The Body in the Marsh
Page 21
She offered Gillard a pile of documents, including the brochure he’d already seen. ‘It seems this property venture was Liz’s idea, to build half a dozen more villas on the land, with the aim of doubling their money in five years. I’ve looked through Oliver’s documents. There’s a notarized copy of the registration document from the Colegio de Registradores, the Spanish land registry, which matches the deed drawn up by the Spanish notary and checked by Oliver. The seller looks to be a Spanish limited company. Seems to be a bona fide transaction.’
‘Except that from what we’ve seen of Professor Knight’s emails to Natalie Krugman, he wanted to move with her to Spain.’
‘That’s right,’ Shireen said.
Gillard rubbed his chin and grimaced. ‘It still seems pretty hare-brained for him to buy the place at all. Why not keep the money and do a flit? Then he could join Natalie Krugman somewhere that works for her. Buying property just ties him down.’
‘Maybe he was outvoted by the rest of the family,’ Shireen said. ‘Anyway, once we catch him we can ask him.’
Gillard nodded glumly. There had been a Daily Mail article about Martin Knight two days ago headlined ‘Why Haven’t They Caught Him?’ Worse still, a sidebar piece catalogued the failings of Surrey Police from the Deepcut Barracks suicides through the Milly Dowler murder and the Girl F case. Though it wasn’t credited, the analysis leaned heavily on Professor Knight’s own critique of the force. Fortunately for Gillard, the only officer named was Alison Rigby, described as ‘a powerful new broom’ to bring the force into the 21st century. As if to emphasize the point his phone rang. It was her.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘You’re probably aware that Lord Justice Cunliffe’s report on Girl F is being published tomorrow.’
‘Yes. Detective Superintendent Kincaid told me.’
‘Ah, of course he did.’ Rigby giggled. She had a surprisingly girlish laugh. ‘He’s not looking forward to it. The thing is, Craig, there is a press conference in London tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock at which the judge will be releasing his findings. It would look really good if we could find Martin Knight by then. I don’t like the way the headlines are drifting. That way we shift the focus to the positive for the force, rather than dwelling on mistakes of the past. Think you can do that for me?’
‘We’ve got some leads, but to actually nab him by tomorrow… That’s quite a tall order, ma’am.’
‘Craig, I’m six-one, all my orders are tall. But I have every confidence in you.’ She hung up.
Chapter Twenty-One
Friday, 28 October
It is my conclusion that the handling of the Girl F case and its aftermath are perhaps the most consistent and protracted policing failures in modern times. Not only on the policy issues of the girl’s vulnerability, the racial and social stereotyping exhibited by members of the force, but bungled evidence handling, inept statement logging, poor supervisory oversight and numerous other matters betray a lamentable lack of professionalism. There is some evidence that lessons have been learned and managerial oversight of officers improved since the original report, and the IPCC interim findings, but the fact remains no one has been convicted fully eight years after the death of this unfortunate teenager.
(Executive summary of the Cunliffe Report, 2016)
Harry Smith was back at Croydon police station. His solicitor, a tiny but intense middle-aged Asian woman called Samira Jindal, was sitting with him in the custody suite, radiating enough anger for both of them. The moment Gillard arrived with Connolly, the custody sergeant, Jindal launched into them. ‘My client has very kindly agreed to be interviewed for one more hour despite only two days ago being released from 48 hours confinement on the very same matter.’
‘He’s on police bail,’ Gillard said. ‘We can bring him in when we want.’
‘No. Not without persuading a magistrate—’
‘Ah, but we have new evidence we want to put to him,’ he said. ‘DS Mulholland is bringing it any time now.’
Jindal paused, then flicked through some of the pile of documents in front of her. ‘My client is not well, and the stress of these groundless accusations is damaging to him. He needs frequent breaks for medication, which he has not been given. He also says that when he was in custody he wasn’t given the kosher food he requested.’
‘Och, he’s not a Jew,’ Connolly said.
‘Sergeant, it is not your job to decide—’
‘Lassie,’ he retorted. ‘Two days ago he asked me for halal food and to be allowed out for prayer and ritual ablutions. Is he claiming he’s converted from Church of Scotland to Islam and now Judaism in the course of a week? Or is he just taking the piss?’
There was no reply from Jindal, and from Smith just the same sardonic smile that had played across his face in earlier interviews. The colourless eyes, the pale eyelashes and the smirking lips seemed designed to enrage every officer who saw him.
‘Let’s get on,’ Gillard said, making the preparations for the tape recording, and then turning to Smith. ‘All right, Harry. Do you know where Aleksander Horvat has gone?’
‘I don’t know anyone of that name.’
‘Also known as Timon Horvat,’ Gillard added.
Smith squinted out of the narrow window in the interview room. ‘May rain today,’ he said. ‘Been a wee bit threatening, hasn’t it?’
‘We found Horvat’s van and a load of copper cable by Immingham docks yesterday. Do you know where he’s going?’
‘There’s a warm front coming in, the forecaster said. So I’m glad I packed an umbrella.’ Smith seemed to have an extraordinary ability to tune out everything that was said to him.
‘Horvat had in his possession—’
‘That isn’t new evidence,’ Jindal said. ‘You asked him all this before.’
‘Horvat doing a runner is a new development. Besides we do have new evidence,’ he said. His phone vibrated, and he looked at it. ‘This will be it now,’ he said, stepping into the corridor and closing the door before taking the call. It was Mulholland. And it was very bad news.
‘Sorry not to be there, but the data stick has gone missing,’ she said. ‘Dobbs is going batshit.’
‘What do you mean, gone?’
‘Disappeared. Vanished. Mislaid.’
‘We’ve got the data back-up though, surely.’
‘No. Hadn’t been done yet. Rob Townsend had signed the evidence bag out at noon. It was on his desk for two hours unattended while he was in a meeting. He had been intending to get technical services to back it up this afternoon, ready for Dobbs’s arrival. But the evidence bag was empty when he returned.’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Gillard yelled. ‘That evidence was vital.’
‘I know. We’re going to have to let Harry Smith go.’
‘That’s the least of it,’ he said. ‘Smith’s got a crooked ally at Mount Browne. Someone with the freedom and authority to walk into the detective block, and to know exactly where to find what he was looking for. And the balls to take it.’
‘It’s shocking,’ said Mulholland.
Gillard hung up, wondering who on earth at Mount Browne could be working with a suspected child abuser like Harry Smith. If he really had an ally in the police, it would change everything. No wonder no progress had been made on the Girl F case for years.
He sighed heavily, then called Connolly out. Through the custody suite window, Smith could be seen radiating a smug grin and leaning back in his chair, his arms behind his head. Connolly shook his head in disbelief at the news, then shepherded Gillard back to the interview room.
‘Okay, Harry,’ Connolly said. ‘You’re free to go.’ They watched him walk out towards the car park with Jindal by his side and a huge grin on his face. It was raining hard now, just as Smith had predicted. He opened up a large golfing umbrella to cover them both. That was when Gillard realized he didn’t even have a raincoat with him.
* * *
The Jimmy Bartram sitting in the Wa
ldorf Hotel in London’s Aldwych didn’t look at all like the haunted 22-year-old scarecrow captured in the 1981 newspaper archive photos. Gillard spotted him reading the Financial Times at a secluded table, well away from the pre-lunchtime groups. A surprisingly slight figure in an expensive dark green suit, flowery mauve open-necked shirt and cowboy boots, he peered over the paper and nodded at him and Mulholland. He had collar-length grey hair, mauve-tinted spectacles and a single crucifix earring. Only the heavily lined face, white scrubby beard and the blue-green gargoyle tattoo that arched from his chest like a satanic stowaway spoke of his former existence.
Gillard, suited up in a forgettable grey M&S three piece, and Mulholland, in black trouser suit and white blouse, looked short on panache by comparison. Bartram offered them a seat and ordered coffee and cakes for three from a waitress who seemed to know him. Gillard knew this was going to be hard work. Bartram had stipulated the time and the place, and limited the discussion in advance to 15 minutes. ‘I’m flying to New York this evening, and I need to spend a little time with my publicist before the limo comes at five,’ he had explained over the phone, in a still-broad London accent. ‘I’m happy to cooperate but don’t you waste my facking time, oright? I’ve had enough police interviews to last me a lifetime.’
‘Look,’ Bartram said, pointing at the FT’s editorial on Cunliffe’s Girl F report. ‘You’re famous. “Surrey Police displayed a high-handed indifference to the fate of a vulnerable young girl, and their subsequent investigations over five years were as limited in their scope and resource as they were self-serving in their conclusions. Institutionalized failings by unimaginative officers—”’
‘Have you finished?’ Gillard asked. ‘We don’t want to waste your valuable time.’
‘Oright,’ he said with a grin. ‘Fire away.’
Once Gillard began with the questions, Bartram turned out to be a model of reasonableness. ‘Yeah, I met Martin Knight a couple of times. Great bloke,’ he said with a grin. ‘And I don’t buy this shit about him murdering Liz.’
‘Why not?’
‘No motive and no means. I mean, I can’t see him with a hacksaw and an apron.’ He turned to Mulholland and winked at her. ‘Believe me, darling, I know what’s involved in butchering and rendering a human body. I’ve seen every bone, sinew, tendon and organ, from the stink when you rip open the stomach to the ooze of shit from the large intestine, I know what that’s like.’ He lifted a plate towards her. ‘Fancy a cupcake?’
‘That’s why we thought you might have helped him out, Jimmy,’ Mulholland said, clearly needled. ‘He needed a man of your skills.’
Bartram laughed, revealing bad teeth held together with lots of metal. ‘Just like I guessed. Every time something happens, even now, nearly 40 years on, it’s “Well, fuck me, it must be down to Jimmy.” I mean you plods have no imagination, do you? Think about it. I’m a success story from the penal system, ain’t I? Did my time, behaved nice, studied hard, no reoffending, got a job. Got some respect.’ He looked up at them, all trace of humour gone. ‘Except from you lot. In the plod book, there’s only story. Once a con, always a con, right?’
‘It’s just a question, Jimmy, that’s all,’ Gillard said.
‘With a ready-supplied answer preloaded in your head, like Windows facking Ten on my home computer.’
More cake and coffee arrived. Hostilities were suspended while the waitress poured. Bartram held his cup with his little finger cocked, as if he was a duchess. Suddenly his face lit up.
‘Hi, Jimmy, darling.’ A tall and shapely 20-something blonde with a skimpy black dress and calf-length roman sandals arrived at the table. She had huge green eyes and a wide smile. When she kissed Bartram it looked like she really meant it.
‘This is Grace, my publicist.’
‘And girlfriend,’ Grace said, finally noticing the others. ‘Delighted to meet you.’ Her voice was as smooth and educated as his was rough and ready, and she reserved every word for the centre of her universe, Jimmy Bartram, convicted dismemberer of the human body. ‘Come on, Jimmy, I’ve packed your bag, but you promised me a few minutes’ cuddle upstairs before we leave.’ Gillard felt an immense pulse of envy, surely the only reason Bartram had concocted this hotel set-up.
Bartram caught his expression and gave him a what-can-I-do kind of shrug, before turning back to Grace. ‘Okay, honey. Run along. I’ll be up in a couple of minutes.’ He turned back to Gillard and Mulholland. ‘Look. For the record… One, Knight never asked me to do anything. Two, I haven’t spoken to him for over two years. Three, everyone knows I’m strictly legit in all things. Four, I’m sure I’ve got a great alibi for any time, any day or any week you care to mention.’ His eyes flicked to Grace’s disappearing rear. ‘Five, I can afford very, very good barristers these days who believe attack is the best form of defence.’
The two fuming detectives watched him walk away. ‘What a sanctimonious prick,’ Mulholland said.
‘Totally bulletproof, unfortunately. He knows that if we had a single shred of DNA evidence against him, we’d just have arrested him.’
‘So is he super smart, or is he innocent?’ Mulholland asked.
‘I just don’t know,’ Gillard said.
* * *
The belated discovery of Martin Knight’s card to his daughter came as a bombshell to the investigative team. Gillard, wearing plastic gloves, turned over the envelope with tweezers. He and DS Mulholland were sitting in the evidence room at Caterham police station, surrounded by shelves along which paper evidence bags were carefully indexed. Among those bags were samples of clothing, carpet, hairbrushes, computers and other objects from the two Knight homes. In the freezer was a section of bloodstained ceiling from the house in Coulsdon, and a tube of mainly human flesh from the overflow pipe of the kitchen in Dungeness.
As expected, forensics had found little on the envelope itself, just a confusing mass of fingerprints from postal staff. It was postmarked Chartres, south-west of Paris, but a postmark could not isolate which postbox had been used in the district. There was no saliva DNA on the envelope seal either, one of their biggest hopes.
The card itself was more productive. There was a clear thumbprint from Martin Knight, and the handwriting was definitely his, according to both Oliver and Chloe.
‘So he’s happy enough for us to know that he’s in France,’ Gillard said.
‘It’s not quite the behaviour of a boastful perpetrator, though. It just seems that he really wanted to tell his daughter that he was thinking of her,’ Mulholland said.
‘And she was prepared to hide it from us, and to email him back,’ Gillard said. It was only yesterday evening that Oliver Knight had handed the card in to Gabby Underwood, with a note of apology written by Chloe. ‘Still, it means he’s outfoxed us by crossing the Channel without being spotted.’
‘Maybe. Another appeal for him to turn himself in might be useful,’ Mulholland said.
‘I doubt it, somehow.’ Gillard held the card up to the light. It was a standard British greetings card, made by Hallmark. ‘He must have taken it with him in advance, intending to send it,’ said Gillard. ‘There’s a certain amount of planning, considering everything else he must have been thinking about, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It doesn’t fit with the idea of panic,’ she said.
‘No. What we need now is for him to use a cash or credit card. He can’t go for ever without using one. He’s got to stay at a hotel, or with a friend, he’s got to have a vehicle,’ Gillard said. ‘His French is supposedly okay. Enough to get by with, but it would be quite obvious he was an Englishman.’
Gillard looked around the room at the accumulated evidence of the death of Liz Knight. ‘The coroner wants to wait for the result of the DNA tests on the vertebrae before releasing an interim death certificate for Liz. You can’t live without a spine, after all.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Graham Coldrick manages well enough.’ Claire had always had a low opinion of the chief constable.
Claire Mulholland looked at him. ‘It will be your opportunity to let Liz go too, won’t it?’
She watched Craig Gillard shrug the comment off with something inaudible. It had hit home, though. She was sure of that.
A week later
The night before the memorial service Craig took the opportunity to go swimming. He was running over in his mind those who could shed further light on what happened. Kathy Parkinson, the woman who knew Liz best; Helen Jennings, who had travelled with Liz for six weeks to help refugees earlier in the year; Jimmy Bartram, a former murderer who was quite capable of doing Martin Knight’s dirty work; and Dr Natalie Krugman, Knight’s inspiration for murder. Only the first two would be at the memorial service. Gillard turned these possibilities over in his mind as he completed relentless fast lengths of front crawl. At 6.45 p.m. he emerged, and after a shower went to his locker. Just as he unlocked it, his phone vibrated.
It was Rob Townsend, and he sounded beside himself with excitement. ‘Professor Knight’s still around near Paris, sir. He’s made a withdrawal of 500 euros on his cash card at a place called Gretz-Armainvilliers.’
‘At last!’ Gillard said, towelling his body. ‘Find out if there’s any CCTV. Make sure our French counterparts have got all the European arrest warrant paperwork they need.’ After he hung up he considered what this development now told him. Knight must have run out of ready cash, or perhaps the accomplice could no longer supply him. The noose was tightening, Gillard was sure of it. Right around the professor’s neck.