Blind Alley

by Danielle Ramsay

  O’Donnell had sanctioned Harris’ arrest warrant immediately, notifying the Met police. He was arrested at 5:01 a.m. by a group of burly officers kicking in the door of his digs. He was now in custody and in the process of being driven back up to the North-East.

  Brady would worry about Gates’s reaction to his bypassing his authority later. Right now he was more concerned with finding where Lee Harris had held and tortured Chloe Winters. When he walked back into that interview room he wanted to make sure that Harris, or James Hunter as he had previously been known, didn’t have a chance in hell of walking out a free man. He wanted no fuck-ups this time.

  ‘Nothing here, sir,’ shouted one of the officers searching the yard.

  It was 10:45. The search warrant had been hurriedly approved. It came with the territory of being a Detective Chief Superintendent. Judges were more likely to act quickly for O’Donnell than someone like Brady.

  ‘Fuck!’ muttered Brady to himself. They had been here for two hours – and nothing.

  They had searched all the offices and warehouses and even the haulage trucks. Brady had even had the dogs search amongst the crates on the off-chance that Harris had kept her in one.

  Again, nothing.

  ‘Sir,’ Conrad greeted him as he joined him.

  They were standing in the yard. All of Sanderson’s employees had been interviewed. Brady wanted to know if anyone had seen Lee Harris hanging around the yard. No one had. It wasn’t the news he wanted. However, he was sure that Harry Sanderson was more pissed-off right now that his future son-in-law had been picked up by the police and was in custody; as was his daughter.

  ‘I don’t get it, Conrad.’

  Conrad didn’t reply. He had no answer to give his boss.

  They had both noticed the twenty-four surveillance cameras surrounding the premises. The haulage firm dealt with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of goods on a daily basis. It was a given that security would be tight. Then there were the two security guards. Kodovesky and Harvey had already questioned them. They had never seen Harris on the premises. Brady currently had Daniels and Kenny searching the surveillance footage for any sign of Harris on that Friday night. So far, nothing.

  He looked around the yard. It would have been impossible for Harris to bring Chloe Winters here. Brady had fucked up. There was no way he could have bypassed the security cameras and the two security guards undetected. It simply wasn’t possible. And if Kenny and Daniels found no evidence of him on the security tapes then Brady was screwed.

  He thought of what Gates’s reaction would be to this news. Not good.

  ‘Does he own anywhere else, Conrad?’

  Conrad shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘These premises look new to me. Sanderson’s office looked as if he had recently moved into it. Fresh paint . . . new carpet. What happened to his old premises? Because he’s been in business for over twenty years . . .’

  ‘I’ll check, sir,’ Conrad said as he took out his mobile.

  Brady watched as he walked off.

  What are you missing? What the fuck are you not seeing?

  Then it hit him. He remembered that one of the paramedics had said something strange in their report. At the time Brady had discounted it. But the paramedic had clearly stated that ‘Her hair and skin smelled of charred wood.’

  Why had he not taken that seriously? Why had it not jarred at the time?

  Brady didn’t have an answer. He just knew that he had failed to see the obvious.

  ‘Conrad?’ Brady shouted.

  He turned to Brady.

  ‘I know what you need to look for.’

  Conrad put his call on hold and waited.

  ‘His old premises burned down.’

  ‘On it, sir,’ Conrad immediately answered.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Two hours later they were searching through the burned remnants of Sanderson’s original haulage site. It was conveniently close to the coast; two miles inland if that. No distance in a car. The haulage company was located on an industrial estate set back off Middle Engine Lane. The place had burned down over a year ago, so why had Brady not thought of it? He was kicking himself at his own stupidity.

  He hadn’t realised this place had belonged to Sanderson. Brady had heard that it had been intentionally torched. He had no idea why. But this place was called Douglas and Sons Haulage Company, which was why he hadn’t made the connection. Brady assumed Sanderson had renamed his haulage firm to distance himself from the suspicion that someone had it in for him.

  The condemned premises were surrounded by eight-foot high fencing and a padlocked gate. But it appeared that the heavy-duty padlock had been cut with bolt cutters and replaced with another. The keys Brady had got from Sanderson were useless. Once in, it didn’t take the police dogs and their handlers long to find the room where Lee Harris had kept Chloe Winters. No surprise given the amount of blood and skin tissue left at the crime scene. Winters’ scent had driven the dogs wild.

  Lee Harris had been here recently. That was obvious. But no amount of industrial bleach could destroy the incriminating evidence. It was everywhere. The ground floor office had been used as a torture room. Harris had thoughtfully fitted a chain into the concrete floor. He had made sure that Chloe was going nowhere. A mattress had been left in the corner of the room. Again doused in bleach. Harris would no doubt have thought about pouring petrol over the mattress and setting fire to it. But if he had, the whole place would have gone up again bringing with it an investigation. It wouldn’t have taken long for the fire officers to know it had been started intentionally and then the police would have started looking around.

  Brady had left the room to Ainsworth’s team. The less contamination the better. They would crucify Harris; he was sure of it. Every officer on this case felt sick to the stomach. Harris was a very disturbed individual. That much was clear from what they had found. Harris had presumably panicked. He had voluntarily come in for questioning but it hadn’t quite gone as he’d planned. Without Lisa Sanderson, and her father’s friendship with DCI Gates, Harris wouldn’t have walked. Not if Brady had had his way. Harris had returned to the crime scene to try and eradicate trace evidence: blood, hair, saliva and semen. However, he hadn’t been as clever as he’d thought. He had not anticipated the SOCOs using the chemical luminol and a portable UV light to reveal trace evidence that couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. Ainsworth’s team had their work cut out. It was gruesome.

  Brady was looking forward to seeing Gates’s face when he realised exactly what kind of sick, depraved kind of person he had released back into society.

  Brady had just returned to his office after interviewing Lisa Sanderson. He needed time to unwind.

  He sat down at his desk. It was late and he was tired. It hit him that he had had no sleep. That after he’d been to see Jimmy Matthews in prison yesterday he had driven around for hours. Otherwise he would have driven himself mad – literally. He had then wound up back at the station in the early hours of the morning. Anything was better than being at home alone. He had needed a distraction, which was why had turned his attention back to Lee Harris. Within eighteen hours that distraction had developed at an exponential rate. Lee Harris was now in a holding cell in the station’s basement after being signed off by the Met police. Had been for the past six hours.

  It was now 7:30 p.m. and Brady still had to interview him. But the forensic evidence they had against him was incontestable. Trace evidence had been recovered from his silver Passat despite his attempts at cleaning it. It was clear that he had transported Chloe Winters’ body in the boot. Then there was the crime scene where he had held her captive for forty-eight hours. And Brady was only getting started.

  He sighed heavily and took a drink of the cold coffee on the desk. Anything to keep awake. He couldn’t believe what they had found at Lisa Sanderson’s flat in Marine Avenue. Harris had sealed his fate by not dumping it all. Brady had questioned why, and the only answer he could
come up with was that Harris, for whatever perverse, sick reason couldn’t let it go.

  Brady thought about his interview with the suspect’s fiancée, or should he say ex-fiancée? It had been short and awkward. Harry Sanderson’s lawyer had been present and had a knack of stopping Brady at every juncture. The upshot of the interview was that she had not knowingly lied about the dates for the trip to Paris. She argued that she had made a mistake when she had checked the dates for that weekend on her phone. Her mobile’s calendar had flagged up both the Friday and the Saturday as the weekend trip to Paris. She had read the dates out and hadn’t realised. She had even shown Brady the flagged dates on her phone at the time.

  Sanderson had explained that they missed the Friday flight because Harris couldn’t make it back from London in time. He changed the flights to the following day before he left London to avoid losing the tickets.

  When Brady had informed her that Harris never cancelled the Friday flights and that he’d already booked two single fares for the Saturday earlier that week she was genuinely surprised. Then taken aback and, finally, horrified. If her whole world had been in a state of collapse, it suddenly imploded at that point.

  It had taken twenty minutes to calm her down. And another twenty to get her in a state where she could answer without the threat of needing to be tranquilised.

  When Brady finally asked her if at any point she had realised her mistake with the Paris dates her answer had been no. Brady accepted it. It was an honest answer. The ground had been taken from beneath her; she had nothing to lose.

  Her lawyer was good. He had argued that his client had been harassed at the time and had had no legal representation. In other words, she should never have been interviewed without a lawyer present. It was no surprise she would have been so shaken and shocked by the fact that her fiancée was being questioned over rape allegations. That it was an easy mistake to make.

  He looked up as Conrad walked into the room.

  ‘Tranquilisers?’

  Conrad nodded. ‘Exactly where she said they were, sir. In her bathroom cabinet.’

  ‘Explains why she wouldn’t have heard Harris leave the flat on the nights he raped his victims. Perfect alibi,’ Brady said.

  Why the hell had Lisa Sanderson not mentioned that when she had first been interviewed? More to the point, why hadn’t Brady thought to ask if she was on any type of medication?

  He had told Kodovesky and Harvey to search the flat that Harris shared with his fiancée, while he and Conrad had been at the crime scene. They had recovered a great deal of incriminating evidence against Lee Harris but they had missed the drugs. The tranquilisers were Lisa Sanderson’s ticket out. It meant that her alibi for all three nights still stood. She had spent the evening with Lee Harris and had then gone to bed medicated up to her eyeballs. She wouldn’t have heard a bomb go off with the strength of medication she was taking. So it was no surprise that Harris was able to come and go without her knowledge. As far as she was concerned, he had been with her all night. She went to bed with Harris and woke up with him. How would she know any different?

  It was her lawyer who had raised the sleeping pills in her defence. Sanderson hadn’t realised their significance. She had been taking them for so long that they were as much a part of her routine as cleaning her teeth before bed. But Lee Harris knew about them. He knew that she had had a bad fall horse-riding a few years ago and suffered from chronic back pain – she couldn’t sleep without medication.

  Harris lived at Lisa Sanderson’s rented flat at the weekends and during the week he stayed in digs in London close to the construction site where he worked. They had confiscated his desktop computer from the flat in Whitley Bay and the Met police had picked up his laptop in his digs. Harris had made himself very comfortable in Lisa Sanderson’s flat. He even had an attic room where he kept all his personal effects – including the surveillance cameras that he had removed from the crime scene. He had installed a camera in the room where Chloe Winters had been held so he could watch her live on his computer whenever he’d wanted. The door had a padlock on it so only Harris could enter. He had explained to his fiancée that he was worried about somebody breaking in and stealing all his computer equipment and personal belongings. For some reason, blinded no doubt by love, Lisa Sanderson had innocently accepted this arrangement.

  Lee Harris’ computers were now with Jed. Brady was certain that he would find everything Harris had stored; including the scenes when he had tortured and raped Winters. Harris was a narcissist and a control freak. He would have savoured being able to relive every cruel and sadistic moment. Even if Harris had deleted all the files after his brief period in custody, Jed was one of the best forensic computer scientists on the force so Brady had no doubts that he would find them.

  Why hadn’t Harris made a run for it? Brady couldn’t say. Perhaps it was a combination of arrogance and the fact that his father-in-law had connections. After all, Lee Harris had already walked free once because of Harry Sanderson’s money and social status. But that wouldn’t have been able to protect him indefinitely. He was a sadist and a serial rapist. It would be very difficult for him to control the urge to attack again. Chloe Winters survived his attack; whether his next victim would have done was doubtful.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘It’s open,’ Brady called out.

  Amelia Jenkins walked in.

  ‘Congratulations, Jack. I don’t how you did it.’

  She stopped when she saw the state of him.

  Amelia had not seen him since before Munroe’s fists had redesigned Brady’s face. She turned to Conrad as if expecting an answer from him.

  She looked back to Brady: ‘Christ! You look dreadful.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I heard that Munroe had resisted arrest but . . . God that looks painful,’ she said as she stared at his swollen jaw.

  ‘It’s nothing. Really. Munroe’s old news.’

  Amelia walked over and sat down in front of Brady’s desk.

  ‘Take a seat why don’t you?’ Brady offered.

  ‘So, I hear that you’ve released Lisa Sanderson?’ There was an unmistakable edge to her voice.

  Brady nodded.

  ‘Can I ask why?’

  Brady turned to Conrad.

  ‘Show her the evidence bag.’

  Conrad did as instructed. The evidence had to be officially signed in and dated which was his next job.

  ‘Christ! These would knock a rugby team out. And she was taking these on a daily basis?’ Amelia asked, incredulous.

  Brady nodded.

  ‘For at least eighteen months.’

  ‘How was she getting these prescribed? No doctor in their right mind would give her a repeat prescription. These are highly addictive.’

  ‘She mainly bought them off the Internet. You know how big the illegal trade in pharmaceutical drugs is now. There’s a lot of money to be made that way.’

  Amelia turned the bottle over.

  ‘Makes sense. Because how else can you explain having no idea that you’re living with a serial rapist who just so happens to have a locked room in the attic where he keeps his trophies,’ Amelia said. Her voice was thick with irony.

  ‘Come on, Amelia. She had no idea,’ Brady replied frowning at her.

  He was surprised. This wasn’t like her.

  Amelia ignored Brady’s comment and handed the plastic evidence bag back to Conrad.

  ‘You better get that handed over, Harry. The last thing you want is losing Lisa Sanderson’s alibi.’

  Brady knew there was something wrong but he had no idea what.

  ‘Go on Conrad, log it before it gets lost on the back of a shelf somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Conrad replied before leaving.

  Brady waited until the door was closed before turning to Amelia.

  ‘OK. What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Amelia answered, unable to look Brady
in the eye.

  ‘Don’t bullshit me, Amelia. I know you well enough to know when something’s wrong.’

  Amelia looked at him.

  ‘Let’s just say that I’m not that impressed with myself. I should have done more with this investigation.’ She shook her head and turned away.

  ‘Like what? Lee Harris fits your profile perfectly. You did everything you could.’

  ‘Did I?’

  Brady didn’t reply. He waited for Amelia to fill in the silence. If she needed to off-load he had time – plenty of it. Lee Harris was going nowhere.

  He got up and walked over to the window to give her time to compose her thoughts. He lifted the old Victorian sash window up to let the cool October evening into the stuffy room. As he did so he looked down at the street below. He caught sight of Lisa Sanderson leaving the station. Fragile and vulnerable, led on either side by her father and lawyer. The world as she had known it had evaporated. She was now part of a serious investigation. She would be called to court and questioned about her knowledge of Lee Harris and his crimes. Every word, every reaction would be scrutinised. Her alibis would be ripped apart. She would become guilty by association. Whether it was the press who took that angle or some barrister, it was inevitable. Not that she had been charged. Not as an accomplice, or for withholding evidence, or even wasting police time. As far as Brady was concerned she was only guilty of being duped by Lee Harris. She was another one of Harris’ victims. He may not have raped and tortured her. But Brady was certain the mental scars would torment her for the rest of her life. Especially when she found out Lee Harris’ actual identity and what she had unwittingly been storing.