Under a Silent Moon: A Novel (22 page)

Les gave her a yellow smile. “They’re about finished down there, to be honest. Just thought it might be worth a visit.”

As he spoke, three members of the party came into view, climbing up the slope. One of them was a CSI, the other two members of the Tac Team—but they were all dressed in white protective suits. Les introduced Paul Harper, the CSI.

“We found it further down the slope, toward the bottom of the hill. Half buried in the sand. You can track it back up to where it landed—it must have been thrown a fair old way.”

He held up a plastic evidence bag containing what looked like a black orb of some kind. Gray sand clung to half of it. The way it was pulling down the plastic of the bag, it looked heavy.

“It’s a shot put,” Les said helpfully.

Paul added, “There’s a stand for it on the small table in the hallway, with a little plaque. Apparently Felicity Maitland was a county champion when she was at school.”

“The hallway . . . ?” Lou asked.

“Yonder Cottage. I think it was a repository for all the ornaments Mrs. M didn’t want to keep at the farm.”

Lou took the bag from Paul. It was heavy. And the sand clinging to the side of the shot put—“Is it blood under there?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve got a sample—been biked over to the labs already. Hair, too.”

“Prints?”

“‘Fraid not.”

Lou turned to Paul Harper again. “So where was it, in relation to the car?”

Paul pointed vaguely over the edge of the cliff, the wind making the white suit flap against his arm. “About fifty yards further on. Although it was thrown from up here—it didn’t fall out of the car.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’ll take some proper measurements and check it all, but yes, I’m sure. We’re going to have a look at analyzing the trajectory to see if we can work out where it was thrown from.”

“You want to show me?”

The Tac Team officers exchanged a glance which said, actually, no we don’t, but Paul Harper gave a nod and took Lou back toward the edge of the slope. “Wait for me, Sam,” Lou called over her shoulder. “I won’t be long.”

There was a steep path running around the edge of the quarry, and they followed this, a sheer drop to their left. Lou watched her feet, choosing her way carefully. When Paul Harper stopped in front of her, she nearly ran into his back. He indicated the quarry floor, small flags marking the place where the car had been found. Other markers indicated the path of the vehicle through the undergrowth, the locations of bits and pieces that had fallen off the car on the way down.

“You can see it best from here. If we go all the way down you won’t get a sense of the perspective,” he told her. Just to the right of them, at the very bottom of the quarry, a small red flag flapped from within a patch of nettles. “That was where we found the ball. Right down there.”

Lou tried to get a feel for whether the weapon could have fallen out of the vehicle on the way down, but since it had gone so much further it seemed somehow doubtful. “Did it roll far?”

Paul nodded. “There’s a definite track. That’s why I want to trace it back properly, but it’s going to take a while to do it with all the foliage, and the light’s starting to go. We’ll get back onto it first thing.”

Climbing back up to the edge of the quarry, gingerly picking her way through the nettles and scrub, Lou stood for a moment, feeling the wind trying to free her hair from the ponytail, whipping it round her cheeks. Sam was waiting, shivering, at the top.

“Dreadful place to choose to end it all,” Sam said, her voice all but lost in the gale.

MG11 WITNESS STATEMENT

Section 1—Witness Details

NAME:
Flora MAITLAND

DOB
(if under 18; if over 18 state “Over 18”)    Over 18

ADDRESS:
    
Flat 2
                      14 Waterside Gardens
                      Briarstone

OCCUPATION:
Artist

Section 2—Investigating Officer

DATE:
Saturday 3 November

OIC:
DC Miranda GREGSON

Section 3—Text of Statement

My mobile phone number is 07194 141544, it has been my number for the past two years and it is the only mobile phone number I use.

I have known Polly LEUCHARS for a number of years as she was a family friend. In December 2011 Polly started working as a groom at Hermitage Farm, which is owned by my family. I helped out in the stables often and we became very close. Around April 2012 our relationship became more serious, although I knew Polly was not monogamous and was involved with other people at the same time. She was the only person I was involved with. I believe she would have told me who else she was seeing if I had asked, but I did not want to know.

Our relationship came to an end around the end of August when I realized I wanted our relationship to be exclusive, and Polly was not prepared to continue on this basis. We did not argue but I moved back to my flat in Briarstone, partly because I wanted to be on my own for a while. Polly tried to contact me by phone a few times but after a while this stopped.

I last saw Polly when I visited the farm at the end of September or beginning of October. I spoke to her briefly in the yard and we parted on good terms. Polly told me she had found someone special she wanted to be with, but I did not ask who this was. I said goodbye to her and went straight home. This was the last time I saw Polly and I had no further contact with her either by email, phone, or in person after that.

On 31 October 2012 I spent the day painting in my studio. I do not remember what time I went to sleep. I slept in the studio and carried on working the next morning until my father telephoned me to tell me that Polly had been found dead.

I do not know of any reason why someone would want to harm Polly and I do not know who might have killed her.

Section 4—Signatures

16:20

Even though she was under caution, and therefore free to leave at any moment, Flora agreed to help the police with their inquiries until late afternoon. They’d written down all their questions and all her answers to them, had got her to sign several times to say that she agreed with what they’d written. Then she had written out her statement and signed it.

All the searches were complete. Flora’s flat had revealed nothing of any interest; Polly’s phone was still unaccounted for. Now that the shot put had turned up at the quarry, the investigation had once again veered off in the direction of Barbara Fletcher-Norman. The opportunity to search the farm and all its outbuildings had been thoroughly exploited.

Unfortunately, nothing had come to light there, either. Nigel’s solicitor had been called as soon as the team turned up. He observed every part of the process and commented on everything. Their warrant was in relation to Flora Maitland, who did not work at the farm and did not even live there anymore. He tried his best to argue that there was no justification for the police to remove anything pertaining to farm business, including computers, files, or paperwork. With the warrant they could have taken whatever they wanted—computers, files, the lot. But in the event, Nigel’s offices, including the second office at the far end of the barn housing his 4×4 and his Mercedes and the Porsche convertible, had yielded nothing they could use. In the loft above the office, a large safe stood empty, its door open. Whatever had been in there had been moved.

The frustration in the MIR, when Lou returned to it after a visit to the farm to discuss progress with the search coordinator, was evident.

“He must have been tipped off,” Les Finnegan was saying. “That’s all there is to it.”

“Well, at least you got him to give a statement,” Ali said. “That’s bloody impressive, if nothing else.”

“It was hardly worth bothering,” Les muttered.

Hamilton came in at that moment, interrupting the debate.

“Andy,” Lou said. “How are you getting on with Flora?”

He leaned back on the edge of Sam’s desk, unbuttoning his jacket. “Well, the good news is she never called that wanker of a solicitor.”

“He was busy with us at the farm,” Ali said gloomily.

“That’s the good news? Did we get anything useful out of her at all?”

Andy sighed. “She claims the last time she saw Polly was weeks before she died, and that was at the farm. Flora said she hadn’t been near the farm since then.”

“What about the phone?”

Jason said, “We still don’t have a subscriber for that number that Polly was calling.”

“Why not? Have we chased it up?”

“They’ve been having computer problems at the service provider. No subscriber checks are going through—I chased it up an hour ago.”

That was typical, Lou thought. “Well, how long’s it going to take—do they know?”

“They said they would update me, but I’ll ring them back if they haven’t got back to me in an hour.”

“I don’t think it’ll help,” Andy said. “So she was visiting someone in Briarstone on the night she died. That’s not so surprising, is it, given what we know about her? She went for a fuck somewhere, came home, and in the meantime the mad old woman from across the road had decided to confront her. Got herself covered in blood, pissed up, drove to the quarry full of remorse, and there you go. Over the edge. Job done.”

“Incredible,” Sam muttered.

“I’m talking about evidence,” he said. “You’ve got the weapon, the blood, the motive for it, everything. I think we should stop wasting resources on the Maitlands and concentrate on Barbara and Brian. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Brian that Polly was meeting that night. She met up with him somewhere in Briarstone—away from the farm and the Barn—for a quick shag. Barbara caught them out somehow and saw red.”

He might not be putting it in the nicest of terms, Lou thought, but he had a point.

“So Flora was seeing Polly,” Sam said. “But so was half the village, including Brian. We don’t know who else she was involved with, do we?”

There was a momentary silence.

Lou sighed. “I think we need to bear in mind that it’s still really early days,” she said. “We’ve found out a lot already, and yes, it would be nice to have an arrest, but we have some good strong leads and plenty to keep us busy, right?”

Everyone looked as tired as she felt.

MG11 WITNESS STATEMENT

Section 1—Witness Details

NAME:
Nigel MAITLAND

DOB
(if under 18; if over 18 state “Over 18”):    Over 18

ADDRESS:
    
Hermitage Farm
                      Cemetery Lane
                      Morden

OCCUPATION:
Farm owner

Section 2—Investigating Officer

DATE:
Saturday 3 November

OIC:
DC 8244 Les FINNEGAN

Section 3—Text of Statement

Polly LEUCHARS was employed by my wife, Felicity MAITLAND, to assist at the stables, which are part of the farm business. I saw Polly infrequently and I cannot remember the last time I saw her. I do not know of anyone who might have wanted to harm her.

Section 4—Signatures

17:40

Lou had been running through the intelligence and comparing it with Jason’s latest charts and timelines, which he’d left on her desk. They went from the last sightings of Polly in the days before her death, right up to the discovery of the possible murder weapon in the quarry. Adele Francis had already been shown the shot put and agreed that it was “likely.”

Of course, if the shot put
was
the murder weapon, then pretty much everything was still pointing to Barbara Fletcher-Norman as the offender. Tomorrow she would get Jane and Ali to pay another visit to Brian and try to get more out of him about the fatal night. She made a mental note to put in a medical disclosure form to Brian’s doctors—it wouldn’t do to put pressure on him when his health was so fragile. The last thing the case needed was another death.

She thought Jason had gone home, long ago—or gone over to the King William with the rest of them—until a gentle knock on the door frame made her jump.

He looked tired, the black eye was yellowing a bit around the edges.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself. Come in.”

“I was hoping for some results from the download of Brian’s phone,” he said, sitting down, “but they won’t have anything until Monday at least. They’ve got a backlog, apparently.”

“They’ve always got a backlog,” she said a tad sourly.

“It would have been a whole lot easier to just check the phone before we handed it over to the CCU.”

Lou smiled. “Unfortunately, we have to comply with RIPA. Can’t have anyone accusing us of tampering with evidence, can we? I know it feels like we’ve been doing this for weeks, but really we’re only into the second day.”

“Two days, huh?” he said. “You’re right. Feels longer.”

“Are you finished?” she asked. “You should get home. You’ve done a brilliant job and I’m really grateful. And it’s Sunday tomorrow, so you are definitely taking the day off.”

He smiled at her. “I guess I should stop hanging round here late at night. I’m looking way too keen.”

Lou looked up in surprise. “Keen? You mean on me?”

He looked back into the empty office behind him. “Yeah, keen on you. Nobody else here right now.”

“Oh.”

“You’re really sexy when you blush, Lou.”

She tried a stern look. “Jason. This isn’t happening here, okay?”

“Sure. Just—you know. Whenever. You want me to make you some dinner?”

God, how tempting, how very tempting to just go home with him again. And maybe, this time, stay the whole night and not on the sofa either.