Truth Lies Bleeding (31 page)

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Authors: Tony Black

BOOK: Truth Lies Bleeding
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‘Can go one better than that: why don’t you join us for a beer tonight? Having a few after work to celebrate.’
Brennan smiled into the phone. ‘Might just do that. The Bull as usual?’
‘Yeah, say about six, seven . . .’
‘See you there, Brycey.’
He hung up.
As he put down the phone the door to the office was flung open. DC Stevie McGuire stuck his head in. ‘Minister’s on his way, sir. Be here in a half-hour.’
Chapter 39
BRENNAN ORDERED McGUIRE TO GO and prepare the interview room; he had a phone call to make. He knew it would have been better to meet face to face with Lynne Thompson, ask her the question he wanted to know about her friend Carly that she had been so reluctant to answer, and it would be clumsy with her mother there on the line, but he had no choice. Time had almost defeated him on the case, and he knew if he didn’t get a result before Lauder took over he was as good as finished.
Brennan dialled the number.
The phone started to ring.
He knew there was no advantage to be gained from showing the Reverend John Donald that he had unearthed a secret, something he and his wife had tried so hard to keep from everyone, the police included, but it would give him something to prod the minister with. And he needed that. Brennan needed to have the minister onside for his next move. Without him, he felt pretty sure that the case was going nowhere; certainly not before Lauder pushed him out.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Mrs Thompson, it’s Detective Inspector Rob Brennan.’
A pause. ‘Oh, hello there.’
‘And how are you keeping?’ Brennan loathed the formality of these situations, the small chat; life would be so much more straight forward if everyone just said what they meant.
‘I’m well, thanks . . . And you?’
‘I’m fine, Mrs Thompson. You’ll no doubt have seen the news.’
A clearing of throat. Her voice lowered a little: ‘Yes, I saw the, er, news about Mr Sproul.’
Brennan listened to her intonation carefully – she seemed to have put a stranglehold on her vowels. ‘I think I mentioned on my last visit, about speaking to Lynne again.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
Brennan tugged at the phone line, started to twist it into little kinks. ‘Oh, really.’
‘She’s very upset about everything, as you can imagine, Inspector.’
Brennan cleared his throat. ‘Yes, I can understand that, Mrs Thompson, but I’d like to stress how important your daughter is to our investigation . . . A young girl has been killed and her child is missing. We still have no idea of the whereabouts of . . .’ He suddenly became aware of a silence on the other end of the line that made him wonder if he was speaking to himself. ‘Hello?’
There was no reply, then, ‘Lynne, here, take the phone.’
‘Hello, Lynne . . . Do you remember me?’
‘Yes, of course.’ The girl’s voice came loaded with nerves but short on actual words.
‘And how have you been keeping?’ Formality again; it irked him.
‘Okay, I guess.’
Brennan dropped the telephone cord, sat upright in his chair. ‘Lynne, I don’t want you to think too hard about what I’m about to ask you, all right?’
‘Okay.’
‘I think, by now, you know there’s nothing you can say that’s going to harm you, or get you into trouble . . .’
‘I suppose.’
‘If you are going to think about anything, you need only concern yourself with your best friend, Carly, and her baby, Beth. You knew all about Beth, didn’t you, long before anyone else did?’
There was a gap on the line. It stretched out too long and Brennan jumped in again: ‘You knew about Beth before Reverend Donald and his wife, didn’t you?’
The girl’s voice lowered yet further: ‘Yes.’
Brennan raised his eyes, thanked above. ‘Now, remember what I said: no one can hurt you now, Lynne . . . Peter Sproul was the father, wasn’t he?’
A gap. Brennan imagined the young girl looking at her mother and then a defiant nod coming. ‘Yes.’
Brennan scrunched his eyes, and smiled into the receiver. ‘What happened, Lynne? . . . What happened with Carly and Peter Sproul?’
The young girl started to cry. Brennan felt an enormous guilt for upsetting her. He heard her mother making encouraging noises, then, ‘He . . . he . . . raped her.’
Brennan froze. The facts of the matter had crossed his mind many times before but hearing them uttered this way somehow gave them more power. ‘Did she tell you about that, Lynne?’
More tears, sobbing. ‘Yes. More than once. He used to come into her room . . . She told her . . .’ The girl paused.
Brennan prompted: ‘Carly told her parents – is that what you were going to say?’
‘Yes.’
The thought of what Carly Donald had gone through in the months before her death welled up in Brennan. He felt his chest ache for her hurts. He wanted to be able to take the culprit and wring the life out of him, like Carly had surely had the life wrung out of her. The girl had faced a trial of misery. Brennan knew who to blame for some of it, and thought he knew who to blame for the rest.
‘Okay, Lynne, that’s enough now. Go back to your mum. You’ve done well. Thank you.’
The young girl started to cry again as the phone line died. Brennan placed down his receiver, rose from the chair and picked up his jacket. Something drew him to take the picture that Lorraine had given him from the pocket. He stared at the familiar shape for a second or two; he was responsible for bringing another child into this world and the thought gored him. Could any of the children be protected from the beasts that were out there? Brennan shoved the scan back in his pocket. As he put his hand in the sleeve of his jacket he spotted the Reverend John Donald being led towards the interview room by DC Stevie McGuire.
‘Right, Minister, let’s see what you have to say for yourself now,’ he muttered.
As Brennan left the office for Incident Room One he was stopped by a WPC. ‘Sir, I have the lab on the phone for you.’
‘What do they want?’
‘I think you should take it.’
Brennan picked up the phone. ‘Hello.’
‘
Rob
?’
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘I just thought you’d like to know that hunch you had about the ammunition . . .’
‘What about it?’
The boffin’s voice rose an octave: ‘You were absolutely right: the bullets were gold-washed.’
Brennan liked to be proven right; it hadn’t happened enough lately. ‘Pro hit all right. Told you. Thanks, Mike.’
He hung up, turned the phone over to the WPC, said, ‘Did you get anywhere running that ammunition through the system?’
She lowered the receiver, reached over a pile of blue files for a loose sheaf of paper, then another. ‘There’s a few, sir.’
‘How many?’
She curled down the corners of her mouth, showed a row of milk-white teeth. ‘I haven’t counted but I’d say over the country, I mean Scotland, fairly few . . . but in the UK and Ireland we’re into the dozens, especially in Ulster.’
‘Those Troubles have blocked our job.’
A smile. ‘Do you want me to cross-ref with over the water, sir?’
‘It’s a hit with military precision on our patch. They have enough on their own to still clear up without going out of their way to help us, but give it a go.’ Brennan nodded to her. ‘Good work, Constable.’
‘Thanks, sir.’
On the way out, Brennan picked up his pace. He didn’t want the minister to get too comfortable. He wanted him on edge. As he swung open the door, the minister was standing in the corner of the room with his hands behind his back.
Brennan was the first to speak: ‘Would you like to take a seat?’
‘I’d sooner stand, unless you have something to tell me.’
Brennan indicated the chair. ‘I have plenty to tell you and I’d like you to be comfortable but, please, suit yourself.’
The minister removed a grey-to-white handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his nose, then moved forward. As he sat down Brennan noticed the redness at the edges of his nose. ‘Can you tell me what this is about, please, and how long you will be keeping us under house arrest?’
Brennan turned over the cover of the blue folder sitting on the desk, said, ‘This is about the murder of your daughter and about your missing granddaughter, you know that . . . You also know you are not under house arrest, but merely helping us with our inquiries. I should have thought, Minister, in the circumstances, you would be more than happy to do that – am I wrong?’
The minister crossed his legs, showed grey argyle socks. He checked his watch as Brennan shuffled papers.
‘Will you need me long?’ he said.
Brennan tilted his head, huffed. ‘Are you in a hurry, Minister? Got somewhere to be?’
He looked away, frowned. Dark semicircles had appeared under his eyes in the last couple of days.
Brennan started again: ‘It’s not the Moderator’s job, is it? . . . My boss has an interview today. I know how nervous they make some people.’
‘Can we just get on with this, please?’
Brennan slapped hands on the desk, smiled. ‘Glad to. Shall I start with the investigation update?’ The minister nodded and Brennan ran through the events that had transpired since they’d last met. He watched the older man for signs of interest but none showed; he seemed to Brennan all too keen to get out of there. ‘For me, Minister, the most interesting piece of information I turned up was from Carly’s best friend.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, Lynne Thompson.’
‘I know the girl; she’s from a good family.’
‘Very good,’ said Brennan. ‘They are all devastated at the loss of Carly. You knew Carly confided in Lynne?’
‘They were young girls.’ The minister crossed his legs the other way. ‘I’m sure they talked a lot.’
Brennan leaned back in his seat, turned eyes upwards. ‘She told me something very interesting about your
man about the house
.’
‘Are you referring to the late Peter Sproul?’
Brennan nodded. ‘Who else?’
‘Well, I’d sooner not talk about the deceased if you do not mind. Suicide is such an unfortunate business.’
Brennan was stunned at his defence of Sproul. ‘The man was a convicted child molester. He’d spent years behind bars for raping children and you let him into your home.’
The minister’s tongue flashed before his grey lips. He retracted it quickly, searched for words. ‘I do not judge people on their past mistakes, but on what they hope to make of the future.’
Brennan stood up, walked round to the minister’s side of the desk, sat on the edge. ‘He was a serial child sex offender and you let him into your home. He raped and impregnated your daughter and you did not reveal that to anyone, even when she came to you . . .’
The minister stayed calm. ‘What proof do you have of that?’
Brennan was incredulous. He leaned over the minister. ‘Your daughter told you he raped her, she was pregnant – what more proof did you need?’
The minister turned away. His voice was flat, bereft of emotion: ‘Is this what you heard from Lynne Thompson, a teenage girl who heard something around the town and repeated it?’
‘No one in the town knew Carly had a child – you did a good job of covering that up.’
‘This is all hearsay.’
‘Sproul’s record wasn’t hearsay. He killed himself in your daughter’s room.’
The minister shook his head. ‘This is helping no one. Why have you not found my granddaughter yet?’
Brennan stepped away from the edge of the desk, spoke: ‘I wondered when you were going to ask about Beth.’
The mention of the baby’s name seemed to poke a spear into the minister. He laced his fingers and placed them on his thighs.
Brennan said, ‘We had a good response from the television news item.’
‘Another two people killed – is that what you call a good response, Inspector?’
He didn’t bite, closed down the minister: ‘We need to give this case a public face. We need to put out a plea and I want you to do it, today.’
The minister rose from the seat. ‘That will not be possible.’
Brennan got up, faced him. ‘Why? Think it’ll play havoc with your prospects of getting the Moderator’s job?’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘I thought you’d say so.’ Brennan picked up the telephone, buzzed the switchboard. ‘I’ll take you to meet our media people. They’ll coach you through what you’ll say at the press conference.’
Chapter 40
MELANIE McARDLE HAD GIVEN UP on her husband coming home any time soon. She had waited for him the night before to bring home the list of things she’d given him for the baby, only to be disappointed to see him carrying in tins of Carlsberg Special Brew for himself and nothing else. She had grown tired waiting and upset herself listening to the hungry child’s screams. Melanie knew she was disobeying her husband to go out with the child, but she also knew she had no choice.

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