Mercy Killing (27 page)

He held out his massive hands to demonstrate what that looked like. Both detectives stared pointlessly at his palms.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what I’m saying is that it was cold that day. Two men came into the café. I was sitting at the back and there wasn’t much room. People
taking a break from the cold. They’d warned there’d be a frost and I keep an eye on the weather. Have to, you see. It’s important for our job.

‘The two who came in couldn’t sit at the back. I’d taken the last table. There seemed to be a bit of a problem between them and one wanted to go out again, but the other
insisted they stay. I couldn’t hear, only see. They were standing between me and Mr Woodville. It’s the only reason, I think, that I noticed them.’

He paused, his face strained.

‘Maybe it’s because I’ve not let myself think about it,’ he said. ‘I waited until Mr Woodville was ready to leave, made sure I’d paid my bill so I
didn’t draw attention to myself and the fact I was about to follow him, when the two blokes made towards the door as if they were leaving too.’

From the expression that Leon was sporting, he thought that a revelation. Tom wasn’t so sure.

Just as Tom was about to break the bad news to him that two men walking out of a café weeks before Woodville’s murder wasn’t necessarily relevant, Leon gave the best bit of
information to date.

‘The thing was, a woman walked past the café with two young kids, a boy and a girl, I think, and Mr Woodville rushed out. The two men in the café looked so worried. One of
them went to the toilet downstairs and it was only a couple of seconds before the other one joined him. It made me think that they knew the woman but didn’t want her to recognize them.
I’m not sure if it’s important but I thought I should tell you.’

Both Sophia and Tom maintained the Home Office-approved po-faced expression on being given the best bit of news so far.

‘It’s possibly important, Leon,’ said Tom. ‘Leave it with us and we’ll look into it.’

Inside his heart was singing.

One thing was for sure, Hazel was glad that her first shift back in Major Crime was over. She was tired and it had been a long day. For the first time since leaving the house
that morning, she was able to relax.

She was pleased to be home and to have the time to appreciate simpler everyday things, such as opening her front door and a seeing a pile of letters lying on the doormat. They were real,
tangible things that had been posted through the letterbox by a real person.

And there was something in there that she had been hoping for.

Kicking off her shoes and picking up the post in almost one motion, she forced the front door closed with one of her stockinged feet and sat on the bottom stair, mail on her lap. She ripped open
the envelope in question and scanned the letter.

Hazel had waited for some time now for a building quote for an outside kennel. She had enough money saved for a modest run in the garden, but had held out for the right person, and the right
price, so that she’d get exactly what she needed for overnight emergencies.

Despite the preoccupations of the day, there had been a small part of her brain set aside to fret about what it was going to cost her to give dogs a temporary home when their owners were fleeing
from domestic violence.

She didn’t want to dwell on the real reason why it was such a relief to see that she could afford the kennel, which was that dog fostering was a way of putting her mind at ease over the
death of Vanessa Meaden.

She crumpled the letter in her hands, held it to her chest, head bent.

The ferocity of her sobbing surprised her. By the time she’d sat listening to her own heart breaking for what seemed to be an eternity, she felt worn out, but a little less angry at
herself or the world.

There was nothing she could do about Vanessa’s death; and she couldn’t prevent Vanessa’s husband – who by now must have served his time for killing his wife – from
finding another victim of domestic abuse. But what she could do was play her tiny part in helping other women, other families escape from a dangerous and volatile home life.

And if she took pleasure from that, and from canine company, surely everyone benefited.

The day had been a strange one for Dave Lyle.

Now he sat in his lounge, lights off, television on mute, third can of lager in his hand. He popped the top and guzzled almost half of the drink in one chug.

All his motives for visiting Millie were valid, he felt. He cared for her and she had been through a horrible ordeal, but he would be kidding himself if he didn’t admit that part of the
reason he had gone to see her was to establish exactly how vulnerable she was. Finding out about her boyfriend’s sexual offending, and then his murder, had indeed weakened her resolve. The
last thing he wanted was any more harm to come to her, although he couldn’t deny the feelings he still had for her.

It made him feel as though he too was a sexual predator but he had always admired her from afar, a little afraid of her rejecting him. He had hung back for far too long and when Clive came
along, he knew that he had missed his chance. Begrudgingly, Dave had really taken to Clive. He had been that sort of person. Even if Dave had been seeking out reasons not to like him, he would have
been hard pushed to find one.

Then there was the Ian factor.

Ever since they had met and become friends at school decades ago, they had looked out for each other. There had been something a little reckless about Ian, not that Dave was able to define it at
the age of eleven when they were thrown together in the first year of their secondary school. It was a place that had seemed very daunting at the time, although they would never have admitted it
then, not even to each other.

They had kept an eye out for one another, but as the years went by it was usually Dave who was reining in Ian, and the favour wasn’t often returned.

The pattern of his friend’s behaviour had become as familiar to him as the taste of the lager that was hitting the back of his throat now, although it was doing nothing to take away the
memory of the day’s events. The look on Ian’s face that he had seen today in Millie’s kitchen, he had seen countless times before. No one single act or comment appeared to spark
the reaction, and Ian had explained that even he couldn’t put his finger on what it was that made him feel so exposed and raw, and then angry and resentful.

That look was Dave’s cue to help out his oldest and best friend who had always been there for him.

He shook the lager can from side to side, found it was empty and contemplated the walk to the fridge to get another. On the short distance to the kitchen, he smiled as he remembered the
open-ended flight he had booked a few years back for Ian so that he could get away to Crete and try a new way of life, even if for only a few months. It had cost Dave his own holiday money, but
that was what friends did for each other. It wasn’t in his nature to turn his back on a friend in his hour of need.

Tuesday 9 November

A very bleary-eyed Harry Powell opened that morning’s briefing with a rapid check around the room of who had turned up. He knew that Sophia and Tom had finished late and
probably got no more than three hours’ sleep each, but both looked very good on it, and Pierre and Hazel had returned from Sussex much earlier than expected, via Charles Culverton. He was
pleased to see that Gabrielle had taken his advice and was nowhere to be seen.

He still made a mental note to get someone to call her as he didn’t want her to forget she was part of the team and think she was out of their thoughts as soon as she was absent.

‘Morning,’ he said at the same moment he realized he didn’t have enough staff. One was on maternity leave and the flexible working arrangements meant that two of his DCs
didn’t work on Tuesdays. He would have to ask DS Sandra Beckinsale to rustle up more officers, although heaven knew from where.

‘A fair bit happened yesterday after our midday get-together. Some of you know what Leon Edwards told us about the car and two men acting oddly in the café. It may be relevant, it
may not be. Someone get the CCTV from the town centre. Often they keep it for a month or so, so we may still be in luck.

‘The car from outside the Co-op is a silver Renault Clio from the looks of it and we’ve got a partial registration of EA52. Intel have run some checks overnight and whittled it down
to a list of several thousand, merely hundreds in and around East Rise. We’ll start local and widen it as we go. There are obvious links to Sussex on this investigation so we’re getting
some assistance from them too. Any Clios with the same partial registration as our vehicle are a priority and the analyst has been tasked with putting together a chart, updating it as we get the
results.’

He paused to scan his investigation team. Some were writing, most were looking at him, awaiting his orders. He had been in their position many years ago, sitting in the briefing room, wondering
what the day would bring, guessing what role they would be given, and some keener to stay on well beyond their eight-hour shift than others.

‘Any questions so far?’

Silence. A few shakes of the head.

‘OK, good,’ he said. ‘There are several lines of enquiry that Sandra will be allocating today. Any links between the Clio and the mystery café men will be, in police
speak, a right fucking touch.

‘In the meantime, I’ve listened to all that Tom and Sophia have told me about Leon Edwards. The upshot being the absence of a feel for him as Woodville’s murderer. However, he
hasn’t given a plausible account for why he was following him and why he was outside his flat on the night he died. His mate in all this, despite Edwards’s insistence he was alone on
Friday evening, is Toby Carvell. We know that later on Friday evening the two of them were together. This plus Carvell being one of Woodville’s original victims – who the jury chose not
to believe – leaves only one option.’

Harry took a breath, and said, ‘I’ve raised Toby Carvell to suspect status. He needs to be arrested on suspicion of Albert Woodville’s murder and then we go back and visit the
other remaining victims of sexual abuse from the 1990s.’

He looked at Hazel. ‘I know that you and Pierre started this yesterday. I’ll have to leave the rest to you as I’ve got no other staff. I’m ruling nothing out, including
the possibility that even those who saw Woodville convicted for what he did to them might still have some sort of grudge as regards his further offending and what they perceive as leniency by the
courts.’

‘Actually,’ Hazel said, ‘apart from Carvell, who’s getting arrested, we’ve seen one. One’s dead and so that only leaves two. One of them was a not guilty
against Woodville, the other a guilty.’

Harry thought about it for a couple of seconds and then said, ‘There’s a chance that one of the five of them, including Toby Carvell, had something to do with our victim’s
death. We still need to make sure that Rochelle Harbour is dead. That’ll make us look bloody stupid if she’s alive and killed him. Let’s see what they’ve all got to say
unless you get any strong feelings otherwise. Anyone got anything else they want to bring up?’

Harry went around the room asking each member of his staff, including police officers, civilian investigators and the HOLMES staff and typists. He listened to suggestions, complaints about not
having enough resources and pleas from those in charge of the tea fund for everyone to pay their subs, and then the room was suddenly empty except for him and Barbara Venice.

‘How’s tricks, Babs?’ he said.

‘I remember all five of them, you know. It was my one and only brush with sexual abuse of children at ground level. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to deal with but I did my best,
despite it not ending in a conviction for everyone involved.’

‘Think through our legal system,’ said Harry. ‘There’s a murder, the police are called. Trained crime scene investigators turn up, gather the evidence, send it to a lab
where scientists in sterile conditions work away and return their findings to the police. The investigators, in the meantime, gather the evidence with their years of experience and detective
training, liaise with the Crown Prosecution Service and fully qualified barristers who’ve cut their teeth on thefts, assaults and robberies, and then what happens? We take twelve random
people off the street, say “have a look at this” and they say guilty or not guilty.’

‘Do you have a better system, Harry?’

‘Not one that the civil liberties people would let me get away with. Listen, my point is that you can’t predict or legislate for what untrained, random strangers are going to do.
We’ll never know why the jury didn’t return a guilty verdict for Toby Carvell or—’ Harry hesitated. ‘Shit, I’m embarrassed. I can’t remember who the other
person was the jury didn’t convict against.’

‘His name was Russell Wilson,’ said Barbara, no pretence at having to trawl her memory for him. ‘The other three, as you know, were Charles Culverton, Rochelle Harbour and
Andrea Wellington.’

‘We’ll find out a bit more when Hazel and P ring back in,’ said Harry. ‘The possibility that they all got together and did it hasn’t escaped me completely. The only
thing so far to disprove that is the DNA returns aren’t showing very much at all and the only fingerprints the senior CSI found were Woodville’s. Common sense says that, if four or five
of them had done it, it would look like a DNA bomb had gone off in there.’

‘Or more likely, someone wouldn’t be able to keep their mouth shut.’

‘Once again, it seems that we’re at the mercy of the public telling us what’s gone on. I only hope that Hazel and Pierre come up with something whilst they’re
out.’

‘Are they starting with Russell today?’ said Barbara.

Harry made no comment on the fact she’d referred to a crime victim from twenty-five years ago by his first name.

‘Yeah. I thought it was the best place to start as he’d be the one with the most to feel aggrieved about, and he’s only about half an hour away.’