by L M Krier
‘Ahead of me, as usual, Steve,’ Ted told him. ‘I want you to go with Jo and oversee a search of the garden. Because you’re right, of course. If there was anything he didn’t want us to see, he had plenty of time to put it in a safe place, out of sight.
‘We’ll need detailed statements from the ambulance crew, too. They might well have known him through work, so their input could be very useful.
‘Claire, I’ve not forgotten you. Are you all right to tie up the loose ends on the Black Mould Scam? To free up Rob? Are we going to go with the case here and add yours on?’
The two of them had finally caught up with their scammers, arrested, charged and bailed them. A search of their properties had found enough of the missing property to give them a good case, and several of the victims had now identified the scammers from photos.
‘Yes, all over bar the shouting, I think, and I’m happy to carry on with it.’
‘Thank you. That will be a nice big tick on the crime figures. Right, let’s all crack on with what we’ve got and we’ll get together later.
‘Jo, can I have a quick word, before you go to the scene, please?’
Jo followed him into his office and shut the door behind them.
‘Are any of your family playing contact sports tomorrow? Only I’ve promised to take Trev out for a special meal in the evening, somewhere posh and pricey to make up for spoiling his day out yesterday. So this time I definitely need you to cover for me, come what may. He’s threatening to commit a murder if I’m a no-show again. He reckons it’s the best way to get my undivided attention.’
‘What are we like, eh, us coppers?’ Jo said. ‘We’re not the easiest to live with, that’s for sure. I feel as if I should offer to pay for the meal to make up for yesterday, but I fear it might be too rich for a humble DI’s wallet, by the sound of it.’
‘I’ve a feeling it may be too rich for mine,’ Ted grumbled. ‘Anyway, I wanted to flag up that, come what may, I need to leave at a decent time, and have my phone off all evening.
‘Please do keep an eye on Steve over this case. He’s getting the bit between his teeth already, and we both know he hates getting things wrong. I’d like to see him spend some time on it. If nothing else, it will focus his attention while Océane is away. But we need to be ready to pick up the pieces if he’s barking up completely the wrong tree and sees it as total failure on his part.’
‘Even with his alibis backing out as fast as they can, he’s still claiming he didn’t kill her,’ Sarah Jenkins told Ted when he called her later for an update on the suspicious death her team were working on. ‘He knows we can’t physically place him in the house at the exact time of death. But he also knows now that he can’t place himself anywhere else. And it doesn’t go in his favour that he’s deliberately tried to falsify an alibi.
‘Then there’s the boot print on the back door. Tests show it’s a perfect match for his boots, which were found tucked away, and there’s no evidence of anyone else having worn them. He denies trying to create the suspicion of third party involvement. He said he did it a few days prior to the incident because the door was sticking. But that doesn’t hold water, and he knows it. It would have been impossible to close the door, let alone lock it, because of the damage.
‘So again, balance of probabilities, why would he leave his property insecure like that, certainly not for a few days? Plus of course, we can show the print is more recent than that. The amount of heavy rain we’ve had would have made it much less clear than it was.
‘I’ve spoken at length to CPS. They agree we’ve not a chance of making a murder charge stick, but I’m going to try to get him to plead guilty to manslaughter, in the hopes of leniency. As pleas in mitigation go, accidentally shoving her hard enough to kill her isn’t right up there, but he might be able to persuade them there was no intent to do anything that serious.
‘His previous form isn’t going to weigh very heavily in his favour, and nor will the statements from his step-daughter and mother-in-law. Nor the boy, if he says anything. So with a bit of luck and a following breeze, we might possibly get him off our streets for a stretch, at least.’
‘Good, an excellent result. Now, I need to poach an officer from you. We’ve two suspicious deaths, as of yesterday, so we’re flat out. Who can you spare, and when can we have them?’
‘Why not take Alan Burgess, now we’ve got him sharpened up a bit? I have a feeling it would do him good to keep away from Ashton for the time being. At least until Pete Ramsay remembers he’s supposed to be a DS and starts exerting a bit of authority.’
Ted’s mobile, on his desk, started to ring. He glanced away from the screen where he was talking to DS Jenkins. Gina Shaw, from Drugs, calling him.
‘Great, thanks, send him as soon as possible, please. I have to take this call now.’
He picked up his mobile and asked, ‘Gina, what’s the news about Data?’
‘I’m meeting him Thursday early evening, and we’re planning to have a nice little reception committee waiting for him. I wondered if you wanted to come to the briefing to plan the op? You already have a lot of knowledge and experience to input which could be valuable.’
‘Love to. When is it?’
Even as he asked, he had a premonition. A feeling of dread. She confirmed it as she said, ‘Tomorrow, end of play.’
Tuesday. When he’d promised to take Trev out for a posh meal to make up for Sunday. When he’d agreed to him booking the table and had vowed to be there, come what may.
‘What d’you call end of play?’ he asked hopefully, busily doing some calculations. The briefing would be in Manchester, which was where the restaurant Trev had booked was situated. All was not yet lost.
‘Six o’clock. Is that a problem for you? I’m afraid there’s no leeway to move it.’
‘I could come for half an hour right at the start, if that would help? As long as it starts on time.’
It would be tight. He was taking a risk. And Trev was going to go off the deep end when he heard. But Ted desperately wanted to be at that briefing. Data had slipped through their fingers once before and he was anxious to make sure it didn’t happen again.
‘Have you got Firearms back-up?’
‘We weren’t going to use them. I’m meeting Data somewhere fairly public so the risk was considered to be too high. He’s seen and spoken to me often enough round the clubs not to be suspicious of me. I’ve bought from him before and met up in similar places. This time is meant to be not just to score from him but to arrange this supposed porn session through him for me and my fictitious boyfriend.
‘I know Firearms is one of your areas of specialist knowledge, so are you saying you think we should use armed back-up? If so, I think we’d have to rethink the whole op and that might make him suspicious. We’ve probably only got one chance to lift him and I don’t want to blow it. We’ve all invested a lot in this.’
‘I’m basing my advice on the man we arrested in the park in our case, when he was taking his dog for a walk. Ex-Special Forces and extremely high risk. If he’s representative of the kind of men who protect our blind dwarf, you’ll need to be extremely vigilant. After them losing one of their own, who’s in the process of being deported back to where he came from, they’re going to be even more wary than before. They’ll no doubt be keeping close tabs on Data, ready to spirit him away at the first sniff of a reception committee, like they did to us.’
‘It really would be an enormous help if you could come tomorrow to present all of this. Me passing along what you’ve said won’t be the same at all.’
‘One hour. Absolute tops. Seriously. And that’s pushing it.’
‘Oh, look, pussy cats. It’s that strange person who sometimes graces us with their presence. Usually when he wants food or a clean shirt,’ Trev commented to the assembled felines as Ted walked into the kitchen.
Ted was reasonably early. He thought he’d better not push it by turning up late and then having to explain about the ch
ange of plan for the next day. That was going to be hard enough, without starting from the back foot. He gave Trev a kiss, but his partner wasn’t finished with him yet.
‘And phone your mother. She’s always telling me she never hears from you. She knows you’re busy but you really should make time for her. She sounds a bit worried about something at the moment, but she won’t say what. Whenever I ask she just says popeth yn iawn and I’m not at all convinced that everything is all right.’
‘I will do. I’ll call her when I go up to change in a minute. I need to tell you something first.’
Trev turned to face him, an ominously sharp-looking paring knife in one hand.
‘Ted, if this is you building up to telling me we can’t go out to dinner tomorrow night after you promised and I’ve booked it, you might want to think very carefully how you phrase that. Especially while I’m armed to the teeth.’
‘No, no, we’re definitely going, that’s all sorted,’ Ted bent to lift up young Adam as he spoke. He decided he might feel safer with the little cat as a shield. ‘It’s just that I need to attend a briefing first, so I’ll have to meet you at the restaurant.’
‘Ted ...’
‘It’s fine, honestly. I know you don’t like doing it that way in case I don’t show up, but I will be there, I promise. I’ll leave you money for a taxi. You go straight there. I’ll take a change of clothes with me, shower and change at the nick. The briefing’s in Manchester, almost on the doorstep, and I only need to stay for the first hour, tops. It’ll be fine. I won’t let you down.’
‘Honestly Ted, I’ve heard that so many times ...’
Ted sat Adam up in his arms and gently lifted his front right paw.
‘I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that this promise I shall give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
Trev couldn’t help himself. He was laughing before Ted had finished the affirmation. He put the knife down and moved closer to hug him, gently, being careful not to squash Adam.
‘This is your last chance, though. I’ll trust you one final time, although goodness knows why. I sometimes wonder why I put up with you.’
‘Because you know I love you beyond reason,’ Ted told him simply.
Chapter Twenty
‘You’ve now had chance to go over, with your solicitor, our findings from your computer. I wonder if you can please explain to me the highlighted purchases on the documents.’
The team were watching the playback of Mike Hallam’s interview the previous day with their suspect for the violent death in the flats on Sandstone Street. They were using the conference room downstairs and the large screen there. The team was bigger than usual, especially now Graham Winters was back with them, and Alan Burgess had been sent over from Ashton. He sat observing the rest of the team as much as looking at the screen, getting a feel for things. He’d already learned that no one got away with any slacking or sloppy procedure under DCI Darling.
The suspect looked relaxed and at ease so far in the interview. Sure of himself.
‘Like I said before, I’d started getting medication online for the wife. To try to help her with the terrible mood swings. I got her some stuff I found which seemed like it would do the trick to get her back on an even keel. It seemed okay at first, but then she started to get hooked on it, like, and when it wore off, she got worse and worse, so I stopped buying it for her. Ages ago.’
‘And yet you will have seen from the orders that several of them had been made quite recently. Can you explain that?’
‘The wife must have been more hooked on it than I realised. I reckon she must have been using my credit card to order it herself on my computer, once I told her I wasn’t going to order any more for her.’
‘But you surely must have noticed, from your statements, that orders were still being made and paid for with your credit card?’
The man shrugged and spread his hands.
‘You know what it’s like, with the paperwork. You keep putting it to one side and telling yourself you’ll get on top of it, one of these days. But somehow you never do.’
‘Was she computer literate? Did she have access to your computer, or was it password protected?’
He shifted slightly in his seat as he answered that question with, ‘I didn’t think she was, but maybe I was wrong, or maybe the lad showed her. Kids these days know about such things, don’t they? And the password were just his birthday. Not very secure, I know.’
‘Pants on fire,’ Jezza said distinctly. ‘Lying through his teeth.’
Mike Hallam continued his questioning on the playback.
‘Were you aware that this particular drug is not licensed for use at all in the UK? Certainly not for use on humans.’
He gave a look of feigned surprise.
‘I didn’t realise. I thought if you could buy it easy enough online then it was okay to use.’
‘His nose just grew.’
Another aside from Jezza.
‘And in fact the boy has told our officers that neither he nor his mother ever touched your computer. He was afraid to. Afraid of what would happen to him if he did. His mother was even more afraid, and he said she had no idea even how to turn it on.’
Jezza had made a quick phone call to Mike when she and Maurice had been to see the boy, to pass on the information he’d given to date to those who were looking after him.
The man’s eyes narrowed and darkened at that.
‘You shouldn’t be talking to him. Not without me there. He’ll be worried sick. He won’t know what he’s saying.’
‘It’s already been explained to you that as you’re not a direct relative of his, various processes will need to be gone through before you’re allowed contact with him. And for the moment, we need to talk to him first as he was a witness to what happened.’
‘He didn’t see anything,’ the man said, rather too quickly, ignoring the raised hand of caution from his solicitor.
‘You can’t be sure of that, though, surely?’ Mike asked, his tone reasonable. ‘You’ve already said that inside the flat you were busy trying to fend off your wife as she attacked you. Even to the point of having to grab her by the throat to hold her at arm’s length.’
‘By the neck, sergeant,’ Ms Castle corrected him. ‘My client admitted to holding her by the neck, You are the one who says throat. That’s inflammatory language.’
‘Even so, that must have taken most of your concentration,’ Mike went on, blanking the solicitor. ‘And then you say your wife broke away and ran out towards the staircase, with you behind her to try to stop her from doing herself any harm. So can you be absolutely certain of where the boy was and what he was capable of seeing, all of the time?’
A brief hesitation, then, ‘You know what it’s like, when you have a kid in the house. You get like a sixth sense, to know where they are and to make sure they’re safe at all times.’
Mike stopped the recording at that point as Jezza said, ‘Excuse me while I throw up. Boss, is it all right if Maurice and I add our two penn'orth at this point? It might be useful. Because the boy is starting to make a connection with us now. Especially with Daddy Hen.’
‘I got lucky,’ Maurice told them all modestly. ‘He was trying to put a puzzle together when we arrived, and not having a lot of success. He let me help him with it and we got it sorted between us. He talked to me a bit while we were doing it and seemed happy to carry on chatting after that.’
‘Something interesting we both noticed,’ Jezza went on. ‘He never calls our suspect anything other than Him or That Man. So much for him trying to play the doting parent with concerns for the boy’s welfare. The boy clearly doesn’t see him as a father figure at all. More an object of fear.’
‘Did you get anywhere about computer use? Other than what he’s already told his carers?’ Ted asked them.
‘We did. I had a flash of inspiration so we did a quick detour to my place to get the tablet I let Tommy use.
He has a basic one of his own but this one is much better and it’s my bribery piece. His time on it is limited and strictly based on it being a reward for acceptable behaviour.
‘I produced it to show the boy some of the apps Tommy enjoys playing with. He was fascinated by it all but it was clear he has only very limited computer skills of any sort. He was happy to talk to us while he was having a go with it. He says he’s not allowed to touch That Man’s computer at home and he seemed genuinely afraid of what the consequences might be if he did.
‘I slipped in some questions about whether he uses a computer for his homework and if his mum helped him with it. Very definite no to both. He said his mum helped him with written work but she didn’t know anything about computers, according to him.
‘I assume tests on the computer might be able to show who used it. If the only traces on it are from him, then he’s not going to be able to stick to his story of her ordering for herself.’
‘Are you going back to talk to the boy today?’ Ted asked them. ‘And yes, the computer will be tested, but we don’t yet have any results. Steve’s been working on it but with a separate keyboard, of course.’
‘We’ll keep going back as long as it takes to hear what the boy might want to tell us,’ Jezza replied. ‘We’ll only stop if it’s clear that talking about it all is having more of a detrimental than a beneficial effect on him. We’re also liaising each time with Children’s Services to make sure they’re happy we’re acting in his best interests.’
‘Mike, can you talk to CPS about what you’ve got so far. There should be enough to charge him with possession of the drug, if nothing else. We’ve nothing like enough yet to go for a murder charge and I’d really like to. So let’s keep digging.
‘Right, you’ll have noticed we have PCs Ron Hardy and Val Gabriel with us to give us their observations from Sunday’s suspected murder-suicide. We’ll hear them now, as I don’t want to delay them longer than we need to.’
The two of them exchanged a look, then Val spoke up first.