Beneath the Bleeding (36 page)

‘He was planning to escape to a cottage in Canada?’ Kevin expressed the incredulity Carol thought they were probably all feeling. ‘Canada?’

‘He was thinking about it, at least,’ Stacey said.

‘You wouldn’t think Canada would be the destination of choice of an Islamic fundamentalist fugitive, would you?’ Chris said.

‘They’re very tolerant, the Canadians,’ Paula said.

‘Not that tolerant. But they do have a significant
population from the sub-continent, Carol said. ‘OK. Kevin, you take care of the cottages. You probably won’t be able to do much before tomorrow, but make whatever start you can. Chris, when you get back from CTC, take over the mobile numbers from Kevin.’ She smiled at them. ‘You’re all doing really well. I know we’ve got a lot on our plates, but let’s show them what we’re made of. Make sure everything you get comes across my desk.’ She stood up, signalling the end of the meeting. ‘Good luck. God knows, we need it.’

Tony couldn’t help feeling sorry for the residents of Vale Avenue. Their normally quiet suburban boulevard, with its grassy central reservation and its flowering cherries lining the verge, was under siege. Now the eyes of the world were on a street where normally the most provocative event was a dog owner allowing their pet to foul the pavement. TV vans, radio cars and reporters’ vehicles were scattered along either side of the road. Police and forensic vans formed a tight cluster round 147. Sitting in the back of the black hack-the cab he’d ordered because it had enough room for his leg-Tony wondered again at the public’s capacity for every last drop of so-called news coverage.

As well as those who had more or less legitimate reasons for being there, there were the ghouls and gawpers. Probably some of the same people who had contributed to Robbie Bishop’s shrine. People whose lives were so limited they needed the validation of being somehow part of a public event. It was easy to despise them, Tony thought. But he felt they did perform a function, acting as a kind of Greek chorus,
commenting in their unconsidered way on the events of the day. Paxman might interview the great and the good, inviting their incisive insights, but the people on the pavement also had something to say.

‘Drive right up to the police cordon,’ Tony said to the driver, who did as he was asked, crawling through the knots of people, using his horn to clear a path. When he had got as far as he could, Tony struggled upright and shoved a twenty through the gap in the window. ‘Wait for me, please.’ He opened the door, then manoeuvred his crutches on to the ground. It was ungainly and painful, but he managed to struggle out on to the road. Armed officers stood at intervals across the drive and along the hedge of 147. On the pavement, Sanjar Aziz was giving another interview. He was tiring. His shoulders were starting to droop, his stance was more defensive than before. But the passion in his face was still alive. The lights went off, the interviewer gave perfunctory thanks and turned away. A look of dejection spread across Sanjar’s face.

Tony swung himself over on his crutches. Sanjar looked him up and down, clearly unimpressed. ‘You want an interview?’

Tony shook his head. ‘No. I want to talk to you.’

Sanjar screwed his face up, incomprehending. ‘Yeah, right. Talk, interview, same thing, innit?’ He was looking over Tony’s shoulder, impatient for somebody else to talk to, somebody who would listen to what he had to say, not get into a verbal fencing match with him.

Tony gritted his teeth. It was amazing how much effort it took just to stand upright, never mind standing
upright and talking. ‘No, it’s not the same. The interviewers want you to say what they want to hear. I want to hear what you have to say. The thing that they’re not letting you talk about.’

Now he had Sanjar’s attention. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, his good-looking face twisted into wounded aggression.

‘My name’s Tony Hill. Dr Tony Hill. I’d show you my ID if I could,’ he said, giving his crutches a frustrated glance. ‘I’m a psychologist. I often work with Bradfield Police. Not this lot,’ he added, nodding towards the impassive riot-clad guards with a trace of contempt. ‘I think you’ve got things to say about your brother that nobody wants to hear. I think that’s frustrating you beyond belief.’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Sanjar snapped. ‘I don’t need no shrink, all due respect. I just want this lot–’ he gestured expansively at the media and police ‘-to understand why they’re wrong about my brother.’

‘They’re not going to understand,’ Tony said. ‘Because it doesn’t fit what they need to believe. But I do want to understand. I don’t think your brother was a terrorist, Sanjar.’

Suddenly he had a hundred per cent of Sanjar Aziz’s attention. ‘You saying it wasn’t Yousef that did this?’

‘No, I think it’s pretty clear that he did it. But I don’t think he did it for the reasons everybody is assuming. I think you can maybe help me understand why this happened.’ Tony gestured with his head towards the waiting taxi. ‘We can go somewhere and talk about it.’

Sanjar looked up at his home, where a white-suited forensic technician had just emerged with another plastic bag. He turned back to Tony, who felt he was being appraised. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to you.’

Dorothy Cross poured coffee from a silver pot into bone china cups decorated with roses whose exact shade of pink was picked up in the several patterns that adorned the walls. Two different wallpapers, one above and one below the dado rail, the curtains, the carpets, the loveseat, the two sofas and the scatter cushions each had a different pattern but they were united by toning shades of pink and burgundy. Carol felt as if she’d been sucked into one of those medical dramas where the camera journeys through internal organs. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

Dorothy stopped pouring and gave the two cups a critical look. Then she added a teaspoonful more coffee to one of them. Satisfied, she passed it to Carol. She pushed the silver milk jug and sugar bowl towards her then looked up with the desperate little smile of someone who is trying to keep herself from exploding into fragments. ‘It’s cream,’ she said. ‘Not milk. Tom likes cream in his coffee. Liked.’ She frowned. ‘Liked. I have to keep remembering. Liked, not likes.’ Her chin quivered.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Carol said.

The look Dorothy flashed her was sharp as a shard of glass. ‘Are you? Are you really? I thought the two of you never got on.’

Fuck. What happened to British reticence?
‘It’s true we didn’t see eye to eye sometimes. But you don’t have to be friends with someone to appreciate their worth.’
Carol could feel herself slithering around on a shiny surface of hypocrisy. ‘He was very popular with his junior officers. I’m sure you know that. And his actions yesterday…Mrs Cross, he was heroic. I hope you’ve been told that already.’

‘It doesn’t make any odds to me, DCI Jordan. What matters to me is that I’ve lost him.’ It took both hands for her to raise her cup to her lips. It was strange to see such a big, solid woman reduced to fragility. But Carol could see the signs of her unravelling. Her shampoo-and-set hair was strangely asymmetrical, her lipstick line a little smudged. ‘He filled this house with his personality, and he filled my life the same way. We met when we were only seventeen, you know. I don’t think either of us has seriously looked at anybody else since. I feel like I’ve lost half of myself. What it’s like is that whenever one of you forgets some detail from the past, the other remembers it. What am I going to do without him?’ Her eyes were bright with tears, her breath catching in her throat.

‘I can’t imagine,’ Carol said.

‘It makes no sense, you know.’ She kept touching her wedding ring with the tip of her right index finger. Again, she flashed Carol that incisive look. ‘I’m not stupid. I know there must have been plenty wanted him dead at one time or another. People he’d arrested, people he’d got across. But why now? Why seven years after he left the force? I’m sorry, I just don’t believe anybody stays angry for that long. And the sort of people he put away? They’re not poisoners. If one of them was going to come after them, it would have been a shotgun on the doorstep.’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ll be honest with you, Mrs Cross. We think this might be part of a wider investigation, but I can’t tell you what that is right now.’ Carol took a sip of the excellent coffee. ‘I know you’ll appreciate how it is.’

Dorothy looked pained, as if she didn’t like the idea of her husband’s death not being a unique event. ‘I want whoever did this to be caught and punished, DCI Jordan. I’m not bothered about any other investigation you’re dealing with.’

‘I understand that. And Tom’s death is our number one priority.’

Dorothy reared up in her seat, considerable bosom heaving, and looked down her nose at Carol. ‘You expect me to believe that? With thirty-five dead at Victoria Park?’

Carol put her cup down and looked Dorothy straight in the eye. ‘They’ve taken that away from us. That’s up to Counter Terrorism Command. We’re concentrating on Tom’s death and I have to tell you that, when it comes to investigating murder, my team has no equal.’

Dorothy subsided slightly. But being Tom Cross’s wife for the best part of forty years had left its mark. ‘They’d never have dared take the Bradfield bombing off my Tom. He’d have given John Brandon what for,’ she said, making it plain what she thought of Carol and Brandon both.

Carol told herself she was dealing with a grief-stricken widow. It wasn’t the time to debate Tom Cross’s views on policing. ‘I was hoping you could help me with Tom’s movements yesterday,’ she said.

Dorothy stood up. ‘I knew you’d want to know
about it, so I looked it out for you. I’ll be right back.’ She bustled out of the room. Carol couldn’t help thinking that if there were to be a biopic of Tom Cross’s life, you’d have to cast Patricia Routledge as his wife.

Dorothy came back with a sheet of paper and handed it to Carol. While she poured more coffee, Carol read a letter from the head teacher of Harriestown High, asking Tom Cross to act as security consultant for a fundraiser. At the bottom of the letter, Cross had jotted the name Jake Andrews next to a phone number and the name of a restaurant. Beneath that, in a different pen but in the same hand, he’d written Saturday’s date, the name of a pub in Temple Fields, and ‘1 p.m.’.

‘Do you know who Jake Andrews is?’ Carol said.

‘He was organizing the fundraiser. Tom said it was going to be at Pannal Castle. Him and Jake had lunch a couple of weeks back in that fancy French place round the back of The Maltings. They were meeting in the Campion Locks pub yesterday then going on to Jake’s flat for lunch. Do you think that’s when it happened?’ Dorothy said. ‘Is Jake dead as well? Were you investigating him?’

This is the first time I’ve heard his name. Do you know his address?’

Dorothy shook her head. ‘According to Tom, they were meeting in the Campion Locks because Jake’s flat is hard to find. He told Tom it would be easier if they met in the pub then walked round to his place.’

Carol tried not to let her disappointment show. This case was full of frustrations. Every time they had
something approaching a lead, it frittered out. ‘Is there anything else Tom said about Jake Andrews?’

Dorothy thought for a moment, stroking her chin in a peculiar gesture that reminded Carol of a man caressing a beard. Finally, she shook her head. ‘He said he seemed to know what he was about. That’s all. Is that when it happened?’

‘We don’t know yet. Before he met Jake-was there anyone else Tom was seeing?’

Dorothy shook her head. ‘He didn’t have time. His taxi came at half past twelve. Just right to get to the far side of Temple Fields.’

Carol couldn’t argue with that. ‘Had he had any threats? Did he ever speak of having enemies?’

‘Not specifically.’ She stroked her non-existent beard again. ‘Like I said, the people who had it in for Tom wouldn’t do anything subtle. He knew there were places he shouldn’t go in Bradfield. Places where he’d put too many of the locals away. But he didn’t live in fear of his life, DCI Jordan.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘He lived his life to the full. His boat, his golf, his garden…’ She had to stop for a moment, hand on her bosom, eyes shut. When she gathered herself together again, she leaned forward, close enough for Carol to see every line on her face. ‘You catch whoever did this. You catch them and you put them away.’

It felt strange being back inside his house. No wonder people spoke of becoming institutionalized. A week away and Tony felt as if his capabilities had been compromised. He led Sanjar into the living room and collapsed into his armchair with a surge of relief.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘As you can see, I’m not in a position to be very hospitable. This is the first time I’ve been home in a week. There won’t be any milk, but if you want some black tea or coffee, you’re very welcome to help yourself. There might even be some fizzy mineral water in the fridge.’

‘What happened to you?’ It was the first thing Sanjar had said to him since they’d left Vale Avenue. He hadn’t spoken in the cab, which Tony had been grateful for. He hadn’t anticipated how much energy the physical activity would take. But the twenty-minute cab ride had allowed him to recoup some of his resources.

‘I think the technical term is a mad axeman,’ Tony said. ‘One of our patients at Bradfield Moor had an episode. He managed to get out of his room and get his hands on a fire axe.’

Sanjar pointed at him. ‘You’re the bloke who saved them nurses. You were on the news.’

‘I was?’

‘Just on the local news. And they didn’t have no pictures of you. Just pictures of the mental case that went for you guys. You did good.’

Tony fiddled with the arm of his chair, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t do good enough. Somebody died.’

‘Yeah, well. I know what that feels like.’

‘There’s not really been any space for you to grieve, has there?’

Sanjar stared at the fireplace and sighed. ‘My parents are really fucked up,’ he said. ‘They can’t take it in. Their son. Not just that he’s dead, but that he took all those people with him. How can that be? I mean, I’m his brother. Same genes. Same upbringing.
And I can’t get my head round it. How can they? Their lives are destroyed, and they’ve lost a son.’ He swallowed hard.