Chapter Twenty-Two
Thursday 17th April 2014
‘Okay.’ Sam was sitting behind her desk, everyone waiting for instructions. ‘Ed, Bev... go and see Billy Wilson and recover the settee. Tell him if he goes near the person who sold it to him or the owner of the shop it came from, he’ll be locked up for perverting the course of justice.’
Ed raised his eyes.
‘He doesn’t know what offence he’s committed,’ Sam answered his unspoken question. ‘If he believes it, it might stop him going after them. The ‘Ways and Means Act’. Isn’t that what you called it in the old days?’
Ed smiled.
‘I want that settee testing for blood and I want it fast-tracking at the lab to see if it’s Aisha’s blood. Remember, if it is her blood, that settee was delivered the day after her parents said she went missing and removed from their house on the Monday before they reported her missing. By the time we’ve got round there, a new settee’s in place.’
Ed looked up from his pad. ‘Good chance he’ll kick off when we tell him he’s losing the settee.’
‘That’s why I’m sending you,’ Sam said. ‘He knows you. Tell him if he buys dodgy gear he runs the risk of us taking it away.’
She stood up. It was time to pace the room.
‘Paul, I want interview strategies drawing up for Charlotte, Alex and Tracey. I want them bringing down to Seaton nick. Their lies point to them being involved in Goddard’s death. Frighten them. I need to know if any or all of them are in this Sisters of Macavity.’
‘What does your instinct tell you?’ Ed asked her.
Sam kept moving.
‘Maybe they were taking him somewhere to get his photograph taken.’
‘Did Never throw any light on anything?’ Bev asked her.
‘Bloody hell, I’d forgotten about him!’ Sam said.
‘Mick, it’s Sam Parker.’ The ivory handset was sticky, needed a good clean, or was it Mick ‘Never’ Wright who made her feel dirty? ‘You wanted to speak to me?’
‘I did.’ Wright’s voice was cool, unfriendly. ‘One of my son’s mates goes to Seaton Uni. He was beaten up on the riverbank after a night out a few weeks ago.’
‘Did he report it? Did he know his assailant?’
‘No to the first,’ Wright told her. ‘Maybe to the second.’
‘Go on.’ Sam picked up her pen.
‘He’d been out and was a bit of an arse around a couple of young girls. You know the type of thing.’
She could almost hear him shuffling on his seat, his deep breath a spotlight on his stress. She smiled.
‘I gather he’d gone up to them in a pub. The Jolly Roger. He’d had a drink. I know him. He’s not a bad lad. His dad was captain of the golf club last year.’
She didn’t disguise the irritation in her voice.
‘That makes it okay then,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
‘I gather he’s asked them, his words not mine, for ‘a shag’.’
‘Golf expression, is it, like shouting four when the ball’s flying towards someone?’
Wright didn’t take the bait.
‘One of them threw a drink over him and a bouncer threw him out. It was near closing time. He staggered home, walked along the tow path and got jumped. He thinks it was the bouncer.’
‘I need his name and address, Mick,’ Sam said. ‘You know as well as I do it could be linked, otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me.’
‘I know but I don’t think he wants to get involved. He certainly doesn’t want to make an assault complaint.’
Sam could feel herself getting hot with irritation.
‘We’ll find him, Mick,’ she said sharply. ‘Somebody will say something. Maybe not this week, but we’ll find him, and it might have an adverse effect on him if he failed to come forward with what might be material evidence.’
‘I understand.’ Wright’s voice was monotone, quiet.
‘Was your son with him on the night?’
Silence.
‘Mick?’
‘Yes, he was, but he didn’t see his mate get kicked out. They got separated. Someone told my lad that Luke had been ejected. He went outside but Luke had gone.’
Sam forced herself to soften.
‘Tell you what, Mick, instead of us going in heavy handed, and Luke thinking he can’t trust your son, why don’t you have a word with him? Explain the importance and get him to give me a call. Tell him he might be able to help catch Jack Goddard’s killer. Does he know Jack?’
‘Think so… I’ll have a word.’
An estate agent might describe the terraced house as being in need of slight modernisation. Ed knocked on the ill-fitting wooden door, varnish peeling, the brass letterbox mottled with green mould. He looked to his right. He could probably get his little finger between the blackened wooden window frame and the glass. Forget the spin. He’d call it a shit-hole.
Billy Wilson opened the door, barefooted in shiny tracksuit bottoms and a grubby white vest. ‘Alright Ed?’
‘Got a minute, Billy?’
‘Yeah, come in.’
Ed stepped over the plastic tractor, his foot just missing the child’s dummy on the chipped tiles. Ed knew this could go one of two ways – mild disagreement or open hostility.
He stepped into the living room. Wilson was throwing coats and clothes off the settee on to the floor where they joined the discarded shoes and socks and last night’s take-away food cartons.
One look at the settee confirmed Sanderson’s story. It was identical to the one in the photo.
‘Have a seat,’ Wilson said, flopping into the only armchair.
‘It’s the settee I’ve come about.’
Wilson leapt up.
‘I paid a fair price for it,’ he bristled. ‘It’s not nicked, it’s second hand. If you’re here about it, you must know that.’
‘I do, but... ’
‘No buts, it’s mine.’
Ed heard the front door.
‘Why’s the fucking CID outside?’ a woman shouted. ‘That dyke detective’s sat in a car right outside the house.’
She was in her late 20s, tall with short blonde hair like straw, not in colour but consistency. ‘What do you want?’
Ed said nothing, although he couldn’t wait to tell Bev she had been called a dyke, and let Wilson speak to who he presumed was the bouncer’s most recent girlfriend.
‘It’s nothing, Charlene. Stick the kettle on.’
She glared at him, gave Ed the finger, and stormed out.
Wilson watched her go.
‘That’s the problem with younger women,’ he said. ‘No respect. No respect for me, no respect for you. Imagine my first wife bursting in like that? Never happen.’
Respect seems to be a recurring theme in Wilson’s world, Ed thought.
‘Half her family’s banged up so you can’t expect her to welcome you with open arms,’ Wilson said. ‘She’s a Jenkins. Harry Jenkins’s grand-daughter.’
‘Explains a lot,’ Ed said. ‘I’ve got to take this settee away with me Billy.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you. I need to do some tests. If it’s nothing, you can have it back.’
‘And if it’s something?’ Wilson asked.
‘I’ll have to keep it.’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘I know you won’t,’ Ed said. ‘I’ll end up taking it anyway. And don’t go around seeing whoever sold it to you. They didn’t know it could be dodgy.’
Wilson nodded towards the kitchen. ‘She’ll go mental.’
‘Has she got a bairn?’ Ed asked him.
‘Yeah, mine.’
Ed raised his eyebrows.
‘I know,’ Wilson said sourly. ‘Goes with the territory if you chase younger women.’
‘Tell her the police are working with the manufacturers, recalling all the ones that weren’t treated with the right fire safety treatment. Tell her it’s an accident waiting to happen with the kid.�
��
Wilson looked at the settee. ‘And we’re supposed to be the liars.’
‘Mine are only little ones,’ Ed clapped his hands. ‘Right, I’ve got a van around the corner. They’ll take it away. Do you need five minutes to tell the charming Charlene what’s happening?’
‘Any problems?’ Bev said, as Ed got back into the car.
‘Good as gold. I’ll give him a couple of minutes to break the bad news to Charlene.’
‘Was that the blonde who glared at me?’
Ed couldn’t kill the smile: ‘Yeah, she thinks you bat for the other side.’
‘Cheeky cow.’ Bev glared at the house.
Billy Wilson appeared at the door and nodded. Ed called Julie Trescothick’s mobile and within a couple of minutes a white Transit pulled up behind Ed.
Ed opened his car door, but didn’t get out.
He spoke to Julie. ‘Can you just take it straight down to the lab?’
‘No problem.’
Ed drove away, his thoughts on an 18-year-old girl he hoped had escaped to a new life.
Bev answered her phone.
‘Hi Tony… really? Is he sure? If he only got a glimpse, he could be mistaken…100 per cent. Okay. Thanks then… Yeah, I’ll get back in touch. Cheers.’
Bev turned to look at Ed. ‘Tony Welch. Plymouth CID.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘The guy driving the car into the garage?’ Bev said. ‘The witness is adamant. It wasn’t Sukhi.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘One hundred per cent certain,’ Bev said, sitting in a chair next to Ed, facing Sam.
Sam had been hoping it was Sukhi but now she wondered if he was going to sell the car, the buyer would more likely be another Asian.
She told Bev and Ed what she was thinking.
‘It’s possible,’ Ed said. ‘But bearing in mind they’re running, I reckon they’ll be avoiding the Asian community. They’d have too many questions to answer.’
‘Like what?’ Sam asked.
‘Like where are you from, where are your parents from, what village are your parents from? What are you doing here? They’ll be terrified someone will know their parents. They might want to avoid any contact. How new is his car?’
‘Fifty-nine plate,’ Bev said.
‘Why not just go to an Internet café and sell it on one of those ‘we’ll buy anything’ sites?’ Ed went on. ‘What if they didn’t drive it to Plymouth? What if someone just wants us think they did?’
‘Family?’ Sam asked.
‘Could be anybody,’ Ed said. ‘Let’s say they didn’t get away. There might be a circumstance when Aisha’s family need to get shot of the car. Burning it out up here would be too suspicious. But what if they drove it to a place where they found out the couple might go? We know Beth told Aisha about Cornwall. I don’t think the immediate family would drive the car but they could get anybody to do it. And I mean anybody. A lot of people would be sympathetic and on their side.’
Sam was shaking her head, struggling to understand how a parent could hurt their own.
Ed was reading her mind.
‘It happens,’ he said simply.
Sam told them she wanted door-to-door teams knocking on houses in Aisha’s street the following evening.
‘As opposed to house to house?’ Bev asked, the difference important.
‘Absolutely,’ Sam said. ‘There’s no need to speak to every member of the household just yet. Let’s do door to door. It’ll be much quicker. If we need to opt for house to house, that’s an option further down the line. If Aisha went home after she got off the bus, she can’t have had much time. Her mother was home just after six. It is a small time window. Let’s see if anyone saw anything.’
‘Uniform did that at the time,’ Ed said.
‘I know, and I don’t expect to get anything this time, but you never know. We just need someone who’s fallen out with the Bhandals since. It’s also an opportunity to see what reaction we get from the family. Tell them and everybody in the street it’s the so-many-weeks anniversary of her going missing. I’ll get the Post on board, give Darius a call.’
The onions were huge and the curry sauce was so thick Sam imagined it sticking to her ribs. She had been about to go the canteen and get a sandwich when Bev said she was doing the Chinese run.
In the HOLMES room, the Scottish voice of a ‘Yes’ campaigner was coming from the television. Sam swore to herself as the plastic fork snapped, a fine spray of curry sauce splattering her white shirt. Thankfully there was always a collection of metal forks in the office, forks that never found their way back to the canteen. Her white blouse could wait. The curry was delicious.
The office manager, a Detective Sergeant, answered his desk phone, his fork stirring his curry as he listened. He put the phone down.
‘That was the lab. There’s blood on the settee. Human blood.’
Sam wiped her mouth: ‘Keep that to yourselves. I don’t want it leaving this room.’
Heads nodded. Everyone knew the importance of keeping quiet and the penalty for a loose tongue.
‘We sit tight on the settee... ’
Spontaneous laughter rumbled through the room.
‘Very funny,’ Sam shouted. ‘You know what I mean. Let’s see if we can identify who the blood belongs to.’
Everyone finished eating in silence. Sam knew they were all hoping the same thing; the blood wasn’t Aisha’s.
Luke Wylam contacted Sam just after 3pm and suggested they meet at the sea-front car park in an hour.
There was a salty crispness to the air, the best efforts of the sun losing its battle against the chilled breeze sweeping from the sea. Sam stood by her car, watching the seagulls following a trawler coming into port, the birds’ equivalent of a fast food outlet.
Was this Wylam heading slowly towards her? Head down, rounded shoulders, hands in pocket, probably walking at half his normal pace, walking to a meeting he didn’t want to attend.
‘Luke?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Thanks for coming,’ Sam said.
‘Did I have a choice?’
He was surly, unshaven, and anxious, perhaps even frightened.
‘Let’s cut to the chase then,’ Sam told him. ‘You said on the phone you wanted to talk about an assault but don’t want to make a complaint. Believe me when I say, young man, it’s years since I took a report of an assault. I’m here because you said you were attacked on the tow path when you were drunk. Correct?’
‘Yeah.’ His eyes bored as deep into the ground as his hands did in his pockets.
‘Well I haven’t time to mess about. Tell me what happened and don’t leave anything out.’
She reached into her coat pocket, flipped open a packet of cigarettes, and offered him one.
He shook his head.
‘It was a Saturday night,’ he began. ‘Well, Sunday morning, a few weeks ago. I’d been thrown out of the Jolly Roger. The doorman said I was being an arse. He’s younger than me, cocky bastard.’
‘Do me a favour, Luke. Look at me when you’re talking,’ Sam said.
‘Why?’
‘Gives me more of a clue whether or not you’re lying.’
‘I’m not.’ He shifted his weight, just once, from side to side.
‘Then you won’t mind looking at me,’ Sam insisted. ‘Why did you get thrown out? Be specific. What did you do?’
He looked up.
‘I slapped this girl’s arse, tried to get a kiss off her,’ Wylam said. ‘I pulled her, she pushed me and I went backwards. Her and her mates laughed. I went to go back to her – I was angry – but before I knew it, the young doorman’s got hold of me. Took me outside.’
An image of Tom King flashed through Sam’s mind. He seemed to have a knack of being in the right place at the right time. Or maybe he kept an eye on particular individuals.
‘Are you a member of any silly boys’ groups wearing T-shirts that some may find demeaning to women?’ Sam aske
d.
Wylam’s eyes dropped again.
‘Mortimers. There’s a few of us in it. It’s just a bit of a laugh, you know.’
‘I know some of the people I work with take a slightly different view.’ Sam’s voiced was loaded with disdain. ‘What happened on the tow path?’
‘Somebody grabbed me from behind,’ Wylam said. ‘I didn’t hear them coming. Punched me on the back of the head, just once. I stumbled forward. Then he kicked me in the stomach. I went down, puked up. He whispered ‘prick’ and jogged off. It looked like the young bouncer but I only saw him from behind and I don’t want this going any further. If you arrest him, I’ll say I can’t describe him?’
‘I understand,’ Sam said.
‘It was him though,’ Wylam went on. ‘He’s so tall, and no way could an ordinary lad kick that hard. It was like a proper UFC job.’
‘A what?’ Sam was thrown.
‘Ultimate Fighting Championship,’ Wylam said, a look of ‘what planet have you been on?’ crossing his face. ‘Cage fighting. You know, martial arts. It was ages before I got up. I couldn’t breathe.’
Wylam touched his head and told Sam he had been left with a lump behind his ear and a large bruise across his stomach.
‘Do you know Jack Goddard?’ Sam asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘The leader of Mortimers?’
Wylam scowled. ‘Liked to think he was. He set it up but most of us knew who the real leader was.’
‘And that is?’ Sam pressed.
‘Elliott Prince.’
Ed walked into Sam’s office. Bev Summers was already there.
‘Guess who comes out of Rendezvous at about 2.45am on the morning Jack Goddard’s killed?’ Sam said.
Ed felt tired. He hadn’t been right since the curry and couldn’t be bothered with the guess-who game.
He lowered himself into a chair, his forehead suddenly clammy.
‘You alright?’ Sam said. ‘You’re white as a ghost.’
Paul Adams walked past the office.
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