Borrowed Light

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘No, Mist. That either makes me slow or stupid or as psycho as Mackenzie. As it happens, I’m none of those things.’

  ‘So what are you?’

  ‘I’m wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded, glad to have settled on the truth. ‘It’s a moral thing, Mist. I just shouldn’t be doing this kind of stuff.’

  She said nothing. Ahead were a couple of big artics. She passed them both, settled down to seventy again. Then she spared him a glance.

  ‘You never told me that,’ she murmured. ‘Right?’

  Faraday convened the pre-interview meet for nine o’clock at Newport police station. The D/I in charge of the island’s CID had found them a room downstairs big enough to accommodate the key players. Ian Whatmore, the Tactical Interview Adviser, had been talking to the two interview teams for the past hour. Ellis and Yates had yet to start with Lou Sadler but last night’s session with Max Oobik had been deeply disappointing. As expected, he’d gone pretty much No Comment on everything. Apart from acknowledging that he lived in the caravan at Upcourt Farm and had a relationship with Sadler, even Patsy Lowe had failed to break his silence.

  ‘He’s got a lot of anger, boss.’ It was the big Scot, Angus McEwan. ‘You can see it in his face. There’s heaps he’s not telling us, but it doesn’t stop there. Could he have done them both? Holman and Luik? Physically, the answer has to be yes. He’s a powerful guy. But would he have done them? I’m not persuaded. Even for a squillion quid’s worth of toot it’s a big ask.’

  Patsy Lowe agreed.

  ‘He’s a child, boss. A boy. He thinks we’re all ganging up on him, and he’s dead right, but so is Angus. There’s a button we need to press, but I’m buggered if I know where to find it.’

  Faraday said he understood. He’d spent the last hour or so reviewing Gosling’s progress and he wanted to offer a sequence of events that might underpin the conduct of both sets of interviews. Oobik’s, in particular, had now moved into the challenge phase, and he wanted to be clear what was available to throw at the man.

  ‘First off,’ he said, ‘we think from seized business records that he’s being paid as a tom. That’s what the documentation’s telling us. Two tricks a day, presumably with the ladies, though maybe not. A grand and a half a week. Decent money. Next, I think Patsy’s right. I think we need a timeline to throw at him. A lot of this will be supposition, but that doesn’t matter. We’ve got to shake his tree, big time, so here goes …’

  On the Saturday night, said Faraday, Johnny Holman flees the fire at Monkswell Farm. He’s nicked Robbie Difford’s Corsa to muddy the waters, and he’s carrying a hefty stash of cocaine in the back. Difford’s phone is in the Corsa, and the last call on Difford’s mobile billing is to Kaija Luik, the Estonian girl. Why? Because Holman’s nuts about her. And because he has nowhere else to go.

  ‘OK so far?’

  Suttle had just joined them. He too was nodding.

  ‘So Luik gets the call from Holman. He’s driving. He’s probably pissed. Plus he’s in a right state because he’s just shot four people to death and burned his own house down. When he arrives at Luik’s flat, at God knows what hour in the morning, he’s all over the place. So what does the girl do? She phones Lou Sadler. And what does Sadler do? She wakes Max. They both turn up at Luik’s place. They see the state Holman’s in. This is a guy who must be reeking of smoke. He may have blood all over him. We don’t know. But outside in Difford’s car is a whack of toot. It may be that Sadler already knows about it. It may be that Max helped Holman dig the hole at Monkswell. All that makes sense. Why? Because Holman’s already known to Sadler. And because we can probably tie the shit from her horses to the stuff at Monkswell Farm. So, gentlemen…’ Faraday glanced round ‘… we probably agree that Sadler has the lead here. She’s the boss. So what does she do next?’

  ‘She gets Holman out of there.’

  ‘Right. And where do they take him?’

  ‘The caravan. Along with the Corsa.’

  ‘Right again. That takes care of the toot. Makes perfect sense. And then what?’

  ‘Max kills him.’ This from Suttle. ‘Probably strangles him. He’s a huge guy. Holman’s a runt. Plus he’s given up. The caravan was never a bloodfest. A ligature or a manual strangling would account for it.’

  ‘Fine.’ Faraday nodded. ‘And the body?’

  ‘He wrapped it up in bin liners. You just leave them on the roll. The guy ends up like a mummy, rolled and taped.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Faraday named a serial killer caught and convicted by Major Crime back in the 1990s. He’d pulled exactly the same trick before dumping the corpses in the country. ‘So now you have a body. It’s Sunday. It’s probably in the caravan. How do you get rid of it?’

  Bev Yates raised a hand. The RIB inflatable, he said. It belongs to Sadler. She can ship the body out to wherever and chuck it overboard.

  Faraday smiled. This was working beautifully.

  ‘But you’d need some kind of weight,’ he said. ‘Which is where this comes in.’

  He’d had Meg Stanley’s shots photocopied. Now they passed from hand to hand. More nods. More smiles.

  Faraday, conscious of time passing, pressed on. At some point after the Sunday, Holman’s body is disposed of. Early on Thursday morning the Corsa is found burned out in the woods. By now the crime scene in the caravan has been cleaned up and the boat trailer is back in the outhouse beside the caravan.

  Minutes before this meeting Faraday had tasked the Outside Enquiries D/S to start a house-to-house sweep of properties adjoining Newtown Creek. On the assumption that Sadler and Oobik wouldn’t take the risk of dragging the body through a marina, the nearby creek, with its relative remoteness, would have been near-perfect.

  Patsy Lowe had a question. She wanted to know about Kaija Luik. Had she been murdered too? Had there been a couple of carefully wrapped corpses in Oobik’s caravan?

  Faraday said he didn’t know. The girl definitely represented a risk as far as Sadler and Oobik were concerned. She probably knew about the cocaine because Holman would have told her, and she probably knew that something terrible had happened back at the farm.

  ‘But is that enough, boss?’ Ellis wasn’t convinced.

  Again, Faraday hedged his bets. Gosling had made extensive booking checks on routes to Estonia without any success. The Estonian police appeared to be in the dark about her. Nor had the Borders Agency logged her out of the country.

  ‘But she could be anywhere,’ insisted Lowe.

  ‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But as far as Oobik’s concerned, it may be to our advantage to suggest he killed her too. Let’s just try it and see what happens.’

  Lowe nodded, still unconvinced, and Ian Whatmore, the TIA, took over. On the basis of Faraday’s exposition, Lowe and McEwan would move through the timeline, pressing him on point after point. Interviews like these, regardless of the steady drumbeat of ‘No comment,’ often proved far more volatile than you’d ever expect. With luck Oobik might crack. At which point Gosling would take a giant step forward.

  McEwan stirred. ‘And if he doesn’t, boss?’

  ‘We’re off the clock at three. If necessary, I’ll go for an extension, but there’s no guarantee we’ll get one.’

  McEwan nodded. These days uniformed Superintendents were extremely wary about granting PACE extensions that simply turned into fishing expeditions. A properly organised inquiry moved steadily forward. Hence the need for meticulous preparation.

  There remained the opening interview with Lou Sadler. Last night she’d asked to be represented by a south London lawyer she used regularly. Faraday, conscious of the precious time he might lose, had insisted she phone him at once and get him down early the following day. This she’d done, telling Faraday that Benny Stanton would be on the 8.15 RedJet catamaran from Southampton. The crossing took twenty-three minutes. So far, at nearly half past nine, there was no sign of the man. Sadler herself, according
to the turnkey, had spent a peaceful night in her cell and had tucked into beans on toast for breakfast. Not a good sign.

  Yates wanted to know whether Oobik and Sadler were each aware of the presence of the other in the custody unit. Faraday nodded. He’d made sure to have Sadler escorted slowly past Oobik’s cell. There was no way they wouldn’t know that one story would be carefully matched against the other.

  ‘That’s why he’s gone No Comment,’ Suttle said.

  Faraday nodded. Dead right. He turned to Yates and Ellis. It would be their job to let Sadler run, mindful all the time of the evidence that Gosling had managed to establish. When it came to the challenge phase, they’d do their best to stress-test her account to breaking point, but this first interview would be largely devoted to establishing her own version of exactly what had happened.

  ‘You OK with this?’ Faraday nodded at the notes he’d made.

  ‘No problem, boss.’ Ellis shot him a smile. ‘And thanks for the invite.’

  The interviews were due to start at ten. Suttle accompanied Faraday back to the SIO’s office. Parsons had at last turned up, accompanied, to Faraday’s surprise, by Detective Chief Superintendent Geoff Willard. Willard had been Head of CID for some time now, a lengthening pit stop on his passage to ACPO rank. A big man with an air of slightly forbidding command, he’d won the respect of detectives force-wide. Parsons adored him.

  Faraday gave Parsons a swift heads-up on the morning’s developments. Much would now depend on the coming interviews. Parsons began to fret about the PACE clock. Willard interrupted.

  ‘How are you, Joe?’

  ‘I’m fine, sir, thank you.’

  ‘Head OK?’ Willard tapped his own skull. ‘I heard about the accident.’

  ‘Ah …’ Faraday smiled.

  There was a brief silence. Then Willard turned to Suttle.

  ‘DCI Parsons tells me you interviewed Winter last night.’

  ‘I talked to him, sir.’ Suttle nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He admitted removing a bin liner from Mrs Percival’s property. There was some of the girl’s stuff inside.’

  ‘And why did he do that?’

  ‘He claimed he was helping out, sir. He meant to hand it over to Sadler in case the girl ever came back. He had the girl’s mobile as well.’

  ‘He’s aware this constitutes interference in a crime scene?’

  ‘He says he wasn’t.’

  ‘I bet he does. Where are these items?’

  ‘I seized them. The clothes are downstairs. The phone’s gone to the CIU for billing.’ He paused, looking from one face to the other. ‘There’s something else …’

  ‘Regarding?’

  ‘Winter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think he’s had enough.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Mackenzie, sir. And everything that goes with him.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  TUESDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2009. 09.57

  The second interview with Max Oobik began a couple of minutes after ten o’clock. By now Benny Stanton had phoned to alert his client that he’d been held up on the journey down from London and wouldn’t get to Newport until 10.15 at the earliest. This delay, Faraday knew, was tactical, taking a hefty bite out of the interview time available on the PACE clock. Under the rules of engagement he could lodge a protest on grounds of unreasonable delay, but he realised that this piece of gamesmanship on Stanton’s part could play to Gosling’s advantage. They needed to squeeze everything from Oobik before tackling Lou Sadler.

  In the absence of video from the interview suite, Faraday was obliged to rely on an audio feed. He settled in the downstream monitoring room with Jimmy Suttle while Patsy Lowe date-and-time-tagged the interview for the benefit of the recording machine. Faraday and Suttle had glimpsed Oobik minutes earlier in the corridor that led from the cells. He’d chosen not to shave, and lack of sleep had darkened the bags beneath his eyes. He had walked slowly, pausing from time to time, making the turnkey wait for him. When one of the custody P/Cs asked whether he’d like to take a coffee from the machine into the interview room he barely acknowledged the question, and the moment he set eyes on Suttle there was something in his face that spoke of a deep anger.

  Patsy Lowe had finished. Angus McEwan got the interview under way. Earlier they’d decided to try and wrong-foot Oobik from the start. Faraday had calculated Oobik’s average earnings at more than £1,300 a week. McEwan, sweetly reasonable, suggested that this was good corn.

  ‘Corn?’ Oobik obviously didn’t understand.

  ‘Money. Good money.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘Nearly one and a half thousand pounds a week, Mr Oobik – I just told you. Was that only with the ladies? Or were you on offer to anyone who fancied it?’

  ‘You think I sleep with people? For money?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Oobik. In fact we know you do. My question is what kind of people? Women? Men? Both?’

  There was a silence. So far, in less than thirty seconds, McEwan had dug more out of Oobik than at any point during last night’s interview. The man sounded outraged. Maybe the interview strategy was working.

  ‘There’s no confusion here, Mr Oobik. All you have to say is yes or no. Men? Yes?’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Not men?’

  ‘I’m getting out of here.’ There was the scrape of a chair.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Oobik.’ A brief pause. ‘Thank you.’

  The question again. Do you sleep with men?

  ‘No comment.’ Oobik had obviously got himself under control again, though his voice had audibly thickened.

  ‘Do you sleep with women?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Do you sleep with anyone?’

  ‘I sleep with Lou.’

  ‘And is she the only person you sleep with?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘So you might sleep with women? And you might earn all this money?’

  ‘No comment.’

  The interview, once again, was bogging down. Careering down a hill he hadn’t expected, Oobik had hauled himself into the escape lane and brought everything to a halt. Patsy Lowe took over, trying to play to Oobik’s softer side. Sleeping with women for money wasn’t an offence, she pointed out. As police officers, in this and every other respect, they were simply trying to get at the truth. Given the disappearance of two individuals, Johnny Holman and Kaija Luik, might Oobik be able to offer them a little help?

  ‘No comment.’

  Mention of Kaija Luik was McEwan’s cue to take over again. The allegation that he slept with men had clearly got to Oobik. Now was the moment to clarify the seriousness of his plight.

  ‘We’re investigating what we believe to be murder, Mr Oobik. Not just one murder but two. In the first place we believe that Holman drove to Luik’s flat very early on that Sunday morning. We know that Luik had a relationship with Holman. We believe that Holman was very distressed. Who would Luik phone? She’d phone Lou Sadler. And what would Lou Sadler do? She’d talk to the person beside her in bed. That was you, Mr Oobik, am I right?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘You weren’t in bed with Lou Sadler?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘But yesterday you told D/S Suttle that you were.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘OK. Let’s assume you weren’t lying to D/S Suttle. Let’s say you were telling the truth. Lou Sadler has Kaija Luik on the phone. Kaija’s very upset. Why? Because Holman is there with her and it’s very early in the morning and he stinks of woodsmoke and he’s probably drunk. Are you with me here?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘OK.’ McEwan had endless patience. ‘There’s something else too. Holman tells Luik he’s got lots of drugs in the car outside, lots of cocaine. It’s worth a great deal of money, millions and millions of pounds. He wants to drive away with Luik. He wants to drive to a better place where everything’s going to be f
ine again, where he and Kaija can live happily ever after, and nothing will ever go wrong again. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it, Mr Oobik? Except Kaija didn’t believe a word of it.’

  There was a silence. Faraday could imagine the scene in the interview room, Oobik immobile in his chair, his face expressionless, his big hands lying in his lap. He didn’t even have to bother with another ‘No comment.’ All he had to do was pretend he was deaf.

  ‘So, Mr Oobik, you’re both there, you and Lou Sadler, and as it happens, you know about the cocaine already. Why? Because you’ve been over at Holman’s place, the farm, Monkswell Farm, earlier in the week. Isn’t that true? You don’t believe me? You don’t remember being over there? Helping Johnny dig that great big hole in his back garden? No?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Ah … no comment. You’re still with us then. Good. And you know why? Because now it gets very interesting. It’s Sunday. It’s four o’clock in the morning. Sadler tells you to get up. You take her car. You both drive over to that flat of Kaija’s. And you know what? She’s right. Holman’s there. And he’s in exactly the state that made Kaija make the call in the first place. He stinks of woodsmoke. And outside in a little red car is the cocaine. How do you know it’s cocaine? Because Johnny told you so himself. When you dug it up for him. When you asked. Isn’t that true, Mr Oobik? Isn’t that the way it happened? No? Then tell me what did happen?’

  Again there was no response from Oobik. McEwan, undeterred, pushed the story forward. How Lou Sadler knew that they had to get Johnny and the cocaine away from the flat. How she’d told Oobik to put Johnny in the little red car and drive him to Upcourt Farm. Hide the car, Max, she must have said. Put it in the outhouse. And hide Johnny too. In fact, worse. Get rid of him.

  ‘And so you did, Mr Oobik. That’s exactly what you did. You put Johnny in the car and you drove him back to your caravan, and you wheeled the trailer out of the outhouse, and you hid the car. But once you’d done that, you still had a problem. And you know the name of that problem? Johnny Holman. Am I right, Mr Oobik? He’s there in your caravan. He’s probably drunk. He’s probably in a terrible state. And so now you must do your mistress’s bidding. Am I getting close, Mr Oobik? Or are you telling me you don’t remember?’