Motive

by Alan McDermott

  “Hello, John! What brings you here? I thought we weren’t due to play until the end of the month.”

  DS Benson stepped into view, and the smile disappeared from Knight’s face. “This looks official,” he said.

  “Can we come in?” Latimer asked.

  Knight stepped aside and held the door open. Both officers wiped their feet and went inside. Latimer led the way through to the spacious living room, the décor neutral tones of whites and light greys.

  “Should I offer you coffee?” Knight asked as he stood by the French windows that overlooked the neatly manicured garden, but Latimer shook his head.

  “Take a seat, James.”

  Knight remained standing. “Is this about Jenny? Has something happened to her?”

  “Jenny’s fine, I’m sure,” Latimer said. Jenny was Knight’s wife. She was a couple of years older than the ex-DCI and worked in an insurance office in the city.

  Knight relaxed a little at the news, but was clearly anxious.

  Latimer put him out of his misery. “We’re here regarding Sean Conte.”

  Knight exhaled loudly and took a seat in his armchair. “You had me worried for a moment.” He took a pack of Marlboro from his pocket and lit one. “As I told the officers who came round a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t seen him for some time.”

  “We found him,” Latimer said.

  Knight blew a grey cloud towards the ceiling. “That’s good. Where was he? Shacked up with his mistress?”

  “Lying in a shallow grave with his head caved in,” Latimer told him, and watched for a reaction. What he saw was genuine shock. Either Knight was a good actor and had been prepared for this line of questioning, or it really was news to him. Latimer suspected the latter; there would be no point leaving incriminating evidence near the body, then being surprised when the police came calling.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Knight said, stubbing out his cigarette in a glass ashtray. “We had our differences, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  “What differences?” Benson asked, earning a glare from Latimer.

  “The whole business with the extension,” Knight said. “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. It was in the Evening Standard and even made the London section of the BBC news website.”

  “I’m not one for newspapers,” Benson told him.

  “Well, three years ago I applied for planning permission to extend the kitchen by three metres and put a ground floor office on the side of the house. It was granted despite objections from Conte, and work began a few months later. A week after the build started I saw Conte leaving his house and he had a smirk on his face. I had no idea what his problem was until the extensions were completed. That’s when he contacted the council and claimed that the building work had encroached on his property by two inches. They sent surveyors round and confirmed that he was right. He demanded that the whole thing be torn down and the planning officers agreed with him. I tried applying for retrospective planning permission but it was denied. I even offered to buy the strip of land from him but he wanted thirty grand for it. That worked out at seven thousand pounds a square foot. I wasn’t going to give the smug bastard the satisfaction, especially as he must have known that I’d encroached on his property when the build started. He waited until it was done before doing anything about it, knowing it would cost me an arm and a leg to resolve.”

  “What did you do?” Benson asked.

  “I exhausted every legal means, but it was no good. The council finally gave me an order to take the extensions down. Both of them. I asked if I could just move the side wall in a few inches but they wouldn’t have it. I had to re-mortgage the house to raise the funds to put everything back as it was. It cost me over a hundred and fifty grand all told, and I’ve got nothing to show for it but a bigger pile of debt. We thought about downsizing, but there’s so little equity left in the place that it would mean leaving London for a tiny one-bed bungalow in the sticks.”

  “Where were you on July ninth, the day Conte disappeared?” Latimer asked.

  “I was here, alone. Jenny was at work and…hang on, are you suggesting I might have killed him?”

  Latimer sighed. This was going to be worse than any of the bereavement visits he’d made over the years. “Hampshire Constabulary found your fingerprints on what they believe to be the murder weapon. They also found hair follicles under his fingernails and want you to provide a DNA sample for a match. We’ve also been asked to bring in a pair of shoes.” Latimer took a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Knight. “This is an image of a shoe print found near the grave. I’ve been asked to secure any footwear you may have that has a matching sole pattern. As you can see, the tread is worn here, and there appear to be a couple of defects.”

  Knight stared at the paper, dumbstruck. He eventually looked up at Latimer. “This can’t be happening. Is it some kind of joke?”

  Latimer shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid not, James.” He stood and faced his old friend. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. I have to caution you that you do not have—”

  “I know my rights!” Knight yelled, Jumping to his feet. “I was a cop for thirty years, or have you forgotten that?”

  “Of course I haven’t,” Latimer said.

  “Then tell me, Sherlock, why I would leave my fingerprints on a murder weapon?”

  “I didn’t say I believed the charges are true,” Latimer said, “but Hampshire have asked me to bring you in for questioning. You’ll have a chance to present your case in Basingstoke. For the record, I had a hard time believing it, myself.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, because this is bullshit, and you know it.”

  Latimer finished reading Knight his rights. Any case against him could fall apart if that wasn’t completed, even if the suspect knew the protocol and words verbatim.

  Benson produced a pair of handcuffs, but Latimer waved him away. It was standard procedure not to allow a suspect into a police vehicle without restraints, but Latimer didn’t think it necessary. James Knight wasn’t a common thief. He was a highly respected former officer and would be treated as such.

  “Can I at least phone Jenny before we go? She’ll be worried sick if I’m not here when she gets home.”

  Latimer nodded, and Knight punched a couple of buttons on his phone. He spoke calmly, letting his wife know that he was going to Basingstoke to help out with an inquiry, and that he didn’t know when he would be back. He said she shouldn’t worry if he was away for a day or two, but he’d be in touch later.

  “You can’t smoke in the car, so have one now if you need one.”

  Knight thanked Latimer and lit up, holding the smoke in his lungs for ten seconds before slowly letting it out.

  “Can you show me where your shoe cupboard is?” Benson asked, taking the sheet of paper from Knight.

  “In the hall, under the stairs.”

  The DS went to look while the suspect finished his cigarette. He was back within a couple of minutes, and had a pair of black leather shoes in a transparent evidence bag. He held it up to let Latimer know he’d found what they were looking for.

  “You know someone’s fitting me up, don’t you?”

  “That was the first thought that crossed my mind,” Latimer admitted, “but unless you can discredit the evidence they’ve gathered, I can’t say it looks good, James.”

  Knight crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, then locked up the French windows and sighed. “Let’s go.”

  Benson led them out of the house and held the rear door of the unmarked Ford open. Knight got in and Latimer climbed in beside him, sitting behind the driver’s seat.

  “Do me a favour when you get back to the station,” Knight said. “Go through my file and get the names of everyone I’ve put away. One of them must be behind this.”

  “I can’t act on this investigation,” Latimer said. “It’s Hampshire’s. That’s where the body was found. My involvement has to end when I hand you over
.”

  “You can at least get the names so that my solicitor has something to give them. I also need you to find out who sells the brand and size of shoes I wear and match sales against debit and credit cards. It could provide a lead.”

  “That’s something the guys in Basingstoke will do,” Latimer said.

  “It’s not, and you know it. They’ll be looking for reasons to charge me, not let me go.”

  Latimer knew his old boss was right. The investigation wouldn’t look for evidence that Knight hadn’t done it; they would want as much as they could to secure a conviction.

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Were you really at home the day he disappeared?”

  “I said I was, didn’t I? I saw him leave in his car with that noisy mutt of his. Must have been around eleven in the morning.”

  “But Jenny was at work and you didn’t leave the house, so no one can corroborate your story.”

  “I didn’t think I’d be needing an alibi when I woke up that morning,” Knight said angrily. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Please tell me you believe me,” he said.

  “I do,” Latimer said truthfully, “and any decent copper is going to see that this looks all wrong. DNA could be planted, the shoes might be explained away, the fact that you haven’t got an alibi isn’t uncommon. Is there any way you can explain your fingerprints at the scene, though?”

  “What were they on?” Knight asked. “Maybe the murder weapon was stolen from my house.”

  “A hammer, which I admit could have been taken from your home, but they also found a good print on the inside of Conte’s wallet. His bloodied wallet, which means the print was left there after he was killed.”

  Knight remained silent, and Latimer would probably have done the same in his situation. Until he had a lawyer present, Latimer wouldn’t have said anything that might incriminate him.

  “Fingerprints are not as infallible as everyone thinks,” Knight eventually said.

  Latimer agreed, but circumstances had to be taken into account. There had been the case of Shirley McKie, the Scottish DS who’d been charged with perjury when her thumb print had been found at a murder scene in Kilmarnock. Four members of staff at what had once been the Scottish Criminal Record Office had identified McKie from the print, and their testimony had ended her career. Pat Wertheim, a US specialist in fingerprint fabrication, was called in to verify the SCRO’s results, and he and another expert testified at her trial that the print didn’t belong to McKie. She was acquitted, but the damage had been done. The print had been misidentified by the SCRO team, though it hadn’t been forged.

  It also wasn’t unknown for police officers to fabricate fingerprint evidence to secure a conviction. Four members of New York State Police’s Troop C were jailed for planting evidence against those they believed to be guilty of crimes, including murder.

  All Knight had to do was convince the right people that the evidence had either been incorrectly analysed or had been planted.

  Neither was going to be easy.

  “There’s no way to sugar-coat this, James; they’ve got enough to charge you. If I were you, I’d arrange for an independent specialist to have the samples verified, then checked again.”

  “That won’t be cheap,” Knight sighed.

  “I know, but if you can take fingerprints out of the equation—”

  “—they still have motive, opportunity, and possibly DNA and shoe imprints.”

  “The first two are circumstantial, the others haven’t been verified yet. This isn’t a done deal.”

  “Well, someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look like I did this, so you can bet your life the DNA and shoes will match.”

  “They can be discredited,” Latimer insisted. “Anyone could place a hair on a body, or wear similar shoes.”

  “Even shoes that are similarly worn, with the exact same defects in the sole pattern?”

  Latimer looked out of the car window, but saw nothing. His mind was too busy trying to think of ways to prove Knight’s innocence.

  He came up empty.

  Benson took them past Kempton Park racecourse and onto the M3, and Latimer stole a glance at Knight to see if the road they were taking elicited a reaction. Conte’s killer would almost certainly have driven the same route to get to the murder scene.

  There was nothing from the ex-DCI. No flicker of recognition, no increase in breathing rate. He simply looked out of the window, a shadow of his former self. The once-confident officer looked like a pale imposter, his hunched shoulders giving him the look of a beaten man.

  An hour and twenty minutes after setting off, they arrived at Basingstoke Centre. They parked out front and Latimer let Knight have one last cigarette before going inside.

  “It could be a cop,” Knight said, sucking smoke into his lungs and releasing a cloud into the sky. “Someone I upset when they were serving under me.”

  “You were a respected officer,” Latimer assured him. “If you did anything to make someone go this far, I’d have heard about it. As you said earlier, it must have been someone you banged up. I’ll put together a list of all your collars and cross-reference them with shoe purchases.”

  “Thanks, John.”

  Knight finished his cigarette and dropped the butt on the ground, crushing it with his foot. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Knight walked through the entrance first. At the desk, Latimer told the officer the reason for the visit.

  After a couple of minutes, a door opened and a uniformed DCI walked through. He was Latimer’s height, around five-eleven, with a gleaming bald head and sharp eyes. He ignored Latimer and Benson and went straight to Knight, his hand outstretched.

  “James, sorry to see you here under these circumstances.”

  “You’re not the only one. I’d like to get this cleared up as soon as possible so that I can get back to retirement.” He gestured towards his escorts. “This is DI John Latimer and DS Paul Benson. They were good enough to give me a lift.”

  The DCI shook hands with both men. “DCI Terry Blakely. I’ll take it from here, gentlemen.”

  Blakely held the door open for Knight to go through to the custody suite.

  “If you need anything, James, you know where I am,” Latimer said.

  Knight offered a resigned smile, nodded, then turned and walked toward the cells.

  Chapter 7

  It was almost time to clock off when Latimer and Benson got back to Lewisham. While the DS went to fetch coffee, Latimer headed up to see Ingram. He’d spent the entire journey from Basingstoke wondering how someone could get access to Knight’s hair and shoes, and had drawn a blank.

  The simplest answer is often the right one.

  James Knight had often repeated the principle of Occam’s razor, and when Latimer applied it he came up to the obvious conclusion: James had murdered Sean Conte.

  He knocked on Ingram’s door and she shouted for him to enter.

  “We just dropped James off,” Latimer said, standing behind the chair that faced her desk. “Handed him over to DCI Blakely. They seem to know each other.”

  “And…?”

  “I don’t know. The idea of James killing someone is ludicrous, but it’s going to be difficult proving otherwise. If the DNA turns out to be his, and the shoe prints match, they’ll have enough to charge him. The thing that still doesn’t make sense is why he would leave evidence at the scene.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Ingram said. She put her elbows on the desk and steepled her fingers. “Let’s say the crime scene was sanitised. No prints, DNA or murder weapon. Who would you speak to first?”

  “Conte’s wife,” Latimer said.

  “Exactly. In the vast majority of murder cases, the killer was known to the victim. You’d ask if Conte had any enemies, and whose name would she give first?”

  “James Knight.”

  “Correct. And if there was no physical evidence at the scene whatsoever, you might deduce that w
hoever committed the crime knew exactly what pitfalls to avoid. Someone like an experienced police officer.”

  “Are you suggesting Knight killed Conte and deliberately left incriminating evidence at the scene to throw us off the trail? That makes no sense. It doesn’t help his cause, it puts him squarely in the frame.”

  “Not if he’s lined up a competent brief who can discredit the evidence.”

  Latimer felt a headache coming on, the result of his brain going round in circles. Whichever train of thought he took, he always ended up at nonsense station. It would continue to frustrate him unless he took a step back and let the answer come to him.

  “James asked if I could do a little groundwork for him,” Latimer told his boss. He explained what had been asked of him, and Ingram gave him the green light.

  “On one condition,” she added. “You do it on your own time. This isn’t our investigation, so I can’t authorise the overtime.”

  Latimer thanked Ingram, then headed to his office. As he passed through the briefing room, he saw a DC removing the last of the Higson photographs from the wall and placing them in a file. The canvas had been stripped, ready to display the next major crime.

  Latimer sat at his desk and looked up the name of the manufacturer of the shoes they’d taken from James Knight’s home. He found a number for their head office and dialled. The clock on the wall showed it to be just after five in the afternoon, knocking-off time for most office workers, but Minster Footwear clearly kept different hours. His call was answered by a female receptionist, and he identified himself and asked to speak to the managing director, only to be told that he was in a meeting. He left his mobile number and asked that he be phoned back as soon as the man was available.

  While he waited for the call to be returned, Latimer searched the police national computer for convictions where James Knight was the investigating officer. It wasn’t a short list. With thirty years in the service, Knight had been involved in solving close to a thousand cases, averaging one every ten days.