Out of Sight

by Paul Gitsham

  Hardwick nodded as he left, a sudden flash of embarrassment colouring her cheeks. Her tiredness notwithstanding, how could she have been so insensitive? Nobody had said anything obviously, but it didn’t take a detective to realise that a couple that age, happily married for so long, might not be childless by choice. The tightness of his smile and the brief flash of sadness in his eyes had all but confirmed it.

  And just as she felt that he had finally started to become more comfortable in her presence. She groaned. It wasn’t even 8 a.m. Could the day get any worse?

  Back at his desk, Warren winced at the bitter taste of the black coffee. Two spoonful’s of granules when there was no milk left might have been unwise, but he had a feeling the caffeine hit would be necessary. Forcing away the unintentional sting from Hardwick’s words, and biting into a custard cream, he opened his emails.

  The previous night’s search of Leon Grime’s second-floor flat that he shared with his wife had thrown up some clothing with suspicious-looking red stains.

  By all accounts, Grime’s wife had been rather uncooperative, refusing to answer any questions. She’d been even less happy to be dispatched to stay with her sister overnight, wearing nothing but the clothes on her back.

  Warren stifled a yawn. The duty solicitor had arrived late and unsurprisingly advised Grime to stop speaking and no comment. The lawyer had quite rightly pointed out that the evidence so far was circumstantial at best, and Warren was conscious of the fact that they were nowhere near the charging threshold. In fact, unless they pulled something out of the bag within the next few hours they might not even be able to extend his custody beyond twenty-four hours.

  Warren’s day didn’t improve any.

  ‘We’ve had teams showing photos around all the bars and nightclubs in the area, especially those popular with the gay community,’ said Hutchinson at the lunchtime briefing. ‘Nobody recognised Anish or any of the headshots from Rainbow Hookups, although given the quality of them, that’s hardly surprising.

  ‘We’ve also got multiple witnesses that say Leon Grime was at work all of Friday until his usual knocking off time around 5 p.m., and Mags’ team have found snippets of CCTV footage around the hotel from throughout the day. It also looks as if he’s right about not using his toolbox; every time they capture him on camera he’s carrying ladders or decorating kit.’

  Warren looked at his watch. ‘Well we’ve got a few more hours to turn up something useful.’ He turned to Sutton. ‘How do you fancy giving his cage another rattle?’

  ‘I think Leon Grime is trying to run down the custody clock,’ said Sutton. ‘I’ll bet his solicitor has told him to keep quiet and see if we have enough to charge him or get an extension.’

  Warren and Sutton were standing by the coffee urn.

  ‘That’s not decaf,’ warned Warren, as Sutton picked up the metal tin of instant coffee.

  ‘Seriously? You’re storing regular coffee in a decaf tin, just to stop Rachel nagging you about how much caffeine you drink?’

  Warren shrugged. ‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Sorry, I should have said.’ He opened the cupboard above and removed a glass jar. ‘Use this, it’s labelled correctly.’

  Sutton took the jar and helped himself to a custard cream. ‘At least you’re man enough not to give in on the biscuits.’

  Coffees in hand, the two men headed back towards the office.

  ‘Speaking of Rachel, I see you managed to get her to go home in time for Sunday lunch,’ said Sutton. ‘Did she put up much of a fight?’

  ‘No more than usual,’ said Warren.

  Pymm’s MS was the relapsing-remitting form of the disease, meaning that she enjoyed lengthy periods of relative good health, interrupted by bouts of debilitating illness. Stress, mild infections and fatigue were all known triggers. Pymm didn’t like being told to take it easy, but Warren had made it clear that he had no choice in the matter, if for no other reason than he was her line manager and responsible for her well-being.

  ‘I told her if she didn’t go home and eat it fresh, I’d invite myself around and eat it for her.’

  ‘I’d have joined you,’ said Sutton; Martin Pymm’s prowess in the kitchen was legendary. ‘We don’t usually bother with a roast if Josh isn’t here. He’s visiting his girlfriend’s parents this weekend.’

  ‘How long has he been seeing her now’ asked Warren.

  ‘Over six months.’

  ‘You’ll be choosing a hat soon,’ joked Warren.

  ‘Hah, not for a while yet, but he could do a lot worse.’

  ‘I think you’re right about Grime running down the clock,’ said Warren as they settled in his office. ‘He’s correct that anyone could have used that toolkit, and the keys to the laundry cupboard hang in plain sight in the office off reception. All we really have on him are his lies about the dodgy camera and door alarm. If we don’t get anything soon, we’re going to have to release him on bail, and I’m still coming up blank on a motive.’

  ‘Well, he’s clearly got something to hide,’ said Sutton.

  ‘The question is whether it’s to do with the murder, or something else,’ said Warren. ‘That CCTV camera has been broken for ages. Whatever reason he had for ensuring it wasn’t fixed can’t just have been to conceal the murderer’s comings and goings that night.’

  ‘Just a happy coincidence then,’ said Sutton.

  Warren’s desk phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. ‘Andy Harrison. Fingers crossed he has something.’

  Warren picked up the handset and put it on speaker.

  ‘We’ve finished processing Anish Patel’s room at the Easy Break Hotel. Hundreds of partial fingerprints, including a few that are definitely Anish’s. We’ve also got a few hundred more from other areas of the hotel. It won’t be cheap processing this many prints, I’ll need authorisation.’

  Warren tapped his teeth. In theory, a murder investigation came with a blank cheque, but in practice Major Crime had not managed to escape the swingeing budget cuts that had decimated the rest of the police service. Andy Harrison had been right to seek authorisation before expending so much money and resources. Warren considered the suggestion for a moment, before deciding to kick the decision upstairs; that’s what superintendents got paid for.

  ‘We also found something that may or may not be interesting,’ said Harrison. ‘Just above the TV there is a small patch of fresh paint. It looks the same as the stuff already on the walls, but a little shinier. I’d say it’s only a couple of weeks old at most. The paint is covering up Polyfilla – the walls are made of plasterboard and there was a drill hole a little over a centimetre in diameter that has since been filled in.’

  Sutton and Warren looked at each other. ‘Leon Grime claims he hasn’t been in 201 for months,’ said Warren.

  Conscious of the dwindling time remaining before they had to apply for an extension, Warren and Sutton decided to challenge Grime immediately over the strange patch of fresh paint in room 201. Unfortunately, the handyman had been advised by his solicitor to ‘no comment’. It was sound advice; the case against him was weak, with no obvious motive, and Warren worried that he would soon be walking.

  Another call came through less than half an hour before Warren needed to plead his case for a custody extension. Hanging up, he went straight to Grayson’s office. Unusually for a Sunday, the superintendent was working.

  Too cold for golf, had been Sutton’s suggestion, who made no secret of the fact that he thought Grayson was only hanging on in the hope of a final promotion before retirement to secure a bigger pension pot. Warren thought that was somewhat uncharitable, but there was no denying that the man spent a lot of time socialising with senior leadership outside of work hours.

  Grayson was on the phone, but waved Warren in.

  ‘Just filling in the brass on where we are,’ he said after finishing.

  ‘Forensics rang,’ said Warren.

  ‘I’m not seeing a smiling face.’

  Walking back
into the office, Warren called for quiet.

  ‘The tyres on the hire car don’t match any of the prints at the dumping site.’

  A chorus of groans rippled around the room.

  ‘The vehicle team at Welwyn looked at the tyres as soon as they received the car, and they aren’t even the same manufacturer. The blood spot in room 201 has been confirmed as belonging to Anish and an attempt was made to clean it up, but Prof. Jordan is still doubtful that the bump on the back of his head was enough to kill him. Given that the CCTV shows Anish leaving the Easy Break Hotel on the Friday morning, it looks as though he returned the car before he was killed.’

  The team had been hoping that Patel’s hire car had been used to transport his body to the ditch where he had been dumped. Logically that would mean that the killer – or killers – had to have driven the car to the dumping site and then back to where it had been originally hired from. Warren knew from long experience that vehicles were a potential forensic goldmine. He’d really been hoping for something useful from the car.

  ‘And we’re certain we’ve got the right car?’ asked one of the seconded detectives from Welwyn.

  ‘I can only go by what Mr Latham told us,’ said Hardwick. ‘But he printed off the car’s rental history and it looks as though it checks out.’

  ‘So where and when did he meet his killer? And when was he killed?’ asked Ruskin. ‘There has to be some link to the Easy Break Hotel, the bed sheet and Leon Grime’s tools can’t be a coincidence.’

  ‘Well unfortunately, the red stains on Leon Grime’s clothes have tested negative for blood,’ said Warren. ‘So there’s no easy link there.’

  The news was disappointing, but not surprising. It would have been an incredible stroke of luck if Grime had kept the clothes that he had worn the night of Anish Patel’s murder in his wardrobe. It would have been even more remarkable if he hadn’t bothered to run them through the washing machine.

  ‘They’re still testing his shoes, coat and car, but we won’t get anything back before we have to release him. Furthermore, none of the shoes we have recovered match any of the impressions on the grass verge next to the ditch. We’ve no choice, I’m afraid; I’m about to go and bail him.’

  As Warren trudged down to the custody desk, the atmosphere he left behind him was sombre. That morning, they’d had a suspect in custody and were awaiting several promising forensic leads. Now it felt as though they’d gone back to the beginning.

  Monday 5th December

  Chapter 22

  Warren spread the doughnuts across the briefing room table. It was a small gesture, but after the disappointment of the day before, it would boost their blood sugar, if not their morale, as they planned their next steps.

  ‘I’m not ready to dismiss Nicholas Kimpton or Leon Grime just yet,’ said Warren. ‘But clearly our priority has to shift. We still need to work out exactly when, where, why and how, before we get to who.’

  ‘The alibi of Latika Luthra, Anish’s … girlfriend? Well anyway, it checks out,’ said Hutchinson. ‘She’s a full-time English teacher and was at work both Thursday and Friday. Her mother confirms that she was in all of Thursday night doing her marking. Friday evening, she went to the pub after work for drinks and spent the weekend with friends.’

  ‘That’s confirmed by the location data on her phone,’ said Pymm. ‘I’ve also cross-referenced it against all of our numbers of interest, and there are no links. If she was involved somehow, she had the common sense to either use a burner phone or use a messaging app.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Warren, turning next to Richardson.

  ‘But maybe she wasn’t the one with the motive,’ said Pymm. Warren fought down a sigh, as everyone around the table chuckled at Pymm’s dramatic flair.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, returning his attention to her.

  ‘Latika’s father died just over three years ago. I looked up the probate records and in addition to the house he owned, he had a bit of money stashed away. According to the will, it all went to his wife in the first instance, with everything being split between their daughters on her death.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Warren, hiding his impatience at hearing information he already knew.

  ‘About twenty-five thousand.’

  ‘Which means that given the cost of private fertility treatment in the US, Latika would probably have had to borrow her sister’s share of the inheritance also,’ said Warren. ‘Which is risky as their long-term plan relied on Gotam dying after she got pregnant, but before her mother passes.’

  He looked closely at Pymm. ‘What else have you got up your sleeve, Rachel?’

  ‘I got a friend in Business and Fraud to do some sniffing around. Latika’s sister’s husband runs a small graphic design business. In June their biggest client went bust. That’s left a significant hole in their income. What they really need is a cash injection of about twenty-thousand to get them over the next twelve months whilst they pitch for new business.’

  ‘And who better to ask than the Bank of Mum?’ said Sutton.

  ‘Nice work. Get a small team to keep on looking into that,’ said Warren. ‘Over to you, Mags, assuming Rachel hasn’t any more surprises.’

  ‘We’ve retrieved the CCTV from the leisure centre that Anish was a member of,’ said Richardson. ‘First off, the morning of the Thursday that he went to the hotel looks pretty much normal compared to previous weeks. He arrived a little before seven-thirty, in a tracksuit, and came out just after eight-thirty in his suit. He exchanged a few words with the lad on the till and paid cash, then changed on his own in a private cubicle. He said hello, or nodded to a couple of the regulars, but I don’t see any meaningful conversation. CCTV outside the entrance shows that he drove there in his own car.’

  ‘What about his Monday fitness suite sessions?’ asked Warren.

  ‘We have videos for the last few weeks, but again nothing stands out. It’s the same crowd each time, but they pretty much follow their own routine and hardly speak; Anish has his headphones in the whole time. I don’t think it was a social thing, he just turned up, did his thing and got on with his day.’

  Warren could sympathise with that. He and Susan had tried exercising together, but they found it a distraction. Warren had started running again over the summer but hadn’t enjoyed it, particularly after the clocks had gone back. Maybe he should look into swimming instead?

  ‘How did he look on that Thursday morning, given that he called in sick the next day?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Normal,’ said Richardson. ‘He seems to have been in there for the usual length of time, and he wasn’t obviously sneezing or blowing his nose as he left.’

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ said Ruskin. ‘Sometimes, if I’m coming down with a cold, I find a good swim clears my head.’

  ‘True, but he didn’t mention feeling ill at work,’ said Sutton.

  ‘So why did he text in sick on the Friday morning?’ asked Hardwick. ‘Was he planning to rendezvous with his killer that day?’

  ‘If he was pulling a sicky, then either it was a last-minute thing, or he’s an amateur; he doesn’t seem to have laid the groundwork very well,’ said Hutchinson. ‘Surely he’d have been sneezing or complaining about feeling ill the day before?’ He stopped and looked around the table. ‘What? My brother-in-law’s an expert skiver. I’m amazed no one has thought to look for a correlation between the football fixtures and his “Monday morning migraines”.’

  ‘I’ll remember to check if Newcastle are playing the next time you start complaining you’re feeling a bit under the weather,’ replied Warren drily.

  ‘We still don’t know if Anish was alive when he sent those texts,’ said Ruskin, after the laughter had died down. ‘We think his killer sent the text on Saturday morning. We see Anish leaving the hotel at quarter to seven Friday morning and the first of those texts was sent at 7.18 a.m. He could have left the hotel and returned the car, then met his killer straight afterwards. That’s not muc
h time for him to be killed before his phone was switched back on and the text sent.’

  ‘The text was sent from the vicinity of his flat,’ said Pymm.

  ‘Anish could have been forced by his killer to send the text and murdered later,’ said Ruskin.

  ‘If we go down that route, then he could have been killed after the Saturday text,’ said Sutton.

  It was a sobering thought. Had Anish been kept against his will for a prolonged period of time?

  ‘Which again raises the question of how well he knew his killer,’ said Hardwick. ‘How else would they have known where he lived?’

  ‘He’d hired a car, so presumably he had his driving licence on him, with his address printed on it,’ pointed out Sutton.

  ‘On the subject of how well he knew his killer, do we still think he lived alone?’

  ‘I reckon so,’ said Sutton. ‘He had pretty much one of everything in the bathroom; it doesn’t look as though anyone was staying over on a regular basis.’

  ‘Which matches his supermarket trips to Tesco,’ said Pymm. ‘He paid cash, but he also used a Clubcard for the points. We’ve got some images of him from his past few trips and he’s on his own; his purchases for the past year are consistent with a single person living alone. He also buys petrol at Tesco and considering how much of a gas-guzzler that Merc is, he doesn’t fill up very often. The dealer he leases the car from says he drives barely five thousand miles a year.’

  ‘Which makes you wonder why he even owns such a fancy car,’ said Ruskin.

  ‘Appearances,’ said Sutton. ‘It’s all part of the playboy image he cultivated on social media.’

  ‘It’s an image that might have got him killed,’ said Warren.

  It was a sobering thought to end the meeting on and the team were subdued as they left. Walking past Pymm, Warren saw that she was scrolling through her email as she waited for the room to clear out – her body language made him pause.