Stephen Booth - The kill call

It was a clear signal that their relationship wasn’t going to be a professional one. They weren’t to be considered a DS and a DI working together, no longer colleagues who could safely share information fully with each other. From this moment, from the second she called him ‘Gareth’, she wouldn’t be a police officer any more. She’d be the victim.

Now Blake changed tack, thinking that she was on side. Hit her with the bad news.

‘I’m afraid the conviction rate in rape cases is still very low in this country.’

‘Yes, I know that.’

Blake tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘Of course you do. And I’m sure you’re aware, too, that there’s a lot of pressure to improve conviction rates.’

‘Absolutely. The inference from the poor figures being that the police don’t take rape allegations seriously enough.’

‘Well, that’s a perception the public might take away from the statistics. We know it isn’t true, though, don’t we? Generally speaking. There are lots of other factors that make convictions difficult to achieve, especially in cases where the defendant is known to the victim.’

‘Like the fact that it’s impossible to provide objective evidence on whether consent was given.’

‘Exactly. It always comes down to one person’s word against another. And juries don’t like that. They want to be presented with evidence. We’re handicapped by those old-fashioned notions of people being innocent until proven guilty, and having to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. When it’s just a question of “ he says, she says ”, there’s always going to be room for reasonable doubt. It would take a piss-poor barrister not to ram that point firmly into the heads of a jury.’

‘Or a defendant who’s not very convincing on the stand?’

Blake smiled. ‘Ah, yes. There are some people who just look so guilty that jurors will convict them whatever the evidence. But that’s the chance you take in a jury system, isn’t it?’

‘Have you lost many convictions turned over as unsound?’

‘Through prejudiced juries?’

‘Yes.’

‘One or two. The information age is a killer.’

The information age. Fry knew what he meant. For many decades, newspapers had been subject to restrictions on what they could publish during a trial without being guilty of contempt of court and prejudicing a jury. But the internet had changed all that. There were archives of news stories from the time of an offence being committed, or from a suspect’s arrest, which could be accessed at the click of a key. For many jurors, it was too much of a temptation not to do a bit of research for themselves. The Court of Appeal had quashed convictions as unsound on those grounds alone. Too much information. A real twenty-first-century curse.

She realized that everyone in the room was looking at her again. Had she been asked a question? She would be a hopeless witness on the stand if her attention wandered from the question so easily.

‘So what do you say, Diane?’ asked Blake.

‘I need time.’

‘Of course. All the time you want.’

Fry looked at Superintendent Branagh, and thought she might have detected a tiny hint of sympathy in her eyes. She thought of all the times she’d observed the behaviour of victims and felt a twinge of contempt at their weakness, wanted to tell them that it wasn’t so bad as all that, for God’s sake, have a bit of backbone and do what you have to do.

And Fry had so often seen people going into court to confront their past. She knew the worst part was waiting in the witness room, and the long walk down the corridor to take the stand. She’d watched people taking that walk. It might only be a few yards, but when you were going to face your own demons, it could seem like a million lonely miles.

For herself, Fry knew that the long walk down that corridor would be the most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life.

As Cooper drove through Birchlow towards Rough Side Farm, he noticed that there was now just one car parked behind the village hall. He almost missed it through his rain-streaked window, but for a brief flash of bright metallic blue, which made him stop and reverse a few yards to take a better look. A blue Mercedes. Had the same car been there on Wednesday? He had no idea.

Cooper drew into a lay-by just past the church and called the office.

‘Gavin, what sort of car does Michael Clay drive? Isn’t it a Mercedes?’

‘Yes. Do you want the reg?’

‘Please.’

Murfin read the registration number to him, spelling it out in the standard phonetic alphabet.

‘Romeo, Echo, Zero, Eight…’

Even before he’d finished, Cooper knew he had the right car. And he knew he had the answer to another mystery as well.

‘Is Diane around, Gavin?’

‘She’s just come down from upstairs. But you don’t want to talk to her, Ben.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Take my advice, mate. I’ve just seen her face, and you do not want to talk to her.’

‘Gavin, put her on, please.’

Murfin sighed. ‘Stand by for the nuclear fallout, then. I gave you the four-minute warning. I just hope you’ve got your tin hat on.’

A moment later, Fry came on the phone. ‘Yes, what’s happening?’

Well, all or nothing, supposed Cooper.

‘Diane, can you come out and meet me at Birchlow, to visit Rough Side Farm?’

‘Is that the Massey place?’

‘Yes. I think it could be important. I’m sorry if it’s a bad time, but there’s something — ’

‘Anything,’ said Fry. ‘Anything. I’ll be straight there.’

Peter Massey wanted so much to talk. It was impossible to tell what had held him back before. Some instinct to put off the moment, a hope that the whole thing might be forgotten? Who could tell? But as soon as Cooper asked the right question, the words poured out of him as if the act of talking made him feel a lot better.

‘Mr Massey, did someone else come to visit you last week?’ said Cooper when Fry had arrived and they’d fetched the farmer out of his workshop. ‘Perhaps to ask about the old ROC post — 4 Romeo?’

‘Yes, he was here,’ said Massey, not even bothering to ask who they meant. ‘Wednesday, it was. I was out in the fields, mending a bit of wall that had collapsed. Too much rain. It washes away the footings.’

‘Mr Clay?’

‘Yes, Clay. Him.’

He spoke so quickly that there was almost no form to some of his sentences. They broke down into mere fragments of sound — part confession, part recollection, interspersed with snatches of narrated conversation, so that Cooper got Michael Clay’s words as well as Massey’s own. It was a spasmodic, convulsive purge, as if Massey was being physically sick, vomiting up the guilt and fear.

Fry tried to persuade him to go into the house, but he ignored her, a stubborn expression on his face. Instead, he sat down on an old, blackened bale of straw, removing his cap and turning his face up to the rain.

‘I recognized him then,’ he said. ‘Even after all that time, I knew him as well as I knew myself. His hair was grey, he’d put on weight, but I knew him all right. You don’t change the way you move, the way you speak, the way you hold your head. Just looking at him brought back all those memories.’

‘ Do you want to have a look inside?’ I said.

A delighted expression came over his face. ‘May I? The hatch is padlocked.’

‘ Yes, but I’ve got the key.’

‘ Do you own it, then? ’

‘ It’s on my land, so I suppose I do. No one else wants the thing, anyway. Not any more.’

‘To be honest, I was surprised that he didn’t know me, the way I’d recognized him,’ said Massey. ‘But maybe he’d never taken much notice of me at the time. Yes, I suppose that’s what it was. He hadn’t studied me the way I’d studied him for all those weeks. He thought I was just some fool in the background, not worth bothering about. Well, that was his mistake.’