by Paul Gitsham
Kimpton shrugged. ‘Just a sports bag; cheap-looking. With handles that you carry, rather than straps for your back. I didn’t see any logos or anything.’
It was hardly conclusive proof, but the report back from the dog handlers had indicated that once-upon-a-time, drugs had probably been stored in Leon Grime’s allotment shed.
‘So, let’s continue. You’re in a room with a dead body. Jake and Leon don’t want to call the police or an ambulance, so they decide to dispose of the body and clean up the room. What happened next?’
‘Well, I said that I didn’t want to get involved, but Jake said I was already involved because I had been letting him into the hotel and that if I said anything, he’d tell the police that I was there when it happened and that he’d take me down with him.’ Kimpton gave a shuddering breath. ‘And then he says he knows all about Kayla and her mum. He had this really scary look in his eyes. I’d seen it before, in prison, when he got mad at someone … and I figured if he was involved in drugs, then he might even ask one of the other dealers to solve the problem …’
‘OK, so walk me through what happened over the rest of the night,’ said Warren, trying to keep him focused.
‘Well, we knew that we couldn’t do anything with the body until everyone else in the hotel had gone to sleep.’ A look of shame crossed his face. ‘Jake said that Anish was creeping him out, so he put a bed sheet over him. And then we just waited.’
Warren had a sudden, surreal image of the three men sitting quietly around as if participating in an Irish wake or performing shemira. And then he felt his mood darken as he remembered his own experiences of sitting with a dead person – some peaceful, some less so.
He pushed the thoughts away and focused on his next question.
‘That’s it? Did anyone leave the room in that time?’ he asked.
‘No, Jake said he wanted everyone together. There was a bathroom so we could go for a piss and there were those see-though cups sealed in a plastic bag so we could drink some water. He wouldn’t even let me go for a fag.
‘About 1 a.m. Jake reckoned it was quiet enough that nobody would see us. Leon told him where the CCTV cameras were outside and Jake went to fetch Anish’s car around to the side of the building,’ he swallowed. ‘He put Anish’s hoodie on in case anyone spotted him.’
‘What did you and Leon do?’ asked Warren.
‘We waited until he got back and then Leon and Jake took the rest of his clothes off him. Jake put his jeans and shoes on and put everything else in his backpack.’ Kimpton’s voice quietened. ‘Poor bastard hadn’t even had time to unpack his wash kit. Then they wrapped him in a bed sheets. He wasn’t stiff yet, so Jake sort of lifted him over his shoulder and took him down the stairs with Leon to the car.’
‘Then what?’
‘I stayed, stripped the bed and remade it using fresh bedding from the laundry cupboard in the corridor, then rearranged the covers so it looked like it had been slept in. I wiped down the desk and the bathroom and replaced the towels and glasses. There wasn’t really any blood from where he hit his head, but I gave that a clean as well. Then when they got back, I cycled home, as I figured people would be suspicious if it looked like I’d stayed in the hotel all night. Leon went home to his missus and Jake stayed in the room until the next morning. After I started work again, he left the room dressed in Anish’s clothes and walked out the front of reception, using the drop box for the keycard. Then he drove Anish’s car back to the hire place.’
‘And what about when they disposed of Anish’s body. What happened then?’
‘I don’t know, I really don’t, I wasn’t there. I just thought they were going to dump him by the side of the road or in a ditch or something. I didn’t know they were going to … you know …’ He made a vague gesture towards his hands and face.
‘Going to what, Nick?’ pressed Warren.
‘You know, cut his fingers off and smash his teeth in.’
‘They said nothing about that as you all sat around his cooling body for what four, five hours?’
‘No, they must have decided it in the car when they were taking the body away.’
‘So when did they fetch the tools?’
Kimpton blinked. ‘Then maybe they decided to do it before then.’
‘When? You said that nobody was allowed to leave the room.’
Kimpton’s eyes jumped from side to side. ‘They must have come up with the idea when I went back down to the kitchen after Jake showed me the body. I guess Jake could have grabbed the tools from Leon’s office when he went to fetch the car.’
‘OK,’ said Warren. ‘That all makes sense.’
Kimpton leaned his elbows on the table, exhaustion etched on his face.
‘I think we can see that Mr Kimpton made some very serious errors of judgement on the night that Mr Patel tragically died,’ said his solicitor, who up until this point had mostly been making notes. ‘He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and clearly acting under duress. If it transpires Mr Patel did die of a heart attack or natural causes, then my client, who was not present at the time, cannot possibly be charged with murder. And if the facts were to suggest that Mr Patel’s demise was precipitated by the events that took place in that room, then again, all my client is guilty of is allowing Mr Beechey access to the hotel. Naïve yes, but he could not reasonably have foreseen how the evening would unfold.’
‘I shall take that under advisement,’ said Warren. The solicitor hadn’t wasted his breath asking for Kimpton to be released on bail. Warren had been granted an extension to custody and he fully intended to use it. And even if Kimpton’s version of events were true, he would need that time to determine if there were additional charges to be brought, such as preventing a lawful burial.
‘Interview suspended,’ said Warren standing up.
Kimpton wasn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
‘Nicely done, Warren,’ said Grayson as Warren re-entered the CID office, where the interview had been streamed on the briefing room screen. ‘It looks like you got everything out of him that you wanted.’ He handed Warren a steaming cup of coffee without asking; from its rich odour it was clearly freshly brewed from his personal stash – he was obviously pleased with how the day was progressing so far.
‘Where are we with the searches, Tony?’ asked Warren.
‘They’ve pretty much finished with Jake Beechey’s flat and very interesting it was too.’
Warren listened carefully as he ran down the list of what they’d found. He caught himself almost smiling. He and the team had developed a theory about what they thought had really transpired that night, and it looked as though they were largely correct.
‘What about forensics?’
‘Coming in thick and fast,’ said Pymm as Warren moved over to perch on the edge of her desk. ‘Andy Harrison reckons most of the fast-track we’ve sent in over the past couple of days will be completed in the next few hours.’
‘It gets quicker all the time,’ marvelled Warren. ‘Pretty soon we’ll be getting results back almost as quickly as they do on TV.’
‘Only if they give us the same budget,’ grumbled Grayson as he joined Warren. ‘The money they spend on filming just a couple of episodes of those glossy American shows dwarfs our entire annual forensic allowance.’
Turning back to her screen, Pymm started to run through what she’d been sent so far. Warren felt a stirring of excitement, and he could see that Sutton and Grayson felt the same. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel was getting ever brighter.
‘One last thing,’ said Pymm as she finished. ‘Mags left you a little present before she and Moray headed over to the Mount to speak to Leon Grime.’
‘She found some CCTV?’ asked Warren.
‘Yep, and it’s everything you wanted.’
Warren looked at the clock next to the wall-map of Middlesbury.
‘Care to join me for elevenses whilst we plan our interview strategy, DI Sutton?’ as
ked Warren.
‘I’ll grab my wallet,’ said Sutton.
‘My treat,’ said Grayson, fishing his own wallet out. He was very pleased with the way the day was going.
Chapter 51
Jake Beechey projected an air of arrogant confidence when Warren and Sutton started the morning’s interview, but behind his sneering visage, there was a note of worry.
‘Before we start, Mr Beechey would like me to read out a prepared statement for the record,’ stated the solicitor.
‘Please, go ahead,’ said Warren, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. Beside him, Sutton kept his face neutral, giving no sign that he’d just lost ten pounds in a bet that the two men had agreed before the interview started. Sutton had been certain that Beechey would go for a ‘no comment’ interview. Warren had disagreed. Beechey already knew that Kimpton was trying to blame everything on him. Whether through fear or arrogance, Warren was confident that Beechey wouldn’t be able to let things stand without trying to fight his corner. It remained to be seen if he had more to say on the matter beyond his statement.
‘First of all, Mr Beechey would like to repeat his apologies for yesterday’s incident after the dance class. He had visited the school in the hope that he could persuade Ms Whitey to speak to her former partner, Nicholas Kimpton, and ask him not to embroil him in the unfortunate death of Anish Patel. As we saw from yesterday’s interview, he was right to be worried that Mr Kimpton would attempt to shift the blame onto him, when he was only guilty of being naïve.’
Warren and Sutton said nothing; Beechey kept his eyes averted.
‘Mr Beechey would also like to retract his claim that he found Mr Patel’s mobile phone in the bushes. In reality, Mr Kimpton had given him the phone a few days after my client had been called out to pick him up on the night that Mr Patel died. Mr Kimpton was, in fact, the one who found it. He asked Mr Beechey to sell it on his behalf, splitting the cash between them. Mr Beechey fully accepts that he should not have agreed to this but had no idea that this phone belonged to Mr Patel until you informed him yesterday. Mr Beechey’s criminal record is such that he was afraid to admit to handling what – in hindsight he realises – were stolen goods. When it became clear to him that the phone belonged to the unfortunate Mr Patel he panicked, worried that he would become even further implicated in a situation he had nothing to do with.’
His piece said, the lawyer closed the laptop.
‘Thank you,’ said Warren. He turned to Beechey. ‘Let’s return to the other mobile phone. The one that we found in the glovebox of your car.’
‘The one that Nick left in the glovebox of my car,’ said Beechey.
‘Which you never saw before?’ said Warren.
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘Why would Nick Kimpton text himself?’ asked Sutton.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Beechey, blinking at the apparent change in direction.
‘You reckon that the phone found in your glovebox belongs to Nick Kimpton. Every night that Anish went to the Easy Break Hotel, that phone texted Nick Kimpton’s other phone; the one with the quacking ringtone. Why would he text himself? It doesn’t make sense.’
Beechey frowned. ‘I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him.’
‘We will,’ Sutton assured him.
‘Do you ever use WhatsApp, Jake?’ asked Warren.
Beechey shrugged, his tone nonchalant. ‘Sure, who doesn’t?’
‘And whom do you contact through the app?’
‘Family. Mates. The usual.’
‘We’ve looked at your personal phone and we can’t find any messages exchanged with Anish, even when we looked as far back as January when you and Anish were getting to know each other,’ said Sutton.
‘I never spoke to him on WhatsApp,’ said Beechey. ‘We just used old-school texting.’
‘What about when you contacted him using the phone found in your glovebox?’
‘Nope, hasn’t even got WhatsApp installed.’
Beechey’s solicitor winced.
‘How do you know what apps are installed on that phone?’ asked Sutton immediately. ‘You said you’d never seen it before.’
Beechey looked over at his solicitor.
‘You know, we can’t find any trace of Mr Kimpton’s fingerprints on that phone,’ said Warren, not giving Beechey time to think up a suitable response to his faux pas.
‘He must have wiped it down, he ain’t daft,’ said Beechey.
‘Wiped it down and then placed it in the glovebox of your car? Why would he do that?’ asked Warren.
‘To stitch me up, obviously.’
‘Why? You were mates. Why would he kill a man, then think, “you know what, I’ll pin this one on Jake Beechey”?’ asked Warren.
‘Don’t know, you’ll have to ask him,’ mumbled Beechey.
‘OK, cut the crap, Jake,’ snapped Sutton. ‘Your fingerprints are on the phone, even if Nick Kimpton’s aren’t.’
Beechey opened his mouth again, before thinking better of it and reached for his glass of water. He took a slow sip, his eyes narrowed and calculating.
Would he ‘no comment’? It was probably the wisest thing to do at that moment, but it wouldn’t look good when they showed the interview to a jury. Or would he try and talk his way out of trouble?
‘I found the phone in the glovebox a few days ago,’ he said eventually. ‘I played with it to see if I could work out who it belonged to, but the messages were wiped. I figured it probably belonged to Nick.’
‘So why didn’t you give it back to him?’ asked Warren. ‘I thought you two were mates?’
‘I couldn’t see why he’d have left it in the glovebox. Then I remembered how flustered he was when I picked him up that night. I got a really bad feeling, and then when I saw Anish on the news …’
‘Then why did you hang onto it?’ asked Warren.
‘I thought it might be evidence. I was trying to decide if I should hand it in to the police and tell them about my suspicions or if I should chuck it and forget all about it. I didn’t want to get Nick into trouble.’ His voice quietened. ‘He’s a good man, I can’t believe he’d kill someone, I figured it was all just a coincidence. But now I know the truth …’
Sutton snorted. ‘Pull the other one, Jake, it’s got bells on it.’
Beechey glared at him, but remained silent.
‘Jake, do you know what end-to-end encryption is?’ asked Warren.
Beechey paused for a moment before eventually nodding. ‘Yeah, I read something about it on the internet.’
‘So, you know that Facebook, the owners of WhatsApp, are unable to tell us the content of any messages passing through their servers?’ said Warren. Beechey nodded. ‘And that the messages are actually encrypted and decrypted on the users’ handsets, so that if the app is deleted, or the phone is wiped, they can’t be retrieved?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘Well here’s the thing. That handset did have WhatsApp installed, but it was deleted.’
‘So, the messages are gone?’ asked Beechey.
‘Yes, all gone,’ said Warren.
‘So, we’ll never know what Nick said to Anish?’
‘Not using that handset, no,’ said Warren. ‘But there are two sides to a conversation.’
‘But Anish’s handset was also wiped,’ said Beechey.
‘Yes, it was,’ said Warren. ‘I imagine you did that before you tried to sell it on in The Rising Sun.’
Beechey said nothing. He’d already admitted to trying to dispose of the phone.
‘Did you look at the messages before you wiped them?’
Beechey reached for his glass of water again. This time his sip was even slower, the calculations going on behind his eyes even more frantic. Would he incriminate Kimpton further? Or would he decide that admitting he had browsed the phone’s contents would make it more difficult for him to claim that he couldn’t be certain who the handset originally belonged to?
‘No, I never r
ead them,’ he shrugged. ‘None of my business.’ A faint hint of a smirk played around his lips.
‘Anish Patel’s handset was a top-of-the-range Samsung – this year’s model. Pretty expensive, which is why you were so keen to sell it on, I guess,’ said Sutton.
‘Yeah, so?’
‘Anish wasn’t perhaps as flush with cash as he liked to portray sometimes,’ said Warren.
Beechey shrugged as Warren continued. ‘So, he saved a bit of money and got the nice, snazzy handset, but bought the model with the smallest storage.’
Again, Beechey shrugged, but a crease had appeared in his forehead.
‘I made that mistake once,’ said Sutton. ‘Within six months I had to delete something every time I wanted to take more than a couple of photographs. It drove me nuts when we were on holiday in Canada. I was going to back up everything to one of those cloud storage websites, but the data-roaming charges would have bankrupted me if I couldn’t find free WiFi.’
‘So?’
‘Did you know that Anish’s handset had a MicroSD card?’ asked Warren.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Beechey.
‘You know, one of those tiny memory cards that you can buy if your phone memory keeps on filling up? They only cost a few quid, it’s much cheaper than backing everything up to the cloud if you’re outside the EU.’
Beechey’s swallowed.
‘Anish set the phone to save everything onto the card,’ said Warren. ‘Photos, music, WhatsApp conversations …’
‘How was Antonelli’s?’ asked Sutton. ‘I’m thinking of taking the missus there for our anniversary. Is the food any good?’
Beechey’s eyes told them he knew exactly where this was going.
Sutton opened the folder sitting between him and Warren and pushed a glossy photograph across the table.
‘This is a still from CCTV footage in Antonelli’s restaurant where you and Anish enjoyed a nice meal on Saturday the 19th of June. That’s what? Five months after you supposedly decided not to meet up with Anish again, and instead introduced him to your mate Nick?’ He leaned forward and squinted at the picture. ‘Looks like lasagne. If it’s as good as my wife’s, I may be tempted to book a table.’