The Suspect

by Fiona Barton

  * * *

  • • •

  He rang Helen the palliative nurse next to tell her he’d be late.

  “Don’t worry, Bob. She’s sleeping. She won’t know.”

  “How’s she been today?”

  “Same. See you in a bit.”

  BANGKOK DAY 19

  (THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 2014)

  Jake had left her room soon after Jamie, saying he had to go and see Mama. “I’ll be back soon,” he’d said and stroked her hair. “Try to rest.”

  Alex had thought about resting for a moment, had even lain down on her bed, but she couldn’t. Make a plan and then carry it out, her mum would say if she were here. But nothing seemed real about the situation and she felt as if she were in a play. She got out her notebook and wrote Plan to Find Rosie at the top of the page, putting off the moment when she would actually have to act.

  Okay, she told herself. What is the priority? She wrote: 1. Go to Wi-Fi café to use the Internet, then crossed it out. She needed her own phone so her parents could ring her back. She had to speak to them, not just send an e-mail or text.

  She put on her sun hat and walked slowly in the draining heat, sticking close to the stalls to catch the shade of their awnings. First to the ATM to queue, then withdraw enough money to buy a phone and some credit. Then to the nearest fake-electronics shop to find a cheap smartphone.

  It seemed to take hours, but she finally made it back to her room and fumbled the SIM card into place with sweaty fingers.

  When the phone came alive, she tried to sign into her e-mail account, but there was something wrong with her password. It was so long since she’d had to remember it. Gmail kept telling her to retry. She punched it in again more deliberately this time, as if Google were a slow child. No match. When she clicked “I Don’t Know My Password” she was told a link had been sent to her phone. Except she’d lost her phone. She wanted to scream. It was like one of those cheap puzzles where you had to slide tiles around endlessly to find the sequence. She’d just phone home. She knew that number.

  But still she hung back, torn between the comfort of hearing her mother’s warm voice and the panic her call would unleash. She’d always been the reliable daughter, but not anymore. She screwed up her eyes, forcing herself to start dialing, and then stopped. It was still the middle of the night in Winchester. She felt relief wash over her at being able to postpone the evil moment.

  “I’ll try Rosie!” she shouted. She could ring Rosie now. I can make her come back and stop all this, she told herself. And Mum need never know.

  But she couldn’t remember the number. It had been saved on her phone under Rosie’s name and she hadn’t seen it for years. She tried to force the digits to magically appear in her head—there was a double eight in it, she was sure—but she came up empty. If only she could find her old phone. The thought made her dial her own number—maybe it’s fallen down the back of something.

  She waited, telling herself the battery must be dead by now and it would click straight to voice mail. But it began to ring in her ear. She held the phone away from her head and listened for its ringtone—“Happy” by Pharrell Williams. She and Rosie had both put the same one on their phones when they flew to Bangkok. God, that was only just over a fortnight ago. Alex clutched the phone, remembering when she had still felt happy.

  She could hear Pharrell. But it wasn’t in her room. She must’ve left it in the bar. She walked as fast as she could down the corridor, but the sound was getting fainter, not louder. She stopped and stood, turning round like a radar dish to pick up the tinny sound. It was coming from the dorm.

  Alex pushed open the door as the sound stopped.

  “Crap,” she blurted and started to redial the number.

  “Have you got a new phone?” Jamie said as he came in behind her.

  “Er, yes. I think my old one is in here.”

  “In here? Why would it be in here?”

  “Don’t know. I heard it ringing.”

  “Oh! I’ve got the same ringtone as you,” Jamie said and sort of laughed. “I was just coming to answer it.” His voice sounded flat.

  “No, you haven’t,” she said. “You’ve got ‘I Will Always Love You.’”

  “Used to. Got fed up with it and changed it. I downloaded ‘Happy.’” And he picked up his phone to play it to her.

  She retreated, unsure and feeling like a fool, and sat on her bed to think what she was going to say to her mum and dad when she finally took the plunge. She’d wait until they got up—or until they got back from work. She could give herself another few hours.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The Detective

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

  They’d found the car late the night before, burning on a piece of waste ground in South London.

  Salmond had rung to tell him. “He must have realized there were cameras at the service station,” she’d said. “Our little firestarter is on foot now.”

  “Anything left for our boys to work with?” He kept his voice low to avoid disturbing Eileen downstairs.

  “Not much. It’d really taken hold before someone rang it in. Not an unusual event round there, apparently.”

  “Bob.” Eileen’s voice had floated up the stairs.

  “Sort out Jake Waters’s DNA sample, Zara. Got to go,” he’d said and ended the call, feeling as guilty as if he’d been speaking to a mistress.

  “Coming, love,” he’d called back softly. How was he going to tell her he wanted to go to Bangkok? He wouldn’t. He couldn’t go. How could he? She might . . . He wouldn’t go.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Was it work?” she said when he bent down to kiss her head.

  “’Course. Nothing to worry you.”

  “Go on, tell me.”

  He sat on the edge of her bed and took her cold hand.

  “The car Jake Waters was driving has been found burned out. He’s disappeared again.”

  “Never mind. Clever copper like you will find him.”

  “Not feeling very clever at the moment.”

  “Sorry, love.”

  “Don’t be daft, Eileen. I just mean that there are more important things to think about at the moment. You.”

  “Shut up. I’m fine. Me and my mate morphine are doing a great job. Now do yours.”

  “I’m trying. The thing is . . . The thing is, we need to go to Bangkok for a couple of days to interview a witness and talk to the police there.”

  That gave her pause for thought. She struggled to sit up and he helped rearrange the pillows behind her.

  “When are you going?”

  “I’m not, Eileen. How can I?”

  “Oh, do stop it, feeling sorry for yourself. Get on with it, Bob. Go to Bangkok. I’ll be fine with Sam and Helen Angel. It’s only two days.”

  “But you might . . . I need to be here,” he blurted.

  “Stop being so melodramatic. I’ll be fine. The doctor and Helen are happy with me. They’ve got the pain under control and that is the main thing.”

  “But . . .”

  “Look, if I promise I won’t die while you’re away, will you go?”

  His eyes filled and he fought to control the tremble in his lips. Eileen clocked it all and patted his hand. “Just go, then come back and tell me all about it. I’m getting quite a taste for police procedurals.”

  He had to smile. She’d never been interested in his job before. She’d complained about the hours, the pay, and the toll it took on him. But now that she was dying, she wanted to hear every detail of every case. She’d even started reading detective novels. The darker the better.

  “Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

  “What is there to talk about? I thought we’d agreed.”

  He kissed her again and slid into the narrow bed with
her, curling himself around her.

  * * *

  • • •

  The results were back when he got to his desk that morning. It was a match. Jake Waters had had sex with Rosie Shaw. But what else had he done?

  “You’ve seen?” he asked when Salmond knocked.

  “Yes. Could it have been rape?”

  “There’s no physical evidence of that. And Alex said in her e-mails that Rosie was throwing herself at Jake.”

  “It could have got very ugly if Alex found out . . .”

  Sparkes nodded. “We say nothing about this to anyone else. This is becoming a very complex inquiry and we don’t want anyone jumping to conclusions and leaking it to the press before we find Jake Waters.”

  “All right, boss. But the families are getting impatient for answers.”

  “Say there’s a delay in getting some of the results. Toxicology takes time. Lab problems. Be creative. The Shaws are still coming to terms with Rosie’s cause of death, so let’s just get out to Thailand and see what we can find there.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  The Detective

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

  The flight had left him completely drained and fogged. He’d tried to sleep but it wouldn’t come. And Salmond had snored and fidgeted beside him. They’d looked at each other when the lights came on and breakfast service began.

  “Bloody hell, we look like the living dead,” she’d said. “Hopefully, we will scare the Thai police into helping us.”

  He’d nodded and spooned the yogurt and orange segments into his zombie mouth.

  A hot shower and clean shirt had made him feel more human for his meeting with Colonel Prasongsanti at the Crime Suppression Division. Twenty minutes later, he wondered why he’d bothered.

  The meeting was an exercise in excruciating diplomacy. It was certainly nothing to do with the investigation, as far as Sparkes was concerned. The senior Thai officer was courteous to the point of parody, bowing, making a speech about the importance of cooperation with the British police, inquiring about policing in their country. But nothing about the girls.

  Bob had made gentle approaches to the subject, thanking the police officer and telling him how much they were looking forward to working with his team. He’d had to wait for the translator to do his linguistic to-and-fro, before being equally gently rebuffed.

  In the end, he made a direct request for the police reports. Colonel Prasongsanti’s smile became fixed as he listened to the translation.

  That’s a no, then.

  “Colonel Prasongsanti regrets that that is not possible at the moment. The reports are still in progress. But you can visit the scene.”

  Well, that’s something.

  “That is very helpful. Thank you. And when is he hoping to have the reports?”

  “Soon.”

  “Please could we meet the investigating officers?”

  “So sorry, they are busy on other cases at present.”

  Sparkes smiled grimly at his counterpart.

  “Perhaps they could spare us an hour. We would be so grateful. We simply want to learn from them . . .”

  He’d pressed the right button. The colonel nodded gravely.

  “He will arrange a meeting. Later today. Someone will call you on the number you have kindly provided.”

  “Thank you so much,” Sparkes said, bowing in unison with his host.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Well, that was like drawing teeth,” he hissed at Salmond as they walked back to the main entrance.

  “What a bloody pantomime,” she hissed back. “I wonder who they’ll let us talk to. No one who knows anything, obviously.”

  “Let’s see. We’ll just have to get on with our own stuff. Come on, let’s get down to the scene. Where are Jason and Nicole now? Do we need to pick them up?”

  They’d left the scenes-of-crime officers at the hotel, fighting jet lag with strong coffee. The pair had clearly not stopped at two cups. They both looked a bit wired when they got in the taxi, and Jason Fellowes started outlining his plan at a slightly faster speed than normal as soon as his bottom hit the backseat. Sparkes listened without speaking in the front, mentally running through his own checklist.

  When they pulled up at Mama’s Guesthouse, they all stood outside and spent five minutes taking a long, hard look at the building, its neighbors, access, the people around them. “Sniffing the air,” Sparkes called it.

  For him, it was a key moment, seeing the scene with fresh eyes. As fresh as twelve hours on a plane would allow, anyway. He rubbed the grit from his eyes and tried to relate what he was seeing to the descriptions in Alex’s e-mails and Lars’s photos. The building looked like an old hand-tinted photograph. The soot and ash had turned it black and sepia, but there was the odd flash of color. Shreds of a scarlet banner advertising whisky at the back of the bar, a melted yellow plastic crate.

  He oriented himself: the terrace where Alex and Rosie drank beers when it rained; Mama’s desk beyond the bar; the concrete stairs to the girls’ room; the grilles on the windows of what must have been the dorm—the “boy nest,” Rosie had called it, according to Alex.

  “Right,” Sparkes muttered. The others had been waiting for his signal and moved forward.

  “I love a bit of flophouse chic,” Salmond said, suiting up alongside Nicole. “I’ve got one for you, boss.”

  Sparkes took the white overall and stepped into it before pulling on latex gloves. They were maintaining standards even though the entire population of Bangkok had probably already stomped through their scene of crime. But the dressing up was attracting a bit of a crowd. Mostly bored tourists but some of the stallholders were moving round to get a better view, too.

  “Come on, let’s get on with this,” Sparkes muttered, anxious to get away from the audience. He was already sweating in his suit and regretted not removing his tie before zipping himself in.

  Nicole Ratner was taking her first videos and led the way. Sparkes moved through the ruins behind her, getting the measure of it all in his head. He didn’t speak until he’d walked right round the site. It was his way. He picked a route through the debris of the ground floor, locating himself and fighting the urge to scream with frustration. He was amazed—no, horrified—at how much potential evidence had been left lying around for weeks, for scavenging dogs and passing opportunists to pick at. Bottles from “the party” were still rolling around beneath the heat-twisted frames of beds in the dorm. Charred belongings—a melted phone, a bracelet, unidentifiable bits of plastic and metal—floated on the sea of ash, probably just lying where they had last been flung.

  The Thai police had originally said a candle knocked over at a party was responsible for the fire, but it looked to Sparkes as if the fire had started at the back of the building, at the end of a corridor.

  Funny place to have a party, he thought. And if a candle fell over on this concrete floor, it would just go out. You’d need something else to keep it going.

  He traced the scorch marks along the walls with his eyes to what must have been a door. There was nothing left of it now, just a gaping hole. He’d lay odds that the fire was started here, against the door. Was it started deliberately? To stop people going out? Or coming in? Or to stop people seeing what had happened beyond it?

  The doorway led into a small courtyard, hemmed in on all sides by blank neighboring walls, and littered with blackened gas bottles and puddles of red plastic. The cold store, where the bodies had been found four weeks earlier, filled one corner. It looked homemade. It was basically a big metal box, dented, patched, and rusting where the edges met. The seal on the door was perished and ash blanketed an external air-conditioning unit. He wondered how the hell someone had managed to get it into the courtyard in the first place. Must have been built on the spot.

  Inside the metal box, the dr
inks crates were still in one piece, stacked against a wall, the bottles clinking when he stepped onto the uneven floor. It stank of rotting food and rat shit and Sparkes put his hand over his mask to double bag his breath. It was only when he turned to come out that he saw the coconut matting heaped in the deep shadow by the door, the same spot, he guessed, where it had been thrown to one side by the officers who had uncovered the bodies.

  “We need that,” he said to Jason, who’d joined him in the claustrophobic space.

  “Okay, boss,” Jason said. “Nicole is photographing everything before I start sifting.”

  Sparkes found a patch of shade at the front of the building and drew a rough floor plan in his notebook. He made his notes meticulously. It was important—more so these days when he could become distracted so easily.

  When Salmond found him, he was thinking about the distance from the dorm to the spot where the girls were discovered. “All right, sir?” she said, pulling off her gloves and hood.

  “Yes. Well, apart from the fact that this crime scene is a bloody disgrace. Has Jason got the bottles from the dorm?”

  “Yes. All bagged up and labeled. There are fingerprints everywhere, of course, but he’s concentrating on the cold store. He says there’s a lovely handprint inside, near the door.”

  “Probably the police or souvenir hunters. But we need everything.”

  “I don’t think they were killed in the cold store—do you, boss? It’s very confined—I can only just stand up straight in there—and he’d have had to kill one girl while the other one did nothing.”

  Sparkes nodded. “There were no marks on the bodies to suggest restraints. But they may not have been killed at the same time, of course. I think they must have died in the building, though. The only access to that courtyard is through the guesthouse, and the street outside is never empty—look around! This must go on twenty-four hours a day with the number of all-night clubs and bars in the area. Carting about two dead bodies might have been noticed. Even here.”