The spacious living room had once been a master bedroom with its own balcony. In summer, nearby trees filtered the light flooding through the south-facing French doors, filling the space with a brilliant softness that was hardly ever too hot; in winter the unfiltered rays were guaranteed to boost the temperature on the coldest days. Jennifer had fallen in love with it as soon as she walked in, and now that the apartment was filled with her own furniture, fittings and books, it was the perfect haven and she loved to spend time there.
By eleven o’clock, she had finished her chores and was relaxing in a huge, soft armchair by the balcony doors with a mug of freshly brewed Arabica, a feel-good glow about her. Her first big case was all but finished and it had gone fantastically well. She was re-reading Dante’s Inferno in Italian for possibly the fiftieth time when her mobile rang.
“Jenni—”
“Cotton! Where are you?” Rob McPherson’s sharp voice barked in her ear. There were no niceties.
“At home, gu—”
“Well, whatever you’re doing, drop it. You need to come straight here, to the SCF. The big boss wants to talk to you. Immediately.”
His tone was cold, full of suppressed anger.
“What’s it abou—”
The phone went dead, leaving Jennifer staring at the display. She thought of calling Derek Thyme to see if he knew what was going on. But then it dawned: the big boss? She assumed by that McPherson meant either the Ice Queen or her boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Hawkins. She’d only spoken to him once at length, on her first day. Rather overweight, and reluctantly balding, he seemed nice enough if rather distant. He had a reputation for rigid adherence to the rules, rather like the Ice Queen, but his methods were less ruthless. No point in calling Derek; it was unlikely he’d know anything.
She looked at her clothes. Jeans and a sweatshirt. That wouldn’t do, but she’d need to be quick.
When Jennifer walked into the main squad room, she immediately registered the silence: the usual buzz of conversation eerily absent. Heads turned towards her, eyes cautious, concerned looks on all the faces. She raised her eyebrows a fraction as she caught Derek Thyme’s eyes, but the response was a tiny shake of the head. Clearly neither he nor anyone else knew what was going on.
“Cotton! This way!” commanded McPherson from the corner of the room.
He was standing by a door that opened onto a corridor leading to the inner sanctum of bosses’ offices. Jennifer followed him to the corner of the building: the DCS’s office. McPherson knocked on the door, opened it and stood aside to let Jennifer pass. Then he followed her in, closed the door and stood in front of it, as if to guard it and prevent her escape.
Jennifer was shocked to see not one but three of her senior officers in the room. They were all seated at the far end behind a long table, a set-up used for promotion board interviews. And for disciplinary hearings. In the centre, leafing through a file was the DCS. To his right was Mike Hurst who was quietly drumming his fingers on the table as he stared at a point in space beyond Jennifer’s left shoulder, while on the DCS’s left sat Olivia Freneton, her face thunderous as her eyes pierced into Jennifer’s. The memory of a comment from Neil Bottomley about Darth Vader crossed Jennifer’s mind.
“DC Cotton, come over here,” ordered the DCS as he closed the file and looked up at Jennifer.
There were two chairs on Jennifer’s side of the table, but there was no invitation to sit. She took a few steps forward, glancing back at McPherson as she did. His rough-hewn features registered little, except he looked ten years older.
Jennifer stopped three feet in front of the table and stood to attention, her eyes fixed on the wall behind the DCS’s head. She knew she must have done something terribly wrong and was frantically racking her brains to consider all the possibilities. A report she’d forgotten to write? One she’d left important details out of? Perhaps one into which she’d put too much detail, making the CPS angry because the defence would have access. In the few milliseconds of deafening silence from her bosses as they all turned their attention to her, she trawled through many possibilities, but she was stumped. She couldn’t think of anything.
Then the silence was shattered.
“DC Cotton,” barked Hawkins. “I’d like you to tell me what the hell you think you’re up to.” His tone was more than threatening.
“I don’t understand, sir. Is there a problem?”
“A problem!” he yelled. “Of course there’s a problem. A huge bloody problem! You have more than likely compromised the whole case!”
Jennifer felt her knees buckle while her gut had developed a free-falling existence all of its own.
“I … I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
Her eyes flickered towards Freneton and back. If it were possible, the superintendent’s frown was even deeper, her whole demeanour darker and more threatening. The corners of her mouth dropped in a sneer.
“We’ll give you one chance, Cotton,” she snarled, interrupting Hawkins. “One chance to explain. But let me make it perfectly clear. Your career’s on the line here; you might even be prosecuted for trying to pervert the course of justice.”
Jennifer’s mouth opened and closed like a fish on a rock, but no sound emerged.
“Well!” yelled Freneton, making Jennifer jump in fright. “Jesus, girl, what is wrong with you?”
Jennifer was fighting to remain standing to attention, her breathing heavy. She was reeling from the verbal barrage, the implied accusations that she knew nothing about.
Freneton continued, her words a series of stiletto thrusts.
“We have some more results. Lab results. DNA results. Your profile.”
“My … profile, ma’am? You mean you think I’ve contaminated the scene? That’s impossible.”
She turned to McPherson whose face now looked as if root canal would be preferable to being there.
“Guv, you saw me do the preliminary examination of the X-Trail. I gloved up and touched nothing inside the car. I know I didn’t wear a mask, but I didn’t speak or sneeze or anything while I was looking in the car. I couldn’t have contaminated it. And even with the gloves, I touched nothing except the door handle, and the shoe when I bagged it. At the scene in the woods, I was fully gowned, masked and everything, so it can’t even be saliva—”
“Shut up, Cotton! Stop babbling!” yelled Freneton.
“It’s got nothing to do with scene contamination, DC Cotton,” interrupted Hurst, his voice insistent but deliberately softer. He was livid with her but that didn’t dampen his dislike of Freneton. If she continued like that unchecked, she’d have Cotton a quivering wreck on the carpet.
“Like me, and everyone else on the team, your DNA is on record for elimination purposes for exactly the reasons you just described: in case anyone is sloppy enough to contaminate the scene. It’s a serious matter when it happens, we know that, but we have to accept that it does happen.”
Jennifer was nodding frantically. “I know that, sir, I know why it’s done.”
In her mind she was running through every occasion she had had anything to do with any of the physical evidence, and she could think of no time when she could have screwed up. She knew the rulebook backwards and sideways and could recite it chapter and verse, in Italian or French if need be. And she took pride in adhering to it.
Hurst continued. “One of the things the lab does is to run all the profiles, full and partial, and all the controls against each other — it’s part of the protocol — and one of their more astute young scientists noticed your DNA.”
Jennifer was shaking her head. “What do you mean, sir, noticed my DNA? What’s so special about my DNA?”
Olivia Freneton was ready to pounce; she wanted to be the one to deliver the killer punch.
“It’s very similar to Henry Silk’s, DC Cotton, that’s what’s so special, as you put it,” she snapped, her voice still hovering precariously on the controlled side of rage. “It contains what the scienti
st called several rare alleles, which are something of a research interest for the scientist. When she then found that Silk’s DNA has the same rare alleles, our astute young scientist asked for our approval to carry out a paternity test. And her conclusion, confirmed by her seniors, is that Silk is your father. Ninety-nine point nine per cent certain. He’s not even an uncle, Cotton; he’s your father!”
She banged on the table with her fist, taking everyone by surprise.
“Henry Silk is your father, Cotton!” she repeated, emphasizing every word.
She paused, taking satisfaction in watching Jennifer absorb what she’d said, that they’d discovered her secret. Then she continued to drag the blade around in the wound she’d opened up.
“And, DC Cotton, I don’t and won’t accept for a moment that you didn’t know. We’ve spent the last hour going over conversations various of us have had with you in the last week or so and it would appear that you’ve tried hard to persuade more than one of your colleagues that Silk is innocent. Now we understand your motive.”
Jennifer could almost feel McPherson cringing behind her as she remembered their conversation in the pub. Judas! she thought. But that thought was an aside. Jennifer was incensed and her anger cut through her shock.
“Ma’am, I can assure you, I can assure you all,” — she glanced briefly at Hawkins and Hurst before focusing back on Freneton’s malevolent gaze — “I had no idea that I was related to Henry Silk in any way. It’s a total shock and in fact, I dispute it. I think there’s been some sort of cock up. My father was a doctor who was killed in a car crash before I was born. Obviously I never met him but I know my mother loved him dearly. Like most people, I only know about Henry Silk from what I’ve read in the glossies; I’d never met him before last Monday.”
She paused, panting, desperate to defend herself. Something else occurred to her.
“And anyway, if you’ve been reviewing my conversations with the team,” — her tone was verging on sarcastic as her eyes flashed to Hurst who was now examining his fingernails, avoiding eye contact — “you’ll know that I was the one who found the red shoe in Silk’s car. And I was the one who noticed the scratches on his neck. Do you think I would have done that if I were trying to protect him? I think he’s as guilty of the murder of Miruna Peptanariu as all of you do. It’s the sheer stupidity of his actions I find difficult to fathom.”
She was almost shouting.
“Watch your tongue, DC Cotton,” snarled Freneton. “You can protest all you like. I, for one, do not believe you. You’re off the case, young woman, and as your squad commander, I’m suspending you from duty until further notice. Your dishonesty has created a huge amount of extra work for everyone and will cost the SCF a fortune. You’ll never work with this team again; they won’t want you. When the defence finds out, and I doubt we can keep it under wraps, they’ll be screaming ‘foul’. And I can’t even begin to imagine what the press will do when they get hold of it. They’ll have a field day; make us look like complete idiots. All thanks to you, DC Cotton.”
Her voice was rising as her rage started to get the better of her.
“Didn’t you once stop to think of the waves you’d be creating, or that your secret wouldn’t eventually be discovered? Thank God we found out now. If it had happened during trial, we’d never have recovered.”
She stopped to take a slow and deliberate breath, and then continued in a more even voice.
“I’m also going to report this to the Internal Investigation Branch, and knowing them, they’ll have your hide. I can’t imagine anyone here will stand in their way. For the present, DC Cotton, I should warn you that you are not to breathe a word of any of this to anyone, inside or outside the team. If you do, I’ll make it my personal business to ensure you are kicked out of the force in disgrace. Now, get out of my sight.”
Jennifer was shaking. She lowered her head and shifted her eyes from Freneton to Hawkins, and then to Hurst. Benign, friendly Mike Hurst. He was her mentor, more than any of the others, and now he hated her for something that must be untrue, and if it wasn’t, something that she had still had no knowledge of.
All she could perceive in their eyes now was hostility. She realised her chin was quivering more than the rest of her. They were not going to see her break down and cry. She turned swiftly on her heel and without even a glance at McPherson, who had to step smartly out of her way, she pulled open the office door and left.
She was hardly conscious of walking along the corridor and into the squad room. As the door slammed behind her, she became aware of every pair of eyes in the room watching her, but she couldn’t look at any of them, not even Derek. She grabbed her bag from where she’d left it on her desk on the way through and rushed out of the door.
Derek Thyme watched her go. He was as alarmed and confused as the rest of them — they’d all been listening to the yelling, shouting and arguing from the inner sanctum all morning. He looked across at one of the other DCs, Joe Renton, one of the older ones. Not over bright, but steady and reliable. Renton caught his eye and nodded after Jennifer.
“What you waiting for, Justin? You’re her mate; go after her, find out what the hell’s up.”
Derek shot out of the room and caught up with Jennifer on a half landing on the stairs. She heard him coming but ignored him.
He grabbed her arm. “Jennifer. Jen. What’s happened? Are you OK? I’ve never seen any of them so angry. Not even the Ice Queen and she’s always angry. McPherson was apoplectic; I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”
Jennifer stopped and half-turned towards him.
“I can’t tell you, Derek. They’ve forbidden me.”
She had a sudden thought that if what she’d been told was true, they had no right to ban her from announcing who her father was. But then the thought of how that would be received hit her.
“All I can say is that I’ve been suspended. They want to prosecute me, Derek.”
“What! Why? What’ve you done? That’s rubbish; they can’t do that. I don’t believe it.”
“Look, Derek, it’s better we don’t even skirt around it. I can’t say anything, Nothing. No hints. They’re bound to question you when you go back and even if they haven’t seen you follow me, they will still question you as part of their investigation. You’re a close colleague; they’re bound to.”
“Question me about what? I don’t get it, Jennifer. Anyway, if they’re going to question me, they’ll tell me what it’s about so you might as well tell me now. Won’t make any difference.”
“Yes, Derek, it will. Let them tell you if they want and then let them swear you to secrecy until the press gets hold of it. For my part, I can’t and I don’t want to even come close to opening up the possibility of you being in any way complicit.”
Derek stared at her, trying to work his way through the complexity of her sentence. He gave up and took hold of her shoulders.
“Jennifer, whatever they’re accusing you of, I don’t, can’t believe that you’ve done something wrong. You’ve got a brilliant mind — I’m in awe of you — and you’re going to make a great detective. It gives me a buzz just working alongside you, even though I know I can never be as good as you are.”
She touched his arm and sagged.
“Thank you, Derek, you’re very sweet. It’s good to know I’ve got one friend here.”
“You’ve got more than one, Jennifer. The whole team feels the same.”
Jennifer pulled open her bag and snatched out a tissue. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes.
She managed to stall them and wipe her nose.
“Look,” she sniffed, “you’ve got to watch your back. You all have. Freneton will take no prisoners.”
She stopped and looked at the ground, suddenly overwhelmed again.
Derek was still not taking no for an answer.
“Jennifer, you’ve got to tell me.”
She looked up at him but hardly saw him, her mind working overtime. She su
ddenly let go of his arm and ran back up the stairs, leaving Derek staring after her with his mouth open.
She banged open the door to the squad room, strode through and into the corridor beyond. Hurst was back in his office talking to McPherson. Jennifer pushed open the door without knocking and marched up to Hurst while totally ignoring McPherson. She hadn’t forgiven him.
“What the hell are you doing here, Cotton? You’ve been suspended.” Hurst was shocked and distinctly uncomfortable. The Ice Queen might emerge from under her rock at any moment and accuse him of collaborating with the enemy.
“You’ve been ordered to leave. Any time you spend near this case is compromising it further.”
Jennifer ignored his rant. “Boss, I want another DNA profile done on me. I think there’s been some enormous screw-up. There’s no other explanation. What they think is my DNA can’t possibly be. There’s no way that man can be my father.”
Hurst took a deep breath as he thought about it. Finally he nodded. “That’s a fair request, Jennifer, but I hope for your sake, for all our sakes, that you’re right.”
He looked at McPherson. “Rob, take her back to the squad room and get someone to take a buccal swab from her, witnessed. Then get the sample to the lab and get it fast-tracked. I need that result ASAP.”
He turned back to Jennifer.
“After that’s done, DC Cotton, get out of here and don’t come back until you hear from me.”
Chapter Sixteen
Late the following afternoon, Jennifer was at home in her apartment unable to concentrate on anything, her mind still spinning around the meeting with her senior officers the day before. She had spent the past twenty-four hours racking her brains for any indication in her past that her being Henry Silk’s daughter could possibly be true. If only she could ask her mother, but she couldn’t.
A cardboard box on the coffee table in front of her was full of old family photographs she had selected from several much bigger boxes stored at the family house outside Milan when she moved to the apartment in Nottingham. There were many of her as a baby and a small child, either alone or with her mother and Pietro, joyful images from holidays in the sun and the snow, the house in Sardinia, various yachts, fashion shows, parties. There were also many Jennifer had selected of her mother as a child with her own parents. Jennifer had never known them; they died before she was born. She remembered thinking it slightly odd at the time that there were none of her mother from around her mid-teens until when she was twenty-three and holding the newborn baby Jennifer in her arms. Now she found it more than odd: there was a distinct gap.
Irrefutable Evidence Page 11