Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,131

Tom he was going to attend the opening of the new community centre, even though it was not on his patch and he’d had nothing to do with its development. Jarvis hoped to hijack the local journalist and get him to run another piece on Sandra and it seemed he had succeeded.

Jarvis looked out from the front page under the words, ‘Politician appeals for help with hunt for missing daughter’. Tom was a journalist, not an editor, but he knew a crap headline when he saw one. It sounded as if Sandra Jarvis had gone shopping for a few hours and not come home in time for tea. It was typical Malcolm. Tom’s former editor had not lost his ability to neuter stories, transforming them into bland accounts of local mishaps. He doubted this would prompt anyone to come forward.

Tom folded the paper in half and dropped it onto the table, leaving Frank Jarvis’s face to stare forlornly up at him while he finished his coffee.

He hadn’t heard from Annie Bell since their meeting in the park. Tom had thought long and hard about his next move. He considered the nation’s legal system, its complex bureaucracy and the way it had of dragging on for years while men and women suffered in the meantime. He went over the evidence he had amassed against Annie Bell and what her lawyers might do with it. He considered the ways in which they would rebuff each point while questioning the validity of everything he had found and his motives for doing so, considering he was on the family’s payroll.

Only when he had gone through all of that over and over again did he finally drive out to her home.

‘We need to talk,’ Tom told her when she opened the door.

‘What do you want? Have you made up your mind?’

‘Yes, Annie, and I’m giving you a chance,’ he told her, ‘the best chance you’re going to get.’

Before Annie could answer, a cry of, ‘Mum!’ came from the back garden and Annie reacted to it by turning away and letting him follow her through the house. As he had expected, it was a large home with smart, expensive furniture. When they reached the garden it seemed to stretch on endlessly, with three separate areas of lawn, trees, bushes, flower beds and separate play areas for the kids.

‘What is it?’ Annie asked.

‘Holly’s biting,’ the younger child said, looking on the verge of tears. At first Tom thought she meant the older girl, who was using a swing on a second patch of lawn, then he saw a Labrador that was scampering around trying to jump up and bite the older girl’s feet as she swung back and forth.

‘Stop that, Holly!’ shouted Annie and the dog immediately complied, slinking away to the far end of the enormous garden. It seemed even dogs did what they were told when Annie Bell did the telling.

When the children were calm she led him back inside.

‘Go on,’ she told him.

‘Go to the police,’ he said, ‘and ask for a detective, Ian Bradshaw. He knows all about the Rebecca Holt case. It won’t take long.’

‘What won’t?’

‘Your confession.’

Her breath came out in a rush then and her voice was high but defiant. ‘No one will believe it was me,’ she told him, ‘I can explain the fine for the car.’

‘No, you can’t, Annie,’ he told her, ‘and I know it all now. You told me yourself. I know everything you did.’

‘I told you because you wanted to understand. You wanted to work for me.’

‘I lied, Annie. People do that; just like you lied about the job. You created it and offered it to me to buy me off.’

‘I offered it to you because I thought you were different, but I see now that you are no better than all of the other journalist scum I’ve had to deal with. Whatever you claim I told you, I will deny every word. I’ll say it’s all fantasy and none of it is true. My husband killed Rebecca Holt. He has been tried and convicted and that’s the end of the matter.’

‘Except I have your full confession,’ he told her. ‘I recorded it.’

There was a moment’s pause. ‘You’re lying,’ she said.

‘No, Annie.’

‘You weren’t wearing a wire,’ she reminded him. ‘I checked. I searched you,’

‘You’re right, Annie,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t wearing a wire, but I got up nice and early that day and went to a little shop I know in the city. I bought something