Under a Silent Moon: A Novel (32 page)

Les shot him a look that said “arse licker” and went back to Josh. “Nothing else of the person she was with?”

“Nothing. The camera by the river is out of action,” Josh was saying. “Camera one outside the Co-op was pointing in the other direction and the one at the other entrance to the center is fixed on the doorway of Carphone Warehouse following those burglaries. All the other ones that were working have been checked.”

“What about the shopping bags? Any chance of identifying them?” Jason asked.

Josh shrugged. “There’s one that looks silver, might be a Debenhams one. We checked there. Their CCTV operator is on holiday and he’s the only one who knows how to work the system.”

Les interjected. “We put out a message via Storenet last week, asking all town center shops to check their CCTV. I bet you none of them bothered.”

Jason sighed. It was rare to get anything truly useful from CCTV, but to be fair to Josh, this was still a pretty good result. “Can we have the footage?”

Josh handed Les two disks in paper envelopes. “I made you two copies. Let me know if you need any more, but don’t go overboard. Those things cost money.”

Jason shook his hand. “Thanks, Josh. That’s great.”

Walking back across the car park, Les Finnegan puffing away on a cigarette, trying to walk slowly so he could have a precious few more moments’ inhalation time, Jason considered the figure and mentally ticked off the list of people in the case.

“I’ll be in in a minute,” Les called after him, as he swiped his pass and dragged the door open. Jason didn’t hear.

REPORT

To:
Op Nettle

From:
PSE Jason MERCER

Date:
Monday 5 November 2012

Subject:
Op Nettle CCTV /ANPR

Following the CCTV footage produced by the TV Unit showing a female who may be Polly LEUCHARS meeting up with an unidentified nominal in Briarstone town center, ANPR cameras searched for the relevant timeframe on 31/10/12 with the following result:

Briarstone Station NCP car park:

36 NRM—cherish plate registered to Nigel MAITLAND. Accessed car park at 1245hrs, exit marked up as 1402. Accompanying image shows male driver, vehicle Land Rover.

All others negative result for the indexes of vehicles known to the inquiry.

07:52

Andy Hamilton had made an effort to come in early. He knew he was skating on thin ice all round, with Karen, with Lou, with everyone on the team. He was starting to be a liability.

He’d managed to reach some sort of a truce with Karen last night. A whole night without him had softened her temper; that, and the fact that he was home in time to help feed the kids, do bath time, and get them ready for bed. After that he’d run her a bath, put in lots of bubbles, lit a candle. While she soaked, he ordered them a takeaway, which was about as close as he ever came to the kitchen. She emerged, dressed in her toweling bathrobe, as the Chinese arrived at the front door.

After that, of course, she wasn’t angry at all anymore. She told him they would have to have a “serious chat” about what his expectations of her were (more like
her
expectations of
him
, he thought, biting his tongue) and how long this could carry on before their marriage would fall apart. She didn’t want to be another statistic, she said, another policeman’s wife who’d had enough of coming second to whatever investigation it was that was the current big thing. They had the kids to consider.

He’d been contrite. Reached for her hand. He’d even teared up, and perhaps that had been the clincher. She had snuggled into his lap and he’d slipped his hand inside her robe. She told him he stank and should go and have a shower. It was good-natured and she was right. He’d had a shower that morning at Suzanne’s flat, but of course she had no men’s deodorant.

“Couldn’t John have loaned you some deodorant?” she called up the stairs.

“He’d run out,” he called back.

By the time he’d had his shower she was in bed, fast asleep. When he reached for her, she nudged him away, sleepily. He left her in peace. Bridges had been built; he could cross them another time.

“Right, everyone ready?”

Lou was at the front, ready to start the briefing. She looked good, as usual, dark blue trousers today, red suede high heels, a snug jacket that nipped in her waist over a plain white top, hair loose over her shoulders.

He was sitting near the front, freshly scrubbed and with an ironed white shirt, top button undone because his neck had grown and he couldn’t actually do it up anymore, tie done up around it to conceal it.

She gave him a smile. Well, thank fuck he’d met with her approval today. He was sick of being in her bad books.

The briefing room was busier than yesterday; Ali Whitmore was back, Jane Phelps, Barry Holloway, and Ron Mitchell all in attendance. Lou had managed to rustle up a few uniformed PCs as well, which suggested something was kicking off.

“Okay, let’s get on with it,” Lou said. “Can we have some hush?”

The analyst looked nervous, Hamilton thought. Not for the first time he caught the glance he gave Lou and wondered if there was anything going on there. In his dreams, maybe. Lou didn’t go for that geek type—she liked men with a bit more about them.

“We’ve had several crucial pieces of intel in the last twenty-four hours. It’s all incorporated on the charts, which Jason’s going to go through in a second, but first I’ve got a summary of the recent developments.

“Number one: Brian Fletcher-Norman recalls having an argument with his wife on the night of the murder of Polly Leuchars. He believes she went out some time after midnight and returned in a state of hysteria. He didn’t realize why, believed she was drunk, left her and went to bed.

“Number two: We have some recent source intel on Nigel Maitland, suggesting that his latest venture is a people-smuggling operation which he is conducting with the McDonnell brothers. There is a 5x5x5 to indicate that a shipment was received at the farm on the night of thirty-first October. As we all know, Nigel prefers to keep his legitimate business well away from anything dodgy, so there must have been a special reason for this to take place at the farm, if the report is accurate.

“Number three: A friend of Mrs. Fletcher-Norman, Lorna Newman, confirms that Barbara was depressed before the murder. Mrs. Newman states she had a telephone conversation with Barbara at around nine thirty on thirty-first October. Barbara had just been badly let down by a man she had been conducting an affair with—more about that in a minute. When Mrs. Newman spoke to Barbara she described her as drunk and hysterical.

“Number four: Tac team has recovered a suitcase from bushes near the car park area of the quarry, which has Barbara Fletcher-Norman’s fingerprints on it. It seems likely she had a suitcase packed ready to run away with O’Toole. The suitcase had been thrown into the undergrowth and fingerprints wiped from the handle.

“Number five: CSI suggests that the shot put, which we believe is the murder weapon for Polly Leuchars, was thrown over the edge of the quarry after the vehicle went over. Likely time frame for this is early Thursday morning. This means it’s pretty much impossible that the shot put was in the car, and also that Barbara could not have thrown it into the quarry herself.

“Number six: According to Mrs. Newman, Mrs. Fletcher-Norman had been saving money in preparation for leaving her husband. The man she had been seeing seems to have absconded with this money on the day of Polly’s murder, leaving Mrs. Fletcher-Norman particularly distressed. The man, Liam O’Toole, has not been seen since. Mrs. Newman estimates that the money amounts to several thousand pounds. We’ve been trying to trace O’Toole, but no luck so far.”

She paused for breath. There were whispers of conversation in the room, but most of the group were giving her their direct attention. “Any questions so far? Right, then—Jason, can you take us through the charts?”

“For sure,” he said. “Let’s start with the timeline.” A new image clicked on, a series of interconnected lines. One for Barbara now, one for Brian, and one for Polly.

“There are a few significant changes on here now that we’ve had more information from Brian and from Lorna Newman. Brian indicates that he heard Barbara making a phone call. We might assume this is the call she made to Lorna, but we will need phone records to check. The billing has come back, but only this morning and I haven’t had a chance to work through it yet.”

He indicated a highlighted area from ten until midnight. “Here’s where we have a problem. Brian says he came home from working late between eight and nine in the evening and didn’t go out again. He had a drink, read the paper, argued with his wife. Then he went and had a bath, fell asleep for a while, and then came downstairs to lock up. He says he bumped into Barbara, who had come in via the back door. Then he went back upstairs to bed.”

He pressed a key on the laptop and Lorna Newman’s information overlaid Brian’s and Barbara’s timelines.

“Mrs. Newman states that during her phone call with Barbara, which took place at about nine thirty, Barbara said that Brian was ‘out somewhere with his fancy woman.’ According to Brian’s statement, he was sitting downstairs, reading the paper at the time.”

“Hold on,” Alastair Whitmore interrupted. “Maybe she simply didn’t hear him come in?”

“I’ve been in the Barn,” came a voice from the back. Jane Phelps. “You have to really bang that front door to make it shut. If he’d come in, she would have heard him. Definitely.”

“He said he shouted up the stairs when he got home and she didn’t answer,” Lou interjected.

“Why would he lie about that?” said Andy.

“Because he was out with Polly?”

“She was at the Lemon Tree, remember? She was stood up.”

“What time was she there until? Anyone know?”

Jason pointed at the timeline. “She left between eleven thirty and eleven forty-five, according to Ivan Rollinson.”

A pause, then Lou said, “We’ve got a medical disclosure form in place now; waiting for the results on that. We’re looking to give Brian a slightly more robust interview once the medics have given the go-ahead. I think there were some significant gaps in what he told me yesterday. Right. Thanks, Jason. What’s next?”

“The second major issue we need to clear up is right over here . . .” He scrolled over to the far right of the timeline, indicated the early hours of Thursday morning. “The vehicle went over the cliff some time after the rain started, which was about nine on Wednesday thirty-first. The PM on Barbara Fletcher-Norman concurs with Brian’s statement that she must have gone out again some time after midnight. The car was discovered by the witness at about seven thirty on Thursday morning. The scene was secured at about nine fifteen.”

“Surely that means Barbara Fletcher-Norman couldn’t have been Polly’s killer?” Ali Whitmore said. “Surely that must rule her out?”

“It doesn’t rule her out of the murder,” Jane said. “It just rules her out of throwing the shot put over the edge, that’s all.”

“Why would someone else throw it over? Where the hell did she leave it?”

Jane shrugged. “She might have still done the killing. Maybe she had an accomplice.”

“Or she left the shot put somewhere where it would implicate someone else?”

“Such as . . . ?”

“I don’t know. Brian, maybe?”

Lou raised her hands. “Right, everyone. Let’s try and keep this ordered, Jason needs to finish up. Then we can talk about it till the cows come home. Jane?” This last directed to Jane Phelps, who was muttering something to Ali Whitmore at the back.

“Sorry, ma’am,” she said, and Lou gave Jason the nod to continue.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m almost done.” He moved the timeline forward to the discovery of the suitcase thought to belong to Barbara Fletcher-Norman. “So—this suitcase. We need to get a positive identification that it belonged to Barbara, but the only person that can realistically do that is Brian. You might want to wait for that. If we assume for now that it is Barbara’s, then we need to consider when it was packed, and where it came from. It’s possible that she’d packed it that afternoon to go away with Liam O’Toole, and forgot it was there until she got to the quarry. Then, for whatever reason, she took it out of the boot and threw it into the bushes before she went over the edge—”

“Wiping her prints off the handle first,” Jane interjected. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“No,” Jason said, “it’s a valid point.”

“There were gloves on the passenger seat,” Lou said. “Red leather ladies’ gloves. Maybe she was wearing them when she got to the quarry. Maybe her hands were cold. Maybe she used them when she threw the suitcase into the bushes, and then took them off before she went over the edge.”

“That’s a lot of maybes,” someone said from the back.

“Of course, the biggest unanswered question is why she would take the suitcase out of the boot at all,” Jason said. “But if she had gloves on, it’s possible that any prints on the handle could have been obscured. So we still don’t know whether she threw the case away. Let’s not forget she was pretty intoxicated. She was also in a state of distress. Irrational behavior is pretty much a given, right before she committed suicide.”

“I don’t think she did,” Jane said quietly. “I know she was depressed, having been let down so badly by Liam O’Toole. But I’m really not comfortable with the logistics of her driving all the way to the quarry, through the pouring rain, when she was that drunk. And then, for some reason, throwing the suitcase away before going over the edge. And then someone else getting rid of the shot put.”

“You’re saying it was an accident?” This from Barry Holloway.