Chapter 64
‘Evening, Melvin,’ Kelly said.
She was tempted to take it and fuck off into the sunset but she didn’t want to leave her team.
She wanted to see Emma have her baby, and Dan become a great dad.
She wanted to sit in Calf Close Bay on the pebble beach, sharing a flask of coffee with a nip of Baileys in it with Kate.
She wanted to listen to Fin’s terrible Father Ted impressions.
In the end it was only the little people who could make a difference.
It wasn’t leaders who changed the world but people who chose to follow them.
Had she heard Joe Folly say that?
The ones who gave the orders were immune from penalty; wasn’t that always how it worked?
Not always, she reminded herself.
They got the unpleasantries out of the way.
Melvin was confused.
‘What happened to your clothes?’ he asked.
She looked at the police psychologist sitting next to him and she gave Kelly the look that suggested she was getting nothing out of this unfortunate and confused old man.
She sat back and studied him up close. He looked around the room as if he was seeing the Sistine Chapel for the first time.
It was quite a show.
He was fit to be interviewed but not to be held overnight and would be transferred to a secure ward after she’d asked him some questions.
She opened her laptop and turned it around so Melvin could see it and started the footage of him walking along the corridor behind the Heron Hall Hotel, towards the stairwell that led to Jamie’s floor, at ten minutes to five o’clock on Tuesday evening. Melvin reacted vacantly.
‘What’s that in your hand, Melvin?’
He peered at the footage. ‘That’s Ursula’s scarf! It was tied around Acorn’s neck; where did you get it?’
It was abundantly clear that Melvin Stone was so far gone into a world they didn’t understand that their only option was to hand him straight over to a public defence lawyer.
She showed him the footage they’d just watched of him in a lab, violent and aggressive, but he didn’t react.
‘That’s you, Melvin,’ she said.
He nodded and smiled.
‘Did you fight with this man when you went to his room?’ she asked.
She showed him a photo of Jamie Robbins.
He shook his head.
They’d taken DNA swabs and digital fingerprints from him, and they had a beautiful match with the smashed glass in Jamie’s room. He still wore Paul’s boots, though the mud was dry now.
It was enough to convince the CPS to charge him with Jamie’s murder.
Then she showed him a photo of Ursula Brunner, a Swiss national who gained US citizenship in 1984.
‘That’s my wife,’ Melvin said, his eyes flashing with jubilation.
They now knew that Ursula had died in 2020. She was repatriated by Hampton-Dent.
Kelly closed the laptop and sat back and closed her eyes.
‘Did you write this on your computer, Melvin?’ she asked him.
The fifteen-page document had been found on his MacBook inside his cottage and it seemed to be some kind of diary record of his life at Rydal with dates, names and details about his illness.
He looked blankly at her.
‘It says here that Hank came to see you,’ she said. ‘The man in the cream suit? And Sandy, Doctor Cooper, the scientist?’
She assessed the ridiculousness of her situation. An uncommunicative murderer, another in the hospital, a chain-smoking scientist who’d been handed over to the US Embassy, and a dead CEO.
Only Hank remained standing in his cream suit (she assumed he had several clean ones) and she’d already been told by Del Booker that he was untouchable.
She thought words like that belonged in Kevin Costner movies but apparently not; they resonated around the walls of Eden House too.
Untouchable.
She couldn’t imagine the level of power it took to gain such status and she shuddered to think what he might do next.
There was no diplomatic incident because firstly no one would believe her and secondly she’d lose her job if she told anyone.
Only Joe Folly could have exposed something like this and they’d found him beaten to a pulp inside a flat in Ambleside, just like Sandy said.
He was now inside one of Ted’s fridges waiting to be cut open and examined, and Kelly wondered how many lies they’d find inside him.
She stood to leave, and Melvin wanted to shake her hand.
He smiled up at her and she stared at him.
He’d stabbed Johnny in his stomach. The blood was still on her clothes.
Yet he still smiled. And it wasn’t a challenging, I-told-you-so, evil grin; it was a genuine effort to make contact with another human being, because that’s what Melvin Stone did.
He was a respectable veteran with an impressive past who’d been decorated.
But Hampton-Dent had created a monster, and she wasn’t allowed to talk about it.
Kelly turned away, left the room, and went next door, where a live feed had been set up between Eden House and the Penrith and Lakes hospital.
Kevin Streeting was a different ball game.
From the moment she’d seen Mercedes man on the first video, filmed by the hapless Instagrammer, cocking his weapon, when Jamie crashed into the atrium floor, she knew he didn’t possess a gun for show.
He was primed to expect something. Because Hank Hampton knew there might be trouble.
Something had gone wrong.
Melvin Stone had malfunctioned and Hank and Tilda were there to mitigate disaster, with Sandy Cooper’s help.
Kelly sat next to Dan and Kate and they looked at Kevin Streeting in his hospital bed.
He was out of surgery and fed up.
Mercedes man was exactly what she expected. He’d been shot in the bushes cocking his weapon. Another second and he would have got a well-aimed round off, and not one that fired into the air. It was difficult to tell who he was aiming at, but she guessed it was her.
He stared into the camera, held by a uniform in the Penrith and Lakes. Streeting was handcuffed and physically incapacitated. Kelly could tell he was angry.
‘Can you confirm your name for the record?’ she began.
They confirmed nationality and DOB, as well as address and marital status.
Streeting was a British citizen and so at least she could throw the book at him.
‘How long have you worked for Hank Hampton as a bodyguard?’ she asked.
‘Fuck off,’ he said.
Kelly looked at Dan, who took over.
‘That’s nai way to speak to a lady, laddie,’ Dan said.
‘You can fuck off as well then, mate.’
‘I’m not your mate.’
‘Can I remind you this is an interview under caution, Kevin, which will be played in court.’
‘Fuck the lot of yer,’ he added for good measure.
They persevered.
‘Where were you on the afternoon of Friday the 11th of July?’ Kate asked.
He glared at them.
‘We have you on camera arriving at the Old Man Guesthouse in Skelwith at around 8 p.m. and not leaving. Who did you go to see?’
‘No comment.’
‘Was it Angelina Robbins?’
‘No comment.’
‘Do you think the DNA we have taken from you in hospital will match the samples taken from room 13 and Angelina’s body?’
‘No comment.’
‘Why did you rape her?’ Kelly asked.
The question garnered a flicker of Kevin’s left eyelid and Kelly leant into the camera.
He grinned.
Kelly wondered if Kevin Streeting had a nanochip in his skull too, because he behaved like he’d had a lobotomy. But dumb animals can be dangerous ones. Lethal ones.
‘Why was it so public? Why take her to the lake and leave her to die?’
This elicited a genuine response.
He thought she was already dead.
‘She drowned by the lake,’ Kelly said. ‘Your beating with the lampstand didn’t finish her off.’
Streeting sniffed and looked away but it wasn’t an emotional gesture; it was more playground bravado: the kind of tough guy snuffle that precedes a punch.
‘Did she reject you? I know how this goes… She turned you down and you decided to stray from your brief. You left your DNA inside her too.’
Kate reached out her hand to place it on top of Kelly’s. She squeezed it.
‘Who told you to go to the address on Rydal Water? To the property of Melvin Stone?’
‘Father Christmas.’
‘Where were you on Saturday 12th of July?’
‘In the bath.’
‘We have a witness placing you in Skelwith with a dog called Potter who belongs to the post office. Did he follow you, or did you take him for a walk?’
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘How long have you worked for Hampton-Dent?’
‘Never heard of them.’
‘Did you kill Joe Folly?’
‘Who?’
‘Is your head sore from when I twatted you in the face with a cane inside my house?’
Streeting grinned at this last question and Kelly knew it had been him. It was the jawline, the thin shoulders…
‘Have you always been an arsehole?’
They ended the interview.
They had him in custody and they’d get him on forensics. But his masters would remain at large.
It seemed that some people were indeed above the law, after all.