A Price to Pay

by Paul Gitsham

  John Grayson had taken the hint and not enquired too much about the reasons for Warren’s sudden escape two days earlier, or his absence the previous day, but had made it clear that Warren could come and find him at any time.

  Whilst Warren was gone, the case had continued to progress, with support from Bergen and the SOC unit, but there had been no significant breakthroughs. The Foreign Office had spoken to Malina and Biljana Dragić’s parents and confirmed that they didn’t have any other sisters, or indeed any close relatives that matched Annie’s description. That at least seemed to rule out one motive for their willingness to face trial to protect her.

  For her part, Silvija Wilson had declined to say anything else. She refused to admit that Annie had been living with her nieces, and they too denied that she had stayed with them. Warren suspected Wilson’s solicitor had told her to keep quiet and wait out the custody clock. With no new evidence that Wilson had played a more active role in the death of Stevie Cullen, she had been charged with perverting the course of justice and released on bail, on condition that she didn’t contact her nieces. Grayson had arranged for a real-time intercept on both her mobile phones, and her landline, so if she did try and contact anyone, they’d know about it. His request for a surveillance team had been denied outright, but a block had been placed on her passport. Warren doubted she was a flight-risk; it was clear to him that she wouldn’t leave her two nieces to face the music alone.

  ‘They’ve had the metal detectors out, scouring the area where the bloody work clothes were found, but it’s looking less and less likely that she disposed of the knife in the same place.’ David Hutchinson sounded frustrated down the phone line.

  Warren shared his disappointment. A good defence might be able to cast doubt on who was wearing the blood-covered overall at the time of Cullen’s murder, particularly if the three young women shared each other’s uniforms. To Warren’s eye, the three women were close enough in build that they might do so.

  However, fingerprints or other trace evidence on the knife, linking it to one of them, would be harder to argue in court.

  Hanging up, Warren chewed the end of his pen, as he worked through the sequence of events in the days following the killing. At some point, that knife had to have been disposed of.

  Had Annie taken it all the way up to Manchester with her? Surely not. They had to assume that she might be stopped by the police, in which case the last thing she’d want is the murder weapon on her.

  Forensics had finished searching the massage parlour and the sisters’ flat, and there was no sign of it. Similarly, Silvija Wilson’s house had been searched, with the same result. The problem was that there had been a significant delay between day of the murder, and the arrest of the masseuses and their aunt. That potentially left the three women ample time to dispose of the knife.

  Warren pulled over his notepad, trying to order his thoughts. Whilst there had been plenty of time to dispose of the weapon, his gut was telling him that it had been got rid of quickly. Wilson had dumped the bloody clothes as soon as she could. Surely, hiding the murder weapon was an even more pressing concern?

  The two sisters had been escorted from the massage parlour immediately after the police had arrived, and whilst the exact details of what happened during the unaccounted-for minutes between the killing and the police attending were still unresolved, it was obvious that neither woman had left the premises.

  Then there were the two nail technicians. It seemed unlikely that they were involved, given the speed with which they left the scene of the murder. They were obviously terrified, and Warren couldn’t imagine them being persuaded to take the murder weapon with them.

  Which left Silvija Wilson, and the mysterious northern-accented man that Joey McGhee had seen arriving minutes after the killing.

  McGhee claimed to have seen Wilson hand him something after he arrived, and heard him promise to sort things out. Could that object have been the knife? McGhee thought it was probably a mobile phone, and that would certainly account for Cullen’s missing work phone. Could she have passed him the knife also?

  It seemed unlikely. They knew that Silvija Wilson had left with a bin bag containing the bloodstained work clothes to dispose of. She was already incriminated in that respect. Would this mysterious northern fixer have been willing to take the murder weapon? If he had any common sense at all, he’d have steered well clear of it. Unless he and Wilson had a relationship that went beyond the professional, then it was hard to imagine Northern Man taking the knife off her.

  Which meant it all led back to Wilson.

  The mobile phone tracking data for both of her phones showed that she went directly from the massage parlour to her nieces’ flat. The search teams were confident that the weapon wasn’t at the sisters’ home. The route went straight through the busiest part of town. Could she have discarded it in a waste bin along the way? The data showed that the car only stopped for the briefest of moments at traffic lights. Even if Annie had jumped out, the contents of all the litterbins along that route had been seized by the search teams. Somebody could have returned at a later date and moved the knife, he supposed, but it seemed a bit elaborate, especially given the amateur way in which the bloody clothes had been disposed of.

  Wilson then stayed at her nieces’ flat, presumably helping Annie pack and arranging for her to leave Middlesbury. It seemed that whatever personal items Annie had been unable to take with her to Manchester had been dumped alongside her bloody uniform. The phones then travelled to the train station. The same argument about a lack of opportunity to discard the knife en route applied here also.

  Which meant that Wilson, if she still had the knife, most likely got rid of it on her drive to the area where she had dumped the clothes.

  Warren traced the route that the phones took with his finger. A crude calculation of the car’s average speed showed that it was travelling a little below the speed limit. Did that figure show that she was travelling slowly, perhaps not to attract attention, or whilst she scoped out likely spots to dump her incriminating packages? Or did the low average speed mask a brief stop as she threw the knife out of the window?

  Teams were scouring the verges, looking for a bladed implement that could have killed Cullen.

  Warren continued to trace the route with his finger, before pausing, an idea starting to form. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before.

  He switched to Google Earth; the map replaced with an overhead satellite shot. Changing the display to Street View, he traced the path the Google imaging vehicle had travelled.

  Hutchinson answered his phone on the second ring.

  ‘I know where she dumped the knife,’ said Warren. ‘According to the phone location data, she stopped for several minutes at a turning circle, before heading back along the road she had just travelled, taking a detour past her father-in-law’s care home to firm up her alibi. We assumed that she was just waiting for the call from Malina to her personal phone, pretending to tell her about the killing, before she headed back to the care home to firm up her alibi. But she received the call from Malina after she left the turning circle. She was at that circle for ages.’

  ‘We have a team up there searching, but no sign of it yet. Besides, there’s nowhere to dump the phone within the radius of the phone location data.’

  ‘She didn’t have her phone with her,’ said Warren. ‘We know it was paired to her car’s Bluetooth hands-free kit. She must have left it in her vehicle. I’ve just looked at Google Earth and it looks as though there’s an overgrown footpath that cuts through the treeline, about three hundred yards from where she stopped. That’s outside the radius of the phone’s location data. Looking at Street View, it doesn’t look as though it’s easily visible from the road, but if she was familiar with the area, which she probably is, since her father-in-law’s care home is along that road, she might know about it.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Send a team down the footpath, and start searching,’
Warren ordered. ‘I’ll get onto DSI Grayson and get him to authorize an underwater search team. That footpath leads right down to the river Herrot.’

  Chapter 40

  It had been three days since Joey McGhee, the rough sleeper who had been living in the alleyway behind the massage parlour, had given his interview. He hadn’t been seen since.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the rough sleeper unit, and they know Joey, but he hasn’t been spotted in any of his usual haunts for the past few days,’ said Ruskin. ‘I also took a wander down to the Sikh Community Centre to see if he attended langar the night he left here. They can’t remember seeing him that evening and reckon that if he left as late as you said he did, he probably didn’t make it in time.’

  ‘Damn, that’s frustrating,’ said Bergen. ‘I’ll bet that this Northern Man joker is buried somewhere in our files. I was going to get McGhee to do an e-fit and run it through our system.’

  Warren frowned in concern. Joey McGhee was their only confirmed sighting of the man that they were calling Northern Man. If he was right about what he saw, the man could be a key player in Stevie Cullen’s murder. He might also lead them to the missing nail technicians, potential witnesses to the stabbing.

  Warren knew that members of the homeless community often led disordered, chaotic lives, but McGhee had been organized enough to turn up at the station to offer information. It seemed strange that he wouldn’t follow up on his deal, especially when there was potentially a substantial reward.

  Another thought struck Warren. What if McGhee had been lying? Giving the police some fabricated evidence, in the hope that they paid him? He could then have got cold feet.

  Yet he had given them details that matched what they had already seen on the CCTV footage. Had he then embellished his story to make it more attractive?

  If Joey McGhee had disappeared, or had been lying, then a promising lead had just gone up in smoke.

  ‘The cell-tower data is in for the phone that we think Silvija Wilson called to arrange the pick-up of Annie,’ said Pymm, squinting at the screen. ‘The phone spends most of its time in a suburb of Manchester called “Chorlton”. Wasn’t there a kids’ TV program called that?’

  ‘Chorlton and the Wheelies,’ supplied Warren.

  ‘The phone travelled to within a few hundred metres of Piccadilly train station, arriving just before Annie’s train was due to arrive. It then sat there, for about twenty-five minutes because her train was late, before moving off a little over five minutes after Annie was spotted walking along the concourse. The phone then returned to its starting place.’

  ‘Lucky he or she didn’t get a ticket,’ said Grimshaw, who’d wandered over, eating a packet of cheesy Doritos; Pymm wrinkled her nose at the smell. ‘The buggers are really cracking down on parking around there,’ he continued.

  Martinez joined him, biting into an apple.

  ‘What do you two know about Chorlton?’ asked Warren.

  ‘It’s a nice area, with some quite posh houses,’ said Grimshaw.

  ‘There are some really good restaurants and pubs,’ added Martinez.

  ‘So not a den of criminality, then?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Not really, you’d have to go to where Shaun was brought up for that.’

  Grimshaw shrugged. ‘Don’t knock it, there might have been drug dealers and pimps hanging around near the school, but at least we didn’t have any Man United players as next-door neighbours.’

  Martinez rolled his eyes. ‘One player, and he moved out of his mum and dad’s house when he got signed.’

  ‘I’ll bet the house prices shot up when he left,’ said Grimshaw.

  ‘When you two have finished …’ said Warren.

  Pymm had opened Google Maps on one of her screens, switching to satellite view. ‘Most of the houses in that area are large and detached, with big gardens. I think we can narrow the phone’s usual location down to a single property, or at least their neighbours either side. Number 42 is the most likely candidate.’

  Grimshaw let out a low whistle. ‘Somebody is doing all right for themselves.’

  The red location icon was hovering over a large house, surrounded by generous gardens. At the time the photograph had been taken, the driveway had three cars parked on it, with enough room for at least another two. Even from above, it was clear from the image that the house probably had at least four generous-sized bedrooms.

  ‘See if you can find out who owns the house, and if the occupants are in our system. Look at the neighbours either side as well in case the resolution of the cell-tower data is poor,’ said Warren.

  Pymm opened another browser window, navigating to a website listing the electoral records. She entered the address and postcode for number 42.

  ‘No need to look at the neighbours,’ she said when the results popped up.

  ‘I’ll contact Greater Manchester Police,’ said Warren, ‘and get them to raid the house. There’s no way that’s a coincidence. Let’s just hope she hasn’t already left the country.’

  The call from Greater Manchester Police came through to Warren’s desk later that afternoon.

  ‘Smooth as a baby’s bottom,’ Warren’s opposite number, DCI Omara, said. ‘We have Mr Aleksej and Mrs Zorana Dragić sitting in custody as we speak, along with a young woman, who currently only answers to “Annie”.’

  ‘Fantastic work,’ said Warren.

  ‘Nothing to it – they were sitting in front of the TV when we rang the doorbell.’

  ‘Have they said anything, yet?’

  ‘Not a lot. Mr and Mrs Dragić speak perfect English and are clearly very pissed off at being dragged into this affair by Mr Dragić’s cousin, Silvija. Annie speaks good enough English to say “no comment”, but refuses to say another word.’ Omara cleared his throat. ‘You’ll have to decide what to do with them sooner rather than later, DCI Jones; we can’t hold them indefinitely.’

  Warren smiled at the none-too-subtle hint. GMP had done them a big favour, picking up the suspects, but the three individuals would each require a solicitor, not to mention space in a cell. The sooner Hertfordshire Constabulary took them off the hands of their northern colleagues the better.

  ‘I’ll send a team up to fetch them back here,’ he promised.

  DSI Grayson agreed with Warren’s suggestion that a little local knowledge wouldn’t hurt, and happily authorized the cost of sending Shaun Grimshaw and Jorge Martinez up to Manchester that evening, with the aim of questioning the three suspects, and then returning Annie to Middlesbury the following day.

  Warren suspected that he also fancied getting rid of the Brownnose Brothers for a bit. With the date of their Inspector exams fast approaching, the two men had been competing harder than ever to look good in front of their Superintendent.

  Warren had spoken to Silvija Wilson already, telling her that they had Annie in custody. The news had placed the woman in a very difficult position. After speaking to her solicitor, she had given a carefully worded statement admitting that she had lied about not knowing where Annie had travelled to, and that she had arranged her travel plans. Nevertheless, she had insisted that her cousin, Aleksej, and his wife Zorana, knew nothing about the identity of Annie, or her role in the murder in the massage parlour.

  For their part, the Dragićs had maintained since their arrest that the call from Wilson had been entirely unexpected. They claimed that Wilson had made no mention of why she wanted somebody to offer a bed to help out a young Serbian woman who had suddenly decided to move to Manchester for a fresh start. They had both refused to comment when asked about why they thought Annie needed Silvija’s assistance, or what their thoughts were when the news broke about the stabbing at Wilson’s massage parlour.

  Warren had instructed Grimshaw and Martinez to question them when they arrived to pick up Annie, but with little evidence of their active collusion, he expected them to be bailed pending further inquiries.

  Grimshaw had been delighted at the prospect of a brief, overnight trip to Man
chester, and had urged Martinez to hurry up, so they’d have time for a few pints after interviewing the Dragićs that night.

  As the two of them made their way to the car park, Grimshaw could be heard excitedly telling Martinez how much he was looking forward to supper from the best fish and chip shop in the country.

  ‘What’s a “barm cake”?’ asked Pymm when the two men had left.

  ‘What you call a bread roll in these parts,’ said Bergen.

  ‘And “Manchester caviar”?’ asked Ruskin.

  ‘Mushy peas, I think,’ answered Hutchinson.

  ‘And you’d have that with gravy as well?’ said Ruskin.

  ‘I wouldn’t, but it sounds like Shaun would,’ said Bergen.

  ‘The Canadians put cheese curds and gravy on their chips,’ piped up Pymm, ‘and yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.’

  ‘Give me a chip batch and a scallop any day,’ said Warren.

  ‘I didn’t think you liked seafood,’ said Richardson.

  ‘And what’s a “batch”?’ asked Ruskin.

  ‘It’s the proper name for a bread roll, and in Coventry, a scallop is a slice of potato, covered in batter and then deep-fried,’ replied Warren.

  The Scotsman thought about it for a moment. ‘To be fair, that’s not the strangest thing I’ve heard of being deep-fried.’

  Friday 13 November

  Chapter 41

  Grimshaw and Martinez arrived back at Middlesbury at lunchtime, with ‘Annie’ in tow. The two officers had made an effort to interview Silvija Wilson’s cousin and his wife up in Manchester, but they had stuck to the same story; that they had known nothing about Annie before receiving a phone call from Wilson begging for a favour. They were bailed pending further inquiries.

  Annie still refused to comment. A local translator had ensured that she was fully aware of what was happening to her, and so the following morning she was bundled into the back of a police car, handcuffed to a female police officer. Jorge Martinez had then driven the car back to Middlesbury. It would have made more sense for Grimshaw and Martinez to split the driving between them, but Grimshaw’s reddened eyes suggested that he’d been as good as his word and found at least one pub serving a decent pint, and might not be fit to drive. A green stain on his left leg implied he’d also found a decent chip shop that served mushy peas. For his part, Martinez was dressed in a clean, freshly pressed shirt and trousers, his suit jacket looking as smart as the day before.