Never Forget

by Lisa Cutts

  I didn’t fancy calling Kim Cotton but one of us had to. I threw myself on my sword and rang the lemon-sucker.

  She answered with, ‘Hello, Nina. Wait. I’m talking to someone.’

  I thought about hanging up but decided against it. I saw Wingsy grinning at me. He said, ‘Your face’s a picture. Lucky she can’t see the expression on it. It’s loaded with contempt.’

  I was about to say something witty and scathing when a voice in my ear reminded me we were still connected by the wonder of technology. ‘Right, Nina. Mark Russell is going to see Alf and Catherine’s gone to see the Headinglys. That leaves both Amanda Bell’s family and Jason Holland’s. Harry, the original FLO for Amanda, is still on duty so he can take care of that one. I’ll send you over to Holland’s girlfriend’s – Annette Canning. There’s not much else for you to do. Make sure you ask her about Benjamin Makepeace, since he was on the same flight as Holland when he last left Spain. Go and do that with Wingsy, then call me and I’ll let you know if there’s anything else before you go off duty. All clear?’

  ‘Yeah, got that,’ I replied, sticking two fingers up at the phone. She disconnected without saying goodbye. I hated that.

  ‘You’re very childish, you know,’ said Wingsy. ‘No respect for rank.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘She’s a great big bastard.’

  ‘What is it with you and women DSs?’ he asked. ‘I think you’re sexist.’

  ‘And I think you’re a baldy wanker. Now drink your tea while I look up Annette’s address. We get the pleasure of telling her that Adam Spencer’s been arrested for her partner’s murder. Also, Sergeant Menopause reminded me that Holland flew back from Spain on the same flight as Benjamin Makepeace. She thinks it’s a good idea we ask Annette about that too. If only I’d thought of that.’

  Wingsy and I exchanged a few more insults, got the information we needed, said goodbye to Pierre, Mark and Matt and drove to Annette Canning’s house.

  Chapter 74

  The journey took us through a couple of decent new estates, past my own road and on towards the rural part of Riverstone. We found ourselves in a street dotted with houses on one side and a field on the other. Some of the houses were very grand with long driveways and lots of land. Others were more modest. We pulled up outside one of the smaller ones, well maintained if the outside was anything to go by, with a very neat front garden. I’d been reading out to Wingsy on the way over that the house was owned by Annette’s father, who had worked for an airline but had been retired for some time. He lived there with his wife and their disabled son and had temporarily taken in their only daughter after the disappearance and then murder of her long-term partner, Jason Holland.

  ‘Nice place,’ said Wingsy as we prepared to get out of the car with our paperwork. ‘Reckon even the smaller places like this are worth a few quid around here.’

  ‘No doubt. Right, then, who gets to tell Annette the update?’ I said as we made our way towards the front door.

  ‘I’ll allow you the pleasure,’ said Wingsy.

  My knock was answered by a small, grey-haired woman in her sixties wearing a raincoat. A man of about forty in a wheelchair was behind her in the hallway.

  ‘Sorry,’ I began. ‘Were you on your way out? We’re police officers and would like to speak to Annette if she’s here.’

  ‘Yes, she’s in. We’ve just got home so your timing’s good. Please come in,’ she said. ‘I’m Annette’s mum and this is her brother, Alan.’ Introductions made, we were shown into the dining room to wait for her. I hadn’t expected such a breathtakingly beautiful woman to walk into the room. Annette was tall, slim, elegant, well-dressed and had a self-assured air about her. The only clues to her misery were the bloodshot eyes and the presence of a tissue clenched within her fist. This she moved to her left hand before extending her right to me in greeting. I’d seen the photos of Jason before the flies took hold and bits of him started to morph with the floorboards. It didn’t seem possible that a woman like her would be interested in a man like him.

  After we’d introduced ourselves, I took a deep breath and watched her face for any changes as I said to her, ‘We’ve made another arrest this evening in relation to Jason’s murder.’ She twitched at the word ‘murder’. I continued, ‘We’ve arrested someone called Adam Spencer.’

  Annette gasped and clamped the tissue to her gaping mouth. ‘But Adam… He was… I know Adam. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

  This I hadn’t expected. The DCI had taken the decision not to publicly name Birdsall, Spencer and Makepeace prior to their arrests. It had made total sense as, although it was not uncommon to release a name, often with a photograph, if someone was sought in connection with a serious crime (and they didn’t come much more serious than this one), in this unique situation we had three names. To have released to the media the names of two suspects and a missing person all sought in connection with the enquiry, later changing it to three suspects, would have caused uproar. It would have seemed as if the police were pulling names out of a hat. People were not named as suspects lightly, and the decision not to tell the families of the deceased was also a wise move. Journalists trying to find out anything of interest would not pass up the opportunity to turn such information into a story. We couldn’t risk one of the nearest and dearest of our victims passing on something before we were ready.

  So Annette had had no idea that the names Tony Birdsall or Adam Spencer or, more recently, Benjamin Makepeace, were those of the suspects sought for her partner’s death. We had always intended that the first she would know of it was one of the county’s officers – in this case, me – knocking on her door and telling her that one of them was in custody.

  Giving Annette a second to compose herself, I asked her, ‘How did you know Adam?’

  ‘I met him around three years ago through a friend of a friend, on his boat down in the South of France, in St Tropez. I already knew Jason vaguely at the time although we weren’t in a relationship. Jason and I had met at one or two earlier social functions in London. Adam then reintroduced us to each other at a party on his boat and we hit it off. It seemed very romantic.’ She sniffed delicately, dabbed her eyes with the scrunched-up tissue and continued, ‘I didn’t mention it before when police called and took the Missing Person report because it didn’t seem important. The police asked me how I met Jason, but, as it wasn’t our first meeting, Adam’s party didn’t seem to be relevant. There were lots of other people on the boat too. It would never have entered my head to list them all and, as I’ve said, the police have never questioned me about it. I’d liked Jason, but always thought he was a bit, erm – I’m embarrassed to say, I always thought he was a bit rough around the edges.’

  I tried to look surprised by this but think I failed to pull the necessary facial muscles into place, largely because I’d seen his list of convictions printed from the Police National Computer. He had basically been a violent criminal. My thoughts were interrupted by Alan Canning, who said, ‘I told her he was an obnoxious individual who probably had a criminal record.’

  Annette looked across at her brother, smiled and said, ‘He did have a criminal record. He told me all about it.’

  Her father had said little up to this point but felt the need to make some sort of contribution. ‘I thought he was a bad sort too. When your colleagues were here when Jason was first found, they alluded to as much without actually saying so. I’d had my suspicions but you have to let your children do what they see fit to do with their own lives. Annette’s an adult, so there was nothing I could do to stop her anyway.’

  Annette told us how she’d initially met Jason in London, introduced by a mutual friend, but all of this had already been covered in her original statements when his body had been found. The mutual friend had also been spoken to by officers and alibi’d out of the enquiry by her passage on a non-stop Southampton-New York-Southampton cruise for most of the relevant times. The only information that was new was the bit about Adam
Spencer. No one had known anything about his part in it all. Annette explained that the same seafaring friend who had introduced her to Holland had invited her to the South of France to a villa for a week, celebrating the birthday of a casual acquaintance. Once in France, the acquaintance had taken her guests to meet up with her friend Adam Spencer, who had sailed his boat from Spain to join them in St Tropez. He had invited her and the others from the villa aboard the boat for the evening.

  ‘Much to my surprise, there was Jason, on the deck, pouring champagne for the guests. We got talking and arranged to meet up when I got home. Our relationship went from strength to strength and within six months we were living together,’ said Annette.

  The whole time she was talking, I nodded and uttered the odd, ‘oh’ or ‘right’, all the time thinking that Annette could not have been more of a contrast to Chloe, Holland’s ex-wife. I failed to see what she could have seen in him.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering what I could have seen in him,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I lied.

  ‘He was funny and kind and he didn’t take life too seriously,’ she replied. He wasn’t likely to, I thought, with a wealthy, beautiful girlfriend he’d met while pouring champagne on his rich friend’s yacht. I would probably find life a breeze too, in such circumstances. Holland probably counted on being set up for the rest of his life. And I supposed, in a way, he had been, short as it was.

  ‘Can you tell us the names of anyone else at the party on Adam’s boat?’ Wingsy asked.

  ‘Well, there was his girlfriend, of course, Josie Newman,’ said Annette.

  Both Wingsy and I took this massive news on board without alerting her to the significance of what she’d told us. Our faces didn’t change. We didn’t react in any way. Not on the outside. On the inside, it was a different story. Annette rattled off more names of those who’d been present. Some had been spoken to already but we took details again anyway. All of the twenty-two people she named would need to be re-interviewed now, following both Spencer’s arrest and the naming of Makepeace as a suspect.

  ‘Tell us about Josie,’ I said.

  Annette smiled and said, ‘Josie and I got along quite well. Jason and I went to several more of Adam’s yacht parties once we were together. Adam had his bar in Spain, but he used to sail down whenever he could, to see Josie. She told me that she came from this area and had friends around here. I heard her and Adam talking, actually, at the last party, about an old friend of Josie’s who still lives here with her young son. Adam was planning to visit her and say hello. You know – check on her, that sort of thing.’

  Again, I refused to allow myself to appear too eager. ‘Can you tell us the friend’s name or any more about her?’ I asked, as casually as possible.

  ‘No, sorry. I was on my way to get myself a drink at that point. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the layout of a yacht, officer?’ Annette asked, without any hint of sarcasm.

  ‘Not really,’ I answered with a smile.

  ‘Well, I went to get a drink on the upper deck from the main deck and the two of them were tucked out of sight of the rest of the party. I heard Josie say something like, “You should go and see her. Let her know that I’m still thinking about her even after all these years.” Adam’s reply was a little less enthusiastic but he seemed to be saying, “I think your plan is a bad one but I’ll do it.” That’s about all I heard.’

  There was little else that Annette could tell us about Josie and her conversation with Adam despite our questioning. It seemed that Annette hadn’t figured out who they had been talking about, so we declined to fill in the blanks for her. Again, we changed tack.

  ‘Does the name Benjamin Makepeace mean anything to you?’ Wingsy asked Annette.

  She paused, her lovely face tilted towards him, intelligence alive behind the bloodshot eyes. After a few seconds, she said slowly, ‘I’m not entirely sure. But I do remember Jason telling me he had met an old schoolfriend the last time he was in Spain. I wasn’t too sure who he’d been talking about but now you mention the name Benjamin…’ Annette uncrossed and crossed her legs again before adding, ‘He may have said Ben. I’m sorry. It was one of those calls he made from Spain. It was just before they called his flight; I could hear the announcements in the background at the airport. He said something about seeing an old friend and that he’d call me at Gatwick. He did call me when his flight landed, and he got home a couple of hours later, but he made no mention of Ben or whatever his name was. I’d forgotten all about it.’ Annette dabbed again at her reddened eyes. ‘He disappeared a few days after that. Everything just went from my mind…’

  We spent another couple of hours with Annette, taking another statement from her, getting as much detail as possible to make sure we were talking about the same Adam Spencer and Josie Newman. When we finally left, it was after 10pm.

  In the car, Wingsy and I sat quietly for three or four seconds before he broke first. ‘Can you believe that?’ he asked. ‘Josie Newman was an associate of Spencer’s all that time.’

  ‘Best give Cotton a call, tell her about Newman and see if the sour-faced cow wants us to do anything else,’ I said.

  ‘Hope not,’ said Wingsy. ‘I could do with getting home, but with a revelation like that one she may well want something done tonight – like a visit to Susan Newman.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I haven’t had a chance to call Bill all day. I’ll text him and say hello, see if he’s still at work or not. Think he was late turn today. I can’t remember.’

  ‘How’s it going with him?’

  ‘OK, but our whole big romance has been one pizza together. Finding the time is proving a bit tough at the moment.’

  ‘You do have a habit of making a mess of things.’

  ‘It’s never my fault. Well, there was that one time when I threw up on that bloke from Manchester I was seeing. To be fair to him, he was quite good about it.’

  ‘Yeah, till you went round to see him and he’d moved back to Manchester without telling you.’

  ‘Can you be quiet now? I’m about to ring Cotton.’

  Thankfully Kim had nothing more for us, in spite of the news that Adam Spencer was the boyfriend of Josie Newman. I was grateful not to be sent to Mrs Newman’s and assumed that there was a plan in place for that one. I was getting too tired to worry about it. We headed back to the nick, intending to complete and hand in our paperwork and have a word with Pierre about the interviews in the morning. Our plans changed rapidly when a very flustered-looking Catherine appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Nina, Wingsy. Glad you two haven’t gone home. Can you come with me?’

  My heart sank. I was really tired at this point. It had been another hectic six days on duty. I’d been envisaging going home and waking up refreshed for my day off.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Wingsy. ‘Did you run up the stairs?’

  She glanced over her shoulder towards Nottingham’s office. ‘When we got Spencer back here, he was insisting that he be interviewed tonight. The plan was to leave him until the morning as it’s getting late. He declined a brief. He wouldn’t stop talking about Jason Holland and Amanda Bell so Pierre went downstairs with Mark to put in an interview. They’ve only been going for a few minutes but I think you’ll want to hear this.’

  Chapter 75

  Without another word, we followed her to the remote viewing room. Catherine was right. I did want to hear what Spencer was saying.

  At this precise moment, I was unable to distinguish what exactly was causing the slight shake of my hands and a really unpleasant sweating in my palms as I opened the door to the viewing room. Nerves or adrenaline were both likely to produce this effect on me. Wingsy looked as if he was faring much better but I couldn’t be sure about that. We took a seat, already transfixed by the pictures and words coming from the monitor on the wall before we even reached the chairs. Catherine took a seat by the door.

  ‘Listen, it’s important. Ask me what you like, but hear me out first. I
have to tell you this.’

  With my eyes on the screen as I slid on to the cushioned surface, I located the speaker. I’d seen enough photographs by now to know what Adam Spencer looked like. The images I’d previously seen were those of a much less worried man. The Adam Spencer I was now looking at had a worn expression, sallow skin, bloodshot eyes. I could have passed him in the street and not recognised him.

  ‘Blackmail, yes. I’ll admit to blackmail. I’ll go to court and plead guilty. But murder, no. Not murder.’ His voice was raised, and his eyes locked on Pierre and then Mark. I wasn’t sure which one held his gaze, due to the angle of the camera, until I heard Pierre speak.

  ‘Tell us about the blackmail, Adam.’

  Adam banged his head on the table and left it there for a couple of seconds. When he straightened himself up again he said, ‘It was Josie Newman’s idea.’ He held his hands up and added, ‘But yes, I’m as much to blame. I went along with it. She had this idea to blackmail Jake Lloyd.’

  As he said Lloyd’s name, I felt a shiver go down my spine. I hugged my goosebumped arms.

  Adam continued. ‘Josie had some compromising photographs of Amanda Bell and Jake Lloyd from a few years ago. She wanted money for them, as he was doing well for himself. Problem was, as it turned out, he wasn’t doing as well as we’d thought. We just assumed that he was kicking up a fuss about paying. Five grand is five grand at the end of the day. We’d sent him some sample pictures so he knew we weren’t kidding about. When I went to see him to collect the money, he told me he’d burnt them.’

  Adam gave a dry laugh. ‘Thing was, what neither me nor Josie knew until later was that Lloyd was stalking one of your officers. I went to collect the money and we rowed. He said that he would pay the five grand but there was to be no more money. It got very heated and he told me that he “knew all about taking photographs”. At the time, that meant nothing to me. He handed me five thousand pounds in a large padded envelope. I took it off him.’