by James Raven
‘The sweater was among a number of clothes that were put in a black plastic bag and left in a wheelie bin on your driveway,’ Temple said. ‘The other garments are also stained with blood. Our forensic technicians have established that the blood is only about twenty-four hours old. Which means it was shed yesterday afternoon.’
Lister clucked his tongue. ‘If the wheelie bin was on the driveway then anyone could have put it there, Inspector. You know that as well as I do.’
Temple tapped a finger on the laptop. ‘But this was found inside the house. In the office, to be precise. And it belonged to Grant Mason.’
‘That’s not possible,’ Fowler said. ‘Why would I have it?’
‘Because you took it from his home on Thursday evening. That was after you ransacked the place and attacked me.’
‘That’s bullshit. I didn’t go to his house on Thursday. And I’m not the one who did all that stuff with Mason. I’ve already told you that.’
Temple reached into a briefcase on the floor next to his chair and brought out yet another evidence bag.
He placed it on the table between them. ‘Can you see what that is, Mr Fowler?’
Fowler swallowed hard. ‘It looks like a flogger whip.’
‘That’s right. As you well know, it’s a sexual contraption used by a dominant to inflict pain on a submissive in an S&M encounter. I’m sure you’ve used them before.’
‘That one doesn’t belong to me.’
‘Really? Then why did we find it in a suitcase under your bed along with various other S&M gizmos, including wrist restraints, canes and gags?’
Fowler’s tongue flicked briefly across his lips. ‘The other stuff’s mine, but not that. I don’t own a flogger whip.’
Temple lifted the bag above the table. The flogger whip inside was black with a studded handle and thirty or so leather tails about a foot long.
‘Look at that, Mr Fowler. There’s blood on the tails. We’ve already carried out a quick check and determined that it matches the blood on the sweater. The blood group is B negative, which is quite rare. But we know that Rosemary Hamilton, who was abducted by Grant Mason a week ago, is B negative. So it seems certain that it’s her blood on both objects. She was wearing the sweater when she disappeared.’
Fowler shot Temple a cold, hard stare. ‘This is insane. You must have planted those things in my house.’
Temple blew out a frustrated breath. ‘Don’t be daft. Why the hell would we want to entrap an innocent man?’
‘You tell me.’
Temple felt his face tighten. ‘Why don’t you just come clean and save everyone a lot of time and trouble?’
Fowler turned on his lawyer. ‘Are you just going to sit there and let them get away with this?’
‘Just stay calm, Mr Fowler.’
Lister tried to put his hand on Fowler’s shoulder, but this time it was pushed away.
‘No, I won’t stay fucking calm. Why should I? These things don’t belong to me. I swear to God. I’m being set up.’
‘What have you done with Rosemary Hamilton and her husband?’ Temple asked him.
Fowler stared at Temple, his eyes bulging out of their sockets.
‘I haven’t done anything. You’ve got it wrong. All I know is what you told me and what I heard on the news.’
‘We’ve got you banged to rights,’ Temple said. ‘Bob and Rosemary Hamilton’s clothes were found on your property, along with the flogger whip that has traces of blood on it. In addition, you had Grant Mason’s laptop. They’re damning pieces of evidence that tell us you’re the man we’ve been looking for. You were Mason’s accomplice.’
Fowler flared his nostrils. ‘It’s not true.’
‘Then explain what you were doing with these objects,’ Temple said. ‘And it won’t wash just to say that you don’t know how they got there.’
‘But I don’t. You have to believe that.’
Temple’s lips twisted into a thin smile. ‘The case we have against you is watertight already. You have a criminal record for killing your girlfriend during a kinky sex session. You were one of Mason’s best friends. And then there’s this lot. So stop lying and get it off your chest.’
Fowler’s eyes turned small and fierce. ‘I’m not fucking lying. How many more times have I got to say it? I’m not the bloke you’re after.’
‘And no matter how many times you say it I won’t believe you,’ Temple said. ‘So I suggest you accept that the game is up and confess.’
‘I’m not confessing to something I didn’t do and you can’t make me.’
Temple’s gaze hardened as he leaned across the table.
‘Where can we find the Hamiltons? Are they still alive?’
‘My client has already told you that he doesn’t know where they are,’ Lister said. ‘And I object to your aggressive tone, Inspector. Mr Fowler has answered your questions and has made it clear that he knows nothing about those objects and he did not commit those crimes alongside Grant Mason.’
‘But he’s lying,’ Temple said. ‘Anyone can see that.’
At that moment, Fowler broke down and started sobbing. He tried to speak between sobs but what he said made no sense.
Temple wanted to continue pushing him in the hope of extracting a confession, but Lister kicked up a fuss and demanded that the interview be stopped until his client had composed himself.
Temple had no choice but to agree, so he said aloud for the benefit of the tape recorder that the interview was being suspended.
He and Vaughan then got up. As they left the room, Temple said, ‘We’ll come back in half an hour.’
45
The mood in the incident room was upbeat. The team were of the firm belief that they had got their man. As far as they were concerned, the evidence against Tom Fowler was overwhelming.
But Temple was anxious to curb their excitement. He knew only too well that cases often fall apart even when you think you have them sewn up tighter than a hangman’s noose.
He called everyone together to brief them on how the interview had gone, and to find out if any more incriminating evidence had been found at Fowler’s house.
But so far nothing more had been discovered, and there were no clues on the property as to the whereabouts of Bob and Rosemary Hamilton. But Fowler’s home computer had been seized and the experts were wading through the contents.
More officers had been sent to the house and they’d started digging up the garden and searching the woods and heaths around the property.
‘It’s too early to start celebrating,’ Temple said. ‘Fowler hasn’t yet confessed and he hasn’t been charged. So the pressure is still on us. It means we have to keep chasing all the other leads. So let’s start with Ethan Kane. Where are we on that?’
Dave Vaughan had been working on it before joining Temple in the interview room. He said he had spoken to the estate agent who had arranged the sale of Theresa Bellamy’s house.
‘They told me they had no idea where she intended to move to,’ he said. ‘I also managed to get in touch with the solicitor who represented Miss Bellamy on the sale. It was a straightforward arrangement apparently, and the buyers were a retired couple from London who paid in cash. Miss Bellamy went to the lawyer twice so she could sign the various documents and provide forms of identification. He said she was by herself both times and she didn’t mention the name Ethan Kane or tell him where she was going to live. But he’s going to dig out the file with his notes just in case he’s missed something and email it to me when he’s back in his office tomorrow.’
Temple turned to DC Marsh and asked her if she’d managed to check out Noah Cross’s alibi for Thursday evening.
‘The number he gave you checks out,’ she replied. ‘It’s registered to a man named Jack Wise who lives in Bermondsey. But I’ve called him three times and he hasn’t answered his phone or responded to my messages.’
‘Then get the local station to check out his address. According to Cross, he arrived
in London by train on Thursday evening and stayed with his pals for a stag do until yesterday.’
‘Do you think he could be lying, guv?’
Temple shrugged. ‘Probably not, but I’m keen to tie up the loose ends as quickly as possible.’
One of the other detectives drew Temple’s attention to the TV screen. The BBC was carrying a news flash claiming that Hampshire police had arrested a man in connection with the New Forest murders.
‘The man is believed to live in the village of East Boldre, less than a mile from the house owned by Grant Mason,’ the newsreader intoned. ‘We understand he was a close friend of Mason and works as an estate agent in the New Forest.’
The newsreader then went on to talk about the latest grave to be discovered near Minstead.
‘The remains of six people have now been unearthed,’ he said. ‘But the search for more bodies is continuing at six other sites across the forest.’
Chief Superintendent Beresford had been watching the same news broadcast. When Temple went to his office to update him, his boss could barely contain his excitement.
‘I’ve called a press conference for six o’clock,’ he said. ‘Any chance I can announce that we’ve charged the bastard?’
‘I think that would be premature, sir. He’s denying all knowledge of the stuff we found at his house, so it’s all circumstantial evidence.’
‘Maybe so, but it’s plenty strong enough to get us a conviction.’
‘That’s probably true, but we still have no idea what’s happened to the Hamiltons and if we charge Fowler, we can’t press him on that.’
Beresford chewed the corner of his lower lip as he thought about it.
‘That’s a good point, Jeff. So what time was he brought in last night?’
‘Around eleven.’
‘Well that means we can keep him in custody without charge for another six hours.’
‘We might need more time, especially if the lawyer takes the view that we’re putting him under too much pressure and demands that he has a break.’
Beresford nodded. ‘Very well. I’ll get a magistrate’s order so that we can hold him for up to ninety-six hours without charge.’
‘That’s great, sir. While you’re at it, it’d be a good idea to get another warrant to search his office and have a look at his work computer.’
‘Consider it done. In the meantime, I’ll just confirm what the press already knows – that we’re questioning a suspect. But be warned, Jeff. The media blitz is going to get even more intense.’
46
The stench of Tom Fowler’s body odour filled the interview room. It didn’t help that he was sweating profusely and the alcohol he’d consumed the night before was still seeping through his pores.
But at least he’d regained his composure, and for two hours he sat next to his solicitor and continued to deny that he knew what had happened to Bob and Rosemary Hamilton. He insisted he had no idea why their blood-stained clothes were in his wheelie bin or why Mason’s laptop was in his office.
They were forced to suspend the interview again so that he could have something to eat and drink. Temple took the opportunity to see what else had come in, but the news was disappointing. Fowler’s computer contained a collection of S&M porn videos, but all of them had been downloaded from legitimate sites on the internet.
There were no homemade movies of the kind found in Mason’s loft. And no incriminating emails and text messages between him and Mason. Plus, none of the prints found on the van that Mason had hired the week before belonged to Fowler.
His prints did turn up in Mason’s house, but he explained those away by saying he’d been there a number of times.
A magistrate signed an order allowing them to hold him for up to ninety-six hours without charge, so to some extent the pressure was eased. But it didn’t feel that way to Temple. He was desperate to know about the fate of Bob and Rosemary Hamilton.
He found it hard not to conclude that they were already dead. Why else would their clothing have been dumped in the bin? And that in itself raised several questions. All the clothes – which included Mr Hamilton’s shirt and trousers and Mrs Hamilton’s jeans – were intact apparently. Forensics were saying that there were no holes in the fabrics to indicate puncture wounds of any kind.
Of course, that didn’t mean they hadn’t suffered fatal injuries to their heads or exposed flesh. The fact that the blood had been shed as recently as twenty-four hours ago suggested that the couple had been kept alive for a week.
Did that mean Fowler had murdered them in a panic? Had he gone to the pub afterwards to get drunk?
Temple put these questions and more to Fowler but he didn’t falter in his denials.
‘Look, I’m no angel,’ he said. ‘I made a terrible mistake some years ago and I’m still paying for it. I’m also guilty of enjoying a form of sexual behaviour that most people find abhorrent. But I was not Mason’s accomplice and I had nothing to do with that couple’s disappearance. On the Saturday they went missing, I was at work. So someone is setting me up and if it isn’t you lot, then you need to find out who it is.’
‘So you’re saying that someone broke into your house and planted the laptop and flogger whip?’ Temple said.
‘Of course I am. How else would they have got there?’
‘But there are no signs of a break-in.’
‘Then whoever did it had a key.’
‘You’ve already told us that you didn’t give your key to anybody.’
‘What about the one that was stolen from the pub last night? Have you thought about that?’
‘Actually we have,’ Temple said. ‘The landlord of the Court Jester called us this morning to say that he’d found your bunch of keys on the ground next to your car. That was presumably where you dropped them.’
Temple called a halt to the interview at eight o’clock because Lister insisted that his client had faced enough questions for one day and was in no fit state to answer any more.
‘I suggest you give careful thought overnight to your position, Mr Fowler,’ Temple said. ‘The interview will resume tomorrow morning and I urge you to see sense and start telling us the truth.’
Fowler was too tired to react as he was led back to the cells with his brief in tow.
Temple walked into the incident room feeling hugely frustrated. He’d tried desperately to get Fowler to confess and had failed. He felt like he had let the Hamiltons down.
He was given the grim news that three more graves had been uncovered in the forest by the search teams. They were located close to the villages of Sway, Ashurst and Bransgore.
The media were now in even more of a frenzy. TV news crews were reporting live from the crime scenes and from the pavement outside the central police station.
Detectives had been dispatched to each location and would be reporting back with the details.
Since most of the team was still in, Temple decided to hold a final briefing before going home to Angel. But DC Marsh got to him before he could get everyone’s attention.
‘There’s been a surprise development, guv,’ she said. ‘We just had a call from a man who claims he saw Ethan Kane two weeks ago.’
Temple felt his heart lurch. ‘How does he know it was Kane?’
‘He says he’s a former prison officer and was at Albany prison where Kane spent two years before being transferred to Wandsworth. He now runs an outdoor leisure shop in Lyndhurst, selling camping equipment and fishing tackle. He reckons Kane came into the shop to buy something and he recognized him.’
‘So why is he calling us now?’
‘He saw the photo of Kane we put out on the news. And I’m convinced he’s genuine because he says Kane doesn’t look anything like he looks in the picture.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well his actual words were: the bastard no longer looks like a boxer. He’s had his nose straightened and his hair dyed.’
47
Temple
hadn’t counted on making another trip into the forest, but he decided to go with Marsh to meet the former prison officer who had called in.
His name was Seth Peters and he lived in a flat above his shop in the centre of Lyndhurst. The town was always quiet on a Sunday evening. Only a few pubs remained open.
The shop was on the High Street and Temple parked the pool car right outside on double yellow lines.
Peters was waiting inside. He was in his late fifties, with lean, angular features and grey hair that rested on his shirt collar.
The shop was closed for business but all the lights were on. Temple saw that it was well-stocked with camping equipment, fishing tackle, hiking accessories and lots of outdoor clobber.
Peters invited them into the back office where he explained that he’d taken over the shop a year ago after retiring from the prison service.
‘I spent most of my time at Albany,’ he said. ‘And that’s where I came across Ethan Kane. He made quite an impression on me, which is why I recognized him when he came in, even though he’s gone to great lengths to change his appearance.’
‘And this was two weeks ago?’ Temple said.
Peters nodded. ‘It was on a midweek afternoon and there were no other customers. As soon as he walked in, I thought he looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure so I didn’t say anything.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He was looking to buy a pair of binoculars. We only had a few in stock so I showed him those and he bought a pair. As he was paying, I caught him giving me a strange look and realized that he’d tumbled who I was.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I said, “long time no see, Ethan.” But he gave me a blank stare and said that wasn’t his name. I told him that I knew who he was, but that it wasn’t a problem. He clearly wasn’t happy, though. He threw a twenty-pound note on the counter, picked up the binoculars and stormed out without waiting for his change.’
‘And you’re sure it was him?’ Marsh asked.
‘Absolutely sure. He looked different, of course, but not enough to fool me.’
‘Did you get to know him well in prison then?’ Temple said.
