Severed

35

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced I'm right about Alannah. But that leaves me no further forward. I still have a mountain to climb in terms of convincing the police of my innocence, and, if anything, it's now got a little bit higher.

There are, however, two factors running in my favour. Firstly, I am actually innocent, and I hope that that's going to count for something. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, I have secured extremely good legal representation in the form of my ex-wife, Adine.

I first met Adine at something most law-abiding citizens won't ever have come across. It's called an acquittal party, which is exactly what it says it is. It was four years back. A guy from our old unit named Harry Foxley had just been found not guilty of GBH for his part in a fight that had left two men seriously injured, one of them with a fractured skull.

To be fair, it wasn't Harry's fault. He was walking home from a friend's house late one night when a gang of about half a dozen drunken teenagers decided to pick a fight with him. Harry's only a little guy, barely five seven, and I suppose in the dim light, and from their position across the road, he must have made a tempting target. They started throwing abuse at him, and when he ignored them and carried on walking, they took this as a sign of cowardice. Hyped up with bravado and booze, they crossed the road and began following him, still keeping up the steady stream of abuse.

It was a very bad move. Some of the hardest people I've ever met have been little guys, and Harry's no exception. He has the lean, wiry build of a champion flyweight, and there isn't an ounce of fat or spare flesh on him. At least there wasn't then. Things may have changed, although somehow I doubt it. He smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish but possessed reserves of stamina that would put most men to shame. He was the battalion's arm-wrestling champion three years running, beating men twice his size, and although he wasn't the kind of man to look for trouble, he wasn't the sort to shirk it either. So when his tormentors had worked themselves up sufficiently to launch an attack, they got one hell of a lot more than they bargained for.

Harry knocked the leader out with a single left hook, then went charging into the others, fists flying, spreading immediate panic among their number as they realized belatedly that this was going to be no walkover. One made the mistake of pulling a knife. Harry broke his wrist, then his jaw, before slamming him head-first into a brick wall. The others ran for it.

Unfortunately, the first guy he'd punched cracked his skull as he hit the pavement and spent the next six weeks in a coma, and it was alleged by one of the gang that Harry had kicked him while he lay on the ground unconscious, which is something I know he wouldn't have done.

The police, though, took a different view. Harry was one of the five men from our unit court-martialled and imprisoned for their part in the revenge attack at the pub in Crossmaglen, and he'd only just come off parole, so their decision to charge him with two counts of GBH may well have been coloured by what they perceived as his history of violent behaviour.

I didn't attend the trial, but it lasted more than a week, and I know from what I read and heard that the prosecution lawyers attempted a serious character assassination on Harry, dredging up the worst aspects of his past to bolster their arguments. However, both they and the police should have realized that in these violent days in which we live, juries tend to sympathize with individuals who are the victims of un-provoked gang attacks, and feel that they should have the right to fight back, even if the damage they inflict is pretty serious. So it was no real surprise to anyone with an ounce of common sense that Harry was acquitted on both charges.

The story, then, had a happy ending, and a party was held in a pub in the West End to celebrate. I was on leave at the time and was back in London. I can't remember now who called to tell me about it, but I ended up going anyway. I hadn't seen the guys for a long time so I thought it would be nice to catch up.

When I got there, the place was packed. Harry was holding court to a crowd at the bar where he was giving a blow-by-blow account of the events of the fateful night and looking none the worse for his ordeal. There were quite a few faces from the past, including, as I recall, Maxwell and Spann, but it was a dark-haired woman about my age, wearing a two-piece business suit and thick-rimmed black glasses, who caught my attention. She was slim and very pale-skinned, with a look you might call severely pretty, like one of those sexy secretaries who can suddenly transform themselves into a completely different woman with a quick flick of the hair and a dumping of the specs. She was standing on the periphery, nursing a glass of white wine in both hands, and looking out of place amid the revelry as she spoke with Maxwell, who'd never been one of the world's great conversationalists. I joined them and introduced myself, and pretty soon Maxwell melted away and it was just her and me.

It turned out that Adine King was Harry's solicitor. She'd been involved in his case from the start and had been with him during all the initial police interviews. We got talking, I turned on the charm, and I ended up taking her to dinner that very night at an Italian restaurant in Soho.

I don't know if you'd ever have called it a match made in heaven. We got on well enough, but we were hardly well suited. She was a well-educated member of the legal profession with a well-to-do stockbroker for a father (her mother had died when she was young) and a sister who was high up in some government department. I was still a career soldier – and not exactly a high-ranking one either – on a soldier's wage. But somehow the relationship grew. I think that at the time we were both looking for someone to settle down with. She was thirty-two and about a year earlier had come out of a long-term relationship with a City lawyer who was meant to have been 'the one', but hadn't been. Her job didn't exactly throw up many potential suitors, and her biological clock was ticking. She wanted to start a family, and I guess I was in the right place at the right time. I also liked the idea of the pitter-patter of tiny feet running around the place. Why not? I come from a big family, I didn't want to grow old alone, and I didn't meet that many eligible women in my job either.

So we got engaged. Her old man was mortified. Her sister, who was married to a director of some hotshot company dealing with internet security, was equally gobsmacked, and neither of them was backwards in telling her so. But of course this just served to spur Adine on. Like a lot of people, she didn't like being told what to do, or who she should be seeing, and we just grew closer. She wanted me to move in to her flashy apartment in Muswell Hill, and she also wanted me to leave the army.

The thing was, at the time I was in love. I'd been a soldier for fifteen years and I'd come into some money too, the result of an aunt dying, so I figured now was the time to make a break. I'd always been interested in cars, so I put all my money into buying a BMW franchise, supplemented by some cash from the bank and even Adine's reluctant (although loaded) father.

And the rest should have been history, but life, of course, never works that simply. I did leave the army and I did move in with her, and at first things went well, but it wasn't long before they began to go downhill. We were both working long hours – me learning how to run a business from scratch (something the army gives you no preparation for), she trying to establish herself in her profession. We were trying for a baby as well, but that wasn't proving very successful either.

The truth is, by the time we got married – on one of those two-week deals in Barbados, with only a few close family present – our best days were already behind us. I was hoping the honeymoon might turn things round and signal some sort of improvement. After all, it's difficult to have too much of a bad time when the sun's shining and the palm trees are shimmering in a gentle tropical breeze. But somehow we managed it, spending most of the trip arguing. I can't even remember what it was we argued about. It was just niggling little disagreements, the kind couples have when each partner realizes that he or she's with the wrong person.

We limped along for another six months, but the faultlines in our relationship – work pressures and the failure to conceive – kept growing, and one day, after yet another explosive argument that had come out of nowhere and drained both of us, she asked me, very calmly but very firmly, to leave.

For some reason, even then her request came as a shock. You see, a small part of me still hoped that somehow we could make it work, that the stresses would fade with time, that she'd fall pregnant and everything would be OK again.

In the end, when it came to it, I didn't want to go, and I asked her to reconsider. But Adine had made up her mind. 'I don't love you any more,' she said quietly. She'd never said that before, even during our worst arguments, and I knew from the resigned tone in her voice that she meant it.

And that was that. Full of regret for what might have been, and wondering if there was anything I could have done differently, I packed my bags and left the flat that afternoon. I never went back.

We kept in touch, though, and through our break-up and subsequent divorce our relationship remained amicable. I think that, in the long run, parting was the right choice for both of us, because our bond just wasn't strong enough, but occasionally I do regret the fact that in the interim Adine hasn't had the family she wanted so much, and that I haven't either.

I haven't seen her for close to six months, but as soon as I was booked in here, I knew who I was going to put my one phone call through to. She's always been a damn good lawyer, and that's exactly what I need. Well, that's not quite right. I need a miracle, but in the absence of one, she'll have to do.

The cell door's unlocked, and I'm told by a bored-looking uniformed cop with dyed black hair that my brief's arrived. I get up from the bunk and follow the cop and his equally bored-looking colleague through a set of featureless and largely empty corridors that remind me of a hospital. I guess if I worked in surroundings like this, I wouldn't be full of the joys of spring either.

Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of security round here, but then there doesn't really need to be. I'm in the holding area beneath the main part of the station, and there's no way out except through a series of electronically operated doors that eventually take you into the station proper, and straight into the arms of God knows how many other cops. Once you're down here, there really is no way out.

We reach a door, and the cop with the dyed hair knocks twice, opening it at the same time. 'Your client,' he announces curtly, then moves aside to let me through.

Adine stands up from behind a table as the door closes behind me. She's wearing a black cocktail dress with a very light cashmere cardigan of the same colour over it. Her hair's loose and longer than the last time I saw her, reaching down to her shoulders, and she's got her contacts in rather than her glasses, a look that shows off the contrast between her jet-black eyebrows and the pale translucent blue of her eyes. In short, she looks stunning. I find it difficult not to fall in love with her all over again.

'Well, it looks like you've really done it this time, Tyler,' she says with a weary sigh that seems to last for several seconds, immediately shattering the illusion.

'Hello, Adine. Nice to see you again too.'

'I had to leave a meal in the Ivy for this, you know.' She gestures towards the room's only other chair. 'I'm only doing this because I'd feel guilty if I didn't help.'

I sit down, noticing that she's wearing scarlet varnish on her fingernails. It must have been a hot date. She never wore it for me. Amazingly, even after everything else, I feel the vague stirrings of jealousy.

'You're in a lot of trouble,' she states with numbing honesty.

'I know.'

'You'd better tell me what happened.'

So I do, for the third time today, only this time I start from the beginning and I don't leave anything out, except for my theory that Alannah is the Vampire, because, for all that I'm convinced by it, that's all it is, a theory, with nothing to back it up. I don't need to muddy the waters any more than they've been muddied already.

Adine listens in silence, making notes on a pad in front of her, and when I finish she sighs again and looks at me with a combination of pity and incredulity. 'And that's the absolute truth?'

I nod. 'Yeah, it is.'

There's a long pause. I don't know what else to say. I've laid my situation on the line, and hearing the details out loud doesn't make me feel any more optimistic that I'm going to extricate myself from the pit I'm in. By the look on Adine's face, she shares this view. After a long time, during which she makes further notes, she finally speaks.

'It's a particularly lurid story,' she says, her voice laced with tacit disapproval.

'It's not good,' I admit.

'And I'm sorry about Lucas. I always liked him.' She speaks the words in a matter-of-fact manner, but that's always been her way, and I know she does feel sorry about it.

'It's my fault,' I say. 'If I hadn't turned up at his door today, then he and Snowy would still be alive.'

'But you did, and it's done now. Don't beat yourself up about it.'

No-one could ever call Adine sentimental. But she's also right. I've got to think about myself. There'll be time for grieving later.

'And you can't tell the police what you've just told me, either.'

'Why not? It's the truth.'

'It may be the truth, but if that's what you tell them, there's no way they'll release you.'

'You always told me that you have to represent a client on the basis of what he or she tells you. That you can't lie on their behalf.'

'Look, Tyler, you've just incriminated yourself in a total of four murders. And that was before you turned up at a house full of corpses.'

'Three were self-defence,' I protest, 'and one was an accident. If the guy hadn't struggled…'

'While you were holding a gun to his head, remember that.' She sighs. 'The point is, no-one's going to believe that you were totally justified in killing four people. I'm not asking you to lie, it's just important we minimize the details we give the police. Now, cast your mind back to this morning. When you were chased by the police from the house where you picked up the briefcase, did any of them get a good look at you?'

I shake my head. 'I don't think so. I kept my head down and it all happened very quickly. I also wore gloves while I was in the house, so I don't think my fingerprints'll be there.'

'Good. Is there anything that might connect the events there to the rest of the events today?'

'Not as far as I know.'

'Right, let's not mention it, then.'

'Are you sure?'

'Listen, Tyler, if you want me to represent you, you're going to have to do what I say. Understand?'

'OK.'

'Can you remember anything at all about last night?'

I shake my head. It remains as blank as ever.

'We're going to have to get you tested for drugs. I want to know what you were dosed with.'

'Whatever it was, it was strong.'

'If we get bail, which I have to say at the moment I doubt in the extreme, I'm going to arrange for you to undergo hypnosis. It's important that we find out anything that might give us a clue as to who was behind this.'

'I know.'

'And you've got absolutely no idea who it might be?'

'I've thought about it all day, but I still don't know.'

'Might it be something to do with your past?'

'That's what I've been thinking. That it's got something to do with my army days.'

'Is there anything that happened that might have pissed someone off?'

'That's the problem. I can't think of anything specific. I served in plenty of war zones but I was just one of many soldiers. There's no reason why anyone would have picked me out for revenge. And why wait this long? I left the army getting close to four years ago; these days I'm just a middle-of-the-road car salesman. I'm not interesting enough to upset anyone that much.'

Adine sighs. 'Unless we find out who might have a reason for setting you up, the attention of the police is always going to keep coming back to you.'

'But there's no motive for me killing any of these people.'

'That's as may be, but be under no illusions, Tyler. The police'll be under huge pressure to get convictions for these killings. The Met have one of the lowest clear-up rates for murder in the country. They're not going to want it to go any lower, and with you, they've at least got a decent suspect. You were arrested leaving a house where four people were murdered. The fact that you made the nine-nine-nine call from within the property places you there at about the time of the murders.'

'But the fact that I made that call should count in my favour,' I say hopefully.

'Get real, Tyler. That's no defence.' She underlines something in her notes, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, then puts the pen down and gives me a stern look. 'No, what we've got to do is make you look like an innocent in all this, which is not going to be easy. The important thing is that you don't mention anything about the killings this morning at the house where you picked up the briefcase, or the dead girl you woke up next to this morning. I'm hoping that the person who set you up for her murder has kept his side of the bargain and given you all the evidence, rather than keep anything back to give to the police.'

'The problem is, it looks as though he's trying to get me to take the rap for everything, so why wouldn't he have sent another copy of the DVD to the police?'

'Because,' she says, 'if someone hands in that DVD anonymously and then phones to say that the killer in the film is you, it might have the opposite effect to what's intended. In other words, it might make the police suspect that you are being set up. If I were him, I'd think it was far easier just to leave things as they are. I mean, your situation is hardly a positive one.'

I concede her point. 'All right, then. What do I tell them?'

'As little as possible. The fact that Lucas has already talked to the police about his colleague's murder means you're going to have to admit to knowing about that. But we don't necessarily have to give the same version of events.'

I'm getting an uneasy feeling now. 'What do you mean?'

'You told me that Lucas told the detectives investigating his colleague's-'

'Snowy. His name's Snowy.'

'All right, Snowy.' She seems to find it difficult to say the name. 'You said that Lucas told the detectives that you approached him this afternoon to ask him to put a track on a briefcase, and that Snowy was the person who actually tracked it, but the two of you lost contact with him.' She pauses for a moment to consult her notes – not, I suspect, that she needs them. Adine's always had a photographic memory. 'You and Lucas parted company, and then the next thing Lucas knew the police were on the line telling him that his colleague was dead.'

'That's about right.'

'So we simply turn it around. You didn't approach Lucas about the case, he approached you. He said he was putting a track on the case and he might need your help dealing with the people who were going to be receiving it. As he was an old friend of yours from the army, you reluctantly said yes.'

'You are asking me to lie.'

'No, Tyler,' she says, folding her hands on the desk, 'what I'm trying to do is save you from going to prison for a long time. Now, we either do things my way or you're on your own.'

She pauses, waiting for me to contradict her. I don't, and she takes this as tacit acceptance of her plan.

'You might have been seen by someone near Snowy's body, so I think we should tell the truth here. Having reluctantly said yes, you and Lucas were also tracking the case, and discovered the tracker and Snowy's corpse at the same time. And it was then that you realized you were involved in something far more dangerous than you'd anticipated.' She stops. 'Did anyone see you go into the brothel?'

'No. I got in round the back, and I was wearing different clothes to the ones I was arrested in.'

'What about leaving?'

'There were a lot of people out watching the fire, but I was smoke-blackened, bleeding and all sorts. I doubt if anyone would be able to pick me out in an ID parade.'

'That's good,' she says, nodding slowly. 'When you and Lucas found Snowy, Lucas panicked. So did you. The two of you parted company, with Lucas apologizing for getting you involved.'

I'm beginning to feel sick. After everything that's happened, this feels like the final act of betrayal.

But Adine's on a roll. 'You didn't hear from him again until earlier this evening,' she says, 'when he told you that he intended to go to the house of the man he believed had had Snowy killed, and he wanted your help in case things went wrong. He identified the man as a gangster called Eddie Cosick. You were kept in the dark about what Lucas's involvement with Cosick was, and you tried to dissuade him from going, particularly when he suggested taking guns, but again you felt that you couldn't say no. You bitterly regret the fact that you accompanied him to Mr Cosick's house, but in your defence you say that you insisted the guns you took were for show only, and were unloaded. Are you getting all this?'

I'm having difficulty keeping up with the lengths Adine is willing to go to get me off the hook, but I reply that, yes, I am getting it all.

She reminds me that I have to remember every single word. 'Make one mistake in the story and they'll be on to you immediately. They're trained to pick up any inconsistencies.'

'I know. I was trained in anti-interrogation techniques myself.'

'Good,' she says with a cool smile. 'So, when you turned up, going in through an open door at the rear of the property, you discovered the bodies of three men who Lucas identified as Cosick and his bodyguards. But while you were in the room with Cosick, an unidentified assailant stabbed Lucas and escaped before you could either see or apprehend him. You immediately dialled nine-nine-nine to summon assistance and made strenuous but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to save Lucas. Only when you were sure he was dead did you leave the scene, the way you came in, afraid of being caught with the bodies, and that's when you were apprehended by the police. Which is exactly what happened, isn't it?'

'Yeah,' I sigh, 'that's what happened.'

'Good. Now we've got a plausible story.'

She makes me go through it again twice, and when I finish successfully for the second time she looks satisfied and vaguely pleased with herself.

'I think we might be able to get you out of this,' she says. 'There's still a long way to go, but at least we're on the right track.'

I tell her that's good, remembering that years ago Adine once told me she'd wanted to become a lawyer because she had a keen interest in the pursuit of justice. Those were her exact words: a keen interest in the pursuit of justice. I realize, somewhat belatedly, that she must have been bullshitting.

'OK,' she says, standing up with her notebook, 'I think we're ready to face the music.'