Yet, as soon as Carl had spotted them, their prime suspect was eager to co-operate.
Gus had a hunch that a confession was the last thing on Carl’s mind, and so it proved. When they interviewed him, Carl confirmed many of the elements of his conversation on the doorstep of Hogan’s home on Trowle Common.
Carl Wallace had learned from his father, Lawrence, that Rachel Cummins had left her mother’s home in Haslemere, Surrey, in 2006. Katherine Cummins had a vague recollection that Rachel moved to the West Country. It hadn’t taken Carl long to trace the personal trainer. Wallace was serving a custodial sentence at HMP Leyhill in Gloucestershire, so he had time on his hands.
Carl soon found Rachel advertised extensively both online and in the local press.
Lawrence had told him Katherine reckoned Rachel lived with a wealthy, older man. Neither he nor Kate knew the man’s name, but Carl uncovered it. Rachel’s business address was the same as that of local business owner Gerald Hogan, a widower with two young sons.
A heated conversation in a bar between Lawrence Wallace and Rachel’s father, Jim Cummins, had exposed potential leverage for blackmail. Jim Cummins had got engaged to his girlfriend, Kate before she flew to Australia to visit relatives. She wanted to see the country before returning for their wedding in April. Rachel was a honeymoon baby as far as everyone was concerned when she arrived on the second of January, but Jeff Cummins became suspicious.
The marriage ended after eighteen months. During their heated discussion, Lawrence Wallace bragged to Jeff about getting together with Kate, just as he had hoped when they were teenagers. They had been an item in the days before Jeff Cummins arrived in town and stole his girl. In the end, Kate and Lawrence’s relationship also foundered. Perhaps she finally realised he was as a big a sleaze as Rachel had always maintained.
Gus did not know what Kate Cummins was doing these days. But Lawrence had held onto the knowledge he’d gained of what her ex-husband had said in their argument. Kate, or Kat as friends often called her, had shared one drunken night of passion with a guy she only knew as Batman because of his t-shirt. Kate discovered Batman’s true identity only hours before flying home to the UK from Darwin. The man she slept with was Gerry Hogan.
Lawrence Wallace had convinced himself Gerry had to be Rachel’s father. The timing was right. Kate’s insistence that she and Jim have sex almost as soon as she’d got home from Heathrow sealed the deal. Jim believed Kate was desperate to cover her tracks.
Lawrence thought Carl was better placed to act on that information. His son had moved to Bristol to live after leaving HMP Leyhill and was familiar with operating on the wrong side of the law.
Carl Wallace had told Gus and Alex that buying the Beretta Tomcat in the city was a piece of cake. He’d taken the train from Temple Meads to Bradford-on-Avon. Hopped on a bus to Trowle Common and walked to Hogan’s front door on May the sixth, 2012.
Gus had thought he’d known the sequence of events from there. As Carl Wallace gave them his version, Gus understood why so many people they talked to insisted Gerry Hogan was a decent man. A man who went out of his way to avoid trouble. Someone for whom even the hint of scandal would be avoided at all costs.
As Gerry had stood on his doorstep, listening to Carl Wallace tell him Rachel could be his daughter, his world collapsed around him. The girl with the cat on her t-shirt. It was just so plausible.
Gerry had grabbed the gun Carl pointed at him and turned it on himself. Suicide was preferable to an accusation of an incestuous relationship.
Everything Carl Wallace told them about what followed the fatal shot made sense of the weapon and the missing white gloves. Carl confirmed he’d dropped the Beretta down a drain and the gloves into a waste bin at the railway station. After a night on a park bench in Bath, Carl had flown to Malaga.
He’d worked hard in local bars for the past six years and never got into trouble. On Saturday night, Carl had flown back to Bristol under escort, and someone else would get asked this week to prepare a case against him for the CPS. Gus was glad he wasn’t involved. Only two people knew whether Carl was lying, and one of them was dead. The CPS would probably cut their losses. No jury would find Carl Wallace guilty of murder, but Carl had taken a gun with him that night, whether or not he intended to use it. Why load one bullet if you didn’t plan to fire the weapon? No, there was enough to put Carl Wallace away for five years. Wiltshire’s new Chief Constable would have to be satisfied with that.
Alex Hardy interrupted his reverie.
“I’ve had a return message from Bronwen, guv,” he said. “It arrived here not long after we left on Friday afternoon.”
“Don’t keep us hanging, Alex,” said Gus. “Spit it out.”
“The girl Bronwen met on the plane was always Cat to her, because of her t-shirt. Her name was Katie or Katherine, and she came from a place in Surrey, but Bronwen can’t remember the name. Hazel something.”
“What now, guv?” asked Alex.
“I called Geoff Mercer yesterday, as I said. Carl Wallace returned to the UK under escort, and Jeff Cummins has agreed to a DNA paternity test. We’ll know the results on Thursday or Friday.”
“You were inclined to
