by Oliver Tidy
As they approached the door, Romney said to Marsh, ‘Take Mr Avery’s statement and then send him home, too.’
‘Wait,’ called Moor. His solicitor put his hand on his arm, but he shook it off. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he snarled.
Romney made a show of looking at his watch. ‘What is it?’
‘Avery couldn’t say I done it?’
‘Why?’ said Romney, affecting bored.
‘Cos he wasn’t even bleeding well there. That’s why.’
The gods were smiling on Romney that afternoon. Soon after Moor capitulated making a sworn statement detailing his assertion that Avery was nowhere near The Castle until after the police had arrived and broken up the brawl and so couldn’t possibly testify to him assaulting anyone, Holmes followed suit. When questioned by Romney regarding previous statements that the pair had made both – with helpful guidance from the DI, who seemed only too happy to help them avoid the accusation of perjuring themselves – stood by their original statements that Avery was there, but both chose to qualify and clarify those earlier statements with the additional details that Avery had not shown up at the incident until the police had already broken up the fighting and were making arrests. Romney got the added bonus from Holmes, seething at his belief that Avery had stabbed him in the back, that the whole thing had been planned by Avery as some sort of reprisal for what had happened to his girlfriend.
‘How do we explain his physical appearance then, sir? He looked like he’d been in a fight,’ said Marsh.
With a hint of disappointment, Romney said, ‘It doesn’t take much to fake yourself up, to make it look like you’ve been in a fight, does it? Not with the right motivation. If Avery was involved in the death of Claire Stamp, I reckon that that would prove quite a motivating force, don’t you?’
‘But he’d been hit. You saw that yourself.’
‘He looked like he’d been hit. If he had been, maybe Claire Stamp did it. Maybe he did it to himself. The main thing is that two key witnesses, who he was relying on to put him at the brawl from the beginning, have now clearly put him anywhere but. I think that our clever Mr Avery only just managed to arrive at the scene to get himself arrested. He must have been very relieved not to have missed the free shuttle to the station. I can only imagine that if he had we would have found him banging on the station front doors suffering an attack of conscience and remorse, begging to be arrested for a part in it.’
Romney left Marsh to the tidying up with the instruction that neither man was to be released before he phoned the all clear. That would be after he and DI Crow had finished questioning Avery at the pool hall.
*
The ‘Pool’ of the Dover Pool Hall neon sign was missing its ‘L’. It occurred to Romney, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Crow in the light drizzle looking up at the building, that this revised version was no less accurate. The exterior promised little in the way of comfort and cleanliness and suggested strongly that the interior was not likely to contradict it. The long-ago whitewashed external walls were somewhere between brown and grey with neglect, streaked with the run-off from defective guttering and the splashing of puddle water from passing vehicles. The window frames were peeling revealing a rainbow of layers of previous paint jobs. Big chunks of putty in the Georgian frames were notable by their absence. From across the street it was depressing enough, Romney reflected, to make one take up snooker.
Inside, as his eyes adjusted to the murky gloom, it was the cloying smell of the place that overwhelmed his senses. Evidently, there was a drains problem, but beneath that Romney could detect the unpleasant odour of damp plaster, the pungent reek of mildewed carpets, stale smoke and the acrid stench of long spilt beer. The decor appeared to be tipping its hat at neo-Victorian slum dwelling with grimy peeling walls where, in the first three feet up from the wainscoting, patches of sandy exposed render were the main feature. Bare low wattage bulbs completed the Fagin’s den ambience.
Only a couple of the tables were occupied. Those involved in the games cast furtive and doleful looks at the police officers as they followed their guide through the establishment to climb the open stairs to the offices that over-looked the ground floor in an open plan arrangement. The man who led them up the stairs tapped at the glazed office door and after receiving a nod from Avery – seated behind an expanse of Formica veneer – stood aside to admit the police to Avery’s inner sanctum.
The office was sparsely furnished. A gas heater gently roared away on three bars. Its fumes conveniently overpowered the stink from downstairs. Avery didn’t get up. His brow crinkled slightly on registering the presence of Romney.
‘Two detective inspectors. What an honour,’ he said. ‘Inspector Crow I was expecting, but not you Detective Inspector Romney. Business must be slow, eh?’
‘Not as slow as it would appear to be for you,’ said Crow.
‘I get by.’
Crow said, ‘This your only business interest, is it?’ He had a way of delivering his lines with just the right weighting of mockery to leave his audience wondering about his real meaning.
‘Yes. What is it I can do for the law today? As you can see, I’m a busy man.’ Neither would have guessed it.
It was a recognised downside of visiting scumbags on their own turf that one handed them a home advantage in the confidence stakes. Many were apt to become slightly to intolerably cocky, if not outright arrogant, when entertaining the police at home. But police work was often a necessary mixture of pragmatism, expediency and psychology. While calling villains into the intimidating and formal environment of the station had its place and its value, it could see them clam up knowing their rights and prove time consuming, awkward, and, of course, the ubiquitous legal presence could foul up the best of questioners. Comfortable at home without the obligatory interview room recording equipment and legal representatives, people could become less guarded, more talkative, and that could often reveal valuable information and insight to investigating officers that they would not have had a hope of getting at the station.
‘I’m sure you are,’ said Crow. ‘You can start by getting us a couple of chairs to sit down on, lad. Surely your mother told you it’s rude to make guests stand. Of course, if you can’t stretch to seats for us we can always do this down at the station. No skin off our noses, is it DI Romney?’
‘None at all,’ said Romney, warming to his senior colleague’s technique.
Avery picked up his phone and summoned chairs, which were brought quickly, almost as though they had only just been removed. Crow and Romney took their time making themselves comfortable.
Crow said, ‘You are familiar with a Mrs Helen Stamp, I believe?’
‘Yes, she was my late girlfriend’s mother.’
Crow leaned back in his chair, folded his arms and made a show of looking suspiciously at Avery. ‘Why would you say ‘was’? ‘“She was my late girlfriend’s mother.”?’
Avery reddened slightly and fidgeted with his pen. ‘What I mean is, well, my girlfriend’s dead and so she isn’t her mother anymore.’
‘That’s a strange way to view it,’ said Crow, maintaining his air of deep suspicion.
‘I can’t help that,’ said Avery.
‘When did you last see Mrs Stamp senior?’
Avery gave his best impression of deep thought. ‘The day that my girlfriend committed suicide,’ he said finally. ‘Last Wednesday.’
‘Where was that?’
‘At my girlfriend’s flat.’
Crow nodded. ‘Have you had any contact with her since then?’
Avery had been expecting this question. His face gave him away. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I have. We spoke on the phone about her coming to collect Claire’s things from the flat.’
‘And when is she coming to do that?’
Avery clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead in his lie. ‘We haven’t decided, yet.’
‘Really? Four phone calls over the weekend and you haven’t managed to work out when she ca
n collect her daughter’s effects. I hope that you’re a little more decisive in your business affairs.’ Avery’s nostrils flared slightly. ‘Is that all you discussed?’ said Crow, quickly.
‘We talked about Claire. We talked about our shared loss and when she could collect her things. That’s all.’
Crow said, ‘I imagine that you were a great comfort to her, Mr Avery.’ Avery stared maliciously at the policeman. ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’
Romney admired Crow’s method. The way he was toying with Avery, his thinly veiled insults, sarcasm and sudden pounces of pertinent enquiry all seemed practised to disorientate and bewilder the thinking of his prey.
‘Yesterday afternoon? I was here and at Claire’s flat and in between.’
‘I take it you have witnesses who will testify to that?’
‘I do for here, but I was alone at the flat. Someone might have seen me there. Why are you asking?’ Avery didn’t deliver it very well and Crow treated the false question with the contempt that it deserved by ignoring it.
‘Thank you for your time, Mr Avery,’ said Crow, abruptly concluding the interview and rising. ‘It’s been very revealing. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon. We’ll see ourselves out.’ Crow had finished with the man and turned for the door. When he reached it he turned back to Avery and gave him a deeply suspicious glare. ‘You should have asked me why I was questioning you about Helen Stamp. You didn’t. Sometimes it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees.’ Romney followed him out.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Avery exited his office and stood on the balcony looking down at them, his hands spread wide on the spindly railing – Lord of his grotty little fiefdom. ‘Show these gentlemen out, Lennie,’ he called down to the man behind the small bar. It was a pathetic show of misplaced bravado that was to backfire on him.
Crow turned back, not wanting to disappoint the captive audience. He acknowledged Avery with a small gesture and called out in crystal clear tones, ‘Goodbye, Simon, and thanks very much for the information. Much appreciated.’ He tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. Romney noticed that all eyes looked up to where Avery stood, but, like Crow, he didn’t look back himself.
Outside on the street, Crow turned to Romney as he pulled his collar up to protect his neck from the elements. ‘If I had any doubts of his involvement in her death before I went in there, his performance didn’t dispel them. What we need now is proof. We should have test results back in a day or two of the paint samples taken from her clothing. Then we’ll have to find the vehicle that it belongs to. Unless we have any other evidence to rope him to it we’re going to be a bit screwed.’
‘Keep in touch about any developments, will you?’ said Romney.
‘Likewise, Tom. I like to think that Mr Avery’s world is going to come tumbling down around his ears in the near future.’
‘It will if I have anything to do with it.’
They shook hands and parted by Crow’s vehicle, Romney choosing to walk the short distance back to the station. Crow had shown himself a cool and smooth operator. Romney’s professional respect for the man had increased significantly.
Romney trudged off into the falling gloom of dusk. As he walked, he phoned Marsh and told her she could release the two men anytime she liked but separately.
Although Romney was pleased regarding the corner that Avery was being painted into, there was still no evidence to link him directly with Claire Stamp’s death. As he walked, this feeling weighed heavily on his mind. The most that his time consuming investigations could hope to show was that Avery might have had the opportunity. He wouldn’t get that past his superintendent; the Crown Prosecution Service would never entertain the idea of a prosecution on such flimsy ‘evidence’. Romney needed to find a motive and then something that tied Avery to the scene and time of death with a Gordian knot.
*
Returning to the station, cold and despondent, Romney returned the call made half an hour before by PC Harker when he had come on duty at Deal police station. Harker sounded young, articulate and alert. Romney explained the reason for his call and asked the PC to trawl his memory for the smallest recollection that he had of his arrest of Avery.
‘Yes, sir. I remember it quite clearly actually,’ said the constable. ‘By the time I arrived the incident had fizzled out. Arrests had been made and there was no continuation of the brawling. The man who I arrested, Simon Avery, sort of appeared from nowhere. He just walked out of the darkness towards me. I remember thinking at the time that it was very odd. Normally, as soon as we turn up most people run off, as you know. I could see that he’d been involved in the incident. His clothes were torn and there was blood on his shirt. I did wonder if he’d been concussed. I collared him and he came as meek as a lamb. No arguments, no fuss.’
Romney felt a cocktail of satisfaction and frustration seep through his thinking. On the one hand, this would bring further reliable testimony to his assertion that Avery was not even there for the fight until it was all over, but on the other, it didn’t necessarily lead to anything concrete. There was still a massive obstacle to overcome to enable him to put Avery in the frame for Stamp’s death. Even with what he had learned that day, he was still well short of being able to clear it.
Romney said, ‘How specific can you be about the time of arrest?’
‘Very, sir. I always make a note of the exact time that I make an arrest if it’s logistically possible. Just a moment please.’ Romney waited while the officer consulted his notebook. ‘Approximately, eleven-thirty, sir. A minute or two either side.’
Romney breathed out feeling that another small piece of the jigsaw that would net him Avery had just been placed on the table. He thanked the constable and requested that, at his earliest convenience, he write up in detail what he had just relayed, specifically mentioning the timings, and send the report to him at Dover.
DI Crow, naturally, was not particularly interested in the why? Why would Avery run the woman over and leave her for dead? Crow was interested only in proving that it was Avery, if indeed it was. Such were the pressures and workloads of modern-day police work. With that limited interest, he wouldn’t be concerning himself with whether Avery got back what was his, which Romney was as certain as he could be was behind everything. Romney on the other hand was.
As he rocked back in his chair, massaging his temples, Romney’s logical conclusions that he was unable to prevent himself from drawing only served to depress him further. He was now convinced that everything pointed towards Claire Stamp having given something – that probably belonged to Avery – to her mother for safe-keeping and that her mother had spoken with Avery about it – why else would she speak four times to a man who she had freely admitted a distaste for and whom the police had suggested at her home only the day before could be involved in her daughter’s death? It followed then, for Romney, that among the few remote reasons Helen Stamp would be in the position and location that she was on a winter’s Sunday afternoon – he checked the incident report again: not dressed for country walking – the only plausible one was that she was meeting someone. Romney didn’t know anything about her social life, but he would guess that she didn’t have much use for country lanes in the middle of winter. Who did apart from doggers and ramblers? and she didn’t strike him as either type, although one could never tell.
Romney’s thinking leant strongly towards the opinion that if she was meeting someone that someone could only be Avery, who, by his own testimony, spent much of Sunday afternoon alone, which provided him with ample opportunity to drive the fairly short distance to where Helen Stamp was killed. And the only reason Helen Stamp would meet Avery – a man implicated in the death of her daughter Romney reminded himself for clarification – would be to trade whatever it was that Claire Stamp had entrusted to her mother. Assuming that Helen Stamp had it for trade and that the appointment was kept by Avery, Romney must further assume that whatever it was was now back in Avery’s
possession. And with that disheartening thought went any chance of tying Avery tighter to the death of Claire Stamp. What he had to hope for now was that DI Crow and his team would be able to make something of a case against Avery for Helen Stamp’s death.
He rubbed his tired eyes, looked at the clock and thought about going home. His phone rang. He snatched it up. ‘DI Romney.’
‘You sound tired,’ said Crow.
‘Sorry, Malcolm. I am.’
‘I know how you feel,’ said the older man. ‘But I don’t know how you’ll feel about this – Helen Stamp’s house was broken into this afternoon. It doesn’t appear to be a normal robbery. TV and such like are still there. Our boys reckon that whoever it was was looking for something. Thorough job, apparently. Sound familiar?’
‘Too familiar and the bastard has a strong alibi for it. I told you he wasn’t a complete idiot.’
‘They only have to be part idiot to get caught. Mr Avery definitely fits that bill.’
The two men spent the next ten minutes discussing Romney’s theories. Romney was glad to have an objective, wise and experienced officer to bounce it all off. Crow agreed with most of what he theorised. The events suggested – if all that went before was accurate – that Helen Stamp didn’t have whatever it was that Avery was looking for when she met him on Sunday afternoon.
‘So why kill her?’ said Romney.
‘Perhaps they traded something, but it wasn’t what he wanted.’
‘She duped him do you think?’
Crow laughed gently down the phone. ‘We could spend all night coming up with ideas, theories and counter theories. It wouldn’t get us anywhere. The one big question that remains, however, is, if everything is as you suggest so far, was, whatever he was looking for, recovered?’
*
By the time Romney had repeated it all to an attentive Marsh in the canteen over coffee, he had thought himself into a position where he couldn’t entertain any other scenario, despite the fact that virtually everything he had so far to link Avery with anything was a construct of his own biased and fertile imagination.
