by GJ Minett
But he thinks he knows what it is.
It sounds like genius.
PHIL
‘So how long can they keep him?’ Anna asked, pushing her dessert plate away and dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a serviette.
He took a sip from his Coke.
‘Depends on when the detention clock started,’ he said. ‘Usually you get twenty-four hours, thirty-six if you get an extension. Any longer than that, you need to apply to a magistrates’ court but they’ll be hoping to wrap it up long before then.’
‘Have they got enough to charge him?’
‘Hope so,’ he said, leaning to one side to allow the waitress to remove his own dish and asking for the bill while he had her there. She asked if either of them would like a coffee and Anna shook her head so he decided he’d pass as well.
‘Most of what they’ve got is circumstantial,’ he continued. ‘Depends on how the CPS sees it. I’ll know more when I’ve had a chance to speak to Andy Holloway. Might be a day or two though. He’s got a lot on his plate.’
‘But they’ve got the bat.’
‘Yep . . . they’ve got the bat.’
When the waitress brought the bill over, there was a brief wrestling match over who was going to pick up the tab, a struggle he was never going to lose. He liked the fact that she’d offered but the evening had been his idea. He’d asked her out, not the other way round. She thanked him and excused herself for a moment, leaving him to fret for a few minutes over whether he might inadvertently have caused offence. He found it so hard nowadays to know where he stood with things like this. The dividing line between what he’d been brought up to regard as decent behaviour and what was now deemed to be boorish chauvinism seemed to be constantly on the move, perpetually re-forming itself in such a way that he was always on the wrong side of it. He just hoped Anna hadn’t taken umbrage in any way.
He entered his code into the machine that the waitress held in front of him and wrapped the receipt around his credit card before replacing it in his wallet. When Anna returned to the table, he half-expected her to start putting her coat on and was relieved when she took her seat and poured herself another glass of water. If nothing else it meant the next step, which had been hanging over him all evening, could be delayed for a while longer.
She asked how he was adjusting to the idea of Abi and Adam. He told her he was coming round to it and realised for the first time that he meant it.
‘I won’t pretend it was easy,’ he said. ‘But it’s not like Abi owes me anything. She doesn’t need my approval. And anyway, he seems like a good lad.’
‘And he didn’t need to step up to the plate the way he did,’ she added.
‘I don’t think he could help himself,’ he chuckled. ‘I think he fancies himself as a bit of an actor. Says he did a bit at the Festival Youth Theatre when he was younger. But you’re right – he could have walked away from it.’
He noticed she was dabbing at the bruise under her left eye with a tentative finger.
‘Sore?’ he asked.
‘A bit. Does it look bad?’
He leaned forward so that he could get a better look.
‘Not really. Not as bad as hers will tomorrow morning. Always worse for the loser.’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ she said. ‘Did you really cry when my arm was raised?’
He snorted.
‘I said I felt a bit emotional. Never said anything about crying.’
‘You did though, didn’t you?’ she said, aiming a slap at his hand and missing. ‘Admit it! It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I like the idea of you welling up. It’s good that you’ve got a sensitive side.’
He smiled and played with the salt cellar for a few seconds.
‘They’ve . . . ah . . . they’ve invited me round for lunch on Christmas Day,’ he said, the words springing out of nowhere. He knew the sudden change of subject would sound bizarre but couldn’t think of any other way of getting it out there.
She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to one side.
‘What? Who have?’
‘Abi. And Adam. They’re having it at her place.’
Her place. He could say it at last.
‘That’s nice.’
‘Yes. So, I was wondering –’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, do you know what you’re doing yet?’
She ran her tongue over her top lip while she weighed up what he was actually asking here.
‘For Christmas Day? I’m usually at my parents’. Why?’
‘I didn’t know whether –’
‘I’d love to.’
‘Only I know you said your family likes to make a big thing of it usually and I didn’t want to –’
‘I’d . . . love . . . to.’
‘OK then,’ he said. ‘I think it’ll be fun.’
‘Proof of the pudding,’ she said.
‘Right.’
‘It’s in the way we eat it.’
‘You could say that.’
She frowned.
‘Did I get that right?
‘Close enough,’ he said.
OWEN
He’s cross. Very cross. He’s not about to show it but he’s getting more and more irritated by the minute. This all feels very petty to him. Vindictive. Like they can’t get him to say what they want to hear, so they’re going out of their way to inconvenience him as much as possible. They want to bore it out of him.
It must be getting on for eight o’clock. They’ve been at it, on and off, since this morning. He gets breaks and meals and water to drink and every so often he wonders whether maybe this is it – they’ve decided they’ve had enough and are ready to let him go. But then, every time, they bring him back into this room with no windows that looks like a box and feels like one too. No idea what the weather’s like now. It could be pouring with rain or sunny or even snowing and he wouldn’t know the first thing about it. Not so long ago he was shivering and complaining about the cold wind that was sweeping across the allotments; now he’d give anything to be out there. Couldn’t be worse than this.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they asked him different questions once in a while, something to break up the monotony. But they don’t, they just keep going over the same old ground, time and time again, and he keeps giving them the same answers. His solicitor seems to think this is a good thing. If they’re going to keep asking the same questions, she says, that’s a sure sign they’ve got nothing else to throw at him. They’re hoping they’ll be able to wear him down, catch him out in a lie, but as long as he sticks to the same answers and gives them nothing to feed off, they’ll have to give in eventually. He hopes she’s right.
She herself is something of a surprise. It’s not like he chose her – she just happened to be the one on duty when he was first brought in. His first thought was that she looked a bit inexperienced. She can’t be much older than he is but he’s already had plenty of evidence that she knows what she’s doing. She’s not intimidated one bit by Holloway or his miserable partner. Any time she thinks they’re not following the rules, she’s quick to pull them up and he likes the confident way she goes about her work. Feels protected. So he’s happy to give her the benefit of the doubt.
He was hoping Mr Mitchell would have picked up some really important solicitor, someone who would get him out of here before they’d even had a chance to sit down. But it didn’t turn out that way. The moment he heard about the baseball bat something seemed to change in their relationship. He just kept saying, ‘Oh, Owen,’ over and over again and shaking his head like it was his fault or something. Like he’d let him down. He hasn’t seen him since early this afternoon and Owen assumed at first it was because he was hard at work, planning the best way to get him out of here, but he hasn’t come back. Holloway says it’s because Mr Mitchell has had enough, doesn’t want anything more to do with him but that’s probably just another of their tricks to make him despondent, get behind his defences. He’s learn
ing about Holloway. You have to watch him like a hawk. ‘All smiles and sharp teeth,’ his mother used to say. He’s asked if there’s anyone else Owen would like to call instead but he’s happy with this young lady as it happens. At least she seems to be on his side.
Unlike Willie. He hasn’t heard a peep out of him since they were at the allotments but, if he’s honest, he thinks that’s no bad thing. More a relief than anything else. Willie can be unbearable when he has the chance to say I told you so . . . and he’d be in his element here. Owen’s been working hard at shutting him out recently. Maybe he’s taken the hint at last and decided to leave him alone. He hopes so. Good riddance.
Owen finds it interesting that his solicitor hasn’t asked him if he killed Callum. Not once. He doesn’t know if it’s because she’d rather not know or because she doesn’t think it matters either way. She’s more interested in how he’s going to explain away the baseball bat being found in that particular shed. So he’s told her – it’s quite simple. He’ll tell the truth. He put it there. And he’ll make no apologies for having done so because that’s precisely what was done to him. He’s told her he found it late on Saturday afternoon in his own shed and realised immediately what it was and why it was there. He’s not stupid. He worked out pretty quickly someone was trying to frame him. He was going to take it into the police station but changed his mind because he knew they’d never believe him. They’d use it against him instead. It’s been obvious for weeks that they think he’s the one who attacked Callum and they’ve resorted to all sorts of underhand tricks to try and catch him out. The whole Julie business was just one example of how they’d tried to get under his skin in the hope that he’d make a mistake. So no way was he going to hand them the murder weapon on a plate. He might as well sign a confession at the same time and have done with it.
Instead he sneaked the baseball bat into Adam Kitchener’s shed the first chance he had. And again, he’s not about to apologise for that. It’s only fair. He’s pretty sure it was Kitchener who passed it on to him in the first place. Who else was it going to be? Even Abi thought there was something iffy about the fact that he’d arrived late at the pub and then misled the police about the time. And if Kitchener wanted to point the finger at someone else, who better than the very person the police were desperate to pin it on? No-brainer.
The solicitor – Kristen – is happy with this. She likes the fact that there’s another possible suspect who can be used to draw attention away from her client. Her client. He likes the sound of that. It’s a shame he’s had to lie to her but he can’t exactly tell her the truth, can he? And what matters is it’s a good lie. Holloway and his partner have been battering away at it for some time now and they haven’t made any sort of dent in it. It’s holding up well. And he knows from his mother’s example that sometimes a good lie is much better than the truth.
Kristen’s asked him questions about Abi as well but he’s shied away from answering most of those. It’s not that he thinks it’s none of her business. He knows she’s only trying to help. It’s just that he doesn’t understand what’s been happening with Abi recently and doesn’t want to look too closely at it either. Not just yet. She’s obviously been tricked by Kitchener and everyone else into turning against him. There’s no way she’d have lied to his face and led him on like that if she was thinking straight, but he knows from his own experience how hard it can be to see things as they really are when you’re being squeezed from all sides. What she’s done is wrong but he’s confident she’ll see that for herself eventually. And he doesn’t want to start talking about all this with someone he’s practically only just met, thank you very much. Personal is private.
He does like Kristen though. She seems to understand him and has his best interests at heart, which is what really counts. She says the police are a long way from being able to prove anything and they’re not going to appear in a very good light once their harassment of him is made public. To her, this whole investigation screamed entrapment. They can claim as much as they like that Julie’s disappearing act was nothing to do with them, but no one’s going to believe that if it ever comes to trial. And the way they tricked him into giving up the bat . . . there’s more than a whiff of the unethical about that too. They’re claiming there was no need for an appropriate adult at the allotments because they were questioning Kitchener, not Owen, and anything he might have said came of his own volition, even though they’d repeatedly told him to say nothing. She uses words like that: Volition. Sophistry. He can tell she’s on top of things and she’s managed to convince him he’ll be out of here before long.
She’s taken the trouble to explain how the detention clock works but it’s all gone in one ear and out the other to be honest. It bothered him at first that he couldn’t keep it all straight in his head but he’s past caring now. It’s a distraction he doesn’t need. All he has to focus on is these questions. If he sits tight, answers them all exactly as he has done till now and doesn’t try to be clever, there’s nothing they can do. They’ll have to let him go home.
She says they’ll be searching his house, garden, shed, truck . . . everything. That’s why they wanted the bat. They’ve now got something called probable cause and can start to apply more pressure. He’s told her he’s not worried. Let them search. There’s nothing for them to find. He says it in such a way, with such confidence, that he thinks she’ll take this as further proof that he had nothing to do with what happened to Callum. As long as they don’t have anything to link him with the crime scene they can come up with whatever theories they like, she says. It’s all circumstantial and not even very convincing at that.
As for the bat, that’s not going to be a problem. If it turns out there are blood traces, so what? Everyone knows it was the murder weapon. If it has his fingerprints, why wouldn’t it? He’s admitted he put it in what he thought was Kitchener’s shed. As for why he had the bat in the first place, there’s nothing to disprove his version. It’s his word against Kitchener’s. And after the way he’s been hounded for the past three months, any jury will see this for the witch hunt it is, which is why it will never get to trial in her opinion. The CPS has to be so careful nowadays. They won’t go for it. That’s what Kristen says and that’s more than good enough for him.
So it’s just a question of keeping his nerve and waiting them out. They’ve been gone for a while now. There’s a camera in the corner of the room which they told him about earlier because they’ve been filming and recording every interview. They’re probably watching him right now from another room near by, trying to decide when will be the best time to come in and have another go at him. He’s seen it all before in films. He knows what they’re trying to do. And even though he’s desperate to get out of here and take a few gulps of fresh air, he’s not going to let them see it.
He can wait as long as he needs to.
The clock’s ticking.
And time is on his side.
*
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ says Holloway, when they finally come back in. ‘Just a few more things we’d like to go over.’
He ignores them. Says nothing. He’s seen criminal lawyers on TV before, knows what they’d say in a situation like this: Is there a question in here somewhere?
Answer – no.
‘You know Estelle Roberts, Owen?’
‘Who?’
‘It’s a shop, not a person. Jewellers. In Arun Valley.’
‘No.’
‘Never been there?’
‘No.’
‘OK. Not surprised. Neither had I until recently. Bit pricey for me, to be honest.’ Holloway smiles, like maybe he can persuade Owen this is nothing more than a friendly chat. Get him to drop his guard. Not going to happen. Owen is watching him like a hawk.
‘Anyway, about a week ago . . . Friday, fifth December, to be exact,’ he adds, glancing down at his notebook on the table in front of him, ‘the manager of Estelle Roberts phoned Abi.’
Wait for it.
‘Abi Green.’
He hates it when Holloway does this. The more he gets to know this man, the more he’s convinced it’s deliberate. It happens too often for it to be just coincidence. All he needs to say is Abi – they all know who he’s talking about. But every time he says her name there’s this pause and then he tacks the surname onto the end as well. Owen knows why he’s doing it. It’s not just to hurt him by reminding him that she chose Callum. It’s because he knows how Owen’s mind works. Knows he won’t be able to help himself.
Abi: total = 12, multiple of 3. Owen: total = 57, multiple of 3.
Safe. Happy.
Abi Green: total = 61.
Prime number. Danger.
He does it to unsettle him and it’s not going to work. Owen says nothing.
‘You want to know what it was about? No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway because we were really quite excited when we heard about it. DS Horgan here nearly broke into a smile, didn’t you?’
Horgan’s expression hasn’t altered since he came into the room. He’s sitting across the table from Owen, eyes drilling into him, as if they’ve decided that’s the best way to rattle him. Well, if that’s the best they can do . . .
Holloway consults the sheets on the table in front of him before looking up and smiling. Owen has seen enough of it now to know he needs to be on the alert. Can’t believe he was ever taken in by it before.
‘Funniest thing,’ he says. ‘She got this phone call and she was making a cake at the time. You know what it’s like when you’re busy and your mind’s on other things? You can’t wait to get the other person off the phone, can you? And just to make matters worse, the call wasn’t even meant for her anyway. This woman wanted to talk to Callum about some customer-satisfaction survey they were doing and Abi’s still a bit sensitive, as you can imagine, so she more or less put the phone down on them and went back to her cake.’