Songbird Page 31

  ‘And as you’ve had your people spending their time on other stuff today, better make sure that what you were supposed to be doing is all done before anyone goes home tonight.’

  He said it would be, and made another move to get up and leave. This time she didn’t prevent him but as he was heading towards the door, Freeman said, ‘Alison Reeve told me to back you as well. Not in as many words, but she did. So, you can make friends as well as enemies, which is good to know.’

  At the door, he waited for her finally to dismiss him.

  ‘But if it turns out that you’ve wasted time and resources and goodwill, that’s on you.’

  Back in the office, he went to Serena, and she told him Terek had been in minutes ago and left a note on his desk. He gave her Freeman’s authorisation and said she should use it straight away to retrieve the car park’s data for the 27th of July. She had more to tell him, he could see, but he went to his desk and read the note.

  It was in Terek’s own hand – small, angular and difficult to read at the best of times – but the meaning was clear enough. It was an order that he should inform Detective Sergeant John Wilson, acting desk sergeant on the Simms investigation, of the new line of inquiry so as to ensure correct documentation. Terek could have done so himself, of course, and the reason why he hadn’t would become obvious as soon as he, Waters, spoke to Wilson.

  As with Terek in Freeman’s office, Waters had the strangely liberating realisation that he didn’t care about another confrontation with the man who carried a grudge from years ago about, what was it, the McPherson case, long before Waters’ time on the force. And that sprang from another realisation which had been taking shape over the past few weeks; becoming a detective sergeant had made it clearer that there were aspects to this job which he didn’t like, and if he didn’t want to do it any more, he had plenty of other options.

  Serena had come to his desk, impatient as ever, and his look told her he was ready to hear it now.

  ‘We should have the car park data within half an hour.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I don’t like it when you do that, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I know…’

  She peered at him, making it obvious she was doing so, and asked if he was alright. He said he was and asked her if she would like a written apology, with a straight face that made her laugh a little.

  ‘And I got the registrations from the DVLA, cross-checked against their addresses.’

  Waters was paying attention now, despite the anarchic thoughts of five minutes ago.

  ‘Barry Simms was easy but Graham Fletcher wasn’t. They had to do a bit of digging because it didn’t show up straight away. Any guesses why?’

  She liked this guessing thing with him. Waters knew he had a reputation for being ‘clever’ – though he wasn’t feeling it much lately – and Serena wanted to put it to the test on a regular basis.

  He said, ‘No. Right out of guesses. Tell me.’

  ‘OK. They couldn’t find it straight away because he’s sold it.’

  ‘Fletcher has sold his car? When?’

  ‘Tuesday of this week.’

  Waters could see that Serena already had some if not all of it. First the iPhone and now the car, and don’t forget the traces of sodium n-lauro-whatever-it-was. Don’t forget the brother-in-law keeping the peace between the two sisters, in touch several times with Michelle while she was at Pinehills – keeping the peace in the rows that Michaela Fletcher had made no mention of to anyone. Some would argue that if he was worried about the car, Fletcher would have got rid of it sooner but that might have aroused suspicion, if it had been discovered. And wasn’t it Tuesday that Serena had begun leaning on Fletcher about locating the missing iPhone?

  Waters said, ‘Do we know where the car went when he sold it?’

  ‘Yes, got all that. It’s a dealer in Luton. Went in as part-exchange would be my guess.’

  Another voice said, ‘Check their website, see if it’s listed.’

  They looked around, having both forgotten about Richard Ford. He ducked slightly, expecting to be told he’d been caught thinking again, but Waters said, ‘Yes, good idea. Serena will give you the details.’

  She came back to his desk after doing so, with Ford already busy with some proper detecting for a change. Waters pointed to the spare seat and she sat down.

  ‘Chris – sir. Are we going with this now? We seem to be out on our own a bit. No one’s spoken to us all day. This is nothing to do with Oliver Salmon.’

  ‘DCI Freeman has agreed to us taking a look elsewhere. On a temporary basis, I think.’

  ‘Freeman? What’s happened to Alison? When you came back, you didn’t say anything.’

  He still had all that to deal with, or with which to deal… Whatever. But this still wasn’t quite the right moment.

  Serena wasn’t waiting too long for answers when there were more questions to be asked.

  ‘And does Terek know? He seemed to be in a foul mood when he put that note on your desk.’

  Waters held up his two, long-fingered hands, the backs towards her. He said, ‘Detective Inspector Terek was in the room. Do these look at all bruised to you?’

  Serena looked closely at his right hand and then at the left.

  ‘No,’ and then, with an expression of delighted alarm, ‘Why? You didn’t punch him, did you?’

  ‘We didn’t come to blows. But one way or another I got my knuckles rapped. Cutting to the chase, then – I seem to be telling various people that I don’t think Oliver Salmon did it, and most of them aren’t happy to hear this. Freeman has said I can look at someone else, and I know you’ve already worked out who that is, but she’s made it clear I’ll be executed at dawn if it turns out to be a waste of time and resources. She also mentioned the loss of goodwill but I think it’s too late to worry about that.’

  Serena had one of her serious faces on now. She thought over what he’d said, before ‘But you did want to punch him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not particularly. I think he wanted to punch me, though.’

  ‘DC would’ve said you must be doing something right, then…’

  Terek entered from the corridor and went to the desk he kept in the main office. He didn’t make eye contact with any of them across the room, he just sat down and woke up the monitor screen before he began typing.

  Serena made a there-you-go face, and Waters said more quietly, ‘Freeman made it plain she thinks I’m on thin ice with this. I don’t want anyone else falling through it with me. Ford’s still an innocent, no one will blame him. You’re not and-’

  ‘You don’t see me as an innocent?’

  ‘Er, no. Try as I might…’

  ‘Well, we can talk about why that is another time. It’s nice of you to be concerned, sir, but I think I can take care of myself. If the worst comes to the worst, I can always say I was just following your orders, can’t I?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Fine. I might have to say it sooner than you think. He’s on his way over.’

  Terek’s expression was set to unforgiving. He ignored Serena and Ford, and without preliminaries said to Waters, ‘Have you spoken to Sergeant Wilson yet?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Make sure it’s done before he leaves. I don’t want that dragging on into Monday.’

  Waters said that he would and waited; there was bound to be more.

  ‘Where are we with the list of Pinehills holiday-makers?’

  Waters had no idea, and was in the mood to say so, but Serena stepped in.

  ‘Nearly finished, sir. There’ll be a few to follow up, the ones who didn’t answer their phone this afternoon.’

  Terek said, ‘Alright. Make sure it’s done.’

  And that was it – the detective inspector turned on his heel and walked away. They watched until he was out of the office again, and then Serena said, ‘He looks like someone did something nasty in his handbag.’

  The day was running out quickly and ther
e was still much to be done. Waters felt the need to make a list, starting with the visit to Wilson in the incident room. Might as well get that out of the way. Serena went back to her screen to see if the parking data had arrived. There were two minutes of quiet before Ford said, ‘Mercedes C-class saloon, silver, new in this week. Low mileage, excellent condition, one local owner. Pictures to follow, available from next Monday. No registration details but that’s got to be it, sir.’

  Waters paused in the list-making and looked at the two of them.

  ‘You’d think so – well done again. Ring them, though, and check the registration. We need to be certain.’

  He glanced at the time on his screen.

  ‘They might well have closed. First thing Monday, Richard, ring them.’

  ‘They’ll be open tomorrow, sir. I can take the details home and ring from there.’

  ‘Teacher’s pet.’

  Serena had her eyes fixed on her own screen, and she didn’t glance up even when they were both looking at her. Waters shook his head at Ford, who had taken no notice of her anyway, and then they heard, ‘It’s opened with Excel. Here we go.’

  They watched as she tapped a few keys and waited. Then she looked up quickly and said, ‘Barry Simms first,’ before her eyes went back to the database she was searching. Waters added items to his list, with the nagging thought that he had forgotten something important. It wasn’t telling these two about DCI Reeve, he’d do that soon. Something else…

  ‘No. Doesn’t look as if Barry has ever used the car park. These records go back months. I wouldn’t be surprised if Barry Simms takes the bus when he goes into town, to be honest. Let’s put the other one in.’

  He needed to finish the document he’d been working on at various moments during the day. It was only bullet points but it had to be as complete as possible. What else? Be ready to move quickly on Monday if any of this looked promising. None of them were on duty over the weekend but all would be in by eight on Monday morning.

  When Waters glanced up again because the room was so quiet, he saw Serena staring intently at her screen. Ford was watching her as well. Without acknowledging either of them, she muttered, ‘Double check that,’ and pressed some more keys. A few seconds later she said, ‘Same result. Sir? He was there.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  With Waters to her right and Ford to her left, Serena moved the pointer, clicked and highlighted an entry on the database; it now stood out from the mass of tiny print as a blue bar across the screen. She said, ‘That’s the reg of the Mercedes Fordy just found for sale. On the 27th of July, it was still owned by Graham Fletcher.’

  Waters said, ‘It’s so small I can hardly read it. What are the times?’

  ‘Arrived in the multi-storey at 17.28, left at 18.06. The fee was £4.50. That’s a bit steep for less than an hour’s parking, isn’t it? I won’t be doing my Christmas shopping in Luton.’

  ‘Remind me what time the phone was purchased.’

  Without checking and without hesitation, Serena said, ‘17.53.’

  Thirty-eight minutes between the times the car goes past the camera on the first occasion and the second. He finds a space, parks up, then walks from the multi-storey to the shops. We know the phone shop is in the centre but you’d still allow a few minutes for him to do that. Then he’s in the phone shop. He chooses one, with or without assistance from the staff, and less than half an hour after he arrived, he’s buying the pay-as-you-go with cash. How many people who have bank cards do that now? Thirteen minutes after that, he’s leaving the car park. He must have pulled over somewhere because just eight minutes later, Michelle Simms gets a call from that mobile. He was in a hurry.

  Serena said, ‘Unless he loses his phones on a daily basis, he’s still got his iPhone at this point. So why does need another phone?’

  Richard Ford said, ‘Excuse me for saying it, but this doesn’t prove that Graham Fletcher bought that phone, sir. It just sort of proves he was in the shopping centre when it was bought. I say sort of, because someone else might have been driving the car.’

  Serena took it up – ‘Well, not his wife, we know where she was. Who else?’

  ‘Someone from his company?’

  They waited for Waters then. He straightened up, his back aching from leaning in to study the screen, put his hands into his pockets and didn’t hurry. Serena recognised the signs and clicked back to see if the same vehicle used the multi-storey regularly; Ford stared at the sergeant and wondered if he was alright.

  Eventually Waters said, ‘Richard, you’re right. Of course you are, don’t excuse yourself for saying anything when we’re into something like this. But it’s the odds… Someone else might have bought it, yes, and that makes Fletcher’s being there, or being involved in any way, a coincidence.’

  He didn’t look in Serena’s direction, didn’t need to.

  ‘But if that’s the case, what are the odds that it was someone else who knew Michelle Simms who bought that mobile during the thirty-eight minutes that Fletcher was there? Fletcher has admitted he was exchanging texts with her that day, and then, while he’s in the shopping centre for less than forty minutes, someone else buys a mobile phone and calls her the same night. What are the odds on that happening?’

  Serena said, ‘One hundred and eighty-three thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four to one.’

  Waters left them, saying he had to see Wilson and that he wouldn’t be long. He took the circuitous route, not because he wanted to put off the inevitable but because he needed a few minutes to think, to work this all out. When would be the best time to speak to Fletcher about the mobile? Tonight? Tomorrow? Monday morning? When should he let Freeman know there had been a development, if it was a development, and should he do that through Terek? Would that help to heal relations or just delay progress? How, and how soon, could he get down to Luton himself and meet these people face to face?

  Lake Central already had the Friday evening feeling. Most CID had gone home but on the ground floor there were uniformed officers equipping themselves to do battle once more with the rising tide of drunkenness that swamps the streets of provincial towns and cities across the land every Friday and Saturday night. Let’s have continental opening hours, the politicians had said, and then the British will learn to drink in civilised, continental ways, like proper Europeans… They didn’t say when this miracle would occur, naturally, and those ministers who had proposed the idea were long gone, leaving the police to hold the line and clear up the mess. By ten o’clock, a dozen vehicles and twice as many officers would be engaged on the streets, being abused, spat at, vomited on and ferrying the people having a good time to Accident and Emergency. Mostly they were of Waters’ generation. He had grown up with it, tried it once or twice and grown out of it too, but without Smith he wouldn’t have known how things used to be, when the pubs and clubs had licences that shut them down at eleven in the evening. ‘It was all over by midnight,’ Smith had told him, ‘and even earlier than that on Sundays. People still had a skinful now and then but there was none of this anarchy. The centre of Lake wasn’t a no-go area for decent-minded sorts on a Friday night. I don’t pretend to understand it but I know what we should do about it.’

  Detective Sergeant John Wilson was still at his desk, and it was plain he’d already been told what had been going on as far as a new line of inquiry was concerned. Waters stood by the desk in the incident room as Wilson pretended surprise and wrote down a few notes. When that part of it was over, he looked up at Waters and said, ‘Well, this is all very exciting. When do you expect to make an arrest?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Wilson went to write that down as well – then he smiled up at Waters and said, ‘You can say that again.’

  There had been a time when Wilson intimidated him. The stocky, powerful build, the shaven head and the deliberate sense of menace made plenty of people wary of Wilson, but he was in the end only a bully, and Smith had been able make him dance whenever he wan
ted, with well-chosen words, nothing more. Every force has its Wilsons, and perhaps even needs them on occasion, but they are dangerous dogs and should never be allowed into the house.

  There was no need to respond, and Waters had begun to move away when Wilson said, ‘The bit I’m waiting for is when you take Oliver Salmon out of the equation, though. Doesn’t matter how many other suspects you can invent. Doesn’t even matter how much legal advice you get for the Salmon family. Is it right you knew them before this investigation kicked off, by the way?’

  Waters didn’t rise to the implication but stood and listened to see what else might come – there might be some value in letting Wilson show more of his hand.

  ‘That’s what I heard. Wouldn’t surprise me. But like I said, you can drum up all the suspects you like, I won’t be buying it until you can explain to me how his saliva got inside her mouth, other than the obvious way which is he stuck his tongue down her throat. Disgusting thought!’

  This was Wilson at his best; the deliberate crudity, the provocative leer, the hope that Waters would lose a little of his smug, smart-arsed self-control and ideally lay a hand on him. The two of them were alone and there were no witnesses, but there was no doubt in Waters’ mind that witnesses would appear were he to do any such thing.

  ‘As desk sergeant, is there anything else you need to know about the new line of inquiry?’

  Wilson didn’t answer that. Waters turned and walked away, directly back to his own office this time. There was more unpleasantness to come and he might as well get it over with now.

  A bond is formed with other officers when you have worked through long and difficult cases together. Ford had not experienced that with Alison Reeve, and so he said how unfortunate it was that she had cancer, but Serena was as shocked as Waters had ever seen her. She put up a hand and covered her mouth, as if she was frightened about what she might say, but when she spoke, she said only, ‘She told me she was ill. I never imagined…’

  He recalled it, the day when he’d seen the detective constable place her hand on the arm of the detective chief inspector as they sat and talked in the intimate way women sometimes do.