He felt quite emotional as he turned back to the table. ‘Right, shut up you lot, and listen. You’re a brilliant team, and I don’t tell you often enough how great you are, but thank you for the work you’ve done today. Go to the pub and have a drink. You too, Paula. Oh, and someone give Sam a call, he should be in on this. Unless he’s at the gym, of course…’
They laughed.
‘You never know,’ he said, ‘it could be the making of him. I can’t go with you, though, got to interview Nathan Solomon and probably let him go again, but,’ he reached into his wallet and brought out a twenty, ‘get the first round in with this. If any of you are left standing in an hour or so, Sally and I will join you.’
He grinned as Lizzie pocketed the note faster than Bill Larcombe could reach it. ‘Who would have thought that bonkers Edith Pollard was right? Her supplier of dead and splattered creatures was Brian Stewart.’ He gave Sally a salute. ‘I bow yet again, to your superior people powers, Sergeant Ellis.’
Sally saluted him back. ‘Thank you kindly, sir. I don’t suppose there’s any way we can hang onto Paula even though we’ve cracked Boggies, is there?’
‘I’ll speak to DCS Oliver in the morning, promise. Now, you lot, get out. Lock everything up properly and we’ll make sense of it all in the morning. I hope you’ve packed your late-night passes.’
He took Sally into his office, eyes shining. ‘I can’t believe it; we have names.’ He perched against his desk. ‘I’m desperate to get started on their trail, but–’
‘D’you want me to interview Solomon? I’m level three trained now, and you could get straight onto the other stuff.’
Dan was tempted, but it didn’t feel right to dump the interview on her. ‘No, I want to be in there, too. You never know, he may give up the manufacturer or the place he does it without too much of a fight.’
‘I like an optimist, Dan,’ said Sally, ‘but he’d probably chew his own toes off rather than dob in Moss Garrett. I probably would, too,’ she added.
‘Well, let’s see what he can tell us. Is his mother sorted out?’
‘They’ve put her in a care home for a couple of days. Doc says she hasn’t been checked out for years.’
* * *
Nathan Solomon looked young and frightened and close to tears. Sally brought through four cups of instant coffee and placed them on the table. Dan eyed the coffee, and decided that he needed the caffeine, whatever the taste. He slid a cup towards Solomon, and a cup towards the duty solicitor, who took it gratefully.
‘I reckon you could do with this,’ he said to Solomon. ‘I certainly could.’ Dan took a tentative sip. “Hot and wet” was the best description he could come up with. “Thin” was the other one.
Sally took the other chair and plonked herself into it with a sigh. ‘I don’t know about you, Mr Solomon, but I’m after getting home to see my littl’uns before they go to bed, rather than spending hours word-fencing with you.’ She smiled pleasantly at Paul Fowles, the duty solicitor, and activated the video recorder. ‘Could you identify yourselves for the record, please?’ she asked.
Formalities completed, Dan sat back in his chair and allowed Sally to lead the questioning. He was after getting to the pub for a pint before the others all staggered home. Their earlier success took the edge off his disappointment at finding the Solomon’s house clean, but a confession would make his week.
‘Mr Solomon, would it be alright if I called you Nathan?’ asked Sally.
Solomon nodded.
‘Great, thanks. So, Nathan, we found four jars containing chemicals in your garden shed. In fact, I observed you putting two of them in your backpack at work, and transferring them to your shed at approximately five-twenty this evening. Could you explain what those chemicals are for?’
Solomon stared at the table. He picked up the coffee and gulped it down scalding hot. Then he put his damaged hand in his lap, and twisted it over and over the other one. He bit his lip and glanced at the grey-haired man taking notes next to him. ‘I can’t say anything,’ he said to Paul Fowles. ‘I can’t.’
The solicitor leaned towards him. ‘You should answer any questions that will help the police to understand that you didn’t make those drugs. These are serious charges, Mr Solomon. I will intervene if I think the questions are unnecessary.’ He sat back, notepad ready.
Solomon shook his head and dropped his chin onto his chest.
‘Nothing?’ Sally eyed him keenly. ‘Well, I can tell you that they are ingredients in making a drug that has caused the death of a fifteen-year-old by the name of Ryan Carr, and given another lad permanent liver damage. Your apparent lack of ability to handle volatile compounds, despite you having a science degree, caused a child to die, Mr Solomon. Okay with that, are we?’
‘I didn’t make anything. It wasn’t me.’ Panic suffused Solomon’s face. His eyes flashed between the police officers. ‘You have to believe me. I just had to get the stuff and… and pass it on.’
‘Did you?’ Sally smiled. ‘I’m sure that will go down a lot better with a jury. Right, to avoid you going down for years for attempted murder, manslaughter, and drug charges, perhaps you’d better tell us who you’ve been stealing the chemicals for?’ Sally sat back and waited.
Dan sipped his coffee and stared at Solomon over the rim of the cup. He was in a bad way. He could see the hands scratching and twisting. At least three of his fingers looked misshapen. What could he have been doing to break so many fingers, and have them set so badly?
‘Nathan,’ he said, ‘we’d really like to get you back to your mum; we know she relies on you. You don’t look like a murderer to me, so why don’t you tell us what we need to know, and we can bail you tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow?’ Panic shortened his breath. ‘I can’t stay here overnight. My mother, she’s not well…’ Solomon pushed his chair back against the wall. ‘I need to get to her.’ He stood and looked at the door. ‘Please, please let me go.’
Dan stood, too. ‘You need to sit down, Nathan. We can’t let you go anywhere until you’ve told us what you know.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Sally, ‘Social services have taken your mother into respite care for a couple of nights. Willow House in Heavitree. She’ll be fine.’
‘Respite care?’ Solomon stared at her and slumped back down.
‘Don’t tell me you look after your mother completely on your own?’
‘Have done ever since dad disappeared.’ He took a breath. ‘That’s what set her mental illness off. She threw herself off the high wall at Rougement Gardens when he went. Broke her back. I’ve looked after her ever since.’
Dan asked, ‘Was this when you were at university?’
‘Yeah, I couldn’t do the work and look after her. Messed up my degree.’ He looked up at Dan then, horror on his face. ‘My job. I’m going to lose my job, aren’t I? Shit, shit, shit. What am I going to do? How can I look after mum? I can’t deal with this.’ He covered his face with his gnarled hands and wept.
Dan sent Sally off to find tissues and stopped the recording for a break, leaving Fowles and Solomon in the room. He felt sorry for the bloke, having such a crap home life, but he was desperate for him to give up Moss Garrett, and even more desperate to find out who the manufacturer was. And where they made it. Frustrated, he was chewing the skin around his fingernail and staring through the one-way glass when Sally returned with a toilet roll.
‘No tissues left, again. I don’t know what they do with them. Must send a memo: stop making people cry. Or: buy your own bloody tissues.’ She hugged the roll to her chest and watched Solomon trying to get back some control. Fowles was speaking to him, and Solomon was nodding.
‘What d’you reckon, boss?’
‘He knows the full story, I can feel it, but he’s terrified of Moss Garrett and I totally get that. Did you know they were at school together? Right from being little kids when Solomon’s family came over from the old Yugoslavia.’
‘No, haven’t had time to rea
d the file, yet. So, he was a tubby little foreign kid with poor English and of all the kids in his school, Moss Garrett took him under his wing?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Wow, he must really have hacked someone off in a past lifetime to get karma that bad.’
‘Yup, and if that relationship is still strong, as it clearly is, that poor sod is never going to give Garrett up to us. Who’s he more scared of?’
‘Right. So what do we do?’
‘I’m very tempted to offer him a deal. If he agrees to help us nail Garrett, we will give him and his mother a fresh start out of county somewhere.’
Sally smiled at him. ‘You big softie. We could just go and verbally batter it out of him, of course.’
Dan smiled back. ‘I don’t want to do that. I have a strong feeling that Nathan Solomon is still being used by Garrett and I’d like to get the evidence to put Garrett inside for a long time. But there’s no way the chief super is going to agree to a witness protection scheme and relocation on hearsay, so Solomon would have to come clean and help us to catch Garrett, and whoever is making the drugs.’
‘That’s a hard sell. He could have been bullied over what, twenty years? That’s a huge barrier to break down.’
‘True. But let’s give it one more little push, shall we?’
In the interview room the cooler evening air seeped in through a vent in the corner, and only the smell of Solomon’s sweat lingered. Dan stacked the empty cups and stood next to the table. ‘You know, if you help us, I may be able to help you and your mum, and maybe even save your job.’ He saw the spark in Solomon’s eyes. ‘But, you have to co-operate fully for me to get permission to do that. You know what that means don’t you?’ He let the moment of silence grow. ‘It means you have to give us Moss Garrett, Nathan.’
Solomon’s face blanched. He threw his hands up in front of his head as if fending off an attack. ‘You know. You already know. You know it all, don’t you? Bastards, messing with my head.’ He scraped his hands down his cheeks, eyes darting around the room. ‘No. No. What can I do? What can I do? He’ll kill me.’ He grabbed Paul Fowles’ sleeve and shook it. ‘Help me. Please help me.’
‘Was that entirely necessary, Inspector?’ Fowles said, and peeled Solomon’s hand away from his suit jacket. ‘Mr Solomon, calm down. You’re perfectly safe here.’ He raised his voice to penetrate the whine coming from his client. ‘Nathan, listen to me. You’re safe here. Stop now. Let’s see what we can sort out, alright?’
Solomon stopped the high-pitched keening that came from lips parted in a grimace of such pain that Dan felt terrible at what he’d unleashed. He’d had no idea that the mention of Garrett’s name would cause so much terror. His gut feeling about Garrett was right, yet again. Pity he didn’t listen to it more often. He sat down.
‘It’s okay, Nathan.’ Sally pushed the toilet roll towards Solomon. ‘Take a few deep breaths, love.’
‘Nathan, I am so sorry,’ Dan said. ‘I really didn’t mean to upset you like that.’ He waited until Solomon had taken several breaths, blown his nose, and looked relatively calm. ‘We’ve been watching Garrett for some time. We know he’s the dealer. I didn’t realise you were so… I didn’t realise that you knew him so well.’
Solomon’s shoulders heaved once more. ‘Well? Hah! You have no idea, No idea, do you? I’ll tell you then. Yeah, I’ll tell you alright. How well does Moss Garrett know me? He rapes me. That’s how well.’ Solomon clawed at his own mouth, but now he was talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. He held up his damaged hand. ‘He did this to me when I was just a kid. Just a kid.
‘Do I know him well?’ He laughed through tears and choking sobs, ‘Yeah, I know him well.’ He swivelled round in his chair so he was facing away from them, and cried.
‘Oh God, Nathan.’ Sally leapt from her chair and crouched next to Solomon, cradling his shoulders. She looked back at Dan, tears in her eyes.
Paul Fowles said, ‘I’d like a few minutes alone with my client, if you don’t mind.’
‘I think that’s enough for tonight anyway,’ said Dan. ‘I’m so sorry we opened that painful box, Nathan, but maybe it is time you let someone else deal with Garrett, eh? Put an end to all this?’
He watched as Sally unrolled a wodge of toilet roll and pressed it into Solomon’s shaking hand. ‘We have the power to keep you here for up to twenty-four, or even thirty-six hours before we charge you, and you’ll definitely stay here tonight. Please, when you feel calmer, think about helping us. After all, you have your mother to think about, as well as yourself. Help us nail Garrett, Nathan.’
Fowles tutted at Dan and gave him another glare. ‘Emotional blackmail, now, is it?’ he muttered.
Dan ignored him. ‘I’m going to get Sergeant White to take you down to the cells for the night once you’ve finished with Mr Fowles. He’ll look after you. We’ll be back in the morning.’ He picked up the empty coffee cups and opened the door.
Sally followed him out and closed the door quietly behind her. ‘Good work, boss,’ she said, sniffling, ‘I suppose. Poor bugger, though, you must feel awful putting him through that.’
‘Alright, don’t put the boot in. I wasn’t to know he’d go off like that, was I?’
‘Well, you could see he was in a state at the mention of Garrett’s name. It had to be some kind of abuse.’
‘Yeah, I suppose I was insensitive.’
‘But successful, I guess. I think he’ll talk now that he’s got that off his chest. He’s got his mum to look after. You know, I’ve never seen anyone react like that before. It’s awful, isn’t it?’ She looked in through the window. ‘He’s in a right state.’
‘Yeah, makes me feel really proud to have made a grown man weep in terror. We have to nail Garrett, Sally, he mustn’t get away with this. A sex abuser. Why am I not surprised?’
‘Can you imagine what Moss Garrett’s like to live with? Steroids make you mad as a box of frogs, anyway, and we know he’s got a real temper. I wonder how his mother copes with him? And why has no-one else complained about him?’ She set off towards the front desk to book Solomon in for the night.
Dan walked with her, depositing the cups in the bin. ‘I don’t think he does it to anyone else. He’s got whatever he needs in Solomon. Oh, yes, he’s the key, is our Mr Solomon. The key to solving the whole case.’
‘Yeah, well don’t break him in the lock, is all I can say. I’ll get the psychiatrist in to see him. He’ll need long-term intervention.’
‘We’ll worry about that tomorrow. Drink?’
‘You know, Dan,’ she said, ‘I think I’ll go home to my other half and wake the girls up for a cuddle, if it’s alright with you?’
‘It’s fine. Go on home. Me, I’m gasping for a pint.’ He waved her through the door to the front desk, and headed off to the pub. He hoped her reading of Solomon was correct. And if he wasn’t manufacturing the drugs, who the hell was?
36
The morning briefing saw the whole team assembled in swift order. Dan surveyed their expectant faces and gave a faint smile. Adam Foster leapt up and found DCS Oliver a chair which earned him a nod of thanks. Even Sally had managed to get there on time, despite the trauma of getting her twins ready and negotiating morning traffic.
Dan waited for the chatter to subside. ‘Morning all,’ he said. ‘This is a day we’ve been hoping for.’ He indicated the whiteboard, now covered with names and dates. ‘Two weeks ago, we had nothing on our bog bodies, and I wasn’t expecting that to alter, to be honest. Today, we have the names of our two murder victims, and a real chance of finding out who murdered them and why. Well done, everyone.’
DCS Oliver spoke, ‘Well done, indeed. Excellent, thorough work.’
‘Thanks. Ma’am,’ said Dan. ‘There are a few things I’d like to ask, while we have you here. Can we keep the names from the press for at least a few days? I don’t want to alert the killers, if they’re local, to the fact that we know who the Boggies are.’
He nodded towards the flowerpot me
n and Paula Tippett. ‘When the team start to pick their lives apart, they may well uncover the likely suspects, and we can then give them something worth having. Is that okay?’
‘It’ll do. The heat has gone out of the story anyway. It hasn’t made the news for the past week, and I’m not planning any kind of press conference soon, so I say that’s fine, as long as no-one lets anything slip.’
Sally Ellis raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think that will be a problem, ma’am. We’re not exactly friends with our local press in this team, although I know we should be. I see Lisa Middleton’s gingery face and my blood boils.’ She smiled at her team. ‘No, we can keep a secret if we have to.’
‘Right, what have we got?’ Dan nodded at Bill Larcombe, who stood next to the whiteboard and put on his glasses. He held a clipboard in front of him at arm’s length. ‘Brian and Ailish Stewart came to the UK in 1992 from New Zealand. We have their entry dates. But, once they got here, they never applied for citizenship, and never signed on for benefits. They overstayed their visas. In fact, they could be almost impossible to trace, so that’s what we will be doing today. Where did they live, how did they survive? We know Brian Stewart supplied dead animals for taxidermy, so we can assume they lived in the Devon area, and were probably here when they were murdered.’ He nodded at Ben Bennett, who rose and stood next to him.
‘In this bag,’ said Bennett, waving a small evidence bag, ‘there are strands of hay and sacking. These were found with the bodies, in the burial site, so we can assume they arrived there at the same time. They indicate that the pair may have lived on a farm or in the countryside around Exeter.’
‘Which is not exactly helpful,’ interrupted Oliver, ‘as there’s a hell of a lot of farmland in Devon.’
‘Ah, but ma’am, begging your pardon, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Bennett, beaming at her. ‘If they didn’t arrange work permits, visas, etcetera, then a farm is a good place to work. They would have been paid cash-in-hand, probably lived on site, and they would have been part of a small community. No,’ he said, pursing his lips, ‘their very avoidance of the official channels may help us to locate them, rather than hinder us.’
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