Songbird Page 10

  ‘In my experience, the nearest and dearest want to talk to a single person, a face and a voice they can have some sort of relationship with, someone who at least appears to have enough authority to make things happen. You did get something useful. What were your impressions of Michaela Fletcher?’

  They were walking back towards the site office. Daylight was draining into the west, and the first stars were visible, with Venus glimmering low in the southern sky.

  Serena said, ‘Sound. I think things happened pretty much as she described them.’

  Reeve was silent, silent long enough for Serena to say, ‘Did I miss something, ma’am?’

  ‘No, I agree with you. But she fell asleep and didn’t notice her sister was missing until half past six the next morning? Seven and a half hours? Is that odd? What might explain that?’

  It didn’t take long for Serena Butler to say, ‘She’d had a few drinks herself?’

  ‘Quite possibly. And that’s something we need to bear in mind. Someone is expecting us.’

  In the light from the office doorway stood Detective Inspector Terek, and indeed it did appear that he was waiting for them to arrive. He didn’t salute his superior officer but one always had the impression that he would, given half a chance.

  Reeve said, ‘Got something?’

  ‘We might have, ma’am. I was in two minds whether to ring you but didn’t want to interrupt. The man who left the site earlier than expected this morning. We’ve traced him easily enough from Mrs Salmon’s booking system. I passed the details on to Central and John Wilson got back to me a few minutes ago. The man’s name is Donnelly. He’s a registered sex offender.’

  Reeve made no attempt at hiding her surprise before she said, ‘I see. You have the details already, I’m assuming. Does he fit at all?’

  ‘I think he does, ma’am.’

  ‘Alright. Great work by the people involved in that. Can you get everyone back here, Simon? A quick briefing and then we can go. Some of us will be in early tomorrow.’

  Terek had turned away when Serena said, ‘Sir? What’s Donnelly’s full name, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  As ever, Terek waited for the nod from the DCI before he said, ‘William Sidney Donnelly.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Of Detective Chief Inspector Alison Reeve, Detective Sergeant Chris Waters and Detective Constable Serena Butler, only the latter was due to work on the Saturday, and that was the one until eleven, afternoon and evening shift. And yet, when the three of them found themselves together in Incident Room 2 at half past nine on the morning after the discovery of Michelle Simms’ body at Pinehills, no one expressed any surprise. The DCI was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved T shirt – without thinking, Waters glanced at her bare arm and saw a tiny red bruise marking the spot where there had been a plaster yesterday. Reeve said she was making a drink and asked if they wanted anything. In official hours, this would not have occurred but there’s an unspoken understanding about work done out of hours and with no pay, and they both said coffee would be good. Reeve had the facilities in her office which meant avoiding the awful substances the newly-installed vending machines were dispensing.

  While she was gone, Serena said, ‘Do you know if anything’s happened with this Donnelly character?’

  Waters went across to the broad table where little stacks of documents were beginning to grow. He was looking for anything relating to William Donnelly as he said, ‘I don’t think so. But she was on the phone to his local force last night. Barnsley, in Yorkshire.’

  ‘Really? I can’t imagine they work late on Fridays any more than we do.’

  ‘No. She was asking for uniform to take a look at his place and make sure he was home. I’m guessing the street where he lives is now getting a regular drive-by.’

  ‘Smart! I wonder where she learned a trick like that…’

  Waters had no need to answer. Terek wouldn’t be in this morning, still living too far away, but he’d been busy yesterday, getting the information organised. There were lists of names from the caravan site, and someone had roughly sketched out a timeline in felt pen on a sheet of A3 paper – if this wasn’t on-screen somewhere, ready for the whiteboard on Monday, that would be something useful Waters could do this morning.

  Reeve reappeared, holding three mugs. Serena found a spare piece of paper for a communal coaster but it was an empty gesture – the table was ringed with cup stains from innumerable investigations. Some of them, she thought to herself, would belong to officers since departed. Would the table still be here as evidence of her own time at Kings Lake after she had moved on?

  The DCI took a tea bag from her mug, dropped it into the waste bin and blew on her fingers. Waters said, ‘Tea, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. Gone off the coffee. I do sometimes, usually after I’ve reached ten mugs a day.’

  She took a sip, burned her lip, swore and then said, ‘I worry about you young people. Haven’t you got anything better to do on a Saturday morning? You know you won’t get paid a penny.’

  Serena said, ‘I think that’s a no and a yes from both of us. I’m on at one anyway, so… I’ll probably nip out and do a bit of shopping before that but…’

  Then they were both looking at Waters, waiting for his excuse. He said, ‘I’m at a loose end, I suppose. I’ve got the crime scene report to write up. That looks like a big job. I didn’t want to spend all Monday doing that if – well, if there’s something else that needs doing.’

  Reeve said, ‘Like making an arrest? I doubt we’re anywhere near such a thing. Not a single person questioned at the caravan site yesterday had anything interesting to report, as far as I know. We’re going to be waiting on forensics and test results for days on this one – hopefully not weeks. Simon tells me you’re going to be at the autopsy?’

  Serena nodded and said one reason she’d come in was to look over her reports on the one she had attended on Bernard Sokoloff, to make sure she didn’t miss anything.

  ‘You’ll be fine. Bodies are all remarkably similar inside. Not a job I’d volunteer for first thing on a Monday morning, I don’t mind admitting. You can’t do a practice for that this morning unless Chris is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. What about the mobile phone?’

  She meant Michelle Simms’ mobile. It had disappeared but records held by the phone company could be vital in tracing her final contacts and movements. It was another area in which DC Butler had a good record. Because none of them were here officially, the DCI wasn’t giving orders this morning, but even voluntary work can be more productive if it’s prioritised.

  Serena said, ‘I can get what we need set up for Monday as well, ma’am.’

  ‘Good. Chris, I’ve read what we have on William Donnelly. It’s on the laptop on my desk rather than on the table at present, but if you want to fetch it and read it, I’d like to hear what you think.’

  Waters said that he would do so but then left hanging one of those unfinished sentences for which he was becoming nearly famous.

  Reeve said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was talking to Dr Robinson about it. About whether Michelle Simms had been, you know, attacked in that way. He wasn’t convinced that she had been.’

  It was clear this hadn’t reached the DCI’s own mental notebook, even though Waters had mentioned it to Terek.

  ‘Oh. Right. Well, Serena, that’s something we need the good doctor to look at closely on Monday. Horrible thought though that is. Still, a known sex offender disappearing early in the morning after a woman’s body is found half a mile from where he’s on holiday? You have to wonder whether he caught sight of the marked cars and decided to take off. And that would be odd unless he had some reason not to want to be questioned. And then there’s what Mrs Fletcher told us, isn’t there?’

  Waters knew that a man had apparently dodged the police presence at Pinehills, but he’d arrived late to last night’s briefing and missed this part of it. Serena told him about the nice couple who’d sat next to
the Fletcher family in the bar on Thursday evening, about the kindly man called Bill who had chatted to the girls and bought them a Slushie drink. Waters weighed it up and wondered aloud how many men in a hundred were named William and called Bill; Serena thought there was probably an algorithm he could download to find out but meanwhile she was going with her gut feeling that it was the same man. She looked to the DCI for agreement and found her staring a little vacantly at the empty interactive whiteboard, the fingers of her left hand spread on the table-top as if she felt unsteady. But it was momentary, and then Reeve looked at her watch and said she’d better go to her office and change into something smarter – Mrs Fletcher would be here in fifteen minutes to identify the body of her sister.

  When she had left the room, Serena made her sympathetic face – one of her least convincing as far as Chris Waters was concerned – and said she’d rather watch the body being autopsied on Monday morning than be taking relatives to see it today. However sensitively one tries to do that, it always ends badly, doesn’t it?

  Now it was Waters’ turn to look distant. After a frown, he said, ‘If she wasn’t sexually assaulted, we’re short of a motive, aren’t we?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see the body,’ said Serena, ‘because I wasn’t brought in quickly enough. But it’s my guess, from what I’ve heard, that she was, Chris. Sorry – if you hang around until one o’clock, I’ll start calling you Sarge again.’

  ‘Why? I mean why are you guessing that she was assaulted like that?’

  Serena had many ways of expressing impatience – today it was the head slightly to one side combined with the stare that says “Really?” in italics. When he waited anyway, she said, ‘Because murdered women usually have been?’

  Reeve heard the sound of the trolley being wheeled into the mortuary’s small reception room – Olive Markham hadn’t needed to be told that the mortuary itself is no place for the bereaved to view their lost one. The technician had also come in unpaid at the detective chief inspector’s personal request, and Reeve would need to find a way of thanking her without offending her. Flowers seemed entirely inappropriate. Maybe a Christmas card at the end of the year.

  When the detective stood up, Michaela Fletcher flinched and her husband put his arm around her again. Reeve said she would check that everything was ready. She went in through the swing door and found the mortuary technician waiting by the trolley. Olive Markham had taken off her usual lab coat and was wearing a tweed skirt, a blouse and a jacket. Just another small gesture, thought Reeve, but better than the impersonal white coverall that reminds the grieving that their relative has become a specimen, like a frog preserved in formalin in a school science laboratory.

  Reeve stood on the other side of the trolley from the technician and did not need to say what she wanted. The corpse was covered in a grey plastic body bag; Olive took hold of the zipper and pulled it down. Then she opened it enough for the detective chief inspector to see the face – to make sure it was the right face. Because the unthinkable has happened somewhere and at some time; never here, to Reeve’s knowledge, but there are some matters one does not leave to chance, however tiny that chance might be.

  It was the face of Michelle Simms, somehow paler and more lifeless now than when Reeve had seen her in the dunes yesterday. The bruising on her cheek was more apparent because of this and the sister would see it; there was nothing to be done about that before the autopsy. It was evidence. But Michelle’s red hair, the little of it that could be seen, looked as if it had been brushed and smoothed to be as nice as it could. Reeve nodded to the technician, turned away and went out through the doors.

  When Michaela Fletcher had identified her sister’s body, Reeve said they should take as long as they needed, and that she would be close by in the waiting room. Olive Markham retreated to the same place, and the two women watched in silence through the small observation window. Mrs Fletcher stood close to her sister, Graham Fletcher a little way back, just a pace or two, and Reeve thought, good on him, not every husband would do as much.

  After a silence of perhaps a minute, they saw Michaela half turn and say something to Fletcher. He replied and they exchanged a few words before she stared again at her dead sister. People react very differently in these situations, and Reeve hadn’t made any guesses about Michaela Fletcher, but strangely the theatrical wailing and weeping almost never happens. Another silence grew behind the little window.

  Reeve said quietly, ‘Definitely Monday morning for this one, isn’t it?’

  ‘So the good doctor has told me. Nine o’clock.’

  ‘He hasn’t had a look already? Hasn’t said anything?’

  ‘If he has, it was not to me.’

  Reeve wanted to ask, what about you, any thoughts? Robinson was rarely here nowadays, but Olive Markham was experienced and Reeve knew that on more than one occasion she had pointed things out to Smith which had altered the course of an investigation. But she wasn’t exactly approachable – in fact, she was quite peculiar which was undoubtedly another reason why Smith had got on well with her.

  Instead, Reeve said, ‘Nine o’clock it is, then. Detective Constable Butler will attend on our behalf.’

  ‘That will be helpful.’

  It appeared that Serena’s steady nerves had already been noted by the pathology department, and Reeve made a comment to that effect. Olive Markham seemed nonplussed for a moment, and then she said, ‘I meant that if this is not her first autopsy, it will save me the trouble of putting out a second trolley just in case.’

  The doors opened, Graham Fletcher holding them so that his wife could walk through. She seemed unnaturally composed and thanked the mortuary technician for allowing her to see her sister. Olive Markham nodded and went back into the reception area behind them. Then Michaela turned to Reeve and said, ‘It’s the quietest I’ve ever known her!’

  What else can one offer but a sad smile in a situation like this?

  Michaela said, ‘She had a lovely voice, didn’t she Graham? I mean a singing voice. That’s what she really wanted to do…’

  He said it was true. Michelle would sing at family dos and you couldn’t keep her away from a karaoke. She was the life and soul alright.

  There were tears in Mrs Fletcher’s eyes but she had them fixed on Alison Reeve, as if making this clear to her mattered more than anything else at this moment. She said, ‘I know lots of people can sing but she was very good. If she’d had the break... She sang like that girl from Fleetwood Mac, the pretty one. Stevie Nicks? Sort of low and gravelly and sexy. Didn’t she, Graham? You always thought she was really good.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She was… I did.’ He looked at Reeve with an odd, mute expression and she couldn’t blame him. Words are never enough in these moments but they are all we have.

  Reeve said, ‘You’re going home today as you planned?’

  Graham Fletcher said they were, though Mrs Salmon had offered them accommodation over the weekend if they wanted it. They needed to get the girls back to some sense of normality, and to help Barry deal with all this.

  ‘Where is he? How is he coping?’

  Michaela said, ‘He’s with that lovely liaison person you sent, and the girls. He thinks the world of them, just like Michelle. They couldn’t have any, so… You know?’

  Of course, Reeve said, of course. But had they remembered she needed to speak to Barry herself before they left? The arrangement was that he would come to Kings Lake Central later this morning.

  Graham Fletcher said, ‘Yes. We’re calling back here on the way home. I reckon it will be about midday. Is that alright? Should I come in with him, if he wants me to?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a case of “should”, Mr Fletcher. It won’t be an official interview in any sense of the word. As the senior investigating officer, I ought to speak to Mr Simms, to Barry, if only to offer my condolences. And there are one or two formalities I need to go through with him. It’s entirely up to Mr Simms as to whether he would like someone
with him.’

  True but not the whole truth, of course. As SIO, meeting the partner of a murdered woman is right at the top of your to-do list – the statistics make it so. Reeve had no reason at this point to suspect anyone – other than possibly one William Sydney Donnelly – but the simple fact was that if Barry Simms was not involved in the death of his wife, he was in a statistical minority.

  Reeve walked the Fletchers to the rear entrance of the station, and from there she watched them cross the car park to a silver Mercedes C-class saloon. She thought, that’s a lot of car for a family who just spent a week in a seaside caravan… These are the things you notice after years in the job, the little pieces in the jigsaws of people’s lives that don’t quite fit. Ninety-nine per cent of the time such observations are meaningless but you can’t stop making them, and in the end it can seem that your life is full of meaningless observations.

  And groundless suspicions – that’s the other thing. Believe no-one? All very well, but after a time it seeps into your other life, the one that is supposed to happen away from here. It can and does make relationships a problem. How many people does she know here in solid, long-term marriages or partnerships? Charlie Hills, John Murray and Maggie, Ann Crisp of course… Detective Chief Superintendent Allen but he doesn’t really count for some reason. Simon Terek apparently, though she has yet to meet his wife. Even Chris Waters has been seeing the same girl for nearly a year. Quite a few, then. Maybe it is me, Reeve concluded as she turned away from the door and headed back to her office. And maybe it’s the lack of caffeine that’s making these headaches worse. Coffee and paracetamol, then. If that was a cocktail, she’d name it the DCI.

  Chapter Twelve

  Waters had found the paradigm of the perfect crime scene manager’s report in his training materials from last February, but as yet it lay unused on his desk – he was reading a file instead, the file for William Donnelly. The most recent address was in Barnsley, and Mrs Fletcher had said to Alison Reeve and Serena that the couple sounded as if they were from somewhere up north. Barnsley would do for that, and Serena’s instincts were probably right – this was the same man who had chatted to the Fletcher family in the Pinehills social club last Thursday evening. One had to assume this was Donnelly’s current address. Being on the sex offender’s register meant he must inform the local force of changes in personal details – and anyway, the DCI already had local uniform making sure he was at home. They would have picked up a change of address issue immediately.