‘Is that all?’ I asked in disappointment.
‘I’m sorry,’ Karen said. ‘To be honest, I didn’t realise just how poor it is. No wonder we’re replacing it. The only decent camera is the one we recently installed in the indoor pool area, so we could see if someone is in trouble. We had a nasty incident last year when an unsupervised child nearly drowned.’
I looked at the image of the swimming pool on the screen and it was bright, sharp and in colour. I obviously should have gone swimming in the middle of the night.
I remembered what Douglas had said.
‘How about the electronic door locks?’ I asked. ‘Does the system keep a record of when they were used?’
‘I think so,’ Karen said. ‘It certainly records the last time someone unlocked the door, but I’m not quite sure how to access it. I’d have to ask our IT man.’
‘I can wait,’ I said encouragingly.
She pushed a button on the desk. ‘I’ve paged him. He’ll be here soon.’
‘Didn’t the police ask for that information?’ I asked.
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
We waited in silence and, presently, a twenty-something bespectacled young man wearing blue dungarees came into the office.
‘Ah, there you are, Gary,’ said Karen. ‘Mr Gordon-Russell here wants to know if our room locks keep a record of when they were used.’
‘Sure do,’ Gary said. ‘Last sixty times for each one.’
Things were looking up.
Gary sat down at one of the computer terminals and started tapping on the keyboard.
‘Which room?’ he asked.
‘Three-ten,’ Karen said.
I was glad she could remember the number. I only knew where it was.
Gary tapped some more.
‘There you are,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Easy as pie.’
I looked at the list on the screen
The last sixty times, Gary had said, and it was none too many. It seemed that room 310 was regularly opened many times per day and the sixty activations of the lock only took us back to Tuesday morning of last week, the very day of my arrival. If I’d left it another day, the data would have disappeared for ever.
‘Can you print this?’ I asked.
Gary looked at Karen, who nodded.
‘No problem,’ he said and tapped yet more.
A printer on the side whirred and out popped a sheet of paper with the information neatly tabulated upon it.
Not only did the list give the time the lock was opened but it also recorded the reference number of the card that opened it.
‘Those first two are Lindy, one of the chambermaids,’ Gary said. ‘I know her keycard number.’ I had the impression it wasn’t the only number of hers he knew. ‘And the next one is Jess, the housekeeper.’
‘She would have been checking that the room was ready,’ Karen said.
‘Then that must be me arriving,’ I said, pointing to an activation at seven minutes past six with the code 4579053.
‘Gordon-Russell, you say?’
‘I checked in as Mr Russell.’
Gary tapped some more on the computer.
‘It was you,’ he said. ‘I cross-referenced your name against the machine that programmes the cards. Keycard 4579053 was created at eighteen-oh-four in the name of Mr Bill Russell.’
The next activation was at 23.34.
‘That’s me returning from the dinner at the cricket ground.’
And the very next activation on the list was at 09.21 on Wednesday morning, with nothing in between.
‘That’s me coming back from breakfast,’ I said with a degree of excitement. Was something finally going my way?
Maybe not.
‘But the system doesn’t record it when someone leaves the room, only when they arrive,’ Karen Wentworth said.
‘That’s right,’ Gary said. ‘It only registers when the keycard is used and you don’t need the card to leave the room – there’s a handle on the inside that opens the door without it.’
So, even though the system clearly showed that I hadn’t entered the room between 23.34 Tuesday and 09.21 Wednesday, it didn’t prove that I was in there all night. I could have left at any time, not just for breakfast.
I sighed.
‘Thanks, anyway,’ I said. I folded up the piece of paper. ‘Can I keep this?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Karen said. ‘Do you also want a DVD of the CCTV tapes? Gary can burn you one easily. He made the copy for the police on Monday.’
‘Gordon-Russell,’ Gary said slowly, the cogs in his memory obviously now turning. ‘Bloody hell . . .’
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t kill my wife, and I’m trying to prove it.’
*
With the useless DVD and the inconclusive lock data in my pockets, I walked down the side of the building to the hotel car park, and specifically to the spot in the far corner next to the rear wire fence where I’d parked my car the previous week.
I stood and looked about me.
The car park backed on to the rear of a parade of local shops, with a service delivery road between them and the car-park fence. I went over to the fence for a closer look. I could see that one of the shops had a security camera pointing along the service road. Maybe the images would also show the hotel car park.
I walked back round the hotel to the shop. It was a local grocery store
Yes, the woman behind the counter told me, the camera made an on-going recording of the previous twenty-eight days, but why did I want to see it?
Rather than explain the real reason, I made up a story of having had my car vandalised while in the hotel car park and their camera might have caught who had done it.
‘Don’t know about that,’ she said unhelpfully. ‘It’s only there to cover our back door.’
‘Please could I see anyway?’ I asked patiently.
She looked around as if wanting some customers to make her too busy, but the shop was deserted.
‘I’ll have to get my husband,’ she said. ‘He deals with the CCTV. We had it put in last year after someone tried to rob us.’
She looked at me suspiciously as if I might have the same mission.
‘And where is your husband?’ I asked.
‘Having a rest. We open from seven in the morning until eleven at night, seven days a week. Every day but Christmas Day. It’s a lot of hours for just the two of us.’
‘It must be,’ I said in my most sympathetic tone. ‘But this is very important to me.’
She hesitated but then went over to the door to the rear, all the while keeping her eyes firmly on me – just in case I tried to pilfer something.
‘Faisal,’ she shouted through the door. ‘There’s a man here to see you.’
A bearded man appeared, rubbing his eyes as if he had been woken by the call.
‘What do you want?’ he asked gruffly.
I repeated my story about having had my car vandalised and asked if he could show me the recordings from the camera out the back. The man didn’t seem to be at all happy at being roused from his slumbers for such a paltry reason and he gave his wife a severe stare. She, meanwhile, patently ignored him.
‘This way,’ the man said reluctantly, and I followed him into a room behind the shop that was crammed full to the ceiling with boxes of spare stock.
He moved a case of Heinz tomato soup tins from a chair and then sat down at a desk.
‘What date did you say?’ he asked.
‘A week last Tuesday. Nine days ago.’
‘Time?’
‘About quarter to six in the afternoon.’
He entered some numbers into the CCTV recorder via a remote control and an image appeared on a screen above.
In the very top corner of the screen, I could see the car-park wire fence and a little way beyond it, but there was no car visible.
‘Can you fast-forward?’ I asked. ‘I arrived a little after that.’
The image shimmered a little as he did so and then, as if by magic, we could see the back end of my silver Jaguar appear as I reversed into the empty space. The number plate was clearly visible,
‘That’s my car,’ I said excitedly, placing my finger on the screen. ‘Can you wind it on a bit more? Until after it got dark.’
He did so and the colour drained from the image as the system switched from visible to infrared but, crucially, the back of my car was still visible, in ghostly grey.
‘Please wind it right on to the following morning,’ I said.
‘What time was it vandalised?’ the man asked.
‘I’m not sure. Sometime during the night.’
He pushed some more buttons on the remote and the image flickered as he fast-forwarded it, the time-recording in the top corner racing on from six in the evening to midnight and then beyond.
The colour returned to the image with the coming of daylight and still the car was unmoved. Only at 9.56 a.m. by the onscreen clock did the car finally disappear from the image, and that was when I drove it out of the car park to go to Warwick Racecourse.
‘I didn’t see any vandalism,’ the man said.
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘It must have been done further forward out of sight of the camera. But that is fabulous nevertheless. Can I please have a copy?’
‘But it didn’t show anything.’
‘I know, but it does at least prove my car was in that car park all night and I’ll need that for the insurance company.’ And for DS Dowdeswell, I thought.
I felt elated. I finally had the proof I needed.
19
‘You could have used some other form of transport,’ said the detective sergeant.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘What other form of transport do you think I had access to, a racehorse?’
I had gone direct from Edgbaston to Banbury by train and had walked with a jaunty step through the town to the police station, where I was now talking to DS Dowdeswell in the entrance lobby.
‘There’s always public transport,’ the DS said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Every bus and train has CCTV. If I’d come back from Birmingham by public transport I’d have been filmed. And how would I have then got from Banbury to Hanwell village? By taxi? Have you found the driver? And what did I do then? Ask him to wait outside on the road while I just nipped inside for five minutes to kill my wife?’
He said nothing.
I had laid the grocery-store CCTV evidence before him, together with the data from the hotel keycards.
‘I demand that you stop this nonsense and release me from this laughable investigation. You have no forensic evidence against me, nothing on my phone or computer, and now I have proof that I couldn’t have been in Hanwell when Amelia was murdered. I was “elsewhere”. That’s what alibi means in Latin. I am told by a QC that an alibi is an absolute defence. So it is high time you started looking for the real culprit. And that’s Joe Bradbury.’
‘You could have arranged for someone else to kill your wife when you knew that you could prove you weren’t present.’
‘Now you really are grasping at straws,’ I said. ‘And who is this mystery person? And how did I contact them, by telepathy?’
‘What about your wife’s life insurance policy? That’s a powerful motive.’
‘I explained all that,’ I said. ‘It’s not relevant.’
‘We’ll see,’ he replied patronisingly. ‘And there is also the abuse complaint we have received.’
‘That’s malicious nonsense and you know it.’ I was quite cross. ‘I not only demand that you release me from this investigation but also that you inform the press and media that I am no longer a suspect in the murder of my wife.’
‘Well, that’s not going to happen.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you do remain a suspect.’
It was like talking to a brick wall.
‘I want my car back,’ I said. ‘And my house, plus my computer and my phone.’
I wanted my life back too, my lovely life with my gorgeous Amelia, but that wasn’t going to happen either.
‘I will need to speak to DCI Priestly,’ the DS said.
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘You do that. I’ll wait.’
I sat down on one of the seats in the police station lobby, crossed my legs and folded my arms. I could also be bloody-minded.
*
I waited a long time and I began to worry that they must have more evidence against me than I thought.
It had always been a bit of a risk coming back to the police station and part of me had argued strongly against it – the memory of being in that cell, even for only one night, was raw and distressing. I had no wish to repeat the experience.
Eventually the detective sergeant returned, still without handcuffs.
‘You can have your car,’ he said. ‘And access to your house, but we will keep your phone and computer for the time being.’
It was a start – a move in the right direction.
‘Okay,’ I said. I held my hand out. ‘I’ll take the car and house keys now.’
‘I can give you the keys for the house but not to your car. It’s still at our forensic lab and needs to be returned here first to complete the paperwork.’
‘So when will that happen?’
‘Soon,’ he said.
Soon could mean anything from just a few minutes to any length of time you chose. Something happening soon in geological terms meant in only a million years or so.
‘Why can’t I have my phone and computer?’ I asked.
‘Because the forensic team are still going through the data.’
‘They won’t find anything incriminating,’ I said. ‘Not implicating me, anyway. But you should take a look at the emails from Joe Bradbury over the past three years. They will show you the sort of man he really is. And there are more of those on Amelia’s laptop. I presume you still have that?’
‘Yes, we do. We’ve had it since the morning she was found.’
‘Well, take a good look. You will see that there is no possible way that my wife would call Joe Bradbury and invite him over to our house, especially if I wasn’t there. She hated him. Joe was lying about that in the Coroner’s Court yesterday and you should ask him why. Check his phone records. There’ll be no call.’
He looked at me in silence and I found it impossible to read what he was thinking.
‘House keys?’ I said, holding out my hand.
He handed over the padlock keys.
‘Call me at home about the car and the other stuff,’ I said.
And then I departed, inhaling the cold crisp air outside in great gulps. There was definitely something refreshing about freedom.
*
‘Sounds like you had a good day,’ Douglas said when I told him everything that evening.
‘It could have been better. The damn police still won’t release me from the investigation. They seem hung up on the life insurance thing.’
‘You have to admit that it’s a strong motive,’ he said. ‘Money being the root of all evil, and all that guff.’
‘But that’s not right,’ I said. ‘The correct quote is “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Different thing altogether. It comes from the Bible. Saint Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, chapter six, verse ten.’
Douglas looked at me and raised a questioning eyebrow.
I laughed. ‘I calculate the church buildings insurance premium for the Diocese of London. The bishop quotes that verse at me every year when the premium goes up.’
And my love of money was like nothing compared to my love of Amelia. I’d give up every drop of monetary riches I owned just to have her back for an hour – or even a minute.
‘How about you?’ I asked, fighting back another wave of emotion. ‘Did you have a good day?’
‘Mixed,’ he said. ‘The damn jury convicted our man of manslaughter rather than murder. Complete cop-out, if you ask me. The judge
was clearly furious with them. All but told them so, straight out.’
‘So what happens now?’ I asked.
‘The CPS may decide to retry him for murder. Or they might take the view that this conviction is enough. We’ll wait and see.’
‘How long is the sentence for manslaughter?’
‘The maximum possible is life imprisonment,’ Douglas said. ‘Same as for murder. But, in my experience, it’s typically between two and ten years.’
‘Couldn’t the judge just sentence him to life anyway?’
‘He could,’ Douglas agreed, ‘but it would likely be reduced in the Court of Appeal. Much better to get things right the first time round.’
Pity the Banbury police didn’t take the same view.
*
Friday morning dawned bright and cold with the sun streaming through a crack in Philip’s curtains.
‘I think I’ll go back home today,’ I said to Douglas over breakfast.
‘You know that you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like,’ he said between mouthfuls of toast.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I can’t run away for ever.’
‘Are you sure you’re ready?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not at all sure, but I have to go back sometime, and today seems as good a day as any. At least the sun is shining.’
Douglas looked troubled.
‘Would you like me to come with you? I’ve nothing scheduled for today now that my trial has finished. All I have to do is prepare my next brief.’
‘My dear brother,’ I said, ‘I would love you to come but you’ve told me how busy you are in the coming weeks and I think this is something I have to do on my own.’
‘At least you don’t have to worry about the police any more.’
‘Don’t I?’ I said. ‘Try telling that to the investigating DS. He’s still treating me as the only suspect.’
‘Trust me,’ Douglas said. ‘I’ve been an advocate in criminal proceedings for more than twenty years now and I’m telling you that there is no chance the CPS would countenance charges against you with so little evidence, and with so many counterindications. Your alibi is cast iron for a start. This DS might not want to admit it but, after what you proved to him yesterday, he will now be forced to look for someone else.’
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