They noticed Brock watching them, of course, as they converged on the green, for they were all observant men, and when he moved out from beneath the eaves of the clubhouse to intercept them on the path they each gripped the handles of their clubs a little tighter, out of habit.
‘Roy?’ Brock asked, and the one with the red tartan cap peered at him more closely before exclaiming, ‘Brock? Why yes, it’s young David Brock!’
They all shook hands and proceeded together to the clubhouse door. Later, showered, changed and seated around a table in the bar, the three retired police officers seemed keen to hear about Brock’s current case, but when he began to describe how it had turned into one of those difficult ones, a sticker, he sensed their interest fade to polite indifference.
‘Frankly, I don’t know how I ever had the time to work,’ one said, and the others nodded sagely. ‘I’m so busy, I just don’t know where the time goes, the days, the months, the years… I’ve got six grandchildren now. Do you want to see their photos?’
‘Roy,’ another remonstrated, ‘he hasn’t got time for that; the man’s working. Although I can’t imagine why. You’ll be entitled to your two-thirds pension aren’t you, Brock? Why do you bother? There’s another life out there.’
‘Actually, I came about one of your cases, Roy,’ Brock managed to get in.
‘Course you did. Robert Wylie, right? You’ve finally got him for a big one. Knew it would happen eventually. Slippery customer. I almost had him in ninety-six.’
‘That’s the case I’m interested in. Before Justice Beaufort.’
‘Old Jugular, that’s right. He threw it out. I got the other three bastards though.’
‘Was he right to throw it out?’
‘Well, I didn’t think so, of course, but the CPS had warned me. They really didn’t want to proceed against him on the basis of what we had, but I was so revved up to get that slimy bastard-too keen, in retrospect.’
‘So Beaufort acted fairly?’
The three golfers stared at Brock.‘That’s an interesting question,’ Roy said.‘Are you after Jugular Jack now?’
‘I’ve got nothing specific, but Beaufort’s appeared on the sidelines in this case-not really involved, you understand, but it did seem a coincidence, remembering your experience.’
‘You’ve got a good memory,’ Roy said, with a quizzical smile at Brock, ‘because that case wouldn’t be on Wylie’s record, would it, what with him having got off scot-free?’
‘I was hoping your memory would be pretty good too, Roy.’
‘Well now… I do recall something one of my snouts said to me after that case. He said that he’d heard Wylie bragging that he’d had influence with the judge. I didn’t believe it, and still don’t. Not Jugular Jack, the scourge of scum like Wylie.’
‘He didn’t say what kind of influence?’
‘No, nothing specific. One thing I will say, though-if you’re after old Jugular, you might be well advised to check out your pension entitlements.’
‘Thanks, Roy. Now, let me buy you gentlemen another shandy.’
Kathy had seen Brock like this before-secretive, unwilling to share what he was thinking or planning concerning the ex-judge. And because she had seen it before, she thought she knew the reason. It was protection, not for himself but for the rest of them, in case things went wrong. It was a measure of how risky he knew the enterprise to be, like a bomb-disposal expert ordering his colleagues out of range of the volatile thing he was probing. But it was a dangerous manoeuvre, separating himself from the support of the team, keeping them in the dark. She felt instinctively that it was wrong and wanted to circumvent it, which of course was precisely why Brock felt obliged to act the way he did. That morning, for example, with the press office clamouring on one phone and Commander Sharpe’s office on the other, no one seemed to know where he’d gone, off on some mysterious trail apparent only to himself.
All she could do was try to find grist for his private mill-facts, observations, or failing that rumour and gossip. So she had come back to the source once again, Northcote Square, where everyone was connected to everyone else by invisible threads of history or loss, business or desire. On the north side, on Urma Street, she could see the light shining through the glass wall of Gabe’s studio on the top floor, where he and Poppy had spent the night together in the fold-out bed. She knew this because the duty sergeant had told her that their police bodyguard had said as much in his morning report. It must have been a great relief for them both after Gabe’s idiotic vigil in the glass cube, Kathy thought with a touch of envy. If she turned one hundred and eighty degrees she could see the cube illuminated through the gallery window, with its untidy workstation and crumpled bed still as they were when abandoned twenty-four hours before, like a shrine for pilgrims, to judge by the queue waiting along the footpath outside.
But she planned to begin elsewhere, at Betty’s house on West Terrace, for which she had signed out the keys. She started in the attic at the top of the house and worked carefully down through each room, each closet, each cupboard and drawer. She was looking for Tracey’s self-portrait, and it took her two hours to work her way down to the basement floor. Along the way she had uncovered glimpses of Betty’s life-a photograph of her husband Harry in army officer’s uniform, an ancient West End theatre program for Irma La Douce, a snapshot of ‘Helga’s children at Broadstairs, 1963’-but no sign of what she was looking for.
She stepped out into the tiny sunken courtyard beneath the footpath on West Terrace, remembering that she hadn’t searched the kitchen on the floor above, and climbed the stairs back up to the front door. As she opened it she glanced up at the projecting bay window beneath the turret on Reg Gilbey’s house next door and saw a figure staring down at her. With a sense of apprehension she recognised the judge. She walked quickly into Betty’s hall and closed the door behind her, wondering what excuse she could use to bump into DI Reeves again, who was no doubt sitting on the other side of the wall in Gilbey’s kitchen at that moment, reading one of his books. She turned this over in her mind as she began searching the kitchen cupboards. Then the phone on the little mahogany table in Betty’s hall began to ring, and when she picked it up she was startled to hear his voice.
‘DS Kolla? It’s Tom Reeves. I’m next door as it happens, with the judge, completing the session with Mr Gilbey that was interrupted yesterday. He wonders if you’d care to pop over for a cup of coffee in, say, half an hour?’
‘Reg Gilbey?’
‘No, Sir Jack Beaufort.’
‘Oh… well, yes.’
She replaced the phone, astonished. For a moment she wondered if she should contact Brock, then decided against it.
Brock took his seat in the same prison interview room as before. Wylie and his solicitor came in, and he looked at them carefully as they took their seats, trying to interpret their moods. Unlike the lawyer, who seemed preoccupied and agitated, Wylie looked casual, sitting back in his chair, arms folded. But he was paler than the previous time, hair lank, eyes puffy, as if he wasn’t sleeping so well, and there was the trace of what might have been a bruise on the side of his head.
The solicitor glanced anxiously at his watch and said, ‘I was reluctant to agree to this meeting, Chief Inspector, given that my client will be released today, but he felt we should hear you out. You’ve read his statement, I take it? I really don’t think there’s anything we can add.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Brock said.‘I thought I should give Mr Wylie one last opportunity before we proceed to court.’
The lawyer frowned. ‘To court? If you’re thinking of pressing some lesser charge in the Magistrates’ Court…’
‘Magistrates’ Court?’ Brock looked at him as if he’d made some kind of legal gaffe.‘Murder and abduction have to be tried in the Crown Court, you know that.’
Now the lawyer was incredulous. ‘Haven’t you spoken to the Crown Prosecution Service? There’s no possibility of you proceeding to committal on those charges.’
‘Perhaps you misunderstood them. We’re not talking about committal, we’re talking about a notice of transfer to take the case directly to trial at the Crown Court without committal proceedings taking place. As you would know, we’re entitled to do that where violence against children is involved and where, as in this case, a child victim is at risk from your client.’ Brock gave him a patient smile. ‘Maybe you’d like to explain the legal processes to Mr
