Relentless (34 page)

that he was helping to keep a dangerous paedophile out of
jail worried him immensely. He even resorted to taping several
of his private meetings with Parnham-Jones, and in one of
them the Lord Chief Justice actually let slip comments that confirmed
his role in some of the alleged crimes. Because of client
confidentiality, the information Calley had couldn't be used in
an open court, but he was so concerned he told Kathy, who was
having an affair with him at the time. She thought he should air
the allegations somehow, but in the end he decided against it,
and a few weeks later the affair fizzled out.
'It was about this time that Kathy started another affair, this
time with her work colleague Vanessa Blake. And it was now
that things started to go wrong. Kathy told Vanessa what she'd
heard about Parnham-Jones, and Vanessa, who was something
of a political activist, was very keen that this information got out
into the public domain. Apparently, she told a reporter she
knew about the existence of this confessional tape, and although
she didn't name names herself, the reporter started digging
around for details. Kathy says she stopped Vanessa from going
any further but she thinks that word got out about the tape, and
that possibly several of the people involved came to hear of its
existence, including Wise.'
'Do you think Wise had anything to do with Parnham-Jones's
death?' Bolt asked him.
'It looks likely, doesn't it? It's safe to assume that Wise's
people got rid of John Gallan, so maybe they decided it was too
much of a risk keeping the Lord Chief Justice alive. What we do know is that Jack Calley phoned Kathy on hearing of ParnhamJones's
death. This was yesterday morning. She said he was
sounding very worried. He was sure that it wasn't suicide, but
murder, and he was worried that, as the owner of the tape, he

might be a target. He was also concerned that Kathy might be
too. She said she thought he was being overly paranoid, but she
did agree with him that it was now a good time to make the
contents of the tape and the allegations public. But, as ParnhamJones's
lawyer, Jack obviously couldn't do that. He wanted
Kathy to do it. He'd placed the tape and laptop in a deposit box
and he asked her to come over to his house so he could give her
the key, telling her not to park outside. That was apparently how
paranoid he was, but it was this paranoia that saved her life.
While she was there collecting the key, this guy Lench and his
friends turned up. Kathy hid, but as we know, they got Calley up
in the woods, and it seems that he gave them Tom's name, as
well as the Merons' address, before he died.'

'I still don't know why he gave them Tom's name. The poor
bastard had nothing to do with any of this.'

Mo thought about that for a moment before replying. 'Maybe
Calley felt that if he was going to survive, he had to give
them something. He didn't want to name Kathy but he'd have
been under so much pressure he wouldn't have been able to
think of anyone else fast enough, so maybe he just let slip
Tom's name. Now that he's dead, I suppose we'll never know for
sure.'
'What about Vanessa Blake? Did Wise's men find out about
her as well?'
. 'Kathy says Lench told her that Vanessa's murder was a case
of mistaken identity. It looks like the killer turned up at the
university looking for her and stumbled on Vanessa instead.
Apparently, the filleting knife she was killed with was actually
Vanessa's own. Like Calley, she was also very paranoid after
Parnham-Jones's death, especially as she was the source of the
leak, so she'd taken to carrying the knife around with her as

protection. That's why Kathy's prints were on it. She'd used it
for cooking in Vanessa's kitchen during their time together.'
Now it was Bolt's turn to sigh. 'AH those dead people. Someone's
going to have to pay for it. Has Wise been brought in for
questioning yet?'
'On what grounds? There's no sign of the tape or the laptop
anywhere. The deposit box has been checked and it's empty.'
'Fuck. So, he gets off?'

'There's no evidence against him. Just some bits and pieces of
hearsay. Not enough to do anything with.'
Bolt fell silent. He believed Kathy Meron's story. It made
sense. Not that it made any difference to him. He was still
suspended. He wondered whether the man he'd killed - David
Harrison, Lench, or whatever his name was - could have provided
any of the answers that would have built up a case against
Wise. It was doubtful. He didn't seem like a man who would have crumbled under interrogation and tried to save his own skin. And anyway, there was no point thinking about it now. He was dead. It was irrelevant.
'Can I ask you a question, boss?'
Bolt knew what it was going to be. 'Sure, go ahead.'
There was no other way, was there?'
'What do you mean?'
'You had to shoot him, right? This man Lench. He would have
killed you otherwise. That's how it happened, isn't it?'
Bolt knew how hard it was for his friend to ask this. They
trusted each other. But what had happened this morning had
changed things.
'I wouldn't ask, you know, but...' He paused. 'I feel I've got
to know.'
'There was no other way, Mo. I promise you.' The lie came

easier than Bolt had expected. 'He went for the gun, and I pulled
the trigger. I guess he didn't want to go to prison.'
He heard Mo sigh with relief down the other end of the
phone.
'I didn't doubt you, boss, but the circumstances were .. .' He
searched for the right words. 'They were strange, weren't they?
And it's all a bit of a shock.'
'This whole weekend's been a bit of a shock. Get back to your
family, Mo. Take it easy.'
'And you, boss.'
'Don't worry about me, I'll be OK.'
And he would be too, he knew that. He, Mike Bolt, was a
survivor. He'd fought back from the brink before, from the
physical and mental wreckage of the car crash that had killed his
wife, and had emerged stronger. But the parameters that guided
his life had changed again. He'd killed a man in cold blood justifiably,
to his own mind, but justification didn't alter the
trajectory of a bullet. His victim was still dead. And he'd still
been unarmed. Like most people's, Bolt's hands had never been
entirely clean. Until now, however, they'd not been too dirty
either. It would take some getting used to.
He put the phone down on the coffee table, picked up the
wine and switched on the TV. He'd done enough thinking for
one day.

56

Being reunited with Max and Chloe was, without doubt, one of
the best moments of my life. As soon as I came in the door, they
ran, laughing, into my arms, and the three of us held each other
in an unbreakable clutch. For a while, nothing else mattered.
The bloody events of the past twenty-four hours faded away; my
broken, battered marriage suddenly didn't matter. I was home.
When Chloe finally pulled away from the embrace, she gently
touched the bandage on my face and asked me how I'd hurt
myself. I told her I'd fallen over and scraped my face on a nail.
'Ah,' she said, 'poor Daddy,' and kissed me gently on the
cheek. 'Do you know what happened to us?' she asked, wide
eyed.
'No,' I answered, feigning ignorance. 'What happened to
you?'
'A man in black came and kidnapped us from Grandma's,' she
explained, excitedly.
I flinched. I knew they hadn't been told about their grandma
yet. I was hoping not to have to do it now. 'Yes, I heard all
aboufcit.'

'I cried. But only a little.'
'I didn't cry,' piped up Max. 'I told him off.'
'Well, you don't have to worry now,' I said. 'The naughty
man's in prison.' But, as I said the words, I wondered if all four
men at the cottage last night were now accounted for. Lench,
Mantani and Caplin certainly. I still wondered if the fourth was
DC Sullivan and, if so, what had happened to him.
But, for the moment, it was time to forget all that.
It was the opinion of the child psychologist at the hospital
that Max and Chloe had been only very mildly traumatized
by the ordeal they'd undergone, their age, the fact that they'd
been together, and the relative shortness of their incarceration
preventing the effects from being much worse. And certainly, as
we played together back at the house that afternoon and they
charged, shrieking, around the garden with me giving chase,
they seemed just the same as they'd ever been. We'd been told
to let them talk about it, but neither of them seemed that
interested in doing so, so I didn't mention anything, preferring hoping,
I suppose - that we could consign it to history.
Kathy held back from the games, and I could see that she was
finding it hard not to crack. Three people very close to her had
been murdered in obscenely rapid succession. All she had left
was her family, although I had to wonder if this still included me.
After we'd put the two of them to bed, and I'd read them
stories, I came back downstairs and joined Kathy in the kitchen.
She'd opened a bottle of red wine and I saw that she'd poured a
glass for me. Her eyes were dry, but the strain in them was
obvious. I couldn't help thinking how beautiful she looked, even
after all this.
'I think I owe you the truth,' she said, handing me the wine.
I took a big gulp, figuring that I deserved it. 'Tell me when

you're ready,' I said, looking at her over the top of the glass,
trying to work out whether our relationship was retrievable. The
expression in the smooth, olive contours of her face didn't tell
me one way or another.
'I'm ready now. Are you hungry?'
I shook my head. 'I ought to be, but my appetite seems to
have gone absent without leave.'
'I'm the same. All I feel is empty. Come on.'
She took my hand, her touch giving me a small crackle of
excitement, and led me through to the lounge. We sat next to
each other and, with her hand still in mine, she told me everything.
How she'd been unhappy in the marriage for a long time,
and had started affairs first with Jack, then with Vanessa. How,
during her relationship with Jack, she'd found out about the
allegations against one of his major clients, the Lord Chief
Justice, Tristram Parnham-Jones no less (I'd never liked the
look of that guy), and the existence of his taped confession; and
how, finally, we'd all become targets as Lench, Mantani and
whoever they were working for raced to find the tape before it
could be made public.
'I'm so sorry for involving you in all this,' she said when she'd
finished recounting the story.
'In the car this morning, Caplin told me that the police found
a joint mortgage application in your name and Vanessa's during
the search of her house.' I couldn't bring myself to mention what
he'd described as the 'intimate' ptfotos.
Kathy let slip a small, melancholic smile. 'No, it wasn't a
mortgage application. It was a mortgage enquiry.' I couldn't
quite see the difference, but she explained it for me. 'Vanessa
was pushing to make the relationship more serious, move it to a
higher level. I was infatuated with her, but I think she might

actually have been in love with me, and, being single, she had a
lot less to lose.'
I began to experience some less than charitable thoughts
about Vanessa, but remembered that she was dead, so had
ended up with a pretty raw deal herself.
'I knew I should have been trying to calm things down,'
continued Kathy, 'but with everything else going on it was
difficult, so I went along with things.' She looked at me, her doe
eyes suddenly very doe indeed. 'I really wish you hadn't had
to find out about her, Tom. I tried to keep our affair a secret
right up to the very end, especially after you'd found out about
Jack.' She gave my hand a squeeze. It felt good. Maybe I'm a bit
naive where women are concerned, but at that moment I really
thought there might still be something there.
When Kathy finished speaking, I shook my head with what
can only be described as weary sorrow. It was Jack I was
thinking about now. Jack, my old friend. Jack the traitor.
'Did he ever say anything about me?' I asked.
'He said that sometimes he felt guilty about what he was doing.'
Somehow I doubted that. There was no room for guilt in
someone like Jack Calley. He followed his instincts in everything
he did, often without any real thought for the consequences for
himself or those around him. Jack's instincts told him he was
all-powerful. That was why he could ride the near vertical slope
at Sketty's Gorge. It was why when the two of us were nine years
old and three older kids had accosted us in the local park and
demanded that we give them our money, Jack had charged
them, fists flailing, rather than pay up. And so many times,
his instincts had been right too. The three kids had given us a
bit of a beating (Jack especially, since he'd offered the most
resistance), but they hadn't got our money.

Yet, when he'd needed it the most, his luck had finally run
out. I thought back to that day in the park. How we'd returned
home bruised and battered, arms round each other's shoulders,
united and triumphant, with me thinking how glad I was that he
was my friend. Even now, after everything he'd done to me, I
couldn't help but mourn his passing just a little. Underneath it
all, he'd been a good man. When he could have kept his mouth
shut about the terrible crimes his biggest client had committed
and carried on taking his money, he'd done the right thing, and
the right thing had cost him his life. And in a way this made his
betrayal even harder to take. The fact that, in my case, he'd
allowed his honour to slip, as if I wasn't an important enough
person to justify it. That was what hurt the most.
'Have I really been that hard to live with these past few
years?' I asked.
She sighed and flicked a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. 'It's
not just been you. It's been both of us. We've grown apart. We
don't talk, and when we do, it's usually shouting.'
I hadn't remembered it being as bad as this, although I think
my ignorance owed more to a desire not to confront the truth of
the situation rather than a better reading of it. We had had some
pretty big fights of late.
'I suppose,' she continued, 'it was inevitable that something
would happen, but I never intended it to be as bad as this. I can't
tell you how sorry I am, Tom. If I could turn back the clock, I
would.'
'Is there any way we can get back to how we were?'
The $64,000 question. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. More
than anything, I wanted to go back in time to the point when we
still loved each other. I needed her. I needed my whole family.
Without them, I was nothing.