The Valley (28 page)

The gun was still pointed at Angela, but Max was no longer focusing on her. He was looking straight at me,

‘And all I could say was, ‘Does that mean you won’t invest?’ And I remember the look of scorn on her face when she yelled at me to leave. But it wasn’t pure scorn: there was fear also. At the time I thought it was fear of me, or fear that I might say something to you. But it wasn’t fear of any of those things, was it Max?’

We looked directly into each other’s eyes.

‘You killed her, Max, didn’t you?’ I said.

He shook his head.

‘Did Charlie Wall do it – on your orders?’

‘It went wrong,’ he mumbled. ‘It was supposed to be painless, done quickly in her sleep. But you’d upset her and she heard him come in.’

He stared straight at me and, momentarily, the gun wavered in his hands.

My attention was so focused on Max that I did not see Angela put her hand in her pocket and pull something out. Suddenly she was waving what appeared to be a large black wallet and shouting, ‘Look at this, look at this!’

Max swivelled around to face her, his gun already pointed at her chest.

‘No, Max,’ I screamed, ‘Angela don’t!’

But Angela kept talking. ‘Look at the badge, Max Grainger, look at the badge. My name is Angela Fawcett, Detective Sergeant Angela Fawcett…’

And just for a second, he looked at the badge and that was all I needed.

I sprang out of the sofa. Max swung the gun round, but I delivered the prefect hand-off, knocking it up into the air, and swept past. And for a couple of seconds I was eighteen again and sprinting down the touchline, any pain in my knee swamped by adrenalin. As I rushed towards the table, I stretched out my hand to grab the fleece. Then Angela screamed and everything stopped. I heard a loud clap and felt a burning heat in my right arm and across my chest and shoulders. Then my legs buckled under me. My last conscious thought was that my head was going to crash into the side of the table unless I put my arm out, but when I tried, nothing moved, except the table which seemed to rise up and smash itself against my face.

And then there was peace. I was walking with Angela and my children in a grass field with hedges all around. The sun was shining, and everyone was laughing until I heard the noise of someone screaming, and after a while I recognised it as Angela.

My eyes flickered open. I was lying on the floor slumped against a table leg. And Angela really was screaming.

At the far end of the room Max was lying on top of her. They were thrashing around and for a brief moment I wondered if he was raping her, until I saw he had clamped one hand over her mouth, whilst the other was wrapped around her throat, strangling her. Behind them on the floor lay the shotgun, a trail of smoke coming from the blackened remains of the silencer.

I turned to my left and saw my fleece, entangled around an upturned chair. I stretched out my hand, and yanked the sleeve as hard as I could. The fleece fell to the floor with a heavy thump.

Angela screamed again. The noise only lasted a second until Max smothered it with his hand.

I tried to pick up the fleece with my right hand but a burning pain tore across my chest. I stared down at my torso. The right side of my shirt had a muddy brown stain that was spreading from my shoulder down to my stomach. I reached across with my left hand and gently tugged the fleece over to my side, then rummaged underneath it, feeling for the gun, and finding it.

At the far end of the room, Angela was writhing around, like a fish on dry land, as Max slowly choked off her oxygen.

I tried to lift up the gun with just my left hand. I had seen Max hold it in one hand. But the gun was still ensnared in the fleece and the combined weight was too much. For a second the shrouded barrels wavered in the approximate direction of both Angela and Max, then an intense pain gripped my chest and I had to let the gun and the fleece fall in a heap on my lap.

‘Max!’ I shouted. ‘Max!’

The word came out more like ‘Gax’. My mouth was too full of blood and saliva.

Max moved his head and looked at me. The rest of his body stayed locked in position, one hand folded over Angela’s mouth, the other clamped tight around her throat.

‘The gun’s in my safe,’ I yelled, my words coming out in a gurgle, but the word ‘gun’ was clear enough. ‘Let her go Max and you can have the gun.’

Max looked down at Angela. Her hands were on his, trying to prise his fingers from her throat.

‘Let her go now, Max. I’ll give you the key.’

He was staring at me now.

‘The gun’s in my safe,’ I repeated, spitting out blood as I tried to enunciate each syllable clearly. ‘You can have the key. It’s here. Just let her go.’

‘Give me the key!’ Max yelled.

I knew I did not have time to argue. I closed my eyes and let my head loll forward. I meant only to pretend to pass out but once my eyes were closed, I felt myself drifting off back to that field with Angela and the children, but this time it was Max who was shouting ‘John, John!’

I blinked back into consciousness. He was standing up. Angela’s body lay motionless at his feet. I thought she was dead until her body convulsed and I heard her retch.

He grabbed his gun and strode back to her. For an awful moment I thought he would finish her off with a shot to the head until I remembered that the silencer was shattered and that killing her with his hands would be much quieter.

He paused mid-stride and picked up something from the floor. I could not see what it was. Everything was slipping in and out of focus. He muttered something, grabbed Angela by the hair, and dragged her along the kitchen floor towards me, as if she was a carcass of a deer he had shot. She stretched out an arm to stop him but he just kicked it away.

Underneath the fleece, I felt for the triggers on the shotgun. I could not remember which chamber I had loaded the cartridge in, so I curled fingers around both of them. I tried to bend my knees, but the angle of the gun was too low. Max was holding Angela in front of him by a clump of her hair, effectively shielding his legs with her head. I waited for him to let go of her but instead he bent down and yanked her head up towards him.

‘She’s a policewoman, John. She’s a bloody policewoman.’

He tossed something onto the fleece on my lap. I looked down. It was the black leather wallet that Angela had waved at us. It had fallen open to reveal a photograph of her in police uniform, and an embossed metal star.

He rapped his shotgun against her skull. ‘It was her who turned you against me, wasn’t it?’ he said.

His voice had changed. I realised he was crying.

‘John, we just had to stick together and stay quiet. I would have given you everything. We could’ve built something special. And now…’

He let go of Angela’s hair and she fell back onto the floor. He placed his foot across her neck as if she was vermin.

‘It’s not all ruined,’ he said. ‘I will look after your children, John. On my life, I swear, I’ll treat them as my own. Just tell me where the gun is John. I can clean up everything and –’

I jerked my knees upwards, and pulled both triggers.

According to the post-mortem report, I shot Max through the heart, liver and lungs. Eighty percent of the shot went into his body. The rest blew away my own knee cap.

The pathologist reckoned he died instantly, and I think that was appropriate. Max prided himself on making clean kills. Leaving a wounded animal to die slowly was a terrible crime in his book, so I’m glad his own death was not prolonged.

If he did have time to utter any regrets, I never heard them. I remember the bang as I fired and a terrible pain in my leg, but nothing much beyond that. Sometime later, I can recall woozily looking up at my ceiling, noticing the small variations in the white paint and listening to Angela talking on the telephone. I could not see her and her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. She had to repeat the address of my flat over and over again, before she hobbled back into my line of sight, and pressed a dishcloth against my chest. She lay down beside me and held my hand, whispering to me that I was not to worry and she was so sorry for everything, which was funny, because that was exactly what I wanted to tell her, but I could no longer talk. Then she got up, and I was left with just the pain in my knee and the burning in my chest, and breathing became harder and harder, until I passed out.

I can not recall anything from my first week in the intensive care unit. My first real memory is of being wheeled between operating theatres, and seeing Karen. I could not talk to her because I had a breathing mask fastened over my nose and mouth, but she must have seen a spark of recognition in my face because she came over and knelt down beside me and started whispering in my ear. At first I thought she was telling me she loved me, which would have been awkward because I loved Angela. But then I realised she was saying something else: ‘John, listen: you’re in a lot of trouble. Don’t say anything to the police. Trust no one.’

Doctors and nurses came by at regular intervals to measure my breathing, plug me into drips and artificial respiration machines, give me oxygen and change my dressings. My right arm and leg were set in plaster and itched so badly that at night I used to dream of sliding a cold metal knife down between the plaster and my skin. To give my back a chance to heal, I had to lie on my front, completely immobilised. And all the time I kept wondering when Angela would come to see me, until I realised that if she had not come already, she never would.

I gradually learnt what was wrong with me. I had a collapsed lung, a ruptured kidney, a broken elbow, blood poisoning, third degree burns, tissue damage and a fractured knee. Apparently it was my elbow that had saved my life. As Max squeezed the trigger, my right arm must have been pulled backwards because it shielded enough of my vital organs to ensure I lived. But whilst the doctors were happy to talk to me about my injuries, they never mentioned the events that had led up to the shooting. And mindful of Karen’s warning, I didn’t say anything either.

When Karen next came in to see me, I tried to tell her what had really happened, but she did not want to know. ‘Save it until Jonathan gets here,’ she said.

Towards the end of my second week in the hospital, Joy Clarke and DI Davies appeared at my bedside. Joy gave her familiar warning about how anything I said could be used as evidence against me, and then Davies asked some questions about the shotgun I had fired. I just shook my head and told them to speak to my lawyer. For ten minutes they tried to interrogate me, but I turned my face to the wall and ignored them until I heard them walking out of the room. Only then did I turn around and ask if they knew where Angela was.

‘You mean DS Fawcett, the police officer who was tortured in your flat?’ Davies snarled.

Joy turned to him: ‘Do you mind if I talk to John alone?’

After Davies left, she closed the door behind him and approached my bed.

‘How are you?’ she said.

‘I’m alive. And Angela?’

‘She’s recovering,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘I can’t help you John, unless you help us.’

I smiled at her and she smiled back.

‘Sooner or later you’ll have to talk to us, John. Just let me know when you’re ready.’

The next day, I had my first proper conversation with Jonathan Harrison. He asked me to give a full account of what had happened. He did not ask about Angela, so I did not tell him much, describing her as someone who had previously lived in the flat above mine, and whom I had bumped into a few times and who had then turned up, as if by magic, in my patio on the night I had killed Max.

‘And you definitely saw her police badge?’ Jonathan asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She called herself Detective Sergeant Angela Fawcett.’

‘It doesn’t make sense. If she was undercover, the police would have attempted to rescue her.’

I nodded. He glanced through his notes, then looked up and spoke in a very slow and deliberate voice.

‘John, this is very important. You said you wrote out by hand a full account of everything on a child’s writing pad. How long was this account?’

‘Fifty pages.’

He looked at me aghast.

‘I signed and dated it as well,’ I said.

‘Did it omit any of the events or actions you’ve just told me about?’

‘No, it described them all in detail.’

He wiped his hand across his forehead. ‘Well, that’s plan A out of the window,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In cases like yours, the defendant’s strongest bargaining chip is a confession. But you’ve already given the police the perfect confession: long, detailed, written out by hand, without any police pressure. Detectives dream of finding evidence like that.’

‘Do I need a bargaining chip?’

‘Yes. I don’t think we can deny you covered up a murder and they can also probably prove blackmail. That’s two serious crimes. And there seems to be overwhelming evidence that you kept a shotgun without a license, and not just any shotgun, but an illegally shortened one that you hid in a drawer with live ammunition next to it, rather than in a proper registered gun safe.’

‘Are we talking prison?’

He nodded.

‘For how long?’

He took a long time before answering. ‘Normally I’d say three years. But it could be double, because of all the press attention.’

I looked at him. ‘What press attention?’

‘Have you seen the newspapers?’

‘No.’

‘You’re famous John.’

‘For killing Max?’

‘Partly. But it’s also the financial stuff.’

I looked at him blankly.

‘The public hate bankers.’

‘I’m not a banker!’ I protested.

‘You worked in an investment bank once. Your best friend was a hedge fund manager. You set up a business with funny money from an old Etonian stockbroker. When that ran out, more was flown in from the Caymans. You covered up an insider dealing scam and you took part in a murder on a luxury yacht. The shotgun you killed your friend with was worth more than most people earn in a year. To a lot of people, you symbolise everything that’s wrong with Britain.’

I sank back into my pillows.

‘That isn’t everything either,’ Jonathan continued. ’If you’re going to hear the bad news, you might as well hear it all. You’re under investigation for murder.’

‘Surely the police accept I killed Max in self-defence?’

‘They might. But that still leaves the murder of Edward FitzGerald.’

‘Max killed him, not me.’

‘That’s our defence, but there’s no evidence to support it. And even if people believe your account, we’ll have to admit you lured Gerry on board a boat where you knew Max was waiting for him with a loaded gun. Then you drove the boat away from prying eyes, whilst Max assaulted and tortured Gerry. And afterwards you helped dispose of the body. At the very least, that’s conspiracy to murder.’

He opened a page of his notebook and studied it. Without looking up, he said, ‘John, did Max Grainger say out loud, in front of over a hundred people at your wedding, that you would be a good man to bury a body with?’

I looked at Jonathan in stunned silence. ‘That was a joke,’ I eventually said.

‘It’s a joke that’s been widely reported. And it’s a joke that could mean you get fifteen years.’

‘Why haven’t I been arrested then?’ I asked.

‘As long as you’re bed-bound, the police know you’re not going to run away and they don’t want the trouble of having to look after you in a prison hospital. They can slowly build their case against you without having to justify anything to a judge or declare any evidence to me. But it’s only a matter of time before they do arrest you, so enjoy your freedom whilst it lasts. Meanwhile I will prepare the best defence I can.’

He started packing away his notes in his brief case, then looked up as if a thought had suddenly struck him.

‘Just one other thing,’ he said. ‘When Angela Fawcett was pretending to be Angela Hope, she didn’t come on to you in any way, did she?’

I looked at him.

‘John, we don’t have many cards to play,’ he said. ‘If this officer flirted with you, I need to know about it. The Met and the CPS are very sensitive about honey traps’

‘No,’ I said. ‘There was nothing like that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Very.’

He put away his notebook slowly.

‘Jonathan, I’m grateful for your help,’ I said, ‘but I’m not sure I can afford you.’

‘Nor am I,’ he said, snapping his briefcase shut. ‘Luckily Karen and Nick have asked me to send the bills to them.’

When I next saw Karen, I asked for an explanation. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You were too badly wounded to engage Jonathan yourself, so we did.’

‘I can’t let Nick and you pay my legal costs.’

‘Well, don’t then,’ she said coldly. ‘Pay them yourself, or pay us back when you can. But one way or another, you’re getting the best legal advice. You’re the father of my children. I won’t let you drag us all down with you.’

‘That’s a little bit unfair.’

‘Is it?’ she said, whirling around. ‘You’re safe in this little cocoon. You don’t know what the other kids say to the children every day at school, do you? You haven’t had reporters camped outside your front door, or policemen crawling through your house, picking it apart.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

We looked at each other like we had so often: anger melting into regret.

‘Jonathan thinks I will have to go to jail for a long time,’ I said at last.

‘I know.’

‘Next time you come in, can you bring the children?’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘There’s something else you should know. We plan to move out of London soon.’

‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere far enough away that we can begin again, but close enough to London so Nick and I can still get into work. Surrey is the latest idea.’

‘Out of The Valley then?’

She stopped. A thin smile started to show around her lips.

‘Yes, out of The Valley,’ she said. ‘I haven’t called it that in years. Anyway we’re doing what everyone in The Valley eventually does. They realise they will never reach the top of the mountains, so they turn around and walk out and live much better lives somewhere else.’