Laura had remained in the observation room, watching their suspect become more and more angry, and demanding answers from his brief. Every time Mahoney moved from his seat, one or both officers told him to sit back down. He clearly hated being told what to do. He was almost ready to explode.
Ridley was beside himself, pacing the carpet. And Jack was sweating now.
Then, at 1.05, a video link arrived from an unknown email address. Jack clicked the link and a still image appeared.
Avril sat in the middle of the sofa in her front room. Her knees were clamped together, her fingers clenched on her lap...
Jack hurried to his desk to collect his iPad, then propped it on the desk in front of Ridley. ‘I don’t need to watch it again.’ And with those words, Jack left Ridley to it, closing the door behind him.
Jack sat at his desk, sipping his vile coffee, watching Ridley’s every move via the window in his office door. He could even see the reaction from Ridley when the video turned to snow and then he saw him concentrate as it jumped to the second video from inside Avril’s en suite.
Inside his office, Ridley stared at the screen, motionless, for a good few minutes after the video ended. He then pushed his chair back, very slowly made himself another cup of coffee and retook his seat. He hovered his hand over the play button, took a deep breath and watched the whole thing again. Jack watched, his nerves on edge, but seeing Ridley replay the video told him for certain that Adam had also been true to his word about the video not corrupting after being watched once.
At that moment, Angel appeared in the squad-room doorway holding the cardboard tube in its carrier bag. Jack jumped up to meet her. ‘There’s one print on this — and it’s yours.’
‘That can’t be right, I saw him touch it...’ Jack’s words faded to nothing. He knew Angel hadn’t made a mistake — which meant that he had. Angel wished him luck with whatever he was up to, then left him to his thoughts.
Jack stepped into the corridor and hurried into the gents’ toilet. He quickly called the local police station in Killarney and asked them to check the name Adam Border against the art studio’s location. The last street name he’d noted was Runda Street, but the track that led to the studio itself had had no signage. He described the route taken from his hotel as best he could and said that it was also a cannabis farm. The officer he spoke to said he’d get back to Jack as soon as he had news.
Jack walked to the canteen hoping a change of scenery might help him think more clearly. And because he needed a coffee with caffeine in it.
He stared down into the car park at the awful pea-green Nissan, turning recent memories over and over in his mind. How could the cardboard tube have no prints on it when Adam had handed it to him?
He closed his eyes and tried to find the memory he needed.
When Adam left the studio to take a call, Jack had used the time to discreetly explore the studio. It was an intriguing space and — right in the centre — was the tantalising canvas hidden beneath a muslin cloth. Jack remembered how he had glanced at the door Adam had left through — nothing — he had then moved towards the easel, reached out his hand and caught the muslin between his fingertips. This was the moment he heard Adam’s voice moving closer. Jack had dropped his hand and by the time Adam returned Jack was scanning the painting materials on the floor beneath the easel — brushes, paints, artists’ glue, palette knives, pots...
‘Glue.’ Jack opened his eyes and clenched his jaw. ‘Fucking artists’ glue.’ He didn’t know for certain, but he now speculated that Adam could have used glue on his fingertips to level his prints and make them undetectable. It would have been easy to prepare. He knew Jack was coming because Greg had told him.
Ten minutes passed and Jack’s mobile didn’t ring. Frustration, humiliation and sheer bloody fury made him want to call the Killarney Garda back and demand to know what the hold-up was before he realised how unreasonable he was being. Jack headed back to the squad room to see if Ridley had finished watching the video for a second time.
As Jack headed for his desk, he could see that Ridley was now in the company of a thick-set man in a cheap grey suit, holding a brown paper bag. Jack glanced at Laura. ‘He’s a DCI from Hammersmith. Been here a couple of times about Tania’s suicide.’ Laura drew quotation marks in the air around the word ‘suicide’. ‘Did you read yesterday’s paper?’ Jack nodded as he eyed Ridley’s office. Laura perched on the edge of his desk again. ‘Up. Her. Arse. Her own dad. He claimed that he was trying to calm her down, unaware of what she’d already taken. I mean...’
Jack’s mobile rang, and Laura’s dissection of the Wetlock case faded into a low hum. The Killarney Garda Jack had spoken to earlier was now calling him back. ‘We’ve got no Adam Border connected to any cannabis farm or artist’s studio in Killarney. I sent a boy to the only studio building you could have been referring to, but it was empty. We do get artists using it as a retreat in the summer, but it looked like there’d been no one there this year.’
Jack interrupted him, asking if there were any flowering plant baskets hanging by the studio door.
‘No, nothing hanging up, no plants, no property, no furniture, no personal items. If you want the place to have a full going-over, SOCO and all, make it official and I’ll oversee it myself.’
Jack knew that if the cardboard tube didn’t have Adam’s prints on it, then neither would anything else. He thanked the Garda for his help and hung up.
Jack was gripping his mobile tightly in his fist to stop himself from exhibiting any outward signs of the turmoil he was feeling inside. when Ridley summoned him into his office.
Jack was surprised that Ridley was now alone. He must have missed the departure of the Hammersmith DCI whilst he was seething at being outsmarted by a bloody drug-smuggling art thief.
Ridley gestured for Jack to sit down. ‘Well, that’s one of the worst things I’ve ever had to watch. But when it’s played in court, it’ll turn the stomachs of the jury, too, and once we submit the partial fingerprint, they’ll associate it with Mahoney. So let me give you a quick catch-up on a few loose ends. We just found the Jaguar in Dave’s garage in Leeds. It’s being towed in by forensics, and he’s asked for a solicitor. So he’s not as stupid as he looks.’
‘Well, no, he can’t possibly be.’ Jack’s flippant remark was just what they both needed after the day they’d had so far.
‘I reckon,’ Ridley continued, ‘with Mahoney being charged with Avril’s murder, the Drug Squad have lost him. Their hope of striking a deal with him to name names, being a super grass... gone. He’s getting life — no deals — so why cooperate? His men, however, who’ve been “no comment” throughout, especially those who feature on the video, will open the floodgates to save themselves.’ Ridley rocked back in his seat. ‘There’s one more thing that needs discussing.’
Jack sat in silence assuming that, any second now, he’d have to explain how he traced Adam Border across forbidden Ireland and made the deal to give him 24 hours in exchange for the video.
Ridley unwrapped a clear mint, twisting the wrapper in his fingers before he continued.
‘I’ve had a number of conversations with that DCI from Hammersmith over the past few weeks because he wanted my opinion on you — as a man, not as an officer — in relation to the death of Tania Wetlock.’ Ridley’s change of subject was a welcome surprise for Jack.
‘I should have told him to get lost, but I went by the rules and put you on leave. Apologies.’ Ridley put his hands in his lap. ‘You had a meeting with their DC Lyle. He said that with your direction they brought in Elliot Wetlock for questioning. He subsequently admitted that he’d supplied his daughter with barbiturates, allegedly to help manage her anxiety. He also admitted that on the night of her death he administered rectal diazepam, having given it before for insomnia. His defence is that he had no knowledge of what she’d taken earlier that day, so he had no way of knowing that it would become a lethal cocktail. They’ll go for manslaughter. Until you pointed Lyle in the right direction, they were going for suicide.’