Blood is Thicker Than Water (8 page)

The solicitor winced as her client sabotaged her plans for mitigation with his callous admission.

“But it didn’t work, did it?”

The man across the table’s shoulders slumped and for the first time his voice shook slightly. “No. A couple of weeks after I started giving him the juice I nicked him with the razor. He bled, but it wasn’t a big deal. I got on the web and they said that the whole cranberry thing was a bit of an exaggeration.”

“So what did you do?” Warren’s voice was softer now.

“I thought about giving it up. But I couldn’t. He was an evil old man and he had ruined so many lives. He needed to be punished, so we could all move on.” He took a sip of the water in front of him. “Then I thought about giving him an overdose of his warfarin. I figured that if you did a blood test, you’d only find what you expected. He’d been on the drug for years; he’d be full of it. I was going to use his pills but they come in packs of twenty-eight and I didn’t think there were enough. Besides, the chemist would know how many he should have left and people would get suspicious if there were too many missing. Then I remembered that he used to call it rat poison. So I went back on the web and found that rat poison contains warfarin.”

A little knowledge could be a dangerous thing, Warren mused. If he’d read a bit further, he’d have found out that warfarin was no longer the active ingredient in most rodenticides and perhaps this whole mad plan would have been shelved.

“I found that you can get the stuff premixed with grain. So I baked it into a cake.”

The solicitor closed her eyes briefly.

He continued, his voice almost mechanical as if what he’d described was the most natural thing in the world. “I’d never win
The Great British Bake Off
, but I tried a bit and it tasted OK. He wolfed it down.”

“When was this?”

“About a week or so ago.”

That tied in with Kathy Mackay’s reports that her father had been a bit under the weather in the days before his death.

“So what did you do next?”

“I figured it would take a few days to get into his system. By Sunday he was complaining he felt tired. I offered to give him a wet shave and nicked him again. He bled like a stuck pig. Almost too much. It got to the point where I was worried that he was going to bleed out there and then. Fortunately I managed to stop it.”

“So you decided he was ready?”

Warren was careful to keep his tone neutral, matching the man’s dispassion with his own. He worried that if he introduced too much emotion the killer before him would dry up and stop the flow of information.

“Yeah. It was now or never.” He paused again and took another mouthful of water.

“I knew that he had a habit of falling asleep in the chair, watching the telly. The TV switches itself off to save power late at night so I figured that if I turned the lights off as well, the room would be pitch black.” He paused, his eyes glazing over slightly at the memory.

“What happened on the night he died?” prompted Warren, careful to avoid emotive words such as “killed” or, God forbid, “murdered”.

The man’s voice was dull, flat. “I turned up about eleven. I could hear the TV still going and the lights were on, but he snores something rotten. He’s half deaf, so it wasn’t difficult to let myself in without waking him. I needed it to look like an accident, so I turned up the corner of the rug in front of the fireplace, pushed his wheeled tray out of reach and moved his walking stick. Then I switched the lights off and turned the TV to standby.”

“And then what?”

The man’s voice lost its robotic edge and a tremble entered his speech. “I was going to leave him. Let nature take its course. But what if it didn’t work? So I sat down on the sofa and waited.”

The man took another sip of water, spilling a few drops down his chin. He didn’t notice. “For over two hours I sat there. Listening to his breathing. Remembering what he did. About one a.m. I nearly called the whole thing off. I even went to put the light back on, so I could straighten the rug and move everything back to where it belonged. But then I remembered why I was doing it. For ten years our lives have revolved around that man, whilst he sits in that bloody chair on a pile of money that could solve everyone’s problems in one go, yet he’s too tight to pay a penny towards his own care, treating his own family like unpaid domestic help. He needed to be punished for what he did and to stop him ever doing it again.”

The man paused, before continuing quietly. His lip trembled slightly. “And then there’s Callum. The fear and the way he gets upset and won’t talk whenever somebody mentions his granddad and I knew I had to go through with it.”

Spent, he sat back in his chair. After a few seconds he started again. “It was getting on for half past one and I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. Perhaps he’d just sleep through until dawn. And then he woke up. My eyes had adapted to the darkness a bit, but I knew there was no way he could see me and he wouldn’t hear me.

“He started sweeping the air with his hand, looking for his trolley and swearing about light bulbs. Then he gave up and started looking for his walking stick. When he didn’t find it, I thought he might just give up and wait for morning when Kathy arrived to do his breakfast, but he started muttering something about being found in his own piss and shit.

“When he stood up, I thought he was going to turn the chair over, because he was leaning on one side. I hadn’t thought of that. But eventually he was on his feet, shuffling along the carpet. I could just about see him as he stumbled on the rug. But he caught himself, managed not to fall…”

The man opposite the two officers fell silent. The seconds ticked by, but Warren and Sutton said nothing. Even his solicitor seemed to be holding her breath.

“So I pushed him—” another long pause “—in the small of the back. He went straight down, just as I’d planned, straight into the mantelpiece. He didn’t make a sound.”

The man covered his mouth, but his words remained distinct enough for the recorder. “I stood and stared at him for a few minutes. And then I left.”

* * *

At the solicitor’s request, they’d taken another short break. Both Warren and Sutton had been relieved. The most important part of the interview, the confession, was over and the two officers were feeling almost as wrung out as the man they’d interviewed.

Now the tape was back on again.

“Can you tell me why you did it?”

“You were right about his liking for children. He had a thing for small boys.” The man’s voice shook slightly. “There was never any evidence but when the rumours started circulating about him joining the scouts I knew that they were true. But then he got kicked out and I figured it would be OK. And when he had his stroke I thought, that’s it then. He’s not going to be a danger to kids any more. And so we just carried on. Feeding him, cleaning him and waiting for him to die.

“And then Callum had his meltdown and I just knew. Even though he wouldn’t say anything, I knew it was happening again. That he was abusing Callum the same way he did all those years ago.”

A single tear rolled down the man’s cheek.

“The same way he did it to me, when I was Callum’s age.”

The man fell silent and Warren knew it was time. A bitter taste filled his mouth. There were no winners in this case. He felt no triumph, just a grim satisfaction that he’d done his job. There’d be no celebration down the Saracen’s Head tonight. A glance at Sutton revealed his colleague’s own discomfort. But he had no choice. Justice must be served, the rule of law upheld. Forcing the compassion from his voice he pushed the CPS charge sheet across the desk towards the broken man in front of him.

“Thomas Michaelson, you are charged with the murder of Charles Michaelson.”

Need a new page-turner? Keep reading for a sneak peak of
Silent as the Grave
, the next full-length DCI Warren Jones novel.

Prologue

The teenage boy walked carefully, balancing an overfilled mug in each hand. The kettle had boiled only moments before and his mother had called down the garden, asking if his father wanted coffee. There had been no reply, but in twenty years of marriage Aileen MacNamara had never known her husband refuse a hot drink. So, curious to know what his father had been doing all evening, the fourteen-year-old had poured himself one as well and set off down the path.

The garage door was a sturdy, wooden affair, the handle missing for as long as the boy could remember, the hasp for the padlock its replacement. Looping a free finger around the metal bracket, he unhooked it then pulled as hard as he could. The door, warped from years of hot summers and cold winters, resisted before screeching open with a sudden jerk, spilling scalding liquid all over his hands. The teenager swore quietly.

Niall MacNamara had patrolled the streets of Coventry for over twenty-five years and had seen—and heard—it all. Nevertheless he had zero tolerance for foul language in his home and his son wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.

The garage was dark, filled with tools and gardening implements. A spate of recent vandalism had prompted Niall to enlist the help of his two sons to clear enough space for him to park the family car in there overnight, but it was a tight fit.

The boy started to cough at the same moment he saw the hosepipe snaking from the rear of the car and in through the partially open driver’s side window. With an incoherent shout, he dropped both mugs, forcing himself around the car’s bonnet to the driver’s side. After yanking the hosepipe from the window, he pulled the door handle. Locked. Through the clouds of exhaust filling the car, he could see his father, head slumped forward in the driver’s seat. Choking, the boy cast his teary eyes around wildly before spotting a claw hammer hanging from a hook. With so little room to swing it took three desperate attempts before he shattered the window, all the while screaming for his mother. After pulling the door lock button, he opened the door. An empty whisky bottle rolled off his father’s lap and clattered onto the concrete floor. Reaching in, he took the keys from the ignition. But he knew it was too little, too late.

Tuesday 10 May 1988. After tonight, nothing would ever be the same again.

Twenty-Two Years Later

The scrum of press outside the prison gates was more like that awaiting the appearance of a pop star than a convicted murderer. An explosion of flashbulbs greeted the arrival of a black Jaguar. Some of the dozen or so uniformed police officers, who were stopping the pushing reporters from getting too close to the prison gates, broke off to form a similar line around the rear doors of the luxury car.

Parked one hundred metres away, DCI Gavin Sheehy looked on with incredulity at the spectacle. All of the major national broadcasters were present, along with several noted international ones. Reporters earnestly spoke into cameras or radio microphones. Recognising one of the BBC’s most famous radio presenters, Sheehy reached for the car radio, selecting Radio 4. Sure enough, the anchor of
World at One
was reporting on the release of the prisoner, before handing over live to the presenter.

“The scene outside Wormwood Scrubs prison is unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed before. Vinny Delmarno, the notorious crime lord sentenced in 1988 to life in prison for ordering the killing of a rival drug baron and accused—although acquitted—of dozens of counts of racketeering, money laundering, drug dealing and prostitution, is due to be released any moment on parole.

“Most prisoners slip out of this back door with little more than a carrier bag, the clothes they wore when they came in, the address of a local bail hostel and forty-six pounds to help them start life again. Vinny Delmarno will have no need of any of these. It is alleged that while he one of the most successful crime lords of the seventies and eighties, he also owned—and some claim still owns—a string of apparently legitimate businesses across the Midlands and the East of England. All of these businesses and his palatial Hertfordshire home were signed over to his ex-wife in an entirely uncontested divorce settlement weeks before his successful conviction. Rumour has it that he and his wife have reconciled over the past twenty-two years and that he will be returning to the couple’s former home as soon as he is released.”

The anchorwoman broke in, “This has caused some controversy, hasn’t it, Mark?”

“Indeed it has. Politicians from all sides of the House are questioning if there is any way the state can seize these assets, even though they were legally awarded to his ex-wife. The shadow Home Secretary has claimed that the divorce was clearly a sham and that therefore his assets should be used to repay the millions of pounds of back tax that it is alleged he avoided through money-laundering schemes. It should be noted of course that despite his conviction, he claims to be innocent of all these charges and that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

“When he is released, any moment now, it is expected that he will give a statement repeating those claims.”

Suddenly the press started snapping pictures again and even from his distant vantage point, Sheehy could hear the increase in volume from the waiting press. A moment later it became clear why, as a small side door started to open.

Sheehy’s breath caught in his throat. It had been a long time since he had last set eyes on the man. He wasn’t prepared for the shock. Delmarno was a small, dapper man in his mid fifties. His silver hair had been expertly coiffured and his thin pencil moustache trimmed neatly. The fitted suit that he wore was certainly not the one he’d worn in court; its cut was clearly contemporary. But then he had been a very different man back then.

“In many ways it is a big surprise to see Vinny Delmarno here today. When sentenced back in 1988, he was believed to be within a year of dying from kidney failure. In fact that was put forward in mitigation by his defence team when the judge sentenced him. Six months into his sentence, however, he received a controversial life-saving kidney transplant. Questions were again raised in the House of Commons and the House of Lords as to whether a convicted murderer should be given such treatment free on the NHS. The then Health Secretary acknowledged such concerns but stood alongside the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister in claiming that denying prisoners such a life-saving operation would be a slippery slope.”