A Question Of Identity Part 41

A calculated risk.

Ben came in, nodded to the solicitor, looked Fletcher in the eye for a second or two. Sat down.

'Let's be clear then, Harry. Let's just be absolutely sure we both know the score. You have confessed to the murder of Olive Tredwell, at her home, on the night of 10 March. You have also confessed to setting the home of Norman Parks on fire deliberately, with the intent to kill Parks. Are we clear about both of these confessions?'

Fletcher glanced at his brief, then nodded.

'Say it, please.'

'Yes.'

'Right. Mrs Tredwell. Do you remember her?'

'No.'

'What, you murdered her in a particularly brutal and cold-blooded manner, and you took time to do it, yet you don't remember her? Odd that. It's not long ago. Why do you think you don't remember?'

A shrug.

'Could it be because you've got mixed up?'

No reply.

'Sorry, let me be a bit clearer. Could it be because you'd already committed several other murders all of old women, all in their houses, at night, all by strangulation with electrical flex that you've blurred them all together? You can't remember because there are so many?'

'Are you making a direct accusation? Are you charging my client, Sergeant?'

'Point taken.'

Vanek leaned back, and was still, appearing to think deeply, perhaps to be working out his strategy, perhaps because he felt he was at a dead end. Fletcher watched him.

'He thinks Ben's a bit junior, not difficult to run rings round him. Look he's got a bit of a smirk on his face somewhere. He's in charge, he's got Ben cornered, not the other way round. He's relaxed a bit, he's the boss in this interview room, is what he's thinking. They sent me a kid who doesn't even shave yet, that's disrespect. I'll eat him up.' Gerry could read criminals. He had the gift plus a lifetime of experience, watching them, listening to them, sussing them out.

Ben leaned back for another thirty seconds, saying nothing, apparently working out what to try next.

'He thinks Ben'll give up on him any minute. Cut his losses. Why not? He's got him for two murders, why bother to struggle for a confession about the rest? Fletcher's pretty sure we haven't got a grain of evidence on the other killings. Look at his face again.' Gerry was right. The expression was only just there, but Simon could see it. The confidence. The arrogance.

Ben lurched forward suddenly and leaned across the table.

'Look at me,' he said to Harry Fletcher. 'Look at me and don't look away. How old are your sons?'

Simon caught his breath.

Ben had taken the man off guard, there had been a flicker across his face and he shifted his body in the chair.

'All right, I guess they're five or six and maybe three? Great lads, you're proud of them and you should be. Do you love them, Harry?'

Fletcher seemed to struggle with the wish to shout at Vanek, or punch him. His body was tense. But he said nothing.

'You love them more than you love life itself, Harry, they mean everything, everything, in the world to you. You're a fantastic dad, they look up to you, they have fun with you, they trust you, Harry. So what's it going to be like for them, never to see you again? That's what you're looking at and you know it. You will never see your lads again until they're grown men with kids of their own and maybe not even then. We'll pin two more murders on you and that makes four. Life, Harry. You've confessed to two murders. You might well get one of those down to manslaughter. You set fire to Parks's home but there's no way you could have been certain he was actually in there. Maybe you felt like a bit of a blaze. Maybe you wanted to teach him a lesson, but you didn't actually plan to burn the poor old bloke to death in his bed. That happened, but I wonder if you meant it to happen? So, you could plead manslaughter on n.o.bby Parks. One murder, when you were in such a state after you'd found out n.o.bby was in the shack and you'd burned him to death, one murder committed under such stress that you were out of your mind at the time. You've admitted that murder, you might well get away with manslaughter for n.o.bby. You're looking at, what, ten, twelve years, time off for good behaviour, maybe eight years? Your lads will be older but they won't be adults who've forgotten you ever existed. But we've got two other murders to pin on you, Harry. You deny knowing anything about them, deny having any involvement in them. Come on, Harry. It's looking like life, isn't it, and for four murders even if you do get the manslaughter life will mean life. Your two little lads, those two in all the photographs you've got round the house, the lads you're obviously so proud of and rightly . . . they'll learn the truth and they won't want to know they ever had a dad. Well, would you?'

Fletcher was staring at the table.

'He's with his kids,' Gerry said. 'He's got them here with his arms round them and he's so close to them, closer than he's ever been. It's got to him.'

Serrailler nodded. Not much further. Not much further.

'You weren't in your right mind, Harry. You were someone else. No one in their right mind would break into the bedrooms of frail old ladies who are alone at night and terrify them, drag them out of their beds, shove them down in a chair in front of a mirror so they could see themselves, see you standing behind them, watch you get out the electrical flex, watch you uncoil it and raise your hands to loop it round their necks, watch while you started to tighten it, watch themselves fight for breath, turn blue, start to choke, watch '

'Jesus Christ, what do you think I am? They were dead before I put them in their chairs. What kind of a person would do what you said?'

There was absolute silence.

In the viewing room, Simon and Gerry could barely breathe.

Ben stayed very still, looking intently at Fletcher. 'Only someone not in their right mind, Harry. Someone not themselves. That's what I think.'

Fletcher crumpled, put his head down on his arms and wept. His shoulders shook.

'Yessss,' Serrailler said.

Sixty-five.

IT WAS LATE. They were all knackered. Simon took Ben and Gerry to the Golden Cross and sent Cat a text to say he would be there for supper.

They did not have much energy for chat at first, simply sat with their pints in front of them, grateful that it was all over, that it had worked out. Ben was very subdued, even when Simon congratulated him again.

'To be honest, guv, I feel grubby.'

'You didn't beat him up, you didn't lie, you didn't deceive him.'

'Below the belt though, using his kids.'

'Absolutely not. It made him stop in his tracks.'

'Wiped the smirk off his face,' Gerry added, getting up to go to the bar.

'It was a cheat.'

'No. You're just tired, Ben, and you've got a success hangover. You nailed a man who, as Fletcher, killed four people and, in another life, killed three.'

'He'll play the tricks. Start being a prison altar boy within six months.'

'Ben, he can become a Christian, an altar boy, a flipping Buddhist, he'll have counselling and he'll put in for every psychiatric check going, he'll take up basketball and do his A levels and volunteer to teach reading to those who can't. He can nail himself to a cross. None of it will make a sc.r.a.p of difference. He's not coming out. You don't want him out, do you? Given retraining as the warden of an old people's sheltered housing block?'

Gerry brought back the second round. 'What about the Yorkshire stuff?'

Simon shook his head. 'That can never come out. Mind you, the judge may have private info about Alan Keyes. He can't use it, he can't tell the jury about it, but it'll be there to ensure he doesn't let anything daft happen again. If any jury tried to mess about or come in with a not-unanimous he'd instruct them to find Fletcher guilty. No worries. There's something else . . . as Keyes, he was acquitted for those murders but what we've got now counts as new evidence. If I were the Yorkshire police I'd be asking for a retrial on the old killings.'

'There'd be justice,' Gerry said.

Ben shook his head. 'He's not the same bloke. They can't retry a different man new ID, new person.'

'Doesn't matter. He's breached the law so the protection he was given by a new ID won't apply. Not up to me, of course. Right, the Chief's got the glad news and I'm off to my sister's for a decent dinner.'

Until he opened the front door of the farmhouse and smelled rich savoury meat, hot candle wax, baked potatoes and woodsmoke from the fire, Simon had felt slightly numbed, the good result processed and accepted intellectually but not emotionally. Now, as Cat called out to him and he went in to find her on her own in the warm kitchen, draining vegetables, an unopened bottle of Merlot on the table, he felt a rush of pure pride and happiness. Old people could sleep soundly again, he had tied everything up.

'The only thing is,' he said, pulling the cork on the wine, 'this guy's two men.'

'It happens. You know how often neighbours and friends simply can't believe that old Jim, nicest man on the block, always collecting for charity and going out of his way to do good turns, could be the killer of ten innocent pa.s.sers-by, but there he is.'

'Fletcher absolutely adores his kids. He's got a nice wife, nice home, he's a good reliable workman. He was a witness on one of the ram raids, gave us a pretty good statement without any trouble. But then he goes walking softly through the streets at night and carries out s.a.d.i.s.tic murders. Then he goes back home, slips into bed beside the wife, crashes out and wakes up right as rain the next morning to go and fit someone's new back boiler.'

'Jekyll and Hyde. It's been done.'

'Yup. Sorry I'm so late by the way.'

'No prob, you gave me a chance to finish a report and start on my tax papers.'

'So what's new?'

'Where do I start?'

But she put a large forkful of food into her mouth to delay starting anywhere. Work, Molly's return, the children those were not what occupied her mind, not what kept her awake, not what troubled her beyond measure. They were not her father and Judith. How did you tell your policeman brother about a crime, of which you have no actual proof, but which you know in conscience you ought to report? You can't.

You can't.

Instead, there was Sam.

'Bad start to the day. I got a call from the film company. They've postponed and won't be filming until the end of next year . . . regretfully, Sam will be too old, so sorry and all that . . .'

Simon groaned.

'The problem isn't so much the film I'm not sure how keen he ever was to do it actually. But of course it's the humiliation in front of Hannah. If only they could see they're both in the same boat and cling together for mutual comfort, but no.'

'War?'

'Stand-off. You sense the constant low rumble of the drums.'

'I haven't seen them for a while maybe we can have a day out soon? Haven't seen Dad and Judith either. Have you?'

Cat hesitated. Drank some wine. This was the moment when she ought to say, 'I've got something to tell you about them.'

But she didn't.

'Saw Judith at book group. All fine, I think.'

'Perhaps we could all four go out for supper? I'll ask them. The Italian?'

Cat nodded vaguely. 'I've got a lot of work on though.'

'I thought the hospice hours were reduced?'

'And my PhD proposal, and I've had an idea for a book.'

'Death and dying?'

'That sort of thing.'

'Still, you can spare an evening.'

'I expect so. Do you want another potato?'

Simon held out his plate.

'How does Rachel take it when you're working round the clock and she can't get in touch with you? Not all of them have found it easy to cope with.'

'All of "them"?'

'Girlfriends. Stupid phrase.'

'Yes.'

'So?'

'Her husband died yesterday.'

'I know, you told me. It's tough, whatever she felt about him.'

'She loved him. Don't give me that look.'

'Didn't mean to. So now what?'

'How would I know?'

Cat set her gla.s.s down and looked at him hard. 'Now listen. I know you're exhausted, I know you're wound up and I totally understand what an awful state this is with Rachel.'

'Do you?'

'Of course I b.l.o.o.d.y do. I've seen you in enough messy situations with women to know first that she's different, and second that the guilt and shock both of you feel now Ken has died is ma.s.sive. I know you, so stop playing games, with me of all people. I want to help you, I'm not trying to interfere.'