Authors: Kevin Brooks
‘John!’ a surprised voice said, bringing me back to the here and now, and I turned round to see Imogen standing at the open door.
‘Hey, Immy,’ I said.
She gave me an enthusiastic hug, kissing me on both cheeks, then led me inside and closed the door.
‘God, John,’ she said, taking me by the arm. ‘I just saw the press conference about Anna Gerrish on the news … Why didn’t you tell me you’d found her?’
I shrugged. ‘Well, it’s kind of complicated –’
‘I tried ringing you, but I couldn’t get through.’
‘Yeah, sorry. The press started calling me so I turned all the phones off.’
‘Are you OK?’ she asked, gently squeezing my arm. ‘I mean, this must be really hard for you …’
‘I’m fine –’
‘Christ,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Anton fucking Viner … I still can’t believe it.’ She looked at me. ‘Is Bishop keeping you up to speed on everything?’
I shrugged. ‘He’s told me what he thinks I need to know.’
‘Yeah,’ she muttered, shaking her head again. ‘I bet he has, the piece of shit.’
I looked up then as I heard Claudia Mercer coming down the stairs.
‘Hello, John,’ she said, smiling. ‘How are you, dear?’
‘Not bad, thanks, Mrs M.’
‘I’ve told Leon that you’re here. He’s in his study.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’
‘No, thanks –’
‘Something to eat?’
I shook my head.
She smiled again. ‘Well, let me know if you change your mind.’ And with that she wandered off down the hallway.
‘She’s never that nice to me, you know,’ Imogen said, smiling.
‘I heard that,’ her mother called back.
Imogen looked at me. ‘Don’t spend too long with Dad, OK? He tries to hide it, but he gets tired really easily these days.’
I nodded. ‘I just want a quick chat with him.’
‘Will I see you later?’
I smiled. ‘You can give me a lift home, if you want.’
‘It’s a date.’
Leon’s study was a small but cosy room at the far end of the landing on the third floor. It was fairly cramped, filled to the brim with too much furniture and too many bookshelves and all kinds of clutter all over the place – files, papers, magazines, newspapers. He had a desk against one wall, a writing table against another wall; a plush leather armchair in one corner, a cushioned wicker chair in another. There were cupboards and filing cabinets, framed photographs and certificates on the wall, a small flat-screen
TV on a black glass table, with stacks of DVDs piled up next to it. Half a dozen lead-crystal decanters were lined up on a narrow mantelpiece above the blackened grate of a small open fire, and the black of night was showing through a small square window in the far wall. Leon was sitting at his desk when I went in, a laptop open in front of him. ‘John,’ he said warmly, closing the laptop and getting to his feet. ‘Come on in, sit down …’
I went over and shook his hand, then sat down in the armchair.
As Leon lowered himself back into his chair and removed the reading glasses he was wearing, it was hard to keep the shock from my face. He was so much frailer than the last time I’d seen him, and that had only been two or three months ago. He’d looked like the same old Leon I’d always known then – big, strong, solid, bright-eyed. But now … well, he’d lost a lot of weight, for a start. But not in a good way. His yellowing skin hung loosely from his frame, giving his face a gaunt and haggard look, and the weight of it seemed to drag him down. His shoulders were stooped, his head bowed down. His eyes had dulled, too. And every movement he made was stiff and slow and obviously painful.
‘I know,’ he said, giving me a stoical smile. ‘I’m a fucking sight, aren’t I?’
‘You don’t look great,’ I admitted, unable to lie to him. ‘What is it – cancer?’
He nodded. ‘Pancreatic.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No,’ he said, reaching for a brandy glass on his desk. He
took a sip and swallowed slowly. ‘It tastes better than morphine,’ he explained.
I nodded.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, glancing up at the decanters.
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ I told him.
‘Sure?’
I nodded again.
He gazed into his glass for a moment, gently swirling the brandy, then he leaned forward and carefully put it down on the desk. ‘So,’ he said, looking over at me. ‘How’s it all going, John?’
I smiled. It was the same question he always asked me, and it always meant the same – are you drinking? not drinking? are you keeping away from the drugs?
‘I’m doing OK,’ I told him.
‘Yeah?’
‘A few lapses now and then.’
He nodded. ‘I can smell it on your breath.’
I looked at him. ‘I’m doing OK.’
He held my gaze for a few moments, looking for the truth, and all I could do was look back at him, not really knowing what my truth was … but, whatever it was, I was happy to let him see it. And if he’d wanted to say anything about it, that would have been perfectly fine with me too. But he didn’t. He just took another small sip of brandy, coughed quietly, and slowly leaned back in his chair.
‘I saw Bishop on the news,’ he said.
‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘I know. Tell me all about it.’
I told him everything then – from the moment Helen Gerrish had come into my office, to Bishop’s unexpected visit earlier that day … I told Leon everything. He listened in silence, his head bowed down, his eyes closed, not saying a word until I’d finished. And even then, when he slowly looked up at me and opened his eyes, he still didn’t say anything for a while. He just looked at me, deep in thought, digesting everything I’d told him … then he picked up his brandy glass, took another measured sip, licked his lips, put the glass down, and finally – after delicately clearing his throat – he let out a long sigh and began to talk.
‘Why didn’t you come to me earlier about this?’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘I didn’t have any evidence … there was no proof –’
‘You don’t have any evidence now. All you’ve got is a dead girl, Viner’s DNA, and a bellyful of bad feelings about Bishop.’
‘I
know
Viner didn’t kill Anna,’ I said slowly, looking Leon in the eyes. ‘It’s simply not possible.’
Leon didn’t say anything for a moment, he just held my gaze, and as he sat there looking at me, I tried to let him see the unspoken question inside my head.
Was it you, Leon? Did you send me that message about Viner all those years ago? Do you know what I did to him?
‘What we
really
need to know,’ he said quietly, neither answering nor not answering my unspoken question, ‘is why Bishop is lying to you. That’s the key to it all.’ He opened his laptop and started tapping keys. ‘The trouble is, Bishop’s nowhere near as one-dimensional as he likes
people to think. Believe me, I’ve known him a long time, and it’s taken me years and years to realise that, in his own twisted way, he’s a very complicated man.’ Leon looked over the lid of his laptop at me. ‘You probably don’t think he’s particularly intelligent, do you?’
‘It depends what you mean by intelligent,’ I said. ‘I doubt if he’d be a stunning success on
University Challenge
–’
‘Exactly,’ Leon said, smiling. ‘But for the last thirty-odd years he
has
been a stunning success as both a serving police officer and a highly efficient criminal, and that takes some doing.’
‘You think he’s a criminal?’
‘I
know
he is.’ Leon glanced at the laptop screen, then back at me. ‘Corruption is a crime, John. It’s not just a breach of trust, a bending of the rules, an abuse of power … it’s a crime. A corrupt police officer is a criminal, it’s as simple as that. And Bishop … well, come over here and look at this, see for yourself.’
As I got up and went over to his desk, Leon angled the laptop so we could both see the screen. At first, I couldn’t quite make out what I was seeing, but when I looked closer I realised it was a stilled image from a poor-quality video. The resolution was terrible, the definition non-existent, and the colour was more grey-and-grey than black-and-white. But despite all that, I could still just about make out the four figures on the screen: a man tied to a chair, another two men standing behind him, one of them with a baseball bat in his hand, and Bishop …
I looked at Leon. ‘Is this what I think it is?’
He nodded. ‘It’s a copy of the CCTV video that your
father gave to DCI Curtis, the one that shows Bishop and the others torturing the man in the chair.’
‘Shit,’ I said quietly, looking back at the screen.
‘You don’t need to see all of it,’ Leon said. ‘And I’m sure you know what happens anyway, but I just wanted to let you see what Bishop is capable of … are you ready?’
I nodded.
Leon tapped the keyboard and the video started up. Bishop was standing in front of the man in the chair, and as the video began, I saw him leaning down and yelling violently in the man’s face. There was no sound, so the yelling was silent, but there was no mistaking the fury in his voice. The man in the chair was screwing his eyes shut and stretching his head back in a vain attempt to get away from Bishop, but Bishop just kept on screaming at him. And then, suddenly, he stopped. And with no hesitation at all, he drew back his arm and punched the man viciously in the face. The blow was so hard that the man – still tied to the chair – tumbled sideways to the floor. The two other men immediately picked him up again, and while they were doing that, I saw Bishop lighting a cigarette. He took a few hard puffs on it, said something to the man, now upright in his chair again, and as the man began shaking his head in wild-eyed fear, Bishop calmly stepped forward and speared the burning cigarette into his right eye.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I whispered as Leon stopped the video.
‘And that was only the beginning of it,’ he said, pressing more keys.
‘He’s a fucking madman.’
‘No,’ Leon said. ‘That’s the thing, I don’t think he is … I think he just does whatever he has to do to get what he
wants … whatever that may be. But I don’t think he
enjoys
it. He just does it.’
‘Do you think he’s capable of killing someone?’
‘Everyone’s
capable
of killing someone,’ Leon said, and for a fleeting moment I thought I saw a knowing look in his eye. ‘But if you’re asking me whether Bishop could have killed Anna Gerrish …?’ He paused for a few seconds, thinking about it. ‘Well, yes … I’m sure that he could. If he had what he thought was a good enough reason to kill her, he’d do it just like that.’ Leon snapped his fingers. ‘But I can’t see him killing just for the thrill of it … and even if he did, he would have made absolutely sure that no one found out.’ Leon turned his attention back to the laptop screen for a moment, fiddled with the touchpad, then looked up at me. ‘The men who beat you up outside The Wyvern … you said you didn’t get a look at them?’
I shook my head. ‘It all happened too quickly.’
‘But you mentioned that the man who hit you first had rings on his fingers.’
‘Yeah …’ I said, my mind suddenly flashing back to that night – leaving The Wyvern, walking down Miller’s Row in the cold night air, the distant
doomp-doomp, doomp-doomp
from the nightclubs, the drunkenness whirling in my head … and then a voice calling out to me from the shadows of an alley,
Got a light, mate?
, and almost immediately the heavily-ringed fist hammering into the side of my head …
‘Yeah,’ I told Leon. ‘He had rings on his fingers. One of them had a skull on it.’
Leon angled the laptop towards me. ‘Is that him?’
The figure on the screen was a close-up still from the video. It was the man with the baseball bat, and Leon had frozen the picture just as he was raising the bat, so not only could I see the man’s hard-bitten face, but also his hands. The picture was blurred and grainy, and it was hard to make out any details … but when I leaned in closer to the screen and squinted at the big silver ring on the man’s right index finger, I knew that I was looking at a skull.
‘His face doesn’t mean anything to me,’ I told Leon. ‘But I’m pretty sure that’s him. Who is he?’
‘His name’s Les Gillard, he’s been working for Bishop for years.’ Leon nodded at the screen. ‘When that happened he was just a PC, only been on the job a few years.’
‘And now?’
‘It’s hard to tell. He moved up through the ranks pretty quickly, and for the last ten years or so he’s been making a name for himself in various Special Ops forces – SO12, SO13, 15 … you know, the kind of units who like to keep themselves to themselves. But whatever Gillard is now, I know that Bishop’s still got some kind of hold on him.’ Leon closed the laptop and looked at me. ‘That’s how it works with Bishop. He gets something on you, something he can use against you … and once he’s got it, you’re his for life, whether you like it or not. You’d be amazed at how many people he’s got in his pocket – police officers, criminals, politicians, businessmen … he’s a very powerful, and very dangerous, man.’
I nodded. ‘So do you think it’s possible …’ I paused as Leon suddenly closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and
groaned. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, quickly getting to my feet as he doubled over, holding his abdomen. ‘Leon?
Leon
!’ As I moved round the desk towards him, he painfully straightened up and opened his eyes.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘Honestly, I’m all right …’
‘You don’t look all right –’
‘It was just …’ He looked at me. ‘Please, John … sit down. It’s OK, really. It happens sometimes, that’s all …’ As he reached for the brandy glass and took a drink, I moved back round the desk. He looked up at me again. ‘Will you
please
sit down, John?’
I sat.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Maybe I’d better go,’ I suggested.
‘In a minute … there’s a few more things I want to go over with you first.’
‘I can come back –’
‘This name you got from the registration of the Nissan … Kemper, was it?’
‘Charles Raymond Kemper.’
‘Have you got any further with that?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m seeing Cal again tomorrow, but so far he hasn’t come up with anything.’