Under a Silent Moon

by Elizabeth Haynes

  “We’ve had several crucial pieces of intel in the last twenty-four hours. It’s all incorporated on the charts, which Jason’s going to go through in a second, but first I’ve got a summary of the recent developments.

  “Number one: Brian Fletcher-Norman recalls having an argument with his wife on the night of the murder of Polly Leuchars. He believes she went out some time after midnight and returned in a state of hysteria. He didn’t realize why, believed she was drunk, left her and went to bed.

  “Number two: We have some recent source intel on Nigel Maitland, suggesting that his latest venture is a people-smuggling operation which he is conducting with the McDonnell brothers. There is a 5x5x5 to indicate that a shipment was received at the farm on the night of thirty-first October. As we all know, Nigel prefers to keep his legitimate business well away from anything dodgy, so there must have been a special reason for this to take place at the farm, if the report is accurate.

  “Number three: A friend of Mrs. Fletcher-Norman, Lorna Newman, confirms that Barbara was depressed before the murder. Mrs. Newman states she had a telephone conversation with Barbara at around nine thirty on thirty-first October. Barbara had just been badly let down by a man she had been conducting an affair with—more about that in a minute. When Mrs. Newman spoke to Barbara she described her as drunk and hysterical.

  “Number four: Tac team has recovered a suitcase from bushes near the car park area of the quarry, which has Barbara Fletcher-Norman’s fingerprints on it. It seems likely she had a suitcase packed ready to run away with O’Toole. The suitcase had been thrown into the undergrowth and fingerprints wiped from the handle.

  “Number five: CSI suggests that the shot put, which we believe is the murder weapon for Polly Leuchars, was thrown over the edge of the quarry after the vehicle went over. Likely time frame for this is early Thursday morning. This means it’s pretty much impossible that the shot put was in the car, and also that Barbara could not have thrown it into the quarry herself.

  “Number six: According to Mrs. Newman, Mrs. Fletcher-Norman had been saving money in preparation for leaving her husband. The man she had been seeing seems to have absconded with this money on the day of Polly’s murder, leaving Mrs. Fletcher-Norman particularly distressed. The man, Liam O’Toole, has not been seen since. Mrs. Newman estimates that the money amounts to several thousand pounds. We’ve been trying to trace O’Toole, but no luck so far.”

  She paused for breath. There were whispers of conversation in the room, but most of the group were giving her their direct attention. “Any questions so far? Right, then—Jason, can you take us through the charts?”

  “For sure,” he said. “Let’s start with the timeline.” A new image clicked on, a series of interconnected lines. One for Barbara now, one for Brian, and one for Polly.

  “There are a few significant changes on here now that we’ve had more information from Brian and from Lorna Newman. Brian indicates that he heard Barbara making a phone call. We might assume this is the call she made to Lorna, but we will need phone records to check. The billing has come back, but only this morning and I haven’t had a chance to work through it yet.”

  He indicated a highlighted area from ten until midnight. “Here’s where we have a problem. Brian says he came home from working late between eight and nine in the evening and didn’t go out again. He had a drink, read the paper, argued with his wife. Then he went and had a bath, fell asleep for a while, and then came downstairs to lock up. He says he bumped into Barbara, who had come in via the back door. Then he went back upstairs to bed.”

  He pressed a key on the laptop and Lorna Newman’s information overlaid Brian’s and Barbara’s timelines.

  “Mrs. Newman states that during her phone call with Barbara, which took place at about nine thirty, Barbara said that Brian was ‘out somewhere with his fancy woman.’ According to Brian’s statement, he was sitting downstairs, reading the paper at the time.”

  “Hold on,” Alastair Whitmore interrupted. “Maybe she simply didn’t hear him come in?”

  “I’ve been in the Barn,” came a voice from the back. Jane Phelps. “You have to really bang that front door to make it shut. If he’d come in, she would have heard him. Definitely.”

  “He said he shouted up the stairs when he got home and she didn’t answer,” Lou interjected.

  “Why would he lie about that?” said Andy.

  “Because he was out with Polly?”

  “She was at the Lemon Tree, remember? She was stood up.”

  “What time was she there until? Anyone know?”

  Jason pointed at the timeline. “She left between eleven thirty and eleven forty-five, according to Ivan Rollinson.”

  A pause, then Lou said, “We’ve got a medical disclosure form in place now; waiting for the results on that. We’re looking to give Brian a slightly more robust interview once the medics have given the go-ahead. I think there were some significant gaps in what he told me yesterday. Right. Thanks, Jason. What’s next?”

  “The second major issue we need to clear up is right over here . . .” He scrolled over to the far right of the timeline, indicated the early hours of Thursday morning. “The vehicle went over the cliff some time after the rain started, which was about nine on Wednesday thirty-first. The PM on Barbara Fletcher-Norman concurs with Brian’s statement that she must have gone out again some time after midnight. The car was discovered by the witness at about seven thirty on Thursday morning. The scene was secured at about nine fifteen.”

  “Surely that means Barbara Fletcher-Norman couldn’t have been Polly’s killer?” Ali Whitmore said. “Surely that must rule her out?”

  “It doesn’t rule her out of the murder,” Jane said. “It just rules her out of throwing the shot put over the edge, that’s all.”

  “Why would someone else throw it over? Where the hell did she leave it?”

  Jane shrugged. “She might have still done the killing. Maybe she had an accomplice.”

  “Or she left the shot put somewhere where it would implicate someone else?”

  “Such as . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. Brian, maybe?”

  Lou raised her hands. “Right, everyone. Let’s try and keep this ordered, Jason needs to finish up. Then we can talk about it till the cows come home. Jane?” This last directed to Jane Phelps, who was muttering something to Ali Whitmore at the back.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” she said, and Lou gave Jason the nod to continue.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’m almost done.” He moved the timeline forward to the discovery of the suitcase thought to belong to Barbara Fletcher-Norman. “So—this suitcase. We need to get a positive identification that it belonged to Barbara, but the only person that can realistically do that is Brian. You might want to wait for that. If we assume for now that it is Barbara’s, then we need to consider when it was packed, and where it came from. It’s possible that she’d packed it that afternoon to go away with Liam O’Toole, and forgot it was there until she got to the quarry. Then, for whatever reason, she took it out of the boot and threw it into the bushes before she went over the edge—”

  “Wiping her prints off the handle first,” Jane interjected. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “No,” Jason said, “it’s a valid point.”

  “There were gloves on the passenger seat,” Lou said. “Red leather ladies’ gloves. Maybe she was wearing them when she got to the quarry. Maybe her hands were cold. Maybe she used them when she threw the suitcase into the bushes, and then took them off before she went over the edge.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” someone said from the back.

  “Of course, the biggest unanswered question is why she would take the suitcase out of the boot at all,” Jason said. “But if she had gloves on, it’s possible that any prints on the handle could have been obscured. So we still don’t know whether she threw the case away. Let’s not forget she was pretty intoxicated. She was also in a state of distress. Irrational behavior is pretty m
uch a given, right before she committed suicide.”

  “I don’t think she did,” Jane said quietly. “I know she was depressed, having been let down so badly by Liam O’Toole. But I’m really not comfortable with the logistics of her driving all the way to the quarry, through the pouring rain, when she was that drunk. And then, for some reason, throwing the suitcase away before going over the edge. And then someone else getting rid of the shot put.”

  “You’re saying it was an accident?” This from Barry Holloway.

  “I’m saying someone pushed the car over.”

  “Is that possible?”

  The debate was interrupted by Hamilton’s mobile phone bringing the Exorcist theme loud and clear into the equation. “Sorry,” he muttered, and headed for the door at the back. “DI Hamilton. Yes, hold on.”

  Meanwhile the room erupted with people interjecting on similar cases they’d experienced in the past, cases involving automatic cars and manual ones, the degree of the incline, the lack of a barrier or a fence between the car park and the edge of the quarry.

  Lou raised her voice above the noise. “People, can we simply review the evidence for a moment? The evidence, not speculation. We know from forensics that Barbara Fletcher-Norman was inside Yonder Cottage when Polly was dead or dying from her wounds. We don’t have any other identifiers for any other person around the time of death. So Barbara was definitely there. And the murder weapon ended up in the same place she did.”

  “Yeah,” said Jason, “but after she was dead.”

  “Then we’re looking for an accomplice?” Jane Phelps said.

  “Hold on, Jane—we have evidence she was there, not evidence that she did it.”

  “Same thing,” Jane muttered.

  There was a pause.

  “Right,” Jason said. “I’m done.”

  “Thank you, Jason,” Lou said. “Barry, can we look at nominals next? Les, we’ll come on to the CCTV in a minute.”

  Mutters from the room.

  “Right, then,” Barry Holloway began. “I’m expecting a bit of discussion around these, along the lines of things we were talking about. Just to be clear, these are nominals we’re interested in for the murder of Polly Leuchars. We’re not talking about Barbara going over the edge of the quarry.” He gave a nod to Jason, who obligingly clicked over to a new slide.

  Nominals

  1. Barbara Fletcher-Norman

  2. Nigel Maitland

  3. Brian Fletcher-Norman

  4. Flora Maitland

  5. Unknown Female (A)—“Suzanne”

  6. Unknown Female (B)—CCTV image

  “We have circumstantial evidence linking all of these people to the victim and the crime. Barbara, obviously. We have the forensic evidence linking her to the scene, and the murder weapon linked to the location of her death, even if it definitely wasn’t her that threw it over the edge of the quarry. In addition, we have a pretty strong motive in that Barbara was convinced that Polly was having an affair with her husband. Despite her own marital infidelity, it seems from Lorna Newman’s statement that she was more upset by this affair than by previous ones because of Polly’s proximity to their home address.

  “Secondly, Nigel Maitland. We have had intelligence that he had had an affair with Polly. We have forensic evidence that he had been upstairs in Yonder Cottage, but since he is the owner of the property and technically her landlord, we cannot assume anything from this. We have intel to suggest that Nigel’s activities have moved closer to home recently, and in particular that he took delivery of some illegal immigrants at the farm on the night of thirty-first October. It’s possible that Polly became mixed up in this, either as a witness or as a participant, and that she became dangerous to the criminal operation as a result. We know from an ANPR capture that Nigel Maitland’s car was in town at the same time as Polly during that day, and we have CCTV footage showing Polly meeting someone—more on that in a minute. Seems possible this could be Nigel.

  “Thirdly, Brian Fletcher-Norman. His daughter has confirmed that he told her he had had an affair with Polly, but he has denied this to us on two occasions. We have forensics linking him to the downstairs at Yonder Cottage, but again he may have had legitimate cause to visit the cottage as he took riding lessons with Polly. There is nothing to indicate the forensics there are recent. We have a witness statement suggesting that a woman matching Polly’s description was in a small blue vehicle in a lay-by or driveway on Cemetery Lane at about eleven thirty on the evening of thirty-first October. Having examined the layout of the Lane, it seems that, realistically, this can only be the driveway of Hayselden Barn, as the witness describes it being near to a bend. It’s possible that Polly had given Brian a lift home from somewhere, and that it was him she was arguing with. Polly’s car was a dark blue Nissan Micra, which would fit the description of the vehicle seen by the witness. If it was Brian, then there is an indication that they knew each other rather better than he has described to us, and also that on the evening Polly was killed they had some sort of disagreement or argument.”

  “It could have been Nigel in the car,” Ali said. “Don’t forget we had his fingerprints in there.”

  “Yes,” Jane said. “It could have been either of them—or someone else entirely.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Lou said. “Ivan Rollinson at the Lemon Tree said Polly left the pub no earlier than eleven thirty.”

  There was an almost-audible groan from the group. “She’s right,” said Whitmore.

  “We need to chase that up. Either one of them has the time wrong, or it’s not Polly in the car. She can’t be in two places at the same time. Sorry, Barry—carry on.”

  “Right. Well, that’s about it for Brian. The only other thing to consider is the heart attack—it came on when the officers were telling him about his wife’s body being found, but he said in the interview with the DCI that he was feeling bad when he woke up. It’s worth considering whether he had had more of a stressful night than he led us to believe.

  “Next—Flora Maitland. Another one who had a relationship with Polly. By all accounts she’s been pretty distraught following Polly’s death, but who knows how she really felt? She doesn’t have any alibi for the relevant time; she could well have gone back to Yonder Cottage to confront Polly and ended up being a bit too physical with her.”

  “Where’s the DI gone?” Lou asked suddenly. Hamilton hadn’t returned since taking the call on his mobile. There was a general shaking of heads, and she tutted with annoyance. “Anyone else want to comment on Flora?”

  Jane Phelps cleared her throat. “I don’t think it’s her, ma’am. I think she’s in bits over Polly’s death. When Sam was taking her prints at the farm, she said Flora was barely holding it together.”

  “That brings us to the woman Brian is supposed to be seeing, according to his daughter. She claims he told her he was having an affair with someone called Suzanne, who Polly had introduced him to. Suzanne had also had a relationship with Polly. Mrs. Lewis says she was asked by her father to contact this Suzanne and tell her that he was in the hospital, which she did. She knows nothing else about her.”

  “The number appears on Brian’s phone as ‘Manchester office,’ ” Jason said. “Has anyone checked to see whether she’s someone he works with?”

  “I did,” Ron Mitchell said. “The company Brian works for is a global shipping company. They don’t have an office in Manchester. Someone was going to contact their clients, subsidiaries, to check—I haven’t chased them yet. I also checked that Brian was at work that day, as he said he was. The woman I spoke to agreed he left the London office at around six thirty on Wednesday; allowing for traffic, he would have been home around eight.”

  “Was Brian asked about this Suzanne when you saw him, ma’am?” Jane asked. She was taking notes.

  Lou shook her head. “Didn’t get around to that one. Didn’t want to antagonize him, he’s got a real downer on his daughter. Every time you mention her he goes on about what a liar s
he is.”

  “He’s a charmer, isn’t he?” Jane said.

  “Yes, he is rather. Still, rest assured, it’s on the list of things we need to know once we get the medical thumbs-up.”

  Hamilton opened the door and tried to get back to his seat quietly. The room was full and he had to climb over several pairs of knees to get there, muttering “Sorry” every time.

  “Can we carry on now the DI’s back?” Lou said.

  “That’s my bit done,” Barry said. “Les has got the CCTV.”

  “Les?”

  Les Finnegan turned his attention to the laptop. “Can someone kill the lights for me, please?”

  The room was duly plunged into semidarkness. “Right, we’ve got three different files here so it’s going to take a good few minutes if you want to see the lot, but I think it’s important that you do.”

  The first file loaded and the image of the high street, the bench in the bottom right, filled the screen. Some of the detail was lost by projecting it to that size, but it was reasonably good quality.

  There was complete silence as the first file ran. At the end of it, someone said, “Poor old Polly. She got stood up a lot that last day, didn’t she?”

  There was a ripple of laughter.

  “Right,” Les said, loading the second file, “watch closely, this one’s really quick.”

  There was an audible leaning forward in chairs at the footage of Polly running through the shopping center, mobile phone clamped to her ear.

  “That it?” said Hamilton.

  “Nearly done. One more to see,” Les said, loading the third file.

  This time the silence lasted only a few seconds into the footage.

  “Shame about that bloody glare.”

  “Can’t see fuck all. Sorry, Boss.”

  “She’s waiting for someone,” came a voice from the back.

  “Well, duh, of course she is.”

  “Wait for it,” Les said.

  The dark-clad figure appeared from the left and Polly rushed into that embrace. When they realized they were witnessing a kiss, there was a little uncomfortable shuffling and a low wolf whistle from the back of the room.