by Nick Oldham
He flipped through the other custody records on either side of Sowerbutts to find who was in custody at the same time as him. He found several names, took notes of what cells they had been in, then closed the binder.
Then he had a second thought.
Not that he was paranoid or anything.
Not that he didn’t suspect everyone.
He was.
He did.
He took the binder under his arm and, while the sergeant was busy booking in the latest prisoner, he left the office, calling for the door release, and went into the police station proper. The custody sergeant didn’t even look up as she reached for and pressed the buzzer.
He made his way through the complicated building until he found Admin on the second floor, introduced himself and demanded access to a photocopier.
Permission was given and he copied Sowerbutts’ record and the front sheets of four other prisoners’ records who were in custody at the same time. He then asked someone who looked after all the CCTV footage taken from the cameras in and around the custody suite. He was told that all those details were stored on a computer in the custody office itself.
He pouted at that news, then made his way back down to the custody office to find the sergeant was busy with even more prisoners. He checked the interview rooms and saw Milner was still being interviewed, so he returned the original custody records, and then it was time for a brew.
He linked up with Daniels at a newly opened Starbucks in the city centre, and both brought the other up to speed.
‘Overall gut feeling?’ he asked her when she’d finished her bit.
‘She was adamant she wasn’t having an affair with Salter,’ she said regarding Melissa the accountant. ‘I believe her.’ Then she added, ‘But I don’t believe anything else, just as I don’t believe a word anyone else has told me since we’ve been here.’
‘I know what you mean,’ he agreed just as his name was called out by a barista. He went to collect two lattes and brought them back to the table they had bagged by the window. ‘Anyway, how are you feeling?’
‘Me?’
‘After this morning’s fracas by the river.’
‘I’m OK. Sore, grazed … I am angry about it but I’m not going to let it bother me.’
‘I’d get it if you did.’
‘Hey, you’re recovering from being shot, you’ve tumbled down steps and you haven’t had any sleep, yet you’re still functioning. I got a bit of a slap – so what?’ She shrugged and picked up her coffee, but before she took a sip, she said, ‘A lot’s happened in two days.’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘What about the man they arrested this morning?’
‘Milner? He’s in denial. He’s a good suspect. Violent. Uses firearms. Could easily kill someone but he looked as shocked as anyone. I know, I know, people are good actors and you can usually see through them, but I’m pretty convinced by him.’
‘One of the few people around here telling the truth?’
‘That would be ironic.’ Henry placed the copies of the custody records he’d just made on the table.
‘What’re these?’
Henry explained, then asked, ‘How d’you feel about visiting these people, see if they can remember anything about Sowerbutts?’
‘Is there anything to remember?’
‘Dunno.’
‘What will you be doing?’
‘Keeping my enemies close.’
The initial interview with Milner lasted almost two hours. Henry was waiting in the custody office as Runcie came out and presented the prisoner to the custody sergeant before he was taken back to his cell. She came up to Henry, looking stressed and not a little concerned.
‘He’s a lying cunt,’ she said, and beckoned him into the office behind the desk where Saul was standing. ‘Shit, shit … mostly no comment. To be honest, I don’t really have much to link him to the murder … it’s all dependent on what we find at his property … Fuck!’ She stared at the ceiling, rolling her eyes. ‘You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to crack this, Mr Christie. It’s always here, on my mind,’ she said, tapping her head. ‘I was hoping this might be the key … comes of trusting anonymous information to Crimestoppers … but I’m sure he’s the one.’ She clenched her fists.
‘I’m assuming it’s a blank at his house?’
‘As yet, yes. Fucking worrying. Search teams have found nothing.’
‘They might yet,’ Henry said reassuringly.
Runcie watched him leave the custody office with her eyes in predatory mode. When she was certain he’d gone, she looked at Saul.
‘Was that a good enough act? The desperate detective? All that shit?’
‘You were very convincing,’ Saul flattered her.
She gave him a wink. ‘Now it’s about time that gun was found, don’t you think?’
Then she turned to the custody sergeant, who was standing there with one of those expressions on her face that made Runcie say, ‘What?’
‘Him,’ the sergeant said, gesturing to where Henry had just disappeared.
‘What about him?’
The fact was, as much as Daniels’ assessment of his staying power made him bristle with male ego, Henry was flagging.
Guilty though he felt about it, he walked out of the station, then through the city to the quayside, and returned to the hotel. He went to his room and flopped on the bed. He wasn’t quite as good at all-nighters as he used to be and as soon as he hit the bed, energy flowed out of him.
It was an effort to stay awake, then drag himself over to the desk and log on to his laptop to see if anything more had arrived from Tope. Nothing had. Slightly disappointed, he turned his attention back to the murder books, but something made him pause.
It concerned the books themselves.
Something about them.
A reference to them.
He felt he was on the verge of realizing something quite simple but vital … Then it was gone as his mobile phone rang and severed his line of thought.
He answered absently, irritated.
It was Rik Dean.
And all thoughts went out of the window as he concentrated on what his old friend had to say.
‘Believe you chatted to my intelligence analyst this morning?’ Rik teased.
‘Yeah. Nice guy, but Mr Grumpy.’
‘He mentioned you asked about how we were doing with Burnham.’
‘I did.’
‘Not that well, to be honest, though we do have one thing we’re trying to bottom. Two guys in a car seen hanging around. This from a woman who lives near to Burnham’s mother. Might not be connected but we’d still like to trace them.’
‘That it? Two guys in a car.’
‘Pretty much, although there is one other thing: it was a white guy and a black guy, she thought.’
Henry tensed up. ‘A white guy and a black guy?’
‘Yeah. Why – does that seem interesting?’
Henry swallowed. That ‘something’ that was eluding him now suddenly morphed into a concrete slab.
Henry had a quick, reviving shower, then returned to the police station on foot and settled himself in the small room he and Daniels had been so generously allocated. It looked as though nothing had been disturbed, but he would not have been surprised if it had been riffled through.
He reread the murder books, knowing that all he could do for the moment was bide his time, gather information and then make decisions. He didn’t want to do anything too rash, just allow things to brew.
Firstly with the gun issue.
He needed to see where that would lead.
It wouldn’t be hard to find a weapon of some sort on or somewhere near a guy like Milner. It was just whether any weapon found was the right one, but if it was, then it looked as though the Salter murder could be solved, so great.
But that left Mark James Wright’s brutal stabbing and the circumstances surrounding the alleged suicide via a cliff of Martin Sowerbutt
s, and the fact that a Home Office pathologist had declared the cause of death to be something other than it really was. And if there was some collusion with Runcie, what was that all about? Sowerbutts had been in custody some hours before his death, been released, then committed suicide.
Simple.
Henry’s skin crawled.
He’d expected to come along to Central Yorkshire, look at a couple of murders, make a few recommendations, then go home.
Instead, simple had become complex, and the attitude of the Serious Crime Team here was, to say the least, unsettling.
He looked at the note Jack Culver had made in one of the murder books: What is going on here?
What the hell did that mean? Henry asked himself.
Unfortunately he couldn’t ask a dead detective.
‘I didn’t see owt, saw nuffin’, not frickin’ interested in talking to cops, ’specially black uns.’
Daniels smiled warmly at a man called Bernard Williams who she had managed to track down to a bedsit by the cathedral in Portsea. He was one of the prisoners who had been in custody at the same time as Sowerbutts. He’d been arrested for minor public order offences and drunkenness, and Daniels guessed he would have spent most of his time in custody asleep and sobering up.
‘That’s not very pleasant. A bit racist,’ she said.
‘And yer a woman. I don’t talk to women, just shag ’em. White uns, that is.’ His cider-tainted breath made its reeking way into Daniels’ face.
‘Lucky ladies,’ she said. She assumed he was one of the city-centre drunks. ‘I’ll be off then. Thanks for your time.’
‘But I did see one thing,’ he relented, suddenly changing tack. ‘After they’d taken the two-pence piece off the peephole.’
‘The what off the what?’
‘You ’erd.’ He described a small circle with the tip of his forefinger. ‘Two-pence pieces … peephole.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The peepholes in them cell doors, yeah? Just a big bigger than a two-pence piece. Stick a two-pence piece in one an’ you can’t see out.’
‘Right.’ She screwed up her nose, wondering what the significance of it was. ‘So what did you see?’
‘Blood – an’ a lot o’ moppin’ up goin’ on.’
Daniels hurried to her car, calling Henry at the same time.
‘Where are you, boss?’
‘In our cubbyhole at the nick.’
‘I’ll be there in five.’
‘You sound rushed.’
‘You’d better believe it.’
Henry placed his phone on the table just as there was a knock on the door and Runcie poked her head in.
‘Boss. Development. You got a minute?’
Henry followed Runcie to her office. Once inside, she turned to him and her face was transformed as she gave a triumphant dig with one of her fists.
‘Good news, I take it?’
‘Found a gun,’ she said almost breathlessly.
‘Oh, wow! That’s bloody good news.’
‘Well, yeah,’ she said, tempering her victory with caution. ‘Early days, but it looks good. Found in a plastic bag underneath Milner’s shed in his back garden. A nine-millimetre Makarov … and nine-millimetre bullets were taken out of Tom Salter’s head. Obviously going to need analysing but, whatever, this guy has some serious questions to answer. I’ll request a fast-track analysis. Could be done in three or four days if I get a traffic car to run it down to the lab today.’
‘Very nice.’
‘Here – look.’ Runcie scooped her iPhone from her desktop and showed it to Henry. It displayed a photograph of a gun in a plastic bag.
‘Really great stuff. If this cracks it, bloody marvellous.’
‘I’m going to re-interview him now, see what he has to say. If necessary, we’ll bail him to come back in a week. Some really tough questions coming up.’
SIXTEEN
‘I’d either like to be in on the interview or be able to watch it on an A/V feed if possible,’ Henry told her, and the request seemed to stun Runcie. ‘I assume you have an A/V feed?’
He knew she was considering saying no – he could see that possibility cross her mind – but she also realized it would be a lie he could easily see through. She composed herself quickly.
‘I’d rather you weren’t in the interview room. Myself and DC Saul have this covered. We’ve got a bit of a rapport with Milner now and you might skew the balance. You know what it’s like.’
‘An A/V feed will do nicely.’
‘This way.’
She led him through the main CID office to a small room with a TV set up on a table, wires from the back of it disappearing into the walls. There were two chairs.
‘Switch it on in a couple of minutes.’
She left and he sat down and called Daniels to tell her where to find him, then switched on the TV. It came to life, giving a split-screen view of an interview room consisting of one table with four chairs, two either side of it, and a tape machine bolted to the wall and table. Sparse.
The cameras gave a view from two positions. One would be over the heads and shoulders of the interviewing officers, the other focused on where the interviewee would be sitting.
Henry glanced around as Daniels entered, looking flushed and excited. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked.
‘They’re going to interview Milner. I thought I’d look in on it as it’s the one we’re reviewing.’
‘Has he admitted anything so far?’
Henry shook his head.
‘You think he did it?’
‘Never say never, but no. What have you got?’
Daniels exhaled. ‘You’re not gonna like this.’
‘Hang fire,’ Henry said as, at that moment, the interview-room door opened and four people entered: the two detectives, Runcie and Saul; the prisoner, Milner, now attired in a forensic suit; and a woman Henry assumed was either the duty solicitor or Milner’s own chosen brief.
The two detectives sat on one side of the table, Milner and the woman on the other. Following the usual preliminaries – unpacking of sealed tapes, insertion into the tape recorder, introductions, time, day, date and location, during which Henry learned the woman was Milner’s own solicitor – Runcie cautioned Milner and the interview commenced.
Runcie said, ‘Firstly, I want to tell you I am now arresting you on suspicion of committing armed robbery.’
Henry focused on Milner’s face. He thought he saw the colour drain out of him on those words, but when Runcie continued to say that the robbery had been committed last year in Portsea when a security guard had been shot in the leg, Henry saw Milner’s expression change and his whole body visibly relaxed. In that moment, Henry knew Milner was not guilty of that particular crime. He had been reading body language for a long time, and Milner’s whole frame suddenly oozed relief and self-confidence.
‘That’s the robbery linked to the bullets found in Salter, isn’t it?’ Daniels said.
Henry nodded. He glanced at Daniels, who was watching the interview closely.
She eyed Henry and said, ‘He didn’t do it. His body language screams it.’
‘Well spotted.’
‘OK,’ Runcie said in the interview room. ‘Do you have anything to say about that?’ She laid a file on the table between them.
Milner shook his head.
‘For the benefit of the tape, Mr Milner has just shaken his head,’ Runcie said.
Henry muttered, ‘This is going to be a long one,’ and Daniels snickered.
‘As you are aware, following your arrest earlier, officers searched your premises,’ Runcie stated, getting zero response from Milner. ‘And, hidden underneath the shed in your back garden, a member of the search team found this.’ She reached down by her side and pulled up a clear plastic evidence bag. It contained the Russian Makarov semi-automatic pistol. She placed it gently on the table between herself and Milner, who was directly opposite. ‘Just in case you are wondering,
it has been made safe by one of our firearms officers.’
‘Would you like me to pick it up so my fingerprints are on it?’ Milner asked. ‘Because they aren’t.’
‘It has yet to be examined for prints. Same with these.’
She picked up another evidence bag from down by her side. It contained two ammunition magazines for the Makarov. ‘One of these is fully loaded; the other, which was in the pistol, contained six rounds. It has a capacity for ten,’ she said significantly. ‘So, four missing.’
Henry said, ‘Tom Salter had four bullets pumped into him.’
‘It’s fitting together very nicely,’ Daniels said cynically.
‘Innit just?’
On screen, Milner shrugged. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.
‘Just bear it in mind and I’ll come back to that point.’
‘Er, no,’ Milner’s brief cut in. ‘You made the point. I believe you should explain its meaning because, clearly, the statement does have some significance. I don’t want any games here, Detective.’
Henry imagined Runcie’s eyes burning laser holes into the solicitor’s skull.
‘Very well. Tom Salter was killed by four bullets. The magazine in the gun, this one’ – she tapped it – ‘had six bullets in it when it has a capacity of ten.’
Milner shook his head.
‘Which proves nothing,’ the solicitor pointed out.
‘Maybe not yet,’ Runcie conceded, ‘but what I want to do in this interview is give your client the opportunity to tell me all about this gun. At the moment, it has not been analysed, but I thought it would be prudent for me to paint the picture as I see it and give Mr Milner the chance to respond truthfully.’
Milner glanced sideways at his brief. She gave a small gesture, then to Runcie, she said, ‘Better paint your picture then.’
Daniels said to Henry, ‘Do you think she’s the one who phoned Alison about us?’
‘Her or someone connected to her.’
