Let the Dead Speak

by Jane Casey

  ‘I don’t—’ She put a hand to her head. ‘I need coffee.’

  ‘I can make you coffee,’ he said. ‘You just sit yourself down in here.’

  Yes, why don’t you sit down in the room full of cushions rather than the room full of knives. I winked at Pettifer over the top of Eleanor’s head and steered her into the living room. The girls followed and sat down at the very end of the sofa, huddled together like birds on a wire. Eleanor collapsed into an armchair as if her legs had given way. I could hear footsteps upstairs, people moving around, the low rumble of conversations.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Shocked,’ Eleanor mumbled.

  ‘We’ll get you that coffee. Chloe? Bethany? Do you want anything?’

  A double headshake. I had the impression that they were still holding hands but I couldn’t quite see. And was that strange, anyway? I tried to remember how I’d been with my friends when I was a teenager and came up blank.

  That feeling – coming up blank – was going to become very familiar to me over the next couple of hours as I went through Oliver Norris’s house. Searching was one of my specialities, but even I couldn’t find anything if there was nothing to find in the first place. I let the girls and Eleanor get dressed once we had finished with their bedrooms, mainly so I could search Oliver’s desk in peace. It was in a corner of the living room, set into an alcove beside the chimney breast, with shelves above it and a small filing cabinet wedged underneath it. There was barely room for my legs under the desk when I sat in the chair and I wondered how he managed. With some difficulty I levered out the drawers of the filing cabinet (unlocked, I noted) and flicked through each one. Insurance documents, bills, the family’s passports, a tax return that made me whistle and showed there was decent money in pushing God … Nothing that made me sit up. I turned my attention to the shelves, lifting down books so I could flick through the pages. They had titles like Bound Together: A United Church and The Spirit-Filled Vessel: A Voyage into Faith. Page-turners, I was sure.

  As I lifted down the last two, I saw there was a box on the shelf, slightly dog-eared and crushed from being hidden behind the books. A dozen condoms, the same brand as the ones I’d found in Kate Emery’s and Harold Lowe’s houses. I was peering into the box to discover there were only two left when footsteps made me twist around. Eleanor, who had pulled herself together enough to brush her hair as well as getting dressed.

  My first instinct was to hide the box, but I thought better of it.

  ‘Do you recognise this, Mrs Norris?’

  She looked at it, uninterested. ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘I can read.’

  OK then. ‘Do you know how it came to be on this shelf?’

  ‘No.’ She looked at me levelly, her face impassive.

  ‘Who uses this desk?’

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘Anyone else? Your daughter, maybe?’

  ‘No. Just Ollie.’

  ‘Do you ever look on these shelves, or in the drawers?’

  ‘Ollie looks after all our affairs. I don’t need to. I cook and clean and take care of Bethany. Those are my responsibilities.’ She gestured. ‘These are his.’

  ‘And – sorry if this is an intrusive question – do you use condoms with your husband?’

  She flushed. ‘It is intrusive and I’m not going to answer you.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen these before. And you didn’t buy them.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you wondering where they came from?’

  ‘I don’t wonder about my husband. I trust him.’ She said it as if she expected me to argue the point.

  ‘May I ask Bethany about them?’

  ‘About what?’ Bethany slid around the door with such speed I thought she had been there for a while. ‘Condoms? Where did you find them?’

  ‘How did you know what they are?’

  Bethany gave her mother a withering look. ‘I shop in Boots. I’ve seen plenty of them. Ribbed. Multi-coloured. Extra-large— Ow!’

  Eleanor had grabbed her daughter’s arm. ‘Are they yours?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Mrs Norris, please.’ Or I’m going to have to arrest you for ABH on your daughter …

  She got the message and let go. Bethany rubbed her arm, wounded. ‘How could you even think they’d be mine?’

  ‘I’m going to need to take the box away for forensic examination,’ I said. ‘So if you do know anything about them, Bethany, now would be the ideal time to say.’

  ‘I told you. I don’t.’ She turned away. I wondered if I was imagining that she looked uneasy.

  ‘We’re going to need to take the car away too.’

  ‘But you already checked it,’ Eleanor protested.

  ‘They gave it the once-over, but now they want to have another look at it.’ Look at, in this context, meaning take apart.

  ‘You know, I don’t understand any of this,’ Eleanor said. ‘Why you would want to question Morgan about Kate, why you’re asking questions about some old condoms, for God’s sake – why you’re even here. It’s ridiculous to think that Ollie had anything to do with her disappearance, and Morgan never even spoke to her.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘I think so.’ Eleanor wrapped her cardigan around herself and shivered. ‘I mean, I thought I was. Now I’m not sure about anything.’

  Join the club. It took a lot of self-control to think it and not say it.

  15

  It was quiet in the office. I tracked Una Burt to the meeting room where she was monitoring the live feed of Derwent’s interview with Oliver Norris. I’d already called her with the bad news: with the exception of the condoms, we’d found nothing much of interest in Norris’s house.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘It’s interesting,’ she said, muting the sound. On the screen, Norris was sitting with his legs crossed, his arms folded, his entire demeanour screaming that he was offended. Derwent was leaning across the table, talking. The tilt of his head told me he was making trouble. ‘I don’t think they’re going to be sending each other Christmas cards.’

  I grinned. ‘There’s a shock. What about Morgan?’

  ‘He’s in Interview 2.’ Burt frowned. ‘Tricky customer, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. He seemed pleasant enough whenever I spoke to him.’

  ‘He’s been asking if you’re going to interview him.’

  I had been flicking through my notes but now I stopped. ‘And?’

  ‘I think you should.’

  I relaxed a little. ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘I don’t know why he’s particularly interested in speaking to you, but I know you and he doesn’t. You’re a good interviewer. If he underestimates you, so much the better.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

  Burt looked sideways at me. ‘You weren’t expecting me to say that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re doing a good job.’ She said it stiffly, as if it didn’t come naturally to her to praise anyone, but she said it. Even if it was only what she’d learned on her most recent management course, I’d take it.

  I walked into Interview Room 2 behind Chris Pettifer, whose height and general bulk made the room feel smaller. Morgan was staring up at him with undisguised disappointment when I stepped into view.

  His face lit up. ‘There you are. I’ve been wondering when someone sensible was going to turn up.’

  I ignored that. ‘Did you want a solicitor to be present?’

  ‘I don’t need one.’

  ‘I’m going to ask you again when I start the interview, OK?’

  ‘For the benefit of the tape.’ He had been leaning back on his chair so the front legs were off the ground. He let it slam back down with a thud and winced. ‘Sorry. That was a bit loud, wasn’t it? A bit over-dramatic.’

  I put some evidence bags on th
e floor beside my chair then sat down. Beside me, Pettifer put a folder on the table and flipped open a notebook.

  ‘Taking notes too? Very thorough.’ Morgan sat up, trying to read upside down. Pettifer tilted the notebook so he couldn’t quite see the page. ‘You’re going to have to forgive me for being curious about all of this. It’s my first run-in with a murder investigation.’ His eyes were bright, his expression artless.

  ‘Most people we meet aren’t all that familiar with murder investigations,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t really see why I’ve been dragged into this one.’ He pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. ‘The solicitor thing was to wind up Ollie. He’s not going to be enjoying this one bit.’

  ‘And you are?’ Pettifer growled.

  ‘Aspects of it.’ Morgan’s eyes stayed on me as he said it. It wasn’t the first time an interviewee had tried to flirt with me and I was more than capable of ignoring it. I checked the tape recorder was properly set up and started it. The CCTV in the room would have been recording from the moment Morgan walked in; if he claimed we’d intimidated him or tortured him there would be evidence to show that we hadn’t done anything of the kind. But the tape was our evidence. The tape transcripts were used in court, if a case got that far. I’d never yet had to feel embarrassed when reading out something I’d said in an interview and this was going to be no different, I told myself.

  I read out the usual preamble, stating who we were and where we were, the time, the details that anchored our conversation in the investigation. Morgan listened politely.

  ‘Do you know why we wanted to speak with you?’

  ‘I don’t have the foggiest idea.’ His voice was totally sincere. There was no hint of tension in his body, in the carriage of his head, in his bright blue eyes. He looked about as stressed as if we were embarking on a meditation exercise.

  ‘We’re investigating the murder of Kate Emery. Do you know who that is?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘What was your relationship to Mrs Emery?’

  He shifted in his chair. ‘Um – temporary neighbour. I’ve been living nearby for the past couple of months.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to her?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He frowned, looking down, taking his time about it. ‘I’d remember, wouldn’t I? I was vaguely aware of her because her daughter spends half her life in my brother’s house. She’s friends with my niece, Bethany. So I knew who she was and what she looked like. Not that I’d have recognised her from the photograph of her you released to the media. Couldn’t you have done a bit better?’

  The answer was no, we couldn’t. I had scoured the house for more recent, clearer pictures, and came up empty-handed. Single mothers didn’t really have anyone to take pictures of them. Colin Vale had diligently tracked her across various shop CCTV systems and got some smudgy images of a thinnish, smallish woman in a tracksuit, her hair hidden by a beanie cap, running errands.

  ‘It could be her. It could be your nan,’ Derwent had said, unimpressed, and Colin had taken offence, but Derwent hadn’t been wrong.

  ‘What made her different in real life?’ I asked now. ‘Why wouldn’t you have recognised her from the image we have.’

  ‘Um … what’s the etiquette on talking about how attractive murder victims were?’

  I waited.

  He sighed. ‘OK. She was attractive and she knew it. Very nice figure. Nice smile. Bit of a glad eye. You can always tell when women look at you when you’re walking towards them. The ones who aren’t interested don’t look, or half-look, or look away straight away. The shy ones look down. The ones who are keen make eye contact, and keep looking.’

  Or they need a new glasses prescription and they’re wondering if they should recognise you, I thought. Or they’re wondering if you’re going to grab them, pull them into an alleyway and rape them. But OK, imagine it’s because they want to shag you.

  Oblivious to what I was thinking, Morgan Norris smiled. ‘Whenever I walked past her, Kate kept looking.’

  ‘And you never spoke to her.’

  ‘I’m not looking for a relationship at the moment. Nursing a broken heart.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t really feel as if I have a lot to offer anyone. No job prospects and no income, living in my dear brother’s house, one step away from being on the streets – not a catch, am I?’

  ‘Were you ever in her house?’ I asked, ignoring the invitation to make him feel better. Find someone else to dry your tears.

  ‘What, burgling it?’ He laughed. ‘I didn’t know her, so no. I was never in her house.’

  ‘You knew Chloe, her daughter,’ Pettifer said.

  ‘Yeah, I did. I do. I mean, I know her well enough to have a brief conversation with her, when she’s not locked away with Bethany, scheming. The two of them stay in Bethany’s room most of the time. I didn’t realise for weeks that Chloe was a bit special because I never heard her say anything except hello and thank you and goodbye.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t have been in Kate Emery’s house for any reason.’

  ‘No. I said no.’ He looked from Pettifer to me. ‘Why?’

  ‘Our crime scene examiners spent a lot of time in Kate’s house looking for trace evidence, fingerprints, DNA – anything that could help us find whoever harmed Kate.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that. And I know that you took my DNA and my fingerprints. I cooperated fully because I had nothing to hide. If you found something, it’s a mistake. Cross contamination. Something of mine that Chloe took home by accident.’

  ‘If it was trace evidence, you could be right,’ I said. ‘But it’s not.’

  ‘What is it?’ The laidback amusement was gone. He was alert and wary now.

  I took the folder Pettifer had brought into the room. For the benefit of the tape, I said, ‘I’m showing Mr Norris a folder containing a series of photographs.’

  ‘What’s this?’ He leaned forward. ‘Fingerprints?’

  I let him leaf through the pictures which showed a wooden surface and the fingerprints they had recovered.

  ‘Those images are from Kate Emery’s bedroom,’ I said. ‘That’s the back of the headboard of her bed. The report suggests that the person who left those fingerprints had put his hand on the top of the headboard, curling his fingers over the top. And those fingerprints are a match to yours. Your right hand, to be specific.’

  He looked at the images for a long time, considering his response. The fingers in question were drumming lightly on the surface of the table. Eventually he looked up. ‘Is it worth telling you I helped her to move the bed once?’

  ‘Not if it’s not true.’

  He opened his mouth to say something and I held up my hand. ‘Before you say anything, you should know that, from the angle, we are sure that you were in the centre of the bed, facing downwards. And then, of course, they did find skin cells and body fluids there that matched Kate’s DNA. The reason you left fingerprints was because you had touched her intimately.’

  ‘And in English?’

  ‘Your fingers had been in or near her vagina,’ I said. Clear enough for you?

  Very slowly, he closed the folder and leaned back in his chair. ‘OK. Should we start this again?’

  ‘I would like you to tell me the truth about your relationship with Kate,’ I said evenly.

  ‘You could have given me a heads-up before I started lying.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have known better than to try and trick you. I didn’t think there was anything to link us. No one knew about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘We had a fling.’ He managed a rueful smile. ‘I wouldn’t even call it a fling, actually. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. A one-off. I’d been for a run and I was on my way back, sweating like a horse, tired – I mean, not at my best. She called me in. She said there was a spider in her bathroom and Chloe was away and she was terrified. So of course, like an idiot, I run up the stairs to
deal with the big bad spider. Only I was the one who got caught.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She – well, she seduced me. She was wearing a shirt with buttons on it and most of them were undone. She had the most amazing tits. Sorry,’ he said, seeing the expression on my face. ‘I couldn’t help noticing. I was meant to notice them. I was in running shorts and there’s not much you can hide in them. It had been a while since I’d been with someone and I was horny and she took advantage of that.’

  ‘You didn’t want to have sex with her.’

  ‘No, I did. I mean, I did at that moment. I hadn’t been planning it. And I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen that way if I had been planning it, because I’d just run six miles and I wasn’t able to give it my best shot.’ A sheepish look at Pettifer. ‘I wasn’t surprised she didn’t invite me round again, if you know what I mean.’

  Pettifer’s face was about as expressive as a slab of granite. For the first time, Norris looked uneasy.

  ‘Tell me what happened after you had sex. Did you stay?’

  ‘No. No way. I had a shower and got dressed again and left.’

  ‘Where did you shower?’

  ‘Downstairs. There’s a shower room near the kitchen. She told me I could use it when I asked. She wanted to use her bathroom. I think she was a bit pissed off and she wanted me out of her life.’

  Of course it had been downstairs, where Kate’s killer had washed away the blood. Of course he had found a way to put himself there, using the shower. An explanation for any evidence we found. Something a barrister could use to create doubt in the minds of a jury, if he ended up in the dock.

  ‘When you say she was pissed off with you, what do you mean?’

  ‘I mean she was disappointed in my performance. And I think I offended her by saying something I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘That we shouldn’t have done it. I blurted it out. I was – well, I was still inside her at the time.’ He winced. ‘If I’d known I was going to have to recount the whole experience to the police I would have handled things differently.’

  I was still stuck on what he’d said. ‘Why did you say you shouldn’t have done it? You were both single, both consenting adults.’