“They found DNA on some of the bodyparts,” he continued, his voice as dispassionate as he could manage under the circumstances. “The DNA belonged to Barnes, who was also a convicted child sex offender. Barnes was arrested, admitted his part in the death of my son, and expressed terrible regret. He also named Belnay and Dean as being involved.
“Belnay and Dean both went on the run but were caught quickly enough and charged with murder, as was Barnes. We buried what was left of our son and waited for some sort of closure with the trial. But of course we never got it. Because a man called Gabriel Mortish denied us that.”
“Oh God,” said the kid.
Hayer nodded. “Oh God, indeed. Gabriel Mortish QC, one of the best defence barristers in the country, well known for taking on the cases that no one else wants to touch. He’s defended all sorts. Terrorists, serial killers, rapists. If you’re one of the bad guys, he’ll be there supporting your right to maim, torture and murder with everything he’s got. If you’ve never done a thing wrong in your life, tried to treat others like you’d want to be treated yourself, then he’s not interested in you. So, of course, it went without saying that Mortish took on the defence of Belnay and Dean. Not Barnes, because Barnes had shown some remorse for what he’d done, admitted that he’d played a part in it. That made him part-human and Mortish is only interested in helping out sub-humans.
“Belnay and Dean denied everything. Said it was nothing to do with them, but it came out that a neighbour remembered seeing the two of them leaving Barnes’s house the day after Robert had disappeared, and when the police found the car used to abduct him, they found Belnay’s DNA in that. But the two of them stuck to their story. Said that they knew Barnes, and had been round his house, but that that was the extent of their involvement. Instead, they blamed him, claiming that he’d been acting very erratically when they were round there, and came close to admitting that he’d been the one responsible for the abduction. But Barnes said it was the other way round. According to him, it was Dean doing the killing with Belnay encouraging him, and it was Dean who did the chopping up of the body afterwards.”
Hayer sighed. “Your dad did a good job, son. I had to give him that. I watched him every day in that courtroom. He sowed doubt like it was a breeding rabbit, put it everywhere. Sure, he said, Belnay and Dean were not nice guys, no question of that, but were they guilty of this heinous crime? He said the evidence suggested strongly that they weren’t. He made the neighbour, the witness who’d seen them leave Barnes’s place, sound all confused about whether it was actually them she’d seen. Then Barnes got put on the witness stand and your dad wound him up in knots. Did he see Dean or Belnay kill Robert? If so, why didn’t he try to stop it? Wasn’t he just blaming them to take the heat off himself?”
Hayer sighed, addressing the kid directly now. “You know what happened? Course you do. Barnes ended up admitting that he hadn’t seen either of them actually kill him, that he’d been out of the room at the time, but he came across like a shifty witness — someone you weren’t going to believe. Your dad made him look like that. Your dad discredited the evidence to such an extent that Barnes, who didn’t have him as a lawyer, got life for murder, but Belnay got away with seven years as an accessory. And Dean...” He spat the name this time. “The judge directed the jury to acquit him. Said the evidence against him just wasn’t reliable. That was your dad’s doing. He got one of them seven years, meaning the bastard’ll be out in four, and the other — the one who was pure fucking evil, who cut my son into little pieces — he got him off. He walked free, and now he’s living on the outside with police fucking protection, just to make sure that no one tries to take the law into their own hands and trample on his precious human rights, even though no one gave a shit about my son’s human rights. He’s even strode past this house a couple of times, just to fucking torment me. THAT IS NOT JUSTICE!” He shouted these last four words, shouted them at the non-existent heavens, his voice reverberating round the dull confines of the cellar.
The kid opened his mouth, started to say something, but Hayer was not to be interrupted. “That man... your father destroyed me. He took away the last thing I had left: closure. A week after the trial, two months ago, Robert’s mother and I split up. Neither of us could take any more. She’s contacted a lawyer and the divorce’ll be going through sometime soon. All I’ve got left is my job. Adding up numbers on one side of a page, taking them away on another.”
“Please, I...”
“Shut up. Just shut up. Listen to me.” He paused for a moment, tried to calm himself down, knew it wouldn’t happen. Not until he’d said his piece. “I can’t stand my job, I can’t stand what my life has become. I can’t... I can’t stand fucking any of it, and that’s why you’re here. You’ve got to understand that. What those men did to Robert, what they stole from me, that half put me in the grave. What your dad did, what he did on behalf of bastards who do not deserve to even be alive let alone walking free, well that pushed me the rest of the way. I’ve got nothing left to lose now. That’s why I snatched you. That’s why you’re here. Because I’ve got to make him suffer like I’ve suffered. It’s the only way. Some people say two wrongs don’t make a right, some people say that you can’t stoop down to a bad man’s level, but it’s bullshit. It’s all fucking bullshit propagated by people who haven’t been torn apart by suffering, by injustice.”
“But you don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand what?” he yelled. “Don’t understand what? I understand fucking everything, that’s the problem!”
The kid shook his head. Fast. “No you don’t. Honestly. The man you’re talking about...” The voice quietened, almost to a whisper. “He’s not my dad.”
“What?”
“This man, Mortish, he’s not my dad. My name’s Blake. Daniel Blake. Lucas Mortish goes to my school. We’ve got the same colour hair, but my dad’s an IT director. Please, I promise you.”
The tension in Hayer collapsed, replaced by a thick black wave of despair. He looked closely at the boy. Was he wrong? What if he was?
“Oh shit. Oh no.”
The cellar seemed to shrink until it was only inches square. A heavy silence squatted in the damp air. The kid snivelled. Hayer just stood there, defeat etched deep on a face that had seen far too much of it during the previous year.
Ten seconds passed. The kid snivelled again. Hayer didn’t know what else to say.
It was the kid who finally broke the silence. “I’m sorry about your son,” he said, trying to look like he understood, “but it was nothing to do with me.”
This time it was Hayer who couldn’t bear to look the kid in the eye. Instead the whole world finally fell apart for him and with a hand that was shaking with emotion, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the .22 calibre handgun he’d bought illegally three weeks ago in a pub (for either a murder or a suicide, he hadn’t known which), fumbled and released the safety, then placed the cold barrel hard against his temple, and pulled the trigger.
He died instantly.
Lucas Mortish sighed with relief, then stood up, staring down impassively at the body of the deranged lunatic who’d abducted him from the street the previous afternoon, chloroforming him in the process. He was hungry. And thirsty. The lunatic’s head was pouring out blood on to the uneven concrete floor and already the corpse was beginning to smell. Lucas Mortish wrinkled his nose and stepped over it, making for the steps that would take him to freedom.