Gone Too Far : DCI Miller 4: Britain's Most Hated Celebrity Has Disappeared

by Steven Suttie

  “Yes, I’m sorry about… I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Well, we could have done this hours ago, and you’d be at home now, and we’d be halfway up the M6. But anyway…” Saunders began reading Greenwood his rights, and explained the purpose of the interview. Within seconds the interview was under way.

  “Can you tell us where you were on Thursday evening, please?” asked Grant, very politely.

  “I was at home. All night. I have CCTV evidence as well, the whole house is covered in cameras.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because Kathy is extremely cautious. Well, that’s what she calls it. I call it paranoid.”

  “And who were with you on Thursday evening?”

  “My producer. We were working on a few ideas for this weeks show.”

  “When was the last time your producer came and stayed at your house until the early hours of the morning?”

  “I… I don’t… wait, what’s this got to do with Kathy…”

  “Just answer the questions Mr Greenwood and you’ll be out of here in no-time.” Saunders was playing the role of the tough cop. Grant was being really nice.

  “I just don’t know why this is relevant…”

  Grant spoke up. “It’s relevant because while your wife is three hundred miles away in Manchester, you’ve been entertaining an attractive, ambitious young woman round at your house. If Kathy had been aware of that, it may have upset her. It may have made her go off and do something stupid.”

  Jack Greenwood smiled coldly. It was a sly grin, completely humourless. He’d changed, he wasn’t the prima donna he’d been at London FM, nor the sobbing, pathetic victim that he’d become once the cuffs were round his wrists. Now, Jack Greenwood seemed to be playing an entirely different character altogether, and it was interesting for the Manchester detectives to experience these three different personas inside a few small hours.

  “Well, I can assure you,” said Greenwood. “If that is how you think about Kathy, that she’d do something stupid because of me – then you are completely wrong.”

  “Thank you. That’s exactly what we’re here to find out.” Grant was fast with her replies, and was doing a good job of softening Greenwood up, before Saunders would hit him with a hammer-blow. This had been the plan, and Grant was executing her part in the procedure brilliantly.

  “Nothing would upset her. She’s completely devoid of feelings. She’s a unique person, there is nobody else like her.”

  “Do you miss Kathy?”

  “What… how do you mean?” Greenwood looked confused, but in a hammy actor, phoney sense. He looked more as though he was trying to appear confused, and it made alarm bells ring in both of the detective’s heads.

  “You know, in all my years of doing this job, I’ve never encountered a partner of a missing person behaving so strangely. They always try and help us with our enquiries… even when they were guilty of doing something wrong! But you’re a strange one Mr Greenwood, and I will get to the bottom of it.”

  “How am I strange?” asked Greenwood, that peculiar smirk was back on his lips. It was almost as though he was getting a bit of a weird buzz from all this.

  “Well, considering that you’ve not shown the slightest hint of concern for your wife’s welfare is pretty strange, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s strange to me. It tells me one of two things. Either you know that she’s fine, or you know that she isn’t. So which is it?”

  “Which is what?”

  “Is Kathy fine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she safe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you heard from Kathy since you last spoke to her by phone on Thursday evening?” Grant’s softer, friendlier questioning style broke off the frosty exchange between Saunders and Greenwood. It made Kathy’s husband change tact.

  “No! No, I haven’t.”

  “So why aren’t you shitting yourself, wondering where your wife is then?” Saunders was angry, this guy was taking the piss, it was blatantly obvious.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How come you went into work today, to do your radio show?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Greenwood.

  “Well, your wife is missing. Not been seen since last Thursday. The press are camped outside your house. This is usually a big deal in somebody’s life. How can you concentrate on talking shit on the radio for three hours under those circumstances?”

  “It helps. It takes my mind off my real life.”

  “Bollocks. You went in because you knew the press would be waiting outside to take your picture!”

  “Really? What a bizarre idea!” That smug grin was back again. This guy was really starting to wind Saunders up. Grant stepped in, and played her part in the routine.

  “Listen, Jack, we just want to find out where Kathy is, and then go back and get on with all our other cases in Manchester. But listen, you’re our best chance of getting to the bottom of it…”

  “And you’re being a knob.”

  Grant shot an icy look at Saunders, before looking back across the table, at Greenwood. “Where do you think Kathy is?”

  “I have no idea. For God’s sake, I’ve been through all this yesterday, it’s beyond a joke now.”

  “Do you think that if she was okay, she’d have been in touch?”

  “I don’t know!” Greenwood slammed his hand against the table, it made Saunders and Grant jump. “I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!” Greenwood stood, he was shouting at the top of his voice, his eyes were popping out of his head, staring up at the ceiling. But it felt insincere, it sounded fake. It was creepy.

  “Interview suspended at nineteen forty-eight hours.” Saunders turned off the recording machine. Grant sat quietly, taking notes. Greenwood was still stood, his bulging eyes were now staring straight at Saunders. He looked like a bad actor.

  “You’re going to have to stay the night mate, you’re taking the piss. We’ll talk to you tomorrow morning when you’ve had a chance to sort your head out.” Saunders stood and opened the interview room door.

  “No! That’s not fair!” Greenwood wasn’t impressed by this news, and for the very first time, he seemed genuinely affected by this announcement. Suddenly, the weird, wooden acting was replaced by a real, seemingly genuine concern. “I can’t stay here. Please, come on, seriously. I’ll answer anything you want. Just, please, I need to get out of here. I’m begging.”

  “Sorry pal, you’ve been taking the piss since we came to ask a few routine questions. Something is going on with you, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

  Chapter 20

  “And this news, just breaking in the last few seconds… Kathy Hopkirk’s husband Jack Greenwood will be spending the night in a London police station. This press release has literally just come in to the BBC News Centre, and, well it confirms what many commentators have been suggesting for several hours now. Mr Greenwood has not been charged, but he is not being released either, while he “helps police with their enquiries.”

  The stressed-looking BBC News presenter was quite clearly adapting to the fast-pace that this story had been picking up over the past few hours. News could be a notoriously slow beast, but could often set off at an extraordinary pace, and leave everybody chasing. This afternoon’s sensational developments in the Kathy Hopkirk story were a classic example. For the news staff, it was hard work, but also a huge relief to see so much activity following the frustratingly slow start to this story the previous day.

  “Let’s cross live now to our senior crime reporter, Owen Daniels, who is outside New Scotland Yard in central London. Owen.”

  “Thank you, and yes, I am standing outside Britain’s most famous police station, reporting on one of the most exhilarating cases of modern times…”

  The top story in Britain, and the second top story in the USA, was exciting, and was certai
nly creating lots of interaction and opinion amongst viewers and social media users who were all keen to suggest their own theories on what was going on.

  But annoyingly for the broadcasters and journalists, and especially the police, the story had come to a dead end for the night.

  * * *

  “Hi Keith, what’s going on?”

  “Hi Sir. We’ve just left the police station now. We’re going to let him stew overnight because he’s just being a dick.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’s acting. One minute he seems like he’s playing ball, the next minute he’s taking the piss. I can’t read him, I can’t suss out if he’s involved in the disappearance, if he’s sad, or worried, or happy even. He’s a right knob! But his mood changed when I told him he’s having a sleep-over.”

  “So what do you think you’re going to get from him in the morning?” Miller sounded quite stressed and tense. It was hard work running this, in the Met’s back yard as well. It was a totally inside-out, upside-down way of working and if Miller had anticipated this kind of development with Greenwood, he wouldn’t have allowed Saunders and Grant to go down to London. Things would be a lot easier if the Met had this headache on their own. Still, Miller was grateful that all of this meant that Saunders was off-the-hook for his notebook blunder. At least there was that.

  “So what do you reckon about Greenwood? Do you think he’s involved?”

  “Hmmm, not sure. He’s totally bananas. But like I say, he didn’t seem remotely concerned about any of this until I said we’ll keep him in. And after all, Kathy is worth a good few quid. It’s quite reasonable to suspect him, he’s due a windfall if Kathy doesn’t come home.”

  “That’s a good point. A very good point. He’s still got a watertight alibi though, hasn’t he?”

  “The CCTV you mean?”

  “Yes, and the work colleague as well. All seems rather perfect. I always worry when an alibi has two rock solid layers.”

  “Any developments on Kathy’s movements in Manchester yet?”

  “Nah. Not had anything, and I thought we’d have got something back since the press conference. But no, nothing has come up yet.”

  “And do we know if she got on the tram?”

  “Nah, still waiting for Metrolink. It turns out they had a bit of a power outage in a few trams over the weekend, and the CCTV clocks went tits up. So they can’t get to the right time.”

  “They say that crap all the time. Why don’t they just admit they can’t work their CCTV?”

  “They need to admit that they can’t work their trams first. Don’t worry though – we’ll get there. We always do. It’s still only day one for us lot and we’ve already made the top story on the international news!”

  “I have!”

  “Ha ha, yeah, but only for being a fucking dipstick!”

  Miller thought that his comment was funny, but he could tell that Saunders wasn’t amused from the awkward silence.

  “Right, anyway, me and DC Grant are going to try and find our hotel. Then I think I’m going to find a Wetherspoons and treat me and the DC to a nice Mexican Monday!”

  “Ooh, Mexican Monday. Lovely! Give me a call in the morning so we can go over things before you reconvene with Mr Greenwood. Oh, and that hotel booking I text you – they only had a double room left.”

  “Aw Sir, for fu… are you taking the fucking piss?”

  Chapter 21

  In the wake of her disappearance, Kathy Hopkirk’s ten years of regular television work was coming under the microscope like never before. It came as quite a shock to the average TV viewer to learn how much broadcasting Kathy had actually done since bursting onto the nation’s screens just a decade earlier. All of the rolling news reports were being inserted with clips from her appearances on all manner of British programmes.

  Clip after clip was being pulled out to keep the news story interesting. In one short video, Kathy was seen talking to the agony aunt of “Britain’s Got Issues” the popular daytime chat-show. There was also some light-hearted footage of her being custard-pied on Children In Need, a stunt that had raised over £1,000.000 for the kids charity.

  Viewers were also being reminded of Kathy’s infamous appearance on “Bake That” five years earlier, when she’d had a row with another celebrity contestant, and had then thrown her competitor’s cake mix on the floor. Kathy had been expelled from the competition for her behaviour, but the subsequent, explosive publicity had ensured that she was the hot-topic of conversation through-out the land, and she had remained the UK’s number one Twitter topic for three days. She’d also had over a hundred death threats. The British were well-known for taking their baking programmes extremely seriously.

  But Kathy Hopkirk’s most memorable television appearance which was now being revisited, had been the six-part Channel 5 documentary, arrogantly titled “Let Kathy Show You A Better Way.” In this series, Kathy spent each episode with a different family from an area of high deprivation. It was part of the TV channel’s “Poor Folk and Cigarette Smoke” season.

  Kathy’s idea was to spend one week with six different families, and try to help them to manage their finances better, teach them how to clean their houses and then keep on top of stuff, including how to tidy their gardens. It was Kathy’s idea to make the show, and it had been her dream to turn around the fortunes of the families that she was sent to stay with each week. Kathy had famously said at the start of each episode, “if I can’t help these people, nobody can.”

  In reality, it was a very gripping, very real and “gritty” programme, but Kathy didn’t quite manage to turn the families lives around. Despite the good, albeit naive intentions, the series just became a weekly slanging match between Kathy and the families that she’d gone to help. The most memorable moment had come when Kathy slapped a husband who had spent all of the family’s weekly benefits in the bookies. He shouted that if the cameras weren’t there, he’d “fucking smack you one, and then let the fucking dogs eat you.” The series won “Best Factual Entertainment” at the TV Quick Awards.

  What was becoming apparent from these constant reminders of Kathy’s various TV projects and appearances, was that this woman had absolutely dominated the TV landscape for the past ten years, and nobody had really noticed that she was doing it. It was only in retrospect that you could see what a richly diverse “show-reel” she had created for herself.

  Outside Kathy’s home in Hammersmith, West London, the media crews were starting to wind-down their activities as it became increasingly apparent that this story was done for today. The final reports were being read-to-camera.

  “And now, as the search for Kathy Hopkirk closes on its second day, with her husband spending the night in a police station, and with still no word on her whereabouts, concern is continuing to grow for Kathy’s welfare.” Said the ITV news reporter. And it seemed, over these past few hours, that people were starting to forgive Kathy.

  All the high blood pressure that she had caused, all the arguments and broken TV remote controls suddenly seemed forgotten about. The news channels had spent the day reminding everybody that they had taken a great deal of entertainment away from Kathy’s various stunts and activities. The mood in Britain was changing, just a bit, and those cries of “well I hope she’s dead” from the previous day were turning to “I hope she’s okay that Kathy. She’s alright really. Salt of the earth, isn’t she?”

  Chapter 22

  “Hi, I’ve got a booking, it was done online about an hour ago by Manchester Police.” Saunders was standing at the check-in desk of the Premier Express, and still hadn’t plucked up the courage to inform Grant that Miller had booked them into a double room. He was just hoping and praying that there was a settee in the room, which he’d offer to take. But he had a feeling there wouldn’t be a settee.

  “Ah yes, is it Mr Saunders?”

  “Yes, well, its Detective Inspector Saunders, and Detective Constable Grant,”
said Saunders, politely, trying to tell the receptionist that a double room wasn’t really appropriate, using only his eyes.

  “And it’s a double-room, is that right?” asked the receptionist. Saunders’ eye message hadn’t worked.

  “A double?” asked Saunders, trying to sound surprised, and failing. “That’s not really appropriate… it’s a business, I mean, we’re work colleagues…”

  “This is the booking, Sir.”

  “It must be a mistake,” Saunders was going red in the face, and it wasn’t anger or irritation. It was just good old fashioned shyness and embarrassment. Grant found it very charming.

  “It’ll be alright, we can top and tail, Sir!” Grant had a cheeky grin on her face and the receptionist smiled coyly, pretending that she couldn’t hear.

  If a hole could just open up and swallow Saunders up right there, that would be a perfect end to this cringey situation.

  “Are there no other rooms available?”

  “I’m sorry Sir, we are completely booked. The room that has been booked was a cancellation.”

  “Right, well, can you sort out some extra bedding please? I’ll bunk down on the floor.”

  “Yes, of course, I’ll organise that for you. Now if you can just sign here, your room is on the second floor, number two-two-nine. Breakfast is served from six until ten, and checkout is at eleven o clock. I hope you will enjoy your stay with us.”

  “Right, cheers.” Saunders took the keys and walked off sulkily towards the stairs. Grant smiled at the receptionist as she followed.

  “Cheer up Sir! It’s better than driving home all night!” she said as she walked just behind her DI.

  “I know, it’s just… I don’t… doesn’t matter.” He looked around at Grant and her face was full of colour, and that smile was there, just as refreshing and irresistible as it had been all day.

  “Just what? Come on Sir, cheer up, we’re on an unexpected holiday!”

  “Yes, well, I mean…”

  “I need to find a supermarket, to grab some pyjamas and some fresh undies. Don’t suppose you know if there’s one nearby?”

  “There will be, we’ll find summat. Let’s get a look at this room first, and we can go and get some tea, have a wander around. Hopefully, they’ll find a spare bed they can lend us while we’re out.”