Beresford and Crane looked at her in stunned silence. They had worked with her for a long time, and if they’d been asked to describe her in five words, the first word they’d both have come up with would have been ‘controlled’.

  But she was far from controlled now. She seemed on the verge of hysteria.

  ‘You need to calm down, Kate,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Calm down?’ Meadows repeated.

  ‘If the police happen to pull you in for questioning when you’re in this state, you’re sunk.’

  ‘I thought the whole point of this little investigation was to ensure I wasn’t pulled in for questioning,’ Meadows said.

  ‘We’ve done our best to avoid that happening, but our best may not have been good enough,’ Beresford said heavily. ‘I think one of the things we should be working on now is damage control.’

  ‘I agree,’ Crane said. ‘So what will you tell the police if they want to question you, Sarge?’

  ‘Tell them about what?’ Meadows asked, obtusely.

  ‘About the time you spent in Lofthouse’s home.’

  ‘I’ll tell them exactly what I’ve told you at least ten times – that I changed my mind and left.’

  ‘That isn’t going to be good enough – and you know it,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Well, it will have to be,’ Meadows answered, defiantly.

  ‘Cast your mind back a few years, Sarge,’ Crane said. ‘If you’d been in charge of the interview and the suspect had told you what you’ve just told us, would you have left it at that – or would you have wanted more?’

  ‘I’d probably have wanted more,’ Meadows admitted, ‘but there isn’t any more to tell. I changed my mind, and I left.’

  ‘Did you tell him you were leaving?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Yes … no … I don’t remember.’

  She’s lying, Beresford thought. There’s something she doesn’t want to tell us about, and I hope to Christ it isn’t that …

  ‘It’s probably not as bad as it looks,’ Crane said, with mock-optimism. ‘If the police believe – as Colin and I are convinced they do – that both killings were carried out by the same man, then any case they’ve been building up against you will fall apart when they realize you’ve got an alibi for the time Hadley was being murdered.’

  ‘You do have an alibi, don’t you?’ Beresford asked. ‘You were at home when Hadley was killed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Meadows said, looking away.

  ‘You’re lying,’ Beresford told her.

  ‘All right, I wasn’t at home,’ Meadows confessed angrily. ‘I was feeling very nervous that night, so I went for a long drive. But I never went anywhere near Hadley’s house.’

  ‘How do you know where Hadley’s house was?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘I read it in the papers, like everybody else.’ Meadows stood up. ‘I can’t take any more of this. Carry on with the investigation or don’t carry on with the investigation. I really don’t care – because I’m out of it.’

  Beresford and Crane made no attempt to stop her. They watched her walk to the door and disappear into the night.

  Then Beresford turned to Crane and said, ‘Do you think she killed Lofthouse?’

  ‘She’s certainly got the nerve and the skill – but so have a lot of other people,’ Crane replied.

  ‘Answer the question,’ Beresford said sharply.

  ‘No, of course I don’t think she killed him,’ Crane said.

  ‘I don’t, either,’ Beresford said.

  Neither of them sounded convinced.

  ‘You’ll have noticed I’ve not switched the tape recorder back on, won’t you?’ Chief Superintendent Towers asked Freddie Bairstow.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s because we’re going to play a game, and I don’t want any record kept of it.’ Towers paused, perhaps to allow his message to sink in. ‘Now, here’s how we play this particular game,’ he continued. ‘I ask you a question I really want to know the answer to, you give me that answer, and I let you go. Have you got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Freddie Bairstow said.

  And he was thinking, this is one big scary bastard.

  ‘Now here’s the question – how did you know that the man who left the club with Zelda was called Lofthouse?’

  Freddie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just did.’

  Towers moved incredibly quickly. One second he was sitting down, seemingly perfectly relaxed, the next he was on his feet, delivering a back-handed slap that knocked Freddie off his chair and sent him sprawling on to the floor.

  It had been a while since Freddie had been knocked down, but his reflexes were still there, and he was back on his feet, his hands bunched into fists, in a couple of heartbeats.

  A lesser man would have instinctively cowered in the face of an imminent fight-back, but Towers held his ground.

  ‘If I was you, I’d think twice before I punched a senior police officer,’ he said, ‘because if you do, I’ll make sure you never see the light of day again.’

  Freddie unclenched his hands, and sank back into his chair.

  ‘Now that’s the first intelligent thing you’ve done since you got here,’ Towers said. He held out a handkerchief. ‘Your mouth’s bleeding. However did you do that, lad?’

  Freddie took the handkerchief and gently dabbed his mouth. ‘I must have walked into a door, Mr Towers,’ he said.

  ‘It’s easily done, but you really should be more careful,’ Towers said, in a friendly voice. ‘Now, to get back to my question. The reason I’m intrigued, you see, is that I just can’t work out how you could possibly have known Lofthouse’s name. Let’s look at the evidence. He was wearing a mask, so you couldn’t have recognized him. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Towers.’

  ‘And as you told Sergeant Dickhead Boyd, there was no register of members and no membership cards. You weren’t lying about that, were you?’

  ‘No, Mr Towers, I swear I wasn’t.’

  ‘The whole point of the Hellfire Club was that people could do dirty, disgusting things to each other anonymously. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Towers.’

  ‘So given that premise, it’s unlikely, isn’t it, that Lofthouse would have revealed his name to a piece of shit like you? So I’m still asking myself where you got the name from, and I think I’ve come up with an answer. Would you like to know what it is?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Towers.’

  ‘You have to say “please” first.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Please, sir.’

  ‘I think that after Lofthouse was murdered, someone came to the club trying to track his movements – and he was the one who told you. Now he couldn’t have been from the force, because we’ve only just discovered what a dirty pervert the man was. So I’m guessing it was an ex-bobby, and I’d like you to give me his name.’

  He hadn’t done much in my life he could be proud of, Freddie thought, but he wouldn’t betray the man who helped him when he was a kid.

  ‘No comment,’ he said.

  Towers looked pained. ‘Don’t be difficult, Freddie,’ he said. ‘You don’t want me to knock you to the floor again, do you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t make any difference if you did,’ Freddie told him. ‘It’d still be no comment.’

  ‘It’s a question of loyalty, is it?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Then let’s just test how strong that loyalty is,’ Towers suggested. He reached into his pocket, and produced a small bag. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  No, but I can guess, Freddie thought.

  ‘I don’t want to play this game,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a pity, because I’m quite enjoying it,’ Towers said. ‘This, my friend, is a bag of heroin. I should, by rights, have booked it in as evidence, but it slipped my mind, so there’s no record of it anywhere in the system. Now, anyone caught with this amount of skag is classified as a dealer, so if we were to find it on you …’

  ‘I’ve never used it,’ Freddie protested. ‘Not once.’

  ‘That makes your position even worse,’ Towers said. ‘The judge might just possibly show a little mercy to a man who is an addict himself, but a man who deals in human misery purely for his profit …’

  ‘Colin Beresford,’ Freddie gasped. ‘The man who came to see me was called Colin Beresford. He used to be a bobby himself.’

  Towers reached across the table, and patted him on the cheek.

  ‘Good boy,’ he said.

  Louisa Rutter’s body was screaming to her that what it needed most in the world was to go home and get horizontal.

  But she couldn’t go home, not while her half-brother was somewhere out there, being hunted by men with guns. And so she sat in her office – her back aching, her eyes stinging – looking at her computer screen and hoping that one of the reports being fed into it might give her some clue as to where Philip was, so she could get there before the armed police, and persuade him to surrender.

  When she heard a tentative knock on the door, she looked up and saw a blond-haired gangly-looking man standing there.

  She recognized him, though he had never worked directly with her. He was a sergeant in the CID. And his name was …?

  Boyd! Daniel Boyd. And if she remembered correctly, his nickname was Dogged Dan.

  She gestured he should enter the office.

  ‘What can I do for you, sergeant?’ she asked.

  He seemed very ill at ease, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and then back again.

  ‘This is very difficult for me, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘I can see that,’ she told him. ‘But it’s rather like getting into an outdoor swimming pool in winter.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am?’

  ‘My advice to you would be to just close your eyes and jump in.’

  Boyd closed his eyes, swallowed, and opened his eyes again.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Towers has been investigating your mother, ma’am,’ he said in a rush.

  ‘He’s been doing what?’

  ‘At least, he’s been investigating members of your mother’s old team, which suggests she might be involved.’

  Oh, she will be, Louisa thought. If the old team are involved, Monika won’t be far behind.

  ‘What is it they’re supposed to have done?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re conducting their own investigation into the murder of Andrew Lofthouse.’

  Oh God, was it as bad as that?

  ‘Does he have any proof of this, or is it no more than a vague suspicion?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘He knows that Dr Crane has been questioning some of the witnesses, and that Colin Beresford has been talking to the bouncer at the Hellfire Club. I don’t think he’s gone so far as to get sworn statements yet, but that shouldn’t present him with any problems.’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ Louisa said, gloomily.

  ‘You know why he’s doing it, don’t you?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I know exactly why he’s doing it. What I don’t understand is why you are doing it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, ma’am,’ Boyd said.

  ‘Office politics is a dangerous game to play, and the lower down the food chain you are, the more dangerous it is,’ Louisa said. ‘And you, sergeant, are very low down indeed.’

  ‘With respect, ma’am, I don’t need you to remind me of that,’ Boyd said.

  ‘So what I have to ask myself is why you brought this to me. You can’t have taken the risk through personal loyalty, because we’ve never worked together.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Boyd said. ‘It is a sort of loyalty though – maybe I should call it loyalty to the job, or loyalty to myself.’

  ‘I’d like you to explain that to me,’ Louisa said.

  ‘I was questioning Freddie Bairstow, the bouncer at the Hellfire Club, and I was developing this very promising lead when Mr Towers burst in. He ordered me out of the room, and questioned Bairstow himself – with the tape recorder turned off, and no other witnesses.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ Louisa said.

  ‘There’s more,’ Boyd said. ‘Mr Towers had Freddie released, and when I asked him what else Freddie had said concerning the lead I’d been following, he said the matter had never come up. You see what this means, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, but I’d prefer you to spell it out for me,’ Louisa told him.

  ‘Mr Towers didn’t follow through on the one good lead we have. He doesn’t care who killed Lofthouse and Hadley. All he’s concerned about is nobbling you. Well, I do care, and I want him out of the way, so the investigation can be conducted properly.’

  ‘What was this lead you were following that you think was so promising,’ Louisa asked.

  ‘When Andrew Lofthouse left the Hellfire Club on the night he died, he was accompanied by a sadomasochist in a purple wig, who said her name was Zelda. Now if we could track her down …’

  That purple wig! It was years since Louisa had given it so much as a thought.

  Boyd was still talking earnestly about the investigation, but she had stopped listening, and all he had become to her was an unwelcome buzz in the background.

  Could it get any worse than this, she moaned, under her breath. Could it possibly get any bloody worse?

  TWENTY

  Monika Paniatowski had just opened her front door and stepped into the hallway when she heard the phone in the living room start to ring.

  ‘Sod off!’ she said wearily.

  She took off her coat, and hung it up. She had spent the entire day visiting Philip’s known haunts. She had talked to dozens of members of Whitebridge’s shadowland – many of them her old snitches. She had reminded them of past favours, and offered them future rewards, and still got nothing. No one, it seemed, had any idea where Philip might be. The phone in the living room was still making its incessant demand.

  ‘Get stuffed!’ she said.

  She sat down on the chair next to the coat rack and took off her boots. Despite the fact they were fur-lined, her toes felt frozen. She was getting too old for this kind of work, she told herself.

  She padded into the living room and glared at the phone, which was still screaming for her attention. On the outside chance it might be someone who had information about Philip, she picked it up.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘It’s me,’ replied a voice that was almost as familiar to her as her own.

  She let out a gasp which was a mixture of fear and excitement. ‘Have you found him, Louisa?’ she asked. ‘Do you know where your brother is?’

  ‘I’m not ringing about Philip,’ Louisa said, and there was an edge to her voice that would have frozen milk. ‘How could you do it to me, Mum?’

  ‘How could I do what to you?’ Paniatowski asked, but the second the words were out of her mouth, she understood. ‘You’re talking about my investigation.’

  ‘Your investigation!’ Louisa repeated with contempt. ‘The police investigate. What an old woman like you does is snoop.’

  ‘You have to understand the circumstances—’ Paniatowski implored.

  ‘Is Kate still calling herself Zelda?’ Louisa interrupted.

  ‘How … how did you know that?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘For God’s sake, Mum, I lived in the same house as you for nearly twenty years. Do you really think you have any secrets from me?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Paniatowski confessed.

  ‘I’m expecting a call from Chief Superintendent Towers sometime in the near future,’ Louisa said. ‘He’s not my biggest fan.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t be,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘I remember him when he was a sergeant, and even back then …’

  ‘He’s been putting together a dossier on you,’ Louisa said. ‘I don’t know exactly what he’s got yet, but it’s bound to be pretty damning. You deliberately withheld information from the police, and you interfered with witnesses.’

  ‘We never—’

  ‘You talked to witnesses before they’d been questioned officially. Did that serve to modify the evidence they’d eventually give? I don’t know. But it could have – and under the law, that’s enough. You perverted the course of justice, and in a murder case that will definitely get you a prison sentence. The maximum sentence that can be imposed is life imprisonment. Do you realize that?’

  ‘Of course I realize that,’ said Paniatowski. ‘I was a bobby myself – and a good one.’ She paused, then said whimsically, ‘If I do go to prison, it will at least give me something in common with my son, which I suppose is a sort of silver lining.’

  ‘You can’t treat this as a joke, Mum,’ Louisa said angrily.

  ‘Can’t I?’ Paniatowski mused. ‘What else is there left for me to do? But I’m sorry for the rest of the team. Do you think they might get off if I took sole responsibility?’

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘This whole thing isn’t about you at all – it’s about me!’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Towers wants me gone. He’s not even approached me yet, but when he does, he’ll offer me his dossier on you in return for my resignation.’

  ‘But that’s blackmail!’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Very good,’ Louisa said. ‘You should be a detective!’

  ‘Now who’s making a joke out of it?’ Paniatowski asked accusingly.

  ‘Like you said, what else can we do?’ Louisa replied.

  ‘I’d like to be there when he offers you that deal,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I’d just love to see his face when you turn him down.’

  ‘I won’t be turning him down,’ Louisa told her.

  ‘I can’t let you destroy your career for me,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you embarked on this madcap adventure of yours,’ Louisa said cuttingly. ‘But it’s not open for discussion. Whatever it costs me personally, I can’t see my mother going to gaol.’

  ‘Louisa …’ Paniatowski pleaded.

  ‘Well, now that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business,’ Louisa said crisply. ‘The woman who Lofthouse left the Hellfire Club with was Kate, wasn’t it?’