Everyone paused at Drake’s interjection. Hayley Killeen once more glowered at him. “Mr Drake, this is the second time—”
As rudely as he could, Drake cut her off. “Oh do shut up, woman. I’m talking to the butcher not the block.” He concentrated on Rachel. “You received a text from Marc Shawforth?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Yes.”
“May we see it?”
Rachel fumbled into her bag, pulled out her mobile phone and placed it on the table. Drake invited Sam and Iris to check the phone.
At length Sam looked at Rachel. “This is from an unknown number.”
“Yes, but it was obviously from Shawforth. What, you think he wouldn’t have spare phones?”
Sam never got the chance to answer before Drake cut in. “How did Shawforth get your number?”
The simple question, which he had already posed to the police, struck Rachel like a thunderbolt. Her mouth fell open and she sat down heavily.
“I – I don’t know. I mean, that’s not my regular phone.”
Hayley Killeen also sat down. “The phone belonged to my husband. I put a pay-as-you-go SIM card in it when Rachel was released last week. The only people who know that number are me, my husband…” Her eyes narrowed on Sam, “and certain police officers.”
“You’re obviously suggesting, Mrs Killeen, that a member of the station’s crew divulged that number to Mr Shawforth?”
“If the cap fits…” Hayley trailed off with a satisfied shrug.
Chapter Forty
From the interview room, Sam and Drake made their way to the fourth floor and the canteen, where Drake indulged in tea and toast, while Sam settled for a bowl of cereal with skimmed milk, and a cup of black coffee.
“Hangover?”
“It’s you. You tired me out last night.” She yawned and chuckled. “I can think of better ways of spending the night than napping in my office chair.”
Drake gazed through the windows, across South Bay. The sun had put in an appearance, sparkling off the calm waters of the North Sea, the sky was largely clear, and the beach and harbour area were already busy with people, taking advantage of the fading embers of the summer.
Notwithstanding the ups and downs of his assignment, the previous evening with Sam had done much to bring a feeling of calm upon him, a relaxation he had rarely felt since those dark days in March when Becky…
He cut off the memory before it could fully materialise, and watched The Empress of Yorkshire chug slowly out of the harbour, following the deep channel to the inshore waters of Landshaven’s bays. He imagined himself seated in the prow, Sam alongside him, his arm strung loosely around her shoulder, savouring the fresh, sea air, the light breeze energising his city-dulled skin. It was a pleasant daydream, but unless he made a firm decision, it would remain nothing more than a fancy of his mind.
“We’re talking bent cop, aren’t we?”
Sam’s question came out of the blue, and brought him from his mental meanderings to the reality of this clean but functional dining room.
“I think so. John Jenner would be an obvious candidate, but I spoke to him yesterday, and he insists he has an alibi for the time of Walston’s murder. Speak to him, if you must, but don’t expect to get any further forward. It’s someone who is active in this station now. It has to be. How else would they get Rachel’s number to send the text?”
Sam’s face fell, and he knew what was going through her mind. A year and a half back, she had exposed her police inspector husband’s criminal activities. The ringleader of a circle of crooked police officers guilty of extortion, drugs, people, weapons trafficking, and in Don Vaughan’s case, murder, he was now serving a life sentence, thanks largely to Sam’s evidence in court, but that testimony had taken a huge toll on her; a complete physical and mental breakdown.
With hindsight and a refreshed, calmer approach to life, Drake had much to thank Vaughan for. If it were not for him, he would never have met Sam.
The same could not be said of her. The thought of dealing with another crooked police officer was carrying her back to those frightful days when she was the butt of verbal abuse from her colleagues, who insisted that Don Vaughan was only making an ‘extra pound or two’ and if he happened to murder an Asian family, so what? They were probably illegal immigrants anyway.
The episode had drained Sam’s reserves of courage to the absolute limit, and when Drake first met her, she was practically unapproachable. Was she in danger of sinking back into that quagmire of frustration and depression?
It was as if she could read his mind. “I’m sorry, Wes, but I’m seriously thinking of handing in my notice.” She did not give him the opportunity to say anything before pushing on urgently. “I can’t go through all that again. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if it’s Neville Trentham, I don’t give a hoot if it’s Hugo Farrington, I don’t care if it’s a humble community support officer. I can’t do it.”
He sympathised, and trawled his memory, seeking the kind of reinforcement exercises he had employed during those visits to Sam when she was a resident at Peace Garden. “Not even with me by your side?”
She pushed her half eaten cereal to one side, reached across the table, took his hand and played with the fingers. Strong, but soft, powerful enough to restrain her, more than capable of carrying her to that mystical realm she had visited the previous evening.
“I want more of what you gave me last night. No strings. Not yet, anyway. Just friendship and sex when we feel like it. I’ll move to Howley. I’m sure I’ll find a little job somewhere. Maybe a security guard in a department store. That way, we can be together.”
Drake chuckled. “That’s a bit of a bugger. I’d just decided to move to Landshaven.”
There was a brief silence, and they both laughed. Sam took the initiative. “All right. So I’ll take a job as a security guard in a department store here. As long as we’re together.”
He kissed her fingers. “As a security guard, you’d last about ten minutes. Face it, Sam, police work is what you’re best at. Inside a month, you’d be pining for it, and no amount of bedroom exercise with me would change that. See this through. I feel we’re very close to a solution. Stay with it. Let’s pin that bastard down. Then make your decision.”
She considered the proposition for a moment, and then nodded. “All right, but if I murder someone in a fit of rage, it’s your fault.” She made to rise, and at that moment, her mobile rang. “You see. I don’t even get any peace when I’m having breakfast.” She made the connection. “DCI Feyer.”
She listened intently for a few moments. “All right. Put him through.” There was another brief delay. “Good morning, Mr Killeen. I sent one of my sergeants to take a statement… I see. That’s why you’re ringing.”
Across the table, Drake listened intently to the one side of the conversation he could hear, trying to second-guess the reason Killeen was ringing.
“… And how did you react to that?” Sam paused again to listen to Killeen’s story. “No, sir, you have my assurance that I will handle the matter. Could you give me a brief account over the telephone, here and now, of your activities last night, and the whereabouts of Rachel Jenner?”
She made a scribbling sign towards Drake. He dipped into his pocket, came out with a pen and notebook, which he passed to her. With Killeen speaking to her, she made rapid notes.
Eventually, she asked, “And did Mrs Jenner leave you at all after she’d returned?” She listened again. “A couple of times, for a few minutes each time. Thank you, Mr Killeen. I’ll get this drafted properly, and have it sent across to you so that you can read and sign it. And thanks for bringing this to my attention.”
She killed the call, and stared pointedly at Drake. “We need to get back to my office, and we need either Iris or Hugo Farrington with us.”
***
Ten minutes later, seated in her office, Iris and Drake with her, she rang the
reception desk.
“Enright, when Larne gets back, I want you to bring him straight to my office, and I don’t mean send him, I mean escort him here. And make sure he doesn’t speak to anyone else before he gets here. Understood?”
“Very good, ma’am.”
She dropped the phone, and fixed Iris’s gaze.
“Bent cop?” the DCC asked.
Sam was unwilling to commit herself. “He could just be an idiot, but after what James Killeen has told me, we certainly need to speak to Larne.”
They did not have long to wait. After a further ten minutes, Larne entered the room, accompanied by Sergeant Enright. The younger officer did not appear particularly perturbed, but he was clearly puzzled by Enright’s presence.
Sam greeted him cheerfully. “Ah, Larne. Do you have James Killeen’s statement?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Like a dog wagging his tail, Larne handed it over.
Sam took up a pen, and read through it. At a certain point, she paused, and circled a specific phrase. Further down, she did the same again, encircling the signature at the bottom of the statement. She then passed it to Iris Mullins for her to read.
The DCC skimmed through it, and then glowered up at the young sergeant. Handing the statement to Drake, she nodded to Sam, leaving the ball in her court.
Sam focused on Larne. “You are aware that the falsification of evidence is not merely a disciplinary offence, but a criminal one.”
Larne feigned puzzlement. “Ma’am?”
“And here you are leaving yourself wide open to prosecution with this farce.” Sam point to Killeen’s supposed statement.
“I… I don’t understand, ma’am.”
“Then allow me to enlighten you. Shortly after you left him, James Killeen rang me to complain about you. He gave you a statement, which you wrote out and then handed to him for signature. He pointed out a specific error in it. He told you that Rachel Jenner left the Killeens’ house at about eight thirty, and returned at about quarter past ten. After that, she was never out of their sight for more than a few minutes and even then only to visit the toilet. You however, wrote that she returned at ten past eleven. If we were to take your version of this statement, it leaves Rachel Jenner a clear window during which she could have murdered Marc Shawforth.”
Larne opened his mouth, but Sam went on before he could say anything.
“What’s more, Mr Killeen says you told him you couldn’t alter a statement once it was written out. We all know that is not the case. You can correct a witness statement, provided the witness initials the corrections. When you argued, he refused to sign it, and you insisted that he had to, but he refused again and threatened to report you, whereupon you stormed out of his office and the college. In his version of events, you should have brought back a statement without a signature, and yet here we have one with the wrong timings and carrying a signature across the bottom, and you can rest assured that I will get James Killeen’s signature, and I will compare it with this. I’m no fortune teller, but I guarantee they won’t match up.”
The colour drained from Larne’s flushed features. “I’ve nothing to say, ma’am.”
“Well, I have.” Iris Mullins took control, and made no effort to hide the venom in her words. “Detective Sergeant Larne, you are suspended from duty forthwith. I require you to hand over your warrant card. Sergeant Enright will escort you to the CID room where you will remove your personal effects from your desk. He will then escort you to the locker room, where once again, you will remove any personal effects. Anything which is the property of the police service will stay behind. You must not speak to anyone other than your Federation representative about the circumstances surrounding your suspension, and you will be called to a disciplinary hearing within the next ten working days.” She glowered. “And if I were you, I would consider appointing a lawyer, because you’re likely to face criminal charges.”
“Ma’am, I—”
“Get out of my sight.”
Enright escorted the younger man from the room, and as they left, Sam picked up the telephone, and rang down to the CID room.
“Frank. Get hold of Paul Czarniak, and bring him to my office.”
“Yeah. Sure. What’s going on, Sam?”
“I’ll brief you up here.”
As she replaced the receiver, Iris caught her eye. “Barker? Czarniak?”
“We were a working conclave, Iris. Frank, myself, Paul Czarniak and Larne, formed a specific unit within the CID squad. They have a right to know what the position is, and it’s better that they hear it from me than picking it up on the grapevine. They both know I won’t tolerate any form of corruption, and it won’t do any harm to have the lesson rammed home.”
Iris agreed. “Why would Larne do it, Wes? You don’t think he’s our man, do you?”
It was a question Drake had asked himself upon learning of Larne’s activities, and he’d had time to consider it. “No. I don’t think so. He’s a bit of a smartarse, but I don’t think he has the brains to set up something like this. I think he’s either been pressured or paid to do it.”
“Another police officer?”
Drake shrugged. “Ask me another. My guess is that Larne’s motivation is money, and you may need to employ accountants to look into Larne’s financial situation, see if you can get any clues from there, because I don’t think you’ll get any answers from him. But as to who’s behind it all, I haven’t the first idea.” He tutted irritably. “You shouldn’t have let him go. You should have put him into an interview room, grilled him.”
The DCC promptly disagreed. “And give him the chance to flimflam his way out of it? He’d simply claim that he was trying to ensure that justice was done. Either that or he’d tell us that Killeen is lying. No, Wes, if there really is something deeper going on, we did the right thing by suspending him. He may panic and lead us where we want to go. He can’t do that if he’s under arrest.”
Drake had his doubts but he kept them to himself. The notion of Larne claiming that James Killeen was lying had already occurred to him, and even though it had to be investigated, it would lead them into a quagmire of accusation and counter accusation, which would serve only to muddy the waters still further.
Frustration was beginning to build again, but he put it aside as Barker and Czarniak came into the office.
Over the next few minutes, Sam detailed exactly what had happened, what had led to Larne’s suspension, and as she spoke, they could see anger rising in the inspector. Czarniak looked like a schoolboy out of his depth, but when Sam finished talking, he was the first to respond.
“The bloody idiot.”
Barker was considerably more aggrieved. “What the bloody hell is he playing at? He’s a good lad… Well, I thought he was. Willing to learn, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s never put a foot wrong. Why would he do something so stupid?”
Sam left control of the discussion to Iris Mullins.
“That’s a question for the near future, Frank. Right now, we need to look at alternative suspects.” She concentrated on Sam. “I think you said you had a couple in the frame.”
Sam, still considering ways and means of getting to Larne, snapped to attention. “What? Oh, yes. Based on Wes’s information, I considered Marc Shawforth – obviously out of the frame now – and Leonard Pearson. Absolutely no evidence against them, but plenty in their favour, and I have no idea of a motive, but the fact remains that they had a better opportunity than Rachel Jenner in the killing of Barbara Shawforth. It might be worth our while to bring Pearson in for further questioning, but the direction that interrogation should take escapes me. Frank, do you know…”
She trailed off as Trevor Anderson, the medical examiner, ambled into the office. He appeared comparatively cheerful, and Sam’s hopes rose.
“Good morning, everybody. I’m obviously walking in on some kind of departmental think tank. I bumped into Neville Trentham as he was on his way out of the building, and he told me to come straight up.
He said I’d find you here.”
“We’re in mufti, Doc,” Sam announced. “We don’t really have anywhere to go, unless you can point us somewhere.”
Anderson spun a chair round and sat down, crossing one ankle over the other knee, and clutching it with both hands. “I had a rather curt telephone call from the chief constable about half an hour ago. He’s kicking ass, as our American friends would say. Told me I had to give you something to work with before the investigation floundered. I tried to tell him that science doesn’t work to timetables, but he wouldn’t listen, so here I am, and I do have a little bit of news.” He smiled cynically. “I just don’t know what use it will be to you.”
Sam smiled back in a silent invitation to the doctor.
“Alex Walston,” Anderson announced. “According to your forensic people, his tyre was shot out, and we found an injury to the back of his head as well as the bruises on his face, so it’s fairly safe to assume that his attacker pistol whipped him, and then probably dropped him into the boot of another vehicle.”
Sam shuddered visibly, recalling the time when The Anagramist had done exactly the same to her, locking her in the boot of her vehicle until he could get her to his killing ground.
Anderson went on. “Manhandling a body like that isn’t easy, especially for one man. But in doing so, a thread became detached from the attacker’s clothing. I’ve had the analysis through. I’m sorry to say that the thread came from a police uniform.”
If Anderson anticipated gasps of surprise, he was disappointed. It merely confirmed the suspicions of everyone in the room.
“Larne,” Sam declared.
Barker shook his head. “I don’t think so.” When all eyes were turned upon him, he went on. “Dom hasn’t been in uniform since forever. To be honest, I don’t know if he still has one.”
Sam was not willing to take her second-in-command’s word. “Nevertheless. Get out to Larne’s place. Bring him back here, now. And while you’re there, find his uniform.” She concentrated on Anderson. “If we get it, can you check it over, match the thread to it?”
The Frame - from the author of the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series (A Feyer and Drake Mystery Book 2) Page 24
