‘And did he contact Olivia?’ Becky didn’t really want to interrupt, but Samir had gone very quiet at the end of the last sentence, and Becky had a mental image of his anger building.
‘My parents had been hurt enough, Inspector. Taking Jasmine to see them would have opened up old wounds that had started to heal. I told him he could do what he liked; he could return to Olivia if he must, and if he wanted to show Jasmine our country that was fine. But he was to take neither of them near my parents, and unless he agreed I wouldn’t give him the money.’
‘Was that the last time you saw him, Dr Jahander.’
‘It was, but I’ve spoken to him since. He was very distressed to find Liv was married, but was confident the marriage was a sham. I told him he had no right to destroy somebody else’s relationship, but he didn’t seem to care. The last time I spoke to him, he told me Liv was scared of what Robert would do if she left him. She’d been scared for some time, apparently – and he said she’d gone away to think in peace.’
‘And what was your brother planning to do about it, Dr Jahander?’
‘He was going to have it out with her husband. He was going to tell him that he and Liv were meant to be together, and it was time for the husband to step aside.’
‘And did it work?’ Becky was holding her breath. She was sure she knew what the answer was going to be.
‘I don’t know, Inspector. I haven’t heard from him since.’
*
Two hours with Philippa had done little to improve Tom’s mood, and he felt like he was back where he’d started that morning – grumpy.
Becky was looking at him, and he guessed she was trying to gauge whether to ask him how it went with the boss. He decided to save her the trouble.
‘Jumbo wants to bring in the ground radar to check over the terrace and the garden. That, amongst other things, is what we’ve been discussing, because Philippa agrees with him. I don’t. I think we should wait to see if we can get a match on the blood first.’
‘Why?’ Becky asked. ‘Surely we need to know if there are any bodies under there as soon as possible, especially given that the neighbours say that Robert Brookes has spent the entire spring building that terrace, and only finished it just before he buggered off to Newcastle.’
Tom scratched his head. ‘Yes, of course. I know that, but I can’t help thinking it might be a waste of time and money.’
‘On what basis? Look, I’m sorry to disagree with you, Tom, but we have no idea who died there. We don’t know if Olivia and the children are safe, and whoever was killed, we’ve no idea why.’
It seemed nobody agreed with him. The arguments that Philippa had put forward were perfectly valid. They shouldn’t automatically assume it was Robert who had killed somebody in that room; Olivia could be the culprit – she could have murdered somebody and run away. But they were wrong, and Tom knew it. When did gut instinct cease to have any validity?
Becky leaned forwards and rested her forearms on the desk. Her cheeks finally had some colour in them and her eyes were sparkling. She was totally engrossed in the case, and it seemed to have driven out the demons she had been carrying with her.
‘All we know is that somebody using Olivia’s email address made contact with Robert from somewhere on Alderney last week,’ she said, speaking quickly and quietly. ‘But we only have Robert’s word that it was Olivia on the other end of that call, and I don’t set much store by that. Do you? Robert could equally well have a mistress or an accomplice who picked up his call. We’ve no evidence that Olivia is there at all. Or anywhere else, for that matter. He could have killed her two weeks ago. And the children. Just because the blood in his study isn’t hers, it doesn’t actually mean she’s not already dead, does it?’
Tom held his hands up, palms outwards towards Becky.
‘Whoa, whoa – I believe you.’ Tom found himself smiling at her vehemence. ‘Even though the blood isn’t hers, her body could still be there somewhere – I know that – or the body of whichever poor bugger died there, for that matter. Robert could have killed her and possibly the children, and all this video footage and FaceTime nonsense could be part of his very elaborate cover-up. But if she’s already dead and we don’t have a bloody clue where Robert is, I just thought we could hang on until we’ve heard back from the Alderney police.’
‘Ah,’ Becky leaned back and screwed her face up in mock pain. ‘Bit of a problem there, I’m sorry to say.’
Tom closed his eyes and shook his head. It was about time something went their way on this case. He looked at Becky and raised his eyebrows. She squirmed a little, but she was going to have to tell him.
‘Ryan spoke to a very helpful sergeant on the island, and asked him if he could identify any newcomers – people who had arrived there in the past two to three weeks. He forgot to mention that Olivia and the children could have been there at Easter, or possibly even last October. I had to call them back and explain. I have to say the sergeant wasn’t too impressed when I told him that unfortunately we need to spread the net a little wider in terms of timescale and they’re going to have to go through the process all over again. They were going to check the schools, but the trick with the home schooling has probably put the kibosh on that. We’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.’
Somebody here is playing with us. The idea wouldn’t let go, and Tom realised that this was the cause of his irritation. Taking the children out of school made perfect sense if Olivia wanted to disappear. But it was equally credible if Robert had decided to abduct them all and keep them prisoner, or kill them.
The double doors to the incident room burst open, just wide enough for the huge body of Jumbo to enter. Tom was surprised to see him, given that they usually got their reports by email or phone. He looked for Jumbo’s wide, infectious grin – just what he needed to cheer him up – but it wasn’t there.
Tom stood up and shook Jumbo’s giant hand. ‘To what do we owe this honour, Jumbo?’
Jumbo’s mouth was set in a grim line, and there were deep furrows between his eyebrows.
‘I like to be right, Tom. You know that. But sometimes, particularly when it involves a murder that until now we weren’t sure about, it doesn’t feel so good.’
‘Sit, Jumbo. Tell us what you know.’
Jumbo grabbed Tom’s chair, which creaked a little as he squashed himself into it. Becky was about to offer Tom hers, but he waved her away and perched on the desk, one foot on the floor and one leg swinging in a casual style that belied his true feelings. Jumbo leaned forwards and clasped his hands, turning his head from one to the other, as if to decide whether they were ready for this.
‘Okay – first things first. I had the blood samples rushed through for DNA analysis, as you know. The tests showed the blood was from a male, but that’s all. We checked against the two little boys – we picked up various items of theirs around the house to test against. I’m very relieved to say they came up negative. We also checked against Robert Brookes, in case he was the victim rather than the perp. Again, negative.’
‘Pretty much as we expected,’ Tom said, but he could see from Jumbo’s face that there was more.
‘Do you remember I told you we’d found an old sealed box in the attic? It was mainly papers covered in handwriting, but I couldn’t make any sense out of it. Lots of complex calculations, printouts from a computer and so on. We’ve had somebody look at them. We don’t believe they’re relevant to our investigation, but we’ll pass them over to you. However, the box was marked “Dan” and the name on the top of the documents is Danush Jahander. At the bottom of the box we found a few odds and ends belonging to him – some with his name on, some just oddments. It was as if somebody had grabbed everything of his in their arms,’ Jumbo demonstrated by spreading his arms and then pulling them to his chest, ‘and thrown it all in,’ he said, flinging his arms wide.
Tom glanced at Becky. He knew what was coming, and from Becky’s expression, so did she.
‘In the box we fo
und a large pair of men’s leather gloves,’ Jumbo continued, ‘fairly battered and well worn, originating from a company in Iran. We managed to extract some DNA and we got a match. The DNA from the gloves is a match to the blood we found in the study. It looks like the person who died there was Danush Jahander.’
Even though he had been expecting Jumbo to say this once he had mentioned the box, Tom paused for a moment to think about this young man who had been so central to the enquiry, but whom Tom had never met. He had been concerned about Danush since they had found out he was back in touch with Olivia and had used Sophie’s phone to set up a meeting with Robert. Now it was confirmed that the blood in the study belonged to him, it meant they had to open up a whole new channel of investigation.
‘Thanks, Jumbo,’ Tom said quietly. ‘Are you certain there was enough blood spilled in that room for a person to have died?’
‘It had been cleaned up, so I can’t tell you for sure how thick the blood was lying. But it covered a wide area and I’m sure it was arterial blood. So yes. Somebody died in that room.’ He looked down at his hands, clasped between his knees, and paused for a second as if in silent acknowledgement of a life lost. Taking a breath, he looked up and continued. ‘There’s more. We took both cars if you remember, and inside the boot of Robert’s car we found traces of blood – and it matched the blood in the study.’
Becky frowned. ‘If Jahander had bled that much, wouldn’t there have been more than a trace?’
Jumbo shook his big head. ‘Not necessarily. If Brookes had lined his car boot well with plastic – a waterproof cover for some garden furniture maybe or even good-quality bin liners – it would have been okay. My guess is that the body bled out in the study, based on the spatter pattern. We’ll get some more feedback on that, but I’m still backing a slashed carotid. Your PC spotted that a sheet was missing from the bed, and there were cotton fibres found in the boot as well. They’re a match with the other bed linen in the master bedroom.’
‘Shit,’ Tom muttered. If the body had been taken from the house, it could be absolutely anywhere now. But something else was bothering him.
‘We know Brookes returned to his home on Wednesday night, or the early hours of Thursday morning to be precise. We can only assume he had agreed to meet Jahander there, expecting Olivia to be home too. Maybe he wanted a showdown between all three of them, and in theory she would have been back from holiday by then. Or maybe Jahander had said that he was going to see Olivia to persuade her to leave with him, and Brookes went to make sure that didn’t happen.’
Tom could see from Becky’s eyes that not only was she following him, she was probably ahead of him.
‘So Robert came back to meet Danush and killed him,’ she said.
‘Danush Jahander died in that study,’ Tom said. ‘There’s evidence that he was then transported in the boot of Robert’s car, and we mustn’t forget the missing knife, which I suspect we’ll never find. Robert was back in Newcastle for the first morning conference session. The dog walker saw him leaving home at five fifteen that morning, so Robert didn’t have enough time to faff about on back roads driving back to Newcastle.’
‘I’ll get a map and check out his likely route,’ Becky said.
Tom shook his head.
‘No need, Becky. I know it well. Given the approximate time he drove off from his house and the time his car was back in the garage in Newcastle, he would have had to go the most direct route. He’d have taken the M60 to the M62 to get him across the Pennines, and then up the A1.’
‘Well, bugger me,’ Jumbo mumbled. Tom waited expectantly for him to say more. ‘What if I told you that our friend Robert had a bit of an obsession with Myra Hindley and Ian Brady?’
Tom’s eyes met Jumbo’s and no words were necessary. Becky was staring from one to the other with a quizzical expression.
‘Come on, Becky, where’s the obvious place just off the M62 that’s totally deserted in the early hours of the morning – the perfect spot to dump a body?’ Jumbo asked.
As a young southerner, it was clearly taking Becky a little longer than Tom and Jumbo to get it.
‘Saddleworth Moor, Becky,’ Tom said, putting her out of her misery. ‘Back in the sixties, Brady and Hindley killed five kids, and four of them were buried on the moor, although one has never been found.’
‘Of course. Sorry, I didn’t make the connection,’ Becky said, flushing a little. ‘But would he have had time to dig?’
Tom shook his head. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re going to say you found a tell-tale spade encrusted with peat while you were searching, Jumbo?’
Jumbo gave him a look.
‘I didn’t think so.’ Tom pushed himself off the desk and stood up, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets.
‘You’d better take your pick of the reservoirs then,’ he said, ‘because we certainly can’t drag them all.’
44
Sitting here on my beach watching my children play, I feel a small burst of happiness, and I realise it’s the first time I have felt free to be happy since I lost Dan and two months later, my mum and dad.
Accepting my parents’ death was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I can remember ranting and raving at the police inspector who came to the scene. The police tried to explain what had happened. They told me it would have been a very peaceful way to die.
But they were wrong about it all. They had to be.
They told me there was a carbon monoxide monitor in the house, but that unfortunately there were no batteries in it. Perhaps my father had taken them out to replace them, and just forgotten?
This didn't make any sense to me at all. My dad kept spares of every size of battery known to man. He was obsessive about stuff like that. I took the inspector and showed him the drawer where they were kept. Why would Dad not have replaced the bloody battery?
The police weren’t listening.
I can remember that once the fumes were gone and the house was considered safe, a kind woman police officer had taken Jasmine into the spare bedroom and laid her on the new activity mat my parents had bought her as a ‘welcome to your new home’ present.
And then my phone had rung. I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t speak to anybody. I didn’t know if I was capable of uttering the words: ‘My parents are both dead.’ I was sure every syllable would stick like glue to the roof of my mouth.
The inspector had taken the mobile from me and answered the call. I don’t know what he said, but when he gave me the phone back I remember him saying, ‘Robert Brookes says he’s coming.’ I had forgotten all about Robert. He was waiting for me at the flat. When my dad hadn’t turned up with the van he’d hired, Robert had suggested that I drive to their house to see what was keeping him. I was supposed to call Robert to let him know when I’d be back.
I remember feeling a sense of relief that somebody other than the police knew what was going on. The news was now outside of those four walls, and it seemed somehow to make it more real. And I was glad Robert was aware of what had happened. I didn’t know him well, but since he’d first arrived to look around the flat – the very day it went on the market – he had been kind to me. I immediately felt he was strong and capable. I couldn’t wait for him to come and help relieve me of some of this burden.
It seemed to take forever for him to get there, but he has told me since then that he did the journey in record time. By the time he arrived, the crime scene team were crawling all over the place, but they weren’t turning up anything surprising. There was no sign of forced entry and no indication, other than the rather paltry evidence of the missing batteries, of foul play.
A specialist gas engineer came to take a look at the boiler, and he was quick to point out one of the problems. He explained about the importance of an air vent to let cold fresh air in to replace the gases that would be rising up the chimney. For once, I’d snapped out of my zombie-like state, and was prepared to listen. I needed to understand this.
<
br /> When he pointed out that the air vent coming into the house was blocked with an old towel, I nearly went ballistic.
‘There’s no way,’ I shouted repeatedly. ‘Why would he do that?’
The engineer simply pointed out that as far as he could see, every window in the house was triple-glazed and every door, including the internal doors, had draught excluders on them. He asked if my father was a bit obsessive about keeping bills low, and I had to admit that he was. The cold air vent would have been against everything my father was working towards in his draught-free environment. But would he be so stupid?
They had all looked at me sadly, and Robert had put his arm round my shoulders. I remember shaking him off with frustration; I didn’t want comfort. I wanted somebody to believe me.
Only it wasn’t just the air vent, apparently. There was a damaged joint on the flue of the, admittedly old, boiler. The toxic gases had been escaping from there. They made it sound like it was all my father’s fault.
I remember my legs giving way as a black fog engulfed me. Somebody caught me and helped me to a sofa – I can’t remember who – but I fought my way back from total collapse because somehow I had to convince the police they were wrong.
At the time, I thanked God for Robert, even though I didn’t want hugs and comfort from him. It wasn’t his fault the police were being so completely useless. Robert was the only person who kept me sane, and even in the midst of such chaos, he reminded me to feed Jasmine.
When I had run out of arguments, he was the one who apologised on my behalf to the police. I didn’t want him to, but yelling at them wasn’t achieving anything. I had to accept there was no evidence, and anyway I couldn’t think of a single person who would want my parents dead.
Tom Douglas Box Set Page 103