‘Call me when you’re back. I’ll be waiting for you at the police office in Euston station.’
‘OK. But listen,’ there was a pause. ‘If I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.’
‘I have to share anything you say with my colleagues on the case. But you have my word we’ll be discreet.’
‘Yes, of course, I don’t mean that. But my husband mustn’t find out.’
Geraldine reassured Louise that no one would pass any information on to him. It was self-evident that if Chris went to court, Louise might be summoned to give evidence, but if his alibi checked out, Louise’s husband might never need to know.
‘Chris was with me on Thursday evening.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive. We see each other every Thursday. He comes to my house. I’d remember if he’d missed a week. Only his wife doesn’t know, and nor does my husband. It won’t all come out now, will it?’
‘If you’re telling the truth, there’s no reason why this should go any further. Can you confirm his full name and address?’
‘Chris Cordwell. I don’t know if he has any other names.’ She reeled off his address.
‘What time was he at your house on Thursday?’
‘He always leaves just before midnight. My husband never comes home before one on a Thursday, but Chris leaves earlier, just in case. He gets the bus over and then I sometimes drop him home.’
‘Thank you. Can you contact me as soon as you’re back in London and we’ll arrange for you to make a formal written statement. It can wait until tomorrow. But it is important.’
‘OK. And tell Chris I’ll be there for him, whatever happens.’
Geraldine logged the details of the conversation. As she was finishing off, her phone rang again. Although she was tired, she was pleased to hear Ian’s voice. It was often helpful to mull over cases with him. After turning the oven low, she launched into an account of the suspect in her investigation, and his alibi.
‘A case of husbands wanting to murder their wives,’ he remarked when she had finished.
‘Only two husbands, and we don’t know either of them genuinely wanted to kill anyone. It’s probably just so much hot air.’
‘Like most marriages.’
‘Ian, I’m sorry. Are you and Bev still estranged?’
‘It’s kind of hard not to be when she’s run off with another man and is about to have his baby.’
‘You could have a paternity test when the baby’s born. You don’t know for sure it’s not yours.’
They discussed Ian’s situation briefly, but it was not long before the conversation drifted back to Geraldine’s problem.
‘The other woman could be lying to protect him,’ Ian said.
‘That’s what Adam thought. The thing is, her story matched his and she volunteered the details without any prompting. Her times matched his before I mentioned anything specific.’
‘That doesn’t prove anything. They could have got together and concocted a story beforehand.’
‘He didn’t want to give us her name.’
‘And yet he did. All very convincingly done, I daresay, and quite possibly carefully rehearsed in advance. I’m not saying they’re lying. It’s probably all genuine. I’m just pointing out the possibility that the alibi is fake.’
Geraldine knew he was right but she wasn’t going to take Chris’s word, or Louise’s, without further investigation. First thing in the morning she planned to set a team to work checking whether Chris had travelled by bus that evening, and whether Louise’s car had been picked up on camera driving towards Chris’s house at around midnight.
‘The trouble is,’ she told Ian, ‘if his alibi stands up to scrutiny, we’re back to square one. We have no other suspect.’
Ian could only sympathise with her frustration, but there was nothing else to say. At last, she rang off and fetched her overcooked dinner from the oven. It was dry. She was too tired to eat anyway, but she forced some down before going to bed. It had been a stressful day, and looking into an alibi for their only suspect wasn’t going to make the next day any easier.
20
The atmosphere at the station was subdued on Wednesday morning. They were not quite a week into the investigation so it was early days. Normally no one would have had cause to feel disheartened at this stage of the case, but having thought they had it all sewn up, it was disappointing to face the prospect of having to start out all over again.
‘It was him, it was obviously him,’ Geraldine overheard Sam insisting to another constable. ‘It’s always the husband. His alibi’s going to come crashing down around his ears soon enough. He might sound plausible – although that’s a matter of opinion – but he’s lying. He’s got to be.’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Geraldine interrupted her.
A constable checking the suspect’s movements had established that Chris’s Oyster card had been used by someone boarding a bus at seven forty on Thursday evening, travelling in the direction of Louise’s house. Careful scrutiny of surveillance film from the bus showed a figure who looked like Chris travelling on the bus. While that bore out his story, it didn’t prove he had still been out at eleven o’clock that evening. There was plenty of time for him to have returned home to kill his wife.
Louise’s car had been spotted by a team studying CCTV footage from cameras along the route. They reported that she had driven at least part of the way along the Holloway Road, away from her own home towards Chris’s house, just before midnight. But that didn’t prove he had been in the car with her. It was feasible that all their travelling had been a preplanned smokescreen to provide false evidence that Chris had not been home that evening. He and Louise could both be lying. The case against Chris was beginning to look flimsy.
‘You mean I’m under house arrest?’
‘No. We just need to know where you are.’
Grumbling about police harassment of an innocent man, he had gone home.
‘At the moment, the only physical proof of his guilt is the defence wounds found on the victim. There’s no question she was fighting her husband off. The evidence of that is incontrovertible. Shreds of his skin under her nails. Fresh scratches on his neck. But we need to find the murder weapon,’ Adam said. ‘Where the hell is it?’
‘He could have buried it in the garden,’ a constable suggested.
‘His garden or Louise’s garden?’ someone else asked.
‘It might be at the bottom of the lake near Kenwood House,’ a sergeant chimed in.
Adam held up his hand. ‘Enough. It could be anywhere by now, but wherever it is, we need to find it. There was a gap of two and a half days between her death and his reporting her missing on the Sunday, enough time for him to dispose of it before we knew who she was.’
‘He could have given it to Louise to get rid of,’ a young constable piped up.
‘I said enough speculation about where the murder weapon has gone,’ Adam said.
‘I was only saying it’s possible,’ she muttered sullenly.
Geraldine sniffed. As a new constable, she would never have dared answer back to her detective chief inspector like that. Whether it was the contrast between the Met and the Home Counties, or the behaviour of a different generation, young officers seemed to have lost the deference that had been expected of her when she was in her early twenties. On balance, she thought that was detrimental to the disciplined teamwork on which their success depended. She glared at the young constable, who looked away with a careless shrug. That, too, was disrespectful. Geraldine felt uncomfortable. The world of policing seemed to be changing. She wasn’t sure she fitted into this new culture.
‘If his alibi holds up, we’re back to the drawing board,’ Sam said.
‘We want to find out what happened,’ Geraldine told her sharply. ‘We�
��re looking for the truth, not for easy answers.’
‘The husband’s our prime suspect, but we have to be sure he’s the right suspect,’ Adam agreed. ‘And that means finding evidence.’
While the Visual Images, Identification and Detections team continued studying local film from the night of the murder, hoping to establish whether Chris had been in Louise’s car after midnight, Geraldine and Sam returned to the garage to double check when the van had been off the road. Tracy was at her desk. She confirmed what the mechanic had told them. Leaving the office, Geraldine was startled to see that the bonnet of her car was open. A figure was sitting in the driving seat.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she called out as she ran over, with Sam at her heels.
The mechanic who had helped her on her previous visit climbed out of the car. He looked surprised to see her.
‘You?’ he said. ‘I thought this was here for a service.’
‘How did you get in? I left it locked.’
The mechanic jangled a bunch of keys. ‘I hope you’re not going to charge me with breaking and entering,’ he said with an anxious grin. ‘It was a mistake. I didn’t know you were here.’
Geraldine shrugged. ‘I hope you didn’t find anything wrong with it.’
‘I’d only just got the bonnet open,’ he replied, removing the protective sheet of plastic he had spread over the seat.
Geraldine and Sam climbed into the car. Their visit had been a waste of time.
‘Let’s see what Louise Marshall has to say when she gets back to London,’ Geraldine said grimly, ‘and if she really can give Chris an alibi.’
‘Where’s she coming from?’
‘Birmingham. Her train gets in to Euston at seven fifteen so I’ve arranged to meet her at the police station there when she arrives. Why don’t you come along?’ As Sam hesitated, Geraldine remembered she had a partner waiting for her when she finished for the day. ‘Not to worry if you need to get home,’ she added as they left the garage forecourt.
‘No, of course I’ll come. One way or the other, we need to get to the bottom of this.’
Geraldine nodded. For all her occasional loneliness, she couldn’t imagine curtailing her commitment to her work for a personal relationship. She wondered if that made her callous, but she dismissed her qualms. For a long time she had felt somehow adrift in her own life. Her confused feelings on meeting her biological sister seemed like a manifestation of that malaise. But before she could spend time trying to forge a relationship with Helena, she had a murder to investigate.
21
Although the train journey back to London was an ideal opportunity to take a nap, Louise didn’t doze off, despite her exhaustion. Normally the regular rhythm of the train engine would have lulled her to sleep without any trouble. She had been up very early the day before. Already tired, she had received a disturbing message concerning Chris which had kept her awake nearly all night, worrying. She had no idea what had happened, but being contacted out of the blue like that to discuss an alibi sounded serious. The police inspector had mentioned prison.
She wanted to speak to Chris, but he hadn’t answered his mobile. She had been afraid to try his number a second time, in case his wife noticed the calls and became suspicious. She and Chris had a rule that neither of them would try to contact the other more than once a day, at most. It worked both ways. She didn’t want her husband to find out about their affair any more than he wanted his wife to know about it. Repeated calls from an unknown number might be enough to provoke suspicion.
By the time Louise had spoken to the police inspector the previous evening, it had been too late to call Chris at work. In the morning she had borrowed a phone from another girl on the course to call his mobile. He hadn’t answered. She had tried his work number and was told he wasn’t there. That had worried her as much as her conversation with the police. As far as she knew, he had no plans to take any time off work while she was away. Something must have happened, and she wasn’t around to help him.
She had been tempted to catch an earlier train back to London, but the cost of buying a train ticket on the day she was travelling was prohibitive. It would have been daft, when she would be back in London that evening anyway. Arriving a few hours earlier hardly warranted the additional expense. Besides, she told herself, Chris would have called if he needed her. She would just have to be patient. While she had been dithering, she had received a message from the conference organisers. They had been asked to inform her that a police driver would meet her at Euston station on her return to London. That clinched it. She stuck to her original travel plans.
At last her train arrived at Euston station. As she passed through the ticket barrier, a man approached her. He was wearing an official-looking peaked cap that hid the top of his face, and his mouth was hidden beneath a beard and moustache.
‘Louise Marshall?’ he enquired in a gruff voice.
‘Yes. They told me you’d be here.’
‘This way.’
Without waiting for a response, the driver seized the handle of her case and began walking away with it. Louise trotted after him. Tired and anxious, she was relieved that she didn’t have to find her own way to the police station.
‘I’m a bit surprised they sent you to get me. It must be important,’ she said. ‘What’s it all about?’
She wasn’t sure if the driver heard what she said to him. He was walking so fast, she had to hurry to keep up. Out of breath, and weary from travelling and the stress of worrying about Chris, she decided to wait until they were in the car to speak to him again. He strode round the corner from the station, pulling her case for her. Reaching a car park, he walked quickly past the entrance and led her to a dark car. It looked quite old, but she supposed the police were having to economise on everything, including their transport. Public spending cutbacks were constantly in the news. Given the current situation, it was amazing that they could afford to send a car for her at all. At the same time, it increased her anxiety. The inspector must be very keen to speak to her as soon as possible, to justify the expense. It was not just the car, but the driver’s time that would be costing money as well.
Tossing her case in the boot, the driver opened the passenger door for her. When they were both seated, and she had thanked him again for picking her up, the driver told her to turn off her phone.
‘Can I just call my husband and let him know I’m on my way home? I mean, this won’t take long, will it? Only I don’t want him to worry.’
What she really meant was that she didn’t want him to become suspicious about her movements.
‘There’s no need, we’ll soon be at the police station. You can call him from there.’
‘I’d like to just give him a ring…’
The driver frowned. ‘Best not to,’ he said quietly.
There was something vaguely familiar about his voice. It reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t think who it was.
‘This is an unmarked police vehicle,’ he added. ‘If you switch your mobile phone on, it can interfere with communications from the command centre.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
She took her phone out of her bag. Before she could turn it off, the driver leaned over and took it out of her hand. Ignoring her protest, he switched it off and deftly removed the SIM card before dropping the phone in the pocket of his door.
‘It’ll be returned to you at the police station,’ he assured her.
They drove out of the car park in silence. Unable to fight off her weariness any longer, Louise leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Whatever trouble Chris was in, she would soon be at the police station and everything would be cleared up. There was nothing she could do about it until then. She tried to relax, but the whole situation was worrying. Looking out of her window, she didn’t recognise where they were. She hesitated to ask where they were goi
ng because the driver was so surly, but she wanted to know where he was taking her. They had left the car park about twenty minutes ago.
‘Er, when I spoke to the inspector yesterday, she told me she’d meet me at the police station at Euston?’ When the driver gave no response, she went on. ‘So I wondered why we’re going somewhere else?’
‘They wouldn’t have sent me to pick you up if they just wanted you to go round the corner,’ he said at last.
‘Yes, that’s what I thought. I just wondered where we’re going.’
Again, there was no answer. Louise decided the driver was odd, but that wasn’t her problem. All she had to do was meet the inspector as arranged, answer a few questions, sign a statement, and be driven home. After a disturbed night, she couldn’t wait to fall asleep in her own bed. The last few days had been hectic. It was nice to be sitting in a car being driven wherever she had to go. She supposed this was how rich people lived, taking taxis or employing chauffeurs. With a sigh, she leaned back and closed her eyes again, soothed by the gentle purr of the engine. She would be woken up when they arrived.
22
Although she was annoyed, Geraldine was not unduly surprised when Louise Marshall failed to turn up for their appointment at the police station in Euston. She was used to members of the public proving unreliable. This was by no means the first time a witness had lost her nerve about speaking to the police, or been confused about times, or had simply forgotten to come forward. She tried Louise’s number but her phone was unresponsive, neither ringing nor diverting to voicemail. There was no need to go storming round to her house, stirring up trouble. As far as Geraldine knew, Louise’s husband still knew nothing about his wife’s affair. If Louise was careful, he might never find out. Geraldine would have to wait until the morning to contact her. Another day made no difference to her.
When she arrived home that evening Geraldine tried Louise’s number once more, but it was still dead. The following morning, she had the same response. Instead of going to her office, she drove straight to Louise’s house, off the Holloway Road. It was not far from where Geraldine lived. No one answered the door. She was no longer sure what to make of Louise’s reluctance to confirm the story she had given over the phone the previous day. Chris’s alibi was looking shakier by the hour.
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