Die of Shame (8 page)

He’s been sitting there waiting for several minutes when his visitor arrives. He watches as one of the guards points him out among the crowd of other prisoners already deep in hushed conversations at tables with wives, mothers, children. He sits up straight, adjusts the green tabard he is wearing over the prison-issue sweatshirt.

The visitor sits, takes out a notebook and pen. Says, ‘Thanks for this.’

‘So, let’s hear about this “project”, then?’ The prisoner holds up the letter his visitor had sent two weeks earlier. ‘Sounds like crap to me.’

The visitor smiles. ‘I’m writing a thesis on dubious convictions.’

‘What’s dubious about it?’

‘Well, in this case I suppose I’m more concerned with the crime itself. The circumstances.’

He studies the person opposite him. ‘Bit old for university, aren’t you?’

‘Mature student. Final year of my law degree.’

He grunts and takes out a scarred tobacco tin. He opens it and begins preparing a roll-up.

‘So… I’ve read the court transcript and the evidence seems fairly straightforward. Plenty of witnesses, murder weapon recovered at the scene and you seemed perfectly happy to plead guilty.’

‘Happy?’

‘You never disputed that you’d done it.’

‘No point, was there? Like you said, plenty of witnesses.’

His visitor writes something. ‘You had an argument with the victim in the pub.’

He nods, licks at the cigarette paper.

‘What was that about? It doesn’t say anywhere.’

‘I couldn’t remember. Still can’t.’

Now, his visitor studies him. ‘You were being accused of murdering someone after an argument and you couldn’t remember what caused it?’

‘It was a red mist type of thing, that’s all.’ He looks away, sees a prisoner from the landing next to his reaching to take a young woman’s hand across an adjacent table. ‘I’ve got a temper, all right?’

His visitor nods. ‘Well, that’s what really got me interested to begin with, I suppose. Your defence barrister kept talking about how out of character it was, the violence, losing your temper the way you did. That was virtually your whole defence. He repeatedly claimed that you’d never been involved in anything like this before. He made out like you wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’ A pause. ‘That’s what your friends and family say too.’

‘Who you been speaking to?’

‘Just some background research, that’s all. A couple of phone calls.’

He looks down at the letter again, reads, mouthing the words. ‘You a journalist or something?’

‘I’m not a journalist.’ A nod towards the letter. ‘It’s a personal project, I swear.’

He puts the completed roll-up back in the tin and closes the lid. ‘We had an argument and I hit him. That’s it.’

‘Had you ever met him before?’

‘No.’ Quick and simple, because he’s telling the truth.

‘Had you heard his name mentioned before?’

He blinks, tucks the tobacco tin away beneath his tabard.

‘I know the police asked you this, so sorry for going over it again, but if you’d just gone to the pub for a quiet drink and you didn’t know the man you got into the argument with, why were you carrying an iron bar in your coat pocket?’

He shakes his head and looks up at the clock.

‘You’ll be out in what… a couple of months? I mean, you would have been up for parole a lot sooner if you’d ever shown the slightest bit of remorse, but that’s up to you. All I’m saying is, what harm can it do to talk about it now?’

He smiles, for the first time. ‘Maybe I’m not sorry.’ He leans across the table, hisses it. ‘Maybe that bastard deserved everything he got, all right?’

His visitor tenses and tightens the grip on the pen; smiles back.

They came in numbers from behind burned-out cars and around corners, yelling and brandishing weapons. They were dressed in black, some with their faces hidden and others heavily bearded; as close to being Central Casting Islamic terrorists as their creators could get without being overtly racist. Chris Clemence made short work of them, putting the last one down in a noisy hail of rapid machine gun fire, with a satisfying eruption of blood and brain matter.

Mission completed.

Clemence casually entered his initials in the list of high scorers then climbed out of the seat and bumped fists with several of the boys who had been gathered around the machine to watch and shout encouragement. There were four or five of them; white, black and Asian kids. The logos varied, but the basic uniform of jeans, trainers and hoodies was the same as Clemence was wearing, though he was probably ten years older.

He turned and looked at the couple watching from near the entrance to the arcade. He waved, waggling fingers. There was a short, whispered exchange with some of the kids, a little more fist bumping, then he ambled over.

‘Very impressive,’ Chall said.

‘Not really,’ Clemence said.

Tanner raised her warrant card, but Clemence did not need to see it.

‘Yeah, Tony called.’ He looked around, as though eager to see who might be watching him having this conversation. ‘He said you’d probably want a word.’

Tanner waited until she had his full attention. ‘I want it somewhere a bit quieter, if at all possible.’

‘There’s a Starbucks over the road.’ Clemence pointed. ‘Only if you’re buying, though.’

‘I think we can stretch to that,’ Tanner said.

They walked across Wardour Street into the coffee shop; a buffer between the blacked-out windows of an adult entertainment store and a high-end seafood restaurant.

‘Can I get a cake as well?’ Clemence asked.

Chall said, ‘Now you’re taking the piss.’

They carried their drinks to a table in the corner that gave them a view back across the street towards the arcade. A few of the boys Clemence had been talking to were still loitering on the pavement outside.

‘This a normal Saturday morning for you, is it, Chris?’ Tanner asked.

‘I come a fair bit, yeah.’

‘Nice to have a fan club.’

‘Oh yeah, I’m like the Pied Piper, me.’

‘Bit young, aren’t they?’ Chall said.

‘Bit young for what?’

Chall nodded across the street. ‘Younger than you, I mean.’

‘So? They’re gamers, same as a lot of kids that age. Would you be happier if they were out nicking cars or mugging people?’

‘Still at school, I reckon, most of them.’

‘I’m not sure what you’re implying.’

‘Sergeant Chall wasn’t implying anything,’ Tanner said. ‘Were you?’

‘Making conversation,’ Chall said.

Clemence scooped the froth from his coffee with a plastic spoon and licked it off. ‘I just like playing games.’

Tanner watched him tear into three sachets of white sugar then slowly pour one after the other into his cup. She said, ‘More than
like
, by the sound of it. The woman we spoke to at the night shelter knew exactly where you’d be.’

‘Creature of habit.’ Clemence grinned. ‘And as you very well know, I’ve had habits a lot worse than this one.’

‘Still expensive,’ Tanner said. ‘What was that game, a couple of quid a time?’

‘Yeah, but I’m good. Well, you saw. So I get twenty minutes or half an hour for that.’

‘Eating into your benefits a bit though, I would have thought,’ Chall said.

‘Not really.’

‘Wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to play at home?’ Tanner could see that one of the boys from the arcade had crossed the road and was pulling faces at Clemence through the window. She looked at Chall, who stood up and waved the boy away.

‘Would be if I had one,’ Clemence said. ‘Anyway, sometimes you need to get out and see people, don’t you? It’s all about making connections, right?’

‘What is?’

‘Having a life, moving on. Something Tony’s always banging on about.’ He turned his head to watch the boy go back to his mates. ‘Trust me, there
are
things I prefer doing on my own.’ He looked back to Tanner with a grin that was short-lived. ‘But people like me aren’t always particularly fond of our own company.’

‘People like Heather, too?’

He shrugged, then nodded. ‘So, what happened to her?’

‘You know what happened, if you’ve spoken to Mr De Silva.’

‘I know someone killed her.’

‘Which is all you need to know for now.’

‘Stabbed, was she? Strangled?’ He waited, saw that Tanner wasn’t going to bite. ‘Don’t suppose it matters, does it? Dead’s dead.’

‘Tell us about her.’

Clemence swirled coffee around in his mouth, swallowed it noisily. ‘She was… nice. A bit nutty sometimes, neurotic about things. Always doing things exactly the same way, you know?’

‘Like OCD, you mean?’ Chall asked.

‘Kind of. Everything always had to be in order.’

Tanner looked down at her notebook.

‘Don’t know what else to say, really. I got on better with her than some of the others in the group. We took the piss out of each other, helped each other out.’

‘Helped how?’ Tanner asked.

‘You know, if she was having a bad day or whatever, she might call and I’d try and snap her out of it. We’d go and have a cup of tea or something, talk bollocks. She did the same for me a few times. Just normal stuff.’

‘Talk bollocks about what?’

‘Anything. Telly or sport, something in the news. Things you never get to talk about in the group.’

Tanner looked up from her notebook. ‘Anything you think we should know? Anything you think might be important, bearing in mind what happened to her?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘Nobody she was involved with? Who she might have been worried about or frightened of?’

‘Not now.’ Clemence saw Tanner’s reaction, shook his head. ‘By which I mean, yeah, there would have been, but we’ve all had dealings with some nasty bastards over the years.’ He smiled. ‘One or two of them even had warrant cards.’

Tanner did not rise to it. ‘Did Heather ever mention any names?’

‘If she did I can’t remember any, but she would have come across a few people you wouldn’t want to mess with. Ex-junkies don’t have too many saints in their address books.’

Tanner shifted her chair to allow a young woman to sit down at the next table. The woman immediately pulled a laptop from her bag and logged on. She caught Tanner’s eye and smiled. Tanner looked back to Clemence. He had remarkably good skin, considering his history, she thought. Pale, but more or less flawless around the carefully groomed stubble. He had styled his hair every bit as carefully; blond streaked into the black, teased into spikes on top and squaddie short at the sides. His teeth were better than she might have expected too and he showed them off a good deal, well aware of his winning smile. Tanner could easily understand why other men might find him attractive. Women too, unaware that they were barking up the wrong tree, or simply wanting to mother him.

‘Tell us what goes on in one of your sessions,’ she said.

‘In the group, you mean?’

‘It would be helpful,’ Chall said.

Clemence sat back and folded his arms. He appeared to think about it for a few seconds, but then shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think I can. That’s the one rule, you know.’

‘Yeah, but murder trumps it,’ Chall said. ‘Don’t you reckon?’

‘I don’t see how it’s relevant.’

Tanner nodded. ‘As far as we can make out, Heather didn’t have too much else going on in her life outside the group you were both in with Tony De Silva. We’re obviously looking at all sorts of things, but until we’ve got anything else concrete, those sessions might well prove to be extremely relevant.’

‘Sorry,’ Clemence said. ‘We talk… well, you can probably work that much out, but I really can’t tell you who said what. There are people in the group who’d want my balls on a plate. Tony for a kick-off.’

Tanner leaned forward. ‘She wasn’t found for a while, you know that?’

‘What?’

‘They didn’t find Heather’s body for nearly three weeks. Nobody reported her missing, because there wasn’t anybody to miss her.’

‘In the end, most of her just seeped through the floorboards,’ Chall said.

‘Jesus.’

‘If you were her friend like you say, I would have thought you’d want to do anything you can to help us.’

Clemence grunted, tore around the cardboard rim of his empty coffee cup. ‘What was her name?’

‘Sorry?’

‘That’s how much of a friend I was, OK? I don’t even know what Heather’s second name was.’ He carried on tearing, the cup getting stubbier, an inch at a time. ‘First names only in the group, you see?’

‘Finlay,’ Tanner said. ‘Heather Finlay.’

Clemence nodded. ‘Sounds Scottish or something.’

‘She was from Sheffield originally. Came down here for college then stayed on.’

‘I knew it was up north somewhere,’ Clemence said. ‘Used to take the piss out of her accent. Eeh-bah-gum, all that. She used to do the same with me, told me I was like a camp cockney or something.’ He smiled. There was almost nothing of the coffee cup left and he gently eased the debris to one side of the table. ‘A pearly queen, she called me once.’

‘While we’re talking about names, it would be helpful if you could tell us who else was in that Monday night group with you and Heather.’ Tanner turned a page in her notebook.

Clemence narrowed his eyes. ‘What did Tony say about that?’

‘He wouldn’t tell us, but said it was fine if you did. Call him if you want.’

Clemence shrugged. ‘Fair enough, but like I told you it was only first names.’ He thought for a few seconds. ‘Robin’s probably your best bet, because at least I know what he does.’

‘What does Robin do?’ Chall asked.

‘He’s a doctor… an anaesthetist. A consultant, I think, or something high up anyway, because he always wants everyone to know how great he is. He mentioned the hospital once. The Royal something?’

‘Thanks, that’s extremely helpful.’

‘I do my best.’

Tanner wrote the information down then looked up at him. ‘What’s that below your eye, Chris?’

‘What’s what?’

Tanner gestured vaguely towards what was clearly a bump beneath Clemence’s right eye, bruising not quite faded around it. ‘Been walking into things?’

‘I’m clumsy,’ Clemence said.

Tanner nodded. ‘Are you clean at the moment?’

‘Come again?’

She waited.

‘Yeah, I fucking am. Like that’s got anything to do with anything.’

‘How long?’

He pushed himself back into the corner, the muscles working in his jaw. ‘I have ups and downs, fair enough?’ He took a few deep breaths then stood up quickly, stared out the woman with the laptop who had turned to watch. ‘Can I go now?’

Chall got to his feet too. ‘Scared someone’s going to beat your high score?’

Tanner stayed seated. ‘Before you head off, can you just tell us what you did on the evening of March the twenty-second?’ She looked at him. ‘If it helps you remember, that was the last session Heather attended.’

Clemence refused to look at her. A few more deep breaths as hands were thrust into pockets then taken out again. ‘After the session, I went to the pub with everyone else, same as every other week… then I left.’

‘To go where?’

‘To wherever I was staying at the time.’

‘The shelter at St Martin’s?’

‘Might have been, I move around. I’m supposed to be getting a flat, aren’t I, but it’s taking a while. Paperwork and all that.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Chall said.

Tanner closed her notebook. ‘It’s all important,’ she said. ‘The red tape, the paperwork. People doing things properly is what might get you a flat in the end.’ She reached for what was left of her coffee. ‘Doing things properly is how I’m going to find Heather Finlay’s killer.’