Murder Unearthed

by Anita Waller

  ‘Lucie,’ Tessa said, ‘I’m going to leave you with Hannah while you sign this addition to your earlier statement. Thank you for your help. I’m going to chat with your boss to see if she heard Orla say it, and then we’ll leave you to get on with your job. Is there anything else at all that you’ve not remembered before? And don’t worry about not mentioning this in your earlier statement, this is why we do second visits. The human mind is a fickle creature.’

  ‘I really can’t think of anything to do with her mum,’ Lucie said, ‘but I’m sure it was that afternoon when she rang her dad. Not her dad, Andy, I mean.’

  ‘Did she say why she rang him?’

  ‘No, but she spoke to him, she didn’t leave a voicemail. It was obvious it was a conversation, not a quick “Hi, it’s me. I’ll ring you later” type of thing. Only lasted a minute or so, and she made the call outside, we’re not allowed to use our phones in here.’

  ‘Thank you, Lucie.’ Tessa stood and walked across to where the owner was serving a customer. They had a brief conversation in which she confirmed she hadn’t heard Orla say anything to her mum, but she had seen Orla make the call outside the café.

  Back in the car, the two women turned to each other. Tessa spoke first. ‘Now all we have to find out is whether Orla did go home before her plan to walk to Hope kicked in, was the reason for going home her pregnancy, and what the fuck did she ring Andy about? Let’s go back and get in that conference room. We certainly saved the best till last.’

  ‘And these were the ones really on the extreme periphery of Orla’s life, yet they’ve been the ones to deliver something new.’ Hannah shook her head. ‘Let’s go and grab some doughnuts – it could be a long afternoon.’

  ‘We’ve left a tea rooms who sell doughnuts. Why do we always complicate things?’ Tessa, driving for once, switched on the ignition, and drove carefully through Castleton. The doughnuts were picked up in Hathersage Café, and transported safely to the conference room.

  It was indeed a long afternoon. The hot water urn had been set up and was good to go, tea and coffee supplies were by its side, along with bottles of water and the precious doughnuts.

  Everyone was present at the specified time, and Hannah handed out bundles of paperwork that she had spent her lunch break photocopying.

  ‘Thank you for being on time,’ Tessa said. ‘We’ll crack on with it till half past two, then have a half hour break. This is going to be a lot of work and I don’t want anybody to have a frazzled brain because of it. Besides, we have doughnuts. So, in your packs you have copies of every reinterview. We must have had some really enthusiastic uniforms on this job, because some of the notes are extensive, but they need reading through carefully. This has been a massive undertaking that is now complete, and so we mustn’t miss anything. Hopefully Hannah has put them into the same order, so we’ll read the statement, and discuss it. Hannah will take notes of anything that we consider worth a mention, and then we’ll move on to the next one. That okay with the three of you?’

  Hannah, Dave and Ray said ‘yes, boss’ at the same time, and opened their file folders. Hannah pointed out that there was order in the way she had collated them – there were only three that hadn’t had any changes, and they had been placed at the top.

  There was silence as they read Clarice Travers’s statement.

  ‘Okay,’ Tessa said, ‘thoughts? Comments?’

  ‘No changes,’ Dave said. ‘I think Clarice has too much on her plate with Ernie to take notice of anything, to be honest. Lovely lady, but saw nothing and knows nothing, in my opinion.’

  They agreed with his words, and moved on. Tessa was pleased to see the three of them taking notes, and after talking through six of the statements, she called a halt. ‘Okay, let’s get a drink and talk about something else for a bit. We need to take a step back for a few minutes.’

  ‘Okay, boss, I’ll get them,’ Ray said. ‘Everybody want coffee?’

  All three nodded. He made the drinks, handed them around and placed the pile of doughnuts in the middle of the table. ‘We need the sugar,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Thanks, Ray. How’s your lad doing?’ Tessa asked. Ray’s son, Ben, had been the one to find Leon Rowe’s hideout, which had ultimately led to the murderer’s death.

  ‘He’s doing fine. Once he’d got over the shock, I think he felt quite proud really. And he’s never told any of his pals about his part in it. The good thing that’s come out of it is that he wants to join the police force as soon as he’s old enough. I can’t make up my mind how I feel about that, deep down, but it’s his decision without any suggestions from me, so I think he’ll do it. It’s not an easy job, being a copper, not with the increase in knife crime and gangs of youngsters roaming the streets, but he seems set on doing it.’

  They carried on talking about anything but the job in hand for ten more minutes, then returned to the files.

  ‘Okay, to check we’re on the same one, this is…’ she glanced to the top of the page. ‘Rory McIver. There’s a good Scottish name. Interviewed by you, Dave.’

  ‘Yes, boss. And it might sound like a Scottish name, but he’s definitely a Derbyshire lad, born in the house he still lives in, and he’s eighty-two. Sharp as anything. You’ll not know him because he wasn’t in church on the day we did the initial interviews after the service, but he was on the regular churchgoers list. I spoke to him first in the week following, but he was a bit distracted. His wife had had a fall, and he was having to do everything – cooking, cleaning, looking after her. It’s why he wasn’t in church that day, she’d fallen while she was getting ready to go.’

  Tessa glanced down at the new section of the old man’s statement. ‘He saw a car?’

  ‘He did. It started by my saying how fantastic a position his house is in. It overlooks the hills, and it’s virtually the last in Castleton, the last before the end of terrace next door. Then there’s nothing but hillside. I asked where the road goes after the houses finish, and he said nowhere; it stops about a hundred yards further on, at the spot where the Peakshole Water becomes more than a stream. It widens at that point and it’s always fast flowing and what he termed as “busy”, before settling down as it reaches the middle of Castleton and becomes more placid.’

  ‘He had no description of this car?’

  ‘I left him thinking about it. He said he would ring if he could remember the make. He knows it was the same night as Orla disappeared, because of the atrocious weather. They’ve got a dog, a yapping little thing that never stopped all the time I was there, and he normally takes her out about five every evening for a little walk around the village, but that evening he took her as far as the front garden, in the pouring rain, and let her do her business there. While he was trying to shelter under a tree, he heard the car. It carried on past his house, and he said at the time he thought they must be strangers who didn’t know they would have a hell of a job turning around, because they would have to come back down. It was a small car, light coloured, and with two people in it. That’s all the information he could give me because he returned inside before the car reappeared.’

  She looked at him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me last night?’

  ‘I didn’t get back here to pick up my own car till nine. I picked up the memo about attending this meeting this afternoon, and I hoped Rory would come good with the make of the car before we started, so we’d have something more concrete to look at. And I was bloody tired, ma’am.’

  She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Dave. You did everything right. It’s me jumping on every little point. He hasn’t come back to you then?’

  ‘No, but I went from his house up to the end of this road, and that’s why I was so late back, ma’am.’

  The second time he’d called her ma’am and not boss. Inwardly Tessa cringed. She’d feel better when he reverted to boss. All her team knew she didn’t like ma’am, and she knew she was only called that in front of senior officers or when they were pissed off with her. There were no senior
officers present…

  ‘I believe we should get forensics up there,’ Dave continued, ‘but we have to bear in mind it’s been virtually non-stop rain since this poor lass died, so tyre tracks are simply not there. However, one thought did occur to me. And this is only a thought.’

  The others leaned forward.

  ‘I don’t think a stranger would know of this weird little road. Rory says there’s only me been up there and I certainly didn’t know it. I hadn’t clocked it was an unfinished road. That’s how Rory described it, anyway, and that’s a good description. When you get there it sort of stops and becomes a hillside. To the right is the water, and it was in full spate last night. The side of the road dips down into the water so it would be very easy to roll a body into it, but there’s no guarantee where the body will go after that, there’s a lot of water at that point. I think the search team found her before they climbed that high, so didn’t know of this possible spot for dumping her.’

  ‘Give me a minute to think,’ Tessa said.

  The others remained silent. Hannah scribbled a note on her pad, but said nothing.

  Tessa eventually placed her hands on the table and pushed back her chair. ‘Let’s go now. Dave, get us a car, will you. Hannah, rebook this room for tomorrow if we can, and I’ll hide the doughnuts in my office. Ray, can you quickly print off half a dozen small cars, all light-coloured – say a C1, an Aygo, a Fiat 500, a Fiesta, and a couple of others. Make sure they’re small, and we’ll see if anything jogs Mr McIver’s memory.’

  Hannah pushed her notepad over to Tessa. ‘I predicted your next words, boss,’ she said with a laugh. Written in capitals on the pad was LET’S GO NOW.

  ‘Smart arse,’ Tessa said.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ninety minutes later, and with Dave driving because he knew where the small road was, they reached Rory McIver’s house. Dave pulled up to show them which one it was, but then suggested they head on up to the end of the road as it was already starting to go dark.

  They parked where it was possible to turn the car around fairly easily, and then walked the rest of the way. There was no pavement; twelve inches from the road edge, on both sides, was a dry stone wall. Where these walls stopped, the road stopped. The ground rolled away, and there was an incline down to the swollen waters of Peakshole Water.

  ‘Perfect spot,’ Tessa said. ‘How easy would it be to drag a body out of a car, and simply roll it until it hit the water. Job done, into the car, turn it around and go home. Seeing this, imagining that night, it seems to me it makes a mockery of Andy Harrison’s alibi.’

  ‘We know he spoke to Orla that afternoon, and he could have arranged to meet her. It would only take five minutes to kill her, she was tiny, and dump her here before heading off home to wifey.’

  ‘We know that, do we? The phone call?’ Dave asked.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Have we been told, Ray?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, you two. Dave, I apologise for being a dickhead. Now can we get back onto the real stuff. I want forensics out here first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t think for a minute they’ll find stuff; the rain will have taken anything that would have been helpful, but we have to go through the motions. Hannah, can you ring and organise that? Dave, can you liaise with them, please? Show them where to park vehicles for safety, we don’t want any vans rolling into this bloody river.’

  Dave grinned. ‘No problem, boss,’ and winked at her.

  ‘And stop winking at me. Let’s go see our Mr McIver. He’s expecting us.’

  ‘Bet we get scones,’ Dave said.

  ‘So that’s what took you so long last night? Scones at the McIvers?’

  He held up his hands. ‘Guilty.’

  Dave turned the car around in five moves, and the others clapped. It wasn’t necessary for him to take a quick course in dry stone walling.

  ‘Wait until all the forensic and scene of crime vans turn up tomorrow. Glad I won’t be here,’ he said. ‘It’s fairly easy outside the McIver place, but here it isn’t.’

  McIver was waiting at the door. ‘I was watching you from the bedroom window.’

  ‘You can see that far up?’

  ‘Oh, aye. There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight, it’s my legs that don’t do so well these days. Come in, let me introduce you to the wife, Eileen.’

  Introductions out of the way, the four officers sat down at the kitchen table and placed the six photographs of small cars on it. Eileen was busy making drinks for them, and buttering scones.

  Rory pulled the pictures towards him one at a time, then sat back thoughtfully. ‘Give me a minute. I want to bring that night to mind. I saw the back and side of the car, and I’m trying to remember anything else.’

  Eileen carried the two teas Dave and Ray had requested, then she paused and tapped the Aygo. ‘I’ve been in one of them.’ She smiled. ‘Not a lot of room and we struggled to get the boxes of stuff into its tiny boot, but she didn’t hang about driving back. Nice little car. It’s that colour as well.’

  Rory looked at her. ‘It’s Marnie Harrison’s car, isn’t it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Eileen said, and turned round to get the two coffees Tessa and Hannah had ordered. ‘She’s been up here a couple of times, always grumbled about the tightness of turning the car around, even the size of hers.’

  ‘Mr McIver?’ Tessa said.

  ‘Look, it was a dreadful night, one of the worst we’ve had in a long time, and I was sheltering under the tree so didn’t see it properly. I saw two people in the front seat, I saw the side and back end of the car only, but out of all of these, I would say that one,’ and he pointed at the Aygo,’ is as close as dammit to what I saw. It has a distinctive set of back lights, shaped like a boomerang. Yes, it was an Aygo.’

  The Aygo was collected from the Harrisons’ home that night, for a detailed forensic inspection. Marsden ordered a SOCO team into the house, with instructions to pay particular attention to the kitchen and to remove anything that could have been used as a blunt force instrument.

  Marnie and Andy Harrison were taken in, and kept overnight in separate cells until they could be questioned the following day.

  Tessa felt wide-awake, her energy levels at a high peak. At eleven o’clock, as she was thinking about trying to get some sleep, Phil Anderton, the man in charge of the SOCO team tearing apart the Harrison house, rang her. They had found a Nike backpack concealed in an empty plastic carrier bag and covered with other carrier bags, hanging in the pantry. It contained a mobile phone, a scan picture of a foetus, and various cards inside a purse confirming the bag belonged to Orla French. Her name was also written inside the front flap.

  He added that the wooden rolling pin found in the cupboard appeared to have dark stains on it, and that if it was blood it would be confirmed as early as possible the next morning.

  She thanked him, and walked through to her own kitchen. She considered ringing Hannah, but decided against it – why should both of them have a sleepless night.

  Tessa felt sick that they had missed everything for so long.

  Marnie Harrison had acted her socks off from the word go. The distraught mother, fooling everybody. Nadine Bond would be livid. She had given every care and consideration to the family, looking after Marnie when she appeared to be at her lowest ebb… Why would this woman, this mother, kill her only daughter?

  And then Tessa knew. It was all about Andy. Marnie’s love and need for the man had showed from the beginning, and even when she had told him to leave, he had only been away a couple of days before she told him to go back home. She couldn’t live without him, and Orla had threatened that. If Orla lived, and had the baby, Marnie would have had to make Andy go. For good.

  The fact that the bag was in the house proved that Orla had gone home first, before intending to set off on the walk into Hope. To fill in the picture properly, Tessa knew she had to get Marnie talking, confessing. That meant having as many facts at her fingertips as possible, before going into th
at interview room. She needed confirmation that it was blood on that rolling pin, and even more imperative that it was Orla’s.

  Tessa sat down at the kitchen table, and pulled a notepad towards her. Time to put her brain into the right gear, and plan out the next day’s interviews. She would start with Andy Harrison.

  She paused for a moment and wondered what he must be thinking. He was probably expecting to be arrested for his stepdaughter’s murder, and heading for a major meltdown knowing he hadn’t done it. Had he ever considered Marnie might be a prime candidate for a charge of filicide? Was he thinking it now?

  Tessa knew that they would probably be releasing Andy Harrison after his interview; they had known from the beginning that his alibi was unbreakable, but he wouldn’t be allowed to go home. The house was a crime scene, and would remain so for a few days.

  She focussed on the list again, and wrote down questions that required answers. And Castleton could get ready for an invasion of journalists and television crews once this bit of news broke.

  Tessa managed two hours of sleep, then showered, grabbed a couple of slices of toast and a travel mug of coffee, and headed into Chesterfield. It was going to be a long day.

  Chapter Forty

  By ten o’clock, Tessa had the information she needed. Inside the Aygo, they had lifted Orla’s fingerprints, very much to be expected as it was her mother’s car. They had also found minute traces of her blood on the passenger seat’s back, presumably where her head had rested during transport to the dump site. The wound caused by the rolling pin had smeared the seat’s back.

  The rolling pin bore traces of the same blood; it had been scrubbed, but the stain remained. Tessa gathered up everything she needed and headed to the interview room, where Andy Harrison was sitting quietly.

  His stomach was churning; he felt sick. What on earth could Marsden have that could possibly point to him killing Orla? Absolutely nothing – he hadn’t done it. And yet he’d been in a cell overnight, and he was seriously worrying that it was the first night of many to come.