‘We have, yes.’
‘And he’s been charged, I understand.’
‘Yes.’ Gillard was already feeling very uncomfortable.
‘So what on earth are you doing going through our refrigerator? Didn’t this man just hit her over the head?’
‘Ms Roy, don’t jump to conclusions. We still have several active lines of inquiry.’
‘I fail to understand how helping yourself to the contents of our kitchen is going to help solve the case,’ she said.
‘Then I’m afraid you’re just going to have to bear with us for a while.’
Kiara leaned past him into the fridge, and brought out a small clear jar of pale yellow fluid from the door shelf. ‘There you go. I think it’s the only one here. The label says February 9. I’m sure you’ll find it an excellent vintage.’
Gillard looked dubiously at the jar before bringing out a plastic evidence bag from his jacket pocket and sealing the jar inside.
Kiara shook her head. ‘So you’re really taking the piss?’
‘Yes. Would you like a receipt?’
* * *
Gillard’s next stop was Mrs Roy’s flat in Leatherhead. A CSI van was already outside, and he saw two male officers in Tyvek suits, booties, gloves and hairnets carrying out cardboard boxes stacked with foodstuffs. He stepped into the kitchen and found CSI chief, Yaz Quoroshi, looking at a tray of health supplements.
‘Hi Yaz,’ Gillard said. ‘They don’t need to be suited up for this, do they?’
‘No. These are the new trainees, I thought I’d get them involved in something harmless to get them used to moving about wearing all the clobber.’
The crackling of plastic heralded the arrival of a young woman from the bathroom. Despite the hairnet and paper dust mask, Gillard recognised Kirsty Mockett. She was carrying a cardboard box full of toiletries, and smiled with her eyes as she squeezed past on her way to the van. Once she was out of earshot, Gillard asked: ‘How is she doing?’
Yaz glanced sideways towards the van. ‘Fine. Eager to learn, not too full of her own self-importance. I think she’ll do well.’ Turning back to the health supplements, he said: ‘I understand everything is to be checked for contaminants.’
‘That’s right,’ Gillard said. ‘Delahaye believes she may have ingested thallium.’
The CSI head eyed him warily. ‘Mass spectrometry is the way they test for that, I think. It’s going to be expensive for all that lot. I’m a bit surprised at this, seeing as you have already charged someone. Or am I missing something here?’
Gillard tried his best at a confident smile, though he felt anything but. ‘It’s just another line of inquiry. The toxicology results were ambiguous and we just want to see if there’s an accidental or criminal cause for it. We wouldn’t want to overlook anything that turns out to be significant.’
Quoroshi nodded. ‘DCI Gillard, always careful, always cautious.’ He clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. It made him feel like a complete fraud.
He made his way around to the back of the van, where the CSI trainees were stripping off their plastic suits.
‘I’m glad to get out of that,’ said one of the male officers, whom Gillard remembered was called Ryan something. He had a thin film of sweat across the forehead, and his eyes slid sideways to Kirsty, who was wriggling rather sensuously out of her suit. The DCI couldn’t entirely blame him – the woman had a great figure, now emerging from the plastic like a butterfly from a cocoon.
‘Got some more stuff for you,’ Gillard said, handing across to Ryan a bag of recyclable containers he’d recovered from a wheelie bin.
‘So, what are you going to do with all that?’ Kirsty asked.
‘We going to get it tested for a poison called thallium.’
‘I thought she got whacked over the head,’ Ryan said, sharing a glance with his mate.
‘She did,’ Gillard said. ‘But that’s not the end of the story.’
Yaz Quoroshi returned with his iPad in hand. ‘Craig, I’ve just been checking, and I think we can save some time on the tests. We can do them ourselves this afternoon. I’ve arranged with my wife, I think you met Jenny, who is a research chemist, to borrow a lab at Guildford University. It’ll be a good training exercise, and it will only take a couple of hours.’
* * *
Later that afternoon Gillard and DI Claire Mulholland were sitting with the three trainees in a large lab at the university. They were all wearing white coats and safety glasses. Jenny Quoroshi bustled around in the lab labelling everything. Each of the foodstuffs had been numbered and marked up, and a liquefied sample of each put into a correspondingly numbered test tube. There were almost 200 of them in a rack. Mrs Quoroshi had already mixed together bismuth nitrate, sodium iodide and nitric acid to make a reagent, and was now using a teat pipette to put a drop in each of the tubes.
‘Now this will give a red precipitate if any thallium is present,’ she said. ‘It will only take a few minutes. It is possible for there to be false positives in this test but at least we will then only have a handful of samples to send on for spectroscopy. That should save the good old British taxpayer a good deal of money.’
‘Always happy about that,’ Gillard said, smiling at Yaz.
The two detectives and the trainees watched in silence as each of the samples received a drop of the reagent. They waited. And waited. After ten minutes not one of the foodstuffs or medicines had tested positive.
‘That’s a little bit of a disappointment,’ said Yaz.
Gillard got up and walked up to one of the boxes from the flat, packed with all the contents of Mrs Roy’s hypochondriac cupboards. ‘Did you test the toothpaste?’ he asked, picking up a tube.
Yaz nodded. ‘We did that and the mouthwash.’
‘What if the poisoner ditched whatever it was?’ Kirsty said.
Gillard looked up at her as she continued. ‘I mean, if he or she could get in to plant something poisonous, then it would be possible to come back a second time and remove it.’
‘That’s true, of course,’ he replied. His phone began to ring, and before he answered it he said: ‘Just make sure you test everything.’
The call was from DC Colin Hodges about Gabby overhearing a conversation at Harry Roy’s flat. ‘The number plate on her photograph is of a vehicle belonging to Deepak Tripathi.’
‘Ah, Prisha Roy’s ex-husband. Thank you for that, Colin.’ Gillard hung up. It was the first glimpse of the Roy family’s secrets, and a fascinating one. If you learned to keep it zipped up. So Deepak was castigating Harry for something. Whatever it was, could it be anything to do with the murder of his mother? Then he realised that Deepak was the one person closely associated with the family that he hadn’t had the opportunity to take a DNA swab from. He’d remedy that as soon as possible.
* * *
Gillard had promised Sam a meal out on the Friday evening. She never set too much store by such promises, because he wasn’t in control of whether he was able to keep them. Still, the sheer fact that he was aware enough of his long absences to try to make amends was a plus point. She herself had had a rough day, and when she reversed the car up the drive at five, trying to avoid a big black SUV carelessly parked half on the far pavement, she could see quite clearly that the net curtains in the house opposite were twitching. Gillard’s Aunt Trish was watching her movements again. Sam felt she was getting a little paranoid. But as the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean to say they’re not out to get you. The woman’s intrusive nosiness, particularly about Sam’s pregnancy, had grated. It was all very well for her husband to just ignore it, but it was she who was bearing the oppressive burden of living opposite a woman who had forced her way into their lives. It was hard to explain to anyone who had not heard about the court case.
At least tonight, they could get some time away. They’d already discussed where they might move, probably closer to Guildford. Craig was spending more and more of his time doing high-profile work from Mount Br
owne, so it would make sense. They would certainly keep that a secret from Trish.
The arrival of Craig’s Vauxhall, bang on time, pleased her. As she looked out of the window to confirm the familiar engine note, she again saw the curtains move opposite. Sam was already dressed up, made up and ready, the reservation at the bistro confirmed. She was hungry.
As soon as Craig walked in, she embraced him, and kissed him fiercely.
‘I’ve missed you.’
‘What, since this morning?’ He laughed, putting down his briefcase.
‘Let’s go now,’ she said. ‘I’ll fill you in on the latest spying.’
‘Oh shit. Did you get chance to contact the estate agent?’
‘Yes, they’re coming round next week. I suggest we get it sold without a board outside.’
‘Good idea. Keep her in the dark.’
* * *
The reserved table was, as Sam had requested, a secluded booth. The guttering candle shed merely a glow on the dark wood panelling that separated them from other diners. They each ordered a small glass of Barolo and the bistro’s signature thick crusty sourdough bread which they broke between them, and dabbed thickly with the chef’s home-made butter. The main course, as usual, took nearly an hour to arrive, but Sam’s seabass and Gillard’s halibut were exquisitely cooked. At Sam’s insistence, her husband had turned off his phone. For two delightful hours she had his company entirely to herself. He complimented her on her make-up, and the silk blouse she had chosen to go with the light blue peasant skirt and suede boots. It was only as they approached dessert that he finally mentioned work.
‘I’ve screwed up, Sam. Big-time.’ He went on to explain the potential contamination of discarded gloves which undermined the tiny speck of forensic evidence which linked Jason Waddington to the crime scene.
She was horrified. ‘Why hasn’t he been released?’
He sighed, and obliquely eyed the other diners, to make sure no one was listening. ‘Rigby has got my balls in a vice. She’s given me a week, until Thursday, to get a new suspect. We tried to make it easy on Waddington by not identifying him. But of course the name’s got out.’
‘That’s terrible.’ She reached out for his hand.
‘Not just for him. I feel bad for the investigative team. They’re my people, and they’re having to carry on following the Jason Waddington line, even though I know he’s very unlikely to have had anything to do with it.’
‘So have you got anything else to replace it with?’
He blew another sigh. ‘She was being poisoned. Probably. Delahaye is being very careful. There are still reasons why it might be accidental exposure, and none of the food or drink in either her house or the flat where she sometimes stayed has tested positive. But it keeps leading me back towards the family.’
‘It’s what you always told me, isn’t it? Most crime is committed within families. Abuse, domestic violence. It’s just the least likely to ever be reported.’
Gillard nodded. ‘Of course here, we’re talking murder and potentially, with this toxin, an earlier attempted murder. I just think it’s going to be really difficult to link the two because of the different MOs. One, a vicious and brutal attack which could have been committed by anybody, and the other a subtle and premeditated poisoning, which surely must have required some access to the woman as well as a knowledge of chemistry.’
‘Now, my news,’ Sam said. ‘This morning when I was being sick in the downstairs loo, her bloody cat was in the house.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘No, seriously. It was that ginger and white one, Napoleon. I saw it in the kitchen, sniffing around.’
‘But how can it get in?’
‘It must have climbed onto the garage roof, and from the ridge tiles it’s just a short jump through the casement window at the side.’
Craig was now looking at his phone, which he had just turned on. ‘Then we should keep it closed,’ he said, without looking up. She was disappointed. From long experience this would be the end of their romantic evening.
‘But Craig, we have got to have some air in the house. I already keep all the downstairs windows shut, but you know how stuffy the place is. And I seem to get so hot now.’
‘Mmm.’
She could see he wasn’t listening. ‘Craig?’
He glanced at her. ‘I’ll fit a couple of bars across it. When I get a mo.’ He was staring intently at the phone, shaking his head.
‘So, about the house move—’
‘Hey, Prisha Roy has been arrested for some ton-up drink-driving.’ He looked pleased.
She watched him scanning the phone, absorbing the details, not noticing her gradually sagging expression. She couldn’t compete with the latest twist in a murder case. She couldn’t compete with Prisha Roy, either. He looked at his watch, and she saw him calculating.
‘You’re going over to see that woman now, aren’t you?’
He looked up at her, surprised by the wounded tone. His eyes softened as he gazed at her. ‘No, Sam. She’s in custody. I’ll go tomorrow morning. I’ve got a few things to ask her. A night in the cells might take the edge off her arrogance.’
‘So what do I do to take the edge off yours?’ She stood up, grabbed her coat and headed for the door.
‘What did I do?’ he asked, but she was no longer there to answer him.
* * *
It was midnight when Kirsty got back from an evening at the pub after a couple of good pints with her new colleagues at CSI. Already the recruits were revelling in stomach-turning anecdotes they had heard about dead bodies, maggot infested, stinking or turning to slime. It was no coincidence that these thoughts returned to her as she opened her front door. The flat was cold and felt damp, the carpet threadbare. When she sat on the loo she noticed moisture running down the inside of the bathroom window, and black mould on the inside of the window frames. The perils of renting.
She had just flushed when over the rush of water, she heard the phone trilling. She hurried to the mobile, thinking it must be something important.
‘Hello, my lovely one.’
‘Oh it’s you,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d told you—’
‘My dear Kirsty, I know you want me to call you. I know you need the money. Now listen to what I want you to do. It concerns a Detective Chief Inspector Gillard, whom I believe you know. He is becoming quite an irritant.’
She listened frozen in horror to what she was being asked to do. He hadn’t finished when she cut the call and turned off her phone. There was absolutely no way she would do that. No way at all. She knew she had to report this conversation. But then she realised she could not. He knew, that’s why he’d risked telling her. What had happened those years ago now made it impossible for her to say a word. She knew she wouldn’t get a wink of sleep now. She lay on the bed and reached for her drawer, for a familiar comfort.
Once again the image of a dead body flooded back. Lying in the snow. But this time it had a familiar male face. DCI Craig Gillard.
Chapter 11
Saturday
Gillard arrived at Hatfield Police Station before eight o’clock in the morning, just as Prisha Roy was being given police bail. The email from Hertfordshire Police said she had been clocked by a camera doing 109 miles per hour on a dual carriageway where the limit was 50. The distinctive black Porsche Cayenne was then spotted by a mobile patrol at 8.45 p.m. and followed for a number of miles, during which it exceeded sixty in a residential area, before being brought to a halt just outside Harpenden. She refused a breathalyser on the spot, and was arrested and taken into custody. She then refused to give a urine sample.
She was leaning on the counter looking tired while a bearded desk sergeant gave her the obligatory debrief and returned her possessions, which included a belt and a pair of high heels. She was a good four inches taller once she’d put on the shoes, and was outraged to be told that she couldn’t collect her car keys until the afternoon.
‘Madam, having fail
ed to give a urine sample we can’t be sure you are yet in a fit state to drive,’ the sergeant said. ‘Is there somebody who can come and collect you?’
Gillard walked up, flashed his warrant card at the sergeant and said, ‘I’ll give her a lift home.’
‘What are you doing here?’ she said, noticing him for the first time.
‘Helping you out, apparently.’
She shrugged, and immediately started looking through her phone. Gillard led her to his unmarked Vauxhall. She showed no signs of getting in, more intent on the messages she was sending. With a sigh, the detective pulled open the passenger side door and gestured to the seat. She slid in without thanks or acknowledgement. She then made a call, talking loudly and animatedly to another woman in a language Gillard couldn’t understand. He sat in the car with his arms folded and waited. Still on the call, she turned to him and waved towards the road, as if he was a taxi driver. He did nothing. She eyed him suspiciously while she finished up the call, and then finally put the phone away.
‘Why aren’t you driving?’
‘Two reasons. One, I’m not your lackey. I’m here for a reason. Second, I don’t know where you want to go.’
She stared ahead at the blank car park, then briefly closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude of me.’ She gave him her home address, then took some moisturiser and started applying it to her face.
‘Did you choose the tikka masala?’ Gillard asked, as he drove. ‘It’s usually okay.’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t eat anything until this morning. They suggested the bacon sandwich for breakfast.’ She gave a slight laugh. ‘I wouldn’t normally eat it, nor white bread. Actually it was very good. But the coffee was like poison.’
Speaking of which. The sentence floated temptingly in Gillard’s mouth. But this was not the right time. Instead he asked, ‘Hangover?’
She nodded. ‘Always a very bad idea.’
The Body in the Snow Page 16
