****
Ten Miles Outside Rownton
It always took Arthur Norris a long time to get anywhere, partly because he couldn’t drive as fast as he’d once been able to, and partly because he often got lost. The first was due to age slowing his thought processes and reactions, and the second to the appalling sense of direction he’d had since youth that meant as soon as he left a motorway and had to make decisions whether to turn left or right, he invariably viewed the map at the wrong angle and ended up returning the way that he’d come.
But even without those impediments, whether the pensioner had covered the eighty miles from Belfast to Rownton Village in one hour or the three that it had actually taken him, it wouldn’t have helped him in his mission to ensure that Rio Reynolds made it to her radio interview, because the young woman had been in police custody since the night before. Well, actually an interview that had morphed into custody when she’d failed to comply with Aidan’s polite requests the evening before not to attend the radio slot and had taken a swing at Ryan and connected with his eye, giving the sergeant a shiner that would make him the centre of attention and jokes for at least a week to come.
So it was that while Hector McDonagh was bemoaning the replacement of his rather inelegant but to the point ‘SUICIDAL BUILDER’S MISTRESS ON THEIR NIGHTS OF SIN’ headline with a eulogy to the giant turnip that had won the summer before’s village fete, said so-called builder’s mistress was stewing noisily in a cell in the cop shop next door, and Derek Morrow’s wife and family were still mourning him as the faithful man that he had actually been.
When a battered looking Ryan and his boss returned to the station that morning after a late breakfast, they were greeted by a smirk from an obviously amused W.P.C. and a scowl from her far less amused boss. As Mickey O’Hare stepped out from behind his custody desk to greet them, the niceties of, “Good Morning” and, “Good Day” were abandoned in favour of, “When the hell can I let that banshee go?”
Aidan countered with another question. “Have Derek Morrow’s wife and family been in yet?”
“Yes. They came to collect the letters he left and now they’ve gone to the morgue at Omagh to view the body. It took the undertaker a fair bit of time to tidy him up after his PM, what with the hole in his head and all.”
Ryan grimaced at the image, empathising with the pain that Morrow must have felt from the shot. The ache in his own head from being punched was bad enough.
Aidan was still on the practicalities of ensuring that the Morrows and Rio Reynolds never met.
“Are you expecting them back here?”
“Nope. Morrow’s home was ten miles north in Cooneen so I expect they’ll bury him from there.”
The D.C.I. rubbed his hands together cheerfully.
“Right then. There’s no risk of them bumping into Ms Reynolds and we’ve nipped her print and radio antics in the bud. We had to get an injunction for the second for the duration of our case, but by the time it’s finished she’ll be old news and no-one will be interested in her lies.” He gestured towards the cells. “If you get her into the interview room we can question her now and let her go.”
O’Hare gave a sigh of relief. “Thanks be to God for that! I’ve three aspirin in me already this morning because of the noise she’s been making.” He turned on his heel eagerly, grabbing a set of keys from behind the desk as he passed. “Come on then if you’re coming. She doesn’t want a brief, and anyway Hector’s the only one local and I don’t think he’d oblige.”
“He’s a solicitor too?”
“It’s the country. We all turn our hands to a lot of things.”
A minute later a screeching Rio Reynolds, who was exposing more flesh than seemed decent at any hour of the day, was seated in the station’s small interview room, only pausing her Human Rights’ rant long enough to demand a cup of tea.
Ryan gazed pleadingly at O’Hare as he rushed to escape. “And two for us, please.”
Muttering expletives, the custody sergeant slammed the door hard behind him, and the detectives turned their eyes to the young woman opposite, considering her as intently as she was now considering them.
Rio, so named because her mother had developed a retro obsession with the eighties’ Duran Duran song of the same name while carrying her rather than that she’d spent her pregnancy gazing into the nearest river, spoke first and with a taunt that sounded even nastier than its content, courtesy of her Belfast twang.
“Nice shiner, copper.”
Ryan gave a grunt.
“I’m nat sorry I gave it you, pig. You shudn’t have stopped me gettin’ tee my radio show. Nye I’ll have to dee it tomorrow an’ I wuz supposed tee work.”
Aidan rested back in his seat and crossed his arms. “You won’t be giving a radio interview about Mister Morrow. Not tomorrow or any other day.”
It sparked a glare of indignation and some crossed arms of her own, which considering the cut of her top created a rather unfortunate look.
“You can’t stap me!”
“Oh yes we can. We’ve got an injunction to prevent it, and if you try to publicise your story in some other way we’ll arrest you again, this time on a charge of slander.”
Her kohl-lined eyes widened. “Slander! What’s that?”
Aidan decided to keep it simple. “Saying something that you shouldn’t.”
The response was predictable. “I can say anythin’ I like!”
Ryan volunteered more detail. “Actually you can’t, Ms Reynolds, not if it’s false and damages Mister Morrow’s reputation, which it will.”
Her face tightened to match her arms. “It’s nat false, it’s true!”
Aidan motioned her on. “Prove it then. We’ve seen the interview you gave the editor of the Recorder, and in it you stated that you and Derek Morrow had been lovers for months. If that’s the case then you should have texts, cards or presents from Mister Morrow. And there should be people who can confirm seeing the two of you together; restaurant staff and the like. Give us some of that if you want us to believe you.”
Her fists bashed the table as she spat back at him.
“We stayed indoors! We didn’t want tee go out,’ cos we wuz gettin’ busy. If you know what I mean, like.”
She shot the D.C.I. what was obviously meant to be a seductive look but ended up as a cartoon version of the same.
“My honey didn’t want us bein’ seen together, in case someone told his old bag af a wife.”
Honey indeed.
The words made Ryan snort derisively. “I’ve seen a photo of Derek Morrow and he was sixty, overweight and balding, so I think if he’d been dating a twenty-five-year-old he would have boasted about it to someone, don’t you? Who might that have been, Ms Reynolds?”
This time they were treated to a shrug.
“You’re telling us that you don’t know the name of any of his friends?”
“I didn’t say that!” After a moment chewing her lower lip her fake-lashed eyes widened triumphantly. “Jimmy! Yeh, Jimmy that he works with. He’s Derek’s mate.”
She’d been briefed well.
They would be interviewing Jimmy Rushton, Morrow’s deputy, later, so the story could be easily checked.
“Good. We’ll ask Mister Rushton when we’re interviewing him.”
The girl paled slightly beneath her layers of fake tan.
“Yeh, well, he’ll probably lie. Jealous af my honey an’ me, he wuz. Like all af them.”
Aidan stepped in again. “Any other witnesses you’d like to offer?”
She gave a sharp nod that made her earrings bounce off her cheeks.
“Yeh, yeh, there’s Arthur. Arthur No-”
The girl halted abruptly, with a look of alarm that made her eyes saucer and her lips form an ‘o’. The shape changed quickly as she tried to cover up with a laugh.
“No, nat Arthur, he’s no-one. He’s... he’s just my dad’s best mate.”
Another change of heart, likely prompted by
the thought of them checking that detail as well, brought, “No, he’s nat, he’s... I mean how wud he know anythin’ anyway? Arthur knows nathin’. Nathin’.”
The two men watched the mythical mistress dig a hole with her red-tinted mouth for a moment and then Aidan decided to end the charade. He leaned forward on the table, making an exaggerated tutting noise.
“If you’re going to tell lies you really should keep them straight, Ms Reynolds.” Lecture over, his tone hardened. “Now, Jimmy Rushton won’t even have heard of you when we ask him, will he?”
The eighties band tribute was obviously tiring of the game because all they got from her was a grunt.
“Well, we’ll soon find that out. And this Arthur, what’s his surname? It obviously starts with ‘no’, so he shouldn’t be difficult for us to locate.”
It sparked another brief burst of energy from the young woman, “Arthur’s gat...” Almost immediately the lie faded into a shrug. “Ach, I’m fed up with this. I’ve gat tee get home.”
Ryan was both curious and seeking validation for his injury so he asked her what she did. If she worked as a professional cage fighter then being given a black eye by her wouldn’t be quite so embarrassing.
The question elicited the first genuine spark of excitement that they’d seen in Rio Reynolds since they’d encountered her the night before.
“I’m a make-up artist. Trainin’ in stage an’ film. It’s brilliant-”
Aidan cut in again. “It sounds it. Arthur what?”
She glanced up at the wall clock and gave a sigh. “I’ve missed my class nye.”
“You’ll miss tomorrow’s as well unless you give me his name. Arthur what?”
It brought a practiced tut. “Oh, all right then! Arthur Norris.”
“And he is?”
“The old guy who came up tee me at work yesterday.”
“Where’s work? By your accent you’re obviously not from around here.”
“McGran’s in Belfast.” It was one of the last great department stores in the north. “I dee demos on the make-up counter.”
The D.C.I. immediately smelled a set-up.
“What did this Norris want from you?”
The girl dropped her eyes to the table, rubbing at an imaginary spot with her finger as she muttered her reply.
“Pay me.”
Ryan was incredulous. “You want us to pay you?”
He got a rude snort in reply. “Nat you, dummy.”
Aidan got things back on track. “Arthur Norris offered to pay you for what?”
“Two interviews.” Her kohled gaze shot up to his face again. “He said he’d give me a thousand quid if I did an interview with the local paper an’ one on the radio. That’ll pay my stage make-up course fees fer a year!”
Aidan sighed noisily. A measly grand for breaking a widow’s heart.
“Did you get it up front?”
The girl groaned. “Only half. I’m stupid. Nye I’ll never get the rest.”
Aidan was tempted to seize the money, but then he considered the girl’s age and what the training course might mean for her future and decided on the threat of doing it instead.
“OK, Ms Reynolds, here’s my one time offer. Accept it now or not at all. Either you give us full details of everything you have on Arthur Norris and exactly what he asked you to do, or we take back the first five hundred as the proceeds of crime.”
Her jaw dropped. “You can’t do that!”
“I can, or I can tie it up in evidence so long it’ll be worth about two quid by the time you get it back. Take it or leave it.”
They could see the calculator whirring behind the beautician’s eyes, and then the realisation that it was time to cut her losses prompted a grudging nod.
“OK. So tell us what you know about Mister Norris.”
She complied with a sneer that would have done a reality show contestant proud.
“He was an old git.”
“How old?”
“My granddad’s age. Around sixty or seventy.”
The D.C.I. gulped: sixty wasn’t that far away for some of the squad and he wondered if they’d be viewed as old gits too when they were there.
“Describe him, please.”
The young woman puffed out her cheeks for so long thinking that Ryan had time to take a drink of tea as he waited, while Aidan watched the process fascinated, half-expecting her to turn blue.
Eventually, “A good head taller than me, grey hair, a beard like Ed Sheeran, an’ he had a hat.”
“What sort?”
“A cap, like in Peaky Blinders.”
What would they do without popular culture to aid communication with the young?
“What sort of accent?”
“Belfast, but posh Belfast, nat like me. An’ he talked funny. Slow like.”
Considering she rattled along at a clip, Aidan reckoned that meant Norris probably just spoke like a normal human being.
“OK, so he approached you when?”
“Abyte five yesterday. I wuz on till six.”
He nodded Ryan to make a note of the time. Most department stores had CCTV, so they might be in luck and be able to view the interaction.
“Tell us exactly what he said.”
“I can’t remember zactly, but it wuz something like, Derek Morrow is a builder an’ you’re tee say you two had an affair. He showed me a picture af Morrow as well.” She gave a look of disgust and added “As if.”
“And then?”
“Then he gave me money tee train it down here an’ stay overnight in some place called Omagh, ’cept thanks tee you I ended up sleeping in a bloody cell instead!”
“Mea culpa.”
“What?”
“Just go on.”
He really didn’t have the energy to explain Latin to her right now.
“The old man said the newspaper an’ radio wud be in touch an’ then he bunged me five hundred cash.” A whine entered her voice. “He said I’d get the rest after the radio today.”
“How?”
“Took my bank details an’ said he’d put it in.” Her face crumpled. “’Cept nye he won’t, will he.”
The D.C.I. steamrolled over her grief.
“So you never actually met Derek Morrow? And if we ask Jimmy Rushton he’ll never have heard of you?”
She gave a grudging “No” to both that made Aidan sign off the tape and stand up.
“Stay here.”
He nodded Ryan to follow him out, waiting until the door had closed behind them before issuing instructions.
“Call Davy and ask him to pull the store CCTV and run a check on this Norris, and tell him I’ll get the girl’s bank details so we can see if a payment comes in and trace it back. Then nip next door and ask Hector McDonagh who first contacted him about the interview, and if it was Norris did they just speak or meet up? And get any contacts for Norris that McDonagh has. I’ll stay here, tidy this up, and set up the meetings with Rushton and the pub landlord.”
Just then his mobile rang and Craig’s name came up. Aidan nodded the sergeant to get on with things while he took the call.
“Yes, Guv. What can I do for you?”
“A few things. First, how are you getting on with the interviews?”
“Just two more to do, Morrow’s deputy and the pub landlord, then we’ll nip down to Mahon on our way back.”
He suddenly realised that he’d forgotten the church and Biddy Evans and made a mental note to drop in on both after they’d been to the pub.
“Good. John’s just called me about Morrow’s PM and his cause of death was exactly as it looked; gunshot to the head. Anything interesting in your interviews so far?”
Aidan leaned back against the corridor wall and reached into his pocket for a cigarette to play with, suddenly remembering, mournfully, that there wouldn’t be one because he’d given up.
“The girl claiming to be Morrow’s mistress has admitted that it was a pack of lies. She was paid to say everything
by some bloke. No idea who he is yet but we’re getting Davy to pull some CCTV and do a check.”
“Excellent. How much did he offer her?”
“A grand, but she only got half. She’s just a kid so I was going to let her off with a warning.”
“Fine. And the money?”
“She needs it, Guv, so...”
“Agreed. Let her keep it, but scare her enough to deter her from doing anything like this again. We don’t want her getting ideas about becoming a professional fake mistress. Right, I need you to go and see the local solicitor for me when you’re done with your interviews.”
“Hector McDonagh. He’s the local newspaper editor and chicken farmer as well.”
“Very enterprising. OK, good, then you already know McDonagh. I want you to ask him about the sale of the Westburys’ guest house, especially the financial distribution, and also, see if he has any recent contact details for Blaine Westbury. Ash should be able to send you a photo of him to show around, just in case someone has seen him around the village lately.”
Aidan frowned, slightly confused about the relevance of the requests, but he decided not to ask. It would all come out in the wash, aka the next briefing.
“Will do.”
“Good. I can’t remember if I said this before but we’ll be briefing at six, so just park your prisoner from Mahon at High Street when you get back. Call Jack so he knows to expect him.”
Jack Harris was the custody sergeant at High Street, the C.C.U.’s nearest police station and the one they favoured for prisoner interviews and overnight stays.
“I’ll see you both then.”
As soon as Craig had hung up the call he made another one, this time to his junior analyst with the information about Bella Westbury’s Henna scar. Just as Ash was scribbling down the details Davy arrived back from his meeting and he called across.
“I’m glad you’re back. We’ve got a shed load of work to do.”
Davy slung his backpack over a chair and turned back towards the exit. “Bring your list and let’s go for a sandwich. I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
Just then both of their desk phones rang; Aidan and Ryan with yet more tasks. Noting them down delayed their food break for ten minutes and by the time the analysts finally managed to reach the canteen Ryan Hendron was just re-entering Rownton police station.
The Depths Page 17