by Ellis, Tim
Had she reached that point today? Maybe she had, but instead of walking away she had taken out her metaphorical sword and cut through the Gordian Knot. The obstacles had dissolved before her. There were no rules. She made her own rules now. Her job was to bring murderers to justice any way she could. And if that meant shifting between the light and the dark, then so be it.
It was five to six by the time she arrived back at the station. She made a detour into the custody area to speak to the Duty Sergeant - Natalie Thompson.
‘What have you arrested him for, Ma’am?’
‘Perverting the course of justice.’
‘He says he hasn’t had his phone call.’
‘And I say he has. Who are you going to believe?’
‘You, of course, Ma’am.’ She pushed the Custody Book towards her. ‘Can you initial where it says he’s had his phone call, and also the box that’s been ticked indicating he’s declined a solicitor.’
She scribbled her initials twice in the appropriate places.
Sergeant Thompson screwed her eyes up. ‘He now says he’d like to talk to a solicitor.’
‘Maybe tomorrow. We’ve got him for twenty four hours. I’m not going to interview him until late tomorrow, so he doesn’t need to talk to anyone yet.’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
Molly pulled Swash’s phone out of her pocket and placed it on the counter. ‘He dropped his phone at the ESW. Can you add it to his contents list?’
‘Of course, Ma’am.’
She walked up the stairs to the squad room.
Imagining himself as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters Tony was throwing screwed up paper balls into a waste bin he’d positioned sideways on top of a filing cabinet to keep himself occupied.
‘It’s good to see you’re doing something constructive with your time,’ she said.
‘I thought you’d got lost. How did Margravine Gardens go?’
‘Do you want to spend the whole night here listening to the story?’
‘Not really.’
‘So, let’s get to what happened at Mrs Izatt’s house shall we? Then you can knock off.’
‘What about you, Gov?’
‘I’ve got to make that phone call to Father Fleming and a few other things before I can crawl home to bed.’
‘Yeah, it’s been a long day.’
‘So?’
‘Oh yeah. Well, Mary Izatt was a sweet old bat. Likes her tea and ginger nuts . . .’
‘You do know it’s twenty past six? Aren’t you taking that Constable Ross out later?’
‘Nothing gets past you, does it, Gov?’
‘You’re so predictable, Tony. I’m surprised you haven’t contracted syphilis yet.’
He grinned. ‘Mrs Izatt has been helping at the church for over twenty years and she’s worked for seven priests over that period. She said that Father Grove was a good priest and a very nice man, but secretive as well. He never spoke about his past, even when she asked him about it. Apart from what he did in the church and the community, she knew nothing about him.’
‘Father Nathan Grove is becoming a bit of an enigma.’
‘That’s not all. I ran his name through the database.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing, but the forensic officer who Perkins sent to dust for fingerprints at the priest’s house and in his office just rang me. She found . . .’
‘She?’
‘Rachel Cornell.’ He licked his lips. ‘An old flame.’
‘Is there anybody in the station you haven’t had sex with?’
He grinned. ‘I think there’s just you and the Chief who fall into that category. Oh, and there’s a cleaner with no teeth who comes in late at night to clean the toilets when most people have gone home.’
Molly shook her head. ‘You’re a crazy bastard. So, what did this old flame say then?’
‘She found prints belonging to two people, which she fed into the database. There’s no match for one set of prints, but the other set belongs to a dead man called Marshall Grant.’
‘Oh?’
‘We had his prints on file because he was charged with burglary in 2005 apparently . . .’
‘Meaning?’
‘He’s not one of ours – he comes from Salisbury. That’s where he was arrested by the Wiltshire Constabulary, and spent two years in HMP Erlestoke, Devizes. He also died in a hit-and-run accident in Salisbury in 2012.’
Her eyes creased up. ‘How the hell have we got a dead man’s prints all over our crime scene?’
Tony shrugged.
‘Is there a picture of him on the database?’
‘No.’
‘There wouldn’t be. Maybe his prison records will . . .’
‘He was given probation.’
‘For burglary?’
‘Probably a first offence.’
‘So, which prints are which?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, presumably the majority of fingerprints would belong to the priest, but . . .’
‘Oh I see. Yeah, I pointed that out. Rachel said there wasn’t much to choose between them. Both sets of prints were all over the house and in the church office.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘No, but that’s what she found.’
‘Have they been compared with Grove’s prints yet?’
‘No. She said you’d taken Perkins away.’
‘Yes. Okay, that’ll be a priority tomorrow morning. Did the church helper say anything about a cleaner?’
‘Nelly Crowfoot. It wasn’t far away from Mary Izatt’s house, so I paid her a visit.’
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know.’
‘I’d forgotten. So, what did she say?’
‘Been cleaning up after one priest or another in that house since humans first crawled out of the primordial soup she said. Wore a scarf on her head – even in the house. Offered me a bottle of stout – said it’s what kept her young, and smoked roll-ups that needed lighting all the time. Said she was ninety-three, but I think she was trying to get me into bed. I’d have guessed at a hundred and fifty and that’s flattering her. She wasn’t one to gossip, but . . .’ He smiled. ‘One time, she arrived at the house early, and she knew there was another man there besides Father Groves. She didn’t see anybody, but she heard noises.’
‘Did she have any idea who it was?’
‘No, but she discovered that they both slept in the same bed.’
‘He’s gay?’
‘Could be.’
‘Aren’t priests meant to be celibate?’
Tony shrugged. ‘That’s the plan.’
‘Good work, Tony. As a reward you can go and be promiscuous now.’
He grinned. ‘Very generous of you, Gov. See you in the morning.’
‘Goodnight.’
Chapter Twelve
It was six thirty. He made his way upstairs to the flat. Kiri would be finished in an hour, and he had a couple of things to do before then.
As soon as he opened the door the smell of beef and vegetable casserole simmering in the oven burrowed up his nostrils and made his mouth water. He’d certainly fallen on his feet when Kiri had taken a fancy to him. Where would he be now if it hadn’t been for her? Probably dead, or lying in a gutter somewhere wrapped in newspapers to keep from freezing to death. She’d held onto his hand, and even when he’d been gazing into the abyss like a creature of the dark, she had refused to let go. Yes, he was a lucky man – in more ways than one.
He switched on his laptop and logged into his email account. Ruby’s messages were sitting there nestled between an insurance quote from Saga for a car he didn’t own, and an invitation to join an over-50s dating agency. He deleted the spam and opened up the first of Ruby’s emails.
Hey Cole Randall!
You’ll find attached to this email credit card, bank account, mobile phone and landline (24 Hay’s Mews) reports for Jim and Colleen O’Con
nor.
As usual, I have annotated the reports with the results of my research.
You didn’t ask me to, but I found their email accounts and the links are below:
[email protected]
[email protected]
From Ruby, your greatest fan
As he clicked on Jim O’Connor’s email account he smiled. He liked having a fan – maybe he should start a fan club.
In the ‘Inbox’ were forty three emails. Most of them were work-related and referred to things like client/server architecture, choke packets, hot potato routing and the like. He knew Ruby would have checked the emails out. To him – and most other people – they were in another language, but Ruby would have known what it all meant and alerted him to anything untoward.
There were a couple of emails from friends talking about the rugby match at Twickenham last Saturday. Was that where the two of them were going when they disappeared? He jotted down the names in his notebook: Joe Gallagher and Wilson Brantly.
He looked in the ‘Trash’ folder – it was empty. There were 328 emails in the ‘Sent’ folder. He skimmed through the messages from the week up to Saturday, but there was nothing of any interest. What did niggle him though was the complete lack of emails from his wife - Colleen. It wasn’t necessarily a sign that something was amiss – it was simply odd. Maybe it meant nothing. He and Kiri had email accounts, and never emailed each other.
Next, he clicked on Colleen’s account – it was overflowing. She clearly didn’t believe in deleting emails, or creating folders and grouping similar messages together. There were emails from eBay; wine merchants; a number of online shopping sites which turned out to be repositories for female fashion, shoes, make-up and the like; and a few from friends asking about their next day/night out. Again, he made a note of their names: Sheila King, Margaret Donnelly and Wendy Worth.
The couple of things he had to do were already taking longer than he’d anticipated, and the hands of the clock had crept round to quarter past seven. Kiri would be walking up the stairs within the next fifteen minutes expecting him to stop work and give her some attention, which he was very happy to do.
He decided to print off the reports attached to the email in the hope that he might get a chance to look at them later. While that was happening he took a look at Ruby’s second email:
Hey Cole Randall!
You asked me to do some digging on David Haig and Kelly Upshaw. Here’s what I found:
Upshaw has visited Haig seventeen times since September this year (extracted from Belmarsh visiting records);
Haig has phoned Upshaw fifteen times since September (extracted from KU phone records);
Three other people have visited Haig since September – his mother, an old friend (Graham Pilton – who’s a bricklayer) and John Adams – he gave a false name and address;
Upshaw lives in a second-floor flat at 7 St Stephen’s Avenue in Shepherd’s Bush. She’s twenty-nine and really ugly (picture attached), and has worked at the Hammersmith Herald for seventeen months;
I get the feeling she’s got a crush on Haig, and he’s stringing her along because she’s helping him;
I’ve disable Upshaw’s ‘Free Haig’ website.
From Ruby, your greatest fan
He wondered who John Adams was – possibly George Swash. On the face of it everything appeared to be fairly straightforward. Kelly Upshaw was helping Haig because she loved him, and Swash was probably being blackmailed into moving Haig’s case into the review stage at the CCRC. All they needed to do now was find out who had compromised the DNA evidence and then shift all wooden blocks back to where they were meant to be – easy. He grunted. Nothing was ever easy. He’d probably have to travel to hell and back before he found out the truth, and even then he might not be successful.
He heard Kiri trudging up the stairs.
‘You look worn out,’ he said when she walked through the door.
She half-smiled. ‘You say such wonderful things to me.’
‘I could run you a bath and give you a massage.’
‘It wouldn’t end there though, would it?’
‘Guilty as charged your honour.’
‘Let’s have dinner. Afterwards I’ll run my own bath and crawl into bed. You can do what you want with me then.’
‘Anything I want?’
‘Anything.’
She walked over to the kitchen, switched the oven off and took the casserole out.
‘I’ll have to do some research,’ he called through to her. ‘How do I know what “Anything I want” if I don’t know what the available options are?’
‘I didn’t mean anything kinky.’
‘Kinky comes in all shapes and sizes.’
She brought the two meals to the table, put a plate of buttered baguette slices in the centre and poured two glasses of white wine.
‘Should we?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
‘I hate Mondays.’
‘I have a vague recollection of a song by the Boomtown Rats about not liking Mondays and people dying at a school.’
‘How’s the investigation going?’
‘I’m scrabbling around for the pieces of the puzzle at the moment.’ He told her what he’d been doing all day.
‘So, you stole a donkey jacket from the charity shop?’
‘Possession is nine tenths of the law.’
‘You can buy a new one.’
‘They take ages to break in.’
‘We’re talking about donkeys not horses.’
He laughed. ‘Not bad for a tired wreck of a woman.’
‘Thanks.’
He told her about the CCRC review of the Haig case.
‘I remember that. You found DNA evidence, didn’t you?’
‘It’s been compromised.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Somebody cocked up. He could be released.’
‘Surely not?’
‘The chain of evidence has been broken. In a review, the DNA would now be ruled inadmissible. Without the DNA the rest is circumstantial – he walks.’
‘That’s hardly your fault, is it?’
‘I was the senior investigating officer. His legal team will argue that the DNA was contaminated from the start, that Haig has always been innocent, and that he was framed for the rape and murder of Chelsea Mey by the police – me. Without the DNA, the CCRC won’t have any choice but to declare his conviction unsafe and recommend his release. Then, of course, his lawyers will say that he deserves millions in compensation for being locked up unlawfully for five years.’
‘That’s my taxes.’
‘I know.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll be investigated by the professional standards committee.’
‘But you didn’t do anything wrong, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t do anything wrong, but that won’t stop them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I could end up in prison for perverting the course of justice. After all the compensation I squeezed out of them they’re just itching to get their revenge. This could be the ideal opportunity to lock Cole Randall up again.’
‘That’s preposterous.’
‘Don’t worry. It won’t get that far. I’m already fighting back.’
‘What about that woman who used to be your partner?’
‘I trained her well – Molly’s helping.’
‘Make sure you win. I couldn’t stand to lose you now.’
He reached across the table and touched her hand. ‘I’ll win. Haig won’t be getting out of prison anytime soon.’
She ran out of puff and left half her meal. ‘When you work with food all day your appetite becomes dysfunctional. I’m going for a bath and then I’ll go straight to bed.’
‘You don’t really want ravishing, do you?’
‘In the morning.’
‘That sounds like a promise.’
She kissed him, went
into the bedroom and closed the door. He’d offered to take her away from it all. Suggested living in a bamboo house on stilts in the Caribbean, wearing sarongs and surviving on coconuts, but she declined.
After washing up the dinner plates and cutlery he scooped up the reports from the printer tray and sat down with them at the kitchen table.
Before he could even look at the reports his mobile activated.
It was Salih Reis.
‘Yes?’
‘The silent alarm has activated in Stone’s flat, but she’s still at the station.’
‘What about the camera?’
‘I’m looking at the view from the cameras on my laptop. There’s a man with a mask snooping around. Do you want me to get over there?’
He thought about what had happened the last time. The Hansen brothers seemed to get everywhere. ‘No, it might very well be a trick to lure you away from Molly. You look after her, I’ll deal with the intruder.’
‘You?’
He heard the scepticism in Reis’s voice. ‘Don’t worry, I know when age exceeds ambition. I’ll get someone else onto it. Let me know if there’s any change in the situation.’
‘Will do.’
He called John Crabbe. ‘We have a visitor in Molly’s flat. Come and pick me up at the cafe.’
‘On my way.’
He stuck his head into the bathroom.
Kiri had fallen asleep in a mountain of bubbles. He wondered if he should wake her up, but decided against it. Instead, he left a note on the bed:
Had to go out on security business.
Back later?
Love, Cole
XXX
He nearly wrote “I Love You”, but did he? Earlier, he’d been thinking that the easy familiarity he’d shared with Sarah was missing with Kiri. Did that mean he didn’t love her? He loved the idea of her, loved being with her, but did he love her? Was he in love with her? Was there a difference? Now was probably not the right time to think it through.