Concrete Evidence (29 page)

“I did no such thing!” she snapped.

“Oh come on,” he sighed. “You knew that he was a little pervert and yet you didn’t ever look through his things?” he shrugged. “I don’t believe you.”

“How dare you,” she said in a whisper.

“How dare I what?” he snapped. His eyes were wide, angry and accusing. “Tod is a disgusting human being and you knew it, didn’t you?” a tear trickled from her eye. She was scared of him. “Didn’t you?” he whispered. “He’d been charged before. You knew what he was.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she cried. “I didn’t want to believe it.” She blew her nose again. “You don’t when it’s your own. He was such a gentle child.”

“I know this will be very painful for you, Mrs Harris,” he said calmly. “Now, answer me honestly this time,” he lifted one hand to calm her. “Did you ever go through his things?”

“Yes,” she nodded and sniffled. “I wanted to know if he was misbehaving, that’s all.”

“What did you find?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “He kept his private things in the shed or the garage. There was never anything in his room. He hid his things from me.”

“Okay,” he paused for a second, “I’ll ask you again. Did he ever mention, Rob Derry?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?” The policeman took a small hatchet from his raincoat and placed it on the table between them. Emilia’s eyes focused on the weapon. “What is that?” she asked confused, her voice a little shaky.

“It’s an axe, Mrs Harris,” he said placing a roll of duct tape next to it. “This is very strong tape.” He stood up and walked to the window. He closed the curtains with one sweep and turned to face her. “And these are pliers.”

As he approached her, Emilia wanted to scream. She opened her mouth but only cigarette smoke came out. 

                            CHAPTER 32 

                 Alec stood next to Annie and waited for Kathy to finish washing her hands. He felt like a naughty schoolboy waiting for the headmaster to acknowledge his presence outside his study. The anticipation was worse than the actual event. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and checked the time. Kathy finished washing her hands and dried them before snapping on a pair of surgical gloves.

              “Right, where do I start?” Kathy said without any pleasantries. She stood to the right of a stainless steel post-mortem slab and removed the sheet that was covering the body beneath it. She positioned a light above so that they could see the body in more detail. “The fingerprints taken from him do not belong to Peter Barton,” she looked at Annie, “and the blood type doesn’t match either. My initial thoughts were suicide for obvious reasons,” she explained pointing to the bloody remains of the head. “But I noticed ligature marks on the wrists here,” she pointed to deep red welts in the skin, “he’d been restrained for a period of time, I can’t be sure how long for but there is some atrophy of the muscles and dehydration of the skin. Days rather than weeks at a guess.” She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. “There is no gunshot residue on his hands,” she raised her eyebrows as she spoke. “I think that the gun was forced into his mouth and discharged while his hands were tied behind him. Then he was untied and positioned to look like he had taken his own life.” She shrugged. “Your detectives had no way of knowing this until the post mortem was performed.”

              “Bloody hell,” Annie sighed. “We need to go back to his house with fresh eyes.”

              “They had to break into the basement after they heard the gunshot?” Alec frowned. “That’s right isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Annie nodded. “There must be another way out of that cellar.”

                “Do we know who this is?” Alec turned back to Kathy.

              “We’re running his prints and DNA through the system.” Kathy said picking up a sheet of paper. “On the plus side, the epithelial cells from the underwear you gave me,” she raised her eyebrows. “Belong to Simon Barton.” She handed the sheet to Annie. “We got the match through from the lab a few minutes ago.”

              Annie and Alec exchanged glances. “The bastard took those boys, Guv.” She shook her head. “Tod Harris must be connected to Simon Barton. There’s no other explanation. I’ll take a team back to Barton’s house this morning.”

              “Make sure that Jim Stirling is with you,” Alec suggested. “He was the first officer at the scene after all. I’ll put an APB out on Barton but he could be anywhere by now. Do you think that Peter Barton is also Rob Derry?”

              “Harris denied that when we showed him his picture. I don’t know what to think,” Annie said pointing to the faceless corpse. “This could be Rob Derry for all we know.” 

              “Kathy,” Alec said. “I don’t care how much it costs; I want these results rushed through.”

              “I’ll call as soon as I have something,” she nodded and walked to her desk. “I have three different forensic companies drafted in on this. We should have something later today.”

                                     CHAPTER 33 

              Google and his team of three detectives were almost hidden by the stacks of books and piles of papers that they had accumulated during their research. Translating the script was slow and painstaking but it was doable. The sequences of numbers were virtually impossible to analyse. They were blindly running searches to try to identify them. The possibilities were infinite and it was a painfully slow process of elimination. Detective Constable Gwen Evans was working on two specific sequences that she had translated from Jackie Webb’s left thigh. “I think that we could have something here,” Gwen said as she typed on her laptop. “One digit followed by three letters and then three more digits,” she looked over her screen as she spoke. Goggle frowned and ruffled his hair. “These two sequences match the format of Californian vehicle registration plates.”

              He hammered commands into his keyboard. “You’re right, they do,” Google said checking it online. “I want you to check number and letter formats for every state in the USA,” he said to the others, “in fact, check Europe too.”

              “What are the sequences that you have there, Gwen?”

              “6DZG271 and 6RVG290,” Gwen answered.

              “San Francisco area plates,” Google said. “You’re spot on.” He took his glasses off and sat back to clean them with his tie. “I think that you should make a few calls, Gwen,” he said pushing them back onto his nose. His eyes looked magnified and he blinked rapidly. “See if we can’t work with the San Francisco PD to identify whether these are actually registration plates in use and if they are, can we work out their significance to us.”

                            *****************     

Annie and Stirling ducked underneath the yellow crime scene tape and walked up the path towards the Barton residence. The sun was a yellow glow behind thick white clouds that were tinged grey at the edges. A sharp breeze blew all the warmth away and made the tape flap about wildly. “Okay, what did we miss first time around?” Annie said as they climbed the step to the front door. The frame was still splintered. “You knocked on the door and then forced entry.”

“Right, units entered front and rear and his heat signature disappeared beneath the staircase, which meant that he must have headed downstairs into the cellar. We heard the gunshot and we turned the power back on. Then we found the hatch.”

They walked down the hallway to the staircase. The cupboard door was open and the hatch cover had been removed. “You forced the hatch and climbed down the stairs,” Annie said stepping inside. She headed down the creaky wooden stairs and then paused at the bottom. The cellar was oblong in shape and looked bigger now that the maps and press cuttings had been removed from the walls. Stirling stood behind her and looked around. “The body was in the middle of the room,” Annie said stepping to the middle. “He couldn’t go up, which means that he either went down or he went through the walls.”

Stirling walked around the room and knocked on the walls. “Nothing but bricks,” he muttered. He desperately wanted to find an answer. Although nobody had pointed the finger of blame at him, he felt professional guilt. Discovering that they had been duped in a manner seldom encountered by many detectives was painfully embarrassing despite the unusual circumstances. “These walls are solid.”

“Then we look at the floor,” Annie said. The floor covering gave the impression that it was tiled. “You start at that side and I’ll work this side. We’ll meet at the other end. This is linoleum over levelled concrete, right?”

“Yes,” Stirling agreed. “It’s screed. Usually just a thin layer of concrete laid wet to get a flat surface beneath laminate or tiles or this stuff. It looks like tiles but its warmer and a tenth of the cost to lay.”

Annie scanned the edges of the floor where they met the walls.

Nothing.

The symmetrical pattern made her eyes wander. It was difficult to focus on it. She skirted the staircase and bent low to check the area where it joined the cellar floor. It was dirty and covered in dust but there was nothing unusual. “Unless Barton was a magician, there has to be another way out of here.”

Stirling had reached the far end and he picked up the desk that was pressed against the wall. He dumped it down near the opposite wall. He rapped at the bricks where it had stood.

Solid.

Annie followed the skirting board line and met him where the desk had been. She squatted and ran her fingers across the linoleum. “Look here,” she said pointing to four small holes where the desk had been. The edges of the holes were raised slightly. “Are they screw holes?”

Stirling knelt and ran his hand across the floor. “There’s more screw holes here?” He stood up and picked up the desk again, putting it back where he had moved it from. The legs were made from box metal with stabilising bars between them and they covered the screw holes completely. They looked at each other and Stirling flipped the desk upside down. The stabilising bars had been drilled. “These holes line up with the holes in the floor.” He frowned. “So the desk was screwed to the floor?”

“Yes but from underneath,” Annie pointed to the legs. “The screw holes are only underneath these bars. Put it back where it was,” she said deep in thought. Stirling flipped it over and put it back where he’d found it. He slid it to line up with the holes in the floor. “There,” she said. “Now if there were screws attached from underneath, we’d be able to lift the desk and pull up the floor,” she shook her head. “Then if you climbed down and removed the screws from below, if someone moved the desk they wouldn’t realise.”

“The linoleum would remain in place,” Stirling nodded. “He could have stayed down there until he was sure that we were gone and then resurfaced and left at his leisure. I’ll get this floor lifted.”          

         ************************       

              “I’ve spoken to a sergeant at the San Francisco Metro Division’s traffic unit,” Gwen rolled her eyes skywards. “I had to repeat everything that I said at least four times. Can you believe that they can’t understand what we’re saying?” she shook her head. “We invented the bloody language, they misspell everything at every opportunity and then they wonder why they can’t understand what we’re saying!”  

              Google smiled and shook his head. “But you’re Welsh, Gwen,” he pointed out. “I can’t always understand what you’re saying and as for spelling, your lot can’t talk!”

              “Charming,” she shrugged.

              “What did you find out?”

              “Ah, now that is the interesting thing,” she raised her index finger. “Both plates do in fact exist and they belong to what he called, an RV rental company,”

              “Recreational Vehicles,” Google nodded wisely and looked around the team.

Gwen raised her eyebrows. “I think everyone knows what RV stands for.” He blushed a little. “When I told him why we we’re investigating these plates, he said that he would contact them today and ask some questions and that he would also contact their Investigations Department and ask one of their Captains to call and talk to us. He said that he would get back to me later on today.”

           ******************************** 

              With the linoleum cut away, they could see an access hatch. The lid had been set into a metal frame were it was flush with the concrete. “You’re safe to lift it,” the Bomb Squad officer said chirpily. “Give me a minute; you can see what is below.” He mumbled to himself as he inserted tungsten hooks into the screw holes and lifted the lid. He shone a torch into the void. “A proper little hideaway.”