The Body in the Marsh

by Nick Louth

  ‘He’s here,’ she said, as the door opened. The duty solicitor, a pale young man in a grey suit, came into the room, followed by DCI Craig Gillard. Claire had asked Craig to come along, seeing as there was now a connection with Timon Horvat.

  ‘Where’s my own solicitor?’

  ‘Stuck in traffic, and we don’t have time to wait for her,’ Mulholland said. She assembled her papers, waited for Gillard to sit down and, after the formalities for the tape, said: ‘Have you ever taken an underage girl to your home?’

  He smirked and closed his eyes, and said: ‘Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.’

  ‘Have you ever met a girl called Francine Cole?’

  ‘Tick-tock, tick-tock…’

  The charade continued, every question met with the same response.

  Gillard got up and wandered around behind Smith with his hands in his pocket. He then leaned down and whispered in his ear. ‘We know you like to take dirty pictures, Harry. We know exactly what you are.’

  For a moment he was silent, his pale eyelids hidden behind pale gingery eyebrows. Then: ‘Tick-tock, tick-tock.’

  ‘Tell me about your friend Aleksander Horvat,’ Mulholland asked.

  Smith stopped ticking.

  ‘Looks like you need winding up,’ Gillard whispered into his ear. ‘Or maybe you’re just retarded.’

  ‘You’re not as tidy as you think,’ Mulholland said. ‘We found Horvat’s semen in your house.’

  For the first time, Smith began to look uncomfortable.

  ‘Tell us what you know, and we can make your last half-hour here comfortable,’ Gillard said. ‘Come on, start from the beginning, give us some names.’

  ‘Albert, Alan, Alastair, Adrian, Archie…’

  Mulholland and Gillard exchanged expressions of frustration. ‘I promise you, we will nail you, if it takes us ten years,’ Gillard said.

  ‘And by that clock you haven’t got more than ten minutes,’ he replied. ‘Tick-tock, tick-tock. It’s also three hours since I’ve had any refreshments, so you can get me a coffee. Milky, with two demerara sugars.’

  ‘You can wait until we’ve finished,’ Mulholland said.

  At the end of the session, the duty solicitor announced that Smith had now to be charged or released. Mulholland shrugged; they would have to let him go. As she and Gillard walked out, frustrated, they heard Smith shout: ‘I still want that coffee.’

  Thursday, 27 October

  The new day arrived like a wave of misery for Gillard. Having foolishly trusted the forecast, he had decided to cycle into Caterham, and it had unexpectedly poured with rain. A large and filthy quarry lorry had almost knocked him off when turning left in front of him without signalling, and he was in too much of a hurry to chase and get the registration number. When he did arrive at the Caterham incident room, it was to discover Claire Mulholland was waiting for him with DC Colin Hodges.

  ‘Craig, I’d hoped to give you some good news this morning,’ she said, her face taut.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Gillard had heard about the DNA link between Horvat and the Girl F case. With the Slovenian’s slaughterhouse background, it had the makings of a breakthrough.

  ‘Horvat’s vanished,’ she said.

  ‘Me and Carl were down there at five this morning, with the operations team and a ram and everything,’ Hodges said. ‘But there was no one in. He’d buggered off in a hurry, I should say. No note to say goodbye, nothing. Place in a complete mess.’

  ‘We got straight on to ports, airports, Chunnel with his passport details by 7 a.m.,’ Mulholland said. ‘But he might already be away. The duty inspector has got the European arrest warrant paperwork underway. For some reason we don’t have details of his vehicle, but we’ve got on to his employer.’

  Hodges added: ‘We’ve taped off the flat and secured the door. Carl rang CSI, thinking that he might have left some dabs or something. Wasn’t sure what you wanted, but we got his computer, which is now being examined by the anoraks.’

  Gillard tried not to express his profound surprise at this level of professionalism from Tweedledee and Tweedledum. ‘That’s great work.’

  Hodges paused, then asked something that had clearly been exercising his brain. ‘So if Horvat is a slaughterman, do you think he could have chopped up Mrs Knight?’

  ‘It’s quite possible.’

  * * *

  Craig needed a lunch break. When he was at Mount Browne, it was easy. Fifteen minutes sitting on a bench with a sandwich in the extensive leafy campus, looking over the rooftops of Guildford. Always helped to clear the mind. Anything was better than sitting munching away in front of a PC, dropping bits of bread and tomato into the keyboard. In Caterham’s crowded incident room, since the Knight inquiry began it had been difficult even to find time. So when a spare midday hour appeared, his mind turned to a Mexican takeaway in South Croydon that had been recommended to him. As he was emerging from the incident room, he ran into PCSO Sam Phillips.

  ‘Hi, Sam. Your first day back, isn’t it? Are you fully recovered from your tussle with Smith? And how’s the leg?’

  ‘All much improved, thanks.’ They exchanged a few guarded pleasantries before he asked casually. ‘Fancy a bite of lunch?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m not due a break until three.’

  ‘Wait a mo,’ he said, and took out his phone to make a call to her boss ‘This is DCI Craig Gillard. I’m borrowing PCSO Sam Phillips for an hour or so, for an operational matter. Is that okay?’ He laughed. ‘Yes, I’ll return her unharmed.’ He turned back to her. ‘Your sergeant is fine with it.’

  Sam had her hands on her hips. ‘Excuse me. I’m a woman. Not a piece of kit to be borrowed, signed out, used and returned. I get a say, don’t I?’

  Gillard laughed as he shepherded her to the unmarked Ford. ‘Sam, I’m not making this up. I’m on my way to one of the rental flats in Thornton Heath that the Knights owned. A suspect in the Knight case has done a runner and I need someone to watch my back while I root around. Yes, on the way back I’m going to buy a bite to eat and tap your brain about Harry Smith.’ He leaned into the back seat and pulled over a grey fleece jacket. ‘No need to be in uniform though. Slip this on.’

  ‘Okay, so I’m being officially abducted.’ She tossed her PCSO hat on the back seat, and exchanged her equipment vest for the fleece. As they got into his car she said: ‘Thank you for the kind message, by the way.’

  Craig shook his head as he drove off. ‘Christ, Sam, I’ve been worried about you. Not only about Harry Smith, but that crazy ex of yours. Still, it’s clear now you know how to defend yourself.’

  She laughed. ‘I’ll never live it down, I suppose. Beating him up.’

  Craig chuckled. ‘You have achieved in legitimate self-defence what many, many officers would love to have done to Smith, but of course they can’t. He’ll go down for the attack on you at least, but if Claire Mulholland has her way, for a lot more besides.’

  As Craig weaved skilfully through the lunch hour traffic to Thornton Heath, he filled her in on Timon Horvat’s relevance to the Knight case and how his DNA had also been found in Harry Smith’s home. They turned down a street, and parked by a slightly tired-looking terraced house. The front door was locked, and she watched as Craig used Oliver Knight’s keys to let them both in, past a heap of local newspapers, post and pizza flyers. They went upstairs and saw the door to Horvat’s flat, covered in police tape and badly smashed by the ram. A temporary police padlock and hasp had been put on it. Craig unlocked it and, after donning a pair of blue latex gloves, let himself in. He asked Sam to stay behind at the doorway.

  ‘I don’t think there’s been any CSI done in here,’ he said. ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee were on the hurry-up, and only took his computer, so I’m going to see what else I can find.’

  Half an hour later he emerged, holding a data stick in his hand. ‘This is going to be important,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it was hi
dden so well, in a pleat of the bedroom curtains, under the pelmet.’

  ‘That’s the last place anyone would think to look.’

  ‘Exactly. I was lucky. I started with electrical-linked places, fuse boxes, cooker hood, that kind of thing, because he’s an electrician and he’s familiar with those spaces. But when I was standing on his bed looking at a light socket, I noticed a strange deformity in the curtain tape.’

  ‘Well done Sherlock!’

  He gave her a look. ‘Now for that sandwich. I’m starving.’

  They no longer had time for a Mexican, but sat in a quiet side street between a tyre place and a Jamaican hairdresser’s, each eating an overfilled chicken salad bap they had bought from a Greek shop round the corner. Sam looked at Craig, his mouth bulging, mayonnaise dripping down his chin. She started to giggle. He pointed to the mirror, and to her. You’re just as bad, was the message. Unvoiced laughter, basic food, the dull beat of hip-hop from the hairdresser’s mixed in with the huff and whine of the tyre joint: as a date, it wasn’t exactly a trip to the Ritz. But in his own, unvoiced way, Craig seemed to be saying sorry to her, carving out time to be with her in a busy day and showing his concern for the latest chapter of her accident-prone life. She deliberately brushed the crumbs on her lap onto the floor of the car, knowing it would earn her a mute rebuke. Mouth full, he glared at her in mock anger, and she felt a smear of warmth butter her face. Actually, this is all right. I can handle this. This is a life, with evidence he cares. Unspoken perhaps, but obvious. It’s more than I’ve had for years, and right now, it’s enough.

  Craig finished his bap, wiped his mouth with the balled-up bag it came in, and flicked it at her. ‘You untidy little bugger,’ he said, leaning across to look at her. ‘I’m going to ferry you back to your boss now, with good reviews: “The Phillips model is reliable, if a bit basic. Easy to use, starts first time, perhaps a little heavy on fuel.”’ He nodded at the crumb-coated footwell.

  ‘A bit bloody basic!’ She hit him playfully on the shoulder and pulled him into an embrace. They kissed gently for a couple of minutes, and as they emerged realized that two dreadlocked punters at the hair salon were laughing at them. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Ethnic minorities making a mockery of the law again!’

  ‘Luckily they don’t know we’re the law. That would make them much more nervous.’ Craig started the engine, and as they pulled away, exchanged thumbs-up greetings with a good half-dozen salon staff and customers peering from their window.

  As they reached Caterham police station he let her out. She leaned back in through the window and said: ‘Detective Chief Inspector, thank you for a very nice “operational matter”.’

  ‘The pleasure was all mine. Now, I’m going to see what it was on that data stick that Horvat didn’t want anyone else to see.’

  * * *

  On his return to Caterham, Gillard found Research Intelligence Officer Rob Townsend and showed him the data stick. ‘Can we take a quick look at this now on your machine?’ Rob’s PC was a standalone set up to handle any malware that computer evidence may contain. ‘I need a second pair of eyes too.’

  They inserted the stick, which listed hundreds of image and video files. The very first video they chose, at random, showed such a sickening act of abuse that Rob turned away from the screen. ‘I’ve got daughters of that age, Craig. I can’t look.’

  ‘Just stay one minute,’ Gillard said. The video looked quite professional, properly lit, taken in a white, featureless room. He set fast-forward at maximum speed, and then halted it. ‘Rob, look at this. Do you recognize anything?’

  The officer had a quick glimpse at the screen, which showed a naked teenage girl kneeling in front of a partially clothed man. His face was pixelated out, but it was clearly neither Horvat nor Smith. The girl’s long hair was bunched in his tattooed fist, pulled in towards him, and her eyes were screwed shut against the act she was forced to perform. ‘The man or the girl, sir?’

  ‘Neither. Look behind her, here. You can just see into the corridor.’ He pointed at the screen.

  ‘You’re interested in the wallpaper, sir?’

  ‘Red fleurs-de-lis on a cream background.’

  ‘Very nice. B&Q probably have it, sir. I can check if you want to order some.’

  Craig looked balefully at him. ‘Stop being a dimwit, Rob. This is the wallpaper in Harry Smith’s hallway. And there’s the reflected sheen of the plastic film he puts everywhere. Even if Smith didn’t take part in any of these acts, the fact they took place in his home means we’ve got him.’ Craig stopped the video and turned to Townsend with a smile. ‘Rob, I’ve got a meeting now, can you book this evidence in for me? Let Claire and the others know the good news.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I expect Radar Dobbs will be able to dig up the manpower to examine all the images. Claire will want stills of the most incriminating stuff. And make sure it’s all backed up.’

  ‘Righto, sir,’ Townsend said.

  * * *

  Finding Horvat was now a priority because it could unlock not just one but two major inquiries. Gillard scanned through the notes that DS Mulholland had made until he came to the details of Horvat’s employer, RCL Electrical Contractors (Redhill) Ltd. He picked up the phone, punched in the number and waited to be passed to the managing director.

  ‘Roger Carlton speaking.’

  Craig was suddenly lost for words. This familiar voice was his old schoolmate, the boy who had gone crumpet-hunting at the girls’ school on that fateful night in 1988. ‘Roger, it’s Craig Gillard. Long time, no see, mate.’

  Roger soon overcame his surprise and they spent a good few minutes catching up on 30 years, Roger’s marriage and four kids, Craig’s career, marriage and divorce. It was ten minutes later when he was able to get to the reason he had called.

  ‘The reason I’m calling is about Alex Horvat. Has he been in contact in the last day or two?’

  ‘No, as I told the female officer, he’s buggered off with one of our vans with three grand’s worth of copper cable and tools in it, and I’d very much like to get it back.’

  Gillard double-checked the registration number, which was exactly as Claire had recorded it. He switched to the Police National Computer. There had been an ANPR match in north London this morning, and another a half-hour later in Hertfordshire. It seemed not to have been shared with other forces, so he made a note to do so. ‘Any ideas where Horvat would go?’

  ‘Maybe Hull. He had connections there,’ Roger said.

  ‘He was a taxi driver there, wasn’t he? Back in 2007.’

  ‘I think so.’ Finally, Roger said: ‘Saw you on the telly the other day about that Elizabeth Knight murder. That wasn’t the girl you were nuts over at school, was it?’

  ‘No, someone different.’

  There was a long pause. ‘But she was a Liz, wasn’t she? Such a gorgeous girl. I was jealous as hell. Parents lived at Marlpit Close, as I remember.’

  ‘Did they?’ Craig realized his fiction was beginning to unravel under the accuracy of Roger’s memory.

  ‘Go on, course you do. You spent enough time mooning about there. In fact you were a complete pain about the whole thing. Told me once you couldn’t live without her, remember?’

  Craig forced a laugh. ‘Well, that’s all a very long time ago.’

  ‘So what did happen to her, Craig?’ He was beginning to be very persistent.

  ‘She fell in love with someone else.’ Who then screwed other women, murdered her, cut up her body in a sink, dumped it in a marsh and ran off abroad.

  ‘Oh well, win some, lose some, eh?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Gillard said his goodbyes, then hung up. He slumped in his chair and rubbed his face. It was five minutes before he could force himself to pick up the phone. He called Claire Mulholland and asked her: ‘When are you planning to get Harold Smith back in for interview?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Now you’ve finally got enough mud to make it stick.�
�

  ‘Good, let’s throw some muddy questions at him together.’

  * * *

  Gillard headed off to the incident room, just in time to hold open the door for the diminutive figure of DC Shireen Corey-Williams who was struggling with three big boxes. She looked exhausted. Her frizzy black hair, normally a bouncy halo round her brown face, was tied back with a scarf. ‘I need coffee, and I need it now,’ she groaned, as she sat down on a typist’s chair. ‘I’ve had four solid days going through acres of paperwork with two lawyers and the dullest forensic accountant in the world and still didn’t get a breakthrough.’

  ‘So what did you learn?’ Gillard asked, gesturing for DC Colin Hodges to get some coffee.

  ‘The first thing you asked me to do was to test whether Oliver could have killed his parents. Well, there is nothing in his financials to support that hypothesis. They think pretty well of him at his firm, but I also get the impression that they think he lacks imagination and drive.’

  Gillard laughed. ‘Seeing what he stands to inherit, I can fully appreciate it might undermine any career drive.’

  ‘Exactly. We did a search at Companies House. He’s not a director of any companies. Neither could we locate any hidden bank accounts, offshore funds, trusts or tax-exempt foreign hidey-holes on his computer or laptop. All paperwork at his house seems legit.’

  ‘Did you check his girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes. Sophie James, junior chiropractor. Clean as a whistle, no debts. Oliver hasn’t been married, or lived with anyone before. The usual places to hide money haven’t cropped up. Oliver and Sophie were at the theatre with friends at the time of his mother’s death. The alibi checks out.’

  ‘Okay, so Oliver Knight is in the clear. What more did you learn about the Knights’ finances?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Everything looks above board. There are none of the tell-tale signs of a man about to become a fugitive from justice. No unusually large cash withdrawals, no juggling between accounts, except for the purchase of this villa in Spain. However, given that most of the legwork was done by Mrs Knight, and none of the others speak Spanish, it can hardly be a property conspiracy against her. Nevertheless, as it was the bulk of their wealth, that was what I spent most of my time on.’