He moved then, head down, ashamed of his outburst, and did as she suggested. Sally heard the sound of footsteps above her head. Jenna going into the bathroom.
She took a moment to fill the kettle and put coffee in mugs. She wanted to chase off after Jamie May, but first things first. The fridge was pretty bare and there was little food in the cupboards. If this wasn’t a family in dire need of support, she didn’t know what was. She could see plastic carrier bags full of empty beer cans in the corner near the bin. Alan’s self-medication. She wondered when either of them had last had a decent meal.
Sally rang Victim Support and pushed to get someone over as soon as possible.
Coffee made, she carried the mugs into the living room and sat next to Braithwaite on the sofa. He took the drink in silence and sipped, despite the heat that made her mug too hot to hold.
‘We attended the post-mortem on Carly this morning,’ she began, keeping her voice low and calm. He gulped in air, like a man drowning.
‘Did they cut her open?’
She could hear his anguish and had to fight down her own deep-seated need to make it all better.
‘Just one incision on her neck, to see how she died.’ She let this hang in the air for a moment. A small step at a time was the best way to do it. ‘Do you want to know what we found now, or would you rather wait for another time?’
Braithwaite took another shuddering breath and clutched the coffee mug to his chest, but he nodded for her to continue.
‘Carly was asphyxiated, Mr Braithwaite.’ His face was bleak, lost.
She rushed ahead, ‘But it was probably over very quickly, as whoever did it managed to squeeze her airway and jugular at the same time. No air and no blood to the brain means a mercifully quick death.’
Sally sat then, hand on his arm, and waited. This time he broke, and slid to the floor, heaving out huge sobs and dropping his mug. He clasped his hands round his head, coffee dregs staining the carpet. The only words he could articulate sounded like ‘Why?’ and she wished she had an answer for him. Sally felt her own tears begin to rise, but choked them back. This was his grief, not hers.
She left him where he was and went upstairs to see Jenna. Jenna was washed and dressed in jeans and a tee shirt and sitting on the bed, listening to her Dad cry and playing with her phone. She looked up as Sally stood at the door, and slid the phone under the pillow.
‘What?’ she asked, her tone more belligerent once she was away from her father. ‘What did you say to him?’
Sally stood by the door. ‘We know how your sister died, Jenna. Do you want me to tell you about it?’ Jenna’s face pinched closed and Sally could see her jaw tighten where she was clenching her teeth, but she nodded, and let her fair hair fall down around her face. Sally sat next to the girl on the bed. Jenna traced the flowery pattern on the duvet cover with her finger. Sally took her hand.
‘Jenna, Carly was asphyxiated. Strangled. Whoever did it managed to block both her airway and the blood supply to her brain and she died in seconds, probably. Once she passed out, she would not have suffered.’
Jenna interrupted in a small, shaking voice, ‘You mean she couldn’t breathe? Someone was stopping her from breathing?’
‘Yes, I suppose I do. It would have been quick.’
The girl crumpled into tears. ‘Was it easy to kill her?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, love, I’m afraid it was,’ said Sally, and held the girl’s hand tightly as she wept again. This job just gets harder, she thought.
Sally wanted to ask more questions of the girl to establish what had happened on the Sunday. She didn’t think any of the team had a clear idea of Carly’s comings and goings during that day.
‘Jenna, how did Carly get to the studio on Sunday night?’
Jenna sucked in a few deep breaths and let them shakily out.
‘She was going to catch the bus with Jamie.’
‘What do you mean, was going to? Jenna, did Carly actually go to the studio with Jamie?’
Jenna turned her head away and looked out of the window. Sally could see the hesitation in the hunched line of her thin shoulders.
‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jenna admitted, talking to the window. ‘I don’t know if she got there or not. I wasn’t talking to her because she had a real go at me about my friends. She was well out of order. I don’t pick on her friends. So I went out for a bit. We had a row.’ Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, ‘The last time I saw her, we had a row and I didn’t even wish her good luck.’
‘So, you don’t know what time she left or whether she went with Jamie or on her own?’ The girl shook her head, eyes on the floor. Sally was sure Jenna knew more than she was saying, She just had to find the right way to get her to talk. Was she protecting Jamie? But if he’d killed Carly, why would he come back here? Or was Jamie trying to protect Jenna from her father? Or even, her mind whirled with sudden possibilities, could this girl have killed her sister? Had Jamie gone round there to accuse her? Sally wanted to get a look at Jenna’s arms to see if there were any signs of an actual fight rather than just a verbal row.
The doorbell rang. Sally stood, irritated by the interruption, and looked out of the bedroom window. She couldn’t believe it. Bloody press. Oliver had begged them to leave the family alone just for a couple of days, and although there were a few hanging about, most had agreed to wait for the press conference and were just using the front of the house for background to their reports. But she could see the zoom lens of a camera pointing up at her through the window of a car parked opposite, and the top of Lisa Middleton’s wiry ginger head directly below her.
‘I’ll go,’ she shouted and ran down the stairs, opening the front door just wide enough to see the body in front of it.
‘Hello Lisa.’
‘Oh, DS Ellis.’
Sally said nothing.
‘I didn’t think there were any police here,’ stuttered the reporter, turning an unflattering shade of pink that clashed with her hair.
‘I bet you didn’t,’ Sally replied. ‘Now buzz off. The deal was no press interviews until we have had a couple of days to investigate, and the family have had a little time to come to terms with what has happened. You’ve already had a detailed statement from Superintendent Oliver. She will keep you informed.’ She made a show of looking up and down the street. ‘Looks like everybody else was more than happy to agree to it. To show a little compassion, a little human feeling…’ She softened her tone, not wanting to alienate the woman. ‘Have a bit of a heart, Lisa. You’ll get your story when the family are fit to talk to you.’
The reporter turned her back and walked away, but Sally could see she was going to sit in her car with her photographer just up the road until Sally left. She didn’t fancy Lisa Middleton’s chances with Alan Braithwaite if she tried the doorbell again, though. Maybe she would let her speak to him after all…
Sally rang Victim Support once more. They were sending an experienced advocate and supporter, but she had to travel over from Crediton and would be at least another hour. Sally’s phone buzzed, Dan wanted her back at the station. Well, he’d have to wait. She was needed here for the time being.
Chapter 15
Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 13:09 Jamie May
Jamie checked his phone. He’d got a bit of charge left in it so he texted his mum. He knew she’d be worried, but there was no way he was going to see her. It was better for everyone if he stayed well out of the way. He pulled up his shirt and looked at the bruise spreading across his gut. It really hurt. He couldn’t believe Miss Quick had had the balls to hit him that hard. He’d just collapsed, couldn’t breathe at all. Must have passed out for a couple of minutes. She’d gone when he got up.
He was crouched in his own back garden behind the rotting shed where he used to play as a kid, waiting until his mum left for her shift at Sainsbury’s. He was planning to sneak in through the downstairs’ toilet windo
w, grab something to eat, tidy himself up a bit and get out again before anyone noticed.
Jamie was buzzing with adrenaline and lack of sleep and food. His brain couldn’t make sense of what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. In fact, in the last thirty-six hours, from the party at Miles’s on Saturday night, his life had changed utterly. He’d left his guitar at Miles’s house too, and needed go back for it. and that was making him twitchy.
He hadn’t been able to get to see Jenna because of her stupid moron of a father, and he didn’t know if he had the guts to try again. The guy had almost smacked him one. If that woman hadn’t been coming up the path, he wasn’t sure he would still be walking and talking.
Jamie put his head onto his arms and rested them across his bent knees. Carly had been glowing, just beautiful that night at the party. All her dreams were coming true. He’d spent everything he had on a silver and onyx ring and waited until just the right moment at the party to give it to her. He’d taken her outside into the back garden where the music and laughter was like a love song in the background. She had opened the little black velvet box with a funny expression on her face, and asked him if it was a friendship ring.
Jamie’s heart was crushed at that very moment. He could still feel it hurting him now, a real pain in his heart. He loved Carly, he wanted her to be his proper girlfriend, not just a ‘friend’. But she had laughed at him in disbelief and kissed him on the cheek and said she had never thought of him like that, but that they would always be friends.
And then she had turned around and walked back into the house, and draped herself around the neck of Miles fucking Westlake, who couldn’t see him, out there in the night, alone.
Jamie shook himself like a wet dog getting out of a river. He wanted to howl like a dog too. How had everything gone so wrong? How could he have lost Carly before he had even got her to be his?
He felt his bruised ribs. What would the Police do when Miss Quick told them what he had done to her? He may have to go to prison. His heart pounded. His head pounded. He had to think, but the horror was too much for him to bear. He punched himself in the head as hard as he could, wanting to stop the pain, but he couldn’t prevent the thoughts from circling round his head like angry biting midges.
The noise of his mum’s old Fiesta coughing into life and hiccupping backwards down the drive, was his cue to move. He hobbled down the path, wincing as the blood rushed back into his legs and feet, pushed the wheelie bin under the window and balanced on top of it. He prised open the downstairs toilet window and wriggled, panting and cursing at the pain radiating from below his ribs, through the small gap, down over the toilet and onto the bathroom floor.
Forty minutes later, he had showered, gelled his hair, charged his phone and dressed in his alternative uniform of black tee shirt, black jeans, black biker boots and black hoody emblazoned with a skull and the words ‘War Death’ on the back. He ate four pieces of toast, raided his mum’s gas bill pot and left by the back door, feeling a little better than he had before. He had to get his guitar back, and he hadn’t finished dealing with Westlake’s betrayal yet.
Chapter 16
Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 13:30 Irina Akis, Illusion Studio
The sound of the glass door closing muffled the footsteps of DC Sam Knowles and DCI Ian Gould as they escorted Jed Abrams out of Illusion
Studios and off to the station for formal questioning about the death of Carly Braithwaite.
Chas Lloyd stood beside the glass and chrome reception desk, dwarfed by its 1980’s opulence. She was scared. Irina Akis rose smoothly from the sofa and took her hand.
‘Chas, darling, I would like you to take a long lunch, but the boys and I have work to do and there are no recordings today, are there?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Come back at about three o’clock, OK?’
Chas was flustered. Did the fact that Dan had sent other officers to pick up Jed mean that their very brief romance was over? She had been totally pissed off the night before when he’d come over all Jane Austenish and sent her home, virtue intact, but she still kind of liked him.
Why were the Police pushing Jed so hard? What did they know? He was such an idiot, but she couldn’t see him murdering Carly. She was too old for him, anyway. But they could easily do him for porn stuff if they had a little look around. And what were the Latvians going to do in the Studio when she was out?
She didn’t dare ask. She got her coat and bag and made her way up the stairs without another word. She knew that Jed made porn films for the Latvians, she’d been in the video room often enough, but she didn’t want to know any of the sordid details. As far as she was concerned, the less she knew the better. She jumped into her Mini and backed out onto Sidwell Street, wondering what to do in her extended lunch hour.
Irina waited until the girl had gone and signalled Grigor to remove the CCTV disk. Then she rang Filip to tell him to drive the van into Chas’s spot. In less than two hours they had loaded the completed DVDs and removed all of Abram’s recording equipment, including forty DVD recorders into the back of their Mercedes van. It paid to be cautious. If the Police wanted Abrams for murder, which they might do, they would search the place.
Irina checked the studio over before they took all the equipment away and she could replace the CCTV disk. Tomorrow, she would dispose of the recorders in the North Sea. And in a couple of weeks she would have sold the DVDs and made herself enough money to pay off her father and escape, properly and for the last time, this miserable life.
Chapter 17
Date: Tuesday April 25th Time: 13:59 Jed Abrams, Exeter Road Police Station
Dan took the stairs two at a time. He could see Sam Knowles waiting at the top, hopping from side to side like an anxious heron. Dan stopped next to him.
‘Got some news, Sam?’
‘Sir, we brought Jed Abrams in and he’s in Interview Room 1. I collected the security camera DVD from the girl on reception. She’s called Chas.’ He blushed and Dan felt a bit better about his treatment of the girl the night before. She was more Sam’s age, and type, than his. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking of.
‘Good work, Sam. Where is DCI Gould now?’
‘He’s stood outside the Interview Room watching Abrams, sir, and having a cup of coffee.’
‘OK, go into the video room and study that DVD for all of Sunday, not just from 7.00pm. I want to know about anybody who entered or left the building. Got it?’
Sam nodded and disappeared.
Jed felt trapped. He’d told the Latvians not to stay in the reception area when the Police came, but they had some stupid notion that they would be able to intimidate them somehow by their mere presence. They couldn’t understand that the way it worked in their country was a very different beast from the way it worked in the UK. Or, maybe they were sitting there to intimidate him into keeping his mouth shut. As if he needed the reminder.
Abrams realised that the Police were on to him, even if they didn’t know exactly what they were onto him for. He also knew that if they got into his video room he’d be finished, and in prison very soon afterwards. He couldn’t decide whether or not to call in a solicitor. Would it make him look more guilty, or less? They were only questioning him, he reminded himself, he hadn’t been arrested. Either way, he was in deep shit. He wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. If he couldn’t have a drink, the shakes would start soon.
Why had the stupid little bitch got herself killed? He was on to such a lucrative contract with the East European markets, and now he could see it going down the toilet in front of him.
He weighed up his options: talk to the Police, probably go to prison for a while, and live the rest of his life on the run from the Latvians. Or keep his mouth shut, close the business in Exeter and move away as fast as he could to start somewhere else. Perhaps Spain. There was no contest.
Gould turned as Dan entered the little corridor that ran alongs
ide the three Interview Rooms and signalled him to stay quiet. They both looked through the one-way glass at Jed Abrams. He was sweating and using the hem of his shirt to wipe his face, exposing his pale paunch. His eyes were jittery, unable to focus on the statement he was supposed to be preparing for the interview.
‘He’s a wreck,’ said Dan, ‘worse than when I saw him yesterday. And why no solicitor? Doesn’t he think he needs one? On a murder investigation? That’s just weird.’
‘That’s not all,’ replied Gould. ‘He stinks of booze, which might explain the jitters, but I think there’s something else going on.’ He paused to collect his thoughts.
’There were three characters in the studio when we got there this morning. A beaut of a girl, tall with short blonde hair and cheekbones you could cut yourself on, and two blokes, one with a cauliflower ear and muscles and the other like an extra from a Quentin Tarantino film, all sharp suit and shaved head. I thought they could have been a band, but not when I saw how nervous Abrams was around them. They didn’t speak a single word while we were there, and I’ll bet my pension they weren’t English.
‘I think our little friend in there is up to something dodgy, even if he didn’t do for the girly.’
Dan bit back the temptation to tell him off about his casual use of language when describing suspects and victims, but he knew Gould came from different times - what was the point? And he had a sneaking suspicion Gould did it on purpose, because he knew it would wind him up.
‘So,’ he asked instead, ‘what do you reckon? Dodgy DVDs? Cheap music rip-offs?’
‘What if,’ Gould teased the filmy thoughts out of his head. ‘What if the girl did go to the studio but Abrams wanted her to do more than just sing? What if he’s making porn, and the foreigners are the distribution arm? What if she argued, or said she’d tell her Dad, or the Police? That would be a reason to keep her quiet, wouldn’t it?’
They looked at each other, united for the first time in their shared pursuit of the murderer. Dan nodded, lips pursed as he reached for links, pulling his Mind Map together into a potential answer.
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