‘I am, yes. You must believe me. I had nothing to do with any of the. . mutilations Alpha may have carried out.’
Tina and Grier exchanged glances once again. Grier looked sceptical. Tina felt the same. If Gore was telling the truth, it meant that Alpha must have had some kind of inside knowledge of the police investigation, which just wasn’t possible. Gore might have been trying to paint himself as as much of an innocent as he could under the circumstances, but it wasn’t a true picture. However, that was for a jury to decide.
‘When did you find out that you were on film?’ Tina asked him.
‘When I received a phone call at my constituency office two weeks later. The caller identified himself to my secretary as Mr Roisin, which is why I took the call. I knew it had to be something to do with what had happened, and I was terrified. As I’ve already told you, I thought our affair was a secret. And I had good reason to be. The caller told me that he had film footage of Roisin’s death, and if I wanted it destroyed, I would have to pay him fifty thousand pounds. He made me give him my email address, and said he would send a sample clip, which he did.’ Gore shuddered visibly. ‘It showed everything.’
‘Did you keep it?’ asked Grier.
He shook his head. ‘No, of course not. I destroyed it immediately.’
A thought occurred to Tina. ‘And the clip didn’t show Alpha performing the cover-up?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t watch it the whole way through. I couldn’t.’
Tina thought how surprised Andrew Kent must have been when he discovered film footage of a government minister killing his own intended victim. Blackmailing him was a dangerous move, but one that would have been hard to resist.
‘At the time, of course, I had no idea who could have taken the footage,’ continued Gore, ‘but fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money, and I knew that if I paid it, the blackmailer would come back for more. So I called Paul Wise. I had no choice. Again he was calm. He told me to arrange the delivery of the money, and that he would use Alpha to find out who the blackmailer was, get back the money, and make sure that I wasn’t bothered again.’
‘By killing him?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’
But Tina wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. ‘It must have occurred to you that Wise and his fixer were going to kill him.’
‘I was terrified. I knew it could destroy my whole life, and more importantly, the lives of my family. I was desperate to make it go away.’ He paused for a moment, shaking his head. ‘But it all went wrong. The blackmailer set up the delivery of the money in Epping Forest, and he managed to get away with it without Alpha managing to identify or catch him.
‘For a while, I didn’t hear from him, and I hoped and prayed that he’d let it go, but then a couple of weeks ago he made contact again, demanding another fifty thousand pounds, or he’d release the footage to the media. I was mortified. It was hard enough to come up with the first demand. Contrary to popular belief, we politicians aren’t all filthy rich. Thankfully, Mr Wise came to my aid and supplied the money. We set up a second delivery of the money, this time on Hampstead Heath. Once again the blackmailer got away with the money, but this time Alpha managed to get enough information to ID him, and find out where he lived.’
Tina frowned. ‘What day was this delivery made?’
‘Monday last week.’
Only days before the team had identified Kent and put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance.
‘But Alpha never got to him, did he?’
‘No. Mr Wise told me that my blackmailer was the Night Creeper, which was a shock. I wasn’t expecting it. I thought it might be some ex-boyfriend who’d been stalking Roisin. Mr Wise also told me the suspect was close to being arrested.’
Tina heard Grier exhale as he too realized that Wise had someone within the police investigating team reporting back to him.
‘Why was Kent kidnapped?’ she asked Gore.
‘I was terrified that once in custody he would say something, and that my secret would be exposed. I know Mr Wise tried to deal with him while he was under surveillance, but that proved impossible. I last spoke to him yesterday evening, and he told me that everything was under control, that no evidence had been found linking me to Roisin’s murder, and that he and Alpha had a contingency plan to silence Kent and recover the missing footage.’ He looked Tina in the eye. ‘That was the last I heard. I didn’t want to be responsible for another death but I felt I had no choice.’
‘There’s always a choice, Mr Gore,’ said Grier, with uncharacteristic venom in his voice.
‘Paul Wise certainly put himself out to help you,’ Tina added, feeling nothing but contempt for the man seated opposite her, but trying not to show it.
‘I’ve helped him in the past.’
‘You know the crimes he’s been involved in?’
‘Allegedly.’
This time her contempt boiled over. ‘Fuck allegedly. You know what he’s done.’
‘By the time I heard the rumours, it was too late. He already owned me. He owns a lot of people.’ Gore sighed and looked at them both in turn. ‘Is there anything you can do to help me?’
Tina was amazed that after a confession like the one he’d just given, he could possibly think he was going to wriggle out of his crimes, but perhaps that was simply the hubris of the powerful. ‘The fact that you’re cooperating will count in your favour,’ she told him. ‘And if you’re prepared to testify against Paul Wise, that’ll also help. Will you do that?’
‘If it helps matters, then yes, of course I will,’ he answered, giving her an earnest look.
‘It will,’ she said.
Tina got to her feet and read him his rights, thinking that it was a strangely liberating feeling, arresting a government minister on suspicion of murder, and that it demonstrated the fact that no one, whoever they were, was above the law.
Including Paul Wise.
Gore didn’t resist as Tina and Grier each took an arm and ushered him out of the study and into the hallway.
Which was when they saw Jane Gore standing facing them, still in her nightgown, holding a double-barrelled shotgun in her hands.
‘I’m not going to let you destroy our family,’ she said shakily, pointing it towards Tina.
Tina flinched but forced herself to remain calm. ‘Put the gun down, Mrs Gore. Please.’
She shook her head, an expression of worrying determination on her tear-stained face. ‘No.’
And then she pulled the trigger.
Fifty
‘What the hell happened?’ I asked when Dougie MacLeod had finally recovered himself enough to talk.
I’d let him up, and he was standing. The tension was still coming off him in waves, but he looked calmer and his face was less puce, although a bruise was forming on his left cheek where I’d hit him.
‘I got a call last night when I was in the pub. A man with a disguised voice told me they’d got Billy, and that unless I did exactly what they said, they’d kill him. I didn’t believe him at first — I mean, Billy’s away at uni in Leeds, for Christ’s sake — but he told me to wait by the phone, and they’d send me something that proved it.’ He paused, taking a deep breath, clearly trying to steady himself. ‘Five minutes later I got a photo from an unregistered pay-as-you-go showing Billy tied to a chair and gagged. It was him, Sean. It was him. If you don’t believe me, check the PC upstairs. They’ve been sending me footage of him ever since.’
‘What do they want?’
‘They wanted Andrew Kent. I was told to put some tablets in his drink, so that he’d get sick.’
‘Where did you get the tablets from?’
‘They were in an envelope under the wheel of a car on John Street.’
