Solid Proof: A dark, disturbing, detective mystery (Sgt Major Crane crime thrillers Book 8)

by Wendy Cartmell

  “Or a need for independence,” commented Crane. “Her own money gave her that.”

  “But surely she didn’t need independence? Why wouldn’t she let Clive support her? And of course, they’d inherit this in due course. I don’t think I’ll ever understand women,” said Lord Garford.

  “Amen to that,” agreed Crane.

  31

  Crane and Anderson had just left the house in Notting Hill when Anderson got a call. After several nods, ‘yeses’ and a ‘copy that’ Anderson killed the call.

  “Copy that?” said Crane. “You’ve been hanging around the military far too long, Derek,” and he laughed.

  “I mustn’t forget, ‘Roger, over and out’,” grinned Anderson.

  “Do you copy?”

  “Affirmative,” laughed Anderson and the two men enjoyed a few light hearted moments after the brutal murder scene and the stress of having to tell the family that Janey was dead. Should Lord Garford or Major Cunningham have seen them, they would have been horrified by their display of levity, but it was a necessity for the two men. It helped to dispel the awful image of Janey Cunningham lying dead in her flat and the sounds of a man being broken by the news of his wife’s death.

  As Crane combatted the London traffic Anderson said, “What do you think of the Major now? Is he a suspect?”

  “I don’t think it’s him,” replied Crane. “He was too badly affected by the news.”

  “Could it have been a display of emotion for our benefit?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Derek. Don’t forget the Major is a soldier and soldiers don’t really do emotion. We have to lock our feelings up in a box and throw away the key. The last thing you want to do after coming back from a tour is to cry all over your wife. Or cry all over your mates come to that. And it is worse for an officer. They take ‘stiff upper lip’ to a new dimension.”

  “So strike the Major?”

  “I’d say so. It’s far more likely a client. Was that what that phone call was about?”

  “Yes, our Janey was a bit sneaky it seems. The Met found a hidden camera in a smoke detector on the ceiling of the bedroom. Her laptop is full of images of clients. Men and women.”

  It was a good job Crane had to concentrate on driving, but his surprise at Anderson’s statement still washed over him, as though he’d had a load of cold water launched at him during a water bucket challenge. Crane took his eyes off the road for a moment and glanced at Anderson.

  “Women?”

  “Yep.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Crane and turned his attention back to the road.

  “They’ve started analysing the images already, so there may be some news for us when we get there.”

  “If we ever do get there in this bloody traffic,” said Crane, leaning on the car horn as yet again someone cut him up. “This is why I don’t drive in town. The underground is much better.”

  “Oh, so you prefer being a subterranean sardine in a tin rather than up here in the light riding on the dodgems.”

  “You’ve got that right,” said Crane, accelerating to do some cutting up of his own as he swerved into the outside lane on the dual carriageway. He was glad he’d done an Advanced Driver Training course, the amount of defensive and offensive manoeuvres he’d had to make. He was trying hard to concentrate on the traffic as he approached the Hyde Park Corner roundabout, but Anderson seemed oblivious to Crane’s focus on the traffic and continued chatting about the case.

  “Was she trying to blackmail her client’s do you think?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Crane said braking sharply as the traffic in front of him suddenly stopped. Once their car was stationary, Crane turned to Anderson. “If she was charging a lot of money for her services, which she was according to Laura Battle, then I think the video was more for insurance. For a rainy day, if you like.”

  “Ah, so she could blackmail someone in the future if she needed a bit of a cash injection.”

  “Yes. I think she would have been calculating enough to do that, she certainly had a business like attitude.”

  The car was moving again, when Anderson suddenly shouted, “Bloody hell!”

  “What? What?” cried Crane thinking they were about to have an accident and he looked frantically around him.

  “Maybe her murder is on video!”

  Anderson’s credentials give them access to the car park at New Scotland Yard and they paced around the foyer until someone came to collect them.

  It was DC John Saunders, whom they’d met at the crime scene. He was a tall young man, with severely short hair which emphasised his large ears. He was dressed in a muted suit, shirt and tie. Around his neck hung his security pass.

  “What’s on the video clips?” Anderson asked Saunders, but didn’t get a reply as they followed the policeman through the maze of floors and corridors. Eventually they arrived at the right office and saw the other detectives who had been with them at the crime scene. Saunders told them that it had been agreed he could give them a copy of Janey’s little black book and also show them to an office where they could review the video clips taken from her computer.

  As they sat down and Saunders opened the correct file for them on a laptop, Anderson asked his question again. “What’s on the clips? Does it show her murder?”

  “No such luck, sir,” Saunders said. “It seems she turned the camera on when she wanted it to run. Here look,” and he ran the first clip.

  Crane and Anderson watched as the video started. Janey could be seen walking away from a dressing table, towards the bed, where a naked man was lounging. The view of her back showed she was dressed in something black, lacy and sheer.

  Saunders continued, “The search of the flat revealed the remote ‘record’ button on the back of the dressing table, just by the corner, within easy reach of her fingers. We had a quick flick through and all of them start with her walking into view from the direction of the dressing table.”

  “Oh well,” Anderson sighed. “I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

  “Come on then, Columbo,” Crane said. “Take off your mac and let’s get going. You take the computer and I’ll take the book.”

  “Not a chance,” said Anderson. “I’m more likely to delete the clips when trying to view them. I’ll take the book,” and Anderson swiftly swiped it off the table. “Let’s just say it’s your punishment for calling me Columbo.”

  Crane grinned and swapped seats with Anderson. Taking off his suit jacket, he rolled up his white shirt sleeves and loosened his tie ready to get on with the job. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to, seeing the victim naked, having sex with numerous men and women, but it was one of those awful jobs he just had to get on with. He turned to his jacket and took his notebook out of the inside pocket. “I’ll make a note of the names of the men as I go along,” he said to Anderson. “Then we can correlate them with the book. She must speak to them and call them by their names at some point.”

  “Okay,” said Anderson, already immersed in the photocopied pages of Janey’s book.

  As Crane clicked on the first file, he knew it was only the beginning of this part of the investigation. All those on the videos would have to be identified and contacted to see if they had an alibi for the approximate time of Janey’s murder. At least all the work wouldn’t fall to Crane and Anderson. It was more a case of them helping the Met, not the other way around. Janey Cunningham had been killed on their patch. It was just the way it worked. Still putting off his task, Crane then phoned Tina to tell her he’d be home late, yet again. Then, having run out of excuses, he clicked open the first video file and began.

  32

  Crane had to confess to being impressed by the speed of the Met’s investigation. With a lot of manpower at their disposal, they’d managed to identify many of Janey Cunningham’s clients through correlation between her address book and the videos and were in the process of contacting them. For the moment it seemed everyone was more or less in the clea
r. Alibis had been sought for the approximate time of her death and were in the process of being verified. Crane thought back to his own office and the amount of work that normally he and Sgt Billy Williams had to plough through on their own, making him wistful for a larger team. But with the recent purges, which involved cutting back the manpower in the British Army, it was a futile wish. Most of the time he was just thankful he still had a job.

  Crane stood and stretched, needing to ease the knots in his spine from reviewing his section of the video clips. He wondered how many of the policemen and women doing the same thing were being put off sex from reviewing a surfeit of sexual encounters, many of which had some kinky aspect or other to them. They had found a cupboard full of sex aids in the flat and it was clear Janey and her clients had put them to good use. She seemed to have been as professional as a hooker, as she had been as a model. He was just considering going out for a cigarette when DC Saunders called for him and Anderson.

  They walked over to his desk, Anderson slightly behind Crane, scurrying to keep up.

  “Have you got something?” Crane asked, hopeful of a distraction from his current task.

  “Something that might help shed some light on the case, but we don’t think he’s the murderer. It’s a man, who started out as a client, but says their relationship developed to the point that they became a couple.”

  Crane couldn’t imagine having a relationship with someone who worked as a prostitute, but he kept his opinion to himself.

  “If you’re up for it, the boss has said we can go and interview him.”

  “Now?”

  Saunders nodded. “Now. Are you coming?”

  “Bloody right we are,” said Anderson and to Crane’s amusement Anderson rushed back to their cubbyhole office for his mac, as God forbid he should lose it. By now it was early evening, so they agreed that Anderson and Crane would follow DC Saunders in their own car and would then go home after the interview. The man they were going to interview luckily lived in West London, so it should be a fairly easy run home afterwards.

  Andrew Ferris lived in a large house in the leafy suburb of SW19, made famous by the lawn tennis championships held there every year at the Lawn Tennis Club. It was an affluent, upmarket area, with large detached houses no doubt worth many millions of pounds. As they drove around the area, Crane wondered which house belonged to Andy Murray, the tennis player who was currently the World No 3 and a source of much British pride.

  They swept into the driveway of Ferris’ house and he opened the door to greet them. Once the introductions had been made and Ferris led them through to the kitchen, Crane had a chance to appraise the man they’d come to see. As they sat down around a huge wooden kitchen table a large, shaggy, grey dog padded over to them and sunk down on the floor next to his master. With his head on his paws, the dog surveyed the men, looking up with eyes that swivelled from one man to the other, causing his eyebrows to raise in turn. Crane smiled at the dog’s unconscious cuteness and then looked at his owner.

  Sometimes owners look like their dogs and it was certainly the case here. Ferris had large grey speckled bushy eyebrows which he had a habit of wiggling and whiskers sprouted out of his ears. In his 60’s and not unattractive, he had an air of casualness about him. He seemed to be a man who knew himself well and was comfortable in his own skin. His clothes were casual, polo shirt and slacks, but clearly very expensive. Crane fancied the polo logo on his shirt was the real deal, not a cheap knock-off. He wore leather loafers with tassels and the shoes gleamed in the overhead spotlights as Ferris sat sideways in his chair at the table, one leg crossed over the other.

  “We understand you knew Janey Cunningham. In fact, you knew her rather well,” said DC Saunders, his notebook open and pen poised to record the man’s answers.

  “Yes, that’s correct,” he told Saunders, with a tinge of embarrassment on his cheeks. “Look, first off I want to say I’m sorry. I really must apologise for not getting in touch with you lot sooner.”

  “We’ll get to that later,” admonished Saunders. “For now can you tell us how you two met?”

  “Oh, I was a client of hers,” Ferris said. “I’m a widower and well, I was quite a successful business man before I retired early and therefore of independent means, so women tended to only want to know me for my money. I wasn’t into that type, so I found it preferable to pay for an escort than bother with the money grabbing divorcee set. I answered Janey’s advert on a discreet website.”

  “Which was?” Saunders asked.

  “Oh, um, Park Lane Escorts. She went by the name Annabelle. You then clicked through to her personal website and made an appointment on line.”

  “Paying by?”

  “Credit card.”

  “Did you know who she was then? Did you know that she was the model Janey Carlton?”

  “I knew there was a strong resemblance. When I asked her she denied it, saying she just looked like her that was all and joked about Janey Carlton not needing to indulge in her type of work. It wasn’t until we, well, became closer, that she confessed who she really was, but she swore me to secrecy.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She told me all about her life. She confessed that she was unhappy in her marriage and that she had become an escort because there was no modelling work for someone of her age. She was struggling with both money and self-esteem. I found her to be rather vulnerable, which is what drew me to her in the first place, I suppose.”

  “You wanted to take care of her?” Crane heard the scepticism in Saunders’ voice.

  “Yes, I believe so, at least initially. It was later that the relationship became more balanced. As we saw more of each other, I began to appreciate her inner strength. She may have been fading as a model, but she was rising as an escort. She was determined to do whatever it took.”

  “To do what?”

  “To become financially independent. She wanted out of the marriage but was realistic enough to understand that she had to do it on her own terms. She said her husband’s wealth was tied up in the family estate so she wouldn’t get anything much in a divorce settlement. Her father in law had even bought them the house in Farnham, so there would be no proceeds for her from the sale of that.”

  “So what happened, Mr Ferris? The last time you saw her?”

  “It was several nights ago. We’d agreed that she was going to leave her husband for me. I’d asked her to marry me and she’d finally said yes.” Ferris’ eyes filled with tears. Dashing them away he carried on. “She was supposed to tell her husband that night that she was leaving him. It was all pre-arranged. I was waiting around the corner with the car. She came running towards me, clambered into the car, said it was done and off we went.”

  “What about the shoe?” asked Crane.

  Ferris smiled at the memory. “She’d changed into flat shoes after he’d left to go back to the restaurant for his wallet, but had crammed the stilettos in her handbag. She hadn’t wanted to leave them behind. Manolo Blahnik’s or some such they were. Anyway, one must have fallen out of her bag. We didn’t realise until we got to her flat and by then it was far too late to go back.”

  “And what was your plan from then on?”

  “I dropped her at her apartment. She was going to meet me at the airport the next evening. I’d booked us flights and we were going to my villa in Portugal. She said she had one last client, a booking that she couldn’t cancel. She’d told everyone else she was retiring, all her regular clients that was, and after that one last booking, she was done with it all.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I tried to persuade her to change her mind, of course, tried to get her to cancel, but she wasn’t having any of it. A job was a job, she said and she wanted to leave with everything straight. Finished. A clean break.” Once again Ferris paused and wiped his eyes. “So I left her and I went home. By then it was the early hours of the morning, I’m not sure of the time. The following day I bumbled about packing, n
otifying my staff of my movements, and making sure that all was ready at the villa in Portugal. I left for the airport around 5pm. We’d arranged to meet there at 6 o’clock.”

  “But she didn’t show?” asked Saunders.

  Ferris could only shake his head. He was choked with emotion and appeared to have difficulty breathing. Crane moved into the kitchen, grabbed a glass off the counter and filled it with water. He handed it to Ferris who nodded his thanks and sipped at it for moment before clearing his throat and continuing with his story. “I waited until long after the flight had departed. I rang and rang her mobile, but there was never any answer. When I left the airport, I went to her flat, but there was no reply to my buzzing. I was crushed. I thought she’d changed her mind. I felt like such an old fool. I was so embarrassed. I shut myself up in this house, feeling sorry for myself, only going outside to walk the dog.”

  “Didn’t you see the television news? Realise that she was missing?”

  By now Ferris was once again crying. “Like I said I thought she’d taken me for an old fool and gone off with someone else. And then, then,” he sniffed, taking deep breaths, his voice shaking with emotion, “You lot rang and told me that she had been found. Murdered. In her flat.” He stood. “I’m sorry, excuse me,” and he tripped and stumbled out of the room.

  No one spoke as they waited for Ferris to return, which he did, with red eyes, his hands and the front of his polo shirt, damp. “To think I doubted her,” he continued as though he’d never left the room. “That’s the worst of it. She would have come with me. Married me. Now I know that she would. But someone killed her. So she couldn’t. Such a tragic waste of life.”

  Crane wasn’t altogether too sure if he was talking about Janey’s life or his own future life. “You didn’t have a key to her apartment?” he asked.

  Ferris shook his head. “No, there was never any need. She didn’t live there, not really. It was only a place for business. If only I had….” His voice trailed off.