Continuing to regard DC Knight’s irritation at the speed with which her mother was pouring the tea, Kate wondered whether the best thing would be for her to end the conversation. As far as she was aware her participation in a situation like this was entirely voluntary and she could ask her guests to go at any time. But would DC Knight really leave it there? Even if there was little more she wanted to ask at this stage, Kate could well imagine her threatening to haul her into the station for a more formal interview to flex her muscles and feed whatever conceited part of her had made her so bolshie.
With everyone finally served their refreshment and DC Knight turning back towards Kate, she understood that to do anything other than to continue to meekly answer the impertinent questions would be unwise.
‘Where were we?’ Kate enquired with false keenness.
‘You were about to give me the specifics of what you heard downstairs,’ DC Knight responded dryly.
‘Yes, of course. I was in the middle of changing the bedding and thought nothing of it when I heard the front door being unlocked and opened. When Scott returns later than me, he usually calls out to find out where I am. It’s a silly gesture really because our house is hardly massive,’ she added, trying to sound melancholic – as though the thought had provoked both warmth and sorrow. ‘I wasn’t consciously listening out for it but I guess my ears were attuned to hearing it and I reacted immediately when I heard him shout instead.’
‘Shout what?’
‘It was indistinct but I could tell something was wrong.’
‘So, you climbed into the loft?’
‘No,’ Kate replied, offering a bitter peal of laughter. She had sensed the cynicism in DC Knight’s tone. ‘I ran out of the bedroom and towards the stairs. I was worried and wanted to find out what had happened to him.’
‘But?’
‘But then I heard another man’s voice; one I didn’t recognise. I panicked and was about to run back into the bedroom and then I remembered the loft hatch. I guess I was lucky to get up there before…’ Kate left the remainder of the sentence hanging, satisfied that she was now performing much better than earlier.
‘Indeed,’ DC Knight replied, standing up. ‘We won’t take any more of your time. Thanks for the tea,’ she added, turning to Kate’s mother even though she hadn’t tasted a drop.
‘Er, yeah, thanks,’ PC Ramsey mumbled, taking a final slurp from his cup.
‘Well you know where I am if you need me,’ Kate responded uncertainly, trying to disguise the relief she felt that they were finally leaving. ‘I’ll show you out.’
No further words were exchanged, and Kate closed the door a minute later with a sigh, wondering what she was meant to make of it all.
‘They seemed nice,’ her mother commented in her typically vacuous way.
‘I’m going for a lie down,’ Kate said, stomping up the stairs without even glancing in her direction.
Chapter Sixty-one
‘This is the furthest I have been outside of St. Albans whilst on police business,’ PC Ramsey commented when they were back underway.
‘Really?’ Ruby asked disinterestedly.
‘Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard of Hatfield before but I don’t think I’ve ever been here.’
‘It’s a shithole,’ Ruby commented sourly, reflecting her mood. Much as she hadn’t appreciated Kate’s mother living a good twenty-minute drive from the station, the thought of going back there to see how badly they had fucked things up didn’t fill her with excitement either. If DCI Nelson even bothered to ask her what Kate had said, he was sure to latch onto her claim that there had been multiple intruders in the house, even if it still didn’t add up.
‘Do you think you can be spared from your other duties a little longer?’ she asked after considering her misgivings a few moments more.
‘Sure, why?’ His enthusiastic replies had initially irked Ruby but then she remembered that it wasn’t so long ago she had been in Ramsey’s position. She had no idea what his aspirations were, much less cared right now, but she too would have jumped at the chance at spending some time with CID when she had been in London.
‘I want us to swing by the house on our way back into St. Albans. There’s something I need to check out that perhaps you can help me with.’
‘Happy to be of assistance in any way I can, ma’am,’ he replied, his face a complete contrast to when she had told him to go and help with the teas.
* * *
As Ruby had found in the past, pulling up at a crime scene after the initial flurry of activity was over was a somewhat surreal experience. Often, were it not for the police tape blocking off the area, there was no sign of whatever horrors had taken place there. Kate and Scott’s house was no different and Ruby could tell by the way Ramsey had immediately stopped his incessant babble that he found it eerie too.
She was about to remind him not to touch anything but remembered how offended she had been when the same had been said to her on her first day in CID. ‘We need to be careful not to disturb anything,’ she offered more diplomatically. ‘We’ll only be a minute in any case,’ she added, nodding at the lone police officer stationed there.
‘I want you to stand in the hallway whilst I go upstairs,’ she continued once they were inside, understanding that the lack of a response from Ramsey was because his eyes had immediately been drawn to the pool of blood still glistening in the hall. ‘That’s where the victim was found. He’d been hit over the head a couple of times with one of those golf clubs,’ she added, nodding to the bag in the corner.
‘Fucking brutal,’ Ramsey muttered before turning sharply to Ruby. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I er…’
‘It’s fine,’ she replied with a reassuring smile.
‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’
‘Go on,’ she replied, intrigued by Ramsey’s continued coyishness.
‘Just seeing this brings home how nasty an attack it was, and not just for him,’ he said, nodding back up the hallway. ‘In which case, why were you so hard on his wife?’
‘You were listening in from the kitchen,’ Ruby said.
‘It doesn’t really take two people to make a pot of tea,’ Ramsey replied, shrugging.
‘There’s a lot about this investigation you don’t know,’ Ruby began in an admonishing tone before thinking better of it. ‘Okay, let’s just say that there are a few things that don’t yet make sense to me. The reason why we’re here now is I hope to clear at least one of them up. Seeing as you listened in to all of our conversation, perhaps you’ll be able to work out what I’m trying to establish.’
‘Fair enough, where do you want me?’
‘Just move a little further along the hallway,’ Ruby instructed before climbing the stairs and heading into the main bedroom. ‘I want you to shout if you hear me moving.’
‘Erm, okay,’ came the uncertain reply.
Ruby slipped off her shoes and waited for a few moments. She then dashed from the bedroom towards the top of the stairs.
‘I hear you,’ Ramsey shouted back before she had barely made it onto the landing.
‘Right, let’s do this again.’ This time Ruby didn’t so much run in the manner she would expect from someone who feared their loved one had injured themselves; instead she walked calmly out.
‘Yep, that’s you.’ The call may have been a little later this time but Ramsey must have heard the same creaking of the floorboards.
‘This time I want you to be talking to yourself at normal volume the whole time.’
‘What?’
‘I need you to make noise so that whatever sound I make is masked by something else going on.’ Ruby went back into the bedroom and waited until Ramsey had established a constant monologue, which sounded like a list of everything he was planning on doing this weekend. This time she went for a movement that was somewhere in between the previous two, resisting the temptation of having her suspicions confirmed by her stomping out onto the landing.
‘No, I st
ill hear you,’ Ramsey called whilst Ruby was a few paces away from the top of the stairs.
‘Right, come upstairs then,’ she instructed him, slipping back on her shoes.
‘I know what you were doing,’ Ramsey said, grinning as he approached. ‘You don’t believe what she said about coming to check on her husband because if she did, they would have known she was here. But, then again…’
‘Just hold that thought for a moment,’ Ruby interrupted, but not unkindly. She hadn’t liked the idea of having to take a stranger with her to speak to Kate but now believed that he would prove far more helpful than Cooper would have done. ‘There’s one thing I want us to do. We’re going to swap places and I want you to stand under the loft hatch. When I give the signal, I want you to open it, climb the ladder inside and close it again.’
‘Okay, do you mind if I just familiarise myself with how the mechanism works?’
‘Be my guest,’ she replied, shrugging and heading off to her starting point, where she waited until all sounds of Ramsey’s practice runs had ceased. Even if Kate was so fleet of foot that the attackers didn’t hear her moving around upstairs, there was no mistaking the thump of the loft’s ladder as it unfolded and crashed onto the floor.
‘Go!’ she shouted clearly, forcing herself to remain where she was until she heard that tell-tale sound. Deciding not to take the stairs two at a time, she left room for her ascent to be quicker if further runs were required, but arriving on the landing to find, not only the ladder still in position, but Ramsey’s feet also sticking out of the loft, had shown Ruby enough.
‘Want me to go again?’ came the muffled offer from above.
‘Do you think you can go any quicker?’
‘Possibly, but not much,’ Ramsey conceded.
‘I wouldn’t bother then,’ Ruby replied gleefully, leaving him to extract himself from the attic in peace.
‘So, she’s lying then,’ Ramsey said as soon as he joined Ruby outside.
‘About what?’ she asked, already knowing the answer but hoping for confirmation.
‘I’m not sure really.’
‘Oh,’ Ruby responded, unable to hide the disappointment in her tone.
‘Perhaps all of it,’ he continued. ‘I thought I had an explanation for why no-one heard her coming to the top of the stairs but, if it was me, I’d have sent someone straight upstairs to check the bedrooms.’
‘Unless there was only one attacker,’ Ruby offered, playing devil’s advocate.
‘But then he would have heard her going into the loft. Even if he didn’t get up there before she made it in and closed the hatch, and that’s a big if by the way…’ Ruby smiled at this clarification. ‘If she did, then they would still know she was up there.’
‘Perhaps they were worried she was already phoning the police and decided to scarper…’ Ruby offered.
‘But then the house wouldn’t have been ransacked, would it?’
‘I’m pleased you noticed,’ Ruby responded, leading him back to the car. ‘That’s good work, PC Ramsey.’ ‘I guess knowing she’s lying is one thing, but knowing why is something else,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Ruby murmured, accepting that this was another million-dollar question.
‘I guess it’s back to Hatfield then to find out.’
‘I wish it were that simple. Not only would such a conversation be better held down at the station but we need something a little more substantial to hit her with than surely they would have heard you. But all is not lost. If we can just figure out why she’s lying, then we might be able to work backwards from there.’
‘That’s easy, ma’am,’ Ramsey responded instantly, before dropping his gaze. ‘I mean, maybe I’m not appreciating the bigger picture here, but I can really only see two possibilities. First is that she somehow knows the gang and…’
‘A little unlikely don’t you think?’ Ruby chided gently.
‘Well, yes, it is, which leaves just one other.’
‘And that is?’
‘She was the one who killed her husband and then set it up to look like intruders did it.’
Chapter Sixty-two
Much as she had just wanted to go directly to Hatfield and pull Kate in, Ruby knew she couldn’t arrive at the station with her in tow without first clearing it with Nelson. Given everything that had happened over the last couple of days she knew her best chance was to be able to speak to him face-to-face, and perhaps having Ramsey there to back up her findings would add weight to her argument. But knowing that she was doing the right thing didn’t make walking into the duty area any easier.
‘Why don’t you grab yourself a coffee or something? I’ll come and find you when I need you,’ Ruby said to PC Ramsey as she headed down the corridor in the direction of the stairs. Striding towards the same door but from the opposite direction were DCI Nelson and DC Cooper.
‘Ah, you’re back,’ Nelson commented, disappointment clear in his voice. If that wasn’t enough to unsettle Ruby, the look of satisfaction in Cooper’s face was.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, keen to find out their news before revealing hers.
‘We’ve just finished interviewing everyone,’ Nelson replied.
‘And?’
‘And what?! I don’t report to you, DC Knight, and I have matters to attend to,’ he responded. ‘If you really must know then I’m sure DC Cooper can appraise you of our progress.’
With Nelson now striding past her, she faced her partner; her raised eyebrow and hands on hips enough to ask the question. ‘Lexie is going to give up Jordan’s location,’ he declared triumphantly.
‘You mean she cut a deal,’ Ruby said flatly.
‘In a manner of speaking, yes. In return for helping us to catch the key player here, we are willing to consider a lesser charge for her.’
We? thought Ruby bitterly but deciding not to vocalise it. If Cooper wanted to directly associate himself with the wrong call on this one, then it was his look out. ‘What are we talking here?’ she asked instead, trying to remain calm.
‘A few months maybe, perhaps even a suspended sentence.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ she sighed. ‘So where is this criminal mastermind then?’
‘We’ll know in a few minutes; Nelson has gone to clear it with the DSI.’
Ruby almost regretted hearing that it wasn’t yet a done deal. If it was, she might have been able to somehow come to accept it, despite her strong feelings about Lexie. However, that glimmer of hope wouldn’t allow her to abandon what she believed to be true. ‘Are you sure about this. I mean, honestly?’
‘What do you want me to say?’ Cooper fired back instantly, adopting a defensive posture. ‘We’re looking at the bigger picture here. As things stand, the main culprit is still at large, and is still killing!’
‘Look, Cooper, I’ve just spoken to Kate and I’m not sure...’
‘Hold on!’ he interrupted forcefully. ‘Before you start on all that conspiracy bullshit again, you need to consider two things. Firstly, we asked Lexie about the murder in the flat two nights ago and do you know what she said?’
Ruby didn’t want to play Cooper’s game and just continued glowering at him.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ he continued, unperturbed. ‘Fuck all, and do you know why that was?’ He didn’t bother to pause this time. ‘Because she didn’t know the first fucking thing about it! She was going through each attack in detail and when I asked her about that one, I might have well asked her who shot JFK! And if that isn’t enough to convince you that Jordan is acting independently then consider this; who else is going around snapping people’s necks like we saw up at King Harry? I suppose Lexie did that, did she?’
Ruby continued to stare at her partner; her brain struggling to process everything he had said and the implications it had for her own version of events.
‘Listen, Ruby,’ Cooper said after a few moments, his posture relaxing in time with his tone. ‘Why don’t you go and look at what’s come up from t
he CCTV trawl? We’ve got the four of them on the same train as the guy from King Harry and then them following him up the hill from the station.’
‘But…’
‘And it would also be worth reviewing the footage from the airport. You’ll see how Jordan sets Lexie up. First, he hands her the burner phone when they arrive and gets her to book the tickets. You can then see how he creates the disturbance that has all the armed officers homing in on her and allowing him to escape. I get that this is probably the first time you’ve made a wrong call of this size and, by all means learn from it, but don’t beat yourself up about it. These things happen and it’s not as though you’ve cocked up an investigation or anything.’ His face instantly hardened. ‘But you need to let it go before people start to think that’s exactly what you’re trying to do.’
Ruby recoiled as if slapped. It was one thing to think Cooper was picking the easy route through this, especially if it was more through a lack of capability than true laziness, but now it seemed that all his soothing words were merely there to add weight to the implied threat at the end. Much as she hated to bow to such pressure, she knew there was no point arguing with him. It would only serve to confirm to him that she was on some sort of false crusade. And even if there was some way to get through to him, the person’s opinion who really mattered was in the process of finalising things with DSI Robson.
Without offering any words in response, Ruby turned and headed up to CID. Even though there was little point asking DCI Nelson if she could bring Kate in, she still had a responsibility to report back on her conversation with the victim’s wife. She would stick to the facts and Nelson could do what he liked with the information.
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