by Paul Gitsham
Rachel Pymm spoke up, her voice quiet. ‘Of course, if Reva is right, and one or both of her brothers did kill Anish to increase their share of the inheritance, then there’s something else we need to consider.’
Sutton beat her to the punch. ‘Reva doesn’t have any children of her own yet, and an inheritance split between two heirs is even bigger than one split between three.’
Chapter 9
By lunchtime, Constable Lederer’s gentle persuasion had finally worked its magic, and the remainder of Anish Patel’s family agreed to attend the station to give statements.
These initial interviews had been divided amongst the rapidly growing investigative team, but Warren had opted to do at least a couple himself. It was somewhat unusual for an officer of his rank to speak directly to potential suspects, but then the set-up at Middlesbury CID wasn’t like most departments. It was one of the things that Warren loved about working there. Having briefly met Manoj Patel the day before, Warren decided to try and build on that relationship.
Anish’s eldest brother was a well-built man with a trimmed black beard. Despite the cold weather, he was dressed in a thin jumper without a coat, and faded black jeans. He removed the jumper within moments of entering the interview suite, revealing a tight, black T-shirt tailored to show off his toned, upper body. Warren had little interest in high-end fashion, but it was clear even to him that the clothes weren’t off-the-peg from Marks & Spencer. It looked as though he also shared his late brother’s taste in expensive watches.
‘As I said yesterday, Mr Patel, I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Warren started.
Patel said nothing. For a man that had found out that his brother had been murdered barely a day ago, he seemed more irritated than grief-stricken. Family dynamics were complicated and unpredictable at times like this, and they clearly had much that they’d rather not discuss with outsiders, but Warren thought it unusual that the family had initially resisted requests to give formal interviews.
‘I realise that the last twenty-four hours have been very upsetting, but we really need your help in tracking down your brother’s killer.’
Again, Patel said nothing.
Warren decided to push on quickly. ‘I wondered if you have had any thoughts about who might have targeted your brother? Are you aware of anyone that he may have had a falling-out with recently?’
Patel gave a snort. ‘You mean aside from the rest of his family?’
At least Warren didn’t need to work out how to broach the subject.
‘I saw that there was some tension when I visited yesterday,’ said Warren. ‘Would you be able to tell me a bit about that?’ Warren had no intention of revealing that his sister had already spoken to them. He wanted to see if their accounts agreed.
‘Nothing to tell; Anish brought shame on us. None of us had any contact with him.’ His lip curled. ‘He was no longer my brother.’
Warren managed to keep his tone neutral. Over the years, he’d encountered many different ways that grief could manifest itself. He’d also witnessed many people faking grief. He’d seen families that were already broken before tragedy struck, and families broken by the tragedy.
But he couldn’t recall ever seeing such a callous attitude towards a dead brother.
‘How did he bring shame on your family, Manoj?’ asked Warren.
‘You know how,’ Patel’s eyes flashed angrily.
‘I really don’t,’ said Warren, keen to hear Patel’s version of the story. ‘I know that there has been a serious falling-out, but nobody has told me what it was about yet.’
‘Because it’s private.’ Patel sat back in his chair, his arms folded.
Warren could see that he wasn’t going to get any more out of the man on that subject. He decided to change tack.
‘When was the last time that you spoke to your brother?’
‘Have you not been listening? I haven’t spoken to him in months. I have – had – nothing to say to him. I don’t know who he saw, who his friends were, or who he might have pissed off enough to kill him.’
Warren decided it was time to stop tiptoeing around the subject. So far – the text message to his sister on the Saturday morning aside – the last confirmed sighting of Anish was Wednesday evening, by his neighbour. The body had been found Sunday morning.
Warren asked him to account for his whereabouts during that time.
A look of surprise crossed Patel’s face. ‘Wait, you don’t think I had something to do with this do you?’
‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ said Warren, struggling to keep his tone even. The man had just sat there, radiating his hatred for his brother, and yet was surprised that Warren might suspect his involvement somehow.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Patel glared at him. ‘If it was a weeknight, I was probably at home with my family; during the day I would have been at work. Saturday morning, I took the boys to football training, then spent the rest of the weekend pottering about at home. I popped into work for a few hours Saturday afternoon. You can speak to my wife and work colleagues or the two-dozen other parents freezing their bollocks off on the sideline Saturday morning.’
‘Thank you, I will,’ said Warren.
‘Can I go now? I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.’
‘Of course, Manoj, thank you for your time,’ Warren handed him his card. ‘If you think of anything else that I need to know about, please don’t hesitate to call me.’
‘What an arsehole,’ said Moray Ruskin.
‘Amen to that,’ muttered Warren. For the first time since he’d been promoted to DCI, he wondered if it was time for him to stop interviewing suspects. He’d assiduously kept up his interview skills, but it was hard to imagine an occasion recently when things had gone so poorly. He’d known that there were tensions in the family, but he hadn’t expected them to be quite so overt. He’d only asked half the questions in the interview plan and he had almost lost his temper, something that should never happen in an interview.
Grayson saw the look on his face. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, I don’t think any of us were expecting that degree of hostility. If his alibi doesn’t stack up, he’s just placed himself top of my suspect list.’
Warren thanked him.
‘I think it’s interesting that he stated that none of them had any contact with Anish,’ said Ruskin. ‘His call logs show that he ignored his brother’s call and texts, or only answered them long enough to tell him to piss off, so fair enough. But does that mean he didn’t know that Reva was speaking to her brother each week, or was he lying?’
‘And don’t forget, we know Jaidev spoke to Anish for a few minutes back in July,’ said Hutchinson. ‘I’ll be interested to hear if Jaidev also denies having any contact with him.’
Warren contemplated what his team had said. He’d not met Jaidev yet; the middle brother had yet to arrive when he, Sutton and Lederer had been asked to leave the Patel family home. However, given how badly his interview with Manoj had gone, it was clear that a different approach would be needed. He just hoped that the premature ending to the interview hadn’t given the two brothers too much time to get their stories straight. Regardless, he needed to alter the interview strategy, and there was one obvious change they could make.
‘Hutch, I suspect I have a little bit too much history with the family. Are you OK to take over for Jaidev?’
Hutchinson smiled grimly. ‘Delighted to.’
‘Mags, can you tackle the father, Gotam?’
‘My pleasure.’
‘Well, that couldn’t have been more different,’ said David Hutchinson after concluding his interview with Jaidev Patel. The interviews with the middle son and his father had been conducted simultaneously to minimise the chance that Manoj Patel could pre-warn them about what to expect. Because of that Warren had been unable to follow them closely on the briefing room screen.
‘Unlike Manoj, he actually seemed upset about Anish’s death and he was a lot more forthcoming about the famil
y’s problems.’
‘He acknowledged that Anish was gay?’ asked Sutton.
‘Yes, and shed light on why it was such a big issue for his father. Apparently, old man Patel is extremely conservative in his views, and moves in very like-minded circles. I didn’t get the impression it’s particularly motivated by religion, more that he is old-fashioned.
‘The biggest thing he craves is respect, which goes back to his own parents’ experiences when they first came here from India. For political reasons that Jaidev was either unable or unwilling to elaborate on, they were shunned not only by the British but also by a lot of the local Indian community. He vowed to do better than his parents, and apparently was doing very well, until Anish started behaving “differently” – Jaidev’s words, not mine.’
‘That chimes with my impressions of him,’ said Richardson, whose own interview had finished rather more abruptly.
‘Apparently, Gotam’s late wife, Suniti, ticked a lot of the right boxes socially,’ continued Hutchinson, ‘although Jaidev was keen to stress that his parents adored each other. Suniti acted as a buffer between Anish and his father, but when she died, their relationship really soured.’
‘If the friction with Anish was causing so many problems, why didn’t he move out sooner?’ asked Ruskin.
‘Hah! Well, that’s where Jaidev says his father dropped the ball,’ said Hutchinson. ‘Gotam refused to give Anish any role in the business. If he had, then he could have paid him a good enough wage for him to build up a deposit for a flat so he could have moved out years ago. Unfortunately, he couldn’t just kick him out, as making his youngest son homeless would have raised awkward questions, so they were stuck with each other.’
‘I can picture the resentment building up enough for one of them to murder the other,’ said Warren, ‘but Anish finally moved out over a year ago. If he did kill him, there must be more to it than that. We’ll come back to it. What did he say about his brother’s recent activities?’
‘Very little,’ said Hutchinson. ‘I gave him two opportunities to admit that he’d had contact with him after he left the family home, but he claimed they hadn’t spoken in ages. He said he knows nothing about what he was up to, or even where he lived and worked, other than that it was in Middlesbury.’
‘Well, we know that’s not true, there was a three-minute phone call on July 10th,’ said Pymm.
Warren tapped his teeth thoughtfully. ‘Three minutes is a difficult length of call to pin him down on. You can say a lot in three minutes, or you can just argue about nothing and then dismiss the call out of hand and claim that you forgot about it when asked. I think we’ll keep knowledge of his call history to ourselves for the time being. I don’t want to give him time to make up excuses if and when we challenge him on it.’
‘If the call was more meaningful, could Anish have told him about his plans to get married?’ asked Richardson. ‘Reva said that she didn’t know if Anish had told anyone else about meeting this woman, Latika. If Jaidev knew, and even told his brother, Manoj, then there’s a potential motive staring us in the face. I know the call was a few months ago, but it could have been the catalyst that triggered everything.’
‘What about an alibi?’ asked Warren.
‘Similar to his brother’s. Work during the day, home with kids in the evening and football training with their boys on the Saturday morning. However, he plays badminton every Thursday evening at the Church End Gym in Cambridge; mixed doubles and they stay for drinks afterwards. Reckons he left by bus about 9 p.m. and got home about half-past.’
‘Does he have any theories about who might have killed Anish? Did he point his finger towards anyone?’ asked Hardwick.
‘No, he just repeated that he hadn’t had any contact with him recently.’
‘What about the future of the family business?’ asked Warren. ‘Any indication that he knows about the changes to his father’s will or Anish’s attempts to circumvent it?’
‘Nothing. He dodged the question when it came up; said it was insensitive to be talking about the death of his father the day after he found out about the murder of his brother. I backed off, as I didn’t want him to shut down like Manoj.’
‘Good call,’ said Warren. ‘Mags, tell us all about Mr Patel senior.’
Richardson snorted. ‘Well, those of you who watched it on the screen can see who Manoj inherited his delightful personality from. He made no admission that Anish was gay and refused to elaborate on yesterday’s suggestion that Anish’s death was due to “his lifestyle” or why Anish left the family home last year.
‘He dismissed my questions about why Anish was the only sibling who wasn’t part of the family company as a “business decision” and flat-out refused to discuss what will happen to Anish’s share of the estate when he dies.’
‘Assuming we take Reva at face value,’ said Hutchinson, ‘I find it hard to believe that only she knows about this change to the inheritance. The will she showed us was dated some months ago, so it’s not like Gotam hasn’t had time to broach the subject.’
‘That’s true,’ said Ruskin, ‘but the amendments insisting on an heir would only affect Reva and Anish, both Manoj and Jaidev are married with kids. Perhaps Gotam felt that the changes weren’t really any of their business?’ He sounded sceptical of his own suggestion.
‘Well, the two brothers would have an incentive to deny any knowledge of the changes if they did kill him to increase their share of the inheritance,’ said Hardwick. ‘If they discovered that Anish was planning on getting married and having children, not only would their share of the pie become smaller, but it might mean that Anish suddenly has a say in how the company is run, if he owns a chunk of it.’
‘So, where does Gotam come into this?’ asked Pymm. ‘Reva said that she thought her dad might have been involved in Anish’s death.’
‘She did say that he was obsessed with his legacy; maybe he orchestrated the whole thing?’ suggested Hardwick.
‘Or perhaps the whole thing was dreamed up by the two brothers, and they kept his father completely out of it,’ said Sutton. ‘Reva could be wrong.’
‘The problem I have is that they all seem to be each other’s alibi,’ said Richardson. ‘We can check out the brothers’ whereabouts Saturday morning easily enough and verify Jaidev’s Thursday night badminton session, but during the week, only their wives saw them at night, and their work colleagues during the day. Gotam claims to have spoken to his daughter Friday evening, when he saw her bringing the groceries in about 7 p.m., but supposedly spent the rest of the evening alone; he can’t account for his whereabouts for most of the rest of that period. Reva claims she did her grocery shop and then spent the evening with her husband and worked from home during the week. I’m not seeing any independent witnesses here.’
‘I think we need to take any alibis with a pinch of salt,’ said Warren. ‘Their colleagues might be a bit reluctant to drop their boss in it.’
He turned to Hutchinson. ‘Hutch, I want you to liaise with Cambridgeshire Constabulary to organise teams of door-knockers; we need to see if Manoj and Jaidev were home when they say they were. Check with their neighbours that their cars were in the drive etc. Mags, Jaidev says he caught the bus home after playing badminton; secure CCTV from the bus company for his likely route and check what he said is true, and try and pin down exactly what time he got home. Whilst you’re at it, run all of the family’s cars through the ANPR system, let’s see if any of their vehicles pop up where they shouldn’t.
‘Moray and Karen, I want you to visit the football club that the brothers’ kids train at. See if they were both there when they said and do a little probing about the wider family, I want an outside perspective. Whilst you’re over that way, pop into Jaidev’s badminton club. See if they remember him being there that Thursday and get the contact details of the people he was playing with.’
He turned to Pymm. ‘I think we have enough to justify a warrant to look into the rest of the family’s mob
ile phones, at least the ones that are registered to them. Download the call logs and cross-reference them against each other. If there was collusion, we may see unusual patterns of activity, particularly in the period before we told them his body had been found. I think we can also get a warrant to look at location data. I want to know where those phones were during the period we believe he was killed. Also, none of them, except for Reva, admit to having had any contact with Anish recently. We know that Jaidev has lied about that. Look and see what the others were doing around the time of that phone call. Did Jaidev contact Manoj or his father after speaking to Anish?’
Warren sighed in frustration. ‘This would be a lot easier if we could narrow down exactly when he was killed.’
Chapter 10
‘We’ve got Anish Patel’s financial records, it looks as though he was spending significantly more than he earned,’ said Rachel Pymm.
She fanned a series of highlighted sheets of paper in front of her.
‘I looked at his bank statement and he received a monthly salary from Clancy’s.’
‘The department store in town?’ asked Sutton. ‘Aren’t they an independent? I’ve never seen a branch anywhere else.’
‘Founded over a hundred years ago as Clancy and Sons, according to the sign on the wall outside the main entrance,’ Pymm confirmed. ‘It’s still owned by the same family; I’m amazed it’s still going with the state of the high street these days.’
‘I’ll pop down and chat to their HR department,’ said Sutton. ‘Maybe his co-workers can give us some insight into his lifestyle.’
‘Either way, his outgoings greatly exceed his income from Clancy’s,’ continued Pymm. ‘I’ve looked over the past few years, and he has been consistently overdrawn on his main current account. Things only got worse when he moved out and started paying rent; his salary barely covers that and his bills. He also has five different credit cards that he has been shuffling the balances around on. He’s paying off the minimum each month, just to stay solvent. I’m no financial expert, but he was heading for serious trouble, sooner rather than later.’