The final reckoning, p.18
The Final Reckoning, page 18
He walked out of the main entrance and was about to turn left for the subway station when he saw it, directly opposite him. Subway, the sandwich bar. He was almost relieved. It was the last place in the entire United States any mafioso would use for a hit: right opposite headquarters, it was an alternative police canteen, brimming with cops fuelling up on foot-long Philly cheese-steak heroes with extra everything. It was the kind of place a first grade detective like Sherrill always avoided, knowing the derision and resentment that would come his way from the old timers the instant he stepped inside.
He pushed the door open and scanned the room, hoping he wasn't making it too obvious. A line of customers, either cops or secretaries on lunch hour; a couple of middle-aged men on cellphones. None of them seemed to recognize him.
‘Excuse me,’ Sherrill said, still scoping the faces, as a blue-overalled cleaner shuffled into him, lethargically wielding a broom and a flip-open, extended dustpan. One of those ridiculous, preppie habits Sherrill couldn't shake: apologizing when someone bumped into him.
‘No problem, Detective,’ the cleaner murmured back.
Sherrill wheeled round to see the man, black, dreadlocked and with white headphones in his ears, raising his eyebrows in recognition: ‘You wanna take a walk?’
Sherrill said nothing and watched, stunned, as the man propped his cleaning equipment by the front door and headed out. Once outside, the cleaner walked purposefully, not waiting for Sherrill to catch up. He remained a half-pace in front, looking ahead, so that he and the detective might just be two New Yorkers hurrying about their business, not communicating at all.
‘Thanks for coming, Detective Sherrill. Sorry about,’ he made a small movement with his hand, ‘all this.’
‘Who are you? How do you know my name?’
‘We're co-workers. I'm an agent with the NYPD Intelligence Division. Undercover.’ Still looking straight ahead, he smiled briefly. ‘In case you hadn't noticed.’
‘How did you-’
‘Get into your office? That was easy. I've got an NYPD pass. Besides, cleaner's overalls? That's a regular invisibility cloak in this town. Fuck Hogwarts. Just gotta be a black man dressed as a cleaner: no one sees you then, trust me. Hey, Sherrill, pull out your cellphone.’
‘My cellphone, why?’
‘Just pretend you're talking into it. And don't keep looking at me.’
For the second time in six hours, Jay Sherrill was coming face to face with his own inexperience. He had never done undercover work. He realized now, he didn't know even the basics. He did as he was told and tried to fake a phone call.
‘OK, what do you want?’
‘I don't want anything. I'm risking my fucking job here-’
‘I'm sorry, I didn't mean-’
‘Want something? What is it with you people?’
‘I'm really sorry. That was-’
‘I have some information that might help you.’
The pitch of Sherrill's voice lifted. ‘Information?’
‘On the killing of Gerald Merton.’
‘What kind of information?’
‘The eye-witness kind.’
Sherrill couldn't help but shoot a glance at the man walking just ahead of him. Then, guiltily, he returned to the blank middle-distance stare adopted by all those talking on cellphones in the street.
‘You were there?’
‘I saw it all. From the beginning.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
‘First, I need you to calm down. We need to be really calm here.’
‘We need to get away.’
‘We can't do that. We need to stay and call the police.’
‘I mean it!’ Rebecca pulled away from Tom's embrace and glared at him. ‘We need to get away. Far away. Somewhere where there are no people.’
‘Come on, Rebecca.’
‘Haven't you noticed?’ Her voice was high, torn. ‘Something very bad is happening here and it's following us. First my flat and now this.’ She pointed at the corpse of Henry Goldman, stiff on the lushly carpeted floor of his study, his face still bearing an expression of open-eyed shock.
‘I know, I understand,’ Tom said, his mind jamming as one thought skidded and crashed into another. It was becoming impossible to deny: danger was stalking them. An image appeared before his eyes, punching him in the guts: he saw Rebecca, brutally murdered. He pushed it away: the important thing was to stay focused. ‘We can't go anywhere. We have to report this. Right away.’ He was bracing himself for an argument, but they had no choice. Imagine how it would look if they didn't call the police. They had met Henry Goldman that afternoon, for a meeting that had ended inconclusively. Goldman had later called his son, sounding agitated; Julian would be sure to tell the police that. Tom cursed himself for losing his temper in the boardroom earlier: the secretary would confirm Julian's story, telling detectives about the raised voices she had heard. And Julian would then confirm that he had spoken to Rebecca this very evening, reminding her of his father's home address. ‘You need to call the police right now.’
‘Me?’
‘It will sound better coming from you. You're a friend of the family. You have a reason to be here. And you're a woman.’
He picked up the cordless phone charging on Goldman's desk and instantly regretted it: fingerprints. Shit, Rebecca had left her prints everywhere, including all over Goldman's body. She had touched his wrist, his neck. He looked over at the corpse: she had ripped open his shirt, popping the buttons clean off. They would have to explain all this.
Too late to undo his mistake, he dialled 999 and passed the phone to Rebecca. ‘Ask for the police.’
Still breathing fast, she spoke within a few seconds: ‘I'm calling to report a murder.’
‘No!’ Tom shouted the word without making a sound, mouthing it with desperate urgency then shaking his head frantically. He stage-whispered: ‘You're calling to report a dead body!’
She tried to correct herself but the damage was done. Tom imagined a recording of this call played to a jury in the future trial of Rebecca Merton and Tom Byrne for the murder of Henry Goldman. He knew how it would sound. He rubbed his temple.
Once the call was over, she looked at Tom. ‘I'm sorry,’ she said. ‘I don't know-’
‘You need to call Julian.’ Any delay there would look even more suspicious. She took the phone and left the room, though he could still hear her speaking in the corridor. He was struck by how quickly she seemed to have steadied herself; he imagined this was her doctor's voice, used when telling families the worst.
Through the study windows he could now see the blue light of a police car and two uniformed men emerging. Local plods, Tom guessed; the first wave, sent to secure the scene. The big boys would come later, especially once they heard what had happened.
Tom went to the door, shut but unlocked, just as they had found it. He opened the door and gestured for the two men to come in.
They introduced themselves as constables, showed their ID and pulled out their notebooks. They started with Tom, asking for his details, looking up when he gave an address in New York. Rebecca came in, the four of them standing together in the hall like hosts welcoming guests to a dinner party.
The older of the two men spoke. ‘I would ask you to sit down, madam, but I'm reluctant to do that at this stage, in case you might alter anything that could be of importance.’ As Tom had feared, they were treating this as a crime scene.
‘So why don't you just tell me what happened?’
The policemen nodded as Rebecca explained that Henry Goldman was a friend of her late father's. To Tom's great relief, neither policeman seemed to recognize the name Gerald Merton, even though it had been across all that day's papers. They listened as she said that she had come here to carry on a conversation started earlier today. Then they both picked up their pens and scribbled furiously when she said that they had found the front door unlocked.
Of course, thought Tom. That was the crucial detail, the awkward fact that would turn this from the unfortunate discovery of a dead old man into a murder inquiry. He noticed the older officer firing regular glances his way, even when Rebecca was speaking. Wait, thought Tom, till you find out that I have known Rebecca Merton for less than twelve hours. Wait till you discover why I'm in London in the first place. He fought hard the urge to sink his head into his hands.
Soon a doctor arrived, to confirm that Henry Goldman was dead, followed by a second police car, this one containing a photographer, who immediately headed for the study, to capture images of Goldman's body in situ from every angle. Travelling with him was a plain clothes detective. Tom had now met two of these characters in the space of two days, a fact he kept to himself. This man was Asian, prompting Tom to think of Harold Allen, the one-time rising star of the NYPD who had become hobbled by a battle over police racism. That meeting with Sherrill and Allen seemed from a different age; New York felt far more than an ocean away.
The detective asked them all to step outside: he did not want any more footprints in the hallway than were there already. So they stood outdoors, in a huddle on the drive. Tom watched as the constables began cordoning off the entire perimeter with plastic tape.
This more senior man asked the same questions all over again, though now he loaded some with extra and, Tom felt, threatening emphasis.
‘So you came here and let yourselves in, and you felt comfortable doing that because you had visited this house often as a child, am I right?’
‘No, that's not-’
‘And once you're in, you find the body. You find it in the study. Which means you had to go exploring, walking down the corridor and so on, to find it, am I right? And then you, Miss Merton, once you see it, you start trying to revive Mr Goldman. Kiss of life and so on, am I right?’
‘CPR. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation.’
‘All right. And this is because you suspect what?’
‘I suspected major cardiac arrest. A heart attack.’
‘And Mr Goldman was in what state when you made this effort?’
‘He was dead.’
‘I know that, Miss Merton, I know that.’
‘Dr Merton,’ Tom interjected. She placed a hand on his. Don't.
The detective now gave a hard look at Tom, as if eyeing a nasty stain on the carpet, before turning back to Rebecca. ‘What I am driving at is that he obviously hadn't been dead for very long. Or you wouldn't have tried reviving him, am I right?’ ‘He was still warm, if that's what you mean.’
‘That is exactly what I mean, Dr Merton. Exactly. Thank you. Now what about you, Mr Byrne? What were you doing all this time?’
‘I watched Rebecca try to bring him round. I consoled her once we realized that it was too late. And then we phoned the police.’
‘Yes, the phone call. I'm curious about that. The note I have says that the call that came at 9.55 this evening was to report a murder. Now what I don't-’
‘Can I ask you a question, Detective?’ Tom now drew up himself to his full height, more than a foot taller than the policeman. ‘In what capacity are you interviewing us, exactly?’
Rebecca's eyes widened in warning: Don't get hostile.
‘How do you mean, Mr Byrne?’
‘I mean, are we witnesses or are we suspects?’
The detective suddenly allowed his expression to harden. ‘That's exactly what I'm trying to work out.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
He wondered if he was about to get double-fucked. The punishment had become notorious inside the entire national bureaucracy. Civil servants in every department spoke about it: Defence, Education, you name it. That was the thing about the boss: he'd been around so long, he'd done every job. There was no one over twenty-five and under eighty with even the remotest connection to government who hadn't worked under him at least once. His dressings-down were legendary; there were schoolchildren in backwater towns who knew of them – though they surely did not speak of getting double-fucked.
No one knew when he had done it first, but there were multiple versions of the story. Some said the first victim was the luckless chump who had failed to square three crucial union bosses on the eve of a party election that the boss suddenly realized he was going to lose. ‘What kind of fuck makes a mistake like that, you fuck?’ he had asked at the meeting of his advisers that journalists later called a pre-mortem. Two fucks in one sentence: a double-fucking.
Now the aide who cursed his luck to be travelling with the boss during this crisis was ready to place a bet that he was in line for the same treatment. Never mind what the outside world saw – Mr Eloquent Orator and Man of Letters – he knew that his boss could be a crude and brutal bully. He hadn't stayed at the top for so long by being sweet.
Still, it was late afternoon and it had been a long day. And he was old. Maybe he wouldn't have the energy for such histrionics. The aide hoped.
He knocked on the door of the boss's suite and let himself in. Unsurprisingly, the old man was dressed in a suit and shirt without a crease between them, his face clean-shaven. He was sitting at a table set for afternoon tea – one of the boss's anglophile affectations – with a clear, picture window view of Manhattan easing its way towards dusk.
‘Any news?’ he said, before the aide had even crossed the room. No hello, no invitation to join him, not even a look round. These were not good signs.
‘Some news, sir.’ He cursed himself for not having rehearsed this moment; he should have sat down with a pen and paper and worked out precisely what he was going to say.
‘Umm?’
‘Good news and bad news, you might say.’
‘What's the bad news?’
Damn.
‘Well, it only really makes sense once you've heard the good news, sir,’ the aide began, incredulous that he could have walked into so obvious a cul-de-sac. ‘Which is, that Henry Goldman will be giving us no further trouble, sir. He did not manage to pass on the, er, critical information to the subj- sorry, the people we're following, sorry, I mean the people we're watching, that is to say, are interested in-’
‘You're babbling. What's happened?’
‘Goldman is dead, sir.’
‘What? How?’
‘Tonight. At his home, sir.’
The old man's face was reddening. ‘Are we responsible?’
‘Not in any way that could be proved, I don't think, sir.’
‘You don't THINK?’ The boss slammed his fist on the table, sending cutlery, plates and a milk jug leaping into the air. ‘What do you mean, you don't think? What the fuck happened there?’
Here we go, the aide thought. It's coming.
‘Was I not clear in my instructions?’ Now the voice was low, calm – which only made it more terrifying. ‘Was I in any way unclear? Or did I spell out, in words any moron could understand, that there were to be no casualties? We could persuade, even intimidate, but nothing more. Did I not make that CRYSTAL CLEAR?’
‘Our men were following those orders, sir.’
‘Don't be an idiot.’
‘The trouble is, Goldman had a weak heart. The minute he saw them, there in his house, he started shouting, then clutching his chest. They didn't touch him. It just happened.’
‘Did they try to save him?’
The aide hadn't even thought of that. ‘I don't think so, sir.’
The boss was no longer shouting. ‘I think in my day, men on such a mission would not just have left a man dying. They would have done something.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The old man was slumped in his chair; he looked somehow smaller. ‘Did they find anything?’
‘Yes.’ He was about to say that that was the good news, but thought better of it. ‘As it happens, Goldman was going through some papers when our men arrived. They haven't had time to analyse them yet but they believe they relate to our issue.’
‘What if there are other papers?’
‘He was going through a box, sir. It seemed as if everything had been kept in one place. Probably hidden.’
‘And those papers are safe now?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Any mention of,’ his voice trailed off, as if he were embarrassed, ‘by name, I mean?’
‘Don't yet know that, sir. There's some translation work to be done.’
‘What about the girl and that man?’
‘They discovered Goldman's body.’
‘Are they in trouble?’
‘Our information is that they've been taken away by police and arrested. They're in custody now.’
The old man rubbed his chin. Whether he was pleased or dismayed by this last item of news the aide could not tell. The boss was simply processing the information, calculating.
Finally, he threw down his napkin and pushed back his chair. Then, barely audibly, he muttered, speaking more to himself than to the official who was still standing by the table, like a waiter poised to clear away the plates. ‘What have we started here?’ he said. And with that, he waved the man away.
The aide receded from the room in soft steps, closing the door behind him almost noiselessly. No double-fucking then. The boss had been subdued rather than livid. And, in a curious way, that was altogether more frightening.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tom could see the dilemma that must surely have formed in the detective's mind within a few minutes of getting here. Rebecca and Tom were clearly respectable folk, a doctor and a lawyer, and they had done the respectable thing, sounding the alarm immediately. In ordinary circumstances, the police would simply thank them for their act of public-spiritedness and send them on their way.
But there was the stubborn matter of that front door. People didn't just come home without closing their front door properly. Someone other than Henry Goldman must have come into that house, which suggested Goldman's death had not been entirely down to natural causes. And there was Rebecca Merton's phone call: why would she have said she was reporting a murder?
So the detective was faced with a quandary. He could work on the basis that a crime had been committed and treat Tom and Rebecca as useful witnesses. He would show great courtesy, of course, without ever losing sight of the possibility that these two might be the killers: iron law of any murder inquiry, don't rule anybody out.
