Splinter in the Blood

by Ashley Dyer

  “Can’t wait.” Ruth ended the call, wondering if Kara Grogan had completed his questionnaire. Wondering if he had been in the audience the night Kara attended Jasmine Hart’s last session at the Epstein Theatre. Wondering if maybe Dr. Gaines had followed Kara out of the theater the night she vanished, to “make sure she got out in one piece.”

  Chapter 37

  DS Lake presented Gaines’s findings at the morning briefing. As soon as she’d ended her call to the anthropologist she had e-mailed Doctor Yi, the forensic psychologist who put forward Gaines’s name to the inquiry team, asking him to contact her urgently. She was tempted to bring up her own theory about the women keeping secrets, but decided to wait until she’d spoken to Harry Rollinson and Jasmine Hart. Before she’d left the theater the previous night, she had asked them to come to police headquarters to make a formal statement, and they were scheduled to come in at nine thirty.

  Parsons was distracted and distant, the team subdued, but they cheered up when she told them about the CCTV footage from around the theater, and DCI Parsons even managed a “well done,” though it seemed grudging.

  He paused on his way out at the end of the session. “My office,” he said quietly. “Five minutes.”

  He’s heard about my visit to Carver. She nodded but carried on gathering up her presentation material, only sneaking a look at him as he walked through the door. He looked more thoughtful than angry.

  DCI Jansen was waiting with Parsons in his office when she arrived.

  “Would you like to account for your behavior at the hospital earlier this morning?” Parsons asked.

  She responded with a bland, “Sir?”

  Jansen butted in. “DCI Parsons is referring to your cozy little chat with Carver.”

  She gave him the puzzled-but-helpful look. “I’ve been visiting DCI Carver most days since he was shot, sir,” she said.

  “On this occasion, he had a police guard whom you gave orders to stand down,” Jansen said.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I drew the constable’s attention to the Bail Act 1976 and Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and since he was unsure of the terms of bail, I advised him to seek clarification.”

  “You sneaked into the room while he was on the phone.”

  “If I breached DCI Carver’s bail conditions, I apologize, sir,” she said.

  Jansen’s face darkened. “You should have asked permission,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I wasn’t aware I needed it, sir.”

  “That’ll do, DS Lake,” Parsons said.

  She bowed her head, accepting the chastisement.

  “If Carver made an admission of guilt, you are obliged to say,” Jansen warned.

  She thought about it and decided it wouldn’t hurt to give him a few details. “He said he couldn’t understand how you found his DNA at Adela’s flat, since he was never there.”

  Jansen scoffed, but Ruth continued, “He also said that until he saw it on the news, he didn’t even know Adela’s real name.”

  “You expect me to believe that DCI Carver—the man who at the time was leading one of the UK’s most high-profile inquiries—didn’t do a background check on the woman he was shagging?”

  She looked squarely at Jansen. “You don’t know him, sir. So, no, I don’t expect you to believe it. But I do know him, and I know he wouldn’t misuse police resources to look into a woman he was having casual sex with.”

  Jansen laughed. “This is priceless. Is this the same Greg Carver who had a duplicate file on the Thorn Killer victims? I say ‘had’ because that’s gone. And where has it gone?”

  Ruth’s mind flashed to the box stashed in her spare bedroom. He’s not accusing you—wait him out. She lowered her gaze and said nothing.

  “I’ll say it for you, shall I?” Jansen said. “The Thorn Killer took it.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the case, sir,” she said, careful not to let her relief show.

  He spread his hands. “If not the Thorn Killer, then who?”

  “Whoever shot DCI Carver.”

  Jansen stared at her. “You’re saying the shooter wasn’t the Thorn Killer?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Based on what evidence?”

  “It’s not his MO,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Jansen. “Based on a negative, then.”

  “That’s pretty thin, DS Lake,” Parsons said. “Do you have anything more substantial to support your claim?”

  He seemed to be on her side, which only made things more difficult, because she had the gun—the best evidence they were likely to find. She couldn’t think of a way to give it to them without implicating herself.

  “No, sir,” she said at last. “But . . .”

  She pictured Carver’s flat when she’d found him. The whisky bottle dropped and rolled. The gun. The stench of whisky and blood and gun smoke. The sense of something not being quite right . . . Suddenly, she had it.

  “There was no glass.”

  “What?”

  “The whisky glass you found at the Faraday murder scene,” she said. “Is it Waterford crystal, cut glass?”

  “What the hell has that got to do with anything?” Jansen said.

  “I think it might have been taken from Carver’s flat.”

  “This is a diversionary tactic,” Jansen said.

  “Maybe so,” Parsons said. “But I want to hear it.”

  “When I found DCI Carver, there was an empty bottle, but no whisky glass by his chair.”

  “He’d downed the best part of a bottle of scotch,” Jansen said. “D’you think he’d be particular about swilling it from his favorite crystal, for God’s sake?”

  “I do, sir.” She appealed to Parsons. “Look, it’s true that DCI Carver had been drinking hard since Kara Grogan’s body came to light—”

  “And the rest,” Jansen said.

  “But whenever I saw him drinking at home,” she forged on, “he always drank from one of two Waterford crystal glasses. They were his father’s—a family heirloom.”

  She stared at Parsons, willing him to believe her, but he seemed doubtful. She couldn’t blame him: she herself had been so convinced Carver had tried to kill himself that she hadn’t properly assessed the scene.

  “Ruth,” Parsons said, “I know you want to help Carver, but—”

  “Did you find his prints anywhere else in the flat?”

  “His DNA was all over the place,” Jansen said.

  “But only one fingermark,” she said, “on an item that could have been brought in from outside.”

  Jansen seemed frankly incredulous. “You think he was framed?”

  “Is one of the glasses missing from his flat?” she demanded.

  “Even if it were, that wouldn’t prove a thing,” he said.

  “It would be suggestive,” she countered. “And a forensic analysis of any residue in Adela’s glass could identify the whisky.”

  “Which Ms. Faraday, along with thousands of other householders, probably kept in her drinks cabinet.”

  “Probably. But you don’t know that, do you?”

  “Detective Sergeant Lake.” Parsons was glaring at her and she realized she’d raised her voice.

  “I’m sorry, sir. But isn’t it worth considering that whoever murdered Adela tried to frame Carver for it?”

  “That being the case, why didn’t your mystery man leave the gun at Carver’s flat?” He cocked his head. “No brilliant insights, Sergeant?”

  She couldn’t answer.

  “If Carver is innocent, why is he refusing to cooperate with my inquiry?” he demanded.

  “He’s confused,” she said. “His memory for that night is beginning to come back, but it’s patchy; he can’t make sense of it. He thinks you’ve already made your mind up, and he’s worried you’ll fit the facts to your theory.”

  “While you’re entirely impartial,” Jansen sneered.

  “I’m just trying to get to the truth,” she said, trying
hard to ignore the voice in her head that said, You hypocrite. You damned lying hypocrite. You’ll get to the truth as long as it doesn’t involve admitting you took the gun.

  Chapter 38

  The corridor was busy with people heading out on jobs by the time Ruth made her way to the interview suite. Harry Rollinson and Jasmine Hart should have arrived by now.

  DC Ivey had just come out of the Carver/Faraday Major Incident Room, and when he saw her, she expected him to duck straight back inside, but he gave her a steady look and glanced across to the fire exit. She nodded, letting him go ahead of her, making a quick diversion to her own MIR to pick up her list of questions for the interview.

  The stairwell was emptying, but a few people lingered, exchanging gossip. She slowed her pace to allow the laggers to find their way out, then continued down the stairs, but there was no sign of the detective constable, and it wasn’t till she started back up that she realized he’d headed up to the floor above the incident rooms.

  “I spoke to the surgeon who operated on DCI Carver,” he said. “There was no glass in his hair. But he said the A&E team at the Royal had checked for head wounds on arrival, so I had a word with the charge nurse on duty the night he was brought in. There was no obvious head wound, but the CT scan showed up a concussion, so she took another look and found what she described as a fine ‘glittery particulate’ in his hair.”

  “Mirror shards,” Ruth said. “Why wasn’t this in their report when they shipped him out to Aintree? I mean, don’t they have a handover procedure?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Christmas and New Year, ‘glittery particulates’ means ‘party glitter.’ She said she didn’t think that much about it. It was a bad night at A&E, what with all the snow, and . . .” He shrugged. “She forgot.”

  “So there’s no physical evidence and no written record that DCI Carver was assaulted prior to the shooting.”

  He dipped his head. “Sorry.”

  “No, I appreciate you telling me,” she said. “Does DCI Jansen know?”

  “I was on my way to tell him when I saw you.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up, Tom.”

  “No problem. He’s really pissed off with you, by the way.”

  “Boy, do I know it.”

  Rollinson was a different man from the one who had tried to intimidate her the previous night. He interlinked his fingers on the tabletop and smiled warmly as she came through the door. The ring was missing from his pinkie finger.

  She looked into his face as she cautioned him and explained that the interview would be recorded.

  “Right-oh,” he beamed. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  Ruth smiled. “Well, you’re in a good mood. I wouldn’t have suspected you were a morning person, Mr. Rollinson.”

  Rollinson threw back his head and gave a booming laugh. “Aye, sorry about that, Sergeant. I can be a bit grumpy after a show,” he said. “But I’m a cuddly teddy bear when you get to know me.”

  She went through the questions she had asked the night before, and he answered them without deviation from his previous recitation. The only difference today was that he was positively seething with good humor.

  Another detective was interviewing Jasmine Hart, guided by Ruth’s prepared questions and warned of the psychic’s cold-reading ability. She was in no doubt that when she compared the interview recordings later, father and daughter would speak with one voice. Harry Rollinson’s protestations that he didn’t know what had happened to Kara after the gig would be echoed by Jasmine, and each would alibi the other for the hours up to midnight on the night in question.

  Looking into Rollinson’s jolly, jowly face smiling for the videocam, it would be easy to mistake him for an avuncular fellow. Ruth knew that he was a crook because she had read his PNC file. Rollinson had successfully conned scores of victims out of money on scam investments, dealt fake checks, claimed Social Security benefits he wasn’t entitled to—in effect, made a dishonest living in whatever way he could. She also knew that he was dangerous and violent, because he had served twelve months of an eighteen-month sentence for ABH, actual bodily harm. The complainant, a female reporter investigating one of his scams, had quit journalism, installed video intruder alarms at her home, and rarely went out after dark.

  Hearing him express concern for Kara Grogan (“poor lass”), seeing him shake his head sadly at the cruelty in the world, anyone who didn’t have access to the facts—a juror, say—might conclude that although his lifestyle was unorthodox, here was a genuine man who helped his daughter to help the bereaved. But when Ruth looked into his smiling eyes, she saw the bruised and bloody face of the journalist Rollinson had left broken and traumatized.

  “Sorry you’ve wasted your time, love,” he said. “But like I said, when Kara left the theater, she was in good health. What befell her afterward, well . . .” He stared into her eyes. “You know how it is: let your guard down for one split second”—he snapped his fingers—“your life changes forever.”

  The hairs on the back of Ruth’s neck prickled. He’d put a slight emphasis on the word “you,” and a chip of flint gleamed dully in his eye for a moment so brief she wondered if she’d actually seen it: “You know . . . one split second . . .” Ruth had firsthand experience of split-second decisions and the disasters that followed. She knew that a second was all it took, and she wondered how much Rollinson knew.

  Playing the video recording back later, he would appear affable, if a little bluff. You had to be in the room with him to feel the implied threat in his words.

  John Hughes was waiting for her in the Major Incident Room after she’d wrapped up and sent Rollinson and his daughter on their way.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you,” she said.

  He handed her a set of DVDs, each individually evidence labeled and sealed inside a jewel case. “The first of the CCTV recordings from School Lane. Those were the easy ones. We’re going to have to clone some of the DVR hard drives, so it’ll take a bit longer to transfer the data onto portable media. Looks like we’ve got a few we won’t be able to download, so we’ll have to seize the original equipment. There’s a hell of a lot, Ruth.”

  She saw where he was heading: “Parsons has asked for additional bodies to handle the work,” she said.

  “When?”

  “It might take a day or two.”

  “You’re going to do it yourself, aren’t you?”

  She raised one shoulder and let it drop. “I can make a start.”

  “You’d better have a bottle of eye drops to hand, then.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said, knowing he wasn’t joking.

  “Oh, and we tracked down the guy who uploaded the video of Kara at Mrs. Hart’s psychic performance.” He paused and she knew that this was the real reason for his visit.

  “Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” she said, for once not caring if her excitement showed.

  “He said would we like the full recording?”

  She grinned. “Would we?”

  “I’ve arranged for a computer tech to go over to his house later this morning, to be sure there’s no chance of any quibbles over the data retrieval,” he said. “I’ll send it to you as soon as it’s ready.”

  Ruth cracked the first evidence box and settled down to watch the nightlife of Liverpool pass under the all-seeing eye of the cameras. She skipped through to six p.m. on the night of the psychic reading. City center workers and shoppers were heading home, but the numbers thinned rapidly, followed by an influx toward seven p.m. of people heading into town for the night. Some were dressed soberly in dark overcoats—couples and small groups of adults she guessed would be headed for Jasmine’s psychic performance at the theater. Kara was not among them.

  Back when she was a newbie, Ruth hated getting stuck with this kind of duty. The ability to pick out a suspect from a blurry CCTV recording of a crowd was a useful asset, and her conviction rate was impressive, but spotting scrotes in the Saturday shopping crowds so
on became a dull and repetitive game of “Where’s Wally?” Identifying people was a talent, a neurological quirk; reading people was where she really got her kicks, and it was a relief when she found a DCI who was willing to listen and had put her back on investigative work.

  Right now, though, she was grateful that she could let the video evidence slide by, knowing that she wouldn’t miss a familiar face while she mulled over her situation.

  The “glittery particles” the A&E charge nurse had seen in Carver’s hair might well have been mirror fragments. Carver was a big guy. Could Adela Faraday have slammed him into a hotel mirror so hard that it smashed? Carver had held out at first, but Ruth believed him when he said that his recall of that night was confused and shifting. Was it possible that the shadowy figure he claimed to have seen in his apartment had actually shown up at the hotel? Had the fight been between Carver and the unknown man, and not between Carver and Adela? The missing whisky glass certainly pointed in that direction. Forensic checks on the gun might well complete that part of the puzzle, but she still couldn’t see a way to introduce it into evidence.

  Something caught her eye and she sat up, her hand going to the rewind icon on the monitor. Kara? The image was blurred and smeary, but it was Kara—she was sure of it. Walking west down School Lane, toward Paradise Street. She called John Hughes, gave him the evidence number, and directed him to the relevant section.

  “Can the techs enhance it?” she asked.

  “Just a minute.” She heard him tapping at his keyboard. “I’ve got a note from the CSI who collected the recordings that this one had a lot of grime on the camera lens,” he said. “We might be able to tweak it, but it’d only show a marginal improvement.”

  Ruth rolled the DVD on, but there was nobody else with the student, and it didn’t look like Kara had been followed—on this section of the street, at any rate. “Leave it for now,” she said. “I’ll do a screen grab. If we need it cleaned up for cross-referencing, I’ll get back to you.” She hung up and made a note, adding the time and position on the recording: it was 8:33 p.m. So Rollinson hadn’t lied about that. She let the recording roll on in case Kara came back the same way, but she didn’t.