A hand shot up from the back of the room.
‘Is it possible that Robert put this woman in the guest house and has harmed Olivia and the children? Could she be working for Robert to help cover his tracks? Looking at the daughter’s picture, it does seem as if she was afraid of somebody.’
Becky nodded her head slowly. ‘Sounds plausible. Does anybody else have a view?’
Tom stood up.
‘We found passports for Olivia and Jasmine at the house this morning. Both of them had Iranian visas, which were dated for the half-term week in October last year when Olivia was supposed to be in Anglesey. It looks like she might have lied to Brookes about her whereabouts before, so isn’t it possible that she’s just left him? The woman at the guest house could be helping Olivia, not Robert.’
‘But was she actually in Iran with Jasmine, and – maybe – Danush Jahander? If she was, where were the boys? Or was she locked away somewhere? Had Robert discovered she was about to run off with Jahander and was that the start of it all? It must be obvious to everybody that it’s a priority to find out who this woman is,’ Becky stabbed her finger at the photo on the board again. ‘Why was she impersonating Olivia, and who the hell asked her to do it? I think we need to consider a television appeal.’
Everybody was quiet for a moment. Becky couldn’t help thinking she was missing something, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. They needed to move on.
‘What else have we got? Yes, Erica,’ Becky said, pointing to a slightly harried-looking woman at the back of the room. She knew Erica had four children, so guessed that – not for the first time – she’d had a nightmare with childcare this morning.
‘We’ve got Mrs Preston saying that Robert came home in the middle of Wednesday night or actually Thursday morning, and was gone again by the time she got up. This was supported by another neighbour who walks his dog at five fifteen every morning before he leaves for work at six. He said Robert’s car shot off the drive and nearly knocked him over.’
‘So do we think he came back to check up on them, wherever they are – or were? And if he did, he might have come back on other nights too. Any joy on the CCTV from the Newcastle hotel?’ Becky asked.
‘Nothing in the lobby area, no. But the manager said there are other ways out, and not everywhere is necessarily covered. He could have gone out through the kitchens for example, if he didn’t want to be spotted.’
‘What about the car park?’ Tom asked.
‘We requested the footage immediately, but we’ve only just got it because it comes from a different company – not the hotel. We’re going to start on that as soon as we’ve finished here.’
‘Start with Wednesday night,’ Becky said, ‘but I want the whole time he was in Newcastle covered. I want to know about every second his car was out of that car park.’
In the brief lull while the team assimilated all they had learned, the door to the incident room was flung open with some force, and a serious, slightly breathless Gil almost sprinted up the room in his red shoes.
‘You are so going to want to see this,’ he said.
Much as Becky didn’t want to be interrupted, Gil’s intensity suggested this was important. He plonked down his laptop and stabbed his finger on a few buttons until it connected wirelessly to the whiteboard. Despite the writing on the board, the image was clear for all to see.
On the screen there was a video, and to Becky it was obvious this was the inside of the Brookes’ kitchen. The door opened, and Robert Brookes walked in, carrying a large bunch of white flowers and a carrier bag that appeared to contain bottles. Under his arm were what looked like children’s comics. He dumped the lot on the table. Although there was no sound, it was clear that Brookes was shouting, ‘Olivia!’ and turning to look around. He walked out of the kitchen, and was picked up next in their bedroom, his glance flicking around the room, seemingly confused. Finally Gil clicked something on the screen, which changed back to the kitchen. Robert flung open the door – and, even without the sound, everybody cringed as it crashed into the cupboard. He grabbed his wife’s bag and upended it on the table, checking the contents.
Gil clicked off.
‘Friday afternoon – at just the time Robert said he was home.’
Becky looked at the puzzled faces around her.
‘So where’s the video from?’
‘Watch this next bit, and I’ll tell you,’ was all Gil would say. He clicked another icon on the screen.
Into shot came a woman. The video was being taken from somewhere above her and she was walking with her head slightly bowed so they weren’t able to see a clear image of her face, but Becky was sure this was Olivia Brookes. She looked at Tom for confirmation, and he gave her a sharp nod without moving his eyes from the screen. There was still no sound, but it did seem that the woman was talking to somebody over her shoulder as she made herself a cup of coffee. A small child came into view, but this time only the very top of a blond head was visible. From his size, the child looked to be about four years old. Both walked out of shot, and the screen blanked for a second before opening up again – this time in the living room. Olivia was walking towards the sofa where she sat down, picked up a magazine and took a sip from the cup of coffee that she had brought with her from the kitchen.
The incident room was totally silent. Stunned by what they were seeing, no doubt. Gil switched off his laptop and turned to his audience.
‘Not a very inspiring bit of video, I hear you cry,’ he said theatrically. ‘But that, my friends, is the tip of the iceberg. The hard disc on Robert’s computer is absolutely full of videos of the Brookes family going about their business. Totally chocker. There are cameras hidden in every room of the house except the children’s bedrooms and the bathrooms. Glad to know that Robert Brookes did have a modicum of decency in him.’
Becky glanced at Tom and noted that the only change to his expression was a slight narrowing of the eyes. She knew he didn’t like Robert, but the idea that the man filmed his wife’s every action was so horrible that it made Becky shudder. Did Olivia know about this? She couldn’t have done. Nobody would tolerate that level of surveillance. Or was it voyeurism? Did Robert get off on watching pictures of his wife? Would they ever know the answer?
Gil hadn’t finished.
‘The cameras were very cleverly concealed, high up on top of cupboards. But I think we’ve found them all now. They’re motion activated, and set to respond to movement above a certain height. It’s pretty clear he was only interested in capturing video of his wife, so each time she walked into a room the cameras started to film and record. Obviously the kids are in some of the shots with her, but they are all too small to activate the cameras themselves. The bad news is that the cameras are looking down on to the tops of their heads, so we’ve still got no photos we can use. And I can only assume that when Robert came home from work each night, he deactivated the cameras from his computer, because with the exception of the most recent one, there are no shots of him at all.’
Gil turned around and smiled at everybody, although the smile never quite reached his bleak, tired eyes.
‘The time stamps show that the last video of Olivia was shot on Friday – approximately one hour before Robert Brookes got back. Until that point, it would appear that she and the children were all fit and well, and at home.’
*
The incident room was humming. Everybody had a theory, but to Tom, none seemed to be quite right.
‘It seems clear from this that Robert was telling the truth when he said he was expecting his wife to be home when he got there,’ Ryan said.
‘Does everybody agree with that?’ Becky asked.
Nic put up a slightly tentative hand.
‘If we assume Robert Brookes put those cameras in place and he usually switched them off when he came home, he’d know he was being filmed, wouldn’t he? He was facing the camera when he shouted her name, and he could have bought the presents just for show. I don’t think it pr
oves anything, personally.’
Good lad, thought Tom. Exactly what he was thinking. But on the other hand, Olivia had been there until an hour before and it would be pretty easy to check if Robert had been in his car on the way back from Newcastle in the only missing hour – the hour between Olivia being there and Robert’s arrival home.
A sudden thought struck him.
‘Becky – in that clip Olivia was making herself some coffee, wasn’t she? And she was adding milk. Didn’t you say there was no milk in the fridge, and there was no empty bottle in the dustbin?’
Becky looked at him and nodded silently.
What the hell was going on?
28
This was the sort of crime that Jumbo loved, chiefly because at the moment, nobody knew whether a crime had been committed or not, and it was his job to find out. He was delighted with the catch on the kitchen knife – his bright spark newbie had done a great job there, and the passports intrigued him too.
When you threw Gil’s discovery of the videos on the computer into the mix, and all those dreadful cameras that he’d had people climbing up and down ladders to retrieve, it was adding up to a true mystery. And there was nothing he liked better.
Now that Gil was gone, Jumbo decided to turn his attention to the study. Tom had told him that the door was usually kept locked, and he understood why. Clearly Robert Brookes had no intention of letting his wife discover that her every move was being recorded. But Jumbo had looked at the video too, and there was something that didn’t quite add up. He was sure Olivia was acting normally when she made her way around the various rooms, and there was no real sign that she was playing to the camera. In his experience, if people knew there was a camera there, they gave off signals. They behaved differently somehow, as if they were acting on a stage. There was no evidence of that with Olivia, but there were two things. She rarely showed her face – her head always seemed to be down as she walked towards the camera, but up as she walked away. And she never, ever got dressed or undressed in the bedroom. She always went into the bathroom. On one occasion, she’d clearly forgotten something and came back into the room from the bathroom to get some underwear from her drawer. But she was wearing a bathrobe. Who walks from an en suite bathroom into their own bedroom for a pair of knickers and puts a bathrobe on to do it?
He was damned sure that never happened in his house. His wife was a bit like him – big in every direction. But big of heart too, with a booming laugh that rivalled his own. Getting her to put her clothes on was more of an issue as she pranced around the bedroom doing her semi-naked Tina Turner impression, which she swore she practised when he wasn’t there. He smiled as he thought of her and couldn’t help comparing her, throwing back her head for a good laugh, with this Olivia Brookes woman, whose face he had yet to see in any detail and whose laughter he had yet to hear.
He looked around the study and called one of his guys in.
‘Let’s go through the books, Adam. You know the drill. This guy strikes me as a sneaky little shit, so it would be good to know if anything’s odd about his reading, or if there’s anything stuck between the pages of his books. Let’s see how we go. Get Phil in to help. I’m going to make a start on the luminol in the rooms we’ve already finished looking at. You okay with that?’
Looking through a bookcase full of paperbacks wasn’t a highlight in anybody’s day, but it had to be done. He thumped Adam on the shoulder. ‘Good lad – it shouldn’t take you too long.’
Where to begin with the luminol? That was the question. It didn’t help that it was June, so not great in terms of making a room dark enough. But the kids’ rooms had blackout blinds, so they were as good a place to start as any, and the en suite didn’t have any windows at all so that would be another.
‘Let’s get this show on the road,’ he boomed, to nobody in particular.
It was about an hour later that he heard a shout from downstairs.
‘Jumbo, you need to see this.’ It was Phil, the technician helping Adam.
‘Two minutes and I’ll be with you, Phil,’ he shouted through the open door.
The luminol hadn’t revealed a trace of anything. All the bedrooms were now done; even the master bedroom, which fortunately had some very heavy curtains to block out the afternoon sunlight.
He thudded down the stairs, his heavy tread making them creak probably for the first time in their history, and stood in the doorway of the study.
‘What’ve you got, lads?’ he asked. Anybody under forty was a lad to Jumbo.
Adam pointed to the back of the bookcase.
‘This looks like just a normal plywood backing, but when we took the books out, we noticed one corner seemed loose so we gave it a bit of a tug. There’s a small space behind that’s been lined with wood to make a concealed area. It’s about thirty by forty centimetres and maybe eight centimetres deep. Unfortunately it’s empty, but nevertheless, a hidey hole. It looks as if the books in front have been moved recently too. There are faint dust marks where the books have been dragged to one side.’ Adam pointed to the marks. ‘Very recent, I’d say.’
‘Well done – all photographed and documented, I presume?’ he asked, already knowing the answer. ‘What the hell was he hiding in there, then? Pity he didn’t have his cameras going when he emptied it – that might have helped a bit. Anything of interest in the books?’
Adam shook his head.
‘Sorry, Jumbo. The only thing Phil and I noticed is that he seems to have a bit of a thing about Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. He’s got quite a lot of books about them, but not on any other serial killers. Strange to be only interested in the one, don’t you think?’
‘I presume you weren’t born and brought up in Manchester, lad. The moors murders isn’t a story that’s ever been allowed to die around here – if you’ll excuse the poor choice of words. With one kid never found, every person for miles around knows the whole gruesome tale. So, I’d like to say it was odd, but I don’t particularly think it is.’
He looked around, and could see that everything else seemed to be finished in this room. All the papers had been boxed up to be taken away, and Gil had already moved the computer.
‘How’s about we try to get this room dark, and let’s have a lookie with the luminol, shall we?’ he said.
The study had both Venetian blinds and curtains. It seemed that Robert didn’t want anybody to be able to look through the downstairs window into this room even in daylight.
While the guys were getting the room ready, Jumbo stepped back into the hallway and saw a couple of people walking downstairs, laden with boxes.
‘What have we got here, lads?’ he asked.
‘Stuff from the loft,’ one of them answered, definitely not a lad, but very difficult to tell in their coveralls. ‘There’s some clothes and other bits and pieces, but we thought this box might be interesting. It’s got loads of old papers and documents – seem to be scientific – and then there are all sorts of odds and ends too. A scarf, a picture frame, a pair of gloves, an old programme from a Manchester United match. But the box has “Dan” scrawled on it, and the name on the documents is Danush Jahander, so as he appears to be a person of interest I thought we should go through it properly.’
‘Good job.’ Jumbo beamed. ‘We’re going to check out the study for blood now; there’s nothing upstairs. Then we’ll move into the rest of the downstairs rooms. Catch you in a few minutes.’
Jumbo returned to the darkened room and prepared himself, pulling his mask into place. He looked around him through the shadows cast by a thin beam of light that was getting in through the partially opened door. That was okay – he needed to choose his spot, then he would close the door. He thought for a moment, and then kicked the door shut behind him, pointing his spray at the carpet in the corner of the room. Nothing. He tried another couple of likely spots. Again, no result.
He turned to face the door: six panelled and painted in white gloss. He sprayed, stopped, then sprayed some more. He
could feel his heart begin to hammer under his ribs.
‘Shit. We’ve got a hit.’ In the dark of the room, Jumbo pulled down his mask and stared at the door and wall, glowing blue from a height of close to six feet down to the ground.
*
Tom looked around the incident room and he could practically feel the adrenaline pumping through the bodies of this team. They had found blood – and a lot of it. According to Jumbo, the blood had been thoroughly cleaned up with bleach, but before cleaning it had soaked into the wall on either side of the door sufficiently to show a kind of spatter pattern, enough to suggest that this was an adult who had been attacked, not a child. It was too high and, from the shape of the drops, they could tell the blood was falling as it hit the wall, not rising. Jumbo said he would put money on it being arterial blood, and in his opinion there was too much for one person to lose and still be alive.
The clean-up job had been good, and bleach would have destroyed any and all DNA in the scrubbed areas. But in Jumbo’s experience, blood spatter like this spread droplets that were not easy to see with the naked eye, and he was confident that they would find a trace somewhere. Nobody ever managed to eradicate every single drop.
So much new information, but no idea where it was all heading. And still nobody had a clue where Robert had gone, or what he was doing for transport. And his mobile wasn’t giving them any clues either. He had used his credit cards before they had realised he was missing, and there had been no activity since. An all-ports warning had been issued, but nothing had come through yet. They were organising a press release, now, because Robert Brookes had to be tracked down.
Finding the blood had definitely had an impact on the team. In some cases, sadly it had raised their level of excitement. But for him it was with a sense of sorrow that he had to accept the fact that something terrible had happened in that room.
Tom Douglas Box Set Page 95