“Karen, even if this Jimmy Finch is prepared to go on the record about everything he was told, for God’s sake, indeed even if he had taped Marshall’s confession, well, the first question must be, is it a confession? ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ A good barrister would soon sort that out.”
“Well, sir, maybe, but surely everyone understands the expression. It means you’re stating the obvious. It means, yes, of course.”
“It’s ambiguous, at the very least. But, OK, even if you accept that, it still gets us nowhere. Not at the moment, anyway. Double jeopardy is still in place. You don’t overturn a six-hundred-year law overnight.”
For once, Karen had to agree with her chief. And for once he was not even being his usual pompous belligerent self. Indeed, he sounded quite regretful. Perhaps some memories of what it was like to be a policeman did lurk in the recesses of his highly political brain after all, thought Karen. She also reflected that he’d been almost friendly. It seemed that her new approach, her expressed desire to keep her boss informed, had been remarkably effective. She and the CC finished their phone call on the best of terms, which, for them, in any situation let alone under the recent strained circumstances, was a real result, and Karen made a resolution to share her innermost thoughts with him more often. It was not, however, a resolution that she realistically expected to be able to stick to for long.
Rather strangely, her conversation with the chief constable had cheered her up. Perhaps sharing the burden, even with Tomlinson, did work after all. She found herself chuckling as she picked up the phone to call Bill Talbot. The retired detective did not answer. Nether did his wife. And neither was any kind of message service connected.
Karen replaced the telephone receiver on her desk and told herself that was fate. She would not bother Talbot again. What difference could John Kelly’s reasons for being so interested in the case make to anything, anyway? Particularly now. Talbot was probably being melodramatic. Kelly’s professional thirst alone was enough to drive him on with any story, as she knew perfectly well.
There really was nothing more anybody could do about Marshall. It was infuriating, but that was that. The best thing for her and everyone else involved, including poor Sean MacDonald, was to try and forget all about it, to move on and get on with their lives. Hers was becoming quite complex enough without dwelling on the past. Apart from anything else, she needed to concentrate on her relationship with Phil Cooper and make sure that she was in charge of it rather than the other way round — although she feared it may already be too late for that.
Her priority had to be the future. She could feel her life spiralling out of control and she didn’t like it. She needed to do some concentrated thinking, and not let her brain be entirely led by her heart and her body. She did not need the ghost of Clara Marshall, nor the ghost of a lost daughter she was equally sure had been murdered, to continue to haunt her. She had to exorcise them. And she also had to abandon the near-obsession with bringing Richard Marshall to justice which she had harboured more or less throughout her career.
It was over, she told herself. For better or worse, it was over.
Part Three
Chapter Sixteen
Karen was, of course, completely wrong. It wasn’t over at all.
Five weeks later, Richard Marshall was found dead in the apartment he still owned at Heron View Marina, Poole. He had been shot through the head with a single bullet from a revolver. No attempt had been made to conceal his body.
Karen received the news by telephone from Dorset CID. It seemed that the alarm had been raised by the local postman, delivering a package, who had noticed that the front door to the flat was standing very slightly ajar. And when there was no reply from inside, after he had knocked several times and called out, he attempted to push the door fully open. It moved only three or four inches before he could push it no further. Something heavy seemed to be preventing it from opening. Peering through the gap, the postman had seen the body of a man lying just inside the hallway.
“Oh, fuck,” muttered Karen to herself. And afterwards she sat very quietly and all alone in her office for several minutes. Her first reaction was shock. Pure shock. Her second, hard as she tried to prevent it, involved a certain sense of pleasure. She was glad Richard Marshall was dead. She couldn’t help it. She experienced a very strong feeling that a kind of justice had been done at last.
For just a moment she indulged herself, allowed herself to revel in the knowledge of his sudden violent death. She hoped also that whoever had killed him had made sure that Marshall was quite aware that he was about to die, and why. She hoped he had known fear, just as his victims must have done. She hoped that when he had looked death in the eye he had been absolutely one hundred percent aware that his end had finally come.
Karen sat with her fists clenched and her eyes closed, savouring the thought. After all this time, after all this heartache, she just couldn’t help it.
Then, abruptly, her mind switched track. The police detective in her swung into action. “Whoever had killed him.” That was the rub. It was now her job and that of the Dorset police to find Marshall’s killer. And that thought brought her firmly back down to earth. She was suddenly acutely aware that Richard Marshall’s death could only be welcome if it did not create another victim. And there was little doubt that was exactly what it would do. Indeed, Marshall’s murderer was almost certainly a victim already, and probably about to become an even greater one.
She turned her attention then to the question of the identity of Marshall’s killer. It just had to be someone who had suffered because of the crimes they all believed he had committed. It would stretch credibility even to consider any other motive.
Top of the list, Karen was well aware, had to be Sean MacDonald. Karen knew that. And she didn’t like the idea one little bit. Sean MacDonald, of whom she had become so fond. Sean MacDonald, who had made it quite clear that he’d had enough of British justice, and had virtually threatened to take the law into his own hands.
She reminded herself again that Sean MacDonald was eighty-three years old. Nonetheless he was a fit man and a volatile one. And a man who felt deeply aggrieved on behalf of a daughter whose killer had never paid the price for his crime. Until now, perhaps.
She picked up the phone again and called Inverness. Mac’s answerphone clicked in. She tried twice more and on the third attempt left a brief message. Then she called Inverness police and asked them to go around to Sean MacDonald’s address. After that she gathered her troops around her.
By the time she walked into the incident room it was obvious that the whole of CID and quite probably the whole of the nick knew that Richard Marshall had been murdered. Tompkins and Smiley were giving each other five in one corner. Everybody in the room seemed to be on their feet, laughing and talking. A bottle of whisky was hastily stowed in a drawer as she entered. She pretended not to notice that, but the rest of it had to be attended to.
“Right, that’s enough,” she called. “We’re going to a funeral here, not a bloody wedding.”
“Yeah, but it couldn’t be a better funeral, could it, boss?” responded Tompkins, to a general muttering of approval. He was looking almost cheerful, which was actually quite difficult for him.
“You think not, Chris?” Karen enquired icily. “Between us and Dorset we have to find out who murdered Richard Marshall. And that’s where this all goes pear-shaped.”
There was more muttering, of a different kind.
“I’ve got Inverness checking out Sean MacDonald,” she went on.