It was good that these things happened in slow motion, thought Booth, as he pressed himself hard against the metal shield of his car. Your brain worked coolly and well when events were slowed down like this. He would get one chance of hitting the man with the Armalite, he reckoned, before he was in the car and away. This was the man he wanted. The other one was just his driver and probably not a killer at all.
He was close enough to have a good chance of a hit, even with a pistol. He held it in both hands and rested it on the top of the Mondeo’s wing. It felt firm and steady in his hands, firmer even than the weapons they held in the controlled environment of the shooting gallery, where they did their regular shooting exercises and examined the targets afterwards.
Riordan had almost reached the car when he was hit. He felt the enemy bullet in his body, didn’t know whether it was one slug or two, whirled with the impact, heard himself screaming as he had never thought he would scream as he hit the ground, felt the subsidiary blow of the tarmac upon the side of his face. The Armalite clattered down beside him, tantalisingly beyond his failing reach. He raised one arm hopelessly towards Cafferty, heard the car accelerate away from him and leave him to the enemy. It was the rule that they should get away. But he felt nevertheless deserted as he lay and waited for death.
It took Riordan a second or two to feel the severity of the pain. He surely couldn’t stand this for long. In the same instant, he realised that his hunter was standing over him, kicking the Armalite even further away, pointing the pistol steadily at his stricken head, uttering words he could not hear and did not want to understand.
The ambulance was there within twelve minutes. The crumpled assassin was lifted gently and stowed carefully within its protecting womb, treated as tenderly as if he had been a pregnant woman. The paramedics fought to save the life of the man who had come to their city to kill.
Patrick Riordan was but dimly conscious of these things. The last noise he heard before he drifted out of consciousness was someone in the ambulance saying that he thought James Fitzpatrick was wounded, not dead. It was the most grievous blow of all.
EIGHTEEN
It was a flat in a block which contained thirty similar residences. This one was on the ground floor, scarcely twenty yards from the main entrance. Peach and Northcott inspected the red Audi in Brian Jacobs’ allotted parking space as they moved the twenty yards from their police Focus to the entrance. They noted that it was as clean inside as it was gleaming outside, that it looked as if it had been recently valeted. That was the kind of detail CID men note automatically.
Brian Jacobs met them at the door of the flat before they had time to knock. He was in casual gear, which looked as if it had been as carefully chosen as the blue suit he had worn when he had met them at his place of work four days previously. The attractive but slightly untidy black hair had been cut and styled since Tuesday. His hands were as clean and well-groomed as if they had been professionally manicured. He settled his visitors on the sofa opposite the big window and the bright morning light. There was a smell of coffee from the kitchen adjacent to this square, pleasant living area.
The man was more nervous in his home on Saturday morning than he had been in his office at work.
Peach wasn’t going to say anything to put him at his ease. The DCI took his time, looked for a moment at the picture of Derwentwater with the fells of Catbells behind it, accepted the offer of coffee and biscuits. He sniffed the coffee, then sipped it appreciatively. He began his questioning obliquely, because he sensed that Jacobs wanted them to be direct and get this over with quickly. ‘You haven’t any children, Mr Jacobs?’
‘I have one boy. He lives with my ex-wife. That’s when he’s at home. He’s in his second year at Warwick University.’
Peach nodded. ‘This place is far too neat and tidy to have kids around it, whatever their age might be.’
Brian Jacobs took a sudden gulp of his coffee. Too large and too impulsive a gulp: it almost scalded his tongue, causing him to gasp and down his cup hastily on to the low table between them. Peach looked at the liquid spilt into the saucer for a moment, as if it had great significance. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see us this morning. We need to ask you some more questions.’
‘I’m willing to help, though I can’t think I’ll be able to tell you anything which will push things forward.’
‘Push things forward, yes. Well, let’s see, shall we? DS Northcott?’ Peach settled more comfortably and raised his black and expressive eyebrows towards the big black man, who was sitting uncomfortably beside him on the very edge of the sofa.
DS Northcott looked somehow even more threatening with the small notebook clasped in his huge hands. ‘Could you clarify the nature of your relationship with Mrs Jean Parker for us, please?’
‘That has nothing to do with the death of Dominic O’Connor.’
‘Then why did you choose to conceal it when we spoke on Tuesday?’
‘I didn’t “choose to conceal it”. It had nothing to do with your case and it still has nothing to do with it. It is a private matter between Jean and me and I simply chose to let it remain so.’
Peach was suddenly animated by one of his eager smiles. ‘A most unwise decision, as things have turned out. Concealment always excites suspicion, in cynical chaps like us.’
‘It wasn’t concealed. Jean told you all about it when you first spoke to her.’
‘Correction. She told us nothing about your association with her. She merely gave us your name as a known enemy of Dominic O’Connor.’
‘Which was clearly very frank of her.’
‘Very frank indeed. So much so that we believe that it was what was agreed between the two of you beforehand, as evidence of that frankness. We believe that Mrs Parker gave us your name as an enemy of the murder victim to try to convince us of her good faith, whilst at the same time electing to conceal the fact that she had a close relationship with you. We have to ask ourselves why she chose to do that.’
‘Because it was private. Because it was our own business and no one else’s.’
‘It makes you into a couple with both motive and opportunity for the murder of Dominic O’Connor. A man whom you hated and whom you now plan to replace as Financial Director at Morton Industries.’
‘That situation is a fact of life. It’s not something we contrived. Motive and opportunity don’t mean that either of us chose to kill O’Connor. I’m even prepared to admit that I’m glad that he’s dead and if there’s the opportunity to obtain the position I should have had years ago I’ll take it. That doesn’t make me a murderer.’
‘No. But the fact that you chose to conceal as much as you could of this makes you a strong suspect. Just as the fact that Mrs Parker concealed how close she was to you until yesterday and then only admitted it because she had no alternative also excites our interest. Concealment is never a good idea, even for the innocent, Mr Jacobs.’ His tone implied that he would need much convincing before he accepted the innocence of this particular pair.
‘Jean told me that she’d informed you all about us yesterday.’
Peach’s smile this time comprehended the fact that he expected the pair to compare notes after each meeting with him. ‘That was only when she realised that there was no alternative, Mr Jacobs. As the only one of our suspects who combines a declared hatred of the victim with a known history of violence, you are now almost our prime suspect, I’d say. Would you agree, DS Northcott?’
‘Indeed I would, sir. Not our only suspect — we have to bear in mind that a woman could easily have killed Dominic O’Connor — but perhaps our prime suspect, as you say.’