She waits and I ask, “She would not be concerned whether a perfume cost £30 or $10,000 then - if she liked it?”
Polly laughs throatily for a moment and for the first time since we met today, “No, she thought £100 was outrageous for the Givenchy - ‘only smelly coloured water after all’ - she would think thousands of dollars was a joke, commodification gone mad for the titillation of the idle rich.”
Finally, it becomes too much, “Why?”
I explain that we think Pippa was wearing a $10,000 perfume when she died, “A unique blend from America, an Alabama perfumier.”
Polly drops her shoulder bag, sways and leans against Whittle who puts a consoling arm around her as the woman answers, “Sorry, the image of her lying in a ditch wearing a perfume that price. Too much for me.”
We all stand awkwardly while she collects herself and departs.
Whittle comes back within minutes, having seen her out, “Press Conference is about to start Sir, are you coming in the atrium to listen.”
I shake my head as she goes on, “Oh and Ms Verity remembered as we got to her car - she thinks Pippa came back from India and China via the States and stopped off somewhere on route. A bit out of her way surely?”
60
The Press Conference beams through on an internal feed to one of the eight screens in Lucinda’s office on the third floor where I have secreted myself with her secretary’s permission.
The top four screens are of BBC 24 Hour News, Al Jazeera, Sky News and CNN, three of the bottom ones are playing the live output from the three police cameras recording in the press conference room and the fourth shows the vision and sound mixed live feed going out to the world - if it is interested. Ancaster Police supply the images and sounds as an economy to the television outlets, and it saves us the trouble of letting camera crews and their equipment in every time. Instead they just send their reporters to ask questions and more often do not even bother with that, just take the feed.
I doubt any television channel, even with twenty-four hours to fill, will be covering this conference live unless it is a very slow news day. On the screens showing the broadcast stations, adverts or a story about the Middle East are running silently.
One police camera sits in the middle of the central gangway that runs from the back of the sloped cinema style conference room to the front stage, focusing at present on a general mid-shot of where the ACC and Lucinda will sit at the central table. Another camera is mid-way to the left side, giving a wide shot of the whole room and the third is to the right side of the stage, concentrating on the reporters taking their seats.
The cameras zoom in or out, or pan left to right, all controlled at the touch of a mouse by a police technical officer who live mixes the whole together according to events from a sweeping gallery high to the rear. The output is then available directly to any news organisations, who have authorization and have paid their contribution for this operation, if they wish to take or download it.
The shapes of over perhaps fifty journalists and photographers in silhouette are milling about HQ’s Press Conference Room, a highly modern operation geared for the digital age with its large stage and screen, plush tiered cinema style seating and a raised platform at the rear for stills cameramen. All befitting the Shakespearean tragi-comedy that is about to play out in wrap around sound. With yours truly as the heartless villain. The event is postponed to eleven from the original nine a.m. following the discovery of Pippa’s identity, the necessary checks to be done and the interest that generated as word seeped out.
***
The ACC, sombre of face, freshly attired in sparkling full dress uniform, medals agleam, walks on stage and sits quietly studying a file she carries with her. The force’s logo appears on the blue cinema size screen behind her. Lucinda has a new outfit since the morning, a dark business suit with a thick roll neck jumper. She stays standing and immediately dominates proceedings, bringing the hum of chatter to a rapid end with a call to order over the microphone. The vision mixer flicks the edited images from the wide back shot to one of the reporters’ faces and then settles on a two shot of the women on the stage.
Lucinda handles the large gathering of experienced journalists from newspapers, radio and television with aplomb, knowing most of their names it seems, asking them to identify themselves when they speak in any event. The auditorium is almost full, mainly middle aged men, in shiny suits and overcoats, holding phones and pocket recorders high for sound and their own video presumably, even as they take their seats.
The ACC quietly outlines the details and timeline of the dead woman’s death, and asks for anyone to come forward if they might know her movements over the previous weekend especially but also the few weeks before that when she is known to have been living in Aisby in Ancaster County.
In Lucinda’s office, an eerie voice comes over an intercom from the television gallery and presumably into her earpiece on stage, reporting that both BBC and Sky News are now taking the feed live. Instantly their screens above me have images of Pippa at a film awards ceremony. In voice-over and then to camera both newsreaders explain that rumour has it the famous and award-winning English film maker Pippa Langstaffe has ‘tragically died in rural Ancaster County, as we go live now to a police press conference on this breaking story.’
Suddenly the ACC is speaking on the two news channel screens, stressing that Ancaster County Police are treating the incident as ‘a suspicious death’ until proven otherwise and have done so from the beginning, putting the full resources of Major Crime Team 2 on it, and that progress is being made.
“Is it Phillipa Langstaffe?” half a dozen voices raucously call out, tired of the preamble.
An image of Pippa appears on a large screen behind the stage as the ACC says that the squad have only a few hours ago confirmed that the dead body found earlier in the week is Ms Langstaffe, the distinguished film maker and writer.
She asks for witnesses who might have seen a silver Bentley at any time in the county in the week previously or a green convertible BMW. Images are shown, registration numbers are announced. Suddenly CNN is also showing the Press Conference live with the text at the bottom of their screen mourning ‘CNN contributor and erstwhile colleague Pippa Langstaffe’ and Al Jazeera show a recording of the past few minutes.
A file will be issued to every reporter with photographs of the cars and the dead woman in life, Lucinda says now, and these are also in the encrypted area of the force’s Press Room to which they may have a password for access. The file does not give the exact location where the incident happened or where the body was found, nor of the way that the body was moved after death, nor any inkling of events being photographed by the woman herself in the run up to and the actual moment of her demise.
It does mischievously mention that statements have been taken from eminent guests to a dinner party on the night in question at a nearby stately home. I would not have released even this information, but the ACC decided that word would get out soon enough and why not cause Albion House and its guests some concern to show we too can irritate.
Voices are suspicious now, dogs sensing a juicy bone. When did she die? Early Monday morning, the ACC answers. What was she doing in a country area, presumably on a road or lane at that time, a BBC woman asks as Lucinda selects her to put a question. Investigations are continuing with various promising avenues being pursued is the reply. What are they, asks a face and voice I know from ITV News. Confidential for the moment. What was she doing in Ancaster County at all, asks a down-to-earth Sky reporter to a slight gust of laughter from metropolitan reporters who have trekked on non-motorway roads without any service areas to get here. The same response is given. Was she working on a film? The same. Is it a hit and run or a deliberate killing? We are treating it as a suspicious death, repeats the ACC, but initial appearances indicate it is simply a tragic accident, albeit one where the driver did not stop. Would they know they had hit someone? Unlikely they would not have noticed. The
room quiets at this, yet BBC, CNN and Sky News hold on the room even as the conference runs down with minor points.
***
Pippa’s large screen image is replaced by the badge of Ancaster Constabulary. Key points have been given and underscored. The ACC thanks people for attending and rises to leave.
A dozen hands spring up and voices roar. The camera on the reporters shows a number of the seedier members of the Fourth Estate on their feet, arms whirling akimbo.
Their questions are all the same: can the ACC confirm that DCI Cade is leading Major Crime Squad 2 and that is the same DCI whose wife and daughter disappeared seven years ago this month.
When there is no response to the noise, a cacophony of shouted questions wants to know when the DCI will face the media himself. The ACC is almost off stage but returns to the centre, waits until Lucinda restores calm and then says DCI Cade, the new Head of Major Crime Team 2, will take a media session ‘when appropriate’.
The babble begins again: should such a man be in charge of an elite team at all, or even be a copper, when he is still under suspicion about the fate of his own family and has been for seven years?
BBC, Sky and CNN are still taking the conference live as reporters roar their questions, with the ACC seated again, calmly waiting for quiet which slowly comes through Lucinda’s due diligence.
Finally, silence until one large, overweight man from a top-selling tabloid cries out with the camera on him, “Your own Head of C.I.D. has said, is known to consider that Cade murdered his wife and toddler, but just cannot prove it despite new evidence.”
Any rustle or movement stops as the ACC icily asks the man to identify himself and his newspaper.
“Noble,” he bridles proudly. I know him of old, his team hounded me outside my home one morning, then my mother another, and then he and his photographer were thrown out of the boxing gym by Daniel. His sweating brow and slight odour has ensured people give him space near the front here.
The ACC stops, piercing the man with a stare as she answers after pausing a few moments.
Her words are sharply clipped, “I find that hard to believe.”
She ignores the man’s dismissive shrug as the camera zooms in on her face, eyes flashing now as she says firmly, “And if I do not know that is the opinion of our Head of C.I.D., I am not sure how you can.”
A dramatic pause, softly now, “Perhaps you would like to enlighten me Sir,” then with the threat implicit, ”as to when he told you this so I can discuss it with him. And with you also, this very hour, if you have new ‘evidence’ I am not privy to?”
The reporter sits, the camera showing a red if still resolute face.
Not a sound. What has just happened is digested. Did a very senior police officer implicitly call upon a journalist to confirm his source, directly branding either the reporter a liar or her own Chief Superintendent at best ‘indiscreet’ and at worst breaking all known rules. It is a moment fraught with danger for all involved, especially Creel.
A cough, a shuffle, silence once more as the ACC’s accusing gaze still blazes, “Nothing to say Mr Noble. A shame, you could have served the public …. with truth….”
The words ‘for once” hang in the silence before the ACC goes on firmly, “For myself, DCI Cade is a highly commended and effective detective, who is known to get results and quickly. He leads the team on merit and we are lucky to have him.”
More gently now, “I would also suggest that anyone decent would have some sympathy for a man who has lost his wife and toddler in tragic and still unexplained circumstances, has handled it manfully and continues to try to do service to this community and its citizens.”
With that she is gone.
***
In the silence before people scurry out, Lucinda stands and advances to the front of the stage.
“One more thing my friends.”
Preparations to leave are halted, despite deadlines always looming. Lucinda is after all one of their own and usually good copy.
“Two - shall we call them publications - this morning ran a story about DCI Cade and a female Detective Sergeant.”
My story must resonate as all the channels remain live on events in remote Ancaster County as Lucinda goes icily on, “From no evidence save a snatched photograph, not bothering to check with me, with the DCI, with the Sergeant, with anyone, they made false allegations. Suggestions totally without foundation. Hysterical mania, fake, fiction.”
The back camera is tight on her face, intercutting then first to another camera in close up on the tabloid reporter Noble and then his neighbour, the Merian Standard editor and chief reporter. An orchestrated camera sequence, created no doubt on Lucinda’s instructions, with the images beaming out live.
Camera on her again she says, “The Sergeant was at the DCI’s cottage for an early morning briefing, arriving half an hour before she was photographed leaving supposedly from ‘a romantic tryst’ – another witness was present the whole time, end of story. Fake news from two, ehm, esteemed news publications.”
The screens in Lucinda’s office cut again to images of the reporters as her voice intones, “A bad day for our profession I would say. Good day gentlemen, ladies.”
Lucinda disappears off stage as a uniform sergeant and two PCs adroitly organise the handing out of files and the departure together of the media ‘pack,’ who will not be allowed to enter police headquarters for at least a month, unless on verified official business.
The journalists, phones to their ears, jostle to escape and file their reports, to begin digging for witnesses of their own and any fresh dirt they can manufacture on me.
Not a single one has asked if there is any progress in finding my missing wife and daughter.
61
Two children huddle around their mother and her pushchair in the desolate village street as the snow arrows sideways into their faces. A toddler falls, is gathered up, dusted, hugged and cherished by its mother as they struggle down their garden path and into the warmth where I can see a small Christmas tree and its coloured lights in the window behind the scrawny curtains.
My mind flies to when I too held my baby close, overwhelmed by just loving her. As her tiny face looked up at mine, big eyes trusting if unfocussed in those first weeks of life, when I vowed to keep even the slightest frown from creasing Grace’s delicate forehead.
When I recited nursery rhymes and poetry to her, knowing they made no sense beyond the rhythm and rhyme. I always sought my voice to be an Aeolian harp as Coleridge describes:
‘… the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise.’
Snow was falling beyond our cottage at that moment too in my memory. Here now the flakes cling each to another, making complicated shapes that hang like Christmas decorations on branches of trees that lurch in the wind like drunken skeletons.
Leaving Ancaster City, it has taken me over an hour to drive the fifteen miles south to Aisby village amidst icy roads and looming darkness. Through sheer weight of numbers traffic is impatiently nose to tail, constantly stopping and starting, even on this main road. The headlights of the Friday afternoon rush home pierce an eerie early darkness. Going in are a multitude of cars and coaches already queueing for miles, jostling avidly to reach the famous Christmas Market. A jamboree of five hundred stalls selling food and drink of every description, hats, clothes, candles, presents galore and much cheap stuff or ‘tat’, along with buskers, brass bands and choirs all around the ancient cobbled streets, arches and steep hills in the old quarter surrounding the thousand-year-old castle and cathedral. Half a million visitors in three days brings its own crime problems from shoplifting, muggings and pickpockets to burglary, theft and potential violence. Hence why the force is out in strength, including my squad.
***
Pippa Langstaffe’s rented cottage sits aloof on the edge of Aisby village, trees hiding it from the front, its sides and back surrounded by one giant ploughed field. I almost miss the t
urn but at the last moment glimpse Fenwick’s small car and a Scientific Services van parked thirty yards in.
As I line up beside them, DC Fenwick is just coming out of the garage to the side, while DC Whittle stands happy if cold by the front door, talking animatedly to a tall young man just stripping off his Forensics scene of crime outfit.
Fenwick is unable to resist casting a baleful look at these two, before he provides a succinct update. Uniform have done door to door of Aisby village and a five-mile area around without anything useful being revealed. The woman who manages the cottage for its London owner met Pippa briefly to hand over the keys, but has not seen her for the three weeks since despite cleaning regularly. Properly crime suited up Fenwick had a quick look around himself, despite the irritation of Scientific Services, to confirm that there are no documents, photographs, computer, laptop, mobile phone, hard drive, memory sticks or cameras of any kind in the house. He has found a taxi firm locally who took Pippa to D'Eynscourte village on Sunday night and was due to pick her up again at three in the early hours but she did not reappear. As arranged the driver had waited half an hour outside D’Eynscourte village hall but had not heard of any hit and run victim to spur him to come forward.
Have forensics found anything? Fenwick shrugs and replies nervously that they have just finished but say their report will be with us Tuesday. A large broad man in his fifties comes out of the cottage then, clearly angry with himself and the world as he ignores us all and strips off his scene of crime suit. His colleague laughs quietly, but tears himself away from Whittle to join him.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 37
