by Jane Casey
‘If you’re wondering why the yard is so busy, it’s gone out over the radio that you’re coming in. Everyone wants to have a look. You’re going to be quite the celebrity.’
I hadn’t realised that the yard was crowded, but peering between the front seats, I could see that uniformed officers were standing around in little groups, their eyes on the car. There was a uniform expression on their faces too: disgust, principally, mixed with open curiosity and a hint of satisfaction. The job had been done. They’d got one. Mixed in with the uniforms were civilian workers who looked just as self-righteous. Marie Antoinette couldn’t have faced a tougher crowd on her last public appearance.
Freeman swore softly, and I could tell that he was nervous about driving into the yard with such a big audience. He revved the engine and swung into a space by the back of the station, hitting the brakes just a fraction too hard.
‘Steady,’ Smith growled, and turned to me. ‘All right back there? Ready for your close-up?’
I was failing to warm to the detective. Something about the fact that he was arresting me for something I hadn’t done – hadn’t dreamed of doing – stuck in my throat. I didn’t answer him; I just twisted my hands in my lap. I was cold and somehow detached, as if all of this was happening to someone else.
Freeman pointed. ‘Through that door is the custody sergeant. All you have to do is follow DC Smith and stand where he tells you to stand.’
I nodded mutely, and when Smith opened the door, I climbed out of the car as instructed and followed him up a ramp, through a door marked ‘Custody’. I didn’t dare look left or right, just fixed my eyes on his wide back and tried to match his pace. A whistle came from somewhere behind me, shrill and unexpected, and I jumped. It was like a signal to the near-silent crowd in the yard, and the door closed behind me on a swell of jeers and comments. I caught sight of my reflection in a glass inner door as we passed through it and felt vague pity for the young woman in a jaunty striped T-shirt and faded jeans, the young woman with a fall of blonde curls down her back that looked too heavy for her small head, and a frozen expression on her pale face, her eyes wide and dark with fear.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. The sweetish stink of vomit was overlaid by the scent of pine disinfectant. The floor was very slightly tacky and my sandals pulled against my feet as I walked. I was so nervous, I could hardly feel my legs. My stomach was in knots.
A large desk took up most of the space in the hallway we had reached. DC Smith swaggered up to it. A female sergeant stood behind it, a motherly type with a scrubbed, fresh complexion. She looked at me, then back at Smith. In a resigned tone of voice, she asked, ‘What have we got?’
‘All right, skip,’ Smith said with a nod, and stood up slightly straighter, like a child about to recite his catechism. ‘I’m DC Thomas Smith, the arresting officer, and this is Sarah Finch. She was arrested at 12.25 this afternoon at 7, Curzon Close on suspicion of the murder of Jennifer Shepherd, on the instructions of DCI Vickers.’
There was a scuffling sound from behind me and Vickers suddenly appeared at my elbow. I looked past him to see Blake standing against the wall, hands in his pockets, staring into space. Something told me that he knew very well that I was looking at him, and no power on earth would induce him to look back. I turned my attention to Vickers, who had been confirming the circumstances of the arrest. Of my arrest.
The custody sergeant leaned across the desk. ‘Just a few questions for you, madam.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact, businesslike.
The questions were all to do with my welfare, and my replies when I answered were only just audible. No, I didn’t consider myself to be a vulnerable person. No, I didn’t have any special needs. No, I wasn’t on any medication, and I didn’t feel that I needed to see a doctor.
‘And do you want to see a lawyer?’ the sergeant said, with the air of someone getting to the end of a well-worn spiel.
I hesitated, then shook my head. Lawyers were for guilty people with something to hide. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I could explain my way out of this more easily – and more quickly, probably – if I didn’t have to deal with a lawyer.
‘That’s a no, then,’ she said, marking it on the form. ‘Initial the custody record for me, and sign in the box.’
I took the pen she handed me and signed where she had pointed. All done in accordance with the rules and regulations.
They emptied my pockets there and then, collecting an old faded receipt, some change and a button I had meant to sew on a shirt. My bag and my belt also disappeared. I had no shoelaces and nothing else that I could use to harm myself. Somehow, being stripped of my belongings was the worst moment of all. It was humiliating and degrading. I stood in front of them, my face burning, and wanted to cry.
The custody sergeant produced a bunch of keys and came out from behind her desk, humming to herself distractedly. ‘This way, please.’
I followed her through a battered door that led to a line of cells, some apparently occupied, some with the heavy doors standing open. The stench was unbearable – stale urine, vomit, and overlying all of it the heavy smell of human excrement. At the very end of the hallway, the sergeant stopped.
‘This is you,’ she said, pointing.
I looked through the open door at a completely bare cell, containing only a concrete block the size and shape of a bed and a toilet in the corner that I didn’t want to look at, let alone use. I walked in and stopped in the middle of the cell, looking around. Bare floor. Cream walls. High window. A whole lot of nothing. Behind me, the door thudded shut. The metallic sound of the key turning in the lock scraped across my overstretched nerves. I looked around to see the custody sergeant’s eyes peering through the wicket in the cell door. Evidently she was satisfied with whatever she saw, because without further comment she snapped the wicket shut, leaving me alone.
When they came back, hours later, I had made myself as comfortable as it was possible to be on a bare concrete slab, sitting against the wall with my knees drawn up to my chest. It had taken me a while to overcome my reluctance to touch anything in the cell. Even though it was superficially clean and smelled as if it had been thoroughly disinfected, I couldn’t help thinking about all of the previous inhabitants. There were no bodily functions, I suspected, that hadn’t occurred in that cell, with the possible exception of childbirth.
It had been a long wait. Every time the custody sergeant jangled her keys in the passage, my heart jumped painfully, and every time the fear and anticipation drained away slowly. With the exception of the offer of a cup of tea (declined) or a glass of water (accepted), I had been left alone since I was locked in my cell. The water had been tepid and slightly viscous, and came in a small paper cup. There hadn’t been anything like enough of it, but I didn’t dare ask for more.
As I sat there, trying not to panic, I started to plan what I would say in my interview. Vickers knew me. I could appeal to him, or even to Blake. I was a nice person, a good person, and they had made a terrible mistake. Surely I would be able to convince them?
I hadn’t yet got as far as counting the bricks in the walls or pacing up and down, but I was seriously tired of being locked up by the time the key slotted into the lock and my cell door swung open. The custody sergeant was there, along with a man I’d never seen before. He was small-framed and stood very straight. He had a dark, saturnine face, and wore an immaculate navy suit with a silver tie.
‘This is DS Grange,’ the custody sergeant said. ‘He’s going to take you down for an interview. Come on, up you get. Don’t keep us waiting.’
I got down off the bench slowly, adrenalin surging through my veins and my blood thudding in my ears. Up close, DS Grange proved to have streaks of silver in his dark hair and I placed him in his forties. His immaculate posture made him seem taller than he was; I was used to being shorter than absolutely everyone I met, but he had less of a height advantage than most men. The custody sergeant had a good two inches on him.
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�This way,’ Grange said briefly, and I followed him through the door at the end of the dank, cell-lined corridor. Another dingy passageway appeared, and he walked quickly along it, checking to make sure I was following him, and holding a fire door open for me to pass through. His manner was courteous without being warm, and I was feeling quite unsettled by the time we got to a door marked ‘Interview Room 1’. He held it open and I slipped through.
I recognised the set-up straightaway from every police drama or crime documentary I had ever seen. A table took up the centre of the room with two chairs on either side of it. One end abutted the wall, and an outsized tape recorder stood there, attached to both the table and the wall with steel clips, presumably to prevent irate interviewees from throwing it at their interrogators. There were two video cameras mounted by the ceiling, in opposite corners of the room, pointing at the table. The different angles would give a complete picture of what went on in the room. Another man was bending over the tape recorder, fiddling with it. He looked up as I came in, assessing me in one practised glance. He was younger than Grange, thirty-ish, about a head taller and three stone heavier. He looked like a rugby player to me. His shirt strained over muscled shoulders, the collar digging into his neck as he turned his head, leaving a blanched mark in his suntanned skin.
‘This is DC Cooper,’ Grange said, and pointed to one side of the table. ‘Take a seat, Sarah.’
I hesitated. ‘Wait a minute – who are you? Where’s DCI Vickers? Or DS Blake? Or the men who arrested me?’ I had forgotten their names already.
Grange sat down in one of the chairs. He busied himself with arranging his notepad and pens before answering me.
‘We’ve been brought in to interview you. We’re specialist interviewers, part of the team on this enquiry. DCI Vickers has briefed us.’ He looked up for a moment, then returned to lining up his pens with mathematical precision. ‘Don’t worry. We know all about you.’
Not in the least reassured, I sank into the chair he had indicated for me. Cooper finished whatever he had been doing with the tape recorder and sat down beside the older detective, knocking one leg of the table as he did so. The whole thing juddered and he mumbled an apology as Grange’s pens slid out of alignment. The older policeman’s lips tightened with disapproval, but he nodded to Cooper, who switched on the tape recorder and began to speak. His voice was gravelly and deep, but he also had a completely incongruous lisp. Glad of the distraction, I worked out that his two front teeth were chipped. They trapped his tongue on the sibilants as he ran through an introductory spiel for the benefit of the tape – the time, the date, the room in which we sat, the police station in which the interview was being conducted, their names and ranks. As he reached the end of his preface, he looked at me. ‘This interview is being recorded on tape and on video, OK?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Yes.’
‘Could you please state your name and date of birth.’
‘Sarah Anne Finch. The seventeenth of February, 1984.’
Cooper shuffled through the papers in front of him, looking for something. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m now going to caution you again.’
He read the caution from the page in front of him, stopping to explain what each clause meant. I was finding it hard to concentrate. I wanted to get on to the interview proper, so I could explain that I was completely innocent and get the hell out of there. There was no way that this was going to end up in court. I couldn’t possibly be put on trial for something I hadn’t done. It was unthinkable. I barely listened, and was caught out when Cooper asked me a question.
‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘You’ve declined the right to legal advice. Can you explain why?’
I shrugged, and then blushed as he pointed to the tape recorder. ‘Er, I didn’t feel that I needed legal representation.’
‘Do you feel well enough to be interviewed?’
I felt nervous, tired, a little bit sick and thirsty, but I wasn’t inclined to delay proceedings any further. ‘Yes.’
‘Now I just want to confirm the circumstances of your arrest. You were arrested, weren’t you, today, that’s the tenth of May, at 7, Curzon Close, for the murder of Jennifer Shepherd.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were cautioned there, and you didn’t say anything at that time.’
‘That’s correct.’ I was trying to appear calm, and I lifted my chin and looked the detective in the eye as I answered.
As Cooper scribbled something on a form, Grange leaned forward.
‘Do you know why you were arrested, Sarah?’ He spoke quietly, with deliberation, and I felt frightened of him without knowing why.
‘I believe a mistake has been made. I had nothing to do with Jenny’s death. I had nothing to do with whatever took place at that house. I had only been inside the house on one occasion, and that was two days ago.’
Grange nodded, but I didn’t get the feeling that he was agreeing with me – more that I had said what he expected to hear. ‘So you can’t see why we would be interested in speaking with you.’
‘Not really. I knew Jenny – I taught her. And I did find her body. But I spoke to the police about that. I spoke to Chief Inspector Vickers. I explained all of that. And I know there were things of mine in the house, but I don’t know how they got there. I certainly didn’t leave them there.’ My voice was getting higher and faster and I stopped short, dismayed that I sounded so flustered.
Grange raised a hand. ‘We’ll talk about that in a moment, Sarah, if we can. First, I’d like to make a few suggestions to you about how we see your involvement in the case, and you can tell me what you think.’
‘I think your first mistake is to think I have any involvement in the case at all,’ I said steadily.
Grange flipped over a page in his notebook without acknowledging what I’d said. He was reading and I guessed he was reminding himself of the case against me. I stared at him, hot with anger, impatient to hear how they could possibly tie me into Jenny’s death. Grange wasn’t giving anything away and I turned to look at the other policeman. Cooper’s round, slightly protuberant eyes were fixed on me, and his pen was poised above his notebook, ready to note any reaction I gave to what they had to say. I settled back in my chair and folded my arms. I felt hostile, and I wanted them to know it.
‘The investigative team has been suspicious of you from the start,’ Grange began at last, and I felt a physical shock at what he said. The investigative team included the chief inspector, Valerie Wade and Andy Blake. They couldn’t have thought I was involved. He couldn’t.
‘There is often a question mark over the person who discovers the body in a murder investigation, particularly if they have a connection to the victim. It suggests knowledge on the part of the discoverer as to the location of the body, especially if there has been a search to locate it, and it provides a ready explanation for there to be forensic evidence of the person in question at the scene: trace evidence, fingerprints, shoeprints – that sort of thing. That muddies the waters for us. Your presence at the scene in the woods contaminated it for us, so we can’t prove that you were there at a different time – as, for instance, when dumping the body.’
I interrupted. ‘I’m five foot two and I would guess that I weigh about fifteen pounds more than Jenny did. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to carry her to the place where she was found. It’s an isolated spot – difficult terrain. I physically couldn’t have done it.’
‘Not alone, no. We believe you were helped in that task by someone else, and that you took the responsibility for cleaning up after that person, knowing that any traces you left could be explained away.’
‘What other person?’
‘I’ll come to that, if I may,’ Grange said with a reproving look in my direction. He had a script that he was planning to follow, and I was trying to jump ahead. I subsided. I genuinely wanted to hear what they thought I’d done.
‘From the time that the body was discovered, you kept comin
g to the attention of the police. You made every effort to involve yourself in the investigation, taking it on yourself to speak to Jennifer’s friends before the team interviewed them. Your curiosity was noted and the team’s suspicion increased. It is our belief that you were feeding information about the investigation back to your conspirator, so that when it became clear that he was in danger of being arrested, he was able to get away.’
‘Danny,’ I said in a whisper.
‘Daniel Keane, yes,’ he said with some satisfaction. ‘However, you needn’t worry about him. We’ve got good intel on him. We’ll pick him up.’
‘I hope you do. He can tell you that this is a complete fabrication. I haven’t spoken to him in years, never mind conspired with him, or whatever you’re suggesting.’
‘It must have come as a shock to you, all the same,’ Grange said, leaning across the table, ‘when you realised that you weren’t just getting a lift home from the police. It meant you had no time to send a quick text to Danny or Paul to let them know that the police were about to execute a warrant. No time to wipe the files, clear the hard drives, destroy the evidence. No time to get your personal possessions out of the house.’
‘I don’t know how those things got there,’ I said lamely. ‘I told you that. And I told DCI Vickers.’
‘He said it was an Oscar-worthy performance,’ Cooper commented. ‘But it didn’t convince anyone.’
Grange took over again. ‘Then you were defending Paul, telling the officers that they shouldn’t interview him, that he was vulnerable. It was clear to everyone that you were afraid Paul would forget the story you’d agreed with him when you went to the house two days ago. Paul’s only a kid. You couldn’t count on him to cover for you.’
‘That’s ridiculous –’
‘Is it?’ Grange was like a predatory shark closing in on his target. ‘Because it doesn’t seem ridiculous to us. You’re too good to be true, Sarah. You live with your mother, teaching day in, day out at that posh school, looking at all the things you can’t have. It’s all so easy for those girls and they don’t even know it. We’ve searched your house – spoken to your mother. Pretty grim sort of life for a young woman, isn’t it? Pretty dull. Not much joy in it.’
