Scared to Live

34

When the call came in, the helicopter unit had been responding to a Casevac request, the recovery of a paraglider who’d made a heavy landing on the slopes of Kinder Scout and broken his ankle. By the time the casualty had been evacuated to a hospital in Chesterfield and the aircraft was free to be re-tasked, the suspect vehicle was already on the M1 and heading south.

Anthony Donnelly was on the run in his beige C-class Mercedes. The first sign of a police car in his street in Swanwick, and he’d legged it. A sign of experience, that, having the car warmed up and ready to go, facing the right direction. Without the helicopter, he might have got clean away before he even reached the motorway.

Normally, Oscar Hotel 88 could be airborne in three minutes from a call, with an average transit time to an incident of seven minutes. It took far longer for officers dealing with an incident on the ground to decide they needed the helicopter deployed.

But now the helicopter unit was airborne a mile west of the M1. On board, the observer was following the Mercedes on his video camera, the zoom facility picking the car out easily from the surrounding traffic. Even the officers following at a distance in an unmarked Omega had no idea the helicopter was there, until its call sign cropped up on their talk group.

If he’s heading for the airport, we need to intercepthim before he enters the terminal.

We don’t have units in place yet. We’re waiting forFirearms Support.

How long are we going to wait?

As long as it takes. We have to assume the suspect isarmed.

Understood.

Listening to the exchange, Fry could detect the underlying anxiety at the prospect of an armed confrontation in a public place. And it would be a very public place, if the suspect got as far as the concourse in the airport terminal building.

She checked her map. Coming south from Sheffield, the M1 passed through part of Derbyshire, entered Nottinghamshire near Pinxton, then crossed back over the border again for the last stretch towards the airport. The confusion of jurisdictions made no sense in policing terms. It was an anomaly that someone always pointed out when the subject of merging police forces came up.

East Midlands Airport lay right by the M1, between junctions 24 and 23A. From the north, the Mercedes would take 24 if it was heading for the airport. Right now, it was approaching the slip road into Trowell Services.

Watch for him pulling off.

Have we alerted our neighbours?

Control rooms are in the loop.

One result of the M1’s waywardness was that Trowell Services lay over the border in Nottinghamshire, despite being within two miles of Ilkeston nick. Permission had to be obtained for an operation on neighbouring territory, and officers would have to keep the control room at Sherwood Lodge informed as well as their own at Ripley.

But the Mercedes went past the services and drove another eight miles down the motorway. The helicopter’s observer kept up a running commentary to guide the units converging on the suspect.

Leaving the motorway now.

The vehicle came off at junction 24 and took the fourth exit at the roundabout on to the A453 in the Donington Park area. At the next roundabout, it would have to stay on the same road and bear right at the lights into the airport. But it didn’t do that.

Turning into the Travelodge. It looks as though he’sparking up.

OK, take up positions and await FSU.

Fifteen minutes later, Hitchens gave Fry the thumbs-up, and a big grin. Their suspect was in custody.

‘So you don’t want to tell us about Rose Shepherd,’ said Hitchens, watching Tony Donnelly across the interview-room table.

‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

They’d been trying for a long time, struggling through the kind of interview that Fry hated — the kind that made her think of banging her head repeatedly against a wall. Good only when it stopped. In fact, she had a suspicion the average wall would crack long before this suspect.

Donnelly and the duty solicitor stared back at the detectives across the table. They had an air of being two visitors at a zoo, wondering when these strange creatures were going to do something more interesting.

‘What about Lindsay Mullen, then?’ said Hitchens.

Donnelly hesitated slightly before he answered. ‘No comment.’

‘Where did you first see Mrs Mullen?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did you even know her name, Tony?’

‘No comment.’

Fry could see Hitchens gathering his thoughts before the next question. Like her, he’d seen the expression that had briefly passed across Donnelly’s face when Lindsay Mullen’s name had been mentioned. Surprise, incomprehension. A lack of recognition. Just for a moment, before he’d trotted out the standard response.

‘You saw Lindsay Mullen meet Rose Shepherd at the Riber Tea Rooms in Matlock Bath, didn’t you?’ said Hitchens.

‘No comment.’

But the answer came more quickly this time, more confidently. Donnelly knew who they were talking about again. It seemed to Fry that he hadn’t known Lindsay Mullen’s name until then. Somehow, that made her killing worse. It appeared even more cold and merciless. She had been an anonymous woman eliminated without a second thought. And the two children? What about them? They’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘There’s one thing that really puzzles me,’ said Hitchens. ‘How did you know who Lindsay Mullen was?’

Donnelly smiled. ‘No comment.’

‘I mean, did you have advance information about the meeting taking place? Did you have a description of Mrs Mullen that enabled you to identify her? Or did you listen in to their conversation somehow?’

A shake of the head. ‘No comment.’

‘Whichever it was, the organization seems to have been exceptionally good, very well planned.’

Donnelly gazed down at the table, but Fry could see the smile on his face. If his eyes had been visible, she guessed that she’d see in them that he was laughing — laughing inwardly at the stupidity of the police.

‘Or was it only luck, Tony?’

His head came up then, and his eyes narrowed at Hitchens. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It was Rose Shepherd you were looking for, wasn’t it? And you stumbled on Lindsay Mullen at the same time. That must have been very convenient for you. It made the job a lot easier, I imagine. What would you have done otherwise? Were you planning on breaking into Miss Shepherd’s house and interrogating her until she gave you the information you wanted?’

Donnelly glared at his solicitor. ‘What’s this shit?’ he said.

‘Detective Inspector Hitchens, could you clarify what my client is accused of? We don’t understand this line of questioning.’

‘We’re conducting enquiries into the murder of Miss Rose Shepherd, who was shot and killed in Foxlow in the early hours of Sunday morning. We’re also investigating the deaths of Mrs Lindsay Mullen and her two children, who died in a fire at their home in Edendale on the following night. And we’d like to know from your client the names of his associates in these offences.’

There was quite a long silence after Hitchens’ statement. When Donnelly responded, it was with a smirk that would have got him a punch in the mouth at one time, before interview rooms were equipped with tape recorders and video cameras.

‘No comment,’ he said.

Fry fetched two coffees into the DI’s office. It was something she wouldn’t normally let herself be caught doing. But they both needed some caffeine. Even so, she took care to avoid the door of the CID room, in case anyone saw her.

‘Thanks, Diane,’ said Hitchens.

He was spinning his swivel chair from side to side, making it squeal at the end of each turn. It was a habit he had when he was angry or stressed.

‘What’s the plan, sir?’

‘I’ll let Donnelly stew for a while, then I’ll have another go at him later.’

‘He’d never heard Lindsay Mullen’s name before,’ said Fry. ‘I could tell from his face when you asked him about her.’

‘Do you think so, Diane?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Hitchens stared out of the window as he took a sip of coffee and put the cup down quickly. It was too hot, as usual.

‘I’m inclined to agree with you. It was almost the only time we got a genuine reaction out of him. He was surprised. And then he thought it was funny. It makes things more difficult for us, doesn’t it? It suggests there were more people involved than we first thought.’

Fry sat down, balancing her own cup on her knee. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If Donnelly doesn’t know anything about Lindsay Mullen, it means the Darwin Street job must have been given to someone else.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, it’s good practice. Separate teams, with no contact between them. Neither team knowing what job the other is doing. There’d be much less chance of them implicating each other that way. That would explain why Tony Donnelly doesn’t even know Lindsay Mullen’s name. He probably only read about her in the papers, like everyone else.’

‘I suppose it could also be the reason why the arson seemed so much less professionally executed. There were always too many differences in approach for them to fit together comfortably. So we have a second suspect, you think?’

‘At least.’

‘Nikolov?’

‘I don’t see how. There’s no indication that he left the farm during the last couple of days before he died. More likely, he picked up a newspaper, or turned on the radio, and heard about Rose Shepherd’s killing. Then he drank himself to death.’

‘He followed her to Derbyshire, then followed her into death?’

Hitchens blinked a little. ‘Well, Nikolov was no hit man.’

‘Who, then? I wonder if that could have been someone recruited at short notice. They can’t have expected to identify the Mullens so quickly after finding Rose Shepherd. There’d have to be a last-minute change to their plans.’

‘A local villain, dragged off the street for a one-off job, cash in the pocket?’ said Hitchens, brightening noticeably.

‘He’d be easier to find, wouldn’t he?’

‘Easier to find? If he’d left us some DNA, we’d have him banged up already.’

‘But, as it stands, we have no evidence to charge Tony Donnelly in connection with the Mullen killings.’

‘No, none at all. But he’s not going anywhere, since we have his prints from the Shogun. So we can worry about that later.’

Fry stood up, abandoning her untouched coffee on a corner of the DI’s desk. No matter how hot it seemed at first, coffee from the machine always turned cold and undrinkable with unnatural speed.

‘But the case against him for Rose Shepherd will be tight enough, won’t it?’

‘If forensics come through,’ said Hitchens. ‘With luck, we’ll get a DNA match from the car, gunshot residue from his clothes, footwear impressions from the track where the Shogun was abandoned. There’ll be something, don’t worry. We’ll build a tight enough case. In fact, it’ll be a headline grabber when it comes to trial.’

Fry still hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t want the Mullens to get forgotten in all the excitement. In a way, the arson was a far worse crime.’

The DI nodded. ‘They won’t get forgotten, Diane, I promise you. Why don’t you get on with that line of enquiry now, and start sifting out some possibles from intelligence? The IU ought to be able to suggest a few names you’d go to if you wanted a nice house fire in a hurry.’

There was one other subject they weren’t mentioning. It had all been gone through already, and no doubt it would be thrashed out again before long.

‘And the Lowthers?’

‘They’re coming in tomorrow,’ said Hitchens. ‘And I’m not looking forward to it one bit.’

‘Ben Cooper has gone home, by the way,’ said Fry, though the DI hadn’t asked her.

Hitchens looked hurt, as if she’d accused him of not caring about his officers. ‘Yes, I know. But he seemed OK, don’t you think?’

‘As far as I could tell. He gave a clear enough statement, but that’s just training. It was a hell of a thing to happen. Ben was right there, and he did his best. John Lowther was always going to do it, one way or another.’

‘But knowing Ben …’ said Hitchens.

‘He’ll be blaming himself. Right.’

At home that night, Cooper was going automatically through his routine — feeding the cat, taking a shower, checking the fridge, remembering he had no food in the flat. That was the great thing about routines — you didn’t need to think. You could switch off the brain and freewheel.

Then he switched on his PC and opened Outlook. The evening’s crop of email included a series of George W. Bush jokes, sent by his friend Rakki from his office address. It looked as though he’d forwarded them to everyone he knew, so the jokes would be doing the rounds for a while yet. In fact, Cooper was sure he’d seen most of them already.

He read them anyway. Not because he was interested, but because it stopped him thinking about anything else. It stopped him re-running the images and sounds from a couple of hours before — the terrified expression on a face falling through air, a sickening crunch, and a voice suddenly cut off, stopped short as if someone had turned the ‘off’ switch of a radio. And the awful silence that followed. Worse — the singing of the birds and the whirring of cables, as life carried on as normal, undisturbed by the moment of death. It was as if they were mocking him for his failure.

Oh, wait. That was the stuff he wasn’t going to think about.

Cooper surprised the cat by picking him up and rubbing the fur behind his ears. Randy gave him a hostile look. This wasn’t in the routine. There was still food to be eaten.

‘OK, OK. It’s not your problem, I know.’

But it had done the trick, and broken his train of thought. He put the cat down again and turned back to his email. How many is a brazillion? That was a good one.

Of course, there was more to think about yet. It was Friday, the day of Matt’s appointment with Dr Joyce, their GP. Matt knew his brother would be home at this time of the evening, but he’d have no idea what Ben had been through during the day.

As if their minds were already making a connection, the phone rang. Ben had no doubt who it was. He could picture Matt in the office at Bridge End Farm, and he could imagine his expression changing with each unanswered ring. He could just decide to ignore the call, of course. Would Matt give up and go away, and never mention the subject again? No, he wouldn’t.

‘Hi, Matt.’

There was a second of silence. ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘It figured.’

‘I keep forgetting. You’re a detective.’

Matt sounded calmer than when they’d spoken last night. Was that a good sign, or not?

‘You had the appointment today, right?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Was it any use?’ asked Ben.

‘Well, actually — yes.’

‘What did he tell you?’

‘Nothing. He just listened.’

‘Right. So …?’

‘He’s a smart bloke, that doctor,’ said Matt. ‘That’s all I needed, really — somebody to listen. I felt a lot better afterwards.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

Ben reflected that it was perhaps what he’d refused to do himself, to listen. He hadn’t wanted to hear what Matt was saying.

‘Do you know what I reckon?’ said Matt. ‘I think I was getting worked up about this business over Mum’s problem so that I didn’t have to worry about the real stuff.’

So they were back to the euphemisms. Back to the family collusion, the maintenance of the pretence. That was quite normal.

‘Anyway, I thought you’d want to know. Was I right to call?’

‘Yes, you were right, Matt. Thanks. I’ll see you at the weekend, probably.’

A moment of silence again. The sound of Matt thinking. ‘Are you OK, Ben?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

Finishing the call, Ben went back to his PC. There was an offer of fake Rolex watches that hadn’t been caught by his junk-mail filter, and an advert for the latest bargains at an online CD shop he’d used once. And there was an email from Liz. It was only a short one, but it meant a lot more than all the others put together. It finished with a little smiley face formed by a colon, a dash and a bracket.

It was odd to think that this might have been Rose Shepherd’s means of communicating with the world. Emails were a deceptive form of communication at the best of times. Without hearing the intonation in someone’s voice, or getting clues from their facial expression or body language, it was easy to misinterpret the meaning of their words. Irony could be taken literally, a joke could be read as an insult, and ferocious arguments could develop for no reason. Conversation was transmitted through a filter that got half of it wrong, like some unfinished translation program.

But at least it was communication, of a kind. Cooper remembered his mother’s attitude after she’d begun to get really ill and almost never left the house. Lying in her bed at Bridge End Farm, she had once said to him in a lucid moment that she wasn’t sure the world existed any more. When he asked her why, she explained that she had no evidence it was really out there still. Other people talked about it sometimes, but she never actually saw it for herself.

It had been pointless for him to argue with her. Of course, her family and friends often sent her postcards from the places they visited. Cheerful, colourful pictures of sandy beaches and historic buildings. France, Italy, Florida, Skorpios. Bulgaria, even. But Isabel Cooper didn’t believe in those places, any more than she believed in the people she saw on TV. For her, the outside world had become a series of images on a screen, and a set of postcards in a box. Just another illusion.

Maybe she had come to believe, like Bishop Berkeley, that nothing existed unless she perceived it for herself. Cooper didn’t know much about philosophy, only what he’d learned in a sort of slogan form during General Studies lessons at Edendale High School — esse est percipi, the principle of existence through perception. So he wasn’t sure what else Berkeley’s theory said. Was the opposite true? If you perceived something, did that mean it existed? Or could perception be an illusion, too?