Death and Deception
Page 11
Jamie crossed the road under the Polsloe Bridge and headed down Hamlin Lane. Lizzie hesitated. It was a winding road with several straight sections where she would have nowhere to hide if he turned round. The last thing she wanted was to frighten him into running. Should she wait on the corner and flag down the area car? She had no idea when they would arrive, and he could disappear in that time. She couldn’t work out where he was heading, either.
When Jamie moved out of her line of sight, she made her mind up, she would have to bring him in herself. Jamie knew her and would probably be calmer with her than with two burly uniformed coppers, anyway. She jogged to catch up with him.
Jamie saw PC Singh pass him in her funny little police car on Pinhoe Road. He tried not to panic, but she had slowed down, so it was clear she had an idea it was him. He tried to walk fast but not run, to keep his head down and look purposeful.
So far, he had not seen or heard the police car so he thought he was OK. He hadn’t dared look back, but as he rounded the first bend on Hamlin Road, he risked a glimpse over his shoulder. She was there! Standing pressed up against the hedge at the end of a side road. She was on foot, not in the car. Jamie’s heart fluttered. He couldn’t get taken by the Police, not now. He ran.
The sudden turn of speed caught Lizzie by surprise. She switched her radio back up, shouted her location then shot across the road, following Jamie up and over the crumbling stone wall and into the cemetery.
Sergeant White had clearly decided that discretion was no longer an issue. Lizzie heard the comforting wail of a siren heading towards her as she stopped in the middle of the main road into the cemetery. She made a 360⁰ circle, using her ears as well as her eyes, straining to detect movement. Had he run straight through, or was he hiding? Great place to hide. Still she didn’t move. She called in and asked for the other officers to go to the far entrance and move back towards her. She was going to try to flush him out. Bit like hunting rabbits with her Granddad when she was a girl.
She crept towards the older section of the cemetery, to the part where the Victorians had made an exhibition of death with massive ornate stone memorials and crypts.
Lizzie jumped onto a raised, flat, weathered gravestone and shouted into the quietness, ‘Jamie, we need to talk to you. I know you’re frightened, but you have no need to be. Come out now, please. I need to let your mum know you’re safe. You’re not in any trouble. I just want to talk to you.’
She hoisted herself up onto the roof of the nearest crypt and waited for a sign of movement. There was a tentative rustling beneath her feet. She held her breath.
The space into which Jamie had jammed himself was tight and oppressive. He was down inside the crypt, squashed between two stone coffins with statues of dead people lying on the top of them. He heard the sirens and pushed even deeper into the tiny space, hands over his ears.
When he heard the police officer shout, he almost laughed. What did she mean, he wasn’t in trouble? Then he understood. The teacher hadn’t told on him. Well, she hadn’t told yet, he corrected himself. The temptation to give himself up was huge. He couldn’t cope with what was happening to him.
Into the silence came a shuffling sound above his head. Had she found him? His instinct, as in all cornered animals, was to run.
He levered himself out of the space and peered through the metal grille of the door. Nothing. As quietly as he could, he edged towards the crumbling stone steps and poked his head over the top step. Nothing. He crept up the steps and paused for a moment at the entrance to work out which way would get him closer to Westlake’s house. Then he set off at full speed to cut across the cemetery.
Lizzie launched herself off the crypt roof and took him down in a flying rugby tackle. Jamie crashed onto his face with a thump of exploding air. Lizzie sat astride his back, kneeling on each arm in turn as she yanked one wrist into a handcuff, then the other. She was surprised to find that she was snarling. Jamie gasped for breath, his face pushed into the gravel. He bucked backwards to throw the officer off him, rolling onto his side and scrabbling to get purchase on the stone chippings. Four black-booted feet appeared in his line of sight, and Jamie May found himself hoisted six inches off the ground by two large, uniformed police officers.
‘Ok, lad, calm down,’ said the older of the two, PC Peter Salter. ‘We just want to talk to you down at the station, no need to cause all this fuss.’ He sighed and shook his head sadly in the direction of Lizzie Singh. ‘Swearing with all the monotony of teenagers whose vocabulary stretches no further than from C to F. I do apologise for the whippersnapper, PC Singh.’
The officers lowered the boy back to the ground and held him steady. Pc Adam Foster nudged Lizzie.
‘You may well get a commendation, Lizzie. And a place on the Exeter Chiefs’ next line up. Very impressive bit of arresting, that.’
‘Do you mean you just stood there watching and let me jump him without helping me?’ Lizzie spluttered, outraged.
‘Didn’t look much like you needed help,’ laughed Foster, ‘and no need for all of us to get our uniforms dirty. Way to go, Lizzie!’ He patted her on the back.
She stared at them. Sometimes equality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Finally, she laughed too, to stop her bottom lip trembling, as she felt the adrenaline wash out of her body in waves. She brushed dust off her trousers and patted her vest to make sure she had everything.
‘Can I have a lift back to my car? And promise not to tell Whitey that I just abandoned it?’
The call from the Major Crime Unit came in as they drove out of the cemetery. Jamie May was wanted for kidnapping and assault on the teacher, Claire Quick. Apprehend on sight.
Lizzie twisted in her seat and stared wide-eyed at the boy sitting behind her in the car. ‘What on earth have you been up to, Jamie?’
Pete Salter stopped the car, and PC Singh arrested and cautioned him.
Chapter 20
Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 17:02 Exeter Road Police Station
Sergeant White passed the news on as Dan walked in through the station door. Jamie May had been apprehended by PC Singh just before the notice for his arrest had gone out. White had arranged for the boy’s mother to be brought to the station and the duty solicitor had been contacted.
Dan nodded, pleased that they at least had one suspect in custody. He wanted to be off again to catch up with Miles Westlake, but they all needed a re-cap, especially in the light of Claire Quick’s statement.
Gleaning the story of the arrest of Jamie May from the two beat officers, Gould stood next to Dan in the main corridor, ‘D’you know, Daniel, my boy,’ he said, ‘that girl Singh is an asset to this force. Why don’t we steal her for a couple of days? She knows the kids and the area and she’s not scared of getting stuck in and doing what needs to be done.’
Dan agreed. They could do with a little local knowledge, and PC Singh seemed willing and keen. He rang Colin White and gave him the bad news, He would be one uniform down for the rest of the week.
‘Do all these gung-ho women make you feel a bit inadequate, Ian?’ Dan asked, as they headed for the Incident room.
‘You have no idea,’ Gould replied, raising his eyes towards Julie Oliver in her top floor office.
Sally Ellis and Bill Larcombe were busy with the Mind Map on the wall. Bill had spent all morning re-doing it. The picture of Carly was at the centre. He had used colours to represent the different people involved with her. Sally was writing up the main headings from the Braithwaite meetings. Dan passed on the Abrams interview tape to Ben who didn’t take long to transcribe it.
Dan stood and stared at the wall, wolfing a tuna sandwich and slurping from a mug of surprisingly good coffee. He raised the mug in a salute to Sally who had thrown out the old stuff and started again from scratch. He stepped forward and added the information he had gained from Claire Quick to the board, then stood back.
He was looking for a pattern that just wasn’t there.
And how did Jed Abrams fit in? Or was he just a distraction? Should he pass their suspicions about Abrams straight onto Vice and let them deal with it?
He found himself chewing at the fingernails on his right hand, a habit he thought he’d conquered when he was a child. He kept the nails long on his right hand and clipped on the other for playing the guitar. If he carried on, he’d have none left on either hand. He could feel anxiety spreading across his chest, a fluttery sensation. He and Ian should not be going to the studio without a warrant. The murderer was still out there. He should tell Oliver what he was up to and have the decision taken away from him. He took a long, slow breath.
He understood in a brief flash of clarity. The truth about leadership was that sometimes you had to manage the decisions and their consequences, all by yourself. And he’d made a decision that he was going to have to see it through, whether he had second thoughts or not. He couldn’t back down in front of Ian Gould, not if he wanted to hold his head up in front of the older, more experienced officers he was supposed to be leading.
The buzz of his phone interrupted his thoughts. Message from his mum. Had he found out anything about Alison? He didn’t want to tell her. He really didn’t want them rushing off to prison to see her, getting themselves all wound up again, giving her all their savings, letting her steal from them and treat them like dirt, all over again. This way, they had over a year of peace and quiet before she would be paroled. Maybe the prison would get her on one of their programmes and get her addiction under control. Maybe. His finger hovered over the tiny keyboard as he prepared the lie,
‘No news yet, be in touch soon as I know something. D xx’.
He wondered what it would be like to be an only child, and whether it was worse to know that your sister was dead, like poor little Jenna Braithwaite, or to wish that she was, like poor little Dan Hellier. He stared guiltily at the now empty bin next to his desk, paper evidence destroyed. ‘A few days won’t make any difference, I’ll tell them at weekend,’ he said to the bin.
The subdued bustle of people going about their jobs, discussing the latest information and enjoying the Lizzie Singh story and typing up notes, ballooned up behind him. He took a moment to appreciate that he hadn’t had to do anything to make this bunch work as a team, except to be part of the team himself. He hoped that the compromises needed to be a leader were ones that he could make. He banged his empty mug on the table.
‘Right, everyone, gather round.’
Sam Knowles loped in from the video room.
‘Sir, I’ve scoured this disc from early on Sunday morning to midnight on Sunday night. Carly Braithwaite didn’t go into the studio. Abrams at came in at 12.06 p.m. A couple of lads with guitars arrived at about 1.40 p.m. and left at 5.43 p.m. Abrams left a bit later than he originally said he did, at 9.13 p.m.’
‘So, no sign of Carly Braithwaite or Jamie May?’ Sam shook his head. Ian Gould looked disappointed. It would have made life a whole lot easier if they had had a genuine need to search the premises as part of a murder enquiry.
‘How much more stuff is on there?’ asked Sally.
‘I got there to collect the disc at about 5.30 p.m. yesterday, so I suppose it’s got all Monday’s visitors on it, as well as the previous couple of weeks.’ He stopped as they looked at him in disbelief. ‘It’s a sort of stop-motion camera. Only records when there’s movement at the door, then switches itself off. Quite sophisticated kit, I’d say.’
‘Thanks, Sam, and I hate to do this to you, but could you go back a bit further and see who visited earlier in the week?’ asked Dan.
Gould asked for any footage of the foreigners arriving on Monday or Tuesday, and any signs of anything being moved out of the studio.
Sam shrugged, not looking excited by the prospect of more hours in front of a computer screen. His face brightened, ‘I could go over to the Studio and get some more discs, sir, if you want me to?’
Dan smiled but shook his head. He understood why that would be a journey Sam would like to make, but he would have to do his chatting up of Chas Lloyd on his own time. ‘I think there’s more than enough on the disc you’ve got, Sam.
‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have to take Jed Abrams off our list of murder suspects for the moment, as we don’t have enough on him to charge him with. If the girl didn’t get as far as the studio, then we have no reason to suspect him.’ He flashed a look at Gould. ‘But we keep him on the board, because all my little grey cells tell me that he is up to no good in that studio, and so he remains a person of interest.’
‘It’s young Jamie looking favourite, though, isn’t it?’ asked Sally. ‘He was with the girl at Westlake’s on Saturday night, and presumably he was there Sunday morning. Maybe he found out that Carly was having an affair with her teacher and flipped. Both Claire Quick and Jenna Braithwaite said he was keen on her.’
‘Did Alan Braithwaite say that Carly had stayed out all night?’ asked Dan.
‘No, he didn’t and neither did Jenna. Maybe she sneaked in early in the morning? If the empties I saw in the bin were anything to go by, I doubt Alan Braithwaite hears a great deal in the early morning.’
‘And why,’ added Gould, ‘would Jamie feel the need to assault and tie up the English teacher? It was the Music teacher having the affair with Carly. What was he so frightened of that he had to resort to violence towards a teacher?’
Silence greeted him. None of it made sense.
‘Was Jamie at the teacher’s house because he intended to hurt him? And Jamie must have known Claire Quick would tell the Police he’d been there,’ put in Sally.
Dan nodded at her. ‘That’s where I’m heading too. Westlake may still be our man. It makes sense if he told Jamie what he had done, or if Jamie witnessed the murder and was there to extract revenge. But we still need to search Jamie’s room while we’ve got him here in the station, in case we find anything, so let’s do that first. Sally, see if his mother will co-operate, will you?
‘Also, what did the Braithwaites say about Sunday?’
‘Not a lot,’ replied Sally, consulting her notes. ‘Dad said she was excited and took ages to get ready. He went to the pub in the afternoon to watch the footy, admits he didn’t get back until late. Jenna went out because she and Carly had had a row over friends, so she didn’t see her sister leave. Neither of them could be clear about timings for the day.’
The door opened to admit Lizzie Singh, and, much to her embarrassment, she received a round of applause, and a wolf whistle from Gould. She stood in the doorway, having changed into her own clothes, brown eyes huge, looking a bit lost.
Dan stepped forward. ‘Lizzie, great to see you. Good job out there. I’ve spoken to Sergeant White and he’s happy for you to be seconded onto the team for the rest of the week at least. Take a seat over near Sergeant Ellis and she’ll brief you. We think your local knowledge of the area and the young people in it, will be invaluable to the investigation.’
Lizzie did as she was told, pulling up a chair next to Sally and keeping her head down until the heat faded from her face. She took out her notebook from her handbag and fumbled around her breast pocket for her pen, then remembered she was in civvies and poked about to get it out of her bag.
Dan pulled their attention back to the wall behind him. ‘It’s still early days, only two days since the murder. I know we have lost one potential suspect, but we have one in custody and soon we’ll have another one, Mr Miles Westlake. We’re just not quite there.’ He sighed.
‘The problem is that we still have no real motive for this murder except the jealousy angle. It doesn’t seem right
that young Jamie May would kill the girl he professed to love. More likely that he would kill the teacher.’ Several nods and grunts confirmed his speculation. ‘Which leaves us with Miles Westlake, if we can work out how he did it. And, more importantly, when he did it.’ There was no reply this time - they all had the same information.
Dan searched their faces and risked another speculation, ‘I think we have all the players on the pitch already, ladies and gentlemen. This was no random killing. So, we’ll stop the house to house and school enquiries and focus on the three in the frame.’ He crossed to the board and circled their names. Westlake, May and Braithwaite.
‘Yes,’ he said when Sally raised a hand, ‘we don’t write off the father yet. He’s volatile at the moment obviously, but we don’t have a clear understanding of his movements on the Sunday, and his violent outbursts may be hiding guilt as much as grief.’ He frowned, consulting his mental list and chewing his bottom lip.
‘Right. Sally, take Lizzie with you this evening and pick up Miles Westlake, bring him in under arrest for a formal. We have him for possible kidnap and assault, too. We’ll keep him in overnight.’
Sally nodded and smiled at the young officer next to her.
Dan continued, ‘Bill, the Post-Mortem report is on my desk but I haven’t got a minute. Go through it with Ben and dig out the relevant details for the wall before you go home tonight, please. Can you see if the Forensic team got any decent tyre or footprints from the scene? I’d still like to know what vehicle transported her.’ And, where it is now, he thought. ‘We’ll push back the formal interviews as far as we can tomorrow, to give us time to do a bit more sleuthing.’ He gave the team time for a snigger. ‘What? Don’t we sleuth anymore? I bet DCI Gould sleuths, don’t you?’
‘Certainly do. The old ways are the best, as I keep telling you whippersnappers. If it was good enough for Sherlock, it’s good enough for me.’ He patted his stomach and smiled round the room, enjoying the brief release of tension.