Irrefutable Evidence: A Crime Thriller

by David George Clarke

  A deep sigh from Hawkins sounded in Olivia’s ear. Had she been convincing?

  “I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt, Olivia. But I must say I’m staggered that you overlooked calling in. Besides being against protocol, it’s completely out of character.”

  “If you decide to discipline me, sir, I’d quite understand. I don’t have a sensible excuse; I panicked. It’s not a feeling I’m used to and it took me totally by surprise. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “We can talk about that later. How long will you have to stay in Exeter?”

  “Well, I need to check with the doctor on how she’s been doing this morning, but if necessary, I can be back in the office late this afternoon. Is there something pressing that needs my attention apart from briefing DCI Hurst on the robbery operation we’re planning next week?”

  There was a pause that was slightly too long as Hawkins decided on the best strategy. He wanted her back, but not immediately, not while they were tying up the remaining evidence. But he didn’t want to alert her and risk losing her.

  “There’s, er … no need to hurry back. It’s a long way. You’ve been under a lot of pressure. The raids for the robbery investigation are late next week. Monday will be fine to get everything up to speed. Why don’t you take your time, Olivia, make sure that your mother, sorry, aunt, is ok.”

  Another pause, this one definitely too long, followed by an overcautiously voiced question.

  “Which hospital did you say you were in?”

  I didn’t, thought Olivia, and there’s only one reason you’d be interested. You know something, perhaps not everything, but enough to want to put a tail on me. A watershed moment, Peter Hawkins, thank you.

  “It’s the Royal Devon, sir,” she said, pleased that she knew the name of Exeter’s main hospital.

  As soon as he put the phone back on its cradle, Hawkins yelled for his DCI. “Mike, in here. Now!”

  Hurst bustled through the door while Rob McPherson, who had also heard the shout, hovered in the corridor.

  “You too, Rob,” beckoned Hawkins.

  “What is it, sir?” asked Hurst.

  “I’ve just spoken to Freneton.”

  “She called in?”

  “No, I called her for about the tenth time this morning and she finally answered.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Exeter.”

  “What in all that’s wonderful is she doing there?”

  “’S’what I said. She told me she was called away urgently yesterday because her aunt was in an ICU after a fall. Life-threatening, it would seem.”

  “And that prevented her from calling in?”

  “Said she panicked, couldn’t think straight. She had to turn off her phone in the ICU and forgot to turn it back on.”

  “Sounds like a load of bollocks, sir,” grunted McPherson. “I can’t imagine Freneton panicking about anything and I certainly can’t imagine her forgetting about her phone.”

  “You could be right, Rob. It was an interesting call; she was unusually polite, calling me ‘sir’, which she seldom does unless she wants something. Let’s check it out. Get onto the Royal Devon hospital ICU and check if there’s an elderly female patient there who was admitted yesterday after a massive stroke and a fall. Mike, call personnel. Tell them you have my authority. I want to know if it’s on record that Freneton’s mother died when she was born and that she was brought up by an aunt.”

  Olivia tossed her phone onto the passenger seat. For thirty seconds she sat motionless as the details of what she now intended to do played out in her mind. This is what she loved about contingency planning: it was all there, pre-ordained. All she had to do was go through the checklist.

  She started her car and drove towards her house. But when she reached the end of her road — one of many that led onto the main road through the featureless estate — she drove slowly past, her eyes scanning in all directions. There were no police cars and no stationary anonymous saloons with passengers trying to look casual. She continued her circuit around the block and entered her road from the far end. As she approached her house, she pressed a button on the dash and the garage door swung open. Within thirty seconds, the door was closed again, her car now hidden within the garage, and Olivia was entering the house through a side door.

  If Hawkins is good, she thought, I’ve got about ten minutes before a squad car shows up. But he isn’t good; he’s fat and slow, so I’ve probably got at least an hour, maybe all day. But let’s not push the luck.

  She ran upstairs and pulled open a wardrobe door in her bedroom. Inside was a holdall containing all she required for setting up another male victim, and a rucksack with essential documents for her escape. Everything else in the house was expendable; she wouldn’t be returning. The apartment in West Bridgford near Trent Bridge had all she needed for now, the apartment that wasn’t rented in her name, the apartment that no one knew about.

  She peeled off her clothes to her underwear while she glanced through the window to the street. Nothing. She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out a pair of leather motorcycling trousers and a snugly fitting leather jacket, both black. She quickly put them on, grabbed her bags and without a backward glance ran back to the garage where she dropped the bags into one of the boxes at the rear of her top-of-the-range BMW K1300 GT.

  She sat astride the bike, pressed the starter and its powerful engine purred into life — Olivia hated motorbikes that needed to make a statement; this beauty never roared. Thirty seconds later, as the garage door closed onto its magnetic locks, she was gone.

  C hapter 33

  After her meeting in Trowell Services on Friday morning, Jennifer followed Peter Hawkins’ instructions and went home to await events. She tried to contact Henry but was told that she had to make an appointment to call at a specific time and that there were no more slots until Monday. So she called Charles Keithley and briefed him.

  “I think that as Henry’s solicitor I’ll have more luck getting through, Jennifer,” Keithley informed her once he’d listened to her letting off steam. “But there’s not a lot to say until the police have finished their latest enquiries.”

  Jennifer was frustrated. “I know that Charles, but I want Henry to know that we are making progress, that we’re trying everything.” She couldn’t hide the desperation in her voice.

  “He knows, Jennifer, he knows full well, and he’s very upbeat about it. Look, why don’t you call me later once you’ve heard from your contacts.”

  Keithley’s attempt at reassurance didn’t help. After two more hours of pacing the floor and getting aggressive with her vacuum cleaner, Jennifer had to get some air. With her mobile strapped to her arm and set up to receive calls from her house phone in addition to normal calls, she hit the Park’s roads with an intensity that surprised even her. An hour of sprints and jogs later, she was still tense so she moved to her bike. It was a damp day and the roads were slippery. Twice she hit her brakes too hard approaching a corner at a more than sensible speed, and twice she only just managed to stay upright as she slithered to a halt.

  On the second occasion, her weak smile to a concerned dog walker radiated guilt — if she hadn’t stopped in time, she might have flattened the small poodle that was now eyeing her suspiciously.

  “Sorry,” she said, her voice sounding pathetic to her ears.

  Finally, shortly after five o’clock, her mobile rang.

  “Jen, hi, it’s me.”

  “Derek, I’ve been climbing the walls. Is there any progress?”

  “Yeah, a bit. I’ve just been to see Hawkins with the records from Amelia Taverner’s credit card statement, and Catherine Doughthey’s. They’re pretty much as expected. The current accounts are interesting. There are occasional injections of funds — presumably to cover the card bills — that are from an Isle of Man account in a name that doesn’t mean anything. The bank reckons it’ll be hard to trace.”

  “Same source for both accounts?” asked Jennifer
.

  “Yup.”

  “Good. Every little helps. And despite what they say, they might be traceable. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, it seems that Hawkins spoke to Freneton.”

  “Why shouldn’t he speak to her?”

  “I mean he spoke on the phone. She didn’t turn up this morning and according to McPherson, Hawkins was hopping. She’d had her phone switched off.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It gets better, Jen.”

  Derek relayed the information that Hawkins had given him about the call.

  “Took them a while to check everything, but apparently personnel had nothing on record about an aunt, only info on Freneton living with her father until he was killed. And according to the hospital in Exeter, there were no cases yesterday that fitted the description Freneton gave. No old ladies who’d fallen down stairs following a stroke.” He gave a dry laugh. “McPherson was wild. Apparently the hospital wouldn’t tell him anything; he had to call the local nick and persuade them to go in person to the ICU. So it took a while to get the info.”

  “People are scared of their own shadows these days,” snorted Jennifer scathingly. “Listen, how certain is Hawkins that she was actually calling from Exeter?”

  “Good point, Jen. I think he took that info at face value. Maybe she was actually waving at him from across the street.”

  “It’s checkable,” replied Jennifer.

  “Phone company?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Right, Jen, I’m on it. Call you back.”

  Realising that it was unlikely that Derek would be calling back immediately with data from the telephone company — this was the real world, not the movies — Jennifer decided that distraction was the best option. She poured herself a glass of a particularly delicious cabernet from the Fabrelli vineyards and curled up in her armchair with Dante. Hours later, she awoke in total darkness. It was midnight; there was no way Derek would be calling tonight.

  “Jesus, Derek, how long does a phone trace take?” was Jennifer’s demanding response to Derek’s call twelve hours later.

  “It’s the weekend Jen. I had to call in a couple of favours not to have the request deferred until Monday. Anyway, listen, you were right, and when I told Hawkins he yelled at me for not thinking of it sooner.”

  “Gratitude or what?”

  “Yeah, my reaction too. You’d think he’d be pleased to hear that Freneton was in Nottingham when she called him pretending she was in Exeter.”

  “Where in Nottingham?”

  “Close to her house, but she’s not there now, I’ve been round to do a spot of unauthorised snooping. Found the side door to the garage was unlocked. Her car’s there but there’s no one home.”

  “You knocked, of course.”

  “No, Jen, I stood in the road shouting her name. Of course I bloody knocked. And rang the bell. And called her house phone. I could hear it ringing from outside, but there was no answer. She’s not there.”

  “But her car is; that’s interesting. Have you called the DVLA to check if she has more than one vehicle licensed in her name?”

  “You think she’s done a runner?”

  “Dunno; she might’ve. She’s nothing if not anal when it comes to planning, and a vehicle unknown to us would give her a head start. If Hawkins is serious about her, it might be worth putting her on the stop list in case she tries to leave the country.”

  “Probably wouldn’t use her own name, Jen.”

  “No, you’re right. The stop list should perhaps include Amelia Taverner’s name, and Catherine Doughthey’s.”

  C hapter 34

  While Jennifer Cotton had been curled up with Dante, a few miles away in her apartment in West Bridgford Olivia Freneton was planning her endgame.

  She had reviewed once again everything she knew the police would have on her, and, having considered it all, she was satisfied that it still didn’t amount to much. Certainly not enough for a prosecution, maybe not enough for her job to be at risk. However, she’d made her decision and she had grudgingly accepted it. There would be no going back. Literally. She wouldn’t be gracing the offices of the SCF ever again.

  But she certainly wasn’t going to go without some payback. Hawkins and his team didn’t have enough to pin the Henry Silk case on her, nor the others, and with what she was planning, there would soon be another case on their desks that wouldn’t be attributable to her either. How frustrating for them. They’d know full well she was the culprit rather than the sucker all the evidence pointed to, the one who’d soon be sleeping through the night at the Fields View Hotel in West Bridgford while Olivia was out on his behalf disposing of another prostitute. Both Hawkins and Hurst were close to retirement; how sad for them to disappear to their respective gardens under clouds of incompetence.

  She hadn’t planned to carry out another disposal so soon after the Henry Silk one — any more than one a year would have risked connections being made. But now her scheme was blown she’d be hard pushed to use it again and have the blame fall on the target; the police would be wise to her technique. So this last disposal was purely for the intellectual satisfaction of carrying it out under their noses. It would take a couple of days of careful planning — it must be executed with the same level of skill and attention to detail as the others. She had a list of potential targets, well-known creeps that she’d love to destroy — a High Court judge, a clergyman and a squeaky-clean pop star among them. However, none was conveniently placed. She wanted a target in Nottingham and the easiest way would be to check in to the Fields View Hotel and wait in the bar in her long blond wig and business gear. There was bound to be some guileless, testosterone-driven hero looking to make a pick-up. It was all too easy.

  She tossed her list of long-term targets back onto the desk where she was sitting and drummed her fingers on its surface. Despite her supreme self-control, she could feel an anger rising. Her brilliant scheme had been destroyed and along with the pleasure of ridding the world of more useless men, she would miss the pleasure of outwitting her colleagues time after time.

  She thought back over how her personal vendetta against the male of the species had progressed. She had come a long way from her first blooding — the disposal of her foul, disgusting father, the man who had abused her repeatedly when she was too young to understand or resist, the man who had made her realise that all men were no better than animals. The attitude of most women didn’t help either, taking daily mental abuse, if not physical, from their men, seldom knowing what their spouses were up to when not at home: she’d never met a man who couldn’t be tempted to stray with a little persuasion. As for the women who died directly at Olivia’s hand, they were utter filth, which was why she had chosen them as the victims of her schemes. Their deaths impacted on no one; they were nothing.

  With many more victims under her belt than the five prostitutes, Olivia had honed her skills for many years, learning by her mistakes, polishing her technique, never compromising on quality, never allowing herself to be completely satisfied with her performance — although she had to admit it: she was pretty damn-near perfect, a master craftswoman, an expert in her specialist field.

  She was proud of her achievements over the years, even in the early days. After disposing of her father and realising she had a taste for more, she had experimented with a couple of other disposals.

  The first was a teacher at the school she was put in when she went to live in Pateley Bridge with the naïve Grace Taverner. He’d been easy. Something of a hunk, he fancied himself and was known to be screwing around, despite having a young wife and child. Bastard. It had been so easy. He was a runner who loved to roam the Dales. Plenty of places there, plenty of reservoirs and reservoir dam walls. All she had to do was find out his favourite route and wait. He knew her of course, so she had to be sure to kill him.

  Pretending she was injured, that she’d twisted her ankle, she sat and waited by a reservoir wall until he came along. There was no one aro
und. He’d stopped, checked her ankle — rather too far up her leg for her liking — chatted her up and even tried a grope as he helped her to her feet. She’d knocked him out with a rock, undone one of his shoelaces to make it look like he’d tripped, scuffed his bare knees on a rough stone, and tipped him over the edge, making sure his head would hit something on the way down to the water. Easy. Accidental death, said the coroner. No suspicious circumstances.

  Then there were the two students she’d hitched a lift with when she was travelling around Europe in one of her university vacations. Thought they’d struck gold with her until their van plunged down a ravine in Greece with them in it, her father’s skills put to good use again. She loved the power, the sense of supremacy, the total control over when and where a man’s life would end.

  Following her early experiments, she had soon developed a yearning to catch bigger fish, and once the idea of adopting the identities that went with credit cards had occurred, she had the makings of a long term plan, so long as Grace Taverner and Catherine Doughthey were in agreement, and, of course, alive.

  That the game she played was dangerous was part of the attraction. Killing someone was easy; pitting her wits against society in general and her colleagues in particular raised the thrill level immeasurably. This was why she had become a police officer. Her training had given her unparalleled insight into the system, specialist knowledge and training, and it was the perfect cover. She was hidden in plain view. Who would suspect a high-flying police officer, especially a woman, even if she was a bitch to work with?

  Her police career had also taught her much about forensics. Of course she could always have read about it — she was clever and had a good scientific understanding, but the on-the-ground experience of courses in labs and talks by scientists was far better. She’d worked out how to plant the right amount of evidence, she’d learned about drugs and she was thrilled to discover that Rohypnol was perfect for her use. She’d acquired stock enough to last her for many years.