Payback

by R. C. Bridgestock

  The stupid smirk Myers gave to the camera as he stood to be taken back to the cells was not a welcome one. He was telling the police nothing. But, bizarrely, what did dawn on Charley as she watched the interview back, was that Mr Gibson could not only help them with Myers’ financial background, but might also be able to tell them who Solomon’s landlord was and whether he shared the flat with anyone. Why hadn’t that occurred to her before?

  Charley placed the phone on its cradle. She had listened to what the representative of the Crown Prosecution Service had said. She understood that they didn’t want her to charge Myers with murder. After all, all she had at this moment in time was circumstantial evidence which didn’t prove he’d committed the murders. But what it did show her was that he’d been present at the murder scene. And now enquiries were in progress.

  A wave of excitement went around the incident room at debrief. The anonymous phone call to the incident room was found to have come from the motorway service station at Hartshead and a unit had been sent to seal off the area. CSI had been booked to attend and the CCTV by the telephone kiosks was known to be in working order. They had an exact time at which the call had been made, because it had been logged. These two vital snippets of information together meant they might also be able to identify the vehicle which the caller had used to get to the service station.

  Believing herself to be alone in the car park when she left that night, Charley looked up at the stars in the night sky. ‘Thank you, God,’ she said, slowly exhaling.

  ‘Put out a jug of milk for the Hob last night, did you?’ said Annie, with a grin as wide as her face would allow.

  Charley looked around for her colleague. When she found her doing much the same thing, she laughed out loud. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Good job I did then,’ said Annie, with a wink.

  Chapter 16

  Charley watched the TV interview held by the Divisional Commander.

  Standing on the steps of the police station he looked very smart and indeed he sported the new haircut he had threatened to have for the occasion. Assembled were local and national media. ‘The pursuit of the person or persons responsible for knocking down my officer will be relentless,’ Roper declared, his face determined. ‘I appeal to the public for their help in finding the driver and the vehicle involved,’ he said.

  A muffled shout could be heard in the background, from one of the media personnel present, Charley suspected. The camera scanned the line-up for the offender before stopping at Danny Ray. ‘Do you think that this incident could be connected to the unsolved murders of the two young people in our town recently?’ Danny was a head higher than most and with his hair being blown about wildly by the wind it was hard for the person with the camera not to notice him. The journalist waited patiently for a reply to his question, unblinking, goading. Staring at the screen, Charley could see that he was pressing his lips together, the muscle twitching along his jawline.

  Brian Roper’s dark eyes fixed on him with a strange, flaring look, but the expression on Danny’s face as the camera moved between them remained unchanged and unreadable.

  ‘We have no motive for this apparently deliberate attack. The officer concerned remains stable on a life-support machine at this moment in time.’ Roper dipped his head. ‘Thank you. There will be no more questions,’ he said, turning his back on the camera. Shoulders back, head held high, he walked back into the station as if being dangled by a puppet master from a set of strings.

  Intelligence arriving in the incident room bubbled like a hot spring throughout the rest of the day and Charley harnessed it all ready for the team debrief. The incident room was buzzing when Mike and Charley walked in, and chatter gave way to silence the minute they sat down at the front. It appeared most of those assembled were drinking coffee from Costa, judging by the number of discarded plastic containers littering the desk tops. It also looked like a sandwich run had recently been completed. Charley noted the updates on the incident boards. She made eye contact with each person in the room as she asked if they had an update for those present. The anticipation was palpable.

  There was no change in Wilkie’s condition, said the liaison officer for the hospital, and Charley reminded them they all needed to be alert.

  ‘Whether the attempt on Wilkie’s life is connected to the recent murders or not, it is without doubt that he was targeted whilst working on the enquiries, so we all need to be aware of our personal safety.’

  When it was Ricky-Lee and Annie’s turn, they told those assembled that Solomon Myers was continuing to make no comment to questions put to him, although his cocky attitude had wilted as the interview had progressed. They’d had the impression he was doing as he had been told, whether that was from fear of repercussions from a co-conspirator, or instruction from his solicitor, they didn’t know. What was known now was that Mr Gibson did pay Myers’ salary monthly into a bank account in his name and the details had been passed to the financial investigation unit who were treating the enquiry as urgent.

  ‘With regard to the landlord of his rented property, that’s been traced to a letting agency and arrangements are in hand to speak to the manager tomorrow morning about the details,’ said Mike. ‘Fingerprints have told us they have not only Solomon’s marks on the mobile phone, but also a partial mark that is not his. It is not good enough for a search of the database, but what they can tell me is that it belongs to a male. The phone is currently at the Mass Spectroscopy Unit, so I am hoping that they may be able to tell us more later.’

  ‘The enquiry at Hartshead motorway service station is still ongoing; the kiosks have been fingerprinted by CSI and the receivers swabbed. The CCTV tapes have been seized and reviewed, but unfortunately the only image we have at that time is of someone’s feet,’ said Annie.

  ‘Do we have a picture?’

  There was a nodding of the head. ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘And is the person in the photo wearing brown brogue shoes?’ Charley held her breath, her tired eyes pleading for a reply.

  ‘Yes, boss, and the team are comparing images,’ said Ricky-Lee.

  ‘Urgently, I hope. This may be it – the thing that connects Wilkie’s attacker to the murders.’ She moved on. ‘CSI update, Neal; give me some good news.’

  ‘Depends what you want to hear…’ Neal’s eyes were heavy.

  ‘I want to hear that the netting recovered from the tailgate is a positive match with the netting used on Kylie Rogers.’

  ‘The marks lifted from inside the cab were all glove marks. The soil sample enquiry is still ongoing. However,’ he nodded his head, ‘the netting is a positive match.’

  Charley shook her head, but smiled at him. His old eyes appeared to light up. There was mischief in the old dog yet. She pointed towards Tattie. ‘Go on, share the update you’ve got from the intelligence unit, Tattie,’ she said.

  Tattie had a serious face. ‘They’ve resurrected an old case in which a woman was viciously raped and left for dead on the moorland at Scammonden. She had been exercising her dog at the time and didn’t see her attacker, but woke up in hospital having sustained severe head injuries.’

  Charley scowled. ‘Why are we only being told about it now? Are they suggesting that it might be connected?’

  ‘Apparently, the cold case review team have just got the news of a low copy DNA profile from a previous scene sample. The technology at Forensics at the time wasn’t able to do this, but with technology continuously evolving, they have found this hit on the National Database.’

  ‘Has Solomon Myers’ DNA been checked against it?’

  ‘The whole file has been attached to the database. Jean Weetwood was lucky to survive.’

  ‘Do they know what weapon caused the head injury?’

  ‘No.’

  At the end of the day, Charley shut her desk drawer, turned the key in the lock, sat back in her chair and looked around. Through the Venetian blinds on the window to the outside world she could see nothing but darkness. The half-w
indow in the door that led to the incident room was dimly grey. Slight movements now and then told her a skeleton staff were still working, but the silence was like a bubble blown from a pipe. It swelled, it floated into the air and then it burst. Quickly, she reached out to her desk lamp, put her finger on the switch and illuminated the room. She unlocked her drawer and pulled out a notepad and pen. There were so many questions yet to be answered. She drew a line down the centre of the page. ‘Positive’ she wrote at the top of column one, before adding: ‘1. They knew roughly where the murders had taken place. 2. The victims were transported to the dump site using the seized pick-up truck. 3. The seized piece of netting from Gibson’s Horticultural was confirmed as being the same as the netting used to cover Kylie’s body, and Charley had an offender in custody.’

  Her pen hovered over the paper. She put her elbow on the desk and ran a splayed hand over her head. She pondered, sat back in her chair and raised her eyes to the darkened ceiling. The missing link was the second person. And the motive. She wrote ‘Motive’ in the second column; without it the case would not be solved. Experience told her that if there wasn’t a clear motive then the likelihood was that there would be some sexual connotation. The jigsaw wasn’t complete, although things were coming together.

  Charley frowned. The other person appeared to be trying to confuse things, but, if so, why? Were they showing off their knowledge of the investigation process? And if so, why would they attack Wilkie? Had her DC rumbled the perpetrator without knowing it? Or knowing it, but not sharing that knowledge with the rest of the team? Was he, for some inexplicable reason, unable to, or felt he couldn’t share it? Was it a timing issue, or was he being bribed; but why and how? What could the perpetrator have over Wilkie?

  She dragged her heavy, tired body from behind the desk. For a moment she could see the faces of the victims with their wide, staring eyes … and then Wilkie’s face loomed at her through the darkness. She gave her head a shake, although she wasn’t conscious of doing it and, going quickly to the door, she got out of the room and shut the door after her. She leant against it. The racing of her heart had passed, leaving her feeling exhausted. She felt like she was going to sink to the floor, but she wouldn’t allow herself to; she stiffened her knees. The humming of the computers in the now vacant, dimly lit incident room was somewhat comforting. It was warm and she felt somehow safe within these walls. She walked through the room to the kitchen and found herself staring at the jar of coffee. She seized it, unscrewed the cap, took a cup from the shelf and spooned the coffee powder into it. She filled the kettle from the sink, turning the tap on full and letting it splash over the surround.

  You can do it. Hold it together. They’re depending on you, she told herself. And, with a deliberate calmness she set about collecting the discarded Costa cups and putting them in a bin-bag along with the empty milk cartons and fizzy pop bottles, wiping the sugar that had spilt over the kitchen tops.

  ‘Just when you think you’ve got a breakthrough. Then the camera turns out to have been offset and you only see feet,’ said a voice from the doorway. It was Ricky-Lee.

  She turned. She couldn’t help but raise a smile. ‘Not in this case though. It’s a godsend.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I know so, I’m sure that they’re the same as those in the picture on Myers’ phone.’

  Ricky-Lee’s eyes were wide. ‘Or is that wishful thinking on your part? We’ll need expert analysis to confirm.’

  ‘Sure, but I’ve got this gut feeling…’ she said, fist to her stomach.

  ‘Wilkie’s would-be killer really would have put his foot in it then, wouldn’t he?’

  The next morning, before briefing, Annie was sitting with the team trawling through CCTV footage. Mike was on the telephone and Charley was photocopying. Mike walked towards her, a solemn look upon his face.

  ‘Solomon Myers’ DNA isn’t a match for the Jean Weetwood attack,’ he said.

  Charley’s disappointment was like a lead weight dropping into the pit of her stomach, but she would not show it. ‘Look at the positive. Every new sample that comes onto the database will now be checked,’ she said.

  ‘Boss, over here,’ came a sudden cry from Annie. ‘We’ve got a sighting of Myers in Bar Amsterdam the night before Stewart Johnson’s body was found.’ When Charley did not appear at her side imminently, she looked up and across to see she hadn’t moved.

  ‘Boss?’ She called again. ‘He wasn’t there long, but it’s definitely him,’ Annie said excitedly when Charley finally arrived and looked over her shoulder at the screen.

  Charley leaned heavily with one hand on the desk and the other on the back of Annie’s chair. ‘Run it again,’ she said, her heart beating frantically in her chest, her mind trapped between worlds. She looked at Annie, frightened she might hear the beating, so loud was it to her ears. Sunny and her platinum-haired friend sat at the bar talking to the bartender. ‘And again,’ Charley said. Satisfied the camera hadn’t picked up her seat at the bar, she could now concentrate on the job in hand. ‘We will need expert analysis and confirmation it’s him. Get it,’ she said, almost too quickly.

  ‘Stewart Johnson isn’t there … Not that we can see, anyhow.’ Annie sounded disappointed.

  ‘I didn’t expect him to be. After all, he was sleeping rough on the town centre streets at the time, wasn’t he?’ The rush of adrenaline that had raced through her body moments before made her heart race, her breathing deepen and the delicate blonde hairs on her forearms stand on end.

  Annie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yeah, and who’d notice if someone who’s sleeping rough goes missing? Do you think that’s why he was targeted? I guess the usual assumption when someone on the streets goes missing is that they have moved on, or been locked up.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Charley, her voice rising an octave. ‘We now know Solomon was out and about and in town though. Have we got any further sightings of him that night?’ she said, searching the screen. ‘Do we know if he met anyone, talked to anyone?’

  Annie shook her head, looking slightly oddly at Charley’s flushed cheeks. ‘Not according to the viewing team. He appeared to be alone. He didn’t mingle with the crowds. In some respects, he looks like he’s bemused, as if he has somehow been transported to an alien time, and place. That, for me, is what made him stand out.’

  There were still hours of footage to review. Charley returned to her office and Annie to her task.

  An hour later Myers was having his last interview with Ricky-Lee and Annie. Charley clicked on the video link. She listened and watched whilst at the same time reading and signing off completed enquiries from the pile on her desk.

  As before, Myers was making no comment. As the officers wrapped up the interview, Charley picked up the phone to speak to the Crown Prosecution Service. The prisoner had had every opportunity to speak up if he had wished to do so.

  The lead case worker at CPS was a Mr Joseph Seagull. Charley was fully prepared for all-out war at any suggestion that Solomon Myers should be charged with anything less than two counts of murder and be placed back before the courts for a remand in custody. The foundation for the success of the remand was based on the fact they were confident one other person was still outstanding.

  ‘Court tomorrow morning, I presume, Inspector?’ said Mr Seagull.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Charley.

  ‘Good. Will you be there to liaise if there are any matters that arise?’

  There was a knock at her door and Tattie walked in, her face serious. Were those tears Charley saw in her eyes?

  ‘Yes,’ she said in reply to Mr Seagull. She smiled at Tattie who stuck a Post-it note in front of her and left abruptly, closing the door quietly behind her.

  ‘See you, then,’ she heard him say as she put the phone down.

  Charley read the note: ‘Hospital requesting you ring them in respect of Wilkie.’

  For a moment her heart seemed to sink even further. She picked up the phone and di
alled.

  Chapter 17

  Detective Ricky-Lee Lewis was the one to charge Solomon Myers with the murder of Kylie Rose Rogers and Stewart Johnson.

  ‘What was his reply?’ asked Charley.

  ‘Would you be surprised if I told you it was, “no comment”?’

  Charley shook her head.

  ‘But you might be surprised to know that as he was led away to the cells he was crying.’

  ‘And yet he still won’t tell us who his co-conspirator is?’

  It was Ricky-Lee’s turn to shake his head.

  Charley’s brow was furrowed. ‘Why, I wonder?’

  Ricky-Lee shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’ll be appearing before Huddersfield Magistrates tomorrow morning. I’ve liaised with Connie at the press office and she’s doing the necessary release to the media.’

  Charley’s phone rang and she picked up instantly, recognising Rubin’s number. Ricky-Lee left the room.

  ‘We’ll be removing the ventilator tomorrow morning,’ Rubin said.

  Her mood immediately lifted. ‘His vital signs are improving?’

  ‘The swelling to Mr Connor’s brain has reduced. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.’

  His voice had neither a negative nor positive tone to it and the phone call left Charley feeling slightly anxious. Her mobile phone beeped a message from the Divisional Commander. She found herself clenching her jaws tightly together when she read it: ‘Just heard the news, keep me in the loop. I’m on the sixth hole at the moment.’