‘But you’ve damned yourself.’
‘It was the woman, don’t you see?’
‘Were you there when she died?’
‘No. With the cameras and everyone excited on the bridge, I managed to get through unseen and cut the cord. I knew that once McAlister died, there would be an attempt to make sure no one left the scene. I melted into the background before he jumped and then disappeared. No one missed me, and if they did, they probably thought I’d chickened out.’
Isaac went into the other room, phoned Henstridge and updated him as to the situation.
‘I’ve seen it before,’ Henstridge’s reply. ‘Although a plea of insanity won’t go far.’
Isaac expanded on Hampton’s condition to Henstridge, his ability to walk, his determination to confess. He had possibly said more than he should have, and it would be imperative for independent and police-accredited personnel to check Hampton, but Henstridge was on the phone. More importantly, as the senior officer in Homicide, Isaac could see that the confession, so freely given, was lacking in crucial details. And if Hampton was also confessing to climbing up twenty-one flights of stairs and shooting Simmons, then where was the rifle, which river had he thrown it in.
Isaac wasn’t a psychoanalyst, but he knew inconsistencies when he heard and saw them.
‘Will he improve from here?’ Isaac asked.
‘It depends if the physical recovery is complete.’
‘He killed the wrong person, feels remorse. With his confession, we can’t leave him at the house.’
‘If he can walk, then he can travel in your vehicle.’
Isaac ended the phone call, went into the other room. Hampton was writing a confession.
Twenty minutes later, Hampton looked up. ‘There you are,’ he said as he pushed three sheets of paper across the table. ‘Either you type it up here, and I’ll sign it, or we do it at the police station.’
‘You seem anxious,’ Isaac said.
‘Tired of living a lie.’
‘Sign them for now,’ Larry said. ‘We’ll get it typed up at the station, get you to sign that it’s an exact copy of what you’ve just written, but the original remains the primary document.’
‘Have you included both murders?’ Isaac asked.
‘Only Tricia Warburton’s for the present. She’s the only one I regret. I’m sure you understand.’
Isaac didn’t, but for now, what they had would suffice.
On the trip back to the police station, the wheelchair folded up, and in the boot of the vehicle, Hampton said nothing, only closing his eyes and falling asleep.
‘I’m not sure what to make of this,’ Isaac said to Larry, who was sitting alongside Hampton in the back seat.
‘An itch you can’t scratch?’
‘That’s it.’
No one spoke again until the three arrived at the station. Hampton preferred to walk to the interview room than to take the chair that Larry wheeled behind.
Chapter 25
Chief Superintendent Goddard was delighted. Two murders solved, one with a signed confession. It was to him a red-letter day, a chance to praise his team in Homicide, to let his superiors know that once again, under his tutelage, his people had delivered.
Isaac Cook, a man who had known Goddard from the first week he had joined the force, could not share in his senior’s evident joy. Something niggled him, or as Larry had said, an itch he couldn’t scratch.
‘You worry too much, Isaac,’ Goddard said as the two men sat in the Chief Superintendent’s office, up high on the top floor.
Isaac had taken the stairs up the three storeys, preferring not to use the lift, conscious that he didn’t exercise as much as he used to, a thickening around the waist, a flabbiness in the jowls.
Now free of his chief superintendent, Isaac sat in the interview room with Larry; Hampton was on the other side of the table with his lawyer friend, Duncan Harders.
‘I’ve advised my client that he was unwise to give a confession,’ Harders said.
‘It’s signed,’ Isaac said.
‘Even so, I will argue that it was a confession made under duress: a disabled man in a precarious mental condition, badgered by the police.’
‘Mr Harders, the facts are damning. Firstly, Mr Hampton was at the bungee jump, and secondly, and more importantly, he has consistently hidden from us and those closest to him that he is not confined to a wheelchair. You do acknowledge that last fact?’
‘I acknowledge both. It would be pointless to deny the evidence.’
‘Duncan, I appreciate what you’re doing,’ Hampton said, ‘but it’s not necessary. I was there; I cut the cord.’
Ignoring his client, Harders continued. ‘A man confessing without the supporting evidence is not guilty. I’ve seen the footage, and nowhere can I see where Mr Hampton bent down and cut the cord. My client may well feel sadness that his hatred of McAlister was indirectly responsible for an innocent woman’s death, but the facts don’t point to murder.’
‘Why was Mr Hampton at the bungee jump? Surely you’re not going to say that he intended to make the jump later on?’
‘I’m not. My client had intended to confront McAlister, to argue with him, and try and reason with him if it was possible. After all, they had been friends once.’
‘Fellow mountaineers, two men who placed trust in each other, doesn’t make for a friendship.’
‘The chief inspector is right,’ Hampton said. ‘I didn’t like him, never did. Although if he said the bungee jump was safe, it was.’
‘Yet you managed to sneak through, cut the cord and then get away?’ Larry said.
‘I did,’ Hampton replied. To add emphasis, he stood up, pushed the wheelchair away, grabbed a chair in one corner of the room, pulled it up to the desk and sat down.
‘The knife?’
‘I tossed it out of the
