Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation

by Nigel McCrery

  ‘If I may ask,’ the duty solicitor said, ‘why is a detective chief inspector conducting this interview? Isn’t that a little like having the Archbishop conduct mass at the local church?’

  ‘He’s not conducting the interview,’ Emma replied before Lapslie could answer. ‘I am. DCI Lapslie is here as an observer.’ She looked at O’Riordan, weighing him up. ‘Mr O’Riordan, let’s come straight to the point. When was the last time you saw your girlfriend, Catriona Dooley?’

  ‘Three weeks ago, weren’t it?’ O’Riordan said. ‘Wednesday the fifth.’

  ‘How do you know what day it was, exactly?’

  ‘’Cos we—’ He glanced at the duty solicitor, who nodded. ‘’Cos we was at the greyhound races. I won a shed-load of cash.’

  ‘Good for you. I hope you bought her a present.’

  O’Riordan frowned. ‘Why should I? It was my money.’

  ‘My client still has the receipt for the winnings,’ the duty solicitor said in a tone of voice that indicated he’d said variants on those words so often that they had become a rote phrase, like an actor who had spent too long playing a minor role in Hamlet but kept going on, night after night.

  Emma could feel Lapslie burning to ask a question, but she kept on going. ‘Was the greyhound track the last place you saw her?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘So where did you last see her?’ Emma continued patiently.

  ‘At ’er mum and dad’s place, wun’it?’

  ‘And what time was that?’

  ‘We was at the pub, then we went back to ’er folks’ place. She didn’t want to come back wiv me. ’Er mum was a bit funny about us spendin’ the nights together. ’Er dad didn’t care one way or the other. I stayed for a drink wiv’ her dad, then I went back to my gaff. I left about one o’clock.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Dooley will be able to substantiate that,’ Mr Knightsbridge added in his trademark dull grey monotone.

  ‘No doubt.’ Emma didn’t take her eyes from O’Riordan, He didn’t seem particularly grief-stricken at the death of his girlfriend; more like indignant over the fact that he had been arrested. ‘And you maintain that you didn’t see her at all from that night until now?’

  ‘’S right.’

  ‘You didn’t come to help identify the body.’

  ‘Her folks didn’t need no help,’ he said darkly.

  ‘Even so, I thought you might want to be present. As a mark of respect.’

  ‘Either it was her an’ she was dead, in which case I didn’t want to see ’er, or it weren’t ’er, in which case there was no point.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, I don’t like seeing no dead bodies.’

  ‘How squeamish.’

  ‘Mr O’Riordan,’ Mark Lapslie suddenly asked, ‘where were you three days ago?’

  Emma silently cursed. He just couldn’t stay out of it, could he?

  The suspect glanced sullenly at the table. ‘I ain’t sayin’.’

  ‘Oh yes you are,’ Lapslie growled. ‘We can stay here until you get sick of the sight of me and the smell of Mr Knightsbridge’s aftershave, but you are going to tell me where you were between those times.’

  O’Riordan pursed his lips, but remained silent.

  ‘Mr O’Riordan,’ Emma said, trying to regain control of the interview, ‘we found traces of blood and flesh in the kitchen of your house, along with quantities of fishing line. If you can’t explain how they got there then we can only assume that they are connected to the torture and murder of Miss Dooley.’

  ‘Have the forensics results confirmed that the traces of blood and flesh are human?’ Mr Knightsbridge interrupted.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘So they are merely circumstantial.’

  ‘But highly indicative, unless your client cares to provide us with a more innocent explanation of their presence.’

  Knightsbridge leaned over and whispered something in O’Riordan’s ear. The suspect nodded reluctantly.

  ‘If, in theory, Mr O’Riordan’s alibi involved admitting to a different and minor criminal act, what would be the position of the police?’

  Emma leaned back in her chair. ‘The position of the police would be that it’s for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide on whether Mr O’Riordan would be prosecuted for any other crime, but I would remind him, and you, that murder trumps most other crimes. He needs to ask himself what he would prefer to be arrested for.’

  O’Riordan glanced at Knightsbridge with a question in his eyes. The duty solicitor nodded wearily, with the expression of someone who has been through this routine so many times it had all begun to blur together.

  ‘It were crows, weren’ it?’ O’Riordan said reluctantly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The blood and the meat in my gaff. I’d been trappin’ crows, ’adn’t I?’

  Emma felt as if the conversation had suddenly veered left when she was expecting it to go right. ‘Crows?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why would you trap crows?’

  ‘For food. The Albanians love ’em.’

  ‘Albanians?’

  ‘The Eastern Europeans. Albanians, Serbs, Poles, Croats, whatever. There’s a lot of ’em work in Essex as labourers and farmhands an’ cleaners. They can’t afford to eat stuff from the supermarkets, and they’ve got a different taste in meat ’cos of what they were used to back ’ome. So what if I’ve set up a business satisfying their tastes? Bit of crow breast goes down a treat wiv’ them, in a stew or a pie. Thing is, crow meat is dark and bloody, more like human flesh than chicken or lamb.’

  ‘And does it taste like human flesh?’

  He shrugged. ‘How would I know? I don’t eat the stuff. I just supply it.’

  ‘And how do you catch the crows?’

  ‘Scatter some bait on the ground then use a shotgun on them. Load the shotgun wiv salt crystals, not pellets, an’ it kills ’em wivout leavin’ pellets in the body.’ He grinned. ‘Seasons the meat as well.’

  Emma shook her head in disbelief. ‘What else do you supply them with?’

  ‘I do carp. They love a bit of carp, ’specially the Poles. Can’t get enough of it. You don’t find it on the fish and chip shop menus here, but over there it’s like a national dish.’

  ‘And where do you get the carp from?’

  He shrugged. ‘Rivers, lakes …’

  ‘Ornamental fishponds in people’s back gardens?’ Emma added.

  O’Riordan frowned, and looked away.

  ‘Tell me, Donal,’ Lapslie asked, ‘does a Koi carp taste different from an ordinary one?’

  ‘They all taste of mud to me,’ he said. ‘Can’t see what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘And that,’ the duty solicitor said, ‘would be the explanation for the fishing line. Mr O’Riordan is a fisherman.’

  ‘This is all very well,’ Emma said, ‘and even if I accept that the blood and the flesh in your house was from crows and not from Catriona Dooley, then it still doesn’t provide an alibi for her time of death. Killing crows and carp and selling them on for human consumption may go against cultural prejudice in the UK, and probably contravenes the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, which is punishable by a six-month prison term and/or a fine up to £5,000, as well as probably breaking all kinds of health and safety regulations, but I still don’t know what you were doing when Catriona Dooley was murdered.’

  O’Riordan glared at her. His eyes were dark beneath thick brows. ‘We was trappin’ and killin’ swans, aw right?’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘We’d driven in to Wanstead Flats. There’s a whole load of ponds there where swans make their nests. A big ’un ’ll fetch a few quid, in the right hands. Feeds a family for a week, they say. Never tried it myself. Tastes fishy, people say, although ducks swim in ponds an’ they don’t taste fishy.’

  ‘So what’s so different about killing swans?’ Emma asked. ‘Why is it different from killing crows?’

  ‘Magistrates take it a lot more seriously,’ he replied. �
��Wiv crows they just treat it as a bit of a lark, a bit juvenile, like. Wiv swans, it’s like you’re attackin’ the Queen.’

  ‘So your alibi is that you were in Wanstead, on a fun trip killing swans.’

  ‘’S right. We was staying at a mate’s flat. Kinda like a party.’

  ‘How many of you.’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘We’ll need names and addresses so we can take statements.’

  He nodded sullenly.

  ‘Anybody else apart from your mates who can verify your story?’

  ‘The people downstairs complained about the noise. An’ the people upstairs. An’ we had some takeaways delivered. The bloke who delivered them saw me a couple of times. We had a bit of a barney about what we owed him.’

  Emma had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that told her this arrest was going to fall apart in her hands. It had looked so good when she’d seen the bloody thumbprint and the mess in the kitchen, but perhaps, looking back, it had all been too convenient. ‘Do you know anybody else with a reason to want Catriona Dooley hurt or killed?’ she asked.

  ‘On behalf of my client,’ Knightsbridge said, ‘I object to your use of the word “else”, as it implies that my client himself had reason to want Catriona Dooley hurt or dead.’

  ‘Very well,’ Emma said tiredly, ‘I withdraw the word “else”. Mr O’Riordan, do you know of anybody at all who might want Catriona Dooley hurt or dead?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nobody.’

  ‘What about her parents? Did she get on with them?’

  ‘She loved ’em to bits, an’ they adored ’er.’

  ‘Very touching.’ She glanced across at Lapslie. He shook his head. ‘I’m halting this interview at – ’ she looked at her watch – ‘eight o-five p.m.’ She pressed the ‘Stop’ button on the tape recorder. ‘Mr Knightsbridge,’ she said wearily, looking at the duty solicitor, ‘we reserve the right to question your client further at some later time. He will be taken up before the magistrate tomorrow morning, at which time bail can be discussed.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that he didn’t commit the murder,’ Knightsbridge said mildly. ‘Why not let him go now?’

  ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I want to wait for the forensics report on the blood and flesh found at his house before releasing him.’

  Knightsbridge nodded. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning in court,’ he said to O’Riordan.

  Leaving a police constable to take O’Riordan back to his cell, Emma leaned against the wall outside the interview room. She checked her watch. 18.08. ‘I hate interviews,’ she said. ‘People either lie to you or they don’t give you the answer you want. Either way, your nice, neat little case gets increasingly messy.’ She opened her eyes and glanced up at Lapslie. ‘That treatment of yours must be working. A year ago you’d never have managed to be in the same room as a suspect being questioned.’

  Lapslie smiled. ‘I tell you what – let’s go and do some real investigating,’ he offered. ‘Let’s go to Chelmsford Hospital and see if we can identify that girl.’

  ‘What makes you think that someone at the hospital can identify her?’

  ‘I’m guessing she was there for a reason. Maybe she was an outpatient; maybe she was visiting a friend or a relative. Either way, someone in that hospital will recognise her photograph.’

  Emma nodded. ‘Okay, I’m up for it. Let’s go “off-island”.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Off-island?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘I’ll drive, and I’ll drop you back here when we’ve finished. And on the way I’ll tell you about the conversation that Dom McGinley and I had earlier on today.’

  Her heart sank. They’d been talking. She needed to score some points quickly, otherwise he’d be overbearing for the whole journey. ‘Okay. Will I get to meet your new girlfriend, if she’s on duty?’

  ‘Not a chance.’ He scowled at her. ‘How did you know about her?’

  ‘Dom told me,’ she said, feeling like she’d evened the score in advance.

  The drive to Chelmsford Hospital took about forty minutes, and despite Lapslie’s threat he actually said almost nothing about meeting Dom, apart from the fact that Dom had tracked him down in a noodle bar. That in itself surprised Emma more than anything else – the fact that Lapslie had willingly spent time by himself in a restaurant. Things really were changing.

  Lapslie swung his car into the hospital car park and prowled the lanes until he found a particular slot, passing several other vacant slots on the way. Emma got the impression that he was a regular there, and had fallen into habits. She followed him in through the main entrance. He looked around for a moment, then went up to the woman on the reception desk. She flinched when she saw him. They obviously had a history together, and it wasn’t a good one.

  ‘I’m trying to identify this girl,’ he said, fishing an A4 sheet of printed paper from his jacket pocket and unfolding it. ‘Have you seen her around this hospital?’

  The woman took the photo from Lapslie as if it, or he, might bite. She scanned it and then handed it back. ‘We get all sorts of girls like that coming in here,’ she said dismissively. ‘On Friday and Saturday nights it’s because they’ve drunk so much they’re suffering from alcohol poisoning. On Saturday and Sunday mornings it’s because they ended up in the wrong bed and need to get hold of a morning-after pill. The rest of the week they’re just visiting some pregnant schoolfriend in the maternity unit.’

  ‘You have even more of a twisted and cynical view of life than I do,’ Lapslie said admiringly. ‘I might even pay for my own parking this time.’

  Emma followed him towards the lifts, feeling the woman’s heated gaze on the back of her neck. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked as the lift travelled upwards. It was large enough to hold twenty people, or perhaps just five people and a large hospital bed being wheeled from ward to X-ray or back again.

  ‘Paediatrics. Assuming she’s a patient and not a visitor, the girl is probably too young to be on an adult ward. Someone in the paediatric ward might know who she is. She might even still be there herself.’

  Emma checked her watch. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Yes, but patients don’t generally go home at night, and they’ll all be in the ward getting ready for bed. We can check them all out while they’re vulnerable.’

  ‘They’re patients in hospital,’ she protested. ‘They live in their pyjamas and dressing gowns.’

  ‘While they’re more vulnerable,’ he corrected himself. ‘And besides, the nurses on at the moment will be the same ones who were on during the last set of visiting hours. They might well remember the girl in the photo.’

  In point of fact, they didn’t. Emma spent half an hour with Lapslie in the paediatrics ward, twenty-five minutes of which were spent persuading the sister in charge that they weren’t suspicious characters trying to get close to vulnerable children. The place made her edgy. The sound of several children sobbing themselves to sleep drifted through the ward, and the oversized cut-outs of cartoon characters stuck to the walls and the room dividers that presumably looked cute and friendly in daylight were ominous black shadows at night. The nurses in their white uniforms moved silently, like ghosts, between the beds. It could almost have been deliberately designed to give kids nightmares. The sister eventually told Lapslie pointedly that the girl in the photo wasn’t a patient now, had never been a patient for as long as the sister had been working at the hospital, and was not a recent visitor either.

  Lapslie managed to get them a good look at most of the beds as they left by deliberately wandering down the ward pretending that he couldn’t remember the way out, but there was no sign of the girl. Or, at least, if she were there, and if the sister were either mistaken or lying, then she was hidden beneath the covers.

  ‘So, what now?’ Emma asked as they left.

  Lapslie rubbed his chin. ‘Short of stopping people at random and asking them whether they’ve seen this girl, or
copying the photo and plastering it on every notice-board in sight with a message asking people to phone us if they’ve seen her, I’m at something of a loss.’

  ‘Anyone you know here you could ask? Your girlfriend, for instance?’

  Lapslie smiled. ‘Nice try, but you’re still not going to meet her.’ He frowned. ‘Actually, I’m still under the care of a psychiatrist here – Doctor Garland. I could ask his advice.’ Catching her raised eyebrow, he added, ‘It’s nothing suspicious. I’m not having a nervous breakdown. It’s just that synaesthesia, being a neurological condition, shades across into the area of psychology. Doctor Garland is running the support group that I attend.’

  ‘Will he still be working this late?’

  ‘As I’ve found out,’ Lapslie said ruefully, ‘doctors are like policemen – they don’t stick to a regular nine-to-five working day. They stay until the job’s done – or later, if they’re committed to finding an answer.’

  Lapslie led Emma back to the lifts, and up to a different floor, then across a bridge between buildings and along a wide spine corridor until they came to a side corridor marked ‘Neurology’. He pushed the swing doors open and entered the darkened corridor. Light spilled from the open door of an office at the far end.

  ‘I think he’s in,’ Lapslie said, sounding pleased.

  He led the way down the corridor and stopped in the open doorway. ‘Doctor Garland,’ he said, ‘may I interrupt?’

  Emma joined him just as a burly, middle-aged man with a handlebar moustache rose from his chair. ‘Mr Lapslie,’ he said. ‘Surprised to see you. Didn’t know we had an appointment.’ He glanced at Emma, and smiled. ‘Alan Garland,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘Emma Bradbury,’ she replied, shaking it. ‘I’m the sergeant to his detective chief inspector.’

  ‘Not a standard police relationship, surely,’ Garland said. His grip was warm and firm. ‘There’s at least one level in between those two. Shouldn’t you have an inspector hanging around somewhere?’

  ‘He’s never followed the normal rules,’ Emma said, nodding her head towards Lapslie.

  ‘Actually,’ Garland said, ‘it’s not so unusual. I used to be in the Army. Lieutenant-Colonel. My Staff Officer was a captain – two ranks down.’