by Nick Louth
‘Well, I was made to feel I was a suspect, rather than a witness. Perhaps I should have brought a solicitor.’
‘That isn’t necessary. We just had to check a few things. But if you have any ideas who that woman is, do let us know.’
Gillard waved her off and went back to join Shireen. ‘So, what does your intuition tell you?’
She looked up at him and said: ‘The first thing was that she was trying to flirt with you, and was having some success. Every time she smiled at you, you smiled back.’
‘Did I really?’
‘Yes you did. As you asked.’
Gillard shrugged. ‘But I don’t think she is either the property fraudster or the woman in France,’ Gillard said.
‘Can’t tell either way, really. We’ve got nothing to nail her with, have we?’ Shireen pursed her lips and shrugged. ‘So what about Dr Natalie Krugman? Could she be the fraudster?’
Gillard blew a sigh. ‘It wouldn’t make sense for her to be involved in defrauding Martin Knight of his inheritance when he’d seemingly offered to share it with her anyway.’
‘Good point,’ Shireen conceded.
Gillard checked his phone, which showed an email from the Visual Analysis Centre in Cambridge. ‘Ah, could have done with this an hour ago. Analysis of the CCTV shows the woman with the umbrella is between five-two and five-six, and probably weighs eight to nine stone.’
‘Too short for Jennings,’ Shireen said. ‘How tall is Krugman? Taller than that, surely.’
‘Yeah. She was nearly my height,’ Gillard said. ‘And besides, our American contacts confirm the last time she was anywhere in Europe was when we interviewed her. I’m afraid our ardent American feminist is in the clear.’
Shireen threw up her hands in frustration. ‘That means we don’t have anyone left, do we? Our tattooed accomplice remains a mystery.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
February
Claire Mulholland was sitting at her desk in Mount Browne, Guildford, eating a yoghurt when an urgent email flashed onto her screen from Europol. It listed a police number in Vilnius, Lithuania for her to ring regarding a fugitive from Britain. She put her yoghurt aside and picked up the phone. A female officer answered, in a thick east European accent, and after a few minutes checking, said ‘We have arrested a Slovenian national known as Timon Aleksander Horvat, whom I believe you are looking for.’
‘That’s great news. What’s the offence?’
‘He has been working here as a truck driver, and was involved in a minor accident last night. We checked his papers and the computer showed a Europol warrant outstanding. We can extradite him to you fairly quickly once the paperwork is finalized.’
‘That’s great, but I think it would be quicker if I came over to interview him immediately.’
* * *
Horvat looked just as thin and nervous as Claire remembered. He was sitting across from her at a large table in Vilnius police’s surprisingly modern video interview room, with a solidly built and unsmiling female officer and a thin, spiky-haired male translator.
‘So, once again, Timon,’ Claire said. ‘If you cooperate with us, we can put in a good word. So let’s run through those questions again.’ She paused so the translator could catch up for the sake of the local policewoman. ‘Did you know Harry Smith?’
Horvat shook his head.
‘Please speak for the tape,’ Claire said.
‘Ne,’ said the translator, a faint tang of alcohol on his breath.
‘Did you ever visit this address?’ Claire showed him a photograph of Smith’s home.
Horvat shook his head. ‘Ne,’ said the translator.
‘Have you ever paid this man, who we know as Harold Smith, to procure you sexual services?’
‘Ne,’ said Horvat, turning to the translator, who then turned to Mulholland and said, ‘No.’ The Lithuanian policewoman sighed, and turned a pencil over and over in her fingers.
‘Did you ever meet this girl, Francine Cole?’ She pointed to the photograph on the table between them.
Horvat shook his head. ‘Ne,’ said the translator.
‘Do you find underage girls attractive, Mr Horvat?’ she asked.
Horvat hesitated, and the Lithuanian policewoman said something. ‘She thinks he does,’ the translator said to Mulholland.
‘All right,’ said Claire. ‘Mr Horvat, the Slovenian police in 2002 charged you with being an accessory to murder, yes?’
Horvat nodded. The translator said ‘Taip,’ earning a loud and lengthy rebuke from the policewoman, who then slapped her hand on the table. ‘She says I’m an idiot and don’t need to translate the obvious,’ he said to Claire, who nodded.
‘That murder involved the disposal of body parts,’ Claire said to Horvat. ‘You had experience as a butcher, yes?’
‘I was acquitted,’ Horvat said.
‘Not of being a butcher,’ Claire said. ‘You worked as a butcher, didn’t you?’
‘No, I worked in a… a place where they kill animals…’ He then looked quizzically at the translator, who leaned towards the local policewoman and said: ‘Skerdykla.’
‘An abattoir,’ Claire said.
‘You speak Lithuanian?’ the translator asked, amazed.
‘No, I just know that an abattoir is where they kill animals. Mr Horvat, what did you do at the abattoir?’
‘Paperwork. I always worked in the office. Ask them. Blood makes me dizzy.’
Mulholland seemed temporarily stumped by the answer and returned to her paperwork. ‘Did you ever meet Martin Knight?’
Horvat shook his head. So did the translator.
‘Please speak for the tape. He was your landlord, so are you sure?’
‘I never met him. Her yes, him no.’
‘Did you murder Mrs Elizabeth Knight?’
Horvat shook his head. The translator mimicked him.
‘I put it to you that you killed and dismembered Mrs Elizabeth Knight. Is that not correct?’
Horvat shook his head and so did the translator.
‘Mr Horvat, let’s go back to the beginning. I can now disclose to you that we have a tissue with your DNA on it which was recovered from a settee at Harry Smith’s house in Croydon. Your DNA, your semen. Can you explain that?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said the translator, and began to talk in Lithuanian.
‘I meant him,’ Claire said, pointing at Horvat. ‘And he already speaks English.’ She was beginning to lose her patience.
Horvat said nothing, chewing on air.
‘Mr Horvat, we can forensically place you at Harry Smith’s house sometime in the two weeks leading up to 27 October 2015. We also found in your own home, in the pleats of your curtains, a data stick with videos and images of children being abused. Abuse that we can prove you took part in,’ she lied.
Something began to happen behind Horvat’s expression, as if he was melting from the inside. His eyes became shiny, and he said. ‘I am sorry.’
‘Don’t say sorry to me, it’s those children whose lives you have ruined. Now once again,’ she said sliding forward the picture of Harry Smith. ‘Do you know this man?’
Horvat reached forward and picked up the picture. ‘This man is Scottish Barry. It was him that organized everything.’
* * *
Over the next hour, confession poured from Horvat like blood from a slaughtered pig. He confirmed that vulnerable underage girls were picked out by the man he now knew was Harry Smith, taken to Smith’s home in his car, given cocktails of drink and drugs, and promised a modelling career and money if they performed on camera. Another man, a thickset bully called McGinley, was the main abuser. There were others who paid Smith for the privilege. Horvat confessed it had occasionally included him, though he was adamant he had never met Girl F. What about Smith? Horvat only ever witnessed him as cameraman and voyeur: fastidious about clean-up and precautions, repulsive and creepy. He didn’t think Smith ever had sex with the girls. Smith oversaw the medicinal
douches that the girls took afterwards to remove any incriminating male DNA. It was Smith too who took responsibility for the video files, which were his sales tool. Interested men came to watch the videos at his home, the male participants’ faces, tattoos and other distinguishing features pixelated out. Those who liked what they saw were told they could have any of the girls for £100. McGinley was the enforcer, making sure everyone paid, and that the punters kept their mouths shut. When Girl F committed suicide, Horvat said, Harry Smith panicked. He deleted all the videos and disposed of the hard drive on which they were stored. From then on, no cameras were used, and the operation was run only occasionally and for only a few live participants.
Claire Mulholland flew back to Stansted with a Vilnius Police video disc of the interview, a comedy of nods and head-shaking, and Horvat’s signed statement in English and Lithuanian. Would one incriminating witness be enough to convict Harry Smith? She hoped so. She rang Gillard, and told him the news. Gillard was overjoyed, and convened a meeting to spread the good news. The moment Paddy Kincaid heard, he wanted to be part of it.
‘Girl F has been the bane of my bloody life, it’s destroyed my career and made people like Knight famous on the back of my misery. If I did things wrong at the start, I’m going to put them right now. So I’m going to be there when we get that bastard,’ he said. ‘Smith’s going to trial in two weeks over the PCSO attack. It’ll take a few hours, but I’ll get a watertight warrant for first thing tomorrow. We don’t want Smith’s lawyer whining to a judge that we did it wrong.’
The raid was set for five in the morning.
* * *
At half past four on a damp Monday morning DCI Craig Gillard and DS Claire Mulholland were sitting in an unmarked car opposite Harry Smith’s Croydon home. It was quiet, and there were no lights visible from within. DCs Carl Hoskins and Colin Hodges, in the back of a white Transit van across the street, had the door ram. On Gillard’s signal, Kincaid and DC Aaron Gibson slipped out of a third car, eased open the back gate and went round to cover the rear, to make sure Smith didn’t slip out of the French windows and over the fence into the alleyway behind.
Gillard then walked up to the front door, banged on it and gave half a minute for Smith to respond, before he gave Hoskins and Hodges the signal to use the ram. But before they’d even made the first strike, there was the sound of breaking glass and shouting from the rear. Craig told Hodges to hold off on the ram and follow him, leaving Hoskins and Mulholland at the front.
By the time Gillard was in the small overgrown back garden, he could see that Kincaid was already in the house, a broken pane on the French windows showing traces of blood in his torchlight. ‘Help me get him down,’ Kincaid shouted from inside. Craig stepped into the dining room at the back of the house and saw a male body hanging from the upstairs banister of the open-plan staircase. Kincaid and DC Gibson were already halfway up the stairs manhandling the body, getting the weight off the rope so it could be cut. ‘Is he still alive?’ yelled Gillard.
‘Could be,’ said Gibson, but to Gillard’s eye the angle of the neck looked fatal. It took five minutes with three of them crowded on the narrow staircase before they were able to get Harry Smith’s body down onto the stairs, and even then Kincaid slipped and managed to let Smith’s head crack loudly on the newel post, where it left a bloody mark.
‘Christ,’ said Gillard, as they laid the body on the ubiquitous carpet protectors at the bottom of the stairs. ‘If he hadn’t already been dead, that would have finished the bugger off.’
‘CSI aren’t going to be very happy with this,’ said Claire Mulholland, from the French windows. ‘It’s a right mess.’
‘We saw him through a gap in the curtains, and thought he was still kicking,’ Kincaid said. ‘Didn’t we, Aaron?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Gibson, adding: ‘You’ve got blood all over your hands, sir.’
‘Yes, where I broke the window.’ Kincaid wiped them on his handkerchief. ‘Anyway, CSI will have better things to do than poke around with a nonce’s suicide.’
‘Yeah, good riddance,’ said Hodges from the doorway.
‘Well, it won’t help us find out if he really did abuse Girl F,’ Claire said.
‘What more evidence do you need?’ Kincaid said angrily. ‘The silver car, the extra-strong mints and Horvat’s testimony that Harry Smith was Scottish Barry.’ There was a general murmuring of agreement. ‘Case over, gents,’ said Kincaid. ‘Girl F is solved. Hoo-bloody-ray.’
* * *
Gillard and Mulholland stayed until the 7 a.m. arrival of Yaz Quoroshi and his CSI team. As the morning light began to filter in, it was clear how compromised forensics would be. Bloody handprints on the white woodwork of the staircase, on the rope and on Harry Smith’s clothing. As Yaz muttered to himself about the mess, Craig and Claire stared at each other in the garden.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Craig asked.
‘Yes. Why would Harry Smith kill himself now?’ Claire asked. ‘He had been released from custody. He knew we didn’t have anything on him, apart from the assault on Sam Phillips.’
‘Of course, we knew about Horvat’s testimony, but he wouldn’t have,’ Gillard added.
‘Unless whoever stole the data stick tipped him off.’
‘Possibly. It’s incriminating, but not enough for such a stubborn little bastard to top himself, is it?’
As they returned to their vehicle they saw DC Gibson, skinny and nervous, taking a crafty drag on a cigarette.
‘A quick word, Aaron,’ Craig said.
‘Sir.’ Gibson dropped the fag as if it were poisoned and trod it out.
‘When you got round the back, could you see at all?’ Gillard asked.
‘Yes, sir. I had a torch, and the patio lights went on when we triggered the movement detector.’
‘Sounds a bit dazzling. Was there any light inside?’
‘No. The curtains were closed, and it was dark. But Detective Superintendent Kincaid put the lights on after he went in.’
‘If the curtains were closed, and it was dark, how could you see if the body was moving?’
‘I didn’t see it properly until I got inside and the light was on. I suppose it could have been moving.’
‘But when Kincaid said he thought the body was moving, that was before you’d gone in, wasn’t it? Before he’d broken the pane in the French windows. From what he said, and you seemed to agree, it was seeing a body appear to move that was the motivation for breaking in.’
Gibson thought about it for a moment. ‘I’m not sure, sir.’
‘Was there a gap in the curtains?’ Mulholland asked.
‘I presume there was where Detective Superintendent Kincaid was standing. I was behind him.’
‘So you couldn’t actually see a gap in the curtains, or into the room?’ Gillard asked.
‘Not exactly, but I trust what Detective Superintendent Kincaid says.’
‘That may be good politics,’ Gillard sighed. ‘But it’s not good evidence.’
‘He’s very senior,’ Gibson said. ‘I didn’t think I should disagree with him. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure either way.’
Gillard smiled, and patted the young DC on the shoulder. ‘It’s okay. You did nothing wrong. Best not mention this to anyone though.’
‘Yes, sir.’
After the constable had departed, Gillard turned to Mulholland. ‘There’s something very fishy about this, Claire.’ He led Claire back to the damaged French windows, beyond which two CSI technicians were kneeling over the body of Harry Smith. ‘Look at these security measures. It’s just what you’d expect from someone as obsessive as Smith.’ He pointed to a full, window-width, sliding security grille, bolts top and bottom, and a five-lever mortise lock. All seemed to be in working order. There were no fragments of wood, forced screws, or bent bolts.
‘There’s no sign of anything being forced,’ Gillard said. ‘Kincaid simply punched a hole in the glass, reached in and de
pressed the handle to open the door. Not one of these security devices seems to have been set. Why would that be?’
* * *
Gillard was about to leave when a young female CSI technician in a Tyvek suit crackled down the stairs from which Smith had hung himself. She called excitedly to Yaz Quoroshi, and waved a small piece of paper. ‘He left a suicide note.’
‘Read it out, then,’ Gillard called out.
‘“I am so sorry about the girls, about Francine, and the others. I can’t face what I have done any more.” He’s signed it too.’
‘So maybe Kincaid is right – Girl F is solved,’ Mulholland said.
‘Suspiciously neat, isn’t it?’ Gillard said. ‘I’ve asked if Dr David Delahaye can look at the body. If there’s even a hint it wasn’t suicide, we should know.’
Three days later
Even in death, Harry Smith seemed to be able to smirk. His naked body, waxy and mottled except where it was gouged and empurpled by rope, lay on a stainless steel table in the mortuary at Croydon University Hospital. Despite evidence of a huge blow to the right side of his head, from which grey matter and plenty of blood had dribbled, his face was set in habitual self-satisfaction. Only the blueness of his lips disturbed the expression. Looking down at him, in the harsh light required for post-mortem examination, were DCI Gillard, DS Mulholland, forensic consultant Dr David Delahaye and mortuary technician Nick Stevens.
‘Where’s Mr Dobbs?’ Delahaye asked. ‘I was led to understand he was in charge of the Girl F investigation.’
‘I don’t know.’ Gillard looked at his watch. It was gone six in the evening, but Radar Dobbs wasn’t generally considered a clock-watcher. ‘Let’s carry on anyway.’
‘I’ve had a good look at Mr Smith, and it seems to me the cause of death is asphyxia, which is consistent with hanging,’ Delahaye said. ‘The furrows on the neck are the inverted “V” that one expects with a fixed noose, with a gap at the apex, here.’ He pointed to a gap in the rope mark. Next he opened one of Smith’s eyelids and, with his pen, pointed to the dilated irises. ‘This is, again, what one would expect. There is petechial haemorrhage, behind the conjunctiva and cyanosing of the tongue and lips.’
