That the boy didn't look up as Kubič entered the interrogation room seemed almost willful, as if intended as a minor act of disrespect. There was however a quick dart of the eyes at the expensively-suited figure to the boy's right, a lawyer by the name of Purvis who Kubič was unfortunate enough to have had dealings with a couple of times in the past. The usual legal representative of the boy's father, Victor Hancock, was in fact Jenny Markham, but given the circumstances it had seemed wiser to call upon the recommendation of one of his golfing pals in the interests of ensuring his son a detached, effective defence.
As Kubič took his seat, the air seemed to positively crackle. It must have felt something similar when they got Brady and Hindley. Sutcliffe. Fred and Rose West. Another of the nation's most brutal and infamous cases of pluri-homicide was drawing to an end. All that remained were the whys and the wherefores. The picking over of bones.
"Look at me please Giles."
There was a dutiful but unwilling upturn of the boy's gaze, his face still framed at its edges by a pinker hue where the facepaint hadn't been completely wiped away, the real flesh tone beneath showing the unhealthy pallour of someone who shunned and cowered from the light. The eyes which fleetingly met his own communicated neither fear nor remorse but rather a flaring rampant scorn.
Just a year older than Danny, Kubič couldn't help thinking. How was it possible for a parent to be so completely and tragically unaware of what they had created?
"Did you kill Catherine Butterfield?"
The wording of the question was deliberately simple, a brutal slash separating the silence which had preceded it and which now followed.
"Did you kill Sophie Markham?"
Still nothing. Not even the barest flicker of a reaction.
"I don't hear you denying it Giles."
At this, Purvis leaned forward a little. "As is his right, inspector. From what I understand you have not a single shred of evidence linking him to either murder scene. All you actually have is him lurking around the parking area of an apartment complex in St Frideswade's Lane. This isn't even wafer thin. It's molecule thin."
"Lurking around the parking area of an apartment complex in St Frideswade's Lane with a carving knife in his pocket," Kubič corrected.
The lawyer smiled almost triumphantly back. "So charge him with possession of an offensive weapon, inspector, and we can all go home."
"A knife he intended to kill Detective Sergeant Wye with," Kubic continued. "After my" - he bent both index fingers to indicate inverted commas - "failure to commit murder my colleague became the target, just the same as Catherine Butterfield became the target after her husband's refusal to act and Sophie Markham became the target following Nathan Edwardson's botched attempt to kill his father."
"Mere conjecture, and you know it. Any self-respecting judge would laugh you out of court."
"You're probably not aware Purvis that we had an SAS sniper on top of that apartment complex." The boy, Kubič noticed from the corner of his eye, had now looked up. "Just in case the vest and the other SAS man hidden in the back of the Clio weren't enough."
"You had my sixteen-year-old client in the sights of an SAS sniper! Oh boy, the judge is just going to love this."
"We didn't know he was just a lad, did we? Certainly didn't look like a kid with all that make up on." It was Kubic's turn now to stretch his lips into a flickered smile. "We're talking high-grade night vision goggles, the same they use in Afghanistan. Goggles which also record what their wearer is seeing." He paused a moment, enjoyed watching the lawyer's facial expression harden, lose its self-assuredness. "We've got the lad on tape Purvis, is what I'm saying. A bit green and blurry, but you can clearly see him moving around the back of the parked cars and into position as the Renault swings into its space. Just as the sergeant opens the driver's door, just that split second before the rear door crashes into his midrift, he lifts the knife in what could not be construed in any way other than threatening. I'm sure any self-respecting judge would take this all very, very seriously indeed."
Taking advantage of the lawyer's temporary speechlessness, he turned his attention back to the boy. Those sneering, scornful eyes had dropped down to his lap once more.
"Where were you aiming for eh Giles? Plum between the shoulder blades? Or maybe the stomach, like Catherine Butterfield?"
Still not a flicker.
The lad was a bloody statue, Kubic couldn't help thinking. Just a chunk of cold hard stone.
"Lily," he continued. Just that - the name dropped there between them like a feather left to float in the breeze.
Then again: "Lily." Now a sigh. "Always so pretty, girls' names which come from flowers. Rose, Iris, Daisy." He leant foward, compressed his voice to a whispered hiss. "That's what they were going to call her. The baby inside Catherine's stomach. Almost ready to come out by then. Almost ready to take her first breath, step aboard this great rattling rollercoaster ride we call life. Who knows what little Lily's trip might have had in store." He sat back again, sighed wearily once more. "Maybe she'd have followed in her mother's footsteps. Become a doctor, devoted her best years to helping people. Just the same as poor Sophie Markham had planned doing."
It was then that he noticed it. The little hiccuping judder of the boy's shoulders. The hand pressed over eyes, the moisture which had dribbled out onto his fingers.
No, not stone. Just a kid, that was all. Just some poor messed up little kid who missed his mother like hell.
"I tried so, so hard," he whispered, more softly this time. "That day, at the top of St Frideswade's." The boy looked up, his hate softened and refracted through the tears. "Promised her that we'd find her help. A psychologist, someone she could talk to. Someone who would listen."
In his mind, he could still glimpse the scene. The broil of bruised grey clouds so close above, the November wind bustling and jostling at his back. Her slippered feet on the moist parapet, silk nightgown buffeted this way and that.
Then, absurdly, gone...
"Depression's a disease Giles, that's the way you should think of it. That your mother had a cancer. There was nothing she or anyone else could do."
The boy was looking up at him, the tears thick now, droopy translucent trails down each cheek.
"G," Kubič hissed urgently. "We need to know who the hell G is."
*
Available only to law enforcement authorities, the software was often referred to as 'brute force' due to the high velocity numerical assault it could effect upon the security shields of electrical devices. Within forty minutes of being handed to the constabulary's chief technician, the access code of Giles Hancock's phone had been identified.
Renault still in station car park.
It was this the most recent text message which immediately grabbed investigative attention. Sent by a contact logged simply as G, it had been timed at 8.17, approximately half an hour therefore after Kubic's feigned knife attack on Clive Bone.
As if this weren't incriminating enough, another message from the self same contact was quickly retrieved from the phone's hard drive. Timed less than an hour before the murder of Sophie Markham, it read simply and darkly thus:
Nathan has failed
To which Hancock had later the same evening given the following single word response:
Done
It seemed clear, therefore, that the boy's accomplice and probable supplier of the sniper rifle was said G. A contact who - perhaps now perturbed by a lack of a similar conclusive message - would a little before eleven o'clock that evening hazard a call as the phone's owner sat wordlessly sobbing in the interrogation room...
There was a hiss of background noise, the urgent twice-repeated calling of Giles' name. The line was then cut - urgently it seemed, as if aware of the state-of-the-art call tracer the receiving phone was hooked up to.
"West Road," whispered the technician, locating the signal on the GPS screen. "About halfway down."
"But that..." Larkinson began to stammer increduously as he squinted at the display. "That's the Echo."
*
Given the heightened uniformed presence on Ravensby's streets, it was only a matter of two or three minutes before the ground floor entrance door had been shouldered and kicked into submission, a thunder of successive service boots made the ascent up to the news room.
Too late though...
George Shreeves sat slumped in the editor's swivel chair, his head twisted unnaturally sideways against the desk, lifeless eyes seeming to stare up at the office clock as if wary of some looming, impending deadline.
KEEP READING! THE NOVEL'S VARIOUS SUBPLOTS WILL NOW BE TIED UP IN THE EPILOGUE. (But first, please, how about a vote or a comment?)