by GS Rhodes
“But no interview?”
Simon shook his head. They would need to track him down somehow. Even though a lot of the evidence within that case file points to Michael Earle being the culprit, the missing interview with Phil Jackson could be key. And then there was retired DI Dennis Wool. He certainly had a lot to answer for if he’d messed up the investigation, or missed out on a crucial part of the story.
“And anything more on Phil’s past?”
“Nothing more than what you got yesterday,” Simon said. “I’ve put it all on the evidence board. I’m not saying it will help or anything but it’s painting a picture of him.”
Kidd looked over at the board to see that Simon had already been hard at work this morning. He’d done more before 9 am than most people would do all day, and Kidd was incredibly grateful for it.
“Thanks, Simon,” Kidd said. “Keep looking, if there’s anything else in there, let me know.”
“Did you—?” Simon started but cut himself off. “I don’t mean to pry, sir.”
“Pry away,” Kidd replied.
“Did you manage to get anything out of Weaver yesterday?” he asked. “Anything worth knowing, at least?”
“Just that the DI was a prick,” Kidd replied bluntly. “Domineering, didn’t listen to anyone else’s ideas.”
“You going to speak to him?”
“If we can,” Kidd said. “I’m going to check in with Weaver about it now, actually. Do you want a coffee or anything?”
Simon Powell reached across his desk and picked up his mug, draining whatever was remaining before handing it to Kidd.
“If you wouldn’t mind, sir,” he replied with a smile. “Black with a couple of sugars.”
Kidd raised an eyebrow at the DC. “Sure thing, Powell. I’ll be right back.”
◆◆◆
“He doesn’t like it,” Weaver said, once Kidd had asked him about getting in touch with DI Wool. “He really doesn’t like it.”
“Well, we knew that was going to happen,” Kidd replied. “You all but said he wanted nothing to do with the police anymore. But we need to speak with him.”
“I know.”
“So either he comes to us, or I go to him,” Kidd said. “And believe me when I say, it’s better if he comes here because I’m a very busy man. I’m just going to be annoyed if I have to track him down.”
Weaver sighed and shook his head. “You two are going to get on like a house on fire,” he grumbled. “He’s as stubborn as they come and you, well, you’ve never met a superior officer you didn’t want to fight with.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir, I’m as docile as they come!”
“Docile like a rabid dog, Kidd,” Weaver replied, sitting back in his chair. “He doesn’t like his work being questioned, Kidd. How would you feel if somebody was doing the same thing to you?”
“Well, first of all, I’d like to know where exactly I’ve gone wrong in an investigation,” Kidd said. “If someone has found that I’ve done something wrong or totally missed something, then surely it’s in my best interests that I know about it.”
Weaver looked at Kidd carefully across the desk. Kidd could practically feel him wanting to talk about the fact that in the last six months alone he’d burst into a house where a guy was threatening people with a knife, chased a murderer down to a riverside, and nearly broken the nose of his brother-in-law. Either he thought better of it, or knew that Kidd was already aware of all of these things. While these went against protocol, there was no question that Kidd and his team solved each and every one of those cases.
“I’ll talk to him today, try and get him to come down this afternoon, if that works for you?” Weaver said.
“Perfect,” Kidd said.
“Tread carefully,” he said. “DI Wool probably hasn’t changed all that much in the past eighteen years. If anything, time will have made him even grumpier.”
“Something you relate to, sir?”
“You’re pushing your luck now, Kidd,” he replied. “Anything else?”
“No, sir,” Kidd said. And without another word he left the office and started back towards the Incident Room, taking a quick detour to grab some coffee for himself and DC Powell.
The rest of the team had arrived in the time it had taken him to talk to Weaver and come back, the whole place already humming with activity. Four pairs of eyes turned to him the second he walked in the door. It made Kidd feel nervous.
“What?” he asked the room.
“Had a phone call from Michael Earle’s mum,” Zoe said. “He’s back at his flat. You ready to go and talk to him?”
Kidd looked down at the cup of coffee. Much as he would have liked to take a seat and drink his coffee before he started interviewing potential ex-murderers, he would just have to enjoy it in the car on the way there, praying he didn’t spill it on his nice clean shirt.
“Let’s go,” he said, handing Powell his coffee. “Be careful not to spill either of them on the way there, eh, Si?” he added with a wink.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Michael’s flat was exactly as Campbell and Ravel had described it the day before. It wasn’t bad, not by any stretch. It was in a pretty decent area, not a million miles from Twickenham High Street and just a little way from the train station. It also wasn’t too far from Holly’s parents' house, something that wasn’t lost on Kidd.
He’d spent time thinking about Michael on the way there, the kind of things he wanted to ask. He was struggling to figure out where he stood on it all. Both the victim’s parents and the suspect’s parents had pointed out things that were missing from the case. As far as he could tell, Holly’s parents wanted Phil to suffer just as much as Michael had, but for Michael’s mother, she didn’t believe that he had done it at all.
Kidd didn’t expect her to, parents of killers often struggled to put those two things together, but it still rang an alarm bell in Kidd’s head.
Simon had stayed pretty quiet on the way to the property. Either he was focussed on the case, or he was focussed on not spilling either one of the cups of coffee as Kidd drove. His driving was legendary within their team, though definitely not for the right reasons. There was a reason that Kidd often walked everywhere, or had Sanchez drive when they were together.
Kidd took his coffee and took a quick sip, the perfect temperature. He downed it before stepping out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Powell followed suit.
“What do you think?” Kidd asked him.
“What’s that?”
“What do you think about Michael Earle?” he reiterated. He felt suddenly determined to be the polar opposite of DI Wool. Kidd couldn’t settle on how exactly he was feeling about it. Simon had studied the case file more than the rest of them, maybe he would have a more concrete opinion.
“I don’t think he did it,” Simon said bluntly.
Kidd’s nodded. “Okay,” he said. “And why’s that?”
Simon shook his head. “The case file feels… I don’t know, it feels incomplete to me. The constant mentions of Phil Jackson, he honestly comes up in every single person's statement and it’s incredible he was never spoken to. Or if he was, it’s been scrubbed from any record.”
“Interesting.”
“That’s what I thought,” Simon said. “And then there’s everything that’s said about Michael.”
“And what’s that?”
“That he’s such a nice guy,” he replied. “Philippa said it, some of Holly’s other friends who were the last to see her, they all talk about what a great couple they were, how he would never hurt a fly.”
“Be that as it may, you can’t take that as gospel,” Kidd replied. “You never really know what’s going on with a couple behind closed doors.”
“Speaking from experience, boss?” Simon asked, a cheeky, Owen Campbell-esque smirk on his face.
Kidd raised an eyebrow. The smirk vanished. “Let’s get inside and talk to the guy, shall we?”
They headed towards the house. As they got closer, Kidd could hear raised voices inside. It was a man’s voice, possibly Michael’s, possibly someone else. But there was shouting.
“What have you gotten yourself into this time?” The voice was booming, but sounded tired, like he’d been yelling for some time. Kidd assumed it was a “he” from the depth of the voice, but he’d been wrong before. “You can’t just carry on like this. You’ll end up back in prison if you’re not careful.”
“I don’t need to be careful!”
“Like hell, you don’t need to be careful!”
Kidd rang the doorbell. Immediately the shouting stopped. There was shuffling about inside. Kidd could see figures behind the glass moving, two burly figures who could barely fit into the corridor at the same time.
The door opened and a man that Kidd immediately recognised as Michael Earle stood before them. He was tall, broad-shouldered, a larger man than he was in the photo from eighteen years ago. His stomach was a little rounder, his face a little fuller, and his hair thinner and flecked with grey rather than the jet black it had been in his mugshot.
“Not interrupting anything, am I?” Kidd asked.
Michael frowned, his gaze flicking behind him to a slightly shorter man standing down the corridor. If you aged Michael another twenty years or so, and shrunk him by a couple of inches, you would have the other man. Kidd could only assume that it was Michael’s father, Brian Earle.
“I’m Detective Inspector Benjamin Kidd, this is Detective Constable Simon Powell,” he said. “We’re here to have a little chat with Michael Earle. Which is you, of course, sir, am I right?”
The man that Kidd knew to be Michael nodded slowly. “Was just chatting with my dad,” he said. “He came over to…to drop something off.”
Kidd raised an eyebrow. So we’re just going to ignore the fact that he was reading you the riot act not even thirty seconds ago, alright then, he thought.
“Great,” Kidd said. “This shouldn’t take very long. Do you mind if we come in?”
Michael blinked. They really had caught him off guard. His mum had obviously waited until his dad had gone out before calling the station. She really did believe he was an innocent man. Kidd would likely be the judge of that.
“I’m gonna go,” Michael’s dad said. “Lovely to meet the both of you, my wife will be wondering where I am.”
“Thank you, Mr Earle,” Kidd said. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon.”
Mr Earle shuffled down the corridor, squeezing past Michael, then Kidd, then Simon to walk out of the house and down the road back to his own home. Had he come over here to give Michael a warning? And if so, what was he warning him about? Maybe they would need to have another quiet word with Michael’s parents after all.
“It’s a tight squeeze, but do you want to come through to the kitchen?” Michael asked, gesturing down towards the end of the corridor. He started away from them, Powell taking it upon himself to close the door and bathe the corridor in darkness once again.
They followed Michael, past a well-kept living room and shoebox sized bathroom to the kitchen, taking a seat at the small dining table that was pressed up against the wall. Michael wasn’t kidding when he said it was a tight squeeze. He stood awkwardly, leaning against the counter, looking between the two of them, waiting for something to happen. He jumped suddenly.
“Uh, can I get either one of you something to drink?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Michael,” Kidd said. “Do you want to sit?”
There was one chair left at the table, one that was sandwiched pretty close to the wall. It didn’t look like a big enough space for Michael to fit in, so Powell and Kidd moved back a little to make room. Sheepishly, the man joined them, rounding his shoulders as he sat, his gaze fixed firmly on the tabletop.
“We wanted to talk to you a little bit about what happened with Holly Grant,” Kidd started.
“I thought you might,” Michael grumbled. “That’s what my dad was here talking about. He thinks I’ve gotten myself into trouble again.”
“And have you?” Kidd asked.
“No,” Michael said quickly, maybe a little too quickly. “I…I didn’t…” He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “Whatever you want to ask me, I am happy to answer. It was a long time ago, though, I don’t know how well I’ll remember.”
“That’s okay,” Kidd said. “It’s not a test we’re just looking into some things.”
“Dad was saying that you went to see my mum yesterday,” he said.
“That’s true.”
“She was pretty rattled after you left,” he said. “I don’t like that.”
“What?”
“I don’t like you sniffing around again,” he said. “It brings back some pretty bad memories for her. Eighteen years ago was a terrible time for her and you coming around dredging it all up again—”
“We wouldn’t do it unless we had to,” Kidd interrupted. “I take it she told you why we’re sniffing around, as you put it.”
“Dad mentioned something about it, yeah,” Michael replied.
Kidd couldn’t shake how strange it was to be talking to him. He looked like a fully grown man, bulky, grey-haired, wrinkles covering his face, but the way he spoke was like he hadn’t quite mentally filled out his body yet. There was a huge disconnect that Kidd could feel throwing him off.
“So, you know that there’s a connection to your case to one we’re working on now,” Kidd said. Michael nodded. He wasn’t looking at Kidd again, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the tabletop. It was starting to grate on him. “The body parts belonged to Philippa Kay, did you know that?”
Michael looked up sharply, his eyes wide. He was surprised. It seemed genuine, at least from what Kidd could see. The man looked from Kidd to Powell and back again, as if he was waiting for them to say that they were just kidding, that this whole visit was just a prank.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Kidd replied. “We had a DNA match. You knew Philippa, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “She was one of Hol’s best friends. They used to hang out together all the time.”
“That’s what her statement said,” Powell chimed in. “Had some nice things to say about you, it turns out.”
A smile spread across Michael’s face. “That’s nice,” he replied. “I… I always liked her.” There were tears filling his eyes, a sort of choking sound as he tried to get the words out. “So she’s… Philippa is…?”
“Yes,” Kidd replied. He couldn’t say for certain, he hadn’t seen the rest of the body, but it was pretty likely that Philippa Kay was long dead. “I didn’t mean to spring it on you like that.”
“Yes you did,” Michael replied, bitterness dripping from every word. “You were hoping that was going to catch me out or something, you’re just like that officer who spoke to me eighteen years ago, asking me leading questions, trying to get me to admit to something that I didn’t do.”
“Then why did you plead guilty?” Powell asked. “You pleaded guilty in the trial, and that’s what sent you down for it in the end.”
“It was…it was what Mr Harkey told me to do,” Michael replied, his voice quaking a little. “He said that was the only way that I’d get to have any sort of life when all of this was over. They’d give me less of a sentence if they thought I was guilty too.”
“What did he say to you, Michael?”
“He said I wouldn’t go down for it, not in the end,” Michael said with a dark laugh. “He thought they didn’t have enough evidence, that what he had was stronger than all of that. But he was wrong. Obviously.”
“And how do you feel about Oscar Harkey?” Kidd asked.
Michael shrugged. “He did his job as best he could, I guess,” Michael mumbled. “Would have been nice if he’d have done it a bit better.”
“I want you to tell me your side of the story, Michael,” Kidd said. “All of it, whatever it is that yo
u can remember. I’m going to get to the bottom of this if I can.”
Michael looked surprised, once again looking between the two officers like they were trying to catch him out. But this was no trick. Kidd had all but made his decision about Michael before he even started his story. The only thing that was troubling him was who exactly had killed Holly Grant. And why were they so intent on putting Michael in the frame for it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Kidd listened to Michael’s story from start to finish. He told them about how much he had loved Holly, about all they’d been through as a couple, how he’d never wanted to hurt her. He’d been away the night that everything had happened, he didn’t know that she was missing until it was reported and they all came looking for him. When the body turned up, all the severed body parts dumped near Michael’s house, the rest of the body dumped by the river to try and hide it, his DNA was all over it. His clothes were the ones covered in blood, and they were in his closet. All the evidence pointed to him, but up until Oscar Harkey told him to plead guilty, Michael had maintained his innocence.
The only person he’d been able to turn to in all of it was Phil, his best friend in the whole world. But he’d barely seen him since he got out of prison. Apparently, he wasn’t too keen on being seen around town with someone who was convicted of something like that. Michael couldn’t blame him, but Kidd could see that it didn’t make it hurt any less.
The strange thing was that Michael never placed blame on Phil, never mentioned that he wasn’t interviewed. Maybe he didn’t know. Kidd didn’t want to be the one to tell him that. He’d likely heard enough of it from his mother.
They talked for a little while longer, Kidd thanking him for everything that he’d told them, for taking the time to tell his side of the story. If anything, Michael looked relieved to have finally been able to get it all off his chest. Kidd wondered when the last time was that someone asked him what really happened. Or if everyone just assumed they knew his story. That must have been a pretty difficult thing for Michael to be walking around with for all of these years.