by MA Comley
He remained silent for a few moments. “Tell me you’ll get the bastards who did this, please? I have to live with this god-awful pain and guilt for the rest of my life, our lives. It won’t bring my kids back…but I need to know the bastards who destroyed my family will be brought to justice.”
“You have my assurance, Mr. Dobbs. Again, please accept my apologies for what you’re having to go through. I’ll keep you informed as and when we have any news. Take care.”
Lorne replaced the phone and thumped the desk with her hand. How dare these bastards rip that family apart like this! How dare they!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Lorne had insisted that Katy should stay the night with her, after the sergeant had beaten the sunrise by a few hours that morning and carried out a full shift at work.
The following day, they arrived at work early, at a quarter to nine, to the news that Zac Murray had been in a cell all night and was ready for questioning.
Lorne punched the air and patted AJ and John on the shoulder. “Good job, guys. Why don’t you go home for a couple of hours? If things go the way I want them to, I’ll need all hands available later on today. That’s if Murray starts squealing.”
The two men left, and Katy followed her into her office.
“I’m going to let Murray stew for another hour or so. Arrange for a duty solicitor to attend, will you? Can you gather the information I asked Molly to collect for me? I’ll take a quick look through that before I tackle him.”
Katy left the office and returned with a manila folder with Zac Murray’s name on it and placed it on the desk in front of Lorne. “The solicitor is booked for ten. Molly said she couldn’t find much on Murray, but there are a couple of snippets of information in there that she thinks will prove to be interesting.”
“Thanks. Do me a favour and get me a coffee.” She reached into her coat pocket and threw a fifty pence piece on the desk.
Looking insulted, Katy turned on her heel and walked out of the room, reappearing almost instantly with two cups of coffee. “That’s the least I can do after you putting me up. Umm…I thought I might go home tonight, if that’s okay with you?”
Surprised, Lorne sipped at her coffee, then said, “It’s up to you. The offer is still open to stay while Tony is away, remember that. Will Darren be around?”
“I hope not. I told him to collect his stuff. That’s why I need to go home, really, to see if he’s done it.”
Katy half-smiled, and Lorne could tell she was apprehensive. “Would you like me to come home with you?”
The sergeant waved her hand in front of her. “Nah, I’ll be fine. You’ve got enough on your plate already, plus we don’t know how today is going to pan out yet.”
“If you’re sure,” Lorne said, before teasing, “We could always ask AJ to accompany you.”
Katy’s cheeks coloured slightly. “Crikey, don’t you dare. Can you imagine how that would look if Darren were there?”
Lorne smirked. “Yeah, it’d be good, wouldn’t it?”
Both of them laughed. “You’re wicked. What do you want me to do?”
“I’d like you to sit in on the interview with me. Until then, if you can, have a word with the team, see if they’ve managed to dig anything else up. Also, gather the crime scene photos for me, will you? All three scenes.”
“On my way.”
Watching Katy leave, Lorne picked up her phone and called Roberts. “Good news, I hope.”
Sounding interested he said, “Go on.”
“The overtime paid off. AJ and John managed to locate Murray. He’s in a cell. I’m going to start questioning him in an hour or so.” While she was talking, Lorne opened the file Molly had collated and scanned the pages.
Hmm…That’s interesting.
“Inspector?”
“Sorry, boss. What did you say?”
“I said ‘Let me know how the interview goes.’ Actually, I asked if you could remember how to interview a suspect, but I changed my mind.” Roberts chuckled.
“Charming! I’ll take that remark with the contempt it deserves. I’ll keep you informed, sir.”
She hung up and searched through the file some more, making notes in her notebook as she went. A little while later, she rang the desk sergeant to check if the solicitor had arrived. When the sergeant told her he had, she asked him to prepare an interview room and to transfer Murray to it within the next five minutes.
“You ready?” Lorne asked Katy as she slipped her notebook into the jacket pocket of her black business suit.
Picking up the file containing the crime scene photos, Katy nodded. Lorne couldn’t help noticing how troubled she looked, so on the way downstairs, Lorne pulled Katy to a halt. “What’s wrong?” If she hadn’t known any better, she would’ve said that Katy had reverted to the way she was last week when she’d first joined the team, burrowed deep in her shell.
Katy sucked in a deep breath and tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine. Seeing the photos again affected me for some reason.”
“It’s been a long week for both of us. I know this is going to sound harsh, but you do get used to it. I know we shouldn’t, but working on the murder squad, you have to get used to seeing horrendous pictures pretty darn quickly. It goes with the territory, I’m afraid.”
“Oh I know that, ma’am. It was just seeing the kids again, that’s all. How can the poor parents go on, knowing that their children died like that?”
Lorne shrugged. “That’s going to be the hardest part of all, as the Dobbses are finding out at this very minute. And that’s why we have to get in there and tease the information out of Murray. DI Holland reckons he’s one of these types that needs to be told what to do. Well, there’ll be no one holding his hand in there—apart from the duty solicitor, that is. Let’s give it our best shot, eh?” Lorne held up her hand, and Katy gave her a high five. “Come on. Copy me and shake all those negative feelings away.”
They both continued descending the stairs while shaking out their extended arms, much to the amusement of several uniformed officers passing by. One of them threw a cheeky comment over his shoulder, and Lorne shouted back at him, “Up yours, Cartwright.”
Lorne checked with Katy that she was up to the interview before they entered the room. After receiving the sergeant’s reassurance, they marched confidently into the room.
The duty solicitor was someone Lorne recognized, a gaunt-looking man in his early forties who had a receding hairline, by the name of Tyler. A uniformed officer stood in the corner behind Murray’s chair.
Katy sat in the chair opposite Tyler while Lorne took the chair across from Murray. He looked rough, with dark rings surrounded his sunken eyes and his hair sticking up as if he’d spent the night running his hands through it and trying to pull it from its roots.
Lorne turned on the tape and said the usual required details: the time, date, and who was present in the room. “So, Mr. Murray, how do you know Mr. Underhill?”
Murray eyed her with contempt. His eyes sparkled with amusement, and the left side of his lips lifted into a sneer, and the words Lorne expected tumbled out: “No comment.”
Lorne persevered with the nice cop routine for the next fifteen minutes and received the same response over and over. She took out her black notebook and dropped it on the desk. It was time to up the stakes. Startled by the noise, Murray jumped slightly, but his eyes never strayed from his hands, which were interlocked on the table in front of him.
With her pen, she tapped just in front of his hands. “You have some pretty nasty abrasions on your hands, Mr. Murray. Care to tell me how you got them?”
Instantly, Murray scooped his hands back and folded his arms, hiding his marked hands under his armpits. “No comment.”
Nonchalantly, she opened her notebook and said nothing for the next few minutes, just turned the pages back and forth a few times. Glancing up, she noticed the solicitor shaking his head and smirking as he made notes on his A4 pad.
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“Okay, here’s the thing, Zac. I’m going to get the police doc to take a sample from your cuts, and if Underhill’s DNA shows up—” She clapped her hands together loudly, making Zac jump for a second time. “Bingo! The evidence will be handed to us on a plate. So?”
The suspect snarled at her. “You think you’re so clever, don’t ya?”
Frowning, she asked, “What makes you say that, Zac? Come on. Admit the GBH, and then we can move on.”
“I ain’t admitting to nothin’.” A hate-filled smile stretched his lips into a thin line across his yellowing teeth.
“I’m sure your brother would be urging you to accept the charge if he was here.”
A momentary, confused look flittered across his pale face. “Don’t get ya.”
“Trevor, isn’t it?”
The solicitor and his client exchanged nonplussed glances before Tyler said, “Inspector, I’m not sure what my client’s brother has to do with this. Are we still talking about the GBH charge?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lorne saw Katy writing in her notebook, which she passed over to Lorne. The note read: Now you have him by the short and curlies.
“Excellent point, sergeant,” she said, stifling a grin.
A determined Tyler tried to grab the notebook from Lorne’s hand, but she pulled it back out of his eager grasp.
“I demand to know what you two are up to.” Tyler sat upright in his uncomfortable chair.
“How many brothers do you have, Zac?”
“One. Trevor.”
“Ah, right. It must have been a distressing time for you when he went missing.”
Zac’s confusion increased. “Yeah, it was. But…”
And with that one word, she knew that Zac had just dug himself a six-foot hole. “But?”
Under the table, his trainers scuffed the concrete floor, and he started to fidget in his seat under her cool gaze.
Mumbling, he said, “I didn’t say but. You misheard me.”
She looked over at Tyler. “Did you hear your client say ‘but,’ Mr. Tyler?”
He nodded.
“But. Such a small word but a vitally important word, nonetheless.” She started writing it over and over on a spare page in her notebook to emphasise her point. “My friend told me an interesting fact about you the other day, during my enquiries.”
“What?” he snapped defensively.
“In connection with another case I’m working on. You’ll see in a moment where the pieces fit. My friend told me that you’re the type who needs to be led. Is that right, Zac? Is someone pulling your strings?”
“What the fuck are you on about?”
If ever a suspect looked rattled, it was him. She was enjoying the look of panic that had settled in his eyes and pushed on. “I’m asking you again, Mr. Murray, what is your connection with Philip Underhill?”
“No comment.”
“Okay, let me put it this way—make it simpler for you, if you like. I believe your brother Trevor is alive.” She paused to gauge his reaction. “And that you and your pal Carl Ward are behind some robberies I’m investigating.”
Tyler chirped up, “Now wait just a minute, Inspector. My understanding is that my client has been brought in for questioning regarding a GBH charge. I know nothing about any robberies, and neither does he.”
“That’s strange, Mr. Tyler. How do you know your client doesn’t know about the robberies? Just because you haven’t been privy to the information doesn’t mean Zac here knows nothing about them.”
Murray spoke next. “I know nothing about any robberies.”
But, as his eyes looked over to the left, Lorne knew he was lying. “Did Trevor tell you to beat Underhill up to stop him from talking to us?”
“Nope,” Murray told her as his eyes dropped down to her notebook.
“Ah, so you admit Trevor is alive, then?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Tyler shook his head again and eyed his client with frustration. Lorne held back a snigger that was dying to escape. “Here’s my take on things, Zac. Correct me if I’m wrong as I explain things, won’t you?”
Murray remained silent, so she continued. Katy pushed the folder in front of Lorne, and one by one, she placed the pictures of Rebecca and Jacob Dobbs on the desk before the suspect. She heard him gulp noisily and knew the pictures had affected him. Then she picked up the pictures of Lewis Kelly lying dead on his bed and thrust them before him.
“While footballer Dave Dobbs was playing a match last Tuesday evening, you, Carl, and a third person—whom I suspect was your brother Trevor—broke into their house. Only you didn’t actually have to break in, did you? You’d already made sure that Underhill’s security firm made it easy for you to enter the property. How am I doing so far?”
Zac’s jaw hung open.
“For the tape, Mr. Murray’s jaw is open, and he has a shocked look on his face. I’m reading that to mean that so far, my assumptions are pretty accurate. I’ll continue. So, who’s idea was it to kill the kids, Zac? Yours?”
“No, it fucking wasn’t. I’d never…”
Feeling smug, Lorne raised her eyebrow at the solicitor, who had started to look disinterested in defending his client’s inept reactions to the questioning.
“You’d never what, Zac? Slit a child’s throat like this.” She snatched up the photo of little Jacob Dobbs and held it in front of Murray’s face. “He was two. What could a two-year-old do to harm a man of your size?”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled under his breath.
“What did you say, Mr. Murray? Please repeat for the tape?”
But he refused to, so she twisted the screws further. “Why did you leave Mrs. Dobbs alive?”
He shrugged.
“That woman will have to live with the image of her children being murdered by you and your gang for the rest of her life. Here’s a snippet of information for you: I received a disturbing call yesterday from Mr. Dobbs. His wife had tried to commit suicide. The guilt has proved to be too much for her. How’s your guilt holding up? Whose idea was it to kill the kids? Trevor’s?”
He angrily thrust his hands through his ginger hair as a pained expression twisted his face.
Instead of waiting for him to answer, Lorne struck again, searching out his jugular. “So what’s it to be, Zac? Take the rap for GBH, or shall I hit you with a murder charge? Actually, make that all three murders.”
Murray’s head whipped round to Tyler in desperation, but the solicitor kept his eyes focused on his pad and refused to make eye contact with his client. When Murray looked at her, she noticed his eyes were watering.
“Are they tears of guilt or desperation, Zac?” she asked sarcastically.
He wiped the wetness from his eyes with the back of his hand and snapped back, “Neither. I told you: I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”
Lorne bashed her flattened hand down on the desk and coolly said, “And I’m telling you that you have. Mr. Underhill has already said that when he’s well enough, he’s going to come in and tell us your involvement in all of this.”
“Ha! That means he’s going to implicate himself, then,” Murray said, foolishly walking into the trap she had set for him.
“I’ve heard enough. DS Foster, get the duty sergeant in here and get him to place Mr. Murray under arrest.” Lorne scraped the chair on the floor as she stood up.
“Wait…You can’t arrest me without proof. I know my rights.”
“Yeah, and I know mine, too, Murray. You either cooperate or…”
His shoulders slumped in defeat, shaking his head, he mumbled, “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Lorne asked, taking her seat again.
Murray clammed up. And again Lorne rose from her chair and headed for the door. “Very well. If that’s the way you want to play it. I’ll leave you with this warning, Murray.” She held her hand up and placed her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “I’m this close, thanks to you slipping up during the course
of this interview, to putting all the pieces together. I have every confidence, once we have Underhill’s statement and we collect his DNA from your wounds, that your brother and Carl Ward will be residing in a cell near you shortly.”
He gave a derisory laugh. “Good luck with that one. My brother’s been missing for three years.”
Lorne laughed and said to Katy, “Maybe we ought to play the tape back to Mr. Murray to refresh his memory about what he’s told us over the last hour.”
Katy reached for the tape but paused when Murray, looking confused, scratched his head. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it almost immediately.
Lorne left the room thinking she was at last on the right track, and it was only a matter of time before the case drew to a satisfactory conclusion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Once back in the incident room, Lorne waited a few minutes for Katy to join her before she started issuing instructions.
“Okay, here’s where we stand. While AJ and John get some sleep, I want the rest of you to delve into three people’s pasts for me.” She walked up to the board and circled three names. “Molly, what you pulled up on Trevor Murray was brilliant, but I need more. What occupation did he have before he disappeared? Any contacts, family members, wife or girlfriend. Did anyone gain from his ‘supposed disappearance,’ for instance?”
“I’ll get on it right away, ma’am.”
“Tracy, I’d like you to dig into Carl Ward’s past. From what we’ve learned so far, he and Zac Murray have been involved in petty criminal activities for a few years now. Go back through his record; see when he was first arrested. I want to know who his employer was before he got into trouble. Any wife or girlfriend in the picture, et cetera. We have to find some kind of connections. I’m sure we’ve taken one of the main players out of the equation, so I don’t anticipate any more robberies. My guess is people will be spinning around on the spot, not knowing which way to turn.”
“I’m on it, ma’am,” Tracy said, already tapping away at her computer.
“Katy, I’d like you to dig into Danielle Styles’ background, friends, family, et cetera. Where did she get her money from to start such a business? What qualifications has she got to call herself an interior designer? I’ll be in my office. The minute you find anything, let me know ASAP.”