‘So far so good,’ she said to Blake, as they made their way upstairs in search of coffee.
‘Yes,’ said Blake, ‘but he’s had twenty-five years to come up with a good story, remember.’
‘That’s what I’m banking on,’ she replied. ‘That he’ll offer far more detail than he needs to. Detail that we can check and hopefully disprove.’
‘He didn’t want a lawyer,’ Blake observed. ‘Shows how confident he must feel.’
‘Yet if he was innocent, and genuinely thought the DNA evidence was going to trap him into some nightmarish miscarriage of justice, you’d imagine he’d be screaming for a good lawyer to come and sort it all out, wouldn’t you?’
‘I certainly would,’ he agreed.
They had reached the MIT kitchen area and Grace, desperate for caffeine after their early start, reached immediately for the kettle. Blake leaned against the worktop beside her, folding his arms and watching absently as she shook ground coffee into a filter. ‘We’re going to be busy, right, boss?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘So will you be keeping DC Bromfield on?’
‘Not now Duncan’s back,’ she said, trying not to sound sharp. ‘I need to keep an eye on the budget.’
‘But you can find some wiggle-room, can’t you? We’re going to need all the bodies we can get.’
‘We’ll manage.’
‘Look, Grace, Carolyn knows how badly she messed up, but she’s really keen to stay part of the team.’
I bet she is! Grace strove to hide her desperation. ‘Let’s wait and see. Any word from Wendy on when we can expect the forensics on Cara Chalkley’s shoe?’
‘I’ll text her.’
She was relieved when Blake shifted his attention to his phone. She lifted the kettle, blinking angrily, and concentrated on pouring boiling water onto the coffee grounds with a shaky hand, no longer able to kid herself that she was capable of taking a dispassionate decision about Carolyn’s future.
They took their coffee to her cubicle, where they could run through her strategy notes before the interview. Grace resented her loss of focus and found it hard not to blame Blake for championing the younger woman. Larry was going to be a tricky enough customer without her wasting energy being upset about something that was no longer any of her business.
She’d seen how some suspects could be highly sensitive to the mood of the interviewing officer. She expected that Larry might be one of them, and she didn’t want him gaining an advantage by letting him pick up on the fact that she was rattled by something. But then an idea struck her: he knew nothing of the extent of their investigation and, rather than demolish his confidence, it might be far more effective to build on it in the hope of leading him into making detailed statements, on record, that she could then test and disprove. Sometimes a detective had to be a good actor, and if she could make him think she was now regretting his arrest and fearing it was a bad mistake for which she’d be held to account, that might play to her advantage.
‘Change of plan,’ she told Blake. ‘You can monitor the interview on the video feed. I want Carolyn in with me.’
He frowned. ‘She’s not done any interview training.’
‘I don’t care. She won’t have to say anything. Come on, let’s get her prepped.’
33
Grace took her seat opposite Larry Nixon. She spread various bits of paperwork out in front of her, leaving DC Carolyn Bromfield, wearing lipstick, hastily applied red nail polish and a borrowed pair of high-heeled shoes, little choice but to place herself next to him.
After they had all named themselves so that their identities were recorded on tape, and Grace had informed Larry that the interview was being remotely monitored, she began. ‘You’re here because your DNA sample matched the profile found on the knife used to kill Heather Bowyer in Southend in 1992. I will therefore be asking you about the events of that night. I will also be asking you about the deaths of Reece and Kirsty Nixon.’ She leaned back with an anxious smile. ‘I’m sure you can see my problem. If it can be shown that you, and not your brother, murdered Heather Bowyer, then a scenario in which he confessed before committing suicide no longer seems credible.’
Larry shook his head in sorrow. ‘I haven’t killed anyone.’
‘But you understand why we need to establish exactly what happened on the night that your brother died?’
‘I’d like to know, too,’ he said, glancing at Carolyn, who nodded encouragingly.
‘Good,’ said Grace. ‘But first, please begin by telling me everything you can remember about the events leading up to the Marineland fire. At what time did you leave home?’
Grace led him courteously through his movements, wanting to know what he was wearing, the car he was driving, what fares he picked up, who else he spoke to, what and when he ate and when he relieved himself. She then moved on to the fire at Reece Nixon’s home. As the questions became more and more specific, Carolyn crossed and uncrossed her legs and jiggled her foot up and down. Once, as Grace asked the same question for a third time, Carolyn cast up her eyes and shot Larry an embarrassed smile. Intercepting the look, Grace shuffled her papers apologetically and said that it was her responsibility to establish all the relevant facts.
As Larry Nixon relaxed he seemed almost to enjoy retelling the stories of the two fires in which he had featured as the hero. It seemed to Grace, listening carefully, that his current narrations differed very little from those she had heard before. However gently she pushed, he had added nothing new and offered no superfluous detail. It made some sense that maybe he had spoken about the Marineland fire so often over the past twenty-five years that the telling had become a fixed narrative, but that could hardly be the case for the recent traumatic and chaotic events at his brother’s home.
‘I still can’t believe that Reece is dead,’ he ended. ‘It’s a tragedy.’
‘Have you been in touch with his son or daughter?’ she asked.
‘No, I didn’t like to intrude.’
‘You’ve said that you and Reece weren’t close, but what about in 1992, when you were both still living at home? Did you hang out with each other much?’
‘We were working pretty hard, helping Dad build up the business.’
‘And when you weren’t working? Did you spend much time at home together?’
‘We had different friends. We didn’t socialise together much.’
‘Did you watch television? Eat together? Who did the cooking, for instance?’
For the first time Larry looked uncomfortable, making Grace wonder if he was trying to work out what answer would best account for his DNA on the knife.
‘Once Mum had gone Dad used to get girls in to help out. Otherwise it was the microwave or fry-ups.’
‘Are you handy with a frying pan?’
‘You can get away with junk food when you’re young. I try to work out and eat a bit healthier now.’
‘You and Reece were quite close in age; did you ever borrow each other’s clothes?’
‘I was younger, and money was tight, so yes, there were always hand-me-downs. But, look, I don’t understand. You already said you have DNA that connects Reece to the murder, but now you’re saying it’s mine. So how does that work?’
‘We have a full DNA profile from the murder weapon which matches your DNA but not your brother’s. However, we also have mixed and partial DNA from a glove recovered from the scene.’
‘A glove?’
‘Yes.’ Grace could all but see his mind whirring, but wanted to keep the temperature low. ‘Reece was a match to the partial DNA recovered from the glove, which also includes genetic markers that you both share.’
‘But if I didn’t kill anyone, how could you find my DNA on the knife?’
‘The DNA is what’s known as trace DNA. Because it’s now possible to analyse very small and also invisible fragments of skin cells or sweat, we can now show who could have touched or handled an object.’
‘It so complic
ated, I’m not sure I always understand it,’ said Carolyn, right on cue.
Larry smiled at her and sat back. ‘Well, there you are. I could easily have handled a knife that Reece took from the kitchen.’
‘And that remains a possibility,’ said Grace. ‘But you can see our difficulty, why we need to be so thorough?’
‘Everyone knows where I was that night,’ he said. ‘Dozens of people saw me. I couldn’t have killed Heather, so why would I want to kill Reece?’
‘Let’s explore an alternative version of events based on the premise that you did kill Heather Bowyer in Cliff Gardens shortly before making your way along the road towards the Marineland resort.’ Grace allowed a note of hesitation to creep into her voice. ‘Your brother had some reason at the time to suspect you of the crime. That’s why he moved away and kept contact to a minimum. Nonetheless, after we called to ask him for a DNA sample, he decided to speak to you, either to warn you or to beg you to tell us the truth. Maybe he threatened to share whatever he knew with us. When he wouldn’t answer your repeated calls, you drove to his house. He let you in, which is why you didn’t need a key.’
Larry was looking down at his hands, clasped between his knees, and now he shook his head in silent denial.
‘Either he was already fairly drunk or the two of you sat talking and drinking together while Kirsty went to bed,’ Grace went on. ‘He wouldn’t back down, or you simply felt he was too much of a liability, so you kept topping up his glass until he’d pretty much passed out.’
Larry raised his arms to show the dressings that covered his burns. ‘I wanted to save him. I called the emergency services.’
‘You slipped up to their bedroom and smothered Kirsty with a pillow. Your business is cars, and you both learned from your father to keep spare petrol at hand so that a vehicle low on fuel would never delay a job. It was easy for you to guess that you’d find petrol in one of Reece’s outbuildings. You used it to set fire to the house, targeting the rooms where Reece and Kirsty were already passed out or dead. The rest we know.’
Larry shook his head in mute distress.
‘Do you have any response to that scenario, Mr Nixon? Now is the time to speak. I should remind you of the caution you were given, that it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.’
‘That’s not what happened. What else can I say?’
‘You have nothing further to add concerning any of these events, that you brought about your brother’s death in order to cover up your part in the murder of Heather Bowyer?’
‘I’m sorry, but no, of course I don’t. You have your killer. My poor brother, Reece.’
‘Very well. Interview suspended at ten fourteen.’ Grace clicked off the recording equipment and gathered up her papers.
‘What happens now?’ asked Larry.
‘You’ll be taken back to your cell.’
‘And after that?’
‘We’ll let you know.’
As Larry remained seated, absorbing his immediate future, Grace stood up, keeping her gaze away from Carolyn, who also pushed back her chair and got to her feet. As she did so, she stumbled as the heel of her left shoe scraped sideways and her ankle folded. Gripping the table she lifted her stockinged foot out of the shoe and, tottering in an ungainly way on the other high-heel, grimaced in pain and rubbed her leg.
Larry Nixon bent down and solicitously picked up the discarded shoe, his fingers cupping it as if it were a precious jewel. As he handed it back to Carolyn, who laughed and apologised for being so clumsy, he slipped one finger inside the rim. Grace only just caught his fleeting look of ecstasy.
34
‘I didn’t think he’d buy it,’ said Carolyn, as soon as they were out of earshot of the custody area.
‘I didn’t either.’ Grace was shaking with shock and relief. ‘You played a blinder. Thank you.’
‘That was so cool!’ Carolyn’s eyes shone with delight. ‘Blake told me you were brilliant, and you are!’
‘Sadly, it’s not evidence.’
‘No, but we saw why there was only one shoe found with Heather Bowyer’s body.’
‘It’s still meaningless to anyone else.’
Colin and Blake were waiting for them in the superintendent’s office. Grace knew that they had both been watching the video feed of the interview, but she wasn’t sure whether they would have been able to catch the way Larry had handled the high-heeled shoe.
‘Did you see?’ Carolyn asked excitedly.
‘Only that he picked it up,’ said Blake. ‘What did we miss?’
‘It meant something to him,’ said Grace.
‘It was creepy,’ said Carolyn.
Grace gave her a warning look to make her pipe down. Larry Nixon’s reaction had been creepy, but it was important that they took his fetish seriously, and the last thing Grace wanted was a junior officer making silly remarks in front of their boss. She turned to Blake. ‘Has the search of Larry’s flat unearthed anything of interest?’
‘No. Some fairly vanilla adult porn. His passport shows visas for a couple of trips a year to Thailand, which could be sex tourism. We took a quick look at his computer. Straight after our first contact he made several searches for DNA evidence and DNA science, but then so did Reece.’
‘And so would I if the police arrived out of the blue asking me for a DNA sample,’ said Colin.
‘Exactly,’ Blake agreed. ‘He does, however, have nearly every Eurythmics album ever made.’
‘You can’t bang a man up for his musical tastes,’ said Colin.
Grace laughed politely. ‘What about the forensics on Cara Chalkley’s shoe?’
Blake shook his head. ‘Nothing found. No fingerprints or DNA other than hers.’
‘Damn! Even a partial would have given us a way in,’ she said. ‘We need something to shake his confidence.’
‘He’s had years in which to prepare himself for this,’ said Colin. ‘Seems to me he’s been very canny so far about not saying anything that he couldn’t have learned from media reports. We need to take him off-piste, send him down a black run and see if he trips himself up.’
‘I’ve been researching shoe fetishists,’ said Grace. ‘There are two types, apparently. One kind may be inadequate, with poor social skills and possible masochistic tendencies. For them the fetish object is a way of avoiding a feared rejection or humiliation if they were to approach a woman.’
‘Doesn’t sound like Larry,’ said Blake.
‘Could fit Reece Nixon, though,’ said Colin. He raised his hands in surrender at the others’ reactions. ‘Just playing devil’s advocate here. The crimes stopped when he got married and had a kid. Found a woman who accepted him for who he was.’
‘That’s possible,’ said Grace. ‘The other type of paraphiliac is an obsessive who is into power and domination. He will be prepared to steal or even to assault a woman in order to acquire the shoes, which he may then slash or burn. For both types, sexual arousal may become impossible without the fetish object.’
Carolyn grimaced. ‘If you’d seen the look on his face when he rubbed the inside of the shoe I was wearing. I’m glad I only borrowed it. I’d never be able to wear it again!’
‘The second type is the right profile fit for the man who carried out the multiple rapes in Southend,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve seen nothing so far to rule Larry out.’
‘So what made him stop?’ asked Colin.
‘I have a theory about that,’ said Grace. ‘Those podcasts gave me the idea, going on about fate and destiny. If Larry killed Heather Bowyer, then he did so right before running into a burning building and rescuing those two boys. It gave him the perfect alibi. Would have disguised any of Heather’s blood on his clothes. Maybe it gave him an outlet for whatever heightened emotions he was experiencing, especially if he hadn’t set out to kill her. But it also made him famous, too famous, perhaps, to risk reoffending, at least on his home turf. Most of all – and this i
s my theory – it turned him into a hero, gave him a new identity. If he’s into power and domination, then maybe this new persona gratified those desires in some way, fed into his grandiosity. Maybe that’s why he was so sure he could get away with last week’s arson and could justify to himself the need to murder his brother and sister-in-law.’
Colin nodded. ‘I don’t dispute your psychology, Grace,’ he said, ‘but we need some hard evidence from somewhere to back it up.’
‘I know.’
‘Larry Nixon has no live-in partner and has never been married,’ said Blake. ‘If he’s stopped offending, then where is he getting his kicks? I know we don’t want to go public yet about the shoes, but we could ask around among the local sex workers about men with special tastes. See if any of them know him.’
‘Good idea,’ said Colin.
‘And I want to go back over all the coverage of the Marineland fire,’ said Grace. ‘So far no one’s tested Larry Nixon’s alibi for the night of Heather’s murder. We’ve always assumed that he couldn’t have been in two places at once, but we don’t know precisely when she died. We need to establish a proper timeline and plot Larry’s movements immediately before the fire.’
‘And how do you plan to do that a quarter of a century down the line?’ asked Colin.
‘We’ll just have to use old-fashioned methods,’ she said. ‘Spend some time in Southend, ask around, jog memories. I’m hoping that people who remember the fire will also remember where they were and what they saw.’
‘Hilary can put you in touch with the local paper,’ said Colin. ‘I’m sure they’d run an appeal for people to come forward.’
‘Larry was driving his cab that night. People would be reasonably familiar with the firm’s cars and drivers. Someone might remember seeing him.’
Wrong Way Home: Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month Page 15
