The Stranger You Know (29 page)

‘Dunno. Maybe he lost his nerve. Couldn’t get it up. Got disturbed and ran off.’ He looked at Derwent with a glint in his eye. ‘Didn’t fancy sloppy seconds.’

I saw it hit home. It was only the smallest shift in his posture but it was a giveaway nonetheless and Orpen didn’t miss it either.

‘Still sad about her, aren’t you? Still wish you’d walked her home.’

Derwent was the last person to need rescuing, usually, but in this instance he seemed defenceless and I found myself stepping forward to stand beside him.

‘Mr Orpen, I spoke to Stuart Sinclair yesterday. He admitted he’d lied to you in his original witness statements.’

‘About seeing this fellow?’ Orpen pointed a long, wrinkled finger at Derwent. ‘I knew that. He was a real mummy’s boy. His mother kept her door locked at night to stop him from coming into her room.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Derwent said. ‘You mean—’

‘Not like that.’ Orpen raised a hand to stop Derwent from going on. ‘Don’t get too excited. The Sinclair marriage had split up earlier that year. Stuart was going through a bad time and he’d stopped sleeping. He wandered around the house all night. Drove his mother mad. She didn’t want him bothering her.’

‘So he didn’t see anything from the front window,’ I said.

‘No.’

‘And you knew he was lying at the time.’

‘Yeah, but he wouldn’t budge. Said he’d seen what he’d seen.’

‘Did you go into his bedroom?’ I asked. ‘What sort of view did he have of the garden next door?’

Orpen’s face went slack and he gazed into the corner of the room, trying to remember. ‘He could see a bit, I think. His room was on the left at the back.’

‘Could he have seen Angela with her killer from his bedroom?’

‘He said he didn’t.’

‘He lied about seeing Derwent,’ I pointed out.

‘There was a tree in that corner of the garden. It was in full leaf. He wouldn’t have been able to see much, if anything.’

I thought about it, trying to imagine myself there. A sleepless fifteen-year-old, attracted by the noise of a scuffle, seeing movement under the trees. Assuming it was the girl next door and her boyfriend. Assuming they were having sex, there and then, only feet from him. And he hated Derwent. Certainly enough to want to disturb them.

‘You know who didn’t have an alibi?’ Orpen was watching Derwent again, his expression wry. ‘Your mate. What was his name? Vinny. He said he was with Shane, but it was bullshit.’

‘Why didn’t you arrest them?’ I asked.

‘No evidence.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘And Shane
did
have an alibi in the end. Some girl he wasn’t supposed to be seeing. That’s why he lied. He dragged Vinny into it to back him up – that was their story.’

‘So Shane was out. But why didn’t you arrest Vinny?’ I asked.

‘I wanted to. It was just a hunch, though. No evidence. I interviewed him twice and didn’t get anywhere. Got told to back off by my boss because he was a juvenile and his parents were getting antsy.’

‘Who was the girl?’ Derwent demanded.

‘Now you’re asking me.’ He went looking through a stack of papers by his chair, wetting his thumb the better to flick through them. ‘Here we are. Claire Naylor. You should talk to that Vinny again. Find out if he knows anything about these killings you’re investigating.’

Derwent didn’t say anything. He was staring into space. I assumed it was too hard for him to tell Orpen what had happened to Vinny, in the end. He had walked away from me when I told him – just turned and left before I could say I was sorry.

‘Vinny died, Mr Orpen. In Afghanistan,’ I said.

‘So he’s probably not your killer, then.’

‘Probably not.’

‘He wouldn’t have hurt Angela.’ Derwent had recovered. ‘No way.’

‘Well, someone did. And you asked me what I thought, and that’s what I thought.’

‘Do you remember if you showed the crime-scene pictures to many people when you were doing interviews? Do you recall who saw them?’

Orpen winced. ‘Bit of a sore point, the pictures. We lost a set.’

‘What do you mean, lost them?’ Derwent demanded.

‘They went missing. They were in the police station, on a desk, and someone misplaced them.’

‘Or they were stolen,’ I said.

‘Who’d want to do that?’ Orpen asked. ‘Anyway, why are you asking me about them?’

I explained about the website Stuart had shown me, and the relevance to our murders. Orpen shrugged.

‘Can’t help you. Didn’t know who nicked them at the time and I’m certainly not going to be able to tell you now. Any more questions?’

‘Just one,’ I said quickly. ‘Do you recall any intel coming in on a guy called Craig? He was passing through the area around the time of Angela’s death.’

‘First name or last name?’

‘No idea.’

‘Description?’

I told him what Claire had told me and he shook his head. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘I came across the name,’ I said vaguely.

‘Never heard of him before. And good luck with tracking him down twenty years on.’

‘Thanks.’

Orpen nodded at me. ‘She’s a bright one, Joshua.’

‘Never thought you’d fall for a pretty face,’ Derwent said, dismissing me as usual.

‘Not my type. Too tall. But she’s got something.’

‘Yeah. Ears.’ I glared at the pair of them. ‘Can you stop talking about me as if I’m not here?’

‘Take it as a compliment, lovely.’ The old police officer gave a wheezing laugh that degenerated into a cough.

Derwent turned so Orpen couldn’t see his face and looked from me to the door. I took the hint and said goodbye, leaving Derwent behind. He joined me on the doorstep a few minutes later and blew his nose.

‘Good to go?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. I am.’ He set off towards the car and I hurried after him.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Of course. Got dust in my sinuses. That place is a health hazard.’ He blew his nose again, and took the opportunity to wipe his eyes. ‘Oh, fuck it. I must be getting soft.’

A lorry with a skip on the back of it blasted past, taking the speed bumps along the road far too fast. The skip flew into the air and thumped back down after every bump. I waited until it had gone by, with a thud and a crack that sounded like a gunshot, before I tried to ask anything else.

‘What did he say to you?’

‘He told me he was proud of how I’d turned out.’

‘Aw. That’s nice.’

‘Don’t,’ Derwent said, shaking his head. ‘Just don’t.’

‘I knew you were sentimental but that’s astonishing. I bet he never made you cry when he was interrogating you.’

‘You’re right, he didn’t.’ Derwent sniffed. ‘Don’t tell anyone about this. Ever.’

‘You’re not here, remember?’ I took out the car keys. ‘So no one will ever know.’

We turned the corner so the park came into view. The children were still screaming, sounding shriller than ever. I glanced across at the playground, about to make some remark to Derwent about it, and stopped. I was aware of him pausing too, looking in the same direction. Something was wrong, I thought, trying to work out what it could be. I couldn’t see any of the children or mothers at first, just a lot of abandoned prams and buggies, but I could see a man standing in the middle of the park, all in black.

And as he turned towards us I saw the gun in his hand.

Derwent and I started running at the same time. Towards, not away.

It didn’t occur to either of us to do anything else.

Chapter 23

Being fitter and quicker, Derwent got ahead of me, but not by much. I sank down behind the car nearest the park gate, a couple of seconds after he had done the same thing.

‘Stay here. Call it in. Tell them to send SO19.’

‘I won’t need to tell them to do that,’ I said, not unreasonably. A gunman in a playground would get every resource available to the Met. I had my phone out and was dialling already. Derwent turned and prepared to move.

‘Hey,’ I hissed. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I’m not going to stay here and wait for him to start killing kids.’

‘And what do you propose to do about it? Talk him to death? You’re not armed.’ I got through to the police control room before I could say anything else to Derwent and he took advantage of that to dart out from behind the car and slide through the gate. I moved along a bit further, still crouching, still on the phone, so I could keep him in view, see the gunman, and monitor the distance between the two of them. It was not enough and narrowing all the time.

And then Derwent whistled, a jaunty two notes to attract the man’s attention.

‘All right, fella? Lovely day for it.’

The gunman turned, his free hand stretched out towards Derwent as a warning. ‘Go away.’

He was older than I’d thought – forty, at a guess. White. Fair hair, thinning a bit. Deep lines scored his forehead and bracketed his mouth. Staring eyes: I could see white all around the irises even from where I was lurking. The gun was rock-steady in his right hand, though.

‘Come on, mate. You don’t want to wave one of those around.’ Hands in his pockets, Derwent was walking towards him, slowly but inexorably. The gunman stepped back a pace.

‘Fuck off,
mate
. This is none of your business.’

‘What’s the problem? What’s going on?’

Through his teeth, the man hissed, ‘I was looking for my bitch wife and my little boy.’

In my ear, the operator was repeating all I’d told her and checking the address, her voice calm and nasal. I was riveted to the scene in front of me.

‘We’ll get backup to you ASAP. Trojans are on the way. ASU is lifting. Stay on the line.’

I wasn’t going to argue with her but I needed both hands. I put the phone in my jacket pocket, still on so she could hear what was happening, and moved forward to the gate. Derwent was about thirty feet away from me, getting closer to the gunman and, crucially, his weapon. Beyond him, I could see a group of about ten women and maybe fifteen children, huddled together in a tight group. They were looking at Derwent as if he was their only hope.

‘The two of you not getting on?’

‘We split up. A couple of months ago. She threw me out.’

Derwent tutted. ‘What’s your name, fella?’

‘Lee.’

‘This isn’t going to help, is it, Lee? You don’t want your little boy seeing you with a gun, do you? Not for real.’

‘I don’t know where he is.’ Lee swung back to face the group of children and women, waving the gun in their direction. ‘They won’t tell me.’

‘Maybe he’s not here. Maybe he’s gone home.’

‘Not without his mother.’ A ghastly grin. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

I saw it at the same time as Derwent: a body lying on the ground. From my angle, all I could see was a pair of legs in skinny jeans and flat brown leather boots. They weren’t moving. She was lying on her front, just beside a brightly coloured climbing frame in the shape of a giraffe.

‘What did you do, Lee?’ Derwent’s voice was sharp. ‘Did you shoot her?’

‘Sometimes you’ve got to stop talking and start doing. She never listened. I warned her about it and she never changed. Anyway, what do you care?’ He held up the gun again, pointing it straight at Derwent’s chest. ‘Fucking stop moving or I’ll shoot you too. I told you before, go away.’

‘Not going to happen, mate.’ But Derwent had stopped. ‘I’m not going anywhere. She needs help and you need to put the gun down.’

‘I want my son. That bitch took him away from me. She poisoned his mind against me. She made him say he didn’t want to see me. Me! His daddy.’ Lee was shaking his head, incredulous. ‘It broke my heart. If no one’s going to listen to me, and people like me, it’s time to take control. It’s time to do something that can’t be ignored.’

‘This isn’t the right way to go about getting him back,’ Derwent said. ‘This is going to fuck up your chances something chronic unless you stop shooting and start thinking. Give me the gun and let’s get an ambulance for the lady.’

‘She’s a whore and she deserved what she got.’

I was close enough now to see that the weapon was not a handgun, which made sense because they were illegal and hard to come by on the street. It was a modified starter’s pistol – still illegal but much cheaper and easier to get hold of. It would be unpredictable even in an expert’s hands, and risky to use. His aim would be rotten. There was a very good chance he’d have bent the firing pin with his first shot, making the gun useless. Then again, he might not. I doubted he was using heavy ammunition, but at close range a small projectile could kill. I wished I could see more of the woman on the ground. I took out my phone and murmured a report to the operator, telling the paramedics to expect at least one gunshot victim.

‘This isn’t going to help,’ Derwent said again. ‘This was a bad idea and you need to start thinking about how you’re going to walk away from it.’

‘This is what I was driven to do. The courts don’t listen to men. They don’t listen to honest, straight-talking people. They don’t value fathers, except as a source of income for lazy sluts like Marianne.’

Marianne, I assumed, was the woman lying on the ground.

‘You sound like Philip Pace,’ Derwent said. ‘That Dads Matter guy.’

‘Philip Pace is the only person willing to stand up to the feminazi left-wing cunts who are running this country.’

I tried to think of a woman of any political persuasion with real power, currently, and failed. Somehow, I didn’t think Lee was in the mood for a discussion about it.

Proving that he was the worst negotiator possible, Derwent was getting annoyed. He dropped the all-in-it-together matey tone and spoke in his usual trenchant way. ‘Pace is an egomaniac. He’s in it for the attention and the fame. He doesn’t care about you.’

‘He’s the only one who cares. The only one.’

‘Mate, you are fucking deluded. But then again, you must be if you’re standing in the middle of a playground waving a gun around.’

‘Have you got kids?’ Lee asked. ‘Do you even understand what I’m trying to do here?’

‘I don’t think you even know what you’re trying to do. This was never going to go well, was it?’

‘I don’t care what you think. It’s none of your business.’