or even your son? People change in prison, Graham. They try out different things. Barry might have developed a taste for young boys. Would you really have been happy to turn your back on him?’

  ‘I didn’t mind Barry.’ The man’s voice was toneless, his face stony. He picked up a tea towel and dried his hands, not hurrying. ‘I’ve known him for a long time – before all of this happened. I was there at the trial, when I could be. I heard the evidence. You didn’t.’

  Derwent stayed where he was for a second, eyes narrowed, considering what Gordon had said. Then he rocked back on his heels with a laugh. ‘Just pushing your buttons, mate. Just trying to see what you really thought of him.’

  ‘Well, now you know.’ Gordon flipped the tea towel onto his shoulder. ‘You also know where the front door is. I’ll let you see yourselves out.’

  Derwent made as if to leave, then turned back. ‘Seriously, though – did your kids see much of Uncle Barry?’

  Gordon’s nostrils flared and his face became suffused with blood. ‘You’re not talking to my kids. No fucking way.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no, then. Don’t feel bad, mate. I wouldn’t have wanted them spending time with him either, if I’d been in your shoes.’

  I thought Gordon was going to lash out at Derwent. Despite my very real desire to see the inspector knocked into the middle of next week, I didn’t want to have to arrest Vera’s husband for assault on a police officer the day her brother’s murder was discovered. I stepped forward smartly.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Gordon. Sir, you wanted to visit that other location before our next interview. I don’t think we’ll have time unless we go now.’

  I sounded apologetic and looked meek, and Derwent had the sense to take the opportunity to leave with his face intact. Graham Gordon followed us out of the kitchen but headed upstairs instead of coming to the front door. I could hear voices as I reached in to close the front door behind us: a brief question from his wife that received an even briefer answer. I didn’t have to wonder if he would tell her what had happened in the kitchen. He would protect her from it, just as he’d allowed her to think that he didn’t mind her brother being around the children. Because part of his problem with Derwent’s questions was that they had hit a nerve. He had been relieved that Barry had refused to come and live with them. Maybe he hadn’t pressed the point with him. Maybe he’d backed him up against Vera, drowning out her objections. Anything for a quiet life. And now he had to be regretting it.

  Grief was hard to bear. Grief overlaid with shame was harder still.

  I waited until we were in the car before I tackled Derwent. ‘What was the point in that?

  ‘What – pissing him off? Nothing, really. Just wondering what made him tick.’

  ‘Why? He’s not a suspect.’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘Well, we do in this case. Vera Gordon said they didn’t know Ivan Tremlett. They’d have no reason to want him dead, even if they wanted to get rid of Barry – and it doesn’t actually sound like they had much to do with him anyway. He didn’t come around; he didn’t bother them.’

  ‘Mm.’ Derwent sounded distracted as he moved off, still poking at the sat nav mounted on the dashboard. ‘Don’t discount the fact that they’ve got the house now. Clean it up, sell it off – nice little lump sum for them. Bit of financial stability never hurt anyone.’

  ‘You can’t think that they killed Barry so they could get their hands on the house.’

  ‘As it happens, I don’t.’ He jammed his hand on the horn, blaring a warning to a Renault that was thinking about pulling out in front of us. ‘But you never know what you might shake loose by being a bit firm with people. That softly-softly-pretty-please approach might work for you now, but it won’t when you get a bit older and lose your looks.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that.’

  ‘You’re not angry?’ He sounded surprised – maybe a shade disappointed too.

  ‘Should I be?’ The truthful answer to that was yes. Having tasted blood in his encounter with Graham Gordon he seemed to be determined to provoke me and I was equally determined not to let him.

  ‘I don’t suppose so. I’m glad you’ve got a sense of humour, anyway. Godley didn’t mention that when he told me about you.’

  I wanted more than anything to ask what the boss had said – if he’d mentioned that I’d nearly got myself killed the previous year, or if he’d concentrated on whether I was a good police officer. I looked out of the window, saying nothing.

  ‘Don’t you want to know the details?’

  And if I had asked, Derwent would have taken pleasure in telling me the conversation was confidential. I shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine he had much to say. I haven’t worked for him for very long.’

  ‘Long enough for a guy like Godley to draw some fairly sharp conclusions about you.’

  ‘That sounds positive.’ I spoke lightly, but I was shrinking in my seat. There was a lot to criticise, after all. The most he’d had to do with me was on a case where I had ended up in hospital by blundering into the wrong place at the wrong time. Then I had been completely wrong-headed about a suspect and nearly missed catching the real murderer as a result. Not my finest hour.

  ‘He said you were intuitive and brave. He said you’d go to the ends of the earth to catch someone who needed locking up.’ Derwent looked at me, trying to see if I was embarrassed. ‘He said you were getting an award for something that happened last year. You saved another officer’s life.’

  ‘Only by chance. That was nothing to be proud of.’

  ‘Yeah, he said you’d say that.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I think he wanted me to understand why he’d put you on this case.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘These aren’t the most attractive victims, are they? Convicted criminals. And not just any criminals – the lowest of the low. Perverts. There are plenty of coppers who wouldn’t bother their arses trying to find whoever’s killing nonces. They’d be more likely to celebrate the fact that someone’s cleaning house in this neighbourhood. You’ve got too much empathy to be like that. I saw you in Palmer’s house. You were upset by what happened to him.’

  ‘Wasn’t everyone?’

  ‘In a basic I’m-glad-that-wasn’t-me kind of way. You were imagining what his life was like and how he felt when he was being attacked. You care.’

  He sneered the last two words like an insult and despite myself the colour came into my cheeks. Having got a reaction, Derwent seemed to relax.

  ‘I’m just taking the piss. It’s a good thing to be able to imagine yourself in the place of the victim, even if the victim is a forty-something freak with child abuse convictions.’

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight, okay? I’m not that different from other coppers. I’m not a fan of paedophiles. But from what his sister said, Palmer could have been somewhere on the autistic spectrum even if he was never formally diagnosed. He was vulnerable to being accused of all sorts of deviant behaviour. That sort of allegation is difficult to face down even if you are articulate and able to cope with life, which, according to his sister, he wasn’t.’

  ‘Yeah. Poor bloke didn’t have much of a chance.’

  ‘Vera was pretty convinced he was innocent, but he was found guilty. Yo
u know more about him than I do. What was the truth of it?’

  He grunted. ‘I spoke to the officer in the case earlier, before we left the nick. The whole thing was bullshit. Fair enough, Palmer got convicted, but the trial was during a massive scare about paedophiles, just after a little girl got raped and murdered by a neighbour in Lancashire. Juries were convicting everyone who was on trial for sex crimes, no matter how flimsy the evidence was, and the sentences they were getting … well, none of the judges wanted to be on the front page of the Daily Mail for letting them off lightly. They threw the book at them.’

  ‘If the case was bullshit, what was he doing in court in the first place?’

  ‘The CPS were scared to drop it. It was all political – no one wanted to make the judgement that the alleged victims were lying so they passed it along the line all the way to the Crown Court. The two kids had totally different stories, although the abuse was supposed to have happened to them when they were together. They kept changing their accounts, even when they were giving evidence in court. The prosecution barrister had to do some fancy footwork to make it look as if what they’d said matched up with what he’d promised in his opening speech.’

  ‘And they wouldn’t have been given a hard time by Palmer’s brief.’

  ‘No. Too young for a tough cross-examination and the jury would have hated it anyway. You heard what Vera said – it was video-link testimony. Ever been in court when kids are giving evidence about abuse? No? It’s embarrassing. Wigs off. Gowns off. The barristers and judge cooing, all gentle and understanding. Everyone pretending like there’s nothing strange going on, nothing to worry about. Give me strength.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re on the side of the defendant.’ I’d met more unicorns than coppers who had tears to shed for the man or woman in the dock.

  Derwent laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. But I hate those cases where you’ve got a witness who’s obviously spinning a tale and no one challenges them on it. I’d rather not take a shit case to court, even if I was pretty sure of a win. I’ve seen barristers lose cases they should have won because the jury ignored the evidence, and I’ve seen them win when they shouldn’t have, and I don’t like either one, to be honest with you. I like to play fair.’

  I filed it away as an interesting insight into Derwent’s character. I’d have said he was the type to want to win at all costs. It was going to be important to get the measure of him, if we were going to have to work long hours together. I needed to be careful not to make assumptions about him just because he was an awkward sod. Godley had brought him on to the team for a reason. I just needed to work out what that reason was, because it would make my working life a lot easier.

  ‘Well, innocent or guilty, going to prison was probably the best thing for Palmer. At least he was protected there. He seemed to have survived prison intact only to get targeted on the outside.’ Child abusers were the least popular members of the prison population but were generally kept away from other prisoners. It was when he had come out and attempted to start his life again that things had spiralled all the way through bullying and intimidation to murder. ‘It sounds as if he was a victim of other people’s prejudices long before he was murdered, so yeah, I do feel sorry for him. And anyway, regardless of what he had or hadn’t done, no one deserves to die that way.’

  We were stopped at a junction, waiting to turn right, so Derwent was able to indulge himself in a slow handclap. ‘Well said. If policing doesn’t work out for you, maybe you could consider a career in the law. That sort of thing would have a judge sobbing into his wig.’

  ‘You sound like my mother. She always wanted me to become a lawyer.’

  ‘Not happy that her darling girl became a policewoman?’

  I shook my head. ‘She’d have liked to be able to boast about me if I was a solicitor or a barrister. But she’d have been just as happy if I’d become a doctor or a vet.’

  ‘Is she Irish?’

  ‘Yes. Dad too. But I was born in London.’

  ‘I noticed the accent. Or lack of one. Not that you could pretend to be anything other than Irish with a name like that.’ Another glance across the car. ‘Besides, you look Irish. A fine Irish colleen.’

  If there was one thing I hated, it was being called a colleen. There was a world of difference between it and the phrase that had sounded like music through my childhood, cailín alainn, used by both of my parents as a term of endearment, my lovely girl. In their mouths it was loving – in Derwent’s, pure condescension. Eight hundred years of unwanted attention echoed through those two syllables.

  More than anything, I regretted the fact that I didn’t speak Irish myself. I knew a few phrases but I didn’t have that understanding that came from thinking in a language, knowing a culture from the inside out. And it didn’t help that my cousins in Ireland whined about having to learn the language in school, hated every second they were made to speak it, and devoted as much energy to forgetting it as they ever had to committing it to memory in the first place. They still had it, and I didn’t. The fact was, I was Irish to English people and English to Irish people and I never truly felt I belonged in either society, but that wouldn’t stop someone like Derwent categorising me based on his own preconceptions. And he was absolutely the sort to find Irish jokes funny. He might not have made any yet, but I was steeling myself for them; he’d make them, in time.

  I settled for responding with, ‘I’m not exactly the typical Irish girl. I don’t have red hair and freckles.’

  ‘Those grey eyes are like the Irish Sea on a cloudy day. You couldn’t be anything else.’

  ‘How poetic.’ My voice was pure acid.

  ‘That’s me.’ He began humming tunelessly under his breath and I slowly realised it was intended to be ‘Molly Malone’.

  ‘She was from Dublin. My parents are from the country.’

  ‘Don’t know any other Irish songs. Sorry.’

  ‘My loss, I’m sure.’

  ‘Just wait until you hear my version of “My Way”. I’ll take you out some time. We can have a few beers and you can hold my coat while I take on the karaoke machine.’

  It would be a cold day in hell before I socialised with Josh Derwent. ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

  ‘What is it – jealous boyfriend? He wouldn’t like you going out for drinks with another man?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Don’t tell me a girl like you is single.’

  I hesitated, not sure how to answer that one. Technically, yes. Emotionally, no. And it certainly wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with the inspector. ‘Let’s just say it’s complicated. And not relevant.’

  ‘Oh, so there’s a story.’ Another sidelong glance, this time accompanied by a wide grin that showed lots of white teeth. It was like a dog’s smile. ‘You don’t have to talk to me about it, but be warned, I’ll find out.’

  ‘There’s nothing to find out. It’s just not clear-cut, that’s all. And it’s not the reason why we won’t be going out, sir.’

  Eyebrows raised. ‘Sir? Are we back to being formal? You can call me Josh.’

  I was beginning to think Derwent had misunderstood the concept of a charm offensive. ‘I’d rather not … boss. No offence. I’d just rather keep things professional. I like to keep work about work. I don’t socialise very often with colleagues.’ Apart from the one I occasionally sleep with, obviously.

  ‘I get it. You’re serious about your job. I should take you seriously.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘That’s the other thing Godley said about you, actually. That I shouldn’t underestimate you.’ He glanced at me sardonically. ‘He’s a big fan.’

  ‘So that’s why he’s put me on the case from hell.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘That’s a point. You’ve told me why I’ve got this one. Why did he put you on it too?’

  ‘Because I’m new to the team and no one else would have wanted it.’ A beat. ‘And
because I’m really, really good at my job. Godley trusts me to get this guy, so that’s what I’m going to do.’

  ‘I admire your confidence.’

  ‘It’s justified. I will catch him.’ He sounded certain. ‘I might hold off until he’s crossed another few paedos off his list though. Because Barry Palmer may have been innocent, but Ivan Tremlett pleaded guilty, and he’s no loss to anyone.’

  That grin again, and I felt increasingly uneasy. It wasn’t a dog’s smile at all.

  It was a wolf’s.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Welcome to Sidley Street, home of the Kwik Kleen Laundrette and Ivan Tremlett’s office, and roughly four-fifths of a mile from Barry Palmer’s house. And we’ll be lucky if we can get parked in this borough, let alone near the crime scene.’

  Derwent was only slightly exaggerating. The road was too narrow to allow for parking beside both kerbs so there were cars on one side of the street only and spaces were hard to come by. He crawled along looking for gaps in the bumper-to-bumper chain of cars, finding only double-yellow lines and loading bays. A hundred yards ahead of us a van pulled out and Derwent stamped on the accelerator to get there before anyone else could steal the spot. I decided not to complain about whiplash, judging that he wouldn’t be sympathetic. As he parked, I looked across the street. By chance we had stopped almost opposite the laundrette. It occupied a central site in a parade of down-at-heel shops with flats and offices on the floors above them. The buildings were red-brick Victorian originally, but a 1980s refurbishment had distinguished the laundrette with blue plastic signing decorated with bubbles. The big plate-glass window was steamed up and I could hardly make out the shapes of the machines from where I was sitting. I could see how those inside might not have noticed anything strange taking place on the street, or in the offices above them. Even if they’d been looking.

  My eyes tracked upwards to the three windows on the first floor. Behind them lay the rooms where Ivan Tremlett had been tortured to death, but from the outside they were blandly anonymous. It was only with a second glance that the signs of an active police investigation became apparent. The windows were covered with makeshift paper blinds and the door was tied off with Police Do No Enter tape. The SOCOs had finished with it, though, and all was quiet. There was no sign of any police presence, apart from the two of us. Nor was there any sign of anyone showing any interest in the building, or what had happened there. Tremlett had lived and died in almost total obscurity, and I wondered what had brought his killers to the narrow, dusty door that led to his offices.