Foreign Bodies

by Colin A Millar

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Derringham replied. ‘I took him up there a few times. Hunting, shooting, fishing trips, you know? That sort of thing. So yes, I suppose she could have got the address from Marcus.’

  ‘How long have you owned the property, Sir Frederick?’ Handley asked.

  ‘Oh years,’ Derringham answered. ‘I can’t say I can recall exactly how long but at least 15 maybe as long as 20 years. Bought the place when I was relocated to London and the Foreign Office after the Scottish Office was all but closed. The new parliament up there and all that. So that would have been 1999, so I think I would have bought the place around 2000. I knew I’d miss Scotland – at least certain aspects of it – and wanted somewhere to retreat to when I could.’

  Handley thought for a moment and then asked, ‘When was the last time Marcus Travers visited the house?’

  Derringham was quiet for a moment, then replied, raising his voice, ‘Look Handley, why all these questions about my home in Scotland? I don’t really remember the last time Marcus was there. What is it you are trying to find out, Detective Constable?’

  Handley noted the dropping of his rank at the beginning of Derringham’s outburst – what was he getting so riled about? – he wondered.

  ‘Sir Frederick,’ he said, keeping his voice even and controlled. ‘I very much need to find Marcus Travers in connection with the murder of Julia Metcalfe, and your home in Scotland appears to be about the only new lead I have as to his whereabouts. Please just answer my questions for now. If I have a chance and I’m able to I will give you further details at a later date. Now, when did Marcus last visit the house and would it be possible for him to gain access to the property should he have gone there alone?’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Sir Frederick breathed. ‘Marcus, a murderer?’

  ‘I haven’t said that sir,’ Handley corrected. ‘At this stage I just need to speak to him – he could be a vital witness as much as a suspect at this stage.’

  ‘Right, yes, of course DC Handley,’ Derringham’s voice reverted to his normal tones. ‘I think it would have been about 18 months or so back. We stopped by after a G8 meeting at Gleneagles. And yes, he could have gained access. I showed him where I hide the emergency key.’

  ‘Right,’ Handley said decisively. ‘Thank you, Sir Frederick.’

  Without waiting for the reply, he put the phone down and began to rise from his seat. He got about halfway up when DC Sonia Mallen arrived at his desk.

  ‘I take it you are collating information in DCI Tanner’s absence?’ she asked.

  Handley sighed – he was beginning to see why his boss wore a permanent frown. He sat back down and nodded.

  ‘Right,’ she said, placing a file on Handley’s desk. ‘PM report on Julia Metcalfe, more cross-referenced lab results and DC White has something on CCTV apparently.’

  Handley lifted the file, then frowned. ‘Who the hell is DC White?’

  ‘Tanner brought her in, apparently a bit of a genius with technology. She’s over in the other corner,’ Mallen replied, pointing out a desk on the far side of the office.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ Handley said, looking nervously between the report, DC Mallen and the desk she had indicated that held DC White.

  Mallen left Handley to it with a slight smirk on her face; she knew he had trouble with prioritising and a fear of making wrong calls in the absence of the boss.

  With three pieces of information all needing to be dealt with, Handley was feeling the weight of the decisions he would have to make and was annoyed at his lack of decisiveness. Mallen’s smirk only served to add to his chagrin. He tried to clear his mind by counting to 10 and thinking of nothing during that time. It didn’t really do the job he wanted but it allowed him enough headspace to come to the conclusion that it didn’t matter what order anything was done, as long as it was done and delivered wholesale to DCI Tanner.

  Using the eeny-meeny method he chose to go over to DC White’s desk first.

  DC White was a petite, attractive woman in her late 30s to early 40s. Handley had to mentally stop himself checking her out as he approached; it was something he rarely if ever did, and it always made him feel uncomfortable when he caught himself doing it.

  ‘DC White,’ he said, almost stammering over her name as he held out his hand in greeting. ‘I’m DC Handley, you’ve got something for me on the CCTV footage?’

  ‘Yes, it’s not great,’ DC White replied, ignoring the proffered hand, ‘but it might just give you a glimpse of your man. Pull up a pew and I’ll run you through what I’ve done.’

  The only chair Handley could see was several desks away so he opted for crouching beside the desk instead.

  ‘Right, so the first thing I did was run everything we had through various image-enhancing routines,’ White explained. ‘This cleaned up some of the newer stuff reasonably well but has only mildly improved the older material.’

  Handley nodded, hoping she wouldn’t get too technical on him. He was no luddite but if she went into more detail he would be lost and likely lose the point of the exercise.

  ‘Then once I had everything as clear as I could make it,’ she continued, ‘I ran facial recognition software on it to see if it picked up any facial patterns or other features that might indicate the same person in each piece of film.’

  So far, so good, Handley thought. ‘And did it?’ he asked.

  ‘Kind of,’ White replied, hedging her bets.

  ‘Kind of?’ asked Handley. ‘What do you mean “kind of”?’

  ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘there’s more than one match for a start.’

  She pulled up two different sets of images on the screen, containing somewhat grainy, indistinct images of two different men. The first set of three images showed a man that could have been anywhere between 35 and 50, with fair hair that was receding at the temples. He was wearing a suit in two of the images and casual clothes in the third. If he squinted Handley could just about see that there was at least a passing similarity between each of these images. He didn’t recognise the man.

  ‘This guy only appears in the older footage,’ White said, indicating the top three images.

  The second set contained four images and they immediately drew Handley’s attention. He leaned closer and peered intently at the screen.

  ‘Jeeesus,’ he hissed.

  ‘I thought you might be more interested in this set,’ White said, then pointed out the first two of the set of four. ‘These are from the older material – that one is from a bar in Manchester and this one is outside a restaurant in Brighton.’

  Indicating the second two images she continued, ‘These two are more recent, one is from Belgium – from Anderlecht – and the other is Manchester.’

  Handley nodded absently as he continued to stare at the images.

  ‘Are these really all the same person?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s hard to say. This is based solely on what the facial recognition software could come up with. But I agree that it’s pretty hard to say conclusively that it’s one person – it could potentially be four different people.’

  The images all showed a man of above-average height with a strong, athletic-looking build, but in one image he was distinctly blonde, in another he had longer hair, and in the other two his hair was dark. The man’s clothes in each of the four images were all different, ranging from high-end casual wear to an expensive-looking suit, to jeans and T-shirt. Handley honed in on the two of the dark-haired man. These two had drawn his attention immediately. Again, he had to squint slightly at the images but when he looked closely, he was sure they could both be taken for Marcus Travers.

  ‘Can you print these two?’ he asked.

  ‘Already have,’ was White’s reply as she handed over four glossy printouts. ‘So, you’re not interested in contestant number one then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Handley distractedly as he looked at the images he now held in his hand. ‘He’s not in any of the recent images and it could just be an a
nomaly of the software, you know, picking up a typically northern face-type and throwing these three images up. But this guy –’ he held up the two images of the dark-haired man – ‘this guy looks quite like the man we’re looking for.’

  He paused then, still looking at the printouts. ‘Thing is …’ he said eventually, ‘I hadn’t realised how alike they were. I could see either of them in these pictures…’

  ‘Either of who?’ White asked with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Hmmmm?’ was all Handley uttered as he rose from his crouch and wandered back to his desk, still staring at the images.

  ’18

  Recollections

  She remembered that their first storming row had come some time shortly after their wedding. She had been seething and it was nearly all over right there and then. It was funny, she reflected, how back then the reason for the row had seemed so important, so make-or-break, but now it seemed trivial and immature in light of everything that had happened since.

  It had started, as so many arguments do, with a little niggle. Marcus had come home late on three occasions one week and twice the following week. He hadn’t called or said before he had left for work that this would be happening; he had simply strolled in around midnight. It wasn’t that she felt she was his keeper and as such should be informed of his whereabouts, or that she didn’t understand he had a demanding job which meant he sometimes had to put in long hours. It was the lack of communication that had riled her. What would it have cost him to make a quick call? She had prepared dinner and then sat waiting and waiting, expecting him home at any moment, only for him to appear several hours later.

  After the fifth time she had raised the subject. And for whatever reason – tiredness, stress or simple misunderstanding – the conversation had quickly escalated into a blazing row. She demanded that he tell her where he had been and why he hadn’t called, while he demanded that she respect his decisions, adding that it was all ‘unavoidable’ and besides which – when had he been required to check in every five minutes?

  It had gone on for over two hours, eventually boiling down to the realisation that they clearly had contradictory views on personal freedoms and responsibilities within a marriage. She had finally stormed out, vowing to stay away until he had reconsidered and changed his ways. He had just thrown his hands in the air and spat ‘fine!’ as the door had slammed shut.

  Too embarrassed to go to her mother’s – knowing the lecture she would get on only just being married and that it takes time to adjust and so on – she escaped to her friend’s place. It took Marcus two days to call and apologise. She had packed and gone straight back home as soon as the call had ended.

  She smiled, now, at how much he had changed almost overnight. From that point on he had always called to tell her if he was going to be late home or had let her know ahead of time when he expected to be kept late at the office. That habit had remained right up to the day he disappeared. That was why she had known there was something wrong as that long, dreadful evening had worn on and there was no sign of him.

  It felt a little odd to her now that she was able to recall that argument so clearly. She was also a little puzzled by Marcus’ sudden change of heart – seemingly switching from a vehement believer in complete personal freedom to a man who would call his wife if there were a longer-than-normal queue at the fish and chip shop. What had motivated such a change? With all that had happened she now wondered if it hadn’t been a calculated move. Had he simply realised it would be easier and less suspicious if he just called her and let her know where he was and what he was doing? Thought about in that way, it certainly would have given him a great deal of personal freedom. If he had simply manipulated the situation in this way then he could have got his excuses in early and then have had however many hours – or in some cases, days – to do as he pleased.

  It distressed and angered her to think he might have manipulated her in such a way. But with the benefit of hindsight and the damning evidence from the police, it was hard to see it any other way. She felt the anger rise as she realised all the ways he could have used the ‘loving husband and father’ routine to hide anything he wanted from her and the world in general – to feign any number of reasons for his absences and lateness and then use that time to slaughter women. The thought made her sick to her stomach.

  She tried to recall now all those calls home – had any of them ever sounded suspicious or false? She couldn’t remember ever thinking so. But then, if the police were to be believed, this was a man who could persuade any woman he chose to believe whatever he wanted or needed them to. Why should she be any different?

  She didn’t want to have these thoughts of Marcus; she wanted to remember him as the loving husband and father she had believed him to be all those years. She still loved him, she knew, but now that love was slowly being eroded into something resembling hatred. Her husband of 12 years was turning out to be a callous, manipulative and depraved man, a man she had never known.

  There would be no forgiving him this time if all this turned out to be true. There would be no going back for them.

  There would be no call to apologise and no happy reunion.

  All she hoped for now was that they would catch him and put him far away from her and the children for the rest of his life.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After the devastating news from DC Handley, Charlotte spent the rest of the day in a numbed haze. Most of the time was spent just sitting in the lounge staring at the photos of Marcus and her and the children. She simply couldn’t reconcile the events of the last three to four months with the happy family portraits that hung on the walls. She only moved and got up when it was time to collect the children from school.

  After seeing to the children and eventually putting them to bed, she retreated to the small room they had called the office. There she sat, toying with the few things that lay on the desk and idly flicking through files on the computer – mostly old letters, photos and videos – paying little attention to any one of them before moving on to the next.

  One video held her attention a little longer than the others. It showed a garden party in what looked like the grounds of a stately home or a millionaire’s mansion – likely one of Sir Frederick’s acquaintances, she decided. There were a lot of long shots of the gathering guests as they emerged from the large, elaborate rear doors of the house and spilled out onto the patio and lawn. Generally looking radiant, the guests appeared to be laughing and chatting, with cocktails or champagne glasses in hand.

  She recognised the place and realised it was one of Sir Frederick’s ‘little gatherings’ as he called them. She couldn’t remember who owned the property but did remember it as a stunning late 18th century mansion: 14 bedrooms, an enormous dining room and one of the most elegantly decorated sitting rooms she had ever seen.

  It had been a glorious summer’s evening and she recalled that both she and Marcus had thoroughly enjoyed the event. She smiled as she watched some younger guests arrive, less assured of themselves in their fine evening wear, staying in close groups as though to protect themselves from the marauding hordes of managers and old duffers.

  Then she saw herself enter the garden. She took a modicum of pleasure in how good she had looked in her bright and airy summer frock. She was a little surprised, though, that she wasn’t on Marcus’ arm. He would always make sure he was close by at any Foreign Office do they attended together. Then a few seconds later he appeared alongside Sir Frederick; they appeared to be talking quite animatedly.

  The camera moved in closer and centred on the doors from which people were still spilling and where Sir Frederick and Marcus were standing, the new guests washing around them like a stream around a large boulder. The camera wasn’t close enough to pick up any one person’s voice but she now had a clearer view of Marcus and Sir Frederick. As she watched she realised that they seemed to be having something of an argument, gauging by the looks on both faces. This, to her, was unusual in itself –
she couldn’t recall Marcus ever telling her that he and Sir Frederick had had a disagreement – but to appear to be having such a public argument was out of character in the extreme, for both of them.

  The video timer showed it had half an hour left to run as the camera moved away from Marcus and Sir Frederick and started catching close-ups of various guests around the gardens and the house. Charlotte was intrigued by the apparent argument and rewound the footage to watch again, but there was no further clue as to the subject of their conversation. On her second viewing she caught the briefest view of Marcus moving away, presumably towards her. He hadn’t, as far as she could recall now, mentioned anything to her either that night or at a later time. It was a puzzle, but probably of little consequence, she decided.

  She scanned quickly through the rest of the video to see if there was any more footage of her and Marcus. But aside from a few very brief moments there was little else. Right at the end, the camera had been moved to the front gates and was filming the guests leaving in their varying cars: an odd mix of family estates, sports cars and what appeared to be old bangers. As the last car drove past the camera turned to follow it. On the far side of the road, opposite the gates, it showed a single house and the hedge that surrounded its garden. It would have been considered quite a large place had it not stood looking out on the grounds of the behemoth at the other end of the drive. Something about it made Charlotte think of a vicarage, although she couldn’t recall if there was a church nearby or not.

  The thought of a vicarage reminded her of something Sir Frederick had said to her in the St. Martins’ Lounge the previous evening. He had been talking about Marcus’ relationship with his parents and how it was similar to his own. But she now recalled he had mentioned something about a house and how Marcus’ parents had left theirs to the church. She had never visited the place and had no idea where it was but the idea boomed in her mind. Could that be where Marcus had gone? If it was church property now, he may well have been able to gain access and hide out there.