The Wrong Man (DS Dave Slater Mystery Novels Book 4)

by P. F. Ford

  "I reckon there could be another murder for us to investigate," said Norman to Slater. "Maybe we should wait."

  "No," said Hollis. "I think you should get out, now. I've answered your questions, now leave, before she gets back."

  "We'll be checking out your story about being on the late shift on the day Diana died, Mr Hollis," warned Norman. "I hope, for your sake, it checks out, because if it doesn't we might have to consider the possibility your affair with Diana gave you reason to murder her."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Norman and Slater sneaked quietly into the car park at six-thirty that evening. They figured Murray would be long gone home, and sure enough there was no sign of his car anywhere. Their idea had been to quickly look in to see if there were any messages from Jolly, and then to get out as quickly as possible. But that idea was based on there being nothing to grab their attention.

  There was a handwritten message on Slater's desk from Jane Jolly, demanding to know what was going on.

  "We'll have to make up for it tomorrow," said Norman.

  There was a vehicle report from Jolly, confirming the small white van they had photographed at Rochester and Dorset was registered to the company, and they had owned it for two almost years.

  "We need to find out who has access to it," said Norman.

  There was also a report from Ian Becks down in the forensics lab.

  "Becksy says it's definitely Diana's prints inside that mobile phone we found," he told Norman.

  "Crap," said Norman. "That's gonna make it harder for us to prove he knew it was in his desk. We need her mobile phone more than ever now."

  Then, as soon as Slater checked his email inbox, he saw there was a message from Millie Gibson, with a file attached.

  "Well, let's not give up hope just yet," said Slater. "Millie has sent a copy of their daily diary. Help me check it against these text messages. Maybe we can see some sort of pattern."

  It didn't take them long to find the first link.

  "He flew out on the afternoon of Monday the fifteenth," said Slater, reading from the diary. "But he was out of office all day."

  "Okay, just a minute," said Norman, scrolling through the stored messages on the mobile phone they had taken from Rossiter's office. "Here you go. Received just before midday. It says 'B. Fancy a quick f**k before you go. D xx.' Then, he sends 'MT house here' with a winky, smiley face. Then three minutes later there's another one received. 'C U in 30. Xx.'

  "What do you think?" asked Slater.

  "It works for me," said Norman. "Sounds like she needed a seeing-to and he had an empty house."

  "Let's see how many more we can tie together," said Slater.

  Over the next hour they found another fourteen cases where the texts could be linked to Rossiter's activities.

  "If there ever was any doubt, I think it's been removed now. This is his phone alright," said Norman. "But I still think we need to find her phone."

  "Okay," said Slater. "Let me just phone Millie Gibson to say thank you, and then we can get out of here."

  "Oh good. Because I feel a takeaway coming on," said Norman as Slater was dialling Millie's number. "What do you fancy? Thai, Indian, or Chinese?"

  "Hi, is that Millie?" said Slater into the phone. "This is DS Slater. I just wanted to thank you for sending the email. I know you're taking a risk helping us out like that."

  "Not really," she giggled. "I'm leaving anyway, so they can hardly sack me, can they?"

  "Even so," said Slater. "We do appreciate your help and I wanted to make sure you know it, that's why I thought it would be better to phone now and not phone you at work tomorrow."

  "It's a pleasure," she said. "And anyway, it's nice to have a little bit of excitement in my life. So what's going to happen now?"

  "We're not exactly sure yet," said Slater. "And it's probably best that you don't know, then if we turn up you won't look as if you were expecting us. There is one more thing you might be able to help us with, though."

  "Go on," she said. "If I can help, I will."

  "We noticed there's a small white van parked in a garage at the back of the building. Can you tell me who uses it?"

  "The Peugeot?" she asked. "It's like a company runabout. Basically anyone can use it. It's supposed to be for company business, like running errands, collecting stationery, and stuff like that, but you know how lax they are about things at that company. Just about everyone uses it. People go shopping in it, collect dry cleaning, and all sorts. Someone even used it to go and collect some compost from the Garden centre a few weeks ago."

  "Is there a record of who uses it?" asked Slater.

  "Well, there is a book," she said. "Anyone who uses it is supposed to say what time they went out, where they went, how many miles they did, and when they got back. But about one person in ten ever bothers to fill it in."

  "So it would be impossible to prove if someone had used it on a specific day and time?" asked Slater.

  "Well, the book would be useless," she agreed. "But, how far do you want to go back?"

  "I want to know if anyone used it the day Diana died," said Slater.

  "What?" she gasped. "You mean you think someone from work killed her? Oh my God."

  "This is just between me and you, Millie," said Slater. "You mustn't discuss it with anyone else. It's a possibility we have to consider, because a small white van was seen in the area at the time she died. Now you asked me how far I wanted to go back."

  "The CCTV," she said. "We use CDs to store the footage from each day. They're used in rotation and recorded over every ten days."

  "So you always have the last ten days on file," said Slater. "And Diana died eight days ago."

  "So, if anyone used the van that day, you should be able to see when," finished Millie.

  "You're a real star, Millie," said Slater.

  "If I heard that right," said Norman, when Slater had finished his call. "They could have CCTV showing Rossiter driving off to Diana's in that van on the day she died."

  "It looks that way," smiled Slater. "We're beginning to build quite a case against Rossiter. I think it's time we dragged his arse back down here and asked him some more questions, don't you?"

  "We need to organise a search warrant and get down there first thing tomorrow," said Norman.

  They were so engrossed in their conversation they hadn't heard the door being very quietly pushed open behind them. It wasn't until the voice boomed out behind them that they realised they'd been caught.

  "And where the bloody hell have you two been all day?" roared DCI Bob Murray. "I've been looking everywhere."

  Slater and Norman looked at each other in resigned dismay. Someone must have tipped Murray off that they had sneaked back into the station. They were caught and there was no escape. They were just going to have to take what was coming.

  Murray seemed to rant on and on for hours, although in reality it was probably no more than two or three minutes. But in those two or three minutes he managed to bring up just about every little thing they had done wrong between them over the last few months. As he raved on, his face became more and more red, and then eventually, a vivid shade of purple. Finally, around about the time he was demanding to know why Ian Woods still hadn't been charged with murder, he seemed to run out of adjectives to describe just how useless they were and, Norman suspected, breath with which to carry on his diatribe.

  "Well," he gasped to a finish. "What have you got to say for yourselves?"

  Slater had become more and more enraged as Murray rambled on and had been waiting for his chance to answer back, but before he could start telling Murray what he really thought of him, Norman stepped in.

  "Alright Dave, I've got this," he said, stepping in front of Murray.

  "Now just you listen to me," he snarled in Murray's face. "We've just about had enough of you behaving like a bear with a sore head all the time. Has it ever occurred to you that you treat the people who work for you like shit? You're job is to lead an
d inspire, but all you seem to do is snap people's heads off and put them down."

  Murray looked horrified to find Norman berating him like this.

  "Who do you think you are?" he roared at Norman. "You want to watch your tongue. If it wasn't for me you'd still be wandering the bloody moors up in Northumberland."

  "That's true," said Norman. "And don't you like to keep reminding me? I know you gave me a lifeline, and I'm grateful for that, but I didn't come down here to be constantly abused. Yes, I owe you, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stand here and let you treat us like shit anytime you like, just because it makes you feel better about your own problems."

  "The only problems I have are you two," snapped Murray.

  "Oh. Is that right?" said Norman. "I think maybe you need to take another look at your crime figures. You know as well as we do that we're most definitely not your problem. Your problem is you're still stuck in the good old days when it was all about kicking arses, knocking heads together and getting a result, even if it meant making the evidence fit the result you wanted."

  Norman was just getting warmed up, and he wasn't about to let Murray get another word in until he'd finished his own speech.

  "You just haven't moved with the times have you?" he continued. "You're so far behind you're still struggling to send an email without making a balls up, and you're gradually drowning in a sea of paperwork and modern thinking. That's why you've put in for voluntary redundancy, isn't it? Because, you just can't cope anymore."

  Slater watched in silence as Norman told Murray how it really was. He sometimes thought Norman sided with Murray too readily, but he couldn't accuse him of doing that this time. Norman's words had actually taken all the steam out of Murray who had gone quiet now, and was beginning to look just a bit sheepish.

  For his part, Murray knew Norman was right. It was true. He was struggling to cope, and he did take it out on anyone and everyone who got in his way. But just as he knew he was in the wrong, he wasn't sure he was actually capable of putting things right.

  "I'm genuinely sorry you're struggling," continued Norman. "But you can't carry on blaming everyone else for your own shortcomings. All the guys that work here have the greatest respect for you and what you've achieved. That respect has been earned over the years, but all you're doing now is eroding it away. Carry on like you are, and they'll have nothing but contempt for you. Do you really want that?"

  Murray slumped back and parked his backside on the desk behind him. For a brief moment he looked looked utterly defeated, and it seemed he might even burst into tears, but then, with what appeared to be a monumental effort, he managed to pull himself together.

  "You have no right to talk to me like that," he said, quietly. "You have no idea what I have to deal with right now."

  "I could argue that you have no idea what it's like for us, trying to carry out a thorough investigation, while we have you breathing down our necks trying to make us cut corners and arrest the wrong man," replied Norman. "But what would be the point? You've stopped listening to reason."

  "You don't know what it's like," said Murray.

  "So tell us," said Norman. "Instead of treating us like little kids, how about you treat us like adults for once?"

  Murray thought about it, but whatever his problem was, he wasn't ready to share it.

  "I don't think I can do that," he said. "I'm not one for sharing my problems. It's a weak person who can't deal with life on his own. It's my business and I prefer to keep it that way."

  "A problem shared is a problem halved," said Norman. "It's not weakness. It's bloody common sense, especially if you're not coping on your own and you're just making everyone else suffer. Just talking about it can help."

  "Maybe," agreed Murray. "But it's not my way."

  "And you think making everyone else's life hell is the right thing to do?" asked Norman. "That takes away another slice of that respect I had for you."

  "No," conceded Murray. "I admit I'm in the wrong there. But I'm sure it's not that bad."

  "Not that bad?" echoed Norman. "There isn't a single person in this station who wants to go anywhere near you at the moment. That's how bad it is."

  Murray’s face hardened and he stared at Norman. It looked, for a few moments, as though he was going to start ranting again, but then his expression softened. It was hard to tell if he had taken on board what Norman had said, but at least when he spoke again it appeared he was no longer looking for a fight.

  "Let's get back to this case," he said. "Explain to me why you haven't charged Woods."

  Norman turned to Slater to make sure his colleague had calmed down and was no longer looking as if he might punch Murray on the nose. Convinced Slater had come off the boil, he nodded to indicate it was Slater's turn to speak.

  "Ian Woods has an alibi for the time of the murder," he told Murray. "And everything he's told us seems to check out. On top of that, we now have another suspect in her boss, and lover, Bruce Rossiter."

  "But does he have a motive?" asked Murray.

  "We think Diana was pushing to take his wife's place, but all he wanted her for was sex," explained Slater. "We've found a mobile phone which we think Diana gave him so they could keep in touch and arrange their sex sessions in secret. We've also discovered Rochester and Dorset keep a small white van Peugeot van which anyone can use at any time. We believe this was the van seen leaving the scene of the crime."

  "And you think he had the opportunity?" asked Murray.

  "There's a gap in his story," said Slater. "He says he was at home when the murder took place. His wife says he didn't come home until after seven. He had plenty of time to murder Diana."

  "You're sure about this?" asked Murray.

  "It looks a better bet than Ian Woods," said Norman.

  "So why haven't you brought him in yet?" asked Murray.

  "We've only just found out about the van," said Slater. "We're planning on getting a search warrant in the morning and taking a team over there. We want to bring him in and get Ian Becks and his boys to take the van apart."

  "You want to knick him at home, and search his house as well," said Murray.

  "I'm not sure I've got the clout to get the search warrants at this time of night," said Slater.

  "If you give me the information, I'll get the search warrants," suggested Murray. "You two organise the troops. I'd suggest Rossiter's house at six am, then on to Rochester's as soon as you can after that."

  Slater almost stepped back in surprise.

  "Well, don't hang about," said Murray. "The clock's ticking. If I’m going to help you, I need that information, now."

  Chapter Eighteen

  At six o'clock next morning, a small convoy of police vehicles drove through the gates and up the drive to Bruce Rossiter's house. If anyone was awake they didn't show themselves, so Norman took great delight in hammering upon the door.

  "Police," he yelled into the letterbox. "Come on open up."

  He stood up and hammered on the door again.

  "You enjoy this bit don't you?" asked Slater.

  "It's like this," he explained, with a wicked grin. "I had to get up extra early to be here at this ungodly hour, and I had to be really quiet not to wake my neighbours. Now I think the least the Rossiters could do is make the same effort and be waiting to let us in, but they don't seem to be awake yet, so I'm just letting them know we're here. And now I can make up for having to be so quiet earlier."

  "Ah. I understand," said Slater. "This is sort of restoring the noise balance in your life."

  "That's exactly right," smiled Norman. "Extra quiet before, extra noisy now, balance restored. Now I can spend the rest of my day at normal volume, knowing I don't have to worry about a noise deficit."

  "If you don't mind me saying," yawned a weary looking PC waiting behind them. "You're talking a load of bollocks. There's no such thing as noise balance."

  Norman looked around at the PC. He knew most of the PCs at Tinton well enough to address them
by their first names, but this one was young and obviously new to Tinton.

  "If you weren't so young I'd take issue with that statement," said Norman, beaming a big smile at the PC. "But I really can't expect you to understand these complex principles at such a tender age."

  "How can you be so bloody happy this early in the morning?" asked the PC, grumpily. "It's not normal."

  "But you see that's exactly what I'm talking about," explained Norman, cheerfully. "My happiness is a direct result of caring for my noise balance. You should try it sometime."

  The PC looked puzzled. What was this noise balance cobblers that the fat DS was talking about? It wasn't real, was it? And if it was, why hadn't he heard about it before? He looked at the faces of the other five PCs assembled with him, but no-one else looked confused. How come they all knew about it and he didn't? It was clearly too early in the morning for him to work out if he was an idiot for being the only one who didn't know what Norman was talking about, or if it was just the case that Norman was an idiot and everyone else was humouring him.

  The others, of course, had worked with Norman before and were aware of the randomness of some of his utterances. It was part of the reason he was so popular among his junior colleagues. He was more or less guaranteed to make them all laugh at some stage, and god knows they needed it sometimes.

  There was the sound of a bolt being slid back on the inside of the front door.

  "Heads up," said Slater. "Someone's awake."

  They heard two more bolts being slid back, and at least two locks being undone.

  "It sound like Fort Knox," muttered one of the PCs. "I'm glad we didn't have to break it down."

  "No problem. We could throw Norman at it," suggested someone, to a series of loud guffaws.

  "Alright, pipe down," said Slater, as the handle turned and the door finally began to open, revealing a tousle-haired, bleary-eyed Bruce Rossiter in a pair of red tartan pyjamas.

  "What the bloody hell's going on?" he cried. "Do you know what time it is?"

  "I certainly do," smiled Norman. "It's time for you to come and answer some questions."