Howard Linskey - The Dead

Instead the DCI just said, ‘You killed Carlton’s daughter, you murdering bastard, and if it was down to me I’d bundle you in a car, take you out into the woods where they found her and beat you to death, because I wouldn’t waste the cost of a bullet on you.’

‘What? Are you out of your mind? I didn’t kill his daughter. I didn’t even know he had a daughter. Who the fuck told you that?’

He leaned in close again as he relished giving me the answer. ‘He did.’

I listened in shock as they told me. Gemma Carlton, eighteen-year-old daughter of DI Robert Carlton, had been murdered and her body dumped in woodland. They’d kept her name out of the papers for now but there would be a press conference later that day, without Carlton, who was in no fit state to appear before the public. Instead, Gemma’s uncle would appeal for witnesses.

Carlton was being treated for shock and grief and whatever they called it nowadays when your mind shuts down, because you’ve been driven out of it by something so bad you just can’t even begin to process it. At some point though, he had been lucid enough to speak to senior officers. They had gently coaxed from him whether there was anyone who held a grudge against him or Gemma, anybody who could have killed the girl because of it. He told them that person could only be me.

Gemma was sweet, she was innocent and kind and could never hurt a fly, she loved her mum, respected her dad, didn’t even have a steady boyfriend. The only possible motive for killing Gemma would be to stop her dad from functioning as a police officer, preventing him from closing that big case; the one he’d been working tirelessly on. He had told everyone he was close to breaking the old Mahoney crew and bringing down their boss, David Blake.

I didn’t say much. I just sat there and listened and figured now was probably the right time to ask for my lawyer. They’d got it all so wrong but couldn’t see it and there was no way I was going to convince them. I was the devil right now. Carlton was going to put me inside so I killed his daughter to derail him. It was outlandish, it was ludicrous and completely untrue but they weren’t in any mood to be convinced.

‘If you really believe I am capable of this, if you actually think I ordered it, or could ever persuade any of my men that it was a good idea, then nothing I can say will alter your view, but I did not kill this poor girl. Now I want my lawyer.’

‘You can have your lawyer,’ said the heavy-set man, who had silently entered the room while I was speaking, ‘but first I’d like a word, if I may.’

I had never met Detective Superintendent Alan Austin but I knew of him and he was fully aware of me. I recognised him from TV footage of police press conferences, like the one they were about to have for Carlton’s daughter. He turned to the DS who had attacked me, ‘I could hear you all the way down the corridor, Fraser,’ he told the man calmly, ‘go and get yourself a coffee,’ then he added pointedly, ‘in the canteen.’

DS Fraser grudgingly left the room and Austin picked up a chair and brought it with him.

‘Get him his lawyer,’ he ordered the DI. ‘And give us five minutes,’ he added. ‘Well, go on,’ he said, and all of them slunk reluctantly from the room.

‘Perhaps they think you might try to kill me,’ said Austin, who rightly assumed he did not have to introduce himself to me, ‘or they reckon I’m on your payroll. That’s the rumour, you know. That you’ve bought and paid for half of the CID round here.’ I didn’t answer. I just let him say his piece. ‘Now then, this is a right horrible mess, isn’t it?’

‘You don’t seriously think I would kill a policeman’s daughter just to stop him from investigating my company?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he admitted, ‘but there are a large number of people here who do because Carlton told them it was you. Some of them are very senior indeed.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘On the record, we are exploring several lines of enquiry.’

‘And off the record?’

‘It’s all about you. The brass have got it into their collective heads that Gemma Carlton was most likely killed because of her father’s investigation into an organised crime firm.’

‘That is fucking preposterous. Whatever you might think about my company, we are not the Cosa Nostra.’

‘I know,’ he told me, ‘I have explained that I do not think you, or anyone linked to you, is likely to have committed this crime, but that is not a popular view here right now. The word has gone out to investigate Gemma’s murder and to find a link with you. You have a motive, all they need is the evidence linking you to Gemma and they will find it.’

‘Manufacture it, you mean. They have already made up their minds,’ his silence confirmed this.

‘It’s not a question of manufacturing anything,’ he informed me, ‘you know how this works. There is always plenty of evidence out there, some of it cast-iron, a lot of it circumstantial, but if there is a political will from the CPS to build a case and present it effectively to a jury of laymen…’

‘Meaning thickos and simpletons they’ve dragged in off the street.’

‘…then they will get their conviction. You know that’s how it can work.’

‘I do,’ I conceded, ‘so why are you here? What do you expect me to do about it?’

‘That’s up to you but, if you really want them to stop thinking you had anything to do with Gemma Carlton’s death, then I’d say it is fairly obvious what you have to do.’

‘Find the real killer?’

He nodded.

‘And just how do you expect me to do that?’

‘Use the men in your… company,’ he told me, ‘they can go places we can’t, talk to people who might not normally be too forthcoming to police officers. They might find it easier to persuade people to be more open, but I’m not going to tell you how to go about it. I’m just asking you to help me find the man who killed a young girl I have known her whole life. We are all hurting very badly right now. I have my own private view of you and your organisation Blake, and you probably wouldn’t care to hear it, but I don’t believe you are stupid enough or so far beyond redemption that you would arrange to have an innocent girl murdered to throw my colleague off your scent.’

I didn’t answer him for a while. Instead I tried to think of ways I could persuade the police I had nothing to do with this girl’s death, without actually investigating the case myself, but I couldn’t come up with any.

‘Alright,’ I said, ‘give me everything you’ve got on the poor lass that I don’t already know, anything that could help me find the man who did this. My guys will look into it,’ he nodded his agreement. ‘I’ll find the killer and bring him to you.’

‘Make sure you do,’ he cautioned, ‘he’s not much use to us dead.’

‘He’ll be no use to me at all if he’s dead. I want him breathing and talking. I need him to explain this had nothing to do with me.’

‘One last thing, Blake,’ he told me, ‘no patsies, fakes or mentally-ill suspects, no losers coerced into confessing to a murder they didn’t commit because you put pressure on them or their families. We’ll see straight through that and you’ll have blown your last chance of salvation. I kid you not.’

I noted he was fond of biblical terms like salvation and redemption and wondered if that was significant. Was Detective Superintendent Austin a bit of a bible basher? ‘Just leave it with me,’ I assured him.

By the time they released me, it was getting light. I called Sarah and told her not to worry. ‘It’s all a bunch of nothing.’ I’m not sure she believed me.