Left You Dead

by James, Peter

  ‘What is it? What aren’t you telling me?’

  ‘Both had their necks wrung, their heads twisted round the wrong way.’

  54

  Tuesday 3 September

  ‘The time is 7.39 p.m., Tuesday,’ Norman Potting said for the benefit of the recording. ‘DS Potting and DS Exton interviewing Niall Paternoster, under caution in the presence of his solicitor. This is the fourth interview.’

  ‘Niall,’ Exton began, ‘can we go back to your wife’s engagement and wedding rings and her passport. Why were they apparently hidden under a floorboard? How did they get there?’

  Looking increasingly ragged and short-tempered, Niall replied, ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  Exton looked him in the eye. ‘Did you put them there?’

  ‘No bloody way. I can only think Eden put them there.’

  ‘Why would your wife do that?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. You’re the detectives, not me.’

  Ignoring the remark, Exton glanced at his notes.

  ‘Your wife is normally active on a number of social media platforms, but there’s been no activity by her on any since Thursday night. Can you explain that?’

  ‘I was with her through until Sunday afternoon, so I don’t know why she didn’t post. She’s always on it, bloody lives on it.’

  Exton nodded politely. ‘You told us you didn’t know why Eden wasn’t answering her phone and that it appeared to be switched off. Can you explain how it came to be underneath your bed in the house? How did it get there? Were you responsible for hiding it there? Is there something you’re not telling us?’ He stared hard at Paternoster, but the man just gave a ‘couldn’t care less’ shrug.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t put it there, I have no idea.’

  Norman Potting took over. ‘Niall, when we interviewed you earlier, you told us you had a nice evening last Thursday, you and Eden having a barbecue at home. You mentioned having a minor disagreement over smoking meat, but no more than that, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Officers have spoken to your neighbours. Your next-door neighbour told us something different. She said she heard raised voices, a violent-sounding argument and what seemed to be some sort of blow delivered. She was so concerned she thought about ringing the police.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ he replied angrily. ‘I told you we had an argument but it’s nothing like she’s describing.’

  ‘Why would she make it up?’ Potting asked.

  ‘She’s a nosy old bat and she doesn’t like me for some reason. Probably wants to get me into trouble.’

  ‘Other neighbours have corroborated what she said. They heard the row, too,’ Potting said calmly. ‘Can you explain that?’

  Paternoster looked at Rattigan, who gave him a signal. He turned back to the detectives. ‘No comment.’

  Potting continued. ‘When you gave your account about what the two of you did last week you told us your wife had gone to work on Friday. We’ve checked with her company and they tell us she never turned up and it surprised them as she missed an important meeting. Can you explain that?’

  Paternoster’s brow furrowed. ‘What? This is complete nonsense, she went to work and then came home, she’d have told me if she hadn’t gone into work – and no way would she have missed an important meeting – she’s very conscientious.’

  Norman Potting paused for a moment. ‘Niall, could you tell us again about your journey home from visiting Parham House, last Sunday afternoon, the first of September. You made a stop on your way?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied sullenly. ‘As I’ve told you and your colleagues repeatedly, I stopped at the Tesco Holmbush superstore at approximately 3.15 p.m.’

  ‘What was the reason for that?’ Potting asked disingenuously.

  ‘God, how many times do I have to repeat this? People talk about wasting police time, what about you wasting our time?’

  Rattigan looked at his client with a nonplussed expression.

  ‘Please could you answer my question,’ Potting persisted.

  ‘I – we – stopped at the store because my wife needed to buy a sack of cat litter.’

  ‘Why did she want to buy a sack of cat litter?’

  ‘Because we’d run out of the stuff – I’d forgotten to buy some the day before.’

  ‘You’d run out of cat litter?’ Potting asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied tetchily. ‘Is there some part of that you don’t understand?’

  Potting did not respond for some moments, while he made a note, then he looked back at him. ‘I’d like to ask you a question about your wife, Niall. Is she good at running your house?’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ his solicitor jumped in.

  ‘If you’ll allow me to continue,’ Potting said, with consummate politeness, ‘I think it will become clear.’ He turned to Paternoster. ‘If I could repeat my question, was your wife good at running your house – your home, Niall?’

  ‘She doesn’t run the home, we run it together,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Would you say she would have known when you were critically low of household items – such as cat litter?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  ‘In your opinion, is it likely she could have forgotten that she had any cat litter in your home last Sunday, when she asked you to stop on your way back to buy some?’

  Niall took some moments before answering. ‘No, no way.’

  ‘You are certain?’ Potting said. Playing him as if he were a well-hooked fish.

  ‘Yes.’

  Potting nodded calmly. ‘During the search of your house last night, two large sacks of cat litter were found at the rear of a cupboard, in the utility room off your kitchen. Do you have any explanation for that?’

  Paternoster stared back in numb silence for some moments, then he said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Really?’ Potting said in a commanding performance that brought a faint smile to Exton’s face. ‘So how do you explain that? Do you have any explanation for how they got there or are you saying the police planted two sacks of cat litter in your house?’

  Paternoster looked dumbfounded. He stared at his solicitor, then up at the ceiling and around at the walls. ‘Two sacks of litter?’

  ‘Correct,’ Potting said. ‘Two large sacks of Tesco Lightweight ten-litre cat litter – several weeks’ supply for a normal household cat.’

  Paternoster ran his hands through his hair, looking genuinely confused. Then he said, ‘All I can think of is that Eden must have bought the stuff in Tesco after I dropped her off and someone she met in the store drove her home. Or it was there all along but neither of us realized. That can happen, right? You forget you have something in the cupboard – it’s not the strangest thing in the world, is it?’

  Jon Exton looked down at a wad of notes in front of him, and leafed through a couple of pages. ‘Niall, I have a copy of a printout of all sacks of cat litter sold in the Tesco Holmbush store between midday, Sunday the first of September, and 4 p.m., when the store closed. There was just one sack purchased, at 1.34 p.m., a time you say you were at Parham House. There were no other sacks purchased that afternoon.’

  ‘Their computer must be wrong,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Are you suggesting that the store may have had technical issues on last Sunday afternoon?’ Potting asked. ‘Their CCTV down, perhaps, and their inventory computer system also?’

  Paternoster looked down at the floor. ‘If there are two sacks of cat litter in our house, either my wife had a major memory lapse or, yes, the Tesco inventory system must be wrong.’

  ‘Let’s hypothesize for a moment,’ Potting said. ‘In the event that the Tesco inventory system was working fine, and your wife did not buy any there, are there any other stores where, between 3.15 p.m. and 4 p.m. when all stores close on a Sunday, your wife could have bought two sacks of cat litter? Of the particular brand that Tesco sell? Tesco Lightweight ten-litre sacks?’
/>   ‘There are other stores in and around Brighton, yes,’ he replied.

  ‘Is any of this relevant?’ Joseph Rattigan asked.

  ‘Very,’ Potting said. ‘If you’ll allow me to explain. Your client has told us he dropped his wife outside the Tesco Holmbush store at 3.15 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. That left her with a forty-five-minute window to find a means of transport and another Tesco store that stocked the same product. Our Outside Enquiry Team have established two other stores within a forty-five-minute radius that do. Neither of them sold any during that window of time.’ He sat back.

  ‘My wife must have got distracted, in that case,’ Paternoster said lamely.

  Exton said, ‘I now want to speak to you about your visit to Parham House. You produced to the police a photograph that you said was taken on Sunday when you visited there with Eden. This would indicate that the two of you were together at Parham House on Sunday the first of September. We have had the photograph analysed and we know it was taken a week earlier on Saturday the twenty-fourth of August, around the same time. What do you know about that?’

  Paternoster replied angrily. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, the photo was taken on Sunday, not the week before. I’ve already told you I was asleep in bed last Saturday afternoon, nowhere near Parham House. You’ve got all this wrong.’

  Exton continued. ‘If that photograph was taken a week before, that means there is nothing to suggest Eden was still alive on Sunday, particularly when no one has seen her, she didn’t go to work and there’s been no social media activity.’

  ‘This is ludicrous, I didn’t kill her. How do we know she’s even dead?’

  ‘There is a large kitchen knife missing from the set in your kitchen, Niall,’ Exton said. ‘Do you know where it is?’

  ‘No, I don’t, and you can’t have looked properly – it must be in the house somewhere. If you’re thinking I used it on Eden, you’re mad.’

  ‘Is that what you believe?’ Exton asked. ‘You’ve told us about the financial background to your marriage and your understanding that if something happened to your wife you would be the main beneficiary.’

  ‘Like I said, we both made wills, leaving stuff to each other – isn’t that normal?’

  ‘Niall,’ Potting said, ‘as part of our investigation we’ve looked into your time in Australia – tell us about Karen Dale, your business partner there.’

  ‘Oh God, you think I murdered her? Seriously? We went into business together and it was going really well until the accident – it was a well-documented and witnessed accident. I was devastated because she was a good friend. I decided to come home, partly to get away from the memory.’

  ‘Came home with the money, then?’ Potting pressed.

  Niall shook his head in exasperation. ‘Yet again you think I’m lying. Nothing I say is going to convince you I’m innocent, is it?’

  ‘From the evidence we have so far, you were in a failing marriage and in a financial mess. We’ve found bloodstains in the house, a knife is missing and there were two bags of cat litter in the utility room. In addition, your wife’s passport and rings were recovered and her mobile phone was found hidden under your bed. You seem to have lied about the photograph and your movements last week, and you have also lied about the barbecue. What else have you lied about?’

  ‘This is just so much rubbish. I haven’t done any of these things, you’re just twisting it all around to suit your story.’

  Ignoring him, Exton said, ‘There is also evidence that the car was used in the early hours of Friday morning when Eden didn’t turn up at work. We think you’ve killed her and have tried to cover your ground but have made mistakes.’

  Niall jumped to his feet aggressively. ‘I’m just not—’

  ‘Please sit down,’ Exton said. ‘Please tell us calmly what you have to say about the evidence we’ve highlighted to you.’

  He remained on his feet. ‘I’m not talking to any of you lot any more, there’s no point, you’ve made your minds up.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ Potting said. ‘Otherwise we’ll have you taken back to your cell until you’ve calmed down. We still want to talk about the hidden T-shirt and your kitchen that has been recently bleach cleaned.’

  Paternoster sat back down reluctantly. For the rest of the interview he replied ‘no comment’ to every question.

  Potting and Exton terminated the interview at 9.45 p.m.

  55

  Wednesday 4 September

  Roy Grace lay awake for a long while, unable to sleep. Partly because of the uncomfortable camp beds they had been given, but also the nightmare unfolding in the hospital. Bruno was almost certainly brain dead.

  His thoughts went back to the last conversation he’d had with his son as he’d dropped him off at school in the morning.

  Did you know that the ancient Egyptians, when they died and were mummified, had their favourite pets killed and mummified, to go in the tomb with them?

  Do you think they did that because they wanted company in their tombs or because they worried their pets would miss them too much – or that no one would take the same care of the animals they did?

  It was 3 a.m. Somewhere out in the darkness of the city he heard a pitiful squealing sound. A creature in utter terror. It went on and on. An urban fox taking its prey. He’d heard that sound several times before and it always distressed him, but tonight he thought bitterly, Well, at least there’s two of our hens you won’t be taking.

  He thought back to the conversation he’d had earlier, with Inspector James Biggs of the Road Policing Unit, and the statement he’d related from the witness who saw Bruno’s accident.

  What if he had done it deliberately to end all this? Did he kill the hens? Because in his confused mind he was worried they would miss him too much?

  Trying to turn his thoughts back to the Paternosters, he eventually lapsed into sleep, awaking sometime later from a nightmare in which Cassian Pewe was holding two dead hens up from lengths of string and shouting at Grace that it was all his fault.

  Finally, shortly before 5.30 a.m., after lying for ages, tossing from side to side, wide awake, he crept out of the bed and along to the bathroom where he was able to shower and clean his teeth. When he returned, Cleo was still asleep.

  He kept thinking about Bruno’s obsession, ever since he’d come to live with them, with serial killers. But what the hell did strangling his two favourite hens have to do with anything? Anticipating his death? Or what? Was it definitely Bruno or was it someone else who had killed the hens?

  A dark thought struck him. Was that just practice, before something on a larger scale? Something human?

  Just before 6 a.m., Cleo stirred and reached for her phone.

  ‘I’m messaging Darren,’ she said. ‘Telling him I won’t be in today. I’ll stay with you here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She kissed him. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I think we’re going to need each other.’

  56

  Wednesday 4 September

  ‘You know what this is?’ Niall Paternoster said, tired and ragged after a sleepless night on his narrow bunk and brutal pillow. ‘It’s a stitch-up.’ He was alone with his solicitor in a small interview room at the custody centre.

  ‘Stitch-up? By who? What do you mean, exactly?’ Joseph Rattigan asked. ‘Are you suggesting the police are fabricating evidence against you?’

  Paternoster raised his hands in despair. ‘I don’t know what to think. It’s just crazy – I mean – just crazy.’

  ‘The evidence against you is not looking good, you’ll have to admit,’ Rattigan said, tapping his bundle of papers. ‘I’m afraid.’

  ‘Not looking good? You’re my brief! I thought you were meant to be on my side?’ He pointed at the door. ‘If I’ve got that wrong then I need to find someone else.’

  ‘Please calm down.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to lose your fee, is that it?’

>   ‘Would you like to know what my fee is?’ the solicitor asked.

  Paternoster shook his head. ‘All you lawyers, you’re fat cats, that’s what I do know.’

  ‘My Legal Aid fee is less than £150. That’s for consulting with you yesterday, being present during the interviews with the detectives, meeting with you again today and meeting with you however many more times you need.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  Rattigan nodded solemnly. ‘That’s the value the Legal Aid Agency place on us.’

  Niall did a brief mental calculation. ‘I would have earned more than you driving my cab.’

  ‘You would, yes. Do you still want me to leave?’

  Niall shrugged.

  ‘So, you dropped your wife off in the car park of the Tesco Holmbush store at around 3.15 p.m. last Sunday and you’ve not seen her since?’

  ‘Correct. Do you believe me?’

  ‘If what you’re telling me is the truth, then I believe you.’

  Niall looked at him, face on. ‘But you don’t believe me, not really, do you?’

  Rattigan sat up straight. ‘I’m not permitted to tell lies, either to police officers or in court. If I act for a client who tells me they are guilty, then my job is to try to reduce their sentence to the best of my ability. If my client tells me they are innocent, then I have to do all I can to prevent them from being convicted. Does that help?’

  Niall shrugged again. ‘Am I right that they have to release me this morning or charge me?’

  Rattigan shook his head. ‘They can apply for a further extension and, with the evidence they have, they would almost certainly get it.’

  Niall Paternoster looked bleakly down at the table in front of him. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? I love Eden, why would I harm her?’

  ‘If I had a pound for every client who’d said that, I would be a lot wealthier than I am, Mr Paternoster, believe me.’

  ‘What do I have to do to convince you – and the police?’

  ‘At this stage, we need proof that Eden is alive and well.’

  ‘And how do you suggest I find that while I’m locked up in here?’