Chapter 65
Hi, thanks so much for recommending Helena—she’s great. My wife brought some chocolates to thank you and asked me to drop them around to you—can you let me know where? Adam
If the address was a fiction, then perhaps “Sarah” was a fiction too.
There are six members listed as admins, nominally in charge of the group. I pick three at random and send them private messages asking if they’ve used Helena and who recommended her; and asking for any more information on who might have added Sarah to the group.
Next, I send a message to Jess, apologizing for last night and asking if she’s had any other contact from this person who had connected us with Helena and Tobias.
We’ve not spoken since the row and I know it was my fault; I know I overstepped the mark.
I want to speak to her rather than texting but I know—from the few rare times we’ve had spats in the past—that she’ll hold me at arm’s length for at least a few more hours, not picking up my calls or returning messages until later.
She’s due to pick Callum up from tag rugby at four, but I don’t imagine I’ll hear from her until then.
Almost straightaway, my message has the two blue ticks to show it’s been delivered and read.
I stare at the screen, willing my wife to message me back. Even if it’s angry, a response is better than silence.
She doesn’t reply.
Webber rings me, his voice taut with excitement.
“OK, it’s on. Five o’clock today.”
He explains his plan to me. I will message the anonymous number and say I’ll deliver the last three items personally, to a location of their choosing. I will relay that location to Webber and he’ll descend on the rendezvous with enough police officers to subdue and arrest whoever comes to meet me.
“So I’m the bait, am I?”
“One of us needs to go. If he sees me, it’ll spook him—he’ll know it’s a set-up.”
“All right,” I say. “I’ll do it, on one condition: you give me back the last three items, so they know it’s for real. Including the watch.”
He hesitates, but only for a moment. “Deal.”
“Just keep everything away from my house.”
I send a message to the unknown number.
I’ve got the Rolex, the real one. And the rest of it. I’ll bring it to you, wherever you want to meet, 5 p.m. today. No police. Just us. And then you’ll never hear from me again.
I press “send” and wait for a response, imagining the satisfaction of seeing them in a few hours, handcuffed and surrounded by police.
Because I already have a pretty good idea of who it is.
There’s a letter on the welcome mat when I push the door open. No stamp, no address, just my name in block capitals on a plain white envelope. I take it into the kitchen and tear it open, pulling out two A4 sheets, each folded twice.
It’s a color printout from a local paper, dated October 29, 2009.
The first page has a big blocky headline under a tabloid masthead, and for a second I think it’s a copy of the same story I’d found at the library on Monday.
But everything else is unfamiliar and it doesn’t have the distinctive tone and shade of a printout from a microfiche transparency; this looks more like a photocopy of a well-preserved original.
The main picture is a candid shot of a man in a dark raincoat, caught in profile on the street, looking over his shoulder as if talking to someone behind him.
A man who’d come to my door yesterday, telling me his name was retired Detective Gordon Webber.
In the image he’s younger, his beard still fully black.
But it’s definitely him. There are five words handwritten in pen, blocky black capitals at the top of the photocopied page.
THIS IS WHY HE QUIT
Below it, the text of a story that takes up most of the front page and runs onto the second sheet of A4 behind it.
I read further, a sick dread curdling in my stomach.
It outlines the sensational collapse earlier that year of the trial of Janusz Makowski, a 33-year-old laborer who had been wrongly accused of the 2001 murder of Edward John Stiles.
Makowski had been cleared of all charges after a judge halted the trial over concerns about police conduct.
A subsequent case review by a team from a neighboring force, Leicestershire Police, uncovered “significant violations of procedure” related to the handling of evidence, tampering with key prosecution exhibits, and coercion of witnesses involved in the case.
I read on to the bottom of the article, which outlines the findings of a hearing that had looked into every aspect of the trial that had collapsed.
Just like the scribbled words said: former Detective Gordon Webber had left out something rather important from our conversation yesterday.
He had been demoted for misconduct and quit the force not long after.