‘But if he’s disappeared you must know where to start looking, surely?’
Letting that pass with a set of his mouth, Montgomery said, ‘So . . . you don’t know where Wesley might be?’
‘Even if I did, I’m not sure it’d be in his best interests to tell anyone.’
Montgomery held his gaze. ‘No,’ he agreed unexpectedly. ‘No . . .’ He looked older than before, the strands of combed-over hair strewn haphazardly over the bald crown in wispy ginger-grey feathers, the pink face turned tired and sallow. ‘Perhaps I can explain?’
‘You can try.’
Montgomery made a cage of his hands and took a slow breath. ‘I’ve been in the force thirty-five years, Mr Gwynne, all but three of them in CID,’ he said in the manner of someone
beginning a long story. ‘After a time you like to think you get a feel for cases. Whether they hang together properly. Whether they’ve got holes. The Jason Jackson murder seemed to hang together all right. Couldn’t see any holes. The forensic evidence was strong. Denzel Lewis had form for violence. The gangs were getting their kicks from hitting easy targets like Jason – kids who had no gang protection. It was the local sport, you might say. No reason to look elsewhere. And then, after Lewis was put away . . . well, I’d seen justice campaigns come and go. Thought this one would fade away like the rest. When it kept going, well . . . you start thinking. You go back over the evidence. You wonder what you could’ve missed. But if we’d got it wrong, if that jacket was planted on Lewis like he claimed, then I couldn’t see how it was done. Not when we’d picked him up so quickly.’ His voice stiffened. ‘You can’t see how it was done unless the whole case was rotten from the start. And you don’t want to have thoughts like that, not without good evidence. So you file your worries away at the back of your mind and you—’ He broke off momentarily as Pertusio’s phone rang and was answered. ‘And you hope like hell you’re wrong.’
‘But you weren’t wrong,’ Hugh said.
Montgomery lifted a hand, as if to ask for more time to tell the story. ‘When your wife first came and asked me about witness protection, well, I can’t say I took it too seriously, not to start with. When she said it was hypothetical, I took her at her word. But when she started talking about her hypothetical witness being able to identify a white boy as one of Jason Jackson’s killers . . . well, I sat up and took notice. I asked her straight out if the witness was for real, and she didn’t deny it. I don’t like to get things wrong, Mr Gwynne. Never have. And a racial killing – that was even worse. Problem was, like I told you, my hands were tied. I had no chance of getting my boss to agree to protection without a statement from the witness, and Mrs Gwynne – correctly in my opinion – wanted guarantees first. We tried to find a way round it, but . . .’ He shook his head.
His call over, Pertusio came and murmured something in Montgomery’s ear, which he acknowledged with a faint grimace. Turning back to Hugh with an air of hesitation, as if coming to the most difficult part, Montgomery continued, ‘When your wife died in the fire, well . . . we had to address the possibility of a connection. The possibility that your wife had been targeted in some way. So while the fire investigation was in progress I set up a team—’
‘But the fire investigation wasn’t in progress,’ Hugh protested, needing to make the point. ‘Nothing was happening.’
Again Montgomery accepted the criticism without objection. ‘Yes . . . If I could come back to that, Mr Gwynne?’ Taking Hugh’s silence as agreement, he went on, ‘We knew we had to get to the witness fast, so we worked round the clock and finally got to Wesley yesterday and took him to a place of safety—’
‘You had him?’ Hugh exclaimed, thoroughly startled.
‘Until this morning. We took him to a police officer’s flat and put a watch on him. But unfortunately he made a run for it while one officer was in the shower and the other was making breakfast.’
‘You had him?’ Hugh repeated in disbelief.
‘We could hardly keep him under lock and key, not without his permission. It was hard enough persuading him we were there to protect him.’
‘Breaking down his door can’t have helped.’
‘We had his mother’s permission, Mr Gwynne. He’d gone and barricaded himself inside the flat after certain callers tried to break the door down. He was in a panic, wouldn’t even open the door to his mother. The mother was worried that he’d do something foolish, try to throw himself out of the window.’
‘But DI Steadman said nothing about this when I saw him this morning.’
‘No . . . that’s right,’ Montgomery said, with an odd, lingering emphasis. ‘It was decided to keep my investigation off the record. For security reasons.’
‘Since when are investigations off the record?’
‘On the say-so of my guv’nor Chief Superintendent Clark. Here . . .’ Montgomery reached into his inside breast pocket and, pulling out a card, handed it across. ‘He’s expecting you to call.’
It was Chief Superintendent Clark’s business card, complete with embossed badge of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary.
Montgomery said, ‘If you look on the back . . .’
On the reverse was written
Please feel free to call me, Tony Clark
, with a mobile phone number.
Hugh stared at the card for several seconds before saying quietly, ‘Go on.’
Montgomery tried sitting back against the sofa cushions, but finding no comfort there sat forward with one elbow on the sofa arm. ‘A few years back we had a corruption problem on our patch. Nothing major, but it had to be stamped out. I joined the special squad that was set up at the time. We nailed three officers for recycling seized drugs, then the squad was disbanded. But where there’s drugs there’s always going to be temptation. So you keep half an eye out for officers who’ve got new cars and plasma TVs and have a low arrest rate. But that’s the careless ones. The clever ones keep their arrest rate up, even if they never manage to catch the top villain. And they can always account for their money. Like having a wife with a successful business. So when you see the handmade suits and the Audi and the new house, you think, lucky sod, to have a wife who brings in the money.’ Montgomery’s face took on a grim expression. ‘I worked alongside Brian Steadman in the anti-corruption squad. Did a couple of big cases together after that. Never a whisper against him. Not so much as a murmur. His wife had a successful hairdressing salon, which accounted for the new house, the car, the holidays. Come the Jason Jackson murder, I was glad to have him on my team. Hard worker, good contacts. Thought we were quids in when he got a tip-off about Denzel Lewis within two hours of the killing. And when he led the raid on Lewis’s flat and discovered the
bloodstained jacket, well . . . Nothing to suggest it was anything but good detective work. Nothing to—’
‘Who killed my wife?’
Montgomery said cautiously, ‘I can’t give you a categorical answer, Mr Gwynne. Not at this point in time.’
‘But you can give me a good idea.’
Montgomery paused, as if coming to a decision. ‘We’re intending to make an arrest later this evening.’
‘Who is it?’
Another pause. ‘I must ask you to keep this in the strictest confidence, Mr Gwynne.’
‘Yes.’
‘We expect to arrest DI Steadman on suspicion of arson.’
It was like running into a wall, the shock and the anguish. Hugh felt as if the breath was knocked out of him; for a moment he could neither think nor see nor hear. Then, as he gasped for breath, a wave of anger came over him in a red-hot sea. The monumental arrogance of Steadman’s deceit, his patronising dismissal of Hugh’s worries, his pretended concern at the evidence of arson, his apology for getting it wrong: these thoughts tore into him first. Close behind came the images of the night itself: Steadman entering Meadowcroft, drugging Lizzie, carrying her upstairs, and – almost unendurable – the picture of him lying her on the bed and removing her clothes. It was then, with a shiver of terrible elation, that Hugh experienced the wish to kill another human being. He was barely aware of Montgomery speaking to Pertusio and Pertusio leaving the room, he heard nothing of what Montgomery was trying to tell him until the anger subsided almost as quickly as it had come, leaving him shaky and nauseous. ‘What were you saying?’
‘I said arson’s just a start. We hope to charge him with more.’
Hugh closed his eyes.
‘DC Pertusio’s gone to make some tea. He won’t be long.’
‘You’ve got evidence?’
‘We’re working on it, Mr Gwynne.’
In a nudge of memory, Hugh said, ‘You know a friend of my son saw a man carrying my wife upstairs? Elk – James Elkins? On the night of the fire? He saw him carrying her upstairs—’
‘We know, yes.’
‘He was there – he saw him – well, not his actual
face
– but he saw him carrying her up the stairs. He gave a statement . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘He gave a statement to
Steadman
. To
Steadman
.’
‘Yes. We have the statement.’
‘You do?’
‘It’s with Chief Superintendent Clark.’
‘And you know Elk – James – saw a motorbike parked down the side of the house? It was too dark to get much of a look at it, but it was newish, shiny.’
‘We do know, yes.’
‘There’s a CCTV camera in the village – you should look at that. You might see what time he arrived – what time he left—’
‘Mr Gwynne—’
‘It probably doesn’t have any film in it, but you never know.’
‘We’ll cover all that, I can assure you.’
‘There might be tyre tracks. The ground’s quite soft there – on the left-hand side of the house. And I don’t think anyone’s been there since.’
‘We’ll be carrying out another search first thing in the morning.’
Hugh whispered almost as an afterthought, ‘He’s got a motorbike, has he?’
‘He has, yes.’
‘What sort?’
‘A BMW.’
The make wasn’t important to Hugh, it was the sense that he was gaining knowledge of Steadman, as Steadman had
gained knowledge of Lizzie, that somehow knowledge would begin to diminish the enormity of the man in his imagination. ‘He did it on his own?’
‘I can’t say. My personal guess is yes.’
As Pertusio arrived with mugs of tea, Montgomery’s phone rang and he left the room to answer it, leaving Hugh to Pertusio’s diffident gaze.
‘You followed me today,’ Hugh said.
‘I did, sir.’
‘Thought you were the enemy. Thought of ramming you.’
Pertusio blinked. ‘Right.’
‘Why? Follow me, I mean?’
‘The guv’nor’s orders.’
He was only a detective constable; it was the only answer he was going to give. Hugh took a sip of tea, wishing it was whisky. Montgomery came back, apologising for the interruption, and sat down again.
As more realisations came to him, Hugh stated flatly, ‘She would have let him into the house because he was a police officer.’
Montgomery nodded.
‘She even offered him a drink . . .’
Montgomery was silent.
‘He probably told her that
you’d
sent him.’
Montgomery’s expression admitted to the possibility.
‘Probably told her he’d arranged police protection. Tricked her into giving him Wesley’s name.’
‘There are things we may never know, Mr Gwynne. Things he’ll never tell us.’
Even as Hugh rebelled against this idea, he realised it was true, that he might never have the consolation of certainty. ‘Well, don’t let me anywhere near him,’ he growled.
‘It might be an idea to turn off your phone, Mr Gwynne.’
‘What?’
‘In case he calls you.’
The thought of hearing Steadman’s voice brought nausea
back into Hugh’s stomach. ‘Why haven’t you arrested him yet? Why wait?’
‘A couple of things we need to tie up first. In the meantime we need to get Wesley to a safe place, Mr Gwynne.’
‘How safe is safe?’
‘This time it’ll be round-the-clock protection somewhere away from here. It’s been authorised.’
Hugh murmured, ‘What sort of a life will that be?’
‘Better than being targeted by the Forbes family.’
‘He may not think so.’
‘He’ll get a new identity, a new life.’
‘He’s only a child.’
‘He’s eighteen. He can start again.’
Some association of ideas, youth perhaps, or fresh starts, brought Hugh another jog of alarm. ‘Elk . . . my son – what about them?’
‘Mr Elkins has made his statement. It’s on file. But we’re keeping an eye on him all the same, just till tomorrow.’
‘You know where he is?’
‘We do, yes.’
‘You had them followed?’
‘A safety precaution.’
In the strange new world into which Hugh had been plunged this seemed not only reasonable but logical. With hindsight his reaction to being followed by Pertusio seemed almost irrational. Coming to a decision, he said, ‘I’ll take you to Wesley. On one condition. That I get to speak to him before anyone else, to make sure he knows exactly what he’s in for. Because it’ll be months, won’t it, before anything comes to trial. Before he can start a new life.’
‘It could be a while,’ Montgomery conceded.
‘And another thing. He’ll need a mentor, someone who’s not police or family liaison, someone from the Citizens Advice. Someone he can trust. Someone like my wife.’
‘I’m sure that can be arranged.’
‘I need your assurance.’
‘You have it,’ Montgomery said.
Have I missed anything, Lizzie? Have I done all I can?
Before he could decide, he heard the sound of the front door and, throwing a questioning glance at Montgomery, getting a blank look in return, got to his feet and went out into the hall.
It was Lou, with Charlie close behind.
‘What about your film?’
Lou hugged him. ‘Didn’t want to see it anyway.’
Hugh turned to Charlie. ‘What about Elk? You haven’t left him on his own, have you?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘He’s with a mate from NA. He’s gonna kip at his place.’
‘He’s all right then?’
‘Yeah, he’s cool.’
‘He doesn’t mind you leaving?’
‘Got tired of having me around,’ said Charlie, with one of his enigmatic shrugs.