Irrefutable Evidence: A Crime Thriller

by David George Clarke

  “You hardly gave me much option, Inspector, but yes, I agree.”

  McPherson nodded. “Now, before we go any further, I should like to ask you to give a buccal swab for DNA profiling and your fingerprints. Since we are examining your car, we will need both for elimination purposes.”

  Henry turned to Charles Keithley who signalled his agreement.

  The DI continued. “As you may be aware, if we are later satisfied that you have nothing to do with the case under investigation, both your DNA profile and your fingerprints will be removed from the databases and destroyed.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that, Inspector, but thank you for pointing it out.”

  Jennifer stood and picked up a bag from a table behind her. She put on a pair of disposable gloves, swabbed Henry’s mouth and took his prints.

  Although he wasn’t trying to unnerve her, Henry found himself staring into her eyes, carefully watching every expression, every flicker of her eyelids. He was impressed that she ignored him until she had finished, when she thanked him and gave him a brief smile before leaving the room to hand the samples to Derek Thyme, who was waiting for her in the corridor outside.

  Once Jennifer had settled back in her chair, McPherson continued by explaining once again to Henry about the discovery of Miruna Peptanariu’s body.

  “What can you tell us about that, Henry?”

  Henry immediately bristled. “Inspector, you have a first name, I seem to remember?”

  McPherson frowned. “Yes.”

  “Do you expect me to use it? Are we going to be chummy-chummy? Shall I also call the detective constable here Jennifer?”

  “I expect you to address us by our ranks.”

  “Then I expect the same level of respect, Inspector. It’s Mr Silk.”

  McPherson’s expression darkened.

  “I’ll repeat the question, Mr Silk. What can you tell us about Miruna Peptanariu and the fact that her body was discovered in Harlow Wood?”

  “I can tell you nothing, Inspector. I’ve never heard that name before today and I’ve never been to Harlow Wood. I don’t even know where it is.”

  McPherson checked his list of points.

  “Mr Silk, could you tell us where you were last Friday evening, the 30th of May?”

  Henry outlined his movements from early Friday afternoon, his leaving the Old Nottingham Hotel, his performance in the play at the Theatre Royal and his return to the hotel. At this point he faltered.

  “Inspector, I’m not trying to be evasive, but I’m afraid I’m having a hard time remembering much between leaving the theatre and waking up rather late on Saturday morning. My usual practice, both last week and always when I’m in rep, is that when I return to my hotel after a performance, I have a drink at the bar to unwind, normally a brief chat with the barman and then I go to my room where I have another drink, a vodka on the rocks, before showering and going to bed.”

  “Are you saying that you did or did not do this on Friday night, Mr Silk?”

  “I’m saying that I don’t remember. I suppose you could ask the barman at the Old Nottingham. His name’s Michael; he should be able to tell you.”

  “Do you remember adopting this procedure on other nights last week?”

  “Very clearly, yes.”

  “Then can you give any reason why you can’t remember what you did on Friday evening?”

  “No, Inspector, I can’t.”

  McPherson checked his list again.

  “Mr Silk. What would your reaction be to my telling you that we have CCTV footage of your car in various locations in the city and on roads north of the city between the hours of about one and three o’clock last Saturday morning, the thirty-first of May? By your car, I mean a Nissan X-Trail registration number LJ11TTV. Do you agree that you are the registered owner of that car?”

  “I am, Inspector, yes. As to my reaction, as you describe it, to its being in those locations at that time, I should say you are somehow mistaken. To my knowledge, my car was parked in the car park of the Old Nottingham from when I parked it there after using it last Wednesday until I drove down to London in it late on Saturday night after the final performance of the play.”

  “Did you lend your car keys to anyone or give permission to anyone to use your car on Friday night?”

  “No, to both questions, Inspector. I left my car keys on the desk in my room, and that’s where they were on Saturday before I checked out.”

  McPherson opened a file in front of him and pulled out three photos. He placed them on the desk in front of Henry.

  “For the recording, I am now showing Mr Silk three prints taken from the Nottingham Traffic Office’s CCTV cameras. The date and time of the photos is shown on the prints. Mr Silk, I’d like you to look at these photographs. Do you agree that they are of your car?”

  Henry studied each one closely and showed them to Charles Keithley.

  “They show a Nissan X-Trail with the same registration number as my vehicle. Whether it is actually my vehicle, I can’t say.”

  “What were you wearing on Friday evening, Mr Silk?”

  Henry scratched his head. “As I recall, jeans, a brownish pullover, cream linen jacket and a woollen scarf. Oh, and a dark blue baseball cap.”

  “Could you describe what the person shown in the photo timed at zero two thirty-three is wearing?”

  Henry peered at the photo. “I can’t see clearly, but I should say it’s a pale jacket, there might be a scarf and under a dark T-shirt or … pullover.” He faltered. “Are you trying to say that that’s me?”

  “I’m asking you if it is you, Mr Silk.”

  “It can’t possibly be.”

  “Please look closely at the windscreen of the vehicle in the same photograph. Could you please describe what is visible immediately below the vehicle licence disc?”

  “It looks like a motorway sticker for Switzerland. I can see the number fourteen on it, so it’s for this year.”

  McPherson pulled another photograph from the folder.

  “For the tape, I am now showing Mr Silk a photograph of his car taken this afternoon at the Nottingham Police Traffic Pound. Could you please describe what is shown on the windscreen of the vehicle in this photograph, Mr Silk? Your vehicle, as you’ve already agreed.”

  Henry nodded. “It’s a Swiss tax disc for motorways. I had to buy it when I drove through Switzerland on my way to Rome two months ago.”

  “So, getting back to the vehicle shown in the CCTV footage, would you now agree that it appears to be your vehicle?”

  Henry’s reply was barely audible. “It would seem so, yes.”

  “Could you speak more loudly please, Mr Silk?”

  “I said that it would seem so.”

  “And do you agree that the person shown driving the vehicle appears to be you?”

  Charles Keithley made to interrupt but Henry stopped him.

  “I would agree only that the person driving the car seems to be wearing clothing that is similar to mine, Inspector.”

  A knock on the door broke the tension in the room. Derek Thyme walked in, which McPherson announced for the recording. Derek leaned over and spoke quietly into the DI’s ear and handed him a printed sheet of notes. McPherson scanned them before saying anything else.

  He looked up.

  “DC Thyme is now leaving the room. Mr Silk, despite what you’ve told us about having no memory of events on Friday night after your performance, I should like you to explain the following. We have now examined CCTV recordings from various cameras positioned around the Old Nottingham Hotel which show you leaving the hotel at twelve fifty-five a.m. — and by leaving I mean standing by the lift on the second floor, entering the lift, leaving the lift at the car park level, getting into your car and driving away — following which we now have enhanced shots from the traffic cameras that show your car picking up Miruna Peptanariu on Forest Road West at one ten a.m. and shots of her in your car with you at various locations in and beyond the city. Furt
her, at various times between two ten and two forty a.m. there are images of you driving your car alone back in the direction of Nottingham. At two forty-two a.m., the hotel’s cameras again show you parking your car in the hotel car park and walking through the car park towards the stairs. You are then shown briefly passing the lift door on the second floor, so presumably you took the stairs all the way to the second floor. What would your reaction be to this sequence of events I have just described?”

  Henry was silent. His eyes wandered in disbelief from the photographs in front of him to McPherson and then to Jennifer, who was scribbling notes. He sighed. “My reaction, Inspector, is one of incredulity. I simply cannot explain it.”

  “OK, Mr Silk, further to everything I’ve described, as you know from the preliminary examination of your car by DC Cotton this morning, a red, high-heeled left shoe was found under the front passenger seat. That shoe has been compared with a right shoe worn by Miruna Peptanariu when her body was found and the two make a perfect pair in brand, style, size, colour, wear pattern and general condition. We shall be conducting DNA tests on the shoe insoles, but there seems little doubt that the shoe found in your car belonged to the victim. Can you tell us anything about the shoes, Mr Silk?”

  Henry raised his arms, palms outstretched. “I am at a total loss, Inspector.”

  “Mr Silk, we have examined the mobile phone you voluntarily passed over to us.”

  Henry turned and nodded to Charles Keithley to agree that this had happened.

  McPherson continued. “Amongst the calls made on the phone, there is a record of a call made at twelve fifty a.m. last Saturday, the thirty-first of May, to a prepaid phone account that we know was used by Miruna Peptanariu. This call was made a few minutes before the Old Nottingham Hotel’s CCTV footage shows you leaving the hotel. Could you tell us anything about that?”

  Henry felt as if he were at the losing end of a twelve-round boxing match. His head was dizzy, his mouth horribly dry. He had protested his complete ignorance of everything that had been thrown at him and yet the blows kept coming.

  McPherson waited, knowing that often at this stage, silence was the best strategy. His suspect was buckling; he could feel it. He turned his head a fraction in order to see Jennifer out of the corner of his eye. She had finished scribbling notes and was staring intently at Henry Silk, her face expressionless, but McPherson could feel her tension.

  Henry’s eyes slowly focussed on the table top in front of him.

  “I can tell you nothing about any phone call made at that time. I can tell you nothing about any of this.”

  He turned and leaned over to talk in Charles Keithley’s ear. McPherson could sense a confession coming, but Jennifer was still puzzled. She had been trying to come to terms with how someone so apparently pleasant, intelligent and open as Henry Silk appeared to be could also be a cold, calculating killer. It was the first time she had been in such close proximity to someone like him and she was trying to analyse every movement of his face, every shrug, every crossing and uncrossing of his arms. She felt that he was using his acting abilities to their fullest, drawing on everything he’d ever learned to portray an innocent victim of circumstance while really being as guilty as hell. At least she had reached that conclusion based on more evidence than her bosses had used. But then again, perhaps their years of experience had given them insight into the man’s character that she was still too inexperienced to notice.

  Then suddenly she saw them. The scratches. She stifled a gasp.

  She leaned to whisper to McPherson. “May I ask him a question, please, guv?”

  “What about?”

  “The scratches.”

  “What scratches?”

  “May I please ask?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Jennifer coughed and Henry looked around at her.

  “Mr Silk,” she began. “There appear to be several scratches on your neck. On the left side. I could see them as you leaned over to talk to Mr Keithley. Could you please tell us how they came about? How you got them?”

  Henry raised his left hand to the marks and felt them, a frown on his face as if he’d not previously noticed them.

  “I … I don’t know, Constable Cotton. I first noticed them on Saturday afternoon when I had a shower. The hot water stung them slightly. Since then they’ve healed over and I’ve not felt them. I’d forgotten they were there. I have no idea how I got them.”

  He glanced nervously at Charles Keithley who was trying desperately to hide being horrorstruck by this new development.

  Jennifer leaned over to McPherson, speaking quietly. “Shall I get DC Thyme to call the pathologist to look at them?”

  “I’ll do it, Cotton. Horace won’t want to come out to do what he’ll regard as a duty doctor’s job, but I’d rather he did it. He and I go way back. He’ll come tonight if I speak to him.”

  He looked across at the pair opposite him.

  “I am terminating this interview at,” — he looked at his watch — “seven fifty-six p.m. pending the arrival of a doctor to examine the scratches on Mr Silk’s neck.”

  He leaned forward and stopped the tape.

  “Mr Silk. I shall have to ask you to remain here for the pathologist to arrive.”

  Henry hardly heard him. He had genuinely forgotten about the scratches. He had felt so wretched on Saturday that they hadn’t really figured in his consciousness. After glancing at them, he had paid no further attention to them. Like everything else that had surfaced on this nightmare of a day, he had no idea about them, no memory. But what concerned him more was the awful realisation that there appeared to be a considerable and ever-increasing body of evidence to connect him with the death of a prostitute he had never met or heard of in a wood he’d also never heard of or even been near. Had his car really been used? Perhaps there was something the police had overlooked and, ridiculous coincidence that it was, a set of plates the same as his had been attached to a stolen X-Trail, an X-Trail that went to and from … the hotel? And then there was CCTV of him. He looked down at his hands.

  “How did she die?” he asked quietly.

  McPherson was making for the door. He turned. “What?”

  “How did she die, Inspector? The girl.”

  “Suffocation with a plastic bag. She was beaten unconscious with a blunt object and then a bag pulled over her head. But I suspect you knew that already.”

  He spun on his heel and marched out of the room.

  Two hours later, Horace Lawson had examined the scratches and they had been photographed.

  “Consistent with having been made by four fingernails,” he told Hurst and McPherson in Hurst’s office. “I’d say that given there wasn’t any sexual activity, as he was suffocating her, she reached out in a desperate bid to stop him.”

  “So after he clobbered her, she wasn’t unconscious like you thought,” said Hurst.

  Lawson pulled a face. “It would seem not.”

  “Poor bitch,” replied Hurst. “She was fighting for her young life.”

  “Bastard,” added McPherson.

  Hurst turned to him.

  “Rob, we’ve got more than enough. Arrest him.”

  C hapter 12

  The elation shared by the whole team in the briefing room on Tuesday morning was attenuated by the presence of their squad commander, Detective Superintendent Olivia Freneton. Stony-faced, she was sitting to the right of Mike Hurst, her eyes slowly moving from one member of the team to the next. For the few who looked closely, her unsmiling features appeared slightly more relaxed than normal, an encouraging sign. However, most of the team avoided looking her way, preferring to keep their attention firmly on Hurst, who for his part was determined not to let the presence of the woman known universally as the Ice Queen dampen his spirits.

  Hurst stood.

  “Morning, everyone,” he said, before turning to Olivia Freneton. “Thanks for joining us this morning ma’am. I’m sure you’ll have something to say to the team in a mom
ent.”

  Freneton gave the slightest of nods as her eyes continued their review of the room.

  “But first,” continued Hurst, “let me say, well done, all of you. We’ve knocked this case on the head in record time thanks to all your efforts. As you know, the devil is in the detail and you’ve all dug out plenty of that in the last forty-eight hours, and every bit has been another nail in Silk’s coffin.

  “As you know, Silk hasn’t confessed yet, but I can’t help feeling that he soon will, since frankly, he hasn’t got a leg to stand on. We’ve still got many of the forensic results to come, DNA in particular and of course, neither the plastic bag he used to kill Miruna nor the weapon he hit her with first have yet been found. We have a team of SOCOs and a squad of uniforms courtesy of Mansfield nick going back to the scene in Harlow Wood this morning to conduct a wider search.

  “And as soon as this meeting’s over, DS Bottomley and DCs Cotton and Thyme are heading off to London to search Silk’s house in Hampstead. Also, this afternoon, the night shift receptionist from the Old Nottingham, who doubled as barman last Friday night, has agreed to come in and make a statement about Silk’s movements on Friday.

  “So, there’s still plenty to do. Until we get the forensic results back for correlation, I want the rest of you here to learn as much as possible about Silk’s background. We know that he’s a loner, and we know that many in the acting world don’t like him, so much in fact that many directors shun him. Has this caused frustration on Silk’s part that has driven him to violence, so much so that he wants to take it out on defenceless victims? Is there any indication that Silk has been involved with other unsolved deaths of prostitutes in the city in the past? — you’ll remember there were three last year and two the year before which are now regarded as cold cases. Maybe we have the answers in Silk. His DNA will, of course, be compared with profiles found in those cases and all other cases on the outstanding crime database, but I also want anything else there is to be had. I want a full life history of the man. He said he isn’t married. Has he been in the past? We’ll be interviewing him further on this, but his solicitor might object to questions that aren’t immediately relevant to the present case, so we’ll have to do our own digging.”