Mercy Killing (36 page)

She broke eye contact with him and folded her arms, possibly against the cold, but more likely it was hostility communicated through body language.

‘And don’t pout,’ he said. ‘It’ll give you lines and age you.’

‘If this is all such a joke to you,’ she said, ‘why are you even bothering to talk to me?’

‘Well, apart from the promise I made you, I want to know what’s going to happen to your organization.’

‘Keeping an eye on us?’

He nodded.

‘We’ll go from strength to strength,’ she said. ‘Just watch us. We’re recruiting all the time. We’re doing nothing illegal so you can’t stop
us.’

‘What makes you think I want to stop you?’ Harry asked. ‘The one thing we share is our loathing of paedophiles, and the irony of that isn’t lost on me.’

She stood up and took a step towards the car park. ‘I think that we’ve both said all we need to say for now, except I’m sorry about the innocent ones who get swept up in all
this.’

Harry knew that his face was sporting a look of incredulity at her choice of words.

‘The innocents?’ he asked, voice raised above the crashing of the waves.

‘The man in Sussex,’ she answered with a frown on her own face. ‘Dean something? I understand he was an innocent victim of vigilantes.’

Harry shot up from the bench and lurched towards her, towering over her.

He spat his words at her.

‘For one moment, you fucking hideous bitch, when you said “innocent”, I actually credited you with giving some thought to the children of sexual abuse.’

‘I—’

‘Fucking shut up. You don’t get to interrupt me. Let me remind you of what you did. You held your own twelve-year-old daughter down, tied her to the bed and then watched and took
part whilst your boyfriend raped her. Get out of my fucking sight.’

She trembled as she took another step backwards.

‘It’s why I formed the VA,’ she said in a cracked voice. ‘To stop it happening to other women like me. So we could spot them, a support group for parents.’

Harry found himself staring down at her face once more, inches away.

‘I shouldn’t have met you on a cliff edge. The urge to throw you over the side is far too strong. Get in your car and fuck off before I do something we’ll both
regret.’

Gabrielle left the crowded incident room with her empty mug in her hand on the pretence of making a drink before the briefing where everyone would congratulate one another. In
truth, she wanted to get away from the noise and hum of over-excited detectives. She knew that she was supposed to feel some sort of thrill at catching a killer but it was wasted on her.

Everything in life was tinged with disappointment. She couldn’t explain it to herself so she certainly wasn’t going to try to spell it out for others. She accepted that she was odd,
emotionless at times. Her only worry over the way she felt was that she failed to hide it. And why did police officers think everyone should be friends and know all about each other’s lives?
She enjoyed solitude and her own company.

She walked to the kitchen, glanced at her watch to work out how many hours it would be until she could go home and be alone, and opened the door to find Hazel already at the wall-mounted hot
water tap.

‘Hi,’ said Hazel over her shoulder. ‘Are you coming to the briefing?’

‘Yes,’ said Gabrielle as she rinsed her cup in the sink.

‘This will be the first I’ve been to with the right person in custody. I expect there’ll be a lot of back-slapping and good humour.’

This was the point that Gabrielle knew she was supposed to make small talk. Up until now she had had little to do with Hazel but thought that she seemed a pleasant enough person.

Gabrielle forced a smile at her as she dried her mug on the damp, stained tea-towel.

‘I have to admit,’ said Hazel as she reached for the milk, ‘I was a bit worried about coming back to Major Crime. Things change and people move on but right now, I’m not
sure why I was so worried.’

‘I like Harry,’ said Gabrielle, feeling her face redden.

From the corner of her eye she saw Hazel jerk and spill the milk over the side of her cup. Automatically, Gabrielle passed her the dishcloth.

‘Thanks,’ said Hazel. ‘Yeah, he seems like an OK boss. And he’s led us to the murderer. It’s not been an easy few weeks but I feel as though I’ve settled back
in.’

She paused and added, ‘How about you? Do you enjoy working here?’

‘There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,’ said Gabrielle with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, which she knew was none at all.

‘Feels like a hollow victory,’ said Harry to Barbara as they sat in his office, about to go into the briefing.

‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘I’ve got DC Ward to interview Sian Hanson. She’s a very distressed little girl and I thought that Laura would do a really good
job with her.’

‘In my mind,’ said Harry, head in his hands, ‘I pictured some sort of riled-up vigilantes, all brawn and no brains, not Ian Hocking and his old schoolfriend, Dave Lyle. No one
should take the law into their own hands but . . .’

DCI Barbara Venice raised an eyebrow at him. ‘But what?’

‘Could you, hand on heart, say that you’d do any different?’

‘I couldn’t take another’s life for something I felt aggrieved about.’

‘He wasn’t just a bit pissed off, Barbara. He’d been abused as a child and then saw the same thing happening to his niece. I’d do it for my children. You won’t
convince me that you wouldn’t do the same.’

‘We have to be better than that,’ she said with a look on her face that told Harry she was trying hard to convince herself as much as him.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘we’re convinced that Hocking was in Sussex at the time that Dean Stillbrook’s body was found, but we still have the decomposing body of
Keely Kershaw that we haven’t even officially linked to these two. She’d been found guilty of abusing children in a nursery under her care. My money’s on that someone did her in
too – it’s just going to be difficult to prove.’

‘And Ian Hocking’s part in it?’

‘Definitely not,’ said Harry with a shake of his head. ‘He was out of the country before she was last seen alive and returned long after the body was discovered.’

‘Are you telling me that there are more people out there doing this?’

‘I am, Barbara. Besides, Hocking didn’t do all this alone. When we find Dave Lyle, we may have the two who murdered Woodville, but we don’t stop looking there.’

He looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘I’ve pushed my team to find whoever did this. Now I want to shake his hand and let him go.’

‘That’s not what we do. We gather the evidence and put it before the court. It’s not our decision. This has been a very difficult investigation for all of us. I can see a
little clearer now and it’s definitely not the murder I want to be my lasting memory of my police career. Now I’ve had a chance to put things into perspective, take a breath, I’m
not looking to retire just yet.’

She paused and said in softer tones, ‘I know that my earlier crisis didn’t go any further, and I thank you for that.’

The response was a very slight nod of the head and the words, ‘Bloody glad to hear it, Babs.’

‘And there’s one very important thing you’re forgetting about all this, Harry,’ she said.

Harry sat for a second or two, chewed his bottom lip and said, ‘I think the point you’re going to make is that Dean Stillbrook was a completely innocent man and died because someone
took the law into their own hands.’

He rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin and said, ‘OK, my views make me an arsehole but at least I’m human with it.’

He stared at her for a few seconds, leapt from his seat and said, ‘You’re right, as always, Babs. Come to the briefing.’

They walked into a packed conference room. Most of the incident room were there; detective constables, detective sergeants, civilian investigators, HOLMES staff, even DI Milton
Bowman who hadn’t worked on the job. Harry recognized the scene before him for what it was: those who had played a tiny part in the investigation wanted to be enshrouded in its glory, plus a
few hangers-on. He would have preferred to take his core staff off to the pub, but there wasn’t time for that. There were other murders waiting in the wings, ready to chip away at what was
left of his sanity.

It went quiet as Harry and Barbara walked in.

‘Hello, everyone,’ said Harry to the hushed crowd. ‘On behalf of myself and Barbara, I would like to thank you all for your tireless work and dedication to finding Albert
Woodville’s murderer. Another arrest team are out trying to find David Lyle, Hocking’s friend, and likely offender from the CCTV stills of the Clio. In the meantime, you should all be
very proud of yourselves. I certainly am proud of you. Congratulations.’

Never had towing the party line for the sake of the organization stuck in Harry’s throat as much as it did at that moment.

The murder of Albert Woodville would always be the lowest point in his career.

This was at times an uncomfortable book to write. Sexual abuse, especially of children, is never an easy topic.

That this novel exists at all is down to so many people for so many reasons. A fair number of them will always remain nameless but thank you so much to my wonderful agent,
Cathryn Summerhayes of WME, for your enthusiasm and encouragement. Thank you to Jo Dickinson, extraordinary editor, for your insightful suggestions and help whenever I needed it. Many thanks to
everyone at Simon and Schuster who has made me feel so welcome and made the entire publication process such a pleasure.

Thank you to DC Kerry Verhiest for your invaluable knowledge regarding ViSOR and the policing of sex offenders. A lengthy conversation with you made me realise your in-depth understanding of a
part of policing I had only a scant idea of.

My thanks to DC Alex Hayter for making three years of my police career much easier than it would otherwise have been. There were many low points, as you’ll recall, but worth every
stressful moment in the end.

About a third of the novel was written in Tintagel, far too beautiful for something so grim. Nevertheless, many thanks to Tara Melton and Andrea Richards for the use of Gilbert Lodge. Cornish
air, cider and clotted cream definitely brought on the inspiration.

Last, but by no means least, my husband Graham. For just about everything else.

Lisa Cutts is the author of three police procedural novels, based on her twenty years of policing experience. She works as a detective constable for Kent Police and has spent
ten years in the Serious Crime Directorate dealing mostly with murders and other serious investigations. She has been on BBC Radio 4’s
Open Book
with Mariella Frostrup; part of First
Fictions festival at West Dean College, Chichester; on the inaugural panel at Brighton’s Dark and Stormy festival, and took part in the Chiswick Book Festival 2015. Her debut novel,
Never
Forget
, won the 2014 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for best thriller.

Also by Lisa Cutts

Never Forget
Remember, Remember

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © Lisa Cutts, 2016

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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5310-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-5312-9

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