The Backs (2013) Page 15

  A world within a world.

  Today there were eleven of them, and the waiter knew them well enough to fetch pastries without being asked. Mary Osborne sat between Claire and Doreen, two of the three founder members of her ex-pat coffee club. She valued these meetings more than anyone would have guessed. But earlier this morning she’d seen a British newspaper, and now this simple ritual of coffee, croissants and talk about nothing felt even more precious.

  If she’d never walked past that news stand . . . if yesterday’s Daily Express had been tucked away further behind the Guardian . . . if she hadn’t recognized Gerry’s face on the front page. Any one of those, and she’d now be giving this morning her full attention, instead of wasting time imagining that the police might be waiting on her doorstep when she got home.

  ‘Mary?’ Doreen nudged her arm. ‘Are you all right?’

  That made Claire look too. ‘Are you about to cry?’

  Then suddenly the whole table seemed to be staring at her, ten pairs of eyes, all of them curious and concerned.

  Mary swallowed, panicking at the thought of breaking down in front of them all, at the unmistakable tightening of her throat and tingling in her eyes. At the other end of the café, the daylight shone in from the street, promising open space and fresh air. She gripped the table, about to rise, but before she had a chance to consider any other thoughts of running, that beckoning rectangle of distant daylight vanished behind a closer and more solid shape.

  The man was middle-aged and thick-necked, with scaly tortoise-like skin around the eyes. One part cholesterol, two parts jobsworth. On any other day she might have assumed he was a public health inspector or some type of bureaucrat, but today she’d only been looking out for the police.

  ‘Mary Osborne?’ All eyes had turned to him as he spoke; now the collective gazes swung back to her.

  She nodded mutely. She’d been many things in her life, but she had never enjoyed being a liar. It was a small and pathetic gesture, but nodding instead of speaking seemed the honourable thing to do.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Goodhew heard the car slow down as it approached. He turned in time to see Kincaide lowering his side window and swinging the vehicle into the kerb. ‘You’ve pulled,’ Kincaide smiled.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Kincaide cocked his head towards the passenger side. ‘Orders from on high.’

  ‘Marks?’

  ‘The man himself. He has a nice little job for us both.’

  Kincaide didn’t seem in any hurry to offer more information but drew away from the kerb again even before Goodhew could close his door. Something had galvanized Kincaide, and keeping Goodhew both in the dark and firmly in the supporting role probably added to that mood. Maybe that was an uncharitable assumption, but Goodhew doubted it.

  ‘So, who are we seeing?’

  ‘Jackson.’ Kincaide kept his eyes on the road ahead and didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Even without his conviction, he’d had a close relationship with the Osborne family, so why wouldn’t we?’

  ‘No, no, I meant why us? Why not Marks himself?’

  Kincaide shrugged. ‘He can’t be everywhere at once, I guess.’

  ‘Guess not.’

  Goodhew’s thoughts drifted back to an occasion several months before Jackson’s release, and to the single conversation he’d had with his DI. He recalled what Marks had said, word for word. I then made a mistake. A serious one. And, as a result, a man who should have received a life sentence was jailed for only ten years.

  Goodhew had dug around and discovered that the knife used to kill Becca Osborne and stab Genevieve Barnes had been recovered and handed over to DI Marks. At some point between then and reaching the laboratory it had become cross-contaminated with other samples, and therefore all but dismissed in court.

  The murder charge had been dropped and it had only been thanks to the testimony of Genevieve herself that any conviction had been secured.

  Maybe Kincaide knew all this, but it was more likely that he didn’t, and Kincaide’s dubious attempts at camaraderie didn’t motivate Goodhew enough for him to share the information. He reminded himself that this was precisely the same petty tactic that Kincaide had been using just a couple of minutes before, but Goodhew’s stubbornness refused to disperse. And he knew it would take far more than a couple of days of goodwill from Kincaide, feigned or otherwise, before he’d thaw.

  Kincaide drove back towards the town centre.

  ‘Is Jackson at Parkside right now?’ Goodhew asked.

  ‘No, round the back, in City Road. He lives there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘So he says. We’ll check out if that’s true, then ask him how he pays for it.’

  The houses in City Road and the surrounding streets were mostly narrow terraced properties. The roads and pavements round there were narrow too, congested by limited parking and awkward turning spaces. But the area nestled so close to the heart of the city that local prices had been pushed ever higher. It was hard to imagine many occupants that weren’t either professional people, well-funded students, or those whose ownership dated back to at least the 1990s.

  Goodhew was about to ask Kincaide for the house number when he spotted Jackson standing in the open doorway of a house about fifty yards further down the street. There was a single gap in the row of parked cars and Jackson approached it and waited until they had pulled alongside. Then he held out a postcard-sized square. Kincaide lowered the window and Jackson thrust it towards him.

  ‘It’s a parking permit, for visitors – in case you need it.’

  Strictly speaking, they didn’t, but Kincaide displayed it on the dashboard, and they both followed Jackson inside.

  He was wearing jeans and a red shawl-necked jersey, both of them streaked with pale dust. He’d pushed the sleeves up above his elbows, revealing that his forearms were dappled with tiny paint spots. He led them through the front door and a hallway stacked with boxes, then up a steep flight of stairs on to an uncarpeted landing. A dank smell sank down to meet them between floors. There were just three rooms up here. They passed the doorway of a front bedroom, then the bathroom; both were bare apart from mould patches crawling up the external wall.

  The third room was a smaller bedroom, and no more than eight foot square. But this one was newly decorated, and freshly furnished with a single bed, small chest of drawers and a plug-in radiator.

  ‘You can sit.’

  Goodhew did, but Kincaide hovered, splitting his attention between Jackson and the view from the window. Jackson remained standing too, and between them the little room became overcrowded.

  Kincaide looked back up the hallway. ‘Was this a squat, or what?’

  Jackson shrugged. ‘It was empty, then it got auctioned.’ He pushed his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans and scowled towards Goodhew as he replied. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘And now it’s a live-in job, right?’

  ‘Yeah, plaster and redecorate it from top to bottom. I know some decent people in the business. I used to do maintenance for them and they’ve taken me on again. Low wages but rent free and, let’s face it, I’ve been used to living in a small space.’ Jackson made that sound like a joke, but his eyes held an angry glint.

  Kincaide glanced around the room once more, then back at Jackson. ‘So you’ve been here since your release?’

  ‘Pretty much. Is that why you’re here – to ask about my home life?’

  ‘I’m sure you know it’s not.’

  Goodhew looked from one to the other. Each man wore the same knowing expression, each courting confrontation but pretending not to. He sighed. ‘Why have you been hanging around Pound Hill, Mr Jackson?’ He ploughed on before Jackson could deny it. ‘Was it to see Jane Osborne, or just to stand and stare at the house itself? And if you were simply fascinated by the house why would you also have been in Newnham Road and Castle Street, like you were watching for Gerry Osborne?’
>
  Jackson’s expression remained impenetrable. Goodhew paused until the moment Jackson was about to speak. ‘Or following Genevieve Barnes?’ he added.

  Jackson’s gaze flashed in surprise. It was enough to prompt him to sit down next to Goodhew on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Do you know what I enjoy about decorating?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The total absorption. Silence. Letting my thoughts wander wherever they choose. It’s cathartic, when it works.’ Jackson scraped at a knot of plaster embedded in the seam of his jeans, not satisfied until it had broken away. He cupped the gritty particles in his palm. Goodhew realized that there were no signs of dust in the room. Jackson’s handiwork showed precision and, as he spoke, he revealed a depth of feeling that caught Goodhew by surprise.

  Jackson ran his finger through the air, as if tracing the line where the ceiling met the top of the wall. ‘I lose myself in the detail, then every so often I complete a section of work and step back and see the enormity of everything that still needs to be done. Then my mind wanders outside and I think of the enormity of what you people did to me.’ He turned his head towards Kincaide, and then back again. ‘He knows. I remember him. He was in on it with the scum that sent me down.’

  ‘What do you want from Jane Osborne and Genevieve Barnes?’

  He again tilted his head towards Kincaide. ‘Same thing I’d want from him. Someone knows I didn’t stab either of those women. That paramedic woman sent me down, but someone put her up to it.’

  ‘She just told the truth, Jackson,’ Kincaide replied. There was no confrontational tone now, just firmness. ‘There’s been a development, and we’ve come to ask you a few questions.’

  Jackson ignored him, addressing Goodhew instead. ‘She’ll tell me one day.’

  ‘Jackson?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard.’ He swung his gaze towards Kincaide, and again Goodhew saw hardness in his eyes. But he smiled. ‘You have the whole road blocked off, so I’d say the whole of Cambridge has heard. Now I suppose you’ve found something there and as I’ve set foot within a mile of the place, voilà, here you are.’

  ‘We have uncovered a body.’

  ‘And what? You’d like me to confess to something? I don’t think so.’

  ‘We’ll be speaking to everyone who may have had access to that house, and who may be able to help us to identify the body or identify other visitors to the house or maybe pinpoint dates of building work. Given your relationship with both Mary and Becca Osborne . . .’

  ‘No, not interested.’ Jackson rose to his feet. ‘You may as well leave.’

  ‘They’re very straightforward questions.’

  ‘And my straightforward answer is, no, I’m not answering them.’

  Goodhew stood too and followed Jackson out on to the landing.

  Kincaide followed reluctantly, and carried on talking to the back of Jackson’s head, listing his questions. ‘You were a regular visitor,’ he added finally.

  ‘A regular visitor? That’s your euphemism for what, exactly?’ Jackson was downstairs at the front door by then. He opened it wide and pressed his back to the wall to make as much room as possible for them to pass.

  ‘It wasn’t a euphemism for anything.’

  Jackson’s expression filled with distaste as he shook his head. ‘Just fuck off, will you?’

  Kincaide stepped out on to the pavement but Goodhew didn’t move. ‘Aren’t you even curious?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘It could be someone you know.’

  ‘It could. But it won’t be anyone I care about. She’s dead.’ He paused. ‘Becca’s dead,’ he added, as though he’d needed to clarify.

  ‘You haven’t asked the sex of the body, how long it’s been there. Nothing.’

  ‘Because I don’t care.’

  Jimmy Barnes’s words came back to Goodhew then: What the fuck is the wrong expression? Perhaps it was time to try to find out. He levelled his gaze at Jackson and nodded slowly. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you did stab them.’

  If Jackson could have stepped back a pace, he would have. Instead he pressed himself harder against the wall, his eyes widened momentarily and for a full second he seemed completely stunned. He took a breath. ‘You’ll need to explain that one.’

  ‘If you hadn’t killed Becca, you would be hoping a new body might exonerate you. What are the odds of two separate killers hitting one family? If there’s only one killer, you’re it.’

  ‘Who says it was murder?’

  ‘No one. But if you knew nothing about it, you’d hope that it was. You’d actually be praying for it, because, finally, there would be some glimmer of hope that that body in the Osborne house would somehow clear you of involvement in Becca’s death.’

  Jackson’s lips pursed sourly. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘And if you know that body isn’t going to clear you, it’s because you put it there.’

  ‘Fucking ridiculous. Maybe I’m not thinking about that body because that’s just not the way my mind works.’

  ‘I disagree. I think it’s exactly how you think.’ Out of the corner of his eye Goodhew could see Kincaide hovering restlessly. As long as Kincaide stayed out of it, Goodhew sensed Jackson was oblivious to anything apart from the two of them. ‘Tell me something, did you love Becca?’

  ‘What the . . .’

  ‘Did you actually love Becca?’

  ‘I was her boyfriend.’

  ‘That’s actually the answer to a different question.’

  Jackson’s expression darkened. ‘You’re pushing my buttons now, Detective.’

  It occurred to Goodhew that Jackson and Gerry Osborne were similarly easy to rile – or perhaps he’d uncovered a new talent for being able to irritate people.

  ‘That’s not intentional,’ Goodhew replied placidly. ‘I just want to know.’

  Jackson suddenly held up his hands. ‘I suppose I thought I loved her at the time. We hadn’t been together that long, but of course I had feelings for her.’

  ‘And yet the only way you didn’t stab Genevieve Barnes is if you ran away from the scene. That means you slipped out of the gate and cleared off when your girlfriend was critically injured.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, you know this. It’s in the case notes. D’you think I’m proud of it?’

  ‘My point exactly. In a tight spot, who do you think about? Number one. So, yes, it is how your mind works. Your first thought on hearing about a body would have been How will it affect me?’

  Jackson shook his head slowly as he glared at Goodhew. ‘You don’t have a fucking off switch, do you? Yeah, I thought about it. I hoped that body got put there while I was inside, because I assumed they’d try to pin that one on me as well. I don’t buy the idea that anything’s going to exonerate me. That’s fantasy land. And what if I was proved innocent, how do I get seven years tagged back on to my life? No one else looks out for me in this life, so, yes, I cleared off when I knew Becca was getting help. I went out of that road and watched the police and ambulances arrive from a safe distance.’

  ‘And never saw the killer follow you out?’

  ‘I never did because he never came out.’

  ‘Even though he dumped the knife on the way?’

  ‘Says who? A bunch of people who wanted to prove I killed her. All of you know this stuff already. No.’ He continued shaking his head, ‘Just no.’ He pressed his head back against the wall.

  ‘OK. One question?’

  Jackson stared up at the ceiling and bumped the back of his head two or three times against the flock-wallpapered wall. ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you think Jane knows something?’

  ‘You work it out.’

  Goodhew studied him for a few moments longer. He’d stopped the thudding on the wall, but his head and upper body continued to gently rock. ‘Mr Jackson, I appreciate your time.’

  Kincaide unlocked the car with the remote and said nothing until they were inside. ‘Wasn’t it obvious to you t
hat he wasn’t going to tell us anything?’

  ‘Don’t you think he did?’

  ‘Screwed with your brain for twenty minutes. What do you know now that you didn’t know earlier?’

  ‘You were there too. You heard the same as me.’

  ‘Yeah, a big fat obstructive stream of shit.’

  Kincaide pulled away from the kerb with a few hundred too many engine revs and his irritation still buzzing in the air.

  Goodhew turned his head towards his window and allowed himself the smallest of grins. Welcome back, Kincaide.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Kincaide glance over. By the second junction he’d slowed and, when he spoke, his voice sounded thoughtful. ‘Or did I miss something, Gary?’

  Goodhew turned to look directly at his colleague. Kincaide was doing a reasonable impression of genuine interest, but Goodhew couldn’t see anything beyond Kincaide trying too hard at being the new and sincere version of his former self.

  Goodhew shrugged. ‘No, I just heard the same as you,’ he replied. Jackson’s body language had said so much more than that, however. Jackson was isolated, defeated and angry and, in his mind at least, Jane Osborne held the answer. ‘It’s not just about what he said though, is it?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Goodhew took a breath and tried to remember reasons why cooperation with Kincaide would be good for both of them. ‘Nothing,’ he lied.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘I think Jane and Becca Osborne were in touch with each other when Becca was murdered.’ Goodhew had been heading towards Marks’s office when he crossed paths with the DI himself crossing the first-floor landing. There had been no preamble, just the blurting of the latest idea to fill Goodhew’s thoughts.

  Marks barely broke stride. ‘Come with me.’

  He said nothing else until they’d reached his office and he’d closed the door behind them.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Jackson thinks Jane Osborne knows something, or he wouldn’t keep hanging round.’

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Kincaide, who says Jackson was a waste of time.’