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But then something else happened.
The screen cleared, the machine calmed, and Maurice could see a document.
He placed his cup on the table, lifted himself out of the chair, and put on a pair of reading glasses before reaching the machine.
Glancing at the monitor, he saw a letter written to him. The only thing Maurice knew how to do was print, so he did.
When the printer had finished, he collected the paper and sat back in his armchair.
Dear Maurice,
If you’re reading this, something serious has happened, probably to me.
I won’t waste time telling you why I’ve done it, but I do owe you some kind of an explanation.
Since my dad died, I’ve been lucky enough to have two father figures in my life: you were one. You investigated his death, and eventually put the coked-up arsehole who ran him over behind bars.
I spent time with you, and I realized the one thing I wanted to do was join the force, protect people, put the bad guys away like the bastard who killed my dad. I know it sounds like a cliché, but there it is. So working with you was an added bonus. The other person who influenced me was Adam’s dad, Robert.
Me and Adam were big mates. When he died I was well gutted. Not as much as when my dad died, though. Adam was also killed by a pair of drug-crazed lunatics, who chased him through the town because they thought he was filming them. He wasn’t. Thing was, he did actually film his own death. He shoved the phone into a crack in the wall and left it on record. Although Lance Hobson didn’t do it, he was involved. Don’t ask me how, but his father Robert, had the phone (still has, for all I know), and he knew what had happened.
It seems that Adam’s mother was also killed by one of Hobson’s gang, Sonia Knight. I don’t know much about that.
Robert Sinclair had probably lost out bigger than me. He was the only person who understood what I was facing when my mam was diagnosed with the brain tumour. There was no chance I could afford what it was going to take to treat her. But Sinclair came up with a once in a lifetime offer, one that was really non-negotiable.
He said he would authorize my mam’s treatment to be covered by a hospital grant. I don’t understand everything, but what it meant was she would have the only treatment available that would help her lead a normal life, and I didn’t have to pay for it. Well... not with my own money anyway.
Sinclair told me all about Hobson, Ronson, Wilson, and Knight. He told me what they had done, and he wanted revenge, like you could never understand. All I had to do was help him. I had to feed him everything I knew about them: everywhere they hung out, where they went, who they saw, who they were selling to, everything. And I also had to get hold of copies of the keys to Armitage’s shop.
The rest is history. But at least you know now what I’ve done. I’ve let you down, Maurice, but try looking at it from my point of view. In my position, what would you have done? Would you have upheld the law and let the drug dealers that we couldn’t run to ground carry on, or would you have helped? You know how much I hate drugs, and the bastards that peddle them. Look at all the misery they’ve caused us. It was either them or my mam. As far as I was concerned, it was no contest.
But I didn’t do it without a conscience. I recorded every last detail of everything we did, and I placed it upstairs in the file room. You can’t miss it. It’s in a bright orange folder.
As I said at the start, if you’re reading this, something has gone wrong, and it’s possible that I’m dead. Let’s face it, if I was still alive, you wouldn’t be reading this anyway. It’s also possible that Sinclair may have gotten away with everything, and even though he deserves to, the law is the law. So I want you to go upstairs and grab the file and give it to DI Gardener. It has everything he needs to do his job.
Don’t be sad, Maurice. Things may not have worked out for me, and whatever else seemed bad to me, you got me through it.
Yours, Gary
Maurice put the file on the desk, removed his glasses, and wiped his eyes.
Gary Close was one unlucky man. Why did the worst things always happen to the nicest people?
Maurice Cragg felt as if he had lost everything as we
ll. The last three days had been the most intense investigation he had ever been involved in, but the senior officers had made him feel more alive than he had done in years.
He had a feeling that things were never going to be the same again.
