‘No, but I know where she is.’
A veiled threat, Isaac wondered. Rees would have realised that it must have been Gabbi Gaffney who was the primary source of information for the police.
‘You are also known as Peter Hood.’
‘I am.’
‘Why?’
‘A man is entitled to call himself what he wants.’
‘Your evidence?’ Jameson said. He said little, waited his time. Whether Gareth Rees was innocent of the crime that the police alleged was not his concern. His job was to give the best legal advice and expertise that money could buy, and Jameson wasn’t cheap, which meant that Rees or someone else had the money to pay him.
‘Do you know a Janice Robinson?’ Larry said.
Isaac would have preferred that Larry hadn’t raised the woman’s name, not yet.
‘Canning Town, tell us about your time there?’ Isaac said, focussing back to the area.
‘I prefer to keep out of there as much as possible,’ Rees’s reply.
‘Why?’
‘Have you been there? It’s not the best part of London, more like Baghdad than Britain.’
‘And you’ve been to Iraq?’
‘I have. I was a soldier, enough medals to wallpaper this room.’
‘You were a killer.’
‘I followed orders. That’s what they teach you, and those who join the military hoping for an education and a cushy life are naïve. In the military, you kill or are killed, whether you like it or not.’
‘And you, Mr Rees, did you like it?’
‘Killing people?’
‘Yes.’
‘If ordered, I did my duty.’
Jameson was looking over at his client, unsure where the questioning was heading. He leant over, whispered in his ear. ‘They’re baiting you.’
Rees sat up straight again, rested his arms on the desk. ‘Someone had to do it, so you can all sleep safe in your beds at night. And, no, I didn’t enjoy it.’
‘Sometimes, innocent people were killed.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Is that why you were court-martialled?’
‘My client’s military record,’ Jameson interjected, ‘is not of relevance here. Whether he had a predilection for killing in a war or not is unimportant. A person is guilty of a crime as a result of proof, not supposition, a muted conscience for right and wrong, moral or amoral. If you are unable to provide further evidence, then it is for the police to terminate this interview and to allow my client to leave.’
‘Your client will be formally charged with the murder of Sean Garvey,’ Isaac said.
‘Without evidence?’ Jameson’s retort.
‘Our investigations are ongoing. Let me ask Mr Rees about his former wife. His understanding of what happened between him and her is contrary to what we’ve been told.’
‘They’re all the same. Find a lonely western man, wiggle their asses, get him excited. Once they’ve got what they want, then it’s a changed situation.’
‘Analyn?’
‘I don’t know the woman.’
‘She was at Mary Wilton’s brothel when you went to see your wife.’
‘If she was, I didn’t see her.’
‘You’re not disputing that you visited your wife at a brothel?’
‘Why should I? It’s what she was doing in the Philippines.’
‘You gave her money.’
‘I did. It seemed the decent thing to do.’
‘Mr Rees, decent and honourable are two words that wouldn’t describe you,’ Isaac said. ‘What we believe happened in Iraq was that you went rogue, exceeded your orders and indiscriminately killed innocent people.’
‘It was a war, innocent people die.’
‘Collateral damage maybe, but for you to be drummed out of the military is a fair indicator that you care little for life, and that murder comes easily. Why didn’t you have sex with Janice Robinson before killing her? Amanda Upton? Why the grave at Kensal Green? It was an assassination of a woman who apart from her choice of a profession doesn’t seem to have committed any grievous crime. Who were you protecting? Whose orders were you following?’
‘This is ludicrous,’ Jameson said.
Isaac chose to ignore him. ‘Ian Naughton called you Gareth when the two of you waylaid a gang of hoodies in Canning Town. Why that gang? How did you know that Waylon Conroy was more intelligent than most gang members, more likely to acquiesce and to kill Hector Robinson?’
‘I wasn’t with an Ian Naughton. I don’t even know the name,’ Rees said.
‘You know him, we know that. What name he uses at other times we don’t know, but we met him at a house in Holland Park. He was in the company of Analyn, as you were in Godstone. Witnesses will testify that you are the man in the village, and both Inspector Hill and I know what Analyn looks like. The BMW?’
‘What BMW?’
‘The BMW in the garage in Godstone and a burnt-out wreck on a vacant block of land in Canning Town are one and the same. Mr Rees, I put it to you that you can act as a rational and decent human being, but as a result of actions you have committed in extremely dangerous situations, you have another side to you.’
‘What does that mean?’ Jameson said. ‘Aspersions have no weight in law, any more than amateur psychology of my client’s mental well-being.’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder doesn’t seem to be the issue here, but you may have had a prior condition that was invaluable in the military. Not that they should have considered you, and they are not willing to let us know, but with a murder charge, they may be forced to release those details.’
‘They won’t,’ Rees said. ‘The Official Secrets Act will keep whatever I and others did under wraps.’
Isaac knew it was true. He had had experience with the secret service before; government-sanctioned assassinations to protect a politician and his indiscretion with a soap opera star when they were both young, a shared son. The son adopted, his later conversion to extremist Islam making him a threat to the government, would have had added power to his voice if his father
