by D C Vaughn
‘I’m afraid I can’t right now, I have a meeting and…’
‘I have to, I’m afraid they’ll find out about me.’
Rebecca again hesitated. ‘What do you mean? Who is trying to find out about you?’
‘I can’t speak on the phone about this,’ Colin said. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Talk to me now, while I’m on the move,’ she insisted as she pulled on a pair of heeled shoes, gloss black, that sat well with the suit and her hair.
‘You wouldn’t believe what I have to tell you.’
‘Then you need to contact Exeter Major Crimes on oh–one–three–nine…’
‘I can’t!’ Colin snapped. ‘I know who killed Sam Lincoln!’
Rebecca froze, the cell phone jammed against her ear. She closed her eyes and tried to remain calm. In her career she had worked dozens of major crimes, and in all of them they had chased up countless leads that amounted to nothing. Much of that time was wasted pursuing stories from fantasists who wanted to involve themselves with investigations when in fact they had nothing to offer in terms of evidence. Thus, they would invent sightings, experiences, knowledge of persons of interest, anything they could conjure to become a vital part of the proceedings at hand. Rebecca had often felt that if most of them had just signed on and become police officers they might have actually had a positive impact.
‘If you have vital information you must speak to the police,’ Rebecca insisted.
‘You don’t understand,’ Colin replied, ‘the police might be a part of it.’
Rebecca didn’t buy that for a moment. Corruption was a part of life, sure, but it was exceedingly rare in the police force, and any accusations were taken extremely seriously.
‘I can’t help you,’ Rebecca replied, conscious of the need to keep witnesses at arms’ length for fear of invalidating their testimony.
‘It was to do with his work,’ Colin insisted. ‘He was trying to…’
‘Go to the police!’
Rebecca shut the call off. Damn it! People were coming forward and she couldn’t do a thing about it. Colin had to call the police, inform them of what he knew and make a formal statement. Without that, anything he said and anything Rebecca said was worth nothing.
She left her apartment and stormed downstairs, each footfall causing a stab of pain in her skull. There was no way that she could drive her car to the station after downing two bottles of Pinot Grigio the night before, so she’d have to walk, and she reckoned that it would do her good anyway to get some fresh air and clear her head.
The air outside was crisp and cold, a powder blue sky and bright sunshine glinting off a faint touch of frost that was starting to melt in the growing warmth. Rebecca started out down the street toward Middlemoor and the Devon and Cornwall Police Headquarters, some two miles from her apartment and next to the Police Training College on Sidmouth Road. She could grab the bus from the nearest stop if she hurried.
She hadn’t walked ten paces when she noticed a worried–looking young man with a cell phone in his hand, standing on the pavement nearby. His eyes met hers and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the man was Colin.
‘I need to talk to you.’
Rebecca stopped and stared at him as she recognised his voice. ‘You can’t. Anything we talk about won’t be admissible as evidence in a court of law. You have to go to the police and make an official statement.’
‘That’s the problem,’ Colin said. ‘Sam was about to do the same thing when he was killed.’
Rebecca didn’t know whether to listen to the guy or run as fast as she could to get away from him. Her thumping headache made her realise that she couldn’t really run anywhere without risking vomiting again, which wouldn’t go down well in her interview.
‘How do you know Sam was killed? He’s missing, not confirmed dead.’
‘It said so on the news,’ Colin replied, ‘that he’d been shot. I just assumed that he was dead. Just like everyone else at Neuray.’
Neuray Solutions, Rebecca recalled. Sam’s job there, something to do with neural networks. He’d tried to explain what it was that they were researching, something to do with efforts to re–join spinal injuries in disabled people by manipulating neural networks in the brain, but most of it had gone over her head. Rebecca was a natural detective but brain surgery was way above her pay grade.
‘Sam would have told me if there was something wrong at work,’ she said defensively. ‘He never even hinted at any problems.’
‘That’s because there weren’t any problems yet,’ Colin insisted. ‘That’s the whole point. He confided in a couple of colleagues and then suddenly bam, he’s missing after being shot and the police are pulling bodies out of the river like they’re going out of fashion.’
Rebecca hesitated. The one direction that she had never considered investigating was Neuray, the company that Sam had worked for. She knew that the company worked for the Ministry of Defence and that many of its programs were highly classified, the kind of thing that Sam could not talk about outside of work, but that might have been why she knew nothing of any discord at Neuray. The fact that Ashton had said nothing meant nothing in itself, as he was in many ways merely the figurehead of the company and had little hand in the day–to–day research. He’d floated the company on the stock exchange years before and Neuray was now run by a board of directors, all beholden to their shareholders. As far as she could recall, Ashton’s stake was about twenty per cent and he maintained only a little influence over the company’s direction.
‘You think that Sam’s shooting is something to do with Neuray?’
Colin looked exasperated.
‘Everyone there is afraid,’ Colin replied, his voice lowering to a whisper. ‘I can’t tell you what it is, because I could risk my job by doing so and also because if I told you there’s no way in a million years that you’d believe me.’
‘Well, then how do you expect me to help you if you can’t tell me anything?’
Colin’s nervous demeanour hardened.
‘Because I can show you,’ he replied. ‘But the only way I can do that is if you come with me now.’
***
XVIII
The Major Crimes Investigation Team had assembled in a conference room within the headquarters building, with the Major Incident Staff Team joining them from the MIR. DCI Stone stalked down a corridor toward the conference room and glanced at his watch.
11.10 am.
‘Any sign of her yet?’
Harris shook his head, walking alongside Stone and hurrying to keep up.
‘Nothing, and she’s not answering her phone, either at home or her mobile.’
Stone strode into the conference room and Harris closed the door behind them. The assembled officers and detectives sat patiently as Stone moved to the head of the table where a large wipe–board was covered in neatly drawn bubbles of text, each of a different colour and each detailing a different section of the investigation.
‘Good morning,’ he greeted the team. ‘Where are we?’
Stone looked directly at Hannah Marchant, who replied without hesitation.
‘It’s been confirmed with CCTV that Rebecca Kyle met with the same man we pulled from the river. We now know that his name was not Greaves, but was in fact one James Mintram. He was a former soldier who was injured in Iraq during service with an infantry platoon, the Rifles, and invalided out of the British Army. He suffered from PTSD and hit a downward spiral, ending up on the streets of Exeter.’
Stone nodded. ‘What about the footage of Mintram prior to their meeting. Does it support Kyle’s accusation of a mystery follower?’
‘We’ve seen the person in question on the footage, although their identity remains unknown. To be honest sir, it’s another person leaving the restaurant and walking down the street outside in the same direction that Mintram went. There is not a shred of evidence that this person is in any way connected to Mintram, let alone following them for some nefarious
purpose.’
Stone glanced at Kieran and saw no emotion cross the DS’s face. He knew the strong sense of team and loyalty conflicting the Exeter CID but right now it seemed as though they were playing ball.
‘Okay, what about Kyle herself?’
Again, Marchant took up the brief.
‘Educated to A–level standard here in Exeter, joined the force as a constable aged nineteen years. A decade of exemplary service, initially as a beat officer, then as a detective constable with CID. Unblemished record and an apparent knack for hunting out homicide suspects. There’s nothing immediate in her career record that suggests motive, however we do now know that she concealed an OCD condition in her original application.’
That caught Stone’s attention. ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?’
‘Kyle was diagnosed while at school. We don’t have her medical records at this time so we don’t know the proximal cause of her condition or even if there was one, but that she concealed it from her application is a cause for concern.’
Stone nodded. OCD in and of itself was not really a barrier to the service, but it was something that any applicant was required to declare upon joining, along with any other medical or mental health issues that may affect the judgement of a serving officer. Many police constables and detectives were ex–soldiers who had been treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other maladies caused by their exposure to combat before they had joined the service, and that treatment had not been considered a barrier to their applications.
Stone decided not to act upon the OCD angle for the time being. Kyle’s condition could be a mild variation of the illness and unconnected to Sam Lincoln’s disappearance, and it certainly wasn’t enough for him to make the bold step of arresting Rebecca Kyle.
‘What about the other victim recovered from the water?’
‘Died from drowning,’ Kieran reported, taking up from Marchant. ‘No other indicators on the body, but what’s really odd is that we haven’t been able to identify them. Fingerprints came up empty as did dental records, and they were carrying no identifying documents on their person. No cash, no nothing. DNA analysis didn’t reveal anything either on the database although the reports are preliminary. They’re basically unknown at this time.’
That was another cause for concern. Rebecca Kyle could not be linked to the unknown victim, other than the fact that the supposed testimony of Mintram before he died suggested a third person on the river walk. Although there was no law against folks walking about with no identification on their person, in this day and age it was highly unusual to not find a wallet, cell phone and other daily essentials on a body, unless of course either the victim or their killer wished to remain unknown.
‘What about Samuel Lincoln?’
This time a bespectacled detective named Humphries spoke. Attached to Stone’s MIR team, quiet, methodical and diligent, Humphries spoke softly but with no less weight to his words.
‘Sam Lincoln worked as a neuro–biologist for a local company called Neuray Solutions. They’re a closed book, lots of MOD work behind them, but they’ve been helpful in my enquiries as much as they can be. Sam was well liked, no apparent enemies either at work or outside of it. There are no financial debts, no evidence that Sam was involved in any kind of criminal activity that could get him killed or abducted and nothing in his job that, we’re assured, would place him in any kind of danger.’
Stone thought about that for a long moment. He’d served his time in the British armed forces, first as an infantry soldier and later with a counter–terrorist unit, so he knew something of the way the MOD operated behind the scenes. Much of their work was naturally classified, and as such it wasn’t impossible that Neuray were up to things that they simply couldn’t talk about and thus wouldn’t feature in their statements.
‘What about his family?’ he asked Humphries.
‘Distraught, obviously, and they claim that Rebecca Kyle filed an assault complaint against Sam with Neuray shortly before his disappearance. Both parents categorically deny that any such assault took place.’
Stone nodded. Kyle therefore, for whatever reason, believed her fiancé capable of violence, and she may well have feared for her life. What bothered him was that she had not reported the crime to the police, which given her history would have been the most likely course of action, unless she had wanted to keep her service record clear of domestic issues. Approaching Neuray would have been a possible second resort, placing Sam’s job in jeopardy should he continue the abuse.
‘Talk to me about her,’ Stone asked Kieran. ‘You’ve worked extensively together. What’s the odds that she’d attempt to shoot Sam Lincoln and then take her own life?’
‘Minimal,’ Kieran replied without hesitation. ‘Thing is, if she’d really planned this all, she wouldn’t have failed at the last. Rebecca’s a bulldog when it comes to a case and she won’t give up. I’ve come here at four in the morning on some cases because I couldn’t sleep for thinking about them, and I’d find Rebecca already here, working some new angle. She’s just not the type for this kind of crime, plus she obviously knows the ropes. I hate to say it, but if she’d wanted to murder Sam, she’d have done a much better job of it than this. I doubt we’d have even known.’
Stone thought again for a moment. ‘But you don’t consider her incapable of it.’
‘That’s a leading question,’ Kieran replied. ‘Anybody is capable of murder if pushed hard enough.’
‘By an abusive spouse, perhaps,’ Stone added, opening up the trap he’d laid. ‘We have motive at the least. Any evidence of Sam being the type to just wander off without telling anyone?’
‘Born and bred Exeter,’ Marchant replied, ‘nothing like that in his history. His parents assure us he called or visited them every weekend just to chat and see how they were. He’s not the type to just disappear without saying anything.’
‘Phone records?’
‘Nothing untoward, and no calls have been made from his number since he vanished into the water.’
Stone leaned back on a desk he was standing beside and folded his arms.
‘So we’ve been led to believe,’ he murmured, thinking out loud. ‘We find one body that’s been in the water since about the time of the attack, but Sam’s is missing and there’s no actual evidence of him going into the water.’
Stone saw the team’s eyes widen slightly in surprise.
‘You think he’s out there somewhere?’ Hannah asked, as surprised as the rest of them.
‘What’s the insurance policy on his life like?’ Stone asked her.
‘Modest,’ Hannah replied. ‘It’d clear the mortgage for Kyle, but there’s no other additional policies in place. Financial motive doesn’t seem that strong.’
Stone glanced at his watch. 11.30.
Kyle wasn’t coming. For whatever reason she had decided to rescind his offer of a voluntary interview. Kieran was adamant that whatever had happened down on that river, there was something else behind it. Stone was beginning to feel as though he agreed, although not because of any suspicions of Kyle’s innocence. There was something else going on here all right, and there was only one person who could tell them all about it.
‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘Kyle’s let us down and she’s at the top of our persons of interest list. We’re not getting anywhere with any of the other leads and right now she’s the only person connected in any way to two of the victims and also the last person to see either of them alive.’ He unfolded his arms. ‘I want officers to arrest her on suspicion of the murder of Samuel Lincoln.’
There was no rush of awed whispers or gasps of shock. Despite the explosive nature of what Stone was suggesting, everybody in the room knew that this had been on the cards for a while. They had to bring Kyle in, especially now she’d refused to come to interview of her own accord.
‘That’s risky,’ Hannah said. ‘We can’t hold her for long and we don’t have much to go on.’
Stone had expecte
d some resistance from the CID team, but Hannah’s point was a valid one.
‘Kyle was drinking, at a low ebb when I first met her,’ he replied. ‘If that’s so then we might be able to get her to confess, if she’s guilty of anything. Right now, we don’t have any leads and two victims plus one missing. We move and we keep it out of the media eye, but the Assistant Chief Inspector is going to need some kind of result in this to feed the frenzy and show that we’re working the case. Give me a good reason why we shouldn’t bring Kyle in.’
Hannah stood with the rest of the team but she didn’t answer the question, primarily because there was no good reason not to bring Kyle in. Stone only hoped that some evidence came to light when the forensics teams swept through Kyle’s apartment and vehicle while the MIR team went through her records in greater detail, otherwise Rebecca Kyle’s stay in custody would be a very short one indeed.
***
XIX
Colin lived in a small rented house in the village of Cranbrook, a couple of miles to the north east of Exeter and just north of the airport. Despite her misgivings and the stress of missing her appointment with DCI Stone, Rebecca had agreed to accompany Colin to his house to see whatever the hell it was he felt was so important to show her.
Fact was, she had realised she was still in no real state to face Stone and the MIR team right now. Her head was thumping with the hangover from hell, bright pain lancing behind her eyes, and her stomach was tumbling with nausea. Stone would take her to pieces, and her state and demeanour would only serve to confirm his suspicions of her involvement in Sam’s disappearance and the unsolved murders in the River Exe.
Maybe, just maybe, whatever Colin was about to show her would be enough to tip the balance in her favour and give her something to bargain with. If what he insisted she had to see was as explosive as he was suggesting, it could blow the whole case wide open and that was something she desperately needed right now, because she knew the consequences of not attending the meeting. Worse, Colin had insisted that she turn off her mobile phone so that they could not be tracked. Stone would have tried to call her by now, and would probably have concluded that she was now a flight risk. He might even obtain a warrant for her arrest.