Davy wonders if Mark is going to break down, but he holds it together enough to say, ‘The stress – she looks so tired. Fly doing that to himself, that’s broken her heart.’
Harriet and Derry enter the room. Brisk and suited and giving off the ‘we really don’t have time for this’ atmosphere of middle managers everywhere. Yes you fucking do, Davy thinks. You’ve put a child away, so you do have time to look at this. He’s surprised at how angry he feels, a hurricane of it blowing about inside him.
It’s been there since he saw the contents of Gary Stanton’s texts.
‘Right, where’s this footage you want to show me,’ Derry says. ‘Because I’ve got several stiffs on the slab, and they don’t like to wait.’
‘If you could take a look at this pathology report from a chap called Fairbrother at UCH. He’s an expert in bleeding,’ Mark says, handing copies to both Derry and Harriet.
The printouts are crisp, stapled at the corners. Mark Talbot has come prepared, Davy notices. Good that he’s in Manon’s corner.
Derry shifts as he reads. Davy scrutinises his face.
Derry is frowning, starting to look uncomfortable.
After a few moments, Derry says, ‘Where’s this CCTV footage then?’
They fan out behind Mark, who sits at Stanton’s desk. They look over Mark’s shoulder at his laptop on which he plays the station buffet CCTV.
Silence.
Mark plays it again.
‘You can see on this—’ he begins.
‘Yes,’ Derry says.
Davy is surprised to feel sorry for Derry – Derry who strides about HQ like some grim-reaper colossus; busy, busy, busy. Derry who depends upon minions falling on his expertise. Derry who wears bow ties as if he were a private school headmaster. At this moment, he looks frightened and old.
‘It seems I may have been wrong. I would like to show this to colleagues,’ he says to Mark.
‘Of course,’ Mark says.
Davy steps out of the way and avoids Derry’s eye on his way out, not wishing to add to his humiliation. It is very hard to climb down. The shame and then, waiting in a dank pool at the bottom, guilt.
After Mark and Derry leave the room, Harriet says, ‘This puts the Latvian firmly in the frame.’
‘Yes. Enough to release Fly?’
‘I should say so. This changes the time of death. Fly was in school. Let’s get a court hearing asap so the CPS can offer no evidence. Then Fly can be released straight from hospital – once he’s well enough to be discharged, that is. Call Manon to tell her, or even better, go and see her.’
‘What about Carruthers?’ Davy asks.
Carruthers’ phone was found, a black shadow in the bowl of one of the gents toilets, unflushed. Tech team had it in rice in an attempt to dry it out. Would they be able to get the data off it? Davy didn’t like their chances.
‘Carruthers can go,’ says Harriet, though he hasn’t been under arrest – insufficient grounds. Merely staying at The Old Bridge Hotel while he ‘helps police with their inquiries’.
Linda Kapuschinski has retracted her statement, having been offered a generous severance package by Dunlop & Finch, which included a very comprehensive non-disclosure clause.
When Davy tried to call her, Linda wouldn’t pick up. A few moments later, a text arrived from her.
I can’t talk to you. They just fired Claire in HR. Try her.
‘That Latvian chap did not kill Ross off his own bat,’ says Davy.
‘No.’
‘He was paid.’
‘Yes.’
‘Carruthers paid him.’
‘Maybe. Or Dunlop & Finch. Or persons unknown,’ says Harriet. ‘Least we get a collar out of it.’
Linda supplied a mobile number for Claire from HR and while Davy would normally hot-foot it to London for a face to face interview, on this occasion he’ll make do with a phoner. He is anxious to get to her before Dunlop & Finch can clam her up with an ‘enhanced’ severance package.
‘Tell me about Giles Carruthers,’ he says.
‘Um,’ Claire says, with a long exhalation, ‘well, classic City boy really, very alpha. But even by the standards of the City, he’s the most competitive guy I’ve ever met. You know about the cull, right?’
‘The cull?’ says Davy. He knows, from Linda, but he wants Claire to tell him all about it.
‘Every autumn most of the successful banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan fire their worst-performing staff, no matter how much money they make for the firm. It’s called the cull. So, usually a bank our size – listen to me, I’m still saying our – a bank the size of D&F would be too small for a cull, but Giles was so into it. He loved to cull. He used it to fire people he didn’t like, people who threatened him in any way. There was a guy called Juan, who’d come over from S?o Paulo – really popular guy, big expansive personality, always joking. Everyone loved Juan, he was the life and soul. Anyway, one evening there was a “friendly” five-a-side football match. Juan played in the team against Giles. Massive mistake. I wasn’t at the match, so I don’t know exactly what happened; maybe he scored the winning goal, maybe he tackled Giles or crowed about victory.
‘Anyway, next morning I was up at 5 a.m. to a text from Giles saying, Juan’s out. When I got into the office, I talked to Giles. I said Juan was one of our most profitable employees. I also said he had a wife here and children in school. Giles said, ‘Don’t care. Execute.’ That’s the other word for the cull – executions.
‘Juan was never allowed back in the building. His pass was blocked. That’s often the first people know – they can’t get into the building. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was gutted about Juan. Such a nice guy.’
‘Was that the first time Giles had behaved in that way?’
‘Oh no, he always behaved in that way. Giles is not someone who can take things on the chin, you know? He can’t laugh anything off, which means if he’s ever the loser, he’s so humiliated that he has to totally destroy the source. It’s not an uncommon trait in the City, actually.’
‘And his relationship to Jon-Oliver?’
‘Well, Jon-Oliver had trounced him by signing Xi Ping and there was no way back from it. If I’d been Jon-Oliver, I’d have been terrified.’
‘So why wasn’t he?’
‘Maybe he thought he ruled the roost, thought he had the boss’s ear, he was going to be deputy chairman. He had the upper hand. He had reason to think Giles might be culled before too long.’
‘All very macho,’ Davy says.
‘Yes,’ says Claire. ‘Being fired, it’s part of the game. You can’t cry about it. Juan did though. He was normal.’
Carruthers can go.
Harriet’s acceptance of this ricochets in Davy’s brain. People like Carruthers always get away with it, he thinks, but he cannot muster Harriet’s resignation. Sometimes, the world order is too upsetting for acceptance – and this isn’t like Davy at all, Davy’s all for the status quo. Except sometimes, one must say no.
He runs along Brampton Road into town, across the mess of busy roads that have nothing but disdain for pedestrians and another stitch starts to pinch at his side. He really must get fitter.
In The Old Bridge Hotel car park, the light is orange from the street lighting. Carruthers has pointed his fob at his BMW and it has answered him with a top-of-the-range beep.