Death and Deception (16 page)

He was hesitant to bring in the father for a formal interview so soon after the death. He wouldn’t be reliable, he was too angry and emotional. Sometimes that could hide guilt. Sometimes it was genuine. He was relying on Sally to get the family’s trust and persuade them to open up to her over the next few days. Jenna would probably crack first. Poor kid needed a mother figure, especially now, and might shed light on the relationship between her sister and father. In the meantime Braithwaite was below Westlake and May on the list. He looked down at the pad. He’d doodled the name ‘Abrams’ and circled it many times with swirling patterns of leaves and thorns. Nice design, he thought, but what did it signify?

Dan checked his phone but there were no missed calls or messages from Sally, so he assumed she was on her way to Westlake’s house. Nothing back from his mum. She’d be disappointed in him. He brought up Chas’s number, suffered another tremor of embarrassment as he touched the screen and wondered how best to play it.

Date: Tuesday 25
^th
April Time: 19:10 Miles Westlake home

The 1998 Fiat Panda that Sally Ellis called her own was not the best vehicle for picking up a suspect in, having just two doors and a pair of child car seats in the back. So she had signed out a new Ford Focus from the pool. It was smooth, spacious and comfortable. There was no need to force the gearstick into third, there was good visibility, the brakes worked. Sally felt she had died and gone to car heaven. And it was only a Ford for goodness’ sake. She was very tempted to go to the police station at Heavitree Road via Taunton, just for the ride.

‘The boss said the English teacher was pretty badly hurt,’ said Lizzie Singh, shifting about in her seat. Sally smirked at her attempts to work out where to put the kit that was usually attached to her uniform.

‘Yes,’ nodded Sally, ‘but it seems that Jamie did the hitting and the tying up, not Westlake, and we’ve got him in custody, thanks to you.’

Lizzie grimaced. ‘I’m hoping that my one act of madness in arresting Jamie May hasn’t given you all the idea that I’m some sort of superhero. I’m still feeling a bit wobbly round the knees, to be honest.’

Sally laughed, ‘Don’t knock it,
kid. Better that the blokes think you’re handy
- might stop them getting ideas…’

Lizzie put the handcuffs into her handbag with her radio.

They drew up outside the house. Westlake’s car was still in the driveway. The front room curtains were partly drawn but there was no other sign of life.

‘Lizzie, go round to the back door and wait for me to call you. Stop him if he makes a run for it.’ Lizzie straightened her coat, threw her bag over her shoulder and stepped past two overflowing bin bags on her way to the back of the house. Sally rang the doorbell.

Several minutes later, having rung the bell, banged on the door and shouted through the letterbox, she realised they were not going to get a response. She worked her way round to the back garden to find Lizzie chatting to the next door neighbour over the fence. The neighbour was certain that Westlake had not left the house as she had been waiting to have a word with him about the noise from the party. The woman was enjoying a chance to complain about her neighbour, so Sally took a step backwards and allowed Lizzie to take down the complaint.

Sally took a moment to think. Westlake could be hurt inside the house and unable to cry for help. He could even be dead. If Jamie May was the killer, he could have killed Miles Westlake after Claire Quick had escaped early that morning. Her head snapped up. She cut straight across the woman’s complaints.

‘Lizzie, we have to get into the house, now. Find a brick or something to break the window.’ Lizzie, caught on the hop, looked about her, picked up an ornamental stone squirrel from the rockery and hurled it at the glass kitchen door as hard as she could.

‘No good,’ said Sally, ‘toughened glass. Go for the window.’ This time the glass cracked.

Using her coat to protect her hand, Lizzie pushed the shards of glass into the kitchen sink, balanced one foot on a protruding brick to give her a lift up, and clambered over the sill and onto the work surface, scattering dirty plates and cans onto the floor. She found the back door key still in the lock and let Sally inside.

‘Good work, Spiderwoman,’ said Sally as she entered.

‘It’s no good, I am marked forever,’ Lizzie sighed as they stared at the mess around them. ‘The next thing I know I’ll be transferred to the SAS. And look at the mess - I’ve probably destroyed evidence all over the place.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Lizzie - if this guy had a party, there’ll be fingerprints and other DNA evidence all over the other rooms, too.’

Sally led the way to the sitting room. The place stank like a brewery. What the hell had been going on? It was no wonder the neighbour had complained. They stopped at the door and peered in. The room was empty but she guessed the guitar in the case might be Jamie May’s. There were CDs all over the floor and more di
scarded mess from the party. She spotted
blood on the floor near their feet - evidence from Claire Quick’s injury, no doubt. An empty vodka bottle lay on the carpet.

‘Wonder if that’s what May used to hit the teacher over the head?’ asked Lizzie.

Sally nodded, ‘Could be. He hasn’t tried to clear up at all, then. That’ll make it easier for Forensics.’ There was nothing else to see on the ground floor, so they made their way up the stairs.

The front bedroom was also empty but the bed had been slept in. Looked like it hadn’t been changed for weeks. The second bedroom was a nursery for Westlake’s baby daughter, Emily. The cot had been filled with empty beer cans and there were stubbed out roll ups on the pink carpet. Sally felt angry that someone could treat a baby’s room like that, could show so little respect.

‘Bloody disgusting,’ she whispered, rolling her eyes at Lizzie and shaking her head as they backed out of the little room.

They found Westlake in the bathroom, slumped on the floor with his back against the bath and his legs splayed out in front of him. An empty bottle of vodka lay by his side. Ripped packets of Aspirin, Paracetemol, cough medicine, and old unfinished prescription medicines were scattered across the floor.

‘Jesus, Lizzie, he’s taken every bloody thing in the cupboard,’ breathed Sally. She dropped to her knees next to Westlake and listened, her ear close to his mouth. There was a faint rattle of breath in his chest, and a weak pulse in his neck.

‘Ambulance! He’s alive. Call it in, fast.’

Sally dragged Westlake out of the bathroom and onto the landing, where she put him into the recovery position and waited for the ambulance. Lizzie held his head, in case he wanted to be sick, but he seemed to be too far gone to act on simple reflex. Sally willed him not to die.

The wail of the ambulance broke the silence. There didn’t seem to be much to say when they arrived. Lizzie went in the ambulance, leaving Sally to lock up and leave the house safe. He hadn’t died yet, but who knew how much of him would be left after they had tried to save his life? There was no way to know whether he had taken a lot of pills, or was just sleeping off a bottle of vodka.

She took the number of Westlake’s wife from his phone and rang her. Sophie Westlake seemed like a nice woman, but she hadn’t known what to say, and Sally had the feeling that she would rather not have known. If Miles had been Sally’s husband, she would have wanted to know, even if she had left him.

Then she rang Dan’s phone, but had to leave a message. She checked her watch, gone 7.00 p.m. Fair enough, she thought, he’s gone home and I’m going home. Report will do in the morning and Lizzie wanted the overtime so she could look after Westlake at the hospital tonight. She rang the Duty Sergeant and arranged for someone to relieve Lizzie later.

‘I just hope the bastard, the dirty, cowardly bastard, doesn’t die on us,’ she said to the cracked picture of a baby hanging off the wall.

She stepped outside the door to a gaggle of neighbours. Whole families were out on the pavements, gossiping, chatting, and enjoying the spectacle of the ambulance on their quiet street. She resisted the urge to berate them and pushed past to the borrowed car, keeping her head down and avoiding eye contact, answering no questions – stuff community policing, she thought.

Sally had a sudden, urgent need to see her daughters, to hold them, to play a game, to give them their baths, to eat with her family, to be normal for just a few hours and to restore a bit of innocent joy to her world.

She knew she would never want to do anything else, but sometimes her job was a dirty business.

Date: Tuesday 25
^th
April Time:
19:26
Chas Lloyd

Chas Lloyd waited in the poky, oak-framed back room of The Fleece, which had the kudos of being the oldest pub in Exeter, as well as the ugliest. She wasn’t sure why she had agreed to meet Dan. The previous night he had humiliated her. But she was glad he had rung and asked her to go out for drink. Maybe they could sort it out. Chas was always willing to give people a second chance. She took a gulp from her bottle of Bud

and checked her text messages.

Dan stood in the doorway under a cracked oak lintel. He had to admit that even after three years at university in Exeter, he had never been in this pub. The walls and ceiling were covered in beer mats that appeared to have been signed by famous people. He amended that on a closer inspection to people who had played for the local football team and a couple of now dead minor celebrities. There were several small rooms and a brass-covered semi-circular bar around which they radiated. He walked through the main lounge area and spotted Chas in a back room, made a ‘want another one?’ gesture and bought two beers to take through with him.

Dan reassured himself that spurning an attractive young woman’s advances did not make him a bad person, although possibly it made him a stupid one. He slid onto the bench next to her and decided to disarm her by going straight for the apology,

‘I am so sorry about last night, Chas. I wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘Looked like pretty straight thinking to me. You practically threw me out.’

Truth was, she had terrified him the night before. They had enjoyed pasta, wine and more beers, giggles and stories about music and past histories, and then gone up to his flat. Big mistake.

It had been alright at first. She had teased him about the ‘new minimalism’ of only possessing one armchair. She had had a go on his guitar and got him to sing her a couple of songs. He had been flattered, and a bit drunk. But when she had climbed up him like a monkey up a tree, looping her legs around his waist and clamping her hands on either side of his head, he had panicked. She was nineteen years old, a possible
witness, if not an actual suspect in an active case, and he was about to take her to bed. It was self-preservation as much as concern for the girl that had broken through the haze of alcohol.

Within five minutes she had been dumped back on the floor, and Dan was calling a taxi.

He took a swig from the bottle and tried again, a telltale slow flush creeping up his neck.

‘We were both a bit drunk, and I do find you very attractive.’

Chas sniffed, breaking into his prepared monologue,

‘So what was all the ‘I just can’t do this,’ bullshit?’

‘Look.’ He decided he had to be at least partially honest, but he couldn’t look at her, focussing instead on the brass rim that bound the table edge. ‘I’ve just come out of a relationship that I thought was going to last forever. The kind where you have two kids and a dog and a house in the country. I just hadn’t realised that it was a total fantasy not shared by the other party in the relationship. She doesn’t want kids ever, she wants Manolo Blatniks or whatever they’re called, a flat in Hampstead and a job that pays a hundred and twenty grand a year.’

He stopped and twisted round on the leather bench to face her.

‘I’m still hurting, Chas, and I don’t want to get hurt again.’

He hadn’t quite intended to say the last bit, but he could see from her face that his confession had touched her.

Chas reached across and took his hand. ‘OK. Well, I’m sorry too. I can be a bit much for people to take. I tend to see what I want and go for it. Shall we have another go at being friends first?’ She smiled to see the relief on his face.

‘Yeah, I would like us to be friends,’ he said, smiling across at her. ‘That would be great. Give me time to get my mojo back, or something.’

It was more than he deserved. His behaviour had been crass and juvenile. But it was the fact that Chas forgave him so easily that made him feel queasy again. She was so young and so easy to manipulate. She really did need someone more her own age and experience, not a fast-becoming cynic like him.

She laughed at last, a little sound that encouraged him to press on.

‘The thing is, Chas, I need a favour.’

‘Favour? What kind of favour?’

‘I need to have a look round the studio without Jed being there.’ He raised both hands to quieten any response, ‘just to eliminate him from our enquiries, nothing else. I don’t think he had anything to do with Carly’s death but he won’t let us in to look round without a warrant, and we wouldn’t be able to get one until Thursday, I wouldn’t think. I don’t want to wait that long. I’ve got a murderer to catch.’

Chas’s eyes widened.

‘I can’t. Jed would sack me. Or kill me. And I need that job.’

Her eyes radiating alarm, she backed away from him. She looked ready to run. Dan reached for her hand.

‘He would never need to know,’ he said, soothing her by stroking her fingers with his thumb, like you might a frightened animal. ‘Just give me the keys and tell me the alarm codes. I won’t leave any prints or take anything with me. I just need to know if Carly Braithwaite was in the studio on Sunday night. I can get the keys back to you later tonight. You will be genuinely helping me, Chas.’