The Kill (27 page)

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Derwent was not in the mood for levity, I gathered. ‘This is such a waste of time.’

‘They have to protect the officers.’

‘In case someone tries to finish them off? Hardly likely.’

‘We don’t know why they were targeted,’ I pointed out. ‘You can’t assume it was random. Maybe there was a reason for that TSG team to get shot up. Maybe one of the survivors was supposed to die.’

‘Kerrigan,’ Derwent said in a pained whisper. ‘Not now.’

I looked up to see an elderly patient staring at us, wide-eyed, his knuckles white on his walking frame. I smiled and held up my ID. ‘Police.’

‘Put it in the tray,’ the bigger constable said. I did as I was told.

‘Anyway, I’d say this is mainly about keeping the press out,’ I went on. ‘You know they’d love to get hold of the families, even if they can’t get an interview with the men themselves.’

Derwent nodded. ‘I do know. Bill Stokes’ fiancée was offered five thousand by the
Mail
for her story.’

I stopped for a moment to wonder at Derwent’s ability to get the inside track on these things. ‘Did she take it?’

‘She’s holding out for ten.’

‘Good for her, I suppose.’

‘I’d prefer a copper and his family to get it than some bloody no-mark celebrity selling copy about their latest divorce.’ Derwent had passed the inspection and was deftly restocking his pockets: phone, notebook, pens, gum, paperclips, change, a fold of notes – because like many police officers he was paranoid about card fraud and used cash for preference.

‘I’m not so sure.’ I took my bag back from the smaller constable. He’d done an absolutely terrible job of searching it but I wasn’t about to point that out. At least he’d been quick. I picked up the leather wallet that contained my warrant card and frowned as something crinkled. I flipped it open and picked out the cellophane-wrapped lollipop that was caught inside it.

‘Is this yours?’

‘Thank you.’ Derwent whipped it out of my hand.

‘I didn’t think sugar was allowed on your diet.’

‘It’s not a diet, it’s a training regime.’ He tucked it into the top pocket of his jacket. ‘So you don’t think the families should go for a quick buck from the press.’

‘If you take their money, they own you. I don’t think there’s any amount of money that would make up for the loss of privacy.’ I was thinking about how easy it had been to ignore the offers I’d received from various newspapers to tell my side of the story the previous year, when Derwent had been shot while being simultaneously brave and a dickhead.

For once, Derwent was thinking along the same lines as me. ‘We both turned down a bit of money from them, didn’t we?’

‘You might have struggled more with the decision. I think you were offered more than I was.’

‘That’s because I was the hero and you came along for the ride.’ Derwent whipped through a set of double doors before I could reply, letting them swing back in my face.

I was preparing a riposte as I followed him, but I didn’t get to use it. A small boy was running towards us, laughing, pursued by a grey-haired man. Outpaced and winded, he called, ‘Kian, stop.’

As the boy hurtled past him, Derwent put out a hand and fielded him. ‘Where are you running off to?’

‘Nowhere.’

Derwent squatted down to be at eye level with him. ‘Just running?’

The boy nodded. He’d gone from giddy to serious. I thought he was five or six – young enough to need to run around a lot just to stay sane. The elderly man reached us and took the boy’s arm.

‘He’s bored, I’m afraid. He’s been here all day yesterday and today. It’s no place for a child but his mother won’t let us take him home.’

The boy looked up at us. He had a lot of dark hair and an impish face. ‘I should be in school but Daddy’s sick.’

‘Poor Daddy,’ Derwent said. He looked up at the man. ‘Is Daddy Tom Fox, by any chance?’

He nodded. ‘My son.’

I showed my warrant card. ‘We’re here to talk to him.’

‘I thought you might be. He’s in room 412.’

Derwent stood up. I hadn’t seen him so much as move his hand towards his pocket, but when I glanced down at Kian the boy was holding the lollipop.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

‘Be good for your granddad.’ Derwent actually ruffled his hair. I raised my eyebrows as we walked away and got a very discouraging look: one more thing never to mention again, I gathered. Derwent was always most ashamed of what other people would consider his good points.

We passed an elderly woman who was sitting on a chair in the corridor, watching the boy and his grandfather. I assumed she was Tom Fox’s mother. She looked exhausted, and worried, and more than a little fed up. I knew how she felt. I’d sat in enough hospitals waiting for something to happen to be very familiar with the combination of stress and boredom that made it a particularly torturous experience.

Derwent paused at the door of room 412, which was standing open, and rapped on it. ‘Sorry to bother you. Mind if we come in?’

‘Depends on what you want.’ Tom Fox was lying back against a stack of pillows, his face grey and, at that moment, unwelcoming. A large bandage covered his shoulder. He looked too tall for the bed and too wide, his arms bulging with muscle. His wife was standing by the bed, worrying at her nail varnish. She looked fragile, with big shadows under her eyes. She was wearing high-heeled boots and pale pink skinny jeans with a low-cut cream jumper – very clinging and feminine. Her hair was elaborately curled. I guessed she was the kind of person who put on her make-up to put out the bins. The near-death of her husband was no reason to let her standards slip.

‘DI Josh Derwent and DC Maeve Kerrigan. We’re investigating the deaths of your colleagues.’

Fox swallowed. ‘All right. Come in.’

‘Not for too long,’ his wife said sharply. ‘You don’t want to get too tired, Tom.’

‘I’m not doing anything else.’

‘Talking is tiring.’ She put a hand out and rested it on top of her husband’s. He shook it off.

‘Stop it, Kells.’

‘Sorry.’ Her eyes welled up. ‘I’m only trying to look after you.’

‘I don’t need you to do anything. Look, just go and have a coffee, okay? Or take Kian home. You don’t have to be here.’

‘I want to be here.’

‘You’re driving me mad.’ His jaw was clenched.

Derwent cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Fox, I promise we won’t keep your husband talking too long. We really need to talk to him about the shooting. We’ve tried to give you as long as possible.’

‘Not that long. He had an operation yesterday. A general anaesthetic. He’s still recovering.’

‘Kelly, for God’s sake. I can talk for myself. I’m fine.’ To us, Fox said, ‘Before you ask your questions, tell me what’s going on with Stokesy.’

‘William Stokes? He’s still unconscious.’

‘Shit,’ Fox said. ‘That’s not good.’

‘Don’t read too much into it,’ I said. ‘They’re keeping him under at the moment. They have to wait to see how he gets on in the next few days.’

Fox shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it. All the guys. One minute everything was totally normal. Then I see Wadey’s head snap back and I’m thinking to myself, that’s a bit odd, and I haven’t noticed the windscreen is shattered too because I’m so busy staring at Wadey and wondering why he isn’t moving and why his head looks so strange. They blew his face off.’ He said it in a wondering tone, as if he still couldn’t take it in.

‘Martin Wade was driving,’ Derwent said.

‘Yeah. He always drove. They did him first. Then Makers when he was jumping out to help Brods and Stokesy.’

I was keeping track without too much difficulty. Makers, I had guessed was Jordan Makepeace. Brods was Stuart Broderick. And Stokesy was William Stokes. I would have bet a week’s wages that Fox’s own nickname among his colleague was Foxy.

‘Then the shooter came up close to the van for the rest of us. He went along the side, shooting. He was so deliberate. No nerves. Professional.’ Fox was sweating now. He moved restlessly against the pillows, trying to get comfortable. ‘Makers was still alive for a while. He bled out. If I could have got to him I could have helped him. I could have saved him.’

‘No point thinking like that,’ Derwent said. ‘You’ll drive yourself mental second-guessing what you did or didn’t do.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘I know.’ Derwent waited for a moment, respectful. ‘You said the gunman came up close to the van. Did you get a look at him? Can you tell us anything at all about him?’

‘I can’t tell you his height. I was inside the van so I’d only be guessing.’

‘We can estimate that quite accurately from the mobile-phone footage someone took of the shooting,’ I said. ‘Our problem is the quality of the recording is bad. We can’t see much more than his height and build. Did you notice anything else? His colouring, or his hair?’

‘I didn’t get long to look at him,’ Fox said, thinking about it. ‘He was white. He had a hat pulled down low so I couldn’t really see anything but his eyebrows. They were light brown but they could be darker than his hair. He could be fair.’ He swallowed a couple of times. ‘Could I have some water?’

His wife held out a cup with a straw in it and he drank a little.

‘Could you see his face clearly?’ Derwent asked.

‘He had his jacket zipped up all the way, to just under his mouth. I could see his mouth, nose and eyes. No chin, no jawline.’

‘And did you get a good look at the features you could see?’

‘Only for a second. Enough to recognise him again, I think.’

‘What about looking at some pictures for us?’ Derwent nodded to me and I handed him a folder. He flipped it open to reveal a stack of mug shots.

‘Have you got suspects? Already?’ Fox asked.

‘Not exactly,’ Derwent said. He was shuffling through the pile, discarding anyone who didn’t fit the correct description.

‘Who are they, then?’ He stretched to pick up one of the pictures Derwent had taken out and stared at it.

‘Gunmen. People who shoot people for a living. We’re not looking for someone starting out, are we? This isn’t the kind of thing you’d do unless you were pretty confident about your abilities. You said it yourself, the way he went through you was professional.’ Derwent began to lay out the pictures on the table, as if he was setting up for a game of solitaire.

Fox struggled to sit up. His wife bent to help him and he snapped, ‘Leave it. I’m fine.’

His attention was on the pictures so he didn’t notice the look on his wife’s face. It was anger more than upset. I had always found it harder to worry about someone in hospital than to be the patient myself, pain and frustration notwithstanding. Kelly Fox might have looked like sugar and spice with a French manicure but there was more to her than that.

‘Not him. Not him.’ As Fox went through the pictures, Derwent slid them off the table and replaced them with another.

‘He’s a possible.’ Fox tapped one image. ‘That’s quite like him.’

Derwent went very still for a moment, his expression unreadable, even to me. ‘Okay. Keep looking.’

‘Not him. Not him. Not him.’ Fox went back to the one he’d indicated before and held it up in front of his face. He was frowning with concentration. ‘I really think this could be him. Who is he?’

‘A guy called Tony Larch.’ Derwent was sounding deceptively calm. I looked sideways at him, noting the muscle that had gone tight in his jaw.

‘Does he seem like the type?’ Fox asked.

Derwent tried to smile. ‘Not a very nice person. It would certainly be well within his powers. And he shaves his head. That might explain why you didn’t see his hair.’

‘Well, I don’t think it’s any of the others.’ Fox slumped back against the pillows. ‘That’s all I can say.’

‘You’ve been a big help.’ Derwent shuffled all the pictures back into his folder and handed it back to me. ‘Look after yourself, mate. Try not to stress about what happened.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’

‘You’ll get counselling.’ Derwent grinned. ‘Of course, that’s generally a complete waste of time unless you get a good-looking woman counsellor. At least then you can distract yourself. Let your mind wander.’

Fox glanced sideways at his wife, pulling a naughty-boy face. She didn’t look amused.

‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Of course, Mrs Fox.’ Derwent put his hands behind his back, so polite it was almost a parody.

‘These shootings are a big deal, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, very much so. They’re getting all the resources we can throw at them.’

‘So how come you’re the ones who are here to talk to Tommy? Why isn’t anyone important here? Why hasn’t that superintendent been here?’

Much more than sugar and spice. Pure steel, when you got down to it. Derwent didn’t answer her straightaway and she waited, hands on her hips, her expression a challenge.

Fox groaned. ‘Come off it, Kelly. It’s not a big deal. He’s busy.’

‘And you’re the only witness who was anywhere near the gunman. I’d have thought it was worth his while to come and talk to you. Every time I switch the telly on he’s there going on about finding the gunman and keeping London safe and he doesn’t even have the courtesy to come and see you himself. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t get it.’

Derwent stood up a little straighter. ‘The superintendent is running the whole investigation, Mrs Fox. He delegates the different jobs to people like me and her.’ He pointed at me. ‘That’s how it works. He can’t do everything himself or it would take too long.’

‘I understand that. I’m not stupid.’ She had gone pink. ‘But you pick and choose what you do, don’t you? You prioritise the important things. Isn’t Tommy important?’

‘Of course he is,’ I said. ‘I know the superintendent will want to talk to him himself soon. But just at the moment—’

‘I think I can live without seeing the great Superintendent Godley in person,’ Fox said, rolling his eyes. ‘You just fancy him, Kelly.’

‘That’s not true. That’s not what I was saying.’ The tears that had filled her eyes started to overflow. She shoved her knuckles under her eyes, desperately trying to save her make-up. I hoped she’d had the foresight to use waterproof mascara.