The Burning (36 page)

‘That’s about the length of it, ma’am. I am as appalled as I’m sure you are.’

‘Are you suggesting a motive?’

‘They occupy three of Mr Rozek’s properties. They haven’t paid rent since December the 1st.’

‘And their connection with Burden? I’m not sure I follow.’

‘Say Mr Rozek didn’t die in his car, but was shot and merely injured. Perhaps before he died they found his passport and asked him how he came by it.’

Jenny was struggling to picture the scene in the North Somerset village: a dying, blood-soaked man being interrogated at gunpoint by rogue undercover detectives. But then when she put it
alongside what had happened at Blackstone Ley, it no longer seemed so incredible. Anything could happen. Anywhere.

‘Do you have any evidence – as opposed to rumour – that these two are officers?’

‘I did think of phoning the Chief Constable, ma’am, but on reflection I decided he might be more inclined to talk to Her Majesty’s Coroner.’ He gave a grim smile.

The clock on the mantel chimed six. ‘Thank you, Mr Falco. We’ll resume tomorrow morning.’ Jenny turned to the stenographer. ‘That’ll be all. If you would be kind
enough to email me the transcript before you go.’

As the stenographer gratefully packed her things into a case, Jenny gave Falco a look inviting him to wait for her to leave. Moments later, the transcript appeared attached to an email on
Jenny’s phone and the stenographer was hurrying on her way.

Jenny leaned forward and addressed Tomasz. ‘This is off the record now, Mr Zaleski, and it’s nothing to do with this case. I’m talking about Ed Morgan. Are you telling me that
he could have been connected with the disposal of human remains at Fairmeadows Farm?’

Tomasz met her eye. ‘I told you already, Ed was a nice guy. He wouldn’t do that, not without a gun in his face. But he could have seen something.’ Jenny’s phone vibrated
once on the desk, alerting her to a text message. She glanced sideways at the screen. It read:
Advise excuse yourself now. Simon
.

Jenny slipped the phone into her pocket. ‘I’m sorry. I need to make a personal call. Could you perhaps think about that a little more deeply, Mr Zaleski. Dates, names –
anything I should be following up. Do excuse me a moment.’

Ignoring Falco’s uncertain glance, Jenny stepped around the table and exited through the door. Out on the landing, she heard voices travelling up the four flights of stairs from the lobby.
One of them belonged to the stenographer; the other voices were male and seemed to be questioning her. A sign pointed upstairs to the Ladies’. She followed it and arrived on the upper landing
as several sets of footsteps travelled quickly up from the ground floor. She pressed herself against the wall, out of sight from the entrance to the conference room, as several detectives bundled
inside. She heard Falco’s voice raised in outraged protest as he and Tomasz were informed that they were under arrest. Falco continued to threaten that he would sue them all for false arrest
as they were taken downstairs. There wasn’t a word from Tomasz, who went as meekly as a lamb.

The black government Jaguar was idling on the opposite side of the darkened street outside the building. The tinted rear window lowered as Jenny stepped outside, revealing
Simon Moreton’s face.

He smiled as if in congratulation. ‘Well done, Jenny,’ he called across the road, ‘you took the hint for once. Spot of early dinner? With all your excitement, I managed to miss
lunch.’

The driver climbed out of the front and opened the back door facing the pavement. He stood patiently, waiting for her to cross over and climb in. It was no use resisting. Moreton hadn’t
travelled from London only to leave without making his point. He would have his pound of flesh one way or another.

She slid onto the warm leather seat and in a petulant act of defiance refused to fasten her seatbelt.

‘At your own risk,’ Moreton said. He switched off the tablet computer on which he had been reading the transcript of Zaleski’s evidence. The stenographer must have emailed it
to him from the lobby. ‘I thought The Avon Gorge Hotel. It seems like a night for comfort food.’

He patted her wrist and the car moved silently away.

The hotel was a large, stucco building on Sion Hill, close to the edge of the gorge. The restaurant, quiet this early in the evening, looked over to the Clifton Suspension
Bridge. Lit up against a moonless night, it seemed to hover in black space. Lulled by the first sips of wine from the single glass she would allow herself, Jenny gazed past Simon Moreton as he
inspected the menu, and watched the disembodied headlights pass to and fro across the gorge. Moreton was looking even fitter and slimmer than the last time Jenny had seen him some six months
before. He had to be fifty-five, but his dark hair showed only the faintest traces of grey and there was no sign of a bulge above his belt.

‘Beef Wellington with roast potatoes,’ Moreton exclaimed with satisfaction. ‘Just the thing. Can I tempt you to join me, or would you prefer “traditional fish
pie”?’

‘That’ll do.’

‘Excellent.’ He raised his glass. ‘To all that’s solid and dependable,’ and clinked it against Jenny’s. He took a large mouthful of rich Bordeaux and rolled
it around his tongue. ‘My God, that’s good.’ He swallowed and smiled at her across the table, which was just large enough not to be awkwardly intimate. ‘How could life be
any sweeter?’ He beamed at her, and summoned the waiter to take their order.

When they were alone again, Moreton leant forward a little, crossing the invisible threshold between them. ‘The Chief doesn’t know about this, all right? And I’m more than
happy for it to stay that way.’

‘I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong,’ Jenny said. ‘I weighed what the interests of justice required and decided I needed to hear Zaleski’s evidence. I’m
glad I did. It’s shocking. And I certainly made no attempt to help him evade arrest.’

Moreton gave a sympathetic nod of the kind a psychiatrist might give to a delusional patient.

‘What?’ Jenny demanded.

‘Aren’t you interested to know how I came to be here? It seems only fair I should tell you.’

‘I imagine DI Ballantyne has something to do with it.’

‘He played his part, but I confess Mr Falco has been of interest to the police more than usual in the weeks since his client Mr Rozek’s death.’

‘He’s been under surveillance? Why? What’s he meant to have done?’

‘Rozek was a notorious criminal, Jenny. You were so locked on to the scent that you didn’t step back and do your research. He and his Polish friends have been slaughtering each other
for the last eighteen months. It’s what happens when criminal gangs have saturated the local market – they contest the turf.’

‘Their rivalries don’t interest me. All I’m concerned with—’

‘Hold on,’ Moreton interrupted, ‘hear me out. What you probably don’t know is that at the time of his death Rozek was under pressure. He’d been smart enough to keep
at arm’s length from the prostitution and people-trafficking, so they were looking at tax fraud. All they needed was to convict him of one offence and, hey presto, all his ill-gotten gains
would have been up for grabs as proceeds of crime. He would have found himself in court, having to prove that every pound of his fortune was acquired legitimately. Being dead doesn’t get him
off the hook, it’s just passed the problem to his wife. Mr Falco is fighting tooth and nail to save their swag, Jenny. The Rozeks are his livelihood. He’s a desperate man.’

‘What are you alleging – that Falco paid Zaleski to give false evidence this afternoon?’

‘Well done! We’ll make a coroner of you yet. From what the police tell me, Zaleski did do the odd job for Mr Rozek, but Janick and Mazur aren’t undercover officers any more
than you or I. It’s a fantasy. A story made up by Falco to muddy the waters and cause terminal embarrassment to the agencies trying to steal his clients’ assets –
first you
kill him, then you rob him!
What a headline he could have made from that! He thought he could scare the police off.’

‘How do I know any of this is true?’

‘You have my word,’ Moreton said, wounded by her insinuation. ‘Scout’s honour.’

‘I wish that were enough.’

‘Jenny, step back for a moment and listen. You may be interested to know that a Mr Lech Weil was indeed “disappeared” last year. And I am reliably informed that Mr Burden did
indeed issue a replacement passport in his name last December. In fact, there’s every reason to believe Mr Falco introduced Rozek to Burden – he’s a well-connected man. And unlike
you, he knows how to think like a criminal, and with the alacrity of an opportunist. He seized on Burden’s suicide and set about spinning you a tale. You were meant to deliver a verdict to
strengthen his arm –
Coroner rules man murdered by undercover cops!
You might almost call him an artist – the way he reeled you in with the Ed Morgan connection was really quite
a master stroke. And the theatre!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There was no warrant for Zaleski. It was a fiction.’ Moreton fetched out his phone. ‘I have an email from the Chief Constable, no less. Would you like to see it?’

‘No, thank you. Then why was he arrested?’

‘For conspiring to pervert the course of justice, obviously. Along with Falco. He won’t be at court tomorrow.’

Moreton sat triumphantly back in his chair. Jenny stared self-consciously into her glass, unable to share in his delight.

‘Word reached me of your domestic incident,’ Moreton said. ‘I think this ought to allay your anxiety on that front, too. Another of Zaleski’s odd jobs, I suspect.’
He took an appreciative sip of wine. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, I feel like I’m telling my daughter there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. A trusting nature is an attractive quality,
but you have to learn – in our business, people are seldom what they seem.’

‘Your version is as good as Zaleski’s,’ Jenny said, ‘and you have a motive.’

Moreton gave an amused smile. ‘Do tell.’

‘Tidy it all up with as little mess as possible. Prevent a public outcry at murdered criminals entering the food chain.’

‘I mean this in the nicest possible way, but wherever there’s a hint of the unexplained, people instinctively suspect witchcraft. It takes a cool and rational mind to stick to brutal
logic.’

‘I’m hysterical and irrational, am I? I thought I was doing rather well.’

‘You are a little. But fortunately you’ve also had flashes of brilliance. That’s what I’ve always admired about you.’

He smiled with his eyes: the look that always came when he was hoping for her to return the compliment and let him feel a frisson between them.

She glanced away, then turned back a little and met his gaze for a moment. She allowed him just a hint of promise: enough to feed his ego and let him travel back to London imagining the night
they might have had if he had allowed himself to slip the shackles of marriage and respectability. It was a harmless enough dance, and Jenny indulged it because no matter how infuriating he managed
to be, she always felt rather sorry for him. He’d lived life by proxy, all his thrills vicarious and his fantasies unfulfilled. He craved excitement, but could only glimpse it through
her.

‘Shall we draw a line, Jenny? Mark this one down to experience and enjoy the evening.’

‘Simon, what exactly are you asking me to do?’

‘Stop ghost-hunting. There are no phantoms in these shadows. Trust me for once, and move on.’ He raised his glass: ‘To sunnier times.’

‘To sunnier times,’ Jenny echoed without conviction.

They drank their toast and Jenny let Moreton briefly brush his ankle against hers.

J
ENNY ENTERED THE COURT AND
took her seat at a minute past ten. It was an intimate gathering consisting of the usher, Anthony Burden, DI Ballantyne and
Clara Lawson, the young lawyer keeping a watching brief for the Home Office. Ballantyne wore a look of quiet satisfaction, but Anthony Burden appeared gravely troubled in a way he hadn’t the
previous day. Jenny wished there was more she could have done for him, but every avenue had been choked off.

Earlier that morning she had received two emails. The first confirmed that both Louis Falco and Tomasz Zaleski had been charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and that in due
course Jenny would be contacted as a witness. The second was from Daniel Burden’s superior, Gordon Kenyon, stating that Burden had indeed approved a passport in the name of Lech Weil, but
that all the supporting documents were in order. The discrepancies between the photograph of Mr Weil on his previous passport and on the photograph submitted had been judged ‘within
acceptable tolerances’. That being so, no evidence existed that Burden had been criminally involved with Rozek.

Jenny didn’t trust Kenyon’s assurance, and she found it hard to believe that Burden hadn’t been abusing his position to make money on the side, but all she had was
circumstantial evidence that proved nothing.

Jenny addressed Anthony Burden: ‘Mr Burden, before I deliver my findings is there anything you would like to say?’

He shook his head in a way which told Jenny he’d had enough of looking into the murky corners of his brother’s life.

‘Very well. I have considered the evidence we heard yesterday and have arrived at the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence available to precisely determine the cause of and
circumstances of Daniel Burden’s death. With some reluctance, I am therefore obliged to return an open verdict.’

She offered Anthony Burden a look of sympathy, but all she read on his face was relief that the ordeal was over. As soon as she rose from her chair, he turned and headed out of the courtroom. DI
Ballantyne cast him a philosophical glance: ‘You wouldn’t want to know if I told you,’ it seemed to say. And Jenny thought he would probably be right.

It was a long shot, but Jenny needed to try, if only to convince herself that she had exhausted every avenue. Loose ends left her feeling listless and dissatisfied, and worse
– as if she had failed in her job.