Bright Spark

by Gavin Smith

  “Mens sana in corpore sano,” he proclaimed to his reflection, dredging up his grammar school Latin as he went eye to eye with himself and poked himself in the finger. “That means you, you fat mentalist. Lose your lard and knock that chip off your shoulder.”

  He spent ten ill-tempered minutes foraging through the half dozen bags that comprised his entire estate before he found a t-shirt that didn’t cling to his belly, shorts that weren’t too short to be legal, socks that almost matched and a pair of running shoes that smelled more alive than he felt. Only as he limbered up in the kitchen with a cup of coffee close at hand, discovering with alarm that he could no longer touch his toes, did he remember that his mobile had woken him. Should he ignore the wretched thing? The police had taken far more than their pound of flesh lately; if only they’d taken it from his midriff. Yet leave was leave, and while the message might be important, so was his mental and physical health.

  He knew he could slip the leash of mobile communications at any time he chose. So, he told himself, it was curiosity rather than compulsion that led him back upstairs to fish the mobile from the tangled duvet and access his voicemail service. As he listened to the halting words from a headquarters fingerprint clerk who couldn’t have grasped their import, his heart-rate leapt to levels he’d never have achieved on the open road. Within minutes, he’d stripped off his running gear and hurriedly donned his best work suit, allowing the leash to be slipped over his head again.

  “Epidermal ridges are all about sensation. All these raised lines exponentially increase the surface area of the skin available for conveying sensation to the nerves.”

  “Ronnie, that’s lovely.” Harkness cast a glance over his shoulder to ensure that they were alone in the quiet annex of the headquarters building that housed the fingerprint technicians. He might need to keep a lid on this if his worst fears were confirmed; at least until he could limit the damage to people he’d allowed himself to care about. Dread and excitement jostled for his attention.

  “It is. Absolutely fascinating,” continued the clerk, almost bursting with excitement. “So, first of all, this lovely set tells me that whoever left these marks couldn’t have been in the least bit forensically aware. It also tells me that they pressed their hands firmly and clearly onto the glass. I’ve seen worse samples from a Livescan machine.”

  “Ronnie, stop. Which window were these prints taken from?”

  “’13 Marne Close, first-floor, rear bedroom, both left and right-hand panes,” said the clerk, reading from his screen.

  “Inside or outside?”

  “Well, that’s the odd thing. These prints were on the outside of a locked window on the first-floor. How wild is that? And guess what else? On the inside, almost in mirror-image….….”

  “You found the prints of Suzanne Murphy smeared in her own blood, confirmed by post-mortem fingerprint and DNA samples.”

  “Top marks, detective.”

  “I should remember that. I found them. Go on then, put me out of my misery.”

  “Ok. Well, more or less in mirror image with the victim’s prints, there’s a full left-hand impression on the left-hand pane if you’re looking from the outside. Despite the sooty residue, you’ll easily get the sixteen points of agreement we’ll need in evidence.”

  Harkness nodded, acknowledging the fact that, to be considered good evidence against a suspect, the whorls, arches and ridges of a given fingerprint sample had to be shown to have sixteen sequential points of agreement with the sample originally taken from that suspect.

  “Things are less clear-cut on the right-hand pane,” Ronnie continued. “The prints are smeared in one direction; the right thumb from twelve o’clock anti-clockwise through to about nine o’clock, and the right index and ring finger from three o’clock to twelve o’clock, again anti-clockwise.”

  “Corresponding to the window handle’s direction of rotation, if it had been unlocked.”

  “It looks that way,” said Ronnie. “But there is no handle on the outside of that window.”

  “No,” said Harkness. “Somebody was miming, urging Suzanne Murphy to open the window, failing to understand why they couldn’t or wouldn’t.”

  “God. That’s awful,” said Ronnie, brightening as he returned to his work. “As I was saying, the smeared prints will get you no more than eight points of agreement, but there’s no doubt it belongs to the same set as the clear left-hand print.”

  “Come on, Ronnie, just tell me. Who do we need to talk to?”

  “Please bear in mind, Sergeant, that this person may well have just been trying to help…..”

  “I can see that. A name.”

  “Here we go,” said Ronnie, turning back to his screen and scrolling down to find the jumble of personal identifiers that always seemed so much less eloquent that arches, whorls and DNA sequences. “You’re looking for one Jeremy Jennings, born 12th May 1980, white male, no previous convictions, not the subject of any intelligence reports. Wow. You’ve gone pale. Should I get you a glass of something?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Harkness had dared to guess in drowsy moments that the truth of these killings would lie close to home, for the Murphys and now for him. He didn’t doubt that Jeremy had been trying to help Suzanne escape the death that claimed her, but the Jennings’ silence on that matter disturbed him and had to be explored. He’d seen the loose thread running through the resolution he’d stitched together and now this grinning clerk had given it a sharp tug and unravelled everything.

  “Why has this only just come to light, Ronnie? How did it take this long?”

  “We had the window impression weeks ago, but we’ve only just had the Jennings samples through from the enquiry team and they weren’t marked as a high priority. They’re just elimination samples, after all.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Just the two of us, so far.”

  “And why did you ring me directly?”

  “That’s what DC Slowey told us to do when he submitted the job.”

  “Look, this is straight from the chief,” said Harkness gravely. Ronnie didn’t need to know which particular chief he was lying about. “There’s a media blackout on this until we’ve spoken to this Jennings character. No sense in starting a witch-hunt if he turns out to be a good Samaritan. So don’t process this through the usual channels. We want to minimise leakage. For now, tell no-one else.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “This is most unexpected.” Sharon greeted Harkness in the corridor outside her office, almost regretting her brusqueness. She’d told the receptionist to send him straight up rather than engaging in an awkward, indirect interrogation.

  On her return from Marne Close, Rory had been unusually solicitous of her welfare but had still managed to flatter and flirt. She had dismissed him with only the requisite niceties; that must have piqued his curiosity, as would Harkness’s incongruous presence on familiar terms.

  “I’m sorry, Sharon,” said Harkness, face downcast. “I should have called ahead. But it’s important.”

  “Who’s died?” she joked, immediately regretting it.

  His presence had thrown her off-balance. Nobody other than her neighbours, Slowey and possibly Harkness’s ex-girlfriend knew of their affair and she couldn’t allow news of it to reach her colleagues. Unpopular as he was in his own right within these walls, being romantically linked to Harkness might raise questions about her handling of the now defunct Firth claim.

  “It’s not that drastic,” he lied, taking a seat. “But I have asked Slowey to meet us here. If that’s ok.”

  “I don’t know if it is ok.” She remained standing, arms folded, unsure of her ground. “Why don’t you help me decide?”

  Harkness nodded thoughtfully then unzipped a document folder, drew out a sheaf of papers marked ‘FINGERPRINT SAMPLE ANALYSIS – RESTRICTED MATERIAL’ and placed it on her blotter. When Harkness offered no commentary, she perched on her chair, scanned the document and gasped. Drawing a b
reath and composing herself, she read the document again, looking for vagueness and inconsistencies and finding only awful clarity.

  “What does this mean?” she asked, wanting Harkness to contradict her own worst suspicions.

  “I don’t want to leap to the worst possible conclusion, Sharon.”

  The bullishness she’d seen in him when he’d entered her office must have sprung from an urge to offload bad news quickly. He seemed distracted, wringing his hands while he stared at his shoes. His hair, while never well-groomed, had arranged itself into wayward tufts and clumps and the knot of his tie hung askew below a missing shirt button. She couldn’t quite believe she’d kissed this sleeping head goodbye a few hours earlier.

  “Rob,” she said, standing and firmly closing the door to her office, after first checking that nobody lurked in the corridor. “Forget ‘us’, whatever we have. It doesn’t matter now. I don’t mean….I have no regrets…it’s just………..well, damn it.”

  “I understand, Sharon, it…”

  “It can’t matter now. Even if I wanted it to. Just tell me what this means. I’ve read through this technical gibberish but I need it in English.”

  “It means that before or during the fire at 13 Marne Close, your brother stood on the roof of the conservatory and placed one hand firmly on a first floor window pane while he moved his other hand through ninety degrees in a motion that roughly mimicked the action of the interior window catch.

  “We can’t say for sure that he did this while Suzanne Murphy stood on the opposite side of that locked window trying and failing to open it, but the presence of her blood and fingerprints almost exactly mirroring Jeremy’s makes it seem likely. Incidentally, she couldn’t open it because Dale Murphy kept all the doors and windows locked and carried the keys on him.”

  “Jesus.” The world shrivelled into distance, traffic noise and nagging telephones just faint memories of the cleaner and simpler world she’d just left behind.

  “This doesn’t mean Jeremy did anything wrong. Frankly, until we….someone speaks to him, we don’t exactly know what this means.”

  “Rob, make it go away.” Colour suffused her pale face and her eyes swam back into focus. “I couldn’t do this to my dad, not now.”

  “Calm down…”

  “Justice has been done, hasn’t it? I mean we know who really did it and it certainly wasn’t Jeremy and he just wouldn’t understand the process and it would be cruel, so cruel, oh Christ, listen to me, floundering and flapping. Just tell me something good, Rob, anything. Can it disappear? Can it?”

  She took her seat again and stared into his eyes, daring him to decide what she was to him, to throw in with her or disown her.

  “I couldn’t do that, Sharon, even if I wanted to. My force has logged the information and so has the lab. I only managed to take charge of it by dumb luck and lies. I can’t control it forever and if I dropped it, someone else would pick it up. But we have got a period of grace. I can control it, for now.”

  “So control it. Write it off.” She dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her temples. “I know how these things work. You CID types can make anything go away. Get creative.”

  Harkness allowed a silence to settle like frost.

  “So, you expect me to stand aside while you exploit my brother and incriminate my family based on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. Is that it, Rob? Is that how you help? Am I another line of enquiry as well as a great cook and an obliging shag?”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Maybe that’s the way it has to be from now on.”

  “You think I would choose this, Sharon? Really? This could be professional suicide for both of us if we don’t handle this correctly.”

  “Correctly? We’re way past correct or appropriate, Rob.”

  “Sharon, just stop and think. Forget about whatever we had.”

  “Past tense, Rob?”

  “We have to know why your brother climbed onto that roof at that time. I have to interview him pronto or somebody else will. Hate me if you want, but please believe that this will come to light, one way or another, and I want to help.”

  “Do you care about me?”

  “We can’t do this now.”

  “You’re right. But there may never be another time.”

  “Let’s make a plan, Sharon. Write nothing, record nothing. Let’s at least manage the risk. If we ever do have to go on the record about this conversation, then I’ve just been trying to establish your brother’s whereabouts with a view to interviewing him in the most sensitive and conducive way possible.”

  “Then I won’t have to lie, will I, Rob? You’re all about the job.” Sharon picked up the ringing telephone. “Yes, I’m expecting him, send him up. Oh, and Kim, I need you to hold my calls and postpone all of my appointments for the rest of the day. What reason? Just say it’s personal.”

  “Slowey?” Harkness asked

  Sharon nodded and swivelled her seat towards the window, dismissing him, imposing a silence and thinking hard about her options. Seconds later, Harkness heard Slowey’s polite but solid rap at the door. Leaving Sharon to mull for a few seconds longer, Harkness opened the door and beckoned Slowey into the office with a finger raised to his lips.

  Slowey shrugged and entered. In Harkness’s absence, Slowey seemed to have regained something of his former self. The charcoal of the ingrained bruises beneath his eyes had faded and his complexion had recovered from anaemic white to its usual charcoal grey. His suit had been dry-cleaned and his shoes polished so that he looked thrifty rather than shabby. He even seemed to have shaved a few degrees off his habitual stoop as if only most of all the world’s woes pressed down on him.

  Today, his kids had foisted on him a tie bearing dozens of images of ‘Tweety Pie’ Even if he’d known what kind of day to expect, he’d still have honoured his girls’ wardrobe choices. Harkness fought back an urge to bear-hug the man, not even knowing if a handshake would be reciprocated.

  “Let’s see it then,” Slowey said softly, taking the proffered print-out and dropping into a spare chair next to the coat-rack. As Sharon and Slowey quietly contemplated the case, Harkness began to feel like a giddy child in the presence of tolerant but disapproving adults.

  “Right then,” Sharon said at last, swivelling to face them and slapping her palms down on her desk. “What happens next, officers?”

  “Do you know where Jeremy is?” asked Harkness.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you take us to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you stick around to help us talk to him?”

  “Yes. I don’t have a choice. I need to protect him. This is the best way. But I have conditions.”

  “Are you acting as his sister or as his solicitor?” asked Slowey from his position on the back wall.

  “His sister, of course,” Sharon replied, peering over Harkness’s shoulder. “I couldn’t represent him in person without sinking up to my teeth in ethical quicksand. But I should be his appropriate adult.”

  “He won’t need a solicitor, Sharon,” said Harkness.

  “You can’t promise that,” said Slowey, stern now.

  “No, you can’t,” Sharon added. “Don’t soft-soap me, Rob. I mean, Sergeant….. Oh, screw it. You do know, don’t you, about our …relationship?”

  “I do, ma’am, yes,” said Slowey, a blush lending his face an almost healthy colour.

  “Ok, good. Now we can all be grown-ups. If my brother needs a lawyer, believe me, I’ll make sure he gets one. I know a few.”

  “You mentioned conditions,” said Slowey.

  “Today, my father took himself off to a hospice so that he can get on with his dying. He’s been dying for most of my adult life, first with emphysema and now with stage-four lung cancer which has metastasised into other organs. I’m not going to play the weeping victim; I’ve been living with this threat too long for that. But you have to know that my dad may never get to understand why
I’m about to help you. I can promise you that my mum will never forgive me either.

  “You can’t change that, but you have to give me a chance to control the damage. In a few minutes, we’ll go straight to his care centre. You’ll let me bring him out – the staff will never see you. We’ll drive him directly to one of those interview suites that doesn’t feature screaming shoplifters and piss-soaked cells – you know, the kind you use for abused children, with peace and quiet and soft furnishings and toys that Jeremy can tidy up for you.

  “We’ll complete the interview in record time without reducing him to a screaming, twitching wreck. If…when my brother gives you a wholly innocent account for his presence on that roof, we’ll deliver him back to his carers in record time and before he’s due to be taken home. I’ll swear him to secrecy about it, tell him it’s a game, and hope for the best.”

  “Good,” said Harkness. “We can certainly….”

  “You should know, Sharon,” said Slowey, leaning, his face creasing with concern. “This could be more complicated. I think Jeremy might reveal something we’d all rather not hear. I desperately hope it’s simple. I just want you to be ready for the shocks if they come.”

  “You visited the house, didn’t you….Ken?”

  “Yes. I did visit. Took samples.”

  “And spooked my mum. Why?”

  “She lied to me,” said Slowey, biting his lip. “I don’t quite know why, but she lies consistently and well about that night. Jeremy kept trying to reveal something but she won’t allow it. I wanted an interview but fingerprints weren’t a bad second prize.”

  “You presume a lot, don’t you?” she said.