Page 33

THIRTY-TWO

Brigstocke had clearly twisted enough arms to bypass the normal protocol for prison visits.

He had managed to get a visitation order arranged at only a few hours’ notice and to secure a private visits room, but the final decision as to whether or not the visit would go ahead had rested, as always, with the prisoner himself.

Peter Brightwell would have been perfectly within his rights to simply decline, but had, by all accounts, been entirely comfortable with the arrangement.

He seemed every bit as relaxed now, when he was led into the room and sat down opposite Thorne and Tanner as though he were joining them for lunch.

‘Thanks for agreeing to see us,’ Tanner said.

‘I didn’t have a lot on.’ Brightwell sniffed and looked around.

Aside from the small collection of brightly coloured armchairs, a low table and a selection of safety notices pinned to a cork board, there wasn’t a great deal to look at.

‘Plus there was always the slim possibility that you might be here to say sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’ Thorne asked.

‘What d’you think?’

‘That’s not why we’re here.’

‘Like I said, a slim possibility.’ Brightwell smiled, showing a far from complete collection of small, yellow teeth. ‘They talk about “pigs might fly”, don’t they, because that’s something that’s never going to happen, but there’s more chance of that than ever getting one to apologise.’

Three years into his sentence, Peter Brightwell looked very different from the man Thorne and Tanner had seen on that mugshot the day before, but the change in his appearance was not unusual.

He was as prison-pale as they’d been expecting, as every other prisoner would be, but while some altered their shape through hours spent working out and a few wasted away, Brightwell was one of those who’d become bloated and jowly after years of stodgy food and no exercise at all.

His gut bulged beneath the green tabard he wore over a sweatshirt and his neck had all but disappeared.

‘We’d like to talk to you about your brother,’ Tanner said. ‘About Alex.’

‘I do know my brother’s name,’ Brightwell said.

‘When did you last see him?’ Thorne asked.

‘Not sure . . . a couple of months ago, maybe.’

‘He comes to visit you fairly regularly, does he?’

‘Yeah, he’s been in a lot.’

‘He believes you’re innocent.’

‘He knows I’m innocent. Because I am.’

‘But he hasn’t been to visit recently?’

‘Well . . . I suppose he’s been busy.’

‘Oh, he’s been very busy,’ Thorne said.

Brightwell looked from Thorne to Tanner. ‘What’s all this about?’

It had become clear fairly quickly that the confidence Brightwell had been keen to display when he’d first come in was no more than an act.

Thorne wasn’t remotely surprised. HMP Woodhill was a place where the only thing anyone could be confident about was how much danger they were in on an almost daily basis.

The prison housed some of the country’s most notorious and high-profile violent offenders.

The suicide rate was higher than in any other prison and, only a few years before, three inmates had been convicted of murder after attempting to behead a fellow prisoner in full view of CCTV and in front of prison guards.

So-called ‘vulnerable’ prisoners were even more vulnerable here than they would be anywhere else, and, as a sex-offender, Peter Brightwell would not have been given an easy ride.

Thorne looked at him – at the shrunken eyes blinking a little too rapidly and the hand sweeping back and forth across a shaved head – and, though he felt no sympathy, it was apparent just how hard that ride had been.

Rapists were always a target.

So were those who had once been coppers.

Thorne could only guess at how much tougher life behind bars would be for men who ticked both those boxes.

‘Did your brother ever mention someone named Christopher Tully?’

Thorne wanted men like that put away for as long as possible, but that was the beginning and end of it.

He didn’t want them shanked in the shower or doused with boiling water.

He was not even comfortable at the thought of them drinking tea that had been pissed in, but knowing that some or all of these things might well happen, he still struggled to summon up any great compassion.

‘He was a police officer,’ Thorne said. ‘Tully.’

Brightwell nodded slowly, one bristly chin sinking into the others. ‘Yeah, I remember Tully, and I know what’s happened to him an’ all because I saw it on the news. I can’t say I was particularly upset because the arsehole nicked me once.’

‘When you assaulted a sex worker,’ Tanner said.

‘I was released without charge.’

‘Lucky for you.’

‘I should have done them for wrongful arrest.’

‘Not quite so lucky for Siobhan Brady.’

‘I did not rape Siobhan Brady.’ Brightwell shifted forward in his chair and looked hard at Tanner. ‘I never raped anyone.’

‘Did Alex ever mention Tully?’ Thorne asked. ‘When he was visiting.’

‘I don’t know . . . maybe. We talked a lot about the case, obviously.’

‘What’s Tully got to do with the Siobhan Brady case?’

‘His name must just have come up, that’s all. We talked about coppers all the time. About how you couldn’t trust any of them, how totally rotten and rancid they all were.’

‘None taken,’ Thorne said.

‘Where’s this going, anyway? Why are you so interested in Alex?’

‘Because he murdered Christopher Tully,’ Tanner said.

Brightwell laughed, then sat back and stared. Then he laughed again.

‘If you saw it on the news, you’ll know that he actually murdered three other police officers at the same time, but we know Tully was the one he was interested in.’

‘You lot have lost the plot,’ Brightwell said.

‘A few days later he stabbed an officer named Adam Callaghan to death,’ Thorne said. ‘Then the night before last he ran over and killed an ex-police officer named Stuart Needham.’

‘You seriously expect me to believe any of this?’

‘He’s been very busy, like I said.’

Brightwell was starting to get worked up. ‘It’s a sick joke, that’s what it is. Like you’re not content with fitting me up, so now you want to fit my brother up as well. What’s wrong with you people?’

‘Nobody’s getting fitted up,’ Thorne said.

‘We were able to identify your brother’s DNA at the Adam Callaghan crime scene.

’ That wasn’t strictly true, of course. The fag-end that had provided the incriminating DNA had been found in the vicinity of the crime scene and Thorne was well aware that as a piece of evidence it could be dismantled by any half-decent brief in a few sentences, but he wasn’t about to split hairs.

‘Oh, right, DNA . . . well, now I know this is bollocks.’ Brightwell began to rant as he mounted what was clearly a hobbyhorse.

‘DNA’s the reason I’m in here and I didn’t do anything.

A nice handy bit of DNA trumps everything, right?

Alibis, witnesses . . . whatever. Like that stuff’s the holy fucking grail, like it’s never wrong and the people in those labs can’t possibly make a mistake. ’

‘Your DNA was found in Siobhan Brady’s rape kit.’ Tanner sounded frosty suddenly. ‘There wasn’t any mistake.’

‘You any idea what it’s like to be falsely accused of rape?’

‘No, I haven’t, and I don’t think we should get into this.’

‘It’s as bad as being raped.’

‘You should stop before you start to seriously piss me off,’ Tanner said.

‘We’re not here to talk about your case, Peter,’ Thorne said.

‘Well, I want to talk about it. I’ve spent the last three years talking about the fact that I’m innocent, even if nobody wants to listen, and so has my brother.’

‘Yes, he has,’ Thorne said. ‘But now he’s done talking. He’s murdered six people so far and there’s nothing to suggest he’s finished.’

Brightwell mumbled, grim-faced, ‘So you say.’

‘We’re saying it because it’s the truth.’ Tanner appeared to have calmed down a little. ‘Whatever the circumstances of your arrest and conviction, all we’re concerned about now is finding Alex before he kills anyone else.’

‘And you think that I can help you?’

‘We’re hoping that you might.’

‘That I would help you, even if I was able to?’

Thorne and Tanner both understood that this was an entirely different question, but they had little option but to try. ‘Have you had any contact with your brother since he last came to visit?’ Thorne asked.

Brightwell leaned back and, for half a minute or more, it seemed as though the conversation might have come to an end. Then he looked up and shrugged. ‘I talked to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago.’

‘And how did he sound?’

‘He sounded pretty happy,’ Brightwell said. ‘Excited.’

Thorne nodded, wondering if Alex Brightwell had called his brother when he’d first had the idea for the doughnuts, or right after he’d taken delivery of the arsenic. ‘Do you know where he was living at that point?’

Brightwell shook his head. ‘He never said. Actually, now I think about it, we didn’t talk about my case or anything like that, which I suppose is a bit strange because we usually do. Appeals and whatever. We mainly talked about our mum and dad. You know they both died just after I was sent down?’

Tanner glanced at Thorne. ‘Sorry to hear that,’ she said.

‘We were both pretty cut up about it . . . I mean, obviously, but Alex was the one who had to organise everything. He was in bits for a long time.’

‘I asked about where he might have been living because, for obvious reasons, he’s gone off the grid,’ Thorne said. ‘Have you got any idea where he might have gone?’

Brightwell might still have been thinking about his parents or he might simply have had nothing to say.

‘Any friends he might be staying with?’ Tanner asked.

‘I don’t think Alex has got any friends,’ Brightwell said. ‘He doesn’t really see anybody. He spends all his time trying to get me out of here.’

‘If he gets in touch again, we’d very much like to know about it.

’ Thorne leaned towards Brightwell, but it didn’t look like he would be getting a positive response any time soon.

It didn’t much matter. Any calls made or received by Peter Brightwell from now on would be monitored and recorded, on the off chance that if his brother did make contact, he might let slip something to give them a clue as to his whereabouts or what he was planning to do next.

Thorne doubted that Alex Brightwell would be quite so careless, but it was worth a punt.

‘Apart from my wife, he’s the only person in the world who has any faith in me,’ Brightwell said.

‘The only one. Everyone out there who even remembers me and every fucker in this place thinks they know what I am. So that’s how they treat me.

Like a piece of shit. Alex has always stood by me, though, which is why I’m finding it so hard to believe what you’re telling me.

’ He looked up at Thorne and Tanner and tried to blink away a film of tears. ‘Why I don’t want to believe it.’

Driving south on the M1, Thorne said, ‘Interesting what he said about Tully, don’t you reckon?’

Tanner nodded, staring out of the passenger window. ‘Why’s Tully’s name coming up at all when Peter and Alex are talking about the Siobhan Brady case?’

‘Right. Peter’s arrested for raping Siobhan Brady and the only link to Tully is that a fortnight before he nicked Peter for an offence that’s completely unconnected.’

‘Then a few years later, his little brother’s making accusations on that message board.’

Thorne thought about the message Alex Brightwell had posted: Chris Tully and Craig Knowles. Two peas in a pod .

‘Something we’re not seeing,’ he said.

‘Or something that just hasn’t become visible yet.’ Tanner turned from the window. ‘The parents dying might be important, too.’

‘Yeah. If Alex blames the police for Peter’s conviction, then his parents die soon afterwards . . . ’

‘He probably blames the police for that as well.’

‘Sounds like a motive to me,’ Thorne said.

They drove on, the regimented outskirts of Luton drifting past and giving way to scrubby brown fields and patches of woodland. Thorne turned the radio on and tuned it to Absolute Country, but after a minute or so Tanner leaned across to turn it off again.

‘Come on, that was Merle Haggard.’

‘I don’t know if Brightwell was deliberately pushing my buttons in there or what,’ Tanner said.

‘Yeah, I could see he was winding you up.’

‘All that false accusation stuff. You do know that’s bollocks, right?’

‘It’s what I’d expect him to say.’

‘It’s a convenient myth put about by rapists, that’s what it is.

The whole idea of women “crying” rape. Do you know how many men are actually falsely accused of rape every year?

’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘It’s one in every two hundred allegations, like .

. . half a per cent of all cases. A man’s more likely to be raped by another man than be falsely accused of it by a woman.

He’s got more chance of being eaten by a shark—’

Thorne’s phone rang and, while Tanner was still quietly cursing, he touched a button on the dash to patch the call through to the speakers.

‘Hey, Dave . . . ’

‘How did it go with Brightwell?’ Holland asked.

‘Well, Nic’s his new BFF.’ Thorne turned to see Tanner giving him the finger. ‘But yeah, a couple of things we need to talk about. We can fill you in when we get back.’

‘OK, but it’s a bit of a madhouse here, just so you know. Emily Mead’s managed to persuade Alex Brightwell to meet up with her, so Russell’s putting a big op together.’

‘What?’ Tanner sat up a little straighter. ‘When?’

‘Eight o’clock tonight. Whittington Park.’

‘ Tonight? ’

‘That’s why it’s such a kick-bollock-scramble.’

‘Shit . . . I’d better talk to Emily.’ Tanner was already reaching for her phone.

‘I spoke to her myself about an hour ago,’ Holland said. ‘And she’s doing OK. I mean, she’s nervous, you know . . . but she’s up for it. To be honest, I think she just wants to get out of that flat.’

‘First rule of a bait operation,’ Thorne said. ‘Always put your bait up somewhere with a beige colour scheme.’