working.’
The door was now wide open.
So, whoever had slashed the tyres had gone to work on the generator as well.
I approached the door slowly, hoping there might be some tools in there we could use for basic weapons, but wary too of going inside. Lee stayed a few yards back as I slowly entered the doorway and stared into the gloom. Boxes, most of them empty, were piled up untidily on both sides of the room, while the generator itself — a clapped-out old thing that had probably been put in when the place was still a farm — took up most of the opposite wall.
The place looked deserted and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide so I went inside, making my way slowly over to the generator itself, conscious of my own breathing. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my lighter and flicked it on, glancing round nervously.
As I’d expected, the flap to the electrics box was open and a bundle of severed wires poked out.
Trying hard to ignore the fear running up my spine, I started to turn away.
And jumped back in shock as the lighter picked up the figure in the shadows.
It was Haddock. He was standing in the corner, watching me.
Except he wasn’t moving, and the expression in his wide, staring eyes was blank and sightless.
I took a step forward, holding up the lighter. And that was when I saw the hunting knife embedded to the hilt in his chest, impaling him against the wall, and the huge bloody gash across his throat where it had been cut from ear to ear.
Clarence Haddock, the six-foot-three, nineteen-stone killer — said, I recall, by one police officer to be the most frightening man he’d ever met — had been butchered like a stuck pig.
Thirty-three
It had just turned one a.m. when Tina finally walked in her front door, physically exhausted but mentally wide awake. The first thing she did was open a bottle of Rioja, pour a third of it into a giant tumbler, and take a long, deep gulp, savouring the strong, rich taste. Keeping the glass tight to her lips, she took several more, feeling herself relaxing, then refilled the glass and carried it with her into the apartment’s shoebox-sized lounge, collapsing into the sofa and lighting a cigarette.
During the drive back home, she’d called the local GP who had certified Kevin O’Neill dead. He hadn’t been best pleased to hear from her, since the call had got him out of bed, but Tina was used to receiving less-than-warm welcomes and she’d brushed aside his complaints by telling him foul play was suspected, which had quickly galvanized him into action. He’d been able to say with some certainty that O’Neill had died between six p.m. and midnight the previous night.
Tina wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what ‘some certainty’ meant. Either you were certain, or you weren’t.
However, it had given her enough information to go on for her second call, to the security company operating the CCTV cameras covering the entrance to O’Neill’s cul-de-sac. After about ten minutes of being shunted around between those staff members still working at that time of night, none of whom seemed to be of any use to her, and being put on hold more than once, she’d finally been put through to someone who was willing to help her. His name was Jim, and he was a retired copper who liked to talk a lot.
But at least he didn’t faint when she told him what she needed, which was for him to go through all the footage taken by a particular camera from four p.m. to midnight the previous night, making a list of the plates of all vehicles captured that didn’t belong to residents of the road in question, and to get the results back to her as soon as possible.
While Tina remained on the line, Jim had looked up the account in question and told her that the footage from Thursday night was still there, and it should be possible to find her the information she needed, since the company kept a database of all the residents’ vehicles. ‘Will it help solve a case?’ he’d asked her, sounding excited at the prospect that he might be a part of something important once again.
In truth, though, it was the longest of long shots. There was, as Grier had pointed out several times, no evidence that O’Neill had been murdered, and even if he had been, it didn’t necessarily mean that the killer had driven up to his house. But that wasn’t what Tina told Jim. Instead, she’d said that she genuinely hoped so.
‘You don’t give up, do you?’ Grier had said with a mixture of admiration and exasperation when she finally got off the phone.
‘Someone once said there was a solution to every problem.’ ‘Do you believe that?’
She’d thought about her alcoholism, about the way her life had turned out, a long battle that never seemed close to completion, let alone victory. ‘No.’ She’d managed a smile. ‘But I always live in hope.’
When she dropped him off at home a little while later, he’d given her a strange look, as if he wanted to say something. But then the look had gone, and he’d got out of the car, asking if he was going to be needed tomorrow.
‘I’ll let you know,’ she’d said, and watched as he let himself in to his attractive redbrick townhouse where his wife, a successful corporate lawyer, was waiting.
Now, sitting in her poky little living room with her cigarette and her booze, Tina concentrated on the case, because she knew that as soon as she stopped thinking about it she’d slip into the inevitable self-pity. And there was plenty to think about. This case was one of the most puzzling she’d ever been involved in. On the one hand, they had a man against whom the evidence seemed overwhelming. There was the murder weapon in his flat, incriminating footage showing a number of the murders on his computer, and he had a direct link with every one of the victims. Yet, at the same time, they also had a murder that was different from the others, and for which their suspect had a cast-iron alibi. Added to the mix was Kent’s claim to have important information, something which he thought was worth killing him for. Whether or not he’d faked his poisoning in the cell back at the station, the fact remained that an armed gang had been prepared to break him free from police custody at gunpoint. Which meant that one way or another he was important to someone.
She took another gulp of the Rioja. Booze wasn’t usually that helpful where intensive thinking was concerned, but she was hoping now that it might give her a new angle on things.
Because she knew she was missing something. Everything happened for a reason. The solution was in there somewhere, it was simply a matter of finding it, and the way to do that was to follow the Sherlock Holmes route of removing every scenario that was impossible until you were left with one that fitted. And that would be the truth.
Kent did not murder Roisin O’Neill. Someone else did. That person had strangled her, although there were no obvious signs of sexual assault. But the killer had known the Night Creeper’s MO, even though the information wasn’t available to the public, and had tried to make her death look like one of his, in order to cover up his own guilt. But what did that killer then need from Andrew Kent?
And then she slammed her glass down on the coffee table as the answer came to her in a mad rush. She didn’t even notice the wine spilling and dripping down on to the carpet. She was too excited for that because for the first time she was sure she knew what had happened, and why Kent had been targeted.
Now they just had to find him.
Thirty-four
I was out of that outbuilding fast, and the shock on my face must have been obvious because Lee put a hand to her mouth.
I took her arm and moved her away from the door. ‘There’s a body in there.’
‘It’s not Ty, is it? Please not Ty.’
