Behind Dead Eyes (9 page)

‘I have no interest in who you write for Mr …' He had clearly forgotten Tom's name already. ‘I simply do not speak to
reporters
,' he said that last word like it was an infectious disease, ‘
ever
. Is that clear enough for you?'

At this point the lawyer was climbing into his car, giving him a look that clearly said ‘Back away,' but Tom didn't move. Instead he replied, ‘It certainly is but I really would advise against that,' his tone was conciliatory, ‘unless you want a fine reputation built over years destroyed overnight. I'll be making some pretty strong claims. If you don't respond, people will assume you have no problem with my allegations.'

Nixon took his leg out of the car. ‘What allegations?'

‘My argument will be that an innocent man may be serving a lengthy prison sentence because he failed to get satisfactory legal representation from your firm. It's my
responsibility as a journalist to give you the right of reply but it really doesn't matter. I can simply put that you refused to comment. It would certainly make my life simpler.' And when Nixon hesitated, Tom said, ‘Sorry to have taken up your valuable time,' then he began to walk away. He'd taken a few steps and begun to question whether his bluff had failed when he heard a single, slightly panicked word from Nixon.

‘Wait,' he urged. Tom turned back to face Nixon, who looked decidedly uncomfortable now, ‘which case?'

Tom made a show of looking round the underground car park. ‘I don't think it would be proper to discuss it down here, do you?'

When the lift doors opened, the receptionist was surprised to see her boss again so soon and at first she wondered what he might have forgotten. When she realised Tom Carney was walking calmly behind him, her surprise turned to shock as they both headed for Nixon's office.

‘Coffee, Carol,' Nixon told her curtly then added, ‘and biscuits.'

Tom grinned at her then and enjoyed the look of indignation on her face as she was dispatched to provide him with refreshments.

Bradshaw
waited for an hour, hoping Tom had just nipped out for a tin of paint, but he did not return. He decided to give the reporter ten more minutes but realised he faced a frustrating day, involving repeat visits to Carney's small semi-detached house until he finally nabbed him.

While he waited, Bradshaw's thoughts idly turned to his girlfriend. He and Karen were an unlikely couple. She was tall, blonde and beautiful with a gym-toned figure that would normally have been enough to keep her well out of his league, but when Karen met Ian for the first time, he was at his absolute best, for he was unconscious. There was no way he could mess things up with a terrible opening line and nerves were never going to get the better of him. Karen was a WPC sent to check on him at his hospital bed by a concerned DCI Kane when Bradshaw nearly drowned. She had brought him fresh clothes from his home and instead of being disgusted by the mess in his flat, had decided he was like a lot of single guys: hopeless without a woman in his life. He later discovered the nurses had done half the work for him by assuring Karen he was a bloody hero. Although he had done everything they claimed he had done, he still couldn't help feeling like a bit of a fraud. When he eventually came round to find this angelic figure smiling down at him he had been quick to dismiss his achievements and she, naturally, assumed he was just being modest.

Bradshaw's unease did not stop him asking her out for a
drink when she popped round to his flat a few days later to ‘see how he was doing'. Later she freely admitted she hoped he would invite her on a date.

The past eighteen months had been a bit of a whirlwind for a man who hadn't had a girlfriend in a long while. As well as numerous visits to pubs, restaurants and cinemas there had been, he had to admit, some pretty amazing sessions in the bedroom.

It was true that Karen was not his usual type and they did often run out of things to say to each other, having quite different views on the world. She tended to care a lot more than he did about station gossip, frivolous TV shows and the need to get down to the gym four times a week as an absolute minimum. He went with her though and Karen assumed he was as obsessed with burning calories as she was. In truth he exercised because he always felt better afterwards and it helped to banish the low moods before they took a hold. He didn't tell Karen about this because he instinctively knew she would never understand.

There was still no sign of Tom Carney and Bradshaw figured he had better get back to the rest of the team. The very last thing he wanted was to be in DI Tennant's bad books. As Bradshaw drove away he noticed a curtain twitch at the house next door to Tom's.

‘Here comes trouble,' remarked her editor as Helen walked into the newsroom.

‘What do you mean?'

‘A certain high-powered London-based PR agency has been on the phone to me. They represent Alan Camfield.'

‘Oh,' she said.

‘I got a pretty lengthy lecture about not allowing my
reporters to intrude on property that has been privately hired for a charitable event, namely a very fancy golf course not too many miles from here.'

‘I see.'

‘Yes,' Graham went on, ‘words like
trespass
,
illegal
,
unethical
and
Press Complaints Commission
were mentioned.'

‘Right,' she said unsurely and waited for the telling-off that would naturally follow.

‘I used a few choice words myself; including
freedom of the press
,
public interest
and finally
fuck off
and
don't ever bother me again
,' he told her. ‘Don't worry, Helen, I've got your back.'

Her smile was warm. ‘Thanks, Graham. I really appreciate it and sorry for the hassle I caused you.'

‘It's fine. If you're treading on toes then you must be getting close to something,' he told her, ‘so what have you got for me?'

‘From the golf course? Nothing,' she admitted.

‘Nothing? I was hoping it was something.'

‘I couldn't get near the man himself,' she said, ‘too much security, but I did see him walk over the horizon with a bunch of bigwig businessmen and Jimmy McCree.'

‘McCree again?' And he frowned at this. ‘You know what bugs me, Helen?'

‘What?'

‘When a gangster becomes a household name and suddenly everybody wants to be their friend. You start seeing them at parties with their arms around actors and footballers. Now it's rich businessmen and even the head of the council who conveniently forget the victims. At least when Frank Jarvis was leader he was openly critical of McCree, now there's no one willing to take him on. Jimmy McCree has left widows and orphans for God's sake.' Then he took a breath. ‘I'm ranting now, sorry.'

‘I agree with every word,' Helen told him.

‘It's partly our fault, I suppose. We write about them.'

‘Only to hold them to account.'

‘Do you really think they care about that?' asked Graham.

‘Yes, I do.' And she wanted to say ‘If they didn't, they wouldn't send their thugs to knock me over in the car park,' but she couldn't admit that to Graham; not without running the risk he might tell her to stop investigating McCree, Lynch and Camfield. Maybe he would even hand the task to somebody more experienced, probably a man, in a misguided attempt to protect her. The attack proved her investigation was beginning to worry someone and she was determined not to allow those thugs to deflect her from reporting the truth. ‘I do have something else,' she said quickly, ‘take a look at this.' And she handed him a folder containing some photocopied documents. ‘They're from the land registry.'

Her editor blinked at the papers she placed in front of him. ‘What is it?'

She pointed at an address on the first document. ‘That's a house that used to be owned by Councillor Joe Lynch.'

‘Right.' And he scanned the details.

‘It forms part of the information openly available to potential buyers of the property, which incidentally is up for sale again. It's now owned by a Mr Cooper, who has had it for just over a year.'

‘So it's back on the market,' he said, ‘and was previously owned by Lynch?'

She nodded. ‘Mr Cooper bought it from Councillor Lynch. What do you notice from the information on that first sheet?'

‘Well,' he said, ‘the councillor picked it up for a song back in 1979 and he's made a tidy profit on it in around fourteen
years, so fair play to him I suppose.' And he looked at his reporter. ‘He's not the first to make a few quid on a property in Newcastle. Some of the outlying areas have really come on. I know he's meant to be a socialist, Helen, but I doubt we could run a story criticising him for cashing in on a mini north-east housing boom.'

‘No,' she said, ‘we couldn't – but I did some digging. Three other similar-sized houses sold in his street at around the same time. They both went for less; a lot less.' She could tell her editor was interested now.

‘So the councillor knows how to drive a hard bargain?' he offered.

‘He must do,' she said, ‘because he managed to get thirty grand more than the market rate for his house when he sold it.'

‘Thirty grand?' said her editor in disbelief. ‘Are you sure?'

‘I'm certain,' she said ‘and I have all of the land registry documents to prove it.'

‘So what do we know about the man doing the over-paying?'

‘Mr Cooper? Very little and, strangely enough, there was no estate agent involved in the purchase. It was an entirely private transaction.'

‘Well I never,' he said dryly.

‘But Mr Cooper had a change of heart, because he never moved into the place. The property has been standing empty since the day Joe Lynch moved out. I checked with the neighbours. They haven't seen a soul at that house in more than a year. I looked through the windows and there's nothing there. It's a shell.'

‘And what does Mr Cooper hope to get for it this time, I wonder.'

‘That's the really interesting bit. This time there
is
an estate agent involved so I went down there posing as a potential buyer. I asked about the price and they confirmed it is on the market at the going rate, meaning our man will lose just under thirty grand in a year, if he holds out for his full asking price.'

‘That's quite a hit he took,' and her editor smiled, ‘considering he never lived in it or rented it out to anybody in the intervening period. Any luck in tracking down Mr Cooper for a comment?' She shook her head. ‘Thought not.'

‘He's abroad apparently, according to the estate agent. Mr Cooper is a very private businessman and they only deal with him over the phone or by fax machine but of course everything is all above board.'

‘Of course.'

And she laughed. ‘The estate agent actually said to me, “Don't worry, love, it's all cushty.” '

And the editor's smile grew broader. ‘So what's your conclusion, as if I didn't know already?'

‘Someone paid Lynch off,' she said, ‘and whatever he did for them, it was worth thirty grand but Joe Lynch didn't want anything as grubby or incriminating as cash in a brown envelope. So instead they bought his house at a vastly inflated rate and he pocketed the difference. Whoever the buyer really was, they waited a year to avoid suspicion and now they are quietly disposing of their asset.'

‘But what did the buyer of Joe Lynch's house get in exchange for his generosity, I wonder?'

‘Whatever it was, they got lucky with Lynch because he's leader of the council now and head of the planning committee, so he has a big say in the Riverside development.'

‘In that case his price will have gone up considerably.' And
he regarded the documents as if he couldn't quite believe what he was holding. ‘And this buyer, Mr Cooper?'

‘He's probably just a set of papers or a front for someone like Camfield or McCree,' Helen said. ‘Who else can afford to blow thirty grand to buy a councillor? Even if we could track an actual person down, it won't get us very far because he'll never talk.'

‘So how can we run this story?' Graham seemed to be addressing the question to her while simultaneously mulling it over in his own head.

‘Put down the bare facts. The leader of the council has made a very tidy sum out of property while others in the same area had to settle for much less.'

‘There's just enough in there for people to draw their own conclusions,' said Graham. ‘His own party will want to burn him at the stake when they read this.'

‘
Lynch Mob?
' she offered as a joke headline.

‘I like that,' he chuckled.

‘We should ask Councillor Lynch to tell us all about Mr Cooper,' she went on. ‘If he gives us some proper information, we can use it to track the man down. If as I suspect he tells us nothing, we can say he refused to tell us anything about his mystery buyer. I'm hoping he'll say he never met the bloke personally, which will make him sound like those guys who get sent down for possessing stolen goods. They usually say they bought them from a man they met down the pub but they can't remember his name.'

‘Even better,' he said. ‘Are you going to phone the councillor now?'

‘Not yet,' she said, ‘a wise man once told me not to give a guilty party too long to come up with excuses or call in the lawyers. I was thinking an hour before deadline. Meanwhile,
I'll write up the rest of the story and leave a gap at the bottom for the councillor's flustered denials.'

‘Then get writing and I'll hold the front page.' And he grinned at her. ‘Again! You realise I've got grizzled veterans in this newsroom who are beginning to look at you with hostile eyes because you're starting to make them look bad.' Then he placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Seriously, this is really good stuff, Helen. Well done you. I mean it.'

‘Thanks,' she said, for his support was beginning to mean a lot to her.

When he had gone it struck Helen he no longer asked where she was getting her stories from. Perhaps he knew she wouldn't tell him about her anonymous source. Someone was very unhappy with the way Joe Lynch was going about his business as council leader and they were more than happy to tell Helen all about it. The latest note to land on her desk had been typewritten, just like the rest.
Ever wonder why Joe Lynch sold his family home?
it asked her.
Or how he managed to get so much more for it than anybody else?

It took a while for Tom to persuade Nixon to discuss Richard Bell's case at all. In the end he was forced to agree to write his piece with no mention of the law firm, in exchange for their version of what actually happened in court. This Tom did reluctantly but only out of principle. Unbeknown to Nixon, Tom wasn't actually writing a piece for the largest tabloid in the country, merely investigating Rebecca's Holt's murder on behalf of her supposed killer.

‘I want to talk to you about the advice you gave your client before the trial,' Tom began.

‘I gave him a lot of advice,' said Nixon as he broke a
digestive biscuit into two equal halves with absolute precision, ‘some of which he chose to ignore.'

‘I'm talking specifically about the revelations surrounding his private life.'

‘Oh that.' And he took a tiny bite of his biscuit.

‘You got him to admit to a whole series of … you called them
assignations
with women other than his wife,' Tom reminded him, ‘which did not exactly endear him to the jury.'

The barrister sighed, ‘Yes, well, we were between a rock and a hard place there. We quizzed him about his affair with Rebecca Holt and decided there was little point in denying it. The police knew about it already and if he lied about it again in front of a jury, the prosecution could bring proof of the relationship into court – then the rest of his testimony would lack any credibility.'