Authors: Clare Donoghue
‘What did you make of him?’
‘Well,’ he said, pulling the file out from under his arm, ‘I can see why you thought he was one of the “good guys”. There was nothing in his tone to suggest he was being dishonest, but . . . ’
‘But what?’
‘It’s going to make questioning him difficult. If he was able to appear that calm and composed only two weeks after he took her, it’s unlikely he’s going to roll over and admit it now.’
‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘He’s declined the duty solicitor. He’s called in his own. Whitaker – she’s a criminal lawyer and, if her suit’s anything to go by, this isn’t her first case.’
‘Great,’ he said.
She knew what he was thinking. Interviews conducted pending formal charges were a potential minefield. Lebowski’s lawyer, if she was any good, would be advising her client to say little or nothing. The burden of proof was on Jane, and her scope of questioning was limited. Lebowski had been arrested for the suspected murder of Maggie Hungerford. All of Jane’s questions would have to relate to that. So far the evidence she had was circumstantial. He had admitted to seeing Maggie the night she disappeared, and that they had had intercourse. That made all the DNA evidence moot. The morphine tablets gave her some leverage, but not much. Even if she could prove he had a prescription for the medication or had stolen it, she still couldn’t prove beyond doubt that he had drugged Maggie’s food. Maggie could have taken the pills herself. It was Lebowski’s word against a dead girl’s. Jane was going to try and establish what Lebowski was doing in Elmstead, but she had no doubt his lawyer would shut down that line of questioning. It was a public park close to his home. His presence didn’t prove he buried Maggie there, nor did it prove he was responsible for the second burial site.
‘How are you thinking of approaching the interview?’ Lockyer asked.
She had thought about little else on the ride back from Elmstead the previous night. It had taken a few hours, but the GPR had confirmed the existence of a second underground cavity and the presence of another body. The image was still fresh in her mind. It had been too late to get started on the dig, so Jane had been forced to return to the office, by which time it was also too late to talk to Lebowski.
She pushed her thumb and finger into her eyelids, harder than she intended, a sharp pain shooting down her neck. She was due back on-site in an hour to view the remains. The excavation team had been working since the early hours. The ramifications kept piling up, scrambling her thoughts. Another investigation, more evidence, more officers. Another family torn apart by grief. She shook her head. ‘I want to get him talking about Maggie, about the night she disappeared.’ Disappeared – the word made her think about Sue; about Mark. Her entire week had been built around Maggie. In order to do one part of her job she had forgotten her friend’s pain.
‘Thinking about Sue?’ Lockyer asked.
‘How do you do that?’
‘Because I know you,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. ‘Your focus is on Maggie, on this case, because that is where it needs to be, Jane. You have to prioritize your time and, more importantly, your efforts. You can’t conjure up information where there isn’t any.’
She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. ‘I know. I just feel like I’m letting Sue down. Letting Mark down. Sue’s my friend. I told her – no, I promised her – I would find Mark.’
‘And we will,’ Lockyer said, steering Jane towards the interview room. ‘But right now you need to concentrate on Lebowski.’
‘I don’t want to mention the second tomb,’ she said, resting her hand on the doorknob.
‘I wouldn’t either. We may need it later on,’ he said, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Relax, Jane. I know you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t.’
‘Thanks.’ She blinked several times, took a deep breath and pushed open the door. ‘Mr Lebowski. Miss Whitaker,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you both waiting.’
Jane stared into the hole, a dark throat disappearing into the ground. She wiped her palms on her trousers. It was still early, but the sun was beating down on the back of her head. Her hair felt hot as she pulled it back into a stubby ponytail. Strands fell around her face, tickling her skin. The sense of déjà vu was undeniable. Her legs began to shake as the memory of climbing down into Maggie’s tomb took hold.
Lockyer was standing a little way off, talking to one of the perimeter officers. She remembered that first visit to Elmstead. She had not known what to say to him, aware that he was staring into his own abyss. She remembered his face: his eyes hollow with guilt and grief. As the image faded he looked over at her. He pointed to a white paper suit in his hand, gave her the thumbs up and smiled. Things were different this time. He was coming down into the tomb with her. They were a team again.
‘Do you want to wait for Jeanie?’ Dave asked, taking Jane’s arm. He had been here last time too and, just like then, he seemed to sense her unease. For someone who spent the majority of his time with corpses he possessed an empathy and understanding that Jane admired.
She squeezed his hand as a silent thank you. ‘How long do you think she’ll be?’
‘An hour maybe,’ Dave said, looking at his watch. ‘She was up in Camden when I spoke to her. It’ll take her a while to get across town.’
Jane nodded. ‘Okay, then I think I’d rather get down there and see what we’ve got. I’ve got a suspect in custody, and so far I don’t have enough to charge him.’
‘Yes, I heard,’ Dave said, tipping his head in Lockyer’s direction. ‘If it’s any consolation, he thinks you’re doing an amazing job.’ She started to argue, but he cut her off. ‘Now there’s no need to get all self-deprecating on me. He doesn’t dish out compliments very often, and I wouldn’t be passing it on if I didn’t know it was true.’ Dave smiled and put his arm around Jane’s shoulders. It was a simple gesture, a sign of his faith in her, but Jane found herself stepping away, rejecting the intimacy. She had spent a lot of her career trying to blend in with the guys. She knew Dave didn’t see her as girlish or weak, but she wasn’t about to risk the rest of her team even contemplating it.
‘Thanks, Dave. I’m just glad he’s talking. The catatonic-boss routine was getting a bit old.’ She could see he was taken aback by her attitude. ‘Sorry. I just want to get this done and get back to the station.’
‘You don’t have to tell me twice,’ Dave said with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Mike,’ he called over to Lockyer, ‘we’re ready.’
Lockyer walked towards them, pulling on the arms of his white suit, the legs flapping behind him like a snake’s discarded skin. ‘Did I mention that I suffer from claustrophobia?’ he said. ‘Are all three of us really going to fit down there?’
‘Normally I’d say yes,’ Dave replied, stepping into his own suit, ‘but considering the length of your legs, I’m not so sure. You might have to leave them outside, you lanky git.’
Jane laughed under her breath, letting the banter wash over her. Any and all distractions were welcome. ‘Come on, you two,’ she said, zipping up the front of her suit, the paper rustling beneath her fingers. ‘Dave, you go down first. Mike, you can follow. I’ll come down last.’
‘You’re going to pull us out if we get stuck, are you?’ Dave asked, smiling.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I just want to be able to get the hell out of there if you two get wedged.’ Both men turned their heads away as they laughed. Jane covered her smile with the back of her hand. The press were arriving en masse. The last thing any of them wanted was to see their pictures on the front page of a newspaper with stupid grins on their faces. Humour would help them deal with what they were about to see, but the public was unlikely to see it that way.
Dave put his foot on the top step of the ladder. ‘Joking aside, this one is smaller, so watch your heads and keep your arms and elbows in.’ He started to climb down.
‘I’m not looking forward to this,’ Lockyer said in a whisper. ‘I really don’t like confined spaces.’
‘You’ll be fine once you’re down there,’ Jane said, and then she added, ‘I don’t think anyone
likes
confined spaces.’
He stepped onto the ladder. Dave’s back was visible below them. ‘See you in there.’
Jane watched Lockyer climb down and bend into a crouch to crawl through the covered entrance. She patted her pocket to check the little torch was still there, attached to her keys. It was a ‘Be safe’ gift from her mother. Satisfied, she turned and took hold of the ladder. Her legs shook on the first step, but by the second and third they had steadied. She could hear Lockyer and Dave talking, their voices muted by the mass of mud and rock surrounding them. She was prepared for what she was about to see. Or as prepared as she could be. But she couldn’t stop seeing Lebowski’s face. She paused and leaned against the ladder for support, a bead of sweat rolling down the back of her neck.
This morning’s interview had been as she had expected. His lawyer had put a stop to almost every line of questioning, but it was the change in Lebowski’s behaviour after a night in custody that had surprised Jane. He was like a different person. He was cold, indifferent. Even when he was talking about Maggie, about their relationship, his voice remained on a monotone. His version of events hadn’t changed. In fact it was almost word for word what he had told her on Tuesday.
She felt again for the torch. This time she took out her keys and put her finger through the keyring, holding them in her hand as she turned the torch on and off a couple of times. Lebowski’s reason for being in Elmstead was laughable in its simplicity. ‘I went for a walk.’ That was all he said. He didn’t elaborate and, when Jane pressed him, his lawyer intervened and told her to move on.
She lowered herself from the final rung and dropped onto her knees. As she pushed aside the plastic sheeting she had one final thought, but it wasn’t about Lebowski. It was about Mort. He had told her and Lockyer that Maggie had refused to tell him whom she was seeing behind his back. Was that true? She sat back on her haunches as an idea took shape. Maggie’s tomb was prepared, the entrance hatch dug out, an air-hose and CCTV installed. Maggie was drugged, attacked, transported to Elmstead, carried through the woods and manhandled into the tomb. For Lebowski to achieve all that, unseen and without help, was no mean feat.
‘You need to see this, Jane,’ Lockyer called.
She looked up. Dave and Lockyer were both on their hands and knees, facing away from her. Only the soles of their shoe covers and their white-papered backsides were visible. She crawled in, struck by how much smaller the space was, compared to the tomb where Maggie had been found. She remembered how cramped it had felt and how terrifying it must have been to be trapped there, in the dark. But this place was even worse. It was more like an oversized coffin, a yard or so high and not more than two, or maybe three, yards square. The three of them pretty much filled the space once she was alongside. Again she found herself thinking about Lebowski and Mort, and Maggie, seeing her lying there in her pyjamas, her hair covering her face, her feet bare.
‘We should have waited for Jeanie,’ Dave said.
Jane followed Dave’s eye-line to the body. The legs and feet were tucked into the corner of the tomb, the torso and head stretched out in front of Lockyer. Jane tried to lean forward, but her back struck the ceiling, limiting her view. She could see tufts of hair. They looked fragile and dry, like hay left to bake in the sun. The skull beneath was like white marble. ‘How long has it been here?’ she asked, staring at the skeleton in front of them.
‘A long time,’ Dave said. ‘A very long time.’
1st May – Thursday
‘I’m not going to be able to charge him,’ Jane said, kicking a stone across the gravel. They were standing in the small car park on the edge of Elmstead Woods waiting for Jeanie to arrive.
‘You don’t know that yet,’ Lockyer said, leaning against a squad car.
‘Really?’ She pulled the band out of her hair, snapping it in the process. ‘What are the chances of there being any useable trace evidence down there?’ she said, pointing to the woods and the tent that was being erected as she spoke, the sun bouncing off the white plastic. ‘I don’t need Jeanie to tell me that those remains have been there for years. Dave won’t even confirm the sex of the victim at this stage. It’s going to take weeks to examine the whole area.’
‘We’ll just have to go back and speak to Lebowski again,’ he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘Try something else. See if we can’t work in this scenario. What are the team doing?’
She sighed. ‘Whitemore and Franks are going over Lebowski’s background – everything and anything. I told them to go back five years initially, but I think today’s discovery might mean pushing that back further. Penny’s got six of the PCs that Roger signed off running second interviews with all of the students and tutors, and she and Aaron are doing Lebowski’s family, ex-wife, et cetera. Who else?’ she said, looking up at the cloudless sky. ‘Sasha’s reviewing Lebowski’s financial history and overseeing the search of his home address. I’ve got some of the PSs looking at cold-cases and talking to Missing Persons about today’s body. The Exhibits team are re-examining all the original evidence, preparing to add today’s samples, cross-referencing any similarities . . . blah-blah-blah.’ She stopped talking, shaking her head when she realized Lockyer was laughing at her.
‘Not much fun being at the top, is it?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can feel this case slipping away from me and, to be quite frank, I’m shitting myself.’ She didn’t swear very often; it was a lazy use of language, or so her mother told her, but the main reason was Peter. He picked up everything and stored it like a computer. She remembered saying the F-word when she dropped the hoover on her foot. Peter had been three, but he repeated the word and put it in every sentence for about a month before he got bored. Even thinking about him made her chest ache. She had not spent more than an hour with him all week. He had been fast asleep when she picked him up from her mother’s on Tuesday night after her ‘chat’ with Lockyer. She had managed breakfast with him on Wednesday morning, but Lebowski’s arrest and the discovery of the second tomb meant she hadn’t got home until gone midnight. She had crept into Peter’s room to kiss him goodnight and found her mother sleeping next to him, both of them cramped beneath his dinosaur duvet on the tiny single bed. She had left the house at six to give herself time to prepare for the interview with Lebowski. So all in all she had no idea how her mother was, let alone her son; and she had no idea what trauma had caused his grandmother to forgo the comfort of the spare bedroom.