Never Forget

by Lisa Cutts

  ‘That brings us nicely back to Nina,’ said Catherine. ‘The telephone number of unknown Charlie that you gave to Mr Nottingham before you went to Birmingham – we’ve found out where that phone was registered to.’

  It took me a couple of seconds for the penny to drop. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I’d handed the DCI the number from the slip of paper Annie’s son had passed me from the pocket of his joggers.

  Catherine added, ‘Get the details from Matt, and then you and Pierre go see the subscriber this morning. Pierre’s got something more pressing that needs to be done first, but it shouldn’t take you all day. I’ll give you the relevant action for the enquiry before you go.’

  It suddenly dawned on me that Laura was not in the briefing. I searched the faces around the room but couldn’t see her. I thought it was strange. She hadn’t told me that she wouldn’t be able to make it.

  Chapter 63

  Half an hour later, we piled out of the conference room, spilling in the usual directions of the loos, kitchen and quiet corners to return phone calls.

  Laura was coming out of the toilet as I went in. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘You OK? Missed you in there.’ I thumbed in the direction of the conference room.

  ‘Yeah, had a couple of calls and stuff to make. Did I miss much?’ she asked, pausing with her hand on the door.

  ‘A couple of things. I’ll let you know in a minute. Got some stuff to catch up on myself,’ I said before heading into the ladies’.

  I thought Laura’s behaviour was odd. She’d seemed to enjoy being on the team, being a part of the murder investigation, so I couldn’t fathom out why she’d missed the briefing. I wasn’t at all concerned from a work perspective that she wasn’t present – I’d covered our updates – but she should have been there for her own sake rather than mine.

  When I went into the Incident Room a short while later, she was not in there. I headed for Ray and Catherine’s office to get the report from the forensic scientist.

  Catherine was already on her way to me. We spoke in the corridor, and she handed me the forensic report as well as the ‘Charlie’ telephone enquiry.

  ‘Thanks, Catherine,’ I said. ‘Is it OK if I call Freya Forbes from your office? It’ll be quieter.’

  ‘Absobloodylutely,’ she purred. ‘Though I doubt it’ll be quieter with Ray in there. I’m off to get some breakfast. I’m bloody starving.’ She wiggled away, all high heels and curves.

  As I turned the corner to the section of the corridor where the DSs’ office was, the door opened and Laura catapulted out. We almost collided.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Didn’t see you.’

  ‘You sure you’re OK?’ I asked.

  Her face released the tension it had been carrying before she said, ‘I’m fine, just didn’t sleep all that well.’

  ‘You and me both,’ I said as I headed for Ray’s office.

  ‘Nina,’ she called after me. I turned. I thought she looked pale. ‘Meant to say to you that West Mids got back. Mrs Makepeace hasn’t yet been asked about Benjamin’s father. Robin Cox thought the answer was in the paperwork somewhere. I’m going to look for it.’

  I gave her a cheesy thumbs-up and turned back towards the DSs’ office. I stood in the doorway watching Ray try to open the window at the rear of the room. He had his back to me.

  ‘Can I ask a favour? I said. He looked round. ‘Could I use your office for a couple of minutes to call the scientist? I won’t be long.’

  ‘Course you can. I was going to get something to eat anyway.’ He walked out, closing the door behind him.

  I took a deep breath and called the number at the top of the report. A female answered with a light, almost breathy, ‘Hello, Freya Forbes.’

  ‘Hello, Freya,’ I began. ‘My name’s Nina Foster. I’m a detective working on – ’

  ‘Oh, Nina, I know who you are. We can talk on the phone, but I’m at Riverstone Crown Court today if you want to meet up?’

  ‘That would be great, if you have the time. Does 3.30pm sound OK?’

  ‘It does. I’m in Court Seven. I’ll see you outside the court then.’

  We ended the call and I went off to find Pierre. He was already armed with all the information we needed to speak to Charlie, as well as directions for finding his house.

  Chapter 64

  Pierre and I set off a few minutes later, in a worn-out Citroën begged from another department.

  ‘This car’s a tip,’ I said, glancing down at the empty crisp wrapper, apple core, crumpled tissues and other debris in the passenger seat footwell. ‘I dread to think what’s in the glovebox.’ Curiosity got the better of me. ‘Oh, a box of tampons. Result.’

  Pierre laughed and said, ‘Shall we agree that under no circumstances do we open the boot.’

  ‘Agreed,’ I said.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Right, then, before we go and see Charles Bruce, the subscriber for your telephony action, I have an enquiry that’s closer to the nick and more urgent. It’s a result of something that came out of Birdsall’s interview that needs checking. We’ll see how we get on for time.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ I said. ‘What you got?’

  ‘He changed his alibi late last night and claimed that, on the morning Daphne Headingly was murdered, he was with a woman called Sophie Alexander. Her address is on that printed sheet on top of my file on the back seat.’

  I stretched over to pick the paperwork up. ‘Bit worried about what might be back here,’ I said. ‘Anyone missing a cat?’

  ‘Birdsall claims he stayed at Sophie Alexander’s overnight, leaving about 11am on the 23rd, which is after Daphne was killed. I went to see her last night to verify it but she wasn’t in.’

  ‘Right, so, if she verifies this, that alibis him out for number three, plus number one, as Amanda was killed while Birdsall was abroad, but not for victim number two, Jason Holland.’

  ‘True but he didn’t know Holland as far as we know, unless the Malaga connection means anything, so at the moment we have no motive or anything linking him to his death.’ As he spoke, he turned to look at me as we waited for the gate at the nick’s yard to open before returning his concentration to his driving. ‘Let’s go and see what Sophie has to say to us.’

  ‘Much else come out of the interviews yesterday?’ I asked Pierre when the car was clear of the nick and traffic.

  ‘Not really. Everything he said about being out of the country between when Amanda was last seen and her body turning up has been verified. He didn’t have much to say about Holland ’cos he was in England at some point when he was missing but that’s very vague. Right at the moment, he’s not looking like the guilty party here.’

  ‘You got a theory or favourite out of the three of them, Pierre?’ I asked.

  ‘No. No, but I wonder if we’ve been looking in the wrong place all this time?’

  ‘Where do you think we should be concentrating, then?’

  ‘The Headingly family. Everything always points back to them. They’re such a strange bunch. I saw you made it into the newspaper. That must have been unwelcome attention. Want to talk about Jake Lloyd?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say about him, really. To be truthful with you, I’ve tried not to think too much about it, but…’ I was conscious of Pierre pulling the car over into a car park marked private next to a small block of flats, set back from the town’s ring road. ‘We here?’ I asked him. ‘We could have walked this distance.’

  ‘No, I’ve stopped because I thought you might wanna talk for a minute.’

  Initial feelings of invaded privacy gave way to a rush of relief at being able to talk about Jake Lloyd. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anyone to turn to, but there was no one I wanted to burden. Talking it through with Pierre felt different; I hardly knew the bloke for a start and that helped, but also I knew that, being a police officer, he’d follow what I was about to say with his capacity to understand as an investigator, remain impartial, and pack no punches in telli
ng me how it really was.

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘Why did Lloyd leave it so long before sending me the photos he’d been taking for years? Why after all this time? And why be stupid enough to leave his fingerprints all over them?’

  Pierre used his fingers to count the points off as he made them. ‘First and second, the important fact isn’t that it was years but that the timing of sending them to you was right in the middle of a murder investigation involving his aunt. Thirdly, his fingerprints weren’t all over them but were on the envelope, inside and out. And what happens then? Police arrest him, search his house, find the stuff in the cellar, he’s banged up and out of the way.’

  ‘Hold on, Pierre, go back a bit.’ I rubbed my eyes as I spoke. ‘If someone else sent those photos to me using an envelope Lloyd had already handled, that means that whoever sent them knew Lloyd was following me, got him to put his fingerprints all over the envelope and then did a good job of stitching him up.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Pierre. ‘Though there are a couple of issues with all of that.’

  ‘Yeah, I know – such as who would want him out of the way and why?’

  ‘And why, after all this time, would he confess to the murder of his cousin?’

  I was aware how many unanswered questions I had surrounding Jake Lloyd and his stash of disturbing snapshots of my life, but this was getting in the way of my part in the investigation. I was grateful for the chance of talking it over with Pierre but figured we’d spent enough time picking apart my problems. Last thing I wanted was for him to return to the office and say I got in the way of a fast-track enquiry chewing over my own issues. Even if he didn’t put it quite so blatantly as that, it could get misconstrued.

  ‘Let’s get on our way to see Sophie before she goes out for the day,’ I suggested. ‘We can talk on the way.’

  Another thing had just crossed my mind too. If someone had wanted Jake Lloyd out of the picture, there had to be a reason. Lloyd had been watching me – or watching out for me, as he put it. He was no longer keeping an eye on me, but someone else was. They’d been in my house. They’d turned on my television.

  Chapter 65

  ‘We’re here,’ said Pierre. ‘You OK? You haven’t said a word in ages.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Looks like someone’s in. There’s a car on the driveway.’

  I perked up as I looked up and down the street. I had a feeling I’d been in the road on another occasion, which wasn’t unusual in itself, as that happened a lot when you were dealing with criminals: you tended to end up in the same streets and houses. This wasn’t one of our usual haunts. It was a fairly wide avenue, trees on either side, room for long driveways complete with off-road parking and not a speed hump in sight. Not many of them left in the southeast. Every tiny plot of land had at least two semi-detached houses squeezed on to it; every reasonable-sized house within two miles of a town centre with a London train link was converted into flats. That was what it often felt like. The race was on to force people to live within an arm’s distance of each other. It wasn’t healthy – unless you were the one selling the land or the houses.

  ‘I think I’ve been in this road before, Pierre,’ I said as I opened the door. ‘Can’t think why I was here. It’ll come to me later.’

  We made our way to No. 86, admiring the gleaming black Audi with personalised numberplates feet from the front door. The upstairs windows hinted at two front double bedrooms, and the whole house gave the impression of being pretty well kitted out inside, too. I was forming a picture of Sophie Alexander in my mind, and wasn’t disappointed when she opened the door to us.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, one hand on the side of the door, the other on her hip. A gold charm bracelet dangled from the arm poised on her tiny waist. Other than that, she was very plainly dressed in a white fitted shirt and black jeans. Her understated mode of dress served to accentuate the fact that she was a very attractive woman. Her hair seemed to do as it was told, unlike my own, which was still protesting at the soaking it had got outside my house on my return from Birmingham, despite having been treated to salon shampoo and conditioner that morning. How could hair sulk? Mine seemed to be managing it very nicely.

  ‘We’re police officers, and we need to come in and talk to you about Tony Birdsall,’ said Pierre.

  ‘Anthony?’ she said. ‘You’d better come in, then. Is he OK?’

  Without waiting for an answer, she padded along in her bare feet, leading us into an impressive room at the rear of her home, which seemed to span half the width of the house. The windows overlooked a neat, if in my opinion very boring garden consisting mostly of lawn and fence. The focal point of the room was a grand piano. As if to invite comment, in case we missed it, Sophie stood with her back to it, gold-adorned arm resting lightly on its top. Just to make a point, neither Pierre nor I said a word about the elephant in the room – well, the bits of its anatomy hacked from its dead face, anyway.

  ‘Tony Birdsall, or Anthony as you call him, is a friend of yours?’ Pierre asked.

  Sophie gave a silent laugh. For some reason, that annoyed me. ‘We go back years. I used to sing in one of his clubs in Spain.’ She walked around the piano and stood behind the stool.

  Fucking hell, don’t sing, I thought. This enquiry is already weird enough.

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ Pierre continued, not at all put off by the theatrical neck-and shoulder-rolling going on before our eyes.

  ‘Let me see. He stayed overnight. I think it was a couple of weeks ago now.’ Her hands went down to her sides, smoothing her flawless shirt over her hips. ‘I can check my diary, if it would help.’ She crossed the room and bent down to pick up an expensive-looking handbag from the floor. It was probably worth more than everything I was wearing, including my sister’s St Christopher. I watched her rummage for a couple of seconds and then pull out a small red pocket diary. Her red-polished nails whipped the pages over until she found the date she was searching for. She shot a dark look at Pierre and said, ‘Here you are, officer. 22nd September. “Anthony 7.30pm”.’

  My colleague reached out and took the notebook from her, reading the words aloud once more while nodding in agreement. ‘Can I ask why you would write down when Tony visits you?’ Pierre asked. I already thought she was a prostitute, I had to admit. She gave the impression of spending all day draping herself over the furniture – the very expensive furniture – and she kept a written record of when men stayed the night. Unless she was keeping a tally for some reason, I couldn’t see why she would make an appointment.

  ‘We have a very casual relationship,’ came Sophie’s reply, a coy smile creeping its way across her lips. She moved around the piano towards the window, pausing with her hands on her hips, turning so that her profile was illuminated by the sunlight.

  If I’d known Pierre better, I would have told the silly preening cow that she was wasting her time – both Pierre and I preferred fellas. I didn’t want to embarrass him, though, so I said nothing.

  ‘Can we sit down?’ said Pierre. ‘It would be easier to talk.’ I translated this as his way of saying he’d had enough of her dramatic wanderings too.

  Sophie glided over to a white leather armchair, perching on the edge, hands on her knees. We took our seats on the matching sofa.

  ‘What kind of casual relationship?’ I asked.

  Her eyes flickered towards me, before returning to Pierre. ‘Just because we have a son together, it doesn’t mean that Anthony and I have to live in each other’s pockets.’

  I did a mental double-take. ‘You have a son with him?’ I asked.

  She continued to direct her answers to Pierre. ‘Yes, Joel. He’s seven years old. He lives here with me and Anthony comes over from Spain to see him six or seven times a year. He’s at school at the moment, of course. That’s why I make a note of Anthony’s visits: so that Joel and I don’t make any other engagements.’

  The room we were in was adorned with pho
tographs of Sophie. She was in every one of them and I estimated there to be about twenty-five strewn on the piano, tables, walls, everywhere I looked. Some of the pictures contained images of her with another adult, usually male, but there was no hint that a child resided anywhere in her house, or her heart.

  ‘Did you and Anthony go out at all over the evening or night of the 22nd of September?’ Pierre asked.

  ‘No, no, we didn’t. It was about eleven the next day when he left. I remember that because he had to meet someone at noon and he was running late. Before you ask, I don’t know who he was meeting or where he went.’

  ‘Is there anyone else who can verify that you were both at home on that evening?’ Pierre asked.

  ‘Joel, of course, but he went to bed not long after Anthony arrived. And there’s the security system. It records anyone going in or out of the front, rear and garage doors. The windows are alarmed so, before I go to bed, I set the system. I seem to remember we went to bed quite early. We hadn’t seen each other for some time.’ She put her hand up to cover her mouth, I suppose in an attempt to appear embarrassed. Bit late for that. She should have shown more humility when it came to poncing about at the piano.

  I left her flirting mercilessly, not to mention pointlessly, with Pierre while I made a phone call to technical services at police headquarters to see if someone could come out and download the hard drive of her complicated security system. Short of seizing the whole thing, Pierre and I couldn’t copy the footage we needed without risking wiping it clean.

  One thing was for sure: if the CCTV was genuine and showed Birdsall arriving at 7.30pm on the 22nd and not leaving until well after the time of Daphne Headingly’s death on the 23rd, coupled with a download from the security system proving the windows were locked and alarmed all night, he was out of the running for this murder.

  I still had a feeling, though, that Birdsall was not a totally innocent man.