The Kill Call

that he was finally showing it to the right person.
    ‘Mr Massey, do you remember this photo?’
    Massey screwed up his eyes, and held the photograph to the light.
    ‘That’s us, in the 1960s sometime. There’s me and Jimmy. The big bloke is Les Clay. And there’s Stuart Clay, Shirley Outram. I know all of them. They’re just as I remember them.’
    In the photo, Jimmy Hind was wearing round, wire-rimmed glasses, like John Lennon’s. He was the only one in glasses, though Peter Massey had also been squinting a little as he looked at the camera.
    ‘Do you normally wear glasses, Mr Massey?’
    ‘Only when I need them.’
    ‘Are you short sighted, or long sighted?’
    ‘Short sighted, I suppose.’
    ‘If I left the room now, would you be able to describe my face to someone? Would you know me again if you saw me in forty years’ time?’
    ‘Why would I need to?’
    Cooper lowered his head, no longer able to look Massey in the eye. He was thinking of the man who’d died in the underground bunker, starved of oxygen as the flood water crept higher around him.
    ‘Why?’ he said. ‘So that you don’t make a mistake about someone’s identity again.’
       
    ‘He’s hopeless without his glasses,’ said Cooper later, when he and Fry had concluded the interview. ‘He says he doesn’t need to wear them around the farm. He doesn’t miss anything that he wants to see. But there are some things he doesn’t want to see too clearly, anyway.’
    ‘Like people?’ suggested Fry.
    ‘Yes, people. He knew me, but he wouldn’t be able to describe my face. When he saw Michael Clay, his memories were of a voice, an outline, a way of walking, a series of gestures or mannerisms. The sort of thing that brothers have in common, or fathers and sons. People say that Matt and I have a lot of similar mannerisms, though we don’t really look alike.’
    Fry seemed distant and detached this morning, as if a great weight was on her mind that prevented her from focusing properly.
    ‘I don’t understand why Peter Massey did it,’ she said.
    ‘I don’t think he understands either,’ said Cooper.
    ‘Well, that’s not good enough.’
    Her tone was suddenly sharp, almost vicious. But Cooper could understand her annoyance. He just didn’t know quite how much of it was directed at himself.
    Cooper had wanted to see Fry bring her case to a successful conclusion. But somehow he’d managed to take the credit for himself, without intending to. This morning, a congratulatory memo had been emailed to everyone in CID from Superintendent Branagh, singling out the actions of DC Cooper for particular praise. That would do his hopes for promotion no harm at all. The trouble was, he didn’t know whether Fry had read the memo yet, since she’d come straight from the mortuary to the interview with Massey. Certainly, no one had dared to mention it in front of her so far.
    ‘I suppose it’s in the nature of the job that we always want motives,’ he said. ‘But people often do things they can’t explain the reasons for, even to themselves. We’re wasting our time trying to make them give a reason for it, something neat and logical that we can write down and present to a judge and jury.’
    ‘I don’t agree,’ said Fry. ‘Being obliged to explain to another person why you did something can clarify the reasons in your own mind. It’s the same principle that lies behind a lot of psychotherapy. If you’re never forced to explain yourself, you can just carry on wallowing in denial.’
    Cooper thought of some of the real killers he’d seen – the social predators, people with the glint of cruelty in their eyes. But Peter Massey wasn’t one of those. In his own way, he probably thought of himself as being just as noble as William Mompesson, sacrificing his own future to rid the world of a pestilence. A large number of murderers were convinced they were doing the right thing at the time. It often came as a surprise that society didn’t agree with them.
    Whose motto had been ‘ Hate and wait ’? Was it one of the de Medicis? Well, Peter Massey had certainly done that. He’d waited more than forty years, nursing his hatred. You’d think that emotions might fade over four decades, but sometimes they just grew stronger.
    Cooper realized that Michael Clay’s death had taken a hold on his mind. How could it not, when he’d been there himself, in the darkness of the flooded ROC bunker, feeling the debris of the past floating up