Beneath the Bleeding (46 page)

Anderson jumped up and lunged for Tony, who swung one of his crutches hard through the air, smacking it into Anderson’s ribs and catching him off balance enough to make him fall to the floor. ‘You see? They’re not rushing in to help me, are they?’ Tony said. ‘That’s because they know you’re not up
to giving me a proper beating. You don’t like violence. Chris Devine just got unlucky in the heat of the moment. If you’d had to think about it, you’d never have hit her. That’s another reason why you chose the poison. So you could kill at arm’s length.’ He shook his head. ‘I started out feeling sympathy for you, Jack. Now, I just feel pity.’

Anderson scrambled to his feet and slunk back to his chair. ‘I don’t want your pity.’

‘So earn my respect. Tell me how it was. If I’m wrong, tell me now. I’ll take it back.’

Anderson slumped in the chair, defeated. ‘I’m not going to talk about it. Whatever evidence they find, I’m not going to talk about it. I’ll plead guilty. But I’m not going to talk about the stuff you were saying. There won’t be any trial to taint me. It’ll always be a mystery, why I did it.’ His eyes blazed anger. ‘I killed them. That’s what you need me to say, right? I did what I had to do. I killed them.’

After they took Anderson away, Tony found he really didn’t want to move. Drained and in pain, he was unwilling to do anything that might make either of those states worse. So he sat there. The custody sergeant brought him a cup of coffee that must have come from his private stash because it tasted of something. Other than that, they left him in peace. He drank most of the coffee, then let the last inch cool so he could use it to swallow some codeine. What kind of a job was it where the high point of success meant feeling so shit?

He wasn’t certain how much time had passed when Carol came back. She sat down opposite him and
reached across the table to put her hand over his. ‘Kevin’s doing fine. He’s going to be all right. And we’ve charged Anderson,’ she said. ‘If the CSIs come through, we’ll be home and dry. We can tie him to Tom Cross for sure, and there’s circumstantial evidence with Danny Wade. And the attempt on Kevin. And if he sticks to the guilty plea, we’ll get Robbie as well.’

‘He’ll change his mind as soon as a brief gets to work on him,’ Tony said. It was the way of the world. Whoever ended up representing him would see the potential for headlines as well as the need for justice to be seen to be done. ‘Let’s just pray it’s not Bronwen Scott.’

‘Is there anything else you’d like to talk to me about?’ Carol said, taking her hand back.

His eyelids flickered with tiredness. ‘Oh,’ he said slowly. ‘Now you come to mention it…’

‘Tony,’ John Brandon’s voice boomed from the doorway. ‘Congratulations. Fresh out of hospital and you’re doing our job for us. Well done.’ He shook Tony’s hand and pulled up a chair. ‘Now, Carol tells me we have something of a delicate situation on our hands. It might be helpful to have your input here. Carol?’

‘It seems we have an alternative scenario for Saturday’s bombing,’ she said. ‘Tony and DC McIntyre went to see Rachel Diamond yesterday. The widow of Benjamin Diamond, one of the stadium bomb victims. It had emerged that Mr Diamond’s company had links to Yousef Aziz’s family business. Tony had already raised doubts with me about whether this might be something other than a straightforward terrorist outrage, so when he asked if he could talk
to Mrs Diamond about any possible connection between her husband and Yousef Aziz, I thought it would be worth pursuing. Tony?’

‘Rachel Diamond claimed she hadn’t been following the media coverage, and it occurred to me afterwards she might not have seen a photo of Aziz, and so she might not have realized something she’d seen and written off as completely innocent was in fact something quite different. So I went back to her house today with a photo of Aziz. She wasn’t there, but her son Lev was. He caught sight of the photo of Aziz and said, “Why have you got a photo of Mummy’s friend?” I didn’t press him in any way, I know the rules about juvenile witnesses. And he said that they’d met Aziz in the park and he’d bought him an ice cream. It dawned on me that there was a different explanation from either of the ones we’d been considering.’

Brandon looked worried. ‘CTC are not going to like this.’ he said.

‘Tough,’ Carol said. She hadn’t forgiven Brandon for what she still saw as spinelessness in the face of the enemy. ‘Tony?’

‘Yousef Aziz wasn’t a terrorist. He wasn’t a hit man either. He was a lover. He was snarled up in…forgive me for sounding like a bad tabloid headline, but there’s no other way to describe it than forbidden love. The son of a devout Muslim falls in love with a married Jewish woman. It’s not going to play well at home, is it? They’re both going to be cast out of their families and the businesses they’ve worked so hard to build.

‘I think Rachel was the brains behind it.’ He shook his head. ‘Actually, having spent some time with
Rachel, I have a creepy suspicion that she went after Aziz with the sole intention of setting up what finally happened-killing two birds with one stone. But I’m getting ahead of myself.’ Brandon looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but with them. Undaunted, Tony carried on.

‘They’re having an affair. Aziz is head over heels in love, he’d do anything for her. And Rachel hits on a great idea. They fake a terrorist bombing. They’ll get rid of Benjamin without anyone suspecting the motive. Aziz also gets to strike a blow against the system that oppresses his people, because the people they’re blowing up are the rich bastards who despise the likes of him and his family.

‘What Aziz thinks is going to happen is this. He’s going to set the manual timer, get out of there before it blows, drive to the airport and be gone before anybody even starts to look for him. He’s going to go to Canada, which is a clever choice, because there are quite a lot of Asians there. Rachel is supposedly going to join him there-’

‘I hate to interrupt,’ Carol said, ‘but I have some information on that front. Stacey has traced a booking on a flight to Toronto next Friday for Rachel Diamond and her son Lev. And we’ve found a holiday rental company who leased a cottage for a month, starting on Saturday, to Rachel Diamond. Yousef Aziz had previously viewed the cottage on his computer. Both flight and cottage were paid for on her personal credit card. So Tony’s right. Whether she was planning to join Aziz or not, she had the bookings to demonstrate her intent.’

‘It’s very thin,’ Brandon said.

‘There’s more to be found,’ Carol said. ‘We’ll be able to trace the call to the remote-control timer. If she used her landline, it’ll be on her phone records. If she used a mobile, we’ll be able to find what mast it went through. I’m betting Stacey will be able to find some evidence on one of the Diamonds’ several computers. We’ll be talking to all the Diamonds’ friends. There must be someone who knew the marriage was in trouble. There always is. And now we know what we’re looking for, we’ll find witnesses who saw them together. And Tony will give evidence of what Lev said.’

‘Hearsay,’ Brandon said.

‘Actually, sir, I think this comes under one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule,’ Carol said politely.

Brandon shook his head. ‘I don’t like it, Carol. You think a jury’s going to buy the idea of a Jewish woman setting up her Muslim lover to kill himself and thirty-five other people, just to get rid of her husband? Why didn’t she just divorce him, like the rest of us do?’

‘Because she’s greedy,’ Tony said.
And I know all about greedy women.

‘I want to arrest her, sir,’ Carol said. ‘On thirty-six counts of murder. Because if we don’t, as soon as her mother tells her what Lev said to Tony, she’ll be on the next plane out of here. And if you think what we’ve got is thin for an arrest, it won’t even get to first base on an extradition warrant.’

Brandon groaned, ‘I don’t like this, Carol. It feels like a fishing expedition.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ Brandon shouted.

Stacey walked in looking very pleased with herself.
‘I thought you’d want to see this,’ she said, laying the folder she carried on the table.

‘What’s this?’ Brandon asked.

The CSIs who turned over Aziz’s flat found a receipt for a Coke and a cake at the City Art Gallery on Friday morning. So we took the initiative and seized the CCTV footage from the café and the gallery. We’ve got the whole thing upstairs, but I thought you’d like to see the edited highlights now.’

Brandon flipped the file open and they all stared at the contents. The first photo showed Yousef Aziz sitting at a table reading the paper, Coke and cake in front of him. In the next shot, Rachel Diamond was approaching from behind carrying a newspaper. The next shot showed her putting the paper on the table in front of Yousef. In the final shot, she was beyond him, no longer carrying the paper. ‘Three points of contact between them,’ Carol said. ‘I say it’s definitely time to go fishing.’ Brandon still looked dubious, but he nodded his assent.

‘Look on the bright side, John,’ said Tony. This way you get to tell CTC to piss off.’

A bright Sunday afternoon, a classic Northern England landscape of high moors and long valleys. A scarlet Ferrari convertible, top down, drifted along a single-track road that wound uphill to a high plateau. ‘Where are we going?’ Tony asked Carol. ‘And why are we going there in Kevin’s car?’

‘It really doesn’t matter how many times you ask, I’m not going to tell you till we get there.’

‘I hate surprises,’ he grumbled.

‘You’ll appreciate it,’ Carol said. ‘So stop whining.’

A couple of miles on, the road flattened out. On the moor, shooting blinds stuck out of the bracken and cotton grass like gun turrets on a ship. A track cut off to the right and Carol pulled up. She reached into the back seat and grabbed a backpack. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This is it.’

Tony looked around at the blank landscape. ‘This is what?’

‘Follow me.’ She set off down the track, then turned round to wait for him. The limp was still noticeable. She wondered if it would ever disappear completely. They were talking about replacing the joint, she
knew. But he wasn’t keen on the idea of more surgery. Not even at the hands of the redoubtable Mrs Chakrabarti.

‘I still can’t walk far, you know,’ he said, catching up with her.

‘We’re not going far.’ About half a mile down the track, the hill dropped away abruptly, providing a spectacular view of the valley below and, at its head, a fine castle. ‘This’ll do nicely,’ Carol said. She opened the backpack and took out a lightweight groundsheet. They sat down next to each other and she produced two pairs of binoculars, a half bottle of champagne and two glasses. She glanced at her watch. ‘Perfect timing.’

‘Are you going to tell me what is going on?’

‘Use your eyes.’ She handed him a pair of binoculars. ‘Look up the valley, towards the castle.’ As she spoke, a wisp of smoke twisted into the sky. Then there was a sudden whoosh of flame and a swathe of greenery turned scarlet and yellow and black with fire and smoke.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Tony asked, gazing at the spectacle through his binoculars.

‘Lord Pannal’s poison garden,’ Carol said. ‘He’s been wanting to do it since the day we arrested Jack Anderson. But we needed to be sure the prosecution and the defence had done all the research they needed. They both signed off on it on Friday, so His Lordship’s finally got his way.’

‘I see now why you borrowed the Ferrari.’ Tony lowered the glasses. ‘Is Anderson still pleading guilty?’

Carol nodded, twisting the champagne cork with
her thumbs. With a soft pop, it flew out and she poured it. ‘His brief has tried everything to get him to change his mind, but he’s smart enough to understand that, if he sticks with guilty, almost nothing will come out in court about the reasons why he went off the rails the way he did. And of course, since the toxicology guys found the pessary in his pocket was loaded with strychnine, it would be hard to argue that he was just an innocent bystander.’

‘No kidding. Did you ever find out how he administered the roofies?’

‘Ice cubes. One side of the tray was laced with rohypnol. The other side was clear.’ She gave a little snort of laughter. ‘The side with the drugs had a big “R” written on it in magic marker, to keep him straight.’

Tony sipped his drink. ‘I wondered at the time if he was going to cheat us.’

‘Cheat us? How?’

The cyanide capsule in the shirt button. Or whatever. I wouldn’t have been surprised.’

He stared out over the valley. ‘Anything new on Rachel Diamond?’

‘She’s still protesting her innocence. But we have witnesses to the fact that the Diamonds’ marriage was shaky. And the stuff Stacey managed to get off her office computer coupled with the handover in the gallery café is going to nail her. You did a brilliant job, figuring that out.’

He shook his head. ‘It was a very strange time for me. The pain, the drugs, the weirdness of the cases. And my mother.’
And the fact that we hardly stopped fighting from start to finish.

‘Has she been in touch?’

‘No. She probably won’t be, until the next time she wants something from me.’

Carol leaned into him. ‘Are you still thinking about trying to find out more about your father?’

He sighed. Sometimes he wished she wouldn’t pick at his scabs. He knew she did it out of concern and affection, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. When his father had been unknown, he’d been able, like Jack Anderson, to inhabit his dreams. Now there was a flesh-and-blood reality to investigate, he wasn’t sure he wanted that part of his inheritance. ‘I never thanked you properly for sorting Vanessa out,’ he said.

‘It’s all right. I know it’s complicated for you.’

He looked down at her, hair gleaming in the sun, long legs stretched out in front of her. Anyone observing them would presume them to be a longstanding couple, out for a Sunday-afternoon walk, comfortable with each other. The truth, like most things in his life, was far more intricate and less attractive. He gave a wry smile. ‘It’s just that sometimes I wish you’d never stopped me signing,’ he said.

She pulled away and looked at him, shocked and hurt. ‘You wish I’d just stood by and let your mother rip you off?’

‘No, that’s not it,’ he said, struggling to find the words. ‘We spend so much of our lives, you and me, figuring out the answers to mysteries. We’ve got so into the habit of it that we can’t leave anything alone. We’ve always got to take the wheels off and see how it works. And increasingly, I find myself wishing for
a bit of inscrutability and vagueness. Being and doing instead of thinking and analyzing.’

‘You’re not talking about your father now.’

‘No,’ he said, lying back and looking at the sky. ‘I’m not.’