Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

Phoebe had refused her stepmum as her responsible adult.

‘Frankly I’d rather go to prison,’ she’d said. And her dad was still abroad, so we ended up with a young solicitor from the local criminal law specialist. The solicitor was white, presentable and spoke with an affected South London accent that didn’t fool anyone, except maybe Phoebe.

After caution plus two we could have gone straight to the business with the drugs. But our priority – as determined by the senior officers even now monitoring us from the video suite – was to find out what the fuck the Americans had wanted.

Phoebe said she had no idea.

‘I was downstairs by the pool,’ she said. ‘And they just appeared.’

‘They’ being Crew Cut, who finally identified himself as Dean, and his merry men.

They’d asked her about her eBay activities.

‘What about your eBay activities?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I never use eBay.’

‘Do you have a PayPal account?’ asked Guleed.

‘No, I have a credit card,’ said Phoebe, who was perfectly happy to buy online and perfectly happy to buy second-hand – just not at the same time.

‘It’s so much more fun getting clothes from charity shops,’ she said. ‘I once almost grabbed a genuine Nicole Farhi jacket in a charity shop in Chelsea but this woman beat me to it.’

She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to have done on eBay, but Dean, formerly known as Crew Cut, seemed to think she’d tried to sell a book.

We asked what kind of book.

‘An old book,’ she said. ‘Really old, like centuries old. A ledger – that’s what boss American called it.’

‘Did he mention a title?’ I asked.

Phoebe said not, but when we pressed she thought that Dean might have referred to it as the ‘Last Ledger’. This all seemed a bit pat to me – suspects often can’t resist dropping in little bits of detail in the hope that it adds veracity to their statement, when all it actually does is make us more suspicious. I made a note to pursue this question in a later interview and we retraced the timeline leading up to the Americans’ arrival.

‘I was in the kitchen getting a drink and—’ Phoebe frowned. ‘Then I went downstairs. Somebody knocked on the door.’

She didn’t know the exact time, but it wasn’t that long before the cleaner left. We’d had the door under observation by then and definitely hadn’t seen anyone. Nobody sneaks past Guleed – she says it’s a talent you acquire if you’re the eldest child in a big family.

‘Was the knock at the front door?’ asked Guleed.

‘Must have been,’ said Phoebe, but she didn’t seem so sure.

‘Did you answer it?’ asked Guleed.

‘No,’ said Phoebe.

‘Was it a knock or the doorbell?’ I asked.

‘It was a knock,’ she said hesitantly and then, with more confidence, ‘definitely a knock.’

So it could have been the back door, not the front – perhaps that’s how Dean and co planned to make their escape.

‘What did you do next?’ asked Guleed.

‘I went downstairs,’ said Phoebe.

‘Did you go for a swim?’ asked Guleed.

‘I must have done,’ said Phoebe. ‘Why else would I go down there?’

She’d looked bone-dry to me when I’d seen her.

‘What were you wearing when you were in the kitchen?’ asked Guleed.

‘Is that important?’

‘Helps us establish a timeline,’ said Guleed.

‘Jeans,’ said Phoebe. ‘Or maybe tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt.’

‘Not your bikini?’

‘No,’ said Phoebe.

‘Not under your other clothes?’ asked Guleed.

Phoebe looked at me and rolled her eyes at Guleed.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Do you keep it downstairs by the pool?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Phoebe. ‘It’s a Sofia by Vix – Ollie bought it for me in Nice – I wouldn’t leave it downstairs where she could get her hands on it.’

‘She’ being Victoria Jones – Phoebe’s stepmother.

‘So you must have gone upstairs to your room before you went down to the pool,’ I said.

Phoebe shrugged.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Must have.’

Memory is unreliable, and it isn’t unusual for a witness to forget big chunks of the events that led to them answering your questions – even when things were fresh. Still, the obvious hole in Phoebe’s timeline was beginning to worry me.

‘Before the Americans turned up,’ I said, ‘was anyone in the basement with you?’

‘Like who?’

‘Like anybody.’

Phoebe frowned. ‘I was talking to someone,’ she said.

‘Do you remember who?’ asked Guleed.

‘Someone from school, I think,’ she said.

‘A school friend?’ asked Guleed.

‘No,’ said Phoebe and bit her lip. ‘An old person.’

‘Man or a woman?’

‘Man.’

‘A teacher?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Phoebe firmly. ‘Not a teacher. You know, it’s funny, but I think he was a parent . . .’ she said.

‘What makes you think that?’ asked Guleed.

‘He was familiar – like I totally knew him from somewhere – but definitely not a teacher.’

‘And yet you didn’t recognise him?’ I said.

‘I did, but not so I could tell you who he was.’ She made a waving motion with both hands. ‘It’s like when you’re half-way to school and you can’t remember what you had for breakfast. You know you had breakfast, you know what you usually have for breakfast, but you cannot for the life of you remember what you actually had today.’

Doing a two-hander during an interview is all about rhythm; you and your partner shift backwards and forwards to keep the interviewee ever so slightly off balance. If they don’t have time to think about their answers, then they are more likely to blurt out the truth. Or at least contradict themselves enough for you to figure out what they’re lying about. Good cop/bad cop is the Hollywood version, simplified and sexed up for maximum drama in minimum screen time. Me and Guleed had spent a year, off and on, interviewing everyone from mad mechanics to surly bouncers – not to mention the thing with the police horse which I’ve promised never to bring up on pain of ninjutsu – so she knew that the next line was mine, which would have probably been me asking what his voice sounded like.

But my mind, ironically, went blank. Because all at once I knew who had been in the basement swimming pool with us that evening.

‘What did his voice sound like?’ asked Guleed.

If Phoebe answered I wasn’t listening, because I was thinking that the subset of St Paul’s parents that Phoebe knew personally was going to be finite. Maybe as low as ten to twenty males, and they’d all be on a list at the school. And that list could be cross-referenced with the list of Little Crocodiles and whittled down by finding out who had a reliable alibi for certain important dates. He’d been good at covering his tracks. But like Nightingale had said, he’s not Moriarty. He’s just another criminal and sooner or later he’s going to make a mistake.

And I was fairly certain that the Faceless Man had just made it.

The main purpose of an administrative meeting is to establish collective guilt for whatever fuck-up arises out of its decisions. That way, when the wheels come off you can’t pretend you didn’t know what was happening – because you were there, weren’t you? – when those decisions were made. And we’ve got the minutes to prove it.

In the normal course of events a lowly PC like me, if they’re sensible, finds themselves something better to do – paperwork, house to house inquiries, searching a landfill. Anything. Unfortunately, the Folly’s flat management structure, viz there only being two of us, and its specialist nature, meant that not only was I at the meeting, but I was expected to make a valuable contribution.