“Yeah, Frank, hilarious. I know the rules are one big bloody joke to you. I know you think you’re immune. Hell, maybe you’re right; I don’t know how things work over in Undercover.” Outrage didn’t suit Scorcher; it swelled up his jaw to twice its normal size and gave him a forehead vein that looked dangerous. “But maybe you should keep in mind that I’ve been doing my best to do you a favor here, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been going miles out of my way for you. And at this stage, I honestly can’t remember why I’m bothering. If you keep on fucking me about, every single bloody chance you get, I might just change my mind.”
I stopped myself from slamming on the brakes and smacking his head off the windscreen. “Favor? You mean putting it about that Kevin was an accident?”
“Not just putting it about. It’ll go on the death cert.”
“Oh, well, then: wow. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude, Scorch. Really, I am.”
“This isn’t just about you, Frank. You may not give a damn whether your brother goes down as accident or suicide, but I bet your family does.”
“Oh, no, no, no. No. Don’t even try to pull that one. When it comes to my family, pal, you don’t have the tiniest clue what you’re dealing with. For one thing, this may come as a shock, but you don’t rule their universe: they’ll all believe exactly what they want to believe, regardless of what you and Cooper put on the death cert-my mother, for example, would like me to inform you that it was, I shit you not, a traffic accident. For another, if most of my family were on fire, I wouldn’t piss on them to put them out. I certainly don’t give the world’s smallest fuck what they think happened to Kevin.”
“Can a suicide go into consecrated ground, these days? What does the priest say in a suicide’s homily? What does the rest of the neighborhood say about him? What does it do to the people who get left behind? Don’t fool yourself, Frank: you’re not bloody immune to that.”
My temper was starting to get a little ragged around the edges. I pulled into a narrow cul-de-sac between two blocks of flats-in reverse, so that I could make a quick getaway if I ended up shoving Scorcher out of the car-and switched off the ignition. Above us, some architect had got cute with blue-painted balconies, but the Mediterranean effect was undermined by the fact that they looked out on a brick wall and a clump of skips.
“So,” I said. “Kevin gets filed away under ‘accident,’ all nice and pretty. Let me ask you this. What are you filing Rosie under?”
“Murder. Obviously.”
“Obviously. Murder by who? Person or persons unknown?”
Scorcher left a silence. I said, “Or by Kevin.”
“Well. It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“How complicated can it be?”
“If our suspect’s dead too, we’ve got a certain amount of discretion. It’s a fine line. On the one hand, it’s not like there’s going to be an arrest, so the brass aren’t wild about the idea of pumping resources into the case. On the other hand…”
“On the other hand, there’s the almighty solve rate.”
“Mock all you want. These things matter. You think I’d have been able to give your girlfriend this much manpower if my solve rate had been in the toilet? It’s a cycle: the more I get out of this case, the more I can put into the next one. Sorry, Frank, but I’m not going to jeopardize the next victim’s shot at justice and my reputation, just to spare your feelings.”
“Translate for me, Scorch. What exactly are you planning on doing about Rosie?”
“I’m planning on doing this right. We’ll keep collecting and collating evidence and witness statements for the next couple of days. After that, assuming nothing unexpected turns up…” He shrugged. “I’ve worked a couple of these cases before. Normally, we try to handle the situation as compassionately as possible. The file goes to the DPP, but on the quiet; nothing’s made publicly available, specially if we’re not talking about a career criminal. We’d rather not wreck a man’s name when he’s not around to defend himself. If the DPP agrees that we’d have a good case, we have a chat with the victim’s family-make it clear that nothing’s definitive here, but we can at least give them a certain amount of closure-and that’s the end of that. They get to move on, the killer’s family get to keep their peace of mind, we get to mark the case solved. That’d be the normal procedure.”
I said, “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to threaten me?”
“Oh, come on, Frank. That’s a very dramatic way of putting it.”
“How would you put it?”
“I’d say I’m trying to warn you. And you’re not making it easy.”
“Warn me what, exactly?”
Scorcher sighed. “If I need to go for an in-depth inquest to determine Kevin’s cause of death,” he said, “I’ll do it. And I’d be willing to bet the media will be all over it like a rash. Regardless of how you feel about the suicide issue, we both know one or two journos who like nothing better than a dodgy cop. And I think you can see how, in the wrong hands, this story could make you look dodgy as all hell.”
