Hodges, having finished his slice, was gazing lustfully at Gillard’s. ‘Nice to get the full labelling of allergens, I thought. Just like my boxers: “May contain nuts”.’
‘Thank you for lowering the tone, Colin,’ Claire said. ‘We can always rely on you.’
The door opened again and a female officer leaned in. ‘DCI Gillard, call for you. City of London Police. It’s about Deepak Tripathi.’
Gillard reluctantly left his cake to answer the call. He was pretty sure that would be the last he’d ever see of it.
Chapter 22
Mehmet Ozul was the franchisee of Chicken Express, and had been brought in to Mount Browne for questioning because DI Claire Mulholland was far from happy with the answers he had given when uniformed officers had gone to visit him at the takeaway shop. Ozul was a corpulent, swarthy fellow, and looked like he should have been a bouncer. Probably useful when the local drunks came flooding in to his shop after the pubs had closed. ‘So let’s start again, shall we,’ Claire said, looking down at her notes. ‘You say you have never seen this man before?’ She pushed a photograph of Zayan Lal, one she had borrowed from Morag Fairburn, across the table.
‘That’s right.’
‘And you didn’t recognise him when he came into your shop?’
‘No. We get lots of one-off customers. I know a few by sight, and even fewer by name. If you say he was there, okay, then he was there.’ He shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘But I don’t know him.’
‘This man is a fugitive from justice,’ Hodges said, tapping the picture. ‘We know he was in your shop, and either he is familiar enough to know there is a back way out, or he had a conversation with a member of your staff who told him.’
‘We need your co-operation,’ Claire said.
‘I am giving it, innit?’
‘And I really think someone must have seen something,’ Hodges said.
‘How long has your CCTV not been working?’ Claire asked.
‘About a week,’ Ozul said.
‘Must be a problem,’ Claire said. ‘You need to get it sorted. Casual staff at the till, drunken customers.’ She shook her head as if the problems of running a takeaway shop were familiar to her.
Ozul nodded.
Hodges slapped down a thick pile of papers in front Ozul. ‘Here are the call logs of all the phones, yours and staff,’ he said tapping at the documents. ‘Find me the number of your security company, and show me when you called them.’
There was no reply. Hodges leaned across the table belligerently. ‘Mehmet, you’ve got a bit of previous. Class B possession, but they could have done you for dealing, I reckon.’
‘You were lucky to get a suspended sentence,’ Claire said.
‘We took a swab off the cistern lid in your staff toilet,’ Hodges said. ‘Cocaine. We could do you. And then of course there’s the immigration status of some of your staff…’
The big man rubbed a hand across his face. ‘Okay, okay. Yes, I know him.’
‘Finally,’ Hodges said, sharing a look with Claire Mulholland. He then turned back to the interviewee. ‘How?’
‘We went to catering college together in Preston.’
‘When?’
‘Years ago. He dropped out, never finished the course.’
‘Where is he now, Mehmet?’ Claire asked.
Ozul sat back in the chair with his arms out. ‘I really don’t know. I promise you.’
‘Is he at your flat?’ she asked.
‘No, one night only, I said.’
‘Yeah, like a Barbra Streisand finale,’ Hodges muttered. ‘Always back for more. So where’d he go?’
‘On my life I do not know. I loaned him some money and I said goodbye.’ The man’s voice broke slightly on the last word. Claire realised in a flash that Ozul and Lal had been more than friends, at least at some stage. Ah, that explained why Lal would take the risk of coming here to Guildford. When the shit hits the fan, it’s about the people you can trust your life to. It was also clear that whatever pressure they put on Ozul, he would not tell them everything. Claire decided to take the interview in a different direction.
‘You’ve known him for a long time, Mehmet. How would you describe his mood?’ She saw Hodges eyeing her, clearly bewildered.
The big man shook his head, his jowls wobbling. ‘Desperate. Just desperate.’
‘Because he’d committed a murder?’
Ozul was about to answer, but his jaw froze, and he hesitated. ‘He didn’t say,’ he replied carefully. ‘But he had a knife, and he was very angry.’
‘Do you think he would commit murder?’ she asked.
‘He likes to get even. He’s always been like that. He takes things very personally. If he likes you, my God, he will do anything for you, but if you cross him. Well…’
* * *
Gillard spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in meetings or on the phone, mainly discussing how to proceed with the fraud case against Deepak Tripathi. The Serious Fraud Office was happy to let him have bail with a surrendered passport, while they continued to dig through the accounts of Empire of Spice. The meetings ran on and on, with various procedural points and even the appointment of an interview strategy officer at the SFO, whose job as far as Gillard could see would simply be to write down a list of questions to ask Deepak and others. This was the kind of policing he hated. Just bureaucratic box-ticking.
It had been a hell of a week. While he was driving home to Sam, through typically slow Friday evening traffic, the prospect of quiet time in front of the TV was thoroughly alluring. Sam had sent him a couple of texts, asking him when he would be home. This was unusual for her, to be so needy, and it gave him a bad feeling. She met him at the door, her face tear-streaked, and he knew immediately something terrible had happened.
‘Oh Craig, I’ve lost the baby,’ she said. He scooped her up into his arms, brought her inside and kicked the door shut behind them. He held her hot wet face against his neck while she shook soundlessly and held him tight. There was nothing to say, no comfort to be given except the most primitive human empathy and proximity. Only then, safe in his embrace, did she finally release the raw, ragged cry of loss, the escaping soul of their unborn child.
For hours they lay in darkness on the bed, for the most part not speaking, his hands busy stroking her hair and back, keeping her close. ‘It just happened, an hour before you got home,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve been feeling fine, I had a good day at work. And then that blasted cat…’
‘What?’ he whispered. ‘I fixed the broken garage window.’
‘Yes, Craig, I kept telling you about it. Napoleon gets through the spare bedroom window from the garage roof.’
‘Couldn’t you have kept it shut until I have time to fix it? I thought that’s what we agreed.’
‘Don’t criticise me, not on top of this—’
‘Sam, darling, it’s not a criticism, I just thought we had agreed—’
‘But it’s so bloody stuffy in there. I had to have it open, I had to.’ She started crying again. ‘It was all on the floor by the bed, and I texted you about it, and I started clearing up—’
‘Sorry, what was on the floor?’
‘Sick, vomit, puke. It was sick, and there were all these bird feathers, and even little claws.’
Craig jerked as if he’d been given an electric shock. ‘I’ll strangle her, I’ll bloody strangle her.’
‘It’s male, Craig.’
‘Not the cat, it’s Trish. I’m not blaming the animal.’
‘And that’s when I started to feel this pain, awful pain, and had to rush to the bathroom.’
Craig returned to embracing her. Sam had already suffered a miscarriage, a year ago, a baby they had conceived when they were in Devon. And now this, a second time almost on the anniversary. And there was nothing to be done about it.
* * *
It was a subdued breakfast on Saturday morning when Craig Gillard got a text from Carl Hoskins. He looked up a
t Sam, who was trying to eat a little cereal now that her cramps had stopped. ‘Colin Hodges was taken in to hospital overnight with kidney problems,’ he told her. ‘He’s apparently in intensive care.’
‘Poor thing. Is that the one with the horrid ginger beard?’
‘Yes, marginally the uglier of the two. He is quite overweight and a notorious salad dodger. Still, I’ll drop by and see him later on. I’ll take him a bunch of celery, that should cheer him up.’
‘Cheer you up more likely,’ she said, then looks down. ‘Craig, I really want to move house as soon as possible. I feel her malevolent presence all the time.’
‘Well, the advert is on Rightmove and we’ve had seven or eight viewings, there’s not much more we can do.’
‘We could lower the price.’
‘Already?’ Craig looked at Sam, his wife, and felt a surge of protective emotions. She looked wan and older, weighted by worry. He had been working so hard in the last couple of weeks that these problems at home had not been dealt with. They had to move away from Trish. It was only money after all, nothing compared to Sam’s happiness.
‘I’m going to see Trish right now, Sam. And before I go to see Colin, I’m going to fit some chicken wire over the outside of that window, so Napoleon can’t get in.’ He imagined Sam, bent over on hands and knees wiping up cat puke, seeing her with one hand on her tummy.
‘Don’t lose your temper with her, Craig. You know how nasty and devious she can be.’
* * *
He marched across the road to Trish’s bungalow. One of her cats was sitting on top of her wheelie bin. He rang the doorbell, long and hard, and noticed the twitch of net curtains to the right of the door. It was a full minute before the front door was opened, as far as the security chain would allow. Trish was sitting in a wheelchair, something she had never required in the past.
‘What’s with the chair?’ Craig asked.
‘I had a fall yesterday, and my back’s in agony. I rang the taxi to go to the hospital, but they said they couldn’t take wheelchairs in the cab.’ She looked at him beseechingly. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get there.’
He had to hand it to her. She could turn the tables on him in no time flat. He could hardly lambast her in these circumstances, but equally he was damned if he was going to ferry her to the hospital for some imagined ailment.
‘Sam’s lost the baby,’ he said. Trish’s hands shot to her face, covering nose and mouth. Her eyes watered. ‘She was clearing up after one of your cats when it happened,’ he continued. Yes, see how you like it.
‘Oh, that’s a wicked accusation to make.’
‘It’s not an accusation, it’s a fact. I’m not saying that one caused the other.’
‘Then why mention it?’
Chapter 23
Gillard arrived at Redhill Hospital, still pretending that the main reason he was there was to go and see Hodges. He opened the boot and set up Trish’s wheelchair, which he moved around to the front passenger door. She stared up at him until he realised she wanted him to lift her into the chair. He did so with bad grace. He’d much rather have been with Sam, nurturing a woman he loved – a woman who really had suffered a medical emergency. Conversation in the car about cats and access had been equally difficult. It had ended with Craig threatening to kill any of her animals that either fouled his garden or house. He regretted saying it almost immediately.
‘Just let me know if they have done their business inside or out and I promise I shall come round to clean it up for you,’ she said. Trish knew that neither he nor Sam would allow her into the house under any circumstances.
He parked Trish at A&E, then made his way to the receptionist to ask about Colin Hodges. He was told to wait, so he took a seat and rang Claire Mulholland, who was covering the weekend. ‘Any progress on Zayan Lal?’ he asked, standing up and moving away from those who could overhear him.
‘None whatever. He seems to have vanished. His burner phone is switched off, and there are no CCTV sightings. We are keeping an eye on Chicken Express, but if he’s got a contact there, I’m sure he will have been tipped off to stay away.’
‘Has CSI finished with his car?’ Gillard watched from the corner of his eye as a white-coated female medic emerged from the lift and went up to the receptionist. They had a brief conversation, then both glanced at him, and then at Trish.
‘Yes, but they didn’t find anything of interest—’
The medic was now walking towards him. ‘Thanks, Claire, got to go.’ He ended the call.
The woman looked at him with a rather wan smile, and suddenly he knew this was bad news.
‘Is the lady in the wheelchair Mr Hodges’ mother?’ she asked carefully.
‘No, she’s not related to him. I’m not family, I’m a police colleague.’
Gillard had delivered enough bereavements in his life to know what he was about to be told, but the confirmation came from a different direction. The lift doors opened immediately behind them, and a wailing family burst out, marching towards the exit. Joan, Colin’s wife, plus their three teenage kids, each in floods of tears.
Colin Hodges must be dead.
* * *
Calming the bereaved is never an easy task, but Gillard knew it was his duty to catch up to Joan and offer his condolences. His unsteady progress towards her, as she hurried out towards the car park, made him realise he too was in shock. He’d worked with Colin for more than a decade, lamenting the man’s political incorrectness, but also enjoying his earthy sense of humour. As a detective he was unimaginative but he could crank out hour after hour scrutinising CCTV, doing the basics of police work, that stuff which rarely gets portrayed on TV but is essential to catching criminals.
As he hurried after Joan, he tried to formulate some kind of appropriate epitaph. He caught up with her as she was fumbling for change at the ever-hungry car park ticket machine. He helped her navigate the instructions, and only when she had the ticket clasped firmly in her fingers did she look up at him and recognise who he was. He started to blurt out his makeshift eulogy, screwing it up almost immediately. She ignored what he had to say.
‘It was meant for you, you know,’ she said accusingly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘That bitch was trying to kill you, not him. He just couldn’t help himself, if only he hadn’t been so greedy,’ she said, and burst into tears again.
Hodges’ son, aged about twelve and already a mini-me of his father, turned to Gillard and said: ‘It was in the cake. Dad told us while the ambulance was coming.’
Gillard’s mouth flapped pointlessly, and he held on to the hospital wall which seemed at this moment the only stable point in the entire universe.
Kirsty Mockett? Could she really be a murderer? And trying to kill him? It had to be wrong, because it would bring the entire case crashing down. She was the only witness to the cyclist. The first on the scene. His mind raced as he tried to fathom any reason why the young CSI trainee would want to kill anybody. At the very least, this would mean her description of the assailant could not be relied upon. Without forensic corroboration, the case against Zayan Lal seem to be falling to pieces before his very eyes, just as that against Jason Waddington had.
He grabbed his phone, and made his way further out, past an impromptu smoking huddle of pyjama-clad patients and the odd exhausted-looking nurse, to a place where he would not be overheard. He had a lot of very urgent calls to make. Perhaps the most pressing one, he suddenly realised, was to Research Intelligence Officer, Rob Townsend, Kirsty’s new and perhaps rather vulnerable boyfriend.
* * *
News of Colin Hodges’ death travelled like wildfire within the Surrey Police CID. While no one had managed to get hold of Rob Townsend or Kirsty Mockett, Gillard’s calls to Claire Mulholland and Carl Hoskins established that nobody else seemed to have suffered any ill effects from eating the cake.
‘I do think we’re jumping to conclusions here,’ Claire said, when he rang her. ‘Colin
made a habit of stuffing himself, but I don’t think we can be sure that a single piece of cake had anything to do with his kidney failure.’
‘Well, the hospital has already ordered a toxicology report. And I’ve been in contact with the registrar there to make sure that they check for thallium. I also rang Mount Browne reception, to see if we can get the incident room bins checked. I’m not sure of the cleaning roster, but there might well be some of those paper plates still there, and we can get any crumbs analysed.’
Gillard described his encounter with the distraught Mrs Hodges and her children at Redhill Hospital. Claire expressed her shock and sympathy and then sighed heavily. ‘This is really all we need, after the embarrassment over Jason Waddington.’
‘I’ll speak to Carl. He’s not on duty today, but I need to know he’s all right.’
* * *
Carl Hoskins may not have been on duty, but he had gone straight into work on the Saturday morning, determined to track down Kirsty Mockett, whom he had already decided was responsible for the death of his friend. Gillard had left a message on his desk phone, saying he would be in by late afternoon, once he had given his aunt a lift home from hospital. Hoskins ignored that, and instead tracked down Kirsty’s number. There was no reply on either her landline or that of Rob Townsend, and both mobiles seem to be switched off.
It was still before nine when he strode into the technical centre at the crime scene unit, and he saw there was just one young woman there, hunched over her screen. Hoskins asked her what Rob Townsend had most recently been working on, and after perusing the log she called up an electronic connection map. The officer explained that this piece of software logged all of the telephone, email and text connections between persons of interest in the case, colour-coded by date. It was a huge and rather beautiful image that filled the screen, with brightly coloured lines showing recent connections, but greying out for those older.
The Body in the Snow Page 30
