Playing the Game (36 page)

            When I identified myself as Detective Patton, his eyebrows raised slightly; his first indication of surprise perhaps? ‘You’re Detective Patton?’ he repeated. ‘The same Detective Patton who is on the news? The same Detective Patton whose daughter was abducted by The Chemist?’ He took my silence as an affirmative. Maybe he saw the answer in my eyes. I held the warrant up.

            ‘We have a search warrant for the house and grounds’, I informed him. Once again, his eyes didn’t give anything away.

            ‘Well then, you’d all better come in’, he gestured to the officers from the black and whites who had gathered behind us during my brief exchange with Farrington. The officers rushed in, leaving Farrington alone with Charlie and I. ‘May I ask what this is about?’ he enquired.

            ‘We’re here to talk to you about Sarah Caldwell’, I informed him ‘You’re daughter’, I added, looking him in the eyes to gauge his reaction. Several seconds passed, waiting for him to respond, before he finally looked down, nodding. It was almost as if he’d been weighing up a decision whilst he was thinking.

            ‘Detective Patton, may we speak in private?’ he enquired. ‘Well, not quite in private actually’, he added, ‘but without any other law enforcement present?’

            I paused for a moment, before finally agreeing. ‘Why don’t you oversee the search Charlie boy?’ I turned to my partner who understandably seemed reluctant to leave me. ‘It’s ok’, I told him. ‘I’ve got this’.

            As Farrington led me into his study he was seemingly impervious to the surrounding chaos the search was already producing; the officers, and now Charlie, were leaving no stone unturned in trying to find any evidence that Sarah Caldwell had been here. ‘Please be seated Detective’, he gestured that I should sit in one of the chairs by the fire. ‘I have something I need to tell you’, he told me, ‘but if you’ll give me a couple of minutes, I’ll be right back’. I nodded my response.

            He was gone for no more than ninety seconds. When he reappeared, he wasn’t alone. ‘Detective Patton’, he introduced, ‘this is my son, Daniel Farrington’.

            I shook Daniel’s hand. He was tall and slim and he had his hair tied back in a pony tail that reached his shoulders. He wore small rimmed spectacles that he took off when he sat down. He looked younger than thirty-one and far from the heir to the Farrington Network that I knew he was. I sat now, waiting expectantly.

            ‘Let me begin by saying, Detective Patton, I assume you are not wired?’ he raised a quizzical eyebrow, ‘Because that would be entrapment you know, as I’m no doubt you are fully aware?’ I shook my head.

            ‘I’m not wired’.

            ‘And son’, he turned to Daniel. ‘I can only hope you can forgive me for what I’m about to tell you’. For the first time, I saw real emotion in Farrington’s eyes; almost pleading. Daniel remained silent and Farrington began.

            ‘May I ask what led you here, Detective?’ Farrington enquired.

            ‘We know about Anne Caldwell’, I responded. There was no harm in letting him know we knew that.

            ‘Ah yes, Anne’, he began. ‘Well son, I’m not proud to say that in the earlier years of my marriage I wasn’t a hundred percent faithful’, Daniel remained as impassive as his father had when we announced our arrival. ‘That’s not to say I didn’t love your mother, Daniel, I loved her very much, but …’ he trailed off, maybe knowing there was no justification for his actions.

            'My wife, Detective, was unfortunately never able to conceive but she wanted a child more than anything else in the world. Daniel is adopted. Well, I say adopted; it is true to say that he is biologically my son'. I could tell from the lack of reaction on Daniel's part that this was not news to him.

            'I began an affair with Anne Caldwell, who worked for me in one of my offices. She fell pregnant, entirely unplanned by both parties, in the spring of seventy-eight. This came as a shock of course, but upon reflection, I saw an opportunity to give my wife exactly what she wanted. Anne's husband was in the middle of serving a two year stretch in County and Anne was fearful of having an abortion in case it led to fertility complications. I confessed to my wife, who I was able to convince that this was a one-time indiscretion on my part, and convinced her that we should take Daniel as ours once he was born'.

            'And Anne was happy to just hand him over, was she?' I questioned.

            'Ah well she was more than compensated for that', Farrington continued. 'Besides, how was she going to explain the addition of Daniel to her husband upon his release?  Anyway, we took Daniel the day after he was born and my wife loved him like he was hers each and every day. We both did'.

            'If you don't mind me saying, he doesn't seem entirely surprised by these revelations', I noted.

            'We told Daniel they truth about his real mother just after his seventeenth birthday', Farrington clarified. 'What you don't know, son', he turned to Daniel, 'is that my affair with Anne Caldwell resumed and she fell pregnant again the following year. This time, I didn't even consider the route I took the first time; my wife would never have forgiven me a second time and Anne's husband had been released'.

            'So you never stayed in contact with Anne then?' I questioned.

            'I saw Anne and my daughter once after Sarah was born', Farrington stated, then saw neither of them again. Anne did send me letters and photographs but I never answered one'. I detected a note of remorse in his voice. 'I think she wanted me to save her', he said. 'I knew her husband beat her …'

            'So if you didn't keep in contact, how did you know that Sarah Caldwell was actually your daughter?'

            'I intercepted a file from an email between Burr and McCrane, as I often do to keep tabs on their activities; a file detailing their plan to free Sarah Caldwell from San Quentin. The name of course struck a chord, so naturally I took a closer look. I knew Anne had named her child Sarah from the letters she had sent me but I knew I could not allow myself to keep in contact with either Anne or Sarah for the sake of my marriage, so I had no idea what had become of Sarah until I intercepted this file. The file, Detective, had a complete history of her life – including the address of her childhood residence. An address I knew well. The address in Wilton. At first I tried to dismiss it, I really did. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. There was a computerised sample of her DNA in that file on the email so to put my mind at rest and be a hundred percent sure, I had some tests run’.

            ‘What kind of tests?’ I asked.

            ‘Well I have an independent contractor who does me favours of that kind from time to time and I had him run what was on that file against my own DNA. There were matching strands and from there, well, finding her was easy enough'.

            ‘I now knew what she had become’, he continued ‘The file had everything in there. I knew about the triple homicide that she was convicted of. I don’t know; I felt
responsible
somehow. I knew I couldn’t let her fall under the control of Burr and McCrane, I had to help her. I thought I could help her. I thought I could save her. A bit late I know but …’

            ‘How did you think you could save her?’ I asked.

            ‘I was going to have her placed securely, anonymously at a private psychiatric hospital; the best money could buy. She’d have been safe there. She’d have been saved’.

            ‘When was the last time you saw her?’ I wanted to know.

            ‘Well I approached her at the safe house. She’d already killed the two guards by the time I got there’. His face was ashen as he recalled what he’d seen. ‘I’m not sure she really believed that I was her father to start with but I had the letters and photographs from her mother. I was soon able to convince her of the truth. She stayed here for a week or so before she fled. She overheard me arranging something with the hospital’, he almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. ‘But she telephoned me last night and said that I could do one thing for her’.

            ‘And what was that?’

            ‘She told me all about you. She told me how you ran her brother off the road eight years ago and that if ever you were to come knocking on my door, asking questions, then maybe she was dead. That if you came here Detective, then I should deliver you a message’.

            ‘And what is that message?’ I demanded, trying to comprehend what I was being told.

            Farrington almost smiled. ‘The message is, Detective Patton, that even if she was killed during the course of your recent investigation, she had taken the precaution of setting up another game. ‘One that would be executed by one of her
followers’
was how she put it’.

            I sat in the chair, too numb to speak or move at the thought that this was going to continue, somewhere, somehow. Farrington turned to his son, who had remained silent throughout.

            ‘Son, can you forgive me?’ Farrington looked at Daniel who began to slowly nod. ‘I’m sorry Daniel, I’m so sorry’.

            ‘Do you think mom would forgive you if she was alive?’ Daniel’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. 'My real mom, I mean, not Anne Caldwell'. Farrington looked a little surprised at the question, but answered it, nevertheless.

            ‘I’m, I’m not sure she would’, he responded honestly. ‘I’m sorry’. Farrington looked like he’d unburdened himself of a weight that he had been carrying. Maybe not only since he found out what his daughter, Sarah Caldwell, had become, but for many years.

            ‘In that case’, Daniel replied as he reached into his jacket pocket, ‘I’m not sure I can forgive you either’.

            He pulled a small tape recorder out of his pocket and silently passed it to me and I let out a huge sigh of relief. He’d gone through with it. Whatever Charlie had said to him last night had been enough.

            Farrington stared open mouthed as I checked the tape recorder. I looked at Farrington and smiled. ‘You asked if I was taping our conversation’, I told him. ‘You didn’t ask if Daniel was’. Farrington had no reply, his mouth wide open, trying to take in the betrayal of his only son.

            I was about to read Farrington his rights, when a question that had been burning for the last few minutes rose to the surface. ‘One thing I don’t understand’, I told him, ‘is why you would do what Sarah Caldwell asked of you. Why would you put yourself at risk, taping aside, by telling me all that? Why incriminate yourself?’

            Farrington looked up again. ‘If I’d known my only fucking son was taping me’, he couldn’t hide his anger, ‘then of course I wouldn’t have. But she asked me to and she’s my daughter. If there’s one thing that you should understand, Detective, given all that you have been through in the last two days, is that we, as fathers, should do everything in our power to honour our children’s lives and wishes’.

            He was right. I understood that only too well and for a moment, I almost sympathised with him. ‘No matter what they have done’, he added. Whether he was talking about Sarah Caldwell’s actions or Daniel’s betrayal, I wasn’t sure. Not that it really mattered. I read Robert Farrington his rights, charged him with aiding and abetting a known felon, then called for Charlie to assist me with him to our car.

99

Three months later

            Judge Charles Walker watched as the twelve members of the jury filed back into the courtroom silently. He cast a look over the courtroom, which was packed to the rafters. Everyone was waiting on the verdict the jury would be delivering shortly. He could only begin to guess the media circus that lay in wait outside for all concerned, no matter what the verdict. One by one the members of the jury sat down and, as he always did, he tried to read the verdict from their faces. They weren’t looking at the accused but what did that matter? Many would have you believe that if a jury doesn’t look at the defendant on the way back into court then they have reached a ‘guilty’ verdict. His years of experience presiding over trials such as this had shown him that wasn’t strictly true. He’d had some high profile cases during his fifteen year tenure in his position but none more so than this one. He waited until everyone was seated before he spoke.

            ‘Would the foreman of the jury please stand’, he asked. Walter Kordinzki stood up, all too aware that all eyes were now on him. A respectable middle aged businessman, used to holding his own negotiations in the board room, he had been a natural choice for foreman and had received no opposition to his proposal that it should be him. In truth, when he’d looked around his fellow jurors on the first day, he doubted whether any of them had the balls to step up to this position with this case being so high profile. ‘Have you reached a decision?’ Kordinzki cleared his throat.

            ‘We have, your Honour’.

            ‘Very well’, Walker nodded. ‘Would the accused please stand?’

            Senator Conrad Conway stood up, exuding confidence and charisma, confident of the jury to his right delivering the correct decision. Ever since Burr and McCrane had been assassinated by Leon Reno, the scumbag that had given him up as he lay in the road dying, Conway’s life had been almost intolerable. There had been nothing substantial to link him to the murders except the word of a low-life, drug abusing loser and a couple of other minor, circumstantial pieces of evidence, yet all this time had been wasted trying convict him of ordering the hits on Burr and McCrane. Conway smiled as he looked at the judge and cast a sideways glance at the jury, and the foreman in particular. Well there was no reason for Conway not to feel confident was there? Only two days ago, Kordinzki had accepted thirty thousand unmarked US dollars to steer the jury the way they needed to go. Not that he’d had any direct contact with any of the jurors himself, but two of his associates had found Kordinzki easy enough to turn. They hadn’t even had to threaten to harm his wife and two children if the wrong decision was made, although they would have been more than happy to make that threat on his behalf. Nevertheless, until Conway heard the words spoken, he couldn’t be one hundred percent.