by Iain Cameron
‘I wonder if she coughed up.’
‘Who knows, but if Cindy held out and refused to tell them where the pictures were, you would think the kidnappers would have come back to the studio for a second look. If they suspected they were still at the studio, they might have tried to burn the place down.’
‘Which they couldn’t do as we had people there, but what if she told them and they’d retrieved the pictures from a different place. Another studio for example.’
Henderson shrugged. He’d debated the same issues with the team numerous times. ‘Maybe.’
‘So, if the pictures aren’t there, we’re wasting the time of…how many officers do we have down there?’
‘Six.’
‘We might be wasting the time of six officers looking through old wedding photos and thousands of family portraits of Mum, Dad and two-point-four children.’
‘It’s one way to look at it, but what if she held out and the pictures are still there? Maybe the kidnappers believed they couldn’t return to the studio because of us or they assumed we’d removed all the pictures as evidence.’
‘It’s a thin straw, Angus, and will cost us dear if it leads us down another blind alley.’
‘But you’re not against us looking?’
‘I don’t see you’ve given me much choice. You don’t have any better leads to follow, do you?’
Henderson sighed and shook his head. ‘Despite interviewing her ex-husband, business partner and ex-boyfriend. We only have Tony Mitchell left.’
She leaned across the desk towards him. ‘Just remember the size of the crowd of journalists at yesterday’s press conference. This case is high profile. With some reservations, I don’t care what you do or how you do it, as long as you get me a quick result. Am I being clear?’
SIXTEEN
‘Interview timed at ten-fifty,’ Phil Bentley said.
Henderson looked across at their interview subject. Tony Mitchell’s arms were folded and on his face he wore a scowl. The arms were large and tattooed but Henderson couldn’t be bothered trying to read or decipher them, although he did notice a heart with an arrow through it, and the name ‘Polly’ inscribed in the middle.
‘Mr Mitchell do you know why you are here today?’
He said nothing; the lined and stubble-marked face impassive.
‘No? Well, let me enlighten you. You lied to my officers. You said when they asked where you were on the night Cindy Longhurst was murdered, you went to The Cricketers pub. We know you didn’t.’
‘Did I fuck lie to you. I said I went out for a couple of pints. If I said The Cricketers it was through habit.’
‘How can you say that? You haven’t stepped foot in the place for over six months.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t know what you mean. If you didn’t go to The Cricketers, where did you go?’
‘A pub along the road from there called The Ship Inn.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
Henderson nudged Phil Bentley beside him.
‘No, you didn’t, sir,’ Bentley said. ‘We also checked with The Ship Inn and even though they know you and your son as regulars, they didn’t see you or your son on the night in question.’
‘How would they remember us? It’s a busy place.’
Henderson could think of a few reasons. A large intimidating man pushing his son in a wheelchair, for one.
‘Let’s put the question to one side for the moment, Mr Mitchell, and talk about Cindy Longhurst.’
‘What’s there to talk about?’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘There’s fuck-all to tell. She crippled my son, end of.’
‘She did, there’s no denying it, but your son was riding recklessly on his bike on a wet night when visibility would be poor and stopping distances greater.’
‘Yeah, but she was going too fast, if she had been paying attention she could have stopped.’
‘Not according to the officers who investigated the accident.’ Henderson reached into a file and pulled out the accident report, turned it around and pushed it towards him. ‘There it is in black and white, it couldn’t be any clearer. She hadn’t been drinking and her speed was less than the speed limit.’
He chucked the paper back at him. ‘A bloody whitewash.’
‘How can you say it’s a whitewash? Cindy had no connections with the police. She didn’t work for us and none of her family did.’ Henderson sighed, before speaking slowly, giving the obdurate man in front of him time to absorb the meaning. ‘Why don’t you get it, Tony? Your son was injured in a car accident, tragic as it might be, but it wasn’t the driver’s fault.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You weren’t there at the accident scene and, according to my officers who came to your house a few days ago, your son even believes it was his own fault.’
‘You won’t change my mind.’
Henderson looked at his face and saw something else; was it guilt, or regret? ‘I think there’s something else going on here, Tony. Tell me there isn’t?’
His face was impassive again, the big shovels for arms and hands folded in an, ‘I’m not talking to you’ gesture.
He didn’t know how to get him to talk, so he decided to throw a few contentious ideas at him and see how he reacted. ‘You knew Cindy Longhurst before the accident, didn’t you?’
No reaction.
‘Something was going on between you and Cindy Longhurst, am I right? What was it? Were you two having an affair?’
‘Don’t be soft, I would never cheat on my wife.’
‘I think you knew her before, Tony. You’re a builder, did you do some work at Longhurst Studios? Lay the tarmac for the car park, improve the drainage, maybe?’
‘It was my fucking company what built it.’
The nail had been truly hit on the head. ‘Now I see.’
‘See what?’
‘What happened? Did she refuse to pay you? Did she become too demanding?’
‘Nothing like that.’
‘What then? Tell me.’
The arms unfolded. ‘Construction of the studio was started by Wright-Carson. Remember them?’
Henderson shook his head.
‘In the building trade on the south coast, they were the dog’s bollocks. They got all the big contracts and the likes of us picked up the bones and scraps. Well, they took on a big contract to refurb a former power station in Thanet and found all this asbestos and radioactive material when they started clearing the site. It cost millions to sort and when, at the end of the job, they went to the client for payment, he refused. They sued, but with the time it was taking to go through the courts, they ran out of cash and went belly-up.’
‘Was the demise of Wright-Carson good or bad news for you?’
‘Good, because we picked up a lot of jobs they abandoned which made up for the many times in the past those bastards did us over.’
‘Including Longhurst Studios?’
‘Including Longhurst Studios.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know if you understand much about the building trade but, often as not, you just can’t take over a job from the last guy, hoping to carry on where they left off. They’d done a lot of the ground work but they’d taken short cuts, you know?’
‘Which would cost money to fix.’
‘Right, but in addition, Wright-Carson under-priced the job and loads of others, probably another reason why they went bust.’
‘I assume you discussed this all with Cindy before you started work.’
‘Sure I did, but she insisted we come in under budget as it was all the money she could spare.’
‘You could have walked away.’
‘We could, but I thought we could make it.’
‘Did you?’
‘No, the job went over by twenty grand and she refused to pay.’
‘Couldn’t you reach a compromise?
’
‘Nope, she still owes me twenty grand.’
‘Whether she owes you money or not, doesn’t detract from the studio itself. You’ve done a terrific job, it’s a magnificent building. You should be proud.’
‘You think so?’
‘Yes, I do.’
He sat more erect, the chest inflated and almost cracked a smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘Going back to the anger you expressed about Cindy Longhurst, twenty grand doesn’t do it for me, Tony. You’re a successful builder. You probably make that much on a quiet Friday afternoon.’
He clammed up again and Henderson knew he was on the right track.
‘C’mon Tony, there’s something else you’re not telling me. I think you knew Cindy better than you’re saying.’
The arms unfurled and he clumped his big mitts on the desk with a thump, making the desk vibrate like the start of an earthquake.
‘We had a fucking affair and she dumped me when I thought we were about to move in together. Does that do it for you, Inspector?’
**
‘This is like Manchester,’ DS Neal said.
‘I’ve never heard Brighton called that before. In what way?’ her driver DC Sally Graham asked.
‘You’ve got the city back there which I admit isn’t as big as Manchester, but you only need to go a couple of miles outside and you’re in the countryside.’
‘I’ve been to Manchester and I know what you mean, but in the Pennines, the countryside is wild with no houses for miles. Here, there are few wild places, if any, and everywhere else that isn’t built on is partitioned by big fences.’
‘I don’t see many buildings around here.’
‘No, because here at Devil’s Dyke,’ she said pointing, ‘the land to the left and right, is part of the South Downs and designated as a National Park. It’s not easy to get permission to build in a National Park.’
‘Right.’
Graham parked the car in the large car park, busy even on this dreary Wednesday afternoon. In her experience, many cars would be owned by ‘weekend’ walkers, people who would go for a half-hour walk and reward themselves with a large coffee and a chocolate muffin in the café. The detectives came to Devil’s Dyke to allow DS Neal to see the place where Ted Mathieson had been stabbed with the added bonus of improving Neal’s geographic knowledge of Sussex.
Neal walked away as if she had spotted something and by the time Graham collected her handbag and locked the car, she was some distance ahead. She ran and caught her up.
‘What is it?’ she asked the sergeant.
‘Look.’
She followed her arm and saw a hang glider approaching. The pilot looked experienced, gently pulling the strings on either side of him, trying to put the giant kite where he wanted it to go. He landed without drama and rapidly gathered in the material behind before the stiff breeze whisked him back out over the valley.
‘I like watching them,’ Neal said as they walked back to the car park. ‘What they do is so elegant.’
‘Don’t you fancy a go yourself?’
‘No, not me. I can’t do heights.’
‘Right, the crime scene,’ Graham said, pointing at the car park downhill from the café car park. ‘Mathieson’s car was parked over there. At the time he came here in the morning, it would have been deserted. Now, anytime I come for a bit of bird watching, I use the car park at the top, which is on the far side of the restaurant over there. There’s always someone about. More often than not, another bird watcher.’
‘Maybe he didn’t care to have other people around him to see what he was up to.’
‘Could be.’
‘Two things still bother me though,’ Neal said. ‘Number one, there must be a dozen places where he could go for a walk between here and his house in Telscombe Cliffs. I was looking at a map last night.’
‘For sure, there are some great cliff-top walks and under-cliff walks, he could access the South Downs close to where he lives and there’s the Marina and Brighton Promenade as well.’
‘My second reservation comes after speaking to DS Walters. Mathieson doesn’t look or sound to her like a guy who goes on early-morning walks. He drinks, smokes and he’s overweight. People I know like him have trouble getting out of bed in a cold morning, never mind coming to places like this for a bracing walk.’
‘So why did he come here?’
‘If we can find that out, I’m confident we’ll find out the reason why he was stabbed.’
SEVENTEEN
DS Carol Walters drove through the village of Hurstpierpoint. Like many larger Sussex villages, it had a selection of small shops: newsagent, co-op, post office, café, each forced to up their game by the competition now coming from the web, in addition to the number of large supermarkets situated within a five-mile radius.
At least this village had more than one pub when many other villages had lost theirs. Like shops, they needed to do something different, and some were offering themed nights such as ‘beers from around the country’ or the ‘best pies in the world.’ Many around the county were also improving their food selection, shifting the focus from the drinking dens of the past into genuine competition for restaurants.
She turned down Langton Lane and took a left into Longhurst Studios.
‘Whoa, look at this place,’ DC Seb Young beside her said, ‘it’s straight out of an architectural magazine.’
‘You sound like the boss, but I don’t understand the appeal of all this wood.’
‘It must have cost a packet.’
‘It did.’
They got out of the car and walked quickly to the studio, the wicked, cold wind whipping across the fields in the distance didn’t encourage lingering.
‘Hello Annie,’ Walters said when she spotted Annie Heath tidying up inside.
‘Hello Sergeant, are you here to check on your team?’
‘I am. I hope they’re not bothering you or interfering with business.’
‘No,’ Annie said, ‘they’re tucked away in the office all day and don’t bother me. Sometimes I think you become invisible when you’re pregnant, you know? To be truthful, there’s not much going on at the moment. I can’t take over from Cindy as I can’t stay on my feet for too long. Looking ahead, I don’t know what’s going to happen to this place.’
‘I expect Ted Mathieson might try and employ a contract photographer until he can decide what to do with it. Did you hear what happened to Ted?’
‘Terrible, isn’t it? Do you guys think it’s connected with Cindy’s murder?’
‘We don’t think so, but we won’t know for sure until we get a chance to speak to him.’
‘It seems a heck of a coincidence if it isn’t, but I don’t see how Ted could be involved in anything, you know, illegal. He’s a bit coarse and rough on the outside, but he’s a teddy bear on the inside. If you could see the way he treated Cindy. He was lovely and she never had a bad word to say about him.’
Walters edged away, fearful of becoming embroiled in one of Annie’s long reminiscences. ‘I must get on, Annie. See you later.’
‘She’s so big,’ Young said in a hushed tone as they reached the office door. ‘Is she expecting quads or whatever the medical expression is for five?’
‘Quintuplets, I think it’s called. No, it’s only twins. I just hope it doesn’t all kick-off when we’re around.’
She opened the door and the smell of stale coffee and a variety of body odours filled her nose, no wonder with six people all sitting at whirring laptops shoehorned into a small room ordinarily occupied by one.
‘Morning all.’
‘Morning Sarg.’
Six officers, including detectives Graham, Bentley and Newman from the murder team were spaced out around the desk, the others making use of any flat surface or trying to balance the computer on their knee.
‘You’ve briefed the newbies?’ she asked DC Sally Graham.
‘I did, as much as anyone can for an inquiry like this.’
/>
Walters looked around. Each officer had a box of SD cards. They slotted an SD card into the laptop, waited for it to load before skimming through all the pictures, making sure it matched the description on the index card. She stood behind Sally Graham and could see hundreds of images of a woman and her two kids.
‘She’s taken a ton of stuff like this,’ Graham said. ‘Hundreds of pictures of one person or a couple. It’s the beauty of digital, you can take as many photographs as you want. I do it when I’m bird watching and delete the crappy ones when I get home.’
‘I had a family photo done once,’ Young said. ‘My mother wanted a picture of the four of us and in a few good shots, my brother had his eyes closed. On pictures where he didn’t, my mother did. What the photographer did was lift a decent picture of my brother and merged it with a photograph where the rest of us looked good. It’s the one she now has on her wall.’
‘Clever.’
‘It is, and that process of trying to find a photo with a few of the people looking good probably accounts for a large portion of the pictures you’re seeing here.’
Walters walked to the filing cabinet and opened a drawer. Cindy operated a comprehensive indexing system and Walters would bet the photographer could lay her hands on a specific set of images in a matter of minutes. Problem was, none of the headings suggested anything malicious, something so bad that it would encourage kidnappers to take her away to beat her up and murder her. The headings instead hinted at normality, ordinary people recording key moments in their lives: birth, graduation, birthday, confirmation, marriage, Bar Mitzvah, golden wedding.
Young was looking over her shoulder.
‘It’s all ordinary stuff here,’ Walters said, ‘if we believe what’s on the labels.’
‘Maybe she kept the serious stuff off-site.’
She considered this. Putting herself in Cindy’s shoes, would she keep something secret, never mind her lifetime’s work in a wooden building? Pretty as it was, it would be less secure from the standpoint of fire, burglary and adverse weather conditions than the substantial stone-built house next door.
