‘I’m sure you’re not.’
He gave me a short, sharp nod, and paused outside a door. ‘This is it. Are you ready?’
I nodded, feeling anything but, and followed him into a small room jammed with papers and files where a white-faced woman was sitting, kneading a balled-up tissue in her hands.
‘My office,’ Lawlor said unnecessarily. ‘And this is Caroline Banner. I’ll leave you to talk.’
It was obvious from the hunted expression on her face that she knew why we were there, and equally obvious that she was guilty. But it became apparent very quickly that she was neither a moral crusader nor a regular associate of hardened criminals. Caroline Banner was middle-aged, gentle of manner, and absolutely terrified. I explained why we were there and she nodded.
‘I knew someone would work it out. I told them I’d be found out.’
‘Mrs Banner, you must understand that we need to know who you’ve been passing information to.’
‘I can’t help you.’
‘Can’t – or won’t?’ Rob’s voice was gentle.
‘I can’t. I don’t know them. I don’t want to know them. I just want to be left alone.’ She sounded as if she was on her last nerve.
‘You do know that’s not going to happen. This is serious, Mrs Banner. This is a breach of confidentiality that’s left three men dead. Maybe more.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ There were tears standing in her eyes but she was angry. ‘Do you think I wanted this? Any of this? As far as I know, I didn’t do a thing to get myself into this situation. I love my job and I work hard. I would never have abused my position if I’d had a choice.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I had to decide between looking up some information and risking my son’s safety. That’s not difficult, is it? If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have. And I would have worried about Alan every day for the rest of my life. I didn’t really have to think about it.’
‘Are you saying that threats were made against your family?’
She nodded.
‘How was it done?’
‘It was a phone call. Five days ago, in the evening. I was at home.’ She swallowed, remembering. ‘I picked up the phone and said hello, and a man asked if I was Caroline. I said yes. I didn’t even think.’
‘Did you recognise the voice?’
‘No.’ She sounded definite. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot, as you might imagine. I’d never heard him before. He didn’t sound old, but I had the impression he wasn’t very young either. And his accent was just ordinary. Middle-class. Like mine.’
‘A Londoner?’
‘I suppose so. There wasn’t anything distinctive about it.’
‘Would you know the voice if you heard it again?’
‘Yes.’ The answer was immediate, unpremeditated. She looked at Rob, stricken. ‘But I can’t help you. I won’t be a witness. I wouldn’t take the risk.’
‘What did the man say to you?’ I asked.
‘He told me to listen, and not to say anything. He told me that he knew I could get at records on the PNC and the sex offenders’ register, and that he needed me to look up a few things for him. He asked me to look for convicted paedophiles in this area – any offences involving children, anywhere and at any time.’
Rob had been making notes. Now he looked up. ‘Did he use those exact words? He called it the PNC, not the police computer or database?’
‘Yes.’
I exchanged a look with Rob. That suggested an insider. ‘What were you supposed to do with the information?’
‘He gave me an email address to send the list to.’
My interest quickened. ‘What was the address?’
‘Gibberish,’ she said crisply. ‘Random letters and numbers. It was a free Internet account, not a proper one. And the day after I sent the list, I sent a message asking him to leave me alone from now on, but it bounced back, so I think the account had been closed.’
‘We’ll need the details anyway.’
‘Of course.’
‘Have you got a copy of the list?’
‘I didn’t keep anything. Too dangerous. And I don’t remember the details, honestly. I was trying to do it quickly, without thinking about it. I suppose there were ten or twelve names in total, but I can’t be sure.’
‘You’re going to have to think about it,’ I said, allowing an edge of authority into my voice. ‘You’re going to have to run the search again, exactly the same way. We need to know what you passed on to the man who threatened you.’
Used to obeying direct commands, Caroline Banner nodded, although she looked miserable about it. I felt a tiny bit bad about bullying her, but it was necessary. I needed the list and she needed anything at all that might make things a little less black for her.
‘What did he say after he gave you the email address?’
‘He said he knew I was a diligent employee and I would want to say no, so he was going to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘I thought that was rubbish, you know. It sounded so clichéd. I was just about to hang up when he said that he’d been watching Alan. He’d seen him at football practice. He told me the position he plays, and the number on his shirt. He told me Alan had fallen that day and grazed his knee, so I knew he was telling the truth – he had been watching him, or someone had on his behalf. He told me that if I said no, or if I told anyone about the phone call, he could arrange for Alan to be taken away and I’d never see him again, dead or alive. I’d never know what had happened to him, except that I could have stopped it if I’d wanted to.’
‘And you believed him.’
‘I did,’ she said simply. ‘He wasn’t lying, I could tell. He just sounded so cold. As if what he was saying was reasonable. He’d have done it, I know it. He might do it still. You have to protect us. You have to make sure Alan is safe.’
‘How old is Alan?’ I asked.
‘Eleven.’ The tears came then and she wiped them away with the back of her hand, the tissue having lost the power to absorb anything more. ‘I couldn’t take the risk. You can understand that, can’t you?’
I could, sort of. She had justified her decision to herself, and to us. But her actions had condemned three men to die horribly, and the saddest part was that she hadn’t even bought herself peace of mind. No matter what she did or where she went once she got out of prison, she would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life, probably with reason. Because if there was one thing I was learning about the killer we were seeking, it was that he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted, whatever that might be.
Reluctant she undoubtedly was, but Caroline Banner came up with the goods. With a little bit more coaxing and access to a computer, she gave us a list of twelve names, the first three of which were instantly familiar to me as my victims.
Rob was frowning. ‘Is this the order you had them on the original list?’
‘As far as I recall.’
‘Palmer, Tremlett, Kinsella, Merriman, Forgrave, Flanders, Johnson, Tait, Carey, Bardock, Lomax, Dyton. That’s not even close to being alphabetical.’
‘It wasn’t designed to be. That’s not what he asked for.’ She looked from Rob to me. ‘Did I not say? He wanted the names of the sex offenders who lived closest to the A23.’
‘Why?’ I said blankly, wondering why we hadn’t noticed that before, when it ran through Brixton like a spine and lay right in the middle of my map of the murders.
‘No idea.’
I hadn’t really expected her to know, but the vacant way she replied annoyed me nonetheless. She had absolved herself of all responsibility for what she had done, and seemed to have no curiosity about what the implications of her actions were. I couldn’t help myself; I pointed at the top of the list.
‘You do realise these men are dead, don’t you, Mrs Banner? Ivan Tremlett had three kids who are going to grow up without a father. Mr Palmer and Mr Kinsella lived alone, but they had people who loved them too, people who will mourn them and miss them. They were tortured before they died – tortured and mutilated – and we don’t know what motivated the killer any more than we know who is responsible. So maybe you should do a bit more thinking about what you know about the man who contacted you. Make sure you share everything with us this time, instead of conveniently forgetting details that might be helpful in tracking him down.’
Rob’s hand came down on mine, hard, unseen by Caroline Banner. She was snuffling in her tissue again. I glared at him and got more or less the same look back.
‘Leave it,’ he muttered.
I couldn’t argue with him there, in front of her, but I could feel anger tightening in my chest. He guided her through what she’d told us once more, checking every detail with the utmost courtesy and gentleness while I simmered beside him. I had enough self-control to leave Mrs Banner with the idea I was grateful to her for her help, and enough presence of mind to talk to the worried DI Lawlor on my way out. I wasn’t really able to do much for his state of mind. There would be more interviews for Caroline Banner, and a whole lot of trouble for DI Lawlor. It had been a worthwhile interview – the first hint of a breakthrough – and Rob had been instrumental in getting Caroline Banner to trust us. All the same, I couldn’t look at him. I stared out through the windscreen, waiting for him to start the car. Instead, he folded his arms.
‘Go on.’ He sounded resigned, but there was a hint of amusement there too that made my hackles rise.
‘What?’
‘You’d better say it now.’
‘I don’t have anything to say.’
‘You mean you’re not angry with me?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ I glanced at him briefly, looking at his chin so I didn’t have to meet his eyes. ‘I’m livid, as it happens. But I don’t need to talk to you about it.’
‘I’d prefer it if you did.’
‘And I’d prefer it if you let me do my job. There was nothing wrong with how I was interviewing her. Nothing at all.’
‘You scared the shit out of her. You told her that the man she helped is capable of extreme violence. You basically made her aware that the threats he made are worth worrying about.’
‘She was worried anyway, but she was worried about herself and her family. She hadn’t even thought about what her actions meant for other people. She’s a selfish, stupid woman, and she wasn’t even trying to be helpful, even now.’
‘Do you blame her?’ When I didn’t reply, he sighed. ‘Look, Maeve, she was right. If she hadn’t given him the information, he would have got it from somewhere else. Those men would still be dead. Or another three men would have been top of the list, and they’d be the victims you seem to care so much about.’
‘Someone has to.’ I felt a tingle at the back of my nose and blinked furiously. I would not cry. ‘You didn’t see Palmer and Kinsella. You didn’t see how they were living. They weren’t dangerous. They didn’t deserve to die like that. And she didn’t seem to care about what she’d done to help the killer.’
‘You’re not going to change someone like that though. She’s never going to see it the way you do.’
‘Do you have to act like you’re so fucking wise all the time? You’re not perfect, Rob, even if you like to think you are. So stop patronising me,’ I spat.
‘I wasn’t,’ he said gently, which didn’t calm me down in the least.
‘Apparently you know just how to deal with Josh Derwent, even though you’ve never had to work with him. Apparently you know just how to cope with going to the most horrendous crime scenes without giving a shit about the victims. Think about why they died, not how. That’s what you said, isn’t it? Well, I can’t. I can’t separate it out like that.’ I ran out of steam all of a sudden, aware that I had got side-tracked, aware that I had revealed more than I had intended.
‘Is that what this is about? What I said about Derwent? I was just trying to help.’
‘Well, maybe you should let me worry about him. It’s really none of your business.’
I heard him take a breath, but instead of saying whatever he had planned to, he started the car. We left the parking space with rather less finesse than he had used to get into it, by the grace of God not quite scraping the wall or the car next to us. I didn’t say anything until we were well out of Brixton, stuck in traffic as we crawled towards Vauxhall.
‘I’m sorry for shouting at you. But you were being a condescending git.’
‘Not my intention.’
‘I don’t suppose it was.’ I paused for a second. ‘Godley suggested I should tell her about Ivan Tremlett’s kids. It wasn’t just me going off on one. I’m more professional than that, I hope.’
A swift, assessing glance. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest you weren’t.’
‘That’s how it came across.’ I couldn’t help sounding truculent, and I wasn’t really surprised when Rob didn’t reply. We spent the rest of the drive in silence, and when we got back to the nick I let him talk to the superintendent on his own while I looked for Peter Belcott. It was probably the only time in my life that I was pleased to have a reason to talk to Belcott, and it was fair to say the feeling wasn’t entirely mutual. He looked up unenthusiastically as I approached.
‘Back already?’
Instead of answering, I laid a copy of Caroline Banner’s list on his desk, sitting on the edge so I could lean over to see what he’d found. ‘Do they match up with anything you’ve found so far?’
He scanned it, then flipped through the sheaf of pages that represented her searches on the PNC. ‘Right. Got your three victims, obviously. Merriman … that’s Anthony Grayson Merriman, aged forty-three, convicted of abusing his stepdaughter from when she was nine until she was thirteen. Lovely.’
‘Have you got an address for him?’
‘Talavera Road.’ He wrote it down beside Merriman’s name and I craned my head to see, trying to recall if I’d seen the road on the map, and if it was remotely near where the other three had died.
‘Stanley Flanders is on here too. Seems to have been a common-or-garden flasher, Peeping Tom, that kind of thing. Seventy-four, God bless him.’
‘Address?’ I snapped.
‘The Mayhew Estate.’
I had seen that on the map and from Barry Palmer’s road: the estate consisted of eight grey concrete tower blocks, stained and square. A social experiment in twelve floors, they had been designed to be the new wave of modern living in the 1960s, and they loomed over the neighbouring streets threateningly.