Simon Kernick - The Business of Dying

'What did you tell them?'

'I told them you were a good copper, that I couldn't think of a bad word to say about you except that maybe sometimes you were too eager to get a conviction.'

'Thanks, sir.'

'Whatever it is you've done, Dennis, be careful. Because they're on to you.'

I sat there for a couple of seconds as the full magnitude of his words sank in. In a strange way, I felt relieved that Welland hadn't linked me with the e-fit. I don't think I could have handled receiving the odium of someone I respected. Not after everything else.

'Don't worry, sir. It's nothing serious. I promise.'

'Sure. I understand.'

Again there was a silence, this time broken by me suggesting it was time to leave. 'I need to think about things,' I told him.

'You've got to get yourself back on track,' he told me. 'Be a good boy for a while.'

'Yeah, I know.'

'You're a good copper, Dennis.'

'Maybe.'

'And it was nice of you to come and see me. I appreciate it. I really do.'

I stood up and patted him gently on the arm. 'It was no more than you deserve. Thanks for saying good things about me.'

He gave a nod of acknowledgement, and I turned to go.

'One thing that was funny,' he said as I reached the door.

I stopped and turned back. 'What was that, sir?'

'Just that for some reason they seemed really interested in your firearms training.'

I shrugged, not giving a thing away. 'You know how it is. They've got to ask these things. Maybe they want to fit me up for a few murders as well.'

He managed a weak smile. 'You never know with the lot they've got up at CIB.'

I turned away from his gaze, hoping I'd imagined the knowing look.

Unravelling. It was all unravelling, so fast that I couldn't keep up with it. With each passing hour, my room for manoeuvre was becoming more limited. The gates to freedom were closing, and unless I made the right decision, and made it quickly, my life was effectively finished and I could look forward to the rest of my days behind bars, segregated from the bulk of the prison population for my own protection. And how long would that be? Thirty years? At least. Triple murder. Maybe even quadruple murder. Thirty years without a single taste of freedom.

Sitting alone that night at a corner table in the Chinaman, the drink doing little to calm my nerves, I tried to consider my options. They clearly had me down as a suspect, I could no longer doubt that. The copper at the roadblock had seen the e-fit and had put two and two together. Doubtless, by now they'd have got hold of a recent photo of me to show their main witness, the girl at the hotel, and presumably she'd picked me out as the killer. The question now was whether this, on its own, was enough evidence to secure a conviction. At the moment they clearly felt there was no point snatching me off the streets and charging me. There could have been several reasons for this, the most obvious being that they wanted me to lead them to whoever it was who had ordered the killing. Another would be that they wanted to gather further evidence against me without my knowing it, then spring their trap. Obviously, given my integral role in the saga, they would know there was no point offering up the carrot of a more lenient sentence for cooperating. I had no incentive whatsoever to tell them anything, however hard they leaned on me, and they'd know that.

It was a potentially embarrassing situation too. A serving police officer in a reasonably high position within the Force, and a background that included seventeen years' pretty much unblemished service, being arrested on suspicion of three counts of murder. No one in authority wanted that scenario, not until they were truly convinced that I was the man they were looking for. This at least gave me a slight chance of escaping the fate that was otherwise in store. But the fact remained that I was almost certainly now under close surveillance.

Even more embarrassing than having me arrested was not having me arrested and news leaking out that I'd been in the frame but had slipped through the net.

I finished the scotch and water I was drinking and casually surveyed the pub, looking for anyone who didn't belong. Police surveillance teams can be good, especially if they're using the best people they've got, but if you're aware that you're under their gaze it makes their job one hell of a lot more difficult. I clocked a middle-aged guy at the far end of the bar in a cheap-looking black suit with his tie askew and the top buttons of his shirt undone. He was talking animatedly to Joan, the landlady, and it looked like he was telling her a joke. I watched him for a couple of seconds, then scanned the rest of the bar. A few stools down from him were a couple of businessmen types I recognized, and down from them were a group of younger blokes, only just out of their teens, clustered around the jukebox. Two couples were at separate tables just in front of the bar: one of them I recognized, the other I'd never seen before. The second couple were sitting there looking bored and not really saying much to each other, so they were probably married. The woman looked up and caught my eye, but there was no momentary sense of concern there at being rumbled. She wasn't police. In fact, she actually appeared quite pleased I'd been looking at her and shot me the briefest of smiles. Her husband, or whoever he was, didn't seem to notice, so I smiled back before turning away.

There were maybe a dozen other people in the place all told, sprinkled across the tables, all seemingly involved in their own private conversations. I didn't concentrate my attention on anyone for very long. The last thing I needed was for the surveillance team – if, of course, there was one – to realize I was on to them. The moment that happened, I'd be straight into custody, and they might even be able to trace my awareness of their operation back to Welland, and I didn't want that to happen. The DI had done me a favour by covering my arse and letting me know what was happening, particularly when you took into consideration the fact that they'd been asking about my firearms experience. A lot of people would have forgotten their loyalties at this point and blurted out everything they knew. But not Welland. He knew the score. Or thought he did, anyway. Thinking back, I was sure that I'd imagined the look of suspicion on his face. There was no doubt that had he realized the full extent of my crimes it would have been a different story. One of the things going in my favour was that few people were ever going to think me capable of mass murder, which probably wasn't something to brag about, but was at least useful.

I lit a cigarette, thinking there was nothing to hold me back from running. This whole thing wasn't just going to go away. Not now. The investigating officers were going to keep sniffing around until they had the information they wanted. Then, one way or another, they were going to pull me in. And if Jean Ashcroft heard about any of this, she was likely to tell the cops about Danny, and then the shit really would hit the fan.

Danny. I'd tried his mobile again when I'd left the hospital, hoping he'd pick it up and tell me he was sitting on the beach sipping a pina colada, but it had still been switched off. I tried it again now, dragging on my cigarette as I waited vainly for a response. The longer he didn't respond to calls, the more I was forced to conclude that something bad had happened, and this left another problem. Raymond and his associates didn't need to keep me alive either. If they too got wind of what was going on they would definitely come for me – if they weren't coming already. Either way, my future looked grim so long as I stayed put.

But running away from everything – my career, my life: it was a big step. And then there was Carla Graham. Maybe she didn't want anything serious, but it was just possible that I could change that. Amid all this, she was the only positive thing keeping me going.