Out of the Dark (27 page)

‘Sir, I don’t know. It kind of just happened.’ Waylant’s jaw clenched under the tension. ‘So when I heard she was demanding to see me, I thought it was a way of getting me to go back there to the flat so that she could get me into bed again. I …’ Now the red in his smooth cheeks was turning grey. ‘I didn’t know there really was someone after her. You have to believe me.’

‘Take me through it from the beginning. She called round, didn’t she, the night before she died?’

‘Yes, sir. The desk sergeant sent for me and I took her into an interview room. I listened for a bit to her stories about this bloke following her and phoning at all hours. I didn’t take notes or put on the tape because, like I said, I was sure it was just a ploy. But I did tell her I’d be round to check out the flat and the places where she was sure she’d seen him, as soon as I could. But I was busy and …’

‘Embarrassed by her? You’ve got a real problem here,’ Lakeshaw began as the phone rang. He grabbed it, hoping Baker had broken through to Maguire and got something useful.

‘Sir? DS Watkins from the front desk, sir. I’ve a Trish Maguire here, sir. She’s very anxious to speak to you, says she has essential information about your case.’

‘Tell her you couldn’t get hold of me.’

‘She says it’s really urgent, sir.’

‘Take a message. Tell her to go home; I’ll get back to her when I can. And if she starts bellowing about her father’s rights, remind her he has a solicitor with him.’

Lakeshaw crashed down the phone and looked at Waylant, who was still standing obediently in front of him. Now he looked like a schoolboy awaiting a beating.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, sit down. Right. Now, do something useful for a change and tell me anything you can that will help us nail this bloke.’

‘But there isn’t anything. Otherwise, I’d have—’

‘There must be. Why exactly did you ignore her?’

‘Because I’d heard it all before and because after a bit she started to say things like: “I’m desperate, Martin. I don’t know what I’ll do if you won’t take me seriously. I can’t go on like this. It would be easier to be dead. I tell you, I’m desperate.” And I could see she
was
desperate, but I thought it was for …’

‘Sex, I suppose, you being such an irresistible stud.’

‘No, sir.’ Waylant looked and sounded defeated. ‘Nothing like that, but because she’d clung and cried and told me she couldn’t live without me often enough, and sounded just like this. If it hadn’t been for all that, we might still have been … OK.’

‘And she might still be alive,’ Lakeshaw said sourly, disliking everything he’d heard.

‘D’you think I don’t know that? D‘you think I’ll ever forget it, as long as I live?’

‘I hope not.’ Lakeshaw wondered when Sergeant Lyalt had first heard of the affair. She’d probably known for weeks. If so, he’d have her guts for garters. It was a crucial piece of evidence that could have saved them days and days of unproductive time.

‘So what exactly did the poor cow say that night? Before she started to show her desperation?’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to remember. I’ve been going over and over it ever since. I think it went like this: “Martin, he’s back. I know it’s him. I keep seeing him in the garden now, as well as the street, waiting for when I open the back door to put the cat out. I know he’s going
to do something soon. I have to put the cat out through the window now, so that he can’t force his way past me. Even when I can’t see him, I know he’s waiting out there somewhere. Please, Martin. I can’t go on like this. I know he’s going to hurt me soon. Please help. You must. There’s no one else.”

‘I knew it was nonsense, sir, but she was in such a state that I promised to go round as soon as we had a free moment here. Then when I said she’d have to go home and wait for me, she flung herself at me, clinging and crying about how Michael Handsome was going to kill her and no one cared.’

‘Who?’ Lakeshaw was on his feet, his hands bunched into fists again.

Waylant stood, his jaw hanging open, making him look like an idiot. Lakeshaw fought his hands back to his sides.

‘Who did she say was going to kill her?’

‘Handsome. The bloke she was so scared of. Sir, what is this?’

Lakeshaw watched Waylant’s face get even more blank and wondered which of them had lost it.

‘She actually told you it was one of the Handsomes?’ Waylant nodded. ‘Not Paddy Maguire?’

‘Who?’

‘Paddy Maguire. The man she told Frances Mason all about, who’d beaten her up when she was pregnant, and against whom she’d taken out an injunction.’

‘She never said anything about anyone called Maguire, sir. It was always the Handsomes.’

‘She
must
have told you about Maguire. According to this Mrs Mason, she was shit scared of him because he’d put her in hospital years ago and was now stalking her.’

‘She never said anything to me about any Maguire. She hated mentioning names. But it was the Handsomes she was so scared of. Everyone knows that.’

Lakeshaw felt dizzy with rage that this idiot hadn’t had the guts to come clean in the beginning. ‘You’re absolutely sure, Waylant, that she never said anything to you about anyone called Maguire?’

‘Of course.’ Waylant had stopped looking scared; now he was all injured innocence, the little shit. ‘I’d have told you that at once if you’d let me speak to you. I’ve been trying to talk to you for days.’

The phone rang. Lakeshaw picked it up and barked his name into it.

‘John Smith here, from Southwark. I think we might have your man for you, Lakeshaw. A pair of brown polyester trousers has come to light with a lot of blood on them.’

‘Thank God for that. Where?’

‘Well, they belong to Gary Handsome, but they’ve been found in his mother’s flat. He forced her to hide them for him in case we searched his place, as of course we did. I know it’ll screw up your time-of-death because he’s got that alibi for Tuesday night. But we all know pathologists make mistakes sometimes. He was probably sober enough to have gone round there in the early hours of Wednesday morning.’

‘Ah.’ Lakeshaw was looking across the desk at Waylant, but seeing only his own mistake.

He was trying to remember if the name of the man who’d terrified Jeannie Nest had ever been mentioned in any of his conversations with Waylant. He was sure it hadn’t. He’d never have ignored that. They’d talked about the Handsomes, of course, but only because he’d been trying to get Waylant to confess that he’d taken their money to betray Jeannie Nest.

Once it was clear that he hadn’t, Lakeshaw hadn’t bothered any more with Waylant, fobbed him off on to Sergeant Baker every time he tried to talk. Then had come the Handsomes’ alibis and Frankie Mason’s information
about Paddy Maguire. Then the CCTV films showing Maguire roaring towards Jeannie Nest’s flat, which proved he’d been lying … Shit! All that wasted time.

‘That poor woman,’ Smith was saying down the phone into Lakeshaw’s half-attending ear. ‘She’s been so badly beaten and bullied first by her husband then her son until she’d do anything either of them told her. Even hide incriminating evidence for them. Though why she didn’t burn the trousers I don’t know.’

‘Maybe the worm’s turned – or been thinking of turning – and she hung on to them to use against him.’

‘Maybe.’ Smith didn’t sound convinced. ‘But you’ll need to get the lab on to the bloodstains. Will you send someone for the trousers?’

‘Straight away. Have you picked up Handsome yet?’

‘No. We didn’t want to bugger up your plans. D’you want us to arrest him for you? We easily could. We’ve checked and he’s back from wherever he’s been hiding.’

‘Who knows about the trousers?’

‘His nephew, young Michael, who found them and brought them straight in, his mother obviously, but she’s in hospital, and three officers.’

Something sprang open in Lakeshaw’s mind and he clamped a hand over the phone.

‘Waylant, did you say just now that it was
Michael
Handsome who so spooked the victim?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Lakeshaw thought of the mummy’s boy he’d seen when he’d been round to suss out the Handsome family with one of the local plods. Looking much younger than his almost twenty-one years, little and blond and rubbing his old granny’s back. Could he ever have been capable of doing what had been done to Jeannie Nest? Lakeshaw was determined not to let another stupid mistake make itself around him, so he kept his cool.

‘That’s more than enough,’ he said into the phone. ‘Yes,
you’d better pick him up right away, and the nephew too, but don’t ask any questions yourselves. We don’t want the clock running before I’ve got them here.’

‘The nephew’s at the hospital, seeing to poor old Lil, who was badly beaten up this morning.’

‘He’s what?’

‘He was collecting stuff for her when he found the trousers, brought them straight round. He’s a good lad, and told us all about his uncle and how he’d threatened the old girl. Mikey looks after her, you know.’

Lakeshaw put down the phone without another word and ran, bellowing for Sergeant Baker as he went. He caught sight of Trish Maguire in the front hall, arguing with the desk sergeant, and took a moment to tell them both that she could see her father.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘I can’t stop to explain. Talk to your father. I’ll sort out the formalities later.’

 

Mikey was sitting by his nan’s bed with the case under his feet. It had all gone well at the police station. They’d taken the trousers and practically wet themselves in gratitude. He knew they’d soon find that there was blood from two women on them, but that wouldn’t matter. It might even help the story. Gal’s Wanstead victim had probably reported the assault – or at least gone to hospital to get herself patched up – so once they really started looking they’d track her down. And unlike Miss Nest, she was still alive to identify her attacker. It would all fit. Gal had done her two days before the murder. They’d think it’d just got him feeling excited and brave enough to do what he’d always talked about: have his revenge on the woman who’d put his old man inside.

Mikey’d had to waste quite a bit of time ‘explaining’ how he’d found the trousers, but he was here now. And not before time, he could see. His nan was white as paper
and her face was kind of sunk in, so that she looked even older than she was. Her eyes were closed and her mouth looked crumpled. Her body was all tied up to machines and there was a bag hanging beside the bed. He knew from the red in it that they had got her kidney. And he knew what that meant.

The doctor had taken him on one side and warned him months ago that any more punishment and it’d give out. At first Mikey couldn’t think what he was talking about when he said that Mrs Handsome ought to stop riding the motorbike now and playing rugby. But eventually it had dawned on him that the bloke was making a feeble joke. Once that was out of the way, they’d had a serious talk about how dangerous it would be for her to risk any more damage to the kidney. It could be as little as a bad fall on her back, say, downstairs. If that was true, it meant that a kicking like this might be fatal.

It didn’t need the nurses being so kind and telling him they’d made sure she wasn’t in pain, or keeping away from them to give him time alone with her, to tell him she was dying. He’d known that if her remaining kidney went she was done for.

‘Be careful what you ask for; you may get it,’ Miss Nest always used to say when they were talking after school. ‘You could do anything and go anywhere and be anyone, Michael, but be careful what you ask for; you may get it.’

Well, he’d got the money now, and his uncle wouldn’t be troubling him for a long, long time. He could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, just like she’d always said. But just like she’d said, he might not want it when he’d got it. With his nan dead he’d have lost everyone he’d ever cared about. A tear trickled down his face, like a fly walking down it. He pushed it off, but then another came and another.

He wished his grandmother’s eyes would open. He picked up her hand and stroked it, but there was no
movement from her. He wanted to hear her say, ‘You’re a good boy, Mikey,’ like she always did. But today her lips were lying thin and slack against her teeth. It was odd seeing her without her red lipstick. Her mouth looked pale purple, as though she was dead already, but he could hear her rattly breathing and see her chest rising under the thin blankets.

‘Nan …’

She didn’t answer.

‘Nan.’ Nothing moved except for the rhythmic lifting and collapsing of the bedclothes over her chest. ‘I only wanted to talk to her.’

It didn’t seem fair. Miss Nest had been the one person who’d believed in him in the days before his nan even knew who he was. His slag of a mother couldn’t be bothered with him and his dad just clouted him whenever he was out of prison, and all the boys at school had picked on him because he was small and pretty. But his teacher had listened to him and liked him, encouraged him to work and taught him how to protect himself from the bullies. And then she’d gone and given evidence against his grandad.

Like Gal and his grandad, he’d hated her for grassing them up, but he’d hated her much more for running away and leaving him to the useless teachers he’d had after her. They’d all known who he was and what his family was, and they’d treated him as though he was like the rest, good for nothing, which was why his nan had eventually sent him to her sister in the fucking country. Older now, and a lot more sensible, Mikey could put the blame squarely on his grandad, but at the time it had felt as though everything was Miss Nest’s fault. If she’d kept her mouth shut, they’d all have been OK. And she’d have stayed at the school and seen him through to the kind of life he’d deserved all along.

He hadn’t believed it when he’d seen her in the street, only minutes from the estate one Sunday when he’d been
coming back from an all-night cabbing shift. He’d known her at once, in spite of her short dyed hair and spectacles, and he’d been amazed at the excitement he felt. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her that he was going to be someone after all, to hear her talk to him again like she used to do. There’d been a small boy with her, and Mikey had followed them back to Hoxton.