Hope to Die

Adam Fawley

27 October

08.35

There’s a delay on the line. An international delay.

‘Inspector Fawley, is it?’

A man’s voice. An accent. Which I’m crap at, as Alex never ceases to tell me. But it’s definitely not American. Southern hemisphere, I think – Kiwi? Australian?

‘A friend of mine saw that interview you did – on the Beeb.’

My interest is ticking up. ‘Oh yes?’

‘It was the photo, really, and of course when I saw it – basically, I think they might be right –’

‘I’m not following you, Mr –?’

A quick laugh. ‘Sorry, mate, it’s just that it’s the first I knew about any of this – I’m still trying to get my bloody head around it, to be honest.’

‘Around what, exactly –’

‘I think I knew Camilla – back in the day. Sorry – I should have said. My name’s Tinus, but people usually just call me Tin. Tin Boekker.’

* * *

Chloe gets in a few minutes after Ev. She looks just as she always does: neat and professional. Only the faint shadows under her eyes give anything away. Ev watches her for a few moments, and sees Carter get up and go over to speak to her, but he gets nowhere. She moves briskly past him and goes to hang up her coat.

Hansen’s obviously noticed something too and flashes Ev a questioning glance, but she just gives a tiny shake of her head by way of response: Leave it be.

When she goes out to the coffee machine a few minutes later, Gis is already there. He smiles at her, stirring his tea.

‘So,’ he says evenly, ‘are you going to let me in on what’s going on?’

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

10.15

Safe to say it’s the first and only police interview I’ve done by Skype. But then again, I don’t have many options, not with my witness being in Cape Town. See, I told you I was crap at accents.

Tin Boekker looks nothing like the e-fit Camilla Rowan gave South Mercia back in 2003, but he does look unnervingly like the man on the Oxford station CCTV. Looking at that footage must have been like seeing his own ghost, back in 1997, when he was bumming across Europe on a gap year which included three months in the UK doing the odd bit of bar work. Which is how he ended up collecting glasses at a pub in Stroud. Though it wasn’t the King’s Head, like Rowan said, it was the King’s Arms. And I bet that wasn’t a memory fail on her part, either: yet again it’s the same pattern – all her lies steer tantalizingly close to the truth but swerve away at the crucial moment. The pub, ‘Baker’; so similar, yet crucially not quite the same. But even if South Mercia had known Tin’s real name, I doubt they’d have found him. He left the UK within a month of his two-night stand with Camilla, and by the time the case blew up he was a sous-chef at a crazily expensive spa retreat in the wilds of British Columbia with zero Wi-Fi. He tells me she said she was on the pill, and if he’d known about the baby he’d have done something, helped her somehow, even come back. And I think he’s telling the truth. There’s a disarming boyish frankness about him – even in his forties, even on a jumpy video call. And when he tells me he always wanted to be a dad and it’s never quite happened, and now he’s only found out when it’s too late, there’s a break in his voice I know he couldn’t fake.

It takes one to know one.

* * *

‘So as at now,’ says Quinn, looking round the room, ‘we’re waiting on the sample arriving from Cape Town, but I don’t think there’s much doubt we’ve got our man.’ He holds up a sheet of paper. ‘Boekker even managed to find a photo of him and Camilla from back then which is basically hashtag shagging.’

He turns and pins the picture to the board. Tin and Camilla are standing with their backs to the bar, he has his arm about her, she’s pulling him towards her and trying to bite his ear.

‘And Boekker can prove,’ continues Quinn, ‘that he was in Sydney by the time the kid was born, so that old lay-off in the lay-by story is the load of old crap we always thought it was. Trouble is, we’re no closer to finding out exactly what did happen.’

‘What does the DI think?’ asks Carter. ‘I mean, he’s not here, so –’

Quinn’s eyes narrow, just a little. ‘The boss, Carter, is in with Superintendent Harrison, giving him a briefing.’

Ev now. ‘So what do we do next? Where does that leave us with the Swanns?’

Quinn nods to Gislingham, who gets up. ‘The CPS still want to wait on the old man to see if we can clarify whether or not he knew who the vic was, and whether he gets charged will depend on what they decide. But as at now, they’re pretty relaxed – I mean, there’s not much risk of the old boy bumping anyone else off in the meantime. We’ve taken his bloody shotgun for a start.’

‘What about Camilla? Does she know?’

‘That we’ve found Tin Boekker? The boss has told her lawyers and asked to see her again, but I gather they’re stalling. I’m not holding my breath.’

‘And the airports?’ asks Hansen.

Baxter looks up. ‘On the case. But there are over a dozen possible entry points and half-a-million Yanks coming through them every month, and since we have no idea exactly when he got here –’