Death and Deception

by B. A. Steadman

  ‘Jamie May is definitely going down for kidnap and assault unless Claire Quick withdraws her statement, so we can keep him here for twenty four hours anyway. Then we’ll see if we need to extend or release him on bail once we have Miles Westlake’s statement.

  ‘Ian, you speak to the boy’s mother and I’ll just pop into the Interview Room to see if I can get anything out of him before the solicitor arrives.’ He paused and consulted his notepad, all jobs allocated.

  ‘Right, that’ll do. There’s overtime in this - so don’t skimp on anything. I want thorough work and no mistakes. Let’s do an eight o’clock briefing tomorrow morning.’ He slid off the desk and made his way back to the dishwasher with his mug, signalling the end of the meeting.

  As they all got to work, Dan felt in better control. At least there were no snide looks or remarks for him to pretend to ignore, and they did have a couple of suspects to interrogate.

  His anxiety about the evening ahead retreated to a small nagging voice.

  Chapter 21

  Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 17:18 Jamie May, Exeter Road Police Station

  The air conditioner sucked old air from the windowless room and replaced it with older, recycled air. Even though no smoking had been allowed in the interview rooms for years, the stink of tobacco was ground into the brown streaks on the ceiling and the crumbling round burn marks in the linoleum floor.

  Jamie May sat, head bowed, tracing the grooves etched into the formica table with his thumb nail. Sandra May stood outside in the corridor looking at her son through the window. A thin woman with dyed red hair and deep wrinkles, she looked like someone who had given her life to looking after her son and not spent any time or money on herself. She looked up as Dan and Ian approached, wiping her nose with a tissue.

  ‘He won’t see me,’ she said. ‘What’s he done? Why won’t he talk to me?’ She looked up at the men, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, appealing for answers they couldn’t give.

  Dan watched Gould take Mrs May aside. The poor woman was going to be in a real state when she found out precisely what her only son had done.

  He entered the interview room without notes or files. This was not a formal part of the interview. He just wanted to make contact with the boy, but didn’t intend to frighten him.

  Jamie looked up through his black fringe, took in the slim, dark-haired man and looked back down at the table.

  ‘Jamie, I’m Detective Inspector Hellier. I’m in charge of the investigation into Carly Braithwaite’s death.’

  Dan studied the side of the boy’s face. Jamie stiffened when he heard Carly’s name, but there was no other reaction. Dan picked up a chair, took it round the table and sat next to the boy, so he could at least see part of Jamie’s face.

  ‘How close were you to Carly, Jamie? Did you know her well?’ The boy did not look up. ‘I think you can help us to work out who may have killed her, Jamie. We know how she was killed and we have a good idea of when it happened. Can you tell me what you know about it? About what happened on Sunday?’

  There was still no response. Dan’s instinct was to press on.

  ‘If you tell me the truth now, I can help you with the other charges. You know, for assaulting your teacher and keeping her against her will. They are serious charges.’ He waited for another minute. ‘Don’t you want me to help you with them?’ He was becoming angry at the lack of response, even though he could see the boy twisting one leg round the other in a mammoth effort at self-control. Dan pushed a little harder.

  ‘Jamie, did you actually like Carly? It’s just that it seems to me that if you were a real friend, you would want to help us to catch her killer. Carly would want you to help us, I think. We are on the same side, you know.’ He bent his head round into Jamie’s sight line and softened his expression. ‘Help me out here.’ Still nothing.

  ‘When did you last see Carly, Jamie? Were you with her on Sunday afternoon?’

  Jamie shuffled on his chair to face away from the detective, hunching into his hoody.

  Frustrated, Dan slapped the table top and raised his voice. ‘Ok, if you don’t want to talk about Carly, tell me about Miss Quick, your teacher. You must really hate her to have tied her up like that. I bet she’s a really nasty piece of work, eh? A right bitch. Was she going to tell us about what you had done, Jamie? Did you need to shut her up?’

  The boy exploded out of his chair, knocking it backwards and stumbling over it towards the door. Dan leapt backwards from his own chair and threw himself in front of the door to stop the boy leaving. He was pleased to have caused some reaction, but he just might have pushed the boy too far for a first meeting. So much for not frightening him.

  ‘Sit down, Jamie,’ he said, ‘you’re not going anywhere, Sunshine.’

  Jamie glared at the man in front of him. He swivelled around, took two steps to the one-way window and banged his head and fists on it, kicking the wall with his booted foot and yelling an incoherent stream of abuse to anyone who might be listening outside. Dan heard footsteps in the corridor and stepped away from the door. He had to admit it was a pretty impressive way to bring an interview to a close.

  Gould burst in, followed by Jamie’s mother. She ran across to the boy and swept him into her arms. This time there was no resistance. Jamie let his mother hold him, and tell him how worried she had been about him, and how it would be alright now.

  Gould raised his eyebrows at Dan but he just shrugged. He hadn’t found anything out and it was unlikely to be alright for Jamie May ever again. Gould ushered them both back to the table and proffered tissues.

  The duty solicitor arrived in a flurry of paper work and Calvin Klein’s Obsession. As she read the charge sheet, she kept glancing up at Jamie May as though finding it difficult to equate it with the boy sobbing in his mother’s arms. She introduced herself to the Mays and to Dan, and nodded towards Gould, whom she called by his first name.

  Before she got a sentence out regarding the charge, Dan jumped in.

  ‘We’re keeping him in, at least overnight. We haven’t charged him yet, but you can see the charges for yourself, and they are serious. The plan is to interview and charge him formally tomorrow afternoon when we have had time to verify the charges and collect witness statements.’

  Vanessa Redmond bristled, and re-arranged the tortoiseshell glasses on her nose. ‘My client is barely sixteen. It is wrong to lock juveniles up and this one doesn’t look like he’s a danger to anybody at the moment. You should let him go, to be returned here tomorrow on his mother’s recognizance. He looks like he needs a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘And,’ Dan continued as though she had not spoken, ‘we have a badly injured witness in hospital who can tell you that he is certainly not the sweet, innocent boy you might wish him to be, so he will be staying here tonight. I’ll think about letting him go home tomorrow or Thursday, if you want to start bail proceedings after the formal interview tomorrow.’

  Jamie followed the exchange, hope fading to despair on his face when he realised that he would have to spend at least one night in a cell. His mother uttered a quiet, ‘Oh, Jamie,’ and held onto his hand.

  Vanessa Redmond held Dan’s eye for a moment, then gave a reluctant nod, and sniffed her displeasure.

  ‘I suppose that will have to do. Can you leave me alone now with my client and his mother, please?’

  Both men rose and left the room. Dan posted a PC outside.

  Gould glanced across at Dan as they headed back towards the main office.

  ‘You handled her well. She’s like a Rottweiler normally.’

  ‘Yeah, I spent a lot of time dealing with solicitors as a Sergeant. You have to get in first. I don’t like locking kids up either, but I’m not sure Miles Westlake will be safe if Jamie’s out and about. Plus a night in the cells might encourage him to talk to us. He’s still our number one suspect. I have to give the kid credit - he held out well against me in there.’

&n
bsp; Gould gave a short laugh. ‘What were you saying about me not bullying witnesses?’

  Much to his embarrassment, Dan felt heat around his collar rise up into his face. ‘Just shaking the tree. He knows what happened, I can feel it.’ He paused at the door to the Incident room. ‘Why don’t you go home now, Ian? Have a couple of hours break, get something to eat. I have a few things to sort out here, then I have to get Chas to agree to help us. It may take all my powers of persuasion. I’m a bit worried that I may have to arrest her to get her to co-operate.’

  He smiled to show that he was joking, but he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t smack him on the nose.

  ‘I thought she was a real little cracker, myself. Is she going to be so difficult? Would you prefer me to go and see her and use all my charm?’ Gould grinned, licking his lips and rubbing his belly.

  ‘Err… tempting offer, but no thanks all the same. I need to do this myself.’ He felt another warm flush creeping up his neck and turned to enter the office so Gould wouldn’t see. He didn’t want to admit to him what had happened the night before with Chas. He’d just laugh at the opportunity wasted and at the thought of the DI being a wimp and having ‘finer feelings’. Questions about his masculinity, never mind his ability, would be round the station before he could blink.

  Gould sauntered over to his desk and Dan stood in front of the whiteboard again with a felt tip pen. He drew a red triangle to connect Carly, Miles Westlake and Jamie May, and wrote ‘love’ along the line from Carly to Miles, and ‘jealousy’ along the line from Jamie to Miles. He wrote the same words on a similar line connecting Carly with her sister and father. Then he thought about how to connect Jed Abrams to the main characters, but however hard he tried, he couldn’t. Abrams was a wild goose chase. Interesting in his own right, but not connected to this case. He would be happy to pass it over to Vice in the morning.

  It was six thirty. The office was quietening down. Bill and Ben had added the results of the Post-Mortem to the wall before going home. Carly had definitely had sex on the Saturday night. Sally had scrawled across it – ‘with Miles Westlake’ and had drawn a line to connect up the information. Had Jamie caught them at it? He wrote the question on the wall. Jamie was struggling emotionally. He wrote that up, too. Would he even be coherent in a formal interview? They had to find a way to get him to open up and trust them. He wrote ‘Trust?’ on the board. In his heart, Dan didn’t think Jamie had killed Carly, but he thought Jamie knew who had. He sat at his desk, took out his notepad and doodled while he thought some more.

  He was hesitant to bring in the father for a formal interview so soon after the death. He wouldn’t be reliable, he was too angry and emotional. Sometimes that could hide guilt. Sometimes it was genuine. He was relying on Sally to get the family’s trust and persuade them to open up to her over the next few days. Jenna would probably crack first. Poor kid needed a mother figure, especially now, and might shed light on the relationship between her sister and father. In the meantime Braithwaite was below Westlake and May on the list. He looked down at the pad. He’d doodled the name ‘Abrams’ and circled it many times with swirling patterns of leaves and thorns. Nice design, he thought, but what did it signify?

  Dan checked his phone but there were no missed calls or messages from Sally, so he assumed she was on her way to Westlake’s house. Nothing back from his mum. She’d be disappointed in him. He brought up Chas’s number, suffered another tremor of embarrassment as he touched the screen and wondered how best to play it.

  Chapter 22

  Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 19:10 Miles Westlake home

  The 1998 Fiat Panda that Sally Ellis called her own was not the best vehicle for picking up a suspect in, having just two doors and a pair of child car seats in the back. So she had signed out a new Ford Focus from the pool. It was smooth, spacious and comfortable. There was no need to force the gearstick into third, there was good visibility, the brakes worked. Sally felt she had died and gone to car heaven. And it was only a Ford for goodness’ sake. She was very tempted to go to the police station at Heavitree Road via Taunton, just for the ride.

  ‘The boss said the English teacher was pretty badly hurt,’ said Lizzie Singh, shifting about in her seat. Sally smirked at her attempts to work out where to put the kit that was usually attached to her uniform.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Sally, ‘but it seems that Jamie did the hitting and the tying up, not Westlake, and we’ve got him in custody, thanks to you.’

  Lizzie grimaced. ‘I’m hoping that my one act of madness in arresting Jamie May hasn’t given you all the idea that I’m some sort of superhero. I’m still feeling a bit wobbly round the knees, to be honest.’

  Sally laughed, ‘Don’t knock it, kid. Better that the blokes think you’re handy - might stop them getting ideas…’

  Lizzie put the handcuffs into her handbag with her radio.

  They drew up outside the house. Westlake’s car was still in the driveway. The front room curtains were partly drawn but there was no other sign of life.

  ‘Lizzie, go round to the back door and wait for me to call you. Stop him if he makes a run for it.’ Lizzie straightened her coat, threw her bag over her shoulder and stepped past two overflowing bin bags on her way to the back of the house. Sally rang the doorbell.

  Several minutes later, having rung the bell, banged on the door and shouted through the letterbox, she realised they were not going to get a response. She worked her way round to the back garden to find Lizzie chatting to the next door neighbour over the fence. The neighbour was certain that Westlake had not left the house as she had been waiting to have a word with him about the noise from the party. The woman was enjoying a chance to complain about her neighbour, so Sally took a step backwards and allowed Lizzie to take down the complaint.

  Sally took a moment to think. Westlake could be hurt inside the house and unable to cry for help. He could even be dead. If Jamie May was the killer, he could have killed Miles Westlake after Claire Quick had escaped early that morning. Her head snapped up. She cut straight across the woman’s complaints.

  ‘Lizzie, we have to get into the house, now. Find a brick or something to break the window.’ Lizzie, caught on the hop, looked about her, picked up an ornamental stone squirrel from the rockery and hurled it at the glass kitchen door as hard as she could.

  ‘No good,’ said Sally, ‘toughened glass. Go for the window.’ This time the glass cracked.

  Using her coat to protect her hand, Lizzie pushed the shards of glass into the kitchen sink, balanced one foot on a protruding brick to give her a lift up, and clambered over the sill and onto the work surface, scattering dirty plates and cans onto the floor. She found the back door key still in the lock and let Sally inside.

  ‘Good work, Spiderwoman,’ said Sally as she entered.

  ‘It’s no good, I am marked forever,’ Lizzie sighed as they stared at the mess around them. ‘The next thing I know I’ll be transferred to the SAS. And look at the mess - I’ve probably destroyed evidence all over the place.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Lizzie - if this guy had a party, there’ll be fingerprints and other DNA evidence all over the other rooms, too.’

  Sally led the way to the sitting room. The place stank like a brewery. What the hell had been going on? It was no wonder the neighbour had complained. They stopped at the door and peered in. The room was empty but she guessed the guitar in the case might be Jamie May’s. There were CDs all over the floor and more discarded mess from the party. She spotted blood on the floor near their feet - evidence from Claire Quick’s injury, no doubt. An empty vodka bottle lay on the carpet.

  ‘Wonder if that’s what May used to hit the teacher over the head?’ asked Lizzie.

  Sally nodded, ‘Could be. He hasn’t tried to clear up at all, then. That’ll make it easier for Forensics.’ There was nothing else to see on the ground floor, so they made their way up the stairs.

  The front bedroom was al
so empty but the bed had been slept in. Looked like it hadn’t been changed for weeks. The second bedroom was a nursery for Westlake’s baby daughter, Emily. The cot had been filled with empty beer cans and there were stubbed out roll ups on the pink carpet. Sally felt angry that someone could treat a baby’s room like that, could show so little respect.

  ‘Bloody disgusting,’ she whispered, rolling her eyes at Lizzie and shaking her head as they backed out of the little room.

  They found Westlake in the bathroom, slumped on the floor with his back against the bath and his legs splayed out in front of him. An empty bottle of vodka lay by his side. Ripped packets of Aspirin, Paracetemol, cough medicine, and old unfinished prescription medicines were scattered across the floor.

  ‘Jesus, Lizzie, he’s taken every bloody thing in the cupboard,’ breathed Sally. She dropped to her knees next to Westlake and listened, her ear close to his mouth. There was a faint rattle of breath in his chest, and a weak pulse in his neck.

  ‘Ambulance! He’s alive. Call it in, fast.’

  Sally dragged Westlake out of the bathroom and onto the landing, where she put him into the recovery position and waited for the ambulance. Lizzie held his head, in case he wanted to be sick, but he seemed to be too far gone to act on simple reflex. Sally willed him not to die.

  The wail of the ambulance broke the silence. There didn’t seem to be much to say when they arrived. Lizzie went in the ambulance, leaving Sally to lock up and leave the house safe. He hadn’t died yet, but who knew how much of him would be left after they had tried to save his life? There was no way to know whether he had taken a lot of pills, or was just sleeping off a bottle of vodka.

  She took the number of Westlake’s wife from his phone and rang her. Sophie Westlake seemed like a nice woman, but she hadn’t known what to say, and Sally had the feeling that she would rather not have known. If Miles had been Sally’s husband, she would have wanted to know, even if she had left him.