by Nick Louth
‘Hold on a moment,’ Gillard yelled. ‘If you have any evidence to offer, would you come this way?’ He shepherded the young reporter into a back room, leaving press officer Christina McCafferty to deal with a now distinctly unhappy press pack.
* * *
Emily Tye was a cub reporter on an obscure regional paper with a circulation of less than three thousand. It limped along as a weekly in an era when eBay and the Internet in general had sucked the lifeblood out of the classified ads that used to provide these papers with sustenance. But for all that she was only just 20, Emily had the instincts of a professional. She quickly traded her discovery into an exclusive but informal interview with the lead detective on the case. Craig Gillard, having established that she’d been given a lift by a colleague to the conference, was happy to drive her the 70 miles from Caterham back to Dungeness. But as the darkness of evening deepened across the dull carriageway of the M25, he detected some frustration from the young reporter that so few of her questions were eliciting a straight answer. He didn’t want to let her know anything that hadn’t already been disclosed at the press conference.
Finally, she got a little snappy. ‘Aren’t you supposed to stick to the speed limit?’ she asked, as they roared through dazzlingly lit but unmanned roadworks at 75. The 50-mile-per-hour limit was backed up by signs for speed cameras.
‘No.’ Gillard accelerated further to get past a lumbering group of lorries.
‘Why not?’
‘We have an exemption for emergencies. This number plate will come up on the ANPR as being a police vehicle.’
‘Oh.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘So what’s so urgent about finding the car?’
‘Plenty. If the car’s been dumped, we might find a body, hers or even his, nearby. Even if not, he may have switched vehicles. There could be witnesses. I’ve already called in Kent Police to secure it as a potential crime scene, just in case he came back to take it away.’
‘Oh. Wow.’
‘My turn to ask a question,’ Gillard said. ‘What made you photograph the BMW’s number plate?’
‘From where it was parked, I’d assumed it belonged to the owner of Cherry Farm Properties. I’d been trying to get an interview with him and he wouldn’t return my calls. I was going to follow him. His name is Michael A. Knowles, and of course there was MAK in the personalized number plate.’
‘Whereas it actually belongs to Martin Knight, or Martin Alaric Hildebrand Knight to give him his full name,’ Gillard said, with a smile. ‘You’d make quite a good detective, Emily. I’m impressed.’ As he grinned at her, he noticed a rosy bloom climb up her long slender neck to her cheeks. She looked up at him shyly through a fringe the colour of freshly fallen conkers. Her dark eyes were large and doe-like. He turned back to the road. Too young, Craig, and probably trouble. His inner emotional caution kicked in, but it was usually right. Maybe he’d been talking too much.
‘If you’ve finished all your questions, we can have some music,’ Gillard said, indicating the glove box. Emily opened it, and removed the stack of CDs. After a minute shuffling through them with a look of glazed horror, she slid them back and closed the compartment. For a few seconds she held her hand against it, as if Simply Red, Celine Dion or Jennifer Rush might otherwise escape that ’80s tomb. ‘We could listen to the radio?’ she suggested. He shrugged his assent.
Half an hour later, following her directions, Gillard found himself on a new housing development, or more accurately a building site, which occupied the grounds of an old hospital near Hamstreet, a village a few miles from Dungeness. The access road wound up a slight hill, along the crest of which huge sentinel windmills threw their giant rotors in lazy circles. Shiny new aluminium street lights tossed pools of light onto pavements and fences which hemmed in shadowy muddy fields scattered with construction equipment and Portakabins. There were trenches aplenty, some concrete foundations set, but not a single line of bricks had yet been laid. Trenches. Concrete. A good place to dispose of body parts.
‘This whole development is by Cherry Farm Properties,’ she said. ‘They’ve got outline permission for over two thousand homes. Phase one, which is right over on the far side, is going ahead, but phase two, here, needs the green light from the archaeologists from the University of Kent before they can start. It’s been hugely controversial.’
‘And a really quiet place at night,’ Gillard whispered, as they rounded a final corner. A patrol car from Kent Police was already there. Gillard got out, greeted the two PCs, then went up to the BMW parked beyond, next to an unoccupied Portakabin. He walked around it. There was nothing visible on the plush white leather interior. There were no scratches, no dents, and no obvious fingermarks along the boot edge.
Gillard had to give Martin Knight some credit. Hiding a car isn’t as simple as it used to be. Until ten years or so ago, it was easy to park a vehicle in long-stay car parks at any UK airport, and then make your way out on foot. Unless you actually went into an airport building you would be unlikely to be caught on CCTV. There had been a couple of gangland cases of well-sealed bodies being left in the boot of vehicles that were not discovered for more than a year. But ANPR machines ended that. Every car going into a major airport car park is identified by registration number which connects to the name and a credit card that made the booking.
Multi-storey car parks had been favoured too, until worries over the safety of women in their frighteningly blank landings, hallways and lifts led to a campaign to increase CCTV coverage. Those with connections to organized crime could still hide cars – in shipping containers, in lock-up garages, underneath railway arches – and not have them found for years. But for academics, even clever criminologists like Professor Martin Knight, there were problems. Where to park a rather smart, not-very-old BMW where it wouldn’t be noticed, yet wouldn’t be stolen or vandalized and thus notified to the police. Somewhere where there wouldn’t be anyone to notice him walk away. Somewhere where neither a CCTV camera nor ANPR would trace him. Somewhere that he could get to and from the Great Wickings house in Dungeness, and then onward, to wherever he was hiding, and with whoever was giving him cover.
‘Are there bus routes that run anywhere near here?’ Gillard asked.
‘There’s the 553 from Maidstone to Ashford airport, but the nearest stop is a good hour’s walk I reckon. I’d get a taxi.’
Gillard harrumphed. He wasn’t going to share his thinking with this enterprising young reporter, but Martin Knight, with a face now plastered across national TV, wasn’t going to risk taking a taxi, or even a bus. That left two options. He had either placed a second car here, much earlier before Liz had gone missing, or – and this was the tantalizing and increasingly likely possibility – he had someone who was helping him. That would presumably take a little coordination. Knight’s own phone had not been used at all after he disappeared, but he could easily have been using a disposable. There had been no hits so far on Knight’s old contact list, according to Rob Townsend. Still, early days.
Gillard gave Emily a lift home, delighted with her scoop, and then returned to Knight’s car on Orchard Way. Kent CSI were due in 15 minutes to look at the BMW, but having obtained the spare car keys from the house at Chaldon Rise, Gillard couldn’t resist. He half expected to find Liz’s remains. It was a prospect that filled him with dread. He pressed the fob and unlocked the vehicle. Donning a pair of latex gloves and with torch in hand he gently lifted the boot lid.
The distinctive metallic taint of blood hit him immediately.
Chapter Sixteen
Week in, week out my bookshelves reproach me with what might have been. The textbooks, box files and papers on the Spanish Civil War, the early accolades, the A. J. P. Taylor prize certificate, the Eleanor Roosevelt bursary award letter, the Harvard invitation, all those glowing peer reviews, the academic correspondence. All these stare out at me from my shelves: ‘Come on, Liz,’ they whisper. ‘You’ve still got what it takes. Forget this misplaced loyalty and start again
without him. Be strong!’
This morning I dumped the whole lot in a box and put it out for recycling. I watched the binmen scoop up my life and toss it away. Then I cried, and cried and cried.
Liz’s diary, March 2014
Gillard shone his torch inside the boot. It was largely empty and there was no blood to be seen, but right at the back was a black bin bag, a metre long and knotted at the neck. It contained something bulky and seemingly cylindrical, not bulky enough for a body. At least not for a whole body.
That was enough for him. The detailed search and opening of the bag was a CSI job, and he’d leave them to it. He closed the lid and, returning to his own car, peeled off the gloves. He found an evidence bag and popped them inside, writing a label for the date and location. He then sealed it and tossed it in the Ford’s boot. His mobile rang, and he answered.
‘Good evening. My name is Cunliffe,’ said a soft but steely voice. ‘I apologize for being rather insistent about speaking to you. I have just heard the news about Martin Knight and thought you would appreciate my input.’
‘Do you know where Professor Knight is, sir?’
‘Good grief, no. But I was with him on Saturday, we played a vigorous game of squash and I found him in rather good form that day.’
‘I’m sure this is going to be very useful information,’ Gillard said as he noticed the Kent CSI car arrive. ‘I’m outside at the moment. Could I call you back in a little while?’
‘Of course. I’d be delighted to help. But I just wanted to say that I’ve known Martin and Liz for more than 30 years, and I am horribly shocked at this turn of events.’
‘It’s a widely held view,’ said Gillard, and then asked for call back details.
‘Gerald Cunliffe,’ he said, and gave the phone number.
‘Sir Gerald Cunliffe?’ Gillard realized that he was talking to one of England’s most senior Appeal Court judges, the one who was writing the latest report on Girl F.
‘The very same. Look, I’m available on Sunday morning if you want to come and take a statement. You can come over to me, I presume? It’s terribly tedious to go into an interview suite. I spend too much time drinking dire institutional coffee as it is.’
‘Yes, I can certainly do that. How about 11.30?’
‘Yes, good.’ He gave Gillard the address, in the picturesque village of Woldingham, nestling in the North Downs not far from Caterham. ‘This is a very bad business, Detective Chief Inspector. I expect the press will have a field day.’
‘No doubt, sir,’ Gillard responded.
Saturday, 22 October
Gillard managed a lie-in until eight before reaching for his iPad to see how yesterday’s news conference had been reported. The coverage was just as lurid as he had feared. The Daily Mail had its front page dominated by a close-up picture of an angry-looking Martin Knight, under the headline: ‘The Evil Professor: Home Office Criminologist who cut his wife to pieces’. The Sun’s headline was similar: ‘Knightfall: from top prof to evil murderer’. On the inside pages it showed a picture of Liz as she had looked in her 30s, more glamorous and less tired than she had looked in the pictures the police had circulated. The Daily Express had ‘Knight of the Dead’. The Star simply said ‘Knightmare’. The broadsheets ran detailed pieces, covering every aspect of the investigation, including profiles of the ‘quiet but dignified beach village of Dungeness’. The Guardian looked in detail at the various spats with senior policemen Knight had instigated in recent years, undiplomatic quotes from his reports including: ‘If all the top policeman in Britain were laid end to end, you still wouldn’t reach a solid conviction.’ Another was ‘Justice to me is about opening doors for the young, not locking them,’ and ‘You can’t punish youngsters into reaching their potential.’ That went side by side with the likely sentence he might get, according to a leading barrister: ‘Given the aggravating circumstances, the failure to turn himself in, and without mitigating circumstances, he’d be looking at 20 years.’
The vibration of his mobile broke Gillard’s concentration. He finished the last mouthful of toast and marmalade, tipped the crumbs off his iPad and reached for the phone. It was a brief email from Nigel Cropper at Kent CSI about what was found in Martin Knight’s car last night. The bin bag contained a blood-soaked rug. The rug was also contaminated with human hair, mucus and what appeared to be a torn fingernail. Samples had been sent for analysis. Cropper was too professional to jump to conclusions, but Gillard knew where the evidence was drawing him. The rug, probably the original one from Liz’s bedroom, was used to partially wrap her body for transport to Dungeness. It was all falling into place. Now it was high time to visit the place where in all likelihood her dismembered body had been dumped.
* * *
Walland Marsh is a 24-square-mile blank on a typical British road atlas. Bordered by the medieval town of Rye to the west and the town of New Romney to the north, this part of Romney Marsh is for naturalists, birdwatchers and environmentalists a unique site for migrating birds, rare marsh species and shingle-loving plants. Two or three minor roads cross the marsh, plus the famous Romney Hythe and Dymchurch miniature railway line, whose steam locomotives haul thousands of holidaymakers back and forth across this unusual, and for the most part unspoiled, landscape.
For all its beauty and tranquillity, Walland Marsh is a perfect place to dispose of a body, or parts of one: vast, lonely, deep in places, but for the most part too shallow to permit easy diving. There are few vehicle access points or boat ramps, which would limit the ease of disposal of a whole corpse. But body parts, distributed at night, could easily be placed by an individual in waders or even by someone in a kayak. To search it all would simply be impossible.
Gillard stood at the edge of Dungeness Road, watching a group of 15 wellingtoned volunteers giving up their Saturday to prod through a chest-high thicket of reeds and rushes. With him was Geoff Coker, chief ranger for the local wildlife trust. Coker was a giant oak of a man, all beard and spectacles with an enormous pair of binoculars dangling round his neck. ‘Quite a good chance of unearthing an unexploded Jerry bomb, of course,’ he said. ‘Lydd airport’s three miles over there,’ he said, pointing vaguely north-east. ‘It’s just a little airport now, despite the silly new name of London Ashford. It’s mostly light aircraft. But of course in the war it was a key front-line airfield in the Battle of Britain. Got a real pasting from the Krauts.’
While Coker was talking, Gillard’s phone went off. It was Kent’s chief CSI, Nigel Cropper. Gillard excused himself and walked out of earshot. ‘Go ahead, Nigel.’
‘Craig, we’ve got preliminary results from hair and blood samples around the sink and in the U-bend and pipe. Most of the hair belongs to Liz Knight, though we have another DNA profile there too. That’s not too surprising – occasional hairs from hair-washing over the years would be expected to accumulate in the grease sleeve of the pipework. However, with blood we’re on stronger ground. There is a positive match for the blood specks on the grouting, and in the pipe. There are other DNA markers too, which will take a little longer to clarify, particularly from the pipe. Small bone fragments, for example. They could conceivably be animal residues.’
‘Animal?’
‘Well, yes. From food preparation. It was in the kitchen, after all. I wouldn’t be surprised to pick up poultry or porcine markers, for example.’
‘Sounds reasonable. What about the teeth?’
‘Our dental specialist obtained Mrs Knight’s dental records yesterday afternoon, and has managed to get a confirming ID. The bridgework was the giveaway. Her dentist fitted a tooth with a couple of metal flanges that exactly match this back in 2007.’
‘It might have been related to an RTA she had that year.’
‘Yes. The dentist is positive it’s hers. We’ll have to wait a little longer for the DNA because they have to extract it from the core of each tooth. I wanted to get the dental records finished first in case of damage to the teeth.’
‘Is that i
t?’
‘Not quite. We’re waiting for the full NHS records on her leg pins, which I presume are also from the RTA. We’ve chased a couple of times, but the consultant involved doesn’t work there any more, and they are still trying to find the paper records.’
‘That’s great, Nigel, thanks. I’m assuming you’re almost done on-site?’
‘Well, it depends if we want to locate the rest of the body. It’s quite possible that parts of her are buried on-site, and it would be a big job. The shingle is very hard to excavate, and of course it might be a wild-goose chase.’
‘We’ve got better hopes with the marshes, to be honest,’ Gillard said, gesturing to the expanse of reeds and water in front of him, even though Cropper wasn’t able to see it. ‘I’ll get my detective super, Patrick Kincaid, to ring his opposite number in Maidstone. Harpinder Singh? Did I pronounce that correctly?’
‘Yes, she goes by Harpy. Very sharp brain. You’d like her.’
* * *
On Saturday morning DS Claire Mulholland and DC Colin Hodges were in Croydon, their third attempt to catch up with the remaining uninterviewed tenant from Liz Knight’s little property empire. Three notes through the door and two phone calls hadn’t done the trick. Finally, arriving in person did.
Aleksander Horvat was a lean and bespectacled man in his 40s, with an anxious face. He looked like he needed a square meal or two. The flat behind exuded an aroma of the sickly-sweet air fresheners used in taxis. Once they explained what they wanted, he rubbed a bony hand over his face, nodded, and begrudgingly let them in.
‘It’s mess,’ he said unnecessarily, pointing to the lounge which was heaped high with clothing, and where two or three old pizza boxes were stacked next to the large TV and DVD system. While the two officers exchanged expressions of distaste, he cleared room for them on the faux-leather settee, which had been repaired in several places with insulation tape.