Snakes and Ladders

by Adam Croft

  ‘Agreed, sir. So. The extension?’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Extension. Granted, Jack. Granted.’

  30

  Jack could’ve sworn he saw Connor French’s jaw tense as he gave him the news they were going to extend his custody clock. He always liked to watch people squirm when they knew they were done for, and he found it an interesting study into Connor’s mind. Was this him realising they’d found something that could prove his guilt? He certainly didn’t look like a man who felt victimised or hard done by, that was for sure.

  Jack had spent long enough in the job to know what would’ve been said between Connor and his solicitor. He knew the brief would’ve let Connor know about the custody clock, explained that if he was being bailed after twenty-four hours then things were going well, but if an extension was sought it tended to mean they were fairly confident of a breakthrough in the next few hours, or otherwise seriously considered Connor to be a flight risk or a danger to others.

  In Jack’s mind, it wasn’t a bad thing for Connor to be aware the net was closing in. More often than not, especially with first-timers and people without criminal records longer than their arms, cranking up the pressure would cause cracks to appear. That’s when his job became a whole lot easier. The rising panic, the sudden falling away of the ego and bravado, the desperation to cling onto something that could get them out of there — it was all music to Jack’s ears.

  They’d requested fast-tracked results on the fingerprints, which would only be started once the scientific services team had clocked in at nine that morning. It wouldn’t take long for any prints to be found and lifted, then checked against the police database. If anyone had handled the knife without gloves, and if the police had a record of their fingerprints through previous arrests, it’d return a match. Connor’s prints were, of course, now on file, but Jack knew the imminent results wouldn’t necessarily be a game changer.

  If Connor had been smart enough to leave his phone at home so he wouldn’t be tracked, how likely was it that he’d handle a murder weapon without gloves, then dump it in a wheelie bin round the corner from the murder scene? Jack feared the results would come back with no matches — or even no prints at all — and in his mind it all rested on the blood analysis and DNA. That would be a whole lot harder to wriggle out of, and wasn’t easily rectified by wearing gloves or wiping the knife down after using it.

  Jack leaned back in his chair and let his hands be warmed by the mug of coffee. He didn’t like waiting for things. He’d never been particularly good at getting on with other stuff when he knew results or verdicts were about to come in. More often than not, he’d lock himself in his office, put the blinds down and nurse a cup of coffee. To keep his brain calm, he’d pick up his phone and scroll through the news, and when that became too stressful he’d turn to his sudoku app, which inevitably caused him even more frustration and resulted in the phone going back on the desk and Jack going back to the coffee machine.

  He’d always admired his colleagues, who could simply put it to the backs of their minds and get on with other tasks in the meantime. That wasn’t Jack. He had a tendency to let things brood, and found it impossible to empty his mind of everything going on inside it.

  As the years had progressed, Jack had found it harder to let go. He knew of colleagues who cared a whole lot less now than they had when they’d started, but for Jack it was quite the opposite. It was almost as if he’d invested his whole life in the job, and for that reason it felt as if there was more to lose. If he stopped caring now, or even cared less, what would have been the point of the last few decades? He’d given his life to policing, most of it to CID and major crimes, and he wasn’t about to jeopardise that now.

  If he was honest with himself, that was one of the things that stung most about Frank’s betrayal. The pain and emotion he’d felt after that had been multi-faceted, but he couldn’t deny one of his biggest issues was that he couldn’t understand why. Why throw a long, illustrious, proud career out of the window in your last few months? His whole life’s purpose had been shattered by an act of stupidity, by chasing the pound signs rather than adhering to the principles he’d spent his life defending. And that was before even exploring the personal betrayal, collusion with Jack’s nemesis and the effect it’d had on the rest of the team at Mildenheath and beyond. Had it all been worth it? No. Not in the slightest. And there was no way it could ever have been worth it. That’s what Jack struggled to understand most.

  When he’d seen Frank in prison, he’d felt an extraordinary range of emotions. But, most of all, he felt sorry for the man. What a waste. What a fucking waste. He looked a shell of his former self, not that he’d ever been peak specimen homosapiens at the best of times. Far from the McCann payday giving Frank a long and fruitful retirement, he’d been left with nothing, and was instead rotting in a jail cell, looking like he’d aged twenty years in the space of weeks and now had one foot in the grave. Even the standard police pension was better than that.

  The team had barely spoken about Frank since, and Jack didn’t know whether that was a good thing or not. On one hand, it’d probably do them some good to chew things over, get their emotions and feelings out in the open and chart a way forward as a team. But on the other, what was the fucking point?

  They were words Jack had found himself thinking too often recently, and his thoughts had turned — more than once — to his own retirement. He was eligible to go, able to pick up his final salary pension and spend all his time looking after Emily and the baby. He could have holidays, learn new skills, take up golf. He hated golf, but there were days he’d happily chop off his left testicle if it meant he didn’t have to sit through performance review meetings and shitty office politics, only to be kicked in the teeth at the last minute.

  It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d thought seriously about taking retirement, but each time he had, something had landed on him like a sign from the gods, and given him a new lease of life — for a few more hours, at least. Today, that sign revealed itself as a knock at the door.

  ‘What,’ he barked, listening as the person on the other side of the door rattled the handle, finding it locked.

  Jack let out a sigh, then stood, walked over to the door and opened it. Ryan Mackenzie was standing on the other side, her face lit up.

  ‘Sir, I think you’re going to like this,’ she said. ‘The knife that was found on Calderwood Street? There were partial fingerprints. Looks like someone had tried to wipe them clean, but they didn’t do a great job.’

  ‘Any match?’

  ‘Amazingly, yes. Guess who?’

  31

  The extension to Connor French’s custody clock was due to run out late that evening, and the team were now in a position where time was on their side.

  After Ryan had come to him with the results of the fingerprint analysis, Jack had made a phone call, then spent the next hour waiting for a response. When it came, it hadn’t been a huge surprise.

  Jack had made the executive decision not to go straight in and tell Connor what the fingerprint results from the knife had shown, but instead to try a different tactic. With the extension granted by the Chief Constable, Jack had all the time in the world to crank up the pressure on Connor French slowly, hoping to watch him squirm and crack. Simply wading in and dropping the revelation on him could cause French to clam up, so he’d decided the best approach was slowly-slowly-catchy-monkey.

  Jack and Wendy sat down at the table in the interview suite, having left French and his solicitor sitting there for almost twenty minutes. If he was honest with himself, Jack was quite enjoying this.

  ‘Okay, Connor,’ Jack said, once they’d got the formalities out of the way. ‘We’ve already spoken about your account of the evening in question. When we first interviewed you, you said you’d been at home all evening, Matthew then left yours and accidentally forgot to take his phone. On further interviewing, it was then revealed that you both left your house, deliberately leaving your phon
es at home so you wouldn’t be tracked, and walked to Mildenheath Woods — the location where Matthew’s body was later found. You were also seen on CCTV heading towards the woods with Matthew, and later returning alone. Is there anything you want to add?’

  ‘That is what is in the notes from the previous interviews, Detective Chief Inspector,’ the solicitor said. ‘My client has already explained that Mr Hulford had arranged to meet a contact that evening, and that he asked my client to accompany him as a matter of safety. This indicates that Mr Hulford saw my client as a friend he could rely on, and someone who would keep him safe. Hardly indicative that he saw my client as a murderer.’

  Culverhouse smiled. ‘With all due respect, if everyone was able to spot a murderer that easily, there would be no murders. Connor, we had a phone call last night from a local resident who found something. Any ideas what that might be?’

  ‘You might need to narrow it down a bit,’ Connor said, in a now-rare display of arrogance, clearly emboldened by his solicitor’s vague posturing.

  ‘Alright, I will. It was something found in a wheelie bin on Calderwood Street. Does that ring any bells?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. Here’s a photo of what was found. Do you recognise it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It looks to me very much like a knife. A flick knife, I think. Can you see the dark crusting where the blade meets the handle there? It’s hard to tell from the picture, but I think that might be blood.’

  The solicitor sighed. ‘Are you asking or telling, Detective Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Neither. Have you ever seen this knife before, Connor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure. I don’t live on Calderwood Street, do I? Some geezer found a knife in a bin. So what? Doesn’t have anything to do with me.’

  ‘Okay. So you don’t think the test results might come back saying yes, that is blood, and in fact it matches Matthew’s?’

  ‘I dunno, do I? I wasn’t there when he died so I don’t have a fucking clue what happened.’

  ‘Do you know what blood type Matthew was, Connor?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘He was O negative. Do you know what percentage of the population are O negative?’

  ‘Funnily enough, no.’

  ‘Around thirteen percent. It’s the third most common blood group after O positive and A positive, but still only just over one in ten people have that blood type. Connor, I can tell you that absolutely is blood. Dried blood, but still blood. And it’s O negative.’

  Connor shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘So, that’s the same blood type as Matt’s. The blood type only thirteen percent of the population have.’

  The solicitor whispered in Connor’s ear.

  ‘I’m pretty sure your brief’s telling you to go no comment, which is absolutely fine, but I just want to let you know it doesn’t get you off the hook by any means. He’s probably also letting you know that we can’t absolutely link the knife to either you or Matt without DNA results, and that they’ll be a little while yet, so we’re just bluffing and hoping you’ll cave in the meantime. He’s right about the DNA results. They’ll be back in a day or two, but that’s fine because we can keep you in custody for up to four days after extensions, particularly if the evidence is starting to pile up. The blood type match is a good example. At this stage, we’d be looking at a very, very strong case for full extension while we wait for the DNA results. With a little something extra, though, we might not need to wait that long. Connor, I should let you know our experts were also able to recover a partial fingerprint from the knife. Do you know whose it might be?’

  Connor’s face now looked very different to the expression he’d shown them a few moments earlier. ‘No comment.’

  ‘That’s fine. Because I can tell you myself. The partial print has come back with a very strong match to you, Connor. Now listen. The more you answer “no comment”, the worse this is going to look for you in court. I suggest you start cooperating and have a really good think about telling us why you tried disposing of a blood-stained knife after your best mate had his throat cut open at a location you’ve admitted to being in.’

  32

  Jack couldn’t deny things felt different. He didn’t know how, but they did. On the face of it, not much had changed. Yes, Chrissie moving in had been made ‘official’, but she pretty much lived there anyway, and the move was far from irreversible: she still had her old house. Despite this, it still felt like a big step, and there was a definite sense that things had changed.

  It was a feeling of commitment, of security. That was something that’d be vital for Emily in the coming weeks and months, and he was beginning to put his own worries and insecurities behind him. Too many people had told him one of his flaws was getting too comfortable in situations, and he was well aware he needed to step outside his comfort zone occasionally. It didn’t mean he found the prospect any more appealing, though.

  If he was completely honest, he’d have to admit he was somewhat worried about giving himself over to someone else — again. He’d invested his life and his future in Helen, and that had ended in disaster. The first sign he had of his marriage being in trouble was coming home to find a note telling him she’d left him and taken Emily with her. It was only recently that he found out Emily had been living with her grandparents — Helen’s mum and dad — for all these years, just a few miles up the road.

  Now, he didn’t even know where Helen was. The last time he’d seen her, she was three sheets to the wind in a hospital in Denmark, Jack having received a call as her registered next of kin. For all he knew, she could be anywhere between Taunton and Timbuktu, and he didn’t see any reason to give it a moment’s thought. Helen had thought of nobody but herself for years, despite claiming to have made her decisions for Emily, and he didn’t want her to occupy the space in Emily’s brain, much less give her the opportunity to poison it.

  This was an opportunity for him to move on — properly. Leaving the door open, the lights on and the bed unmade wasn’t going to give him any peace. It would only leave him in a constant state of mental torture, an emotional purgatory. As much as he despised the word, he hoped this would give him some closure. After all, what other options did he have? He didn’t want to be one of those daft old codgers who re-marries in their seventies or eighties, wheeling out the ‘It’s never too late to find love’ line. Granted, it might never be too late to find love, but it was certainly past the cut-off point for maintaining an erection without chomping enough Viagra to turn your piss blue.

  Jack smiled inwardly. There was nothing like a good knob gag to avert his thoughts from sappy subjects and considerations of… What was he even considering? Why had the thought of marriage later in life even crossed his mind? It wasn’t something that’d come up in conversation with Chrissie — not seriously, anyway — and he wasn’t entirely sure which corner of his brain that thought had come from. Either way, it was the last time he’d let Chrissie choose some shitty chick flick to watch, especially after the best part of a bottle of red wine each.

  In any case, it wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be done. Jack, like it or not, was still married to Helen. He recalled some law about being able to declare yourself divorced in absentia, but he thought there had to be something like six or seven years without contact before you could do that. He’d have to read up on it. Then again, how long had it been since he’d last heard from Helen? If he was honest, it’d all started to blur a little. He’d made such an effort to cleanse it from his mind, he found it difficult to recall the details — especially after this much wine.

  He rested his head back against the sofa, closed his eyes and felt the hitherto-unnoticed stinging in his eyelids beginning to recede.

  33

  Jack arrived at work the next day thanking a lord he didn’t believe in for ibuprofen. It wasn’t so much the hangover that was causing him issues, but the crick in his n
eck after he woke up at three o’clock in the morning, head back on the sofa, mouth wide open. Chrissie ‘didn’t want to wake him’, and had gone up to bed herself just before midnight, leaving Jack to wake up a few hours later feeling like he’d just barely won a fight against Albert Pierrepoint.

  Jack knew Connor French’s solicitor would likely advise holding his counsel until it was advantageous to do otherwise. Pleading Not Guilty in court and ensuring that the Crown needed to organise an expensive and potentially lengthy trial, along with the induction of a jury, was a good way to get one’s sentence reduced when the likelihood of a Guilty verdict was insurmountable, but there was no real benefit to admitting everything before then, in case the defence found a gaping loophole to prod at and prevent the case from even getting that far.

  For now, Jack’s main priority would be gathering further evidence, crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s and making sure they had an absolutely watertight case moving forward towards a decision to charge. However, even he had to admit there were a few things which didn’t quite add up, which was the main reason for not yet going to the Crown Prosecution Service and asking for a recommendation to charge Connor.

  The team briefing that morning was less formal than usual — not that anything was ever particularly formal at Mildenheath — and Jack listened as the team relayed some of their concerns about aspects which needed addressing or tying up.

  Steve Wing leaned back on his chair, his not inconsiderable belly hanging over the front of his trousers, and Jack found himself feeling sorry for the chair’s springs and tensioners.

  ‘There’s something about this which don’t quite sit right with me, guv,’ Steve said.

  ‘Alright,’ Jack replied. ‘But I’m going to need a bit more than that.’