The Body in the Snow

by The Body in the Snow (retail) (epub)

  The detective called Davies over and pointed out their quarry’s position. The gothic-style, three-storey, red brick building was a perfect hiding place, with its many steep pitched roofs, Victorian chimney stacks and mullioned windows. Davies couldn’t at first see the figure within the shadow, until Gillard pointed him out.

  ‘Keep an eye on him while I go down. Call me if he moves,’ Gillard said. The detective then ran back to the stairs, descended and calling PC Clore to join him made his way over to the historic building. At the reception desk Gillard asked the security man about the various staircases which gave access to the roof. There were three. One was always locked, and a second was a fire escape. Gillard chose the third, the main maintenance access, whose door gave out onto a small piece of flat roof behind a low battlement. He opened it carefully.

  The fugitive was just ten feet away on the next gable. He gradually stood up as the detective emerged, a smile widening across his face. The only way around to Lal was by clambering on the steep moss-encrusted slates to the right which connected the two gables. To the left, it was at least fifty feet down to the concrete.

  ‘Don’t make this difficult for yourself,’ Gillard said. ‘You can’t escape.’

  ‘Come and get me then,’ Lal said, pulling a small but wicked-looking knife from his belt. Gillard could feel the presence of Tina Clore behind him. She had a Taser, but to use it up here would be lethal. The detective edged out onto the roof, steadying himself on the tiles with his right arm, his left out for balance over the cast iron gutter. Ideally he would have preferred to be wearing a pair of trainers like Lal’s for this, but there hadn’t been time to get to his locker. Polished black brogues may look the part but their grip was clearly inadequate.

  ‘Be careful, sir,’ Tiana said.

  Zayan Lal looked comfortable and balanced and, glancing to his left, ran nimbly up and over the apex of the roof, barely using his hands for support. Gillard, attempting to do the same, slipped on the damp moss, and only saved himself by grabbing the ornate knurl of a ridge tile. Peering over the edge to the other side, he saw Lal below the level of the guttering, arms busy, seemingly working away at the catch on a mullioned window. The scratching noise indicated he had found a use for his knife.

  The detective scrambled back down, and into the door he had come from. With a finger to his lips to ensure Tiana’s silence, he indicated the other side of the building. They waited in an alcove, listening as the fugitive continued to work away at the lock of a corridor window. Finally, they heard the casement open, and the light thump of two athletic feet hitting carpet. Two seconds later the detectives jumped out. Lal was in a short corridor that ended in a padlocked door. The only way out was through Gillard and Tiana, or back out of the window. He tried the latter, one foot on the sill, but Tiana was on him immediately, seizing the trailing leg. As she pulled him to the carpet, he spun around, the knife arcing towards her neck. Gillard fell on Lal like a ton of bricks, knee in the midriff, both hands on the knife arm. In thirty seconds it was all over.

  * * *

  DCI Gillard and DI Claire Mulholland looked through at the CCTV into the cell where Zayan Lal was sprawled on the blue plastic bedding, arms behind his head, feet on the wall. Gillard knew from decades of experience that this was the behaviour of the guilty. It was the innocent, the bewildered, those who didn’t know why they had been arrested, who had the nervous tics, who paced around, and who wept. In many cases, those who knew they had committed crimes were relieved to finally have been caught. The tension was lifted. It was no longer down to their own judgements or decisions. Justice would take its course.

  Getting Lal to that catharsis, where he was happy to confess, wasn’t going to be straightforward. Although Gillard was eager to interview the man, he knew it was better to get all available evidence first. They could get him easily for dealing cocaine, forty grams of evidence was right there in his apartment. But there was nothing other than circumstantial evidence for the poisonings and the assault on Mrs Roy. The CPS had been quite clear. The cross-contamination of Jason Waddington and Mrs Roy’s forensic samples and the connection between Kirsty Mockett and Deepak Tripathi were both gifts to the defence team. If there was even a suspicion that Kirsty had taken money from Tripathi to tamper with evidence, then her valuable witness statement about the cyclist and anything she had access to at the crime scene, or during the search of Mrs Roy’s flat, would all have to be set aside. Ideally, Gillard needed fresh evidence that didn’t rely on any of the forensic work that had been done so far. That was a huge ask. But the first place to look for it was in Zayan Lal’s apartment.

  * * *

  By noon Gillard, Claire Mulholland and two uniforms were back outside Lal’s tenth floor Walton-on-Thames apartment. The corridor looked like the site of a medieval siege. The smart hardwood door, taken right off its hinges by the police ram, had been roughly fixed back, held on with four hasps and padlocks. The corridor carpet was stained and gouged, presumably where someone had dropped the ram after use. There had been several complaints by Lal’s neighbours about the heavy-handedness of the police raid.

  One of the PCs unlocked the padlocks and manoeuvred the door open, allowing the two detectives, wearing latex gloves and polythene overshoes, to go inside. The raid and hurried search had done a tremendous job of wrecking the integrity of this flat as a potential crime scene. CSI chief, Yaz Quoroshi, had taken a quick look on the day of the raid, and was scathing in his report about the chances of finding undisturbed forensic evidence. Nonetheless, his team had produced a series of photographs which Claire now had in her hand. Yellow markers in the flat and the pictures showed where Lal’s mobile phone and other devices had been found, and the cocaine stored within several DVD boxes.

  The two-bedroom apartment had once been tastefully decorated. The least disturbed room was the kitchen. ‘I’m surprised that the plods didn’t search here more carefully,’ Gillard said to Claire, as he picked his way through the many spices and herbs. ‘The man began his career at Empire of Spice as a demo cook.’

  ‘So it was probably in here that he made his preparations of thallium and glycol.’

  ‘Thallium, yes. Probably not glycol, as he left here days before turning up at our canteen. My guess is the glycol was an opportunistic event. Besides, CSI already swabbed the surfaces here, and didn’t come up with anything.’

  One of Gillard’s instructions to CSI had been to look for a matching chrome-coated hand weight to that used to kill Mrs Roy. These things were used in pairs. CSI had found nothing in this flat, nor in Harry’s penthouse, nor even in Morag Fairburn’s house. The gym that Harry and Zayan were registered to likewise had only much more modern weights. Probably Lal had ditched it soon after the attack. ‘Where else, near at hand, could Zayan Lal have dumped incriminating stuff, do you think?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Up on the roof, or in the maintenance areas?’ Claire suggested.

  Gillard inclined his head in acknowledgement of this thought, and then clicked his fingers as a fresh idea came to him. ‘Aha! There is a much safer place. Follow me.’

  Gillard led Claire out to the front doorway, towards the fire escape, and then down one floor. They took off their booties and gloves. ‘It’s here that I saw Lal’s muddy footprints, leaving this apartment. He had climbed down from his own balcony just above. Harry said that Zayan had a key to the terrace door here.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He used to walk the woman’s Yorkshire terrier, and sometimes let the cat out onto the terrace where its litter tray was, according to Harry. That’s how he managed to give us the slip.’ Gillard pressed the doorbell and after a minute of yapping from within, the door was opened as far as the chain would permit. A woman in her eighties eyed them dubiously even after they had explained who they were, but unlocked the door and let them in.

  ‘We are sorry to disturb you, Mrs Clark,’ Gillard said.

  ‘One of your PCs has already taken a statement,’ she said.
/>   ‘I know, we just need a few more details.’

  The flat smelled musty with that suspicious taint often found in the homes of the housebound. She offered them tea, but the detectives declined. Mrs Clark was barely mobile, so they all sat down together in the lounge, the dog shivering on the woman’s lap. Gillard pulled her statement up on his phone, and once again checked the details with her.

  ‘I can’t believe that Zayan would do any of these things,’ she said. ‘He was always so kind to me. He took Brunnhilde to the vet, and Pepe here for long walks that I can’t manage.’

  ‘Very kind, I’m sure.’

  ‘He even vacuumed for me sometimes.’

  Gillard and Claire shared a look. ‘Mrs Clark,’ he asked. ‘Would you mind if I took a look around in some of your cupboards?’

  ‘Not at all. My money is in the old teapot.’ She laughed. ‘Just save me enough for a funeral.’

  Claire smiled, and continued to talk to her as Gillard made his way into the kitchen. What he was looking for were high cupboards, well out of reach of the owner. There were three or four of them here and one in the hall. The latter he thought would be unlikely, as it would be visible from the lounge. It was the second kitchen cupboard that yielded results. A plastic carrier bag, containing a small holdall. Before touching it he put on a fresh pair of latex gloves. Gingerly he lifted it out and onto the kitchen work surface. He unzipped the bag, and saw three very heavily taped plastic bundles, which he was sure would turn out to contain cocaine. And then something else. Not what he’d expected.

  Chapter 25

  The solicitor who arrived to represent Lal was Danny Shah, the same high-profile brief present for Harry Roy’s interview. The prisoner was brought through, seated in the interview room and the formalities and introductions made for the tape. Lal did not deny who he was, and confirmed the address in Walton-on-Thames. The two detectives read him his rights and charged him with the murders of Mrs Tanvi Roy and of DC Colin Hodges, and a separate charge of the attempted murder of Mrs Roy through poison. He was separately charged with possession with intent to supply cocaine. The lawyer reminded him of the implications of anything he said. He shrugged and said he was happy to co-operate as far as the cocaine was concerned. ‘But I have never killed anyone, not Mrs Roy, not your detective friend. No one. I’m a peaceful man.’

  Gillard snorted with disagreement. ‘Peaceful? Well, for a start, you threw a knife at me front of witnesses in the kitchens at Mount Browne.’

  ‘That was self-defence.’

  Gillard shook his head in bemusement. ‘You’ve led us a merry dance. You were using the subcontractor ID card that had been issued to one Akash Begum, who had worked for Compass Catering Services. Can I ask you how you obtained that card?’

  Lal shrugged. ‘Mehmet let me have it. Akash is a friend of his. My sister got me the placement at Mount Browne.’

  ‘So you thought it was a good idea,’ Claire said, ‘to try and get your own back on the police who were investigating you?’

  ‘No, that wasn’t it at all. I was just hiding. It was Mehmet’s idea. He got it from Osama bin Laden, hiding in plain view. You know how he was caught in 2011, living in the same town as the headquarters of Pakistan’s security forces?’

  ‘We know,’ Gillard said. ‘So how long had you been working in the kitchens at Mount Browne?’

  He shrugged. ‘Four nights. The idea was just to keep my head down for a while. I wanted you off my back.’

  ‘So why the poison?’ Claire asked.

  ‘What poison?’

  For the next half an hour Lal denied every accusation put to him, except possession of the drugs found in his flat. ‘There wasn’t even enough to convict me for dealing,’ he said.

  ‘I beg to differ, Mr Lal,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Harry is going to be very disappointed in you,’ Claire said.

  He blinked angrily. ‘Bullshit. Harry trusts me, Harry has always trusted me.’

  ‘You killed his mother,’ Gillard said. ‘You created a false alibi, to convince him, more than anyone else, that you had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘You don’t have to answer,’ Shah said gently.

  Lal locked gazes with Gillard. ‘You don’t have anything on me.’

  ‘Really? We found some highly incriminating evidence with your downstairs neighbour Mrs Clark.’

  The suspect’s face tightened, and doubt showed in his eyes. Claire opened a folder and passed across a sheaf of photographs.

  ‘We found this bag concealed in a cupboard in her kitchen.’ She pointed at one picture, and then another. ‘These are two 170g bags of cocaine. Your fingerprints are all over them. And this,’ she said, pointing to a third image ‘This is Mrs Roy’s Bottega Veneta purse. Lost at the murder scene. How come you have it?’

  Lal seemed to sag under this blow.

  ‘You kept it to make it look like a mugging, but you didn’t think we’d check with the neighbours, did you?’ Gillard said. ‘But ever since I found you did your Internet search on thallium at Morag Fairburn’s house, it’s been clear to me that you have no compunction about leaving your dirty linen on other people’s doorsteps, for them to take the blame.’

  * * *

  Zayan Lal was remanded to Coldingley Prison near Woking for a week, and Gillard left him to fester with his own thoughts for two days before coming back for a fresh interview. It was a carefully planned psychological strategy to get a confession. They had allowed Harry Roy to visit Zayan on Wednesday afternoon, and turned up incognito in advance of that meeting.

  The detectives knew that nothing they could do would soften up the prisoner more than the disappointment in the eyes of his lover. From the prison’s security office the detectives watched the CCTV from the visiting room, though they could not hear what was said. Zayan was almost prostrate on the table in front of Harry, clearly beseeching him to believe his story. Harry meanwhile had his eyes closed for most of the encounter, leaning back as if he didn’t want to touch, and shaking his head in disbelief. At the end of the allotted time, Zayan held his arms out to Harry, who shrugged him off and lurched towards the exit. A custody officer had to restrain the prisoner, who was clearly calling out to his former lover.

  Gillard and Claire made sure they were there at the entrance as Harry almost staggered towards them down the long corridor from the visiting suite. He looked ashen.

  ‘How is he, Harry?’ Gillard asked.

  Harry slung them a venomous look and strode past, more faltering steps on the long and painful march from love to loss.

  Two custody officers then escorted Zayan Lal straight to a windowless interview room where the detectives were waiting for him with a duty solicitor. He fell like a sack of spuds on the seat opposite. If the objective of the strategy was to soften up their target, it had been more than successful. He was a wreck. His eyes were bloodshot, he looked like he hadn’t slept.

  ‘How are you, Zayan?’ Gillard asked. All he got in response was a shrug.

  ‘I see that Harry has been to see you,’ Claire said.

  Zayan nodded.

  ‘I thought you’d appreciate the chance to explain to him your side of the story,’ Gillard said.

  ‘I bet,’ he replied, rubbing his face wearily.

  Gillard then ran through the likely course of events, continued remand in custody and a high-profile trial followed by a conviction that, based on precedents for the murder of a policeman, was likely to be in excess of twenty-five years in a high security jail.

  The prisoner was trembling now.

  ‘Of course if you co-operate fully, and we get a guilty plea, things could go a bit easier,’ Claire said. By design, Gillard excused himself, leaving Claire to continue. She offered him a box of paper tissues, which in itself prompted some barely suppressed sobbing.

  ‘I did it for him, you understand? His whole life he’d had to hide who he really was. I wanted to free him. It was an act of liberation.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem
to see it that way.’ Claire watched the tape, slowly turning and spooling up the truth.

  ‘He doesn’t love me any more. It’s all over.’ It was almost as if he didn’t understand how it had come to this.

  ‘Well, that’s what happens when you kill someone’s mother. It’s not rocket science, Zayan.’

  * * *

  By the next day, Lal was ready to get everything off his chest. All Gillard and Claire Mulholland had to do was to steer the confession away from maudlin self-loathing and back towards the facts. The first details he was ready to give were of the events at Mount Browne’s kitchen on the day that Hodges died.

  ‘I think it was breakfast on the second morning, just before I was due to go off shift, that I heard your name.’ Lal looked at Gillard. ‘Your order was announced by the West Indian woman. It got me to thinking. So the next evening, before I came in in the minibus, I was rooting around the place I was crashing and I found this radiator cleaner gunk. It had glycol in it, so I thought I’d bring it in with me. I didn’t expect to use it—’

  ‘I doubt whether a jury would believe that,’ Claire said. ‘A man is dead, a policeman. You know how the legal system views premeditated murder, especially the murder of a cop.’