In Too Deep (Knight & Culverhouse Book 5)

by Adam Croft

  ‘Possibly, although I don’t think the two of us would pass for Premier League footballers,’ Wendy replied, a small smile playing on her lips.

  They’d called ahead to Woods’s agent, in order to make sure he’d be at home, and they’d managed to be relatively evasive about what the visit was about, which was always a good thing. It would give any potentially guilty parties far less time to prepare their excuses or alibis.

  The front door opened before Wendy and Ryan had even got to it, and Wendy recognised Callum Woods immediately from the photos she’d seen online.

  ‘Hi. Come in, come in,’ he said, standing aside and waving them in. ‘Sorry,’ he said once he’d closed the door behind them. ‘Can’t be too careful. Not when it comes to the press. Thanks for not turning up in a marked car, by the way.’

  ‘We’re CID. We don’t use marked cars,’ Wendy replied. ‘You must get a lot of press intrusion, then?’

  Callum replied as he led them through to the kitchen. ‘You don’t know the half of it. I’ve had them going through my bins before now. Any tiny little thing they can use and latch on to, they will. One women’s magazine a few months ago even ran a feature about breastfeeding, and they absolutely bloody slaughtered us for feeding our kids formula milk rather than breast milk. All because they found the empty packaging from some formula in my bins. Funny thing is, it was my sister’s. She’d been over with her two baby twins. Get this — my youngest kid was two-and-a-half at the time. Didn’t even cross their minds that he might be on solids by now. Bloody parasites, the lot of them.’

  Wendy couldn’t disagree that there were elements of the gutter press that infuriated her, and in this instance she definitely agreed with him, but it was also fair to say that Callum Woods had probably deserved a fair bit of the negative publicity he’d had. After all, he’d put himself up on a pedestal and he’d blown it — he’d hardly been the best behaved person in the world.

  ‘Goes with the job, I guess,’ Ryan said to him.

  He turned away slightly, though Wendy could still see the look on his face. It was obviously a line he’d heard a thousand times before, and it was one he patently didn’t agree with. She could also see that Ryan knew this all too well, and had probably said it deliberately to get that exact reaction from him. Ryan was clearly the sort of officer who could go far. If certain people would let her, that was.

  ‘Well, it’s not quite that simple,’ Woods replied after a moment. Wendy noted that he hadn’t offered either of them a drink. ‘So, what can I help you with?’

  ‘It’s with regards to an incident that happened in Mildenheath recently,’ Ryan replied. Wendy had decided to let Ryan take the lead on this one. She seemed more than capable, and Wendy would be there to step in should anything happen. It also meant she could keep an eye on Woods, could look out for any sign that he might become violent.

  ‘Mildenheath? Never heard of it.’

  Ryan chose not to rise to the bait. ‘It’s to do with a woman called Tanya Henderson. Does the name ring a bell at all?’

  Wendy could swear she saw the faintest glimmer of recognition in Woods’s eyes. It was barely perceptible, but to the trained intuition of an experienced detective, it was definitely there.

  ‘Sounds familiar, but I don’t know why,’ Woods replied, sitting down at the large, ornate kitchen dining table. Wendy and Ryan stayed standing. It’s not like he’d invited them to sit, anyway.

  ‘She’s the journalist who broke the news story about your visits to prostitutes.’

  ‘Is she? Yes, if you say so.’ His face remained blank.

  ‘Bit strange that you’d not remember her name, isn’t it?’ Ryan asked. ‘Especially as she’s the woman who nearly ruined your career.’

  Woods laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, it wasn’t ideal, but I can tell you now it’d take a lot more than a newspaper article to ruin my career.’

  Taking a piece of paper from her pocket, Ryan read directly from the article. ‘“This has ruined my family and affected my career. People never think of these things.”’ She looked down at him.

  ‘Yeah, and? People say things in the heat of the moment. And newspapers don’t always report quotes accurately, I can tell you that for nothing.’

  ‘Yes, heat of the moment. That might be it. Would that be why you also said, “How would this so-called journalist appreciate her whole life being ruined”?’ She stared at him, letting the question linger in the air between them.

  Callum Woods swallowed and folded his arms. ‘I don’t remember saying that.’

  ‘You don’t need to. It’s here in black and white,’ Ryan replied, waving the photocopied article in the air.

  Woods stayed silent for a few moments. ‘Listen, what’s this all about? You’ve sent CID up here from some bloody Home Counties backwater to question me over a quote in a newspaper article from over a year ago?’

  ‘Funny that you remember the date, but nothing else,’ Ryan said. ‘Is anything else springing to mind by any chance?’

  It seemed to Wendy that Woods was trying to stare Ryan out. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what this is all about?’ he said, eventually.

  Wendy decided that now was the best time to chip in. ‘Tanya Henderson was attacked on her front doorstep in front of her four-year-old daughter on Sunday evening. The attack was so severe that Tanya has been put on a specialist brain injury unit. She’s been in an induced coma since she got there.’

  Callum Woods’s blinking increased in speed. ‘Right. And?’

  ‘And we’re looking to speak to anyone who might have had a reason to want Tanya Henderson harmed. As I’m sure you can understand,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Are you serious? You must have a list as long as your arm, then. Have you seen the sort of stuff that woman writes? She ruins lives for a living. She’s done it to hundreds of people, not just me.’

  ‘Oh, so you’ve remembered who she is now?’ Ryan interjected.

  Wendy raised her hand slightly to placate Ryan. ‘It’s a matter of routine, Mr Woods. But where were you on Sunday evening?’

  ‘Easy. At home, like I always am,’ he said, sitting back and clearly relaxing a little. ‘I’m usually pretty bloody knackered the day after a game. Besides which, we’re not allowed late nights during the season, especially not before Monday morning training. And I’m a good little boy.’ Woods threw a knowing glance at Ryan — one she intercepted and interpreted without any problem at all.

  ‘Do you have an alibi?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘My missus and the kids. Although the kids were in bed by seven and the missus was asleep by eleven.’

  Wendy nodded. If that could be corroborated, it would rule Woods out of any direct involvement. It wouldn’t go too far towards proving his innocence entirely, though. There was still every possibility that someone else had done the dirty work for him. If Wendy had to be honest, this was the line of enquiry she was expecting to follow most closely. After all, famous people didn’t tend to make the best criminals.

  ‘Do you have a garage or shed at all?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘Yeah, both. There’s a shed in the garden full of kids’ toys and patio furniture and stuff, and a triple garage at the side.’

  ‘Mind if we take a look?’ Wendy asked.

  Woods shook his head and sighed. ‘Fine with me. The shed’s probably a bit pointless, though, unless you’re looking for a particular model of trike or sun lounger.’

  Callum Woods led them through to his impressive garage and flicked on the light. It appeared to be heated, too.

  ‘No cars in here?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘No, they’re in the other building over there,’ Woods replied, gesturing with his hands. ‘It’s got better security.’

  Wendy nodded. ‘Makes sense. Not got many tools in here, have you?’

  Woods laughed. ‘Well no. Unsurprisingly. I’m not exactly a DIY kind of guy. I have people come in to do all that stuff. I’m not exactly doing too badly, you know.’
r />   Wendy could detect just a hint of arrogance in his voice as she tugged on various drawers and cupboard handles. One cupboard door seemed to have far less give in it than the others. In fact, it wouldn’t budge at all.

  ‘This one locked?’ she asked, knowing full well that it wasn’t as it didn’t have a lock on it.

  ‘Oh, nah it’s just jammed. I think some of the wood’s warped. We like to keep the heat on in here but the previous owners didn’t, so some of the wood was a bit damp when we moved in.’

  ‘Ah. The joy of garages,’ Wendy said. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a crowbar handy, have you?’ She watched carefully for his reaction.

  ‘I dunno. Doubt it. I’ll have a look,’ he said, walking over to the other side of the large garage to look inside a drawer.

  Ryan leaned in towards Wendy and whispered, ‘Nice. What about the shed?’

  ‘We can’t do much about that. We can’t force him to let us in there without a warrant.’

  ‘We could get one.’

  Wendy raised her eyebrows momentarily. ‘Possible. Although we’d need something more to get it signed off. Public figure and all that.’

  ‘Nope, nothing here,’ Woods said, closing the drawer. ‘Then again, I wouldn’t know the difference between a crowbar and a power drill.’

  Wendy smiled. Somehow she doubted that.

  33

  Before the morning briefing had even got going, Jack Culverhouse’s pounding headache was made momentarily worse by the ringing of his desk phone. He was already two bodies short, with Wendy Knight and Ryan Mackenzie up in the East Midlands speaking to Callum Woods, and he didn’t feel in any fit state to be getting further depressed by the team’s lack of progress.

  ‘Culverhouse,’ he barked into the phone, his throat raw.

  It was the desk sergeant. ‘There’s a woman here to see you about the Tanya Henderson case. A Chloe Robinson. She says you met her at the hospital yesterday.’

  He vaguely remembered the name. A nurse, he thought.

  ‘I’ll be right down.’

  He groaned something at Frank Vine about suspending the morning briefing, then made his way down the corridor before taking the three flights of stairs down to the front desk. He usually would’ve taken the lift, but this morning he knew he could do with having the blood flow to his brain. Not to mention the fact that the movement of the lift might make him liable to vomit.

  He recognised the nurse immediately as soon as he got to the front desk and, after greeting her, he took her into a side room.

  ‘How’s Tanya doing?’ he asked, assuming that she hadn’t come down here to give him an update on her medical condition, but interested all the same.

  ‘No news,’ the nurse replied. ‘She’s stable, but there’s not really anything new.’

  ‘Good. Well, no news is good news.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Culverhouse could sense there was something she wanted to tell him — after all, she’d come here for a reason — but at the same time she didn’t seem to be saying all that much.

  ‘So how can I help you?’ he said, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. His head was pounding and he’d much rather have been at home asleep. ‘I mean, I presume this isn’t a social visit.’

  ‘Oh. No. Well, you see, it’s a bit weird. It’s about yesterday, when Tanya was brought out of her coma.’

  ‘What about it?’ Culverhouse said, his patience running thin.

  ‘Well, actually it’s more about what happened just before she was sedated again. She seemed confused and she was saying all sorts of odd things. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because it’s fairly common for patients with brain injuries to come out with strange things, but it was only when I was reading the newspaper later in the evening that it started to make sense. She was mumbling, and it was difficult to hear what she was saying, but I definitely heard “crowbar” a few times.’

  ‘She was attacked with a crowbar,’ Culverhouse said.

  ‘I know. That’s what I mean. Yet earlier she said she couldn’t recall anything about what happened. Then, when she got all agitated, she remembered the crowbar.’

  Culverhouse knew this could be significant, but he wasn’t sure how. ‘Could there be a medical reason for that? For why she remembered it when she was agitated, but not when she was calm? Earlier, I mean.’

  The nurse shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Not that I know of.’

  ‘And did she say anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing relevant, I don’t think,’ she replied, clearly thinking back. ‘She kept talking about the bright lights in the room, and I think she said “Pevensey Park” a few times.’

  ‘Pevensey Park?’ Culverhouse said. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know. And she said something about having to go to a meeting. “I have to go”, she kept saying. Look, I wouldn’t normally even bother reporting this because we get things like this all the time. Elderly women who suddenly become convinced they’re twenty-one again. Just general delirium. It’s pretty common. But the crowbar thing threw me. She’s obviously got the memories there. We just need to find a way of getting them out of her.’

  Culverhouse couldn’t agree more. ‘The only problem with that is that she’s already reacted really badly to being brought out of her coma. I don’t think the doctors will be in any great rush to try again, will they?’

  ‘Well, no. I imagine they’ll leave it a good few days. They’ll want to see tangible improvements rather than just having her remain stable.’

  Culverhouse nodded slowly. He had the distinct impression that Chloe Robinson was holding something back.

  ‘And is there anything else?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ she replied, forcing a smile.

  ‘Anything else on your mind? Something you might have seen, heard, thought of? I mean, you’re with Tanya Henderson most of the time on the ward. Is there anything you’ve... observed?’

  Chloe pushed her bottom lip out and slowly shook her head. ‘Not that I can think of. To be honest, she’s been unconscious most of the time and there was a police presence there when she was awake.’

  ‘Except for those crucial two or three minutes,’ he said, more frustrated at himself than anything. ‘Here’s a thought. The security cameras on the ward. Was there one near Tanya’s bed?’

  The nurse narrowed her eyes. ‘Well yes, but I don’t think there’s any suggestion of anything untoward...’

  ‘No, I know,’ Culverhouse said. ‘But do you think it might have picked up Tanya’s words? We might be able to go back and listen, see what she was saying.’

  ‘Ah. No can do, I’m afraid. The cameras don’t do sound.’

  Culverhouse smiled and nodded, but inside he was fuming. What exactly had been the point in Chloe Robinson’s visit, other than to point out another missed chance to gather some crucial evidence?

  ‘Right. Well, give me a call if you think of anything else. Anything useful,’ he added, not very subtly, as he escorted the nurse from the room.

  He watched as she left through the automatic doors at the front of the building, cursing silently to himself. He knew it was going to be one of those days.

  34

  Culverhouse hated texting, but right now he didn’t particularly want to speak to anyone. He selected Wendy’s contact details from his phonebook and typed out the message.

  How long?

  She’d know what he meant. He really couldn’t be bothered to type any more.

  He took the flights of stairs a little more slowly on the way up, feeling his legs ache with every step as the sun dazzled at him through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows on each level of the staircase. The grass outside looked so green and inviting, and he wished he could be out there, sitting on it.

  Rounding the corner of the landing on the next floor, he continued his steps up just as his phone buzzed in his pocket.

  Taking it out, he looked at the screen.

  Not long. On way back. Hour
maybe?

  There you go, he thought. Much easier than making a phone call.

  Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to have them do when they got back; this whole investigation seemed to be on the go-slow. For as long as Tanya was unconscious, there was very little they could do. There was no evidence as to what she had been working on at the time she was attacked, there were no witnesses, no murder weapon had been found, and there were either no suspects or hundreds of the fuckers depending on your outlook. Whichever way you looked at it, it wasn’t great.

  Jack knew the Chief Constable wouldn’t be happy. Charles Hawes was generally a very forgiving man as far as Jack Culverhouse was concerned, but even he had his limits. He was slowly but surely running out of lives, and with Hawes approaching retirement age, he knew he wouldn’t have an ally sitting in the main seat for much longer.

  Regardless, he knew he had to keep him up to speed and now was as good a time as any. At least it looked like things were happening. Wendy and Ryan were up in the East Midlands speaking to Callum Woods, Debbie Weston was still going through Tanya’s financial and phone records with a fine-tooth comb — even though they already knew there was absolutely nothing there — and after the case had been covered in the local papers, they’d received a handful of calls from the public.

  If it were any other investigation, progress wouldn’t be looking too bad at all, but Jack knew this was all a front. It was a case of looking busy, knowing damn well that Tanya Henderson’s security consciousness could have been her own downfall. And until she came round again — if she came round again — there was very little they could do to help her.

  He knocked on the door of Charles Hawes’s office and waited for a couple of seconds. There was no answer, so he knocked again.

  ‘Come in,’ came the familiar voice from the other side. So he did.

  There were many faces Jack wouldn’t have been particularly keen to see that morning, but Martin Cummings’s was right up there. The county’s Police and Crime Commissioner was the worst conceivable career politician, elected as the first PCC for the county in the initial set of elections. Jack thought it had been a stupid idea from the start, having an elected politician effectively in charge of the local police forces of Britain, but it had been the flagship policy of the government of the day and there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it.