Eeny Meeny

75

For a moment, she was staring at his eyeball. And then it was gone. Helen had tracked down Simon Ashworth’s city centre apartment and respectfully rang the doorbell – which showed some restraint given her desire to hammer on the door. A long pause, no sign of movement. So she rang the doorbell again. And again. She paused, listened. Was that the squeak of a floorboard, the tiniest hint of footsteps? And then the eyeball appeared at the peephole. Helen had been expecting – hoping – for this, so was staring down the peephole herself. The eyeball immediately took fright and vanished from view. The tell-tale signs of footsteps padding away made Helen smile – he was busted, so why tiptoe?

A copper faces a number of choices in this kind of situation. You can go the official route, apply for a warrant etc., but when you’re working alone this almost always means that your quarry escapes whilst you’re busy elsewhere filling in forms. You can go the patient route, feigning a departure only to take up a viewing post on the street. This usually works as the fugitive is desperate to leave the flat having been rumbled and is often on the street within the hour. But Helen had never been very good at patience. Which is why she marched into the caretaker’s office – startling him during his elevenses – and demanded he open flat 21.

He would have been well within his rights to ask for – demand – a search warrant, but it’s funny how many people’s brains stop working when they see a warrant card. Fearing censure, or excited by the drama of the moment, they usually comply. And so it was now, the flustered caretaker opening up flat 21 without hesitation. He seemed somewhat surprised and disappointed when Helen shut the door in his face – a brief smile of gratitude was all he got for his pains.

Ashworth was preparing to flee. The packed bags, the car keys – he was a man on the move. But he stood stock still now as Helen crossed the room towards him. He looked scared, blustering about the illegality of what Helen was doing – but not in a convincing or threatening way. Putting her warrant card away, Helen pointed to an empty metal chair. After a brief pause as Ashworth seemed to size up both Helen and the situation, he complied.

‘Why did you do it, Simon?’

Helen had never been very good at pussy-footing, so opted for a full-frontal assault. She laid out the charges – illegally downloading confidential information, compromising an active investigation for financial gain – quickly and crisply, intending to afford Ashworth no time to invent excuses or evasions. To her surprise, he offered a spirited defence of his actions.

‘It couldn’t have been me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because every technical consultant involved in something like this has their own unique access code. It’s the only way in or out for us and you can always tell when we’ve accessed the system and how we’ve used it.’

‘There must be ways round that.’

‘Not for us. Tech support staff move around a lot, sometimes within the police service, sometimes outside it. In order not to compromise an investigation and to deal with the turnover of technical staff, the access system was created. If you check -’

‘So why did you lie?’ Helen butted in. She wasn’t prepared to be lectured.

‘How do you mean, lie?’

‘I asked every person who had access to the investigation to account for their movements that day and you, along with all the other technical staff, claimed to have been on strike. But you weren’t. You broke the strike.’

‘So what? I didn’t agree with the strike, so I went in to work briefly. I wasn’t there for long and when asked about it, I thought it better to tell a little fib so the others didn’t find out.’

‘Didn’t work very well, did it? Who told them?’

For the first time Ashworth looked rattled. Finally, we’re making progress, Helen thought to herself.

‘I don’t know how they found out,’ he muttered, staring at his shoes.

‘Are you ambitious, Simon?’

‘I guess so.’

‘You guess so? You’re very young to be at your pay grade, you’ve got great appraisals. You could really go somewhere. In fact, your move to Hampshire police was a big promotion, wasn’t it?’

Ashworth nodded.

‘And yet, after only four months in your swanky new job, you are returning to your old job. A job which, if your application for the Hampshire posting is to be believed, you felt you had mastered and were bored with.’

‘We all say stuff like that in job interviews.’ He remained staring at his shoes.

‘What happened?’

A long silence. Then:

‘I had a change of heart. I hadn’t really settled in Southampton, didn’t have any friends to speak of and then… when the lads started to cut me out because I wasn’t a union stooge, I thought I’m better off out of it.’

‘Except you put in your transfer request before the other lads found out about your betrayal of the cause. The others were very clear about this. It was at a departmental piss-up in the Lamb and Flag on the eighteenth that you were forced to admit that you’d broken the strike. You applied to return to your old job on the sixteenth.’

‘They must be mistaken…’

‘There were several witnesses to the conversation in the pub. They can’t all be lying.’

A longer silence.

‘The truth is… The truth is that I just don’t like it here. I don’t like the people, I don’t like the job. I want out.’

‘That’s curious, Simon. Because at your three-month appraisal, you’d said how happy you were. How you were loving the increased responsibility. And you got top marks for your work, even the hint that you’d be fitted for promotion if you kept it up for a year or more. I’ve got a copy of your appraisal here if you’d like to read it.’

Helen offered it to him, but Ashworth said nothing. The guy looked deeply, deeply miserable. Which made Helen happy. The cracks were beginning to show. She decided to put the boot in.

‘You’ve done the police training, Simon, so I’m not going to patronize you by spelling out what the effects could be for your career if you’re forced to admit to lying to a police officer who’s pursuing a murder investigation. If you’re forced to admit taking payment to leak confidential police material.’

Ashworth sat stock still, but his hands were shaking.

‘Your career would be over. Finished. And I know how important it is to you.’

Helen softened her tone now.

‘I know you’re a gifted guy, Simon. I know you could go places. But if you lie to me now, I will destroy you. There’ll be no way back.’

Ashworth’s shoulders hunched and began to shake. Was he crying?

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Because I need to know the truth. Did you leak the interview to Mickery? And if so, why? I can only help you if you help me.’

A long pause, then:

‘I thought you knew.’

His voice was strangulated, cracked.

‘He told me you knew.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Whittaker.’

Whittaker. The word hung in the air, but Helen still didn’t quite believe it.

‘What did he tell you? What should I have known?’

Ashworth shook his head, but Helen wasn’t about to let this go.

‘Tell me. Tell me now or I will arrest you for conspiracy to pervert -’

‘Whittaker downloaded the interview.’

‘But he was on leave that day.’

‘I saw him. I went into the office. Because of the strike there was no one about. But Whittaker was there. By himself. He said he’d been going over the case material and when I looked later he’d downloaded the interview. I didn’t think anything of it. He’s in charge, so why not? But when I found out later that you were asking for people’s movements, I realized that Whittaker had made a mistake. Got his days mixed up. I went to see him. I didn’t want him to cop any flak for a simple mistake.’

‘You were currying favour.’

‘Sort of. Whittaker liked me, saw a future for me. So I just mentioned it – better safe than sorry, you know. Well he didn’t like it. Not at all. Said I was mistaken, but I knew I wasn’t.’

He paused, scared of saying any more.

‘Go on. What happened next?’

‘He said he could destroy my career with one phone call. That I didn’t understand what I was getting involved with. We… he decided there and then that I was to be transferred back to London as soon as possible. I guess it was him that let the cat out of the bag about the strike. As a reason for my departure. He told me that you knew all this. That it was your idea.’

Anger flared in Helen, then she reined it back in sharply. She must keep calm, keep focused. Was this all for real?

‘He said I was involved?’

‘Yes, that you were handling it, so there was no point saying anything to you.’

‘What did you do next?’

‘I tried to carry on but I couldn’t keep it going, not with the lads on my back as well. So I signed off sick. Been hiding out here ever since, biding my time until my transfer…’

He tailed off as the reality of his situation hit him. For the first time that day, Helen was conciliatory.

‘This doesn’t have to end badly, Simon. If what you’ve told me today is true, then I can make this right for you. You can take the transfer, learn your lesson and start over again without a blemish on your record. You can do the things you were meant to do, achieve what you want to achieve.’

Ashworth looked up, disbelief jostling with hope.

‘But I need you to do one thing for me in return. You are going to come to my flat now. And when you get there you are going to write a statement, putting down everything you’ve just told me. Then you are going to wait. You are not going to answer your phone, or make any calls. You’re not going to mail, text or tweet. You are going to sit still and quiet and the rest of the world need never know we’ve spoken, until I say the time is right. Is that understood?’

Ashworth nodded. He would do anything she told him now.

‘Good. Then let’s go.’