‘Because I could,’ was Ledger’s self-assured response. ‘Because it’s my firm.’

  Minter cocked his head, waiting for a bit more. ‘Was it because you and Robin actually were very good friends?’

  Ledger stiffened and crossed his arms. ‘All right… look, Robin was my only real mate at school. He was a decent bloke. He stood by me. We got in touch via Facebook a while back. You know how it is… Folks look up folks from back in the day, right? Just out of curiosity to see how they’re doing. Anyway, having reconnected, I found out he was struggling a bit. So, I suppose, out of a sense of gratitude – misplaced in hindsight – I offered him a job. He said he was up for it. He was coming back to the UK anyway, so… why not?’

  Boyd texted Okeke. Push him on the job offer. Why him? No relevant experience.

  Okeke looked up from the phone on her lap. ‘But, as far as we’re aware, Robin has no experience in finance, does he?’

  Richard chuckled. ‘Like I said to your colleague yesterday. It’s not rocket science.’

  ‘What is your business exactly?’ she asked him.

  ‘Financial management and advice,’ Ledger replied promptly. ‘There’s not much to it, to be honest. We reach out to retired investors who are looking to make their pension pots do a little more for them. The money goes into our fund, which is, in turn, managed by an investment broker that I trust. We’ve got three funds: low, middle and high risk. We give our clients the advice to come in on low risk. Then, when they feel confident they’re in safe hands, we look at encouraging them to step up.’

  ‘To high risk?’ Okeke asked.

  ‘To higher risk,’ Ledger replied. ‘But, honestly, it’s all pretty safe really. Post Covid, the areas we invest in are all steady.’

  ‘So how do you make your money?’ Okeke asked him.

  ‘A handling fee and a slice of the appreciation of their value. They do well; we do well.’

  ‘So what was the job you offered Robin?’ Okeke asked.

  ’Financial planner. Which is to say, glorified telesales. My team cold-call potential investors. It involves a bit of hand-holding, a bit of trust development. We let them know that we’re not sharks; we’re here to work together, to help them leverage that pension into something more useful. That kind of thing. Nothing that requires expert knowledge of the markets, just a nice manner… and a lot of patience.’

  ‘So then,’ resumed Minter, ‘you offered him the job. And what happened after that?’

  ‘I gave him a start date,’ Ledger replied. ‘I explained that when he turned up I’d give him some training, get him settled in and at the same time we’d sort out his paperwork and so on.’

  ‘And when he didn’t show up for work?’ Minter asked.

  Ledger shrugged. ‘To be honest, I let it go. I guessed he got cold feet, or maybe he found a better offer elsewhere.’

  ‘You didn’t chase him up? Call him? Send him a text asking what was going on?’ cut in Okeke. ‘Since he was an old friend.’

  ‘No. Contrary to current appearances, I’m extremely busy most of the time. I threw him a bone for old times’ sake. If he couldn’t be bothered to turn up, or at least out of courtesy send me a text and say why he wasn’t there…’ He spread his hands. ‘Well, I can’t be doing with time-wasters. I offered to help him. I did my bit.’

  Minter nodded. ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘So…’ Ledger looked at his watch. ‘You wanted me to look at some photograph, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, we did.’ Minter reached into his folder and pulled out the scan of the driving licence. The name and details on it had been blacked out with a marker pen, only the small, head-and-shoulders picture was visible.

  Ledger squinted at the picture for a moment. ‘Sorry, mate, I’ve no idea who that is.’ He passed it back. ‘Should I?’

  ‘It’s someone we think might have known Robin,’ volunteered Okeke.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m sorry, we can’t say.’

  ‘Right. Well, I honestly don’t recognise that bloke. Sorry. So… is that us done then?’ He checked his watch again. ‘I’ve got an unsupervised sales team waiting for me back in London. For all I know they could be sitting around with their feet up on their desks and drinking coffee.’

  Boyd texted Okeke. DNA swab.

  ‘Almost,’ said Okeke, looking up from her lap again. ‘We’d like to take a DNA swab from you before you go.’

  ‘DNA?’ Ledger looked surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just a routine thing, Mr Ledger, while you’re here.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re talking about forensics, aren’t you?’

  Okeke remained tight-lipped.

  ‘Wait…’ He looked from one detective to the other. ‘If you’re talking forensics… you’ve actually found him, haven’t you?’

  Good Cop Minter nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘He’s not a missing person any more?’ Ledger sat back down. ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘We have recovered a body, yes,’ replied Minter. ‘And it has recently been identified as Robin Whitehead.’

  ‘Shit,’ he uttered. To Boyd, who was sitting next door, he seemed genuinely shocked.

  ‘But why the hell do you need my DNA?’ Ledger asked.

  ‘As a matter of procedure,’ said Okeke. ‘We need to work through everyone he might have encountered once he had returned to the UK.’

  ‘I spoke to him over Skype. Over Facebook. That is literally it,’ Ledger said. ‘We never actually had a face-to-face encounter.’

  Okeke offered him a firm but placatory smile. ‘As I said, it’s routine procedure. We just want to rule you out of things so that you can get back to your business.’

  Ledger took a moment and shrugged. ‘Fine. If that’s what you need, you’d better get on with it.’

  Inside the viewing room, Boyd could feel himself wilting as Okeke snapped on a pair of gloves, pulled out a testing kit and came around the table to take a mouth swab.

  Ledger hadn’t refused. Which wasn’t the response he’d been hoping for.

  ‘That’s it?’ said Ledger after she’d capped the cotton bud.

  ‘That’s it,’ confirmed Okeke.

  ‘I’m free to go now?’

  Boyd quickly texted. Yes.

  She nodded.

  ‘And thanks again, Richard, for coming down,’ said Minter, getting up. ‘My colleague will show you out.’

  The feathered chavs were being particularly bold today, swooping and diving at anyone daring to emerge from the pier café with food in their hands. Boyd chose a picnic table as far away from the overflowing bin as possible. The gulls had staked a claim around it, making it their centre of operations, and were busy pulling everything out from it and onto the decking.

  Boyd watched Warren and O’Neal queueing inside the café for their lunch order.

  ‘So, what were your impressions, boss?’ Minter asked.

  Boyd gathered his thoughts. ‘One thing I did notice is that Ledger seemed genuinely surprised at the news that Whitehead’s dead. That – plus the fact he seemed willing to do the swab – makes me think we might be barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘Maybe he was just shocked that we’d found the body he thought he’d safely stashed away?’ suggested Okeke. ‘And the willingness to be swabbed… was just an act.’

  ‘He could easily have said no,’ said Minter. ‘He wasn’t under arrest.’

  ‘But if he’d refused, he’d know that we’d know he had something to hide,’ she replied. ‘He’s not an idiot.’ She turned to Boyd for support. ‘Come on, guv.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Boyd. ‘He may have guessed that we were hoping he’d refuse. But…’

  ‘Which makes him a very clever, very slippery bastard,’ said Okeke. ‘He’s bought himself a bit of time. Time to get his story straight. Time to lawyer up… Maybe even time to flee the country. We should have hit him with everything we had.’

  Boyd shook his head. ‘He’d have clammed up and “no commented”.’

  ‘But what if he does flee?’ Okeke said.

  ‘He won’t. An attempt to leave the country would just add weight to his guilt. That’s usable in court.’ Boyd looked at her. ‘We have to play the long game, Okeke. You know the drill. We’ve got to give the CPS as much as we can.’

  Every move Richard Ledger made from now on could potentially be admissible and usable. If he was guilty of murdering his three friends, then giving him enough rope with which to hang himself was the smart move.

  ‘We’ll get his swab over to Ellessey. Hopefully we’ll have the results by tomorrow. If it’s a match with the coffee cup, then we can get CPS to greenlight an arrest-and-charge. Until then, whatever he’s up to over the next twenty-four hours… any calls he makes, anything he googles on his phone or laptop, becomes ammunition the prosecution can use. If he’s panicking right now… he’s going to be building up a mountain of evidence for us further down the line.’

  ‘Hey! Watch your heads!’ said Minter.

  A gull swooped down over them and landed on the end of their table, beady eyes searching it thoroughly before it changed tack and interrogated them for scraps.

  ‘Go on, bugger off!’ said Minter, waving his hands at the bird. It eyed him defiantly for a moment, then leapt off the table and down onto the decking to check the planks for pickings.

  ‘Bloody gulls!’ grumbled Minter. ‘It’s all these flaming holidaymakers that attract them.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Okeke. ‘It’s just Boyd. He’s their secret deity. They just want to commune with him.’

  ‘Commune?’ Boyd lifted a brow. ‘I’ll give them bloody commune.’ He swung his foot at the bird, which hopped back a few steps and carried on eyeballing him from a safer distance.

  40

  Boyd returned home to an unusual silence. Where, he wondered, was the deafening canine welcoming committee beyond the front door. He let himself in, bemused by the calm. He walked down the hall and was about to call out that he was home, when he heard the pleasant sound of Charlotte and Emma chatting in the dining room.

  He tiptoed to the dining-room door and peered in. It was empty. They were both in the tiny kitchen prepping dinner. He lingered.

  ‘Oh, but, you know, he’s going to love being Grandpa Bill, Emma.’

  ‘God. That’s what concerns me. What the hell’s he going to be teaching my offspring?’ Emma replied with mock horror.

  ‘What was he like with you when you were a little one?’ Charlotte asked.

  A pause. He could hear chopping. ‘Well, he taught me to swear. My first word, apparently, was “bloody”.’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘Oh God, I bet your mum wasn’t too pleased.’

  ‘Nope. She wasn’t. My first actual phrase was “bloody scrotes”.’

  They both chuckled.

  ‘How was he with your little brother?’ Charlotte asked.

  The sound of chopping paused. He could imagine Emma cocking her head, recalling a very different time, a different life. ‘I remember him and Noah on the floor wrestling. They had their own little game: Poison Ivy.’

  The name of the game stung him. He’d forgotten all about it. He used to lie on the floor, coiled up in a foetal position, and the game was for Noah to step stealthily past him. If he made too much noise, Boyd would spring to life and snatch Noah into his arms. The more he struggled, the tighter the grasp; the less he struggled, the looser it got until he could worm his way free, giggling as he did so… and the game would start all over again.

  ‘They played soldiers too, setting up little plastic men and pew-pew-pewing them until they were all knocked down. They made little Lego forts… you know? He was more hands-on with Noah than me,’ continued Emma. ‘I think he knew what to do with a boy.’

  ‘Well, whether this little one is a boy or girl, I’m pretty sure they’ll have him wrapped around their little finger from day one,’ said Charlotte.

  There was a long pause as Emma resumed chopping. Boyd was about to announce his presence when she spoke again. ‘I hope so. I really hope so.’ He could hear raw emotion surfacing in his daughter’s voice. ‘I need him. I need him to be around, to be a grandad… to be my dad… to…’

  Her voice died away and he heard Charlotte offering murmured words of comfort.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ said Emma. ‘It’s fine… I’m good. It’s just the onions.’

  I am going to be here for you, Ems, Boyd answered silently. He’d walked away from the scan this morning feeling positive. That parting I’m-not-saying-anything smile from the radiographer, he convinced himself, had been answer enough. He was going to be around to make sure Baby Boyd learned a whole load of godawful language.

  He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He quickly shuffled up the hallway before they noticed the noise. He opened the front door quietly and stepped outside.

  ‘Bill Boyd speaking, who’s this?’ he said.

  ‘It’s Dr Chudasama, your oncologist,’ came the reply.

  ‘Ah, hello there!’ Boyd said, closing the door noisily behind him as he stepped back into the house. A moment later Ozzie and Mia were dancing circles around his feet, jumping up at him. ‘That was incredibly quick!’ he said loudly.

  ‘Yes. It was quick. I received your scan results this afternoon,’ Dr Chudasama continued, his tone flat and neutral. ‘I have some news for you…’

  41

  Boyd went into work the next day nursing, what O’Neal would call, a bitch of a hangover. A stupid, ill-advised, middle-of-the-working-week one. He made a beeline for the kitchenette and slapped the kettle on. He needed coffee. A strong one.

  Last night at the Pump House he’d sealed his fate by ordering that second bottle of merlot. Emma wasn’t drinking for obvious reasons and Charlotte had barely helped him out at all. He’d had the best part of two bottles all to himself. Emma and Charlotte, he vaguely recalled, had had to steer him up the hill as they’d walked back home.

  He smiled to himself as he watched the kettle boil.

  It had been a celebration. A well-deserved one.

  The news from his oncologist had been Bloody Good News, in his humble opinion. There were no signs of any secondary tumours in the scan. It was all clear, except for that gnarly-shaped twiglet protruding from his bowel. Dr Chudasama’s call had been carefully measured to manage Boyd’s expectations; of course it had. But, essentially, the tumour was stage two and operable. Surgery was needed asap – in the next couple of weeks if Dr Chudasama could find a spare slot in his theatre schedule. And, yes, unfortunately there would be six months of chemotherapy afterwards to make damned sure no rogue cells had begun to set up home elsewhere in his body.

  But, as far Dr Chudasama was concerned, it was all very treatable and Boyd had a very high probability of experiencing a full recovery.

  So, naturally, in light of that, he’d decided to take ‘the girls’ down to the Pump House for some pub grub – sod their half-prepped dinner – and now he was paying the price for it.

  ‘Boss?’

  It was Minter, standing in the doorway, looking fresh-faced and particularly energised. ‘We’ve got us a match on Ledger’s DNA.’

  The CID pool cars were available once again, to Minter’s profound relief. With Okeke back behind the wheel of a car that wasn’t hers to crash, she was inclined to drive more conservatively.

  ‘What time are we rendezvousing with them?’ she asked.

  ‘Eleven thirty. Outside,’ Minter confirmed.

  He noticed her check her watch. ‘We’ve got loads of time, Okeke, don’t worry.’

  ‘I hate driving into central London,’ she replied. ‘Flippin’ Deliveroos and those stupid hipster scooters are everywhere.’

  Minter had the warrant for Ledger’s arrest freshly signed and sitting on his lap. He was a little surprised that Boyd hadn’t opted to come along with them. He was usually after any excuse to get out of the station.

  ‘So, what’s up with the boss, then?’ he asked after a while. ‘Sam?’

  She shrugged. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know him best,’ he replied. ‘You must have noticed he’s been very cranky of late, out of sorts?’

  ‘He seemed fine this morning,’ she replied, keeping her eyes on the road for once.

  ‘Yes, oddly enough, this morning he’s been in a much better mood, even though he’s hangin’ like a sign. But he’s been a grumpy bugger recently and he’s been late in a few times.’

  She remained silent.

  Which, to Minter, meant she probably knew something. ‘Samantha?’

  ‘It’s personal,’ she replied eventually.

  ‘Ah. So you do know what’s up with him? Is he ill? It’s not cancer, is it?’ he guessed.

  She nodded.

  ‘Ah, man, you’re shitting me – that’s bloody awful, that is,’ said Minter.

  ‘Look, he doesn’t want anyone to know. Emma told me; it wasn’t him. He doesn’t want a pity party so keep schtum, okay?’

  He nodded. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to run up to him and give him a big sloppy cwtch. Just keep me in the loop, all right?’

  She nodded. ‘Okay.’

  They parked up outside Stern House on Charter Street: a Jenga brick tower of glass and cladding, dwarfed by the much larger looming glass-and-steel structures all around it. They were five minutes late and a patrol car was already there, waiting for them. Minter went over to introduce himself.

  ‘Hello, I’m DS Steven Minter from East Sussex CID and this is DC Samantha Okeke,’ he said.

  ‘Morning,’ the officer replied. ‘So… who are we arresting?’

  Minter handed him the warrant. ‘One Richard Ledger,’ he said.

  42

  Boyd started the recorder and waited for the test bleep to finish. ‘The date is the fifteenth of June, 2023, and the time is three thirty p.m. Present in the interview room are DCI William Boyd, DS Steven Minter, interviewee Richard Ledger, and his lawyer…’