Best Served Cold: A DCI Harry Grimm Novel

a dent in the guilt he carried. He was a shell from that moment on, kept saying how he wished it had been him who had died. He changed. Drew into himself. Put on so much weight, just eating because it made himself feel better, sort of a comfort thing, I guess. He got into fights at school, usually ended up on the wrong end of it all. But he was bright, and he managed to pass his exams, and head off to university. And that was the last I ever saw of the boy I called my son.’

‘Do you mean he just never came home?’ Harry asked.

‘He called me one night,’ Mr Rawson said. ‘He was the most lucid that I had heard him in years. He sounded calm. Happy almost. Said that he knew what it was that he had to do and that I wasn’t to worry. Said he was sorry that he hadn’t been able to protect Sally and that he hoped what he was going to do would make up for it.’

Harry suddenly felt sick, his stomach knotting itself up, his own experience on the job, the hell and anguish he’d witnessed over the years more than enough to guess where the story ended.

‘The police came the next day,’ Mr Rawson said. ‘A letter was found in his room in the halls of residence. They found his clothes by the river, which was only a walk away from where he was staying.’

‘Suicide,’ Harry muttered.

‘I’m afraid so, yes,’ Mr Rawson said, the sadness in his eyes so deep, Harry could tell the man had spent years drowning in it. ‘The note was what he had said to me the night before on the phone, almost as though he had read it to me before heading off to do what he did. So, in the end? I lost my whole family. Because of that boy. Because of that gang. Because of what they did.’

Harry leaned back in his chair, the weight of what he and Jenny had heard seeming to almost push him back, and his breath felt suddenly short, taken away by the sadness that now sat with them in the room, the cloaked figure of death leaning on them all.

‘So it all comes down to revenge,’ Harry said. ‘All of this. Everything that’s happened. It’s revenge for everything you’ve told us.’

Mr Rawson sat up straight, as if to display pride in what he had come to confess. ‘It was Sally’s birthday on Saturday,’ he said. ‘Or would have been. Every year it comes around I think about what happened. This year, though, it’s a little different. You see, I have cancer, detective. Stage four. I won’t see her next birthday. I needed to do something, to see some sense of justice.’

‘They were kids,’ Harry said. ‘And if what you said is true, then as tragic as it was, it was never intended, Sally’s death, I mean. They didn’t set out that day to see her die.’

Mr Rawson visibly bristled at this.

‘How can you sit there and say that? They chased her! They scared her! She fell into the river because of them! They killed her! I lost my wife, my son!’

‘And you decided, seeing as you were running out of time, to go after them.’

‘Exactly that!’ Mr Rawson snapped. ‘So, are you going to arrest me or not?’

Harry was thoughtful for a moment. ‘You’ve not told me how you killed them,’ he said. ‘And you’ve not explained why you’ve stopped now. I mean, there are six in the gang, aren’t there? Why stop if you blame them all for what they did?’

‘I don’t have to explain anything to anyone!’ Mr Rawson said, anger in his eyes. ‘We all of us died that day Sally fell into the river! Those boys, they got away with it! It was called an accident, a tragic event, and life just moved on for everyone else. But not for us! No, not for me! It couldn’t! I bloody well wouldn’t let it!’

‘But it’s still a leap,’ Harry said. ‘From all that, all those years ago, to murder, now. And I’m just not buying it. Because they’re not just murders, are they? What you did, I mean, there’s a lot more to it.’

Harry saw Jenny swing round to stare at him.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Harry said, looking to Jenny, ‘we have to arrest him. We can’t not arrest him, not after what he’s said. But there’s just one thing I just don’t get . . .’ He turned his attention back to Mr Rawson. ‘Your third victim, Jack Iveson. Why did you risk it?’

‘Risk what?’

‘Ignoring the fact that I doubt you’re strong enough to twist open a barley sugar, never mind put a choke hold on a grown man, the first two victims were alone when murdered. Not only that, their deaths were clearly planned down to the last detail. Jack though? There was someone else there, wasn’t there? The doctor, attending to Jack? And you still went for it! Took him out first before you could have a go at Jack! Why? Why not just wait until he’d gone?’

‘Jack had it coming,’ Mr Rawson said. ‘I was there. I had to get it done!’

‘But a rolling pin, though,’ Harry said. ‘You could’ve stoved his skull in!’

Mr Rawson paused, his eyes flickering just enough for Harry to notice.

‘It was the first thing that came to hand!’ Mr Rawson said. ‘I wasn’t really thinking.’

‘And that’s the problem,’ Harry said. ‘Right there. Because this, whoever’s doing it, they do a lot of thinking. In fact, I reckon they’ve been thinking about it for years and years. Just like you. And then it’s all come to a head, the fantasy spilling out into reality, perhaps.’

Harry stood up. ‘Jenny, you can do the official arresting business, and that means you’re going to have to take him up to Harrogate. You okay with that?’

‘Of course,’ Jenny replied.

‘What about the others? Where are they?’

‘Jadyn and Matt have eyes