desperately wanted to ask, but knew he couldn't because even if he kept his expression void and his voice bland, a sharp-eyed man like Sawyer would see the pain inside him. And he didn't want anyone to know how much it hurt. Betraying vulnerability led to exploitation. He'd learnt that the hard way in his youth. He said, 'Pity the prisoner who attacked Peter Ebury is dead. He could have told you.'
'Yes, and if Sergeant Cantelli hadn't paid him a visit he might still be alive.'
'You should have spoken to him sooner instead of hanging on our coat-tails.' Horton knew that the Intelligence Directorate had specialist teams focusing on prison intelligence. They'd probably been monitoring Peter Ebury for months, years even.
Horton asked, 'Did Mayfield, Peter's accomplice, know that the armed robbery was a put-up job?'
'I don't think so. He was rather simple and worshipped the ground Peter Ebury walked on.'
Horton knew that; Cantelli had told him. He wondered now if Mayfield had died of natural causes, or whether he too had been eliminated.
He said, 'It would have been simpler to have killed Buckland without setting up the armed robbery and then disposed of Peter.'
'Not for Zeus.'
'Who?' Horton asked surprised, racking his brains trying to recall the name before swiftly realizing it was a code name. His theory had been right then. This Zeus was the master criminal who the Intelligence Directorate were after, and he had a connection with Irene Ebury and her son Peter. And what about Jennifer? Had she known this Zeus? Horton scrutinized Sawyer for some sign that perhaps she had, but Sawyer's expression was giving nothing away.
'We call him Zeus because he wields his thunderbolts to control his family of crooks,' Sawyer said.
'Didn't do classics at my comprehensive school,' Horton said cynically.
'Zeus wanted Peter out of the way, but he also wanted him alive.'
'Because Peter was one of his troublesome sons, as a result of his affair with Irene Ebury.'
'I thought you didn't do classics.'
'I'm a detective. I worked it out. So Zeus offered Peter a big pay-off, a good solicitor and a reprieve on appeal if he proved his worth and shot Buckland. Only Peter didn't get what he was promised. When he didn't, Irene Ebury started threatening to talk about the good old days, so her flat was set on fire a couple of times, but she managed to escape unhurt. It was probably only a warning to them both anyway. If Zeus had wanted her dead there would have been no escaping. Peter was told that Zeus would leave Irene alone if he kept his mouth shut and served his time like a good boy. If he didn't, then they'd kill him and his mother.'
Sawyer said nothing, but Horton knew he was right. 'And then Irene conveniently got dementia and was pushed into a rest home.' Horton watched Lee climb out of the car. 'But what Zeus didn't realize was that as the dementia progresses the patient begins to remember more of the past, not less of it. Not that it really mattered because everyone dismissed what Irene was saying anyway. So who did you have in the Rest Haven listening to her rambles?'
Lee answered. 'Claire Butler. She's a DC. We pulled her out on the third of January, two days after Irene died. There didn't seem much point in her staying on.'
And that was what Angela Northwood had meant when she had said she was a care assistant down: wretched woman didn't show up for work yesterday or today and there's no word from her.
'And you were just calling off your surveillance on the fifth of January when Cantelli and I arrived. What alerted you to staging the surveillance in the first place, Inspector Lee? It is inspector, isn't it?
'Yes.'
She gave him a hesitant smile, which he didn't return. It wasn't her fault, he told himself. She was just doing her job, but he didn't like being deceived.
She said, 'When Peter's mother went into the nursing home, Peter kept quiet for a couple of years working out how he could expose Zeus and still live to tell the tale. Of course we knew nothing about Zeus then…'
'And do you now?'
Sawyer answered. 'We're a couple of steps further forward, thanks to Peter.'
Horton knew that Sawyer wouldn't say anything more, but whatever this Zeus had done, and still did, it had to be a serious international crime, and a sophisticated large-scale one for the Intelligence Directorate to be involved.
Lee said, 'Early in December Peter was told that his mother was getting worse. That it wouldn't be long before she died.'
'Who told him that?' Horton asked sharply. That certainly wasn't what Angela Northwood had said and though Dr Clayton had said Irene had clogged lungs and arteries, death hadn't been imminent.
As if he'd never spoken, Lee said, 'Peter thought that now might be the time to put his plan into action.'
'I bet he did,' Horton muttered, 'with a little prompting from you.'
'On the twenty-first of December Peter asked to see the governor. He told Geoff Welton that he knew someone the police would dearly love to get their hands on and he was prepared to tell them who it was in return for a new identity, money and a fresh start overseas. Geoff Welton had been primed that this might happen one day. He contacted us immediately. We arranged, through Mr Welton, a visitor to talk to Ebury in the governor's office where Ebury was brought after trashing his cell. There we did a deal with Ebury, but he wasn't going to tell us Zeus's identity until we had given him a new identity and a fresh start overseas.'
Would they have gone so far as letting out a man convicted of murder? wondered Horton. He reckoned so. 'You strung Ebury along.'
Sawyer answered. 'For a while, yes. We told him we were arranging it and we put a surveillance operation on his mother and DC Butler into the home.'
Then the light dawned on Horton. He tensed with anger and swivelled his hard gaze between them. 'Then you let the word out that Peter was ready to talk. Just so you could see who showed up at the nursing home, only when he did, you cocked it up. You missed him. Where was your precious DC Butler? On the day shift, I guess. And you had no one on night duty except you, Inspector Lee, and waxed-jacket over there.'
Silence. Horton knew that these two were never going to admit failure. He felt angry for Irene Ebury. She hadn't deserved to be used as bait. He knew the stakes were high and that to catch scum you had to think and sometimes act like scum, but Inspector Lee had fallen down on her job. And he could see that she knew it.
Stiffly Horton continued. 'When the staff were drinking to celebrate New Year's Eve, one of Zeus's operatives entered the Rest Haven from the back gardens on to the flat-roof kitchen extension and in through the landing window, the only one in the house that isn't double-glazed. Then all he had to do was climb the remaining stairs, dart into Irene's room and kill her.'
'There's no evidence of that,' Lee snapped. 'Irene Ebury died of natural causes.'
'Like Peter Ebury, supposedly,' scoffed Horton. 'She could have been injected with air, or she awoke and was frightened to death. Maybe Mrs Kingsway really did see someone, and her son used it as a reason to disguise his own bullying of his frail elderly mother.'
It also meant that the intruder had known the layout of the Rest Haven and where Irene Ebury had slept so he must have visited there, perhaps posing as a workman or relative. On New Year's Eve he had taken advantage of the fact that the staff would be drinking to slip in and kill Irene.
'Did you know about the prescription fraud?' he asked and saw that they did. 'You thought Daniel Collins was involved in that, and that his death was just an unfortunate accident until his mother refused to believe it. Then you wondered if he had been Zeus's eyes and ears all the time. The surveillance had been called off, but by working with me, Inspector Lee, you could follow up that lead. Well, Daniel Collins was killed by Steven Kingsway.' And he told them of Kingsway's confession. Neither Lee nor Sawyer showed any emotion or reaction. He finished by asking who had stolen Irene's belongings.
Inspector Lee answered. 'There was nothing in them. DC Butler had already been through them, but we didn't take them.'
So Irene's killer had probably seen how lax Marion Keynes was in keeping her office locked, or he'd managed to take impressions of the keys to the basement.
'And there was no photograph or mention of your mother,' Sawyer said.
Horton tensed. He wondered how long they had known about Irene's link with his mother. He wasn't going to ask though and give them the satisfaction of seeing his curiosity. He also wondered if Sawyer was telling the truth.
