‘The flecks of paint found in Christie Walker’s clothing are without a doubt from a car, not a train,’ said the someone at the end of the phone. ‘I’ve compared it with the manufacturer’s database and it’s a DuPont Cayman green, a paint used on Ford Escorts up at Halewood from the early 1990s.’
‘That’s a long time span.’
‘The last car rolled off the production line up there in July 2000, so you’re looking for a car more than six years old. That should narrow it down for you. Also the top layer of paint was more loosely bound on some of the samples, so you’re looking for a car that’s had a partial re-spray.’
‘But basically we’re looking for a green, six-year-old Ford Escort.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Thanks.’ It was a starting point. At last something tangible to look for.
Mariner contacted the DVLA for a list of Ford Escorts registered in the Birmingham area, though it was only going to help them if the driver believed in tax and insurance, and there were plenty who didn’t. And the CCTV cameras in the car park of the Golden Cross were no help at all as they were out of commission.
‘It would help if we could pinpoint exactly where Christie was struck,’ Mariner said to Tony Knox. ‘To have killed her it must have been quite an impact. There must have been damage to the car so there must be some evidence of it. At least if we could establish what route she might have taken—’
‘And how do you propose we do that?’
‘By looking for anything connected with Christie.’
‘Like?’ The penny dropped and Knox screwed up his face in distaste. ‘You mean by looking for the vomit.’
‘It’s all we’ve got.’
Assembling a small team, they began working outwards from the pub, but in a short time it became clear that it was going to take a long time. Even aiming for the direction that Christie would have taken to get to Jimmy Bond’s house, they were very quickly presented with numerous alternative routes and each pavement was dappled with possible stains. The enormity of the task was just hitting home when Mariner’s mobile rang. It was CID. ‘We’ve had a call from a man who’s seen Christie’s shoe.’
‘Seen it?’ It seemed an odd way of phrasing it.
‘So he says, and it’s kind of in the area you’re looking at, between the Golden Cross and Jimmy Bond’s house. I said you’d go and talk to him.’
Knox and Mariner went immediately to Grange Road where Andrew Sawyer lived. Bordering on the university campus and once the home of manufacturing industries, in recent years the old factories had been torn down and student halls of residence erected in their place. Sawyer, it transpired, was a mature student, an academic, renting a flat in the university post-graduate accommodation. Even though his face said early thirties, he dressed like a middle-aged man in dark trousers, collar and tie, with a sleeveless pullover on top. Nor was his flat anything like any student accommodation Mariner had ever been into before, everything tidy and spotlessly clean. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I was just making one,’ Sawyer offered.
It was hours since they’d had a drink and Mariner’s throat was parched. ‘Thanks.’
Knox declined. Sawyer disappeared into the kitchen.
As they’d driven up, the street outside had been deserted, Sawyer seemingly the only resident in the block, a point that Mariner remarked on now.
‘Yes, most of the other students aren’t back yet after the summer break,’ Sawyer explained. ‘Give it a couple of weeks and it’ll be a different place.’
‘You must feel quite isolated here,’ Mariner called after him.
‘Not really, I like the peace. I’m working on my doctorate, ’ came the disembodied voice in reply. ‘It demands a high level of concentration.’
‘What’s your subject?’
‘The impact of electro-magnetic fields on planetary orbits.’
‘Oh.’ It was a real conversation killer.
Sawyer reappeared moments later carrying a tray with two mugs and a plate of chocolate digestives.
‘So, the shoe?’ Mariner asked, thanking him and taking one of the mugs.
‘I saw it lying on the pavement when I went to the library yesterday. I remembered thinking how strange, because it was a nice shoe and quite new. It’s amazing isn’t it, the number of times you see just an odd shoe lying in the road, but they’re usually old and worn out? During term time I’d have simply assumed that one of the undergraduates had lost it on the way home after a drunken night out. Then I saw the appeal on TV and recognised it; a blue and white striped canvas ballet shoe, with a buckle trim.’
Mariner was impressed with the level of detail. ‘And where is it now?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. When I realised it was the same shoe, I went out to fetch it, but it was gone.’
‘When was this?’
‘First thing this morning. I caught it on the breakfast news.’
But the first appeal had gone out yesterday evening, meaning that someone else could have seen it then, and returned to the scene to retrieve the shoe. Either that or they were dealing not with a genuine witness, but an attention-seeker, with a possible shoe fetish.
‘Can you take us to where you saw it?’ Mariner asked.
‘Of course.’ It was a squally day and on their way out Sawyer lifted an anorak off the hook in the hall. Mariner wouldn’t have expected anything else.
Sawyer took them back out on to the road, still eerily quiet, walking back towards the Bristol Road until they were about equidistant between a sharp right-hand bend at one end and the main road at the other. He looked in both directions to judge the distances, then concluded: ‘It was around here.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘I have a photographic memory. That was how I recognised the shoe when I saw it on TV.’
Debris crunched underfoot. It was glass, the thick glass that shields car headlights. It might just be enough to make Sawyer a credible witness. Mariner scooped some of it up into an evidence bag and he and Knox scoured the road for any traces of paint. SOCO would need to come and make a more thorough examination.
‘And you saw only the shoe here? There was nothing else?’
‘Like what?’
Mariner shrugged. ‘Any other personal belongings?’ He didn’t want to make any suggestions.
‘Not that I noticed.’
‘Have you been aware of any disturbances out here during the past few days?’ Mariner was careful not to lead Sawyer.
‘A couple of nights ago I must have dozed off in the chair, because I woke suddenly in the early hours. I thought I’d heard a noise but then realised it was just a car door slamming. It was pretty late, after midnight, so I did get up and have a look, but the car was just pulling away as I got to the window. It would have been about here I suppose.’
‘Did you see what make the car was, or what colour?’
‘I’m not very good with cars, but it was a smallish one and a dark colour. I think it might have been one of those hatchbacks.’
‘You didn’t happen to see the number plate?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
So much for the photographic memory. ‘Any idea which night this was?’
He thought hard. ‘It must have been Saturday, well, early Sunday morning really.’
‘Have you seen the car back here since then, say yesterday evening?’
‘No.’
‘Do you drive, Mr Sawyer?’
‘No. I ride a bicycle.’ No big surprise there either.
Before leaving Grange Road, Mariner walked again to the spot where the shoe had been.
‘The timing would be about right,’ Knox said. ‘The barmaid at the Golden Cross said Christie left at about midnight. The accident woke him up, driver jumps out of the car slams the door and/or the boot. By the time Sawyer gets to the window the car’s pulling away.’
‘I have a problem with the hit and run accident scenario though.’ Mariner was frowning.
�
��Which is?’
‘Look at the width of this pavement. There’s no need for Christie to even have been in the road.’
‘Unless she’d chosen to walk there. She was drunk, remember.’
‘But approaching this spot from either end a driver would have had to slow down, either to turn the corner into the street, or to round a sharp bend, and he wouldn’t by this point have picked up much speed. The street lights are new and there are plenty of them, and if it’s well-lit he would clearly see any pedestrian and would have time and space to swerve to avoid them. It makes no sense. And in any case, who would need to drive along here at night? Sawyer seems to be the only person living here. For Christie on foot it was an obvious shortcut through from the university campus to get up to Jimmy Bond’s house, but it’s not a through road for drivers. It doesn’t go anywhere.’
‘Joyriders?’
‘That’s a possibility, or if someone wanted to deliberately hurt her, it’d be a good place to do it.’
‘You think someone was following her?’
‘The route between the pub and the university is all public roads and would have been fairly busy late on a Saturday night, so too risky. But if the driver knew where Christie was going, he could have watched her walk on to the campus then driven round and waited for her to emerge on this side. With the students away this area’s like a ghost town. He could have reasonably expected no witnesses at all.’
‘He?’
‘Okay, it could have been “she” but whoever it was would need to be strong enough to lift Christie’s body and heave it over the bridge parapet.’
‘So why bother to move the body?’
‘Because eventually it would be found, along with the broken glass from his headlights and any other forensic evidence that might lead us to the killer. Having knocked her down, the first thing he’d want to do is dump the body away from the scene of the accident. It’s what, about a mile from here to the railway bridge? The only thing he failed to notice was that her shoe had come off. Fortunately we tipped him off with last night’s TV appeal, giving him time to come back and retrieve it.’
‘So what’s the motive?’
‘Where do we start? We come back to Jimmy Bond for a start off. Did he believe that Christie had shopped him, or is he just pissed off because she left him?’
‘He’s got a pretty firm alibi.’
‘I’ll bet he’s got some interesting contacts too, though. And what about this TV documentary Christie was going to do? I bet Trudy Barratt wouldn’t have been very happy about that. She wasn’t going to admit it to us, but the nursery has clearly suffered as a result of the abduction. A documentary rehashing and sensationalising Jessica’s abduction would have opened up old wounds and brought back all the adverse publicity for the nursery, especially if Marcella Turner’s involved. She’d make sure of it.’
‘How would Trudy Barratt have found out?’
‘She already knew a documentary was proposed, so maybe just by keeping a close watch on all her staff. Or Christie could have been using it to force a pay rise. Trudy Barratt told us that the heated meeting with Christie was about trying to keep her, and involved offering her more money. Perhaps she was being economical with the truth. Was Christie trying to blackmail the manager? It would explain why she was smiling when she came out of the office, and why she thought she would be able to afford a flat on the Bristol Road development.’
‘People like Trudy Barratt don’t go around killing though.’
‘She might if she’s desperate enough. We both know it happens. Jack and the Beanstalk is Trudy Barratt’s livelihood, and she’s already taken a battering. Then there’s this “other story” that Christie told the TV producer she had. We don’t know what that was. Maybe it’s something going on in the nursery.’
‘If it was anything at all. As the producer said, it could have been just a cynical ploy to screw more money out of the TV company.’
‘Christie didn’t call Jez Barclay about it until very late on Saturday night, after you stood her up.’
‘Thanks for the reminder.’
‘What I mean is, perhaps Christie had uncovered something illegal, something she thought you’d want to know about. When she couldn’t tell you about it she decided to go public instead.’
‘Or maybe this has nothing to do with me,’ Knox said. He preferred it that way.
‘We could do with talking to her friends again and find out if anyone else knew about her discussions with the TV company.’
Back at Granville Lane they were greeted by Charlie Glover who was almost beside himself.
‘You won’t believe this, boss. I went back to finish the house to house, and I’ve found a guy who remembers seeing a man going into the woods late one night last year. He says it was definitely around November the fifth because the fireworks had kept him awake. He assumed the bloke had gone into the woods for a slash, but he thought he might be carrying a bag of some sort and he went right into the woods and was gone for ages.’
‘That’s terrific,’ said Mariner, wondering how soon it would be before Glover realised how thin that was.
‘Yeah, only thing is, the description doesn’t match Alecsander Lucca. Lucca was short and stocky. According to this witness, the man going into the woods was tall and slim.’
‘But it’s something.’
‘Yeah, something.’
Mariner and Knox returned to his office to look again through Christie’s meagre belongings. ‘Shame she didn’t keep a diary,’ Mariner said, taking out the bank statements. Something fell out, a bright orange flyer that fluttered to the floor by Knox’s feet.
Knox picked it up. ‘What about this?’ He held up the flyer for Mariner to see. Fertility. New hope for childless couples. Telephone confidentially: . . .
Mariner read it.
‘Bond talked about wanting to settle down and start a family but, according to him, Christie wasn’t interested,’ Knox said.
‘And yet she came off the pill eight months ago. Perhaps Bond was lying. If they’d been trying unsuccessfully for a baby it’s not something he’d want to own up to. It’d put a nice big dent in his macho image, wouldn’t it?’
‘But Christie’s how old, twenty-four? Isn’t that a bit young for fertility treatment?’
‘Unless she or Bond had some specific problem that they knew would affect their chances. It would explain the clinic appointment last Tuesday.’
‘Given what Christie’s GP said it must have been Bond’s problem; his little swimmers not doing the business. He’s quite a bit older than her. It might explain why he let her go without a fight, too.’
‘Yeah, I doubt that Bond would be the type to want to dwell on that particular failing.’
‘It wouldn’t be something that he’d want broadcast either. Does that give him a further motive?’
‘To kill her?’
‘It’d be quite a humiliation, ’specially as he’s playing away as well. His bit on the side probably doesn’t know.’
But Mariner wasn’t so sure. ‘It’s a bit flimsy.’
Knox tried the number on the flyer. It was unobtainable.
‘Let’s see what else Christie was interested in.’ Mariner put a call through to IT, who were examining her computer. ‘You’re joking aren’t you? Give us five minutes at least.’ It was a further hour before they had a call back.
‘Is there anything?’
‘Well it’s a pretty new machine, so there’s not much on it, but if it’s any use, the Internet history list shows that she’d been looking at the local property market, some stuff about childcare and some adoption agencies, here and abroad.’
Knox waved the flyer. ‘It’s consistent. It’s all stuff you do if you want a baby and can’t conceive. If Christie was looking into adoption, it would indicate difficulties in that area too.’
‘Madonna and Angelina have done their bit to make overseas adoption fashionable and we saw how much Christie liked her celebrity magazines
. They’re full of that kind of stuff.’
Mariner was pensive. ‘It might be worth checking if Christie and Bond were known to the fertility unit up at the QE. I think I’ll have a wander up there.’
‘Okay.’
The north car park at the hospital looked oddly familiar, giving Mariner a sense of déjà vu on two counts. It was the car park they’d come to after the miscarriage when Anna had visited the consultant. It was also identical to the south car park, viewed in the hours of CCTV footage that had been running in the incident room just a couple of weeks before. Outside the multi-storey, he followed the pedestrian signs to the fertility department.
Decorated in subtle tones of grey and blue, it was like any other hospital division. Mariner approached the young woman behind the open reception desk and after identifying himself asked if they had any record of Jimmy Bond and/or Christie Walker. ‘Miss Walker may have had an appointment here last Tuesday at four o’clock,’ he added.
The girl checked her computer. ‘There’s no record of a Miss Walker or Mr Bond for last Tuesday,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and see if we have them on the system at all. I won’t keep you a moment.’
While he waited, Mariner perused the notice boards, hoping, though without reward, that he might see the orange flyer.
‘Hello. It’s Chief Inspector Mariner isn’t it?’ The woman who approached Mariner, inadvertently promoted him. Mariner returned her gaze without recognition, though there was something about the smile.
‘Sheila Fry,’ she reminded him.
Of course. Mentally retracing his steps he realised that he must be practically next door to the office responsible for administering the crèche.
‘You work in this department?’ he asked.
‘I’m a counsellor. But don’t worry, discretion is our watchword.’ She smiled knowingly and it occurred to Mariner that she thought he was here for personal reasons. He decided not to disabuse her.
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