What Remains (18 page)

Gail.

April.

Abigail.

Part Three

31 OCTOBER 2014

31 October 2014

FUNERAL FOR COP FOUND DEAD IN DEMOLISHED HOUSING ESTATE

The funeral of former Metropolitan Police detective Colm Healy will take place at Bells Hill Burial Ground in Barnet today. Mr Healy’s body was found in a maintenance room under notorious south London sink estate Highdale on 4 October. He’d committed suicide.

Healy had been a detective inspector at the Met before his dismissal in 2012, which was down to ‘investigative decisions not in the public interest’ and ‘insubordination’, according to a spokesman. However, one of his former commanding officers, Detective Chief Inspector Melanie Craw, said ex-colleagues on the force were still ‘extremely upset at the passing of a man who served with great distinction until the regrettable decisions of his final few months’. She also confirmed that a contingent from Scotland Yard would be present at the funeral.

24

The day of the funeral it rained. The late summer was long gone, replaced by the grey of autumn, cloud knitted together, the temperature down to single figures.

I was surprised at the number of people who turned up to say goodbye to Healy, and while I felt nothing for him but sadness, his last months haunted by ghosts he’d never been able to control, a part of me was strangely relieved. As I’d driven to the cemetery that morning, I’d been worried the only other people at his graveside would be Gemma, her sons, Craw, and maybe a few former cops who felt sorry for him. Instead, despite all that he’d done, all his history with the force, forty-six travelled up from the Met, joining some former neighbours from his time in St Albans, and some cousins of his who’d flown over from Ireland.

He was buried a two-minute walk from Gemma’s house. It was difficult to know where else we could lay him to rest: at the end, he’d had no home, no anchor to anywhere, so I suggested Bells Hill to Gemma, and she went along with it. In the days after I’d found him, she’d gone along with most things. It had been a long time since she’d thought of Healy as her husband, but that didn’t mean, in some small way, she hadn’t still loved him. In that first week, as we waited for DNA results, for definite confirmation it was him, she was dazed, a little punch-drunk, so I offered to take care of all the arrangements.

She didn’t cry at any point in the run-up to his burial. Instead, she’d sit there, staring into the middle distance, telling me she trusted my judgement, that the coffin I’d chosen was fine, that the flowers were lovely, that the hymns were perfect. For a month, she was like a dam groaning under the weight of water.

I watched his sons during the service, having only met them once in the flesh, at their sister’s funeral three years before. Ciaran, whom I’d chatted to on the phone briefly in the days before I found Healy, was thinner, physically similar to his mother, and showed nothing, staring at the coffin throughout, hands in front of him, suit dotted with rain. His brother, Liam, was the opposite: bulky like his father, red-haired, intense, emotional. He began welling up as the coffin was lowered into the ground, gripping his mother’s arm as if trying to prevent himself from falling in after it. Gemma, immaculately turned out, held out for an hour, first in the church and then out at the graveside, but on the walk back to the car park I saw her stumble a little, like her legs had given way.

Then, finally, she cried.

The wake was held at a golf club on the northern fringes of the town. Although Craw was there, she never spoke to me, her doubts about being seen with me in public keeping us on opposite sides of the room. Instead, as I stood on my own at the windows of the clubhouse, looking out at the greens, I saw a reflection shift in the glass to my left, and when I turned I realized I’d been approached by a couple of CID cops I’d crossed swords with before. One, a softly spoken Scotsman in his early forties called Phillips,
had been the senior investigating officer on the case that had led Healy and me to the body – and the killer – of Leanne; the other was a pudgy, aggressive detective sergeant in his fifties called Davidson. Davidson had worked alongside Healy on the Snatcher task force in 2012, but the two of them had loathed one another.

‘David,’ Phillips said.

I nodded at him, and we shook hands.

Davidson didn’t offer me his hand, just looked me up and down.

The three of us stood there in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, then Phillips said, ‘I understand from what I’ve read that you were the one that found Colm.’ It wasn’t a question, so I just nodded again and let him continue. ‘Still running around trying to save the world, I see.’ He stopped, this time for longer. During my dealings with him, I’d never liked Phillips as a person, although I’d come to admire his abilities as an investigator – but it was clear he didn’t feel the same way about me either personally or professionally. ‘It seems that every time I pick up a newspaper these days, I find your name plastered all over it. Why can’t you just let us get on with our jobs?’

‘I didn’t realize I was stopping you.’

‘You’re damaging cases, David.’

‘You don’t believe that.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘I’m searching for people no one else cares about.’

‘So it’s a public service?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s whatever you want it to be.’

He smiled but didn’t say anything.

Next to Phillips, Davidson had edged around so he was
almost side-on to me, and through the gap that had opened up between them, I could see a crowd of other detectives looking on, Craw among them. They were obviously all in on whatever this was. Briefly, my eyes met Craw’s, but she showed nothing in her face, and then a guy leaned in and whispered something to her, his eyes on me, and she broke out into a smile. I felt a spear of anger.

‘We first met in 2011, didn’t we?’ Phillips asked.

‘I try not to remember,’ I replied.

‘Three years on and we’re still chasing around after you, trying to clean up all the messes you make. I feel sorry for Colm – of course I do. His life was tragic. None of us wanted this for him’ – he glanced at Davidson, as if to assure me that even he felt the same way – ‘and, if I’m honest, David, I don’t think we’d be here now, and I don’t think he would have had this ending, if he hadn’t met you.’

I frowned. ‘How do you figure that?’

‘You corrupted him.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ I said, and took a step closer to him. ‘Healy was already well down the road by the time I met him, and you can look a bit closer to home for the reasons why.’

‘Really?’

‘When Leanne went missing, no one at the Met cared.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It’s why he went off on his own, trying to find her. She’d been missing for ten months when he and I finally discovered she was dead – and you lot spent the entire time sitting on your arse doing nothing.’

‘You’re rewriting history, David.’

I shrugged. ‘Whatever helps you sleep at night.’

‘You’ve still got all the answers, haven’t you?’

Davidson this time. He had a thick East End accent.

‘Why are you even here?’ I said to him. ‘Healy hated you.’

‘You don’t know anything about me –
or
Healy. He was a good man before he met you.’ He looked out at the rest of the room, over to where the group of detectives was: every face was on us now. It seemed to spur Davidson on: ‘If you had a shred of fucking decency,
you’d
be the one who stayed away today. We’re burying the poor bastard, we’re leaving his sons fatherless, because you got inside his head. You’re the reason he’s dead.’

I swallowed my anger again but this time it didn’t disappear as easily, and as Davidson glanced off at the crowd, starting to find his feet, I noticed that Craw was the only one among the group who wasn’t looking at me now. She’d turned away, pretending that something else had got her attention, unable to face me.

‘Well, it’s been great catching up,’ I said, and before they had the chance to come at me again, I barged between them and made my way out across the room to where Ciaran and Liam were standing together, talking to one of their relatives.

Behind me I heard the cops erupt into laughter as Phillips and Davidson returned – swaggering, triumphant – but I didn’t look at them. Instead, I said goodbye to the boys, sought out Gemma and told her that I would catch up with her at some point over the coming days – and then I made a break for my car.

Twenty minutes later, as I headed south on the A1, rain spitting against the windscreen, traffic heavy as rush hour crept closer, my phone started going.

It was Craw.

‘I didn’t realize you’d gone already,’ she said.

‘Didn’t you?’

‘You should have told me you were leaving.’

I laughed a little at that, but there was no humour in it. ‘Yeah, I’m sure you would have appreciated me coming over to say goodbye to you in front of everyone you work with.’

Silence on the line.

‘Look, Raker –’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I can’t be …’ She stopped herself, the rest of the sentence hanging there in the space between us:
I can’t be seen with you
. ‘It’s difficult. There are people –’

‘Just forget it.’

‘ … who will try to take advantage –’

‘It doesn’t matter, Craw. I get it.’

As I joined the North Circular, everything ground to a halt and I came to a stop next to a Holiday Inn that looked more like a grain silo. To start with, neither of us made an effort to resume the conversation, the line filling with a soft buzz.

Then, finally, she said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘What do you think’s the matter?’

‘We’re all upset –’

‘It’s not about Healy.’

I looked over the roofs of the cars in front of me, the road rising to a ridge beyond which I could see nothing. The rain got heavier.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she said.

Except, because I understood her, I knew she wasn’t offering to help me, she was confirming our situation. She meant:
What do you want me to do about the fact that I’m a senior detective in the Met – and you’re a man the Met loathes?

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know
what
to do, or
what
to say, but I guess I’m just tired of taking lessons from people whose jobs I end up doing for them.’

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means I’m sick of being treated like a leper.’

It was out of my mouth before I’d even given thought to it, a rare lapse of control on my part, but I was surprised at how little regret I felt. Maybe on this day, of all days, having buried a man whose brutal honesty had often cut deeper than any knife, it was time to make her understand exactly what I was feeling.

‘Are you saying you regret finding him?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s
not
what I’m saying. But that’s my point:
I
found him, just like you wanted me to – just like you
asked
me to – and yet I had to stand there today while two arseholes with warrant cards took potshots at me and told me to my face that I’m the reason Healy is dead.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘What did I
expect
?’

‘You pick up the pieces on cases they can’t close. Of
course
they’re hostile. You’re finding out what happened to their victims. You’re showing them up.’

‘ “Them”.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That’s you, Craw.’

‘No –’

‘This “them” – that’s
you
.’

‘No, I don’t speak to you –’

‘What’s the difference between having to eat shit from a half-cop like Davidson, an hour after I buried someone I care about, and you standing across the other side of that room today, nodding in agreement as all your friends on the force formed a huddle and took turns to lay into me?’

‘That wasn’t what –’

‘Don’t tell me that wasn’t what was happening.’

She didn’t reply. The lull was filled with the chatter of rain, with the hum of cars moving inch by inch towards the city. I looked at the phone in its hands-free cradle, the mobile’s display showing her exactly as our relationship had defined us: no first name, just Craw.

‘Is this going anywhere?’ I said to her.

‘Raker, look –’

‘It makes no difference to me whether anyone sees me sitting at the same table as you, so I’m fine about it. I’m prepared to run with whatever this is. And you know what? I don’t even really care that I had to watch you pretend not to like me today, just so no one would find out that we’ve had dinner together. I mean, you
do
like me, right? This isn’t just some elaborate trick you’re playing?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Good. So, what I need to know is this: am I going to be standing across the room from you in three months, in six months, in a year, in five, while you still treat me like an outcast? Frankly, I couldn’t give a shit about the rest of them in there today, what they say or what they think – but I care about what you think.’