Rough Justice (10 page)

‘Thanks, Dan.’ She flashed him a smile and headed upstairs.

Shepherd finished his meal, drained his glass, and made himself a mug of coffee. He took it through to the sitting room and dropped onto the sofa. Liam’s phone was on the coffee-table. Shepherd picked it up and scrolled through the Gallery, looking for the video he’d taken of Liam trying to walk the dog. He found it and watched it, chuckling at his son’s attempts to stop the dog jumping up.

There were a dozen other videos of Liam trying to teach the dog tricks. The beagle could just about obey the ‘sit’ command but clearly didn’t understand ‘stay’ and would only stare at Liam, bemused, as he tried to teach her to offer her paw. Liam was good with her, though, never raising his voice, talking to her patiently and quietly as he explained what he wanted her to do. Shepherd smiled and put down the phone. He tried watching an old movie on Channel 4 but he was too tired to concentrate so he switched off the television and the lights and went upstairs.

His son’s bedroom door was ajar and Shepherd peeped in. Liam was fast asleep, lying on his back. The beagle was lying next to him, her head on the pillow. They were both snoring softly. Shepherd gently closed the door.

Gerry McElroy carried his mug of coffee into the sitting room and sat on the sofa facing the big-screen LCD television. It was nine o’clock in the morning but McElroy had been up since five. He rarely slept more than a few hours. The coffee was all he would have for breakfast. He couldn’t face food, not since his daughter had died. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t concentrate on anything except that Debbie was dead.

He fought back the tears and sipped his coffee. Nothing had any taste now. His wife said he had to eat, he had to keep his strength up, but he was never hungry. Every evening when she came home from work she’d cook him a meal and he’d have a few mouthfuls. Then he’d put down his fork and shake his head. He didn’t want food. He didn’t want anything. He just wanted his darling Debbie back and that was the one thing he’d never have.

To the left of the television there was a set of shelves. He’d put them up himself, a couple of months after they’d moved into the house. Debbie had been two years old; she was walking but not talking, other than to say ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ and ‘Milk’, but she had sat on the sofa and watched as he’d cut the wood, sanded it, and screwed the brackets to the wall; she’d watched him as if he was the most important thing in her life.

On the third shelf down there were half a dozen framed photographs. Three were of Debbie on her own, and had been taken at school. One was from the day she was born. It had been a long birth and a difficult one, and the strain was written on his wife’s face, but she smiled proudly at the camera, which had been held by a nurse, clasping the tiny bundle that was Debbie to her cheek while he looked on, tears in his eyes.

The largest picture was a family group, snapped one Christmas when his in-laws had come to stay. Their neighbour had popped around for a drink and she had taken the photograph. His wife’s parents were so happy to have a grandchild. Their daughter was an only child, and you could see the joy in the faces. Debbie had been three, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, with a face that always seemed to be smiling. They had known there would be no more grandchildren for them. The obstetrician had said McElroy’s wife’s womb had been damaged by the birth and she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. It hadn’t mattered then because Debbie was the perfect child.

A tear ran down McElroy’s cheek and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He cried every day. Every day and every night. His wife was so much stronger than he was. Maybe it was because she was an A and E nurse so she saw death on a regular basis. Maybe it was because she was just tougher than he was. She never cried in front of him, hadn’t even at the funeral, but sometimes late at night she’d lock the bathroom door and he’d hear her sobbing inside.

His wife had gone back to work the day after the funeral. McElroy had stayed at home. He couldn’t face leaving the house. He owned a small printing company and his partner had told him to take off as much time as he wanted. There would never be enough time, McElroy knew. Time wasn’t helping, and it wasn’t healing. He missed Debbie as much that day as he did the day that she died. He spent most of his time lying on the single bed in his daughter’s room. Everything was exactly the same as the day she’d left for school. He could still smell her on the pillow, and if he lay there long enough he could sometimes imagine that she would be home at any moment, throwing her school bag on the floor, hugging him and telling him she’d missed him so much.

Tears streamed down his face and he blinked, trying to clear his eyes. He put down his coffee, went into the kitchen and pulled several sheets of paper towel off the roll. Debbie’s homework schedule was still on the fridge: Wednesday, Maths and Literacy. McElroy jumped as the doorbell rang. He tossed the wad of kitchen towel into the rubbish bin and walked slowly along the hallway. He made out two blue uniforms through the frosted-glass window. Police. McElroy stopped. He didn’t want to talk to the police. There was nothing he wanted to say to them any more, and every time they turned up on his doorstep they only had bad news for him. He turned to go back to the sitting room, but then one of his visitors knocked. ‘Gerry, it’s the police. We need to talk to you.’

‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ said McElroy. ‘Just leave me alone. Come back when my wife’s here. She’ll talk to you. She likes to talk, my wife.’

‘We don’t want to talk to your wife, Gerry. We want to talk to you. That’s why we waited until she went to work.’

‘What do you want?’ said McElroy.

‘We want a chat, Gerry. Trust me, you’ll want to hear what we have to say.’

McElroy opened the front door. There were two men, in uniform. He didn’t recognise them, but in the weeks following his daughter’s death there had been dozens of uniforms in his house, all of them sympathetic, all of them powerless to get him the one thing he wanted – justice. One was wearing a fluorescent jacket over his uniform. He was the younger of the two. His colleague was in his late thirties, bigger and stronger. They both removed their hats as they stepped across the threshold.

A grey police van was parked outside. A uniformed driver was looking in their direction. He put his hand to his forehead and saluted McElroy. Then Fluorescent Jacket closed the door behind them.

The constable walked through to the sitting room. McElroy got the feeling that it wasn’t the man’s first time in the house, but he couldn’t remember his face. He was sure that he hadn’t seen the policeman in the fluorescent jacket before, though. ‘What did you say your name was?’ he asked him.

‘I didn’t,’ said the policeman. ‘Can we sit down? Have a chat?’ He walked past McElroy into the sitting room and sat next to the constable.

McElroy stood facing them, his arms folded.

‘You were heard talking in the pub, Mr McElroy,’ said the policeman. ‘Talking about the man who killed your daughter.’

McElroy said nothing but stared sullenly at the two men.

‘You’ve been saying things, Mr McElroy . . . saying that you wanted al-Najafi dead, that you wanted to do to him what he did to your daughter.’

‘That’s what this is about, is it?’ McElroy snarled. ‘That piece of shit comes to my country, drives around without a licence and without insurance, kills my little girl, gets out of prison on bail so that he can apply for asylum, and I get my nuts kicked for saying it’s not right. Fuck this country. Fuck England and fuck you.’ He pointed his finger at them. ‘Get the fuck out of my house or I swear to God I’ll kill you.’

Fluorescent Jacket put up his hands, smiling. ‘Easy, Gerry,’ he said softly. ‘We’re not here to give you a hard time. We’re on your side. We’re here to help.’

McElroy lowered his finger, frowning. ‘Help? How can you help me?’

The policeman pointed at the armchair by the fireplace. ‘Sit down, Gerry, and I’ll explain.’

The van came to a halt and McElroy felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘You can lift your head now, sir,’ said the policeman in the fluorescent jacket. ‘We’re here.’

McElroy looked up. They had stopped in front of a metal-sided industrial unit. There was a for-rent sign on the front door. They had driven for almost thirty minutes and for most of that time McElroy had had his head down so he had no idea of where they were.

Fluorescent Jacket opened the side door of the van, climbed out and waved for McElroy to follow him. He took a key from his coat pocket and used it to unlock the door. He pushed it open and nodded for McElroy to go through.

The industrial unit was empty, stripped of whatever machinery it had once contained. There were oil stains on the wall and a metallic smell in the air. Mohammed Hussein al-Najafi was standing on an oil barrel in the centre of the building, his hands bound behind his back with duct tape. There was more tape around his mouth. He was standing as erect as he could to ease the pressure on his neck caused by a chain that ran over a metal girder in the roof. If he stood perfectly straight the chain was tight but he could still just about breathe. Al-Najafi was wearing dirty blue jeans and a blue and grey checked shirt with dark sweat patches under the arms. It was a cold day but he was sweating a lot, sweating like a man who knew that he was in a lot of trouble. He was in his early forties, his skin leathered from years in the hot sun, his hair black and glossy, flecked with dandruff.

McElroy would never forget the Iraqi’s face. He had been to all three of his court appearances and had stared at the man, wishing he was dead, wishing he’d had a loaded gun in his hands. Al-Najafi had never once expressed remorse, never said he was sorry, never even admitted his guilt. He hadn’t spoken a single word in court: a solicitor in an expensive suit with a Louis Vuitton briefcase had done all the talking for him.

‘What’s happening?’ said McElroy. ‘Why’s he up there?’

‘Because we’re granting your wish, Mr McElroy,’ said Fluorescent Jacket. ‘This is the man who killed your little girl. Killed her and ran away. We know that the system has failed you. He’s out on bail now and that’s not fair and even if the courts do find him guilty then the most he’ll get is five years and that’s not enough. An eye for an eye, that’s what we believe in. And that’s what you want, too.’

‘But . . . how . . .’ McElroy was unable to believe what he was seeing or hearing. A sudden thought struck him: maybe it was a trap. Maybe the police were testing him. A second officer, a large West Indian with massive forearms and legs that looked as if they were bowing under the weight of his huge torso, walked into the unit.

Fluorescent Jacket put a hand on McElroy’s shoulder. ‘We’re taking a risk letting you do this, Mr McElroy. But we think you deserve it.’

‘But you’re the police . . .’

‘It’s because we’re the police that we’re doing this,’ said the officer. ‘We’re sick of seeing scum like him walk free. He killed your daughter and hasn’t even had the decency to admit what he did. He’s playing the system, Mr McElroy. First, he said it wasn’t him driving. Then, when the forensic evidence and witnesses showed he was lying, his defence team came up with a new strategy, that he was so traumatised by what had happened in Iraq that his first thought was to run. He might get away with it, too. It wouldn’t be the first time that a sympathetic jury let an asylum seeker get away with murder.’

McElroy frowned. ‘Is that true?’

‘As true as I’m standing here,’ said the policeman. ‘The CPS is spitting feathers but there’s nothing they can do. This is England, and under English law he can put forward any defence he wants. He’ll say that he’s been having flashbacks to being tortured by the police in Iraq so his first thought when he hit your daughter was to run away. Then his brief will say that he’s stricken with grief but that it wasn’t really his fault and so on and so on.’

‘And he’ll get off?’

‘He might go down for dangerous driving, but if they make it careless driving he might not even go to prison.’

‘That’s . . .’ He shook his head, unable to find the right word.

‘Unfair? I’m afraid that’s the way it is, these days, Mr McElroy. The entire criminal justice system is slanted towards the criminals. And, make no mistake, that’s what this scumbag is. A criminal.’

Fluorescent Jacket nodded at his colleague and the big policeman walked over to a metal crowbar that was leaning against one of the walls. He picked it up and gave it to Fluorescent Jacket, then headed towards the exit.

‘I’m going to leave you alone now,’ said the policeman. He handed the crowbar to McElroy. ‘Do whatever you want,’ he said. ‘We’ll clean up the mess.’

McElroy stared at the crowbar. Then he looked up at al-Najafi. The Iraqi was struggling to stand on the tips of his toes to ease the pressure on his neck.

‘Are you okay, Mr McElroy?’

McElroy nodded but didn’t say anything.

‘It’s justice, Mr McElroy,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s what you deserve.’

The phone rang and Katra answered it. She waved the receiver at Shepherd. ‘Caroline Stockmann,’ she said.

Shepherd grimaced. Stockmann was the undercover unit’s resident psychologist and he had already missed two appointments to see her.

Katra saw his discomfort and put her hand over the receiver. ‘Shall I say you’re not here?’ she asked.

‘I’d better take it,’ said Shepherd. ‘I can’t avoid her for ever.’ He took the receiver. ‘Caroline, sorry I missed our last session,’ he said brightly. ‘I was away on a job.’

‘So I gather,’ said Stockmann.

‘I’m going to be in London on another operation, so we could do it next week,’ he said.

‘I thought we could do the Mohammed-mountain thing again,’ she said. ‘Remember that pub where we met last time I was in your neck of the woods?’

‘Yes,’ said Shepherd. It was just half a mile from his house.