Apparently appeased by what she’d just said he rose from his chair. ‘Please do let me know when you catch him, won’t you.’ That was it. He was done.
She promised to do so.
And on that point, it was time for her to organise the extension of her father’s detention and get back to the custody suite to continue interviewing him. It was a good job the press hadn’t got hold of that information last night, that DS Dominic Harrison had been arrested for the murder of his own wife.
* * *
There was a message waiting for her when she got to the custody suite. The custody sergeant waved her and Russ over and then rummaged under the desk where Claudia couldn’t see what he was looking for.
‘It’s in here somewhere,’ he said, face pasty and grey looking. You never saw the light of day when you permanently worked Custody. It was a grim place. Claudia had worked it for six months when she had first been promoted to sergeant and she had hated every second of it and had been glad to get out of there, back into the real world. Some cops loved it, the ability to go to work and hand their jobs over to the next sergeant on the following shift when it was time to leave. No worrying about cases at home. Everything was left at work.
‘Ah-ha!’ He waved his arm in the air, a piece of paper in his hand. He looked pleased with himself. ‘So much crap down here.’
She smiled at him. Impatient to get started on the interview again, the expression tight on her face. If it was Sharpe she was surprised she hadn’t called on her mobile.
The custody sergeant looked at the note in his hand. ‘We took a call for you.’ He turned to her. ‘We’re not a bloody answering service though.’
She side-eyed Russ, they were known to be a little on the grumpy side in Custody. Probably due to the fact they never saw daylight.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said, for the sake of saying something.
He nodded, appeased, then looked back down at his note. ‘He said, he doesn’t have Ruth and you have your facts all wrong. Please don’t attribute all your shit—’ the custody sergeant looked back up at her — ‘yes, he said shit and it was written down. God knows why. We don’t take that shit on the street.’
Claudia smiled. He didn’t notice the irony of what he’d said.
‘Anyway . . .’ He went back to the note. ‘All your shit that you can’t detect onto him.’
Claudia was puzzled. She was sure she hadn’t heard him correctly. ‘I’m sorry, can you read that again?’
He rolled his eyes and read from the sheet again. ‘He doesn’t have Ruth and you have your facts all wrong. Please don’t attribute all your shit that you can’t detect onto him.’
They both looked at each other simultaneously.
‘He doesn’t mean . . . he’s not . . .’ The custody sergeant stammered, looking at the custody record in front of him. Seeing who Claudia had in custody and for what offence. The note wafting in his hand in front of him. ‘Oh shit.’
Claudia held out her own hand. ‘Can I read that, please?’
He handed it over. ‘Ruth is Ruth Harrison?’
She was reading the message again, with Russ peering over her shoulder. She nodded as her eyes skimmed the paper.
‘He’s the Sheffield Strangler?’ His voice was quiet, not to alert the rest of the custody suite what they had in front of them.
Claudia read the note a second time and then a third, trying to get the words to sink in and allow their meaning to gain some understanding in her head. ‘What time did you take this message?’ she asked, her voice brittle.
‘Not fifteen minutes ago. He was put through from the switchboard who had tried to locate you and someone had identified you were on your way here so he was put through.’
‘And it was you?’
He had managed to pale even more. ‘Yes, it was me.’ He bit at his lower lip. ‘When he said Ruth I didn’t think of Ruth Harrison. It didn’t cross my mind that the killer would phone up and talk like that.’
‘What did he sound like?’ Claudia didn’t have time to make the sergeant feel better for not taking any action sooner.
‘He didn’t have an accent I could place. Maybe a local lad? Not a strong Yorkshire accent though. Nothing about him stood out.’ He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Hello, switchboard. A phone call was put through to this custody suite less than fifteen minutes ago, I want to know from what number it came from. Yes. Yes. It’s urgent. Thank you.’ He listened and waited.
‘Okay, that’s great, thank you.’ He scribbled onto a notepad and when he placed the receiver down he tore the sheet out of the pad and waved it at Claudia. ‘I have the number he dialled in from.’ He was pleased with himself.
Claudia was less happy. She didn’t expect it to be this easy. ‘Can I use your phone please?’
He handed her the phone from behind the desk and she dialled the number. The line was dead.
‘You think he used a burner?’
‘I do. This is time sensitive. Can I ask that you find me someone to submit the number, see who it belongs to? We need to get in to interview.’
If he hadn’t have missed such a big issue as talking to the killer and sitting on it for fifteen minutes, Claudia knew he’d have told her it wasn’t his job and to sort it out herself, but as it was, he’d be feeling pretty bad about that so agreed to get someone to sort it out for her and straight away.
Claudia turned to Russ — her stomach churned with the betrayal of what she was about to say. ‘We need to speak to Dominic. If the Sheffield Strangler is saying he doesn’t have Ruth then we need to break Dominic down and find out which parts of his story aren’t true, because I don’t believe he’s telling us the whole truth.’
Chapter 47
Claudia
With the custody keys in her hand Claudia unlocked Dominic’s cell and looked in. He was on the solid bed in the right-hand corner, back against the wall, feet up on the edge, knees bent in front of him.
‘About time,’ he said. ‘Who knows what’s happened to Ruth in the time you’ve been having a nap.’
He didn’t mean to hurt her, he was angry and hurting himself, but his snide comment sliced through her, cutting deep. She didn’t respond, merely gave him a look that told him he was out of order. He raised his hands, palms forward, and shrugged. It was the most she was going to get from him.
Eventually he asked, ‘How did it go?’ Letting his legs drop and shuffling to the front of the concrete slab. He was talking about the press conference last night.
‘Come on.’ She twitched her head sideways. ‘We need to talk.’
He stood. ‘But how did it go?’
‘We put it out there. We shared the photofit image and we directly asked that she be returned. Now it’s back to you. Come on.’ She was short with him. She had no time for these games. Ruth had no time for these games.
Dominic looked at her, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. What’s happened?’
‘We need to get you back into interview. Get a move on, will you, or do I need to get Russ to pull you out of there?’ She meant it as well. She didn’t care that this was her father. Sharpe had given her this job to do and she’d bloody well do it. If he was lying to her about something then she wanted to know what it was.
He raised his hands again in surrender.
In the interview room the recording device was switched on and the interview started, Russ going through the introductions and official dialogue.
‘You’re lying to us about something, Dominic, and we want to know what it is.’ Claudia jumped straight in.
His eyes widened. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘We can go round in circles for as long as you want, but we’ll get there eventually. Or you can simply tell us what we want to know straight off the bat.’
‘Where is this coming from? I thought everything was okay when you left?’ He looked from Claudia to Russ and back again. Waiting for an answer from one of them.
They stared back in stony sil
ence, giving him nothing.
The silence stretched on. Eventually Claudia broke it. Silence was seen as oppressive in the courts and Dominic knew this. She was aware he could sit in a silence as well as they could because he was trained the way they were. Your average interviewee hated silences and tended to fill them, but Dominic could sit and wait it out.
‘We’ve had contact from the killer, Dominic.’
His jaw slackened and his face paled. ‘What the fuck? Already?’
She waited again.
‘What does that have to do with me? What did he say? Please, Claudia, tell me what’s going on.’ There was a slight whine to his voice.
‘He doesn’t have Ruth—’
‘No. No. I don’t believe that.’ He was on his feet before they knew what was happening. Backing away from the table, from them. ‘What does that mean for Ruth? If he says he doesn’t have her? I don’t believe him, I don’t believe he doesn’t have her. He does. He’s hiding the fact. He’s biding his time. He’s going to wait until you find her body. He’s going to make us, me, find her body in the ground, desecrated like the others.’ He was shouting now.
Claudia and Kane both rose from their chairs. Claudia had expected him to be upset but this was extreme. He was panicked. Kane put his hands up. ‘Hey, Dom, calm it down. We’re telling you what he’s said. We’re still working on the assumption he has her. We’re still out there searching for her. We haven’t abandoned her.’
Dominic was backed up against the wall. The room wasn’t very large.
‘Please don’t lean back hard,’ Claudia said. ‘You’re up against the panic bar and if you lean on it you’re going to have half of the custody suite barging in here with their asps raised.’
Dominic took a step forward. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked his daughter in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, Claudia. I’m just afraid.’
‘I know you are. Please come and sit back down.’
He took another step forward. Kane and Claudia hadn’t moved. They were standing in front of their chairs.
‘I don’t want to lose her.’
Claudia seated herself again. Kane followed suit and leaned back in his chair showing Dominic the situation was calm and there was no need for this.
Dominic took another step forward and he was nearly back at the table.
‘He made contact quickly,’ Dominic said.
Kane crossed his legs. ‘He did.’
Dominic sat down opposite them, scraping the chair on the ground as he folded himself into position.
Claudia tapped a finger on the table. ‘We still believe you’re lying to us about something, Dominic.’ She had referred to him by his name again, rather than calling him Dad. She was back in investigative mode. ‘We want to know what that is. It might not be big, it might not even be relevant, but something feels off and we want to know what it is so we can move on from it and focus on what’s important. If you don’t tell us what it is you’re hiding we’re going to think it’s bigger than it is and lay more prominence at its feet than we might otherwise.’ She stared hard at him and tapped a pen on the pad in front of her.
Dominic rubbed at his forehead.
‘Do you want us to go down that rabbit hole?’
He shook his head. His eyebrows furrowing deep down over his nose. ‘There’s something but it’s not relevant at all. It’s not even worth mentioning, but now you’ve put it like that you’re not leaving me with any choice.’
Kane tapped his foot in the air. ‘It’s best to let it out.’
Claudia looked at Kane, concerned. There was a minute shake of his head as he tried to reassure her this would not be what she was afraid of. Did Kane know something about this? Why hadn’t he told her?
She had no idea what was coming but fear ran the gauntlet inside of her. ‘Tell us what it is you’re hiding.’ It took all her strength to keep her voice on an even keel.
‘I lied to you.’ He paused, putting off the moment of truth. ‘More an omission than a lie.’
Claudia didn’t care about semantics. She just wanted him to spit it out. Her patience was wearing thin. If whatever he was hiding could help with their investigation into Ruth’s disappearance, then he needed to speak.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s about Ruth.’
Claudia’s blood ran cold. Her mind began to spiral. She gripped the edge of the table, her fingers turning white.
‘I’ve been seeing Hayley behind Ruth’s back.’
Chapter 48
Claudia
The silence stretched out between them. She didn’t care about how it would be perceived this time. That silence on an interview recording is seen as oppressive, but it didn’t bother her. Claudia didn’t speak and allowed the silence to play out. She would not be the first person to speak. The fact was that at this time she didn’t have the words. She was so let down by him. She’d been through this situation with him before. She thought that was the one and only time he would tear a family, her family, apart.
Now he was doing it again.
She had grown to love Ruth. At first it had been uncomfortable — she’d been the other woman, after all — but Ruth had taken her time with Claudia and had not pushed or asked for anything from her. She’d accepted the cold shoulders Claudia had doled out until eventually she had thawed and they started to talk.
Claudia had come to realise what it was her dad saw in Ruth, how well matched they were. It was much easier once her mum was okay and settled but Ruth had made the transition something that Claudia controlled and Claudia had never been more grateful to her. She could see how much Ruth loved her dad and now here he was telling her this.
She stared at him.
He started to twitch.
‘I didn’t mean it to happen.’ Eventually he broke. As she knew he would. They all did. They couldn’t sit there when they were guilty and had words to say if the room was filled with silence. It was one of the reasons silence was seen as oppression. It really did make an interviewee talk.
‘You’re a grown man. How can you not mean it to happen?’ Claudia hissed at him. ‘Did you lose control of your faculties? Did you get some kind of virus where you lost your mind? Do we need to go through your jobs in that case to check you haven’t screwed them up?’
‘Don’t be like that, Claudia.’ He talked to her like a father to a daughter who was reprimanding a child. Short and sharp.
Impatient.
She glared at him. ‘Do not speak to me like that. It is you who is under caution and is being interviewed for murder here. You have absolutely no right to talk to me like I’m a child.’
He bent his head.
‘This is a professional interview. I don’t care how you see me. You will answer the questions properly. Do you understand?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So how did you not mean for it to happen?’
‘We were working late all the time. We went for the occasional drink after work together. A relationship built up. It doesn’t mean anything. It should never have happened. I was exhausted with the case, it started to mean more to me than anything else, being at work was more important than being at home with Ruth. The job consumed me and Hayley understood that, we leaned on each other. But I can see that it’s nothing, that it was just easy and that’s why it happened.’
‘You’re unbelievable, do you know that?’
He hadn’t yet looked up. His shame obvious.
Kane stayed out of it. This was now something between Claudia and Dominic. It was too personal for him to ask questions about.
‘This was exactly the same thing you did to Mum with Ruth. You cheated on Mum with Ruth, who by the way was far too young for you. It was as though you were going through a mid-life crisis. But you were adamant she was the love of your life and you had found your soulmate. Because you stayed with her and married her I accepted her into my life and grew to know and love her and now you’re doing exactly the same goddamn thing to her?’ Her voice was risin
g a little and she had to rein it in. This was still an interview and not a family argument.
Dominic looked beaten. ‘I’m sorry, Claudia. This thing with Hayley, it’s been a mistake. I promise. It’s Ruth I love. Can you imagine how I feel knowing that sick fuck has her and what she’s going through? It’s tearing me apart. I’ve made a huge mistake. I want Ruth back and when I get her back I’ll never let her out of my sight again. You’ll need to tear us apart with a crowbar.’ He leaned forward. ‘I promise you. I want her back.’
Kane was making notes in his pad as he had been doing throughout the whole of the interview process. Claudia looked at it, hated that her personal life, that of her parents, was recorded this way. But there was nothing she could do about it. This had happened to Ruth and her dad and she had to deal with what was in front of her. Ruth was banking on her.
‘Does Ruth know?’ Claudia asked.
Dominic shook his head, confused. ‘I don’t understand, what does that have to do with anything? It’s me who has lied to you. It’s that bastard who has her. What do her feelings have to do with this?’
Claudia tapped her own pen on the table. A sign of her impatience with him. ‘It has everything to do with this. You know how an interview works, we cover all the bases and go over all the ground. You never know what might be important so better to cover it than realise you’ve missed something.’
Dominic waited a beat. ‘No, she didn’t know.’ He hung his head again. ‘I was too good at being deceptive. She had no idea. I’m glad that she didn’t know and wasn’t hurt. I’m ashamed of myself and my behaviour. When she’s home I’ll make it up to her. I’ll show her how much I love her. She’ll need so much love and care and I can give it to her.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe you did it again, but our focus has to be on finding Ruth.’ She was still furious with him, for doing it again, but they had bigger issues to be dealing with. She would talk to him about his behaviour later when they weren’t being recorded in a custody suite.
BLOOD STAINED an unputdownable crime thriller with a breathtaking twist (Detective Claudia Nunn Book 1) Page 24