by Nick Louth
‘Who is it, sir? Don’t keep us in suspense,’ Michelle said.
‘I’m not sure, but I do know that Sophie Cawkwell was using a drone inside that very library just a few days before the killing. For her documentary, according to Natasha Fein.’
‘The papers obviously suspect she was behind the killing,’ said Rainy. ‘There’s a big exposé in the Daily Mirror about how much she might inherit.’
‘That’s so unfair,’ Hoskins said softly.
Rainy pinched his cheek. ‘Aww, have yer got a crush on our lovely palaeontologist, you poor wee bairn?’
There were some barely-suppressed sniggers. ‘Bugger off,’ he muttered.
‘I thought your heart was pledged to Tatiana, Carl?’ Gillard said. Hoskins hadn’t been far from the Westgrave Hall kitchens since the case began.
‘Och, no sir, that’s only Carl’s stomach pledged to her, not his heart,’ Rainy said, looking at Hoskins’ pronounced paunch. ‘Though it’s clearly the more substantial commitment.’
Gillard held up his hands. ‘We’ll soon know if I’m right about Dr Cawkwell. Claire is interviewing her this afternoon.’
* * *
It was just after three that afternoon when Detective Inspector Claire Mulholland arrived at Sophie Cawkwell’s home, in the swanky London borough of Richmond upon Thames. Sophie lived in a beautiful whitewashed four-bedroom villa on a quiet side street, less than a hundred yards from the river. The door was opened by a good-looking dark-haired man in his thirties, wearing an apron. He introduced himself as Paul, Sophie’s ex-partner. He showed Claire in and offered her a coffee. A young child sat in the lounge playing with upmarket soft toys, while rainforest sounds played on a voice-controlled Alexa unit.
Claire was shown into the dining room, where Sophie was wearing a headset and speaking into a microphone attached to a laptop on the table. She looked up and turned off the mic.
‘Deadlines wait for no one, sadly,’ she said.
‘I’m surprised you feel like doing anything, given what’s happened.’
‘In times of crisis, I always throw myself into work. Ask Paul.’ She indicated her ex with a thumb over her shoulder.
‘Is that the National Geographic documentary on the Westgrave fossil you’re working on?’ Claire asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, closing the lid on her laptop.
‘Actually, could you show me?’ Claire asked.
‘Certainly.’ Sophie restored it, enlarged the screen to full size, and hit play. The footage began on the ground floor of the library in the shadows underneath the giant dagger-shaped rock. As spotlights were turned on, swelling strings could be heard as details of the discovery were intoned on voice-over. The viewpoint lifted from the ground, and the entire keel of the rock was surveyed as if by a submarine floating beneath.
‘How do you do that?’ Claire asked.
‘It’s all drone footage these days. We use them for everything.’
‘Even inside the building?’
She nodded, and Claire watched as the viewpoint lifted gently in the gap between the edge of the rock and the balcony, until the full glory of the fossil could be seen. Still the viewpoint ascended, then traversed the full length.
‘Isn’t there a danger of bumping into things?’
‘Oh yes, there would be if you did it cold. But you prepare what’s called a point cloud, an electronic map of the building. You can slowly traverse that space, and when you’re happy with the route, it can be saved to memory. Some big warehouses are already doing stock-takes by drone.’
‘Is that all on GPS?’
‘No, GPS works poorly inside. It’s a different system.’
‘That’s very clever. I’ve seen you controlling a drone with a smartphone on TV, is that what you use?’
‘I thought you wanted to talk about my witness statement?’ Sophie asked, looking puzzled.
‘Just indulge me,’ Claire said.
She shrugged. ‘Smartphone control is certainly coming. I mean, you can already activate a pre-loaded flight plan with a smartphone, but to really do some exploring you need a specialist console. You can use something as simple as a PlayStation, because that has all the joysticks and so on. If you need to know more, I can put you in touch with a real technical wizard.’
‘Ms Cawkwell, may I see the drone you were using for this video?’
‘Of course. I’ve got a spare in the garage.’
‘No, I mean the actual one,’ Claire said.
Sophie frowned. ‘I don’t have it. It was damaged in prep for the shoot.’
‘Were you using a drone at the time of the shooting at the party on Christmas Day?’ Claire’s tone had become much more formal.
‘No, of course not.’ Her faced searched Claire’s for understanding. ‘It was my engagement party to Sasha, it was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life. Why on earth would I be working?’ Her eyes had filled with tears.
‘I’m not suggesting you were working.’
‘You think I killed him, don’t you?’ Tears rolled freely down her cheeks.
‘You stand to inherit a lot of money.’
Sophie’s face distorted and she began to sob. ‘For God’s sake, I don’t care about the sodding money. Everyone says it’s all about the money, in the press, all those pointing fingers. I didn’t want the money, I wanted the man. Can’t you understand that?’
Paul had walked in wearing an apron, with flour on his fingers. He winced at her last statement. ‘Please don’t upset her, detective inspector. She is in a delicate enough state as it is.’
Claire looked at him and wondered at the loyalty of this man: spurned for a wealthy oligarch yet happy to stay around, prepare food, mind the child and help pick up the pieces of the woman he adored. It’s a special kind of love that still smoulders when unrequited.
‘Just a couple more questions and then I’ll go,’ Claire said to him. ‘Ms Cawkwell, do you know how to use a gun?’
‘No.’
‘Really? Wasn’t there a documentary which showed you with a rifle slung over your shoulder in Central America?’
She sighed. ‘You’re referring to The Hunt for the Moctezuma Basilisk, aren’t you? It was the local guide’s gun. The producer suggested I wear it, as he did with that absurd hunting knife. It was simply a prop. It’s all about the Indiana Jones look. I’ve never fired a gun in my life.’ She looked up at Paul and rolled her eyes. He turned on Claire with barely-concealed rage.
‘Are you for real?’ he demanded. ‘Coming in here, making ridiculous accusations, based solely on what you’ve seen on TV? She’s just been bereaved!’
‘All right,’ Claire said, turning back to Sophie. ‘Maybe you’ll understand why I’m asking these questions. We believe a home-made armed drone was used to kill your fiancé, along with Maxim Talin and Bryn Howell. That drone was very precisely flown, escaping through the open skylight, almost certainly using a flight plan that you created, and was controlled from some distance outside the library.’
Sophie started crying again, huge sobs that shook her slim shoulders.
‘No, it can’t be. That must be wrong.’
‘We’re pretty certain, actually. We have video of the party from a Russian TV channel which shows you with your phone in hand as the gunfire began.’
‘It wasn’t me, I promise you it wasn’t me! I loved Sasha, I still do.’ She broke down completely, and in the other room, the child started crying too, calling for her mum. The cacophony was pitiful, and Claire felt embarrassed. Maybe she had gone in too hard. But from what Gillard had said, this was the woman with the expertise, the woman who could have set up the killing.
Paul intervened, raising his voice above the stereo wailing. ‘Look, detective inspector, I think you had better go, and come back when we’ve got a solicitor here. Next time give us a bit more notice, if you don’t mind.’
Claire nodded, pocketed her notebook and pen, gathered her bag and stood up.
Sophie Cawkwell’s grief wa
s convincing. Maybe Gillard’s hunch was wrong. Either that or she was a terrific liar. Paul ushered Claire to the door. Just as she was on the doorstep, he called out to her and said, ‘You know this is completely unwarranted, don’t you? Sophie’s in a terrible state, on medication. We have press on the doorstep most days, and the things that are said about her in the newspapers, you wouldn’t believe them.’ He shook his head.
‘I didn’t want to upset her, but we have to follow the evidence.’
‘What evidence? The drones that she uses are completely innocent, designed specifically for TV work. If you don’t believe me, ask Volkov’s daughter. She worked with her on the bloody documentary. She’s the navigational genius.’
‘Is she?’
‘Yes.’
Claire’s jaw fell open.
Chapter Nineteen
Gillard was still in the middle of the delayed incident room meeting when Clare rang him. Based on what she told him, he wound up proceedings rapidly. Hurrying across to Westgrave Hall as dusk gathered, he looked in vain for a member of staff. Anastasia wasn’t answering her phone, and he had a funny feeling that she might do a runner. He ran up the deeply carpeted stairs from the main hall around the landing and then up to the second floor towards her bedroom. The corridor was quiet and when he knocked on her door there was no reply. He rang the police post at Westgrave Hall’s gate, still tasked with keeping the press at bay.
‘Gillard here, are you aware whether Anastasia Volkov has left?’
‘No one’s driven away in the hour since I got on duty, sir,’ an officer replied. ‘But let me check the log. What’s her car reg?’
‘She could be driving any of the Volkov cars. Perhaps you could check up as a matter of urgency and get back to me. Thanks.’ He ended the call, and made his way to the garage, where another uniformed officer was sitting inside a green Maserati, one of a dozen high-end vehicles in the large showroom-sized space. He jumped out the moment he saw the detective arrive.
‘Constable, have you seen Volkov’s daughter this afternoon?’
‘You mean the skinny girl, sir? Not since late this morning.’
‘What was she doing then?’
‘She took a Volkswagen people carrier, loaded it with loads of stuff, including those massive dogs. Said she was taking them to the vets for some jabs. I’ve not seen her come back.’
‘She’s supposed to be staying here! Did nobody think to tell me?’
‘Nobody told us. Sorry, sir.’
Gillard looked heavenwards. ‘Did she say when she’d be back? Did anyone think to ask her?’ He looked back to the PC and saw the look of bewilderment on his face. ‘No, of course you bloody didn’t. Right, get me the registration number and phone it in, all points, get the damn car traced and stopped.’
Without waiting for a response, Gillard dug out his phone, rang his contact at the Border Force at Heathrow and left a message. ‘Hi John, Craig Gillard here, I’ve got an urgent stop. Anastasia Alexandrovna Volkov, Russian national. Don’t let her board an aircraft, any aircraft, going anywhere at all. Can you spread the word to your opposite numbers at Gatwick, Stansted and City Airport? I don’t have the passport number or the car reg to hand, but I’ll get them to you within five minutes.’
He then ran back to the incident room. Rob Townsend was there, squinting at the screen at something he had found in the huge evidence backlog.
‘These are all the files that Anastasia has shared with Sophie Cawkwell and vice versa in the weeks running up to Christmas. They’d not been looked at.’
The original warrant had allowed the police to scour the phones of all guests at the Christmas party. Unsurprisingly there were hundreds of thousands of messages, texts, photographs and videos, the vast majority of which were sitting in a huge archive on the Surrey Police computer and had still not been examined. Less than one per cent of the material had so far been checked as relevant and then logged onto the HOLMES computer.
‘What have we got?’ Gillard asked.
‘It seems that Anastasia did all the grunt work of setting up the basic flight plan to get the drone to move smoothly around the fossil,’ Rob said.
‘It makes sense for her to be involved in the documentary, seeing as she’s studying media and photography.’
‘There is a lot of backwards and forwards about technicalities on the messages between the women. I’ve looked at a few of the videos which were transferred via a file-sharing service. Let me show you one or two,’ Townsend said.
The first one was an almost comically haphazard training flight within the library, which from the drone’s own camera showed Anastasia with some kind of handheld console attempting to direct the device. The camera swung wildly. There were a few glimpses of Sophie too, and plenty of laughter.
‘I recognise that console. It’s a PlayStation 3,’ Townsend said, turning towards his boss.
‘Aha, evidence of a misspent youth,’ Gillard replied.
Townsend stopped that video and activated another. This was a short clip showing the device moving very slowly, with a metal rod protruding below the camera.
‘Watch carefully,’ Townsend said. The drone approached a wall, the viewpoint getting more and more restricted as it climbed slowly until a small metal plate with a button set in it came into view. The drone then manoeuvred until the rod hit the button, triggering a low mechanical hum.
‘That’s the button to control the skylight!’ Gillard said. ‘So that’s how she did it.’
‘Finally, there is this,’ Townsend said. This final video was utterly polished and in high definition. The drone began high above Westgrave Hall, showing its many beautiful cupolas and towers, the seventeenth-century crenellations and the mansard roofs. A voice-over by Sophie Cawkwell set the scene for the arrival of an unforgettable long-dead creature from another age. The drone turned and dived gently towards the library building, heading towards the open skylight. There was not much space, but the drone slid through effortlessly, descending gently into the atrium, then over the fossil in all its glory. It moved smoothly above and below the huge blade of rock, showing off its sheer size.
‘Right,’ said Gillard. ‘No doubt Anastasia took this flight plan and adapted it for her own ends by running it in reverse. Starting in the library, going above the fossil for the shooting, and then escaping via the skylight.’
‘The actual flight plan used would be stored within the drone’s processor. If we had the drone’s unique number we could perhaps extract it from a server somewhere,’ Townsend said.
‘All we need to do is get hold of Anastasia,’ Gillard muttered. ‘It’s all beginning to fall into place.’ He held up an evidence bag that had just been given him by DS Singh.
‘What’s that?’ Townsend asked.
‘Love letters, from Anastasia to Bryn Howell. They’ve never been logged properly and Vikram only found them this morning.’
‘Sorry, I don’t get it.’
‘She’d been having an affair with the bodyguard for many months and the correspondence makes clear that he broke it off in December and she was furious about it.’
‘Sorry, am I being dim?’
Gillard smiled. ‘Right from the beginning, I was baffled by why it was that the bodyguard had so many bullets in him.’
‘Ah, hell hath no fury.’
‘Exactly.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anyway, let’s hope we catch her. There are dozens of ANPR cameras around every airport, so we’ll get a heads-up as she approaches.’
* * *
For the next two hours there was frenetic activity in the mobile incident room. Gillard directed most of his team to comb through the stored electronic evidence to find what else they could of Anastasia’s communications with others during the days leading up to the party.
Carl Hoskins got to work on ANPR, to see if they could trace the Volkswagen.
It was six o’clock on a Saturday evening, and there was not a single ANPR hit so far, which indicated she wasn’t fleeing to a
n airport. Every airport in the country was ringed with traffic cameras.
Gillard relaxed a little and returned to the Russian TV Christmas party video footage. He looked carefully through it to the point where the fireworks began. It showed Oleg Volkov and Anastasia in the distance on their respective second-floor balconies in the main Westgrave Hall building. Oleg and his girlfriends remained there looking out at the fireworks, for almost the entire time. He had a mobile phone in hand, held up as if photographing the display. That was not the act of a man about to implement a carefully planned murder.
Anastasia, by contrast, seemed unsettled. She only glanced at the fireworks, instead examining her phone before returning to her room. She did not emerge at all during the latter half of the firework display. It wasn’t possible to see what exactly was happening when the shots began because the Russian camera had turned away from Westgrave Hall, towards the library.
‘Sir, sir,’ interrupted Shireen Corey-Williams, pointing at her screen. ‘We’ve got a transaction from Anastasia’s credit card.’
‘Where?’
‘Airport parking at Farnborough.’
‘When was that?’ Gillard demanded. ‘And why was there no ANPR?’
‘The parking is for a different vehicle than the one she left in,’ Shireen said, then looked it up. ‘Ford Focus, 2017.’
‘Ah, she’s clever,’ Gillard muttered, feeling outfoxed. Farnborough Airport, of course. A billionairess doesn’t need to go to Heathrow or Gatwick. Private jets are easy if you have the money.
‘She paid it four hours ago, I’m afraid,’ Shireen said.
‘She’ll be away then,’ Gillard said with a sigh. ‘Get me the details of the flight.’
A few minutes later Shireen said: ‘I’ve found the transaction with the airline, on her father’s account. He was copied into the email, which says it was due to depart at 14:45, destination Moscow.’
‘Damn, she’s got away.’ Gillard banged the table in frustration.
Shireen looked up from her terminal. ‘That Ford Focus is registered to PC Woodbridge. And the manifest shows he’s on the flight with her.’
