‘Why didn’t you ring the Police? Or find Mr Braithwaite? You must have known he was in the pub. That’s what normal people do,’ said Sally.
Jamie stared at her and shook his head. ‘You don’t know what her dad’s like. He’d have killed Jenna if he’d found out. And, probably me, too. He’s insane.’ He turned back to Dan. ‘We didn’t know what to do, or how to hide her. I wrapped her in the duvet at first but you could see it was her and I couldn’t keep it rolled up. And Jenna was no use, she was in a right state. So in the end, I rang Jed Abrams and asked him to help us because he’s got a van.’
‘What?’ interrupted Sally. ‘Why on earth would you ring this bloke, who you hardly know, and expect him to help you move a dead body? The body of a girl who should have been at his studio at that very minute?’
‘I hardly know him, yeah. But Jenna probably knows him from Youth Matters. Alright?’
‘Probably knows him? Probably isn’t going to make someone break the law and put themselves in the frame for a murder.’
She raised her voice, and Dan noticed that the softness had disappeared. ‘Tell us the truth, Jamie. Why did Jed Abrams agree to help you? What is your relationship with Jed Abrams?’
‘I haven’t got a relationship with him.’ The boy looked horrified. ‘I don’t know what you mean. What you trying to say? I’m not gay.’ He looked to Dan again, fellow male in a room full of women, trying to find a shared disgust at what she was implying.
‘I just met him at the competition. I didn’t have a relationship with him. I’m not gay.’ He looked at the solicitor. ‘Is she trying to say I’m gay?’ He swung back to Sally. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m supposed to be helping you and you have a go?’
‘Calm down, Jamie,’ Dan said, ‘Sergeant Ellis is just doing her job. We need to be sure we have all the facts before we do anything else. You’re doing really well, just hang in there.’
‘Hold on,’ said Sally, shuffling papers on her knee. ‘There are no calls to Abrams on your phone log.’
‘There won’t be,’ Jamie replied, voice twisted by sarcasm, ‘because I used Jenna’s.’
‘So Jenna has Abram’s phone number on her phone? Why? And where is Carly’s phone?’
‘I don’t know, alright? I don’t fucking know all the answers to all your fucking questions. I’m doing my best, alright?’ He furrowed his eyebrows. ‘Yeah, I think Carly’s phone got broken when they were fighting. There was glass on the floor. But I don’t know where it is.’
Vanessa Redmond cleared her throat. ‘I doubt that this mode of aggressive questioning is going to help engender trust between the two of you, Sergeant. You can hardly expect my client to remember tiny details after such a traumatic incident. Why don’t you just listen to what he has to say and then we can go back over anything that you don’t like, later?’
Sally subsided with a sniff. She cast a sidelong glance at Dan. He could see she was quite enjoying playing nasty cop. He hoped she’d shut up though, and let the boy tell it.
‘And then,’ Dan asked, ‘what did you do?’
‘We had to wait 'til it got dark. Jed came over with his van about 9.00 o’clock. He helped me to take her to the woods at the top of school in his van. It was the only place I could think of. We were going to go back on Monday night and take her somewhere and bury her properly.’
The boy’s shoulders began to shake and he faltered. He looked at the black ballet shoe, still on the table in its evidence bag.
‘I don’t even remember taking the shoe. I must have just put it in my pocket.’
‘What? You were just going to stick her in the ground and forget about her? Didn’t you think her dad might notice she was gone?’ Sally’s face was picture of disgust. ‘Not very convincing so far, Jamie.’
‘I’m telling the truth. Why don’t you believe me?’
‘I know when someone’s lying, Jamie.’ She glanced at him, and looked back down at her notes.
Jamie threw up his hands and flopped back into his chair, arms folded tightly over his chest.
Dan intervened, ‘Tell us about Jenna. What did you mean about Jenna being involved in porn?’
‘That’s what I was trying to tell you,’ Jamie answered, frustration making his voice even more gruff. ‘Carly had seen Jed’s number on Jenna’s phone and told me she was going to find out why. Jenna was pretty jealous of Carly. But Carly found other stuff on the phone as well. She showed it to me when Jenna was in the bath on Friday. But she didn’t want to say anything then because her dad was in.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘There were pictures of Jenna with blokes on her phone.’
‘What kind of pictures?’
‘You know, sex pictures, with no clothes on. Oh yeah, and kids, too.’
Sandra May gasped, ‘No! But she’s a child herself, a little kid!’ Vanessa Redmond reached across and placed her hand on Sandra’s damp fist.
Jamie didn’t look at his mother, but focussed on Dan’s face. ‘That’s what they were arguing about when I got there on Sunday. Carly had hold of Jenna’s phone and said she was going to tell her Dad what Jenna was up to and she’d get put into a home for prostitutes or end up dead from drugs.’ He paused. ‘She was saying bad stuff. And then Jenna must have lost it and killed her.’ Jamie lifted his white face towards Sally, as if waiting for her to find fault with his story.
‘Thanks, Jamie. Good job. So let me re-cap,’ said Dan. ‘Jenna happens to know Jed Abrams. Jenna has pictures on her phone of herself and other children having sex with men. When her sister finds out about this, Jenna kills her in a fit of rage rather than let her father find out. You and Jed Abrams then hide Carly’s body at the school.’
Jamie nodded, relief lifting his features. ‘Yeah, that’s how it happened. I didn’t mean to do anything bad. I was just trying to help Jenna.’
Sandra May blew her nose and made an effort to sound calm. ‘Can I take him home now?’
‘Not yet, Mrs May, we still need Jamie, I’m afraid.’ Dan felt for her. She’d come into the room thinking her child might be a murderer, but there was a now at least a chance she would leave in a different frame of mind.
‘I want you think hard, now, Jamie. When Carly showed you the pictures on Friday night, did you recognise any of the people in them? Besides Jenna, of course.’
‘No. Just some old geezers. They were disgusting old paedos.’
‘Did you recognise any children besides Jenna?’ asked Sally.
He thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t, but Carly said Jenna’s friend was in one picture. I think she was going to tell the girl’s mum, too. She was so angry at Jenna.’
Having finished his confession, Jamie looked lighter, and sounded lighter.
‘I don’t think Jenna meant to kill Carly. It was a fight gone wrong. Will she have to go to prison?’
Sally, who had understood the meaning of Dan’s raised eyebrows, and kept quiet during the latter exchange, responded,
‘Oh, we’re a long way from that point, Jamie. We don’t usually lock people up just on one person’s say-so. That wouldn’t exactly be fair, would it? No, we have lots of investigations to carry out yet.’ She tapped her pen on her notes. ‘We have to check out your story, for example, make sure we have all our facts straight.’
Dan watched Jamie’s brows knit together and headed off an explosion, ‘I think we all need a break,’ he said, and suspended the interview.
‘Thanks for everything so far. I’ll send in a PC to take you to the toilet or get you a drink. Back in a couple of minutes.’
Dan caught Sally’s eye and beckoned her out of the room. He swung to face her in the corridor, excitement making his moves jerky.
‘I reckon he’s telling the truth, Sally. He’s got most of the details correct, and he couldn’t make up the bit about moving her body, or about what position she was in when she died, could he?’
‘No, I suppose not,�
� she replied slowly, ‘but …’
‘But, what? I know you don’t trust him, and I understand why - he’s a bit of a time bomb, especially the way he attacked Claire Quick.’
‘Yes, about that. Claire isn’t keen to press charges. She doesn’t want to go to court, and she thinks Jamie was acting under extreme provocation and wouldn’t do anything like that again. She’d rather drop it, I think, which is bonkers. He shouldn’t get away with behaving like that towards anybody, let alone a nice person like Claire Quick. Although, I might be able to persuade her to change her mind.’
She stopped and looked at him with her hands on her hips. ‘Would you do me the courtesy of listening to me, please, Boss?’
Dan was chewing a fingernail and staring at the wall. He re-focussed. ‘Sorry. Just thinking. I know you don’t like Jenna for this, but she had means, motive and someone to help her deal with the body. A pretty slick operator, if you ask me.’
‘Exactly,’ she responded, exasperation obvious. ‘With all due respect, Boss, you don’t know the girl at all. I just don’t think she’s got it in her to be ‘slick’. It has to be somebody else. I don’t trust Jamie May as far as I could throw him. He could have been there, not because he was helping hide the body, but because he is the bloody murderer.’
‘But we have the link, Sal, can’t you see? Jed Abrams is the link. Jenna is the link. Carly is just the innocent victim.’
He grabbed her arm, using the other hand to smack the front of his forehead.
‘Oh my God!’
‘What?’
‘What if Jenna is one of the kids due at Abrams tonight? What if that’s why he agreed to help them hide Carly’s body? Because he needs Jenna for tonight?’
Sally followed his line of thought. ‘Yeah, that feels right. It would be typical of Abrams to want to protect his investment.’ She took in his flushed face and shining eyes. ‘I assume that making that link will make you feel a bit better about Ian’s death, too.’
‘Yes, it will. Now I know Abrams really is up to no good, and it’s not just wishful thinking. It feels like his death wasn’t a total waste.’
‘I still think we’re missing a trick here. Would a thirteen-year-old have the gumption to kill her sister and arrange for removal of the body? Her grief seemed so genuine to me.’
Dan saw the appeal in her face, but his brain was working so intensely making the links, that it was hard to talk it through and think at the same time. ‘Oh, I don’t think for a moment that she intended to kill her sister, Sal. But she didn’t need to do anything once she thought about ringing Abrams, did she? He took over the problem and disposed of it. And, of course she’s feeling sad. It’s just that she was more frightened of her Dad finding out what she was up to, than she was of Carly. She could scheme that far.’
‘Ok, I see the way you’re thinking, but I’m uneasy about Jamie. He’s lying through his teeth. Watch his eyes, his body language. He’s squirming all over the chair, trying to get sympathy from us all in turn. He’s a tricky customer, and I don’t trust him, and I’m worried that you do.’
Dan controlled a flash of anger.
‘Sal, he’s given us the best story yet of what happened to Carly Braithwaite. We don’t have to like him to see that. We have Jenna in the frame for her sister’s murder.’ He gave a short laugh of disbelief. ‘Who would have thought it?’
‘But what would motivate a girl like that to turn to pornography?’
Dan sighed. ‘Just the usual, Sally. Money, attention, all the things she wasn’t getting at home, I guess.’
‘That bastard Abrams.’ Sally felt real anger burn her insides. ‘He just picked her off the discard pile and used her, didn’t he? The other sister, the one with no talent. Easy meat. Bastard!’ She felt her fingernails cutting into the soft skin of her hands as she formed two fists.
‘We have to nail him, Boss, and we have to do it right. Trouble is, we haven’t got any real evidence yet. Not even the phone with the pictures on it.’
‘Don’t worry about that. We might have more evidence than we want later on today, if my hunch is correct. We need to get Jenna Braithwaite in for questioning.’
He checked his watch. ‘We’d better get back in there. See if we can wrap it up and get to Abrams’ house before it’s all over.’ He caught her arm as she turned. ‘You know we’re not going to be able to keep Jamie in, if Claire doesn’t press charges? Oliver won’t give us the extra twenty-four hours. Redmond will know that, too.’
Sally glared at him. ‘Bad move, Boss. We need to keep him here. What if one of Abrams’ Latvian friends finds out he’s talked? He could be in danger. And I still don’t trust him. I think you’re going for the answer he wants you to accept.’
Dan stared at her. He wanted to snap, to ask what the fuck was the matter with her, to ask why she was spoiling a great moment, what was her problem? But she was a good officer, and still learning the job, so he softened his features.
‘Point taken Sergeant, but as we seem to have two thirds of the Latvian gang in custody, I can’t see that you have any reason to worry on that score. I don’t think Jamie’s telling us everything either, but I won’t know that until I’ve had Jenna under the microscope. Come on.’
Dan entered the Interview Room slowly, attempting to get his breathing under control and adopt his previously cool demeanour. But, he couldn’t stop one foot from tapping a fast rhythm on the table leg as he felt a nervous elation surge through his body. He switched on the recorder.
‘Jamie, thank you for telling us what happened with Carly. It must be a great weight off your shoulders. It was too much to expect you to keep this all to yourself.’ The boy shuddered out a great sigh.
‘There are still some questions we need to ask you about Miles Westlake though, and we have to sort out the charges regarding Miss Quick, so we have to keep you here for another night, I’m afraid. Then we can let you go home on bail.’
He could sense Vanessa Redmond rearing up even before she came into his line of vision.
‘Inspector Hellier, I think it is perfectly clear that this young man is no longer a danger to anyone. He has been honest with you, even though some of what he has said will go against him in court. Miss Quick has said that she will not be pressing charges, so the serious charge of assault and kidnapping no longer stands.’ She held her hand up to stop any potential interruption. ‘I know he has aided and abetted the concealment of a body but that’s not the sort of everyday criminal activity that warrants overnight detention . . . As you very well know.’ She skewered him with her stare.
‘So, are you intending to charge him?’ She pointed the nib end of her pen at his face. ‘If so, what are those charges? If not, please release him under the recognizance of his mother until tomorrow.’
‘I’ll have him back here in the morning,’ offered Sandra May. ‘He won’t be going anywhere, I promise.’
Dan hesitated and looked to Sally who shook her head. She would argue black was white to keep him in. He was stuck. He either had to charge Jamie May with murder, and sort it out after he had interviewed Jenna Braithwaite, or charge him for the original assault and kidnap, which wouldn’t stand if Claire had withdrawn her statement - or let him go home. He chewed the stub of a fingernail. He didn’t believe Jamie had killed Carly, although he did accept that his Sergeant’s reading of the events on Sunday evening, could possibly have a grain of truth in it. Was he simply accepting the boy’s version? No, he was convinced the evidence was right. It pointed clearly at the sister and Jed Abrams.
But it was all happening so fast, and he was desperate to get to Abrams’ house for the Latvian take-down. He shrugged. A decision had to be made, and he hadn’t got time for a fight with Vanessa Redmond.
‘Alright. I’ll let you go home for the night, Jamie. You must not leave your mother’s home until you come into the Station tomorrow at 9.00 a.m., so that I can question you further. If you break these conditions, you wil
l be kept under arrest and in custody for the duration of my investigation. Understood?’
Jamie and Sandra May nodded and smiled and thanked him. He chose to ignore the satisfied smirk of the solicitor as she strode from the room and led them to the front desk where Jamie was returned his few possessions. He also chose to ignore the angry frown creasing his Sergeant’s normally placid face.
As they watched the small group leave the building, Dan let out a breath that he felt he had been holding since Monday morning.
‘Let’s get a car sent round to the Braithwaite’s in case Jenna is at home after all, and bring her in for questioning.’ As Sally turned towards her desk, he added, ‘and we need to update the Boss. No, we’ll do that on the way. Come on, let’s get a move on, it’s gone six.’
Colin White stopped them at the front door as they were leaving. He was holding the phone and talking to someone at the same time.
‘DI Hellier, you need to take this, it’s Alan Braithwaite.’ Suppressing the need to look at his watch, and dreading telling Braithwaite about the allegation made against his daughter, Dan took the phone.
‘DI Hellier?’ Braithwaite sounded strained and was breathing hard. When Dan answered, he shouted,
‘I’m sitting on that bloody idiot teacher. He came in through the front door as I got in from shopping. He’s raving, something about Jenna and Carly. Can you send a car to get him out of my house, quick, before I smack him one?’
Dan felt a smile twitch on his lips. ‘You do whatever it takes to keep him quiet, Mr Braithwaite, it will be in self-defence as he broke into your property and violated your right to privacy. I’ll get a patrol car over there as soon as possible.’
He looked over at Sergeant White, who turned his hands up and shrugged in the way of all humans faced with an insurmountable problem.
‘What car?’ he said. ‘Oliver’s got them all. I’ll have to radio Traffic and borrow one of their vehicles to send round.’ He gave a hard-done-by sigh and lifted the radio receiver.
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