Cleanskin

‘He looks like shit,’ Ben said.

‘No wonder.’

‘You think it’s for real?’ he asked.

‘You’re the one with kids,’ I said. ‘How would you be feeling if that was Owen or Bethan on the slab?’

Ben took a moment to think. ‘Angry,’ he said at last, rubbing a hand over the blond stubble that covered his cannonball head. ‘Angry is what I’d be feeling. I’d be raging to get my hands on the person that killed my kid. I’d be storming in there with my fists at the ready. But Farrell just looks beaten. He looks like a man who’s thrown in the towel. Only goes to show, you can never tell the thing that will truly cut somebody off at the knees. Before this, I would not have believed Jack Farrell would take this lying down.’

As often happened, Ben had put his finger right on the very thing that was bothering me. Jack Farrell was a man of action. We’d seen it time and time again. Someone would try to inflict some serious damage on part of his empire, and Farrell would swing into action. There would be a morning meeting as per usual. Then Danny Chu and Fancy Riley would spend the rest of the day running round like somebody had lit a bonfire under their arses. Within a matter of days, Farrell would be back on top, often stronger than before. And whoever had been dumb enough to try it on was never going to do that again.

Of course, nobody had ever hit on the idea of doing something this personal before. And yet the very idea of Farrell taking this lying down was something we were both struggling with.

But when we walked into Max Carter’s office, it looked like that was just what we were going to get. Farrell barely looked up when we were shown in. He was slumped in an armchair, hair greasy and lank, suit crumpled and his eyes dull as pebbles. It was hard to square this hollow shell with the man who ran one of the toughest criminal empires in the country.

When we introduced ourselves, posing as members of the Hampshire force, Farrell made no sign of knowing me from the night of the fire. Carter kept up a steady flow of plummy nothings as he settled us all round a low coffee table, but he couldn’t put off our questions for ever.

I took Farrell through the evening leading up to the fire. ‘I wasn’t home when Katie went to bed,’ he said, his voice slow and dull. ‘I was late getting back from a meeting in London. But I looked in on her when I got in.’

‘What time was that?’ Ben asked.

‘About half past nine,’ Farrell said. ‘Then I went in to give her a kiss on my way to bed. Just like I always did.’

And so on. The alarm had been set. At least, he was ninety-nine per cent sure he’d set it like he always did. He’d taped a football match earlier in the evening so he’d gone to bed around half past ten to watch it there. Martina had joined him some time during the second half, before the Arsenal goal. They’d turned out the light just after midnight and gone to sleep.