‘H
ow long are we going to give this bloke to come home?’ I asked Wingsy, forty minutes later. Our first enquiry had taken us to the registered home address of a vehicle seen travelling close to Amanda Bell’s body. We were sitting in our unmarked car outside an attractive, well-kept detached house on one of the county’s many new housing estates. The lights were off and it appeared to be empty. There were only a few other vehicles parked on the street: a painter and decorator’s van about five doors away from our target premises, and a couple of other cars outside various houses.
‘We’ve only been here twenty minutes. Stop being such a miserable fucking cow and have some patience. No wonder blokes keep chucking you.’
‘I think you’ll find, dickwad, that I finished with the last one.’
‘What, the married last one?’
‘Yes, the married last one. I’ve missed working with you, you know. Why’d you leave our team?’
Wingsy and I had known each other for about ten years and had a pretty good working relationship. You couldn’t really call it a friendship as we never saw each other out of work, apart from the occasional leaving do, but whenever we worked together we got on well. It was just… easy being with him.
Wingsy let out a lengthy sigh. My attention had been focused on the house so I turned my head sharply to look at him and saw something flicker across his face: exasperation?
Annoyance? I waited for him to speak. When at last he did, it wasn’t what I was expecting him to say.
‘Remember Amber?’ he asked. I probably looked puzzled, partly because I wasn’t quick enough to stop my facial expressions reflecting everything I was thinking when I was in the company of someone I completely trusted, and partly because I really didn’t know who this Amber was. I gave a small shake of my head rather than speaking; I didn’t want to stop him from telling me something that was clearly troubling him. ‘The PC who came to work with us for about two months in the summer? Pretty, redhead, well fit.’
‘Oh, John, you didn’t?’ Wingsy was married with three kids; I hadn’t had him down for that sort of thing.
‘No, I bloody didn’t. I’m not you, you old slapper.’ I laughed, then punched him on the arm. ‘No,’ he continued, ‘haven’t got the fucking energy for an affair. I walked in on her and someone else. Someone else who should have known better. I immediately asked for a move. Well, not immediately, ’cos he still had his dick out at that stage.’
‘Oh, crap, Wingsy. Would this person happen to be your father-in-law?’ No wonder he’d gone so quickly and it had all been kept so quiet.
‘Yep, Inspector Matheson. Makes family Christmas a bit awkward. But he did buy me a new golf driver this year. Definitely the most expensive present ever. Oh, and Mel doesn’t know. Apart from an old schoolmate, me, you and the guilty parties, no one else knows.’
I watched Wingsy run his hands through his thinning, greying hair. He let out another sigh, then he seemed to pull down the shutters that twenty years of policing had forced him to acquire.
I wasn’t really surprised that he had confided in me. I was used to hearing gossip and I never passed it on. I liked to hear juicy titbits of other people’s lives, but I’d also done some stuff that I wasn’t particularly proud of, and I always put myself in the position of the person being talked about.
To be fair, if you were embarrassed about something and didn’t want others to find out, you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. However, police officers were only human and that meant weakness. Chris Matheson was a pretty decent man. I’d worked for him from time to time and found him reasonable and approachable. A bit patronising, but fundamentally a decent bloke. Perhaps it had been a mid-life crisis, a one-off? I hoped so, as I didn’t want to think about who else he’d been getting his nuts in with.
I caught a movement in the corner of my eye and glanced back at the road. ‘There’s a car coming,’ I said. ‘Seems to be slowing, too.’
A grey Ford Mondeo came to a stop outside the house we were watching. The driver was the only occupant, and he looked our way as he turned the ignition off. He didn’t react to seeing the two of us feet from his front door, but got out of the car, shut the door and began walking up the path. Wingsy and I were both out of our vehicle by the time he’d taken two steps. As we headed towards him, Wingsy said, ‘David Connor? Police.’ He got no further than opening his warrant card when the man we’d come to see headed full pelt up the road in the direction he’d just come from.
It startled both of us. We were used to people running from us, used to people not opening front doors, used to people lying, but why pull up in front of your home in your car, see two suited people in a vehicle outside your house and then go to walk into it first? Still, if you were going to run from the police, clearly you’d done something wrong; the man had just upgraded himself from witness to suspect.
Fortunately, Wingsy and I were a bit quicker and fitter than him. He’d made a distance of about fifty metres from his driveway when Wingsy tackled him to the ground. I was a couple of seconds behind, and got there just as Wingsy was pulling his cuffs out from his harness inside his jacket and saying, ‘You’re under arrest for the murder of Amanda Bell. You do not – ’
He was unable to finish the caution; Connor turned his now scarlet face to the side, saliva falling from his lips, and shouted, ‘What the fuck are you on about? Who the fuck is Amanda Bell? Let me go.’
I came around to the side of Connor so that he would see me and tried to calm him, while Wingsy cuffed him with his hands behind his back. ‘David Connor, we’ve arrested you on suspicion of a murder and so you’re being handcuffed.’ I knew that this would hardly stop him struggling, but at least it distracted him long enough for Wingsy to finish what he was doing. When he’d got Connor restrained, he looked at me and nodded. I called the DCI. He was on his way before I’d hung up.
By the time Eric Nottingham arrived, along with a van full of uniform PCs to search Connor’s house, we’d got our number one suspect into the back of our Golf and he’d at least stopped foaming at the mouth and swearing. Following a quick search of his pockets in case of weapons or drugs, he’d been fairly compliant and even seemed to be finding the whole thing slightly amusing. ‘A fucking murder,’ he said – well, perhaps he hadn’t totally abandoned the swearing. ‘Who am I supposed to have murdered? I don’t know anyone called Amanda.’
‘David,’ I said, ‘you’re under arrest and we’ve cautioned you, so we can’t question you about the offence until we get you back to the nick. We’ve got your house keys from your pocket and, now that the other officers are here, we’re taking you to the custody area and leaving them to search.’
I took my pocket notebook out and made a note of what he’d said. I planned to ask him to sign it later, as his hands were currently handcuffed behind his back.
While I was talking to the prisoner, I could see Wingsy updating the DCI. It was a short exchange as we hadn’t much to tell – got to the house, bloke got out of a car, ran off, we
nicked him. Then we’d waited for the search team and senior investigating officer to arrive. That was unusual in itself. SIOs were usually in meeting after meeting when something like this happened, so the fact that Nottingham had come out himself at such a crucial point in the investigation was intriguing.
‘Nina, I want you to stay here with the search team and call DI Patterson with any updates from the house,’ shouted Nottingham, before taking his phone from his pocket and answering a call. ‘Hello, Eric Nottingham… Just on my way.’ He walked away back to his car.
Wingsy came up to me and beckoned me away from the open police car window where I’d been talking to Connor.
‘Why do you think this knobcheese ran away from us?’ I asked him. ‘He strike you as a murderer?’ I just wasn’t getting a feel for him. We’d only been told to go and see him because his car had been seen on the dual carriageway near to the body. He’d been a priority as the cameras had picked him up three times that morning half an hour before the body was found, twice northbound and once southbound. The pathologist still hadn’t given a time of death, so, for all we knew at this point, he might have been driving along totally innocently, a clear twenty-four hours after Amanda was murdered. If he hadn’t done anything wrong it seemed madness to have run from us, but then this job had introduced me to so many halfwits over the years that little about human behaviour struck me as out of the ordinary.
‘No idea, Nin. Probably hasn’t paid for his TV licence and is a bit nervy. DCI wants me to take him back with another PC – ’ he pointed at the van ‘ – and you’re to stay here. I don’t expect we’ll be interviewing him. Probably a job for Serious Crime. Doubt you and I will get a look in.’
‘But we nicked him.’
Wingsy just shrugged at me. Showing him my notebook, I told him Connor’s earlier comments and we went back to the car. ‘David,’ I said. ‘I’ve written down what you told me;
can I get you to sign this as an accurate account of what you and I said?’
‘Sure, love, it’ll pass the time.’
Wingsy recuffed his hands in front so that he could read and sign the notebook, while I passed the keys to the uniform PC who was taking him back to the nick. Wingsy asked the usual questions: whether anyone was in, whether there was any burglar alarm or a huge dog in the house that was likely to jump out and bite anyone. Once reunited with my notebook, I followed the search team to the front door. The only woman in the group, Lila Armstrong, was removing exhibit bags, labels and tags from the rear of the van.
‘Wotcha, Bill,’ I said to the sergeant.
‘’Lo, Nin. How you been?’ he asked. Bill Harrison was six feet tall, well-built, with a bit of a soft heart – you wanted him on your side, as he could be pretty useful in the right situation. ‘Any idea what’s in this place?’ He waved in the direction of No. 82.
‘No. Dozy git just legged it when we said “police”, and then you arrived.’ I shrugged back at him. I’d always had a bit of a crush on Bill. I couldn’t even tell you why, but I sometimes blushed like a teenager when talking to him. I had never worked out if he knew the reason or if he thought I just had high blood pressure. In fairness, either would have been a safe assumption to make, as I was no spring chicken and I did drink a lot.
To try to avoid eye contact with Bill, and in an attempt to stop myself blushing, I turned towards the house. I had the key ring in one hand and my notebook in the other. One of the two keys appeared to be a back door key and the other was for the front door. I unhooked the back door key from the ring and passed it to one of the officers heading for the side gate.
As Bill and I walked along the gravel driveway, I glanced up at the top floor of the house and ran an eye over each of the windows, then did the same for the ground floor and
the glass-partitioned front door. No signs of movement; it looked as if the premises were empty. My heart was beating just a little bit faster. No, not Bill this time – this was in a professional context only. I was excited at the thought of who or what might be inside our murder suspect’s house.
Bill peered through the frosted glass panel into the hallway. ‘Can’t see anyone in there,’ he muttered.
I put the key into the lock, opened it with one turn and pushed the door inwards, shouting ‘Police. Anyone home?’
‘Police. We’re at the front and back door,’ bellowed Bill. The hallway stretched to the back of the house, where we could see into a vast modern kitchen. The two officers who had taken the back door key from me appeared in the kitchen. Bill and I made a cursory search of the downstairs in case anyone was at home but keeping very quiet about it, while the other two went upstairs.
‘This bloke’s got a couple of quid,’ Bill commented as he looked admiringly around the front room. ‘Huge wicker bar in the corner’s a bit much, though. Just goes to show that money can’t buy taste.’
‘I’ve got one of them, Bill. Only stocked it with Baileys and Babycham before I came to work today,’ I said, hands on my hips and mock indignation on my face. My cheeks reddened again. Now I was annoyed with myself in case he did actually think I was embarrassed because I owned such a piece of crap.
He was unable to answer, though, as one of his team from upstairs shouted, ‘Sarge, up here. You’ll both wanna see this.’
I followed Bill upstairs, trying not to look at his backside. What was wrong with me? I had serious work to do. I wasn’t much of a women’s libber but I made a note to insist that it be ladies first in future. Less distracting.
Once we reached the top of the stairs, Phil and Jerry, the other half of the current search team, confirmed that no one else was in the house but said again that they had something
to show us. Phil, the taller one of the two, was standing in the doorway to the rear bedroom. ‘Notice anything odd about this room?’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the bedroom overlooking the back garden.
‘Hardly, Phil, we’re not even in it yet,’ replied Bill. He spoke slowly and patiently to the young, clearly overexcited officer. In a kind and manly way, I thought.
‘There’s only one door into it, sarge,’ gabbled Phil.
‘Oh, right, good observation, Phil. Like most bedrooms, though.’ Bill nodded encouragingly as he answered. ‘What’s special about this room?’
‘It’s two rooms and I think that someone’s bricked the other doorway up. I noticed from the back garden that there are two windows up here but only one in this room. There’s a wardrobe and another door behind it.’
David Connor had run from us as we identified ourselves as police officers outside his front door. Earlier that same day, his car had been seen on the road passing a disused site shielding the body of a murdered woman. The fact that he had a hidden room in his house looked very interesting. It was also disturbing; I wondered if there was another victim hidden behind the wall.
My personal mobile phone vibrated in my pocket. Bloody Russian moron, I thought; if that’s you, I don’t think much of your timing. The break-up had been straightforward: I’d just walked out one day and ignored him ever since. Even if he hadn’t have been married, I hadn’t been all that impressed with our ‘early diners eat as many jacket potatoes as you fancy’ dinner date. He hadn’t exactly been an oligarch.