Under a Silent Moon: A Novel (14 page)

17:50

Since returning to the MIR, Lou had barely stopped for breath.

The blood found on Barbara Fletcher-Norman’s clothing had been taken to the lab by Les Finnegan personally for further analysis on the premium level of service, which cost the taxpayer a small fortune but would likely steer the investigation one way or the other. With a bit of luck the results would be back in a few hours.

Buchanan had called her in for a meeting with the assistant chief constable which had been brief, and surprisingly jolly. They both seemed convinced that the blood was going to be Polly Leuchars’s and were therefore happy with her blowing a large chunk of the operation’s budget on the lab work. It was going to be a quick result after all, they joked, even if they didn’t have an arrest. And with a bit of luck, this would disrupt Nigel Maitland’s criminal enterprises for a while. Who knows, he might even let something slip over the interview process, something that could unravel things for Special Branch.

Buchanan hadn’t even asked her about the details of Barbara’s postmortem report, for which she was grateful. She hadn’t had a chance to read the report properly, and for the rest of the meeting she waited to be caught out with a question that would show up this oversight.

But there were no dramatic revelations about the way Barbara had met her death. As Andy had said, multiple injuries consistent with being inside the car as it fell. Adele Francis had asked her about the seat belt, and reference was made to that point, something Andy hadn’t mentioned: “. . . broken ribs consistent with pressure from the seat belt during impact.” She read through the report in detail, looking for other things that Andy might have missed. There had been multiple injuries, but death had most likely been caused by an open skull fracture on the side of the head. Lou looked at the pictures. The side of Barbara’s head was concave, most likely from the car’s door frame, which had been pushed inwards on the quarry floor. She looked at the pale skin of the woman’s face, crisscrossed with rivulets of blood which had dried to a black lacy pattern that was almost beautiful. Her eyes were closed, her expression almost serene. Sometimes the faces of the dead registered traces of the expression consistent with the manner of death—fear, pain—but not in this case. Lou wondered if it had something to do with the amount of alcohol in her system. Had she parked at the top of the quarry, left the handbrake off, and passed out, and had the car then rolled over the edge?

No easy solution would emerge from the postmortem, in any case.

On her desk was Jason’s first report on the phone analysis he was working on, as well as the timeline of events, the network associations, and the intelligence. She flicked through it, looking blindly at tables and paragraphs until she got to the end. He’d done a summary. Fantastic.

Preliminary Phone Analysis on Numbers Ending:

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

       
•   call traffic during the day, little in the evenings

       
•   little contact with the number ending 920 (Polly LEUCHARS)—final contact with this number was on 31/10/12 at 11:15hrs

       
•   little call traffic on this number

       
•   all contacts are with numbers attributed to family members

       
•   only additional numbers dialed/contacts are landlines and open source research shows these to be local businesses connected with farming

       
•   should be considered that this is likely not MAITLAND’s only phone

       
•   regular, frequent contact with number ending 920 (Polly LEUCHARS) until 27 August 2012

       
•   regular contact with 07484 322159, which is attributed via HOLMES to Mrs. Taryn LEWIS (daughter of Brian FLETCHER-NORMAN)

       
•   contacts with phones attributed to Flora MAITLAND, Felicity MAITLAND, but notably not that attributed to Nigel MAITLAND. As his employee, and given intelligence that he was in a relationship with Polly LEUCHARS, again this may indicate that he has at least one other number in regular use.

       
•   cellsite activity shows the phone traveled from Morden to Briarstone between 12.30pm and 3pm on 31/10/12, consistent with reports of shopping trip mentioned in statement of Felicity MAITLAND

       
•   there were two outgoing calls made to 07484 919987 (unattributed number) at 22.15 and 22.20. Cellsite for both calls was in Morden. (Possible that one of these calls was that observed by Ivan ROLLINSON at the Lemon Tree). At 22.58hrs there was a further unanswered call to the same number, but the cellsite location for this contact was Briarstone.

       
•   at 23.49 an incoming call was received from the same unattributed number, 07484 919987, with a duration of 3 minutes 42 seconds. Cellsite location was Morden. (This may indicate that Polly LEUCHARS received the call when she was back at Yonder Cottage and was therefore alive at 23:49.)

       
•   this line was used only once in the entire billing period. The only call registered was at 23.43 on 31/10/12—an outgoing call to 07484 854498 (unattributed)—duration of 23 seconds.

RECOMMNDATIONS

       
•   billings/cellsite data to be obtained for 07484 919987 and 07484 854498 to enable attribution

       
•   interview Flora MAITLAND / Taryn LEWIS to determine nature of their association

       
•   identify other phone(s) for Nigel MAITLAND

When Lou looked up from Jason’s report, he was standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching her.

“This is good stuff,” she said.

“I’ve got something else,” he said.

“Have a seat. I’m on the last page.”

He sat and waited for her to finish, and when she got to the end he was tapping an inaudible rhythm with his fingers on his right knee. Lou looked at him expectantly.

“I’ve been looking at Polly’s cellsite data some more, comparing it with the maps, trying to trace her movements on the last day.”

“And?”

“You saw from the data that the phone traveled from Morden to Briarstone around eleven, and then was back in Morden just before midnight, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the cellsite in Briarstone ends up at Forsyth Road.”

She thought for one horrible moment he was going to wait for her to make the connection, the way her geography teacher used to stare at her expectantly, demanding an answer that she was unequipped to provide, but thankfully Jason didn’t seem to want to play that particular game.

“Forsyth Road is the nearest cellsite phone mast to Waterside Gardens.”

This time she knew what he was getting at before he could say it. “Where Flora lives.”

“Exactly.”

Lou stood, looked past Jason out to the main office, and the person she most wanted to see had just walked through the door. “Sam!” she called, and beckoned her over.

Jason stood up as Sam came in, offered her the seat. Sam looked at him with amusement in her eyes. “No, you’re all right,” she said. “I can manage.”

They all stood in the tiny office while Jason repeated what he’d just said about the cellsite.

“What do you think?”

“It’s not enough to arrest her,” Sam said. “But we can bring her in and take a statement, at least.”

“I agree it’s a bit feeble,” Lou said. “If we can bolster it up, it would be very good. And if we could get a search warrant for the farm—who knows what else we might get from that.”

“We still need to find the murder weapon,” said Sam. “Chances are it hasn’t gone far from the cottage. And we still haven’t found Polly’s phone handset, either.”

“I want Nigel’s dirty phone,” Lou said. “This is the best chance we’ve got.”

“What about that other call, the one made from the landline? Any ideas?”

“I’ve already emailed Jane about it,” said Jason. “Hopefully we’ll get a result from the checks. In the meantime, at least we might get something from the search of Flora’s place.”

“Right,” Sam said. “Well, I can try for a Section Eight search warrant, at least. Let’s hope I don’t get Boris.”

She went back out into the main office to start putting the warrant request together.

“You want me to give her a hand?” Jason asked.

“Everything you’ve got, thank you.”

“One question—who’s Boris?”

Lou smiled. “Your friendly local magistrate, Jan Bryant. Also known as Battleaxe Bryant. Never raises a smile, never looks pleased to see you, under any circumstances. And to keep us all amused, she wears her hair like Boris Johnson.”

18:05

Taryn had phoned Chris when she got back to her car, sitting in the hospital car park with the fan heater on, trying to get the windscreen to clear.

“Flora’s been here,” he said. “She’s gone off to see her father. Said she’d be back later. Are you on the way home?”

“I’m going to stop off in Morden. He needs some things.”

“You want me to meet you there?”

She thought about it, just for a moment. “No. I’m probably better off doing it alone. Thanks, though.”

Twenty minutes later she was pulling into the driveway of Hayselden Barn. Morden, being a village, wasn’t particularly well lit, but here, out in the sticks, it was black as black could be. When she parked and turned the lights off, the world outside disappeared. For a moment she sat listening to the wind bend and stretch the horse chestnut tree which towered over her, wishing she could have just gone home and forgotten about everything. The door key was on a silver key ring with car keys, what looked like a locker key, and one for something else, a padlock maybe?

She took a deep breath and stepped out into the blackness. Almost instantly a bright light came on and Taryn almost jumped out of her skin. Of course. A security light, triggered by a sensor of some kind. She headed for the front door and opened it. As she did so, she wondered what she would do if the alarm actually went off, but fortunately there was no sound at all from inside. Everywhere was in darkness. She found light switches by groping along the wall, knocking something off the hall table and treading all over the post on the floor in front of her.

Taryn gathered up the envelopes and shuffled them into a pile. One letter, addressed to Barbara. Handwritten. It was so unbelievable. One day she’d been living her life, as normal, and then she left this house and never returned. Here were letters she would never get to open, bills she would not pay, laundry in the basket she no longer had to bother with.

For a moment Taryn stood in the hallway, listening to the silence broken only by the ticking of the enormous grandfather clock. How strange it was to be in this house on her own. She had never lived here, never even spent a night here, and yet the place was furnished with antiques she remembered from her gran’s house, all the pictures and ornaments and dark wood she had grown up knowing so well. A glass-fronted mahogany bookcase under the stairs held her grandmother’s collection of dolls from around the world, old and faded. As a child she had been allowed to take them out and look at them, had given each of them a name and treated them with such reverence and care when all she had wanted to do was set up tea parties and hunting expeditions into the wild corners of the garden. They had probably never been taken out of the case since then.

She was wasting time. Upstairs, then—into the bedroom at the far end of the long hallway that stretched the length of the barn. It was neat and tidy in here, but the bed was unmade. On the back of the bedroom door she found a bathrobe. She draped it over one arm and had a look in the chest of drawers for something that looked like pajamas. Underwear, socks, trousers, a shirt—God, this was a hideous task. There was a leather holdall in the top of the wardrobe. She pulled it down and inside was a black leather dopp kit containing various male-smelling things, a toothbrush, toothpaste. The bathrobe went into the bag, along with a handful of pants and socks, a pair of khaki trousers and a polo shirt, a pair of worn-looking brogues in the bottom of the wardrobe that he probably never wore. She gave up on the pajamas. Perhaps he didn’t wear them.

Going back out into the bland, beige-colored hallway, Taryn was struck by the transition from the maleness of the room she had just left. There was nothing feminine about it, nothing at all. And at the other end of the hallway, she could see through an open door into another bedroom. Curious now, she dropped the bag at the top of the stairs and carried on, pushing open the door at the other end and reaching along the wall until she found a light switch.

This must be Barbara’s room. How strange, that they had separate rooms! And yet, why wouldn’t they? When you had five bedrooms to choose from, and visitors only infrequently, why not spread out a bit more? This room was in a curious amount of disarray, the wardrobe doors open, revealing clothes draped over hangers and in piles on the floor. The bed was made, but a large rectangular indentation was on the plain white duvet as though someone had been packing a heavy case and had only just removed it.

She turned off the light and took the bag back downstairs. On a whim, she took the envelope addressed to Barbara Fletcher-Norman, Hayselden Barn, Morden, away with her. Barbara was never going to read it, so Taryn decided she should read it instead. It might help her understand this woman after all, might help her get some answers about why she had always been so unkind.