I glanced at Cerys and she nodded so I took them through all the hiding places he’d used over the years. As I went through them I was amazed it had taken me this long to work out what he was up to.
Chapter Forty-Five
Denise
The Crime Scene Investigation team had almost finished at Stephanie’s flat. I couldn’t face going back there. At some point I would have to, but not today. Instead, I decided to make my way to the Gundersen home. Immediately I pulled into the street, the silence fell around me like a cloak. Busy as it was nearby, the noise didn’t penetrate this echelon of wealth and privilege. I wondered how much the house was worth now after the changes Lily Gundersen had made to it. I knew what they paid, it was my job to know, but I couldn’t help wondering what its current value was. I knew it was well out of my reach. It wasn’t hard to put aside the sneaking feelings of envy. Lily Gundersen’s life may have looked perfect but, I now knew, it was far from that.
At the gateway I signed the log and hopped into a white Tyvek suit. I tucked my hair under the hood and walked to the front door before I popped on shoe covers and gloves. The music room was the bay windowed room to my left and I strolled in to talk to the technician I saw working there. All of the framed pictures and certificates were off the walls. No key had been found.
The search team were hard at work finding treasure troves in all the places Lily mentioned in her interviews. There was, however, no sign of a second identical phone. I was beginning to warm to Lily and wanted to believe her incredible story, if only to justify Stephanie’s trust in her. However, so far, nothing had been found to back it up. I had to find out if she was telling the truth or if she was a fantasist as DI Blaine insisted on calling her.
As I stepped out into the hallway, Kendra Wilson, the Crime Scene Manager, called me and I headed upstairs to where she was standing.
‘Anything?’ I said.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’
I fell in behind her as she mounted the second stairway and we stomped up to the master suite.
‘What do you see?’ she asked.
‘Nice room. Nice view. What are you seeing that I’m missing?’ I shrugged. It all looked normal to me.
‘It’s not in here I want to show you,’ she said.
We ambled further into the room and into a large area, which seemed to be used as a dressing room. Shoes were lined on shelves behind glass doors and there was an enormous antique mirror which seemed to take up the entire end wall. It was everything I’d ever wanted. My envious feelings were on overdrive. Kendra opened one of the cupboards and pushed the expensive suits aside.
I squinted for a moment, not understanding what she was showing me. Her torch ran over the back of the cupboard and then I saw it. A small, polished section of wood, about the size of a thumbprint, in unpolished planking at the back of the wardrobe.
‘Clever huh?’ she said, pushing the mark. Silently a small door sprung open to reveal a compact safe.
‘Can we get in it?’ I exclaimed.
‘Just waiting on the keys from Mr Gundersen,’ she said. ‘He’s not very happy but since his wife is being questioned for murder and he’s been arrested for assault we got a warrant to search the property.’
I left Kendra to get on while we waited for the keys to arrive. I called DI Blaine to let her know, but of course she was ahead of me.
‘I want to know what’s in the safe as soon as it’s opened. Keys are arriving under blues and twos,’ she said referring to the lights and sirens on the police vehicle heading my way. At least there would be no hold up. As I finished my call with her I heard the police siren getting closer. My heart raced as I recalled my days in uniform speeding through the streets of London. A deafening clatter of heavy boots crashed up the stairs and the keys were thrust into Kendra’s hands. The PC stepped back but I could see even he wanted to see the outcome of his chase through north London.
Kendra pulled the safe out of its hiding place and put it on a plastic sheet she’d lain on the dressing room floor.
My heart was still racing. The tiny door swung open and the safe appeared empty. Kendra cursed under her breath but poked her gloved hand around inside the safe.
With a squeal of triumph, she found something. She pulled it out and opened her hand to reveal a small USB memory stick resting on her palm.
I had been hoping for Lily’s phone, and groaned with disappointment, until I started to wonder what on earth could be so valuable on a USB stick, that it needed to be hidden in Topher Gunderson’s safe?
Kendra slid the USB into a tamper evidence bag, and it was added to the box of evidence bags for the techies at the laboratory to work on. I picked up the clipboard and ran my index finger down the list of items. The team had found Lily’s phone whilst I’d been upstairs. I sifted through to box to find the evidence bag. I pulled it out of the box and held it up to the light, examining the phone through the plastic. It was identical to the phone I had back at the office. Odd, very odd.
‘I’m going outside now,’ Kendra said and I followed her across the lawn to the garden office. She replaced her shoe covers with fresh ones and I did the same. She selected a key from the bunch taken from Topher Gundersen and turned it in the lock.
I think I had expected the office to be little more than a shed, but this was a perfectly styled comfortable workspace with bookshelves and filing cabinets around the walls. A battered old Persian style rug lay on the floor under the desk chair. Pulling the chair out, I sat at it and switched on the tower unit. As the monitor burst into life, it showed a screen requesting a password. I typed randomly, but wasn’t able to crack the code. I hadn’t expected to, but I wanted to give it a try. Silly really.
I pushed away from the desk and lay my head on the back of the chair.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Kendra. ‘We’ll take this away and see what we can get off the hard drive. Even if he’s deleted stuff and emptied the recycle bin, it doesn’t mean he’s scrubbed the hard drive. We still might be able to recover the information. But at least it gives a better idea of what’s likely to be on the USB.’
‘You think he downloaded everything to that little drive?’
‘Letters and such like yes. If there were any video files, well they take up more space so I would expect them to be on an external hard drive someplace. We might find a link to some cloud storage when the techies go over his tower unit.’ Kendra paused for a moment. ‘He’s taken time to clear up, hasn’t he?’
‘Yep, almost as if he expected it. I was thinking it too, but it still doesn’t make him a murderer.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Kendra’s voice was muffled as she dug around in the office cupboard.
‘I agree it’s extremely suspicious. He seemed to have had information before he should have had it,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to need something stronger than that before I can slip the bracelets on him.’
‘How about this?’ Kendra asked.
I turned around. In her gloved hands Kendra was holding up two mobile phones. One was a cheap Nokia – a burner no doubt. The other I recognised immediately; it was Stephanie’s missing phone.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Those will do very nicely indeed.’
Chapter Forty-Six
Denise
I drove back to West Hampstead nick in a daze. Despite our conversation Stephanie had decided to have an affair with Topher Gundersen. Finding her phone at his house was, to me, conclusive evidence that he’d killed her. Irritatingly a good barrister would argue that he could have come across the phone in any number of ways. I needed something more concrete.
Kendra agreed that Lily’s phone would get priority at the lab, although I needed the information off Gundersen’s main computer too. Resources were limited and I had to make a choice. I hoped I’d made the right one.
I pulled into the small car park and luckily managed to wedge my car in to a skinny slot. Exiting the car like a contortionist, I trotted up the stairs hoping that the pain in my
side, from squeezing myself through the narrow gap would subside in a while. I didn’t need a pulled muscle right now, I needed to focus.
I knocked on DI Blaine’s office door and walked in. I should have waited; Chief Superintendent Harlow was with her.
‘DC Jones,’ he said. ‘I understand the victim was a friend of yours?’
‘Not a close friend, sir,’ I said. Damn he was going to take me off the case. ‘I got to know her when an ex-boyfriend was stalking her. We’ve been out for a couple of meals, nothing more than that.’
‘I see,’ he paused. ‘Very well, so long as you can keep your personal feelings in check. DI Blaine assures me that you can. We need to get an arrest in this case. I don’t want overly emotional officers getting in the way of a solid conviction.’
‘That won’t happen, sir,’ I said.
He uncrossed his long legs and rose. ‘Make sure it doesn’t,’ he said.
He stood by the office door; I was slow in realising he expected me to open it for him.
‘Dickhead,’ said DI Blaine as we listed to his footsteps fade away down the corridor. ‘But don’t you let me down. He’s a bloody relic. Thinks women aren’t up to the job. We need to show him.’
I sat in the chair the Super had vacated. ‘Are you going to charge Lily Gundersen?’
‘I want to, but I think I’m going to have to let her go.’ She scowled at a report she was reading. ‘It looks like the flat was wiped down after the murder. Kendra called me to say no prints have been found.’
‘Stephanie’s phone was found at the Gundersen house. In the husband’s office.’
‘You found it?’ she snapped.
‘No, not me. Kendra,’ I said.
‘Good. We’ve got him cooling his heels downstairs. We’ll interview him as soon as his solicitor arrives.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll update the decision log. I’d like to be in on that interview.’
DI Blaine nodded and flicked her hand to wave me out of her office.
Back at my desk I tried to concentrate on the inevitable paperwork and not think about Stephanie’s last moments. It was a relief when I got a call to say Topher Gundersen’s solicitor had arrived.
I followed Anita Blaine to the interview room. Both men raised their heads as we opened the door. Peter Robinson was expressionless but Topher Gundersen narrowed his eyes with the faintest curl of his upper lip.
DI Blaine rapidly dispatched the preliminaries and the reason for Gundersen’s arrest.
‘I’m assuming you’ll be giving my client police bail?’ Peter Robinson said in his customary monotone voice.
Anita nodded, ‘I’d just like to ask a few more questions related to the murder of Stephanie Silcott,’ she said. ‘I’m sure your client won’t mind helping us with our enquiries.’
The two men exchanged a look, but she didn’t wait for answer. ‘Where were you on the night of 8th November, Mr Gundersen.’
‘As my wife has no doubt told you, I was on my way to a conference in Norwich,’ he leaned back, his hands resting lightly on the arms of the chair.
‘Where were you planning on staying in Norwich?’
‘I’ve forgotten,’ he said. ‘I’d have to check my plans.’
‘Forgotten, Mr Gundersen?’ said Anita. ‘That seems very unlike you.’
‘Mr Gundersen has said he’ll need to check. We’ll get back to you,’ intoned Peter Robinson.
‘Indeed,’ Anita replied. ‘Tell me, where were you when you decided to return home. Just so we can check your journey times with ANPR.’
Gundersen shrugged.
‘Have you forgotten that too?’ Anita raised her eyebrows. ‘Not to worry, even if I have to trawl through the ANPR evidence myself, I will find out. Perhaps you can recall which route you took?’
Gundersen glanced at his solicitor who merely raised his eyebrows. ‘M11 and A11,’ Gundersen finally grunted.
‘There, now that wasn’t hard, was it?’ Anita smiled at the two men. I knew that smile. She’d trapped him.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Lily
Cerys and I were asked to stay in the interview room after Blaine and Jones left. Achy from sitting so long in one place I began to pace. Cerys bought us a beverage from the vending machine. I had no idea if it was tea or coffee. For all I knew it could have been soup, but it was warm and I gulped it down.
‘I was wondering what other evidence they have on me,’ I said to her. ‘I’m sure it was Topher who killed Stephanie, I just have no idea how I’d prove it.’
‘He’ll have to prove he has an alibi,’ Cerys said. ‘He told you he was going to a conference, but was there a conference? You knew it was a lie and the police will see right through it.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ I said.
When DI Blaine came back to the interview room she looked pleased with herself; I was sure this wasn’t a good sign for me.
‘You’ll be delighted to know Mrs Gundersen, that the preliminary forensics have come back from Ms Silcott’s residence,’ she said. ‘The flat had been wiped clean of all prints…’
‘So, I’m free to go?’ I said.
‘No, whatever gave you that idea?’ replied DI Blaine. She looked genuinely surprised. ‘It simply means you wiped down after you killed her.’
‘Why on earth would I kill my best friend?’
‘Because she was having an affair with your husband?’ DI Blaine’s voice sounded as if she were explaining to a particularly stupid child.
‘But like I said, I’d asked her to do that, so I could find out what he was up to. I needed someone to get close to him.’
‘And you expect me to believe that?’ Blaine sat back in her chair, clearly bemused.
‘I know how crazy it sounds, I really do, but it’s the truth.’
‘Well we are undertaking a search of your home now,’ DI Blaine told me.
‘But it will be too late. Topher will have destroyed everything.’
DI Blaine suddenly smiled and it lit up her face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was arrested for attempting to assault an officer. He’s had no chance to move or destroy anything since you were arrested.’
Relief overwhelmed me, and I buried my face in my hands for a moment. Then a thought occurred. ‘He’s here?’ I asked. ‘What about my children? Who’s looking after them?’
‘Your husband is here now. We waited until your housekeeper could get to the house to look after the children.’
‘Thank you.’ I slumped in my chair. All energy drained from me. I saw no end to this nightmare.
Denise leaned forward towards me. Her voice was softer and I wonder if this was the good cop, bad cop ploy Topher had told me about in the past.
‘Where is your husband likely to hide things?’ she said.
‘I’ve already told you that. He has a few favourite spots for hiding my things,’ I said. ‘On top of the cupboards in the kitchen. There’s a tall bookcase in the sitting room, that’s another. The freezer. He likes to drop things down the backs of cupboards where they may have fallen naturally. Or he pulls a drawer out and hides something at the bottom of the unit. So you can’t find the necklace, say, until you’ve pulled all the drawers out.’ I gulped, tears slipping down my cheeks. Cerys passed me a tissue and I wiped my eyes frantically. My anger was growing, I had been too stupid for too long.
‘And what about the password for your husband’s computers?’
‘I’m not sure about the laptop. It might be the same as his big computer.’ I wrote the password down in her notebook. She took it back and marked a large lazy Z underneath. Blocking out the rest of the page.
Suddenly the interview was over and I was free to go home. Cerys stayed with me for a while.
‘This is good news,’ she said. ‘At least they’re not holding you on remand whilst they carry out investigations. You can go home to your children.’
‘And Topher? What about him?
She gave me a short nod. Her lips were in a tig
ht line. ‘We have to show he is the killer rather than you,’ she said finally. ‘That means looking at phone records and getting copies of CCTV of the possible journeys he could have taken from Ms Silcott’s flat to your home. It’s going to take some time and you will need to be brave whilst we do. I will keep hassling the police and I will get my own people onto it, but it’s not a quick job.’
‘Are they likely to release him as well?’
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘Have you got somewhere safe to go to?’
I thought about Fran’s suggestion of the refuge. If I went to my mother she’d only tell Topher. ‘I’ll call my father,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I can stay with him.
‘Just let me know what your plans are and you’ll need to keep the police informed. .’
‘Thanks,’ I said. We shook hands and I strolled outside. It was already tomorrow. The sky glowing pink with the rising sun. I had been in the station overnight. My clothes were crumpled; I was sure I smelled rank, but I did manage to hail a cab to take me home.
Of course, I had no keys or remote to open the gates and had to press the speakerphone. Heather opened the gates and was on the steps with my purse when the cab pulled up at the front door.
‘You look all in,’ she said. She gave me my purse and, cab driver recompensed I followed her into the house.
Darcy was in her playpen with a tea set, happily serving tea to her dolls. She screamed with delight when she saw me and demanded to be picked up. I bent over and hauled her out of the pen, burying my nose into her soft hair, breathing in the delicious baby smell. She pushed me away.
‘Mummy smell bad,’ she said, wriggling to get away.
‘Thanks, baby,’ I said and swapped her with Heather for a very welcome cup of coffee.
‘There’s plenty of hot water,’ Heather said tactfully.
I pulled a section of my roll neck sweater closer. I didn’t smell good. ‘I think I’d better take a shower.’ I took my coffee up to the first-floor landing and took fluffy towels from the airing cupboard.
The Love Trap: an unputdownable psychological thriller Page 17
