The Darkness Within, page 5
Molly knew Mags well enough to know she was capable of lying, or at least manipulating the truth for her own ends. She had no reason to believe a word that came out of the woman’s mouth. Common sense told her to finish her pint and walk away. But something made her think again. If there was even the faintest chance Mags knew something about a possible murder, then Molly felt obliged to hear her out.
‘OK,’ she sighed. ‘Tell me about this alleged murder.’
Mags started circling the rim of her glass again. ‘It happened a few years ago. My friend… somebody killed this kid he used to hang around with. He wouldn’t tell me his name, or what they did to him. But he says the men who did it said they’d kill him if he ever told anyone.’
‘When you say “a few years ago” – how long ago are we talking?’
‘About thirty years.’
‘Thirty years! That’s a cold case, Mags. The chances of us finding someone after all this time is slim, to say the least. Especially if we don’t have a name.’
‘I’ve told you all I know.’
Molly wasn’t sure. ‘If this all happened thirty years ago, why has your friend gone missing now?’
But Mags just shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe something’s happened to scare him.’ She looked imploringly at Molly. ‘But I really do believe he might be in trouble.’
This sounded more and more fanciful by the second. Molly wondered if Mags was making it up as she went along just to get her attention. Or did she genuinely believe what she was saying? There were times she wished she had Denning’s ability to read people.
‘How long have you known this friend?’ she asked.
‘A while.’ She paused. ‘I went to school with his sister.’
‘And he’s only just mentioned this murder from thirty years ago?’ Molly struggled to keep the scepticism from her voice.
‘Look, I know how this sounds. But we kind of lost touch. He’s been away…’ She took a moment to find the right words. ‘I hadn’t seen him for some time, then he got back in touch with me a few weeks ago. He was very agitated; claimed he’d had time to think about things, and he wanted to sort his life out. But before he could move on, he had to deal with all the crap that had gone down in his life, including this. He’s been living with it for years – frightened to tell anyone, scared of what would happen if he went public with it. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how. I’m a journalist, not a counsellor – I’m not trained for this kind of thing.’
‘So why didn’t you and your friend come to us and make this official? You know it’s a crime to withhold information from the police.’
‘I told you – they threatened him, which is why you need to find him. He could be in trouble.’
Molly took another sip of Kronenbourg, trying to make sense of what she was being told. ‘Why should I believe you, Mags? What makes you think this friend’s disappearance is something sinister? He could just have gone away for a while.’
‘Like I said – I think he’s scared.’
‘And you’ve tried contacting him?’
‘Well, of course I have. He’s not answering his phone, or replying to my voicemail messages.’
‘What about social media?’
‘He isn’t on social media.’
‘Have you been round to his address?’
A pause. ‘I don’t know where he lives.’ Her finger stopped mid-circle, and her eyes met Molly’s again, staying there for a moment, before falling back to the tabletop. ‘He only recently moved to London. I think he’s sofa-surfing, or dossing down with mates. He might even be sleeping rough.’
‘How long has he been missing for?’
‘Just over a week.’
Molly wondered just how well Mags really knew this ‘friend’, and what it was she wasn’t telling her. Her gut instinct was to approach the situation with caution. ‘Then my advice is to wait until he gets in touch again. If you haven’t heard from him by the end of next week, contact your local police station and report him as a missing person. And I’m sorry, but unless you can give me some hard facts about this supposed murder, I can’t take it any further.’
Mags leaned in closer. Molly could smell her perfume: Christian Dior’s ‘Poison’ – appropriate. ‘You don’t get it, do you? There’s a real possibility something bad could have happened to him. That’s why I got in touch with you.’
Another sigh from Molly. Whatever was going on here, the bottom line was that a possibly vulnerable man had gone missing. A man who may potentially have information about a serious crime. It was all very tenuous, but if Mags was telling the truth, as far as she knew it, Molly had a moral obligation as a police officer to take her seriously. Besides, she had a feeling Mags wasn’t going to let the matter drop easily.
‘Alright. I’ll have a look on the system and see what I can find out. But I can’t guarantee anything, at least not until I have more information.’ She took a pen and pad from her jacket pocket. ‘Give me his details.’
‘His name’s Colin Meek. He’s in his late forties. He originally hails from Barnsley, but he no longer has any connections there. I’ve got his mobile number, and I can email you a photo, if that helps.’ She reached over the table and grabbed Molly’s hand. Molly wasn’t sure if it was a gesture of appreciation or a threat. ‘Promise me you’ll try and find him.’
Molly pulled her hand away. She put the pen and pad back in her pocket and glanced at her watch. There should be a bus in five minutes, meaning she could be home in half an hour.
She downed the rest of her pint, then grabbed her bag from the back of the chair and slung it over her shoulder.
Getting to her feet, she said, ‘OK, Mags. I’ve said I’ll look into it. That’s all I can do for now.’ Molly told Mags she’d be in touch. She left the pub and headed to the bus stop on Queen Victoria Street. But as soon as she was on the bus heading back to Crouch End, she regretted having said anything at all. Agreeing to do a favour for Magda Kilbride felt a bit like offering your soul to the devil: once you’d signed it away, there really was no hope of turning back.
She had a horrible feeling this was all going to come back and bite her on the arse.
Chapter Nine
The aromatic tang of something exotic greeted Denning as soon as he entered the flat. Sarah was in the kitchen preparing dinner.
He and Sarah had an informal arrangement where each made dinner on alternate evenings, assuming they weren’t dining out. They both had demanding jobs and often worked long hours, so they’d agreed early on in their marriage that it was only reasonable they should divvy up the domestic chores as evenly as possible. In reality, it was usually the case that whichever one was home from work first ended up cooking, and more often than not that was Sarah. Not for the first time, Denning wondered what life would be like if he had a more conventional job.
‘Busy day?’ she asked. She was chopping some vegetables ready to add to the cubes of pork sizzling in a fruity sauce in the Le Creuset casserole dish on the hob.
‘So-so,’ he replied. Any interest she took in his job was motivated by politeness rather than actual curiosity, and that worked both ways. His wife had no wish to become acquainted with the gorier intricacies of a murder investigation any more than he had an urge to query the tax implications of the investment portfolios she managed on behalf of wealthy clients. Work was rarely discussed beyond the usual cursory enquiries. ‘How about you?’ he asked.
‘Same,’ she replied. ‘So-so.’
He headed upstairs to the shower room off the main bedroom on the mezzanine level, which overlooked the vast open living space that took up most of the flat.
As he changed out of his work suit and turned on the shower, he thought about Buckfield’s spartan flat. The contrast in their living arrangements couldn’t have been greater. The lofty Shoreditch apartment he called home was mainly paid for courtesy of Sarah’s salary rather than his, but even so they could still have afforded to live somewhere nice on what he earned.
Buckfield should have retired with a good pension, easily enough to have funded a comfortable home to see out his remaining years. So why had he ended up living in that dump?
Before they’d all left for the day, Dave Kinsella told them he’d found contact details for Buckfield’s ex-wife. Denning would speak to her tomorrow. Perhaps she could throw some light on her ex-husband’s domestic situation, though Denning wasn’t holding out much hope.
He stood under the shower, letting the needles of water ease away the day’s tension. Ex-wives… that was something he and Buckfield did have in common.
Claire hadn’t been in touch for a while. She was planning to take their son Jake down to her mother’s in Devon for the Easter holidays. Not that long ago she’d been talking about moving there. That idea seemed to have been knocked on the head recently, but there was always a chance Claire would move away from London, taking Jake with her. He’d wanted to spend a bit of quality father-and-son time together over Easter. Jake’s ADHD meant he found it difficult to make friends, and often felt isolated. Denning wanted to prove to Jake that his son could depend on him if he needed to.
He turned off the shower, dried himself, then slipped on a pair of jeans and a woollen pullover, and headed back downstairs.
Sarah was still in the kitchen, adding some chopped tomatoes to the casserole. ‘It’ll be another twenty minutes,’ she said. ‘You might as well chill for a bit.’ That was code to get out of the kitchen whilst she was cooking, so he took a bottle of beer from the fridge, went into the living room and made himself comfortable on one of the linen sofas.
His thoughts turned to the meeting that morning with the new Detective Chief Super. He still wasn’t sure about Harrison; there was something about the man he just didn’t like. Maybe it was his condescending manner, or the way he talked about change and efficiency. The Met had undergone a decade of cuts and savings, none of which had helped make the service any more efficient, no matter what the politicians claimed. Crime hadn’t dropped, but the workload of the average copper had significantly increased. Harrison had said little – if anything – to address this.
Denning sipped the beer and took out his phone. Curiosity had got the better of him. He logged on remotely to the Met’s intranet and looked up Harrison’s profile. Most of what he read he already knew: Harrison had joined the Met straight from school as a PC, moving over to CID in his late twenties and steadily progressing through the ranks until becoming a DCI in his mid-forties. His later promotions had come about after a period of restructuring had created gaps in senior management that had been slow to fill. The implication was that Harrison’s success had been down to good timing rather than talent, but perhaps that was unfair.
The picture on Harrison’s profile page was at least ten years old. The man who had addressed them today was greyer and more grizzled, his skin more pockmarked than the ‘official’ picture suggested.
Denning did a further search but could find no information about the other contenders for the DCS post or their reasons for dropping out. Had Harrison received political backing? Detective Chief Superintendents were internal appointments, decided by the Met rather than arranged by the Mayor’s Office for Policing, but having an Assembly member on his side probably wouldn’t have harmed Harrison’s chances.
Still curious, he then googled Justin Morrow. Morrow’s page on The London Assembly website gave little away. According to his biography, he’d come from a financial services background, but had always been interested in politics from an early age.
Apart from the Police and Crime Committee, Morrow was a member of two other committees and some kind of special advisory body on crisis planning that reported directly to the Mayor’s office. However, there was nothing to link him with Harrison, and no suggestion that the two had known each other prior to Harrison’s recent appointment. Perhaps Denning was looking for things that weren’t there.
He logged off and placed the phone on the coffee table. Morrow had been smooth. Smooth and confident was how Denning recalled his performance that morning: a well-rehearsed speech that Morrow could probably deliver off pat by now. But what was his interest in the Met Police, and in MIT in particular? The Mayor’s Office had recently come up with several community-based initiatives to try and reduce knife crime and gang-related violence in the capital, but that was outside of MIT’s remit. True, they had to deal with the aftermath of such crimes, and it would certainly be in their interests to see it drastically reduced, but these initiatives were generally better directed at rank and file policing, rather than overworked detectives.
But if Harrison was planning radical changes to MIT, then having political support behind him would provide some much-needed clout if it came to a fight.
Denning couldn’t help worrying that there may be stormy times ahead.
Chapter Ten
Jon was pottering in his ‘man shed’ when Molly got back to the North London home they shared. She could hear Motorhead’s Iron Fist oozing across the scrub of overgrown lawn that separated the shed from the house.
The shed had recently been converted from general garden usage into a ‘space’ for Jon to write and think, though he mostly used it to listen to music and smoke dope. He’d moved an old sofa bed from one of the spare rooms into the shed, along with a desk he’d found in a junk shop, and an old gas heater donated by an elderly neighbour. He’d made the place cosy and homely, to the point where, if he were to add a kettle and a toilet, Molly suspected he’d be quite happy to live in it permanently. She rarely crossed its threshold.
She briefly thought about knocking on the shed door to let him know she was home, but decided against it. Instead, she went into the cluttered kitchen, walked over to the sink and poured herself a glass of water.
Things had been going well between them lately. Jon had spent the best part of a year almost paralysed with depression. It had put a strain on their relationship, no matter how sympathetic she’d tried to be. The situation had been exacerbated by him losing his job as the political editor of a tabloid newspaper, The London Echo, along with the ensuing loss of self-worth that went with unemployment. Fortunately, he’d recently turned a corner thanks to medication and regular sessions with a therapist. Plus he was now teaching journalism at a local FE college two days a week and firing off the odd article for the few publications that still accepted freelance submissions. But the risk of a relapse was never far away. There were days when Molly felt like she was treading on eggshells such was her concern that something she said or did could trigger another bout of melancholy. Other times she felt guilty that she wasn’t being more supportive. It was a delicate balance.
Then there was her trip to the doctor’s that morning. They’d never discussed having children. Molly had tacitly assumed that kids were off the agenda. She had been so focussed on her career since they’d got together, and Jon had never struck her as the paternal type. She knew he had a daughter out there somewhere, although he had lost touch with her and she was rarely mentioned. The prospect of another child might make him run for the hills. Or give him a reason to get up in the morning. Either way, now was probably not the time to try and find out.
She sat at the kitchen table and sipped the water. Drinking a pint of Kronenbourg quickly on an empty stomach had been a mistake. Meeting Mags had probably been a mistake too, but there wasn’t much she could do about that now.
Jon suddenly appeared at the back door, his face breaking into a smile when he saw her. ‘Heya, when did you get back?’ He kissed her on the cheek.
‘A few minutes ago,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
He gave a slightly forced laugh. ‘It’s all right. I was only chilling. Nothing to disturb.’ Sometimes Molly felt he was trying too hard to convince her everything was OK. Or perhaps he was trying to convince himself; it was hard to tell.
* * *
Neither of them fancied cooking, so dinner was a takeaway pizza in front of the telly. Molly sat in the comfy armchair that she’d recently bought from Ikea, while Jon was on the rickety chaise longue that was partly supported by two and half bricks. Channel 4 News was doing a piece about the melting polar ice caps, and she could see Jon’s eyes focus more on the pizza than the telly. This felt like a convenient moment to share what was on her mind.
‘I saw Mags today.’ She ate a mouthful of ham and pineapple and waited for his response. Jon and Mags had worked together at the Echo several years ago, long before he and Molly met. At some point they’d had a relationship – a full-on affair, according to Mags; a brief and forgettable fling according to Jon. Molly had never been sure which one to believe, and suspected the truth lay somewhere in the middle.
‘Mags?’ he said, looking up from his pizza to stare at the telly, suddenly interested in melting ice caps. ‘What did she want?’
She filled him in on what Mags had told her about the missing ‘friend’ and the alleged murder, the details of which were too sketchy to make any real sense. She omitted to mention her somewhat impetuous promise to look into it; a promise she was already regretting.
When she’d finished, he was still gazing at the telly, chewing on a slice of pizza. ‘Do you believe her?’ he asked.
‘About the missing friend? Probably, though I would question her use of the word “friend”. I’m not sure Mags does friends.’ He didn’t react to her comment, so she continued. ‘About the alleged murder?’ She paused. ‘I don’t know. I suspect the murder story was simply the bait to lure me in.’
‘I take it she wants you to find this friend?’
She nodded. ‘But I’m not sure I can justify wasting time on what could turn out to be a wild goose chase.’
‘But…?’
She nibbled some of the pizza crust. Jon was right; there was a ‘but’. ‘It was when she said he was vulnerable. I can’t help thinking it’s possible something could have happened to him. And if it has, I’d never be able to live with myself knowing I hadn’t taken this seriously.’
