Warren ignored the mans familiar use of his first name and his attempt at stirring rhetoric; he wasnt naïve enough to be persuaded by that old trick.
Again, I dont see what I can do to help youStandards are investigating the case and I have no access to their files or even their officersby definition they have to be free from outside influence. I doubt theyd even grant me an audience. I didnt arrive until months after your arrestthis is the first time Ive met you. Why the hell would they listen to me?
He was starting to lose patience with the man. He was clearly a drinker and obviously clutching at straws. This afternoons operation had cost the force a considerable amount of manpower and resources; if Sheehy had nothing to contribute to the Williamson case, then Warren was strongly contemplating arresting him for wasting police time. He said as much.
Warren, I can help with the Williamson case and others, but it has to benefit both of us. I need you to help me fight these charges.
Warren shook his head in exasperation. Havent you listened to anything Ive said? I cant intervene on your behalf. I have no influence here. You must know this. I dont understand why you want me to become involved.
Sheehy looked at him for several long, hard seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was low, almost gentle. Warren, you are already involved. Youve been a part of this since the moment you walked into that garage and found your dad dead in his car.
* * *
It was as if Warren had been punched in the stomach. All of the air left his lungs and he felt a wave of nausea pass over him. Immediately, the memories flooded back. He could taste the coppery tang of fear, feel the painful pounding of his heart, smell the choking exhaust fumes as they filled his nose and mouth. It was a smell that to this day Warren hated. As a teenager out clubbing in Coventry hed always make sure he was upwind of the taxi rank, the smell of their idling engines making him feel sick. Hed loathed the old Pool Meadow bus station, with its lines of chugging buses filling the air with smoky pollution.
Somehow, he found a voice, forcing it past the tightness of his throat. You have ten seconds to explain yourself before I arrest you for wasting police time.
Sheehy ignored him. What do you know about your father and his death?
The voice that answered sounded like Warrens but it seemed to come from a long way away. He killed himself after stealing money from a drugs bust. The voice dripped with bitterness and resentment.
What if I told you that he didnt kill himself? That he never stole that money.
If Warren hadnt felt so weak and disoriented hed have punched the man in the face as hard as he could. Could the man stoop any lower, invoking the name of Warrens father in a crude attempt to manipulate Warren into helping him? It was nearly a quarter of a century ago and Warren had suppressed his feelings for much of that time, but they never went away. And they hadnt softened. The hurt, the betrayal then finally the anger and, yes, even hatred towards his father. The man hed admired and looked up to, even wanted to be when he was olderthat man had torn Warrens world apart. To know that his father had chosen to leave them had hurt so hardthat he had been unable to save him had hurt even more.
And then came the revelations. Thousands of pounds seized in a drugs bust, half of it going missing between the crime scene and the evidence room at the police station. His fathers gym bag, housing sweaty towels, stained T-shirtsand wads of fifty-pound notes wrapped in elastic bands.
Quite why his father had decided not to collect the bag from his lockerhe would probably have gotten away with itinstead choosing to kill himself, was never satisfactorily answered. Perhaps he had stolen the money on a whim, then felt guilt at what he had done? Unable to face the shame, hed taken his life that early summer evening.
That was what his mother had clung onto, even as she saw her husbands memory destroyed, as friends from the force stopped calling or avoided talking to her when they bumped into her in the street. The name Niall MacNamara was toxic and Warren wanted nothing to do with it.
Leave now, before I make you. It was all Warren could do to force the words past his clenched teeth. He no longer cared about Reggie Williamson, he just wanted this man out of his life; he could feel the sweat on his brow. It was as if Sheehy had slammed a wrecking ball into Warrens carefully constructed defences, bringing down the walls. Warren needed time to rebuild them, to reconstruct the ancient structure.
Sheehy ignored him. Warren, your father was a good man; he was an honest man. He wasnt a thiefand he didnt kill himself. I know this. Ive known it for twenty years. And everything thats happened recentlyit all stems back to what happened that night.
Warren closed his eyes, concentrating on breathing. He wanted nothing more than to race back to his car, to leave in a cloud of burning rubber and run and hide. But he couldnt. The memories from that horrific evening had left their mark, but now another scar was itching. One hed ignored but which was now shouting for attention. Why? Why had it happened? He had to know. He was trapped. If he left now, refusing to let Sheehy talk, he could never have peace. A long-dormant seed had started to germinate and he had to know the truth.
I knew your father back in the late eighties. We met about two years beforeyou know. I was a young DC, with only a couple of years experience.
Sheehy stared at his feet. I was working in North Herts, but I was seconded to West Midlands as part of a small team working as liaisons on the investigation into a huge, cross-county crime ring. Your father was a senior detective sergeant on that team and we worked closely together. Sheehy raised his head, looking Warren directly in the eye. He was a good man. And I liked him a lot.
Warren didnt trust himself to speak.
It was a massive enterprise. Basically, it was modelled on the Italian Mafia: drugs, prostitution, stolen goodsyou name it; these guys did it. And they were ruthless, anyone who crossed them ended up dead.
But they were also clever. All of the action was taking place in the West MidlandsBirmingham, Coventry, Nuneaton. But the guy who headed it lived in North Herts and was ostensibly a legitimate businessman. He owned a string of restaurants, fast-food places, leisure centres, B&Bs, minicab firmsyou name it. He partnered local tradesmen. All cash businesses. All built from scratch or bought legitimately, with no links to the Midlands and no evidence of any wrongdoing. They even had a charitable foundation, helping unemployed kids learn skills and trades. Local politicians loved him and he was on the front page of the local newspaper at least once a week.
But, we knew the bastard was a crook. The Hertfordshire businesses were just a front and a way of laundering money. Back in those days you could move money around a hell of a lot more easily than now and a secret Swiss bank account really was a secret. He was worth millions. And he was a murderer. We knew of cases going back to the nineteen seventiesdrug dealers mostly but the odd prostitute as well.
The problem was we couldnt prove it. He covered his tracks too well. And he rarely got his own hands dirty. We busted a few dealers here and there, but there was never any direct link to him. Witnesses had a tendency to suddenly develop amnesia or even to disappear. We were going nowhere fast. We needed a break.
Sheehy paused. You have to realise, Warren, that we knew this guy was filthy. In fact we had tons of evidence that placed him right in the centre of his little ring. Most of the grunt work was carried out by his right-hand man, but it was him that we wanted. What we didnt have though was the one remaining piece that would open up everything else. He was too high profile for us just to go on a fishing expeditionwed never get a warrant to search his house or business premises. And that was what we needed. With a warrant we would be able to raid him and that would be enough to open a bridge between the evidence we had and him. But without that information, we didnt have enough to get a warrant. Catch-22.
Warren didnt like the sound of this. Where was it leading? He also had a suspicion about who Sheehy was talking aboutand the implications were massive.
What did you do? His voice was slow, steady.
Sheehy licked his lips nervously. Although he kept his hands clean most of the time, it wasnt always that way. Back in the early eighties, he was dabbling in the club scenesupplying drugs to clubbers. The problem was that if you really wanted to make money, you needed the clubsor at least the door staffon your side. And most of the clubs that were willing to take part were already under the control of a guy named Frankie Cruise.
He approached him about a partnership, but Cruise was an arrogant bastard and wouldnt play ball. In the end, he shot Cruise dead. The mess was all cleaned up of course, but everyone knew what had happened. In fact he encouraged the rumours to enhance his own reputation. But obviously, that wasnt good enough for court and no judge was going to grant us a warrant based on that. Especially not for someone so high profile and well connected; he knew where all the skeletons were buried.
However, ballistics recovered a nearly intact bullet from Cruise after his body floated back to the surface in Coventry Canal. It was no good to us without a gun though.
Then in mid 1987, we got word that he had been boasting at a party he was hosting at that Hertfordshire mansion of his, about how he had killed a man. He must have really wanted to impress his guests because he eventually went up to his bedroom and fetched the handgun that he claimed to have used to kill Cruise. He was brandishing it like some sort of trophy.
Sheehy paused. Your father and I knew that was the weapon he had used, and that it was the final piece of evidence that could blow the whole case open. But we still couldnt get a warrant. We were told it was just hearsay. The PACE regulations were still fairly new and nobody wanted to be seen to be harassing such a prominent local figure.
So we made contact with his handyman, who was unhappy with the way he was being treated. We persuaded him to steal the gun, which was kept in his bedroom.
Sheehy, looked away, unable to meet Warrens eye.
You have to realise, we knew that he was guilty. We had so much evidence. That all came out at his trial. It just needed a catalyst to start everything working.
So you planted the gun and framed him for murder. Warrens voice was bitter. He felt sick.
But Sheehy was shaking his head vehemently. No! We didnt frame him for anything he hadnt done. We just left the gun at the scene of a drugs raid. It was collected along with a load of other weapons. Routine ballistic testing linked the gun to the Cruise murder. There were fingerprints all over the gun. Luckily for us, hes had a few run-ins with the police over the years. Usually all the charges were dropped when the witnesses mysteriously changed their minds, but his fingerprints were still on file.
All it did was give us the excuse to raise a warrant. As soon as that happened, we were able to build that link between him and the case wed built. The case was sitting there, ready to go. It just needed that link.
Vinny Delmarno.
It wasnt a question. The man had been released whilst he was still with West Midlands Police and there had been anger about the things that had been said in the press. Allegations of corruption and fabricated crime scenesallegations that Sheehy now claimed were true.
Sheehy nodded but said nothing as if speaking the mans name out loud was a curse.
So why are you telling me all of this now? Warrens voice was bitter, the anger now simmering just below the surface, It cant just be an attack of conscience. Youve had over twenty years to come clean. Delmarnos been out how long now?
Warren was confused; it made no sense. By all reports, Sheehy was in deep trouble already. What benefit was there to adding this long-forgotten miscarriage to his litany of sins? It was clear from his tone that he felt that what he and Niall MacNamara had done all those years ago was still right. Noble-cause corruption they called it.
Sheehy looked at his hands and Warren noticed they were trembling. Reggie Williamson was the gardener who supplied us with the gun.
Thats what this is all about? Warren couldnt hide the scepticism in his voice. For sure it was a hell of a coincidence, but surely that was all it was?
He said as much.
When Vinny Delmarno was released, he swore blind that he would find out who put him away and would get his revenge.
Warren still wasnt convinced.
Theres more.
Sheehy opened the coat, revealing the concealed file folder, and removed a newspaper article, handing it over. A cutting from a local Hertfordshire paper from February, page one but not the lead. Stapled to the back was a narrow column from page four, continuing the story; a black-and-white headshot, formal-looking and probably taken from an official website, took up barely two inches.
Retired coroner and wife killed in drink-driving smash: Verdict
A former coroner, killed in the early hours of 31 December 2011, was driving too fast and was under the influence of alcohol, an inquest ruled today. The crash, which killed Dr Anton Liebig, 67, and his wife Rosemary, 66, instantly, happened after a sharp bend on the A5062, on the way back from an awards dinner at The Allingham Golf Club in Hertfordshire, where Dr Liebigcaptain of the senior mens teamhad presented several trophies.
A police spokesperson said that skid marks at the scene of the accident revealed that Dr Liebig had rounded the blind bend at a speed in excess of fifty miles per hour, before apparently losing control and leaving the road, where he hit a tree. A post-mortem revealed a blood alcohol level of 85 milligrams per 100 ml. The legal limit is 80mg.
The coroner, Dr Lila Schiff, called upon North Hertfordshire District Council to look into the safety of that stretch of road, which has been the scene of numerous serious accidents in recent years, resulting in three fatalities.
Dr Liebig worked as a coroner throughout Warwickshire, before retiring. Rosemary Liebig was a keen painter. They are survived by a son and two grandchildren.
Warren finished reading the report and looked up at Sheehy. So?
The story meant nothing to him. He worked in Middlesbury CID. The incident would have been dealt with by traffic down in Welwyn. Besides which, Warren had had enough on his plate over the new year to worry about the ins and outs of some drink-driver.
Sheehy took a deep breath. Anton Liebig was the coroner who oversaw your fathers inquest, Warren.
Sheehys voice was fading out, replaced by the sound of blood rushing through Warrens ears. His fathers inquest.