Chapter 33
We interviewed Tony Wilkinson in the suite. He sat across from us on the same seat in which we’d talked to Billy Martin yesterday. But the atmosphere was very different.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen a man so reduced.
I’d never met him before, of course, but it was easy enough to get a sense of the man from his more obvious physical characteristics.
He was thirty-four years old, good-looking, broad and athletic.
I imagined that twenty-four hours ago, he would have given the impression of being a strong, reliable man.
But twenty-four hours ago, he had a wife and a son waiting to be born, and, while traces of that man remained, he seemed to be in tatters.
Some internal clock had been wound on countless years in the last few hours, hollowing and aging him from within so severely that his loss appeared physical, visible. It had crippled him.
He said, ‘Jake.’
It took me a moment to understand.
‘That was going to be his name?’
‘That is his name.’
He shot me a look. Under different circumstances it might have been angry and forceful, but he was too drained right now – his emotions all over the place – for him to summon it properly.
He was right though. It made me realise that Rachel and I hadn’t even discussed names yet.
I wondered whether she had ones in mind that the gulf between us had prevented her mentioning to me.
I was sure she did. That was normal, wasn’t it? That was what normal people did.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re right. Jake.’
‘It’s not you. I’m sorry. But Marie –’
Wilkinson shook his head and broke off, taking a few moments to gather himself together.
Determined, I thought, not to cry. As beaten down as he was, it was obvious he was not a man to cry in front of strangers, not even under circumstances like these.
His shoulders seemed slumped from the weight of it.
Laura and I sat quietly, patiently, waiting for him to be ready to speak again.
‘That was what Marie wanted to call him,’ he said finally. ‘It took me a while to understand, I guess. He was such an … abstract concept for a while. But then he was just … well, he was Jake.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
I meant something different this time: not so much an apology as an attempt at sympathy.
Sorry for your loss, perhaps. Sorry for what you’ve been through.
But, really, it was a meaningless thing to say; the words sounded empty even to me, and Wilkinson barely registered them.
Why would he? I’d seen what the killer had done to Marie Wilkinson.
I hadn’t known and loved her, and I was in some way prepared for it by the countless horrors I’d seen in the past. And yet the Wilkinson house was still the most abhorrent, awful crime scene I’d ever stepped into.
‘I can’t imagine how hard this is,’ I said. ‘I really can’t. But what I can tell you is that we will – that we are working around the clock to stop this man. He will not get away with what he’s done.’
‘No.’
Wilkinson looked at me as he said that, and a little more of the anger came through this time.
Heaven help the man, I thought, if Wilkinson got hold of him.
With everything that had happened – not least the indescribable, inhuman horrors of today – a part of me wished it was possible to make such a thing happen.
‘The only reason we’re asking you to go over all this again is so that we can catch him more quickly. There might be some detail that can help us. Maybe even save somebody else’s life.’
He nodded slowly.
‘I know.’
We’d already noted his movements over the past day, but I wanted to go over them again in case there was anything he or we had missed.
Marie had made him a coffee, which he’d drunk before leaving for work at about half past eight.
About quarter of an hour later, the Wilkinsons’ elderly neighbour, Keith Carter, had phoned the police to say he had seen a masked intruder enter the property next door.
What happened next was unclear, but Carter appeared to have taken matters into his own hands and gone round to the Wilkinsons’ house to make sure Marie was all right.
Upon entering the property, he must have interrupted the murderer, and had, himself, been struck.
At that point, or very shortly afterwards, the killer had fled the scene.
Officers had arrived at the house just before nine, where they had found Carter slumped on the outside steps with serious head injuries, and Marie Wilkinson lying on the kitchen floor.
Both of the victims died at the scene. While Carter’s interruption had prevented the killer committing his usual level of damage to Marie Wilkinson, what had been done proved to be enough.
Where did that leave us? For one thing, it meant the killer had probably been watching them – that he’d waited for Tony Wilkinson to leave, and then taken the first opportunity he had.
Carter’s involvement was presumably accidental.
So if Marie Wilkinson was his chosen target, how did that fit into the pattern?
Was it something specific about her, or was it the location?
We didn’t know. For the moment, it left us nowhere.
I was rubbing my hands together, still thinking it over. ‘Have you noticed anything untoward in the past few weeks?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Someone hanging around? Someone who seemed to be watching the house?’
Wilkinson shook his head. ‘God, no. I wouldn’t have … left her alone if I had.’
I nodded as sympathetically as I could. But while he sounded sure, I knew it was an easy thing to say in hindsight.
In reality, he might have seen something suspicious, or Marie could have mentioned something to him, and he probably wouldn’t have acted on it.
Because you don’t. A guy was hanging around a bit too long yesterday.
What were you supposed to do – give up your job and sit by the window?
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing, however small and insignificant it might have seemed at the time … ?’
‘No.’
That look again: I’m not an idiot.
‘I’m sure.’
‘Okay.’
I swallowed the frustration. There had to be something, didn’t there?
Even if it was something so innocuous, so small, that he’d forgotten it – or, worse, was choosing to forget, because acknowledging it now would mean recognising that he’d failed his family in some way.
If that was true, I understood and, again, was sympathetic.
But the small things were exactly what we needed right now. Anything was what we needed right now.
So I was about to try again, but then Laura tapped my arm gently: her perennial ‘can it for a moment, Hicks’ gesture.
‘And you can’t think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Marie?’ she said. ‘I know that –’
‘No. Of course not. She never made an enemy in her life.’
‘What about you?’
‘No.’ His face clenched up at that. ‘What is wrong with you people?’
‘We have to check.’
‘If someone had a problem with me they’d take it up with me, wouldn’t they?’
Not necessarily, I thought. The fact is that everyone has enemies, at least to some extent.
No matter what Tony said about his wife, or himself, somebody probably disliked them.
Maybe someone even hated them. In a standard investigation, it was often those kinds of apparently trivial animosities and vendettas that turned out to be fertile ground to plough.
But this wasn’t a standard investigation.
With our guy, it wasn’t personal. The people who have died mean nothing to me.
The traditional lines of enquiry here were more a matter of box-ticking and time-wasting than anything else.
Marie or Tony could have been hated by a hundred people, and it wouldn’t mean anything.
So, again, that question: why had the killer chosen her? How did she fit into the code he was challenging us to break? She had been a thirty-three-year-old brunette. She had been pregnant. Was it that? Or was it nothing to do with her at all, and more about the location?
‘Have you got kids, Detective?’
Tony Wilkinson’s question was like a slap. I thought of Rachel again, and almost said yes. But she was at the same stage of pregnancy as Marie had been. Given what had happened, and how I felt about my own upcoming fatherhood, it didn’t seem like a good thing to mention.
‘No.’
‘Well I do.’
‘I know.’
And I wanted to tell him that it was something to cling to.
He had lost his wife, yes, and in the most horrific of circumstances, but he had not lost his son: the paramedics at the scene had managed to deliver Jake.
The little boy was now under twenty-four-hour care in the special baby unit of the hospital.
And that really was something. But it was not what Tony Wilkinson needed to hear right now. That it could have been worse.
I said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You have no idea.’ This time the anger in his voice was undeniable. ‘Why did this happen to us? You can’t even tell me why, can you? I’ve seen you on the news. Why haven’t you caught this fucking bastard yet? Why is …’
But then the words collapsed under him.
‘We will,’ I said. ‘We’re doing everything we can.’
Wilkinson shook his head and looked down at the floor for a moment. At the neat, plush carpet that I knew was designed to give an illusion of comfort to the interview suite because it might remind people of home. After a moment, without looking up, he said:
‘Do you know what Marie used to tell me abut Jake?’
I waited.
‘She used to say that she couldn’t wait to meet him.’
I wanted to close my eyes. Instead, I forced myself to meet Tony Wilkinson’s gaze as he looked up at me. His face crumpled as he burst suddenly into tears. It was an awful sight and sound. The sobs seemed to rack him from head to toe, from the top of his soul to the very bottom.
‘And she never got to. Oh God.’
He could barely even get the words out. Laura and I sat very still.
‘She never got to meet him.’