Mosse quickly opened the briefcase and checked a note, his head down so that none of them could see his face.
‘Client MM 45/65/82?’ he asked.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Masters. ‘Sorry — you’d no name until now. That’s it — Christopher Alan Robins.’
Masters began to read the will, Mosse’s eyes fixed on some point in the snowy roofscape outside. The estate had been valued at?13,700. It all went to his mother. It took his solicitor less than a minute to read in full.
‘Now,’ he said, setting the document aside. ‘One other duty. Mr Robins — it seems odd to call him that. I knew his father, you see — John,’ said Masters. ‘He had a shop down on the quay — shoe repair. I always used to call him John …’ He trailed off, looking at each of them in turn, unable to work out why everyone was so silent, so studiedly impatient.
‘Well. Anyway. Christopher had two unusual requests. He asked me in …’ he checked a note on the blotter, ‘in 2002 to take receipt of some items, and to lodge them in our offices for safe keeping until he requested their release. Or, in the event of his death, they would form part of his estate. Two years ago he asked that these same items be transferred to Mr Mosse’s firm but under a client number only — no name. You’ll remember that, Bob?’
Mosse’s chin moved a centimetre in answer.
‘Yes, I’m sure you do,’ Masters continued. ‘He specifically asked me to make sure the signatory should be Mr Mosse himself. And that was undertaken — at an annual fee of thirty-five pounds and seventy pence, I see from my records.’ Again, the mindless smile.
‘And one further alteration — that, upon the reading of the will, these items were to be released into the custody of DI Peter Shaw of the West Norfolk Constabulary.’
Mosse was looking at the metal deposit box, his legs crossed casually at the ankles.
‘Did he say why?’ asked Shaw.
‘He said that would become clear on the day. Yes — those exact words.’
The door opened and the secretary came in with coffee cups, a pot, Nice biscuits. The tension in the room was almost intolerable. Shaw imagined the crockery shattering. She left the tray, retreated.
‘And the other unusual requirement was a statement, lodged with us, to be read on this occasion.’ He leant across the desk and gave Shaw a second envelope. ‘By you, Inspector.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ said Mosse.
Masters missed the intonation, but was quick to respond to the legal niceties.
‘Mr Robins stipulated that the statement was to be read before the contents of the deposit box were transferred. I’m sure it will only take a minute.’
Mosse looked into the middle distance. Shaw tried to imagine just how fast Mosse’s brain must be calculating. If he walked out now he wouldn’t know what he was facing. And why leave, why run, when all the life he’d built was here, in Lynn? Job, money, reputation, family, children, not to mention a shiny black BMW.
‘You might as well stay. You’re going to hear it one way or another,’ said Shaw. Valentine was standing now, staring at Mosse.
Shaw opened the envelope and extracted a single sheet of A4, typed, single spaced.
‘I typed it,’ said Peggy Robins. ‘And signed it.’
Shaw nodded, noting the scrawl at the foot, the two signatures almost merged.
He read.
‘“I know this statement is worthless — that I’m as guilty as Bob, and the rest, of these crimes. But it seems to me — to all of us — that we’ve suffered, paid the price, and he hasn’t. Ever.”’
‘Oh,’ said Masters. ‘Goodness.’ He held up a hand, as if suddenly deciding it shouldn’t be read.
‘It’s all right. Carry on,’ said Mosse. He took out a yellow legal pad from the briefcase and started making a note.
‘“The night those people died in the car, it was Robert Mosse what drove. He was down from Sheffield and he wanted a bit of action. His idea. We went out to Hunstanton and he got the Mini over the ton. We drank — all of us. Bob was taking us home by the back roads, trying to keep the car over eighty — even on the lanes. He didn’t see the T-junction until it was way late. It wasn’t until afterwards that we realized he’d stayed in the car — let us get out, wander round. So those first few days was a nightmare. I didn’t tell you, Mum, did I? I’m sorry for that. And I stayed out — with the others, down at Alex Cosyns’s lock-up. We got the car in there and me and Voycy got a drum of paint from work to respray it — yellow, tractor yellow they called it. Alex was soft on that dog he’d taken from the car. Night of the crash he cried about it — ’bout the old people in the back. He’d taken the dog because he said he wanted something to live. Like I said — soft. Then that evening — the evening the Tessier boy died — Alex took the dog for a walk. When he came back the kid was with him. Alex had tried to tell him that it wasn’t the same dog. But the kid could get it to do stuff — beg, roll over. Odd kid. He wasn’t going anywhere. We let him play with it and decided on a plan: we’d let him go, let him take the dog, sit tight — that would work in our favour when the police came. We’d say it was the driver who was drunk at the crash, but we wouldn’t say who it was. We’d admit the rest. Bob needed to lie low — and we’d fix up an alibi for him on the Westmead.
‘“Bob said it wasn’t going to work. That one of us would crack and tell the truth. He told the Tessier kid to stop crying and cuffed him on the back of the head. And then he put those gloves on, his driving gloves — the leather ones with the fur on the inside, and he had a bit of nylon rope.”’
Peggy Robins took out a tissue and pressed it to her mouth, looking out of the window.
‘“Then he kind of hugged the kid, turned his back on us. And he held on. It was Alex who realized what he was doing first. He told him to stop. But we all kind of froze. I’ve never forgiven myself — and I know I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. And Bob pulled the kid around, behind him, like I said, so we couldn’t see their faces. There wasn’t any noise at first. I heard a snap, like a plastic snap, a bone giving. And then the kid made a noise, just once, and it was over. He dropped the kid to the floor. He had one of Bob’s gloves in his mouth, stuffed in. Bob took the other one off and just dropped it on the floor, like he’d finished a job. He didn’t smoke, but he took one of mine.”’
Shaw realized his breathing was shallow, so he too took a lungful of air.
‘“So we made another plan. Bob thought it all through. He said they’d be looking for the kid, that they’d go on looking until they found him, so the trick was to give them the kid. Dump him — under the big tower. That’s where you get the gangs, the crime, and they’d think the kid had got caught up in something nasty. I was to clean up the garage. Bob went to get his car, Alex went to check out where the kid lived, see how long we had, see if they was searching already. We put Voycy on lookout up by the community centre. When Bob got back with his car we waited until after dark and then rolled the kid up in a bit of old carpet, put him in the boot. The light was bad by then — and we dared not use the mechanics’ lights we had for working on the car, ’cos we thought the police would be out on the estate by then looking for the kid. I took all the things I could find in the garage that might be linked to us — bagged it, took it to the bins under our flat. Later, when we knew they was searching for the kid, I took it out on the roughlots and burnt it. Then we all met at the pub on the estate — the Painted Lady. Bob said he’d been seen dumping the kid, and he had to get rid of the car. So he reported it missing and we fixed him up with an alibi — at the cinema, ’cos his mum had been and all we needed was a ticket. I’m sorry for what I did. We tried to make Bob pay but we never had the courage to face up to what we’d done. He knew that. But I am sorry. Tell the kid’s mother I’m sorry. And tell her that what I’ve left is for her. I didn’t burn everything.”’
Shaw leant forward, put the sheet of A4 on the desk. Valentine beckoned for Mosse to hand him the box, then passed it to Shaw. Masters opened his desk, took out a pair of identical small gold padlock keys and handed them to the detective. Shaw worked one into the lock on the box. As he lifted the lid a look of disappointment crossed his face: the box appeared to be empty. Then he saw a plastic bag tucked into one corner, knotted, with an unbroken paper seal signed by Chris Robins and Jerrold Masters. He held the bag up: inside was a single fur-lined leather glove. In the leather was imprinted the marks of a child’s teeth, pressing down, a faint ghost of the last bite, drawing blood at last.
LYNN SOLICITOR TO SERVE LIFE FOR ‘COLD-BLOODED’ CHILD MURDER
Lynn solicitor Robert Mosse was yesterday given a life sentence after being convicted of the murder of a nine-year-old boy in 1997 on the town’s notorious Westmead Estate.
The trial judge recommended that Mosse, 34, should spend the rest of his life in custody. Leave to appeal
