Core of Evil (17 page)

‘He’s got someone with him, but he’ll be free in a moment.’

Lapslie stepped away from the desk and over to a nearby notice board. While he waited, he let his gaze flicker across union notices, fire alarm reminders and cards offering rooms to rent and laundry services. So much information, these days, he thought. So many signs everywhere to read. How could any ordinary person keep all that information in their head without going mad?

A sudden increase in noise made him turn his head. Superintendent Rouse stood in the doorway of his office, saying goodbye to two men. They were both in their late thirties, short-haired, and wearing black
suits with a subtle pinstripe. The Superintendent was, as usual, in full uniform.

The two men moved away, and the Superintendent bent to have a quick word with his PA. As the men passed Lapslie one of them turned his head slightly. Lapslie glanced sideways, and the two gazes met with a noticeable jolt. The man raised his eyebrows slightly, involuntarily, as if he recognised Lapslie. Then he was gone, and Lapslie was left with his interest heading one way and his body heading another.

When he turned his attention back towards the way his body was moving, the Superintendent had re-entered his office. His PA gestured Lapslie in. ‘Ten minutes, then he has to leave for another meeting.’

He knocked and entered. The Superintendent had sat behind his desk and was rearranging a sheaf of paper. The desk was placed so that the office’s window was to his right, and the light cast one side of his face into a flattering glow and the other into sharp and craggy relief. His face had once been memorably, if uncharitably, described by a young DS as looking like a bag full of spanners. He was older than Lapslie by a few years, a battle-scarred veteran of police politics and in-fighting who had worked his way up the ranks, regardless of prejudice and the old-boy system, to a position of relative authority. Despite the fact that he was Lapslie’s boss, and
obviously had one eye on the next job in line, Lapslie liked him.

‘Mark, thanks for popping along.’

‘I understand you wanted an update on the Violet Chambers case, sir?’

Rouse’s gaze flickered down to the sheaf of notes in front of him. They were hand-written. Lapslie had often seen Rouse make similar notes in meetings, a contemporaneous record of what was being said to remind him later, something between a set of personal minutes and a stream of consciousness. Had he made the notes during the meeting that had just finished? And, if so, why was he consulting them now?

‘That’s the woman whose body was found in the woods? Quite decayed?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Has the coroner been able to establish a cause of death?’

‘It’s a toss-up,’ Lapslie replied, moving across to the window and gazing out at the surrounding landscape of office blocks and, off to one side, an elevated slice of road visible between two buildings. ‘She was poisoned, but she was also bludgeoned on the back of the head. It’s going to be impossible to determine which one caused her death.’

‘But it’s murder?’

‘Either that or the most elaborate suicide I’ve ever seen.’

His gaze dropped to the car park below. He could see his own car, parked off to one side. There were too many Mondeos for him to be able to tell where Emma had parked. He could hear the Superintendent making notes as they talked.

‘Any suspects?’

‘Not as yet. We’ve finished processing the crime scene – or at least, the location where the body was found. We have yet to establish whether she was killed there. We’re currently checking into Violet Chambers’ background, in case there’s something in her past that would explain her murder.’

Two figures had just left the building, far below. They were heading for the spaces reserved for visitors.

‘Do you think there’s a realistic chance that you can catch whoever is responsible?’

He shrugged. ‘Too early to tell, sir. We’ve not run out of leads yet, if that’s what you mean. Not quite.’

The two figures down in the car park had separated now, and were moving either side of a black car. It was difficult to tell from where Lapslie was standing, but it might have been a Lexus.

The scratching of the pen stopped for a moment. ‘I was wondering whether the relatively low chances of success in this particular case mean that you should scale down the investigation. Concentrate on something else, where you’re more likely to make an arrest.’

As the car below them started off and drove out of the car park, Lapslie turned to meet Superintendent Rouse’s gaze. ‘Are you suggesting that I should let the case drop, sir?’

‘I would never suggest we let a case drop, Mark. I’m merely asking whether our priorities are arranged correctly.’

‘I think it’s too early to tell,’ he said, knowing he was prevaricating. There was a strange flavour in his mouth: something like nutmeg, although he couldn’t quite place it. He’d tasted that flavour before. Usually it was during an interrogation, when some toerag was lying to him about their whereabouts, or trying to convince him that the top-of-the-range BMW they’d been trying to get into at three in the morning had been loaned to them by a friend whose name they had temporarily forgotten. It was the taste of lies; or, at the very least, it was the flavour of evasion. Of someone saying one thing to avoid saying another. But why would Superintendent Rouse be evading his question?

‘I can let you know in a few days whether I think there’s any realistic prospect of a conviction,’ he said.

Rouse nodded. ‘I think we may be devoting too many resources to this problem,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘It’s an old case, and there’s precious little evidence. Perhaps we should scale down the team.’

‘The
team
,’ Lapslie said levelly, ‘is one Detective Chief Inspector who’s been pulled back from sick
leave and one Detective Sergeant who has an attitude problem. Unless you want to swap Emma Bradbury for Mary from the canteen, it’s hard to see how much less effective the team could be.’

‘Very well,’ Rouse said, avoiding Lapslie’s gaze. ‘We’ll keep things the way they are. For the moment.’ Putting his pen down, he leaned back in his state-of-the-art chair and gazed at Lapslie, smiling slightly. ‘We’ve both come a long way, haven’t we, Mark?’

‘Since Kilburn CID, back in the eighties? Since those nights we spent arresting crack dealers and Yardies and breaking up three-day-long raves? It’s like another world now.’

‘I’m surprised you keep going – especially with your problems. Have you thought about taking early retirement?’

He shrugged. ‘Who hasn’t at our age? Watching the sun rise from your desk for the tenth time in a month? Finding out that an overtime ban means that all the hours you’ve been putting in are for free? And knowing that my particular … problems …aren’t enough to get me pensioned off, but they are enough to stop me getting promoted again? The thought has crossed my mind more than once.’

‘Then why stay around?’

Sighing, Lapslie turned to gaze out of the window again, not at the car park this time but out past the elevated section of road, towards the nearest thing to
a horizon one could see from this office. ‘Where would I go?’ he asked, more to himself than to Rouse. ‘What exactly would I do? I’d be yet another retired cop in a land full of them. I just haven’t got the energy to set myself up in business as a security consultant, or head up the investigation branch at one of the big banks. I’m a cop, sir. That’s what I do. That’s all I can do.’

‘What about—’

‘Sonia? She’s not coming back. Neither are the kids.’ And this time it wasn’t a sound, but the memory of a sound, that filled his mouth with the taste of vanilla. The memory of his children playing in the back garden, calling each other silly names, screaming as they chased each other around the car. The memory of them calling to him as they ran through the woods, their voices hanging directionless on the wind. The memory of them crying as they fell over and grazed a knee, and laughing as they tried to catch birds on the lawn. Odd how time could freeze around a few moments, projecting them backwards and forwards through his memories. For Lapslie, his children were always the age they were when they left. He couldn’t really remember how they had looked when they were born, or when they were crawling around the house. And, despite the occasional visits and the photographs that Sonia sent through, he found it hard to keep a grip of what they looked like now. It was their faces on those last few days, playing in the
garden, running through the woods, that he would always remember.

‘It’s a shame’.

‘That it is,’ he said heavily. ‘That it is.’

‘If there’s anything I can do to help …’

He nodded. ‘Thanks for the offer,’ he said. ‘But what about you? Is your star still in the ascendant? Are you still managing to keep your grip on the greasy pole?’

Rouse smiled, and for a moment the years dropped away and he looked much like he had back in Kilburn, all those years ago. ‘I’m considering my options,’ he said judiciously. ‘There’s an offer on the table from the Serious Organised Crime Agency for me to take over their counter-terrorist section. And I’ve heard that there’s a team being put together to look at the security implications of the London Olympics. Either of those would suit me.’

‘On promotion, of course.’

‘Of course. There’s only two directions to go on the greasy pole – up or down. Staying still isn’t an option.’ Rouse gazed up at him, and his eyes crinkled in what might have been the beginnings of a smile, or the beginnings of a worried frown. ‘Let’s do lunch soon. We should talk about the future.
Your
future. I’ll get my PA to arrange it.’

He turned his eyes back to the notes in front of him and started writing. It was a dismissal. Lapslie glanced once more out of the window and then left
the office, closing the door behind him. He felt slightly floaty, slightly disconnected from the world.

Outside, he paused by the PA’s desk.

‘Those two men who left just before I went in,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn I recognised one of them. I think we were on a course together at Sandridge. Who were they?’

The PA consulted her computer. ‘They were visitors from the Department of Justice,’ she said. ‘Mr Geherty and Mr Wilmington. Which one was your friend?’

‘Oh, I didn’t say he was my friend,’ Lapslie said quietly. ‘Thanks for your help.’

Geherty. There couldn’t be too many people with a name like that working for the Department of Justice – assuming that’s where they actually came from.

Returning to his desk, grimacing at the salty wash of blood in his mouth from the general hubbub of conversation, he looked up the switchboard number for the Department of Justice’s new offices in London on his own computer, then dialled it.

‘Good morning,’ he said, when the call was answered, ‘Could you put me through to Mr Geherty, please?’

There was silence for a few moments as the receptionist presumably checked her screen for details. Lapslie wondered idly whether she was actually in the Department of Justice building, or whether she
was based in a call centre in Mumbai, perhaps, or New Delhi, and spent her lunch hours laughing about the strange names of people in England.

‘I’m afraid I’m getting no answer,’ the receptionist’s voice said. ‘Shall I put you through to Mr Geherty’s voicemail, or would you like to speak to someone else?’

‘Actually,’ Lapslie said, ‘I need to put something in the post to him. Can you confirm his title and department for me?’

‘Yes, of course. It’s Martin Geherty, Assistant Director, PRU. Do you need the full address?’

‘That’s okay,’ Lapslie said, ‘I know where he is.’

PRU? What did that mean? Assuming that the black Lexus in the car park and the black Lexus that he had seen back at the place Violet Chambers’ body had been discovered were the same – an assumption that would need to be proven – and assuming that the two men coming out of Superintendent Rouse’s office were the ones who had got into the Lexus in the car park – again, something he could work with but which would require evidence backing it up – then it looked as if there was some kind of parallel investigation going on. But what interest could the Department of Justice – and in particular the PRU, whatever that was – have in the murder of an old lady? And why had Superintendent Rouse been trying to subtly manoeuvre him off the case, first by asking whether he had too much work on to undertake
the investigation properly, and then by suggesting early retirement to him and trying to get Emma Bradbury reassigned? If Rouse wanted things dropped, why not just order him off?

Presumably, because he would have to give reasons.

And he couldn’t.

The noise was getting too much for him, and Lapslie headed back to the Quiet Room, hoping that nobody had nipped in for a quick snooze whilst he’d been gone. Friday afternoons were particularly bad: once he’d found three officers sleeping off a lunchtime drinking session: one in the chair, one flat on his back on the desk and one curled up underneath it.

Fortunately, he was in luck. The room was still empty.

He shut the door and leaned back in the chair, letting the silence slide over him. Slowly his breath, which he hadn’t even realised was tight, relaxed.

He found his thoughts turning back to the mortuary, and the question of whether there had been an intruder going through Dr Catherall’s files. He hadn’t mentioned it to Emma Bradbury. Although she had been alone in Catherall’s office for a while and, by any theoretical analysis of the situation, was a potential suspect, Lapslie had discounted her immediately because she was a police officer, because he knew her and because she had no
apparent motive. Now, suspecting that his own immediate superior knew more about the case than he should and could therefore have asked his Detective Sergeant to do some undercover work for him, Lapslie paradoxically trusted Emma even more. If Superintendent Rouse was involved then so were the two strangers from the Department of Justice, and it made more sense that they had been going through the files than that she had. After all, it looked as if they had been present at the scene where the body had been discovered.