by Iain Cameron
He knocked on the door and held a hand up to stop Walters speaking. He was listening for the movement of an occupant or the grunts and whispers of their missing woman. He heard nothing and knocked again. Nothing.
‘Let’s take a look around the back.’
‘Did you notice the guy across the road gawping at us?’
‘Is he? It’s good to know we have a local nosey parker. Could prove useful.’
‘Not if he calls the station.’
‘He probably thinks we’re from the council and fearful of having his Community Charge increased, he’s trying to keep himself hidden.’
The small gate opened without being forced and Henderson, followed by Walters, walked around to the back of the house. It was a long, narrow garden with a rotary dryer, shed and a vegetable plot at the far end. Henderson tried the handle on the back door but it didn’t budge. He looked through the window but saw little of interest except the detritus of a rushed breakfast and a householder who didn’t believe much in tidying up.
He headed for the shed where Walters was trying to peer inside through the dirty window. The door was locked but one he could open without too much trouble.
A few minutes later, Walters poked her head inside.
‘See anything interesting?’ she asked
‘Nope, a few bits of gardening gear but no boxes or places to hide anything.’
‘Nothing much out there either.’
They both headed outside, Walters in the direction of the car and Henderson towards the vegetable plot at the rear of the garden.
‘Look at this, Carol. Notice anything?’
She walked up the path towards him. ‘Yes, I thought it looked tidy.’
‘It’s more than that. This ground has recently been dug over.’
‘So? Don’t serious gardeners dig their plots in the winter? Add some compost and get the ground ready for planting in the spring or something.’
‘Very good, Carol, for a flat-dweller. They do, not often in the frost-heavy months like we’ve had recently, but Christine Sutherland doesn’t strike me as a keen gardener. You?’
‘No, but as you say, it takes all sorts.’
‘Can I help you?’
Henderson looked over in the direction of the voice. A woman with curly grey hair and wearing a thick body warmer glared back at them from across a dividing hedge.
Henderson walked towards her and fished out his ID. ‘Police. There’s been a number of thefts from garden sheds in the area, we’re checking one or two just to be on the safe side.’
‘I see. Well ours is fine. My Harry fitted a new lock only two weeks ago.’
‘Well done, madam. Can you tell me who lives here?’ he said, jerking a thumb towards Christine Sutherland’s house. ‘It’s a very neat garden.’
‘A single woman lives there. It’s rented, of course. Her name is Christine Sutherland but we don’t see her often and if we do, she doesn’t talk to the likes of us. A bit stuck-up, if you know what I mean.’
Henderson nodded.
‘She must get someone in to do it, the garden I mean, but I don’t know when. I never see anyone out there. Mind you, if we drink a glass or two of wine over lunch, me and him will have snooze beside the fire,’ she said with a smile.
‘Thank you very much for your assistance, madam,’ Henderson said, not wishing to hear another anecdote from the annals of the retired in Steyning. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
‘But you didn’t check my shed. My husband, Harry, will be most upset.’
‘We will do so when we come by next time, don’t you worry. Goodbye.’
‘You nearly put your foot in it there,’ Walters said as they walked back towards the car.
‘How?’
‘You were so close to being roped in to doing an inspection on that woman’s shed and she looks the sort who would call on all her neighbours to join in.’
‘Now wouldn’t that be a good story to tell in the canteen,’ he replied as he unlocked the car. ‘Get in.’
He pulled out of the parking space and had only travelled about ten metres when he noticed the road ahead was blocked. The automated arm on a slow-moving refuse lorry reached over and picked up the tall bins lining the pavements as if they weighed nothing, and emptied them into its cavernous belly. It did this every five metres or so along the road. He couldn’t hope to overtake, as the road on the other side was full of parked cars, and fascinating as it was to watch this mechanical monster, he didn’t have the patience to watch it all the way to the outskirts of the village.
While waiting, he programmed the satnav to take them back to Lewes before executing a U-turn. It felt as if they were driving in the wrong direction but he had little choice until the system re-calculated another route back to Lewes, hopefully before they reached a critical road junction.
‘I know this area,’ Walters said, ‘not far from here we’ll see a turn-off for the A283.’
‘The road we took coming here?’
‘Yep. We’ll be joining it further back but it’ll still take us back to the Shoreham by-pass.’
‘Good. Who needs a satnav?’ Henderson said, as the said system sprang into life and indicated the same route as suggested by the sergeant.
They were passing a line of parked cars when Walters shouted, ‘Stop the car! Look over there!’
‘What is it?’
‘Pull into the side now!’
Henderson slowed and on spotting a gap further ahead, eased the car into the space.
‘Back there,’ Walters said, ‘the maroon Fiesta. I think it’s Cindy Summer’s car!’
THIRTY-FOUR
‘Interview timed at 18:32. Please state your name and occupation for the tape,’ Walters said to the woman sitting across from her at the interview table.
‘My name is Christine Sutherland. I am the Financial Director of Quinlan Fine Foods in Brighton.’
‘Also present is Detective Inspector Angus Henderson,’ he said.
‘Detective Sergeant Walters,’ she said.
‘Good,’ Henderson said, ‘formalities complete. Now, as I said earlier Ms Sutherland, you’re here voluntarily and are free to leave at any time, but first I’d like to ask you a few questions. Does that sound ok to you?’
‘Fine.’
Christine Sutherland held him confidently in her gaze before looking down at her hands. She was a good-looking woman with shoulder-length dark hair, deep green eyes and prominent cheek bones. Aged thirty-one according to details supplied by her employer, a qualified Management Accountant with a curvy figure that could only be described as voluptuous. Brains as well as looks; a heady combination. Not for the first time did he wonder what power and charisma Marc Emerson had once possessed to attract a bevy of beauties towards him, from a model ex-wife to Lily Barton, and now this enigmatic and attractive woman in front of him.
‘Now Ms Sutherland–’
‘Call me Christine.’
‘Christine, I’m leading the team investigating the murder of Marc Emerson.’
‘I thought you already had someone for this. Wasn’t the man shot in Brighton, that rat Guy Barton, responsible?'
‘Why do you call him a rat? Did you know him?’
‘I didn’t know him but Marc did and he didn’t like him much.’
‘You’re right. He was one of our leading suspects, but with him dead it might prove difficult to build a case against him. However, there are still a number of loose ends we’d like to clear up.’
‘Such as?’
‘I’ll get to them in time. Tell me about your relationship with Marc.’
‘I told her this before,’ she said, nodding at Walters.
‘I know you did and I’ve read the interview notes but I want you to tell me again.’
She sighed. ‘We were going out, on and off, for about five months.’
‘Why on and off?’
‘Oh sometimes he would finish with me after an argument, or I would do the same to him.’
‘It sounds like you had quite a volatile relationship.’
For a moment she looked flustered. Walters had picked this point up in the first interview. Marc didn’t often finish with her, according to other people in the Finance department, it was temperamental Sutherland doing the dirty on him and regretting it the next day. From sitting in the office slowly tearing his cards and notes into shreds and sending them back to him in an envelope, to having a blazing row in the company car park, viewed by all in the offices behind them.
‘No, I wouldn’t call it volatile. We behaved no different from anyone else I know. We had our ups and downs for sure, but who doesn’t?’
‘How did you manage your relationship in the office?’ Walters asked. ‘Did you try to keep it secret?’
‘We did at the start but Lewes is a small town and we were soon spotted. It didn’t give us much of a problem as Marc was out on the road for long periods on sales calls, and due to the senior position I hold in the company, staff wouldn’t dare say anything while I’m around.’
‘Was there much?’
‘I’m sure there was. Marc is, was, a much sought after catch, especially working in a business dominated predominantly by women. A lot of jealousy and bitching goes on but when he could have his pick of all the women, he chose me.’
‘On the night Marc was killed, you were at a hotel in East Grinstead attending a seminar hosted by your accountancy institute.’
‘Yes, the Effingham Park Hotel.’
‘What was it about?’
‘What?’
‘The seminar. What was it about?’
‘You’re interested in accountancy? My, my whatever next? Let me think. The subject was Time Management.’
‘Which is what?’
‘How to better utilise your time, how to prioritise and delegate; those sorts of things.’
‘Do you pay for these seminars?’
‘Some of them are free but this one required payment.’
‘What’s the format for the meeting?’
Henderson knew this as Walters had called Sutherland’s accountancy institute and talked to the person responsible for running training seminars, but he wanted to hear it from her.
‘We gather in the foyer and have some chit-chat for ten, fifteen minutes, and then go into the meeting room to listen to the speaker. At the end there’s questions and after that, drinks and a chance to network. It’s the only reason I go, to network and–’
‘Did you meet anyone you know there?’
‘No. Even though, I’ve lived in Sussex for less than a year, so I don’t know many other accountants.’
‘If you went there to network, surely someone could vouch for your presence there?’
‘You can see I was there from the payment on my credit card statement. In fact I used my Quinlan credit card to pay for it so Francis Quinlan’s secretary should have a copy.’
‘How did you feel when Marc died?’
‘How the hell do you think?’ she said raising her voice for the first time. ‘I was devastated. I still love him, if you must know.’
‘Who do you think is responsible for his death?’
‘Guy Barton, I told you already. He didn’t like Marc and Marc didn’t like him.’
‘I think Guy is more a fist and boots sort of person,’ Henderson said. ‘Setting someone on fire doesn’t look his style.’
‘Is this what the police do, is it? Assign ‘killing styles’ to people. There must be a lot of criminal psychologists working on this case.’
‘There aren’t any.’
‘I don’t care if you think it’s not his style, I think Barton did it.’
‘Christine, when we searched through Marc’s things, we found a number of large deposits had been made into his bank account. When finally we managed to trace their source, we found they came from you.’
She shrugged.
‘Why did you give Marc Emerson ten thousand pounds, and again, a month later? He obviously didn’t want the money as he sent it straight back.’
She sighed. ‘When he bought the house in Spences Lane, he wasn’t quite ready to move but his hand was forced by his pig of a father-in-law, Jeff Pickering. As a result, he didn’t have a lot of savings behind him. He told me he needed more money and I lent it to him. He could be a stubborn brute at times and said he wanted to manage buying the house on his own, so he sent it back.’
‘Were you annoyed at his refusal to accept?’
‘Why would I be? It’s no big deal.’
‘Now, as you are no doubt aware, Cindy Summer, a financial analyst in your department has been missing since last Wednesday. Francis Quinlan is very concerned. Do you know anything about her whereabouts?’
‘Me?’ she said, the indignation evident in her voice. ‘I don’t socialise with any of my staff, I make a point of it, and I don’t care what they get up to in their spare time. As long as they come in to work every day and do a good job, I’m happy. So no, I don’t have a clue what’s happened to Cindy but I want her back soon, there’s some reports she needs to finish.’
Walters gave him a look that said, ask her about Cindy’s car, but he gave her an almost imperceptible shake of the head in return.
‘What were you doing on the night she disappeared, last Wednesday?’
She smiled. ‘Another institute seminar, and before you ask, this one was about strategy.’
Henderson terminated the interview five minutes later. Walters walked Sutherland back to Reception, before heading back to Henderson’s office where she found him sitting behind his desk looking at Christine Sutherland’s CV.
‘She’s a polished interviewee,’ she said, ‘never gets flustered and answered all our questions.’
‘Too good if you ask me. Did you notice the lack of emotion when Marc’s name was mentioned and the casual way she dismissed any discussion about the mystery bank deposits?’
‘I did. This is the man she hounded with texts and repeatedly appeared on his doorstep, even saying today that she still loved him. Oh, and sorry for not following up the training seminar thing at the time. I didn’t realise the attendees aren’t required to sign-in and no one takes a note if anyone leaves early.’
‘It has the appearance of a valid alibi as she can produce credit card receipts and make it look like she went there, enough to satisfy most enquiries without further scrutiny. But don’t apologise for not doing it, she didn’t strike any of us at the time as a serious suspect.’
‘But she is now.’
‘You bet.’
‘Why didn’t you pick apart her seminar alibi, and mention that we found Cindy’s car?’
‘Look at her CV,’ he said. ‘She never stays in one place too long and she’s renting the house we looked at in Steyning. I couldn’t see any of her personal stuff when I looked through the window. If she ever gets wind of our suspicion that she might have killed Marc Emerson, and we’re not there yet, she would immediately scarper, never to be seen or heard of again. I guarantee it.’
‘Which means?’
‘It means we need to build a rock-solid case and be convinced of her guilt, before we go after her.’
‘Sounds good in principle but we’ve still got nothing concrete to go on; no witnesses, a flaky alibi and no forensics.’
‘We do what all good detectives do, now we’ve got ourselves a new suspect. We comb her background armed with this CV and the alias Cindy Summer told you about. Talk to former employers, family, friends; anyone we can.’
‘I’m on it,’ Walters said, her enthusiasm restored.
‘We need to make it quick. Edwards wants to close the case down by the end of this week and pin it on Guy Barton.’
‘Yeah, but we know it’s not true.’
‘I would prefer to say we think it’s not true and we won’t know until we’ve turned over all the stones. There is a possibility Guy Barton is responsible by the simple logic that it can’t be anyone else in Marc’s circle, once we’ve elimin
ated them all.’
‘It’s not like you to give up without a fight.’
‘Who says I’m giving up? Edwards has left me no choice and I don’t have the evidence to argue a stronger case. We’ll find out everything we can about Christine Sutherland, and if she’s no good, then we move on to Kevin McLaren. I’ve got no intention of letting this one go.’
THIRTY-FIVE
‘You should have taken Harry Wallop with you,’ Phil Bentley said. ‘Norfolk is more his neck of the woods than mine. He would have enjoyed a trip back to his old stomping ground.’
‘If I did, we wouldn’t get back home tonight,’ Walters said, ‘as he would be too busy visiting relatives and looking up old girlfriends. Anyway, it’s not like you to pass up the chance of a day out of the office.’
‘I’m not ungrateful, Sarge, but the list of questions the CPS sent back to me about the Guy Barton murder case will still be there when I get back.’
‘Yes, but you’ll feel invigorated after an afternoon basking in pure Norfolk air.’
‘It’s too cold to do any kind of basking but I live in hope.’
Walters had done as much as she could researching Christine Sutherland using social media, police sites and looking at company websites such as Quinlan’s and those of her former employers. Now she wanted to meet someone who knew her better than Francis Quinlan seemed to do, and in any case, she fancied getting out of the office for a spell. To that end, they were driving along the A12 towards a village in Norfolk called Newton Flotman to see Sutherland’s previous employer at Gresham Fresh Produce.
The name given to Walters by Cindy Summer, Amanda Sherman, didn’t raise any flags on the Police National Computer and so she assumed Sutherland was trying out the name to see how it looked and sounded, perhaps with a view to adopting it sometime in the future.
Changing a name was as simple as submitting a form, thousands of women did the same thing every year with a marriage certificate. For everyone else in the UK, it was done by a process known as Deed Poll. In some ways, it made the job of the police harder, although the aliases of habitual criminals were logged on the system. However, another part of her felt, why not? If someone had been lumbered at birth with a bizarre Christian name like Apple or Tinkerbelle or an unusual surname such as Tubby or Bytheway, why shouldn’t they do it?