Relentless (6 page)

so
They went to the back of one of the vans, where a SOCO
officer gave them the kit of overalls, hoods, gloves and booties,
and once they'd put everything on they headed up the path that
ran round the side of Calley's house and into the shadows of the
beech trees.
The two of them made an odd pair. Bolt was a tall, rangy man
in his late thirties with the broad shoulders of a rower, closely
cropped ash-blond hair that was just beginning to fleck with
grey, and a face you wouldn't choose to argue with. It was long
and lean in shape, the features hard and naturally well defined,
and clearly belonged to someone who knew how to handle
himself. There was a vivid S-shaped scar running almost the
length of his chin, and two more scars, like shapeless runes, on
his left cheek - relics of a life-changing night three years earlier.
Yet the overall result remained somewhere close to handsome.
His eyes were his chief selling point. His former wife had called
them the most striking she'd ever seen, and although she could
probably have been accused of bias, they did draw people, being
perfectly oval and a lively cerulean blue, and when he smiled,
E which was often enough these days, they became surrounded by
peep laughter lines.
Mo, by contrast, was a small, stocky guy with a head that
J sometimes appeared too big for his body. It was topped by a
ifrizzy mop of curly hair that couldn't seem to decide whether
pt was black or silver, and had ended up being an unkempt
ibination of the two. He was a couple of years younger than lt, but could probably have passed for forty. His face was
wind and jolly and he had big bloodhound eyes under which
heavy bags, that had become more pronounced in recent
due to the trials and tribulations of his young family,
bad three sons under the age of five and a daughter of ten

who thought she was a teenager, and it showed in the air of
permanent exhaustion that surrounded him. Without cigarettes
and copious quantities of coffee, it was doubtful he'd be able to
function, and people often asked him why he'd punished himself
by waiting so long after his first child before suddenly producing
three more. His reply was that he hadn't planned any of them;
they'd just come when they were ready, and rather than being a
punishment, to him they were a blessing. Mo loved his kids
deeply, and part of the reason he made such a good cop was
because, underneath the somewhat cynical exterior, he believed
in what he was doing and wanted to create a better society for
them to grow up in. Of everyone in the team, he was probably
the hardest working, and had never once shied away from overtime,
paid for or not, which was the reason Bolt enjoyed working
with him.
The path, which was little more than a dirt track, led up
a moderate, fairly straight incline and was muddy in patches
from the recent rain, revealing a number of partial and complete
footprints, several of which had already been enclosed by
phosphorescent-scene-of-crime tape. A line of it stretched up
the edge of the path, and they had to keep to its right to avoid
contaminating any possible evidence. As they made their way
along it, they could see that the prints belonged to at least three
sets of shoes. Occasionally, they were scuffed where someone
had obviously slipped. It didn't take much to figure out that
Calley had been chased by two people, probably men by the size
and style of their shoe markings.
They rounded a corner and the path became a wider, flatter
gully, and it was here that they came face to face with the body
of the man himself. He was hanging from one of the lower
branches of a gnarled beech tree on the left side of the path

about ten yards away, his feet dangling a few inches from the
ground, a leather belt around his neck. He was dressed in jeans,
trainers and a white England rugby shirt, the front of which was
flecked with spots of blood. It looked as if he'd received a facial
injury but it was difficult to tell from the position of his head,
which was leaning forward so that he was facing the ground. A
thick fringe of dark blond hair hung forlornly down over it like a
curtain.
Five or six men and women, all in identical white suits, milled
around the body, taking photographs and samples in the undignified,
if necessary, manner that characterizes all major crime
scenes. As Bolt and Mo approached, one of the men standing on
the edge of the scene turned and came down towards them, an
inquisitive expression on his face. He was a tall man in his fifties,
with a well-kept moustache, a seriously receding hairline and a
vaguely regal manner that suggested the possibility he was ex
military.
'Can I help you?' he asked, stopping in front of them. The
question wasn't delivered in an unfriendly manner, but he wasn't
smiling either.
'I'm DI Mike Bolt, NCS. This is my colleague, DS Mo Khan.'
Mo nodded. 'We were coming here to interview Jack Calley.'
Bolt looked over at the body. 'I'm guessing we're a little too fete.'
" 'You are. I'm DCI Keith Lambden, Ruislip CID, the SIO on !4his case.' He put out a hand and»they shook. 'Can I ask exactly imhsA you were going to speak to Mr Calley about?'
Bolt gave him a brief rundown of their own case and Calley's
elationship with their supposed suicide victim. Lambden's eye
rows rose when they mentioned the Lord Chief Justice's name,
[butjje didn't speak.

'Is there anything you've found so far that could link the two cases, Keith?' asked Bolt, looking over again at the body.
'Far too early to say,' replied Lambden. 'He was only discovered
an hour ago by a woman walking her dog, which was
lucky as this isn't really a well-used path. We got here at half
past four, and we've only just finished sealing everything off.
The doctor's given a preliminary time of death of between two
thirty and three thirty, so he's not been this way long.'
'It looks from the prints like two people were chasing him,' said
Mo. 'Those trainers slipped twice in the mud on the way up here.'
'Three times actually, and you're right, it does seem like it was
two people. We've checked out the downstairs of Mr Calley's
house and the side door was wide open. There's also a fresh
partial footprint at the end of his garden by a gate that leads
directly on to this path. The gate was also open. It looks like the
suspects confronted him in his house and he managed to escape
out of the side door through the conservatory, which goes out
into the back garden. They chased him up this path and caught
him here. There was some sort of struggle. He ended up with a
bleeding nose and facial bruising, and you can see where his
shirt's been ripped.' He pointed over at the body and they both
saw that there was a large tear running underneath the arm of
the rugby shirt where he'd obviously been grabbed. 'My guess is that one of them held him while the other put the belt round his
neck and either strangled him then and there and hung him up
afterwards, or put him up there while he was still alive and let
him die like that.'
They all fell silent. Whichever way any of them cared to look
at it, it was a particularly nasty way to go.
'They were certainly determined to make sure they killed
him,' said Bolt. 'But no-one saw anything?'

'We'll be making the usual appeals for witnesses but no-one
called us until the dogwalker who found him.'
'Poor bastard,' said Mo, getting back to his feet. 'I guess we
can rule out robbery. They wouldn't have bothered chasing him
up this path if they just wanted to burgle his house.'
'And nothing appears to be missing from it either,' said
Lambden. 'My guess is that he knew his killers. There's no sign
of forced entry at the front of the house.'
'A professional hit, then, boss?' suggested Mo.
'Well, it doesn't appear as though there was anything random
about it. What do you think, Keith?'
'Again, too early,' answered Lambden, with a hint of reproach
as if they were enthusiastic young rookies running ahead of
themselves. 'AH we can be certain of is that the people who did
this were physically strong, and very nasty indeed. Not the sort
you'd want to meet on a dark night.'
Bolt moved closer to the body. He waited while the police
photographer took some close-up photos of Calley's corpse,
then inspected it from a couple of feet away, ignoring the
pungent odour that clung to it.
Calley looked young, maybe early thirties. He was good
looking too, with clean-cut, middle-class features and a big build. A man who should have been, and probably had been, a success
Istory. Not the sort you'd associate with being a victim of crime. fFhe dead man's features were slack, the mouth turned down a
le at each corner in a mildly doleful expression, the eyes
Hazing blankly in Bolt's general direction.
; Death, like the onset of age, terrified Bolt. He wasn't a
ristian, having become convinced that the world's secrets
Id be better explained by science than spiritualism while still
his pre-teenage years. He believed then, as he did now, that

when a person died, that was it for them. The end of their
journey, the big sleep. It was this lack of faith in something
beyond which made him fear it so much. Sometimes he truly
wished he could embrace religion, as many do when age takes
them closer to the end, but he knew that it wouldn't work. His
own beliefs were too deeply ingrained. Standing here, viewing
sudden, unexpected death at first hand, brought the fear right
back to the forefront of his mind. A few hours ago, Jack Calley
had been a wealthy young man with everything to live for. Now
he was simply a sack of deteriorating meat without soul or
function.
Something caught Bolt's eye, and he leaned down, squinting.
'What is it?' asked Mo from a few feet away.
'Do you mind if I move the body, Keith?' he asked DCI
Lambden.
Lambden asked the photographer if he was finished, and the
other man replied that he was. 'OK,' he said, 'but be careful. I
don't want anything contaminated.'
Bolt ignored Lambden's irritable manner. He was used to the
territorial instinct of provincial detectives whenever they dealt
with him and his colleagues, as if they thought the arrival of the
National Crime Squad at a crime scene was some sort of official
slight on their reputation. Slowly, he used both gloved hands to
prise apart the upper portion of Calley's thighs. The other two
men had come closer, and they noticed it immediately.
'What on earth's that?' exclaimed Lambden in a voice that
was an octave higher than it needed to be. Mo just exhaled. He'd
worked organized crime for several years now and was well used
to seeing signs of torture on both the living and the dead.
The crotch of Calley's jeans was badly blackened and charred
where a number of separate burns, each approximately the size

SB
of a two-pence piece, had been made. Someone, it seemed, had
slowly and deliberately held a naked flame to his groin, and not
just once either. Four, possibly five times, the marks merging
together.
For a while no-one said anything. The other SOCO officers
and the photographer came over and looked at this discovery,
and the photographer took a couple of pictures. Bolt picked up
one of Calley's arms and inspected the wrist. There was a faint
but noticeable line of reddish skin about half an inch thick running round the wrist like a bracelet. He checked the other
wrist. There was the same colouring. Ligature marks.
'He must have had some real enemies,' said one of the
SOCOs.
'Either that,' said Bolt with a sigh, 'or he had something
someone wanted very badly.'

When I was seventeen, Jack 'n' me and two other friends got
arrested on suspicion of stealing a car. We hadn't stolen it. It was
ja crappy old white Ford Escort van and it belonged to Jack.
lHaving been the first to pass his driving test, he'd bought it
llourth or fifth hand for about a hundred quid, and on most of
[the summer nights of that year he'd come and pick up the rest of

vtts in it. Whoever he picked up first - almost always me, even
though he'd moved more than a mile away by that point - got

the front seat, while the other two had to make do with sitting
on a mangy old rug in the back among the rusty tools, bits of car
and all the other crap that had accumulated there over the
months. We called ourselves 'The Van Gang', and our nights
consisted of driving round looking for something to do, which
could involve a visit to one of the few country pubs that would
serve us, or a girl's house, or just a detour off somewhere
isolated so we could do our bit for teenage rebellion by puffing
away on a couple of joints and while away the time giggling
inanely. They were good days, all in all, more innocent than they
sounded, and though my involvement with drugs was pretty
brief, I don't recall it ever giving me any ill effects.
Anyway, the indicators on Jack's van didn't work, and one
night near the end of summer when we were driving around
aimlessly, he made a right turn, naturally without signalling, in
front of a police car parked in a layby. The cops came after us
and pulled Jack over. They were an officious-looking pair and
the lead guy looked more like an accountant than a defender of
law and order. But I remember being scared, even though I had
no dope or anything else illicit on me. It was just the thought of
being on the receiving end of the attention of the police, as
if they could somehow find out about all my other youthful
indiscretions and bring me to account for them.
The first question the accountant copper asked was whether
the vehicle belonged to Jack.
'Yes,' he'd replied.
'Can you give me the keys, please?'
'Well, the thing is, officer, I lost them a while back and I've
been using this.' He removed a pocket-sized screwdriver from
the ignition and showed it to the officer.
Incredibly, this version of events was absolutely true (Jack's

van really was a heap of shit), but no police officer in his right
mind was going to let us go having seen that, and because the
police computers were a lot slower in those days and it took a lot
longer to access the registration database, we were promptly
arrested, even though Jack made a manful and genuine attempt
to explain his innocence. I could tell at the time that the police
were quite pleased with their collar. Four arrests in one go
would look good on their record, and the paperwork meant that
they could go back to the station for a while. I could also tell
that they were inclined to believe Jack's story, mainly because of
his pleas and the fact that, when it came down to it, we looked
and sounded like students rather than car thieves.
We were held for a total of four hours, which was the time it
took to process the paperwork, followed by a forty-five-minute
wait while the necessary checks were made. During that time, as
it became obvious that they were only really interested in us as a
statistic rather than for any crime we'd committed, I found
myself relaxing. They didn't bother putting us in the cells but let
us sit together in one of the interview rooms, where we passed
the time playing a cramped game of charades until it was time
to go. With the vehicle impounded, however, for being unroadworthy,
there was no way home, and after drawing lots we
were forced to call my dad for a lift at 4.30 that morning. He
collected us but he was none too pleased about it, and he hadn't
; spoken to Jack for months after that.
I thought back to that time flow as I sat in the interview [ room of a different police station, alone this time, and with the
f Charge of murder hanging over my head. It was, as you can
; imagine, a very lonely place to be. The police officers who'd
j brought me here were most definitely not inclined to believe my
[story, and nor was the custody sergeant who'd booked me in.