It doesn’t need saying that she won’t be doing that again for a very long time. She bows her head, picking up her vending machine coffee, sipping it then wincing.
‘You’d better develop a taste for bad coffee,’ I say. ‘They might claim prison’s like a holiday camp these days, but I don’t think Ethiopian blend is high on the menu.’
‘It’s never a holiday camp for one of us, is it?’
Underneath the bravado, she’s petrified and she should be. For most ex-police officers in prison, it’s a case of surviving one minute to the next; zoning out the threats, turning a blind eye when your food’s been spat in for the fiftieth time, rolling your eyes and requesting a J-cloth when someone’s smeared shit on your cell walls.
If I could put the horror of Holly Kemp’s final hours out of my mind for one single second, I might almost feel sorry for her.
‘You’ll get protection,’ says Steele, unmoved. ‘There’s always the Vulnerable Prisoner’s Wing.’
Dyer makes a harsh scraping sound. ‘Half an hour out of the cell every day? That’s not protection, that’s isolation. Big difference. But thanks for the words of comfort, Kate.’
‘You think you deserve comfort?’
‘I think you don’t know a thing about me, so who are you to judge?’
‘You’re a corrupt officer and a killer. That’s all I need to know.’
‘A killer.’ Remarkably, her tone suggests she’s never seen it that way. So how has she been framing herself all these years? An avenging angel? A vigilante? ‘You know, I’d never been violent before that night, not ever. I’d never had a fight at school, never smacked the boys. Paul loved boxing, but I wouldn’t have it on in the house. I always said violence was no way to settle anything. But then you meet someone like Holly Kemp and you realise sometimes violence is the only way, and that violence is in you. It’s in any of us if we’re pushed far enough.’ She stops, lost to herself for a moment. ‘I just hated her so much, you see. The complete disregard she had for my family. Her fucking greed. I hated her that much I honestly thought I could kill her with my bare hands, no problem. I mean, she was tiny. I had eight inches, probably thirty pounds, on her. But when it came to it, I couldn’t do it – not on my own, I mean. See, I’d hit her and she’d fallen back, and just the sound of her head smacking on the floor . . . I’d actually puked in the sink. That’s when I knew I had to call Simon.’
I can’t stop myself. ‘So the sound of the trigger wasn’t so bad, no?’
‘I’m not going to lie, it was easier. And I was so frantic about Paul by that point, I think I disassociated from it.’
A scornful sniff from Steele. ‘Oh, here we go. Disassociation, that old defence.’
‘I’m not trying to defend myself, Kate. I’m trying to explain. Holly Kemp was bleeding us dry – £2,000 a month in the end – and she had to be stopped. I’d tried reasoning with her, begging her, I’d set Simon on her. I’d even threatened her myself. I said I could plant something on someone she loved any time I liked, but nothing worked. She was relentless. I’d even offered her a lump sum the week before – £10,000. She just laughed and said she’d spent more on a holiday to Dubai. That was what I was up against. That was what she was like.’
‘Shall I tell you what she was like?’ I thumb through my file, finally landing on Holly’s Social Services record. ‘A happy, bright, well-adjusted child, by all accounts, until her dad took a corner too fast and his motorbike collided with a lorry when she was nine. Twelve months later, her mum, who didn’t touch drugs before the accident, dies from a heroin overdose – oh, and Holly found her, there’s the kicker.’ I look up, expecting to see some flicker of emotion, some sign of humanity. All I get is indifference. ‘Then the only other family she has, an aunt, declines to take her in because – and the social worker made a note of this beauty – she felt it would be “too much of a hardship for her own children to have to share a bedroom”. So that means Holly’s shoved around various care homes and foster homes until she’s sixteen, followed by two years in a hostel.’ I hold up another document. ‘Her medical records show evidence of several severe beatings between the ages of eleven and sixteen.’
‘She probably asked for them.’
There’s no point in arguing with her, she’s too far gone. Holly was understandably cast as the villain six years ago and her legend will have been growing in stature ever since.
‘Can I tell you what Paul was like now?’ she asks, every word laced with indignation.
I look over at Steele, who shrugs, ‘Sure, why not?’
‘A lot of people say about their partners, “Oh, he’s not perfect, but he’s mine,” but Paul was perfect. He was the kindest, funniest, most down-to-earth, compassionate person you could meet. Everyone loved him – everyone. Old ladies, young babies, all the boys’ friends, the bloody postman, you name it. I was always in his shadow, in that sense. Wherever I went, it was always, “Where’s Paul?”, “How’s Paul?”, “Tell Paul I was asking after him”. And even when he was at his lowest, he’d still try to cheer everyone else up. He never complained once about being ill, and God knows he had every right to because it was so unfair. He had everything to live for, but his heart was failing him and there was nothing he could do. And then just when you think he’s had enough bad luck for one lifetime, he runs into that parasite, Holly Kemp.’ Her chin lifts, eyes challenging mine. ‘Well, I might not have been able to fix his heart, but I could fix that problem for him.’
‘Did Paul know what you’d done?’ I ask, wondering – unfairly, I admit, and without any medical knowledge whatsoever – if the shock of Dyer’s ‘fix’ could have hastened his demise.
‘He didn’t know anything, but I’d say he suspected something. The woman who’d been blackmailing us, murdered by the very person I’d been hunting? There’s coincidence and there’s convenience. Paul was a smart guy, he knew the difference. He never said anything, though.’
Steele says, ‘So not quite the saint then? He wasn’t too concerned about brushing a coincidence like that under the carpet.’
A flare of anger. ‘He was too concerned with the fact he was dying, Kate. He knew by then – we knew – that the end wasn’t too far off. He’d had infections before, but this one: subacute infective endocarditis – God, the lingo trips off my tongue even now – had weakened him so much. We didn’t think it would happen so soon, though – he died in the October. I thought we’d have another birthday, Christmas, maybe one more holiday.’ She looks at me, then Steele. ‘I suppose you think that’s karma.’
‘We’re very sorry about your husband, Tess.’ Steele’s voice is flat but genuine.
Dyer nods, staring at a spot on the table. ‘You know, I wasn’t even angry when he told me what had happened with her, how he’d gone back to her hotel room.’ Her eyes fill but she blinks away the tears. ‘I was hurt, I suppose.Shocked, but not angry. He’d had some bad news from his consultant that day, you see. They’d told him he had to stop playing sport. Basically, he had stop doing anything beyond gentle exercise. It knocked him for six. It wasn’t just that he loved sport, it was that another part of him was being stripped away by his illness. The night she approached him in that bar, he was drunk and feeling like he needed to prove something to himself. That he still had it. That he was still a virile man. The bloody idiot.’ Even this is said with affection, as if his only crime was forgetting to fill the car up or put the washing on. ‘It was bullshit macho thinking, I know. But I got it. I understood. One moment of weakness in sixteen years and God, was he paying for it. You couldn’t not feel sorry for him.’