Witchmoor Edge (18 page)

"What?"

"CD player".

"I know what a ghetto blaster is. What had he
got it plugged into?"

"How d'you know it were plugged in to
owt?"

"Because I think I understand something that
has been puzzling me," Millicent said obscurely, thinking of the
wire from a street lamp the fire investigation branch had
found.

"He had a wire from a street lamp to this CD
player. Real smart it were. Anyway we sat around and listened to
music for a while and I bargained with him, but it were no use. He
wanted too much, so I grabbed at it and he ran off down the steps.
They must've been rotten or something, because the steps broke up
and he fell. He wasn't moving or nothing and I couldn't get down,
so I went outside to try and get at him from the canal side. That's
when I saw this fancy car with the keys in it. I took it to Danny
Stone because he wouldn't ask no questions."

"What did you do about Oyewinde?"

"Yeah, well," Koswinski, having the grace to
look a little shame faced. "I forgot about him until later on.
That's why we went back to the warehouse that night."

"So you went to look for him eventually?"

"Well, I sort of had that in mind when we
went there to have another bevy. When Musworth found the tramp I
forgot about Oyewinde again."

"You left him to die, did you?" Millicent
asked. "Great mate you are."

"I think he were dead already. He fell a long
way," Koswinski said. "Anyway, he weren't no mate of mine."

Millicent didn't comment, instead she changed
the subject to something that had occurred to her before, but was
now a real interest. "Think very carefully," she said, "The
conspiracy charge could rest on this. Did you see or hear anyone
while you were in the warehouse?"

Koswinski shook his head. "No. But as I were
just going there to meet Oyewinde a bloke passed me on a
motorbike."

"Out of the side street by the
warehouse?"

"Yeah."

"Would you know the motorcyclist again?"
Millicent asked.

"He were wearing a helmet, so I never saw
him."

"What else was he wearing besides a
helmet?"

"Bike jacket and jeans, I think. I weren't
taking much notice."

"What was the bike like?"

"Medium sized. Not big and flashy nor an old
wreck. Reddish I think. Like I said, I weren't taking much notice.
I were thinking about Oyewinde. I thought it were probably one of
his customers."

And maybe not, Millicent thought. It might
have been Alice Dent fixing the timing device. I bet the fire was
meant to destroy the car as well as the body. Clever scheme,
whether it was a scratch plan to cover up a spur of the moment
murder or part of a thorough plot. Unfortunately for the plotter or
plotters, Koswinksi had happened around and Musworth had drowned.
It sounded as though the death of Oyewinde was part accident, part
Koswinski and nothing to do with the arsonist, though.

"All right," Millicent said. "I'm charging
you with theft of a car. The CPS can decide whether there's a case
to answer over Oyewinde's death." She turned to the officer. "I'll
charge him and we can keep him overnight. DC Hammond can deal with
statements and things in the morning."

Millicent still wasn't finished, though time
was getting on. She went back up to the incident suite and rang
Bradford CID to let them know about Koswinski's apparent
familiarity with the Stone set up. Close was still there and she
agreed that they could have young thug in Bradford as soon as Tommy
Hammond had finished with him next morning.

"And thanks for letting me join your raid,"
she said to DI Close.

"We got all we needed," Close said. "I'm glad
you got your evidence too."

"We have to get lucky once in a while,"
Millicent said, and rang off.

All that remained was to glance through the
results of door-to-door enquiries around the area where Knowles
lived and decide that next morning had better start with a whole
team review of where they were at. On the way out she left a note
for Chief Inspector Cooke in case he wanted to join the
briefing.

She selected a tape by the medieval music
specialists Fifth Element and drove home in a much calmer mood,
reflecting on her remote viewing success and the implications.

Chapter 12: Friday 17th August (am)

It had taken a long time for Millicent to get
to bed the night before, and then she'd been a while getting off to
sleep. She had dreamed of things faintly connected with her reading
and the case and she had breakfasted and driven to work still
thinking about them.

Before going to bed she had been reading a
book loaned to her by Tobias N'Dibe. It was called Footsteps in the
Psychic Wilderness and was by the man who for twenty-two years had
been in charge of the US Army's Operation Stargate into Remote
Viewing. The man who wrote it had a scientific background and
training but an open-minded approach, which led him to challenge
the accepted scientific world view. He had come to the conclusion
that Quantum Physicists who postulated that the whole universe was
connected, at a deeper level, in a somehow holographic way were, at
the very least, on the right track.

Millicent had not realised that the negative
of a hologram is just a pattern of interlinking circles, like
ripples on a still pond when you throw in two pebbles at once. Once
a laser is shone at the same angle as the original, a 3D
holographic image of the subject is projected. She had vaguely
known how the image was produced but had definitely not realised
that every part of the negative contains every part of the image:
if you take a holographic picture of an apple and cut off a corner
of the negative, you don't have the corner of a picture of an apple
- when you shine a laser through it, an image of the whole apple is
projected.

What the writer of Footsteps in the Psychic
Wilderness, a man called Dale Graff, suggested was that, if
creation really is a holographic-type projection, then Millicent
was part of that projection and, as a part of the holograph, she
contained every part of it, and that is a mind-set shattering
idea.

What Remote viewing (or, by inference, any
other psychic skill like dowsing or precognition) is doing she
thought, as she drove abstractedly but carefully through the rush
hour traffic, is tapping into what all of us already know.

The implications of this are shatteringly
unsettling and most of us refuse to believe this version of
reality. Whatever Millicent's logical mind thought, however, it is
an inescapable scientific fact that most of reality is an
illusion.

Take this car, she thought. It is composed of
atoms of metal and various other things. The biggest part of any
atom is the nucleus. If a single atom was the size of my car, the
nucleus - and that's the biggest part - would be the size of one of
these specks of dust dancing in the morning sunlight. The illusion
of a solid atom only comes because that nucleus is vibrating so
fast the whole atom appears solid. In reality any atom is mostly
just space!

Millicent reflected that the leading edge of
quantum physics was uncovering a reality so strange and full of
illusions that it was rather arrogant of any scientist to say that
any faculty however strange was actually impossible.

It was only when she turned into the secure
yard behind Witchmoor Edge police station that she even turned her
mind to the case and the briefing she planned to start with.

Chief Inspector Cooke came up to the incident
suite and settled himself into the circle of chairs, which the
whole team joined. Millicent again had PC Downing join the circle,
with easy get out to the switchboard in case she needed to respond
to the phone. The civilian staff also joined the meeting. As
Millicent said, it was much more efficient if everybody knew where
everything fitted into the investigation.

"Right," she said. "We have an identity for
the body in the ruins of Cartwright's Wharf and we've found the
Porsche." She explained the raid of the evening before and
Koswinski's confession.

"I want Tommy Hammond to take statements and
charge him, as soon as this meeting's over," she said. "Then you
can arrange to have him sent to Bradford, so that they can
interview him about his previous dealings with Stone's Autos. We
have him on car theft and the CPS can decide whether there’s
anything over the Oyewinde affair. I think, on balance, that he
didn't have anything to do with fire itself. Failure to report a
body is an offence against the one of the acts surrounding the
coroner, maybe complicated by the fact that he may have believed
they killed Hunter. I think well leave that to the CPS as
well."

She turned to the matter of the car. "The
vehicle is with forensic now. Bradford Division promised a thorough
going over as a high priority. They were doing it last night, so I
expect the preliminary report any time now. That concludes what I
have to contribute: Tony, How did the door to door around Knowles's
house go?"

DC Gibbs shifted in his chair and flipped
open his notebook. "We didn't have a lot of luck," he said, "A lot
of people were away on holiday and most were out on the Saturday
anyway. However, a Mr. Peters - Norman Peters - was mowing his
front garden and saw a BMW with two men in it pull up outside his
house and stay for about half an hour just after half past twelve.
He remembered the time, because his wife rang up about twelve
thirty from shopping and having her hair done, saying she wouldn't
be back till 1.30 or so. He decided he'd just time to mow the
grass, which is why he went out there. He saw the BMW arrive."

"Shields and Leverett?" asked Millicent.

"It's about where they claimed to be, at the
time they said they were there. We don't have a specific
identification of either the vehicle or the occupants, but it is
the right make and colour."

"It sounds as if Shirley Hunter was lying and
Knowles telling less than the whole truth," Millicent observed.
"I've got to see a Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins today and see if we can
finally nail the story."

At that point a uniformed officer came in.
"Desk Sergeant sent these up," he said, holding out a file and two
evidence bags. "Some one brought them over from Bradford Division
saying they were very urgent."

Millicent took the files and plastic
bags.

"What've they sent you?" Cooke asked.

Millicent held up the bags, one in each hand.
"A letter addressed to Simon Hunter," she said, "... and a syringe.
Well, well." She put down the two bags and opened the file.

"Short and sweet," she said. "The car had
been re-sprayed silver and cleaned. There were no prints other than
Stone's people and it seemed to have been given a good general
clean, but they slipped up and missed the driver's side door
pocket, where forensic found the letter. The syringe had slipped
down into the spare wheel compartment. Text of the letter is
here."

She read from the file.

"9th August

Dear Simon,

I managed to get the stuff
you wanted. I'll meet you Saturday in the usual place around 2pm,
unless I hear otherwise.

Rosie."

There was a stunned silence as everyone
considered this new information.

"Well," Millicent said, breaking the silence.
"That syringe is going for analysis so urgently you wouldn't
believe it, and we're bringing in Rosie O'Connor for questioning as
soon as this meeting is over. Tony and Lucy, you can go pick her
up, but I'll sit in on the interview if I'm back in time. DC
Bright, Matthew, you can come with me to interview Mr. and Mrs.
Hutchins and then see Shirley Hunter again. Gary," she continued
turning to DC Goss, "I want you to take this syringe to forensic
and stand over them while they tell you what was in it and whose
prints are on it. Then come running back with the report. Stand
over them and breathe down their necks if you have to."

She turned to Cooke. "Could you phone as
well, tell them how urgent it is and that Goss is on his way over
and will wait?"

"They won't like it," Cooke said. "But I'll
do it anyway," he added hastily as he caught Millicent's eye. He
was well pleased with his Detective Inspector, but she could
sometimes be a cross between a bulldozer and a road roller. It was
best to get out of her way if you could!

"Okay," Millicent said, rather like an
American football coach ending a time out, "let's go, go, go and
get on with it. This complicated little crime's starting to crack
open."

DC Bright pulled the car up outside 15
Coldicott Crescent and followed Millicent to up the drive to the
Hutchins' house. There was a low hedge over a waist height stone
wall, but the ground rose quite steeply behind it, so anyone
washing the car would have had quite a reasonable view of the
Crescent. Millicent turned and looked around. The Hunters' house
was on the other side of the crescent and Mrs Hutchins' must have
been standing on the edge of the lawn to see their drive at all.
Perhaps she had been. Millicent turned again, walked up to the
front door and rang the bell.

A man of about fifty of fifty-five, dressed
in casual trousers and a short-sleeved shirt came to the door.

"Mr. Hutchins?"

"Yes."

Millicent showed him her warrant card.
"Detective Constable Bright, here, was making door to door
enquiries earlier in the week, in connection with the murder of
Simon Hunter. He spoke to your wife, but you were away at a
conference."

"That's right," Mr. Hutchins agreed. "I've
been at a conference for Trustees and Board Members of Housing
Associations. However, I did read of the murder. Spoke to my wife,
you say?"