Hodges launched the interface with the speed camera system, and called up the records which showed each of the images. ‘Those three cameras are only temporary, in fact I think they have already been removed now the roadworks are finished.’
‘So it was an average speed checker,’ Gillard said. ‘Was he speeding?’
Hodges shook his head. ‘System didn’t flag it up, so no.’
‘We can get the actual speed though, can’t we?’
Hodges turned to look at his superior officer. ‘If you want. Can’t see what for, mind.’
‘Indulge me.’
Hodges’ fat fingers moved across the keys with practised dexterity. ‘There you go.’ The figure in the data box was 26.4 mph. ‘Ah, bloody system’s got a fault. He couldn’t be going that slowly.’ The screen showed that the roadworks were 8.9 miles long, and he took 19 minutes 43 seconds between the start and finish cameras.
‘No temporary traffic lights, I take it? That would slow the average.’
‘No. They are supposed to turn off the average speed check when there are lights.’
Gillard leaned over, and move the mouse to get the individual camera measurements. The Toyota averaged 48.1 mph between cameras one and two, but only 13.8 mph between two and three.
‘That’s bollocks,’ Hodges said, sitting back in exasperation.
‘No, it’s not. I know that stretch of road. Our suspect stopped somewhere, in the roughly two miles between cameras two and three, and I think I know where.’
Hodges turned round to look up at his boss.
‘If my hunch is right, we will actually get a good look at our suspect.’
* * *
An hour later, Gillard and Hodges had on their screens the CCTV footage they had hoped for.
‘I know this is the only twenty-four-hour petrol station in the area,’ Gillard said. ‘Which means it would be the only one open early on a Sunday morning. Remember there was that horrible assault there two years ago? They upgraded their security after that.’
The BP station had a state-of-the-art multiple camera set-up, with footage held on the cloud rather than on disc locally. This meant it was quickly downloadable to police forces once they had a password issued by the company’s duty security officer. Previously it would have taken twelve to twenty-four hours. That was a big difference when criminals were on the move.
It took a few minutes on fast forward to find the moment when the Toyota pulled in. The entrance camera mounted on the front edge of the canopy clearly picked up the registration number, which matched Morag Fairburn’s car. The male driver was wearing a dark jacket or cagoule, partially open to reveal a lighter coloured shirt. The angle of the camera precluded a view of his face, though the gloves he wore were quite distinct. It was, by the camera clock, 8.19 a.m., around an hour after the attack on Mrs Roy. Gillard was holding his breath as he watched the vehicle edge into the far left-hand of the four service piers. He cross-checked the cloud dashboard with its camera map, and clicked on camera nine, which covered the left-hand side of the pier. A message flashed up.
Camera not in service.
‘Shit! It’s not even two years old!’ He switched to camera eight, on the right of the same pier. Fortunately, there was not a single other vehicle in the filling station to hide the view. For all that, the architecture of the pier meant that signage as well as the location of the pumps obscured much of the view. He could see the Toyota’s door open, but there was no angle on anything above waist height. When the door closed, they could see a pair of black or dark blue trainers, with three parallel light-coloured stripes. The dark trousers looked to be loose, perhaps the bottom part of a shell suit, and was torn on one knee.
‘Dog bite,’ Hodges said.
The suspect was completely hidden while he pumped fuel. There was just one very brief full-height glimpse as he passed through the extreme right-hand periphery of the camera’s fisheye lens.
Hodges froze the image, and moved the magnifier to the right-hand section. It was a side view. The suspect was of average height, slim, and wearing a woolly hat and sunglasses. He had a well-kept but dark beard, and appeared to be of a dark skin tone. Possibly Asian.
‘Bingo,’ breathed Hodges.
‘I don’t know who it is but it’s definitely not Jason Waddington,’ Gillard said. ‘And there appears to be no one else in the vehicle.’ Over the next few minutes they switched methodically from one camera to the next to see if there was any view that they had missed. They only gleaned one extra piece of evidence, from the exit camera. There was a bicycle wheel visible through the rear window.
* * *
Morag Fairburn’s home in Esher was a three-bedroom semi-detached, familiar to Gillard only from the surveillance footage he had seen. Gillard arrived at 8.30 p.m. as arranged, to find lights already on. Accustomed to having to wait for the Roy family, the detective was pleasantly surprised that Morag’s BMW was already parked in the drive and the Toyota estate parked in the street outside.
She answered the doorbell immediately, a sandwich in one hand, mouth full of food, mobile phone tucked into one shoulder. She gestured to Gillard to come in. She was still in work clothes, minus shoes. The detective recognised Harry Roy’s voice on the other end of the phone, asking for various figures to be supplied. Morag gestured to Gillard to go into the lounge, and held up one hand, fingers spread. Five minutes.
The lounge was a very conventional, middle-class room. A single bookcase with as many photographs and ornaments as books, some old photograph albums, and a smallish TV. A small tortoiseshell cat was lying in a basket asleep underneath an end table. A teenage boy was visible in the kitchen, still in school uniform, looking at his phone while eating.
Morag was as good as her word, and five minutes later ended the call, and came in to sit opposite him.
‘Sorry about that. I think you know why we’re so busy. As I said, I’m more than happy for you to take the Toyota away if you think it would help.’
‘Thank you. We’ll get it towed later this evening. Is it always parked outside?’
‘Generally. I leave the key with the others by the hat stand in the hall. Not that I wear many hats. Mrs Boswell has returned the spare key, now her car’s been repaired.’
‘We did a fair bit more work tracing your vehicle, and someone was certainly driving it around before eight o’clock on the morning of Mrs Roy’s death. Are you sure you no one borrowed it?
‘Yes. I’ve had a think, and I’m sure you must be mistaken. I’ve heard that car number plates can be copied.’
‘Well yes, but for it to work they’d have also to clone those rather distinctive alloy wheels. It wouldn’t be worth the effort, to be honest.’
‘It might be, if somebody wanted to frame me.’
‘If so, they wouldn’t be doing a very good job. It’s quite clear that the car was being driven by a dark-complexioned man.’
‘And this is the man who killed Mrs Roy?’
‘It’s quite possible.’
At that moment there was the noise of a key in the door. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘My bridesmaid’s dress,’ Morag stood up and went out into the hall. Gillard recognised the wedding planner Zayan, standing there with some weighty plastic-wrapped clothing. He kissed her on both cheeks, popped his head in and said: ‘Hello again, detective chief inspector.’
‘So do you have a new wedding date?’ Gillard asked.
Zayan rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘Don’t ask,’ he sighed. ‘It’s an absolute nightmare, the bride’s mother is impossible, just impossible.’ He turned to Morag. ‘Harry should have married you darling, life would have been so much simpler.’ He laughed, and ran up the stairs carrying the dress.
‘He has a key to your house?’
‘Yes. And he has used the car in the past. But he was away in India with Harry when she died, so it won’t have been him.’
‘Ah, I see.’
As Zayan came downstairs, now empty-handed, Morag called him
in. ‘The detective chief inspector has been asking about the Toyota. You were away in Mumbai with Harry, weren’t you?’
‘Absolutely. Last time I borrowed the heap was in February I think.’ He turned to Gillard. ‘Got my own gorgeous Mini now. I mean you can’t go to clients in that knackered old thing.’ He jabbed with his thumb out into the road. ‘However, the Toyota does have room to lay out a full length wedding dress without folding, which is something I suppose.’ He waved his goodbyes and was about to go when Gillard asked for his contact details. He wrote down the phone number, and an address in Walton-on-Thames, then looked up, slightly puzzled.
‘Isn’t that the same building that Harry lives in?’
‘Yes. But mine is a pokey little flat, not a palatial penthouse like he’s got.’
* * *
Gillard asked for the keys to the Toyota, and went out to take a look just as Zayan was pulling away in his Mini. It was too dark to see anything clearly, so he went to his own vehicle, dug out a large torch, then donned a pair of latex gloves. He peered in through the windows and was disappointed to see that the car was clean and tidy. Of course, Mrs Boswell had borrowed it. She was the kind who would have vacuumed it all out before returning it. Maybe even had it valeted. Gillard berated himself that it taken so long to track down this vehicle. He walked all around it, and realised that the exterior had been cleaned too. CSI were never going to find anything, he was convinced of that. The detective squatted down behind the tailgate, confirming from the reflection in the torch beam that the handle, and that lovely bastion of all good fingerprints, the bottom edge of the tailgate, had been cleaned.
There was just one chance.
He opened the driver side rear door, folded the rear seat forward and shone his lamp on the rear, to a crease marking where the leatherette bordered a carpet-style fabric, one that matched the floor of the boot, and when folded down would extend that space.
‘What are you looking for?’ Morag asked from behind him.
‘Not sure really.’ He hadn’t heard her approach and had assumed she was still inside the house. He tore off a hand-sized piece of gel tape and took a lift from the upper rear portion of the seat, pressing it into the crevice. He didn’t want to tell her that what he was hoping to find was a smear of mud, or if he was really lucky, a fingerprint. Only the most thorough of car valet cleanings would involve wiping the fabric back of the rear seats.
He was quite hopeful about dirt. Anything that might have been caught on a brake lever or handlebar if the bicycle had been stowed back in the vehicle after the assault. If the assailant had any forensic nous, he would have chucked away not only the bike, but any clothing and footwear he had been wearing at the time of the attack, rather than bring it back into the vehicle. But you never knew. Criminals did stupid things. That was how most of them got caught. Ingenious detective work did the trick in only a minority of cases.
He was still packing away the tape and gloves when the police flatbed truck arrived to take away the Toyota. Morag stood next to him, watching them winch the vehicle gradually onto the back. She trod from one slippered foot to the other as the chill evening breeze gathered. ‘It feels a bit sad actually. That was the first car I ever owned. I had many delightful summer days when Harry and I used to slip off to country lanes.’
‘To make use of all that space in the back?’
She smiled. ‘Have you never done that, detective chief inspector?’
‘Many years ago.’ His thoughts strayed away to his first important girlfriend, Liz, when he was just eighteen. Now there was a story. Happy and sad. For another time.
The truck driver waved a cheery goodbye, and after double-checking his load, drove off.
Gillard bagged up the tape and returned with the evidence to his car.
‘When will I get the car back?’ she asked, following him with a slap of slippers on the tarmac.
‘It should only be a few days,’ he said, as he climbed into the driving seat. He slid the window down. She was standing there, leaning towards the open window, arms folded tightly around her against the evening chill, red hair flaring in the breeze. She was beginning to shiver.
‘I should have offered you a sandwich. You must be starving. And you didn’t finish your coffee.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
Morag Fairburn looked like a normal young woman, bright, caring, hard-working but not overly ambitious. She was obviously unlucky in love but still optimistic. Everything she said seemed fair and reasonable. Yet some part of him remained troubled. Maybe he shared with Prisha Roy some deep-seated organ of doubt, which niggled and grumbled at whatever Morag said or did.
He pulled away, and watched her in the rear-view mirror, waving goodbye as if he was a relative who had come over for tea.
Chapter 18
Wednesday
Gillard had deferred yesterday’s incident room meeting, but now wanted to update everybody on the state of the case. The nine a.m. gathering was an ad hoc affair, everyone who worked on the case being called together. Gillard himself arrived half an hour early, hungover with tiredness after another night disturbed by wailing cats. He rearranged the whiteboards to try to bring some sense to the floundering inquiry. Claire Mulholland brought him a spare coffee and then DS Shireen Corey-Williams walked in with DC Rob Townsend, the young research intelligence officer, carrying an extra pile of documents. Gillard had to go out to find Tweedledum and Tweedledee, detectives Colin Hodges and Carl Hoskins, who were going over some CCTV footage. Finally they were ready to start.
Gillard stood up and went over to the first whiteboard, on which all the details of the investigation of Jason Waddington had been scrawled in marker pen. There were also the latest updates on the interviews with him, in which he had continued to deny any connection with the murder of Mrs Roy. He scrawled a list: fingerprints, footwear, fibres and DNA.
‘We have had no success getting fingerprints from either the murder weapon or Mrs Roy’s clothing. Likewise, we have not found at Jason Waddington’s house, or anywhere else, footwear that matches the snow imprint that we got at the crime scene nor the fibres recovered from the snout of our valiant boxer dog. That leaves us with DNA. The tiny sweat mark on the murder weapon yielded DNA of an unknown person. Unfortunately that sample was not large enough or in good enough condition to yield a mitochondrial element. The only other DNA is from the root of a single human hair, belonging to Mr Waddington, found on the lapel of Mrs Roy’s coat.’
Gillard stood in front of the whiteboard and said: ‘I’m now certain that Jason Waddington was nothing to do with this crime. The forensic connection between Waddington and the crime scene is not reliable, and I don’t think I’m the only one who has found his protestations of innocence convincing. Moreover, the thallium poisoning was clearly done by someone else. He had no access to her office.’
Colin Hodges, who had interviewed Waddington only yesterday, folded his arms and asked: ‘We knew that a few days ago. So what changed between yesterday and today, sir?’
‘Nothing. It’s just been a growing conviction of mine, and I’m sorry to have only communicated this quite late in the day.’
‘So, do we have any suspects, sir?’ Hoskins asked.
‘Not yet, but I think we are close.’
Claire Mulholland stuck a hand up. ‘So do you now think it was somebody within the family?’
Gillard nodded, and moved to the next whiteboard, which was labelled with the company name. ‘I’m convinced that her murder is intimately connected to the future of the company she headed. The difficult thing has been to narrow down to exactly who would have a financial motive for killing her. I think Shireen has more about this.’ He nodded at her. ‘I think most of you are aware by now that there are financial difficulties in Empire of Spice, and it is likely to be taken over by a rival.’
‘The tricky Mr Johnny Lam,’ Claire said. ‘I don’t trust him.’
‘Indeed, he is one of the few people with a clear motiv
e, seeing as Mrs Roy was always against selling the company. However if we go back to the evidence, the only people who would have been able to switch the contaminated deodorant for the one in Mrs Roy’s desk have been trusted family or close associates. Remember, this would have taken two trips, one to discover that Mrs Roy even kept a deodorant in her desk, and a second to switch the poisoned one in.’
Claire intervened again: ‘Unless, of course, Mrs Roy herself had brought in the contaminated deodorant from her own bathroom or from her flat in Leatherhead.’
‘Yes, there is that possibility. Sadly but predictably the only DNA or fingerprints on the deodorant are Mrs Roy’s. We’re unlikely to ever get to the bottom of how the deodorant found its way into her desk. All that we can say with certainty is that those with the easiest access would be, in order: her PA Philippa Boswell, Morag Fairburn and Harry Roy. Then there are the two sisters, Prisha and Kiara who, though not frequent visitors, would tend not to be questioned. There is also Deepak Tripathi, possibly Simon Parr-Fielding, Prisha’s partner, and the office contract cleaner. We should also consider the wedding planner, any senior employees, and so on.’ He wrote down the last few names, which had not yet been added to the whiteboard. He then turned back to the meeting.
‘I think you can see that we have real difficulties here. Those with the easiest access to her have the weakest motive. We’ve picked up plenty of DNA from employees and family members around Mrs Roy’s office, but not on or in the drawer where she kept the deodorant. Frankly I don’t think this case is going to be solved by forensics. While it seems clear to me that many in the family have various grievances, some of them quite understandable, there is no proof of anything. That is why I would like to turn to the third strand of evidence.’ He stepped across to the third whiteboard, on which all the details of the crime scene and the Toyota Avensis were recorded.
The Body in the Snow Page 23
