Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (35 page)

Churchill sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Didn’t they know it was a crime scene?’

‘They’re only young, sir. I expect they hoped they were going to save a life.’

Churchill leaned back in his chair, glaring at Terry with blatant hostility. ‘What do you mean, Terence
if
there was an intruder? You think she was hanged by a Martian?’

We can do without this, Terry thought. We’ll never solve this if it’s a pissing competition. He drew a deep breath.

‘Well, sir, it’s likely that this woman had a boyfriend. Maybe one, maybe several - we don’t know. We found a sex manual and a packet of condoms in her bedside drawer. So either this lady liked blowing balloons, or she had an active sex life. And another thing - this scarf she was strangled with. It was pure silk, quite expensive. Much fancier than the rest of her clothes.’

‘Any DNA on the scarf?’

‘Only hers, sir, unfortunately.’

‘Pity. So? What are you saying?’

‘Well, maybe this scarf was a gift, sir. From a rich boyfriend perhaps. What I’d like to know is who her partner - or partners - were. Maybe he knows something about this. At the very least he could say what she was like.’

‘If young Peter the pervert killed her, this is irrelevant,’ Churchill said. ‘What are you trying to do? Ruin the poor lady’s reputation? Embarrass her lovers for the sake of it?’

That’s rich, Terry thought, from a man who has a new girlfriend every month. ‘No, of course, not, sir,’ he said calmly. ‘What I mean is, one of them may have been there on the night. He may even have been the killer. Another thing - her mobile phone’s missing. It’s not in the house. And the neighbour, Mrs Phillips, mentioned a couple of cars she’d seen there occasionally - a small blue hatchback and a large black saloon. We need to check those out too.’

‘Drop it, Terence, for Christ’s sake.’ Churchill shook his head incredulously. ‘What are we, the morals police? What does it matter, who this lady did or didn’t screw, whether they were married and so on? The most likely thing is, she was topped by this nasty little pervert who assaulted the other women. The one you should have caught earlier.’

He smiled in grim satisfaction, leaning back in his leather chair while Terry and Jane stood on the carpet like two guilty schoolkids, waiting to be dismissed. ‘What do you say, Sergeant Carter?’

‘Well, sir, I agree that Peter Barton’s top of our list,’ Jane began cautiously. ‘But as far as we know he gets about by bike - this mountain bike of his - and we haven’t been able to turn up any sign of that so far. No tyre tracks on the cyclepath, even - and the farmer’s wife, Mrs Richards, hadn’t seen any cyclists round there ....’

‘He has got feet, this lad, I suppose?’ Churchill sneered. ‘He can walk?’

‘Yes, sir, of course, but that’s the trouble. We haven’t been able to turn up any footprints as yet, despite all the mud in the fields round about. Because of it, in a way.’

‘Really? Tell me about that.’

Jane spread a map on the table in front of their boss. She showed him Alison’s house, and the Richards’ farmhouse separated from it by a strip of woodland. The bridlepath came towards the farmhouse from Fulford and turned right towards the A19, so anyone approaching Alison’s house from it would have had to go through the woods first. The woods had been searched for footprints but none found. And the field between the woods and the house was being harvested for carrots, it was hopeless. Parts of it were covered by straw, the rest was like the battle of the Somme. ‘So,’ she shrugged. ‘No joy there. It’s the same for our third possibility.’

‘What third possibility?’

‘The car the farmer saw in the gateway. A red Nissan Primera.’ Jane pointed out the spot where the car had been parked. ‘Anyone approaching the house from the gateway would either have to walk down the road, where people could see him, or cross the carrot field in the same way as someone coming from the woods. The only faint clue that he might have come that way are a few wisps of straw on the kitchen floor. But as the SOCOs pointed out, they might just have blown in when she opened the back door.’

‘But it could have been your intruder?’

‘It could have been, sir, yes. Whichever way he approached the house, from the woods or the gateway, he’d have had to cross that carrot field with the straw. And got scraps of it on his shoes.’

‘Hm.’ Churchill drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Any TWOCs on this Peter Barton’s record? Does he have a licence, a car of his own?’

‘No sir. He doesn’t seem to be interested in that.’

‘You can probably forget about the car then. Got a licence number?’

‘Just two letters, sir. Probably XB.’

‘Well, check it out of course, but it’s probably just coincidence. Couple of teenage lovers, something like that.’

That was typical of Churchill, Terry thought. Jumping to conclusions instead of carefully sifting through the evidence; dismissing details before evaluating them. To judge by her expression, a similar thought was passing through Jane Carter’s mind. The longer he had worked with this young sergeant, the more he was coming to appreciate her. She might not be the most charming or decorative of female detectives, but her work rate was second to none. And she was unlikely to forget about that car, until its presence was fully explained.

‘Anything else I should know about?’ Churchill asked.

‘Well, there is one other thing,’ Jane said hesitantly.

‘Yes, what’s that?’

‘There’s a barbed wire fence between the garden and the field. So anyone entering the garden from the field would have to climb over it, and back out again too. So I got the SOCOs to check the barbed wire and they found a small scrap of cloth, snagged on the wire. Whoever climbed that fence has a hole in his pants. The lab are checking it for DNA.’

Churchill nodded approvingly at Jane. ‘Which would nail young Peter if it’s his, wouldn’t it?’

‘If it matches the sample I took when I arrested him, sir, yes. But they weren’t too hopeful. It was only a small scrap of cloth, but if he’d been sweating ...’

‘Let’s hope he was,’ Churchill glanced at Terry with contempt. ‘Your sergeant’s moving ahead of you, DI Bateson. She’ll have your job next.’

For a moment no one spoke. Terry and Jane were both embarrassed, for different reasons. Jane was pleased by the praise, but felt it was devalued by the man it had come from. Perhaps she’d joined a duff department, she thought; both her superiors were incompetent. Well, if that was so, it could be an opportunity - if she solved this murder on her own, it might help her a step up the ladder. Unless one of these two snatched the triumph from her, to use in their own private feud. Well, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

Terry was annoyed that the old rivalry between himself and Will Churchill had surfaced so obviously in front of a promising, young detective like Jane. Churchill had relished humiliating him in front of her, and some of the barbs hurt.

But there was one great relief. Terry had fully expected Will Churchill to end the interview by taking over the case himself. But he hadn’t done so. Leaving the room, Terry wondered why.

Perhaps his boss was simply too busy. His real talent, after all, was not detective work but networking, arselicking, climbing the greasy pole to become Chief Constable before the age of fifty. He’d been on far more courses than Terry, had a CV many pages longer. Maybe he was waiting until the case was eventually solved, and planning to take the credit then. Without even getting out of his expensive leather office chair.

Or could there be another reason? Churchill was devious, but not entirely stupid. All his comments had focussed on Peter Barton. Catch Peter, Churchill seemed to think, and you’d catch the murderer. It had been virtually an instruction. But what if Churchill knew, or suspected, that the case was more complicated than that? What if he was deliberately sending them on a false trail, so that he could take over the case later, when they had definitely got it wrong?

It’s another possibility, Terry told himself wryly. That’s the thing with a murder enquiry. You shouldn’t rule anything in, or anything out.

39. Landlord

I
N THE days before Christmas the streets near York Minster were jammed with shoppers seeking last-minute gifts. It was a good area to look, particularly if you had a difficult relative or demanding spouse to please,: the narrow medieval streets were full of shops selling unlikely and quite useless decorative items such as suits of armour, mediaeval swords, and sets of wooden Russian dolls. But it must pay, Terry Bateson thought; the rents in this area were far too high for any failed enterprise to last long.

He found the door to Alison Grey’s landlord -
Town and Country Holdings
- squeezed between a trendy internet café and a shop selling elaborate string puppets from Thailand. There was a narrow window beside the door, with photographs of properties to rent, and housing developments in various stages of completion. Terry climbed a narrow staircase, discreetly lit by recessed spotlights and decorated by framed Victorian cartoons. At the top of the stairs a glass door opened into a brightly lit modern suite of offices. A young woman was talking on the phone. She waved him to a seat. After a couple of minutes she put the phone down and treated him to a bright, professional smile.

‘Sorry about that, sir. How can I help?’

Terry showed her his card. The smile faded slightly, to be replaced by a puzzled frown. ‘We’re investigating the death of one of your tenants, I’m afraid. A lady called Alison Grey? She rented a house in Crockey Hill.’

‘Oh. I read about that. Terrible. She hanged herself, didn’t she?’

‘She was hanged, certainly,’ Terry said. ‘But we haven’t had the inquest yet.’ He took an envelope from his pocket. ‘We found this contract in her desk drawer. That is your company, isn’t it?’

The young woman studied the contract briefly. ‘Yes, yes it is. I’m so glad you’re here. When I read the story I thought we should do something but couldn’t think what. It’s so hard to take in and - she’s really dead?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Terry watched her carefully, wondering how much of the distress and confusion were real. Most of it, he thought.

‘Oh dear. Poor woman. I spoke to her a few times on the phone, and she sounded quite normal. Why would she do such a thing?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you have a file on the house?’

‘Yes, of course. What do you want to know?’

‘When she came, what sort of tenant she was - anything and everything, really.’

‘Here you are, then. That’s her - Alison Grey.’ She turned the computer screen so that Terry could see it from the front of the desk. ‘Came - what? - eighteen months ago. Before my time. Regular payment by standing order; we let the house furnished, put in a new damp course, repaired some windows, some trouble with the Aga last year, installed dishwasher and new washing machine - is this sort of thing any use to you?’

‘You say you spoke to her on the phone,’ Terry said. ‘What sort of woman was she?’ .

‘Ummm - quite a normal, friendly sort of lady I would say. ‘Teacher/writer’ it says here under ‘Occupation’. That’s probably why she chose a quiet house in the country.’

‘Was she a sociable person? Did she have any friends, partner, that sort of thing?’

The young woman shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know that. It was just, you know, maintenance calls - if a tile blew off the roof, or there was a problem with the plumbing. She’d ring and we’d send someone to fix it.’

‘So she never came here, into the office?’

‘Hm, not that I remember, no ....’ The young woman touched her cheek with a manicured fingernail, thinking. ‘She may have come in at the beginning, of course, to see what we had, be shown a few properties. But I only started a year ago, so she’d have met my predecessor, Muriel Hartson. See - there’s her signature on the contract. Michael might know more, of course. He usually vets the tenants, you know, to see if they’re ok.’

‘Michael?’

‘My boss. It’s his agency really. Do you want to talk to him?’

‘If I could.’

The young woman smiled. ‘You’re lucky. He’s usually out on site, while I hold the fort.’ She spoke briefly into an intercom, then pointed to a door. ‘Through there.’

As Terry walked through the door, the man in the office got up, walked round his desk, and held out his hand. ‘How do you do? Michael Parker. You’re from the police, I hear.’

‘Yes. DI Bateson.’ The name meant nothing to Terry. The man in front of him was tall, about his own height, with a square lined face and dark hair greying at the temples. He was in his mid forties but looked fit, as though he worked out regularly and spent a lot of time in the fresh air. He wore jeans, a work shirt and a leather jacket. All of this Terry saw in the first second.

But what his mind couldn’t quite process, was where he had seen the man before.

‘Have a seat.’ The man waved him to a chair in front of his desk, and resumed his own place behind it. ‘Maggie tells me you’ve come about this unfortunate tenant of ours. Alison Grey?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Terry sat down slowly, thinking
why do I hate this guy so much?
He must have done something - what is it? He’s not on the child abuse register, is he? He felt his heart pumping with sudden, unaccountable fury. He took a deep breath to calm himself, before asking: ‘How well did you know her?’

‘Know her? Hardly at all.’ The man, it seemed, did not recognize him. His face was calm, quiet, controlled.

‘But she was your tenant, wasn’t she? Your secretary said you would have vetted her when she first arrived.’

‘Oh yes, well that would be normal. I like to meet new tenants before handing over the key.’

‘Presumably you take up references, that sort of thing?’

‘Normally we do, yes, unless ...’ He paused, as if thinking. ‘I seem to remember she was a teacher, she’d worked overseas for the British Council - would that be right? And she needed somewhere quiet to write books of some kind - schoolbooks, I think. That seemed quite satisfactory.’

‘Yes, she did that,’ Terry agreed. One part of his mind kept up the conversation, while another was searching frantically through a database of faces, thinking
where have I met this man before, and why do I have such a strong reaction to him?
He must be a conman, a fraudster of some kind; he’s clearly not a common thug, not with a business like this. ‘Did you speak to her often?’