Songbird Read online

  She let it play to the end and stopped the recording. Freeman said, ‘It’s wonderful. Who was playing the piano?’

  ‘That was Michelle. She taught herself on a keyboard when we were kids. She didn’t read music, it was all by ear.’

  After a time, Freeman said, ‘I can see why that isn’t easy to listen to right now. But those recordings will be something to treasure. I think it’s absolutely right for the funeral.’

  Michaela Fletcher heard the words but continued with another conversation.

  ‘We have that piano in the house, right through there in the dining room. She used to play and sing for the girls whenever she came, they were always asking her… Now, as soon as they hear any of the recordings, they just start crying.’

  Waters wanted to say, ‘Do you know the other version of that song, the one by Eva Cassidy?’ but it would be too strange on the one hand and too banal on the other unless he explained why. And how would he explain his question? What a coincidence, Mrs Fletcher, that the first person we had locked up for your sister’s murder listens to “Songbird” all day long!

  Freeman said, ‘It’s understandable. They’ll feel the loss as much as anyone.’

  Michaela switched off the audio player and returned to her seat.

  ‘Did she ever talk about having a child of her own? Obviously, she was devoted to her nieces.’

  That’s a subtle line of questioning, thought Waters – Freeman is more than a miniature bulldozer. She can play this all sorts of ways.

  Michaela said, ‘It came up sometimes, sisters talk about these things. She was, yes – she made no secret of it that half the time she was calling around to see them and not me!’

  ‘Had she talked about becoming a mother recently?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why do you ask?’

  Mrs Fletcher was paying attention again.

  Freeman said, ‘It always helps me if I feel I’m getting to know the person who has been attacked. What her thoughts and concerns were, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I don’t see why…’

  A longer pause as she thought about this but Freeman was in no hurry to say any more, or to try and cover her tracks.

  Michaela Fletcher said then, ‘We know you’ve questioned someone. What’s happening there? Have you arrested anyone?’

  ‘No. No one is under arrest at present and no one has been charged. The investigation is continuing.’

  Michaela Fletcher took a long look at the detective chief inspector then, and Waters could sense the thought process. She was making an evaluation as to whether this woman was telling her the truth, all of it, and nothing but the truth. To be a successful detective, there are times when you must convince others you are doing so.

  Michaela said, ‘And why are you in Luton today? Have you been speaking to Barry?’

  ‘Yes, we have.’

  And if they had not? What would Freeman have given as an explanation? But it satisfied Michaela, and she said, ‘I remember earlier in the year she mentioned looking for a donor – you know,’ with a look at Waters, ‘a sperm donor? I don’t think she was serious, not really. I remember it because I said to her it would be a good reason to cut down on her drinking…’

  Freeman frowned and said, ‘A funny thing for a married woman to joke about, though.’

  Despite her sorrows, Michaela Fletcher had that altered demeanour that comes when women discuss intimate things. She leaned a little towards Freeman, dropped her voice, and Waters knew he was momentarily invisible.

  ‘They did look into it years ago. They found out Barry was the problem. I think they just accepted it and moved on. But she used to say that if she hadn’t handed Graham on to me, my two would have been hers.’

  Freeman was good. She didn’t blink, didn’t give even a half-glance in his direction.

  ‘Oh. She and Graham – your Graham – knew each other? Before, I mean.’

  Michaela nodded, ‘Yes, that’s how we first met. They went out for a while. She used to joke about her hand-me-down clothes as well… It’s funny how things turn out. No one ever thought she’d marry Barry, either. She was always seen as more of a catch, you know – more than me!’

  Freeman had said then that Michaela must let her know the date of the funeral, and also, would she mind letting them have a couple more photographs of Michelle? Two minutes later, they were outside the house and back in Waters’ car. There was the now obligatory glance at messages on her phone, before, ‘The waters are getting a little murkier, Waters. Sorry about that, it wasn’t intentional. How many horsepower under this bonnet? It’s the 1.8 TFSI, isn’t it?’

  He looked at her and said, ‘Has anyone ever told you you have a tragic side to your character, ma’am?’

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, detective sergeant, it’s written on the back of the vehicle. The question for me now is, do I let you get away with that because you haven’t given me an answer about my squad yet? And also, if I do let you get away with it, and then you join the squad, will a period of retraining be necessary, as a result?’

  ‘One hundred and fifty-eight horsepower at five thousand rpm, ma’am.’

  ‘Alright. Get us back to Lake and don’t spare a single one of them. I’ll consider your position.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ‘Oliver, look at me please.’

  She wasn’t being heartless. This is what they had told her beforehand, Shirley Salmon, backed up by Marta – if he doesn’t trust you, he won’t look at you, and if he’s not looking at you, he doesn’t feel any need to answer you. Oliver had a fright in the last interview, and you have to get past that before you can go anywhere else.

  The boy’s gaze was over to the left, somewhere beyond the seated figure of Detective Inspector Terek. After a few seconds, Shirley touched his arm and said, ‘Oliver, you’re not in trouble. Look at Cara when she’s speaking to you, please.’

  The first names had been agreed and used in the introductions – even Mrs Archer was Christine, just for the evening. The gaze came back to his aunt, and then went to Marta Dobrowski. Freeman guessed he hadn’t been fooled by the Christian names so much that he didn’t realise the woman now asking the questions was the one he needed to worry about, even though this wasn’t the same one as last time.

  She tried again.

  ‘Oliver, what Shirley says is true. You are not in trouble. We’re sorry if you thought you were last time. We want you to help us now.’

  Keep the sentences short, they had said. Say one thing at a time, one sentence at a time. And give him the spaces in which to answer. If you hurry him, he’ll just close up again.

  ‘And we know you like helping people. You help your Aunt Shirley, don’t you, at the caravans? You help in the charity shop.’

  These were things he recognised, and at last he was looking at her directly. She’d found ten minutes in her office to brief herself – it’s amazing what you can retain when you need to – and there in the irises Freeman could see the Brushfield spots, the pale flecks of concentrated connective tissue common in those with the syndrome. But his eyes were also blue and less fearful than she had expected. He was giving her an opportunity, after all.

  No more than a quarter of an hour, they had told her, and shorter than that if you can. Not too many words, make this as visual as possible, and in the folder in front of her she had the two items she wanted to show him.

  ‘Oliver. We think someone might have got hurt. And we think you might have seen this person. The one who got hurt. Will you look at a photograph with me?’

  Now that she had his attention, Freeman seemed to have all of it. He sat with a very straight back, his hands folded in his lap, frowning at the question but with his eyes still looking directly back at her own. He nodded his answer, and she picked up the folder. In front of him she placed one of the pictures Michaela Fletcher had given her that afternoon, the most recent, with the two women side by side in a garden somewhere, each of them holding a wineglass and smil
ing at whoever took the photograph. It was a good picture, and you could see a family resemblance, which was why she’d chosen it. If his recollection was vague or uncertain, he might as easily point to Michaela as her sister.

  Oliver leaned forward and peered at the image, his face a few inches from it. She thought, is he short-sighted? No one had mentioned such a thing, but if he was…

  His hands were small and square, his fingers short and curled inwards a little. And then, as she watched, the fingers of his right hand curled further in towards the palm save for the index, which was pointing at Michelle Simms. The finger remained but his eyes came back up to Freeman, and he said, ‘She got hurt.’

  It was important not to over-react. Marta had explained to them that Oliver might well be as sensitive to expression and tone of voice as anyone else in the room.

  Freeman said, ‘Thank you. What about the other lady, Oliver? Have you seen her before?’

  They had to consider the possibility he had encountered the women elsewhere on the caravan site during the three days they had been together before Michelle was murdered.

  ‘No. Don’t know this one.’ He was pointing to Michaela, and then the finger moved back as he said, ‘This one got hurt. She is dead.’

  She had been told that getting him to describe an attack would be a risk. He was likely to become upset, and if that happened the interview was over. Freeman put her own finger close to Oliver’s and said, ‘Is this the lady you tried to help, Oliver?’

  ‘Tried to help. Yes.’

  ‘How did you try to help?’

  He sat up straight again, completely engaged with her now as if there were no other people present. His hands moved into a new position in front of him, fingers open, palms facing each other and about the length of a rugby ball apart – it took a moment for Freeman to realise he was holding someone’s head in his hands, Michelle Simms’ head. He leaned down and began to blow out rhythmically, pausing between breaths. He did this four or five times, and then turned his head to one side, listening.

  Freeman looked away from him for a moment. Shirley Salmon was weeping silently behind her nephew, and Christine Archer was white-faced. When Oliver resumed the breathing, she stopped him and said, ‘Thank you, Oliver. You did a very good thing, trying to help. This is what Mr Longhill showed you, isn’t it?’

  He smiled broadly, and said, ‘Trevor!’ before the smile faded as quickly as it had come. ‘But it doesn’t work.’

  There would be a dozen, maybe a score of questions she wanted to ask then, but a plan had been agreed, and she’d already seen the solicitor looking at her watch. Freeman picked up the photograph, replaced it in the folder and took out a brochure. It was important not to make the connection in any explicit way – the connection between what he had just shown them and what he was about to see.

  ‘Oliver, can you help me with one more thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like you to look at this magazine for me.’

  She placed it in front of him, the right way up for him, and said, ‘I’d like you to look at every page. Take your time. There’s no hurry.’

  He picked it up, plainly understanding that this was an odd request in the circumstances. Then, for some reason he turned it over, put it flat on the desk and began looking through it from the back cover. His face was close to the page again, as it had been when he viewed the photographs, and as he looked over each page, his head moved up and down a little. He took Freeman at her word and did not hurry.

  Christine Archer seemed to be having second thoughts about this but it was too late to intervene, and if she’d tried to do so, Freeman would not have given way. Oliver was taking about ten seconds a page and there were eight pages in the brochure – a minute at least would pass before he reached the inside of the front cover.

  She noticed first that the up and down motion of the boy’s head stopped; the rest of him too was suddenly motionless as if an unseen finger had pressed pause and frozen the frame. It was vitally important that no one spoke, that the first reaction came from Oliver.

  He pushed the brochure towards Freeman. When, without thinking, she tried to return it to the middle of the desk, he forced it away from himself, and his eyes were full of reproach. Shirley Salmon knew him, of course, and she already had a hand on his arm. He turned around to her and said, ‘Bad things. We don’t look at bad things. When people show us, we say go away!’

  Shirley reached further forward, putting an arm around him. To Freeman’s puzzled look, she said, ‘Believe it or not, other people like to tease the Olivers of this world, especially other children. They show them things they shouldn’t. I’m sure you can imagine. Oliver has been told to tell them to go away. If he’s seen something that makes him uncomfortable, that’s how he will react.’

  Freeman stared down at the inside cover of the Luton Central Heating Services brochure, at the smiling image of Graham Fletcher posing in smart company overalls, a spanner in his left hand, the other giving a thumbs-up gesture. There were other pictures, and some had people in them, but could there be the slightest doubt as to what had caused Oliver Salmon’s distress?

  She said, ‘Oliver? Can you tell me what you saw?’

  He turned further away, into his aunt’s shoulder, his breathing audibly changed. Christine Archer was shaking her head, on the point of getting up from her chair. Freeman looked at Terek, but he was giving her nothing in return.

  ‘Oliver – is it this man? Is he why you won’t walk down the road to the woods anymore?’

  The solicitor was on her feet now, a hand raised between Freeman and the boy.

  ‘Thank you, detective chief inspector, but this interview is terminated.’

  When Waters, watching and listening three rooms away, heard the final question about the road to the woods, he had just a split second of panic. How did Freeman know about that? He had not mentioned it to her; doing so would have taken the story too close to a certain member of the public who had no business involving himself in a police investigation. Therefore, it could only be that Shirley Salmon had mentioned it to Freeman – but had Shirley had the sense not to include Smith’s name? The DCI had asked whether Waters had seen much of him recently. Was that why? The likely consequences of not being open with a senior officer like Cara Freeman were all too obvious.

  Serena was sitting next to him. She watched as the DCI brought the interview to a formal close, and said, ‘Well, if anyone had any doubts, that just ended them, didn’t it?’

  Waters brought his mind back to the moment – most of the bridges you try to cross before you come to them turn out to have been imaginary anyway. As he stood up to stretch his back, which troubled him sometimes – being tall has its downsides – he said, ‘Conclusive as it might seem, we can’t use any of it in a court case. As intelligence, it’s excellent – as evidence, it’s useless.’

  ‘Because he’s disabled?’

  ‘Indirectly, yes. What Oliver admitted doing corroborates the forensic evidence, fair enough. Beyond that, what is there in the interview that ties anything to Fletcher? Oliver got upset when the page with Fletcher on it was in front of him. As a member of the jury, would you convict anyone on that? We could try interviewing Oliver again and hope to put together some sort of coherent account, but can you imagine putting him on the stand? Cross examination? No judge would allow it.’

  This wasn’t an argument – it wasn’t even a discussion because she knew he was right. Serena stood up as well. Freeman would be here in a matter of minutes.

  ‘You said it’s excellent intelligence, though. How?’

  ‘We know this puts Graham Fletcher right in the cross-hairs. That’s the motivation to go over every inch of it again, as well as looking into all the new stuff we got today. As Cara said, he’s bound to be rattled now. When he got home, Michaela will have told him all about the visit from the police, the senior investigating officer sitting in his lounge and chatting to his wife – and he’s going to
be wondering just how much we let slip. How much does she know? And if we didn’t tell her, why didn’t we? What are we planning next? He won’t get much sleep tonight.’

  Serena thought it over.

  ‘So, it’s Cara now, is it?’

  Waters ignored that and said, ‘Something happened between Michelle and Fletcher. We know they’ve got history now. It’s what was being talked about in the texts and phone calls – there never was any argument between Michelle and her sister. She said something, maybe she threatened him, and he snapped. That’s my guess. At some time on the Thursday, he decided what he was going to do, and he made preparations to do it. I’m not saying he planned to kill her but he planned to confront her about whatever it was up at Pinehills without anyone else knowing. The texts would have given it away, so they had to disappear. He bought the burner phone so he could call her and it wouldn’t be traceable. We don’t know it for certain yet, but I think he wiped the data from his car for the same reasons.’

  She stood up beside him, stifled a yawn and looked at the time on her phone. It was one of those days when you lose track and have to keep checking how much more of it can be left.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, sir’ – ironic – ‘I think you’re a bit of a dark horse. All these first names with the girls? Doesn’t take you long, does it? First it was Marta, now it’s Cara. What happened with Janey, by the way?’

  ‘I told you about the job interview? Well, she got it.’

  ‘In Manchester? Oh dear. And you decided you didn’t want a transfer to the capital of Britpop.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  His mobile began to ring, and he answered it immediately. It was Mancini from Gleneagles Motors, telling him what he needed to know and asking whether he could have his car back soon as he’d been so cooperative in the investigation. Waters made no promises but said he would speak to Luton North in the morning and get them to call the sales manager with an update on their progress.

  As he was ending the call, Freeman walked into the recording suite alone. She saw the phone and asked the question wordlessly. Waters said, ‘That was your friend Henry, ma’am. Mr Mancini. He’s checked with his technicians. They didn’t wipe anything from the Mercedes.’