A Good Day To Die (38 page)

I managed a half-smile, which I think annoyed her. 'Brutal? I don't begin to compete with you.'

'No,' she said, stretching out her gun arm, ready to fire. 'You don't.'

I willed myself to remain calm as I continued to look for my moment. 'How did the whole thing begin? I know it was with the therapy, but what did Jason Khan know? And why did he and Ann die so long after she'd exposed Blacklip for who he was?'

She shook her head dismissively. 'Sorry, Dennis, but I can read you like a book. You're just trying to delay things and I haven't got a lot of time. Comfort yourself with this: for an old man, you were very good in bed, and it was fun to sleep with another killer.'

And then she fired: three carefully aimed rounds that slammed into my chest like lead punches.

I gasped as my body jackknifed, and I felt myself rolling sidewards.

'Now it's your turn, Daddy,' I heard her say, her voice soft and gentle, and through the thin slits of my eyes I saw her turn and face her father in the doorway, raising the gun to finish him off too.

'Emma, no,' he pleaded. 'What are you doing? I love you.'

His voice had taken on a desperate urgency, and suddenly something in her expression changed. A ripple of doubt crossed her face, weakening the killing glare. There was something else there, too. It might have been love; it might have been hate. It was impossible to tell which, but when I think about it now, I'm convinced that it was both.

The gun in her hand shook ever so slightly, and for a long tense moment, she hesitated.

And consequently never noticed as I sat up, still reeling from the force of the bullets, the worst of which had been absorbed by the flak jacket Tyndall had given me, and pulled the .45 from where it had been concealed in the front of my waistband
underneath my jacket, lifting it two-handed in her direction.

'Just one more obstacle, Emma,' I said as she turned my way, her face stretched tight with alarm.

She mouthed the word
NO,
the syllable seeming to go on for ever, and started to raise her gun.

Which was the moment I pulled the trigger, realizing that in the end she deserved it as much as any of them.

The bullet struck her right in the middle of the chest, her white dress erupting in red as the shot lifted her off her feet and slammed her against the wall. Her own gun went off, the bullet ricocheting off the floor and flying up into the ceiling, and then I fired a second time, this time hitting her in the face and blowing the back of her skull away. A huge chum-like mixture of blood, brains and bone shot three feet up the wall as Emma slid down it, her face disappearing under a falling red curtain.

I heard Thadeus cry out in pain, grief, maybe even relief, but the cry was weak and there were still questions he had to answer.

Staggering to my feet, I took two deep breaths and walked over to the door. He was leaning back on the door frame where I'd left him, still clutching his leg. Blood stained the tiles and ran in a steady stream across the kitchen floor. His face was pale.

'You've killed her,' he whispered. 'My baby.'

'She was no one's baby, Thadeus. You made sure
of that. She was a monster, and one you created. I almost wish I'd let her kill you.'

'She wouldn't have killed me,' he snarled through gritted teeth. 'Couldn't you see that? She loved me. She was my little girl. And you've murdered her. You may as well do the same to me. It's all over now.'

'Not quite, it isn't. I've got some questions for you. If you answer them, I'll make it quick. If you don't, it'll be slow and it'll be painful.'

'Fuck you, Milne,' he spat, sending flecks of thick white saliva onto my jeans. 'I'm not going to make your life any easier. Our secrets will die with us and there's nothing you or any other bastard can do about it. Because you've got nothing left to threaten me with. The only thing you can do is end my life, and I'm ready for that now. Today's as good a day to die as any.' He spread his arms out, welcoming my final shot. 'So go on, do your worst.'

So I did.

I did things to him that I'm ashamed of, because those things debased me and dragged me far too close to his dank, black level. I ignored his cries for mercy, I ignored the blood that splattered my clothes, I ignored the stomach-churning disgust that grew as I applied the pressure. I ignored everything except the task of making him talk, knowing full well that both the ghosts of my past and the ghosts of his would never forgive me if he didn't.

And talk he did. In the end, he told me
everything, and when he'd finished, I bent down and used the pistol that Nicholas Tyndall had provided me with to shoot him once in the head, an act which put us both out of our misery. I think at that moment he was pleased to go. Not because he really was in pain, although doubtless there was an element of that, but for other less obvious reasons. I genuinely believe that somewhere in his dark heart there was a part that was weighed down heavily with guilt, particularly where Emma was concerned. I believe that he loved her, and I believe too that she loved him. It was a corrupt, twisted love but it was there nevertheless, and by his actions when she was a child, he'd betrayed that love, and knew it.

It didn't make me feel any more sorry for him. Eric Thadeus had ended the life of Heidi Robes, and in doing so had sentenced her father to a life behind bars for a crime of which he was not only innocent, but also a victim. Only the cruellest of minds would have countenanced that. Thadeus was scum. He deserved everything he got. But Emma? I tried not to think about her.

Instead, I turned away and left them there together.

44

Eric Thadeus told me that Jason Khan died - and Asif Malik died with him - because of a television programme.

This, effectively, was what started everything off. Jason had known for some time about the abuse his girlfriend, Ann Taylor, had suffered at the hands of her father and his so-called friends in the days when she still lived with him. Her trial for GBH had taken place before Jason met her, and having come to terms with the details of her past herself, she'd told him everything when they'd become lovers, including the fact that she'd witnessed a murder seven years before.

Thadeus confirmed that the murder victim had been Heidi Robes, and that she'd been killed during a violent sex game that had got out of control. Usually the parties they held never went that far, or so he'd claimed. I wasn't so sure.

Thadeus called his group of paedophiles the
Hunters, and there was a perverse hint of pride in his voice when he mentioned their name. One of the Hunters, and a participant on that night, was Les Pope. Pope had been charged with getting rid of Heidi's body and framing her father, John, in order to keep suspicion as far away as possible from the group. According to Thadeus, Pope had used one of his lowlife clients to do the dirty work, something that the client had obviously done very efficiently, given how things had turned out.

Even when Ann's account of the murder became public some years later, and the second participant from that night, Richard Blacklip, was subsequently arrested, things still hadn't got out of hand. Blacklip got bail, was supplied with a false passport and a ticket to Manila, and then it was simply a matter of Pope telephoning Tomboy to organize his murder, thereby avoiding the possibility of a problematic trial, where the truth of the Robes murder might have come out.

And up until two months earlier, the truth looked like it might have remained buried for ever. I'm sure it would have done, too, if it hadn't been for the television programme.

I don't suppose either Jason Khan or Ann Taylor made a habit of watching
Newsnight,
BBC2's late-evening current affairs programme, but for some reason - call it fate, if you like - they were both sat in front of it on the evening when the producers chose to interview the newly installed
Lord Chief Justice, Tristram Parnham-Jones.

I still wonder what Ann's reaction must have been. She'd never seen the face of the man in the black leather mask - the most violent of all her father's 'friends' - but she remembered his voice clearly enough. Would always remember the smooth, controlling tones of the person who'd molested her and then taken a knife to a screaming and pleading Heidi Robes. And now this man - who, years later, must have continued to haunt her dreams - was the one on the television talking. There was, she was adamant, no mistake.

But what could she say? The police hadn't found any evidence to back up the claims made at her trial regarding the murder she'd witnessed, and no one had been charged in connection with it. Who was going to believe her now, if she started accusing the most senior judge in the land of being a child murderer on account of his voice? I could see her point. They'd think she was mad. She'd already been threatened with a spell in a psychiatric institution once, and would be fully aware that claims like that, from someone with her background, would probably get her carted straight off to one.

But Jason was different. Jason was a street thug and a hustler, whatever his rushed conversion to Islam might have suggested, and he would have sensed an opportunity to make some serious money. His problem, of course, was how to use the potentially explosive information he was holding
to best effect, so he turned to his solicitor - a man he knew to be corrupt - for help organizing some form of lucrative blackmail.

What Jason didn't know was that Pope was only representing him in legal matters in order to remain close to Ann and keep tabs on what she was or wasn't saying. The Hunters, it seemed, were very careful and very thorough, and initially that thoroughness paid off. Pope strung Jason along, while simultaneously planning his murder. But Jason must have got wind of what was going on, because he'd phoned Asif Malik, a senior detective and fellow Muslim, requesting that they meet up urgently. Presumably (although no one knows for sure), Jason was going to spill the beans.

His phone, however, was being tapped on Thadeus's orders, and the call was picked up by the Hunters, who were now keen to get him in the ground as soon as possible. Billy West watched Jason leave his home to go to the meeting, and instead of killing him there and then and saving Malik's life, he'd got greedy and shot them both.

There had been five men present on the night of the Heidi Robes murder. Five Hunters: Eric Thadeus; Les Pope; Richard Blacklip; a man called Wise who, Thadeus told me, had died of cancer three years previously; and Tristram Parnham-Jones.

Only Parnham-Jones still survived.

45

I left the house the way I'd come in and headed back to the Jaguar, dialling 999 as promised, to call an ambulance for Bill.

I couldn't hear anything from Theo in the boot when I reached the car, so I got inside, turned on the engine and started driving. I had no idea where I was going.

As I drove, I thought through the case, and in particular Simon Barron's part in it. How had he got so close to Emma and Thadeus, when everyone else on the investigation was convinced that the man behind the slayings was Nicholas Tyndall? I'd never know, of course, but as a former detective myself I could surmise. My guess was that Barron had realized some years ago that by convicting John Robes of the murder of his daughter, he'd made a terrible mistake. I felt sure that somewhere further down the line he'd come across the name Richard Blacklip and discovered that he was part of
a wide and well-connected paedophile ring. Obviously there couldn't have been a great deal of evidence against any of them for anything, but something about them must have led him to believe that it was they, not her father, who had murdered Heidi. This would have put him in a terrible position, made worse by the fact that, according to what Thadeus had told me, John Robes had committed suicide in prison several years earlier. Unable to tell anyone else of their possible involvement for fear of what it would do to his own reputation, it may well have been this knowledge, coupled with his unending sense of guilt, that had pushed Barron into premature retirement.

However, like all coppers, he could never entirely let go. So when the Met issued a rallying call for retired detectives to come back and help in London's burgeoning murder investigations, he'd volunteered. I don't suppose he'd known at the time how much the Malik/Khan case impinged on the one that had caused him so much pain, but it wouldn't have been that difficult for him to make the connection once he'd found out Ann Taylor's real identity. The problem, from Barron's perspective, was that no one on the investigation seemed that interested in Ann's death or the light her testimony of child abuse years earlier might throw on the case, so he'd used the
North London Echo's
investigative journalist, Emma Neilson, to
publicize his suspicions. He'd fed her information, ignorant of her own duplicitous role, hoping that her articles would prompt a rethink of strategy within the investigation. I don't suppose Emma had been too keen to draw attention to the fact that Ann's death might not have been suicide, but she would have had little choice but to adhere to Barron's wishes and write the articles if she wanted him to remain onside.

And then Barron had found out something that suddenly made him a dangerous liability. It could well have been the name of someone else involved. He'd probably even confided to Emma who it was, and, in doing so, sealed his own fate. She'd lured him to an isolated meeting place, doubtless with the promise of information of her own, and had then silenced him for ever, nearly succeeding in getting me arrested in the process. Very neat. And very ruthless. She really had been a cunning operator.