‘Night shift a bit dull, was it?’ I asked, ‘and you wanted to liven things up a bit?’
‘Carlton,’ he said.
‘I might have known,’ I replied. Carlton was behind this, ‘DI Carlton’s been my biggest fan for a while now. He seems to think I’m a criminal mastermind, not a respectable north-east business man.’
‘We know all about you, Blake, so there’s very little point in pissing us around,’ the DCI told me, ‘you used to work for Bobby Mahoney and he has been missing, presumed dead, for years now. He might be on a tropical island somewhere but more than likely he’s buried in the foundations of one of those yuppie apartment blocks you built on the Quayside. You’ve been doing very well since then, haven’t you? Well,’ he added, ‘you were because we’ve never been able to prove anything,’ then he continued, ‘but that’s all about to change.’
Then Hibbitt put his palms on the table in front of me, stretched across it, leaned in close to me and hissed, ‘there is a line, Blake, and you just crossed it. You are going down for a very long time.’
‘Is this the bit where I get to say something like, “I have no idea what you are talking about, Inspector”, because I really do have no idea what you are talking about, Inspector.’
‘Carlton,’ he said again, but he didn’t tell me more.
‘What about him? Is he here? I don’t know what he thinks he has got on me but it’s nothing. You are going to look very stupid when my lawyer tears you apart and sends you the bill for my front door.’
The DCI shook his head, ‘You can’t just do anything you want, hurt anyone you want. Don’t you see that? Sooner or later…’ his words tailed away and he shook his head in something like bemusement. He was looking at me like I was shit on his shoes. He stepped back from the table.
‘Shall we start again?’ I asked, ‘perhaps you can tell me what it is that you or Carlton think I have done? Would that make sense? You are supposed to do that; under your own code of practice from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, you are meant to let me know why you have brought me here.’
The DS, who had been watching me intently, suddenly lost control and let out a roar. He marched up to my table with a ferocious look in his eye and smashed his fist down onto it hard.
‘You fucking bastard,’ he hissed at me while he tried to regain control. I just stared at him, wondering what the hell he was on to make him act like this, ‘you… evil… fucking… bastard. You are gonna pay! I promise you that!’
‘Look,’ I said, in as reasonable a voice as I could muster, ‘there’s obviously some kind of mix-up here. I haven’t done anything… out of the ordinary.’ I was choosing my words carefully, abandoning the pretence that I was a law-abiding citizen for a moment.
The DS ignored this. ‘Carlton is a good man,’ he told me, ‘he’s worth a hundred of you.’
I frowned at him, ‘What’s happened to Carlton?’ I asked. ‘I haven’t seen him in weeks.’
‘He was close,’ the DCI interrupted, ‘very close, so he said. He was going to nail you and you knew it. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you, you fucking low-life.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I told them both, ‘has something happened to Carlton, because it has got nothing to do with me. You lot have your jobs to do and I might not like you for it but I understand and grudgingly respect it. I’ve never come up against any of you like that. If Carlton has taken a kicking, if he’s fallen down the stairs or been hit by a car, gone missing or stubbed his toe on the pavement, I repeat, it has nothing to do with me.’
‘Got an alibi, have you?’ asked the DCI, as if I was pulling the other one. ‘Got your men to do the dirty work? That’s how people like you operate isn’t it? You’re not hard, Blake, you’d be nothing without men like Joe Kinane to back you up.’
‘Neither I, nor anyone who works for me in any capacity, has done anything to hurt or harm DI Carlton,’ I told him, ‘and if you think we have, you are definitely on the wrong track.’
‘Leave me alone with him for just five minutes,’ DS Fraser was virtually frothing at the mouth now, ‘I’ll get him to talk.’
‘Oh please,’ I told him, ‘you’re acting like an idiot.’ And that’s when he went for me, launching himself across the table and swinging a haymaker at me that caught me off balance, even though I saw it coming. I ducked, but he still connected with the top of my head. It wasn’t a crashing blow but the intent was there and the two DCs who’d been standing to one side had to drag him off me. They managed to haul him away but I didn’t get an apology.
Instead the DCI just said, ‘You killed Carlton’s daughter, you murdering bastard, and if it was down to me I’d bundle you in a car, take you out into the woods where they found her and beat you to death, because I wouldn’t waste the cost of a bullet on you.’
‘What? Are you out of your mind? I didn’t kill his daughter. I didn’t even know he had a daughter. Who the fuck told you that?’
He leaned in close again as he relished giving me the answer. ‘He did.’
9
I listened in shock as they told me. Gemma Carlton, eighteen-year-old daughter of DI Robert Carlton, had been murdered and her body dumped in woodland. They’d kept her name out of the papers for now but there would be a press conference later that day, without Carlton, who was in no fit state to appear before the public. Instead, Gemma’s uncle would appeal for witnesses.
Carlton was being treated for shock and grief and whatever they called it nowadays when your mind shuts down, because you’ve been driven out of it by something so bad you just can’t even begin to process it. At some point though, he had been lucid enough to speak to senior officers. They had gently coaxed from him whether there was anyone who held a grudge against him or Gemma, anybody who could have killed the girl because of it. He told them that person could only be me.
Gemma was sweet, she was innocent and kind and could never hurt a fly, she loved her mum, respected her dad, didn’t even have a steady boyfriend. The only possible motive for killing Gemma would be to stop her dad from functioning as a police officer, preventing him from closing that big case; the one he’d been working tirelessly on. He had told everyone he was close to breaking the old Mahoney crew and bringing down their boss, David Blake.
I didn’t say much. I just sat there and listened and figured now was probably the right time to ask for my lawyer. They’d got it all so wrong but couldn’t see it and there was no way I was going to convince them. I was the devil right now. Carlton was going to put me inside so I killed his daughter to derail him. It was outlandish, it was ludicrous and completely untrue but they weren’t in any mood to be convinced.
‘If you really believe I am capable of this, if you actually think I ordered it, or could ever persuade any of my men that it was a good idea, then nothing I can say will alter your view, but I did not kill this poor girl. Now I want my lawyer.’
‘You can have your lawyer,’ said the heavy-set man, who had silently entered the room while I was speaking, ‘but first I’d like a word, if I may.’
I had never met Detective Superintendent Alan Austin but I knew of him and he was fully aware of me. I recognised him from TV footage of police press conferences, like the one they were about to have for Carlton’s daughter. He turned to the DS who had attacked me, ‘I could hear you all the way down the corridor, Fraser,’ he told the man calmly, ‘go and get yourself a coffee,’ then he added pointedly, ‘in the canteen.’