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.The amount of storage space needed would be phenomenal.But Sandie shook her head.‘Oh no.We hold all the records electronically, too, and then once a case is closed the hard copy goes to a special government storage facility.’‘I don’t understand.So what are we bringing down here?’‘Sometimes individual members of the Commission ask us to hold a further copy of files they consider significant.Sir Geoffrey did it all the time.’‘Significant how?’‘Sometimes there’s a pattern, say the same trial judge, or the same police force.’ Or, thought Mariner, the fact that a suspect had been coerced into making a confession; Ryland’s witch-hunt against the police.So somewhere in this mass of paperwork there could be a copy of Joseph O’Connor’s file.Mariner knew that asking outright would be a step too far.Helena’s introduction had been carefully worded and so far Sandie had quite openly accepted his questioning, assuming that he was here in some sort of general official capacity.Getting too specific would no doubt involve consultation with her seniors, and there was a simpler way of doing this, if not completely above-board.It made him uneasy, but taking the broader view, what he was doing was in the name of justice and if he did uncover something that had been missed by Special Branch it would all come right in the end, wouldn’t it? If Dave had been more open and honest with him there wouldn’t be any need for all this cloak and dagger stuff.‘I could do with a pee,’ he said as they passed the gents on their way back from the archive.‘Shall I catch you up?’‘Oh there’s a much nicer one on the upper floor,’ Sandie said.‘These aren’t really used any more.’‘Oh I’m not fussy,’ said Mariner.‘And all those stairs,’ he joked.‘I’m not sure if I’ll make it.’‘Oh.’ Now Sandie was concerned, probably thinking now that the old feller had prostate problems.‘Okay then.You’ll be able to find your way upstairs?’‘If I’m not back in an hour send out a search party.’Sandie, it seemed, had trouble determining when anyone was joking, but she continued on her way, leaving Mariner with full access to the archive and feeling like Michael Caine in The Ipcress File.He hoped to God that it was a logical filing system.Though his watch said only minutes, it seemed to Mariner that it took him hours to locate Joseph O’Connor’s file.Contained in the folder were notes on the interview that followed O’Connor’s arrest.They looked unobjectionable, but interviews weren’t routinely taped until the late eighties, so the accuracy was questionable.On the front page the names of the arresting officers were outlined several times with pink highlighter.Were they the significant aspect of the case? Mariner noted their names in his pocket book: Detectives George Hollis and Stephen Jaeger.O’Connor’s confession had been bullied out of him, so the chances were that this wasn’t the first or last time these two had indulged in a bit of malpractice.It brought a new possibility into the equation; that O’Connor was helping Ryland to build a case against Jaeger and Hollis.Sharon O’Connor had denied that her husband was offering any additional help and talked categorically about her husband ‘wanting out’, but would she necessarily have known? She’d intimated Ryland’s promise that he would ‘get the men’ who’d put Joseph in prison the first time and Mariner had taken that as meaning the men who’d set him up; Brady and his crew.But she could have equally been referring to the police officers who’d secured the wrongful conviction.If that’s what she meant then it was a whole new ball game.If Ryland was planning to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Hollis and Jaeger, citing O’Connor’s case in evidence, then the detectives would be keen to keep both men quiet.Offering O’Connor a job could have been Ryland’s unsuccessful strategy to protect him.The timing was a puzzle, though.O’Connor had been released years ago.If the officers were taking some kind of revenge, why wait until now? Had it taken this long for Ryland to build the case against them, or had something triggered a decision to act on his findings? Or maybe the policemen in his sights had been tipped off about what was going on.Knowing what he now knew, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Mariner to understand why Ryland was being overlooked as the victim in the shooting.Potentially there were all kinds of people who were unhappy about what he was up to.The trouble was that none of these revelations would be palatable to the public, especially with a general election coming up and a government that claimed to be tough on crime.It was also exactly the kind of thing the Met would be keen to draw a veil over, preferring instead to divert attention towards O’Connor’s so-called previous drugs activity.Flicking through the other paperwork in the file, Mariner came across a large envelope.He pulled out the contents; a series of eight-by-six black and white surveillance photographs [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]