Gillard and Kirsty Mockett were standing with Yaz Quoroshi, head of CSI, looking into a chest freezer unit in Mount Browne’s cavernous evidence warehouse, where the preserved sample was on display in the open pizza box.
‘The snow had begun to soften a little bit by the time the sample was in a deep freeze, but the tread of the tyre is a fairly clear, as is the tip of the running shoe,’ Quoroshi said. ‘I think it is safe to say that this sample together with the photographs you took give a clear indication that the assailant was riding the bicycle.’
‘You say you didn’t get even a glimpse of his face?’ Gillard asked her.
‘No. I was too busy unlocking the phone. I honestly only saw him in peripheral vision.’
‘So how do you know it was a him and not a her?’ Quoroshi asked.
Mockett paused. ‘I can’t say, but there was something about the movement, I don’t know what it was. I’m sure it was a man. It’s the way when you see someone moving in the far distance, too far away to make out their features, you still know somehow whether they are male or female.’
Gillard nodded. ‘Based on your pictures, the assailant cycled up behind the woman, and hit her with something. He then dismounted, allowing the bike to fall sideways into the snow, where the tip of the right pedal and the tip of the right brake lever left an impression. While he was off the bike, and she was presumably already on the ground, he continued to strike her a number of times.’
‘It certainly was a savage and furious assault,’ Quoroshi said. ‘Far more blows I would have thought than were required to kill this lady.’
‘So, Yaz, what can we do about this to make it suitable to offer in evidence? You could hardly offer a patch of snow for a jury to inspect.’
‘I’m going to try to make a cast. I was thinking about this earlier, and found a section on the Alaska police website where they talk about having to create a permanent impression of footprints or tyre tracks in snow. I’m not sure we have the materials they mention easily to hand but I’m going to take a look.’
* * *
Fine specks of snow like polystyrene pellets peppered the windscreen of Gillard’s unmarked grey Vauxhall as he drove DC Gabby Underwood up the M3 motorway towards the prosperous south-west London suburb of Richmond upon Thames. Mrs Roy’s residence was a four-storey Georgian house, on a quiet side road just a stone’s throw from the river. It was protected from view by a large laurel hedge and a pair of wrought iron gates. The detective nosed the car up to the gates, and identified himself at the video box on the gate post. The gate slid silently open. He parked carefully between a new Mercedes and a Jaguar convertible whose wing mirrors alone were probably worth more than the Vauxhall. He and Gabby made their way to the pillared portico, but before they had a chance to ring the ornate brass bell, the door opened. A striking-looking thirtyish Asian woman with cropped snow-white hair beckoned them inside. She was swathed in a pea-green woollen dress, off her shoulder on one side, and with sleeves so long they swallowed her hands. Her bare coffee-coloured feet were decorated with a fine tracery of henna.
Gillard introduced himself and Gabby, and offered his condolences.
The woman nodded. ‘I’m Kiara, the baby of the family,’ she said, lifting a sleeve and offering them the most perfunctory of handshakes. Expecting flesh, Gillard glanced down. The woman was wearing fine silk gloves that perfectly matched her skin tone. ‘Rotten freezing weather again. Would you like some tea?’ They replied in the affirmative, and she shouted something down the hallway behind her, ending with the word chai. The entrance hall was sumptuously decorated in gold and green, with a black and white tiled floor. It was dominated by a man-sized porcelain statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh, and a large gilt mirror behind. The chandelier above them was an elaborate modern creation with a dozen arms at different heights suspending thousands of glass teardrops.
Kiara showed them into a large lounge, dominated by an enormous marble fireplace and three gigantic goldbrocaded sofas. A wood burner was roaring away in the fireplace.
‘Is your brother here?’ Gillard asked.
She shook her head. ‘Harry called to let me know he was running a bit late. He’s in an awful state. He’s taken it very hard. Prisha isn’t going to be here for an hour either, I’m afraid. You must just excuse me.’ She hurried out to the hallway where a telephone was softly trilling.
‘I know her,’ Gabby said. ‘I’ve definitely seen her before. Can’t think where.’
‘On the front cover of Vogue maybe?’
Gabby shook her head. ‘No, face-to-face.’
They stopped talking as a very dark-skinned middle-aged Asian lady in a sari appeared. She was carrying a tray containing an ornate teapot and three old-fashioned, blue and white, hooped mugs. ‘Orange pekoe and Darjeeling okay?’ She set out the crockery and a small jug of milk, then disappeared for a minute before returning with a two-tier cake stand decked with thick slices of Victoria sponge, chocolate gateau and coffee and walnut cake. Once she had exited, Gillard turned to Gabby. ‘The gloves were weird. But she seems very composed.’
‘Shock,’ Gabby said. ‘I’ve seen it a hundred times. There is probably so much to do that she is not allowing herself to think about—’
The silent return of their hostess caught them by surprise. ‘Don’t stop talking on my account,’ Kiara said, padding in on bare feet.
‘We were just saying that you’ve probably got a lot to do, given what’s happened,’ Gillard said hurriedly.
Kiara poured out three mugs of tea and handed one to each officer. ‘I’ve done nothing yet but fend off press queries and answer phone calls. Harry is supposed to be appointing a family spokesman to deal with the press and speak to the lawyers. To be honest, I’ve only got the haziest idea what actually happened to my mother. I was hoping you could—’ Her voice broke up on the final words and she hid her face behind an enormous woollen sleeve. She sniffed deeply a few times, and when her shapely puckish face re-emerged Gillard could see the reflection of the window in her big brown eyes. They were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening.
‘Are you here, Kiki?’ It was a man’s voice.
‘Oh Harry!’ Kiara fled the room, and the two detectives could hear a noisy and tearful embrace outside in the hall. It took a moment for them to realise that the sobs were from him, and the shushing and the ‘there-there’s from her. It must have been five minutes before the wailing stopped and he was composed enough to enter the lounge. Harshil Roy was tall and smartly dressed, with a boyish face and oval metalframed spectacles that made him look younger than his thirty-five years. His hair was dishevelled at the back, as if the comb never got that far. He blew his nose noisily on an enormous, red cotton handkerchief, before wiping his eyes and greeting the two detectives. His handshake was firm but he didn’t make eye contact.
‘Detective chief inspector, we are all in a terrible state of shock, absolutely terrible. We have heard so many rumours, mostly from journalists, but nothing in detail from the police.’
‘I did try repeatedly to ring you at the office this morning,’ Gabby said defensively.
‘Yes, my PA told me. I was on my way back from Mumbai, arriving at Heathrow first thing, but I had already heard from a PC Oldroyd who answered my mother’s phone when I rang it. I’m afraid his account was a little bit more informative than what was passed on to me by your liaison officer.’
‘That was me,’ Gabby said. ‘It’s not something we want to leave as a phone message and I didn’t want to tell your PA all the details, for obvious reasons.’
He spread his arms. ‘Perhaps you can tell me now. Is it true that she was hit on the head by a cyclist with a hammer? Because I cannot believe that. She would not have got into an argument with somebody like that. She really wouldn’t.’
‘I don’t want you to jump to any conclusions about this,’ Gillard said. ‘We have several active lines of inquiry, and the passing cyclist is certainly somebody we would like to s
peak to. We always try to manage any details, particularly the more distressing ones. So I don’t know where you heard this story. I hope it wasn’t from the PC.’
Harry stopped to blow his nose extravagantly. ‘No, it was from a journalist.’
Gillard was impatient. How on earth do they get to find out so quickly? But he said nothing. He left it to Gabby Underwood to describe in the blandest and most neutral terms the death of Mrs Roy. Harry nodded as Gabby said that a witness had described his mother throwing a ball for her boxer dog.
‘Oh, dear Bertie. The loyalist of companions,’ Harry said. ‘He surely would have defended her to the death.’
Kiara nodded, and stroked her brother’s knee, her gloved fingers just visible beyond the sleeves. ‘What happened to Bertie?’
‘He’s being looked after by one of our dog handlers. We needed to do a DNA test in case he bit the assailant, and get him checked over by a vet, but I think he can be returned to you shortly.’
‘Could you put him in an identity line-up?’ Harry said. ‘He presumably saw the attacker, and would bark at him?’
Gillard suppressed the urge to laugh. ‘I’m sure it would appear plausible in a TV show, but in fact it wouldn’t be the kind of evidence that a court would accept. The Crown Prosecution Service would be horrified if I even suggested it. But if Bertie did bite the attacker, and we can find a piece of clothing or scrap material with both their DNA on, we could be in business.’
Harry excused himself, and Gillard could hear him out in the corridor, his plaintive voice getting a reassuring answer from some unseen woman. It was almost six, and Kiara suggested that they watch the BBC TV news together. Gillard agreed, checked his watch, and saw he had time to do what he needed before it began. He asked her the way to the bathroom. The room, just a few yards along the passage to the left, was opulent, high-ceilinged and contained several mirrors. Gillard took a tissue from his pocket, moistened it under a gilt tap, and carefully wiped the top of the cistern and the vanity unit. He then slipped the tissue into a Ziploc bag in his pocket and sealed it. He flushed the toilet, washed his hands, then returned to the lounge.
He arrived just as the news was beginning. The killing of Mrs Roy was the first item. There was an interview with Mrs Harriet Carlton, one of the dog walkers who was present at the scene. Having described what she said must’ve been a savage attack, she said: ‘I think the police are looking for a cyclist. That’s what I heard anyway. I can’t give you any details, because they asked me not to, but there was an awful lot of blood in the snow.’
Gillard blew a sigh. Claire Mulholland would be incandescent. She had interviewed the woman, whose horrible, yappy terrier had contaminated the crime scene, and would certainly have emphasised how important it was not to go blabbing to the press. Yet here she was, speculating like crazy. There wasn’t too much background, but the presenter trailed a change to the schedule with a special half-hour BBC Two programme on Mrs Roy on at ten p.m.
Harry Roy came back in, and was embraced by his younger sister. ‘We’ve got to get through this,’ she said.
He nodded, and kissed the top of her head. ‘Thank you, Kiki. You keep us all sane.’ He settled down, alternating between looking at the TV and checking his own mobile which, judging by the incessant audible pings, was being peppered with messages.
While they were watching the news, the front door went again. Two women came into the lounge, and Harry and his sister stood up to greet them. One was a slender and elegant Indian in her late thirties in a black trouser suit. The other was a willowy, mid-thirties redhead with milky skin, wearing a rugby shirt and ripped and faded jeans. Ignoring the police officers, the younger woman went into a group hug with Harry and his younger sister, cooing and stroking both their heads. The older woman stood apart from the others, glancing briefly at Gillard, then checking her phone before stepping out to answer a call.
Gillard, alert to the fault lines within families, was fascinated by this group dynamic. After a minute, the redhead turned to them and said: ‘I’m sorry, let me introduce myself. I’m Morag Fairburn. I’m a friend of the family, and the operations manager at Empire of Spice.’ Morag had a delicious Scottish burr to her voice. Harry and Kiara continued to converse quietly, not in English.
Once he had introduced himself and Gabby, Gillard asked: ‘Who is the other lady?’
‘Oh, that’s Prisha, the eldest,’ Morag said.
‘She’s the sensible one,’ Kiara interjected, leading her brother out of the room.
‘And I understand Mrs Roy was a widow?’ Gillard asked Morag.
‘Yes, Dr Roy had a stroke in 2008, after which he passed over day-to-day control of the business to his wife, and he sadly passed away in 2017 at the age of eighty-four.’
The front door bell went again, and Gillard heard it being answered. Whoever it was who came in had a deep voice and spoke in an Indian language to a woman. They did not come into the room.
‘Okay,’ Gillard said. ‘We have scheduled a press conference for eight p.m. this evening, but you don’t need to be there. The Metropolitan Police, whose area this is, will have an officer on the door here overnight, just to provide you with a little reassurance in case you get a large gathering of reporters outside. Gabby here is a family liaison officer. She will be back tomorrow morning, and can answer most of the questions you are likely to have about coroners, inquests, that kind of thing, as well as police processes.’
‘And even when I’m not here, I’ll always be a friendly voice at the end of a phone,’ Gabby said, handing over her business card to Morag, and extruding one of her trademark sympathy smiles.
Gillard said: ‘It’s a matter of some urgency that I’m able to interview each of the family in the next day or so. We need to establish some background, particularly regarding everyone’s movements, in the time leading up to Mrs Roy’s death.’
Morag looked taken aback, so Gillard hurriedly added: ‘It is just a formality. We like to rule out the unlikely possibilities, so that we can with some confidence return to more promising lines of inquiry.’
‘Okay,’ she replied. ‘I’ll see to it.’
‘There is something else which we would appreciate and will save us time.’
Morag smiled and cocked her head. ‘Yes?’
Gillard went to the door of the lounge, peered outside into the hallway, which was deserted, then came back in closed the door.
‘I will need to know about the financial construction of the business, exactly how much of it was controlled by Mrs Roy, and what happens to her shares—’
‘Now she’s dead?’ Morag gave a tight smile, and nodded. ‘Yes, tens of millions of pounds. Quite a motive. I’m sure that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’
They said their goodbyes, and once they were out on the steps, Gabby turned to Gillard. ‘I remember now. Kiara Roy saved the lives of two children from a burning car back in 2013.’
‘Was that the M2 pile-up?’ Gillard recalled that it was one of the worst UK road accidents in recent years – sixty-eight vehicles collided in fog, leaving six dead and thirty-three injured.
‘Yes, I was stuck in traffic on the other carriageway just outside Maidstone, and saw this car, horribly squashed between two lorries, just starting to go up in flames. I jumped out and was clambering over the central reservation, but this Asian woman was already there. She used the car’s bumper, which had already fallen off, to smash the rear window of the car. She and an off-duty fireman braved the flames, and got two of the three toddlers out, but the parents perished.’
Gillard’s eyes widened at the tale. ‘That explains the gloves, then. Burns.’
‘Yes. From what I remember, she wouldn’t be identified. She was just known as Miss R. Refused all press requests, and commendations for bravery.’
‘I wonder why.’
‘She felt she’d failed, apparently. Felt guilty she couldn’t reach the final child.’
He blew a sigh. ‘A woman of demanding standa
rds. Much like her mother, from what we’ve heard.’
* * *
The press conference at Surrey Police headquarters was hasty and hectic, squeezed into a spare meeting room, the floor strewn with loose cables, with barely enough space for the larger than expected number of TV journalists. Gillard and press officer, Christina McCafferty, had little information to give and struggled to rein in the wilder speculative questions. They sensed the frustration of the journalists at what even Gillard himself felt were repetitive responses. There was criticism too of the artist’s impression of the cyclist, which seemed nothing more than a figure in a hooded coat, loose trousers and trainers.
‘Joe Public is hardly going to be impressed with that,’ said one scruffy and bearded tabloid reporter. ‘Looks like a scarecrow drawn by a nine-year-old.’
‘It’s the idea I want to plant in people’s minds,’ Gillard replied. ‘If anyone cycles regularly through Ashtead Common, especially early in the morning, we would like to hear from them. We’ve already had many responses on the dedicated information line.’
It was gone nine o’clock by the time the last media stragglers had left. Gillard felt sorry for Christina’s new assistant, Stef, having to clear up the mess while her boss handled further press calls, so he pitched in folding and stacking tables and chairs. Just as they were finishing, Christina walked back into the room and offered Gillard her phone. ‘It’s Owen Cathcart, city editor at the Telegraph. Says he’s got a tip for you.’
Gillard picked up the phone and introduced himself.
‘It’s not a share tip,’ Cathcart said, ‘but a bit of a steer. You may not have been aware, but quite a few companies have tried to buy Empire of Spice over the years. Mrs Roy, God bless her, has always refused to sell up, which has according to my information been a source of friction within the family.’
‘Anything recent that you’re aware of?’
‘Well, funny you should say that. My information is that the chief financial officer of Global Foods Inc. of Milwaukee met Mrs Roy just last week at the Dorchester Hotel.’
The Body in the Snow Page 3