DS Fraser grudgingly left the room and Austin picked up a chair and brought it with him.
‘Get him his lawyer,’ he ordered the DI. ‘And give us five minutes,’ he added. ‘Well, go on,’ he said, and all of them slunk reluctantly from the room.
‘Perhaps they think you might try to kill me,’ said Austin, who rightly assumed he did not have to introduce himself to me, ‘or they reckon I’m on your payroll. That’s the rumour, you know. That you’ve bought and paid for half of the CID round here.’ I didn’t answer. I just let him say his piece. ‘Now then, this is a right horrible mess, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t seriously think I would kill a policeman’s daughter just to stop him from investigating my company?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he admitted, ‘but there are a large number of people here who do because Carlton told them it was you. Some of them are very senior indeed.’
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘On the record, we are exploring several lines of enquiry.’
‘And off the record?’
‘It’s all about you. The brass have got it into their collective heads that Gemma Carlton was most likely killed because of her father’s investigation into an organised crime firm.’
‘That is fucking preposterous. Whatever you might think about my company, we are not the Cosa Nostra.’
‘I know,’ he told me, ‘I have explained that I do not think you, or anyone linked to you, is likely to have committed this crime, but that is not a popular view here right now. The word has gone out to investigate Gemma’s murder and to find a link with you. You have a motive, all they need is the evidence linking you to Gemma and they will find it.’
‘Manufacture it, you mean. They have already made up their minds,’ his silence confirmed this.
‘It’s not a question of manufacturing anything,’ he informed me, ‘you know how this works. There is always plenty of evidence out there, some of it cast-iron, a lot of it circumstantial, but if there is a political will from the CPS to build a case and present it effectively to a jury of laymen…’
‘Meaning thickos and simpletons they’ve dragged in off the street.’
‘…then they will get their conviction. You know that’s how it can work.’
‘I do,’ I conceded, ‘so why are you here? What do you expect me to do about it?’
‘That’s up to you but, if you really want them to stop thinking you had anything to do with Gemma Carlton’s death, then I’d say it is fairly obvious what you have to do.’
‘Find the real killer?’
He nodded.
‘And just how do you expect me to do that?’
‘Use the men in your… company,’ he told me, ‘they can go places we can’t, talk to people who might not normally be too forthcoming to police officers. They might find it easier to persuade people to be more open, but I’m not going to tell you how to go about it. I’m just asking you to help me find the man who killed a young girl I have known her whole life. We are all hurting very badly right now. I have my own private view of you and your organisation Blake, and you probably wouldn’t care to hear it, but I don’t believe you are stupid enough or so far beyond redemption that you would arrange to have an innocent girl murdered to throw my colleague off your scent.’
I didn’t answer him for a while. Instead I tried to think of ways I could persuade the police I had nothing to do with this girl’s death, without actually investigating the case myself, but I couldn’t come up with any.
‘Alright,’ I said, ‘give me everything you’ve got on the poor lass that I don’t already know, anything that could help me find the man who did this. My guys will look into it,’ he nodded his agreement. ‘I’ll find the killer and bring him to you.’
‘Make sure you do,’ he cautioned, ‘he’s not much use to us dead.’
‘He’ll be no use to me at all if he’s dead. I want him breathing and talking. I need him to explain this had nothing to do with me.’
‘One last thing, Blake,’ he told me, ‘no patsies, fakes or mentally-ill suspects, no losers coerced into confessing to a murder they didn’t commit because you put pressure on them or their families. We’ll see straight through that and you’ll have blown your last chance of salvation. I kid you not.’
I noted he was fond of biblical terms like salvation and redemption and wondered if that was significant. Was Detective Superintendent Austin a bit of a bible basher? ‘Just leave it with me,’ I assured him.
10
By the time they released me, it was getting light. I called Sarah and told her not to worry. ‘It’s all a bunch of nothing.’ I’m not sure she believed me.
I called Sharp and got him out of bed. I arranged a crash meeting with him, then got Palmer to come and pick me up. My head of security drove me quickly out of the city, heading north, glancing into his mirrors now and then to make sure we weren’t being followed by any plain clothes plod. When he had convinced me we were alone, I got him to turn the car around and drive south until we reached the Angel of the North. Palmer stayed in the car. Sharp was already waiting for me and he wasn’t happy to be there.
‘It’s a bit bloody public this, isn’t it?’ he hissed, as he filed in next to me and we began a slow walk towards the two hundred tonnes of rusting steel that constituted the Angel. His eyes were all over the place, as he checked out the bushes for surveillance teams, but we were virtually alone here at this hour. It was a cold, misty morning that would deter any but the most hardy.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said, ‘that old bloke with the flat cap walking his dog has got to be with SOCA. Get a fucking grip, Sharp, it was your idea for us to meet here in the first place.’
‘That was ages ago. Before I was convinced the bastards were out to get me.’
‘The bastards are out to get all of us,’ I informed him, ‘and this time it’s me they’re after, not you, so listen up, because this is important.’
We stood a few yards from the Angel, which towered sixty feet above us, and I briefed Sharp on everything the Detective Superintendent had told me about the murder of Gemma Carlton; including the police assumption that I was responsible for her death.
‘But that’s crazy,’ Sharp said, ‘you’d never be that daft.’
‘Or that evil,’ I reminded him, ‘you forgot that bit.’
‘Aye, well, that too,’ he conceded.
‘I’ll need you on this big style.’
‘I’m on it already, and so are forty other detectives, but nobody told me they were linking you to it. Jesus,’ he shook his head, ‘they know, don’t they? They know I’m your man on the inside. That’s why they’re not telling me anything.’
It was a possibility, but I couldn’t allow Sharp to be deflected by self-doubt. ‘That’s bollocks. They only hauled me in last night and they didn’t get any sense out of DI Carlton until recently. You’ll be briefed. I’ve no doubt about that. You’ll be expected to come up with the evidence to put me away.’ Then I told him about Austin’s request for me to investigate the case in parallel with the police operation.
‘That’s a bit unusual isn’t it?’
‘Highly unusual, but Austin is worried they only have one line of enquiry and he doesn’t believe we did it. He thinks the real murderer is going to walk. He might hate us but he doesn’t want the girl’s killer to get away with it, does he? I want you to straddle both investigations; ours and yours.’
He didn’t say anything to that and I could sense there was something else. ‘What is it?’ I asked him.
‘It might be nowt,’ he said, ‘but the timing’s interesting.’
‘What?’
‘Henry Baxter was arrested last night.’
‘Was he? For what?’
‘Careless driving and driving with excess alcohol.’
‘He was pissed?’