Songbird Page 38

  Waters thought – leave this job? Were you serious? Idiot! Because in that moment he felt it, the knowledge that not only could he do this when many could not; more than that, he knew this was what he was meant to do. It might be something in the genes – his dad had been pretty good. It might have come from the fact that of all the disciplines in history, he had enjoyed most the one others liked the least: historiography, the study of how history is written, the critical examination of sources, the selection and synthesis into a narrative. It might even result from some quirk in his character that meant he was always in the kitchen at parties, talking to some nerdy individual who probably assumed they were doing exactly the same. No matter. It had all led to this, to something no one would ever have guessed he would be good at – to having Graham Fletcher at his mercy.

  He said, ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Fletcher, we’ll come back to the car in a moment. I’d like to ask you about your lost iPhone. Did it ever turn up?’

  Not still on about that sodding phone, are you, Fletcher had said, forcing a smile – he thought they’d done with all that. No, it hadn’t turned up. Someone had had it away. Freeman asked whether he had reported the theft to the police. Why would I bother with that, was the answer, and she said to get a crime number so you can claim on the insurance. It was clear enough that Fletcher knew she was provoking him, and he didn’t respond outwardly – but he’s an angry sort of man, thought Waters. The two women in the outer office have been shouted at and threatened, getting the blame for the police being here, for telling them something they shouldn’t, maybe.

  Waters said, ‘When someone is murdered, Mr Fletcher, it’s standard procedure for us to locate the last people they were in contact with. I’m sure I don’t need to explain why.’

  ‘And you think that was me?’

  In such an interview, every pause has its own significance. Waters frowned and looked Fletcher in the eye.

  ‘Well, according to her phone records, and to what you’ve already told my colleagues, sir, it was you, yes.’

  ‘Really? I’d have thought the last person she had contact with was the one who killed her. Shouldn’t you be out looking for him?’

  A longer pause, allowing Fletcher the time to examine the situation into which he had inadvertently just wandered. Freeman was leaning back in the chair a little, the leather bag on her lap. She opened it, took out the iPad and propped it up so she was able to see it but neither of the two men could. Then she tapped the screen, red nails clicking on it, as if she’d already lost interest in the interview. Whether this was her intention or not, Fletcher glared at her and then at Waters, who said, ‘Assuming it is a “him”, sir, that’s what we are doing. You did buy a phone to replace the one that was stolen?’

  ‘Obviously. That’s how people have been ringing me up today to tell me what you’re doing. I don’t understand what’s going on with the car. Can you just tell me? I haven’t got the time to sit here all day. In my line of business, time is money. Someone has to pay the taxes so that other people can sod about, wasting time and money.’

  Smith would have loved that – he’d have knocked that ball over the boundary. Waters gave it half a smile instead, and said, ‘Apart from the replacement for your stolen iPhone, have you purchased any other mobile phones in the past month, Mr Fletcher?’

  There was a timid knock at the door, and Fletcher told them to come in. Ashley carried a tray with three identical mugs. She went first to Freeman, put down a coaster and then the tea, repeating the process for Waters. Finally, she went around the other side of the desk, putting down a coaster and a mug on Fletcher’s left side. She never once looked any of them in the eye and she never spoke when Fletcher thanked her – she left the office and closed the door. The Managing Director was the first to pick up a mug and to take a drink.

  ‘What’s this about another phone? I run a plumbing business, not an answering service.’

  Beginning to come forward now, unable to resist it, just how Smith liked them. Counterpunching is the way, Chris – the wilder they swing, the more opportunities you get. It was all about boxing, apparently, and Smith had had to demonstrate the counterpunch the first time he mentioned it because the apprentice had never heard of it.

  Waters said, ‘We’re asking about another phone because on that day, Thursday the twenty-seventh of July, when you had several contacts with Michelle, the last call to her phone was made from a different mobile. We haven’t been able to trace it yet but we’ve made some progress. We’re asking everyone who’d been in touch with her whether they used a different phone, just to eliminate it.’

  The mention of “everyone” seemed to reassure Fletcher.

  ‘I see… But I had my mobile then. Why would I call her using two different phones on the same day?’

  ‘I didn’t actually say that you did, sir…’

  And then a different voice said, ‘But that’s the sort of question we spend the taxpayer’s money worrying about, Mr Fletcher, all day and every day.’

  Both men looked at Freeman then. She was still studying the iPad. After a second or two, she glanced up, smiled and went back to whatever she was doing there. Waters reminded Fletcher that the question had yet to be answered, and received a blunt reply – no, of course he hadn’t bought another mobile phone.

  The notepad came out then, still the old reporter’s style – less durable than an Alwych, and less likely to form an archive, but still unnerving for the interviewee as a detective flicks back through the upside-down pages that he cannot read. What is written there? Where is all this going? What do they think they have on me?

  Eventually Waters said, ‘The twenty-seventh of last month. Can you tell me about your movements on that day?’

  ‘The twenty-seventh?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The day your sister-in-law was murdered.’

  Fletcher’s face was becoming immobile.

  ‘My movements on that day? I don’t bloody believe this. Could you tell me what you were doing, just like that?’

  ‘No, sir. But we keep a log. I could look it up and tell you pretty exactly.’

  ‘You want to know what I was doing all day?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, sir.’

  Fletcher got up, said he would check the work diary in the other office, and added with heavy sarcasm that one of them was free to accompany him if they thought it necessary. When he went out, the door swung behind him until it closed.

  Freeman said, ‘Did anyone bother to look him up?’

  Waters replied that he didn’t think so, and she gave a sniff of irritation before she said, quietly, ‘I just did, or rather I got Simon Terek to do it for me. An ABH when he was twenty-three, a punch-up in a pub. He laid a couple of blokes out. Must have done some damage to get the sentence he did. A year suspended and a hefty fine.’

  This had no direct bearing, naturally, but people fall into three basic categories. There are those who will never strike a blow even when they are under attack and in danger; there are those who will never strike first but will let fly once they have been struck; there are those for whom violence is never far beneath the surface, and these are the people who do not know when to stop, because they like it.

  Waters wrote it on the pad and didn’t see Freeman smiling. Then she said, ‘It’s going alright.’

  ‘He’s left-handed as well.’

  ‘Yes, I got that. Shakes with his right but does everything else with the left…’

  Around ten per cent of the population have the affliction. It’s a little more common in men but even then not more than fifteen per cent. If there are twenty million adult men in the country, three million at most will be left-handed .Divide that by the three according to the predilection towards violence – three is too low but for argument’s sake – and you’re looking for one person in a million, not one in sixty million. This is the process, a kind of sifting of data through one statistical sieve after another, eliminating those who could not have done this thing until y
ou are left with the only person who could.

  Fletcher returned with the work diary, which was an actual book, a hard-backed ledger. He half-threw it onto the desk in front of him, whereupon it closed and he had to find the correct pages again.

  ‘It’s all here. I know where I was and what I was doing that day.’

  Waters said, ‘Were you using your own car on the 27th, Mr Fletcher?’

  A frown and a pause before the answer, ‘Yes, I must have. Nothing here that would mean I’d used one of the vans. Why?’

  ‘And would anyone else have used the Mercedes? Anyone from the office, say?’

  ‘No. That doesn’t happen. They’ve both…’

  Fletcher might have realised the significance of the question in answering it. But the detectives were watching him now, and he couldn’t go back.

  Waters said, ‘Did you drive into the town centre in the afternoon, Mr Fletcher?’

  Noticeably more wary now, Mr Fletcher, weighing up each new question.

  ‘I may have done. That wouldn’t be unusual.’

  ‘But on that particular afternoon?’

  ‘I think I did go into town, yes.’

  ‘What sort of time?’

  Waters knew he’d already said “afternoon” which was a slip, but not an important one. Fletcher was looking at him, trying to read the best answer in the policeman’s face.

  ‘I think it was latish in the afternoon.’

  ‘And where do you think you might have parked?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that.’

  Waters turned pages in the notepad again, going backwards now. The interviewee realises at this point that the police have had this information, whatever it is, for quite a while. What else have they got written in there since?

  Waters said, ‘I think I can help with that. There’s a multi-storey car park adjacent to The Mall shopping centre. Your car was parked there between 17.28 and 18.06, and you’ve confirmed that you were driving it. Would you mind telling us what you went to the centre for? What did you purchase, Mr Fletcher?’

  Disclosure can be deadly, in the right hands.

  Fletcher made little attempt to hide his surprise – perhaps he had more important things on his mind. Eventually he said he wasn’t sure, nothing very significant, possibly just some things they needed in the office, for the business. The most interesting thing for both detectives was that Fletcher was no longer protesting at his movements being investigated; the tacit acceptance of it meant the game had moved into a new phase entirely.

  Waters said, ‘To be clear, then, sir – you definitely did not purchase a mobile phone on that day?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  The look you give them says, and you’re absolutely sure you want me to write that down in this notepad? Fletcher didn’t blink, and so the detective sergeant wrote slowly, with a frown that said, so be it…

  ‘About the car,’ Fletcher said, ‘I’ve got the dealer on my back, thanks to you lot. What’s going on with it?’

  ‘Possibly nothing to worry about, sir. But there were traces on Michelle Simms which might relate to a vehicle of some sort. Before you ask why we’re looking at a vehicle of yours, it comes back to you being the last person with whom we know she’d been in contact. Again, this is almost a routine procedure.’

  ‘Almost?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Single words can speak volumes, but this was another example of Fletcher not wanting to go there just at this moment.

  ‘Traces of what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I can’t go into that sort of detail, Mr Fletcher.’

  The Managing Director closed the diary but it was surely a gesture made more in hope than expectation. There were other voices beyond the door, a man asking to see the boss, and the receptionist explaining he was in a meeting, he shouldn’t be too much longer.

  It was Freeman who ended the awkward silence.

  ‘Mr Fletcher, I can see you’re a busy man, and we have a lot to do ourselves this morning. I have a couple more questions, and then we’ll leave you in peace. How does that sound?’

  An honest answer would certainly have involved more profanities than she actually received; Fletcher simply suggested she might be guilty of wasting police time with all this nonsense.

  Freeman said, ‘Good. How well did you know Michelle, Graham?’

  Her use of the Christian name had to be as deliberate as Waters’ avoidance of it.

  ‘Eh? Well, she was my sister-in-law… About as well as anyone knows their sister-in-law, I suppose.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say you were close to her?’

  ‘I would not.’

  This was the first time since he’d known her that Waters had seen Freeman interviewing someone of interest – up to now, he had only observed her grilling her colleagues. She had a peculiarly innocent expression now, almost a child-like smile, as she said, ‘But you used to visit the salon she managed, quite regularly. Was that for professional reasons? Did the heating system have problems?’

  Fletcher replied slowly, saying the words carefully – ‘I’ve not been there for months.’

  ‘No, not for about five months. Since April, isn’t it?’

  Fletcher didn’t move or say anything for a long time. For so long, in fact, that when he did speak, Freeman gave a little start of mock surprise.

  ‘You said you had two more questions. What’s the other one?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Please would you tell us where you were on the evening of Thursday the twenty-seventh of July, between the hours of six pm and midnight?’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ‘Chris, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but we need to get a room.’

  They were standing in the car park of Luton Central Heating Services at one minute before one o’clock in the afternoon. He didn’t know yet how far he could go with Freeman in the sense of humour department, but she was looking up at him and waiting for some sort of response.

  He said, ‘We should probably call home and let them know what we’re intending to do, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, that’s my next move. Yours is to call Serena and find out what she got this morning. We’ll make the calls from here, now. I want him to see us at work in his car park.’

  Waters took a few steps away from his car, and then he could see the girl, Ashley, in the back seat. She was pale-faced and staring back at him. Freeman had been sympathetic and kind but somehow she had still managed to frighten the wits out of the receptionist.

  Serena was in the office. She told him Terek was in the room on his own phone, not listening to this conversation – what she and Ford had got at the school had caused some consternation. Terek had tried to reach Freeman, she said, but the DCI hadn’t answered the calls. Waters remembered her ignoring her mobile; that was something worth noting for future reference. And then Serena told him what it was they’d discovered, without any of the usual guessing games.

  He looked across at Freeman, realising she was almost certainly hearing a version of the same story from Terek. Then she glanced back at him and shook her head a little in disbelief.

  He said to Serena, ‘You made absolutely sure of it? He taught them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?’

  ‘Actually, no. He called it, er…’ – she was searching her notes – ‘manual insufflation. But that’s what it is, mouth-to-mouth. It was one of Oliver Salmon’s last lessons before he left school.’

  You could shout, clench your first and shake it, you could imagine the moment when you get to say I told you so to certain individuals – or you could do what Christopher Waters did, which was to think very clearly. He turned away from Freeman and stared at the building in front of him, watching his own mind at work. If Oliver Salmon hadn’t attacked Michelle Simms himself, there were two possibilities. One – Oliver had found the woman in the dunes, had somehow stumbled across her, had somehow realised that it might be worth trying to revive her. Two – Oliver had seen something of what had happen
ed – maybe the attack itself, maybe the person carrying the body along the footpath. He had seen something, waited until the dangerous man had gone and then he had tried to bring her back with what Mr Longhill had taught him. He had failed, of course. Was it any wonder the boy would not walk along the road with Smith and Jo a couple of weeks later? Was it any wonder that when questioned about such an awful thing, he had retreated into himself? He’d been questioned in entirely the wrong way, as a suspect, not as a witness. As potentially the only witness.

  Waters said into the phone, ‘Well done.’

  ‘It was Ford who spotted it. But I cannot tell a lie – it was me who worked it out.’

  Freeman was still talking into her phone. He said to Serena, ‘This will probably come from Terek anyway, but get onto Michelle’s bank accounts – her husband OK’d it this morning. And the fertility clinic. Check if she ever made contact, whether she had any dealings with them. If they start talking medical privilege, you start talking Police And Criminal Evidence, serious offences. Explain that the person concerned cannot give consent because she’s the victim. If they still argue, give them Freeman’s direct number.’

  There was a short pause while she wrote this down, and then, ‘How are you getting on with her? What d’you think?’

  ‘Too soon to say. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. This is more like the old days?’

  When he got back to the car, he heard the end of the DCI’s conversation.

  ‘… no, I’ll ring Shirley Salmon and the boy’s mother myself, Simon. Send me the numbers now. I want this set up for tonight, though. If they agree to him coming in, I need the Polish girl who helped to interview him last time, and I want the same solicitor, whatever her name was. And I need time beforehand to brief these people as to what’s happened. Chris and I should be back by,’ – a glance at her phone – ‘between four and five, so I’m thinking sometime after six. Can you get that all arranged?’

  She listened then, said a yes, a no and another yes before she ended the call; if Cara Freeman knew the meaning of the word equivocation, it was most likely as the thing she had decided a long time ago she would not do. She glanced down at what Waters had in his left hand and said, ‘I hope you’re not thinking of using them.’