by Elena Forbes
SEVEN
It had started to rain again and the morning traffic was almost at a standstill, backed up all the way along the Earls Court Road as far as the junction with the Cromwell Road. Eve cursed herself for leaving her umbrella at home and made her way as quickly as she could along the crowded pavement. The offices of 4Justice were in a shabby, four-storey building, not far from the Tube, the front door sandwiched between a Betfred and a Starbucks. The paint was scuffed and peeling and somebody had chalked the words ‘out of order’ against the small row of ancient-looking bells. A waft of warm doughnuts from one of the nearby shops momentarily filled the damp air and she suddenly felt hungry. Hopefully, the meeting wouldn’t take long. Sheltering under the narrow overhang above the door, she took out her phone and dialled the office number. After several rings, a woman’s voice answered. Repeating herself loudly several times over the noise from the street, Eve explained who she was. After a pause, she caught the words ‘first floor’ and the door buzzed open. The hall inside was poorly lit and smelled strongly of damp. Piles of dusty, unopened post lay on the threadbare brown carpet, next to a plastic recycling bin overflowing with unwanted fliers. A sign saying ‘4Justice 1st Floor, Exotica Travel 2nd Floor’ was pasted on the wall, with a large, black arrow drawn in marker pen pointing up the stairs. Peters had said that the charity was short of money, but after the impressive website, she had been expecting something a little more salubrious.
As she reached the first floor, the door on the landing opened and a stocky young woman, with short, spikey, black hair, appeared behind it.
‘I’m Zofia,’ she said, holding out a very firm, cold hand. She was dressed head to toe in black, her eyes heavily outlined in black as well. ‘Dan’s tied up at the moment. You can come in and wait.’ Her Polish accent was strong.
The office was spacious and light, with a large sash window overlooking the street. Shelf-lined walls were stuffed with files and books and the noticeboard that hung over the Victorian marble fireplace was papered with a variety of press cuttings and photographs. A mishmash of tatty tables and desks had been pushed together to form a block in the centre of the room, which was laden with computers and more files and papers.
Zofia pointed towards a sofa under the window. ‘You can sit there,’ she said offhandedly, before returning to her desk and tucking herself behind it, her face hidden by a large, leafy pot plant.
Eve took off her wet coat and hung it on an empty hook by the door. Moving a collection of files and newspapers to one side, she sat down on the sofa. A few minutes later, a door at the back of the room opened and a tall, thin man emerged, a cloud of cigarette smoke following him out into the office. She recognized Dan Cooper immediately from the images on the website, although his face looked more gaunt and he had grown a rough sort of a beard. As he closed the door behind him, Eve caught a glimpse of a darkened room, with what looked like an unmade camp bed pushed up against the wall.
‘You’re here about Sean Farrell, right?’ He ran his fingers quickly through his thick, brown hair, peering at her through narrowed eyes, as though dazed by the daylight. His voice was croaky and he spoke slowly as though every word was an effort. His frayed jeans hung low on his hips, pulled together loosely with a silver-buckled belt, an old denim shirt half tucked in at the front and open to his mid chest, the buttons done up incorrectly. It struck her that he had just hauled himself out of bed and dressed in a hurry on hearing her arrive.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re with the police.’ The tone was hostile.
‘I’m not here in an official capacity.’
‘Why are you here, then?’ He met her gaze defiantly, his eyes an intense, watery blue.
It was all very well for Peters to assume that Dan Cooper would do what he was told and cooperate, but experience had taught her otherwise.
‘I’ve been asked to help,’ she said quietly, aware that Zofia had stopped tapping on her keyboard and was no doubt listening.
Dan shook his head dismissively. ‘We don’t need any help. Thanks.’
He was frowning and his hand shook a little as he reached in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes and lit up. The night before, she had read various articles he had written and watched a short video clip on the 4Justice website of him talking about a different case, which he had investigated and where they had succeeded in overturning a guilty verdict. He had all the vigour and clarity of a successful campaigning journalist and when she Googled him, she saw that he had won a number of journalistic prizes and accolades. He had had a promising career in mainstream journalism and she wondered what had taken him off on a detour into charity work. She also wondered what had gone wrong. Peters had mentioned Kristen Harris as being his ex-partner but it wasn’t clear if he had meant it in a romantic, as well as a business, sense. Out of curiosity, she had watched a couple of other short clips from a TV programme presented by Kristen, highlighting a recent 4Justice case. She was good-looking, in an offbeat way, with long, wavy, dark hair and shiny red lips. Her presentation was slick and professional and she seemed very sure of herself as she talked and smiled at the camera. But it was all a bit over the top, a little too knowing and self-serving, Eve thought, given that Kristen was supposed to be presenting a programme on the serious issue of a miscarriage of justice, which had ruined somebody’s life, rather than The One Show. By contrast, Dan Cooper had come across as earnest and genuinely passionate. Based on the little she had seen, she knew which one of them she would rather have as an advocate. But the man in front of her seemed to be falling apart and she understood why Duran thought he might need help.
She got to her feet, holding his gaze. ‘Look. You may think you have everything in hand. I hope, for Sean Farrell’s sake, you’re right. But I have a job to do. I’ve been asked to take a look, as a favour for someone. Just in case I can turn up something. If I find anything, you can have it. What have you got to lose?’ He made no reply and she continued: ‘I’ve worked many, many murder cases—’
‘Yes. Yes. I know exactly who you are,’ he said, with a vague wave of his hand. ‘But I still don’t get why you’re here.’
She shrugged. ‘What I’m trying to say is, I’m used to dealing with this sort of thing and I understand how the system works. Maybe a fresh pair of eyes can be of use.’
‘Why are you so interested in Sean Farrell?’
His expression was still sceptical and she gave him a hard stare in return. ‘I’m not. I’d never heard of him until yesterday and, to be honest, I’d much rather go home and leave you to it. But as I said, I’m just doing a favour for somebody who, like you, believes Sean is innocent. That’s all. I’m not here to spy on you. I’m not checking up on you. And I won’t get in your way. But from what I hear, there’s not much time to turn things around and Sean needs all the help he can get right now. I just need you to fill me in on a few things, then I’ll go away and leave you alone. OK?’
He studied her for a moment, his full lips slightly apart, as though weighing things up in his mind.
‘I thought Alan Peters had explained everything,’ she said sharply, when he made no reply. ‘Do you want me to call him now and put you on the phone?’
‘He has. It just seems very odd, that’s all. But I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say. So long as you’re not a Trojan horse.’
‘I’ve told you who I am and why I’m here. I’m not going over it again.’
He sighed deeply as though it was too much trouble to resist any longer, slid out a chair from behind one of the desks and thumped down heavily onto it. He swung his feet up onto the desk, nudging aside a pile of papers with the heel of one of his ancient-looking cowboy boots, took a long, deep drag on his cigarette, then looked up at her through the smoke. ‘OK. Fine. But be quick. I’ve got to go and see somebody in half an hour.’
He didn’t look like a man with anything urgent to do. She sat down again and took out a notebook and pen. She wasn’t leaving until she had
what she needed. ‘Before we talk about the case, can you tell me a little about Jane and what her background was, that sort of thing?’
He coughed, then looked round at Zofia. ‘Can you get me a coffee please, Zofia. My throat’s really dry and sore.’
Zofia shot him a sharp look, then rose from behind her desk with an audible sigh. ‘What sort of coffee?’
‘Black. Triple espresso. Maybe just a dash of hot milk. And something to eat. I’m absolutely famished.’ He looked back at Eve and added as an afterthought: ‘What about you?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘And some Hedex Extra,’ he shouted after Zofia, as she grabbed her coat and strode out of the room. He swivelled back towards Eve. ‘What were you saying?’
‘You were going to tell me about Jane.’
He nodded slowly and half closed his eyes as though it was all an effort. ‘She was an only child, born and brought up in a small village just outside Lincoln. Her father was an equine vet and she wanted to be a vet too, but didn’t get the grades. She’d been working at the Michaels’ yard for about six months.’
‘Before that?’
‘For a bloodstock insurance broker in Newmarket, I think.’
‘So she was relatively new to the Marlborough area?’
‘That’s right. She wanted to work for a racing yard, or at least that’s what her mother said. Reading between the lines, I think she also wanted to put some distance between herself and her parents.’
‘You’ve spoken to them?’
‘Just the mother. Briefly, on the phone and then about a year ago in person. She practically slammed the door in my face when she found out we were trying to help Sean. They’re convinced Sean killed her.’
‘Based on what?’
‘What the police told them, I guess. They certainly don’t want us digging it up all over again. They’ve been quite vitriolic, in fact.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
She had seen it before and understood why they wouldn’t welcome Dan’s efforts. Families wanted closure so that they could grieve and then, if possible, move on as best they could with their lives. Jane’s parents would want to believe that the police had got it right, that her killer was locked away behind bars for as long as possible, and that the murder of their daughter had been avenged. From their point of view, opening up the case all over again, with all the media attention and speculation, would reawaken the past, with all the endless wondering about who had killed their daughter, and why.
‘What about other boyfriends?’ she asked, watching Dan stretch his mouth wide into a yawn.
‘Nothing serious for a couple of years, from what I was told. I don’t think Sean was anything serious either, he just thought he was. That was the problem.’
‘Tell me about the Westerby estate. I don’t know the area and I know nothing about racing.’
‘It’s a big place and it belongs to the Michaels family. They’re one of those horse racing dynasties and they’ve been there for several generations. When Jane McNeil was murdered, Tim Michaels was still in charge, but he died and it’s now run by his son, Harry, and daughter, Melissa.’
‘Is she the one who reported Jane as missing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who lives on the estate now?’
‘There’s Tim’s widow, Sally. Harry Michaels. He’s divorced. Plus Melissa, her husband, and their children. I don’t know who’s in the main house these days, but there are a number of cottages dotted around the estate. I think a few are rented out, but the rest are occupied by the family or people who work for the Michaels, like the assistant trainer and people like that.’
‘So Jane had one of these cottages to herself?’
‘She was supposed to share it with two other girls, but they’d both left at the time of her murder, so she was there on her own.’
‘A number of people seemed to be passing her cottage the night she disappeared. How easy is it to access the land?’
‘Very easy, or at least it was. The whole place is covered in public rights of way and bridle paths, and anyone used to be able to come and go in a car, according to Sean. There are three or four entrances onto the estate and none were secured at the time Jane was murdered. You could just drive through. Even though it’s private land, people used to use it as a cut-through from the A4 to avoid Marlborough town centre.’
‘That must have made it very difficult for the police,’ she said.
‘I guess so. That’s all changed now, since Harry Michaels took over. He put up security barriers everywhere to stop people driving through.’
‘Tell me a bit about Sean Farrell. He was older than Jane, wasn’t he?’
He reached forwards to stub out his cigarette and nodded. ‘He’d been married before and had two kids. I don’t know why the marriage failed, but his ex booted him out and it was all very acrimonious. She even gave evidence against him at his trial, saying he was prone to violent mood swings and was overly possessive and controlling. If you ask me, the mood swings were to do with having to live with her. I met her once. She’s a right bitch.’
‘How did he and Jane meet?’
‘At the yard. He was the Michaels’ farrier. By all accounts, he was pretty successful and looked after a number of racing yards in the Marlborough and Lambourn area. He and Jane started seeing each other quite soon after she started work there.’
‘Let’s get to the trial. What went wrong, in your view?’
He sighed heavily and shifted in his chair, rotating his shoulders as though they were stiff.
‘A number of things. Sean was found guilty on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone. None of the forensic evidence gathered at the time indicated that he was her killer. There were fresh footprints in the mud around where the body was found, but they were too big to be Sean’s, nor did they fit the boots of either of the two female riders who found the body. There was sperm on the victim’s thigh, but Sean had had a vasectomy. You’d think that all the arrows were pointing away from Sean and not at him.’
‘How did the police explain it?’
‘They said the footprints could have been anybody’s, even though the body was found nowhere near a footpath. Also, the prints were found directly around the body. But there were no footprints under it, so they must have been made after the body was dumped there, most likely at the same time. As for the sperm, the women’s changing room at the gym was out of order, for some reason, so men and women were using the same place. The police had some ludicrous theory that the sperm must have come from a used towel or something. Or, that she had had sex with someone after the Westerby party and that Sean had seen this and flipped. But nobody knows who this other man is. The police certainly couldn’t find him.’
‘There were no other suspects?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. I don’t think they bothered to look very hard, once they had Sean in their sights. All of this should have been enough to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury, but the defence team were rubbish.’
‘They must have had something else against him, surely?’
‘A woman said she saw Sean near Jane McNeil’s house on the Sunday night after the party at Westerby, but her testimony isn’t totally reliable.’
‘You mean Susan Wright?’
‘Yes. She lived in one of the other cottages down the lane. She didn’t even come forward for two weeks, as she was away on holiday when the body was found. She describes a man in a suit hammering on Jane’s front door, but the physical description’s vague, as he was facing away from the road and, at best, she could have only seen him in profile. According to his family, the last time Farrell wore a suit was at his father’s funeral, yet she says she recognized Farrell in the headlights of her car …’
‘So she knew him?’
‘She worked with Jane and knew about their relationship, so maybe that was enough for her to make the association and think it was Sean. At any rate, it was pitch-black outside, no lights
on inside Jane’s cottage, and the porch light wasn’t working either. I went down to Marlborough and walked past the cottage myself, just to check. It’s set back from the road, up a bank, and there’s a hedge at the front. Even with your lights on full beam, you’d be hard pushed to see much in the front garden at night.’
‘You think she lied?’
He shook his head wearily. ‘People often get things wrong, as I’m sure you know. Farrell said he went to the cottage earlier that evening to apologize for his behaviour at the gym, but Jane was still at the party, so it’s possible that Susan Wright did see him and made a mistake about the time. Alternatively, it was someone else she saw, who was also looking for Jane. Someone had tried to break in through one of the back windows, but Sean’s fingerprints weren’t found on it. So the prosecution said he must have worn gloves. But that would imply premeditation, which just doesn’t fit with his hanging around outside in full public view. He’s also not the pre-meditating type, based on what I know of him.’
‘Was there anything else to link him to the cottage?’
‘They found some partial fingerprints that might have been his inside the house, but they were old and smudged and could easily have been left over from when he was seeing Jane. There’s something else they tried to dismiss. Sean sent a text to some woman he’d just started seeing around about the time he was supposedly outside Jane’s house. The call was logged in the vicinity of his home, which is about ten miles away. The technology wasn’t as accurate then as it is now, but he couldn’t have been in both places at once. The prosecution said he had someone else, some sort of an accomplice, send the text and help him deal with the body, but they weren’t able to find any evidence that there was such a person. And why would anyone want to help him kill Jane? It just doesn’t add up.’ He looked at her challengingly.