Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

‘Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts between 4.00 p.m. and 8.00 p.m.?’

  ‘Ohhh. You mean an alibi?’

  ‘Yes. An alibi. You know what that means, right? While Niamh Connolly was being tortured and strangled, you prove to me that you were elsewhere. That’s what it means, you know. In Latin. Elsewhere.’

  Holt sat forward and stubbed his cigarette out. Took his time lighting another while staring, very obviously, at her breasts. He inhaled, then blew out a smoke ring towards Roisin.

  ‘I never did Latin. Nelson Mandela Comprehensive wasn’t that kind of school, know what I mean? I bet you did, though, didn’t you? What was it, a convent school? All them nuns giving you the cane?’ He leered at her. ‘Loads of lezzers, too, I bet.’

  Before Roisin could answer, Will reappeared. His face was a mask. He nodded, once. That was the signal he’d found something incriminating enough to want to bring Holt in for questioning.

  Roisin moved forwards towards Holt.

  ‘Isaac, we’d like to continue this conversation at Paddington Green Police Station. How would you feel about that?’

  ‘Why? Are you arrestin’ me?’

  ‘Do I need to?’

  Holt jumped to his feet. Roisin reared back, instinctively reaching for the cannister of pepper spray in her jacket pocket. Beside her, Will was going for the extendible baton.

  Then Holt smiled. Hands out in front of him, palms facing Roisin, he spoke.

  ‘Whoa! Calm down, all right? You wanna take me down your nick, ’s fine with me. I ain’t doing anything this arvo. Might be fun to see the inside of a real police station.’

  ‘Go and put some clothes on. Will. Go with him.’

  At Paddington Green, Roisin put Holt in an empty interview room and left him there, with an instruction not to smoke. She spoke to Will outside.

  ‘OK, when we go in, I’ll kick off. When I lean back and look at you, that’s when you hit him with your questions, all right?’

  ‘Got it,’ he answered with a grim smile. He was enjoying himself, Roisin could tell. About time you saw a bit of real police work, Will, she thought. Watch and learn.

  27

  THURSDAY 16TH AUGUST 4.00 P.M.

  Roisin led the way into the stuffy interview room and took the chair nearest the door. Will sat next to her.

  ‘Ain’t you s’posed to be recordin’ this or sumfing?’ Holt asked.

  ‘You’re not being interviewed under caution, Isaac. This is just for us to sort out a few more details with you. So, no. No recorder.’

  Holt fidgeted in his chair, seemingly unable to get into a comfortable position.

  Not so cocky now, are you, you pervy little shit! Roisin thought.

  ‘Maybe I should ’ave a lawyer,’ he said, looking at the scratched and pitted table top.

  ‘What for?’ Roisin asked.

  ‘I dunno. Like, advise me an’ that.’

  ‘Innocent people don’t usually start asking for a lawyer, Isaac. Is there something you want to own up to?’

  He shook his head, still not meeting her gaze. He scratched ferociously at the back of his head, then inspected his fingernails.

  ‘No. Like I said. I never did nothin’ to Niamh Connolly.’

  ‘Fine,’ Roisin said briskly. ‘Let’s crack on then, shall we? You said you left the demo with Kim. What time was that. Exactly?’

  He picked a bit of loose skin from the side of his right thumb. Then he flicked it onto the carpet.

  ‘One o’clock.’

  ‘And how can you be so sure?’ Roisin asked, making a note.

  ‘Checked me watch, didn’t I? I wanted to get back to mine for a shag, like I said.’

  ‘And Kim didn’t mind leaving the demo early? It said on the news it went on all day.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I said I really wanted her. Said she was drivin’ me crazy. The usual shit. Always works.’

  Not with me.

  Roisin smiled.

  ‘OK, so Kim drove back to yours. How long did that take?’

  ‘An hour. Maybe a bit more?’

  ‘Let’s say an hour and fifteen, then, just to be on the safe side. So, you got back to yours at two-fifteen. Did you shag straight away or have a few drinks or something first?’

  He smirked, looking straight at her.

  ‘Straight away. She was gaggin’ for it, wasn’t she?’

  ‘How long did it take? Five minutes? Ten?’

  The smirk slid off Holt’s face for a moment, then returned, now accompanied by a narrowing of the eyes.

  ‘Funny. We were up there for about an hour.’ He folded his arms across his chest.

  Defensive body posture. Feeling a bit exposed, are you, Isaac?

  ‘Right. That takes us to three-fifteen. Then what?’

  ‘Then she left. I told you. I ’ad stuff to take care of.’

  Keeping her face neutral, Roisin was rejoicing. He’d just cut back his alibi by fifteen minutes.

  ‘Like driving to Wimbledon and killing Niamh Connolly?’

  ‘What? No! I told you at mine. I never touched ’er.’

  Roisin sat back and glanced to her right at Will.

  Right on cue, he leaned forwards.

  ‘Tell me about the porn, Isaac.’

  Holt’s eyes slid sideways. His hands went to his pockets.

  ‘What porn?’

  ‘You know. The porn in your bedroom. The magazines. The DVDs.’

  Holt’s mouth twisted, showing oddly small teeth.

  ‘You ain’t allowed. You need a warrant.’

  Will spread his hands.

  ‘I took a wrong turn looking for the toilet.’

  ‘You fackin’ liar!’ Holt shouted, half-rising from his chair.

  ‘Sit down!’ Will shouted back, impressing Roisin with his reaction.

  Holt complied, but his face was suffused with blood. She hoped Will hadn’t overdone it. As if his yell had been delivered by someone else, Will resumed talking in a quieter voice than before.

  ‘The porn, Isaac?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Pretty hardcore stuff. Bondage. S&M. You get off on causing women pain, do you?’

  ‘It’s all fake. You know that, right? Your lot see it all and I bet you’ve had far worse than that in ’ere. It’s not like I’m a nonce or nuffin. I bought it all legal, in Soho.’

  ‘Oh, right, yeah, of course. Legal. So, I read one of your little stories while I was up there, too. You fantasise about hurting women, don’t you, Isaac? About hurting them with knives. Cutting them up. Cutting their breasts off. Don’t you?’

  Holt looked as if he was about to argue, then clearly he changed his mind. He sat back in his chair.

  ‘I wanna go. I ain’t done nuffin wrong. You can’t force me to stay ’ere if I don’t want to.’

  Roisin checked her watch: 4.15 p.m. Then she stood.

  ‘Actually, I can. Isaac Holt, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Niamh Connolly. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand what I just told you?’

  ‘I s’pose so, yes.’

  She turned to Will.

  ‘Cuff the suspect please, DC Dunlop. Let’s get him down to the custody sergeant. Then get a move on with the search warrant for his place. The PACE clock starts ticking as soon as he’s officially booked in.’

  They booked Holt in with the custody sergeant at 4.30 p.m. Roisin smiled at her prisoner as he was led away to the cells with a blanket, a copy of the codes of practice relating to arrest, a pencil and notebook. On being advised he could call someone to let them know he’d been arrested and was at Paddington Green, he’d called his mother.

  28

  THURSDAY 16TH AUGUST 6.00 P.M.

  Holt had, unsurprisingly, not had a solicitor of his own, so Roisin detailed Will to ring round till he found the duty solicitor.
<
br />   ‘Which is good for us,’ she said. ‘Poor sods are underpaid and overworked, unlike those Armani-wearing reptiles from the big firms.’

  ‘When do we go back and interview him again?’ Will asked.

  ‘Not yet. We’ve got twenty-four hours, minimum. We’re going back to his place to search it.’

  Stella had spent the day reading reports, assigning priorities and teams to new lines of enquiry and, in the latter half of the afternoon, interviewing a man named Gregory Johnson. Johnson had served two sentences for aggravated rape in his life. One had started when he was eighteen, the other twenty-seven. She’d identified him as a suspect based on a report at the time of his second conviction that he had cut his victim’s breasts with a knife. He was now out on licence.

  It had been a waste of time. At the time of Niamh Connolly’s murder, Johnson had been in a meeting with his parole officer twenty-three miles away. Frustration, plus a copper’s combination of too much caffeine and not enough food had combined to give her a pounding headache behind her right eye.

  Arriving at Paddington Green, she nodded a greeting at the custody sergeant. She’d known Rob Blanchard a long time. He’d booked in more than a few of her collars. He nodded back.

  ‘Evening, ma’am. Good to see your team’s got someone in the cells for the Connolly murder.’

  Stella stopped dead in her tracks.

  ‘Sorry, Rob. What?’

  No-one had called her about an arrest. And she hated not knowing what was going on with one of her investigations.

  ‘DI Griffin brought him in, ma’am. Scruffy little shit goes by the name of Isaac Holt. He’s in number two.’

  Massaging her forehead above her eye, which now felt as if someone were sticking a newly sharpened pencil into it from behind, Stella pushed through the door that led to the cells. She reached the door to cell number two and slid the steel viewing window open.

  Sitting on the narrow cot, staring at his hands, a white male, average height, muscular torso, slim hips, turned to the door at the scrape of metal on metal. He jumped to his feet and crossed to the door, going eyeball to eyeball with Stella.

  ‘Oi!’ he shouted. ‘Where’s my lawyer? Why ain’t that copper come back? I never done nuffin to Niamh Connolly. I only said I’d come down ’ere ’cos I thought it’d be a laugh.’

  Stella slid the window cover shut. Swearing at Roisin under her breath, she retraced her steps and went up to the SIU incident room.

  Baz and Def were deep in conversation when she arrived. They looked up at Stella, took in her expression and turned fully round to face her.

  ‘Evening, boss,’ Baz said. ‘How was your day? Nothing much to report, I’m afraid.’

  Stella sighed.

  ‘Oh, you know. Reading a shitload of paperwork. Interviewing a violent rapist who couldn’t take his eyes off my tits the entire time and who waited till the very end of the interview to tell me about his alibi. And then I come back and find Roisin’s arrested a suspect I knew nothing about. So, you know, just another brilliant day. Plus my right eye feels like it’s going to burst.’

  ‘I’ve got some Nurofen in my desk, boss,’ Def said. ‘Want a couple?’

  ‘Oh, God, yes please.’

  Def scooted off to her desk and returned with a battered silver carton.

  ‘Here you go.’

  Stella swallowed the pink tablets gratefully with a mouthful of cold coffee from a mug she’d left on her desk first thing.

  ‘Thanks, Def. So, either of you know anything about Isaac Holt?’

  ‘Who?’ Baz asked.

  ‘Isaac Holt. Roisin’s collar. Shifty little IC1 in cell two downstairs.’

  They shook their heads in unison.

  Her head popping up from behind her screen like a meerkat, Becky piped up.

  ‘Boss? I showed DI Griffin a guy on some news footage I was reviewing. Could that have been him?’

  ‘Thanks, Becks. But, honestly? I don’t know. You’d better show us this bloke on the video.’

  Gathered round Becky’s computer, Stella, Baz and Def watched intently as Becky manipulated the onscreen playback controls. After a couple of failed attempts she froze the film at the moment Holt was in full view.

  ‘Yeah,’ Stella said. ‘That’s him. And I can see why Roisin went off to find him.’ She stabbed a finger at the placard Holt was holding aloft. ‘Not quite a confession. But not bad.’

  Inside though, she was far from happy. She’d established her housekeeping rules right at the start of her tenure running the day-to-day operations of the SIU. All intelligence, especially relating to arrestable suspects, came through her. In advance. No one-man, or one-woman shows. No off-books activities. No mavericks.

  Anyone knowing even a little of Stella’s recent history might have wondered at the last imperative. After all, acting as a one-woman vigilante squad, Stella had shot, stabbed, electrocuted and defenestrated enough people to count as a serial killer several times over.

  The fact that they’d been trying to murder her, and been classified as enemies of the state at a top-secret review hadn’t changed things. But that was precisely why Stella felt the need to keep her new squad well inside the line demarcating the right – and wrong – sides of the law.

  She called Roisin.

  Roisin answered almost at once.

  ‘Yes, boss?’

  ‘You arrested a suspect.’

  ‘Yes, boss. I’m over at his gaff now with Will, searching the place.’

  ‘Why the radio silence? Why did I have to find out from Rob Blanchard and not you?’

  A pause, during which Stella imagined she could hear cogs whirring in her DI’s brain.

  ‘I tried, boss. Couldn’t get a mobile signal.’

  ‘And your Airwave?’

  ‘Not working. I did try, boss, honest. Look, I’ve got to go. We’re nearly done here and you’re going to like what we’re found.’

  ‘OK. But we’re going to interview him together when you’re back, OK?’

  ‘Whatever you say. You’re the boss.’

  It was after 10.00 p.m. when Roisin and Will arrived back in the incident room. Both were clearly on a high. Stella recognised the signs. The flush in the cheeks, the wide smiles. The strutting body language. You got it when you knew, deep down, you were onto something that would close a case.

  Stella intercepted them.

  ‘Coffee, Roisin?’

  ‘Yeah, that would be great. Thanks.’

  ‘Come on then. I heard they’ve got a Nespresso machine on the third floor. Let’s go and get a couple of decent cups.’

  Stella stepped into the lift ahead of Roisin. As soon as the doors closed, she spoke.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at, Rosh?’

  Roisin’s eyes widened.

  ‘What do you mean? I just arrested an absolutely prime candidate for Niamh Connolly’s murder.’

  ‘I know. That’s not what I mean. Why didn’t you let me know?’

  ‘I told you. I tried.’

  ‘Oh please, Roisin, don’t give me that old one. You’ve been out all day, half of it with Will by all accounts, and neither of you had service once?’

  Rosin’s voice hardened a fraction.

  ‘I wasn’t sure it would pan out. I tracked him through a pro-abortion charity. By the time it looked like it was a goer, we didn’t have time. It all happened too fast.’

  The doors opened on the third floor, halting their tense conversation. At the CID coffee station, they stood awkwardly, waiting for the hissing, plopping, huffing machine to deliver two frothy coffees. Stella motioned for Roisin to follow her into the stairwell.

  ‘Look. I know where this is coming from. You got your nose put out of joint when Callie put me in as her DCI. But that was almost six years ago. It’s time to draw a line under it, don’t you think?’

  Roisin took a sip of her coffee, narrowing her eyes as the steam coiled away from the surface.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re ta
lking about, Stella. Really I don’t. Look, I’m sorry for the radio silence, OK? It won’t happen again.’

  29

  THURSDAY 16TH AUGUST 10.20 P.M.

  Back in the SIU incident room, Will had brought up all the bagged and tagged evidence they’d retrieved from Holt’s house, mainly the bedroom.

  Laid out on a table it made a compelling case on its own. A foot-high pile of glossy, luridly colourful hardcore porn magazines, the covers featuring women in what looked like excruciatingly painful positions, their wrists and ankles bound with rope, ball-gags in their mouths and, in one eye-catching photo, ropes tied tightly around the woman’s breasts. Beside the magazines, a stack of DVDs revealed more of Isaac Holt’s tastes.

  A clear plastic Ziploc bag held an A5 notebook with a yellow cover.

  Will tapped it.

  ‘That’s the killer, no pun intended. His fantasies. In his own hand. The last entry is a story about Niamh Connolly. He, Holt, I mean, rapes her all ways from Sunday and slices her tits off with his samurai sword. Not much in the way of literary merit, but it reads like a report of her murder.’

  The sword itself lay on the end of the table in its own evidence bag.

  Taken together, the items arrayed before them did make a superficially impressive case. But doubts were already swimming around in Stella’s brain. The pain behind her eye had finally eased and she was thinking more clearly.

  ‘At first sight, this is all good stuff. Well done, guys,’ she began. ‘But there are a few things that don’t fit what we know of the killer’s MO. Anyone?’

  Baz pointed at the topmost porn magazine. The naked woman on the cover lay spread-eagled on a bed, hands and wrists manacled to the bedposts. She was blindfolded. A man with hairy, tattooed shoulders stood to one side holding a carving knife at the same angle as his huge erection.

  ‘She’s not shaved, is she? Mostly they are these days.’

  Def snorted.

  ‘Made a study have you, Baz?’