The Silver Knot (Forest of Dean Investigations Book 1)

by T J Harris

  “Interesting.” said Carver leaning forward. He was itching to get going and meet his first Sean Williams, but the meeting still had another 30 minutes to run as they worked through the list of public callers who had responded to the local news appeal and the information request board in the forest. None of them had seen anything of interest in the car park on the day of the murder. The uniforms posted at the gate all day had nothing new to report either.

  Jobs were allocated and leads assigned. The motive box was gradually being pared down as possibilities were ruled out. The timeline was also reduced since the pathologist had given them a time of death of between 7 and 8:30, which coincided nicely with the time Tony Brooks said his wife left but reduced the upper limit which had previously been 10:30, the time at which the body had been discovered.

  Chapter 7

  Carver and Moss parked in Cinderford town centre and approached the small physiotherapy clinic on foot. It was located above a bookshop but had its own glass door to the street. The glass was etched in large letters with the practice name, Scorpio Physiotherapy, and below it listed the services offered which in addition to sports massage, also included rehabilitation, podiatry and apostherapy. Carver had to admit that he had no idea what that was, but suspected it was expensive.

  The door was unlocked so the two officers made their way up the stairs following the signs to reception. A young slim girl in a white cotton tunic and loose fitting dark blue cotton trousers met them as they reached the top of the stairs. Her long brown hair was arranged in a practical ponytail. Carver explained that they were there to see Mr Williams and showed the girl his warrant card. She was in the middle of explaining that he was with a client, when a door opened and out came a limping teenaged boy and a fit looking man, also wearing a white cotton tunic and dark blue trousers. Carver allowed the teenager to hobble down the stairs before speaking.

  He held out his warrant card. “DI Carver and this is DS Moss from Gloucestershire Police, are you Mr Sean Williams?” The man nodded. “Is there somewhere we could talk?”

  Williams led the two officers through the door he had emerged from into a small treatment room. It had a desk with a PC, two chairs and a large massage table in the centre. The room was white but was covered in posters with diagrams of various parts of the human skeleton and musculature. It looked well maintained, tidy and smart. Williams looked at ease in the space. He was shorter than Carver but he looked strong and wiry, like an athlete. Carver supposed that it was part of the uniform for a sports medicine specialist. He would have to practice what he preached. He was a handsome man with a strong looking jaw line, intelligent grey brown eyes and fashionably long wavy brown hair, trimmed just above the collar.

  When the door was shut Carver started. “We wanted to talk to you about a woman we believe may have been a patient of yours.” Williams said nothing. “Her name was Helen Brooks, does that name ring any bells?”

  Williams looked thoughtful, his blow furrowed but he responded, “I don’t think so, no.”

  “According to her credit card statement, she was making regular payments of £75 a week to your clinic until a couple of weeks ago.” Moss added helpfully.

  “Brooks, Brooks, do you mean Helen Brooks.” A bead of perspiration appeared on the man’s forehead. “Sorry I thought you said Ellen. Yes, Helen Brooks is a client of mine. Why do you ask?” The two officers exchanged a quick glance.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Carver enquired, starring at the man hard.

  “Let’s see.” He tapped the spacebar on the keyboard to wake up the computer and accessed his diary. “It was two weeks ago last Tuesday. She’s making good progress and so I’ve moved her to a monthly appointment. Her next visit will be on the Tuesday after next.” he looked up.

  “May I take a look?” said Carver walking towards the computer. “Do you have all your appointments on here?” Williams nodded and pointed to the diary software, inviting Carver to view the screen. Carver checked the entries for the current week, but there was no mention of Helen Brooks. That part was true at least. He looked at the entries for the previous morning, the morning of the murder. “Where were you first thing yesterday morning Mr Williams?”

  “I was here. We open at 8am to allow clients to visit us before they go to work. Trying to respond to our customers’ needs.” he added trying to lighten the mood.

  “Your first appointment was at 8:30 according to this.” Carver looked him in the eyes again and the man looked away, starting to fuss with a towel left over from the previous session.

  “If it says so.”

  “A Mrs Cartwright, arthritis of the wrists.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Mary Cartwright.”

  “Can you explain why her name is also in another slot at 12:45?”

  He looked down at the screen. “Oh, that’s right, sorry, she rang and moved the appointment. I must have forgotten to delete the original one.” The two officers looked at each other.

  “So if we call her, she would be able to confirm that would she?” Moss asked, pulling out her mobile and tapping the screen, ready to read the number written next to the diary entry.

  “No wait, sorry. No yesterday was my fault. I had car trouble and got in late. I called my assistant and she moved the booking for me.” The man was clearly panicking now. His face was reddening and more beads of sweat were lining up on his hairline ready to race down his forehead.

  Carver nodded at Moss, who walked back into the reception area. She closed the door, but Carver could hear the murmur of their quick conversation. After a short while, Moss returned and shook her head at Carver. He stood.

  “I think we need to have a longer conversation under caution Mr Williams. Would you mind accompanying us back to Gloucester Police Station?”

  Williams looked shocked. “What’s this about? Am I under arrest for something?”

  “No, you are not under arrest, you are free to go at any time, but we would appreciate you helping us with our enquiries. We are investigating the death of a patient of yours, Mrs Helen Brooks.” The man looked shocked but agreed and after making an excuse to his assistant, allowed himself to be escorted by the two officers back to their car. Carver had cautioned him in case he said anything on the way, but he sat in silence for the whole journey.

  Once at the station, Williams exercised his right to have a solicitor present so it was another hour before Carver and Moss walked into the interview room to talk to their suspect. The room was equipped with video monitoring which was being recorded onto the stations network as well as being relayed back to the incident room. The DCI settled himself down at the big table next to Goldberg and they watched with interest, each caressing a mug of coffee.

  The interview started gently, covering how Williams had known the victim. He filled them in on the details of her injury and how he had been treating her for over six months. He denied anything other than a purely professional relationship. Moss had pressed him on this but he as adamant. When it came to his movements the previous morning, he seamed to have got his story straight. He glanced at his solicitor before he started talking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said “I was a bit flustered before. I was running late yesterday morning because my car died on the way in. It took me a while to get it started again. Realising I was not going to make it, my receptionist called the client and moved the appointment for me.”

  “So what time did you leave your house?” Moss asked.

  “The normal time, 7:15. I broke down just outside Newent. I think it’s the coil. It’s an old car you see. I waggled the HT leads, sprayed some WD40 about and after about an hour, got it going again. I eventually got in just after nine.”

  “When we first spoke, you said you had telephoned your assistant to tell her you would be late. But she says she never received a call from you.” Carver paused for a response.

  “I tried to but I couldn’t get a signal. She must have realised I was not going to make it and re-arranged the a
ppointment for me.”

  They continued to go over the details for a further twenty minutes before Carver paused the questioning.

  “The problem we have is that our victim was murdered just at the time that you were having your car trouble. While we were waiting we checked with our colleagues from Traffic but they didn’t receive any reports of broken down vehicles, so we can’t corroborate your story. Would you give us permission to inspect the car and also take a look around your house? We would like to be able to rule you out as quickly as possible if we can.”

  Williams looked across to his solicitor who shrugged and nodded, so Williams agreed to the request and handed over his keys. Carver switched off the tape. It was agreed that Moss would accompany him to collect his car with a CSI officer and that another team would set off with Carver to Williams’ house in Ledbury.

  It was early evening by the time the three police cars rolled into the quiet cul-de-sac where Sean Williams lived. The plan was for the forensic team to enter the house and carry out a thorough search of the inside and gardens. Hunter was with them and would secure and complete a preliminary examination of any IT and computer equipment. Once Moss arrived, she and three uniformed officers would carry out some house to house questioning of the neighbours. Carver would manage the scene.

  As soon as they parked, Carver could see the curtains starting to twitch. He felt sorry for the small group of children that had been playing a ball game in the road at the end of the cul-de-sac. Their parents would soon drag them indoors. That was actually one of the things he liked about this part of the country. Back in London, the housing estate kids would have taunted them, acting all macho and their parents would have looked on without a care.

  Williams’ house was a medium sized semi. It was in reasonable condition but the grass looked like it needed cut and it was a while since anyone had done any weeding in the scruffy flower bed by the front door. They knocked, without expecting an answer and when none was heard, let themselves in. For the second time in as many days, Carver was squeezed into a white coverall and hair net. Hunter followed him in and they both donned the matching booties. Carver noted that Hunter did not look half as ridiculous in his coverall as he did in his. He resolved to lose some weight, but not to the extent that Hunter had. Since the man’s divorce two years earlier, he had taken solace at the gym. He trained nearly every day and had even completed an Ironman triathlon the previous month. He looked great, but Carver knew that something was obviously broken inside.

  After a quick tour of the house, the team set to work collecting hair and potential DNA samples from each room. They searched it thoroughly and even took swabs from the sink and bath u-bends. They found neither evidence of co-habitation nor of a regular female visitor. There was no woman’s underwear in any of the draws and no spare toothbrush in the bathroom. The place was a bachelor pad. They had half expected to find a dungeon equipped with leather outfits, whips and chains, but they found nothing to link the Japanese love rope to the house.

  Hunter found one desktop PC. It was on a small computer table in a corner of the living room. When he powered it up it logged in straight away with no password. He checked the browsing history and smiled. “Got ya!” He looked across at Carver who joined him as he clicked open the online mail service. Like Helen’s laptop it logged into the John Smith email account automatically.

  “He’s our man then.” agreed Carver patting Hunter on the shoulder. “At least for the affair anyway. Bag it up and then you can take it apart back at base.”

  “I’ve just a few things to look at first, then I’ll get it into the van.” He clicked away at the mouse. Accessing pages of data that meant nothing to Carver before photographing the screen with his phone and switching it off.

  “I’m just going to retrieve his wireless router as well. It’ll tell me if Helen Brooks’s laptop has been used here.” he said, heading into the hallway in search of the router.

  Outside, Moss had just returned with Williams. He had been allowed back into the house, obviously highly embarrassed as he looked around the cul-de-sac before rushing indoors, not wanting to make eye contact with his inquisitive neighbours.

  Moss brought herself up to date with the house to house. The story they were telling the concerned residents was that there was no cause for concern. Their neighbour was simply helping them with their enquiries and it was all quite routine. They were interested in three main aspects of his behaviour. Firstly to put them at their ease, they were asked about his behaviour generally, then whether they had noticed any regular female visitors and finally whether anyone had seen him leave for work the previous day.

  The overwhelming response was that the man was quiet and generally a good neighbour. Many of them reported that after his wife had died, he had let the house go a bit, but that more recently he seemed to have turned the corner. The neighbour who lived next door but one reported having played squash with him a couple of times, stating that he managed the league that played at the sports centre round the corner. “He was in a different class though, I didn’t have to try hard to let him beat me, put it that way.” He had smiled thinking back. “He’s incredibly fit.”

  It was one of the uniformed officers who struck gold however. Moss was collating statements, sat in the front of one of the cars when the young officer almost skipped over to her. Moss considered herself as still young at 28 but how this guy was not still in school baffled her. “I think you will want to come and speak to Mrs Yates.” He said excitedly. “Number 47.” He pointed to the house opposite Williams’ as she got out of the car to join him.

  The young PC introduced her. “Mrs Yates, this is Detective Sergeant Moss, do you mind if we come in and you can tell her what you saw yesterday morning.” The woman looked surprised, she was a little younger than Moss and was standing in the doorway with a toddler on her hip. The child was sucking his thumb and looked tired, almost as tired as Mrs Yates Moss thought.

  Once inside she repeated what she had told the PC. “Your colleague was asking if I’d seen Sean leave for work yesterday.” she started. “Well, Joshua here is teething, aren’t you?” She looked down at the infant and touched his nose. The boy giggled and then quickly snuggled back into her neck. “He woke up and was crying, so we were looking out of the window, weren’t we?” She was speaking in a high voice and the baby talk was already beginning to annoy Moss. “We saw Sean get into his car and drive off, didn’t we? I wonder where he’s going so early, we said.”

  “And what time was that Mrs Yates?”

  “It must have been at about a quarter past six.” the woman said in a relatively normal voice before once again lifting it an octave. “Because Mummy saw the clock when she got out of bed and it said six oh five, but Daddy’s alarm hadn’t gone off yet, had it?” She shook her son gently but he ignored her.

  “When was the alarm set for?” Moss asked.

  “It goes of at 6:20. But you’re normally up by then aren’t you, my little pest.” She smiled at Moss in that way that new mothers have, a slightly smug look designed to invite words of praise of their perfect offspring, or at the very least an ‘Ahh’.

  Moss was having none of it though. She didn’t think she had a maternal bone in her body. If anything she felt sorry for the woman. “That’s very helpful.” She said. “Would you mind just signing an official statement to that effect?” she started writing on her pad without looking up.

  It was gone ten in the evening by the time the teams finished and drove back to Gloucester. Carver and Moss shared a car and brought each other up to speed. Carver put in a call to the DCI, partly to update him, but also to make sure he knew how late people were working so that he didn’t gripe when he got the overtime bill at the end of the month.

  Chapter 8

  Although he arrived at his desk just after six thirty on the Saturday morning, Carver arranged the briefing for ten, partly to allow everyone to collate the data from the previous evening’s activities and partly because it w
as a Saturday and his team had already had two late nights in a row. He used the time to go over the post-mortem report, which the pathologist had emailed over as promised the previous evening.

  There were no surprises following his visit to the pathology lab. The toxicology had come back clean. No drugs were detected and only trace amounts of alcohol, no more than might be expected if the victim had had a glass of wine with dinner the previous evening. The stomach contents merely confirmed that Helen’s last breakfast had consisted of an upmarket brand of muesli with a natural plain yogurt.

  As Reid had reported, the love rope was confirmed as the murder weapon as the trace blood and DNA embedded in the fibres was a match for the victim’s. The markings on her neck were also a match for the weave of the rope. No other DNA, semen or blood was found, either on the body or anywhere else in the car.

  He was about to get a second coffee when Hunter rang him and suggested he join him in his lab. “I think you are going to want to see this.” he said with his typical level of excitement.

  Carver made his way into the small lab and around the desk with the large twin monitors. The desktop computer they had taken from Williams’ house was on the desk, its side panels removed to reveal the dusty workings inside. Hunter had removed the hard drive and connected it directly to a box on his desk.

  “So, the first thing is, this is the machine that we pinged Thursday night. It has the corresponding MAC address and the browser history confirms he visited the mail site at the time I got the data packet. He also went back in yesterday morning, although there was no new activity.”

  “Ok, that’s good. It will certainly give us something to talk about when I re-interview him later.” Carver smiled and Hunter matched his expression.

  “That’s not all though.” Hunter brought up a list of domain names on the screen. “These are some of the other sites he has visited recently.” Carver could tell from the domain names what sort of sites they were. Hunter clicked on one at random. The welcome page of www.hotbondageslaves.com assaulted the screen in all its glory. “That’s the designed purpose for the rope you found.” said Hunter nodding to the large graphic at the top of the page and taking a sip of sports drink from the bottle on his desk.