‘No.’
‘And you didn’t ask?’ Long shook his head.
Someone came into the secretary’s office with the tea, and Kathy stood up. Her skin felt grimy with perspiration and fatigue.
‘We’ll take a break there,’ she said, i have some things to arrange with Sergeant McGregor, then we’ll go downstairs.’
27
‘It just feels like an anticlimax,’ Kathy said. ‘I would really have liked to march into the canteen and arrest the bastard there, eating his bacon and eggs in front of his mates.’
Brock smiled, manoeuvring the car along the winding road back towards London. ‘Better that McGregor should pick him up, Kathy. In the long run you’ll feel better about it all if you distance yourself and don’t make it personal.’
‘But it is personal.’ She could see the glow of the orange street-lights of the built-up area in the night sky ahead, although here in the country the darkness was impenetrable. Soon the dawn would come, people would rise, taking up where they had left off. And Tanner, wherever he was, would rise too, and discover that his whole world had come to pieces while he slept.
‘It was a beautiful example of what that American was talking about at the conference, come to think of it,’ Brock said. ‘Chaos theory. A malcontented butterfly flutters her wings somewhere in the north of Italy, and in the south of England all hell breaks loose.’
‘Yes,’ Kathy yawned. ‘Bit ironic that the killer was the one person who wasn’t personally threatened by Petrou.’
‘The worst part of the whole thing,’ Brock said, ‘is that I’ve put my shoulder out again, breaking into Long’s bathroom.’ He glanced at Kathy’s face, her eyelids beginning to droop. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I took you straight back to your flat?’
‘Oh …’ Kathy felt too tired to think. ‘No, I might as well pick up my car from your place and get it home. Once my head hits the pillow I’m going to crash.’
Brock turned on the radio and a voice cheerfully predicted rain. It was followed by an old recording of ‘Volare’.
A pale dawn was silhouetting the backs of the houses behind Warren Lane and picking out the young leaves on the horse-chestnut tree as Brock turned through the archway from Matcham High Street and swung to a stop in the courtyard behind Kathy’s Renault.
‘I’ll ring you when you’ve had some sleep,’ he said. ‘Drive carefully.’
She nodded and trudged over to her car, feeling for her keys in her shoulder bag. She pulled them out, dropped them, groped around in the half-light on the cobble-stones, picked them up, opened the door and threw herself in behind the wheel. Thankful that the engine turned over first time, she strapped herself in, giving a little smile of pleasure at being alone again on her own territory. She put the car into gear, glanced up at the back of Brock’s house as she rolled forward, and saw a light in his kitchen window snap off.
She pulled to a halt. There was no way that he could have got further than his front door in the time since he had left her. Whoever had turned off the kitchen light must have heard his key in the lock, the door pushed shut, his footsteps begin the weary climb up the stairs.
‘Oh no.’
She switched off the engine and thought fast. She had no phone in the car. The nearest public phone would be in the High Street, but that would mean driving away. Which was what she should do. Except she still had the front door key Brock had given her.
She snatched it from her bag and hurled herself across the courtyard and round the corner to his front door. She bent down and opened the letter flap. A light was on in the stairway. She was just about to call out and warn him, when she heard the crash of breaking glass and splintering timber. Then total silence.
She thought again about leaving and getting help, or at least finding something to use as a weapon. What? The tyre lever? She slid the key into the lock as quietly as she could and carefully eased the door open. Still no sound. She closed the door and began to climb the stairs, the way she had learned as a teenager coming home late and not wanting to wake her aunt and uncle, by clinging to the wall, where the timber treads were less likely to creak. Half-way up, the light went off.
She froze.
In the silence she put her hand into her coat pocket and took hold of her bunch of keys, gripping a key between each of her knuckles. Not a lot of use, but still … She carefully slipped the long coat off her shoulders, laid it on the stairs and started to move forward again.
The darkness inside the house was relieved only by the faint glimmer of dawn which spread from the study across the landing and drew her into the room. It was light enough to see that there was no one standing waiting for her. Light enough, too, to see the chaos in the centre of the room, where Brock’s body was a dark mound in the middle of a shattered coffee-table.
Kathy looked carefully around the room, then a second time, then over her shoulder at the landing. No sign of anyone else. Was there a back door the intruder could have left by? A window, perhaps?
She stepped forward cautiously and knelt beside Brock, reaching to feel the pulse in his throat, still making no sound, as if the slightest noise might start the furies. The smell of whisky was overpowering, and she guessed that the broken bottle that lay beside his head must have been close to full. There was a pulse, but no signs of consciousness. His laptop computer was lying beside him like a faithful dog, waiting for its master to wake up and give it instructions.
She picked it up and straightened, trying to remember where the phone was, turned round and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Tanner’s dark figure standing a few paces away in the doorway.
‘Hello, Kathy.’
His voice was low and hoarse and probably the most frightening thing she’d ever heard.
‘Hello, Rie,’ she heard herself say, calm as anything. ‘You didn’t need to do that to Brock. You’ve hurt him. I think we should get an ambulance.’
He looked her over slowly before replying. ‘Too late for that, Kathy. Thieves are getting more and more violent these days. I don’t think he’s going to make it, to be perfectly honest.’
‘No, Ric. No one will buy that.’
‘Oh, really? Why’s that, now?’
She hesitated. ‘Too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’
He was looking keenly at her. ‘Come on, Kathy, what have you got up your sleeve?’
He took a step towards her.
‘They know, Ric. Long has told them everything.’
‘Ah.’ He halted, a little smile frozen on his lips while his mind worked. ‘Well, it was always on the cards. I’ve had time to make other arrangements. I do have some family business to attend to overseas, as it happens. It makes it easier to deal with you two, anyway. No need to pretend. In fact, I can positively show off. Enjoy myself. It would be poetic having you and Brock end up exactly the same way as the other two, wouldn’t you say? Brock on the end of a rope like Petrou, and you with your throat sliced open like Rose. Couldn’t have a plainer way of telling them all to get fucked than that, now, could you?’
He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket. When he withdrew it he was holding something, and Kathy watched as it clicked and sprung a long silver blade.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, her voice sounding implausibly relaxed to her own ears, ‘why you killed Petrou at all. What did he say to you that made you so angry?’
Tanner stared at her balefully for a long, silent moment. ‘It wasn’t what he said, it’s what he wouldn’t say.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I wanted the stuff he had on Long, didn’t I. Photographs and a letter. Very indiscreet stuff. Stuff you’d spend a lifetime to keep hidden. Especially if you were Assistant Comissioner of the Metropolitan Police.’
Kathy was chilled by Tanner’s voice, so detached, so quiet and unemphatic, as if he had already set aside all the feelings that modulate the way we speak.