The Reckoning Page 6

  ‘That was my next question. How did you convince yourself he was innocent when he pleaded guilty?’

  ‘He was advised to plead guilty because it looked, on the face of it, as if he’d downloaded hundreds of images to his work account. But it was a set-up. One of his subordinates wanted his job and framed him. She had access to his password because she used to do bits and pieces for him when he was out of the office. She logged in as him – pretended to be him in chat rooms and forums that were about child abuse. She left a trail all over the Internet. It was easy for the police to follow it once they were tipped off. Ivan said that if it had been him, he would at least have made a token effort to cover his tracks, but no one listened – not the company, not the police, not the CPS. And that bitch got his job when he was kicked out, so she was happy.’ Claudia was flushed now, her eyes glittering as she spat out the last sentence.

  ‘Presumably you couldn’t prove any of this.’ Derwent sounded dubious.

  ‘She was too careful, Ivan couldn’t get anything on her. And the managing director flatly refused to believe she had been responsible. I found it hard too. I’d met her a couple of times – she’d come to dinner in our house. She even rang me after the conviction to tell me how sorry she was for me. As if I wanted her pity.’ She shook her head. ‘Ivan trusted her and so did I. That was the only mistake we made and it’s cost us everything.’

  ‘Why didn’t your husband fight the case?’ he asked.

  ‘Our solicitor was totally incompetent. She told Ivan the evidence was damning and his explanation wouldn’t hold up in court. She said that if he pleaded guilty at the first opportunity he’d get a reduced sentence – maybe even a suspended sentence. She said there wouldn’t be any long-term consequences if we got it all over with quickly. So Ivan pleaded guilty and got eighteen months, although he served only half of it. Then he got out and no one was interested in employing him. No one would return his calls. His career was dead. But Ivan never gave up. My father lent him the money to set up on his own and he worked tirelessly to pay it back. Gradually, he made something of this.’ She gestured at the door that hid her husband’s office from view. ‘It doesn’t look like much, but he was doing well. He was clever. Too clever to work for other people, actually. He was better off on his own.’

  It sounded to me as if he had been a difficult employee. It also sounded as if he had been guilty. The story about his subordinate didn’t ring true to me any more than it had to his managing director, and I didn’t even know the girl. People did tend to assume they were invisible on the Internet. Even the technologically sophisticated like Ivan Tremlett could underestimate how easy it was to trace them, to follow their progress into the dark places where horrors were shared and sold, and to prove it in court. And thank God they did make that mistake, because it made our job that much easier.

  ‘He was quite devoted to his routine, by all accounts.’ I kept my voice gentle, a counterpoint to Derwent’s head-on approach. ‘Was that why you became concerned yesterday evening?’

  ‘He was like clockwork. You could plan your day around him. I did, actually.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘The boys had their tea when he came home. We both thought it was important for them to spend time with us, so we would sit at the table with them and talk while they ate.’

  ‘Was he good with them?’

  She was on her guard immediately, staring at Derwent with hostile eyes. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Just that he had this place so he could get away from the boys, didn’t he? Did he find them annoying?’

  ‘From time to time. When he was trying to concentrate.’ Her body slackened, the tension leaving it slowly. But I thought she knew, as I did, that Derwent’s question about Ivan Tremlett’s relationship with his sons had been a pointed one. I wondered if she had trusted him enough to leave him alone with them, and the next thing she said answered that question neatly.

  ‘My mother lives with us. There’s a granny flat in the basement. She moved in when Ivan was arrested and she’s never left.’

  ‘What does your father make of that?’

  She looked uncomprehending. ‘Why should he care? Oh – I see. You couldn’t have known. They’re divorced. They split when I was eight. Both of them married again, then both of them got divorced again. Dad’s on wife number three but Mum never bothered with meeting anyone else. She said two failed marriages was enough.’

  ‘Are you an only child?’ I asked.

  ‘Sort of. I have four half-siblings from Dad’s other marriages, but I was Mum’s only child.’

  ‘The two of you must be close.’

  ‘We are. Very.’ Her face softened. ‘It’s wonderful for me and the boys, having her so close. They adore her.’

  ‘What did your husband think of the arrangement? It’s not every man who’d be pleased to find his mother-in-law had moved in to his house while his back was turned.’ Derwent again, characteristically direct.

  ‘He didn’t complain.’ That didn’t mean he’d liked it, and Claudia didn’t go so far as to pretend he had. ‘The flat is self-contained. She doesn’t impose on us. Ivan had enough sense to know that it was a good thing, having her there. She minds the boys when I can’t, so it took the pressure off him.’

  There was no way to ask it delicately, so Derwent didn’t even try. ‘Did your mother think he was guilty?’

  She stiffened. ‘We never discussed it.’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it? Not to talk about it? Was that because you didn’t want to hear what she thought?’

  Instead of taking offence, Claudia tilted her head to one side, considering it. Another benefit of counselling, I presumed. She analysed the idea he had presented to her rather than responding emotionally. ‘It might have been because I didn’t want to argue with her. Or it might have been because she didn’t think he was to blame, and she knew I didn’t think he was guilty, so there was no point in talking about it when we both felt the same way.’

  ‘First option’s more likely, isn’t it? If you were determined to keep him as your husband, the best she could do was make sure he wasn’t left alone with the children.’

  Tears filled the blue eyes but they didn’t waver from Derwent’s face. ‘You could put that interpretation on it, I suppose. But that’s not how I saw it.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever think he might be guilty? Even for a minute?’

  Once again, she was startlingly honest in her response. ‘I didn’t allow myself to think he might be guilty. I didn’t want him to be and he said he wasn’t, so I never considered the alternative. I loved my husband very much. I mean, he gave me three beautiful sons, and they’re the most important things in my life. I didn’t want our marriage to end because I didn’t want them to have to struggle as I had when I was a child. The best thing I could offer them was the stability of having Mummy and Daddy there, for as much of the time as we could manage. We never argued. We never even raised our voices to one another. Everything was so civilised.’ She bit her lip. ‘Maybe too civilised. Maybe we should have been more confrontational with one another. Then I could tell you that we’d argued, that I’d wanted him to leave, but he’d convinced me he was innocent, and you’d believe me.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter what we believe,’ I said gently. I’d never been in that situation. I couldn’t judge her for what she’d done, but I was glad beyond words that her mother had taken on the role of unofficial bodyguard for their sons. ‘What matters is that it looks to us as if someone else thought he was guilty and punished him for it. We obviously need to find out who killed him and why, and we’re working on the theory that it was someone who’d identified him as having a conviction for child sex crimes.’

  ‘Was there any other reason that you can think why someone would have wanted to harm your husband?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he keep secrets from you, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think he had any. He worked, or he was at home. He didn’
t go out without me, apart from coming here. And I know he was working while he was here because I organise his accounts. He kept a log of work done that accounted for every fifteen minutes of his day. He was meticulous about keeping it, and the invoices always matched up. His clients wouldn’t have paid him for work he hadn’t done, so I assumed he was here when he said he was, and he was working when he was here.’ She must have seen the matching expressions on our faces because her chin went up. ‘I did check it. I wanted to be sure that he was making a go of the business, for Dad’s sake. I wanted to trust him but I couldn’t quite, after what happened. I hadn’t been able to up to now, anyway. My therapist has been working with me on having faith in others, and I really have been trying. But it’s hard.’

  It wasn’t remotely surprising that Claudia Tremlett found it hard to take people at their word. The fact that she thought that was her problem, for which she required therapy, confirmed for me that her poise and beauty masked rampant insecurity.

  ‘Did anyone know about Ivan’s conviction?’ Derwent asked. ‘I presume your friends and family would have been aware of it.’

  ‘We didn’t exactly mention it in our Christmas cards.’ Claudia said spikily, but then relented. ‘Most people thought he’d had a nervous breakdown. I just said that he’d gone away for a while – that he’d left his job in stressful circumstances, and that I was worried about him, but I hoped he’d be back to his usual self soon. The family knew, but I’m not close to my half-siblings. They’re all a lot younger than me. I doubt they would have cared to talk about it.’

  ‘Did any of your neighbours seem aware of it? Anyone look at you oddly – keep their children away from yours, that kind of thing?’

  She smiled slightly. ‘This is London, DI Derwent. No one knows anyone. The boys go to a private prep school a couple of miles away rather than the local primary, so they don’t really interact with our neighbours’ children. I haven’t noticed anyone being especially odd, but they’re not what I’d call friendly. But that’s just how people are around here. I don’t think we were singled out because of Ivan.’

  ‘Did Ivan seem particularly preoccupied in the last while? Was he sleeping okay, do you know? Did he seem concerned about his personal safety?’

  ‘There was nothing different about him.’ She gestured to the door. ‘He was always concerned about his security, but he was more bothered about the business than about himself.’

  ‘So as far as you’re aware, he had no warning.’

  ‘Nothing.’ She gave a long, quavering sigh. ‘I thought things were getting back to normal. But things will never be normal now. I’ve already had a couple of phone calls from reporters asking about Ivan, about his past. Everyone will know. We’ll have to move again. And I don’t know what I’m going to tell the boys.’

  This time, she didn’t cry. I had a slight suspicion that life would be easier without her husband around. Maybe Claudia was coming to that conclusion too. She stood up and brushed off the seat of her jeans. It wasn’t too fanciful to see it as wiping away all traces of the office building. I hoped she could walk away and not look back. She deserved to leave her husband’s mistakes behind her. And if she could think about him without bitterness – well, so much the better for her. It was beyond me, but I’d worked on child pornography cases; I’d seen it for myself. I didn’t need to imagine the kind of images Ivan Tremlett had downloaded. Nor did I need to imagine what kind of person would be titillated by them. It was a crime for a reason. There was a certain satisfaction in knowing how thoroughly he had been punished.

  Damn. That was worryingly close to how the killer seemed to feel. It had been too long a day, I thought, as I said goodbye to Claudia Tremlett and watched Derwent lock up after us. It was time to go home.

  The inspector, naturally, had other ideas. ‘Get a move on, Kerrigan. The traffic is going to be shite all the way back into town. We need to get going.’

  I fell into step behind him. My feet were aching, my neck hurt and I could barely think straight, but I didn’t dare opt out. ‘Where are we headed?’

  ‘Back to the nick. I want to brief Superintendent Godley before the close of business. You might as well come too. Someone has to read through the files on Palmer and Tremlett and it’s not going to be me.’

  The files would be dense, the material contained in them would be upsetting, and it wasn’t really fair of Derwent to palm the lot off on me. But that wasn’t why I went down the stairs slowly, painfully, as if my shoes were soled with lead. Bad though spending the day with Derwent had been and grim the things I’d seen and heard, I would happily have done another twelve hours of it rather than spend any time at all in the office. There was unfinished business there – business I didn’t want to finish. Business I didn’t even want to think about.

  But then, maybe I would be lucky. Maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with it today. It was getting late. Most people would have gone home already. I made the most of a tiny burst of energy generated by wishful thinking and hurried across the road after Derwent. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe everything was going to be all right.

  I really should have known better.

  Chapter Four

  As it turned out, we needn’t have rushed back. The superintendent was in a meeting that dragged on into the evening, a meeting that involved several senior officers and DI Bryce at Godley’s side. The other officers were so senior that I had never seen them in person before, just in pictures on the Met website. Something big was going on and, whatever it was, Godley wasn’t pleased about it. On the rare occasions when the door to his office was open, I had a grandstand view of him from my desk. His expression was that of a man under intense strain, with lines entrenched across his forehead and around his mouth. I had never seen him look like that, even at the height of the hunt for an active serial killer. The media had turned on him like dogs running wild and still I hadn’t ever seen him look upset. Tired, yes. But not hunted, as he was now.

  On the bright side, the delay meant I had plenty of time to get very familiar indeed with the details of the murdered men’s files. The transcripts of the interviews with the two girls in Palmer’s case showed that their evidence was contradictory and confused, as Derwent and Vera Gordon had said. It was hard, though, to fault the CPS for proceeding. Children were not usually good witnesses, especially about something as traumatic as sexual abuse. They were likely to blur the outlines of the truth, to agree too readily with suggestions from those interviewing them, to forget key details from one interview to the next. So you could spin it both ways. Either they were lying deliberately, or they were too upset to remember accurately. If they were lying, there was something depressingly plausible about the details of their accounts; the conclusion was inescapable that they had done the things they described, even if it wasn’t with Barry Palmer. That lent them credibility even though their stories were weak in places. They didn’t have to be accurate for them to be telling the truth, and the jury had believed them. I tried to shake off the creeping gloom that was starting to affect me. It wasn’t up to me to retry the case following the death of the defendant, I reminded myself. Guilty or not, he had been singled out as a child molester and that had probably sealed his fate. But whether or not he was obviously, rampantly guilty, wasn’t the issue here. What I thought of him mattered not at all. He had been murdered, and it was up to us to find out who did it.

  A whiff of bullshit permeated the statements from Ivan Tremlett; without surprise, I found myself on the side of law and order. Tremlett had constructed an elaborate conspiracy to explain the images in his files, but the investigating officer had been meticulous, compiling spreadsheets to prove that the images had been downloaded at times that Ivan Tremlett had been working. The timestamps showed that he had sometimes gone looking for images between writing emails, as if he had needed a break, or felt he deserved a treat. He had over a thousand images squirrelled away in various corners, password-protected and disguised as innocent, personal files.
That hadn’t happened by accident. And I found it hard to believe it had been the work of his junior colleague, a young woman who gave a warm statement in support of him after he had accused her of tampering with his files. If she was trying to manipulate his employers to turn against him, as Claudia had suggested, she was playing a very long game indeed.

  Halfway through the Tremlett file, Derwent walked past me and whistled to attract my attention as he threw an envelope onto my desk. ‘Hanshaw’s autopsy reports. Thought you might want to look at them.’ He walked backwards for a couple of paces, the better to see my face when he added, ‘I haven’t looked at them, so just give me the main points when you get the chance.’

  Autopsy reports were probably my least favourite form of reading; I skimmed through them trying not to think about what I was supposed to be taking in. The sheer scale of the violence floored me. The injuries Dr Hanshaw had listed for the two men ran into three figures – some of them very minor, some of them catastrophic. Torn muscles, broken bones, bruises and cuts, stab wounds, amputations and rough excisions – the words brought back the images I had tried to suppress from Barry Palmer’s house, and conjured up images I never wanted to see from Ivan Tremlett’s office. I put the files to one side and stared across the office at Godley’s door, wishing dully that he would wrap up his meeting so that I could go home.

  ‘So this is what you’re up to. Watching the remake of Twelve Angry Men. Shame they had to slash the budget. Five Angry Men doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.’

  In spite of everything, my first reaction at hearing Rob’s voice was pleasure. ‘Hey, watch it. You’re behind the times. In the modern-day Metropolitan Police Service, it would be Five Angry Individuals. You can’t exclude the possibility that a woman could have a role.’