“Answer the question, please.” Robin waited.
Eventually, Dave said, “Yes, he wanted to meet. I told him to stick his suggestion where the sun don’t shine. I assumed it was going to be about Melanie.”
“But it wasn’t.”
Dave shook his head.
“For the tape, please,” Pru reminded him.
“It wasn’t.” Dave spoke exaggeratedly slowly and clearly. “He was at risk of losing his job, so he’d got some half-arsed idea in his head about me giving him money. I told him where to stick that too.”
“Did he communicate by phone or email?” Pru asked.
“Phone. From work, I think. Why?”
“If it had been by email, you would have had proof of what was said. Otherwise we’re relying on your word.” Before Dave could respond, she continued with, “Why did you ring him at his flat?”
“To tell him I wasn’t going to meet him. He said I had no choice but to come along.”
“Where did he want to meet and at what time?” Robin asked.
“I thought you’d have known all this” Dave waved his hand towards the files laid on the tabletop. A real belief or bluster, playing for time so he could get his story straight? “Half past six, in the clubhouse. Somehow, he’d got hold of a set of keys. Typical. Melanie reckons he loved all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. Made up for the lack of other excitement in his life, I guess.”
“See, that’s another thing. We’ve been told about his lack of sex drive. How did Melanie feel about that?”
“She’s stood by him when perhaps most people would have upped sticks.”
“That’s not answering my question.” Time to go fishing, despite Robin knowing the bait wasn’t foolproof. “Melanie seems to still have a sexual appetite, seeing as she’s on the pill. Few people would blame her for occasionally satisfying her needs elsewhere, if that meant her marriage surviving. Were you the person to help her out?”
The bait got taken. “Did she tell you all that?”
“Answer my question, please. Was it you sleeping with her or someone else?”
Faced with the prospect of potentially labelling his old girlfriend as too free with her affections, Dave gave in. “Okay, okay. When they were first married, but only then. Melanie and I had the occasional time in bed and she really appreciated it. Said I was being a true gent. But it never sat easy with her—always aware she was being unfaithful to Nick. It seemed reasonable to give up the sex for just being social. It works for both of us.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if Nick ever found out for sure what we’d been doing, but even if we hadn’t had the odd evening of passion, he’d have still been suspicious.”
“Thanks for getting that into the open. It’s always better in the long run.” Robin glanced at Pru.
“Back to the meeting with Osment. You had no choice but to go,” she said. “What did he have to say to you when you got there?”
“He didn’t say anything, because I didn’t go. I left it until the last moment to get to training—any of the lads can tell you that—and hoped he’d got the hint that I wasn’t interested.”
Pru carried on the grilling. “Must have been a shock to find him dead. Or were you expecting it?”
“What? Of course I wasn’t.” Dave grabbed a clump of his hair and tugged at it. “How the hell would I have been able to kill him and get his body into that cubicle without any of the other players seeing?”
“Maybe you had help.” Robin made a show of consulting his notes. “The keys to the clubhouse that Osment had got hold of. If you knew about them, why didn’t you tell anyone he had them? Given how keen the club is to guard the players’ valuables, wouldn’t it have been sensible to tell Mr. Preese that there was a rogue set in circulation?”
Dave’s eyes flicked from side to side before focussing on the table. “I was going to; I simply didn’t get the chance.”
“Really?” Robin leaned forward, resting his arms on the tabletop, willing Dave to look him in the eye. “Isn’t it a fact that Osment had a hold over you, and you’d not have dared report him in case you landed up in worse trouble?”
“Are you saying he wanted to blackmail me?”
“Yes. Which is why he wanted to meet and why he was wanting money from you.”
At last, Dave raised his head, although he remained silent. Robin had seen that expression on a suspect’s face before. It either heralded a last-ditch stand before the truth began to emerge or an entrenchment, burying the facts deeper below the topsoil of defiance. What would be the best strategy to ensure it was the former not the latter? To prolong the silence, letting it become so uncomfortable that Dave felt compelled to speak, or press on with the questions?
Pru went for the second option. “Dave, you’re not stupid and neither are we. Tell us why Osment was so keen to meet you. It’s because he knew you’d killed Jamie Weatherell, isn’t it?”
“No!” Dave struck the table with his fist, then slumped back in his chair. “No, I didn’t kill him, but yes, that’s why he wanted to see me. Said he had something to sell me—proof of my involvement in the hit-and-run. I reckoned that was a load of rubbish. He wanted to cause trouble for me because of my friendship with Melanie.”
“Let’s get this clear. For the purposes of this statement, you’re saying that you didn’t hit Jamie Weatherell with your car?”
Dave didn’t get the chance to answer, as a sharp rap sounded on the door. Robin, usually annoyed to be interrupted, welcomed the opportunity to get his thoughts in order as they’d not really learned anything they didn’t already know.
“This had better be good,” he said to Callum anyway, once he’d stepped outside.
“I thought you might like to know while you still have him in there. Osment’s phone has turned up. The one he had with him the night he was killed.”
“Where was it?”
“In someone’s back garden. It must have been thrown over a wall and fell behind a bush. The houseowners found it while they were gardening this morning and rang the station to see if it had been reported stolen or lost.” Callum wagged his finger in the general direction of the station entrance. “The constable who took the call had the sense to notice how close the address was to the ground, saw that the general description matched Osment’s missing device, then got a patrol to pick it up.”
“Good work.” The solid, boring stuff that made up good policing. “We’re sure it’s his?”
“Ninety percent. The distinctive case Osment kept it in—R2D2, so the bloke had some degree of good taste—has gone, I guess because whoever slung it thought that lessened the chances of a match-up, but we had a description off Melanie to compare it with. Distinctive scratches on the back, under the Apple logo. SIM card’s been removed too, but once the device has been checked for prints, it’ll go down to the tech people. To see if they can get into it.”
“Okay. That was worth interrupting me for.” Not least because a notion was starting to form in Robin’s mind. He doubted there’d be something on the phone like an incriminating photo of Osment’s killer, taken as he was attacked—the killer would surely have taken a hammer to the thing in that case—but there could be other items of note. Like the elusive “proof” that Osment had allegedly possessed concerning the hit-and-run.
Robin re-entered the interview room, gave Pru a nod, and then settled himself while she did the formal interview-recommencing speech, concluding with, “Back to the night Jamie was killed.”
Dave turned slightly, conspicuously to address the recording device. “I admit I left the Tuckton ground after Jamie did and I drove down that same road, so I must have passed the place where it happened, but I don’t remember seeing anything at the time. Is that clear enough for your recording?”
“Have you come across a man called Colin Cooper?” Robin asked.
“Eh?” Dave wagged his head. “Never heard of him.”
“Osment asked him to the meeting. The meeting he wanted with you.”
&nbs
p; “Did he?” Dave grunted. “Maybe you should be questioning him about the murder, then.”
“We have. He was late arriving, which we know for a fact, so he didn’t get to see either of you. He was the person who gave Osment a lift home from the derby game the day Jamie died.” Robin rested his elbows on the table again. Time to go angling again. “Maybe he was the proof—the missing witness to the accident who’d be able to put the blame on you?”
“That’s nonsense.” The suggestion had got Dave riled, though.
“There’s the phone.”
Dave started forward in his seat—focussing on the hit-and-run, or anything linked to it was showing dividends in his reactions. “What phone?”
“Osment’s. The one that disappeared the night he was killed. An old phone. One on which he might have kept pictures. Of you and Melanie, for example.”
“I wouldn’t put that past him.”
“Maybe he had a photo of your car, the night of the accident.”
Eyes narrowed and voice clipped, Dave said, “He might have done, seeing as I’ve admitted to being on the road that night. That proves nothing. He’s always been—always was—a troublemaker.”
Robin waved the remark away. “Anyway, we’ll soon find out what’s on there, because it’s turned up, which is what my constable came to tell me. Did you get rid of it?”
“No. I’ve never had his phone. Like I said, I didn’t meet him that night.” Dave sat back again. “Are we finished?”
“For the moment. We need to take your fingerprints and DNA—for elimination purposes, unless you’ve already given them—and I’d be grateful if you’d give us access to your bank records rather than us having to get a warrant.”
“Feel free on both counts. I suppose you’re on the hunt for payments from me to Osment but you won’t find anything.” Dave broke into a broad smile. “I have nothing to hide on that front.”
“I have a horrible feeling that I believe him,” Pru said, once the interview had ended and Dave had been taken by Callum to have his fingerprints taken. “At least about the bank statements and possibly about not having the phone.”
“Yep. He strikes me as the type who tries to be careful about what he says so when he’s on firm ground, he wants to make the most of it. He didn’t like me mentioning the phone, though.”
“I noticed that too. Do we know there are pictures on Osment’s phone, or were you taking a punt, sir?”
“Dangling a worm in the water.” Robin shrugged: a policeman had to take a leap in the dark at times. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are. Strikes me that he must have had some reason for keeping it, despite it being an old device. And while that may have simply been so he and Melanie had a backup in an emergency, it might also have been because it had something on it that was worth keeping.”
“Wouldn’t he have backed the pictures up to his iCloud so it wouldn’t matter what device he was using?”
“Not if he’d chosen not to. Might be as simple as his storage being full. Or maybe Melanie had access to his Apple ID and he didn’t want her seeing them.” Robin pushed his chair back from the desk, ready to be on the move. “We’ll know once the techy whizzes have done their techy whizzy stuff.”
They had the answer to Pru’s question by five o’clock, at which point they also had a timeline, but the device took precedence. There were a number of pictures on the phone, time and date stamped with the night Jamie died, at around the time the accident must have happened, showing both the dead deer in the front garden and Dave’s car near the fatal bend in the road. Some general ones had been taken a couple of days after that, showing the scene by twilight. There didn’t appear to be any particular significance in those, but they must have meant something to Osment. Perhaps those pictures taken on the fatal night had helped him to work out who had been where and when in relation to the site of Jamie’s death.
The most damning sat on the camera roll between the ones of the deer and the ones of Dave’s car. A young man, oblivious to being snapped—Jamie, surely, given the clothes he was wearing and which Robin recognised from the pictures in the case files—fiddling around with a bike.
A shame that the photos on that Saturday evening hadn’t been taken from the lay-by Robin had parked in and which would have given a clear view of the accident. But if Nick had parked there, Dave might well have spotted him. He must have found another place to hide his car. The sequence of snaps suggested he must have been on foot at some point, having got out of the car to poke around, unnoticed.
“Hardly cast-iron proof that Dave caused the accident, are they?” Laurence pointed out.
“No,” Callum agreed, “but think about the timeline they construct. First a snap of the dead deer, then a big gap. That’s when Nick’s being dropped off and picking up his own car.” He glanced at Robin, who nodded for him to continue. “He returns to the scene, gets bored waiting for Dave to drive by, so has a poke about by that deer. He spots Jamie and takes a snap.”
“Why doesn’t he go to help with the tyre or offer the bloke a lift?” Laurence asked.
“Because he’s decided that’s where he’ll wait for Dave. Better there than nearer Tuckton, because those roads don’t have anywhere you could tuck—excuse pun—a vehicle away unnoticed. He can’t help Jamie because wants to be able to hare back to his car and get on Dave’s trail.” Callum drew breath. “He’s returning to his motor when another car comes along, so he dives into the entrance to a drive and gets a picture of Dave going past. Timeline of photos.”
“Okay, that works,” Laurence conceded. “There was an old house along there which they were redeveloping at the time. I remember because my parents went to have a nose up there. Anyone could have easily nipped into the entrance to the site and not been seen. Maybe even parked there.”
“Go on,” Robin said to Callum. “Where do the pictures take us next?”
“Away from the crash site. Osment’s clearly followed Dave about that night, maybe trying to catch him meeting up with Melanie.” Callum pointed to a sheet of notes he’d made. “There are snaps taken a little while later at the chip shop on the outskirts of Hartwood. The timings of those show that Dave must have driven straight there from Tuckton. Osment mightn’t have formed a timeline of what he thought had happened until later that night, if that’s when he heard about the fatality.”
“And maybe he also got his hands on other evidence that we’ve not tracked down and the pictures were only part of it,” Laurence agreed.
“Um, sir.” Pru, frowning, had apparently been struck by something on the incident board. “Osment’s car. It was allegedly stolen before Jamie got run down. Did he lie to us about the time?”
“His original statement just gave a window of a couple of hours between when he last saw it and when it had gone,” Callum pointed out. “He could have gone and trashed it himself before ringing us. Panic stations set in when he realised that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Or,” Laurence suggested, “if he knew there were thieves in the area—which we all did at the time—he might have left his satnav out on display to tempt them.”
“He might even have borrowed his wife’s car to go back to the Tuckton road in case anybody recognised his vehicle,” Pru said, “and by a classic case of Murphy’s Law got home to find his own one had been nicked.”
Robin raised his hand. Time to return to facts rather than speculation. “His wife didn’t have a vehicle, remember. They shared one. Can we return to the Wednesday? We’ve established that he had the photos with him the evening he was killed, but that his phone was taken and thrown away. Any prints on it?”
“Blurry ones. Osment’s, Melanie’s, and a partial third set. No match for those as yet.”
“Remind me whose prints were taken on the Wednesday or subsequently.” Robin, irritated by the blank faces greeting his question, snapped, “Please tell me that somebody had the sense to obtain some for elimination?”
Sally swallowed
hard. “Because the CSIs said there were so many at the scene, with most of them blurred and unusable, Inspector Robertson suggested we left it until we had something more concrete, like the weapon. Imagine all the comings and goings in a changing room, sir. Not to mention the loos.”
“I take the point, but what about the door from the bar? Was that in a similar mess? Does nobody bother to clean the place?”
“The bar, yes,” Laurence said. “That’s part of the groundsman’s job and he does it pretty well. The doorknob had been recently wiped, so it only had Osment’s fingerprints on it; same with the bolt. The teams are supposed to keep the changing rooms clean. You can imagine that only gets done once in a blue moon.”
Time to take a deep breath and try to calm down, or else he’d go mad with frustration. If he’d been running this from the start, he would have had Grace—possibly the best CSI anybody could hope to have—going over that place with a fine-toothed comb. Maybe she’d have turned up other things than simply the dabs of blood on and under the edge of the changing room bench and the snag of black plastic. Even if she hadn’t, Robin would have felt more confident that there was nothing else to be found. Somebody had missed that broken picture first time around and the material caught on the wire.
“Shall we look at the timeline for that evening, sir?” Pru, in soothing mode, gave him a smile.
Robin, smiling back, turned his attention to what appeared to be old computer paper, the sort with perforated sheets. Laurence had apparently sourced that from some part of the station that was in a time warp. It ideally suited the purpose, though, being long enough and wide enough to carry all the relevant times, locations, and names.
Preese had arrived first, around about six o’clock, so he could unlock the access gates and get things set up. Most of the players had been there by quarter to seven, bar Dave, who’d appeared at ten to the hour. Somewhere in between those times, Osment must have sneaked into the bar; probably closer to twenty past six if he hadn’t wanted to risk being seen by the players. At twenty past seven, everyone had been on the pitch awhile and remained there until well gone eight, so the only person they knew for certain to be in the building at that point was Cooper.
A Carriage of Misjustice Page 24
