Book Read Free

Rush of Blood

Page 31

by Mark Billingham


  ‘Who are you?’

  Jenny introduced herself, though once the man knew she was Job, he did not seem overly interested in exactly what her connection to the people in the house might be. He had more important things to think about. She had seen him stalking around the station and knew that he had only recently been transferred south from the other side of the river. There were rumours he had been bumped down from CID to uniform; a major slap on the wrist for something or other, though nobody was very sure what. On the few occasions Jenny had run into him, it had been clear enough that he was not thrilled about the situation, though now – watching him taking in his surroundings, seeing the way he carried himself – he seemed a little more energised than usual.

  One of those who came to life at a crime scene, she guessed.

  Easy enough to recognise, because she was one of those too.

  She heard a siren growing suddenly louder and guessed that the HAT car had arrived. A minute or so later she was proved right when the two plain-clothes detectives from the Homicide Assessment Team stepped into the house. She saw the uniformed inspector’s expression harden.

  The banter was not long in coming, the habitual Suits v Lids windups, though it did seem a little less good-natured than Jenny was used to.

  ‘All right, Thorne, we’ll take it from here.’

  The inspector glared at them.

  ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful? Actually, the car needs parking …’

  Grinning, the detectives pushed past the inspector towards the kitchen, just as the paramedic was on his way out.

  ‘Straight through the heart by the looks of it,’ the paramedic said. ‘More or less instant, I reckon.’

  ‘What about the weapon?’ one of the detectives asked.

  The paramedic pointed back down towards the officer who was standing at the bottom of the stairs. He turned and for the first time Jenny noticed the plastic bag he was cradling as if it were a newborn. The blade pressed against the plastic, a tablespoon of blood pooled at the bottom of the bag.

  What had Dave Cullen said to her?

  ‘Should be interesting on Saturday.’

  Christ …

  The detectives stood in the doorway staring at the body, still sharing a laugh at the things they’d said to the inspector. The paramedic smiled as he walked past Jenny. Now it would just be a question of the formal pronouncement of ‘life extinct’, but the doctor would not need to hurry. The on-call scene of crime officer would be on their way together with a forensic photographer, but the body would be staying where it was for a few hours yet.

  Jenny took a step closer to the inspector. Said, ‘Where’s the suspect?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ he said.

  ‘The witnesses?’

  He nodded towards the room with the closed door. ‘You know them then?’

  Jenny said that she did and that she’d interviewed all of them.

  ‘There’s a new lad in there with them,’ he said. He took a few steps back towards the kitchen. ‘Why don’t you go in and give him a hand?’

  As soon as Jenny stepped through the door into the living room, two of the four people who had been sitting on the edge of the sofa-bed got to their feet. The uniformed officer standing on the other side of the room stepped forward, a little concerned, but Jenny showed him her warrant card, assured him that there was nothing to worry about.

  ‘What’s happening?’ one of the witnesses asked.

  ‘How long do we have to stay here?’

  ‘I think they’re just trying to organise some vehicles,’ Jenny said. She looked around, saw a duvet lying in a heap next to the fireplace. ‘We’ll need to get you down to the station in separate cars if possible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So we don’t talk to each other. They need to make sure our statements aren’t tainted.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Any chance we could get a drink?’

  Jenny looked at the uniform. ‘They’ve had some tea,’ he said.

  ‘I was thinking about something a bit stronger. I mean, it’s been a bit …’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Because they’ve got to make sure our statements stand up in court or whatever. If some lawyer finds out we were drinking after it happened …’

  ‘I don’t think one drink’s going to make any difference, the amount we’ve put away in the last few hours.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jenny said. ‘Just try and get comfortable and we’ll get this sorted as quickly as we can.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ Angie asked. ‘Nobody’s told us anything.’

  ‘Yes, he’s dead. I’m sorry.’

  The woman shook her head, though it was not possible to tell if it was disbelief or a simple indication that the apology was unnecessary. Barry put his arm around his wife and Jenny was about to settle down on the arm of the sofa when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Is that her?’ Angie asked. ‘Are they taking her out?’

  Jenny opened the door just the few inches necessary to see out and watched as a uniformed officer led a handcuffed Sue Dunning down the stairs. She stared at her feet and her lips were moving just a little. Her cheek was marked high up, as though she’d been slapped hard. There was dried blood on her face and hands and a patch that still looked wet on the front of her blouse. She and the uniform were joined at the foot of the stairs by the inspector and when he glanced across at Jenny, Sue followed it and caught her eye.

  She stopped.

  The uniformed officer laid a hand on her arm to urge her towards the front door, but the inspector told him to wait.

  Sue licked at a flake of dried blood at the corner of her mouth. Swallowed and shuddered. She looked as though she had just woken from a nightmare and had yet to discover if she was still dreaming.

  When she spoke, her voice was cracked and colourless.

  ‘I know where she is.’

  PART FOUR

  SUE

  From: Detective Jeff Gardner [mailto: j.gardner@sarasotapd.org]

  Sent: July 30 09.48

  To: Jennifer Quinlan

  Subject: My Visit

  Jenny,

  First off, thanks for sending the transcript of the witness interviews. Were you in there for those? Sounds like they had quite a night of it!

  All being well I should be arriving in London sometime tomorrow evening and coming to your station first thing the following morning. Hoping a cab has been laid on as I have no idea where the hell ‘Lewisham’ is or how to get there from the centre of town. On the SPD budget, I seriously doubt my hotel’s the kind of place that will have a concierge! Apologies for not making contact sooner, but have spent the last few days talking to the top guy in your Homicide Command and it looks like he’s finally agreed to let me do the interview.

  I’m looking forward to it, if that doesn’t sound too weird.

  Be good to finally meet you too. Put a face to the name.

  See you in a couple,

  Jeff

  SIXTY

  DI STEVEN BARSTOW (Homicide Command): How soon after the noise started did you go downstairs?

  ANGELA FINNEGAN: Straight away, near as damn it. I mean … a few minutes? Barry got up to see what on earth was going on and when he opened the door, Dave was already standing at the top of the stairs. I came out the same time as Marina did and then we all went down.

  God, I couldn’t believe it …

  SB: What did you see?

  AF: She’d killed him, hadn’t she?

  SB: If you could stick to what you actually saw, that would be helpful.

  AF: Sorry … he was lying on the kitchen floor and she was sitting back against one of the cupboards and she sort of had his head in her lap and she was … Her hand was on his chest and there was just loads of blood. And the knife was in her hand. In her right hand, I think. Yes, must have been. There was a red mark on her face where he’d hit her. Sorry … where it looked l
ike he’d hit her. We just stood there, you know? Listening to her …

  DAVID CULLEN: She was gabbling a bit, hysterical sort of thing. She was saying sorry all the time and talking about how he’d told her what he’d done. Just come out with it. All the details. She said he was expecting her to be on his side, to stick up for him, I suppose, and then when she wouldn’t he’d just lost it and gone for her.

  SB: This was after you’d called the police?

  DC: Right, yeah. Marina wanted to go into the kitchen, try and help Sue or whatever, but I knew that she shouldn’t really be touching anything because it would contaminate the crime scene. Somebody said, ‘What if he isn’t dead, shouldn’t we try to help or something?’ But he definitely wasn’t moving and something on Sue’s face sort of made it obvious he was already dead. So I went to get a phone and made the call and the others stayed where they were. She was talking all the time though, telling them everything. The girl in the boot of his car in Florida and what he’d done with that girl in Kent. Like I say, it was a bit hysterical. I don’t know what the others thought and maybe they’re saying how shocked they were and all that. I mean seeing what had happened was definitely a shock … the blood and everything else … but about him and the business with those girls … I can’t honestly say I’m really surprised.

  SB: Any particular reason you say that?

  DC: I just think he had it in him.

  MARINA GREEN: It was funny because all I could think about, standing there and seeing what had happened, was that we’d heard him threatening her before. When we were eating, I mean. They went out into the kitchen after this big argument. He said, ‘You’ll be sorry,’ or something like that. He was really drunk and getting aggressive and he seemed OK when everyone went to bed, like he was just going to crash out, but I suppose it must have all kicked off again. There was this thing about kids, you know? They had a daughter who died.

  BARRY FINNEGAN: Is that true? The stuff she said about him killing those girls? Jesus …

  SB: Obviously we’ve passed that information on, but right now we’re just interested in the incident this evening.

  BF: Well, it was pretty bloody obvious what had gone on, her sitting there with this dirty big carving knife in her hand and him covered in blood and that. She was looking at us all standing there in the doorway, but it was like she couldn’t really see us properly. I suppose that’s shock or whatever. Then she starts saying that it was him who’d done it … the girl who was killed when we were in Florida and that one who went missing a couple of weeks ago. She said he’d told her where she was, that girl … what he’d done with her. I mean I don’t know if she knifed him because of that or because he attacked her or what. Not sure I care very much, if I’m honest. I was probably the only one he hadn’t had a pop at over dinner and that’s only because he knew I’d smack him if he tried it on. I never really liked him, no point me sitting here and pretending I did, but still … I can’t say I had him pegged for that. Just goes to show, doesn’t it?

  DC: He was always pushing her around a bit, but some of us thought she liked that. You know, like she wanted to be … dominated or something. He was definitely the boss though. He didn’t like not getting his own way.

  SB: Had you heard him threaten her earlier on that evening?

  DC: Yeah, we all heard it. ‘You’ll pay for that,’ or ‘You’ll be fucking sorry.’ Something like that. She was really upset when she came back in … it was almost like she was trying to defend him because he’d had too much to drink, but you could see she was shitting herself.

  SB: You said that after things started breaking downstairs, you heard screaming.

  DC: Yeah, Sue was screaming.

  SB: Like she was angry? Like she was scared?

  DC: I don’t know … just this scream that went on and on. Because of things getting smashed up, I presumed she was screaming because he was trying to hurt her, but I suppose it could have been after he’d told her what he’d done. One sort of scream probably sounds much the same as another, doesn’t it? She was definitely terrified, I can promise you that, but if the person you were married to just came out and told you they’d killed two people that’s pretty understandable. She still looked terrified, just sitting there on the kitchen floor. I don’t know … terrified because of what she’d done, I suppose.

  SB: Can you remember any of the things she said? Specifically?

  AF: I don’t know about word for word.

  SB: Do your best.

  AF: She definitely said, ‘It was him.’ And she said, ‘He told me what he did to them.’ Then she was sort of ranting and raving, talking about water and kayaks and keeping a body in the boot of his car. Something about chocolate and a place in the woods. I remember there was one point, not long before the police came, when she suddenly looked even more scared than she was already. She looked at us and said, ‘I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.’

  MG: Yeah, she kept on saying that, right up until the police and the paramedics arrived. She was saying it to them too, I think. We got taken into the living room as soon as they arrived, so I don’t know what happened after that. I heard someone asking her to put the knife down …

  SB: How much had Mrs Dunning had to drink?

  MG: I don’t know … not much. Probably less than anybody else. That’s the stupid thing, because she could easily have driven home. She was just too scared to, I think. She probably thought she was safer here with everyone else, that he wouldn’t do anything with other people in the house. I reckon they started fighting in the living room, because there were a few things knocked over in there. He probably tried to tell her what he’d done when they were still in bed and she freaked out … I mean quite understandably, and then when he attacked her she ran into the kitchen and … I don’t know … just grabbed the knife. Is that about right, you reckon?

  SB: We’ll know more when we’ve finished in the house.

  MG: If it was me … if I found out that Dave had done something like that … I’d want to kill him.

  BF: I’m not even sure she really knew what she’d done, you know. She looked … dazed or something sitting there like that. Like a kid with ketchup round her mouth. She had her hand on his chest, where the knife had gone in I suppose, sort of patting it, and she was stroking his head with her other hand … the same hand she still had the knife in. All the while she was telling us this stuff, the things he’d done to these girls, it was like part of her just thought he was asleep or something. Like she didn’t know there was blood everywhere.

  SB: OK, thank you. I think we’re about done. Interview terminated at—

  BF: Listen, I know she stabbed him, nobody’s arguing with that … but if he did kill those two girls and, you know, she only did it because he was trying to kill her or whatever … will she still get done?

  SIXTY-ONE

  ‘You look tired,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, overnight flight. Jet lag’s a killer, right?’

  The woman did not react to the unfortunate choice of words, though the man next to him shifted slightly in his chair. Gardner looked down, a little embarrassed, doodled something in the corner of his notebook.

  ‘Police don’t fly business class then?’

  ‘You kidding?’

  Four days after her arrest for the murder of her husband, Gardner was finally sitting down opposite Sue Dunning. Next to him sat Detective Inspector Steven Barstow of the Met Homicide Command, a bluff Scotsman who was leading the investigation into Edward Dunning’s murder. As Sue Dunning was being interviewed primarily as a witness and not in direct connection to the murder for which she was now on remand in Holloway prison, she had dispensed with legal representation. As far as her own offence went, she had thus far seemed content with the solicitor appointed on the night of her arrest. Happy enough to do whatever she was told, or advised.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,’ Gardner said.

  ‘Nothing to thank me for. But I do want to help …’
<
br />   ‘Shall we get this started?’ Barstow said.

  They were gathered in an interview room at Holloway station. A remand prisoner was only allowed out between the hours of 9.00 a.m. and 5.00 p.m., so as a matter of course interviews were conducted at the nearest available station. Not that it made a great deal of difference.

  One interview room was very much the same as another.

  In jeans and a plain T-shirt, with her hair scraped back, Sue Dunning was not what Gardner had expected. She was smaller than he had imagined, slighter. She did not look like the sort who would do well in prison. She looked like a victim. Despite what she had done, Gardner supposed that, given everything they had discovered about Edward Dunning since his death, that’s exactly what she was.

  ‘We’re now as certain as we can be that your husband was responsible for the murders of Samantha Gold here in the UK and Amber-Marie Wilson in Florida,’ Gardner said.

  Sue Dunning nodded slowly, swallowed hard.

  ‘Obviously you’d got no reason to think otherwise, bearing in mind everything he told you. You’re aware that they found the location of Samantha Gold’s school programmed into the GPS in his car and I know you’ve already been informed that the remains of a young girl were discovered in woods just outside Sevenoaks.’

  ‘It was her.’ Not a question.

  ‘Yeah, it was her. She was still … identifiable.’ Gardner had spoken to the officer leading the hunt for Samantha Gold. There had been a lot more left of her than there had been of Amber-Marie Wilson. ‘What you don’t know is that they got a provisional DNA result back late yesterday and samples taken from the burial site are a match for your husband.’

 

‹ Prev