The Reckoning (54 page)

‘Possibly. But it’s his means of communication with the Skinner gang. He’s not going to want to abandon it without having an alternative lined up, and I doubt he’s had time. They’d have to give him the new number to use and Skinner has been running out of staff. My betting is that Felix Crowther was in charge of the intel – that was his reputation, wasn’t it?’

‘He was probably the brightest of them,’ Bryce allowed. ‘That’s not saying much.’

‘All things considered, it’s worth having a scout around. But I need to be quick, and I don’t know him well enough to be able to explain it if he found me looking in his desk or his car.’

‘I get the picture. You want me to do that.’

‘I’ll check his locker.’

‘What if he has it on him?’

‘Would you take that risk?’ I half-smiled. ‘Anyway, he’s in his shirtsleeves and his trousers are on the snug side. I can see how many coins he’s got in his pockets. If he’s got a phone in there, it’s too small to be visible with the naked eye.’

‘Fair point.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘If I’m wrong, he’ll be none the wiser.’

‘If you’re right, he’s in a lot of trouble.’

‘Not of my making.’

‘Maybe not.’ A deep sigh. ‘I’ll help. But I hope you’re wrong.’

‘Honestly? So do I.’ And I meant it.

‘Josh? Can you come in here for a moment?’

‘What’s up?’ Derwent breezed in, kicking the door shut with a back-heel. He looked around the room, at Bryce in one chair, at me leaning against a filing cabinet, at Godley who was sitting behind his desk, his fingers laced. ‘Who died?’

‘Sit down.’ Godley waited until Derwent had flung himself into the vacant chair, his fingers tapping on his knees. I had never seen anyone so wired who wasn’t on drugs and I found myself wondering about that for an instant, then put it out of my mind.
Concentrate on the things you can prove
…

‘Josh, you know as well as I do that John Skinner seems to have had access to the information we possessed all through this case. Rob has been looking into the likelihood that someone has been leaking that information deliberately.’

‘Makes sense.’ Derwent looked at me expectantly. ‘Found anything?’

‘Yes.’

Godley’s head snapped up at that; I hadn’t told him. I was watching Derwent. The fidgeting hadn’t stopped, even for a second. It was a good cover for giveaway twitches he wouldn’t have been able to hide otherwise, and I couldn’t pinpoint anything that made me sure he was guilty.

Derwent raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t keep us in suspense. Who was it?’

‘You.’

‘What?’ He stopped dead for a second, his mouth open. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

Bryce was looking down at his feet. Godley’s face had gone white. I was not the sort of person to enjoy the theatre of unmasking a villain; quickly and quietly I explained what I had learnt.

‘This case was obviously of particular interest to John Skinner, but it’s not the only one that’s been compromised by leaking information, from what I’ve heard. You and DI Bryce worked for Superintendent Godley on the task force that targeted Skinner some years ago. He was always ahead of the game. You never managed to catch him in the act, no matter what you tried. No one is that good. He was acting on inside information then, just the same way he was on this occasion.’

Derwent had folded his arms. He was smiling, incredibly. He seemed to have decided not to take it seriously. ‘Skinner has a habit of corrupting people. You can’t be sure there wasn’t someone crooked on that task force and someone else on this team. Why does it have to be the same person?’

‘It doesn’t. But it has to be someone who Superintendent Godley trusts.’ I risked a look at the boss. ‘You invited DI Derwent to your home on numerous occasions, boss. That’s true, isn’t it? He knew your wife and your daughter’s names. He knew a lot about your family.’

‘I was close to my team in the old days. I’ve got into better habits now.’

‘Keith fits both of those criteria too,’ Derwent pointed out. Bryce’s eyebrows twitched in surprise.

‘DI Bryce didn’t react strongly at the sight of Cheyenne Skinner’s body. I was there when you ran out of the room. You had a visceral reaction to it, and it surprised me at the time. It’s what I would have expected from someone who knew the victim.’

‘Are you telling me I shouldn’t be upset about the death of a fourteen-year-old girl?’ His voice was harsher – he was getting angry with me. I preferred it to the mocking levity, on the whole.

‘I am saying that it was an unexpected reaction from someone who presents himself as being an old-school copper. The boss has a fourteen-year-old daughter. I’m sure it was hard for him to see Cheyenne’s body. But he stayed in the room.’

‘You’re a dickhead. You think you’re being clever, but you don’t know jackshit about me.’

‘What is there to know?’

‘I have personal reasons for being upset at what I saw in the warehouse. Those reasons are not relevant to this discussion.’

‘With respect, they are if they go some way to explaining how you behaved.’

‘With respect, fuck yourself sideways.’

‘What about the shooting yesterday? When we got there, the action was all over. Three in custody, one down. None of our lads shot. You weren’t responsible. You had been well away from the action. But you were sweating like a horse when we were talking to you.’

‘I don’t like shooting,’ Derwent muttered. He looked ashamed of himself, but defiant. ‘I was in the army before this. I was in Northern Ireland in the nineties, right at the end of the fighting, and it fucked me up, the things I saw. I left after that – couldn’t deal with the stress. I don’t like being around CO19 at the best of times and I can’t deal with gunfire.’

Bryce raised his head. ‘It’s true. He’s always been gun-shy.’

‘Then you went to the trouble of telling the three thugs to keep their mouths shut in interview. I bet you felt a lot better after that.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Derwent’s forehead crinkled as he tried to remember. ‘I was just putting them under pressure. Softening them up.’

‘Why bother? They weren’t going to break down because you told them they were screwed.’

‘It’s what I do,’ Derwent said simply. ‘That’s how I get results. I’m not the quickest at outthinking people in an interview room but I’m good at pushing them around.’

‘Literally.’ I tried to keep any hint of my personal feelings out of my voice for the next bit. ‘What happened when John Skinner was arrested? How did Maeve Kerrigan get injured?’

‘She fell.’

‘She had help.’

‘I did push her. But I was terrified she’d get shot. I don’t like women being in harm’s way. I’m old-fashioned like that.’

‘She said you went to restrain Superintendent Godley even though there were two men fighting your fellow officers. You went to help Skinner. Were you trying to get him out?’

‘Through a million and one CO19 boys? I’d have to be suicidal.’ He looked at Godley. ‘Boss, I could see you’d lost it. If you’d done serious damage to him, that would be it. End of career. No question about it. I had to stop you, but for your own good.’

Bryce looked sorrowful. ‘Josh, I can’t believe it.’

‘Because it’s not true.’ Sweat was standing on Derwent’s forehead, darkening his hair. ‘Charlie, you’ve got to believe me.’

If he’d hoped using Godley’s first name would remind him of their friendship, he’d miscalculated badly.

‘I can only believe the evidence,’ Godley said tonelessly. ‘It doesn’t matter if I’d prefer it to be a mistake.’ He looked at me. ‘What else is there?’

I nodded to Bryce and he put a phone on the desk in front of Godley. It was still attached to strips of electrician’s tape. ‘I found this in Josh’s car, stuck to the underside of the passenger seat. It matches the number that sent the messages the TIU found on Crowther’s mobile phone.’

‘I’ve never seen that before in my life.’

Godley slammed his hand down on the desk. I suddenly understood why Maeve had been so unsettled to see him lose his temper; it was an unnerving sight. ‘Stop
lying
. You’ve been found out, Josh. You’ve lost. Just admit it.’

‘I’m not going to admit doing something I didn’t do.’

‘The fucking phone was in your car, Josh. How did it get there if you didn’t put it there?’

I was very glad there was a desk between Derwent and Godley. It was the only thing saving him from a punch in the face, or worse.

‘I don’t know, all right? I don’t have a fucking clue.’

‘I do.’ After Godley and Derwent shouting at one another, my voice sounded absurdly calm and quiet.

‘What do you mean, you do?’ Godley was glaring at me.

I turned to Derwent. ‘You were right, earlier. There was another person who had the same access to the boss – who was around when you were working on catching Skinner the first time. Keith Bryce.’

Bryce had his hands on the arms of his chair, his fingernails digging into the upholstery. ‘What’s this game, Langton?’

‘I asked you to help me search DI Derwent’s car and desk.’ I ignored the choked outrage from Derwent’s direction. ‘I told you I couldn’t do it myself because I didn’t want to risk getting caught. I lied. I’d already carried out a quick search in both locations so I could be sure the phone wasn’t there. I was pretty sure you were the leak, so I gave you a nudge to see if you would try to implicate someone else. I told you I was looking for the phone. I don’t know where you had it – I think you probably had it hidden about your person, in fact, as you suggested DI Derwent might have done that with it. You wear very baggy clothes – frankly, you could have a fax machine in your jacket pocket and we’d be none the wiser. I wanted the phone and I wanted to know that you were the only person who could have put it where it was discovered. And you fell for it.’

Godley was looking thunderstruck. ‘But the things you said about Josh …’

‘All reasons to suspect him. But I believe his explanations.’ I turned to Derwent again. ‘I’m not sure you’ll forgive me for any of this, so I might as well say it. You’re obnoxious. You come across as a total arsehole, but you’re too much of an arsehole to be subtle. You draw too much attention to yourself. Your colleague, on the other hand …’I looked at Bryce ‘… you’d forget he was in the room half the time. I know who I’d rather enlist as my spy.’

‘Keith …’ Godley was back to white-lipped distress but the anger had ebbed away. ‘Why?’

I didn’t expect him to get an answer, but they had a long history, the pair of them, and maybe Bryce still had a conscience in there somewhere.

‘I’m sorry, Charlie. I don’t even have a good excuse. It was money.’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘I gamble. Always have done. On anything. Racing, football, two flies crawling up a wall – it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve made thousands, but I’ve pissed away tens of thousands. Elaine doesn’t know. She’d kill me if she did and I don’t blame her. We almost lost the house seven years ago. Skinner got in touch with me and offered to pay off my debts. I said no. He said he’d give me a regular retainer – mad money, he called it. All I had to do was tip him off now and then. No harm done. He would let us make arrests so none of us looked bad, but he wanted to stay out of jail. If he did, I’d be better off.’ He looked piteously around the room, seeing no sympathy. ‘I know it was wrong, but I thought he’d be running his empire anyway, even if he was locked up. What difference did it make if he was free or behind bars?’

‘You should have quit.’

‘I realise that now.’ He shook his head. ‘I never wanted to give him personal information about you, Charlie. He was just so good at getting it out of me. A question here or there. A suggestion. A threat, sometimes. He played me like a Stradivarius.’

‘You’re making my heart bleed.’ Derwent had bounced back remarkably quickly. He was staring at Bryce with total loathing. ‘I can’t believe you were going to fit me up.’

‘On the scale of betrayal, I think putting my family at risk is a touch more serious,’ Godley pointed out mildly.

‘You’re right. You’re right. Sorry.’ Derwent had the grace to look abashed. ‘What happens now?’

‘You can go,’ Godley said to Derwent. To me, he said, ‘Thanks, Rob. I appreciate it.’

‘Do you want me to call DPS?’

‘I’ll do that myself.’

Bryce was huddled in his chair, his eyes wet with self-pity. ‘I need to call Elaine. They’ll be searching our house. I need to explain.’

‘For old time’s sake, I’ll let you use this phone.’ Godley lifted the receiver, back in control of himself, icy reserve in place. ‘Once I’ve called DPS and told them what you’ve done.’

I followed Derwent out of the room, wondering if I should risk an apology. He got a safe distance down the corridor then turned to confront me.

‘You frightened the shit out of me. I thought I was getting fitted up good and proper.’ He grinned. ‘No hard feelings, though. I’d have done the same thing if I’d thought of it.’

‘You couldn’t be in on it, I’m afraid. You had to believe I really thought you were guilty if you were going to be convincing.’

‘Did you tell Charlie it was me?’

‘He didn’t know anything. He needed to be convincing too.’

‘I thought he was going to kill me.’

‘Me too,’ I admitted. ‘But I would have stepped in.’

‘I wouldn’t have needed any help.’ He pulled his shoulders back, broadening his chest. I wondered if he was even conscious of doing it. It was so much a throwback to the apes it was almost ridiculous. The missing bloody link, alive and well and policing London with maximum offensiveness.

I shook his hand, then and there. Much to my surprise, I was getting to like him.

‘You would have to be completely insane to ask Derwent to be your inside man. He’d wear a T-shirt advertising the fact just to show off.’ Maeve was never going to be a member of DI Derwent’s fan club, no matter how much I tried to convince her he was all right. ‘I still can’t believe it was Bryce, though. He’s so … nondescript. How did you work out it was him?’

‘Process of elimination.’ I turned in a circle, checking in all directions for signs of a stalker before I followed her up the steps to her front door. ‘And just the fact that he is a nothing. Skinner’s not stupid. He recruits the people he needs. A not-too-ambitious career policeman with a gambling habit is pretty much ideal.’