Anderson gripped his chair more tightly, his shoulder muscles bunched and taut. He shook his head violently, as if he were trying to shake off something sticky and disgusting.
Tony spoke softly now. ‘And then you found out. Just one time, that’s all it took. That infection in the blood, poisoning you. Killing you. It doesn’t matter that these days you can take the drugs and live longer. Who wants to live longer without their dreams? What’s the point in existing? You had the world at your feet, you were going to be somebody. And one bad night took it all away.’
The silence between them stretched out, tight and dramatic. Anderson looked as if something was going to snap inside him. Tony decided to try and make it.
His tone was silky, sweet. ‘So you decided if you couldn’t have your dreams, then the men who had walked the same path as you weren’t going to have them either. You could have been them, but you weren’t, so they weren’t going to be allowed to be them either.’ Then his voice changed abruptly. Harsh and loud, Tony said, ‘Well, here’s the news, Jack. You don’t get to take away anybody else’s dreams. You’re going to jail, where they’ll take good care of you and make sure every day you have left is filled with misery. You’re going to live long and prosper behind bars. Where everybody else inside with you will know all the juicy details from your trial.’
Anderson jumped up and lunged for Tony, who swung one of his crutches hard through the air, smacking it into Anderson’s ribs and catching him off balance enough to make him fall to the floor. ‘You see? They’re not rushing in to help me, are they?’ Tony said. ‘That’s because they know you’re not up to giving me a proper beating. You don’t like violence. Chris Devine just got unlucky in the heat of the moment. If you’d had to think about it, you’d never have hit her. That’s another reason why you chose the poison. So you could kill at arm’s length.’ He shook his head. ‘I started out feeling sympathy for you, Jack. Now, I just feel pity.’
Anderson scrambled to his feet and slunk back to his chair. ‘I don’t want your pity.’
‘So earn my respect. Tell me how it was. If I’m wrong, tell me now. I’ll take it back.’
Anderson slumped in the chair, defeated. ‘I’m not going to talk about it. Whatever evidence they find, I’m not going to talk about it. I’ll plead guilty. But I’m not going to talk about the stuff you were saying. There won’t be any trial to taint me. It’ll always be a mystery, why I did it.’ His eyes blazed anger. ‘I killed them. That’s what you need me to say, right? I did what I had to do. I killed them.’
After they took Anderson away, Tony found he really didn’t want to move. Drained and in pain, he was unwilling to do anything that might make either of those states worse. So he sat there. The custody sergeant brought him a cup of coffee that must have come from his private stash because it tasted of something. Other than that, they left him in peace. He drank most of the coffee, then let the last inch cool so he could use it to swallow some codeine. What kind of a job was it where the high point of success meant feeling so shit?
He wasn’t certain how much time had passed when Carol came back. She sat down opposite him and reached across the table to put her hand over his. ‘Kevin’s doing fine. He’s going to be all right. And we’ve charged Anderson,’ she said. ‘If the CSIs come through, we’ll be home and dry. We can tie him to Tom Cross for sure, and there’s circumstantial evidence with Danny Wade. And the attempt on Kevin. And if he sticks to the guilty plea, we’ll get Robbie as well.’
‘He’ll change his mind as soon as a brief gets to work on him,’ Tony said. It was the way of the world. Whoever ended up representing him would see the potential for headlines as well as the need for justice to be seen to be done. ‘Let’s just pray it’s not Bronwen Scott.’
‘Is there anything else you’d like to talk to me about?’ Carol said, taking her hand back.
His eyelids flickered with tiredness. ‘Oh,’ he said slowly. ‘Now you come to mention it…’
‘Tony,’ John Brandon’s voice boomed from the doorway. ‘Congratulations. Fresh out of hospital and you’re doing our job for us. Well done.’ He shook Tony’s hand and pulled up a chair. ‘Now, Carol tells me we have something of a delicate situation on our hands. It might be helpful to have your input here. Carol?’
‘It seems we have an alternative scenario for Saturday’s bombing,’ she said. ‘Tony and DC McIntyre went to see Rachel Diamond yesterday. The widow of Benjamin Diamond, one of the stadium bomb victims. It had emerged that Mr Diamond’s company had links to Yousef Aziz’s family business. Tony had already raised doubts with me about whether this might be something other than a straightforward terrorist outrage, so when he asked if he could talk to Mrs Diamond about any possible connection between her husband and Yousef Aziz, I thought it would be worth pursuing. Tony?’
‘Rachel Diamond claimed she hadn’t been following the media coverage, and it occurred to me afterwards she might not have seen a photo of Aziz, and so she might not have realized something she’d seen and written off as completely innocent was in fact something quite different. So I went back to her house today with a photo of Aziz. She wasn’t there, but her son Lev was. He caught sight of the photo of Aziz and said, “Why have you got a photo of Mummy’s friend?” I didn’t press him in any way, I know the rules about juvenile witnesses. And he said that they’d met Aziz in the park and he’d bought him an ice cream. It dawned on me that there was a different explanation from either of the ones we’d been considering.’
Brandon looked worried. ‘CTC are not going to like this.’ he said.
‘Tough,’ Carol said. She hadn’t forgiven Brandon for what she still saw as spinelessness in the face of the enemy. ‘Tony?’
‘Yousef Aziz wasn’t a terrorist. He wasn’t a hit man either. He was a lover. He was snarled up in…forgive me for sounding like a bad tabloid headline, but there’s no other way to describe it than forbidden love. The son of a devout Muslim falls in love with a married Jewish woman. It’s not going to play well at home, is it? They’re both going to be cast out of their families and the businesses they’ve worked so hard to build.
‘I think Rachel was the brains behind it.’ He shook his head. ‘Actually, having spent some time with Rachel, I have a creepy suspicion that she went after Aziz with the sole intention of setting up what finally happened-killing two birds with one stone. But I’m getting ahead of myself.’ Brandon looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but with them. Undaunted, Tony carried on.
‘They’re having an affair. Aziz is head over heels in love, he’d do anything for her. And Rachel hits on a great idea. They fake a terrorist bombing. They’ll get rid of Benjamin without anyone suspecting the motive. Aziz also gets to strike a blow against the system that oppresses his people, because the people they’re blowing up are the rich bastards who despise the likes of him and his family.
‘What Aziz thinks is going to happen is this. He’s going to set the manual timer, get out of there before it blows, drive to the airport and be gone before anybody even starts to look for him. He’s going to go to Canada, which is a clever choice, because there are quite a lot of Asians there. Rachel is supposedly going to join him there-’
‘I hate to interrupt,’ Carol said, ‘but I have some information on that front. Stacey has traced a booking on a
