Missing Persons (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 5)

by Sean Campbell

  The team gathered in the Incident Room where a second board had been set up with a picture of Jake, a photocopy of the suicide note, and a report from the Fraud Squad outlining the extent of the fraud.

  ‘Suicide,’ Morton said firmly. ‘Preliminary analysis of the note confirms Jake killed himself. The note was written in his handwriting, using his pen, on his own headed notepaper. Not only that, I had to break down two doors, both locked from the inside, before I could get to him. We aren’t looking at a second murder, which means we have to focus on Mark.’

  Mayberry raised a hand. ‘B-but what if J-Jake was the killer?’

  ‘Maybe he was,’ Morton said. ‘We need to prove it, either way. I personally think Jake was just a fraudster. He stole money. There is no evidence he ever committed a violent crime, and the amount of money he was set to receive from Mark’s life insurance is far less than he successfully stole from his clients. If Mark hadn’t died, we’d never have known about the fraud.’

  ‘Then who killed Mark?’ Rafferty said.

  Morton tapped the whiteboard. ‘We’ve still got four suspects, even without Jake.’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘Laura, Tim, Faye, and Pip Berryman.’ The mistress, her boyfriend, the lover betrayed, and the rival. Any of the four could have killed Mark on the canal side and thrown his body into the water.

  Rafferty stood up. ‘I think Jake did it. He had the best access to the waterways. Look at the canal map. The Guilty Pleasure has been travelling east to west along the Grand Union. Mark’s body was dumped in the middle of that journey. Jake had access to a boat and could easily have used that to dump the body.’

  ‘And Faye was on the victim’s boat,’ Morton countered. ‘As you said, she was on the boat he owned, she definitely went past the point where we found Mark’s body, and she has motive, to boot. If she knew about the affair, she could easily have offed him.’

  Ayala coughed loudly to interrupt the impending argument and then nudged the conversation back into safer waters. ‘How far could the body have drifted?’

  ‘Forensics aren’t sure,’ Morton said. ‘Chances are, Mark’s body was dumped at night. There isn’t much natural movement in the water, but if he was dragged in the wake of another boat – and the abrasions on the body are consistent with that – then he could have gone in anywhere along either branch of the Union.’

  ‘Isn’t it most likely he was dumped near the discovery site?’ Ayala asked. ‘The odds have to favour the dump site being proximate to the discovery site.’

  ‘Yes,’ Morton said. ‘And it all comes back the one person we absolutely know had to have gone past that part of the canal while they were aboard The Guilty Pleasure: Faye. She had access to the boat, she clearly had the opportunity to commit murder, and she has the strongest motive. He cheated on her. I think she killed him, and now she’s playing us for fools.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, David!’ Rafferty exclaimed. ‘Faye’s handwriting doesn’t match. She was asleep when I found the second note, or are you forgetting that? I was there. She would have had to walk past me to plant the note.’

  ‘She could have had someone else write the note,’ Morton reasoned. ‘It’s not impossible to change your handwriting, either. And, as to access, she could have exited from the window at the back of the boat, popped the ransom note under the front door, and been back in bed long before you woke up.’

  Rafferty looked offended. ‘What more do you want the poor girl to do? Take a polygraph?’

  ‘That would be a start.’

  ‘Then, I’ll make sure she does. Will that shut you up?’

  Morton half-shrugged and turned his attention to the remaining suspects. ‘Pip Berryman seems an unlikely possibility. While he had motive, he seems affluent enough without needing to kill for a single client meeting. Physically, he had no better access to the boat than you or I. Does anyone seriously think Pip could be our killer?’

  His question was met with silence.

  ‘Then, let’s look at Laura and Tim. They had access. They were on the boat the last time Mark was seen alive. Laura was having an affair with Mark, which would have been difficult to sustain once Faye was released. We know from Jake’s interview that Tim knew about the affair, and it doesn’t take a genius to see why he might be angry at Mark. Add in Mark’s HIV status and the potential for Tim or Laura to have been infected as a result of the affair, and we’ve got two strongly motivated suspects. Of the two of them, Laura appears to have had better access as, by all accounts, Tim left the boat before she did that night. We need to confirm that timeline.’

  Rafferty pouted. ‘We’re going on hearsay now? Jake would have said anything to plead down the fraud charges to simple theft. What happened to real evidence?’

  ‘Find me some, and we’ll run with it,’ Morton said.

  ‘Fine. I’ll take the suicide note down to the handwriting specialist.’

  ‘You do that. Take Mayberry with you. Ayala, you’re with me. We’re going to visit the coroner to make sure this is suicide.’

  ***

  Gabrielle Boileau was quick to answer Rafferty’s summons. She arrived in the Incident Room, panting, ten minutes after getting the call.

  ‘Mes apologies, chére. I was held up by the superintendent. He is a friendly man, non?’

  Rafferty smirked. It was the first time she’d ever heard anyone say something nice about the superintendent. The man was crass, talentless, and quick to blame his inferiors for his own shortcomings. No doubt he was making an effort to impress the young Frenchwoman.

  ‘I suppose,’ Rafferty said tactfully. ‘I need you to look at a suicide note and confirm whether the handwriting is consistent with a prior handwriting sample.’

  There were plenty of samples to choose from. While Jake’s accounts were all computerised, his own notes were not. He had opted not to entrust the details of his gambling to the computer, instead scribbling shorthand notes that were indecipherable. The paperwork had been seized for the fraud investigation against him, giving them pages upon pages of his spider-like scrawl to use as a comparison.

  ‘Very well.’ Boileau rifled through the box of samples Rafferty had placed on the desk. ‘Hmm.’

  She seemed to be searching for something, but Rafferty didn’t know what. Eventually, Rafferty’s curiosity got the better of her.

  ‘What are you looking for in there?’

  ‘Les mêmes lettres, Madam Rafferty. Most of the samples are, pardon my English, bollocks. They are numbers, initials, and Monsieur Sanders’ signature. For my comparison to be meaningful, I need to see complete prose.’

  Rafferty leapt into action. Somewhere in the boxes, she’d found letters that Jake had once written to a woman. They had never been sent, which was probably just as well, because their sheer cheesiness had made Rafferty want to barf. ‘What about this?’

  Boileau took the letter, read it, and burst into a fit of giggles. ‘Your English men... they really write like this? C’est parfait.’

  The letter, which included an awful rhyming poem, was soon displayed on the big screen alongside the suicide note.

  ‘Interesting,’ Boileau mused. ‘Look at the letter. The Ls are elongated, curved slightly to the right. There are linking strokes between every letter, which shows that the writer’s hand rarely left the page. Projecting pen strokes interact with the lines above and below them. Punctuation is brief, sloppy. The shading is strong, indicating lots of pressure.’

  ‘Okay. And what about the note?’

  ‘It is consistent. There are some hesitation marks, of course–’

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘It is a suicide note,’ Boileau said. ‘One does not simply write such a thing from start to finish. Did you find, perchance, any failed drafts?’

  Rafferty shook her head. ‘This was all Morton found.’

  ‘Then, it is no surprise that his handwriting is imperfect. The love letter could have been written a dozen times so that ‘e might impress the woma
n. The suicide note was written but once. Hesitation marks are normal under such stress.’

  ‘I don’t want to argue with an expert, but aren’t hesitation marks also the hallmark of a forgery?’

  ‘Oui, in certain circumstances. It would take an expert to forge such a note as this. Everything else is consistent. And was the note not found behind two locked doors?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Then, I am afraid, we must conclude that this is suicide.’

  ***

  The pathologist was whistling when Morton arrived at the morgue. He was a strange fellow. Forty hours a week cutting up bodies never seemed to dull his world view. He also had a penchant for biting sarcasm that confused many new recruits.

  He was leaning over a corpse with a transparent plastic mask over his face, wearing a grin that made him look sociopathic.

  ‘Morning, David. Want to give me a hand?’ Chiswick grabbed the corpse’s wrist and gave Morton a wave.

  ‘Cut it out, Larry,’ Morton said. ‘That wasn’t funny the first time you did it, and it’s not funny now.’ Actually, it had been quite funny the first time, if only for being so unexpected. But Morton would never tell the pathologist that.

  The pathologist turned his attention back to the body on the slab.

  Morton coughed loudly. ‘You said you had the results back for Jake Sanders’ blood tests.’

  ‘Oh. Those. Yes. Suicide. Off you go. I’m a busy man, David.’

  This again? Morton thought. He ought to know better than to question the pathologist’s sense of humour by now. ‘Okay. It was funny. Now, can I have your attention?’

  Chiswick’s smile returned. He waved again with the corpse.

  ‘Larry. Please.’

  ‘He killed himself, David. You found him behind two locked doors. You can’t possibly think it was anything other than suicide.’

  Morton was beginning to get impatient. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘Corpses have unique tongue prints, just like fingerprints.’

  ‘Really?’ Morton said. ‘Please tell me you weren’t playing around with dead people when you found that out.’

  ‘Nah. I read it in a magazine.’ Chiswick took off his blood-stained gloves and began to rummage through his filing cabinet. ‘Here.’ He handed Morton a report.

  ‘Amitriptyline and oxazepam,’ Morton read aloud.

  ‘Yep. He had a prescription for the former. It’s used as an antidepressant.’

  Jake had been on antidepressants. Could his gambling have been an offshoot of that depression? ‘How long has he been on those?’

  ‘Since his father died. Four years.’

  Exactly when the gambling began. Morton felt a sinking feeling. Jake wasn’t their man. He was a broken, depressed gambling addict. He wasn’t a murderer. ‘And the oxazepam?’

  ‘It’s an over-the-counter sleeping med. The combination is popular among the suicidal. They drift off to sleep and are gone in about twelve hours.’

  ‘Is it painful?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Chiswick said. ‘I haven’t died.’

  Chapter 42: The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But

  Monday 27th June, 15:30

  The polygraph test was a relic of a bygone era. It was against Morton’s better judgement to use one at all, and he had only acquiesced at Rafferty’s insistence. The problem was inaccuracy. Polygraphs, despite commonly being referred to as “lie detectors”, could only measure three variables: sweat, heart rate, and breathing.

  The premise was simple enough: the three variables would be recorded and plotted by needle onto paper. The patterns would show spikes that, in theory, could indicate lies.

  In practice, Morton thought, they were little more than stress tests. The courts would never admit polygraph test results as being probative of guilt.

  Faye was seated in an empty incident room on the third floor. It belonged to another team and had been cleared out that Monday morning. Her chair was in front of the desk where the machine had been set up so she could not see the man questioning her. His name was Gerald Parks, formerly of New Scotland Yard. These days, he was retired, and he only consulted on an occasional basis. Morton wasn’t looking forward to the next budget meeting, when he’d have to justify hiring Parks to go through with this farce.

  Morton and Rafferty were sitting in the back of the room as observers. They had set up a camera aimed at Faye which relayed her expressions without their being able to influence her at all. It would be down to Parks to conduct the interview.

  There was an arm cuff looped around Faye’s wrist to measure her heart rate and blood pressure. Electrodes ran from the polygraph machine to her fingers to measure sweat levels. Her chest was bound with straps to measure the slightest change in her breathing patterns.

  Almost as soon as the equipment was in place, her readings were all over the place.

  ‘Miss Atkins, please try to relax. Take a deep breath,’ Parks said.

  Faye’s eyes were wide with fear. She strained in the chair, trying to turn around to face her questioner. ‘Do we have to do this?’

  ‘Miss Atkins, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If you’re up to it, I’d like to ask you a few simple questions with yes or no answers. If you’re uncomfortable at any time, we can stop. Do you understand?’

  The needles stopped jerking almost immediately, as if someone had turned off a switch. Morton saw Parks frown as if this was most unusual.

  ‘I understand,’ Faye said.

  ‘Just yes or no, please. I’ll start with some control questions. These don’t matter at all, so just say the first answer that pops into your head. Is your name Faye Atkins?’

  The needle began to leap again. ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Please relax, Miss Atkins. I’m not here to trip you up. You are twenty-two years old. Is that correct?’

  The needle moved more smoothly. ‘Yes.’

  Parks turned to give Morton a quick thumbs-up. ‘Miss Atkins, have you ever stolen supplies from work?’

  ‘No... I’ve never had a real job.’

  Parks scribbled out that control question. ‘Have you ever lied to get out of trouble?’

  ‘No... Wait, yes.’ Faye seemed to screw up her face, morphing from a persona hiding her foibles to a childlike innocence.

  The interviewer arched an eyebrow. It wasn’t normal for his subjects to so easily admit to dishonest albeit harmless behaviour. He asked a few more standard control questions from his prepared list, and then he moved on to the meat of the interview.

  ‘On Sunday, 12th June, you were on board The Guilty Pleasure, weren’t you?’ Parks asked.

  ‘Yes.’ No sudden movement.

  ‘And your boyfriend, Mark Sanders, was there too?’

  ‘Yes.’ Still no movement.

  ‘It was the last time you saw him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The needle stayed within the same range.

  ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’

  ‘No!’

  There was a small jump. It wasn’t enough to alarm Parks. He seemed to shrug, as if her reaction was simply anger. His questions were intended to be stimuli, and it was natural for her to become stressed in response to an accusation of murder.

  Parks switched back to a control question, throwing a curveball to see how she would react. ‘You’re wearing blue today, aren’t you?’

  ‘What? Oh. Yes.’ Faye looked confused and even glanced down to confirm that her blouse was really blue.

  ‘There were other people on the boat that night, weren’t there?’

  ‘Yes.’ True.

  ‘Were they,’ Parks said, glancing at his notes, ‘Miss Laura Keaton, Mr Tim Fowler, and Mark Sanders?’

  ‘Yes.’ True.

  ‘Was there anyone else on the boat, to the best of your knowledge?’

  ‘No.’ True.

  ‘Did you write the ransom notes?’

  ‘No!’ True again.

  Parks glanced ove
r to Morton as if to ask if he had any follow-up questions. Morton quickly scribbled one down on a piece of paper and passed it over.

  ‘Miss Atkins, when you were convicted four years ago, did you do it?’

  ‘No.’ True again.

  ‘Thank you for your time.’

  Parks began to remove the apparatus from Faye. When he was done, Rafferty quickly scooped her up and escorted her from the room to take her home.

  ‘Well?’ Morton said when the two women were gone.

  ‘Chief Inspector, in my expert opinion, she was telling the truth. There were a couple of small blips–’ Parks indicated point on the graph where Faye had failed the name question, and the curve when she had been asked the control question about dishonesty. ‘But that’s to be expected. All of her responses were consistent with someone telling the truth.’

  ‘Do you really believe that polygraphs are accurate?’ Morton asked.

  ‘At least eighty percent of the time,’ Parks said. ‘The reality is that one can learn to pass a polygraph by exaggerating responses to the control questions. Miss Atkins didn’t do that. Her control questions are consistent with her real answers. It’s easy to fudge a guilty response to look inconsistent. It’s much more difficult to fudge a guilty response to look totally honest. I like to think of answers as comparative. People who lie tend to make blanket denials. Faye admitted to lying to get out of trouble. That speaks to her innocence.’

  ‘That’s your verdict, then,’ Morton said.

  ‘That’s my verdict. Faye Atkins is not your killer.’

  ***

  Faye sulked that evening. She said little to Rafferty, despite Rafferty’s best efforts.

  ‘Faye, I’m sorry. I wasn’t doubting your innocence. My boss wanted to make sure. At least we can rule you out now. Isn’t that a good thing?’ Rafferty implored.

  ‘No. I always knew I was innocent.’

  ‘Faye, I–’

  ‘We thought we could trust you,’ Faye said, and then hastily added, ‘Fabby and I, that is. But you’re just like everybody else.’

  Rafferty held up her hands in surrender. It was like arguing with a child – and that child was right.