Irrefutable Evidence: A Crime Thriller

by David George Clarke

  “To that end,” continued Henry, “how are you getting on, Charles? Any breakthroughs?”

  Keithley sighed as he shook his head.

  “I’m still exploring a number of avenues, but it’s not looking good. The prosecution has a strong case with all the forensic evidence and the CCTV footage. It looks sound and no doubt they are scrutinising it to close any possible loopholes.”

  “What about your forensic people?”

  “They’ve come up with nothing. I’m afraid that after reviewing all the evidence, they agree with the conclusions. The procedures have all been followed to the letter and there’s no indication that anyone has screwed anything up — contamination and so on.

  “The thing is, Henry, we’re not dealing with traces here, you know, one or two fibres, a partial DNA profile on a smear somewhere. There’s loads of good, solid material.”

  Henry nodded. “Did they have anything to say about that, given that my position is that it must have been planted?”

  “Both our experts say that although there seems to be an abundance of forensic evidence, it’s not so much that they would be suspicious. And since no one can come up with any explanation as to how or why it might have been planted, they are struggling to fault it.”

  “So the prosecution will have plenty of means, but no motive.”

  “Exactly, and that’s going to have to be the thrust of our barrister’s argument. The old car crash is bound to raise its head, but he’ll be ready for that. Fortunately, you’ve never publicly taken a strong position on anything controversial, no daft right or left wing comments in the press, so character witnesses and lack of motive will be what we’ll use.”

  Henry nodded his agreement. “I don’t tend to mouth off privately either, so I doubt they’ll dig up some old soak to pour boiling oil on me.” He paused, sighing. “I should have tried hypnotherapy.”

  “What?”

  “You know, get someone to release my unconscious mind. Find out what happened to me that night, because I’ve no bloody idea. But I doubt it’s on offer from the counselling services here.”

  Keithley pulled a face. “I can make enquiries if you think it would help.”

  Henry shook his head, radiating his dejection. “No, it would be a waste of money.”

  Keithley glanced down at the file he’d brought with him.

  “There is one thing that cropped up, bit strange, but I don’t think it’s really likely to help.”

  “What?”

  “Well, we’ve known each other a long time, since the early nineties, in fact, and I don’t recall you ever mentioning that you had a daughter.”

  “A daughter?” Henry snorted derisively. “I haven’t mentioned it because I don’t have one. Why, is someone claiming she’s my daughter? It wouldn’t be the first time, it kind of goes with the territory, although it’s usually some star-struck loser claiming that I’m the father of her child. Easy to deny, of course, especially these days with DNA. I’ve already had a letter from some idiot who says she wants to marry me. Even suggested conjugal visits. Tell her to get lost, Charles.”

  “It’s not quite as easy as that, Henry. You see the young lady in question came to my office and cut straight to the chase — quite a forthright young woman. She told me that I should have your DNA profiled independently of the police lab profile.”

  Henry frowned. “I thought that had been done.”

  “It has, which rather surprised her. So she asked if our DNA expert could have a look at something and comment. Then she handed me a file containing several sheets of the scientific mumbo jumbo that the DNA people put out. I asked her what it was and she said it was her and her mother’s DNA profiles that she’d paid a private lab to produce.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “And she wanted them compared with mine?”

  “Exactly. She seemed perfectly sensible, if rather ardent, but clearly not playing a game to waste my time and your money.”

  “You mean you didn’t think she was some gutter journalist trying to set me up for a sleazy headline.”

  “Oh, she’s certainly not that. You see, I recognised her as soon as she came through the door, and you will too.”

  “Really? Who the hell is this mystery woman, Charles?”

  “DC Jennifer Cotton.”

  “What! You’re kidding me. You’re saying that DC Cotton is claiming to be my daughter? She’s off her head.”

  “I can’t comment on the state of her mind, Henry, but I’ve had the profiles all checked by our expert Dr Merriton and she says that Jennifer Cotton’s claim is correct. She is your daughter.”

  Henry sat back in his chair, his face fixed in shock. Then, as his mind started processing the information, a smile slowly formed at the corners of his mouth. For the first time that morning he became animated, his introspection gone.

  “That, Charles … that …” He stopped and let out a bark of amazement. “That is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard!”

  He paused as another point hit him.

  “But she was in on the interviews, came with those other plods to pick me up. Christ, she was the one who found the shoe in my car and she spotted the scratches on my neck. Are you saying that all along she knew she was my daughter?”

  Keithley smiled, encouraged by seeing the real Henry back in the room.

  “That’s exactly what her bosses thought as they unceremoniously dumped her from the case. No, she had no idea at the time. One of the lab scientists noticed the similarity of your profile to hers, carried out a paternity test and blew the whistle.”

  “Wow! I’ll bet that ruffled some feathers.”

  Henry’s eyes were roaming the room, piecing together events.

  “You know, I wondered why she disappeared. I mean, she seemed to be the girl of choice and then suddenly she wasn’t in on the interviews any more. Her replacement wasn’t nearly as good looking or as bright.”

  “Yes,” agreed Keithley, “they played it very subtly, if you recall. They basically repeated all the interviews that she’d been involved in, and a few more so as not to make me smell a rat. They asked the same questions but in a different way using a different officer alongside Inspector McPherson. They made an excuse about the recordings being damaged, said the sound was distorted and that they needed to redo them. I’m sorry, Henry, I fell for it; I should have questioned it more.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” said Henry, “they would have kept plugging away. But I’ll bet they were sweating.”

  He sat forward, now drumming his fingers on the table.

  “I wonder who her mother is? I’ve never met anyone called Cotton, not that I can remember. Is she married, this girl? What was her maiden name?”

  “No, she’s single.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  Henry did the sums. “So, she was born in 1989. I—”

  “No,” interrupted Keithley. “Nineteen eighty-eight. November 1988.”

  Henry frowned through more sums.

  “That means she was conceived in, what, February or March of that year. I was still married to Antonia at the time. Just. Our marriage was well on the rocks and she’d told me she wanted out. But she never let that sort of detail get in the way of her basic urges. Any port in a storm with our Antonia. Of course, it wasn’t long before the accident. Well, a couple of months.”

  The memories of that time came flooding back. He and Dirk Sanderley had been best mates. Dirk was round at their apartment so much that he almost lived with them. Antonia revelled in it all, encouraging Dirk to stay, encouraging everyone to stay. Henry had complained occasionally that Victoria Station had fewer people passing through it. Actors, directors, people from Antonia’s fashion world; it was never ending. He and Dirk would take off from time to time; sometimes Antonia would come, sometimes not, more not towards the end. He remembered that Antonia had been unwell during the month leading up to the accident. Now he knew why: she had bee
n pregnant. Why hadn’t she told him? Yes, of course, she didn’t think it was his and anyway, they were going their separate ways. That was the reason she hadn’t gone to France with them, to the film festival. He shook his head. More drug festival than film. Dirk was well into everything by then, and starting to get argumentative and aggressive whenever Henry tried to steer him back on course.

  He snapped back to the present.

  “Did she tell you anything else about herself?”

  “No,” replied Keithley, “She refused. Said she’d been forbidden to reveal the information about the DNA profiles that were produced as part of the police investigation, so she arranged for her own.”

  Henry smiled. “Sounds like a chip off the old block. I like this girl already.”

  “She wants to see you. She said she’ll discuss things with you, but no one else, for the present.”

  “Well, I can hardly pop over to her place for a cup of tea and a chat, so she’ll have to come here. And if she’s my daughter, the authorities can’t object.”

  “I can arrange it, Henry. But, you know, you don’t seem over-surprised to find you have a daughter.”

  Henry laughed. “Hey, I’m surprised all right. It hasn’t quite sunk in, that’s all. Antonia must be her mother, mustn’t she?”

  “I don’t know, Henry. That was all before I knew you, and Miss Cotton wouldn’t say more.”

  Henry was only half listening.

  “I thought there was something about her, that day back in Luton,” he enthused. “Never occurred to me that she might be my daughter, though.”

  He took a deep breath, his eyes on Keithley’s file on the table.

  “When Dirk was killed, I got the blame, as you know. But Antonia’s reaction was ten times, a hundred times worse than everyone else’s. She was like a mad dog, raging. Completely refused to speak to me. Cut me off. The divorce whistled through in double quick time and that was that. I never saw her again. I didn’t really mind; I’d had more than enough of her and I had my own problems. I thought I’d never work again. But I did think it rather strange that she seemed to disappear off the face of the earth.”

  He looked up at Keithley.

  “Is any of this going to help the trial, Charles? I mean, the police must be extremely embarrassed that my daughter was one of the investigating officers.”

  “They’re embarrassed, you can guarantee it, but it seems they’ve covered their tracks well. They’ve more or less fixed it so that they won’t have to call her as a witness. I could get our barrister to, of course, but I doubt in the long run it would help, given that when she was on the case her behaviour was exemplary.”

  Henry smiled again at his old friend.

  “OK, Charles, if you can arrange it, I’d be delighted to meet DC Jennifer Cotton.”

  “Actually, Henry, she’s now just plain Ms Jennifer Cotton. She has resigned from the police.”

  C hapter 18

  It took ten days for Charles Keithley to work his way through the red tape. He found it frustrating until he was reminded that if Henry had been a convict rather than a remand prisoner, it would have taken far longer. The system didn’t make it easy for anyone.

  Unlike the visit with Keithley, Jennifer’s was in the main interview room, a dreary space of twenty small tables and twenty pairs of chairs. There was no privacy, so the norm was a surreal set of hushed conversations, like people talking in a church.

  The procedure for visits was that the visitor was escorted in first and told to sit at one of the tables. After that, the prisoner was fetched.

  As she saw Henry being led through the door from the main prison, Jennifer stood up, feeling awkward. She was shocked; he looked gaunt, he’d lost weight, but there was a sparkle in his eyes, unlike other prisoners she’d glanced at around the room.

  “Hello, Jennifer,” he said as he reached the table. “What should we do? Shake hands? Hug?”

  “Let’s just sit and talk,” she said, and sat down.

  Henry followed suit and there followed an awkward silence with each of them studying the other’s face.

  Finally, Henry broke the ice. “This is a bit of a turn up. I still haven’t quite hauled it on board. I don’t mean to jump straight in, well, I suppose I do really, but may I ask who your mother is?”

  Jennifer was immediately defensive. “Why? Are you trying to place me as the possible offspring of one of a long line of conquests?”

  Henry smiled, wanting to ease the tension. “Now, now, there’s no need to be hostile. I’m not like that. I know that many actors have quite a reputation for being ladies’ men, but sadly my reputation is altogether different.”

  Jennifer was still stern faced.

  “I know. I’d read about you in the glossies even before the case.”

  “Then you’ll know that I lead … led … a quiet, almost reclusive life trying to make a living in an industry that was forever trying to marginalise me.”

  Jennifer suddenly relaxed.

  “Yes, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like some aggressive police officer. I wasn’t that sort of police officer, anyway.”

  It was now Henry’s turn to be serious.

  “Charles Keithley told me that you’d resigned from the police. To be honest, I was stunned. I can’t imagine why you would do that. Remember, I’ve seen you in action and you were streets ahead of the rest of those clowns who interviewed me, the senior ones included.”

  He saw Jennifer’s chin quiver; clearly her decision was still a raw wound.

  “When they found out that you were my father, they didn’t, wouldn’t believe that I didn’t know. There was one in particular, — the detective superintendent — who was relentless. She would have had me hung, drawn and quartered. They were rightly embarrassed by it all, so even though I think I persuaded some of the bosses that I was totally innocent, the damage was done. I had to be taken off the case and if I’d stayed, I would have been sent back into uniform. I couldn’t accept that; it’s not the career I wanted. So I chucked it in.”

  “That sounds appallingly vindictive. Does this superintendent person think you fiddled the results of the case, tampered with the evidence? You were the one who found the shoe! At the time I wondered if you’d planted it by some clever sleight of hand.”

  For the first time, a smile flickered at the corners of Jennifer’s mouth, softening her whole face. Henry felt his heart melting.

  “No, it wasn’t the evidence,” she said. “They were worried about the fallout, especially the senior types. It all gets absurdly political in the elevated ranks — the chief super, assistant chief constable and above are all paranoid about the press. I think their idea of hell would be a never-ending phone call from a tabloid editor with dirt to dig and a direct link to Whitehall.”

  Henry’s eyes creased; he liked his daughter more each second. He took a deep breath.

  “Anyway, Jennifer, your mother? And, of course, your father. Who were you told was your father?”

  “My mother’s name is Antonella Cotton, She is, or rather was, a fashion designer, not a particularly special one, but as it turned out, that didn’t matter. She worked in Milan, which is where she still is, and where I was born and brought up.”

  “Why didn’t it matter?”

  “She married Pietro Fabrelli, the boss of the fashion house she worked for. You’ve probably heard of him, most people have. He’s my stepfather, and a generous one too.”

  “Pietro Fabrelli! Wow! I’m impressed. Have you always known he was your stepfather, rather than your father, I mean?”

  “Yes, I have. My mother never tried to hide it from me that my real father was a newly qualified doctor, a brilliant man with a stellar future ahead of him, she said, who was killed in a car crash in Europe along with two friends.”

  “Did she say where?”

  “Somewhere in the former Yugoslavia. His name was Simon Jefford.”

  Henry shook his head. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m a
fraid. Have you checked, about him and the crash, I mean. You were a police officer, it should have been easy enough.”

  “No, I had no reason to, and anyway there are strict procedural protocols these days for searching the police databases. You can’t just dive in and check up on someone or something if it’s not part of an ongoing investigation. All access is logged and it’s taken very seriously if someone takes a wander around the files.”

  “Interesting. So it’s not like they show it in films or on TV?”

  “You must be joking. In movies they get information so quickly that it’s there almost before the crime has been committed.”

  “You have to take short cuts if you want to squeeze all the action in to an hour or so,” said Henry, smiling.

  He paused, his eyes roaming over Jennifer’s face, taking in her features, her hair, the set of her jaw.

  “Could you tell me more about your mother? What’s she like? Have you told her about me?”

  Jennifer frowned briefly, making a decision. She reached into her pocket, brought out a photo and catching the eye of the nearest guard, raised her eyebrows in question. The guard sauntered over, taking his time.

  “May I show this to him, please?” asked Jennifer.

  “Who is it?” said the guard.

  “My mother.”

  “OK, this once, but you shouldn’t bring anything in with you, and Silk, you can only look; you’re not to touch it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Henry automatically, his jaw clenching.

  Jennifer dropped her eyes, realising it had been a difficult moment for him.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  She held up the photo for Henry to study.

  “Antonia,” he said, nodding. “It had to be, really.”

  “Antonia?”

  “Antonia Caldmore. At one time, Mrs Antonia Silk, although she always preferred to use her maiden name.”

  “She was your wife? When?”