The Common Enemy

by Paul Gitsham

  Rhodri and his landlord, Bryan Thornton, were in their thirties; none of their flatmates were older than twenty-one and, Warren couldn’t help notice, very pretty. It was creepy, but they were all adults so it was none of his business.

  The house smelt of stale tobacco and weed and it didn’t take long for SOCO to find a couple of discarded joints down the back of the fridge. The amount of drugs was negligible and they’d never work out who they belonged to – regardless, they could always be used as a lever. Rhodri and Thornton would know that the police wouldn’t go to the expense of linking DNA from saliva on the filter to the user, but their housemates might not…

  Philip Rhodri wasn’t the most fastidious man and his room was filled with dirty laundry; the bed was covered in sheets that looked as though they hadn’t been washed in months. The smell of sweat added to the stale smoke and the ripe stench of an unfinished takeaway curry.

  A quick look in the overflowing laundry bin revealed it contained clothes similar to those seen on Saturday’s CCTV footage and so the entire bag was simply photographed and placed into a large evidence sack. If any of Tommy Meegan’s blood had found its way onto the clothes, they’d find it. But Warren was worried. Rhodri didn’t strike him as a fool; if he had been wearing those clothes when he stabbed Meegan on Saturday, would he really be silly enough to leave them unwashed in the laundry basket?

  Chapter 28

  Philip Rhodri’s posture in custody was a carbon copy of that shown by Binay Singh Mahal; arms folded and an expression of mild disinterest. Unsurprisingly, his solicitor, a smarmy young man who seemed to know Rhodri well, was significantly better prepared than Dan Stock.

  ‘DCI Jones, I have yet to see convincing evidence that my client is in fact the person that sent those allegedly abusive messages over the internet to the late Mr Meegan. Furthermore, I object strongly to the search of Mr Rhodri’s property and the seizure of his motor vehicle on such a flimsy premise.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  The truth was, Warren wasn’t especially bothered about a bit of abusive to and fro on social media, the allegation was simply a useful way to get a search warrant.

  ‘As I am sure you are aware, Mr Rhodri, the person that you were engaged with on social media was killed on Saturday, 19 July. Much of what was said in that conversation could be interpreted as threatening. Did you threaten Mr Meegan?’

  ‘Don’t answer that,’ interjected his solicitor. ‘As I have already stated, there is no evidence that Mr Rhodri is responsible for those messages.’

  Predictable.

  ‘Have you ever met Mr Meegan?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘OK, Mr Rhodri. Could you tell me your whereabouts on Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘No comment.’

  The man’s face was a mask. Time to try something different.

  ‘We have CCTV footage that places you in Middlesbury on Saturday afternoon. Could you tell me what you were doing?’

  Was that a flicker of surprise? It was too fleeting for Warren to tell.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Were you meeting anybody?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Do you recognise this man? For the record, I am showing Mr Rhodri photograph 12A.’

  Rhodri’s eyes barely moved.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Try taking a closer look, Mr Rhodri.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Does the name Binay Singh Mahal mean anything to you?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Warren stared hard at the man for a few more seconds. Rhodri met his gaze, unblinking.

  Warren stood up. ‘Interview suspended.’

  * * *

  ‘He’s hiding something.’

  Gary Hastings had been watching the interview on the monitors.

  ‘No argument there. The question is what and is it significant? Rhodri hates the police, he sees us as little more than state-sanctioned terrorists – his words on his Facebook page. He wouldn’t cross the street to piss on us if we were on fire.’

  ‘So you think he might have nothing to do with the killing?’

  ‘I honestly have no idea. He could be completely innocent, he could know who did it, he could have stood next to Binay Singh as he stabbed him or he could even have done the stabbing himself. I genuinely have no clue. Contact Social Media Intelligence and get them to look for any link between Binay Singh Mahal and Philip Rhodri.’

  Hastings looked at his watch. ‘We have about twenty hours to figure it out or come up with enough to get an extension to custody.’

  Warren sighed. That seemed to be the way that this was case was destined to go.

  Chapter 29

  ‘Rhodri’s computer is password protected, and so is his mobile phone. Unless he chooses to cooperate with us, it’ll take us time to trace the threatening messages back to him.’

  Warren thanked Pete Robertson, the head of Welwyn’s Forensic IT unit. Rhodri had shown no evidence of any willingness to cooperate and the clock was ticking. Hopefully they’d have better luck with some of his associates.

  Of the ten people that Rhodri had hooked up with on Saturday afternoon at the Park and Ride, six had been arrested at the scene, including two of those he had driven from Cambridge. The remaining four had been identified from Garfield’s database.

  The six arrested at the scene had been released the following day without charge. Ultimately, the CPS had decided that it wasn’t worth the expense of taking them to court over a bit of spitting at police officers and abusive language. Warren wondered how the officers who had been spat at felt about that decision.

  Pulling the ten activists back in for questioning hadn’t been entirely straightforward, since they were not under arrest, but they had eventually been persuaded it was in their interest to help voluntarily or Warren and his team would dig until they found something to arrest them for.

  So far Warren, Hastings and a detective constable on loan from Welwyn had been met with a wall of silence or ‘no comments’. It was what he’d expected, but nevertheless Warren had warned Tony Sutton in the canteen that he was likely to strangle the next person who uttered the phrase. Hastings, who’d interviewed two witnesses himself, agreed.

  They were down to the last three, one in each of the interview suites. Warren downed his coffee.

  ‘Well, folks, as much as I’d love to spend another hour listening to these delightful individuals refusing to cooperate, I see that we have three witnesses left and if I count myself and DI Sutton, four officers. I shall bow out here and leave it in your capable hands. My inbox awaits.’

  The interview team groaned but reached for the three files left on the table.

  The door opened and one of the civilian support workers poked his head in.

  ‘Gary, I have a call for you. It’s about your sergeant’s interview.’

  With a sigh, Warren reached for Hastings’ file.

  ‘Wipe the grin off your face, Constable.’

  * * *

  Despite his earlier cynicism, Warren was generally an optimist and having read the file of Alois Kernaghan, he’d felt a stirring of excitement.

  Kernaghan was one of the students that Rhodri had driven to Middlesbury from Cambridge. According to the notes he had in front of him, the first-year natural sciences student at Homerton College had been distraught at being picked up at her first demonstration. Whether it was the risk of being kicked out of university or the reaction of her parents back in County Mayo, the nineteen-year-old had cried from the moment she’d been bundled, handcuffed in the back of a police van, to when she’d finally been released without charge after a night in the cells.

  Judging by the state of her mascara, the tears had been flowing again this morning, although she had dried her eyes and blown her nose by the time he sat down in front of her. It was a change from the hard-faced sneers of her fellow protestors.

  After the preliminaries had been completed, Warren started with his questioning. D
espite being appraised of her right to representation, Kernaghan had waived her right to a solicitor, no doubt wanting the whole thing over with as soon as possible.

  ‘Tell me, Ms Kernaghan, where were you on Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Hardly unexpected, but Warren was only just starting. Her voice was clear and confident.

  ‘Really? You were arrested Saturday afternoon during the protests against the BAP.’ Warren allowed a flicker of annoyance to cross his features. ‘I have that written down in black and white by my colleagues. Do you really want to waste everyone’s time by refusing to acknowledge something already agreed upon?’

  She said nothing, affecting a look of bored disinterest.

  He flicked through her file.

  ‘I see that Saturday was the first time you’ve been arrested in the UK. If I were to contact the Gardaí, would I find anything of interest?’

  ‘No.’

  It was the first time she’d said anything other than ‘no comment’. Even on Saturday, in floods of tears, she’d said little more.

  ‘Are you certain? I’m sure your college would be able to look on my behalf.’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  Her voice had a strong Irish lilt.

  ‘OK. Let’s take it as a given that you were at the counter-protest. How did you get there? Did you come from Cambridge?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Warren sighed dramatically. ‘We’ll all be out of here a lot sooner if you stop this “no commenting” nonsense. I just want to know how you travelled to Middlesbury on Saturday. Did you come by train?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What about bus? We have footage of lots of protestors getting off the bus.’

  She nodded, almost eagerly.

  ‘For the record, Ms Kernaghan claims to have travelled to Middlesbury on the day in question by bus.’

  ‘How did you get to the scene of the protest? Did you travel alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you tell me roughly what time you arrived in the centre of Middlesbury?’

  ‘No, I didn’t look at my watch.’

  Warren shrugged slightly. ‘No matter, I can get that off the CCTV cameras.’

  He leant back in his seat slightly.

  ‘Look, Alois. I really don’t care about some silly student who gets caught up in a protest and finds herself in over her head.’ He sighed. ‘Protesting is a rite of passage. When I was at uni we marched against Tory cuts to student grants.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Had bugger all effect. We also protested against the council closing down our favourite nightclub – similar result.’

  He looked over at her. ‘All I want to do is to track people’s whereabouts that afternoon. I’m sure you’ve seen the news and know what happened. As you can imagine there were hundreds of people in town that day. I just need to eliminate as many as I can. That’s all I’m asking. Will you help me?’

  The young woman sitting across from him chewed her lip.

  Warren said nothing. He had to let her make up her own mind; to think it was her decision.

  Eventually she nodded.

  Warren opened a manila envelope containing a couple of dozen individual headshots. All of the protestors who she had met at the Park and Ride were included, along with Rhodri, a few of the other protestors who had been arrested, and a number of unrelated ‘control’ photographs.

  ‘We’re trying to work out who was at the protest and may have seen something suspicious. Do you recognise any of these individuals?’

  The headshots were all custody photographs. If she was on the ball, she might question why they had these photographs if they didn’t know who they were. She didn’t.

  The photographs were slightly larger than those used for passports, and similarly devoid of humour, and she started to divide them into two piles.

  ‘I recognise these guys.’ She pointed to the pile on the left. All of the protestors that she’d walked in with were included, plus a couple of others who had also been arrested.

  ‘What about these?’

  She signalled ‘no’ but didn’t meet his eyes. The pile included a couple of known protestors, plus the ‘control’ group. And Philip Rhodri.

  ‘Some of these guys were arrested at the scene of the protest – are you sure that you don’t recognise them?’

  ‘No, I never met them.’

  ‘OK. Now just so we’re clear, I am in charge of a murder investigation. If any of the information you have given me is incorrect, you may well be charged with perverting the course of justice.’

  Kernaghan blanched slightly, but her voice remained steady. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Tell me again how you got to the protest.’

  ‘Bus.’

  ‘And were any of these individuals on that bus?’

  She paused for a moment before pulling out the pictures of the individuals who she had met at the Park and Ride.

  ‘Can you remember what number bus you caught?’

  She paused. ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’m sure the CCTV footage will tell us.’

  She bit her lip again.

  ‘And the bus stopped in the middle of town?’

  Another pause.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you tell me even roughly what time it arrived?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘That’s fine, we have CCTV footage of the bus station, we’ll pick you out easy enough.’

  Kernaghan clasped her hands in her lap, but not before Warren saw that they were trembling.

  ‘Where did you pick the bus up from? Cambridge?’

  Warren could see the fear in Kernaghan’s eyes. How much deeper would she dig the hole that she found herself in?

  She nodded, her voice barely audible.

  ‘Whereabouts in Cambridge? I believe the main bus route to Middlesbury has several stops?’

  It was time to stop digging. She knew it, but he could see that she was terrified, with no idea how to extricate herself. A more experienced person would have started ‘no commenting’ now and Warren didn’t want her to start that again, so he decided to make it easier for her.

  ‘Let’s start again, shall we? Tell me the truth and I’ll consider not arresting you for attempting to assist an offender.’

  She slumped in relief.

  ‘First of all, how did you get to Middlesbury?’

  ‘We drove to the Park and Ride.’

  ‘Who is we?’

  She pointed to two of the protestors, a woman about the same age as her and a man a few years older.

  ‘Anybody else?’

  She picked through the other pile until she found Rhodri’s photograph.

  ‘He drove us.’

  ‘And what’s his name?’

  ‘Philip. That’s all I know.’

  ‘OK. What else do you know about him?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not a lot. We met at a Students Against Fascism meeting a few months ago.’

  ‘Is he a student?’

  ‘Yeah, although I don’t know what he studies or which college he belongs to.’

  Warren said nothing. Philip Rhodri had five GCSEs to his name and when he wasn’t claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, he pulled pints in local pubs.

  ‘What happened when you got to the Park and Ride?’

  ‘We met up with these other guys. I assumed that we were going to jump on the bus, but Philip said it was only a mile or so and he’d rather walk.’

  ‘So Philip was the leader?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘And did you walk all the way into town together?’

  ‘Yes.’ The tremble was back.

  ‘STOP LYING TO ME, ALOIS!’

  The young student rocked back in her chair in surprise at Warren’s sudden bellow.

  ‘You were doing so well.’ Warren’s voice was soft again. ‘I don’t want to arrest you again, but I will if you don’t start telling me the truth.’

  The te
ars were back.

  ‘What happened on the walk into town?’

  She rubbed her nose on her sleeve.

  ‘About halfway in, a car pulled over. Philip said he had a meeting to go to and that we should go ahead, he’d meet us in town later.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He got in and they drove off.’

  ‘Who was in the car?’

  ‘I don’t know, I didn’t recognise him.’

  ‘Just one person?’

  ‘Yeah, an Asian guy.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  She shrugged helplessly. ‘I dunno. Youngish I guess. Long black hair and a beard. He was wearing sunglasses, I couldn’t see him clearly.’

  ‘What about the car?’

  She shrugged again.

  ‘Normal. White, I think, not very big.’

  Warren could see that he was unlikely to get much more out of her.

  ‘Why did he pull over there? Why not pick him up at the Park and Ride?’

  She looked at the table.

  ‘Alois?’ Warren’s tone was sharp.

  ‘Philip said there were too many cameras at the Park and Ride.’

  ‘And there were none on the road he was picked up on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did he know that?’

  Kernaghan said nothing.

  ‘Alois…’ This time Warren’s voice was low, warning.

  ‘There’s a website. It tells you where surveillance cameras are.’

  ‘Thank you, Alois. Interview suspended.’

  Chapter 30

  ‘So what else have you found?’

  CSI Stewart Beattie and his colleagues had spent the past few hours completing a search of Philip Rhodri’s house and were now heading back to Welwyn with their spoils. Since he practically had to drive past Middlesbury, it hadn’t taken much more than the offer of a decent coffee to get Beattie to take a detour.

  ‘We didn’t find anything in Rhodri’s room of great interest, but you were right about them flushing drugs.’ Beattie held up a plastic evidence bag. ‘It’ll need testing, but that looks like a fair few grams of cannabis resin to me.’