by Ford, P. F.
“I did.” She was beaming now. “His name is Rodney Rodgers.”
There was a pause as Slater absorbed the name. He thought he’d come across it before, and racked his brains. Suddenly, he remembered. This name just kept on cropping up, but surely it couldn’t be the same guy, could it?
“Is this guy still working there?” he asked, but he was already quite sure what the answer would be.
“No. He left years ago.”
“See if you can find out exactly when Mr Rodgers left that leisure centre.”
“I already have,” she said. “According to my reckoning, it was roughly three months before Rose Bressler was born.”
“Do you know why he left?” asked Slater.
“They wouldn’t say anything specific,” said Jolly. “But I got the impression it wasn’t a promotion.”
“A sideways move.” Slater thought for a moment. “So he obviously did something to get a black mark. I would imagine getting a member pregnant wouldn’t exactly win him any prizes, would it?”
“Especially if that member’s husband made a lot of fuss,” added Jolly.
“Is he still with the same company?”
“Yes he is,” said Jolly. “It’s called ‘Leisure for Pleasure’. And you’ll never guess where he is now.”
“I hate to spoil your fun,” Slater said. “But that’s where you’re wrong.”
“I’m sorry?” said Jolly, looking puzzled.
“He works at the leisure centre in town, doesn’t he?” Slater smiled, enjoying her reaction.
“How did you know that?” Jolly said, looking crestfallen that he’d stolen her thunder.
“Don’t look so disappointed, Jane. I met him last week when the flasher was terrorising the old ladies down there,” Slater said. “He’s obviously been given a chance to redeem himself, and then managed to work his way up the ladder. He manages the whole place now.”
“Oh, poo,” said Jolly. “And there I was, thinking I’d done some brilliant detective work-”
“Ah, but you have, Jane. You have,” Slater interrupted, keen to recognise her good work. “It’s just luck on my part. And just this morning, we also discovered our new friend Rodney keeps a light aircraft up at Trapworth airfield. So that’s twice his name has come up today.”
“Now that’s what I call a coincidence,” said Jolly.
“Only if you believe in coincidences.” Slater didn’t. “With his connections to all our victims, this has to be more than a coincidence.”
“What’s he look like, this Rodney Rodgers?”
“He looks, and behaves, like a prize tit,” said Slater. “But if you mean, ‘does he have ginger hair?’ Then, yes, he does.”
“My money’s on him as the father, then,” Jolly said, smiling.
“And I think that’s a pretty safe bet.”
“Did you say he keeps a plane up at Trapworth?”
“It seems his name’s in the owners register up there.” Slater remembered what Steve Biddeford had found out.
“So, what if Sarah Townley somehow found out Rodgers is Rose’s father? Is he the type who would murder her and throw her out of an airplane?” asked Jolly.
“I’m not sure there is a ‘type’ who murders.” Slater pondered for a moment. “But it’s definitely a possibility.”
He had an idea.
“Do you fancy a little run out in the morning, Jane? It’ll only take half an hour.”
“What have you got in mind,” she asked.
“Take Sarah’s photo down to the leisure centre. Show the photo to some of the staff, but keep it low key. You just want to know if anyone recognises her. Maybe she did go looking for our friend Mr Rodgers.”
“Okay,” she said. “I can do that.”
Chapter 32
On their way out to Bressler’s house, Slater thought about how to approach the upcoming conversation. At the briefing earlier, he and Norman had decided they shouldn’t wait any longer and they should start to lean on Bressler and Lindy Fellows. They were going to start by telling him about the DNA test results and how his daughter actually wasn’t his.
“I’m sorry you’re getting stuck with preparing all the briefings,” said Norman, looking guilty.
“It’s not a problem,” said Slater. “I realise you need to help Steve keep on top of that smuggling circle. It must be the first case like that he’s had to deal with, so he’s going to need some guidance. You are keeping on top of it, aren’t you?”
“Oh yeah. On the one hand, we could do with some extra resources, but right now there isn’t anyone to spare. On the other hand, because it’s such a small operation we’re not making lots of waves – which might work in our favour.
“Steve’s been working on the flight log and fuel log, and there seems to be a pattern emerging. With any luck, we might even be able to say when the next flight’s coming in and set up a welcome party. If we could just get this murder inquiry out of the way, we might be able to rustle up enough people to keep it in house.”
“As you’re asking so nicely, I promise to try extra hard to catch the killer.” Slater smiled broadly. “It just so happens I have a feeling today’s going to be a good day.”
Slater was relieved to find there was no sign of Cindy’s pink Mini Cooper. He hoped this meant she was out.
“If you’re looking for Cindy, she’s not here,” said Bressler, the moment he set eyes on Slater. “She’s out choosing decor for her new house. She’s about to move out of here and needs to get everything ready, but then I’m sure you already know that.”
Slater was caught completely off-guard and was totally lost for words. He felt his face turn a nice shade of pink to accentuate his embarrassment and his mouth flopped open in surprise.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Sergeant,” said Bressler. “I don’t have a problem with you seeing Cindy. After all, I’ve just about finished with her.”
Slater’s embarrassment quickly began to change to indignation. He wasn’t going to let Bressler talk about Cindy like this. She wasn’t some sort of used goods.
A smug-looking smile crossed Bressler’s face.
“That’s okay,” said Norman, and Slater was slightly relieved he had stepped into defuse the situation. He didn’t think punching Rudy Bressler in his smug face would go down very well with the powers-that-be. “We’re not looking for Miss Maine. It’s you we wanted to talk to.”
“Oh, for goodness sake.” Bressler sighed, impatiently. “Have you people got nothing better to do? What is it this time?”
“The sooner you let us in,” said Norman, with an icy smile. “The sooner you’ll find out.”
“We value our time, too,” said Slater, recovering his composure and trusting himself to speak now. “That’s why there’s an offence called ‘wasting police time’.”
Bressler didn’t look impressed by Slater’s veiled threat, but he stepped back and let them into his hallway. It was quite clear that was as far as they were going to be invited to go.
“I’m not sure I like your attitude,” he said to the two detectives.
“Yeah, you said before,” replied Slater. “And I’m still not sure you understand the true nature of our investigation. So, once again, I’ll remind you we’re investigating the murder of two women and a child, all of whom were related to you.”
“I don’t need some jumped up little prick, who thinks a badge makes him God, to remind me my wife and daughter are dead, Detective Sergeant,” snarled Bressler, squaring up to Slater.
Slater felt himself getting angry again. Who did this guy think he was?
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Norman, breaking the tense silence. “Right now we’re only thinking about charging you with wasting our time, Mr Bressler. If you prefer we can stop thinking about it and actually do it.”
Bressler looked from Slater to Norman. Finally, he relaxed and took a step back.
“You have to admit,” Norman said to Bressler. “Sergeant Slater does have a point. You�
��re not exactly busting your balls to help us, now are you? To be honest, getting information from you is like pulling teeth.
“And then we do get something out of you we find some of it just isn’t the truth. That makes us think you don’t want to help us. When people don’t want to help us, it makes us suspicious, and then we start to think they probably have something to hide. It would make life a whole lot easier for you, and for us, if you were to tell us everything you know.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide, and I have told you everything,” cried Bressler, in exasperation.
“Oh, really?” said Norman. “You might want us to believe that, but do we really look that stupid?”
Now Bressler was beginning to look uncomfortable, but he said nothing.
“I had a nice little chat with your friend Dr McCall yesterday,” began Slater. “Or did I get that wrong? I mean you’re not actually friends any more, are you?”
“I haven’t seen him in years,” said Bressler. “Sometimes friends just drift apart, you know that.”
“And sometimes friends get driven apart when one of them behaves in a way the other finds intolerable,” continued Slater. “Which is why Dr McCall no longer regards you as a friend, isn’t it?”
“McCall’s an old fool,” said Bressler, dismissively.
“He didn’t sound like an old fool to me,” said Slater. “Old school, maybe. Old morals, definitely. Old fool? I don’t think so. He didn’t approve of you cheating on your wife, did he? And he especially didn’t approve of you making him part of it by flaunting it in front of him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” snapped Bressler.
“Yes you do,” said Norman. “He’s talking about you and Lindy Fellows. Dr McCall might have turned a blind eye when he couldn’t prove your affair, but you made a big mistake sharing a hotel room with her at his conference. That made him part of your little conspiracy behind your wife’s back, and that was a step too far for him.”
“He’s mistaken,” said Bressler, calmly. “We had separate rooms. I knew Lindy as a fellow doctor attending a conference. That’s all there was to it.”
“Yeah, right,” said Norman. “We know she was booked into her own room. The problem for Dr McCall is she never actually slept in that room. The biggest problem for us is it’s getting hard to sift the truth from the fiction where you’re concerned.”
“Why don’t you ask her if you don’t believe me?” Bressler’s face was like thunder.
“Oh, we will,” said Norman. “You can count on it.”
“You go away a lot on business, don’t you?” Slater changed the subject, suddenly.
“Yes, two or three times a month. You already know that.”
“Where?” asked Slater. “Where exactly do you go?”
“All over Europe, and South East Asia. Sometimes to the USA,” replied Bressler.
“Do you use commercial flights?”
“Of course.”
“Same airline, every time?”
“That depends on where I’m going.”
“I think this is more fiction,” Norman piped up.
“I don’t have to put up with this,” said Bressler, angrily. “This is just harassment. I think this interview is over.”
“I don’t think so,” said Slater, calmly. “You see, the problem Sergeant Norman is having here, is believing your suggestion that you leave the country two or three times a month. The thing is we can check facts like that quite easily. And we have.”
He let Bressler think about this for a moment before he continued.
“According to the very efficient constable who checked this out, you left the country just six times in the last 12 months, and we’re pretty sure three of those trips were holidays, because Miss Maine was on the same flights.”
Slater could see Bressler was struggling to come up with a plausible answer.
“Of course,” continued Slater. “It could be that you’ve somehow got lost in the system. Maybe your records have become corrupted somehow.”
“Yes,” Bressler clutched hopefully at the straw. “That must be it. One little glitch and a whole record can be wiped clean.”
“But, of course,” said Norman with a smile, clearly enjoying Bressler’s discomfort, “if you show us your passport, we’ll be able to see all those nice little stamps that prove where you’ve been.”
“Ah. Yes,” Bressler was evidently struggling again. “The thing is-”
“Don’t tell me. You’ve lost it,” said Norman, his voice thick with faux-helpfulness.
“Since I came back from my last trip,” said Bressler, desperately, “I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”
“Oh dear, how inconvenient.” Slater was really piling on the sarcasm now. “Well, I hope you find it soon, because if you can produce it and it proves our system doesn’t work, and we’re wrong to keep bothering you, you’ll have grounds to make a real complaint about harassment. But if you can’t produce it, we’ll just have to carry on hassling you until you tell us the truth.”
He looked at Norman, and they began to move towards the front door as if they were about to leave.
“Oh. One more thing I nearly forgot,” said Slater, turning back to face Bressler. “Remember that DNA sample you allowed me to take? Well, we finally got it analysed. And then we compared it to the DNA sample we have from Rose. She’s not your daughter.”
Slater watched Bressler’s face carefully. It seemed to crumple for a second, and a look of desperate sadness passed across his face. But then it was like he got a grip of himself, and his face returned to its usual, stony expression.
“You know she’s not your daughter?” asked Slater.
“Of course I didn’t know-”
“Oh, come on, Bressler,” Norman said, sighing. “Quit messing around. We saw it on your face. Have you always known?”
Slater saw resignation pass across Bressler’s face.
“I knew from the timing I was unlikely to be the father,” he began. “I had been away more and more, and Sandra was unhappy about that. Then she started to be out of the house more and more whenever I called. She was having an affair with some fitness guy at the local gym.”
“You knew who he was?” asked Norman.
“It didn’t take a lot of working out,” said Bressler. “I made a complaint about him and he was transferred away somewhere else, but it was stupid of me really. The damage was already done, you see.”
“So how come you didn’t kick Sandra out?” asked Slater. “Or divorce her?”
“Have you never been in love, Sergeant?”
“Not like that, he hasn’t,” said Norman. “But I know what you mean. You just wanted to try and carry on because you couldn’t see a life without her, right?”
Bressler nodded his agreement.
“But it was never the same after that,” he said. “I tried to love that little girl, but I just couldn’t. And that drove another wedge in between Sandra and me. Of course, Sandra’s mother thought I was the father and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to know her. Home became a sort of hell and I began to stay away longer so I didn’t have to face all the dirty looks and snide comments. That’s when I started my first affair.”
He fell silent. He looked genuinely distressed, and Slater almost felt sorry for the man. Then he reminded himself that they had just found yet another motive for Sandra’s murder – and that Bressler was now their number one suspect.
“If it was so bad, how come you and Sandra moved here so you could make a fresh start?” Slater asked.
“I told you before. She suggested if we moved away and escaped her mother, we could try to wipe the slate clean and start again. I genuinely believed she meant it, but then she disappeared as soon as we got here, and then I didn’t know what to believe any more.”
Slater said nothing, but he thought they had just chalked up yet another motive.
Bressler had gone quiet again. Slater exchanged a glance with Norman.
It was time to go. He turned and opened the door.
“We’ll leave you to it then, Mr Bressler,” he said. “We’re going to need to talk again, so please don’t leave the country.”
“But then you can’t can you?” Norman said, smiling at his parting shot. “Not without your passport.”
Chapter 33
When they got back to the office, Slater and Norman set about planning their next move. The plan was to arrive at Lindy Fellows’ house with a search warrant. Slater had suggested going in mob-handed to unsettle her, but in the end, he and Norman agreed to take just one female PC to keep an eye on Lindy while they conducted their search. Their chosen female PC was the increasingly impressive Jane Jolly.
While they were collecting the search warrant, Slater had a quiet word with Tony Ashton.
“You know his car,” said Slater. “Just park up the road where you can see if he leaves the house. Take someone with you and stay out there for as long as it takes. I want you to call me the moment he gets in that car and I want you to follow him wherever he goes.”
“I’m on it,” said Ashton, gathering his things and heading for the door.
As Slater and Norman headed across the car park for their car, PC Jolly drove in.
“PC Jolly.” Slater smiled at her. “Perfect timing. We have another little job for you. As a special reward, you get to accompany both myself and DS Norman.”
She parked her car and climbed into the back of their unmarked car, pushing piles of rubbish aside to make room for herself.
“Don’t you ever clean this car?” she asked.
“We can’t decide which one of us is the responsible driver,” said Norman from the driver’s seat. “And we’re both the same rank so it’s a difficult to allocate such a menial task. If it worries you, we’re quite happy to wait while you-”
“On your bike,” she interrupted him. “You clean your own car. There’s no way I’m cleaning up your mess. You can come up with an excuse for not doing anything, can’t you?”