The Death Messenger

by Mari Hannah

  ‘Look at the time on the clock,’ he said.

  ‘Eleven fifty-one,’ Grace said. ‘So what?’

  ‘Compare it to the DVD counter.’

  ‘Eleven, fifty-eight – it’s fast by seven minutes.’

  ‘And thirty-six seconds, if we wait,’ Ryan said triumphantly. He didn’t need Technical Support to prove his point. ‘I’d like to see Sophia try to wriggle out of this one.’

  O’Neil reached forward, placed her hands over his ears and kissed the top of his head.

  63

  O’Neil offered Ryan the interview with their prime suspect, if he wanted it. No chance would he turn it down. There was, without doubt, enough evidence to convict: DNA, the camcorder, reams and reams of circumstantial evidence, all of which amounted to a watertight case. Despite the fact that Montgomery was refusing to speak, they had to go through the motions of questioning her.

  Ryan cautioned her, making sure she understood that she’d been arrested and brought to Newcastle on suspicion of five murders: Paul Dean, Lord Trevathan (Leonard Maxwell), Michael Tierney, James Fraser and Laura Stone. Sophia didn’t answer to her name or give her date of birth. She sat passively beside her solicitor, staring across the table, hands loosely in her lap.

  O’Neil wasn’t wrong . . .

  Sophia was creepy.

  ‘I’d like to take things chronologically.’ Ryan sat forward, elbows on the table, Montgomery’s file in front of him. ‘Do stop me if you need to take a break. We’ll probably need one too. We’ve been working very hard on this case. We didn’t find your brother’s computer, but I suspect you removed it from his flat. Actually, we don’t need it because our technical support unit has examined the chat room he used to frequent under the username: Shdwman.’

  Ryan opened the file.

  ‘On the tenth of January 2013, Shdwman (Mark) had a fascinating conversation with another chat room user with a similar profile who called himself dude1980. We now know that dude1980 was in fact your co-accused, Daniel Spencer. Spencer was a predator, not a chat-buddy to Mark. I thought I’d better make that distinction. I’m guessing you already know that, because you were doing some grooming of your own, weren’t you?’

  Montgomery’s solicitor sighed. ‘Is there a point to this line of questioning, Detective? If so, I’m not seeing it.’

  ‘As I said to your client on the phone on Christmas Eve, we have an eyewitness who identified her loitering outside the British Embassy in Copenhagen (Denmark) at around three o’clock on Friday the twenty-sixth of July 2013.’ Ryan waited for the brief to stop scribbling. ‘Ms Montgomery was in the company of Daniel Spencer, who has since been identified by the same witness. This was just two days prior to the disappearance of Ambassador Paul Dean who was found dead on July thirtieth.’

  More note-taking.

  Ryan had eyes only for Montgomery. ‘Daniel Spencer is talking to us, by the way. He’s in the next room with my colleague. It might help your defence if you follow his lead.’ Ryan winced, shook his head, a sorry face. ‘Loyalty is not his specialist subject.’

  She didn’t flinch.

  ‘We also found, within the chat room, a conversation between Spencer and a woman calling herself brokenkiss. This is a complicated one, so listen carefully. The woman calling herself brokenkiss claimed that her father went to see a solicitor in order to stop his wife from having a second child.’ Ryan switched focus to Sophia’s legal counsel. ‘To make this absolutely clear, the child she was referring to was Mark Montgomery, Sophia’s late brother.’ Ryan was back with the accused. ‘But you know that, don’t you, Sophia, because you are brokenkiss.’ He paused for a response and got nothing in return. ‘I’m getting there, I promise you. This lawyer didn’t manage to swing a court order, despite being smart enough to eventually become Scotland’s second highest judge, Lord Trevathan, whose body we found floating in the River Tay on December ninth. How am I doing?’

  Montgomery didn’t nod or shake her head. She didn’t appear stressed or worried. No body language of any kind on display. She was far too cool a customer for that.

  O’Neil glanced at him: Must try harder.

  ‘You moved his body from the folly at huge risk. I can see why you did it. It’s such a popular beauty spot and you didn’t want anyone to find him before Police Scotland received your DVD. That wasn’t part of your plan, was it? Your message was more important than the individuals concerned. I know this, because most killers dispose of victims to get rid of evidence. The body is, after all, a silent witness. You did the opposite. I have a theory about that. I think you see yourself as someone with right on her side, someone with a serious point to make – isn’t that your endgame, Sophia? To make us all sit up and take notice. To send a clear message that you would and have been punishing those with an opposing point of view, blaming them for not supporting your cause. You said as much on the footage you sent. They deserved it, were the words you used in one form or another, to justify your actions.’

  ‘My client doesn’t speak,’ the brief said. ‘How could she possibly have told you that?’

  ‘With respect, we all know that her mutism is discriminatory.’ Ryan eyeballed his suspect. ‘You may as well admit it, Sophia. We have video evidence of you talking to Spencer prior to your stop and arrest on the A1. Some of the vehicles that passed you in the outside lane were ours, a covert unit doing a job on you. You’re not the only one with a plan. Before pulling you over, firearms officers saw and heard you yelling at Spencer to put his foot down. But I’ll come on to that later . . .’

  Montgomery feigned boredom.

  ‘Do you have anything to say?’

  She remained silent.

  ‘Do you really think the people you killed were in the wrong? If so, you should think again. It certainly wasn’t so in the case of Mr Tierney. Remember him? Nice man on the end of the line the night you threatened to throw yourself under a London tube train. He offered to help, didn’t he? But nothing came of it. Michael Tierney didn’t deserve to die, Sophia. In fact, he was so shaken by your call, he resigned his post that very night. Of course, you didn’t know that he’d referred you on to Social Services. Why should you? His email’ – Ryan pushed a sheet of paper across the table – ‘was never acted upon. It wasn’t his fault, Sophia. He did everything he could for you. I want you to go to prison knowing that.’

  She was like ice, nothing touching her.

  ‘Let’s move on to Laura Stone, then. She didn’t like Mark, did she? She wouldn’t sign him up for her documentary, and you killed her for denying him a voice. Do you think he’s at peace now because of it? I doubt that very much. I suspect he found out that you were using his computer. He may have been angry not to get his fifteen minutes of fame on TV, but I suspect he got over it. What he couldn’t bear to live with was the guilt of what you were doing. Isn’t that right? I suspect that’s why he rocked himself off.’

  The solicitor peered over the top of his specs. ‘Evidence, DS Ryan.’

  Ryan handed him the post-mortem report without interrupting his flow. ‘For the purposes of the tape I am showing Sophia Montgomery and her solicitor a post-mortem report on Mark Montgomery.’

  Sophia shifted in her seat – she wasn’t expecting that.

  Unable to help herself, O’Neil joined in. ‘DS Ryan is a clever detective, Sophia. Remember James Fraser, the nurse you killed in Whitley Bay. He didn’t deserve it either, did he? DS Ryan was the one who worked out that he was an innocent bystander, a nurse who happened to jog past your kill site at the wrong moment and was killed for it. At first, DS Ryan was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one, because even he couldn’t believe that you were callous enough to kill a man who hadn’t hurt you in some way. You’ve left his mother a broken woman. The only thing DS Ryan failed to spot in this whole affair was the assumption that your co-accused was ill, until we realised that he’s just a drugged-up little thug who likes hurting people. I have to hand it to you: keeping him supplied was a g
reat control mechanism. Where did you keep his stash?’

  Sophia crossed her legs and let out a bored sigh.

  ‘Carry on, DS Ryan.’

  ‘We searched your house,’ Ryan said. ‘Nice place. I know exactly where you were standing when you called me on Saturday the twenty-first of December, when you told me to call you Marge.’ Ryan held up the evidence bag containing the Simpsons mouse pad.

  The brief glanced at his client.

  Sophia ignored him.

  ‘Or maybe you were sitting in front of that expensive computer of yours.’ Ryan’s eyes were on Montgomery now. ‘You love gadgetry and technology, don’t you, Sophia? I bet you watch Click on the BBC. Great show. I’ve got a good one for you, if you’re into that.’ He flicked through the file in front of him, removed another sheet of paper and then looked up. ‘Ever heard of egocentric video analysis?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘No? I’m not surprised. It was a new one on me too. Well, let me tell you that video technology has moved on apace in recent years, enabling us to ID certain characteristics of filmmakers from biometric signatures. Imagine my surprise when I was told that it’s possible to extrapolate the height of the camera from the ground, even the gait of a person who might wish to hide their identity in criminal cases. Isn’t that brilliant? Data can pinpoint with high accuracy the optical flow associated with such a person, each individual producing a unique pattern, much like a fingerprint. I reckon it’s fairly accurate in your case. What do you think?’

  ‘Five eight?’ Sophia’s brief almost scoffed. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Detective. If my googling skills are up to scratch, although that height represents less than five per cent of British women, may I remind you that there are thirty-plus million of them. Can we move on?’

  ‘Certainly. We found the video you made in Spencer’s house, Sophia? The one you coerced him into making in exchange for drugs. He said you tried to upload it to YouTube and got knocked back on grounds of hateful content and threats. Shame. All that wasted effort. Nice that you got to star in your own movie though – a speaking part too!’

  The suspect was done for – they both knew it.

  There was a game of poker going on between accuser and accused. ‘You should’ve got rid of your camcorder, Sophia. The counter on it is running fast by seven minutes and thirty-six seconds. Remember when you were filming in James Fraser’s house? The discrepancy between the timing on your camcorder and his digital alarm clock is precisely that. What do you think the odds are of two pieces of equipment being that distance apart, down to the nanosecond?’

  The solicitor lifted his pen, fixing Ryan with a stare. ‘That doesn’t amount to proof that she was there.’

  ‘Her camcorder was, so was her DNA and James Fraser’s firearms were found in the boot of the vehicle she was arrested in, along with Ambassador Dean’s wallet. Spencer is a thief as well as an addict.’

  There was anger in Montgomery’s eyes.

  ‘In my book, that is deeply incriminating evidence,’ Ryan said. ‘We’ll let a judge decide, shall we? Oh, I forgot. I’m told that the tread pattern on a pair of her shoes matches the footprints we found in James Fraser’s flat. She did her best to clean them up, but I’m certain we’ll be able to prove conclusively that his blood is on them. Then there’s the small matter of your photograph album. It’s not looking good, Sophia.’

  Montgomery was losing it.

  ‘I don’t suppose you care much, do you?’ Ryan said. ‘You’re dying anyway. Forgive me if that sounds callous. The disease you inherited is nasty. Ordinarily, you’d have my sympathy. It must have been tough for you and your brother as kids, having a rare genetic disorder. Your mother knew about Sauer’s, didn’t she, and yet she put her needs above yours – and you hated her for it. You decided to play judge and jury. You killed her, just as you killed all the others. Granted, that’s not what the coroner said – and now she’s been cremated we’ll never be able to prove it. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.’

  ‘Did anyone ever tell you how much you resemble your mum?’ Ryan opened the file and took out a blown-up copy of the photograph O’Neil had found in Sophia’s house. The likeness was astonishing. ‘You must’ve liked her once.’

  Sophia wiped a tear away.

  ‘Your mother didn’t agree with genetic testing, did she? She thought it labelled people. Oh yes, I know all about that. You go with what you’re given, wasn’t that her philosophy? She didn’t care about you or your quality of life. All she wanted was to give birth. I’m not sure about my guv’nor . . .’ Ryan glanced at O’Neil. ‘But I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve seen a few life sentences handed down in my time. Your mother may as well have worn a black cap.’

  ‘She was evil!’ Montgomery said.

  ‘No, Sophia. You are evil. She was, at worst, misguided.’

  64

  It was rare for Ryan to feel sorry for a killer. A small part of him had done so during the latter part of a murder investigation that had led him in several directions before the truth was finally revealed. From a young age, Sophia Montgomery had lived with a death sentence, her vicious crimes motivated by hatred of a mother who’d put her own needs above all else. Faced with the same dilemma, Ryan knew he’d suppress his wish to father children.

  But that was easy for him to say.

  Still, a child’s well-being must come first. No one asked to be born. Not Rebecca Swift, certainly not Sophia Montgomery. She’d suffered twice over: from the emotional fallout of being told she had Sauer’s; from having to watch her younger brother go through a living hell. Whether her mother had told them that terrible truth high above the Filey shoreline, detectives would never know. Ryan would like to think that Sophia hadn’t meant her mother to go over the edge. That her fall from the cliffs had been a tragic accident brought about by a kid’s outrage, but deep down he didn’t believe it.

  She was evil!

  Those three short words were the only ones he’d heard Sophia speak, delivered with such venom that any sympathy he might have had for her evaporated. The fact that she’d spend the time she had left on this earth incarcerated was of no real consequence to either of them. Ryan felt sure that she was already in a prison of her own making.

  O’Neil had taken the view that the media coverage surrounding Laura Stone’s documentary had been the flashpoint, fuelling a new and explosive anger to the point where Montgomery couldn’t stop. Bizarrely, she would get her way. Her story had already raised the profile of an issue she felt strongly about. She and her accomplice, Daniel Spencer, were splashed across every national newspaper, a situation that would remain until the two were indicted and handed a life sentence in a court of law.

  Anja Pedersen had been Ryan and O’Neil’s solitary eyewitness. Without her sharp eye and attention to detail, Ryan was sure the investigation into the unlawful killing of four British citizens, at home and abroad, would have gone on longer – for months, possibly even years. He was grateful to the Danish librarian whose testimony would be pivotal to the case. Set to play a leading role in her own crime story, Pedersen would dine out on it for the rest of her life.

  The cell door slammed shut on Sophia Montgomery. As campaigns go, hers had been an unprecedented success. After Ryan had done his stuff, she was rushed to court for a bail hearing, the car mobbed by waiting journalists keen to take her picture. She shooed away an offer to cover her face. Now she’d been caught, there was no point hiding. She craved the attention. As she stood in the dock while the Crown Prosecutor objected to her release in the most strenuous terms, she listened patiently. There was a moment when it looked like she might go free, but when the sitting magistrates were invited to clear the court, she knew she was in for a treat. A video, her video, appeared on the TV monitor in seconds, shocking a small but critical audience. Having finally made her screen debut, she was done. When magistrates remanded her in custody, she thanked them politely; maybe now people would think twice. Mark
was gone. What else was there?

  There was a final bit of housekeeping for Ryan and O’Neil. A murder file was being written up and submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service – someone else’s problem for an elite unit like theirs. The panic alarm had been removed from the home of James Fraser’s heartbroken mother. She, like Robert Parker and relatives of Lord Trevathan and Ambassador Paul Dean, had now been given permission to bury their dead. The search would go on for the body of Laura Stone. It was Ryan’s wish to return the brilliant documentary maker to her loved ones in the Ardèche region of France.

  She was out there somewhere.

  Ryan scanned the waves crashing onto the shoreline within sight of his tiny Northumberland hideaway, willing the sea to play its part, praying that storm-force winds now battering the region would bring Laura home. Newman and Grace arrived, hand in hand, happy to have spent their first Christmas together as man and wife. They cared less that they had been working. Neither was ready to abandon their investigative skills just yet. Their considerable expertise was vital to the unit – that was the word according to Grace. She’d practically begged O’Neil to take them on permanently.

  Whether she would or not was anyone’s guess.

  Caroline too had played her part. She and O’Neil were approaching from the south, Bob trundling along beside them, the historic remains of Dunstanburgh Castle in the distance. The two women appeared to be sharing a joke. Ryan hoped his twin was being discreet.

  Suggesting they walk back to the cottage, Grace and Newman linked arms with Caroline. As the three walked off, Bob duly followed. O’Neil made no move to follow. She stared at Ryan, hands in pockets, hair flying in the wind – more alive than he’d seen her in weeks.