Blood Line (49 page)

The key to the locker in Tina’s salon had been taken from her and they found the suitcase containing the two hundred thousand pounds. The money was in used banknotes tied with elastic bands in bundles of tens and twenties and fifty-pound notes. So she had told the truth about that, and would be entitled to reclaim it unless they could prove it was the proceeds of drug transactions.

*

It had been a long day and Anna did not get back to her flat until after eleven that evening. Sleep was out of the question as she lay mulling over all that she had gained from Tina’s interrogation. What she still could not come to terms with was the fact that Alan Rawlins had been so brutally murdered, his body removed and the flat cleaned up to disguise and hide what had occurred. Weaving through the mound of lies that Tina had told from day one meant a lot of sifting through notes and statements.

Tina Brooks had continued to live in the flat, knowing how Alan had died. She had gone about her daily business at the salon acting as if she was the estranged girlfriend and pretending that he had simply gone missing. She had denied having any knowledge of his sexual activities, instead weaving a picture of a gentle, quiet man who hated confrontations, who never argued and whom she planned to marry. She claimed to have seen Alan’s bloody body in her bathroom, yet carried on going to work and even went shopping for the two purported killers who were still inside her flat. Could a woman be so traumatised and forced into doing terrible things, and then be raped and warned to keep silent or she would end up the same way as Alan Rawlins – yet never disclose the money she had hidden in her salon?

It was after two as Anna leaned back on her pillows, trying to ascertain if there was, as Langton had suggested, even more to get out of Tina. She had lied about ever knowing Sammy Marsh, lied about virtually everything – and even with her admission about what had happened inside her flat, she still claimed that she was not in any way responsible for the murder and had only acted out of fear.

Anna sighed, pushing away the mound of papers and notebooks she had littering her bed. But she still couldn’t sleep, recalling how few personal effects were on display in Tina’s flat when they searched it. The lone photographs, the ordering of the new carpet. She wondered, if Alan Rawlins’s father had not contacted her via Langton, would Tina have simply moved on? That was another thing that Anna would have to face – informing Edward Rawlins of the outcome. This brought her back to wondering how his son’s body had been removed from the flat. Did they wrap him in the sheet? The forensic team had found no bloodstains outside the flat or the surrounding area.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would take another look around Tina’s flat and surrounds before picking up the interrogation . . .

When the alarm woke her, it felt as if she had only just fallen asleep. Disorientated, she threw the duvet aside, spilling all her notes and papers onto the floor. The first page of typed notes showed the lists of the phone numbers recovered from Alan Rawlins’s mobile, with calls made to Florida, Antigua, Los Angeles – but they’d had no success in finding out the identity of the recipient. What’s more, the calls had been made after 16 March – when Alan Rawlins was already dead.

J
onas Jones was cleaning the glass panels in the reception doors of Tina’s apartment block when Anna arrived, and she asked him to show her the fire exit and corridor to the rear of the building.

‘Is it ever left open or used as a shortcut to the rear?’ she asked.

‘No, ma’am, it’s a fire exit, but I’ve never seen anyone use it. It’s near the basement entrance where all the central-heating and air-conditioning vents are. They were checked out by officers ’cos I had to unlock that door.’

Anna followed him, passing flats one and two as they went into a narrow corridor that ran the length of the building. At the end of the corridor was, as he had described, a small fire-exit door with a single bar across it. He pressed it open for her to pass through and step outside. Although the SOCO team had obviously checked out the area, this was the first time Anna had seen the rear of the building. The area was fenced in and covered in tarmac with an old rusted table and two chairs by the only tree.

‘Do residents park back here?’

‘Sometimes. They’ve got their own garages, but they’re only for a single vehicle, so if they got people visiting they park here out of the way of the main exit.’

‘You ever seen cars or vans out here?’

‘Only when you people were around. They used this to park up and they sat at the table. It’s for the tenants, but nobody uses it.’

‘So you have never seen a motor bike parked here maybe?’

‘Nope.’

‘What about a Ford Transit van?’

He shook his head and repeated that he only ever came in for a few hours a week. Judging by the piles of dead leaves pushed up against the walls and around the fence, it didn’t look as if he had swept up for some considerable time. Anna returned back through the small corridor, aware of how easy it would have been for a van to be parked up and a body carried out without anyone seeing it. Disappointed, she went back to her car not bothering to look over Tina’s flat again.

By the time Anna arrived at the station, both Brian and Paul had been working on trying to get a trace on the three numbers. The Antigua and the Los Angeles ones they knew were to mobiles, but the Florida number was a landline.

‘You got an address?’

‘Yeah, it’s a condo in Tampa and we’re onto Interpol in the US to check out who owns or rents the place. We’re waiting for them to get back to us.’

‘Good. How about Cornwall? They had any result in tracking down Silas Douglas?’

‘Nope. He’s not been seen for weeks, but they got his Transit van hauled into Forensics; no motor bike though.’

‘What about the Passport Office and Border Control?’

‘They’re checking, but as we don’t have a date, he might have skipped the country.’

‘Has to be after he came here, obviously. Keep up the pressure.’

Anna had only just sat down at her desk when DCI Williams called. So far, the Transit van owned by Douglas was as clean as a whistle, with no blood traces or fingerprints. ‘The only thing we did pick up,’ he said, ‘was a few bits of chipped paint, plus some kind of mud grains which were caught in the rubber mats.’

‘You found nothing at his place either?’

‘Nope. He did a clean-out. Papers were burned and too charred to get anything from them, but Ballistics said that Sammy Marsh was probably shot with a 9mm Luger. The markings on the bullets and cartridge cases didn’t match any previous shootings.’

‘The time of death for Sammy was around four weeks ago, you believe?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Williams. ‘Decomposition was pretty extensive so we’d thought longer, maybe due to the body being hemmed into the small space of the lavatory.’

‘So if Silas Douglas killed him, he would have had to be in the country then, which will narrow dates down for us to try and get something out of an all-ports enquiry.’

‘We’re working on that, but my gut feeling is, because we’ve got no motor bike, he could have taken off and be hiding out in England, Ireland or even Europe by now.’

‘Well, we’ll both keep looking,’ Anna said, with one eye on the clock. She could only hold Tina for thirty-six hours until formally charging her or getting a further extension at the magistrate’s court. But she still wasn’t ready to begin the exhausting process of going through the gruesome details of the murder or Tina’s insistence that she had nothing to do with it.

Instead, she went into the incident room and told Brian that since Silas Douglas could have gone to Ireland or Europe with his motor bike by ferry, she wanted him to focus on the all-ports enquiry, circulate Silas’s details and the number-plate of his motor bike. She turned as Langton made yet another unscheduled visit and once more she was forced to give him the latest details, which delayed her from beginning the interview.

From his attitude she felt as if he in some way disapproved of her continued search for Silas Douglas. She knew him of old; on such occasions he had a bad-tempered look and grunted, constantly gesturing for her to get to the point if indeed she had one.

‘Of course I have one. We only have Tina’s word for what happened in her flat: the rape, the body being removed and that everything she did was due to the fact she was terrified. She’s still hiding something and I can’t think what’s niggling me.’

He nodded, rubbing his head, making his hair stand up on end. Then he clicked his fingers.

‘I know! I know what it is!’

‘Know what? What is it?’

He clicked his fingers again, grinning – and then pointed.

‘You said they’d found some kind of mud particles in the footwell of Douglas’s Transit, right? Yes – and when you did a search of her flat you listed thick bandages, tins of a substance she used for treatments at her salon for a seaweed wrap?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘The caretaker also told me that he saw the thick bandages tossed into the wheelie bin for her flat.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a treatment she uses at her salon, Anna. It’s a mud wrap. She plasters the mud over the body then wraps it with the bandages. Mud dries on the skin and the body loses water retention or something like that. You with me?’

Anna nodded, but she wasn’t quite following.

‘Now, you’ve got a bloody corpse leaking in a bathtub, but no blood apart from the bedside pooling, smears in the small hallway and some blood spray in the bathroom, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘You could wrap a body in bloody sheets, but carrying that out has got to leave some clues. However, if she covered it in this mud stuff, then wrapped the body in bandages, it could have been inside the flat for days whilst they cleaned up. You said over and over that the cleaning of the flat had to have taken longer than just her going to work and returning.’

‘But we are still going on her word that Alan Rawlins died on the day he left work, that both Sammy and Silas were there when she got home and that they had already killed him,’ Anna said thoughtfully.

‘You’ve seen how good a liar she is. At best, all you have her for is attempting to pervert the course of justice. I’m warning you though, she could get away with being seen as the innocent, terrified victim here. We know she’s a bloody good actress. If defence put her in front of a jury, she turns on the tears, out will come the rape allegation – followed by a not-guilty verdict – and she calmly walks away from it all, passing Go and collecting two hundred thousand pounds. If you want her to go down for accessory to murder, you need to show she assisted or encouraged Sammy and Silas.’

Anna tried to take on board all Langton had said but knew that by now Tina’s brief was waiting impatiently in the interview room.

‘I’ll do my best, but with only her word to go on it’s not easy.’

Paul looked over to see if he was needed. They still had no result on the Tampa number and Brian was checking the possibility that Silas Douglas was in Ireland or Europe. Now Douglas was wanted for questioning about two murders, the hunt was hotting up.

‘Okay, Paul, let’s go for round two,’ Anna said, heading for the stairs to the interview rooms. Langton watched her leave before he did another slow meander over to the incident board.

‘Brian, what do we know about this guy Silas Douglas?’

‘Not a lot, Gov. He’s got family connections, well educated, trained as a carpenter and has a reputation for customising surfboards. He charges a few thousand as well, and he’s been bringing them in from the USA for about three or four years. He runs this car-wash dump close to where he lives, full of Polish immigrants . . .’

‘Any previous on him?’

‘Nope. Travels from London to Cornwall for the summers and—’

‘How did you get his name?’

‘It was in Alan Rawlins’s address book. Douglas gave up Sammy’s name and showed us a photograph of Rawlins with pals. He admitted he knew Sammy Marsh again when we brought him in for questioning, and said Alan Rawlins had been in his surfing class.’

Langton sat down in a chair facing the accumulated evidence plastered across the incident board.

‘Is he married?’

Brian dug around in his notebook, thumbing over pages.

‘Yeah, divorced nine years ago, has one daughter.’

‘Where do they live?’

Brian shrugged. ‘I dunno but I can check.’

‘Is he gay or straight?’

‘Straight, but I dunno. He’s got a ponytail like an old hippy with biker’s leathers – huge guy.’

Langton ruffled at his hair again and then instructed Brian to dig up everything on Silas Douglas’s background. He would be in the monitor room watching the interrogation.

Brian waited until Langton had left and then asked Helen to do it for him as he was still trying to work on what Anna had wanted.

‘He’s taking a big interest in this, isn’t he?’ Helen observed.

‘He and Travis were an item a few years ago. To be honest, rumours were flying around that he’d pushed her promotion through. I think he’s looking over her shoulder. This is the first Category A murder enquiry she’s handled solo.’

‘Well, the body count is mounting. It’s gone from a missing person to a murder and then the guy in Cornwall, and . . .’

Brian was reading an email when he suddenly turned to Helen.

‘Fuck, the condo in Tampa, Florida, is occupied by a Mrs Wanda Douglas. It’s the suspect’s wife, isn’t it? Can you check with the General Registrar’s Office for births and marriages?’

‘I’m doing it, I’m doing it.’

*

Anna once again cautioned Tina and informed her that the interview would be recorded. Tina looked dishevelled and wore the same clothes as the previous day. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had been crying, her face devoid of make-up. Even her hair looked as if she hadn’t bothered to comb it.

‘You feeling all right, Tina?’

‘Not really. I couldn’t sleep. The place stinks and they gave me food that was disgusting.’ She jerked her thumb towards Jonathan Hyde, saying, ‘He got out of here so fast, he didn’t make any arrangements for me to get a change of clothes. I’ve not got my make-up and . . . so how do you think I feel?’