Deity

‘There must be a bus service,’ reasoned Noble.

‘Or maybe Rusty had a car that we don’t know about. Maybe he walked to my cottage from the intended crash site after leaving that car nearby.’

‘A car nobody saw,’ said Noble.

‘With a body hidden in the boot which matched his DNA?’ added Gadd with a doubting eyebrow. ‘That doesn’t sound very likely, sir.’

‘And don’t forget they found the incinerated laptop and camcorder. .’

‘Props,’ said Brook. ‘Like the laptop he left in his bedroom.’

At that moment the hearse pulled into the large crescentshaped driveway followed by relatives’ vehicles. Press cameras began to whirr.

Roz Watson stepped from the first vehicle in a black trouser suit. She was tiny and Brook almost didn’t recognise her without her grey dressing-gown. Her husband’s coffin was in the hearse and the pall-bearers gathered at the doors to carry it into the chapel.

James Henry Watson had watched the final Deity broadcast in horror, while staying at the house of his brother and his wife. His mood had worsened during the day, according to all witnesses, and later that evening after receiving a text purporting to be from his daughter, he had snuck into his brother’s garage and hanged himself with an extension cord.

Roz Watson kept her eyes lowered from the flash of the cameras, but when she saw Brook, she stopped and marched defiantly over to him. ‘Bastards,’ she screamed as though the dialogue during the search of her house had never ended. ‘This is your doing.’

The cameras flashed even more urgently at the scent of conflict, but the three detectives maintained expressions of stone in the face of such an absurd accusation. Taking their silence as admission, the shrivelled woman raised a hand towards Brook but thought better of it, instead snarling, ‘When can I have my Adele back?’

Brook lowered his head. ‘Her death is still the subject. .’ He choked on the official language and took a breath before looking directly into the wizened face of the grieving wife and mother. ‘As soon as possible,’ he mumbled.

She stared for a moment longer then went away to follow her husband to his final resting-place. Brook caught sight of Charlton in full uniform. They exchanged a nod of acknowledgement before Charlton ran a surreptitious eye over Brook’s suit.

Brook arrived home late that evening, finally able to park outside his cottage. After the Watson ceremony he’d attended a simple service for Phil Ward that Brook had arranged and paid for himself. He was the sole mourner. A few hours on the phone had turned up an elderly mother in Harrogate but she had been too infirm to travel and, not having ‘clapped eyes on him for thirty year’, she couldn’t be persuaded to accept Brook’s offer of a taxi-ride down the M1.

Back at his cottage as night fell, Brook sat on the garden bench in shorts and T-shirt, a jar of whisky and a cigarette in one hand. He spent a couple of hours mulling over the Deity case, trying to form the qualms he’d expressed to Noble into a credible theory. Defeated, he trotted up to his doorless bedroom and went straight to sleep, dreaming about walking up a strange rock formation in Australia and meeting Rusty at the top.

What we see and what we seem is but a dream.

Brook woke in the night and sat bolt upright in bed.

‘Sir, it’s three o’clock in the morning.’

‘It’s Philippe, John.’

‘Sir?’

‘The body in the car.’

‘But the DNA-’

‘. . is all his. Philippe, the exchange student from Paris. He was supposed to return to France, so who’s going to miss him if someone abducts him.’

‘Abduct him? Who would do that?’

‘Rusty. He abducted him, drugged him but kept him alive until he needed him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s perfect. Remember Yvette said she was drawn to him because he was an orphan like her. Who better? Who’s going to miss him? And if he slept with Yvette, and Rusty found out about it then. .’

‘. . he put himself in danger like Wilson, Len and Rifkind.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Okay, I get that — but how do you explain the DNA match?’

‘That’s the best part, John. After Len attacked Rusty and cut him, Rusty does the same to Philippe, and when he goes to the party he leaves the plaster with Philippe’s blood and tissue in the bin. If it’s not Becky’s, Kyle’s or Adele’s, we’re bound to think it’s Rusty’s.’

‘But the semen?’

‘Philippe and Yvette must have had sex using a condom. Rusty waits for his chance, hoping it doesn’t get flushed. They throw it in the rubbish and he recovers it, probably stores it in a freezer so it doesn’t degrade, and when Becky’s dying he smears it in and around the vagina. That’s why Habib was surprised when we told him she’d had intercourse. She hadn’t.’

‘And the toothbrush?’

‘Simple. Once Rusty had Philippe and his belongings, he switched them. Remember Yvette was confused when we showed it to her.’

‘I left to pick up Len, remember.’

‘Then check the film. She was confused because she knew it wasn’t Rusty’s and she didn’t know why. Maybe she even knew it was Philippe’s, I don’t know, but right now Rusty is passing himself off as Philippe. He has his passport and papers and he’s probably made himself over to look like him.’

‘But where did he keep him? The hospital?’

‘At first, maybe, but it’s too far away, John. Remember the stench in Rifkind’s cellar? I’m guessing Rusty drugged him and kept him there until he needed him. That’s why it stank like a sewer. When he took Terri to the cellar, he switched her with Philippe.’

‘Great theory — pity it’s all circumstantial. How do you prove it?’

‘The car. Philippe must have had a car here. Either he drove it over from France or hired one. If Rusty dumped it, we’re in business. That’s how he got to Rifkind’s cottage. That’s how he got away from the crash site.’

‘And if Rusty didn’t dump it but returned it to the hire company or drove it back to France as Philippe?’

Brook sighed. ‘That just makes it a bit harder. If we can find out which company Len paid to test Rusty’s DNA against Yvette’s, we get the real thing. And Rusty’s DNA will be different from the samples he left us.’

‘Without Len that could take forever and even then we may not get access. What about Philippe? If he was in the cellar we could get his DNA there.’

‘No good. If he didn’t clean up, Rusty’s DNA could be there as well and we’d have no way to tell them apart.’

‘There is another possibility, sir. Maybe Rusty died in that burnout. He lost control of the car, hit the wall and burned to death. Case closed. Are you sure you want to prove to the world that we got our butts whipped?’

‘Are you American, John?’

‘I mean it.’

‘First thing tomorrow, get Philippe’s details from the college and find that car.’