Mercy Killing (31 page)

He mulled this over for a second or two and said, ‘We can ask the man. He may confess yet.’

This was met with snorts of derision from most of the office and he definitely heard one of them mutter ‘Dream on’.

He wandered back to his office wondering where all the respect and optimism had gone from the police service. He made a note to ask Tom and Sophia why they hadn’t picked up on a large
injury to Tey’s hand when they visited him at home.

‘Is this a good time?’ he heard someone say as he got to his desk.

‘Joanna Styles, come on in,’ he said to the senior CSI. ‘Tell me that you’ve brought me some good news about the forensics on this job.’

‘We’ve got three pounds ninety left in the budget,’ she said.

He sighed. ‘I’ll ask for more money. Where has forty grand gone?’

‘Forty? I thought it was fifty.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. I look forward to seeing the chief with a telephone directory down my pants.’

‘Is he a Mason too?’

‘Very funny. What have you got for me to brighten my day, Jo?’

She settled herself in her seat and said, ‘I’ve compared the boot marks we have from Albert Woodville’s flat, particularly from the front door. As you already know, they
didn’t match Toby Carvell’s or Leon Edwards’s shoes.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘We’ve bailed them both out. The searches of their homes showed nothing new, Carvell told us where and when he parked his Ford Focus on Friday night
and that checked out, even Edwards ended up with an alibi who came into the nick and vouched for him. All we’ve got on those two is a funny feeling that they know more than they’re
letting on.’

‘I took their photographs in custody,’ said Jo, scratching the end of her nose with her pen. ‘Edwards didn’t strike me as particularly bright.’

‘That’s another thing,’ said Harry as he rubbed a hand over his stubble. ‘Edwards couldn’t live with the guilt of sending death threats in the post. That’s
why he came in here. It could be a double bluff, but I’m with you. I don’t think he’s got either the intelligence to plan a murder or the mental capacity to cope with the
aftermath.’

‘So,’ said Jo, ‘that leaves the two in the bin downstairs.’

‘And so far—’

‘I’ll have to take a look at their shoes and stuff but if Jonathan Tey did throw the shoes in the sea, there’s not much I can do about that. However, first look, I think that
he’s the wrong shoe size.’

Harry sat back and stared at her.

‘So why throw your clothes in the Channel?’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘We don’t know that it was his clothes.’

‘I don’t know what else, other than a weapon, he would try to dispose of. The beauty of plastic cable-ties is that no one’s going to call the police if they see some in a bin
somewhere. A gun or a knife attracts attention. I can’t rule anything out, but my money’s on clothing.’

‘But why?’ said Jo. ‘If he didn’t murder Woodville, what reason could he possibly have for disposing of his clothes?’

‘Let’s hope the interviews shed some light,’ said Harry.

Toby Carvell pulled up in his Ford Focus on the opposite side of the road from Leon who sat in their company van, waiting for his friend.

Leon saw him give a small nod of his head, face in a grim expression, and get out of the car.

Things had not gone particularly well for either of them but at least they were out of the police station.

‘All right?’ said Leon as his friend opened the passenger door and climbed in.

‘Been better, Dilly. How about you?’

In answer, he switched off the engine so that he could talk without raising his voice and turned his head towards Toby, still visible in the early evening’s gloom. ‘I can’t
believe they gave us bail conditions not to speak to each other.’

‘I know. We run a business together. How can we avoid one another?’

Leon slowly blew the air out of his cheeks and said, ‘Just as well we ignored them then.’ He shifted his weight onto his left side and leaned against the steering wheel. ‘I
didn’t tell them that you were there on the night Woodville died. I kept my word. I want you to know that.’

‘I knew that you’d keep your word. I told them that you sent the death threats but neither of us was actually involved in killing the dirty bastard. If one of us had told them
anything different, either we’d still be stuck in those bloody cells, or we’d have been charged with murder by now. We stuck to the plan, and it’s working. It’s why we had
one.’

There was a pause as Leon thought how to phrase what he wanted to say next. After a couple of minutes of companionable silence, he said, ‘Do you think about him dying much?’

‘All the time, all the time.’

Toby left a short pause and then said, ‘Daft question, but how about you?’

A short dry laugh followed by, ‘You could say that. I don’t feel bad that he’s dead, just glad I don’t have to worry about how I’d kill him, if that makes
sense.’

‘It makes perfect sense, mate,’ said Toby, averting his gaze from his friend to watch the cars driving past. ‘I thought for years about what I’d do if I came face to face
with him. And then I did.

‘It wasn’t long before I started fantasizing over beautiful ways to end his life. You and me discussed it for weeks, planned it for months and waited outside his flat on all those
Friday nights to watch what he did.’

Beside him, Leon nodded along, his mind in a happier place than it should have been as he allowed himself the luxury of reminiscing about all the hours he’d spent doing what he loved the
most: being with his best friend. They had always been close, but no more so than when discussing how they were going to end Albert Woodville’s days. Toby had been intent on doing away with
him because of the pain, misery and abuse he had suffered at his hands. Leon had wanted to go through with it, partly because of his own physical abuse and mental anguish, but largely because of
what he had seen Toby endure. He had wanted to help, to make things better for his friend, even if that meant plotting a murder.

‘Do you reckon though,’ Toby said to Leon, ‘that we really could have?’

A heavy shrug from Leon. ‘Don’t know. How did you feel when we drove away on Friday night, knowing that the two men following him were likely to do to him what we’d been
preparing for?’

‘I don’t know, Dilly. Part of me felt glad that we didn’t have to do it ourselves, and part of me wanted to stop the car, follow them into his flat and help them kick the
absolute crap out of him.’

Once again, Leon leaned against the steering wheel. He rubbed his eyes.

‘But do you think,’ he said, ‘we would have helped them to kill him if we’d have known what they were going to do, or do you think that at the last minute we’d have
stopped them and saved his life?’

The one thing that had been keeping Leon going was the belief that when push came to shove, at the final hour, he would have done the decent thing and saved a life, even if it was one as
worthless as Albert Woodville’s, recidivist sex offender. And because this belief had seemed like his salvation he wanted Toby to feel the same way.

‘Can I ask you one thing before I answer that?’ said Toby. He saw Leon nod, so carried on. ‘Why did you send Mr Woodville death threats?’

This was an answer Leon struggled to formulate. He knew the reason but as so often he couldn’t find the right words to express his feelings.

At last he said, ‘To make him feel bad. To make him worry and wonder what was going to happen to him, like he did to us in the home. I wasn’t ever going to hurt him, not with my
fists.’

He cast his eyes down to his hands, massive against the steering wheel, chapped from his job and filthy from his time in the cells.

‘That was always my point, Dill,’ said Toby. ‘I really, really wanted to kill the bloke. I was never sure that you were up to it, not in your head. You don’t know how
relieved I was when I saw those two fellas get out of their car and run in the direction of Woodville’s flat. They’d been watching him, following him and running around in the dark
dressed like that, well it was too good to be true.’

‘But they killed him and we didn’t tell the police what we’d seen.’

Toby reached out and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘They would never have believed us if we’d told them that we saw them following him to the flat. They would have
wanted to know what you and me were doing there together. We were the closest they had until you dropped them a line about seeing a car. You see? Then they went looking, like good detectives, and
found the car themselves. They feel better as they think they got a prisoner to talk, did some Scooby Do work and it led them further towards the actual murderers. All the while, we’re off
the hook.’

‘We’re still on bail.’

Toby let out a sigh and said, ‘You’re right, we are. And we’re not supposed to be talking, so I’d better go. Do you feel any better now?’

Leon gave an unconvincing nod and said, ‘Much. I’ll do the window-cleaning round tomorrow and get you the van back for the next day.’

He watched as Toby climbed out of the van, crossed back over the road, got in his car, waved and drove off in the direction of his house.

He knew that he should feel relieved for getting it off his chest to the police, but once again, he had lied. For good reason, but nevertheless he had lied again.

When he’d told Toby the truth about Woodville’s real treatment of him, he had felt purged. That was sullied again now. He couldn’t afford to feel like this repeatedly, as if
the troubles of the world were upon him. The one thing he knew he could never do was to confess to anyone the amount of time Toby and he had spent plotting and planning a murder. He knew that would
get them into another fix with the law, and so, as agreed, he hadn’t gone off script, just stuck to the plan.

Why then did he have the urge to return to the police station and tell them that it had all been a terrible mistake and he had more to tell them?

There was another thing he would never tell a soul. Toby’s confession that he would have taken part in killing Woodville had sickened him to the bottom of his stomach. It was one thing to
talk about taking a life, it was quite another to actually do it.

He had given Toby a chance to redeem himself, say it was no more than a big game like the games they had played in the children’s home when it all became too much. But instead Toby thought
he had the right to take away someone’s life.

Their relationship had crossed a line and things would never be the same again.

He sat alone in the dark, only his thoughts of retribution keeping him together. His mind had the ability to swing between denial and justification. If he didn’t think
about what he had done, he could cope. But if he allowed his mind to wander, it started to eat him up all over again. He wasn’t sure if he had managed to hone that particular skill, making
his mind go blank when he felt himself crumbling, falling apart.

Confusion often followed. He’d blotted out a bad memory but couldn’t help trying to recall it. It was like he had seen something out of the corner of his eye, and no matter how fast
he moved to focus on what was there only a moment ago, it eluded him.

He found it hard to breathe on these occasions and the only way to cope was to sit still and concentrate on nothing. A black empty space.

Gradually, it would come back to him. That was the worst part.

If he didn’t think about what he had done, it was bearable. Blocking it out was more and more difficult with each day. Once he let it in, he had to deal with what it was doing to his
mind.

Ian knew he couldn’t block it out indefinitely. If he did, they had won after all.

‘Why is it,’ said Harry, arms full of Chinese takeaway, ‘that I’m the DI, and I had to go out and get the grub for everyone else?’

‘Because you’ve got the job credit card,’ said Sandra as she took the order from him and scanned it for her dishes.

He stood back and watched her with incredulity as she surveyed the order of twenty or so boxes, packets and bags, most of which weren’t labelled, and went straight for her choice.

The incident-room door opened and Hazel, Pierre, Tom and Sophia walked in, all sniffing the air, and headed straight for the table where Harry had plonked their meal.

‘There’s a lot of food here for six of us,’ said Pierre.

‘Stop complaining,’ said Sophia, ‘and pass me some of that chow mein.’

‘Come on then,’ said Harry as he took a seat, ‘what have Tey and Watson had to say for themselves?’

‘Well,’ said Pierre as he sat down beside his DI, ‘me and Haze interviewed Jonathan Tey. He’s a total stroppy twat and made no comment.’

‘And me and Tom interviewed Jude Watson,’ said Sophia as she poured sweet-and-sour sauce all over her plate and some down her trousers. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Like I want
to iron another pair of strides when I get home at one in the morning.’

Tom laughed and passed her a serviette.

‘He spoke to us,’ said Tom as he filled his own plate. ‘He answered all our questions, from how he and Jonathan know each other—’

‘According to Watson, their wives know one another from their children’s schools,’ said Sophia.

‘We asked about Woodville and Watson told us what he knew about him,’ said Tom as he chased a pork ball across the table, caught it with the edge of his fork before it rolled off and
landed underneath the fire extinguisher.

When Sophia stopped laughing at his misfortune, she said, ‘Doesn’t make me feel so bad about dropping food down myself now . . . He elaborated a lot in the interview about the day
Eric Samuels called the meeting and how he and Jonathan stormed out. According to Jude, it was him who lost it and Jonathan who calmed things down.’

Harry listened and watched his detectives. They currently resembled a chimps’ tea party, although instead of tea, they were dropping crispy duck and egg fried rice everywhere. What he did
know, was that despite their terrible table manners, he trusted their judgement.

‘Do you think that we’ve got the right two people in custody for the murder of Woodville?’ Harry asked.