Death and Deception (20 page)

‘You now have one hour to explain to me exactly what has been going on, and give me a detailed breakdown of your reasoning, the intel you have so far, and what your gut is telling you. I need to believe that you have the ability, in fact the capability, to solve this case. If you do a good job in persuading me you are competent, then that will go in your favour as well. Then you can help me draft yet another statement for the press, which I’ll deliver later this morning.’

Dan took out his notebook and flicked briefly through the pages, but she noticed he didn’t refer to it again. She was pleased to note that he had all the salient facts in his head. She was simply going to help him get them into order.

Forty minutes later Julie Oliver sat back in her chair.

‘Ok, I think I get it. We are looking at either two separate cases, or there may be a link between Carly and Abrams that we haven’t yet found. So the nocturnal visit was a genuine part of your investigation.’

Dan agreed. ‘I can’t give you a solid reason why just yet, but it just feels right. There is a link. Abrams removed stuff from that room, and it is important to the case. I bloody well hope I am right, after what happened.’

‘And we need to find out about this foreign crew and what they are doing in Exeter. We need to eliminate or charge Carly’s father, Jamie May or Westlake. Currently, murder seems a bit strong for a girl who was having an affair with her teacher. After all, if we believe the Daily Mail, this sort of thing happens all the time, right? So we need motive and opportunity.’

Dan nodded again. ‘The motive could be jealousy, as we originally thought, or it could be something totally different, related to some dirty little dealings going on at the studio.’

Oliver sniffed and sat in silence for a moment, assimilating the information.

‘OK, Dan, I’ll let you carry on, as long as you stick to my rules. The younger members of your team don’t need to know about our arrangement, just tell Sally. I know this has been a disaster so far, but I also know you’re onto something.

‘You promised me on Monday that you would do everything you could to catch Carly’s murderer, didn’t you?’ He nodded. ‘Right, then, you’d better get on with it, and Christ help us if this all goes tits up. I’ll second another person onto your team to help out, and I will act as SIO instead of Ian, bless him. Then you can get back out there and catch me a killer.’ She paused and checked her notes. ‘I think that covers it. So, anything else you want to say?’

‘Thank you,’ said Dan. ‘I want to say thank you for letting me have this chance and for not throwing me out, even though we both know I deserve it. I want to say I’ll do better and I will find out what’s going on. Thank you, Ma’am.’

‘Ok, enough mushy stuff.’ Oliver pursed her lips and sighed. ‘What on earth can I say to the press that will show them we are on top and in charge, and know exactly what we are doing?

The Incident room was a hive of pretend activity. Dan entered the room and found the whole team still there, shuffling paper, writing up notes and pretending to talk to people on the phone. So busy were they at the tasks he had appointed them an hour before, they pretended not to notice his arrival, too. Sally ‘suddenly’ noticed his return.

‘Oh, Boss, there you are. Everything alright?’

All sham activity ceased and they looked up at him, their faces leaking their emotions. Dan was surprised and touched that they had waited for him. He was even more surprised when he smiled and they let out a cheer.

‘So it was alright, then?’ Sally said, ‘you’re not suspended or anything?’ He shook his head. ‘Right,’ she grinned, ‘Sam, get that coffee pot on. Lizzie, open the biccies. Let’s have a mini-celebration.’

Dan was itching to get on. He wasn’t entirely happy that they had all disobeyed his orders and were sitting on their backsides, but he understood why. Even a rubbish DI was better than breaking in a new one halfway through a case, and they did need to know what the Super had decided. The fact that Oliver thought he was still in charge meant that they could trust him, and they would work better with that knowledge.

He perched one buttock on the edge of the table as they gathered round, holding out stained and drained mugs for a refill, relief clear on their faces. He didn’t think he would be able to shake the darkness from the eyes of Bill and Ben, though. They had been Gould’s men, had worked with him for years. And they were right in their unspoken accusations. It was his fault that Ian had died. He was in charge of the whole case. He should have stopped Ian, not just gone along with him, like a rookie looking for excitement. In his head, he marked up the list of people damaged or killed because of his bad judgement, Ian and Chas, and because of his anger, the gunman. He knew those worries would come back into his dreams and haunt him, but that was a worry he would have to bury for another day.

Dan dunked his biscuit and threw the whole thing into his mouth before it dropped into the hot drink, earning applause from Sam Knowles.

‘So, you all on strike, or what?’ He spoke with a mouthful of soggy biscuit. The door opened and a sheepish Adam Foster entered followed by Julie Oliver. The younger officers shot to their feet and Adam took a bow, blushing when he realised they had stood for Oliver, not him.

Oliver drew up a recently vacated chair to the table and smiled.

‘Just carry on,’ she said, ‘I’m giving you young Adam for a week or so to help out and I’m here to take DCI Gould’s place as SIO. I know it’s been a long time since I did any actual detecting, but I used to be quite good at it.’ She looked over at the Flowerpot Men and gave them a sad smile. ‘I just wish it was under different circumstances. We will all miss Ian, but none of us more than the Flowerpot Men, or me. He was my first Sergeant when I was a rookie WPC.’ She stopped for a moment and wiped a tear away with her finger. ‘How on earth we got away with some of the stunts we pulled in those days, I’ll never know. He seemed to have no sense of fear or self-preservation.’

‘Well, definitely no sense,’ observed Ben Bennett in his dry rumble, a wry shake of his head the only emotion he would allow to surface.

Bill Larcombe managed a small smile in return.

‘He was a bugger sometimes, and I don’t think he ever read the rulebook, never mind stuck by it. But I’ll miss him. By God, I will.’

Dan kept his head down. He could hear the snuffles and the blowing of noses in the room, but felt he could play little part in their shared grief. He’d hardly known the guy, and for the three weeks they had shared an office, Ian had barely spoken to him other than to wind him up. But he could not escape the feeling that he was responsible for the total cock-up the night before. He should never have agreed to such a stupid stunt. Stunt was indeed the right word for it. And the worst thing was that he had stood in this very office and had known that it was a mistake. And he had ignored his intuition. Well, he wouldn’t do that again. He would find a way to atone for this pointless death.

He drank his coffee to the dregs and looked up to find Julie Oliver staring at him. She smiled an encouraging smile.

‘Before you all go off,’ she said, ‘I wanted to say that despite what the tabloids would have us believe, it is not common for an officer to die in the line of work. Inspector Hellier has assured me that this late-night visit to the Illusion Recording Studio was essential to the Carly Braithwaite investigation, and judging by the reception they got, he is absolutely right that there is something going on. Linking that slime-ball Abrams to the murder of Carly Braithwaite is as important a priority as nailing her murderer, and will be the best tribute you can pay to your colleague and friend.

‘So, I am your SIO. Send back everything as you get it. I’ll make sure I’m up-to-date with everything we’ve got so far.’ She stood and walked across to the whiteboard. ‘What have we missed?’ she asked, but she was talking to herself. The office had emptied behind her as soon as she’d left the table.

Date: Wednesday 26th
April
Time: 09:48
Jamie May’s house

It was quiet in the car. Sam Knowles felt he could hardly start a conversation with Lizzie Singh about the weather, but he thought he’d have a go.

‘It’s going to be a nice summer if it stays like this.’

Lizzie Singh ignored him.

‘Are you going anywhere on holiday in the summer?’ Still nothing. He turned pink. She was torturing him. It was bad enough that he fancied her, but if she didn’t even admit to his existence, then what chance had he got?

She negotiated the roundabout and signalled left, stopping at the pedestrian crossing.

‘What?’ She saw his embarrassment. ‘Sorry, Sam, I was miles away. I just can’t get my head around Jamie May being involved in Carly’s murder. How much would I love to be able to find something out? You know, to really help with the investigation.’ She paused. ‘What were you saying?’

‘No, nothing. Just making conversation.’

‘Right.’

They drove another mile in silence until Lizzie relented. ‘So, have you searched a house before?’

Sam smiled in relief, a reprieve. ‘Yep, on several occasions, actually.’

‘Good. Tell me what to do, ‘cos this is my first.’

The May household was a two-bedroom terrace in the middle of a long row of houses in Heavitree, one of the older parts of town. There was a long back garden leading out to an alleyway that met up with a road at one end and the cemetery at the other.
      

‘I wonder if Jamie was trying to get home when I intercepted him at the cemetery yesterday? It’s just down the road.’

‘It’s likely. He must have been devastated.’

Sam eyed the front garden, turned into a muddy drive for the aged maroon Fiesta parked at an angle in front of the door. He rang the doorbell.

‘I still feel a little strange being out of uniform,’ Lizzie laughed, finding a place for the car keys in her bag. ‘I don’t expect people to take any notice of me now I’m in plain clothes.’

Sam smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t think you’re going to have any problem at all, Wonderwoman.’ He slipped neatly to the left to avoid her elbow.

‘Oh,’ Sandra May said as she opened the door. ‘I thought it would be the older policeman I met yesterday.’

Sam replied, ‘No, just us underlings, Mrs May, to do the house visits. Hope that’s alright?’

He didn’t wait for an answer as they followed her into the living room. Sam was surprised at how empty it was. There were no pictures on the walls, no ornaments, no soft cushions, nothing that would turn this room into a home.

‘What a lovely tidy room,’ said Sam, deciding that in this case, banality was exactly what was required.

‘I don’t like stuff everywhere.’ She looked at the floor when she spoke to them. ‘It’s hard enough having to work forty hours a week and bring up a boy on my own without having to spend all my free time cleaning and polishing. It’s got what we need.

‘So what do you want to see? I need to get back to the Police station for Jamie.’

‘We would like to see his room please, Mrs May, and anywhere else he’s likely to leave his stuff.’

She sniffed. ‘Right, you’d better come upstairs. But we weren’t expecting visitors, so you’ll have to take us as we are.’ She led them up a narrow staircase, the wall burnished to a dull yellow sheen from the brushing past of countless hands. ‘I know it needs decorating, but everything costs money, doesn’t it?’

She stood back in the cramped space at the top of the stairs and let them go through into Jamie’s room.

‘Thanks, Mrs May,’ said Sam, ‘we can manage from here.’ She sniffed again and made her way downstairs.

To Sam, the contrast between Jamie’s room and the rest of the house was more marked than it would have been in a typical home. Jamie had been through the upstairs of the house in a hurry, there were clothes on the floor, open jars of hair gel and canisters of deodorant and aftershave on top of the chest of drawers. The walls were covered in posters for heavy metal and death metal bands, and there were CDs and even vinyl records on every surface. ‘This is more like it,’ he muttered to Lizzie as they stood inside the door.

‘Shouldn’t take too long,’ he added. ‘It’s not a big room. You start on the left and I’ll start on his laptop, so we won’t get in each other’s way.’

‘Sam, what are we looking for?’

‘I don’t know, but we will when we find it. Put everything back where you get it from.’ She put her tongue out at him.

The search was as methodical and thorough as they could make it without taking everything out of the room. Once Sam found Jamie’s laptop, it took him three minutes to work out that Jamie’s password was ‘Napalm Death’. After several further fruitless minutes searching folders and browsing history, Sam shook his head, ‘Nothing. You’d think there’d be something here that would help us.’

‘I know we’re missing something,’ Lizzie said. She gingerly checked the boy’s underwear drawer, the place where most teenagers would store personal stuff. She found tobacco, bits of cardboard he used for filters for his roll-ups, and an unopened packet of condoms. ‘We asked Sandra May not to touch anything. So, what is it we’re not seeing?’

There were hand-written song lyrics, and a demo CD, and at one point Sam played a couple of Jamie’s songs off his computer, which weren’t bad. It was a poignant moment to hear the strong voice of Carly Braithwaite belting out vocals as if she was just in the next room.

‘She could really sing, couldn’t she?’ said Sam, pausing in his perusal of the CD rack.

Lizzie slapped his arm and let out a little squeal.

‘Got it! There’s no guitar in the house, is there? I wonder if the guitar I saw at Westlake’s house was Jamie’s? I wonder if that’s where he was heading when I arrested him yesterday? I thought he was coming home, but Westlake only lives a mile or so away. I knew we’d missed something.’

‘What does it mean, though?’ asked Sam.