Topher moved away and waited outside with some men who I assumed were from Stephanie’s office and I followed Dad into the crematorium. I stood halfway down and, as the music started I saw Topher bearing Stephanie’s coffin down the aisle. I almost choked and Dad patted my hand, motioning at me to keep quiet. As the coffin was laid down and Topher took his seat at the front of the crematorium, I heard a rustle behind me. I half-turned and sneaked a look at the new arrival. Was this John, I wondered? He was smartly dressed in a suit and dark tie. His hair was neatly trimmed and I thought how good he and Stephanie would have looked together.
He returned my stare but, unlike everyone else who had looked at me today, his expression was not one of contempt or anger. It seemed as if he pitied me. I looked away wondering if I had guessed his mood correctly. If I had encouraged his pity, then what more could he know? Did he know who really killed Stephanie? I was sure it was Topher, but Cerys assured me there wasn’t enough evidence to link Topher. Personally, I wondered how hard DI Blaine has actually looked at Topher as a suspect. I was convinced she hadn’t, certainly not once she had me in her cross hairs. I had to talk to Denise.
I saw her further down, a few rows away from the front. She was looking around at the other people there and I tried to catch her eye. I raised my hand and waved at her, but Dad batted my hands down.
‘We’ll talk to her later,’ he whispered.
I sneaked another glance at John. He was staring at Topher. There was no pity. Just puzzlement and I wondered what he was thinking.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Lily
A few days after the funeral, Cerys asked me to come along to the police station with her to see Denise Jones.
Denise smiled at us both as we sat down. ‘Thank you for the info on Mark Brown,’ she said.
‘It was nothing,’ I said. ‘How does it help my case?’
‘I’m still working on it,’ she said. ‘But it’s showing me there are links between you and Mark Brown which shouldn’t exist.’
‘Yes, I know, but thanks for checking up on them,’ I said. A thought occurred. ‘I don’t suppose DI Blaine has changed her mind about me yet?’
‘She still thinks you’re guilty. I’m sorry,’ Denise took a sip of the tea she’d been nursing. ‘Who do you think it is?’
‘I know it’s Topher,’ I said. ‘He must have found out Stephanie was helping me. Can’t you get his prints off her skin or something.’
‘I think you’ve been watching too many American CSI programmes,’ she laughed.
‘Well that’s the reason I wiped everywhere down so carefully,’ I said resentfully.
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ Denise said. ‘It’s not funny. DI Blaine would take that as a confession.’
‘I’m not confessing to something I didn’t do,’ I hissed.
Denise seemed unperturbed. She pointed at my hands with her plastic cup. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.
I laughed bitterly. The topic of my hands had been avoided by everyone close to me for so many years, and yet here was second person asking the same question in just a short space of time.
I watched her face carefully as I repeated the events of that night exactly as I had told them to my father. Her expressions flicked from sympathy to horror to denial as I spoke. By the time I’d finished tears shone in her dark eyelashes. She pulled her sleeve down and brushed at her eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you leave him?’
‘He convinced everyone that I was a risk to myself and to the baby.’ I shrugged. ‘By the time we came home again, everyone knew I’d had a breakdown. No one would’ve believed my version of events.’ I glimpsed at my hands folded in my lap. Perhaps I should have tried harder, but I had been on a roller coaster that was hard to jump off. Exhaustion from the birth, being a new mother, my injury, and the house. ‘I was always so tired,’ I said. I knew it was a lame excuse, but it was all I had.
We all sat in silence for a moment lost in our own thoughts.
‘Have you had any joy with finding the CCTV footage of the accident,’ Cerys said.
Denise shook her head. ‘No, nothing.’
‘And what about the list of names that I took a photo of? Have you tracked any of those down?’
Denise sat up in her chair. She frowned shaking her head, but her eyes shone, her energy restored. ‘Tell me more,’ she said.
‘I found a file,’ I said. ‘When I went into his garden office, there was a file on Mark Brown. In it I found a scrap of paper with a few names and phone numbers on it. I didn’t dare remove it from the file but I took a photo. Hopefully, he’s not wiped that photo too.’
Denise looked at me sharply. ‘I don’t think we found anything like that,’ she said.
‘Mark can hack into CCTV systems.’
‘But he wouldn’t be able to hack into the Highway Agency.’
‘Look, he’s same guy who bribed the kid to say I’d molested him. I’ve no idea what else he’s capable of.’ I sat back and stared at the ceiling. Tears were forming and I tried to blink them away.
It was all coming together. I hoped I’d be the one to pull the thread which brought down Topher’s tangled web of deceit and lies.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Denise
I drove away from West Hampstead station, my thoughts focused on Lily’s dilemma and the possibility of her being Stephanie’s murderer. The more I thought about it the more I felt in my bones that Topher had killed Stephanie, but I had no idea how I was going to prove it. Topher’s connection to Mark Brown was a good link, but it was still circumstantial. I needed to find a conclusive connection between the two men.
I made my way to the technicians’ laboratory on the Brampton Road. After a few moments’ wait, one of my favourites, Dan, walked into the reception area. A bespectacled man in his early thirties, but he’d retained a boyish enthusiasm when talking about his favourite subject. Mobile phone technology. Fortunately, over the three years we’d worked together I’d managed to train him to keep things simple for me.
‘Nice to see you DC Jones,’ he said, blushing to the roots of his dark curly hair.
‘I’ve told you, call me Denise or DJ if you prefer. How long have we known each other now,’ I smiled at him. Jeez was I flirting? I’d never been able to decide which I preferred – men or women. ‘DC Jones is far too formal.’
He blushed an even deeper shade of red. Close to vermilion, I thought, and took me into the main lab.
He picked up a tray on which sat the two identical phones. ‘I’ve downloaded all the data I could get off each phone. I’ve found something interesting in relation to the Pay-As-You-Go phone too.’
I looked up at him. He was grinning widely. ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘I’m too exhausted to grill you.’
‘The donor phone had a photograph of a list of names and numbers and, wait for it… The burner had dialled some of those numbers, but only one of them twice.’
‘So not only do we have the number, but we also know who it belongs to?’
‘Yep,’ he said.
‘And these two,’ I said pointing at the two matching phones.
‘Definitely a donor phone and a clone,’ he began. ‘This one found at the victim’s flat is the clone. And this one is the original.’
Lily wasn’t lying after all.
Dan continued into some long explanation about how you need to have both the original and the copy phone together to clone one. ‘It’s not like in the old days when you could just copy a SIM. It’s much more sophisticated now.’
‘So Mrs Gundersen would have had to take her phone to be cloned by someone or be without it for a while, while someone else cloned it.’ I said.
‘Which scenario is most likely?’ asked Dan, pushing his glasses up his nose. The lenses were covered with little smudges and, as if he could read my mind, he removed the spectacles and started cleaning them with a lens wipe taken from a tub on his
workbench.
‘I think she’s quite used to losing things, so it could have been taken from her to be copied,’ I replied thinking about who could have done that. Only a few adults had access to the house to take her phone and return it. I didn’t imagine it to be her housekeeper or her mother.
‘Whoever did it was able to see all her texts, and see where she was at any time with the find my phone app. The clone also has an app installed to record all the phone calls made to or from the original,’ said Dan. He showed me the app in practice, and I saw that whoever had this phone knew exactly where Lily was, who she was talking to. It was the ultimate weapon in the stalking arsenal.
‘Can we trace where the two phones were? I mean if one is a clone of the other, do they show up in the same place all the time or not?’
‘I can see you’re getting good at this,’ Dan grinned at me and it gave me an unexpected shiver of pleasure. ‘I’ve traced them both. They ping separately dependent on their location. So they both show up at the same time, but they’d ping different masts.’
‘Unless they were in the same area?’
‘Correct,’ Dan said. He pulled up a map on his screen and showed me where the clone was and where the donor was on different days.
‘Can I get copies of these?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ Dan said.
‘Good,’ I replied. I was very interested to see where the clone phone appeared most often. Topher Gundersen’s chambers.
I left the lab and looked at my notebook. Topher Gundersen seemed to be the most likely suspect for cloning his wife’s phone and, if that were the case, then he was the most likely suspect for leaving it in Stephanie Silcott’s flat. Which would mean, he must have been the last person to see Stephanie alive. Was he guilty of killing my friend or trying to kill his wife? I didn’t know for certain, but I was determined to find out.
I called into the office and left a message for DI Blaine to keep her up to speed and then made my way to Tottenham to meet the lorry driver, Vinnie Craycroft.
The Craycroft’s terraced house was neat with a tiny front garden and pots of bright flowers behind the freshly painted fence. It had an air of hope in amongst the bleak gardens of its neighbours.
I sat in the front room and waited for Vinnie to arrive. I knew he hadn’t worked since the day of the accident and I wondered how much he blamed Lily Gundersen for his current predicament. He was in a coma for weeks after the accident and whilst I had now had his statement, taken after he recovered from his coma. I needed to check how much of it he still stood by and what else he may be able to recall.
Vinnie lumbered into the room, clean jeans hanging loose around what had once been a plump belly. His brown belt was cinched as tight as it would go and, if I was not mistaken there were some extra holes pierced into the leather.
I stood but he waved me back down into the seat. ‘What can I do for you love,’ he said.
I accepted a cup of tea from Mrs Craycroft and Vinnie and I relaxed together in what was clearly their front parlour. I’d not been in one since my grandmother was alive.
‘The 4th June,’ I began. ‘What can you tell me about that day?’
‘Day of the accident, that was,’ he said slowly. ‘I was on the North Circular just minding me own. Lorry was empty and it was high winds that day, so the trailer was a bit skittish, always is when there’s no load. This old Volvo overtook me, and it’s just about to pull back in front of me when I saw a black Range Rover speeding up behind. I toots on me horn to warn the Volvo but it’s too late, the four-by-four hits it. Bashes it into the barrier. I brake cos I think I’m gonna hit the Volvo but then the SUV smashes into it again. Must have caught it just in the sweet spot cos it went right over the barrier. But by then I’d got problems of me own. The cab started to tip. Me trailer had swung round see, cos it was light being empty. Me cab went right over and I was hanging out me seatbelt while me lorry skidded along the road. Not sure what hit me,’ he pulled back his overlong hair to show a scar which was still in the process of healing.
‘Thank you. Is there anything else you remember about the black car.’
‘Yeah, I saw it speeding off. Belching smoke it was. Pretty sure it had taken a fair bit of damage itself. It was a Range Rover, didn’t get the number. Sorry.’
I thanked Mr Craycroft for his time and left.
I really needed to get hold of the CCTV footage from the 4th June.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Denise
Back at the station I retrieved my email from Dan. It was hardly a shock that the person called from Topher Gundersen’s burner phone was known to us. Antonio Moretti ironically also known as Tiny Tony, was six foot four and at least twenty stone. I obtained his address and called for backup. A police van and two large PCs.
Moretti lived in a tower block, where to our surprise, the lift worked. I wondered how much that was down to Moretti’s legendary “influence” as I couldn’t imagine him walking up twelve flights of stairs. Sadly, his influence didn’t stop the lift stinking of stale urine.
When he finally opened the door in response to my knocks, he filled the frame. I showed him my ID and he backed into the kitchen so that I could walk down the hallway to the main room. One PC followed behind me, the other behind Tiny.
‘Tony, is this your phone number?’ I said showing him the number I’d copied into my notebook.
‘Nope, nuffin to do with me.’ He lolled in his armchair. The noise from motor racing on the giant TV was deafening.
‘Can you turn that down?’ I said.
He ignored me and one of the PCs strolled across the room and pulled the electric plug out.
‘Oi, you can’t do that,’ he roared. He attempted to rise from his chair and was pushed firmly back into place by the other PC. Both officers stood over him arms folded. They played regularly in the second row for the Met’s rugby team. I was glad they were on my side.
I took my phone from my pocket and rang the number. A buzzing sound echoed from the kitchen and the second officer left the sitting room to find it. He handed it to me. ‘So, Tony,’ I said. ‘This phone number that has nothing to do with you, seems to ring through to this handset here. Is there anything you want to tell me about that?’
Moretti glared at me. I wasn’t sure even a smile would look good on his face and I was grateful not to be alone.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘So,’ he said. ‘I must’ve made a mistake.’
‘This is your phone?’
He shrugged. ‘Suppose so.’
‘There’s only one number saved on it. Whose number is it?’ I knew that it was the number of Topher Gundersen’s burner phone, but I was keen to see what Tony would say, but he shrugged again.
I signalled to my colleagues and one pulled handcuffs from his belt. Tony’s eyes widened. ‘Antonio Moretti, I am arresting you on suspicion of perverting the course of justice…’
‘No!’ The roar from Tony’s mouth was deafening. He pushed the handcuffs away, causing the PC to stumble. His colleague was quicker and tackled Tony to the floor, but it wasn’t until both PCs were astride his back that the big man calmed down. ‘You can’t arrest me,’ he growled. ‘I’m out on licence. If I get arrested, I go back inside.’
‘Then tell me what I need to know, Tony. Simple as.’
Tony rested his forehead on the carpet and muttered, ‘okay.’
I signalled to the PCs to let him back up.
‘It’s in the kitchen,’ he said.
I frowned.
‘What you’re after. It’s in the cupboard hidden in a bag of Frosties.’
I left Tony and sprinted to the kitchen. I poured the Frosties over the countertop and there, in a plastic bag, was a USB drive. I marched back into the sitting room. ‘What’s on here Tony?’
‘That CCTV footage you’ve been after. I was asked to take care of it, you know get rid like, but I thought I’d hold on to it just in case. Glad I did now.’
I pi
cked up my handbag and headed for the front door. ‘What about him?’ called the larger of the PCs.
‘Bring him with us,’ I said.
‘You bitch,’ yelled Tony. ‘I thought you weren’t going to arrest me.’
I popped my head back around the door. ‘Oh, but I’m not arresting you Tony,’ I said giving him what I hoped was a winning smile. ‘You’re helping us with our enquiries.’
Back at the station I plugged the USB into my laptop remembering to scan it for malware first. The laptop chose the video program and the CCTV footage began to play. I prepared myself for a long period of watching cars. As I watched the first few moments of the video, I rang DI Blaine to let her know what I’d found.
It seemed like hours later I was still going through footage of cars on the North Circular. Even though I had narrowed it down to the correct time and place on the road there still seemed to be eons of footage to work through. Then I saw it. Craycroft’s lorry pulled into view – the trailer swaying slightly as he’d mentioned. I saw Lily’s old red Volvo overtake and pull alongside. As she indicated to pull back in, the black Range Rover shunted her from behind, once then a second time. I’d had the accident described to me, but this is the first time I’d seen it. Even the grainy video couldn’t detract from the force which was propelled into Lily’s Volvo. Sitting in my office chair I braced myself for the second collision and the following carnage.
I stopped the film, wound it back and zoomed in. Lily hadn’t been lying about the Range Rover and it trying to push her off the road. It made it less likely that she was lying about the murder. Not out of the question, granted. But unlikely. At least I now had a registration number. I went to the rest room and made myself a fresh cup of tea, before going back to my desk and logging onto the Police National Computer. I typed in the plate number. It was registered as being off the road, but with a few taps on the keyboard I found out who the last owners were. An exclusive car-hire company near Richmond. I noted down the address and headed back to my car.
The Love Trap: an unputdownable psychological thriller Page 20
