Delayed & Denied

by J. J. Salkeld

  ‘Yes. Talking to the last couple of folk who were called at the original Burke trial. A waste of time, I’m sure, but it was in the agreed work plan, so…’

  ‘All right, love. Listen, I have to go. But me and Ian are talking to Lee this morning, as well as the other blokes who Jenny Smith seems to have been seeing, so we’ll see where that takes us. And I’ll keep you in the loop from now on, I promise.’

  Ray Dixon was already in Whitehaven, and had been for half an hour, but he was having no luck in finding his witness. He’d been to the address in the file from ‘95, and after knocking on half a dozen doors was told that his man had moved. ‘He went up in the world, did Derek. We haven’t seen him round here in years.’

  ‘But he still lives locally?’

  ‘Oh, aye. Why would anyone move away, like?’

  Dixon searched the old man’s face for a hint of irony, but saw none.

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘Is he in trouble, like?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Shame. Flash bastard. Hang on, I’ll ask the wife.’

  Ten minutes later Dixon was driving down a metalled drive towards an old farmhouse high above the town, with views clear across the sea to America, or to the Isle of Man, anyway. It didn’t look like the kind of place that a retired milkman would live. And as he parked Dixon wondered when he’d last seen a milkman anyway. Was it five years before? Ten? He had no idea. They’d just sort of vanished, at about the same time that tattoos had become so popular with the young ones.

  The man who came to the door answered to the name of Derek Webb, and confirmed that he had once lived at the address that Dixon had just come from. He asked Dixon in, and Ray slid off his blue slip-ons without being asked. The carpet looked expensive, deep and very, very pale. The two men were about the same age, although Webb’s tan was two shades darker than Dixon’s. Webb made them each a coffee, and Dixon explained who he was, and why he was there.

  ‘They never called me, at the trial. You do know that?’

  ‘I do, aye. Your name was on the list, but I couldn’t find a copy of your statement in the case file.’

  ‘I’m not sure I ever gave a statement. I don’t remember signing anything, like.’

  ‘So why did the police talk to you? I couldn’t find any reference to you anywhere else.’

  ‘I went to them. About a week after they nicked Adam Burke, like. I told them it was probably nothing, though, and I expect it was.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘What I told them. You see I saw the Burke lad on the Saturday morning, the day after the wife disappeared. I was collecting, see, and I knocked on the Burke’s door at about nine. She often came down to pay in her nightie, and she was a nice looker, was Sharon. So I always looked forward to it, like, especially in the summer.’

  ‘Aye, all right. I get the picture. But what happened on that day?’

  ‘I knocked, and he came down. He was out of it, like. As if I’d woken him in the middle of the night. He asked me what time it was, I do remember that. He was always such a normal bloke, was Adam, usually.’

  ‘Was it like he was drunk?’

  ‘No. More like he’d been drugged, or something. When my dad was in hospital that last time he was a bit the same, I’d say.’

  ‘All right, thanks. But one thing, Mr. Webb. How can you be so sure that it was that particular Saturday? It’s all a hell of a long time ago now, isn’t it?’

  Webb smiled, and opened his arms wide.

  ‘You’re the copper, marra. Haven’t you wondered how I came by all this? It wasn’t from collecting bloody milk bottle tops, I can tell you.’ Dixon waited for his answer. ‘I won the pools, almost a million quid. It was that night, that same Saturday night. I’d gone out on the collection run three months behind on my mortgage, and I went to bed that night nearly a millionaire, like. So aye, it was that day all right. Does it help you, anyway? I never saw Adam as a killer, not by a bloody long chalk. But I always assumed that you lot knew best, like.’

  ‘Well, it’s not an alibi, except for the Saturday morning itself. But it does tie in perfectly with certain other new information. So all I can say for now is that you’ve been very helpful, and that we may be in touch again. Would that be OK?’

  ‘Aye, but come September I’ll be off to my place in Spain. I just can’t handle the bloody winters here any more. You know what I mean, marra?’

  The interview rooms at Whitehaven nick were all hot and clammy, because the A/C had packed up. So Ian chose the warmest and muggiest of the three, made sure that he and Jane both had bottles of water, and they set to work. Tom Ferguson was the first to be interviewed, and Mann led the questioning.

  ‘So you’re an estate agent, Mr. Ferguson?’

  ‘Yes. If you’re ever…’

  ‘And you knew Jenny Smith how, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t really know her. We just hooked up online, and had sex a few times.’

  ‘And when did this start?’

  ‘About a month ago.’

  ‘And when did it stop?’

  Ferguson paused, looking confused. ‘Well, she’s dead now, isn’t she?’

  ‘So when did you last see her?’

  ‘Last week. Friday it would have been. The wife was out, so, you know….’

  ‘The coast was clear?’

  ‘Exactly, aye. The coast was clear.’

  ‘And does your wife know, about this, er, hooking up?’

  ‘Oh, aye. She does it too, like.’

  ‘Right. I see.’ But DS Mann’s expression said that he really didn’t.

  ‘Look, Jenny was nice, you know, and it was fun, but that’s all it was. There are no strings, like, unless you’re into that sort of thing. It’s just like a good game of squash, that’s all, this kind of sex.’

  ‘Squash? I must be doing it wrong, then. My partner’s a fifty year old bloke with a bad knee and body odour.’

  When Ferguson had gone it took Jane and Mann less than thirty seconds to agree that he was not, in any conceivable way, a person of interest. But Matt Jessop proved to be a good deal more credible as a suspect. For a start he was visibly nervous, his eyes as wide as a deer on the fellside, and he was also far more evasive than Ferguson had been. This time Jane was asking the questions, and it took her five minutes to tease out exactly how he and Jenny Smith had met.

  ‘So it was actually on a website where people meet up when they want to have sex, is that right? Not in a bar at all?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right.’

  ‘OK. Now you listen to me, Mr. Jessop. This is a murder investigation, and that’s very serious. You really don’t want to lie to us now, about anything at all, because if you do we will find out, and then there’ll be more questions. Lots more questions. So forget about any implications that your answers might have for your wife, your friends, or anything like that. Because someone is going to go to prison for many years, and if you didn’t kill Mrs. Smith then you need to convince of us of that as quickly as you can. You understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes, OK.’

  ‘Now you say you had sex three or four times. Where did these encounters take place?’

  ‘My van, once or twice. The park, last week that was.’

  ‘Anywhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about the graveyard?’

  ‘No. Christ, no. It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill her. Why would I? We had fun, that’s all. I didn’t force her. We both knew what we were doing.’

  Jane Francis looked at Jessop steadily. All three men’s alibi’s had already been checked, and his was the most solid of the three. For once, it seemed, he’d actually spent an evening at home with his wife on the night of Jenny Smith’s death.

  ‘Was Jenny seeing other men as well, do you think?’

  ‘Aye, of course she was.’ There had been no hesitation. ‘It’s not a dating site, like. People aren’t looking for a relationship. It�
��s all about the sex, pure and simple.’

  ‘Do you think it was one of the men who she was seeing who killed her? One of the other men?’

  ‘No, not really. Why kill her? It’s all just a bit of fun, like I said.’

  ‘Could something have got out of hand? Did she like rough sex, anything like that?’

  ‘Not with me, no. You mean being tied up, all that?’

  ‘Possibly. Strangulation play, maybe?’

  ‘No way. I’m not into that. I just like sex. Call me old fashioned, if you like.’

  Mann laughed heartily at that. He just couldn’t help himself.

  DI Francis told him that his punishment for that would be to lead on the Jack Lee interview, but she wanted to observe anyway. He was the oldest of the three men, by nearly twenty years, so Jenny Smith would have been fifteen years his junior, at least. And the bloke wasn’t exactly a looker. But then maybe Jenny hadn’t been all that choosy either. Jane rarely had to tell herself not to judge either her suspects or her victims, she’d been a copper too long to make that mistake, but as they waited for Lee she did remind herself of that rule.

  Lee didn’t seem to have a problem confirming that he’d used the same website as Jenny and the two men who had just been interviewed.

  ‘My wife died quite recently, so…’

  ‘You don’t need to explain to us, Mr. Lee’, said Mann quickly, before running through the questions that had been asked twice before that morning. Lee’s answers chimed with them almost exactly. But he’d only actually met Jenny and had sex with her once, about a fortnight before.

  ‘Why not more often?’ asked Mann. ‘Did you not fancy a return fixture?’

  ‘No. I mean yes, I did, but we never quite managed it.’

  ‘I see. But she was still keen, was she?’

  ‘Oh, aye, she was keen all right. Bloody keen, like.’

  ‘And you met where?’

  ‘At my house. We used the spare room. It seemed best, you know.’

  ‘And did Jenny have any unusual sexual preferences?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  Mann looked steadily at Lee, and waited for him to break his gaze. It didn’t take long.

  ‘And how about you, Mr. Lee? What about your preferences?’

  ‘Me?’ Lee glanced nervously from Mann to Jane, then back again. ‘Quite normal. Aye, normal.’

  ‘But you like to be in charge, I bet?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Really? You surprise me. I know I do. Be the man, like.’

  ‘Aye, well.’

  ‘All right, Mr. Lee, we’re almost done. But one thing, about Mrs. Smith. Do you think that she was meeting up with several men as well, or just with you?’

  ‘Loads of others. There’ll have been a queue round the block, I expect. She as good as told me that.’

  ‘And how did that make you feel?’

  ‘How do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘Aye, well, that was her business, wasn’t it? And look where she’s ended up like.’

  Mann waited, and Jane took the opportunity to come in. They hadn’t discussed it before, but the moment was right, she just knew it.

  ‘Sharon Burke was strangled as well, wasn’t she?’

  Lee looked properly rattled now. ‘Aye, she was.’ He went quiet for a moment. ‘What, you reckon that Adam Burke might have done this? Was he shagging Jenny too, like?’

  ‘Not as far as we know. But these are the early stages of our investigation.’

  ‘Aye. I see that. But it makes you think, don’t it? Maybe she knocked him back, like, and he couldn’t take it.’

  ‘You think that’s what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. But still, it makes you think. Aye, it certainly does that.’

  When Lee had signed his statement DI Francis and DS Mann went for a walk down at the harbour. There was a bit of a breeze blowing, and it felt good to be out of that basement room.

  ‘How the other half lives, eh?’ said Jane, biting the top off the Flake from her 99.

  Mann grinned. ‘Those three Casanovas? They’re all at it like rabbits out this way. It’s a well known fact, is that. But seriously, what do you reckon?’

  ‘Write off the first two, I’d say. They’re randy, not angry.’

  ‘Agreed. But what about Jack Lee? His alibi is iffy, but he lives alone now. So nothing too surprising there, I suppose. And we checked with Mrs. Atkins, remember. He’s the only one of the three who she knows, and she says she doesn’t think it was him.’

  ‘She wasn’t certain though, was she?’

  ‘No, true enough. So he’s got to be a runner, I suppose, especially if Andy is right about Burke being innocent. And we both know that Andy’s usually right, the bastard. But talking of Burke, I suppose we’d better talk to him? Today, like. He’s on the list of relevant local offenders anyway, of course.’

  ‘Aye, get him picked up. Let’s get this bloody over with, shall we? I’m not sure how many more west coast Lotharios I can actually listen to today, without puking up in the waste paper bin. ’

  ‘Andy won’t be happy, us talking to his man like this.’

  ‘No, he’ll be all right about it. If anyone knows how this all works, it’s Andy. We’ll just follow the process, and see where it gets us.’

  If palpable nervousness really was an indication of guilt then Adam Burke might as well have missed out the interview stage and been charged immediately. Hall had told Jane that he’d seemed strangely disconnected when they’d talked, as if his conviction and incarceration had happened to someone that Burke had only ever known slightly, and didn’t much like. But that’s not how he seemed now. He looked frightened, but there was no sense of righteous anger. He never asked why he was there, right up until the moment that the tape started running. And then it was too late for him to ask anything at all.

  ‘So, Adam, do you know why you’re here?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Aye. It’ll be about that woman who was killed. Jenny Smith.’

  ‘That’s right, Adam. Did you know Jenny?’

  ‘Aye, to say hello to, like. She only lived down the road, back when I lived in Whitehaven. And I still see Phil in the pub sometimes. Nice lad, is Phil.’

  ‘So you didn’t meet Jenny for sex then?’

  ‘What? No. Of course not. Who do you think I am? And I bet she wasn’t like that, neither. She was a nice, respectable lass, was Jenny.’

  Jane smiled at Burke, but it didn’t seem to do much good. He looked as if might confess, pass out, or lash out at any moment. It was impossible to tell which was more likely.

  ‘So where were you on Tuesday evening?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Are you sure? You didn’t have to think about that at all, did you?’

  ‘No. I’m always at home. I go down the pub, in Flimby, Maryport or here, once or twice a week, but that’s it.’

  ‘And did you see anyone on Tuesday evening? Talk to anyone on the phone?’

  Then Burke started to shake, suddenly and violently. Jane thought he was having some kind of seizure, and Mann was already out of his chair. Burke’s teeth were chattering too. Jane was about to hit the panic button, but Mann shook his head.

  ‘No, Jane, he’ll be all right in a minute. You’ll be OK, won’t you, mate?’

  It was over thirty seconds before Burke regained the power of speech.

  ‘Aye. Aye. Give me a minute.’

  Mann let go of Burke’s shoulders, then stood back as if examining a piece of DIY that he’d just completed, and wasn’t entirely happy with. After a few seconds he sat down again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Burke. ‘It’s just that this is just like last time, see? It’s all happening again, isn’t it? This is exactly what they said when Sharon was killed. I was at home, alone, and they said I had no alibi, and that’s why I got sent to prison for something I didn’t do. And now you’re going to do it again. I bloody wel
l know it.’

  ‘No, Adam’, said Jane, ‘not having an alibi doesn’t mean that we’ll assume you did it. We’d need much more evidence than that, wouldn’t we?’

  And then Burke laughed. It sounded like a distant shipwreck. ‘Don’t you worry about that, officer. I bet Jack Lee will be along in a bit, to tell you that I did it. You believed him before, after all.’

  ‘What makes you think that Mr. Lee would know anything about this case?’

  ‘Nowt. Like I say, he's the one who told you lot that I confessed to killing my wife.’

  ‘I see. Then I don’t think that’s very likely this time, do you? But tell me, did Jack Lee know Mrs. Smith?’

  ‘How would I bloody know? I haven’t spoken to that bastard in years. Did you know that his wife died not long since? I was tempted to turn up the funeral. Just stand at the back like.’

  ‘To pay your respects?’

  ‘Aye, I suppose. She was good woman. A sight better than he deserved, anyway. But I wanted him to see me, like.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just so he’d remember, later on. What he did to me. What the pain feels like. Because I lost my wife too, and then I went to prison for all those years, didn’t I?’

  This time Jane heard the tone that Hall had meant. It was sadness, more than anything. Certainly more than anger. This man hadn’t killed his own wife, let alone Phil Smith’s. She wanted to tell him that, to tell him not to worry, but she couldn’t.

  ‘All right, Mr. Burke. That will be all, for now at least. And don’t you worry about not being able to account for your movements on Tuesday evening. That doesn’t mean anything at all, in itself, OK?

  Burke nodded his head, and Jane had the sense that it was his first lie of the interview. He didn’t believe her, and in his position she doubted that she would have, either.

  Jane didn’t notice the scenery on the way home that night, but then she was on the phone the whole way, being briefed by the investigative team, both sworn officers and civilians. She was better informed when she got home, although nothing she’d heard had contradicted the content of any of the day’s interviews, and by the time she parked up at the house she had four working hypotheses.