False Tongues (38 page)

‘And did he come?'

Josh nodded. ‘I knew all along, deep down, that Tom would never love me. I mean, he's straight. You can tell that. He has a girlfriend. And I'm a freak—a red dwarf,' he added bitterly. ‘Even if he was gay, he wouldn't want me. But I was desperate. And so unhappy, because I love him so much. And I wanted him to know it.'

‘So what happened?'

‘I told him that I loved him. He laughed at me.' Josh gulped back a sob. ‘I showed him the knife. I told him that I was going to kill myself, and it was all because of him. And I meant it, too.'

This wasn't what Neville was expecting. He waited, afraid to say anything.

‘He laughed again. He said I was a silly little wanker, and not to be so bloody stupid. But I didn't care what he said, because…well, you know. Then he…he took the knife off me. Just grabbed it out of my hand. He laughed, and told me to go home.'

‘And did you?'

‘Yeah.' Josh sighed. ‘I came back home. But the next day…well, when I heard that Seb was dead, and had been stabbed with a knife…' He shook his head. ‘I knew that Tom had something to do with it—he had the knife, didn't he? And he was on Paddington Green, right where it happened. So when you found me, and took me to the police station to answer some questions, I did the only thing I could think of to protect him. I told you I'd killed Seb.'

Neville processed that for a few seconds. It might not have been what he expected, but it did make a weird kind of sense. ‘I have just one more question for you, Josh,' he said. ‘What was Tom wearing that night? Can you remember?'

Once again, it clearly wasn't the question he was anticipating. Josh frowned, but answered immediately. ‘His grey Superdry hoody. It's his favourite.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Oh, yeah,' said Josh, nodding. ‘I'm sure.'

Chapter Twenty-one

Repeated calls to Liz's home number, made by Jane through the morning, resulted in nothing but a series of messages left on the call minder. ‘She must be at the hospital,' Jane reported to Brian. ‘If he's out of danger, I suppose they would let her stay in his room and sit with him.'

‘Do you think I ought to go to the hospital to support her?' Brian asked doubtfully.

‘It's your day off. She wouldn't expect it. And there's nothing you could do, really,' Jane stated, supplying the answer she knew he wanted.

‘I'm sure you're right.'

But Brian seemed restless, unsure what to do with his day off. Once he'd had his breakfast and a bath, rather than his customary shower, he said to her, with uncharacteristic impulsiveness, ‘Let's do something today, Janey. Something different. Let's get out of the parish.'

Usually, if they went somewhere on Brian's day off, Jane was the one who planned it, in advance, and it had always—until a few months ago—been planned with the boys in mind. Trips to the London Transport Museum or the Museum of Natural History, picnics in Hyde Park, or the odd train journey to the seaside, on the rare occasion that the weather was suitable. Brian had always been happy to go along, but he'd never suggested anything himself.

‘What did you have in mind?' Jane asked blankly.

‘Oh, I don't know. We could take a train to Oxford and surprise Charlie. Or we could go to the cinema. Or…it's such a beautiful day—we could even go to Kew Gardens.'

‘Kew Gardens sounds wonderful,' said Jane. They'd been, once, a long time ago, but the twins had been bored and fractious and as she recalled it, the weather had been less than ideal.

‘That's what we'll do, then. We'll have a lovely day out, looking at the gardens, and then a cream tea in the Orangery. How soon can you be ready, Janey?'

***

The doctor rang Neville on his mobile, as promised, early in the afternoon. Tom Gresham was—he said—conscious, stable, and well enough to be questioned.

Neville went straight to the hospital, switching off his phone as he entered. He figured out where he needed to go, then headed for the lift. Someone else was waiting for it as well. He realised with a shock that it was Miranda Frost.

He knew she worked at the hospital, of course, and he knew—from talking with Mark Lombardi—that she had gone back to work a day or two ago, so it shouldn't have been such a surprise. But his previous encounters with her had been in other places, and he'd never seen her in scrubs.

They got on the lift together. ‘Hello, Mrs Frost,' he said, feeling awkward.

She nodded in acknowledgement as they punched their respective buttons. ‘Good afternoon, Detective Inspector.'

‘You're…back at work.'

‘As you see.' Her tone was cool, verging on tart. ‘There are lives to be saved. And nothing to be gained by sitting at home, waiting for you and your colleagues to catch my son's murderer.'

Stung to defensiveness, Neville said, ‘We're getting close, Mrs Frost.'

The lift slowed at her floor; the doors opened. ‘I'm pleased to hear it,' she said. ‘You will let me know, won't you?'

Why did she have such a knack for making him feel guilty? He might have been more diligent in keeping the Frosts up to date with the police enquiries, he acknowledged to himself. But that was what they had Family Liaison Officers for. Nonetheless, he forced a smile and nodded as she stepped off.

‘I will,' he stated. ‘I promise.'

The lift went up another floor. Neville got off and followed the signs down the corridor to the ward where he'd been told he would find Tom Gresham.

He stopped at the nurses' station and asked for the boy's location. ‘He's not on the general ward,' the sister on duty informed him. ‘He's in a private room. Just there.' She pointed across the corridor to a half-open door.

His parents would be paying privately for that, Neville assumed. He pushed on the door and went into a small room with drawn curtains, his eyes adjusting slowly to the dimness after being in the brightly lit corridor.

Mrs Gresham was sitting by the bed, holding her son's hand. She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Thank you for coming. It's very kind. My husband…he's on his way back from New York, but he won't be here until late tonight.'

‘This isn't a social call, Mrs Gresham,' Neville informed her. ‘The doctor said it would be all right for me to talk to Tom. To ask him a few questions.'

She nodded, but showed no signs of moving.

‘In private,' he added, thanking his lucky stars for that providential sixteenth birthday.

‘We
are
private. Close the door, if you like.'

He was going to have to be more direct. ‘I'm afraid you'll need to leave us alone, Mrs Gresham. For a few minutes. Wouldn't you like to go and get a coffee, or something to eat?'

Tom's mother frowned and looked as if she were about to protest, but then she shrugged, rising from her chair. ‘All right, then. But don't tire him out. He's still very weak. And possibly confused,' she added.

Neville waited until she was gone, closed the door behind her, and sat down in the chair she'd vacated. ‘Hello, Tom,' he said. ‘I think it's time for us to have a little chat. Just the two of us. Don't you?'

***

Frustratingly, the train from Cambridge back to Kings' Cross was delayed, stopping between stations, for reasons which remained unexplained to the passengers.

While they were waiting for the train to start again, Callie got out her phone. ‘I'll ring Peter,' she said. ‘I'll let him know that we're on the way. And I want to make sure he's not planning on hanging about, once we get there.'

Mark laughed at her determined expression. He pulled out his own phone, which he'd switched off before he arrived in Cambridge, feeling a bit guilty that he hadn't checked in with Neville for over twenty-four hours. Had Josh Bradley been charged with the murder? Mark could only assume so, given the state of play the last time he'd talked to Neville. He'd scanned the front page headlines of the tabloids at the station, but remained unenlightened. The
Globe
had moved on to other things, and none of the other papers featured the story either. He really ought to find out what was going on, and make the time to pay a visit to Miranda and Richard Frost.

But when he tried Neville's number, it went straight to voice mail. Mark left a brief message, shrugged, and pocketed the phone.

***

‘Tom?'

For the first time the boy rolled his head on his pillow to face Neville. ‘Yeah?'

‘I said, we need to have a little chat.'

‘If you say so.'

Now that the moment was finally upon him, Neville felt weary. All those days of looking for answers; now he was about to get some. He had no appetite for playing games, so he went straight to the point.

‘What happened that night, Tom?'

‘I took some pills,' the boy said, wilfully misunderstanding him. ‘Quite a few, as a matter of fact.'

‘I didn't say last night. I said
that
night, and I meant Sunday. As you very well know.'

Tom closed his eyes with a weary sigh. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Don't try that with me, Sunshine,' Neville snapped. ‘You know exactly what I mean.' Cards on the table time, then. ‘You stabbed Sebastian Frost. You killed one of your best mates. I know it, you know it. So there's no point wasting my time by pretending otherwise.'

The boy's eyes flew open; he paused for a moment to assimilate the situation. ‘Did that little freak rat on me, then?' he sneered. ‘I knew he would, as soon as I heard he'd been arrested.'

Neville felt absurdly protective of Josh. After all, Josh had been willing to take the rap for a murder he hadn't committed, out of love for this spoiled brat. He resisted the temptation to tell Tom exactly that.

‘So that's why you swallowed the pills, I suppose. You thought you were going to get caught, so you went for the easy way out. Or tried to.'

Tom turned his head away.

‘It didn't have anything to do with all that crap your mum believes—that you were depressed because your girlfriend dumped you,' Neville went on. ‘You tried to kill yourself because of what happened on Sunday night. But you failed, son. You're still alive. You're still here. So am I. And I'm not going anywhere until you start answering some questions.'

‘Like…what?'

There was one thing, in puzzling out the events of that night and the circumstances leading up to it, that Neville didn't understand: that was where he would begin, and work up to the rest of it.

‘Josh Bradley,' he said. ‘Red Dwarf. You despised him, like all of your mates did. You bullied and persecuted him, along with the rest of them. And yet you led him on. You made him think that you weren't involved in the bullying. You must have been at least a bit nice to him, or he wouldn't have been so besotted by you. And when he texted you that night, and asked you to meet him on Paddington Green, you went. Why?'

That brought a smirk to Tom's face. ‘He was…useful.'

‘Useful? In what way?' Apart, that is, from the buzz Tom must have got from knowing that the kid was in love with him. As he must have known that Lexie fancied him.

‘He…did things for me.'

Things. Not sexual, surely. What, then? ‘What sort of things?'

‘My parents…expect a lot of me,' Tom said obliquely, looking toward the window, its drawn curtains allowing in just a thin shaft of sunlight where they didn't quite meet. ‘At school and stuff. They expect good marks, good exam results. And I'm not as clever as Seb. Not as clever as Josh, come to that. So Josh…helps me, sometimes.'

It was beginning to make sense. ‘He helps you cheat, you mean? To get better marks?'

Tom shrugged in acknowledgement. ‘If that's what you want to call it. Sometimes he does my homework for me. And once he stole an exam paper from the office, with the answers and everything. He'd do anything for me,' he added, with a touch of smugness that made Neville want to give him a good smack.

Instead he balled his fists and pressed on. ‘So on Sunday night, Josh called you and asked you to meet him on Paddington Green. You went. He threatened to kill himself. You took the knife off him and sent him home. What happened after that?'

Tom looked at him for a moment, as if trying to decide what to say. Neville waited.

‘Okay,' said Tom, sighing. ‘I'll tell you.'

Suddenly Neville found the darkness of the room oppressive. In a gesture that he knew to be symbolic as well as practical, he crossed to the window and pushed the curtains to either side, flooding the room with afternoon sunlight.

Tom winced at the glare. ‘Did you have to do that?'

‘Yes.' He crossed his arms and stood by the bed. Waiting.

‘I texted Seb,' Tom said quietly, after a moment of silence. ‘I told him to come to Paddington Green.'

‘Why?'

‘I wanted to tell him about what had happened with Red Dwarf. I thought it was a real laugh, you know? I mean, we'd been putting stuff on the Facebook page, telling him to kill himself and stuff, because he's such a waste of space, and then the little wanker says he's going to off himself with a kitchen knife. Because he loves me! How funny is that?'

Not very, in Neville's opinion. ‘And?' he said.

‘Seb came. His parents were working, he said, and he was bored. So we just hung out for a while. I told him about Red Dwarf, then we planned some more things to put on Facebook.'

Neville tried to picture the scene: the two boys, lounging on the grass, possibly even sitting on the bench in the churchyard where he'd sat with Cowley later that night. ‘Where was the knife all this time?' he wanted to know.

‘I had it. I was playing with it, like. Just messing about.'

‘Then what happened?'

Tom turned his head to look out of the window, taking a moment to answer. ‘I said something like, if I was going to turn into a bloody poofter, I'd do it with someone better than Red Dwarf. Someone more like Seb. I was just joking, see? Messing about.'

Oh, no, thought Neville. Here it comes.

‘Seb stood up. I thought he was going to go home, but he said there was something he had to tell me.' Then the words came out in a rush. ‘He said he loved me. He said he would never have said anything, he'd been holding it in for ages, but now maybe there was a chance so he had to take it. And since I'd broken up with Becca, he thought that meant something, that he had a chance with me. I was like, gob-smacked. I had no idea.'

‘And then what?'

‘I stood up, and he…he grabbed me.' Tom gave a little shudder. ‘He put his arms round me. Without any warning. And he kissed me. Stuck his tongue down my throat. It was…so gross. Horrid. Disgusting.' He closed his eyes for a second. ‘The knife was still in my hand. He had my arm pinned up against him, like, but my hand was by his neck, and I just…' He stopped.

Neville held his breath.

‘I stabbed him,' Tom said, with a little sob. ‘I didn't mean to. I was just trying to get him off me. I didn't mean to kill him.'

***

‘Well?' said Rob Gardiner-Smith, sitting behind his vast desk. He raised his eyebrows, looked at Lilith, and waited.

‘The trail's gone cold,' Lilith admitted. ‘They released that boy Josh. And as far as I can tell, they haven't arrested anyone else.'

‘My source would let me know if they had done,' he pointed out.

‘Well, then.' She shrugged. ‘What else can I do? Apart from having a go at the police for dropping the ball, leaving a major murder unsolved after nearly a week.'

Rob Gardiner-Smith tented his fingers in front of him. ‘You could start there. Lay on the outrage, and hit the ‘parents' anguish' angle again. Any chance of talking to the parents again?'