Jenny looked down at her notes. ‘According to the short statement you gave in Sarasota, you were having lunch when Amber-Marie Wilson went missing from the Pelican Palms.’
‘One of those bars in the village,’ the girlfriend said. ‘I think we were there from about one until three o’clock-ish.’
‘I couldn’t swear to it, but it might have been Gilligans, or maybe The Daiquiri Deck.’ The boyfriend thought for a few seconds then shook his head. ‘Might have been. Mind you, whichever one it was, I’m not sure our waiter would remember us now.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jenny said.
‘Not exactly cast-iron in alibi terms though, is it?’ The boyfriend winked at the girlfriend. ‘The pair of us vouching for each other.’
‘So, you were there together, all that time?’
The boyfriend smiled. ‘I might have gone to the toilet …’
‘I don’t suppose you saw the girl.’
‘No,’ the girlfriend said. Calm, straightforward.
‘I’m afraid not,’ the boyfriend said.
Jenny wrote for a few seconds. ‘Thanks for staying calm, by the way.’ She looked up at them. ‘Mr Finnegan got rather emotional when I asked him the same question.’
The girlfriend said, ‘Oh.’
‘Why did you need to ask Barry?’ the boyfriend asked. ‘They were at the beach, weren’t they?’
‘We found out that Mr Finnegan went back into the village and spent some time drinking at one of the bars.’
The girlfriend said, ‘Oh,’ again.
‘Did you see him?’
‘Like Dave just said, we thought they were at the beach.’
‘He was driving a red Nissan Altima if that helps.’
The boyfriend shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, no.’
‘What car did you and Miss Green have while you were out there? That’s one of the questions on my list, so …’
They exchanged a look. ‘A Neon or something,’ the boyfriend said. ‘A Dodge Neon? A silver one. I don’t know a lot about cars, but we only wanted a small one. Something low on emissions, you know?’
‘There’s only the two of us,’ the girlfriend said. ‘No point in getting some big gas guzzler, is there?’
Jenny shook her head and said, ‘I suppose not.’ She put her pen down and looked at the boyfriend. ‘So, as someone who knows a bit about these things, as an … enthusiast, what do you think happened to the girl?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘I’m just interested in your opinion,’ Jenny said. ‘I mean you must have thought about it and sometimes it helps to get another perspective, you know?’
He glanced up at the camera as though he were being filmed then sat back and folded his arms. ‘Well, whoever took her had to have been driving a car or a truck or whatever.’
‘Obviously.’
He smiled. ‘I can see why you had to ask about the car.’
Jenny smiled back. ‘Go on …’
‘I think she was probably taken somewhere and killed fairly quickly.’ He nodded. ‘In almost all these cases the victim is killed within hours of being abducted. They don’t tend to keep them for long. I mean, it’s been known of course, there’s plenty of documented cases, but overall it’s pretty rare. If I was a betting man, I’d say he killed her straight away.’
‘He killed her?’
‘Well, no, not necessarily a man of course. No, you’re right. Especially not when there’s children involved.’
‘What about a he and a she?’
‘That’s been known too, of course, God yes. Fred and Rose West. Brady and Hindley, obviously. A woman enticing the victim into the car and driving to where her partner’s waiting. Yeah, that’s possible …’
‘Easier to get a child’s trust in some ways, I would have thought,’ Jenny said. ‘Something familiar about the shape of a couple. Like their own parents, if they’ve got parents, of course.’
‘Statistically more likely to be a lone killer though,’ he said.
Jenny shook her head. ‘Can’t argue with statistics.’ She glanced at the girlfriend who was looking a little bored with proceedings, picking at a painted fingernail. ‘They run our lives, don’t they?’
‘Well, to a degree,’ the boyfriend said. ‘But don’t forget, lies, damned lies and all that.’
Jenny nodded, though she did not know what he was referring to. ‘So, statistically,’ she said, ‘what are our chances of catching him?’
He pushed out his bottom lip, chewed on his top one while he thought about it. ‘Well, there’s not really a simple answer to that,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of variables. Stranger murder is a lot harder to solve than a domestic killing, for a start, and are we basing this on British or American rates of homicide clearance?’
‘Either,’ Jenny said.
‘We solve a higher percentage of murders here than they do over there.’
‘So, average it out.’
‘A lot depends on how high-profile the murder is, of course. If it gets a lot of publicity, which I don’t think this one did particularly. If there’s any political pressure on the police—’
‘An estimate will do, Mr Cullen.’
The girlfriend was looking a little agitated. ‘I could really do with getting back to work,’ she said. ‘Are we about finished?’
The boyfriend seemed perfectly content, however. He considered the question for a few more seconds then said, ‘Sixty-five per cent maybe. Yeah, there or thereabouts. A sixty-five per cent chance of catching him.’
‘I’d take those odds,’ Jenny said.
Without taking his eyes off Jenny, the boyfriend reached into a pocket for his inhaler. He gave it a shake and said, ‘I’m guessing that so would your killer.’
THIRTY-ONE
It felt like a tooth that was starting to go rotten. It was OK as long as you remembered not to bite down on it or made sure to eat in a certain way, but a few times every day the pain would remind you that things weren’t getting any better. Detective Jeffrey Gardner knew it was hardly unique. Looking around the office, he knew that each of his colleagues had rotten-tooth cases like the Amber-Marie Wilson murder that snuck up and made them wince just when they thought they’d forgotten them. Files sitting in a drawer somewhere or stashed away on their desks, buried beneath the paperwork on other jobs.
Newer cases they might at least have a chance of solving.
Once or twice a day he followed up on his promise to Patti Lee Wilson and chased whoever needed chasing to get her daughter’s body released for burial. Once or twice a day he was told that things were in hand, that they didn’t need telling how to do their jobs and he would be the first to know when they had finished with it.
‘It can’t get any better until I get my baby back …’
As far as the case itself went though, there was a good reason why the urgency had gone out of the investigation. Brick wall, dead end, whatever damned cliché you chose to signify the lack of progress, they had run into it good and hard. Gardner was as fired up as he had been on day one – since Amber-Marie’s body had finally surfaced, bloodless and bloated in the mangrove tunnels – but when it came to prioritising, his lieutenant had a job to do, same as the detectives did. That rotten tooth had stung like a bitch, the day Gardner had been told to move the paperwork on the Wilson murder from a red file to a grey one.
In bed that night, Michelle had sighed and said, ‘It’s not like there haven’t been cases like this before, honey. Why is this one getting to you so much?’
It wasn’t anything Gardner could put into words, so he just said, ‘I know, you’re right,’ and lay back and let her try to take his mind off a dead girl the best way she knew how.
He was working through witness statements on a stabbing outside a bar on Main Street and thinking about getting lunch when his phone rang and the operator put through a call from the Metropolitan Police.
‘It’s Jenny Quinlan here, Detective.’
‘Oh, hi …�
�
‘From London,’ she added, just in case Gardner needed reminding where the Metropolitan Police were based.
‘Yes, I remember,’ Gardner said. A skinny, white detective named Whitlow was grinning at him from the desk opposite. ‘What can I do for you today?’
‘I wanted to give you an update, really. I’m just finishing writing up my report on the last interview session … the one with Marina Green and Dave Cullen? Anyway, one or two things have come up over the course of the three interviews I thought you should know about.’
‘Interviews?’
‘With the three couples. You wanted—’
‘Well, it was just a few things we needed confirming.’
‘Yes, of course, but I presumed you would want these things done properly.’
Gardner fought the urge to yawn. ‘Absolutely.’ Whitlow was still grinning. Gardner grinned back and rolled his eyes. ‘I’m listening.’
‘Sorry?’
‘What exactly has “come up”?’
‘Well for a kick-off, none of the couples was completely honest when they accounted for their whereabouts when the girl went missing.’ He could hear the sound of papers being riffled through. ‘Or at the very least they were being a bit forgetful.’
Gardner reached for a pen, said, ‘Go on …’ He listened while the woman told him that the first couple – the Dunnings – had confirmed that they had been shopping, but that they had not been able to say what they had bought at the mall. He cut her off without writing anything down. ‘I’m not sure I see your point,’ he said. ‘It was almost ten weeks ago. Listen, when I go shopping with my wife I’ve forgotten what we bought almost as soon as we’ve bought it. It’s a defence mechanism.’
She didn’t seem to find his comment very funny. ‘I thought it was odd, that’s all.’ When Gardner did not respond, she told him that Barry Finnegan had not stayed on the beach with his wife as had been thought, but had instead driven back into Siesta Village. ‘To buy cigarettes, he said, and he could have been gone for anything up to an hour. Enough time, I would have thought.’
‘Enough time for what?’
‘Well, if he saw the girl …’
‘I think perhaps you’re getting a little ahead of yourself here.’
‘He was very edgy,’ she said. ‘He got aggressive when I pushed him about it.’
‘I don’t quite get why you were pushing anybody.’
‘So was Dave Cullen, come to that. He was acting very strangely, plus he and his girlfriend couldn’t tell me the name of the bar where they claimed to be having lunch.’
‘I’ll say it again. This was ten weeks ago.’
‘Even so—’
‘I can’t remember the name of the bar I was in last night and, more to the point, you were just supposed to be gathering information. Basic timeframes. Anything these people might have remembered and so on.’
‘I’ve got the makes of car they were all driving.’
‘You’ve got what?’
‘I thought it would be useful information,’ she said. ‘I mean there must have been a vehicle involved.’
‘Yeah, we’d worked that much out.’
‘At the very least you need to eliminate people from the inquiry, don’t you?’
‘OK, tell me about the cars,’ Gardner said, doing his best not to raise his voice. There was more shuffling of papers until the woman found what she was looking for. He scribbled down the three makes of car. Said, ‘Thank you.’
‘There’s something else.’
Whitlow had been joined by another detective, a woman he might or might not have slept with once after a party. The pair of them were looking over at him and chuckling. Gardner looked down at his notebook where he was drawing squiggles around the few words he had jotted down. ‘I really need to get on,’ he said.
‘This is important,’ Quinlan said. ‘Something they remembered.’
Gardner leaned back in his chair. ‘Go ahead.’
‘They saw a man with the girl’s mother.’
‘Who did?’
‘A couple of them saw him, one night when they were all out for dinner. They saw a man talking to Patti Lee Wilson on the street. I’ve got a description …’
She described the man with tattoos that Susan Dunning had told her about and Gardner wrote down the details. He asked her if any of them had seen the man again, but she was not able to tell him. She apologised profusely for not having asked and offered to re-interview the couples concerned, but he told her politely but firmly that it would not be necessary.
‘Got to be worth looking into, I would have thought,’ she said.
‘I’ll check it out,’ Gardner said.
‘Well, let me know how you get on. You’ve got my email address?’
Gardner wasn’t sure that he did, or that he needed it, but said, ‘I think so,’ anyway. She promised to send through the completed reports in the next day or two, told him that he would then definitely have her email address. He said, ‘Great.’ She told him she was happy to help and not to hesitate if he needed anything else.
He thanked her and hung up.
In less than a minute, Whitlow’s bony rear end was firmly planted on the edge of Gardner’s desk. ‘That your Miss Marple?’
‘She’s a little over-enthusiastic is all,’ Gardner said.
Whitlow looked at him. He could clearly see something other than annoyance etched across Gardner’s face. ‘Listen, how about we get a few after work? Blow some cobwebs off. Maybe we can hit a bar you won’t remember the name of tomorrow.’
Gardner smiled. It was also clear that his friend had been listening in. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Nothing sorts out a toothache like beer,’ Whitlow said.
Gardner looked down at the notes he had scribbled during the call from Quinlan. Three cars and a man with tattoos. He thought that in the absence of anything better, Whitlow was probably right.
There was rain coming, so Jenny walked quickly towards Lewisham station. Thinking back, line by line, through the call to Florida. The things she had said and the way he had reacted.
Going over her performance.
It was obvious that Detective Gardner had been pushed for time and that was understandable with a major murder investigation to run, but all the same she was fairly pleased with the way she had handled herself. Confident and assertive, without being stupid about it or overstepping the mark. She had actually surprised herself with just how forthright she had been when he’d been slightly dismissive or had tried to suggest that she was getting carried away.
Plenty of room for improvement though. No point in kidding herself.
Getting a little ahead of yourself here. That had stung, still did if she were being honest, but she hadn’t let it get to her and it wasn’t as bad as getting caught out about the man Sue Dunning had seen with the girl’s mother.
Why the hell hadn’t she thought to ask if anyone had seen the man again?
It was such a basic mistake, neglecting to ask the obvious follow-up question. She kicked out at a plastic bag on the pavement and felt a little better, a little more determined. Jenny was nothing if not a quick learner and she would not screw up like that again.
She went out of her way to make a good impression on anyone useful, but she really wanted to impress Jeff Gardner.
If she were being critical of herself – and there was no point being otherwise – she had perhaps not stated strongly enough just how suspicious she was about the people she had interviewed. She had disliked each couple a little more than the one before and was not sure that she trusted any of them. Barry Finnegan was clearly capable of snapping without much provocation. Ed Dunning was a sleazebag and Dave Cullen was just downright creepy. She had fought shy of suggesting that all three couples might be in it together, but she wished she had at least voiced her suspicion that there was some covering of tracks going on. That one of them, and perhaps more than one, was trying to protect someone else.
S
he should definitely have said something to Gardner. Maybe she’d mention it when she emailed the report across. How the hell would anyone know she had come up with all this stuff if she didn’t speak up?
Jenny wanted the killer caught, of course, but there was always a question of credit being given where it was due. She’d learned that much while she was still a cadet, for God’s sake. Thinking about it, she decided that Jeff Gardner was definitely the sort she could trust, someone who would make sure the work she had done on the case was acknowledged properly.
He seemed like one of the good guys.
Looking at the darkening sky and picking up her pace a little, she fantasised again – just for a minute or two – about herself and Jeff Gardner working the next case together. In truth she would happily have settled for a quick rise through the ranks in south London … DI in five years, something like that … but it never hurt to aim high, did it?
You heard about Quinlan? Jammy cow’s been transferred to Florida …
She would finish off the report on the Cullen/Green interview as soon as she got home. She would open a bottle of red wine and curl up in front of something on the TV. One of those US cop shows she loved so much. Something gory and action-packed, with a string of caring, sensitive cops whose wives didn’t understand them and could never really appreciate the pressures of the job. One cop in particular, who blurted all that out over a beer at the end of a tough day, then fell into the arms of his gorgeous female partner.
We shouldn’t be doing this. It’s wrong …
A few fat raindrops were spattering the pavement by the time she reached the station. At the entrance, a man with hollow cheeks and blood around his mouth was selling copies of the Big Issue. He didn’t seem bothered about the rain. Jenny cheerfully tossed a handful of loose change into his cap, took a copy of the magazine and hurried towards the platform.
THIRTY-TWO
‘I’ll get them in,’ Ed said.
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