Silas Nash book 1: Hush Hush Honeysuckle: Chapter 27

Lawson said, ‘Boss, they’re waiting for you with the suspect in Interview Room Three.’

‘Who’ve we got?’

‘No idea, boss.’

Nash felt his heart rate quicken. He wondered who the hell was sitting in that room—Jones or somebody close to him. The real Florist?

The fact remained that Nash was being targeted as well as Jones. He didn’t know if extortion and blackmail were just the start. Following the logical line of thought, the next step for Nash would be death. The note he’d found inside his briefcase had disturbed him. His mind was seesawing between it being written by Jones or the real killer. This brought him back to the eternal question of whether they were one and the same and had Nash made a grave error in letting Jones out to walk the streets and kill again. Even he couldn’t be that brazen. But he had nothing to lose, a few weeks left to live. That would mess with a man’s mind.

Nash went into the observation room and looked at the suspect through the two-way mirror. What the absolute holy hell was going on? Of all the people he might have expected to see sitting at that table—this wasn’t it. The next half hour could ruin his career—and his life.

He straightened his posture, rested his files under his arm, and walked into the room with an air of confidence that he didn’t feel.

Brown said, ‘For the tape, we have been joined by?‘

‘DCI Nash.’ He almost fell into his seat beside her and could hardly speak his name.

‘Interview commencing 10:17 am. DCI Nash, this is Mr Alexander Burns. He was picked up for suspected soliciting when he was caught in a lewd act with a gentleman in the front seat of the other man’s car on Anson Street in Barrow. Both men have been detained. The other gentleman’s name is Graham Miller, and he’s being held in Interview Room One.’

‘Why does this concern me? There’s no need to waste my time with petty crimes of this nature. Damn you for taking me away from my case, Brown. Process them and have them sent on their way.’ To avoid eye contact with the suspect, Nash made a show of rummaging in his folders.

‘I’m sorry to have annoyed you, Sir. It was not my intention, and I’d thank you, not to berate me in such a way in front of a member of the public. For the tape, I’m happy for this statement to be deleted later but will not be spoken to like a child.’ She glared at Nash, who didn’t look up to meet her eyes. ‘We brought you in on this for a reason, sir.’

Brown waited until Nash showed some interest. ‘Go on.’

‘When we did a pat-down search of Mr Burns, we found a photograph relating to The Florist case, folded up in his back pocket.’ Brown adjusted her position in the chair, folded her arms, and waited for Nash to respond. Her expression was smug, and he wanted to bring her down a peg or two, but the impact of what she’d said pushed all petty hierarchy to one side.

‘What?’

‘An incriminating image from our case, sir. And in light of that, the arresting officer asked Mr Burns to unlock his phone, and when he refused, we requested a warrant from Judge Bradbury. We presented the evidence, and he was happy to comply. We pulled over three hundred images relating to the case. There were pictures of all the victims and the crime scenes, but more than that. There were photographs of sensitive documents and pictures of collated evidence.’ Her tone was still cold. ‘I thought you would want to be brought in, sir.’

'Okay, Brown. Enough. I’m sorry I snapped. Good work.' He glanced up at the suspect and then looked away. ‘Carry on.’

‘I assumed you would want to conduct the interview, sir.’

She had no idea that Nash knew the suspect. ‘No, please, you carry on.’

‘Sir.’

Brown looked thrown, but Nash was finding it hard to breathe. There was no way he could conduct this interview. The room was stuffy, and he wondered what a heart attack felt like. ‘Continue, Brown, please. We haven’t got all day.’ His mind was racing for a way out of this. Brown shuffled some papers and straightened her posture, which brought her up another couple of inches. She assumed an air of command which in other circumstances would have made Nash smile. Good on her.

‘Mr Burns, please tell us what this photograph was doing on your person at the time of your arrest. For the tape, I am showing the suspect Item One.’

It was a photograph of the Wilson boy kneeling by his bed. Nash shuddered, and for the first time in twenty years, he felt sick in an interview. The photograph was taken from his office at home. He hoped that Brown would assume it had been stolen from evidence lockup.

Burns looked between Nash and Brown and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve never seen it before in my life. I don’t know how it got there. Someone must have planted it on me.’

‘Come on, Burns, you can do better than that. While we were waiting for DCI Nash to join us, I took the liberty of having our boys run it for prints. Guess what we found?’

Burns shrugged.

‘We found your prints all over it. So let’s make this quick. I could extend this interview over ninety-six hours, but we’ve got you right in the middle of the murder case. My men have been busy through the night while we’ve had you in the cells. You’re a lucky man. You have an airtight alibi for all of the murder’s bar one. Where were you on September the eighteenth between eight in the evening and one am?’

Burns looked at Nash, then at Brown, and he shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

‘We don’t believe you’re The Florist. To be honest, you don’t seem that clever. So, I ask you again. Where did you get this picture?’

‘That man. The one I was with.’ He glanced up, then looked back at his hands. ‘He must have slipped it into my pocket when I was—you know.’

‘But his fingerprints aren’t on it. Only yours.’

‘Maybe he had gloves on.’

‘Was he wearing gloves? You were closer to him than we were.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, you tell us. Was he wearing a glove when he had his fingers wrapped around your penis? Look, Burns. I want to get this over with, so I’m going to throw the book at you. We haven’t got enough to charge you with murder—yet—but we can make a damned good start with you being up to your neck in this case. Alexander Brian Burns, I am re-arresting you on suspicion of murder.'

‘All right. Stop. I’ll tell you everything.’

Nash jerked and leaned forward in his seat, making eye contact with the suspect for the first time. Brown drilled her nails on the desk until Nash wanted to pull every one of them out with a pair of pliers. The sound, meant to intimidate the suspect, was drilling into his brain like a Woodpecker on a pine tree.

‘I met a man in the pub.’

‘Mr Miller?’

‘No, another man, a few weeks ago.’

‘Which pub and what was his name?’

‘The Tavern, I think, but I don’t know his name.’

‘Go on.’

‘He stopped me in the toilets, and I thought he was after a bit of game, you know, a trick for money, like.’ Brown was immobile, and Nash winced. ‘But he was different. He gave me some stuff in an envelope and told me to ring Jonas Scott at The Mail. He gave me a hundred quid, told me exactly what to say, and said if I did it right, there’d be more.’

‘What was in the envelope?’

‘I tried to open it, but it started to tear. It was sealed, so I couldn’t get into it.

‘And it happened again?’

‘Yes. About eight times.’

‘And you don’t know this man’s name?’

‘No.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘Big. He was six feet three and had black hair. He wears a long black leather coat. And he’s got a spider’s web tattooed on his face.’

‘Really?’

‘Honest.’

‘Give him some white face paint like the Joker, and you’ve just described every DC baddie there ever was. Do you want to try again, Mr Burns?’

‘I’m telling you the truth, honest. Ask Jonas Scott at The Mail.’

‘Rest assured. We will. Did Mr Scott ever see this man?’

‘No. He gave me the envelope and told me what to say, and then I rang Scott.’

‘Would you be willing to take a polygraph to that effect?’

‘No.’

‘But you’ve told us the truth, haven’t you? If you’ve got nothing to hide, why the reluctance?’

Nash had to get out of there. ‘Okay, DI Brown, I think that’s enough for now. Let’s charge him with indecency, and we’ll pick this up when we’ve looked into it further.’

‘What? But we need to detain him. This is one of the biggest breaks we’ve had in the case, boss.’

‘No, Brown, only in the leaked material.’

‘But sir, even if he didn’t do the murders, he could be in cahoots with The Florist. It might be him that leaked the material to Burns.’

Nash shouted, and the papers on the desk fluttered with the force of his breath. ‘I said, charge him and let him go, Brown.’

‘Sir.’

Nash was the first one out of the room. He had to get Burns’ phone out of evidence, but he couldn’t do it now. There were too many people around. He wanted to go to the men’s room and throw up. But he leaned against the wall to calm his stomach. He watched Burns come out, followed his confident swagger to the front door, and let him get down the steps and around the corner. He watched him walking down the street, and Burns didn’t look back once.

When he turned the next corner, Nash broke into a run. He ran with a fury he hadn’t felt since his early days on the beat. He caught up to Burns and tackled him from behind, slamming him against the wall.

‘What the hell, Sandy?’

‘Piss off, Silas.’

‘It was you. The leak was you all along?’

Alexander ‘Sandy’ Burns turned in his arms, but it was far from a loving embrace. ‘I’m afraid so, sweet cheeks. I told you, Silas. I warned you not to mess with me.’

‘You vindictive bastard.’

‘Take your hands off me, or I’ll have you done for police brutality. It’s a pity you weren’t this lively in the bedroom, darling. Let’s get down to business. I’m not pissing around. Twenty grand, You’ve had twenty-four hours, but because today must have been a shock for you, I’ll give you another day. Twenty thousand quid by tomorrow, or I sing like Mariah.’

‘The graffiti in my house. That was you?’

‘Bravo, darling. I must get some brownie points, though. I fed your miserable cat.’

‘I threw it out. I thought you’d poisoned her.’

‘I like Lola. She was the only good thing about spending time with you.’

‘You have a key?’

‘You’re getting good at this detective stuff.’

‘And a key to my office.’

‘The question is, what are we going to do about it? You can have me put away, but the consequences for you are equally dire. Criminal, I shouldn’t wonder. Having some little queer at large in your house, tampering with evidence, sucking you off at night. Knowing all kinds of things that he shouldn’t. Is DI Brown still screwing Sergeant Renshaw, darling?’

‘If I meant anything to you, you wouldn’t do this to me.’

‘You never meant a thing to me. Just one more thing. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll go for the big one before you can have me picked up again. And you aren’t going to march me back in there right now, are you, my love? You haven’t got the balls. I’ll go to Jonas Scott and tell him chapter and verse, everything—I’ll give him every damned detail you’ve got, pictures and the lot. That’s got to be worth twenty little thousand to keep it hush hush, hasn’t it?’

Nash let go of Burns and looked at his hands as though he’d been burned. He leaned against the wall and tried to make sense of it.

‘Or you can make it all go away. I’ll stop selling my stories. You’ll give me twenty K, and off I go into the night, never to be heard from again. I’ll leave town, darling. It’ll be easier for both of us that way. I have something lined up. I can be gone as soon as tomorrow morning. I’ll need my phone back. And don’t worry. I deleted you from it. Only an in-depth investigation would find any intel on you. Do we have a deal?’

‘No. I’m an honest cop.’

‘Let’s talk about this new suspect you have then. I can have him all over the morning edition.’

Nash’s head shot up.

'What’s his name? Ah, yes, Jonathan Finch.'