Left You Dead

by James, Peter

  Paternoster stepped aside to allow them in.

  ‘Niall Paternoster, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering your wife, Mrs Eden Paternoster. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  The man looked in total shock, Norman Potting thought. He was so stunned that he barely even noticed DS Exton stepping past him, seizing his wrists and cuffing his hands behind him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Niall said, looking genuinely bewildered. ‘This isn’t making any sense. I called you guys this morning because my wife had disappeared – and now you’re arresting me? On what grounds?’

  ‘Did you not hear what I just said?’ Potting asked.

  He shook his head. ‘No – I—’

  ‘Would you like me to repeat it?’

  ‘Please,’ he said lamely. ‘Oh my God, is she dead? Please not, please tell me she isn’t. What’s happened? Have you found her body?’

  He was crying. Potting thought, Crocodile tears?

  ‘We’ve not found your wife’s body, Mr Paternoster,’ he said. ‘We’re hoping you can help us with that.’

  Niall shook his head, sobbing and sniffing. ‘I’m sorry, this is insane – completely ridiculous. Why would I murder her? Murder the woman I love?’

  Ignoring his protestations, Potting said, ‘You will be entitled to legal representation if you don’t have your own solicitor, but I’m afraid I can’t say any more at this stage. We will now take you to the Brighton custody centre.’

  ‘What about the cat?’ Niall asked.

  ‘Cat?’ Potting queried.

  ‘Reggie. He’s about somewhere, probably asleep upstairs.’

  ‘Officers will be here and will take care of him, if you tell us what he needs.’

  Niall Paternoster looked on, in even more bewilderment, as several men and women in oversuits, protective shoes, rubber gloves and face masks stood waiting on the pavement, while a uniformed officer stretched a line of blue-and-white crime scene tape across the front garden wall, pausing to let him and the two detectives leave, each officer holding an arm.

  One of the men in oversuits approached, glanced at Paternoster’s wrists, and spoke to the two detectives.

  ‘When you book him in to custody can you have them bag the Fitbit and Apple Watch separately, and get them across to Digital Forensics ASAP?’

  ‘I’ll make sure of it, Chris,’ Exton replied.

  As he was led away, up the pavement, hoping to hell none of their neighbours was watching, Niall Paternoster noticed the two officers who had come to his house that morning. He shouted out at them. ‘Hey, Detective Superintendent, can you tell me what’s going on? You’ve got no right to do this to me. I know my rights.’

  A moment later, a firm hand pushed his head down, propelling him into the rear of a small Ford, behind the front passenger seat.

  ‘You’ve got this all wrong!’ Paternoster said as the door closed on him and one of the arresting officers climbed in beside him in the rear. ‘Can’t you people get anything right? You’re meant to be trying to find my wife! What the hell is all this about?’

  Jon Exton turned to face him. ‘Perhaps it’s because we don’t believe you, Mr Paternoster.’

  ‘Don’t believe me? What do you mean? Don’t believe what? My wife has vanished and I’m going out of my mind with worry. What the hell don’t you believe? Haven’t you checked out the CCTV footage at Tesco Holmbush?’

  Exton continued staring at him. ‘That has been done. The footage has been studied. Outside and inside the store. You were there, but your wife wasn’t.’

  28

  Monday 2 September

  After Potting and Exton had driven off with their prisoner, Roy Grace didn’t strictly have a further role to play tonight, other than as the SIO to make his own initial assessment of the crime scene. The fewer people who entered a potential crime scene the better, to limit contamination. He watched Gee sign the scene guard log and go into the house, and Barbara Onoufriou and four Search Team officers walk round to the rear garden. But he was too curious to leave. All his instincts were telling him something was very definitely wrong here.

  Turning to Branson, he said, ‘You can go home, mate, I want to hang around a bit.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you, boss.’

  ‘Honestly, you don’t have to. Go and cherish your family.’

  The DI shook his head. ‘The kids are at their grandparents and Siobhan’s taken a day off – she’s been out with her sister at the final wedding dress fitting. She said they were going to dinner together – which is shorthand for getting trolleyed.’

  Grace grinned. ‘Think I would too – at the thought of getting married to you!’

  ‘Your humour doesn’t improve with age.’

  ‘Nah, just my wisdom.’

  After worming into fresh forensic suits, overshoes and gloves, and pulling on masks, they approached the Paternosters’ house. The young, uniformed PC scene guard standing behind the tape was in for a long night, until the poor sod was relieved around 6 or 7 a.m. tomorrow, depending on how they worked their shifts these days, Grace thought. Both of them signed his log and ducked under the cordon.

  The guard contacted the Crime Scene Manager, who came out into the tiny front garden to join them.

  ‘All OK, Chris?’ Grace asked.

  ‘We’ve found two laptops and two iPads – I’m having them bagged and sent over to Digital Forensics. Any chance Mr Paternoster would oblige us with the passwords, do you think?’

  ‘That will be a good test of whether he’s going to cooperate. If he won’t give them, it might indicate he has something to hide – I’ll make a call. And we’d like to take a look around if you’re happy, Chris? I want to get more of a feel for the place, but if you’d prefer us to stay outside, I’d understand.’

  Gee smiled. ‘You’d both be welcome, sir. You came here earlier today, so I don’t think we have to be worried about contamination from either of you. I’ve already had a quick look round and there’s no obvious sign that any section of the carpets have been cleaned recently. There are two tiled areas, the kitchen and en-suite bathroom floors – if you could avoid walking on those for the moment, sir. We’re taking a close look at the kitchen where the attending officers earlier noticed recent cleaning and saw fresh blood – which Mr Paternoster blamed on cutting his finger on a potato peeler.’

  ‘Of course,’ Grace said.

  The bathroom, in particular, was where a lot of domestic murders happened, because the killers thought they were easy places to rinse away and wipe clean any bloodstains. But, Grace well knew, what many murderers did not realize was that most bathroom tiles were very slightly porous. You could wipe the surfaces completely clean of bloodstains, but if the tiles were lifted, there was a high probability of finding that some small amounts of blood had seeped through them. Which was why he always encouraged his Forensics Team to dig up floor tiles and check their reverse.

  The plugs, drainage and U-bends were also often areas of rich evidence retrieval. The other key place to check for blood was the outer surface of the sinks – offenders would often carefully clean the inside, but forget the outside area.

  At least the press and media hadn’t yet picked up on what was happening, he thought, relieved – although it wouldn’t be long, for sure. The press and blowflies – both could smell a dead body from miles away.

  Trailed by Branson, he followed Gee’s footsteps across into the hall, along the track that had been laid down to the kitchen door. A Forensic Officer in full protective clothing was kneeling by the sink next to an open cupboard door, pulling out the contents of the rubbish bin one item at a time with gloved hands, examining each carefully before placing it in a bin bag on the floor beside her.

  ‘Checking the bins,’ Gee said. ‘After that we’ll work on the surface of the floor tiles then dig them up and look at the fl
ip sides. Is there anything in particular you’d like to see while you’re here?’

  ‘I’d like to take a good look around the living room and the master bedroom,’ Grace said.

  ‘No problem at all. Go ahead.’

  Leaving the Crime Scene Manager in the kitchen, Grace led the way through into the open-plan living-dining area. He called Norman Potting and asked if Niall Paternoster would give up the passwords for both computers and iPads, assuming he knew his wife’s.

  ‘We’re just arriving at the custody centre, chief, I’ll ask him and bell you back.’

  ‘Tell him any cooperation would count a lot in his favour.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s not being very cooperative at the moment.’

  Grace began looking again, in more detail than he had on his previous visit, at the elegant, minimalistic decor. The two white velour sofas. The smoked-glass bookshelves stacked with crime novels and true crime non-fiction. The fancy, ultra-modern electric fireplace and the row of framed photographs of the couple on the mantelpiece above it. Copies of most of them they’d already seen, pinned to the whiteboard in the Major Crime suite conference room. ‘Does anything strike you as odd, Glenn?’

  Branson frowned. ‘Odd as in what?’

  ‘As in not fitting?’

  ‘Not with you, boss – not sure what you mean?’

  ‘This is quite an elegant house. Classily decorated and furnished by someone with taste. Did Niall Paternoster strike you as a man with delicate artistic flair?’

  ‘Not exactly. No. So how did he strike you?’

  ‘A typical hunk, with more muscles than sense. This must be the work of his wife.’

  Branson nodded. ‘You mean, decorated by someone with flair?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The DI shrugged. ‘But that’s not unusual in relationships, to have one partner the artistic or brainy one and the other the muscle. That can work.’

  ‘But maybe Eden became fed up when his business failed, the physical attraction at the beginning has gone and the relationship has broken down?’ Grace suggested.

  ‘Yeah, and as they’ve got older they’ve changed, one more than the other? Perhaps this is what has happened here?’

  ‘But if Eden is the brains, and the original passion has gone, wouldn’t she be the one who’d want to leave?’

  They were interrupted by Grace’s phone ringing. It was Norman Potting.

  ‘Chief, I’ve got all the codes.’

  ‘Nice work,’ he said, and jotted them down in his notebook as Potting read them out.

  Turning back to Branson, he said, ‘Interesting he gave up the codes.’

  ‘He must be thinking he’s got nothing on his computer or iPad or on hers that could be incriminating, boss?’

  ‘Maybe. Or just knows we’d break the codes anyway so he’s trying to be a good boy, to give us the impression he genuinely wants to cooperate in finding his wife.’

  ‘Taking a risk, isn’t he?’

  Grace frowned, thinking through what it actually might mean. ‘If he has killed her, he might be thinking that by giving us the codes, we’ll look less thoroughly. If he hasn’t topped her, then he’s nothing to hide anyway.’

  ‘And what do you make of it?’

  Grace shook his head. ‘Early doors. I’m staying with my hunch that he’s murdered her and disposed of the body. But I question, from his attitude and demeanour, whether he’s disappeared the body effectively. My guess is he’s dumped her in water or dug a shallow grave – hopefully the BMW’s satnav might tell us where. If I’m wrong and he’s put her in the sea or in Shoreham Harbour, we have to hope she’ll float ashore.’

  ‘And if not, wise man?’

  Grace smirked. ‘Then we really will have a “no body” murder investigation on our hands. Challenging but not impossible to get a conviction – if we can get the Crown Prosecution Service onside and then a half-decent jury.’

  They stayed in the living room for some while, assimilating their surroundings, then made their way upstairs, keeping to the narrow metal stepping plates the CSIs had laid down. Another Forensics Officer was on the landing at the top, on his hands and knees, painstakingly fingertip-searching the carpet.

  ‘Where’s the master bedroom?’ Grace asked him.

  The officer indicated with his hand. ‘First door on the right, sir.’

  Grace led along the track, followed by Branson, into a bedroom that was entirely neutral. A deep-pile off-white carpet, white bedding, pillows, cushions, white furniture and a white fabric ceiling that made them feel like they were in a tent.

  Marie Desmond, another Forensic Officer, was on her knees pulling stuff out of a deep drawer beneath the bed. Books, an assortment of lacy black underwear.

  ‘Opening a brothel are you, Marie?’ Grace said.

  ‘Want me to put this on the Sussex Police eBay site?’ she retorted with cheeky glee, pointing at a delicate camisole.

  He nodded towards Branson. ‘Yep, Glenn here will be putting in bids!’

  She held up something black, with a strap, that looked like a dildo.

  ‘What’s that?’ Branson asked, his face a picture of horror.

  ‘A torch – I know what you were thinking!’ she replied matter-of-factly, smiling. ‘We’ve not found any signs of a missing duvet or duvet cover, sir,’ she went on. ‘Just these and a load of old junk so far.’

  Then she reached deep into the rear of the drawer and came out with one final item under more lingerie. She frowned at it. ‘Well, well, well, what’s this?’

  The two detectives peered at the iPhone in a sparkly case. Grace shot Branson a glance and was about to say something, when another officer emerged from the en-suite bathroom, holding up a large plastic bag that was securely closed with tape. As he came into the room Grace immediately saw that the bag contained an item of clothing.

  ‘I noticed a small screw on the floor in the bathroom,’ the officer said. ‘I checked and saw it had come from a wall access panel, so I removed the other screws and found this hidden in the cavity.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Grace said. ‘If that’s—’

  The officer looked at Grace and pointed to the bag. ‘I think that’s blood, sir, and do you see the tear there in the material?’

  29

  Monday 2 September

  Joseph Rattigan had a poker face beneath spiky grey hair, a gut straining the buttons of his pale-blue shirt and a sloppily knotted tie. He was dressed in a chalk-striped suit that might have been made-to-measure, but not for him.

  There had been a time when this Legal Aid solicitor, younger and fresher-faced, had been the bane of any officer with a newly arrested suspect, but now in his late fifties, the lousy pay and tough hours had worn him down, blunted his passion. The fire that had once raged in his belly had been doused by too much beer and junk food. His voice these days was bland and flat, as if he didn’t care, was ready to accept defeat because, sod it, no client was worth dying in a ditch for.

  Just before 10.30 p.m. Niall Paternoster and Joseph Rattigan had completed their private conference ahead of his initial police interview at Brighton custody centre.

  This would be the first of several interviews to be carried out over the next couple of days, following a strategy Norman Potting and Jon Exton had agreed with a tier five interview adviser, DC Alec Butler. The adviser’s role was to agree the strategy with the SIO and deal with not only the questioning of the suspect but also those that required special consideration or were deemed to be significant witnesses – sigwits.

  Potting and Exton led Paternoster and his solicitor into the interview room. For the next forty-five minutes, they first went over in detail Paternoster’s initial account of his version of what had happened the previous day. Then they covered the couple’s background, relationship, financial status and current domestic situation.

  The interview concluded with Potting leaning across the table towards the suspect. ‘Mr Paternoster, we’ve taken note of all you’ve said. The
purpose of this initial interview has been to enable you to give a full account and your version of events prior to your wife’s disappearance. But you need to know that police officers have checked the CCTV at the Tesco Holmbush store, both inside and out, as well as showing your wife’s photograph to every staff member who was working there. There is no sign on any CCTV footage of your wife being in the store and no member of staff recalls seeing her.’

  Paternoster turned, bewildered, to his solicitor. ‘This is crazy! It just can’t be – it doesn’t make any sense.’

  Rattigan nodded, eyes wide open and vacant, like a zombie that wasn’t home.

  ‘We will continue with our second interview at 9.45 a.m. tomorrow,’ Potting said. Then, speaking to the mic, he added, ‘First interview with Niall Paternoster terminated at 11.22 p.m.’ He stopped the recording.

  30

  Monday 2 September

  Roy Grace arrived home just before midnight, but despite being tired, his brain was buzzing. He now had more than enough to put a sock – or rather a blood-spotted T-shirt – in Cassian Pewe’s mouth tomorrow. And he dearly wished he’d have the opportunity to shove that torch right up his jacksie.

  Humphrey greeted him at the front door with a chewed-up pink unicorn in his mouth, stuffing tumbling from its ripped-open midriff all over the floor. He let him out into the balmy, warm air and the light of a near-full moon, and took him for a short walk along the cart track that was their drive. As he walked and the dog ran off after a scent, Grace breathed in the delicious, sweet smells of freshly mown grass and of the surrounding countryside that he loved so much. Strange to think, as he did this time each year, that the nights were starting to draw in and autumn was on its way.

  A bat flitted overhead. He could hear the distant baa-ing and bleating of sheep. He really fancied a drink and suddenly a cigarette, too – which he hadn’t had for ages – but decided against both. He needed to get some sleep, as tomorrow, with all they’d found tonight at the Paternosters’ house, promised to be a long day. But he hoped the brief walk might be enough to settle both Humphrey and himself.