‘No!’
‘Joey ran away. You knew about the knife. You replaced it, you wanted to protect him. They remember you at Henson’s, the knife shop.’
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
‘I need to see Joey,’ I said.
‘He didn’t do it,’ her words were choked.
‘I need to talk to Joey. Soon. Once the lawyers hear about this they’ll likely call the police back in, and it’ll be out of my hands. This is a murder enquiry, Mrs Deason, and you deliberately misled the police about the murder weapon. I don’t know whether Joey is up to his neck in it, or an innocent bystander, but he won’t be able to hide for much longer. Ask him whether he’d rather talk to me first or wait for the police to come.’ I waited in case she wanted to say anything. There was nothing. I put the phone down.
I tried Victor Wallace but he’d left the answerphone on. He was visiting Luke that afternoon; maybe still on his way back. I left a message for him to call me when he had a moment.
Finally I rang Mr Pitt’s office. His secretary said he had left for the weekend and would be tied up in court till the middle of the next week. I explained that I had some significant new information regarding the Luke Wallace case. I could meet him at the courts if that would make things any easier. She promised to pass the message on as soon as possible.
I suppose in the scale of things it didn’t make a great deal of difference to Dermott Pitt whether he acted on the new information immediately and tried to get the CPS to drop the case, or whether he waited until it came to court when he could demolish the prosecution case, get Luke released and win plaudits into the bargain. In fact, the latter course would probably enhance his reputation and advance his career more.
But it made a massive difference to Luke. The more weeks and months he spent incarcerated at Golborne, the more damage would be done. He was already losing his sense of worth, his sense of purpose, becoming depressed and withdrawn. The consequences could affect him for years to come. He could kiss his youth goodbye. I determined that I would get to see Dermott Pitt early in the week. If necessary I’d hover around the courts. Create enough of a nuisance value and he’d listen to me just to get shut of me.
Friday night, kids asleep, I was wrapping up a Pass the Parcel game, inserting super bouncing balls, dinosaurs that could squirt water, tattoos and face-paints between the layers of paper. Ray was labelling party bags with the guest-list and getting muddled as to which bags had got which novelties in. Digger had been banished to the kitchen after showing too much interest in the sweets.
‘I just hope it’s dry,’ I said, ‘if we can keep them in the garden it’ll be ten times easier.’
Ray grunted.
The phone rang. It was Victor Wallace. He was over the moon when I told him about the replacement knife. He demanded I see Pitt right away, asked if I’d told the police yet, was all for calling the press in. I tried to calm him down a bit. I didn’t want either police or press at this stage. I was still hoping that I could see Joey D and find out what had actually gone on that night. And it would be wise to see the lawyer with the fresh evidence before doing anything else, as he would be more of an expert in how to use it. I got Victor’s agreement on this and accepted his effusive thanks, hoping that they weren’t misplaced.
Tom is usually a very equable child with an adventurous spirit. Unlike Maddie he enjoys new situations and challenges, while she hangs back convinced that ‘there be monsters’ in any fresh environment. But the strains of his fifth birthday party pushed him to the limit.
He held it together for the first highly exciting half-hour while he ripped open carefully wrapped presents and tore open cards with signatures laboriously scrawled by his little friends. He coped fairly well with the ensuing games of Pin the Tail on the Dinosaur and Hunt the Treasure in the garden, even though two of his bigger pals knocked him down in their determination to find more sweets than anyone else.
