Born in a Burial Gown

by Mike Craven

  It was unusual for anyone above sergeant to conduct interviews but Fluke always liked to do the big ones himself. He also preferred to interview with Towler, who had the knack of unnerving suspects without actually saying anything.

  But first, he needed something to eat and a coffee. They headed for the canteen.

  ‘How we gonna play it, boss?’ Towler asked, through a mouthful of bacon sandwich.

  Fluke shrugged, his own mouth also full. It was an interesting question. If their dad was the brains of the outfit, there was no doubt that Nathaniel was the enforcer. Everything about him screamed it. The very fact he flaunted his homosexuality on the Meadowby estate was proof enough of the fear he installed in people. He was probably bright enough to not be the triggerman but he’d know who had been. Even if they’d brought in someone from outside the family to do the actual hit, it was inconceivable he wasn’t involved in the decision.

  ‘Dunno know yet. We’ll play it by ear to start with. See how chatty he is. Is he lawyered up yet?’

  ‘Yep, they all are, the waiting room looks like a right wankers’ convention.’

  Fluke laughed but found the woman who’d driven him home the other night had popped into his mind. She’d said she was a solicitor and suddenly Towler’s comment didn’t seem quite so funny. The smile dropped from his face. ‘Right let’s do this. I’ll lead.’

  Nathaniel Diamond was wearing a white paper boiler suit. He’d been allowed half an hour with his solicitor. When Fluke entered the interview room, they were hunched over, talking together quietly. Actually, the solicitor was doing all the talking, Fluke noticed. Diamond wasn’t saying anything.

  Fluke often wondered how much information he could get by bugging privileged conversations. How many lives could he save from being ruined? Would a spared victim care if the intelligence came from the fruit of the poisoned tree? He doubted it.

  Fluke believed in the law. Rather, he believed in the spirit of the law. But when he had to, he was prepared to work in the grey area that existed between the letter of the law and justice. He was proud that he’d never extracted a confession by force or planted evidence. He’d never taken money for looking the other way. He wasn’t a dirty cop. If the occasional suspect got hurt while resisting arrest, that was something he could live with. If a paedophile banged his head getting into the police car, then he didn’t care. He expected officers who worked with him to be sensible, not saints. Fluke’s conscience was clear.

  But that didn’t mean he didn’t have tricks up his sleeve.

  Fluke sat without saying anything and spent a minute setting out various photos and documents from the file he’d been carrying. Diamond’s solicitor was casually trying to read them upside down. At that point, Diamond would have no idea why he was there. It could potentially be any one of their criminal enterprises. He’d be concerned but not overly worried. Fluke assumed there were safeguards against the main players being found with anything too incriminating. He glanced up at Diamond and found him looking back with an amused expression. He was ignoring the documents Fluke was laying out.

  Diamond was an interesting-looking man. Although he was of average height, a certain aura of power emanated from him. It was clear his solicitor was scared of him. From a distance, Diamond looked exactly like he did in the various photos the police had of him. He kept his ginger hair short, shaved it every day, Fluke guessed. He had heavy stubble but no one had had time to shave that morning. He knew some heavy gold rings and a thick gold chain had been taken from him as part of the booking-in process. The custody sergeant had told him that they were not the usual cheap rubbish habitually favoured by criminals. They were the real deal. Thousands of pounds’ worth, he estimated. Not a bad way of carrying currency around with you if you needed cash in an emergency.

  Nathaniel Diamond looked exactly like he was supposed to. A thug. A bouncer with attitude. A violent man in a violent business.

  However, although he was undoubtedly all those things, Fluke suspected there was more to him than that.

  It was the eyes that gave it away. The photos didn’t do them justice. They had intelligence behind them. They were looking at Fluke shrewdly. Without panic. Fluke couldn’t detect concern. He couldn’t even detect curiosity.

  Although there’d been a press release on the murder, there hadn’t been one on the rape. The details of the murder released to the News and Star did not include a photo and Fluke wanted to gauge his reaction when Diamond saw it for the first time. It would be the key moment in the interview. Diamond had been there enough times to keep quiet but human reactions aren’t so easily controlled.

  Fluke sometimes used an unorthodox and unapproved method when interviewing suspects.

  Some years before, after attending a multi-agency public protection meeting in Liverpool, Fluke had been having a coffee with a forensic psychologist and had idly asked him what he was working on, more for something to say than anything else – the type of thing said when two people who don’t know each other are thrown together.

  The psychologist had told him that he’d been commissioned to develop a two-minute interview for airlines which had flights leaving the UK for the States. They wanted to have staff talking to passengers while they waited to check in. And they wanted it to appear casual. They were trying to spot signs of deception before they progressed to the formal security checks.

  He explained they’d been encouraged with the early results of a technique they’d been piloting. The theory was that the member of staff would ask a series of questions so normal it would appear the interviewer was simply killing time. Questions designed to put the passenger at ease. But they didn’t want rehearsed answers. They wanted honest answers. And the best way to get honest answers was to ask questions so mundane there would be no reason to lie.

  ‘But terrorists plan for this, don’t they? They have legends that they memorise, they know which schools they went too, they know where they were last night and what they watched on television. They certainly rehearse the “did you pack your own bag” question,’ Fluke had asked. He’d never worked counter-terrorism but had a rough understanding of it.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Mr Fluke? Which was the last supermarket you shopped at?’ the psychologist had asked.

  Fluke paused, confused. ‘Sainsbury’s,’ he said finally.

  The psychologist looked at him. ‘This is the type of thing we ask. We ask mundane questions, yes. But some of the questions we ask are that random they can’t possibly be predicted and therefore rehearsed.’

  He’d gone on to explain that the human brain wants to tell the truth and, in the absence of a reason to lie, will normally tell the truth. The passenger’s facial micro-expressions, essentially very brief expressions, when they answered those questions contained what he called truthful indicators. If those micro-expressions were different when answering questions that could be rehearsed it indicated possible deception, and a far more rigorous security check followed. The two-minute lie detector, the psychologist called it. Passengers don’t even realise they’ve had it.

  Fluke had adapted and refined it to the point where he believed he could tell when someone was lying to him almost every time. It was virtually infallible. He couldn’t remember the psychologist’s name and had never seen him again to thank him.

  After the usual formalities were covered: who was present, an explanation of how the digital recording worked, and what happened to copies afterwards, they began. Towler stayed silent. Silent but staring, Fluke knew without having to look. It was unnerving for the suspect. Usually.

  Fluke had checked. Diamond had been arrested and interviewed eight times. To date he’d never been charged. He’d read the interview transcripts and he always went no comment. Not the McNab no comment, Diamond never actually said anything. Eight times, from the point of arrest until he walked out with no charge, he’d never said a single word. Nothing that could be misconstrued or misheard.

  ‘Who was that you were with earli
er, Nathaniel?’

  For a moment, Fluke thought the interview was going to go the way of all the others. He’d planned for it, which was why he’d a whole range of photos with him. They were going to be his questions.

  ‘Mathew.’

  Fluke looked up from his notes, surprised. He honestly hadn’t expected Diamond to answer that. He decided to push it a bit further.

  ‘And who’s Mathew, Nathaniel?’

  ‘He’s my boyfriend.’ There was no trace of shame in his voice or any trace of defiance. He’d simply stated it as the truth.

  ‘How long have you been together?’

  ‘Look, Inspector. I really don’t see what my client’s personal life has to do with this,’ Diamond’s solicitor said.

  Fluke didn’t answer him. He noted that Diamond was looking at him carefully.

  ‘Eight years.’

  The solicitor put his hand on Diamond’s arm to stop him adding anything. He leant in to whisper something but before he could, Diamond spoke. ‘Get your hands off me.’

  He delivered it quietly and without turning his head. The solicitor snatched his hand back as if he’d been burnt. He reddened but said nothing. He heard Towler snort. Fluke’s peripheral vision caught the solicitor’s florid face turn redder; embarrassed that he was being spoken to like that but too scared to protest. Fluke almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He chose to represent the family; he made a living from human misery just as surely as they did. Guilty by association. The solicitor reached into his suit and took out a silk handkerchief. He wiped the back of his neck and looked ahead, trying to avoid catching anyone’s eye.

  ‘What does Mathew do, Nathaniel?’ Fluke said, looking at the solicitor as he said it, as if daring him to say anything. Everyone knew who got the last lick of the lolly in that room.

  ‘He’s a photographer. He’s good. He did the photos in our house.’

  Fluke nodded. ‘Yeah, I saw them.’

  Diamond’s expressions had all been neutral but he was sure he was telling the truth. Fluke had watched his micro-expressions carefully and thought he’d recognize any changes that might indicate deception. He wanted to ask one more though. One that would ordinarily illicit an expression of anger, but if answered would be truthful.

  ‘Where do you buy your condoms, Nathaniel?’

  The solicitor couldn’t help himself and exploded out of his chair. ‘That’s it, Inspector! This is outrageous. My client has been here two hours and so far no one has even told him—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, fat man. You work for me. Speak when I tell you to speak.’ Delivered in the same flat tone. Diamond turned to face him. The solicitor sat back down and seemed to shrivel.

  ‘I don’t know why you called me if you’re not…’ He petered out under Diamond’s withering gaze.

  ‘Sorry about that, Inspector,’ Diamond said. ‘The Co-op on London Road.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Fluke said, nonplussed.

  ‘Our condoms. The ones we used last night were bought from the Co-op on London Road. We don’t always get them from there, obviously, but I assume you only want me to go back so far.’

  Fluke had always felt that the real skill in interviewing was knowing when a plan wasn’t working. Diamond was far too calm, as calm as anyone Fluke had ever interviewed. His answers were all delivered as the truth, and he seemed to be hiding nothing. Fluke had been planning to ask him about drugs next, to see what he looked like when he was being deceptive but also to keep the real reason for his arrest hidden a bit longer. But he wasn’t convinced that Diamond wouldn’t see straight through that. He was getting the impression that Nathaniel Diamond was far more intelligent than anyone had realised. Fluke had been on the back foot since the interview started and that hadn’t happened for a long time.

  He was still considering what to do next when Diamond took the matter into his own hands.

  ‘You have heterochromia, I see, Inspector.’

  All doubt about Diamond’s intelligent left him instantly. Not even Leah Cooper had known the correct term for his different-coloured irises. She’d had to look it up and even then it took her three goes to pronounce to correctly. Towler called them his “fucking weird eyes” and that was about as polite as anyone got. Fluke couldn’t even spell his own condition, it was that rare.

  A full minute passed before he answered. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said. He could feel Towler stirring. The big man was also getting uneasy.

  Fluke didn’t know what to ask next and quickly evaluated where they were. He considered stopping the interview to regroup. By revealing his intelligence, Diamond had thrown him. It hadn’t been accidental either. He couldn’t have made it any clearer if he’d come in with an IQ certificate. Diamond was letting him know how intelligent he was for a reason, and as he’d successfully hidden it for so long, it was for something significant. There was something going on here that Fluke wasn’t yet aware of.

  Fluke decided there was nothing to be gained by playing games anymore. Nathaniel Diamond may be the most intelligent criminal he’d ever sat opposite, he might even be a genius but there was one thing outside his control: micro-expressions don’t lie.

  It was time to see if he was involved in Samantha’s murder.

  It was time for the photo.

  Fluke took it from the folder and placed it facedown on the table. He stared at Diamond. They knew what was coming. They knew the whole interview had been about this moment.

  ‘Have you seen this woman before, Nathaniel?’ Fluke said as he flipped over the photo. It was an 8" x 10" colour glossy of her head on the mortuary table. Diamond glanced down at it then back up at Fluke.

  Fluke stared at him and saw what he’d been hoping for. Recognition.

  A tiny change in his expression. It had only been there for a fraction of a second, but that was long enough for Fluke.

  Diamond had seen her before.

  Fluke smiled to himself. They were getting somewhere. The Diamond family were involved somehow.

  ‘Why would I have seen her before?’ he replied, calmly.

  Even liars don’t like to lie. Before answering questions of any consequence the liar will at first try to avoid answering it at all. Replying with a question was a classic reaction.

  With no warning, Towler shouted. ‘Answer the fucking question, dickhead!’ Diamond ignored him. His solicitor nearly fell off his chair. Fluke didn’t move a muscle. He’d been expecting it. He’d planned it.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen her before.’

  There was no emotion in his answer but Diamond was no longer holding his gaze. He was looking slightly above his eye line. His micro-expressions were different. The difference between his truthful and deceptive indicators were bigger than Fluke would have expected in someone so intelligent, but as the psychologist had told him, people have very little control over them.

  He was lying.

  Fluke felt that it was the first time he’d actually gained anything from the interview. He was ahead and didn’t want Diamond to have an opportunity to claw back the advantage. Time to change the rules. Fluke had always believed that it was best to do what the criminal wasn’t expecting.

  Fluke stood up and put everything back in his file.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Diamond. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘He can go?’ the solicitor asked, surprised. It was only the fourth thing he’d said.

  Diamond was watching Fluke, the same small smile he’d had at the start of the interview was back. ‘Of course I can’t, you fat idiot. I’m a suspect in a murder investigation.’

  ‘You should listen to your client. I’m keeping hold of him for a while longer,’ Fluke said.

  ‘I won’t be paying for your services today, Mr Potting,’ Diamond said. ‘I don’t think you’ve been of any help. Would you agree?’

  That got the solicitor’s attention. ‘My legal advice is only as good as the person listeni—’

  Diamond interrupted him. ‘I asked if you agreed, fat man?’
>
  For a moment, Fluke thought the solicitor was going to stand his ground.

  But his face deflated in defeat. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, quietly. Diamond was looking at Fluke throughout the whole interaction.

  Towler and Fluke left the room.

  Fluke had new things to consider. Diamond was highly intelligent. Even his solicitor was scared of him. He was used to command, that much was obvious. Serious command. When he spoke, he expected to be listened to. It had been like a game of ‘Simon Says’ with the solicitor. He also knew that Nathaniel Diamond was somehow involved with Samantha. Whether he was involved in her death was something he wasn’t ready to speculate on.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  He needed some rest. He needed to regroup.

  ***

  Chapter 22

  They drove back to HQ, and Fluke slept on the couch in his office for a couple of hours. He woke, still feeling tired and with a headache. He checked his emails. There was the usual rubbish from HR, as well as some information on current live investigations: a street robbery in Ulverston, a social worker had been found with indecent images of children on his computer, and someone had been impersonating a police officer in various parts of the county. Nothing for FMIT to get involved in. He yawned and looked back at his couch.

  Instead of going back to sleep, he got up and looked for Towler. He found him sleeping in a hard plastic chair in the incident room. Towler had the soldier’s knack of being able to fall asleep anywhere, and under any circumstances. The room was busy and noisy as Jo Skelton coordinated the updating of HOLMES 2 with the morning’s raids and the subsequent interviews taking place around the county. People were shouting for things: links to computer files, passwords, codes, but Towler slept through it all. Fluke envied him. He and sleep had an uneasy relationship. Towler and sleep were best friends.