Death and Deception

by B. A. Steadman

  ‘He could have killed Carly and moved her body in the van without anybody even noticing.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t see all the rooms in that studio, did you?’

  Gould shook his head. ‘Sam had a look at the Control room and I went to the toilet, but actually had a nosy round the kitchen and his office.’

  ‘So none of us has been in the Post-Production room, have we? Who knows what we might have found?’ Dan angled his head toward the Interview Room window. ‘Let’s get in there and see what we can shake from the tree.’

  Gould entered the room talking. ‘Right, Mr Abrams, let’s not piss about. You want to go home and we want to catch a killer, so let’s co-operate, shall we?’

  He switched on the recorder and the policemen identified themselves and the detainee for the record. Gould sat opposite Abrams and Hellier sat on his right side, just to disconcert him. The PC who had been watching over Abrams left for a much-needed toilet break with instructions to return with coffee.

  ‘You have already told DI Hellier that Carly Braithwaite did not arrive at the studio last night, but you seem to have no witnesses to that effect. You then told DI Hellier that you went for a drink, but couldn’t remember where, until, oh yes, you remembered that you went home, but nobody saw you do that either.’ He paused, leaned across the table and glared at Abrams. ‘Can you see why my antennae are waving, Mr Abrams? Can you?’

  Abrams drew himself up in his chair until he was the same height as the two policemen. He took a breath. He’d worked out exactly what to do.

  ‘Would it be possible for me to go to the toilet, please?’ he asked.

  Gould shook his head.

  ‘Not just at the moment, sir, as we’ve only just begun. But, of course you may go to the toilet when we have a comfort break later.’

  Dan smiled to see Gould struggling with the proper protocols for looking after a person being interviewed. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act had a lot to answer for.

  The door opened and PC Foster came in with a tray of drinks. Dan got him to escort Abrams to the toilet during the disruption. He took a moment in the quiet that followed.

  ‘Ian, don’t bully him into talking. He’s a wreck as it is, I want anything we get out of him to stand up in court.’

  Ian raised an eyebrow. ‘Me, bully someone? Never let it be said, Inspector. He just makes my skin crawl. We should be able to break him without resorting to my usual bullying tactics, though.’

  He smiled with his teeth to show Dan he hadn’t taken offence at being told off by someone twenty years younger and of a lower rank than himself, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Dan was relieved when Abrams returned. Gould was still touchy, it seemed. The rest of the interview did not go as planned. Abrams was unwilling to add any further details to those he had already provided about the night of the girl’s death. He simply said ‘I don’t know’ to questions he didn’t or couldn’t answer.

  Rolling his eyes, Gould tried another tack. ‘Do you do any other kind of productions in your studio Mr Abrams? Films, for example?’ He looked hard at Abrams, saw the man’s pupils widen. He pressed on, ‘Who were those people in the studio this morning? They didn’t look like the latest boy band to come out of Exeter. Foreign, weren’t they?’

  Abrams busied himself putting sugar in his coffee. ‘Of course they’re a band, that’s what I do, record bands.’ He stirred clockwise, then anti-clockwise.

  Dan felt a small buzz of excitement in the pit of his stomach. Were they getting close? He interrupted, ‘It’s hard making ends meet these days, isn’t it, sir? We all have to look for ways to boost our income, and there’s a good market in Europe isn’t there? Especially if you can sort out distribution…’

  Abrams stopped stirring his coffee and raised teary eyes, ‘Ok, I admit I have done a bit of bootlegging of music CDs and DVDs in the past. I know it was stupid but I’m not doing it anymore, honest.’ He looked from one police officer to the other. ‘Since the kids started downloading music, there’s no market anymore, so I don’t do it now. I didn’t have anything to do with the girl’s death, I promise.’

  Gould snorted and sat back on his chair, folding his arms over his stomach.

  Dan leant forward on the table, twisting round so he could see more of Abrams face. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Look,’ Abrams tried again, ‘I’m an alcoholic. I drink all the time. I passed out on Sunday night, that’s why I couldn’t remember where I was.’

  Gould laughed. ‘Didn’t take you long to put that together, did it? You won’t mind if we have a look in your studio, then will you, sir? We won’t be too worried if you have a few fake CDs around the place.’

  ‘I could take you over there now, Mr Abrams,’ said Dan, ‘get it all over with. Then we won’t have to bother you any more, will we?’

  Abrams swallowed. ‘You’ll need a search warrant to look round my premises, Inspector, I believe. I’m not going to let you in just like that to trample all over my stock. I have my rights. I’ve been as honest with you as I can. Can I go now, please? Or have you got something to charge me with? I’ve been sat here for almost two hours, and I’ve got a business to run.’

  He signed his statement and looked between the two officers, hands on knees, ready to leave.

  Dan looked across at Gould and shrugged. One nil to the suspect. ‘Interview terminated at 2.45pm.’ He switched off the recorder and pocketed the cassette tape. Not that it would be much use. Then he stuck his head out the door and asked PC Foster to see Abrams out.

  The two men sat despondently in the room for a couple of minutes.

  ‘He handled us far better than I thought he would,’ admitted Dan. ‘He’s either very confident or very stupid. He held himself together much better than I thought he could, too. I wonder if he’s planning to run?’

  Gould looked up from his deep contemplation of the desk and stared at him.

  ‘Who’s a clever boy, then? Of course, that’s exactly what he’ll do. And it will take us at least a day to get a warrant written out and signed off. And that’s if we can persuade a magistrate to agree to on mere suspicion of illegal practice.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk in a tattoo of frustration. ‘I bet the place will be empty by Wednesday.’

  Dan nodded. ‘If Abrams’ visitors are a foreign gang, they are here to collect or deliver something. What? And how does it relate to our murder inquiry?’ There was no response. Gould’s head was down and Dan could feel the vibrations of furious thought. ‘What’s going on in that tortured brain of yours, Detective Chief Inspector?’

  Gould held his eye. ‘What about a little nocturnal visit to check the studio out for ourselves? Tonight? Before he has the chance to empty the place and make a run for it? Not sure how we’d get though that metal door, but the rest looks straightforward enough.’

  It was couple of minutes before Dan replied. He knew that if he agreed to such a jaunt, he would be working outside the law he spent his days trying to uphold. He was naturally cautious and knew that Ian was naturally the opposite. Having worked for a time in London, Dan had known officers who cut corners. Sometimes they got away with it, sometimes they didn’t. When a bit of rule-waiving got a result, little was said. When it didn’t, careers were ruined. But, sometimes you just have to take a risk to get what you want. Like Ian, he just had a feeling that this business with Abrams had to be connected somehow with the death of Carly Braithwaite.

  ‘We may not need to use brute force,’ he said at last. ‘I might be able to persuade Chas Lloyd to let us in. She must have keys as she gets there first in the mornings. Have to make sure she doesn’t talk to Abrams, though.’

  Gould gave him an appraising look and Dan had the feeling he had passed a test of some sort.

  ‘Feisty little thing, isn’t she, that Chas?’ He almost smirked. ‘And let’s keep this between ourselves, Dan. If we find rip-off music or something worse operating down there, we
can pass it on to Vice as a tip off from the general public.’

  ‘Otherwise, we mess it up as evidence, I know.’ Dan gave a tentative smile, for the first time feeling a connection with the older man. ‘I’ll have to see Chas after work. You go home as usual and I’ll ring you later when it’s arranged. I just hope she says yes.’

  Gould smiled back, ‘Still life in the old dog, eh?’

  It had been a long time since he’d had the chance to work a murder case. Dan could see he was enjoying himself.

  Bill Larcombe waved them down as they entered the office. He was taking notes and balancing the phone under his neck. ‘It’s the hospital. They admitted a young woman called Claire Quick six hours ago, Looks like a car accident.’

  Chapter 18

  Date: Tuesday 25th April Time:15:15 Claire Quick, Exeter Hospital

  Bill put the phone down and paraphrased his notes.

  ‘She’s just regained consciousness and wants to talk to you urgently. The doc says she’s got rope marks on her wrists and ankles, a large contusion on the back of her head, broken ribs and other more minor stuff.’

  ‘What? Which ward is she in?’ asked Dan as he grabbed his jacket and headed for the stairs. He was bemused. Rope marks? The English teacher? Gould jogged across to the stairs to catch up with him, earning a weak cheer from the Flowerpot Men. They passed Sally on the stairs, but didn’t stop. She would have to wait.

  Gould contacted Traffic on the drive to the hospital. Claire Quick had crashed her car at 5.50 a.m. at the traffic lights at the top of Barrack Road. It seemed likely that she was heading for the hospital, but had lost control going round the corner and ended up ploughing into the garden wall of a house on the corner. The car was a write-off.

  The police officer at the scene reckoned she was going slowly and had passed out as she reached the corner. She’d only been a couple of hundred yards away from the hospital entrance.

  Claire Quick was leaning back against several pillows on the hard hospital bed. In her handbag-sized mirror she could see a neck brace for the whiplash and a bandage on the back of her head, over the swelling caused by the bottle. Both wrists and ankles were bandaged and she had two broken ribs from the accident. Her legs were bruised and cut, but not broken.

  When the two policemen entered, a pleasant-looking woman in her fifties stood and introduced herself as Claire’s mother. Concern and fear had caused vertical creases between her eyebrows and were tugging down the sides of her mouth. She left with obvious reluctance to get herself some coffee and buy a magazine for her daughter.

  Gould seated himself in the only chair, so Dan leant against the wall until Claire invited him to sit on the edge of the bed. He shrugged and sat in the space she made for him by pulling her legs to one side.

  ‘Hi.’ Claire looked at Gould, a rueful smile twitching her lips. ‘Bet you didn’t expect to see me again so soon.’

  ‘Not like this, that’s for sure,’ replied Gould, and introduced Dan Hellier. ‘What happened, Claire? Are you fit enough to tell us?’

  She sighed. ‘It’s completely unreal, and I can’t make sense of it, but there are some things you need to know.’

  She began with Miles Westlake, the Music teacher, and his affair with Carly and went on to talk about the party on Saturday night.

  Dan interrupted, ‘So, Carly never went home on Saturday night at all?’

  ‘No, and I don’t think Jamie May did either. He must have been horribly jealous of Miles, although I don’t think Miles realised how bad he was feeling.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘This is the end for Miles Westlake, Inspector. He can’t get away with behaving like that and just carry on being a teacher. He would realise that I would have to tell the Head about what he got up to with a student.’

  ‘Could Westlake have killed Carly, Claire? Sometime on the Saturday night?’ asked Gould, but it was Dan who replied,

  ‘No, I don’t think anything could have happened on Saturday night as she was apparently home with her family for some of Sunday… if the family are telling the truth. But Westlake did have a strong motive, didn’t he? If Carly threatened to tell anyone about what had happened, he would lose everything.’

  Claire nodded, then grimaced with pain. ‘No nodding. Nodding is bad. He’s already lost his wife, she left him and took their baby six weeks ago. I think that’s why he agreed to the party, because she wasn’t there, and he’s pathetic.’ She clasped both hands across her mouth. ‘He may have been having an affair with Carly for all of that time. They did enough late nights after school in the Music room.’ She looked away and fiddled with the bandage on her left wrist. ‘God, what a mess.’

  Dan shifted round on the bed to face her. She had the most amazing green eyes. He’d never seen proper green eyes before. She looked a bit like a cat. Some sort of exotic Siamese or something. He realised Gould was waiting for his lead.

  ‘So, how did you get the rope burns?’

  Claire flushed pink. ‘You’re not going to believe this bit,’ she said. ‘How stupid was I? I went round after school to see how Miles was because he had signed out of school at lunch time and I was worried about him. He wouldn’t let me in at first, but when he did it was awful – you should have seen the state of the place. It was trashed.’ She paused, catching her breath with a wince.

  ‘Those ribs are going to cause you more pain than any of your other injuries,’ Dan said with a smile. ‘Been there and done that.’

  Claire smiled back at him, and shook her head at the ridiculousness of the story she was about to tell. ‘I found Jamie May sitting in the living room smoking a joint and drinking a can of lager. Shocked doesn’t cover it. I got Miles to explain what had been happening and I started putting two and two together about Carly and Miles, but before I could do anything at all, Jamie came back in to the room and hit me across the head with something hard. I’ve never been hit that hard in my life, it was such a shock.’

  Gould winced, ‘He could have killed you if he’d got you on the temple.’

  ‘I know, but he didn’t. He’s just a kid, Inspector, and I think he was frightened and just did the first thing he could think of to shut me up.’

  ‘Hmm,’ murmured Dan. ‘He could also be our murderer if he had seen Carly and Miles together and lost his temper.’

  Not much of a kid if he can cause that much damage to his teacher, he thought.

  ‘How did he seem to you?’

  She hesitated, trying to find the right words. ‘Wild, almost out of control. I think he showed how distressed he was when he tied me up and wouldn’t let me go. No sane person would think they could get away with that. I think grief has sent him a bit doolally. He’s always been a bit wild at school. Well, perhaps more like unpredictable. It’s hard to know how he will react to things. In Jamie’s case he will always try for the last word or the last laugh. Makes him a pain in the neck to teach.’

  ‘What do you think he was doing at Westlake’s house?’

  ‘They were arguing when I arrived, I think, but I couldn’t hear properly. Miles tried to pretend Jamie wasn’t there but he’s no liar - couldn’t fool a baby.’ She wiped a tear away with the back of her bandaged wrist and smiled down at her wrists. ‘Knew these would come in handy for something. Sorry, I’m still a bit weepy. It’s all so strange and awful. I know it’s a cliché, but things like this don’t happen in my world.’

  Dan pushed her gently to explain her Houdini-like escape from the house. He was impressed at her contortionist’s abilities with the tiny knife blade. She laughed because he did, and Dan was relieved to see her shoulders drop and her face begin to relax.

  ‘Very resourceful,’ he said. ‘Fancy a job?’

  She didn’t laugh.

  ‘You police may be used to all this physical stuff, but I’m worried. Will I get into trouble for hitting him with the poker? I knocked him flat!’

  Dan shook his head, ‘You were acting in self-defence, Miss Quick, I don’t thi
nk you have anything to worry about at all.’ He rose from the end of the bed and smiled at her again, just to get one back. She was braver than most people he’d met, and she had a great smile. ‘We need to find Westlake and Jamie now, so we’ll leave you alone before your mum comes in and tells us off for tiring you out. I’ll send an officer over to take a statement from you later. So for now, try to rest a bit, OK?’

  She lay back on the bed. ‘Yes, I will. I’m really tired, but every time I try to drop off the nurses keep waking me up. I could sleep for England, I can tell you.’

  Gould took hold of her hand and squeezed it as they left.

  ‘There’s not many people would be defending the person who’d just seriously assaulted them,’ he said as they strode down the endless hospital corridor. But Dan wasn’t listening, he was already on the phone.

  Chapter 19

  Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 14:35 PC Lizzie Singh

  Lizzie Singh turned up the radio attached to her black bulletproof vest, as high as the volume would go. She whispered into it, resisting the temptation to throw it at the wall when the Desk Sergeant stage-whispered, ‘Receiving,’ back to her.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sarge, be serious. I’m following Jamie May, white male, sixteen years old, black hair, brown eyes, 5’8”, wearing black everything. Wanted in connection with the murder of Carly Braithwaite and he’s been missing for two days. So, stop mucking about and get me a bit of back up.’ She gave her location and general direction of travel and then turned the radio down.

  Jamie was walking fast along Pinhoe Road, hood up and head down. Lizzie had only noticed him because of his unmistakeable ‘War Death’ hoody, otherwise he was wearing the perfect disguise in a city with 20,000 students. She didn’t want to get too close, and had had to abandon her patrol car in a small cul-de-sac to follow him on foot. Sergeant White had promised her an area car with a couple officers. But, until they arrived, she was on her own.