A Good day to die

45

I left the house the way I'd come in and headed back to the Jaguar, dialling 999 as promised, to call an ambulance for Bill.

I couldn't hear anything from Theo in the boot when I reached the car, so I got inside, turned on the engine and started driving. I had no idea where I was going.

As I drove, I thought through the case, and in particular Simon Barron's part in it. How had he got so close to Emma and Thadeus, when everyone else on the investigation was convinced that the man behind the slayings was Nicholas Tyndall? I'd never know, of course, but as a former detective myself I could surmise. My guess was that Barron had realized some years ago that by convicting John Robes of the murder of his daughter, he'd made a terrible mistake. I felt sure that somewhere further down the line he'd come across the name Richard Blacklip and discovered that he was part of a wide and well-connected paedophile ring. Obviously there couldn't have been a great deal of evidence against any of them for anything, but something about them must have led him to believe that it was they, not her father, who had murdered Heidi. This would have put him in a terrible position, made worse by the fact that, according to what Thadeus had told me, John Robes had committed suicide in prison several years earlier. Unable to tell anyone else of their possible involvement for fear of what it would do to his own reputation, it may well have been this knowledge, coupled with his unending sense of guilt, that had pushed Barron into premature retirement.

However, like all coppers, he could never entirely let go. So when the Met issued a rallying call for retired detectives to come back and help in London's burgeoning murder investigations, he'd volunteered. I don't suppose he'd known at the time how much the Malik/Khan case impinged on the one that had caused him so much pain, but it wouldn't have been that difficult for him to make the connection once he'd found out Ann Taylor's real identity. The problem, from Barron's perspective, was that no one on the investigation seemed that interested in Ann's death or the light her testimony of child abuse years earlier might throw on the case, so he'd used the North London Echo's investigative journalist, Emma Neilson, to publicize his suspicions. He'd fed her information, ignorant of her own duplicitous role, hoping that her articles would prompt a rethink of strategy within the investigation. I don't suppose Emma had been too keen to draw attention to the fact that Ann's death might not have been suicide, but she would have had little choice but to adhere to Barron's wishes and write the articles if she wanted him to remain onside.

And then Barron had found out something that suddenly made him a dangerous liability. It could well have been the name of someone else involved. He'd probably even confided to Emma who it was, and, in doing so, sealed his own fate. She'd lured him to an isolated meeting place, doubtless with the promise of information of her own, and had then silenced him for ever, nearly succeeding in getting me arrested in the process. Very neat. And very ruthless. She really had been a cunning operator.

But something nagged at me, something that I just couldn't get out of my head. You see, it was the timing. Heidi Robes had been abducted and murdered seven years ago. According to Thadeus, one of Pope's lowlifes had got rid of her body and planted the false evidence of her father's guilt. Tomboy Darke had left London for the Philippines seven years earlier, having made enough money (by his account, as an informant) to set up a business there. One of Tomboy's criminal trades when he'd been back in England had been burglary. Coincidence? Let me tell you something, speaking as a copper: there's no such thing. It was eleven o'clock when I pulled off the M1 just short of Leeds and drove until I found a deserted lay-by. I got out and switched on the mobile, ignoring the banging coming from the boot. As I walked across a piece of scrubland towards some trees, I dialled our dive lodge in Mindoro. It would be a little after seven in the morning there.

Lisa, our part-time receptionist, answered. It was nice to hear her voice and it was a good line.

'Mr Mick,' she said. 'How are you?'

I told her I was good and she asked when I was coming back. 'Never,' was the answer, but I didn't tell her that. Instead I said it would be soon, and she said she'd look forward to it. I asked her if Tomboy was there.

'Yes, he is around here somewhere. I get him for you. See you soon, Mr Mick.'

A minute later, he was on the line. 'How are things?' he asked.

'Take a walk,' I told him. 'So you're out of anyone's earshot.'

He asked me once again how things were. He sounded nervous, but not unduly so.

'Cold,' I said. 'What's it like there?'

'Warm,' he answered. The conversation was awkward, but then I'd expected that. 'I'm in the dive shop now,' he said eventually, 'and there's no one about. You can talk.'

'Good.' I sighed, wishing that it hadn't come to this. We'd been good mates once. Even a week ago. Now, though, the whole world had changed. 'I know everything, Tomboy.'

'What do you mean?' There was no mistaking the nerves in his voice now.

'You know what I mean. I know about the girl Pope and his friends killed at their little get-together all those years back, and I know that they used you to get rid of her body.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Her name was Heidi, by the way. Heidi Robes. And she was twelve years old. And her old man, the one whose house you broke into to plant the evidence, he's dead now. He was found guilty of her murder, even though they never had a body, and he finally topped himself two years back. He'd lost his wife first, then his only child. I'm amazed he lasted as long as he did.'

The silence at the other end of the phone spoke volumes. Tomboy didn't have to say anything; we both knew that what I said was right.

'You'll never be able to bring either of them back, and you'll never be completely able to shake off the guilt of what you've done all in the name of greed, but you can do one thing to make things a little better. There's one man amongst those paedophiles who's so far escaped the fate that's coming to him, and he's now the Lord Chief Justice in the UK, if you can believe that. He raped that girl, and one way or another, even after all this time, I'll bet he left some DNA evidence on her. They weren't so clued up about it seven years ago. So what I want you to do is tell me where you buried the body.'

Tomboy cleared his throat. 'I don't know what to say,' he croaked, sounding like he'd just lost his life savings on a horse that had fallen a yard short of the finishing line.

'You do. I've just told you what to say. I want to know the location. It'll never get back to you, I promise.'

'Mick… Dennis… Look, I…' His voice trailed off. 'Pope was blackmailing me, you know? I had to do it. I wouldn't have done normally, you know that. He found out I'd grassed up Billy West for a job he'd done, and he was threatening to tell him. You've got to believe me.'

'The location, Tomboy.'

He told me that he'd taken her to woodland down in Dorset, not far from the coastal town of Swanage. 'There's a lake in the middle. She's in there, weighted down with chains. Or she was, anyway. In a wooden box.'

I made him give me directions and he tried to remember as much as possible while I wrote it all down in my notebook, the phone pressed to my ear. By the time he'd finished he was crying. 'I wish I hadn't done it, Dennis, but he made me. He had stuff on me. He could have had me killed. I did it because it was my only chance of escape.'

Part of me wanted to tell Tomboy that I understood, but in the end, how could I? 'You're very lucky that you're six thousand miles away,' was all I could manage.

'Is that it, then?'

'For us, yes. Just hope I never decide to come looking for you.'

I rang off, and stood for a while staring at the spindly bare trees in front of me as they rose up like gnarled, many-fingered hands in the winter night; wondering if I'd done the right thing by coming here and tearing up the past. It would have been so much easier if I'd never heard about Malik's death; had never shot Slippery Billy West, or found out about his part in the whole bloody chain of events. If I'd simply carried on life in paradise with my old mate Tomboy, ignorant of what he too had done in his past. Diving, drinking, letting one day drift into the next.

But the world never works like that. Life's hard, and it's unfair. And if ignorance is bliss, then knowledge is essential. There are some terrible people walking the earth, and even now they might be coming for you or me. If you're not watching, not acting, not neutralizing them, then one day they're going to have their hands around your neck, and it'll be too late.

People say that one man can't justify being judge, jury and executioner. Some have even said it to me. I suspected Parnham-Jones himself would say it. And in many ways I can agree. But there are times when you need to take a short cut to justice. Because the alternative – letting the guilty get away with crimes too sickening to contemplate – simply doesn't bear thinking about.

As I turned to walk back to the car, the phone rang again. I didn't recognize the number so I picked up and said nothing.

'I called to see how you're doing,' said Nicholas Tyndall. Bizarrely enough, after all that had happened that day, his voice came across like a breath of fresh air.

'It's over,' I told him wearily.

'And the people who've been trying to fuck up my business?'

'All dead. Including the reporter.'

'Miss Neilson? You know, I always had a feeling about her.'

'Well, she was a part of it. A lot more cunning and a lot more vicious than either of us gave her credit for.'

'You're not upset she's gone?'

'I'm upset she was what she was.'

'We're all what we are, my friend.'

He was right, but I still couldn't help wondering what Emma would have been like if she hadn't had Eric Thadeus as a father. And that was the sad thing: we'd never know.

'Do I owe you any money?' he asked.

'No, we're quits. You might get a bit of heat for a while, but it'll be over soon, I promise you.'

'That's what I like to hear. Thanks for your good work. Maybe we'll do business together again some time. I could always use men like you.'

'No thanks. This is the end of it. We won't be talking again.'

'Suit yourself,' he said.

I said I would and hung up. Then switched off the mobile and chucked it towards the gnarled old trees. It was someone else's problem now. I drove north until eventually I came to the North Yorkshire Moors. It was there, amidst cold bleak hills, with not a tree or dwelling in sight, that I opened up the boot and told Theo Morris that he could go.

'Where?' he asked.

'Wherever you like,' I said. 'But go now while I'm still feeling charitable.'

That did the trick. He jumped out and without so much as a backward glance took off in the direction of an undulating valley below. He might have been cold, tired and lost, but I guessed that he was also extremely relieved.

I got back in the car and continued to drive.