The Judgement Book (24 page)

‘You’ve considered her?’

‘You know my suspicious detective’s mind. What if – say – Yvonne had known about the prostitute before Freedman killed himself? What if she’d had enough of her husband? She’s told us he was never there in her life, or Alex’s. She might have been in the Judge, chatting to a friend, telling her about it all. Sarah could have bugged the conversation, approached her later, teamed up with her. It could even have been Sarah who told her about the prostitute.’

Dan couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice. ‘You’re suggesting she blackmailed her own husband? You mean to say that she guessed he might kill himself, so nicely ridding her of the man she wanted out of her life anyway?’

‘Well,’ Adam mused, ‘she wouldn’t necessarily have had to suspect he’d kill himself. She could just have calculated the scandal would have given her a good reason to divorce him and get the house and enough money for her and Alex to live on.’

Dan breathed out heavily. ‘It sounds a bit far-fetched.’ He tapped a finger on the steering wheel. ‘But then again …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, we’ve tackled more bizarre crimes. I never cease to be amazed at what people will do. And in fairness, she was pretty bitter. She clearly wants some kind of revenge on what she sees as the “establishment”. I suppose it could all fit.’

Adam nodded. ‘You starting to be convinced?’

‘Not convinced, but it’s a possibility.’

Ahead, they could see flashing blue lights and a crumpled car being shunted to the side of the road. ‘There’s the reason for the jam,’ Dan said. ‘It should ease up in a minute.’

‘Let’s keep going for now,’ Adam replied. ‘Who else is on our little menu of suspects?’

They crawled forwards a couple more yards. The sun sneaked out from behind a roll of cloud, making the car feel warm. Dan rolled down a window. The sun went back in again. He sighed.

‘In order of the people we’ve met – or in this case, haven’t – Linda Cott?’ he said.

‘You mean, faking her death to become Sarah’s accomplice?’

‘Yep. Her body still hasn’t been found.’

‘True. But we did find her blood on the rocks below where she jumped. And as for not finding a body, that’s not unusual around there. The tides are vicious.’

‘She could have had a motive. We’ve got some evidence she was getting frustrated in her career.’

‘Who doesn’t? But enough to turn her into a blackmailer?’

Dan thought for a few seconds. ‘Probably not.’

‘And that stuff about her being involved in …’ Adam hesitated before finding the word. ‘Well, dogging. That would have been incredibly powerful material to blackmail her with.’

‘True.’

‘And Sarah seemed very sure she had something nasty over Linda. Dogging would certainly fit the bill.’

‘Yep.’

‘OK then,’ said Adam. ‘Linda’s an unlikely candidate, I agree. Let’s keep going. Next?’

Dan chuckled, couldn’t help himself. ‘Superintendent Osmond?’

Adam rolled his eyes. ‘You mean to get back at the rotten police force around him, to expose their corruption and incompetence by offering himself as a sacrifice? Being turned to become Sarah’s accomplice after she taped him talking about his drink driving, and persuaded him to join her crusade to highlight all that was wrong in society?’

The two men exchanged a look. ‘No,’ they said together.

The traffic started to move. Dan shifted the car into first gear, allowed it to trundle towards the roundabout.

‘Julia Francis?’ he asked.

‘I’d like to say so, but probably not.’

‘She does have a chip on her shoulder about the establishment thing, though. There’s her history of civil liberties work. Maybe she thinks the state is infringing too far on people’s lives, just like Sarah does. And there’s no hint of her being in the Judgement Book. Perhaps that’s suspicious in itself. Maybe Sarah bugged her raging about how she hated the system and afterwards persuaded her to join the plot?’

Adam considered this. ‘I’d like to believe it, but it’s a long shot,’ he said finally. ‘I hate to say it, but despite all my run-ins with her I’ve always got the impression she’s pretty straight.’

Dan indicated, turned the car towards Charles Cross. The ruined church loomed ahead.

‘Almost home,’ he said.

‘Keep going,’ Adam replied. ‘This is useful.’

‘OK, Sinclair or Robinson. As for motive, again to expose the rottenness of the world around them, again after being taped by Sarah talking about their own misdemeanours and her persuading them to join her great crusade. A sort of way to make up for what they’d done.’

‘Possible, but a bit crime fiction. You are prone to it. That sounds like something from a book. Long shots, surely?’

‘Yeah, but we don’t know much about them, do we? We got nothing in those interviews.’

‘We’ll keep working on them, but I can’t see it.’

They reached the Charles Cross roundabout. Sunlight flared through the open stone arches of the church’s windows. A couple of magpies hopped across the grass. A mist of rain began drifting from the sky, conjuring a fragile rainbow over the city. The sight would usually make Dan smile, but not today. Even a brief lull of contentment felt a far distant emotion.

‘Well, that’s about it,’ said Dan. ‘I reckon …’

‘Hey!’ Adam interrupted. ‘I don’t believe it! I nearly forgot him.’

Dan couldn’t hide his puzzlement. ‘Who?’

The detective pointed at the ruin standing proud in the centre of the roundabout, traffic edging around it. ‘The church jogged my mind. Maguire.’

‘The priest?’

‘Yeah.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘How about – getting fed up with all the horrible things he hears in confession. Ground down by the world’s endless sin. Wanting to hit back at a rotten society. He could have been in the Judge, been bugged saying something, got together with Sarah that way. And he’s got form too, that previous conviction for burglary.’

‘I don’t know. It sounds pretty wild to me.’

‘Maybe,’ replied Adam. ‘Until you remember the clues we’ve got so far.’

Dan thought for a moment, closed his eyes, groaned. ‘Of course. “Open original memorial church.”’

‘Exactly!’ Adam hissed. ‘Church – what if it’s his church? What if the Judgement Book’s safely hidden in an original memorial in his church? Come on, quick, turn the car around. Let’s go and see him.’

The little priest was on his hands and knees, polishing hard at a flagstone. He seemed intent on his work, didn’t look up as they walked towards him. The church was deserted, their footsteps echoing from the stone and rainbow glass. The air was still and cooler than outside.

Still he rubbed away at the floor, the yellow cloth flicking busily back and forth. The surface was smooth, inscribed with faded letters, a name and a date, but they were faint and worn, eroded by the countless years and pairs of feet which had passed by. Dan noticed Maguire was wearing jeans under his cassock.

They stopped just feet from him, waited. Adam coughed pointedly. ‘I sense trouble,’ Maguire said, without looking up.

He shifted his position, finished rubbing at a corner, then got up, dusted himself down and they shook hands. He was sweating. Dan wondered if it was from the exertion of his work, or something more.

‘Police footsteps,’ he explained. ‘I knew it was you the moment you opened the door. You manage to walk in an ominous way. And you let the door shut a little too hard for a believer.’

Adam didn’t smile. ‘Why do you say you sense trouble, Father?’

‘Because you haven’t just popped in for a cup of bloody tea, have you, Breen?’ he snapped, dabbing at his forehead with a sleeve. ‘I read the papers. They’re full of your blackmailer case. And they say it isn’t over. I take it I’m still a suspect and that’s why you’re here?’

Adam knelt down, ran a finger over the stone Maguire had been polishing. Dan knew his friend well enough by now to see he was playing for time, deciding on his tactics for handling the interview. On the drive to the church, the detective had hardly spoken. He sat, staring out of the windscreen, silently thinking.

‘What are you going to say to him?’ Dan asked finally, as they rumbled down the hill towards the church.

‘A little test, I think,’ was the cryptic reply.

Dan bent too, studied the writing. He could just make it out. The light seemed to slide from the polished stone, only briefly held in the shallow grooves of the words. They were in loving memory of a Thomas Hubball, a notable parish priest from some time in the 1600s, although the exact date was too worn to discern.

Adam tapped a finger on the stone. ‘A memorial,’ he said slowly.

Maguire folded his arms. ‘I certainly can’t fault your ability as a detective.’

‘Do you have many in the church?’

Dan studied the priest’s face. He was peering at Adam, but there was no hint of a reaction to the question. His silver hair shone in the mellow church light, making it appear as if he was wearing a halo.

‘The church dates from the thirteenth century, Breen,’ he said. ‘So yes, we’ve clocked up one or two over the years.’

‘Are there any which are particularly famous? Or important?’

Maguire raised his eyes to the fluted columns of the church’s roof. ‘Holy Father preserve me. They’re all important, man. That’s why they were created. To mark the passing of our better fellows into the arms of the Lord.’

He crossed himself with the same sense of theatre he’d shown when they had first met.

Adam took a deep breath. ‘Then let me rephrase that. Are any of your memorials particularly famous?’

The question received due consideration before the reluctant reply, ‘No, not really. We’re in Plymouth, not Westminster Abbey.’

Outside, two sets of feet crunched on gravel. Adam nodded to himself. The preamble was over. Dan sensed the sting of the interview coming.

‘Then have any been duplicated?’

‘Duplicated?’ The priest’s voice was sharp with scorn. ‘What the hell are you talking about now, man? This isn’t a bloody factory. We don’t knock off copies of our memorials to stack the shelves of our local Ecumenical Discount Store.’

Dan gritted his teeth to stop himself from grinning. A suspect he may be, and as such the rules dictated he had to be treated with dispassionate neutrality, but despite that, Dan couldn’t help rather liking Father Maguire.

Adam frowned, but answered patiently, ‘I’m sorry, perhaps I’m not making myself clear. Have any new memorials been created to anyone already remembered here? Perhaps by their family? Or for some occasion like the anniversary of their death?’

Again no sign of a reaction from Maguire. If he knew what Adam was hinting at, he was hiding it well. He didn’t look in the least guilty or worried, just mildly puzzled and more obviously irritated. ‘Not that I know of. Not that’s happened in my time here, anyway. Why do you ask?’

‘Just – a possible line of inquiry.’

The priest regarded Adam with suspicion. ‘I’ve heard that one before,’ he barked. ‘On the TV it’s normally a prelude to someone being arrested. What are you up to, Breen?’

‘Nothing, Father, nothing. Just thinking out loud.’

‘Got me down as your number one suspect, have you?’

‘No, Father …’

His voice rose. ‘Blackmailer Maguire? The priestly extortionist? The latest in a long line of Catholic Crooks? If it’s not the choir boys they’re after, it’s cash.’

Adam held up his hands calmingly. ‘Father, please. I’m only following a possible lead, that’s all. We’ll leave you in peace now.’

The tone of the detective’s voice had changed, become softer. Dan had seen it before. The interview was over. Maguire didn’t know the contents of the blackmail notes. He thought they demanded cash. Unless he was the finest of actors, the priest wasn’t Sarah’s accomplice.

The church’s bell rang one, a jarring loudness in the quiet. The morning’s precious time had been wasted. There were now just 30 hours until the contents of the Judgement Book were revealed and they were no closer to finding it. Dan was growing ever more sure that he and Adam were both in there.

There was an invisible clock, counting down the time to the end of their careers. It followed wherever they went. And its ticking was growing ever louder.

Chapter
Twenty-one

I
T WAS TWO O
’
CLOCK
and the sun that had spent the morning battling to free itself from the shroud of cloying clouds had finally won through. The hurrying umbrellas disappeared from the city and shirt sleeves and cropped tops took their place, making their way to their destinations with easy leisure. From the window of the MIR, high above Plymouth, Dan wondered at how a change in the weather could transform spirits in an instant.

On the window sill was his piece of paper with the final, most important riddle. He’d written the words in as many different combinations as he could think of, looked for anagrams, acrostics and patterns of any kind, wondered whether there could be hidden numbers or place names contained there, and come up with precisely nothing. He still had no idea what the solution could be.

“See have mind good land, Plymouth.”

No matter how many times Dan looked at it, in how many different ways, he couldn’t see any hidden meaning.

Lizzie had rung again, demanding a story. It was a quiet news day and they were desperate for anything he could provide. Dan had just about managed to fob her off with more vague talk of something being likely to happen and him needing to be with the police to make sure they got the exclusive. But being fobbed off had never become his editor. She was growing increasingly agitated.

He found himself strangely tempted to tell her the truth, about the two new notes, the deadline for solving the riddle and tomorrow’s promised release of the Book, complete with its section on a certain Dan Groves. He wondered why. Perhaps it was the classic spin doctor’s art of preparing the ground for bad news, or simply to make an early appeal not to be sacked?

He’d ended the conversation by telling her something seemed to be happening and that he had to go and see what it was. He’d call her back later with some kind of story, he said. But he had no idea what.

All he knew was that he had to be here. With Adam to do his best to break the code, find the Book and save them both, and with Claire, to support her as they decided what to do about their baby. Dan raised a hand, wiped his forehead. It felt strangely hot, as if there was too much going on in his mind. There were just 29 hours to their deadline.

Eleanor and Michael sat at two desks next to each other, studious like children in a class. She had a small pile of books, he had his laptop. But both had also come up with no ideas about what the final code might mean. Dan worked with them on his thought about seeing a good land. They’d checked reference books, thick works on Plymouth’s history and the countless computer memories gathered on the internet, but they’d got nowhere.

At the front of the room, Adam either paced back and forth in front of the felt boards or sat heavily on the edge of a desk, his head bowed. He was a study in thought. Each time a telephone rang, he jumped for it. Each time there were no new leads to report.

Claire worked at the phones, coordinating the inquiries they had left to cover. The team checking the churches had come up with no famous original memorial and not even a hint of a lead. A couple of technicians from the Square Eyes division had been working on the internet to see if they could trace any web site which might be used to post the Judgement Book. They’d found nothing. The list of possible suspects Dan and Adam had discussed earlier in the car had yielded no progress.

They all knew it, but none would say. No one dared.

The investigation had stalled.

Claire and Dan exchanged occasional glances. She looked pale, and her eyes were still red. One hand rested automatically over her stomach.

They’d had a brief chat earlier, agreed to leave the row behind. Such emotions were inevitable; her hormones were racing, he had never been in this position before, they were amidst the tension of a major investigation.

Dan was almost convinced that all was more or less OK.

Almost.

More or less.

It was hardly the most romantic of moments, huddled in a narrow gap between two police vans in the yard behind Charles Cross. Dan very much wanted a hug. But all he got was tears.

‘I can’t go on like this,’ Claire sobbed. ‘I just can’t. We’ve got to get it sorted. It’s eating away at me, every hour, every minute, every second. I can’t think about anything else. What are we going to do?’

And he’d had no reassuring words to give her, no magical solutions, nothing but more uncertainty. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t. I keep thinking of what having a baby would mean. I don’t know how we’d cope. Your job, my job, Rutherford, where to live. Any of it.’

She buried her head into his neck, didn’t reply, just whimpered. Dan held her close, but she didn’t squeeze him back and he couldn’t still her sobbing.

‘We’ll work it out,’ he tried to soothe. ‘We will. I promise. We’ll work something out.’

‘But what? What?!’

And that was the fatal question, the one without an answer. Dan hugged her tighter, tried to think. And then, with vindictive timing, a policeman had jogged up to one of the vans, muttered some excuse about a call out, and driven it off.

Dan tried to stop her, but Claire walked quickly away, her face buried in a handkerchief. All she could say was, ‘We have to get it sorted. I just can’t go on like this any more.’

And the words hadn’t stopped resonating in his head.

He gulped hard, was about to get them all another round of teas and coffees when his mobile warbled. Lizzie again, and this time she was fizzing.

‘Need you on a story. Urgent!’

‘What?’ He tried not to panic, instead find another excuse. ‘But I’m at Charles Cross, waiting for developments on the blackmailer case. It’s a cracking story. We don’t want to lose sight of it, and I reckon...’

She cut in. ‘Do you have any developments?’

Dan stared over at Claire. She was looking at him too, and he could see her face was ready to crack. It felt like the weight of emotion it held back was growing too powerful to resist. He couldn’t leave her now, not to go chasing some stupid story. He had to be here with her. She needed him, her eyes were full of it.

The icy voice on the phone again. ‘I said, do you have any developments that will make us a report for tonight?’

If only he could tell her about the two new notes, the final riddle. It was a fantastic story. But Adam wouldn’t let a word get out. They had to concentrate on the investigation, couldn’t afford the distraction of the media frenzy it would create. The pack of reporters and photographers was still hanging around the front of the police station.

‘I’ll take that as a no then,’ came the merciless voice once more. ‘Get moving. Now! North Devon Zoo. They’ve had a break in and lost loads of their rare animals. Great TV story. It’s our lead for tonight. Nigel will meet you there. I’m sending the outside broadcast truck too. I want a report and a live.’

‘But Lizzie, I …’

‘Enough! I know how much you love playing detectives, but this is breaking news. I shouldn’t have to point out it’s your job. Get going. Now!’

Dan could feel Claire’s eyes fixed on him. Her lips were trembling.

‘But Lizzie, I don’t want to lose sight of this case. It’s one of the biggest stories we’ve ever had. I think ...’

She interrupted again, and her voice was acid calm. ‘It’s very simple. Go do the story and do it well or start looking for another job.’

She hung up. He stared at the mobile, felt a sudden screaming desire to fling open a window, hurl it out, enjoy the sight of it shattering on the street below. But he knew he had no choice. Dan briefly closed his eyes, took a breath and stepped down from the window ledge, the noise echoing around the silent room.

‘Got to go,’ he said to Adam, but couldn’t help himself looking at Claire. ‘There’s a story I have to do in north Devon.’

Adam shrugged. He looked tired and defeated, his shoulders slumped. ‘Go ahead,’ he said wearily. ‘You’re hardly missing anything.’

Dan walked to the door, paused, looked back at Claire. Her head was bowed over her desk, her hair falling across her face in that way he always found irresistible. She didn’t look up.

The drive to north Devon took two hours. It was one of the worst in the region, full of frustrating twisted and sinewy roads with only the rare release of some dual carriageway. And when you were in a rush you could always guarantee at least a couple of tractors and caravans to get stuck behind. It was one of the hazards of the South-west, tourists and farmers, both working to a pace of life at least fifty per cent slower than the rest of the world.

Dan couldn’t concentrate on the story he was going to cover. All he could think about was Claire. He kept seeing her with that other man, hand in hand, pushing a pram.

The newsroom rang to update him on what happened. A gang of raiders had burst in, tied up the staff and filled a van with animals. They knew exactly which ones they wanted. Two breeding pairs of Galah Cockatoos had been taken, a colony of dozens of Geffroy’s marmosets, nine black-eared marmosets, a pair of Rainbow Macaws and two yellow-winged Amazon parrots. The animals were worth tens of thousand of pounds and probably destined to be sold to collectors.

Dirty El also called. He too was on the way to the zoo. All the national papers wanted pictures. Not even the usual tormented entertainment of his burbled and painful limerick cheered Dan.

‘El, he always loved the zoo,

The creepies and the crawlies too,

But now they’re out,

Up goes the shout,

Get us pics, pursue, wahoo!’

Loud was already there when Dan arrived, Nigel standing beside him. They’d been in the newsroom when the tip-off came through and Lizzie had scrambled them first. Dan checked the cameraman’s watch. Almost five o’clock. They had an hour and a half until they were on air.

Such deadlines, and so merciless, Dan thought miserably. Tonight’s programme, and the countdown to the release of the Judgement Book.

‘I’ve got you a few pictures already,’ Nigel said. ‘So that takes the pressure off us a bit. I’ve done lots of general shots of the zoo, plus plenty of the animals that are left. You can talk about “cockatoos and marmosets similar to this” being stolen. The boss is bringing me some old photos of the actual animals. I’ll film those in a minute.’

Dan thanked him and excused himself to go to the loo. It was a priority after that long, frustrating drive. His mouth was dry too, and his ulcer was stinging hard. To save time he called Claire while he was in the toilets. He had more bad news and he wanted her to know now.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he began. ‘I really am. But I couldn’t get out of it. It’s a big story for us.’

‘It’s OK, I understand.’ She sounded flat, distant, almost indifferent.

‘Claire, I’m sorry, really. It’s the worst time for something like this to break. I want to be with you, not here, believe me.’

‘It’s OK,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll see you later. I’ll wait up.’

Shit. Just – simply – shit. How the hell was he going to tell her? He couldn’t put it off, he didn’t have a choice.

‘Claire, I hate to say this, but I’m not going to be back tonight. They want me to stay up here to do a follow-up story for tomorrow.’

The mobile line hummed and clicked. Dan thought he heard a gulp, but couldn’t be sure.

‘Claire? Claire!’ he urged. ‘I’m sorry, I really am.’

‘It’s OK,’ she said again finally, and her words sounded hollow, empty of feeling. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Her voice caught and she struggled to finish. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Got to go.’

‘Claire! Claire, please,’ Dan shouted, but she’d hung up.

He twice tried to ring back, but got her answer machine. Dan glared at his mobile, then put it back into his pocket. He’d have to call her again later. He loosed off a machine-gun string of expletives, making an old man walking into the toilets stare and shake his head. It was an effort not to lash out at him, vent the seething venom.

Dan walked with Nigel to see the layout of the zoo for the outside broadcast and did a quick interview with one of the keepers. Other journalists and photographers were arriving, El amongst them. He had his biggest lens on the front of his camera and stroked it lovingly as he clicked off his snaps, the trademark sleazy grin shining on his face.

Dan sat in the outside broadcast truck to edit the report. Loud was wearing a shirt adorned with strutting Rainbow Macaws and kept giggling, pointing at them, then the monitor screens. Dan scarcely noticed. He had to force himself to think about the story he was writing, be professional. He wondered if this would be the last report he produced. The theft of some animals from a zoo wasn’t exactly the blaze of glory he’d always had in mind for the end of his career.

It was half past five. They’d need 15 minutes to prepare for the live broadcast. They only had 40 to cut the report.

Time to shift. Stop worrying about craft and polish, just cut and burn. News was the art of the possible.

He started the story with pictures of the cockatoos and macaws, their spectrum of plumage lighting the monitors, and talked about them being worth thousands of pounds and probably stolen to order. Their breeding programme had also been destroyed, almost twenty years of work gone in the few minutes of the raid.

Then came a clip of interview with the keeper. He could have been an actor, played the part perfectly, broke down and cried, right on cue. Dan felt tears forming in his own eyes as his mind ran once again to Claire. He imagined her sitting alone in a dark cubicle in the toilets at Charles Cross, trying to stifle her sobs.

Loud laid down some pictures of the marmosets, while Dan talked about how vulnerable they were to shock, how they could easily have died already because of the stress of the raid. Their tiny, human-like faces looked pitiful to match his words. He finished the report with some general pictures of the zoo, writing about how and when the gang had struck and the photos Nigel had filmed of the actual animals, asking the viewers to keep an eye out for them in newspaper adverts and pet shop windows. Loud spun the edit controls and they watched it back.

‘Not a bad report,’ the engineer grunted begrudgingly, his forest of a beard twitching. ‘Almost worth coming all the way here for.’