Irrefutable Evidence: A Crime Thriller (11 page)

C
hapter 15

D
espite the promise in her pep talk of providing whatever resources were necessary, detective superintendent Freneton was keeping a keen eye on expenditure. In her role of resources manager, the buck stopped with her for the entire SCF. If they went over-budget, it was her head on the block with the high command.

One of the cost-cutting initiatives she had introduced almost before her coat had settled on its hook on the day she assumed office as squad commander was to cut overtime payments. The measure was not well received: detectives supplemented their salaries with overtime, especially when there was a big case on. Freneton knew that, but costs were escalating and needed to be reduced. She instructed that once a certain number of hours of overtime had been worked, the officer would take time off in lieu for any more clocked up, or work for nothing. Mike Hurst knew it wouldn’t work; it had been tried before, but Freneton insisted.

For this reason, the following Monday morning, Jennifer was at home in her apartment in Nottingham’s Park district, a private estate of large Victorian houses a stone’s throw from the city centre, taking time off in lieu. Her stepfather, the Milan-based and internationally renowned fashion designer Pietro Fabrelli, had bought her the apartment as a present when he heard she was moving to the Nottingham area as a police officer. He thought her career choice was crazy — he would have far preferred to use her intelligence in his business and for her to help him deal with the wreck that her mother had become — but he knew better than to resist, so he decided to help her in any way he could.

“It’s going to be a hard life, carissima, long hours and much pressure,” he had told her in a phone call from his baroque-inspired office in the Via Monte Napoleone, his liquid tones attempting to perform their persuasive magic. Jennifer always imagined him sitting there in a brocade silk jacket and powdered wig.

“You’ve got to have somewhere private where you can relax, somewhere quiet and comfortable, away from all the madness. I’ve seen the cop shows; I worry about you.”

Jennifer’s apartment was one of four in the expensively restored Lincoln View House that in the eighteen hundreds had been one of the grander of the Park’s exclusive residences. Occupying half of the first floor, the apartment had a fine view over the adjacent Lincoln Circus, a large, tree-fringed circular garden popular with dog walkers. Originally, Jennifer had found the ground floor apartment, which came with its own private garden, a tempting proposition, but even though the plot was walled and protected with a high, electronic gate, Pietro was still worried about security, preferring the extra barrier against intruders that living one floor up would bring.

The spacious living room had once been a master bedroom with its own balcony. In summer, nearby trees filtered the light flooding through the south-facing French doors, filling the space with a brilliant softness that was hardly ever too hot; in winter the unfiltered rays were guaranteed to boost the temperature on the coldest days. Jennifer had fallen in love with it as soon as she walked in, and now that the apartment was filled with her own furniture, fittings and books, it was the perfect haven and she loved to spend time there.

By eleven o’clock, she had finished her chores and was relaxing in a huge, soft armchair by the balcony doors with a mug of freshly brewed Arabica, a feel-good glow about her. Her first big case was all but finished and it had gone fantastically well. She was re-reading Dante’s Inferno in Italian for possibly the fiftieth time when her mobile rang.

“Jenni—”

“Cotton! Where are you?” Rob McPherson’s sharp voice barked in her ear. There were no niceties.

“At home, gu—”

“Well, whatever you’re doing, drop it. You need to come straight here, to the SCF. The big boss wants to talk to you. Immediately.”

His tone was cold, full of suppressed anger.

“What’s it abou—”

The phone went dead, leaving Jennifer staring at the display. She thought of calling Derek Thyme to see if he knew what was going on. But then it dawned: the big boss? She assumed by that McPherson meant either the Ice Queen or her boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Hawkins. She’d only spoken to him once at length, on her first day. Rather overweight, and reluctantly balding, he seemed nice enough if rather distant. He had a reputation for rigid adherence to the rules, rather like the Ice Queen, but his methods were less ruthless. No point in calling Derek; it was unlikely he’d know anything.

She looked at her clothes. Jeans and a sweatshirt. That wouldn’t do, but she’d need to be quick.

Twenty-five minutes later she walked into the main squad room and immediately registered the silence: there was none of the usual buzz of conversation. Heads turned towards her, eyes cautious, concerned looks on all the faces. She raised her eyebrows a fraction as she caught Derek Thyme’s eyes, but the response was a tiny shake of the head. Clearly neither he nor anyone else knew what was going on.

“Cotton! This way!” commanded McPherson from the corner of the room.

He was standing by a door that opened onto a corridor leading to the inner sanctum of bosses’ offices. Jennifer followed him to the corner of the building: the DCS’s office. McPherson knocked on the door, opened it and stood aside to let Jennifer pass. Then he followed her in, closed the door and stood in front of it, as if to guard it and prevent her escape.

Jennifer was shocked to see not one but three of her senior officers in the room. They were all seated at the far end behind a long table, a set-up used for promotion board interviews. And for disciplinary hearings. In the centre, leafing through a file was the DCS. To his right was Mike Hurst who was quietly drumming his fingers on the table as he stared at a point in space beyond Jennifer’s left shoulder, while on the DCS’s left sat Olivia Freneton, her face thunderous as her eyes pierced into Jennifer’s. The memory of a comment from Neil Bottomley about Darth Vader crossed Jennifer’s mind.

“DC Cotton, come over here,” ordered the DCS as he closed the file and looked up at Jennifer.

There were two chairs on Jennifer’s side of the table, but there was no invitation to sit. She took a few steps forward, glancing back at McPherson as she did. His rough-hewn features registered little, except he looked ten years older.

Jennifer stopped three feet in front of the table and stood to attention, her eyes fixed on the wall behind the DCS’s head. She knew she must have done something terribly wrong and was frantically racking her brains to consider all the possibilities. A report she’d forgotten to write? One she’d left important details out of? Perhaps one into which she’d put too much detail, making the CPS angry because the defence would have access. In the few milliseconds of deafening silence from her bosses as they all turned their attention to her, she trawled through many possibilities, but she was stumped. She couldn’t think of anything.

Then the silence was shattered.

“DC Cotton,” barked Hawkins. “I’d like you to tell me what the hell you think you’re up to.” His tone was more than threatening.

“I don’t understand, sir. Is there a problem?”

“A problem!” he yelled. “Of course there’s a problem. A huge bloody problem! You have more than likely compromised the whole case!”

Jennifer felt her knees buckle while her gut had developed a free-falling existence all of its own.

“I … I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

Her eyes flickered towards Freneton and back. If it were possible, the superintendent’s frown was even deeper, her whole demeanour darker and more threatening. The corners of her mouth dropped in a sneer.

“We’ll give you one chance, Cotton,” she snarled, interrupting Hawkins. “One chance to explain. But let me make it perfectly clear. Your career’s on the line here; you might even be prosecuted for trying to pervert the course of justice.”

Jennifer’s mouth opened and closed like a fish on a rock, but no sound emerged.

“Well!” yelled Freneton, making Jennifer jump in fright. “Jesus, girl, what is wrong with you?”

Jennifer was fighting to remain standing to attention, her breathing heavy. She was reeling from the verbal barrage, the implied accusations that she knew nothing about.

Freneton continued, her words a series of stiletto thrusts.

“We have some more results. Lab results. DNA results. Your profile.”

“My … profile, ma’am? You mean you think I’ve contaminated the scene? That’s impossible.”

She turned to McPherson whose face now looked as if root canal would be preferable to being there.

“Guv, you saw me do the preliminary examination of the X-Trail. I gloved up and touched nothing inside the car. I know I didn’t wear a mask, but I didn’t speak or sneeze or anything while I was looking in the car. I couldn’t have contaminated it. And even with the gloves, I touched nothing except the door handle, and the shoe when I bagged it. At the scene in the woods, I was fully gowned, masked and everything, so it can’t even be saliva—”

“Shut up, Cotton! Stop babbling!” yelled Freneton.

“It’s got nothing to do with scene contamination, DC Cotton,” interrupted Hurst, his voice insistent but deliberately softer. He was livid with her but that didn’t dampen his dislike of Freneton. If she continued like that unchecked, she’d have Cotton a quivering wreck on the carpet.

“Like me, and everyone else on the team, your DNA is on record for elimination purposes for exactly the reasons you just described: in case anyone is sloppy enough to contaminate the scene. It’s a serious matter when it happens, we know that, but we have to accept that it does happen.”

Jennifer was nodding frantically. “I know that, sir, I know why it’s done.”

In her mind she was running through every occasion she had had anything to do with any of the physical evidence, and she could think of no time when she could have screwed up. She knew the rulebook backwards and sideways and could recite it chapter and verse, in Italian or French if need be. And she took pride in adhering to it.

Hurst continued. “One of the things the lab does is to run all the profiles, full and partial, and all the controls against each other — it’s part of the protocol — and one of their more astute young scientists noticed your DNA.”

Jennifer was shaking her head. “What do you mean, sir, noticed my DNA? What’s so special about my DNA?”

Olivia Freneton was ready to pounce; she wanted to be the one to deliver the killer punch.

“It’s very similar to Henry Silk’s, DC Cotton, that’s what’s so special, as you put it,” she snapped, her voice still hovering precariously on the controlled side of rage. “It contains what the scientist called several rare alleles, which are something of a research interest for the scientist. When she then found that Silk’s DNA has the same rare alleles, our astute young scientist asked for our approval to carry out a paternity test. And her conclusion, confirmed by her seniors, is that Silk is your father. Ninety-nine point nine percent certain. He’s not even an uncle, Cotton; he’s your father!”

She banged on the table with her fist, taking everyone by surprise.

“Henry Silk is your father, Cotton!” she repeated, emphasizing every word.

She paused, taking satisfaction in watching Jennifer absorb what she’d said, that they’d discovered her secret. Then she continued to drag the blade around in the wound she’d opened up.

“And, DC Cotton, I don’t and won’t accept for a moment that you didn’t know. We’ve spent the last hour going over conversations various of us have had with you in the last week or so and it would appear that you’ve tried hard to persuade more than one of your colleagues that Silk is innocent. Now we understand your motive.”

Jennifer could almost feel McPherson cringing behind her as she remembered their conversation in the pub. Judas! she thought. But that thought was an aside. Jennifer was incensed and her anger cut through her shock.

“Ma’am, I can assure you, I can assure you all,” — she glanced briefly at Hawkins and Hurst before focusing back on Freneton’s malevolent gaze — “I had no idea that I was related to Henry Silk in any way. It’s a total shock and in fact, I dispute it. I think there’s been some sort of cock up. My father was a doctor who was killed in a car crash before I was born. Obviously I never met him but I know my mother loved him dearly. Like most people, I only know about Henry Silk from what I’ve read in the glossies; I’d never met him before last Monday.”

She paused, panting, desperate to defend herself. Something else occurred to her.

“And anyway, if you’ve been reviewing my conversations with the team,” — her tone was verging on sarcastic as her eyes flashed to Hurst who was now examining his fingernails, avoiding eye contact — “you’ll know that
I
was the one who found the red shoe in Silk’s car. And
I
was the one who noticed the scratches on his neck. Do you think I would have done that if I were trying to protect him? I think he’s as guilty of the murder of Miruna Peptanariu as all of you do. It’s the sheer stupidity of his actions I find difficult to fathom.”

She was almost shouting.

“Watch your tongue, DC Cotton,” snarled Freneton. “You can protest all you like. I, for one, do not believe you. You’re off the case, young woman, and as your squad commander, I’m suspending you from duty until further notice. Your dishonesty has created a huge amount of extra work for everyone and will cost the SCF a fortune. You’ll never work with this team again; they won’t want you. When the defence finds out, and I doubt we can keep it under wraps, they’ll be screaming ‘foul’. And I can’t even begin to imagine what the press will do when they get hold of it. They’ll have a field day; make us look like complete idiots. All thanks to you, DC Cotton.”