My breath catches. The man who killed Masters was an associate of Simon Fellows.
A link?
‘So you know Fellows?’ I battle to keep the hunger out of my voice.
‘No.’
‘’Cos from what I’ve heard about him, Pope was lucky to get his P45, not a bullet.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met the man.’
‘You know that he’s a dangerous bastard.’
He gives me a look: everyone’s dangerous in my world, sweetheart.
‘Oh, so you don’t actually know anything,’ I sneer, hoping I’ll prick his fragile yet inflated ego. ‘It’s just tittle-tattle, the old grapevine again.’ With a cheap laugh, I add, ‘God, you’re as bad as Jacqui’s WhatsApp group – all the school mums bitching about teachers and other parents.’
It works. His need to please me, impress me, make it up to me, wins out.
‘Frank knows him. Fellows is a bit of a mercenary these days – happy to work where the money is, and occasionally, the money’s with Frank.’ He raises an eyebrow, smug, superior. ‘Although, from what I hear – and this is fact, not gossip, but don’t even think about asking me how I know – your lot are fairly well-acquainted with Simon Fellows.’
‘You think? He doesn’t even have a caution to his name.’
A laugh. ‘Well, you won’t have when you’re on such good terms with the police.’
Somewhere in my brain there’s a sense I should be reacting right now. Asking him what he’s talking about. What the actual fuck he thinks he means.
Problem is, I know what he means and we both know what he’s talking about. And it’s explosive and game-changing, and worst of all, in the few seconds I’ve had to process it, it kind of makes sense.
Dad carries on spelling it out. ‘Yeah, the big players, Cat – they don’t get that successful and keep their noses clean without being hand-in-glove with at least one senior police officer. And Fellows certainly used to be, although I don’t think the officer is on the scene now . . .’
I stare at him hard, my face frozen, my nerves rioting. ‘And this is fact?’
‘Like I said, Frank knows him.’ The shutter comes down. That’s all I’m getting.
‘I suppose a name, even which force, is out of the question?’
‘On Finn’s life, I don’t know, and on Finn’s life, I wouldn’t tell you if I did. We’re straying a bit too far from “context” here, sweetheart. Let’s get back to New York, eh?’
I can’t conjure up New York. I can’t anchor my attention to anything remotely solid. I look around the garden, taking in objects, real life; Finn’s hula hoop, a watering can, the pair of leopard-print crocs that Jacqui always gets defensive about. I can’t connect to any of it. Even Aiden’s face in my mind seems fuzzy and abstract.
Dad and me. Criminals hand-in-glove with police officers.
Are these officers my enemies or my tribe?
I take one last breath, then make a decision. Pick my side.
‘Dad, I need you to do something for me.’ My voice shakes as a nervous, shivery energy courses through me. I feel cold for the first time in months. ‘And your instant reaction is going to be to say no, but it’ll never be traced back to you, I swear . . .’
‘What won’t be?’ he says, panicked; my nerves infecting him. ‘What are you on about? What do you want me to do?’
‘I can’t explain why and it’s better if you don’t know, but I need you to phone my incident room. I need you to ask to speak to the SIO heading up the investigation, only her – I’m pretty sure she’ll still be there – and then I need you to tell her what you’ve just told me about Pope and Fellows. I’ll rehearse it with you. I’ll tell you exactly what you need to say.’
His belly-laugh carries across the garden. Jacqui looks out the window, wondering what’s going on.
‘You want me to make an anonymous call to the police? Me.’ He turns 180 with some difficulty, determined to face me head-on. ‘And why do you think I’d do that? Do you think I fancy having every other limb broken? And that’s if I’m lucky.’
I take a few seconds to answer. I need to be calm, practical, convincing, not a cat on hot bricks. ‘It won’t happen, Dad. You can lay your hands on a burner phone in minutes and I promise, they’ll never trace it. They won’t even try. All you’d be doing is pointing us in a direction, and if that direction checks out, we can get all the evidence we need. Your call will be forgotten. Just one of those mystery lucky breaks that happens more than you’d think. No big deal.’
‘And why would I screw over Simon Fellows? I’ve got no beef with him.’
‘Because I’m asking you to. And because you owe me.’
I shift forward, reducing the space between us, praying that the person he’s seeing in front of him is his daughter, not a cop. The little girl who sat on his shoulders and bounced on his knee. The little girl who believed him when he told her, ‘There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, sweetheart.’
‘So is this going to be an annual thing?’ he says eventually, when staring each other out becomes unbearable. ‘Last year – Frank. This year – this. I mean, ballpark figure, Cat – just how regularly am I going to have to compromise myself for you?’
‘I think it’s called parenting, Dad. You’ve got a lot of it to make up for.’
He looks away, wounded. I’m not proud of myself, not by a long shot, but then you use the weapons you have and my biggest weapon against Dad – my hydrogen bomb, if you like – is emotional blackmail. The reminder that he failed me. He failed all of us.
He turns back. ‘I want one thing in return, though. And it’s not a big thing. It’s me asking you to be a grown-up.’
‘Oh yeah, how?’
‘You meet Ange. You play nice.’
I guess I’d have met her eventually. Jacqui’s birthday. Finn’s communion. Maybe the mortal hell that is Christmas lunch. I’m not a total truant when it comes to my family. I turn up for the big stuff, the main calendar events. The occasions where my absence would cause more drama than my presence.
And so I nod. ‘Yeah sure, why not?’
Dad takes this in for a minute, nods back.
‘Sounds as though we’ve got ourselves a deal then.’
26
‘This is big, Kinsella. It’s a monster. A meteor.’
It’s not the lateness of the call, it’s the break with tradition; Steele’s sombre tones echoing down the line just after midnight, when the standard run of play is that Steele calls Parnell, then Parnell calls me. As a rule, Kate Steele isn’t a fan of having to repeat herself. But tonight maybe she needs to. Tonight, maybe the more she repeats it, the more she can try to make peace with it. Although I could tell her right now that hasn’t worked at all for me.
It’s a quick call, just a précis. Not the ins and outs – not that I need them.
‘We’ve had a tip-off,’ she tells me. ‘Anonymous, but credible.’
An allegation about a senior officer.