Songbird

by Peter Grainger

  Donnelly was fifty-eight and no longer working, according to his last police interview, but before that he’d been employed as a brick-layer. Waters checked the dates and found that the last interview was three years ago. This was not as part of an investigation but presumably just someone in a Barnsley police station doing an unusually thorough job of monitoring offenders and updating their records. Five years before that, Donnelly had been found with a fifteen-year-old girl in his car, parked in a side-street in Sheffield, close to one of the city’s red-light districts. She had been partially undressed when the officers shone a light into the back seat of the vehicle. Donnelly claimed the girl had been working on the streets, that she had propositioned him and that she looked at least twenty. The Crown Court judge must have taken something of this into account; the sentence had been twelve months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years. Donnelly had not served time, therefore, but the fact that a custodial sentence had been given meant he would be on the sex offenders’ register for ten years from the date of sentencing.

  That wasn’t all, however. In 1983, when he was twenty-three, William Donnelly had been accused of inappropriately touching the daughter of a family who lived next door to his parents. He had been charged but these had been dropped. It was, as is still often the case, a matter of his word against the girl’s, and in those times that meant she would have to give evidence in open court. Unsurprisingly, the parents had decided to move away rather than put a thirteen-year-old through such an ordeal.

  Waters took a detour then into online guidance for criminal investigation officers. As he had suspected, the earlier offence long preceded the Sex Offenders Act 1997 which had set up the register. There was no reason for it to be mentioned in this file other than that an officer somewhere had decided it should be. Good for them, said a voice from somewhere behind Waters.

  He went back to the beginning of the file and read it again, this time with his reporter’s notepad beside the keyboard. The first point he made was about the ages of the two unfortunate girls who had encountered Donnelly – thirteen and fifteen. Undoubtedly the girl he’d picked up on the streets of Sheffield looked older, but if he had been in the red-light district with that purpose in mind – hardly an “if” at all – he had probably cruised around and taken his pick. He’d chosen a girl who was plainly still at the younger end of the spectrum. Waters had not worked on a case like the ones involving Donnelly but he’d read and heard enough to know that repeat sexual offenders tend to have specific behaviours – they very often choose similar victims in similar situations. There are exceptions, but the gap between the two girls known to have been approached by Donnelly – there would be others, of course – and Michelle Simms was more than twenty years.

  What makes young girls dangerously attractive to some men? Waters was aware he didn’t know much about this and that he didn’t really want to, but this job often takes you to places you don’t want to go. Something to do with their vulnerability, their innocence and lack of experience which compensates for things missing in the man himself. Has he discovered that mature, experienced women can see through him, that they intimidate him? Maybe.

  But Michelle Simms, according to the picture they had of her so far, was none of these things, surely? Not inexperienced, certainly not innocent, at least in the biblical sense. And even though someone had killed her last Thursday evening, she wasn’t coming across as someone you’d call vulnerable, was she? Waters looked up and watched Serena Butler at work for a few seconds. Taking on Michelle Simms and getting it wrong was more likely akin to taking on his female detective constable than it was to picking up a teenager, and any normal man would shudder at the thought.

  Next, there was a Mrs Donnelly, Elsie Donnelly, the kindly lady who had befriended the Fletcher family first. How long had they been married? Did she know of her husband’s past offences? There are women who ‘forgive’ and believe it was an aberration, that young girls these days bring it upon themselves; there are even women who in some ways aid and abet their partner’s behaviours. You can’t rule anything out, but that was unlikely. When questioned, was Mrs Donnelly going to say they had gone back to the caravan, had their customary cup of cocoa, watched the ten o’clock news and gone to bed?

  Waters made a third point on the notepad. Donnelly was fifty-eight. As a former brick-layer, one might expect him to have good arms, but Ford had said that if Michelle Simms had been killed near the road – and in his three years on the force, Waters hadn’t known Sally Lonsdale to be wrong about anything important – if she had been killed there, the murderer had carried her body quite a distance before he made those rudimentary efforts to conceal it. That was surely going to be easier for a man of twenty- or thirty-eight, rather than one who was nearing sixty.

  On the other hand, their best estimate was that Mr and Mrs Donnelly had left the Pinehills site at around half past seven on the Friday morning, much earlier than the typical guest, Shirley Salmon had said. The official time by which one should vacate the caravan was 10.30. Most visitors would have breakfast, call in at the office to say goodbye and leave the keys. Waters looked at the photocopied records and found that the Donnellys had arrived on the Friday afternoon a week previously, so they’d had their seven days – but why the hurried departure? Had William Donnelly seen the police activity – there was enough of it by seven thirty – and made his escape, having up to that point hoped that the woman’s body had been well-hidden enough not to be found so soon? It was possible, but anyone with a normal amount of common sense would realise the police would check who was staying on the site that week; leaving as he had was only going to increase the interest in Donnelly.

  Waters’ mobile had rung four or five times before he realised and picked it up. He looked at the screen and then pressed the button that meant he was not going to answer it. Serena was watching and looking surprised because this wasn’t something Waters often did – he was too well-mannered.

  She said, ‘You can answer it, you’re not on duty.’

  Waters nodded and said, ‘I’ll get back to them when I’m not so busy.’

  He refocused on the screen but knew perfectly well this would not be the end of it.

  ‘Them?’

  ‘It was a personal call, not work-related.’

  ‘So, she, then. She’ll be cross if you do that when she calls. I bet she knows you’re not on shift, doesn’t she?’

  ‘How are you doing with Michelle Simms’ phone?’

  ‘Being ignored is the worst thing, she’ll get really cross. Unless… Is it you that’s cross? Have you had a falling out? What did she do?’

  This was just one of a number of potentially terrifying things about Serena Butler. She could take these apparently ridiculous shots into the dark and keep hitting the target. Four hundred years ago, she’d be dead already, he thought, burned at the stake as a witch. Or maybe that ducking-stool thing, which would take longer…

  ‘None of your business. Michelle Simms’ phone?’

  ‘But it’s always difficult when you’re a long way apart. Did she get that job she was going for? Manchester or somewhere. What would you do, get a transfer? Inner-city policing is a whole different ball-game, Chris. When I was working in…’

  Waters had sat back in his chair, crossed his arms and was staring at her. She must have concluded that this part of her job was now done. She said next, ‘You know there’s just one mobile phone service provider that still insists on reviewing every request made under RIPA? Well, guess who is Michelle Simms’ mobile phone service provider.’

  ‘Right, got that. Where are we with it?’

  Serena said, ‘I don’t have any contacts with them. They asked me whether it’s terrorism-related or whether withholding the data is likely to put life in danger. I said I’d check and get back to them. Which is ridiculous when you think about it – but I could call back and say it’s one or the other. My guess is they would then pass it up the food-chain and we’d do the same – they’
re going to want a senior officer’s say-so before they break their protocol. Otherwise, they said it will be dealt with on Monday.’

  It hadn’t taken Christopher Waters very long to realise that for a policeman he was politically a little left of centre – probably that moment of understanding came early in the afternoon of his first day. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act had, according to many privacy campaigners, effectively deregulated the processes by which criminal investigation officers can obtain information about an individual’s use of their mobile phone. The other major service providers generally now hand over the data automatically through an online request, and if the police have the handset in their possession, even that isn’t required – officers have at their disposal devices and software which enable them to extract huge amounts of information from any phone in a matter of minutes.

  Was there now a state database of private communications as some claimed? He doubted it but such a thing would be easier to construct now than ever before, and that felt wrong. On the other hand, mobile phone data had already been key to solving important cases in his short career and bringing wrongdoers to justice. Michelle Simms’ phone records would without a doubt throw light on her final days and hours, but did lives depend on accessing the information now rather than on Monday morning? As a detective sergeant who had, he hoped, the confidence of the senior investigating officer, he could make a case for demanding the records today, and Reeve would go along with it. But was it justified? Was it necessary?

  He said, ‘We’ll let the DCI know when she’s back from meeting Barry Simms, which should be soon. I think Monday will do, but you won’t be here. Leave it so that Ford or someone can get straight back into it and chase them. In the meantime, we need to get the list of holiday-makers in order and make sure no-one was missed out when the uniforms went round. We can cross-check their lists against Mrs Salmon’s and make sure we haven’t missed a potential witness. Also, we need to finalise the list of convicted offenders for the northern half of the county – we can’t leave that until everything else has failed to come up with a lead.’

  Every major investigation involves hundreds of hours of such routine work. Today much of the resulting bureaucracy is stored invisibly on hard drives but that’s a relatively recent phenomenon. There is a story, possibly a true story, that the search for the Yorkshire Ripper eventually produced so much paperwork the floors of the building had to be reinforced to hold it safely. Now we could store those files on a single memory stick but the work itself must still be done.

  Serena said, ‘I’ve got the rest of the day to do that, and if I get bored I’ll make Mike and O’Leary do some, they’re both on today. You’re not. You should go and sort out whatever it is you need to sort out.’

  And then, just as quickly, she could switch to being genuinely thoughtful – immediately you forgot how annoying Serena could be, until the next time. There was always a next time.

  Alison Reeve came into the room; it wasn’t yet half past twelve, so Mr Simms hadn’t been in the station very long at all. She came towards them, still wearing the smarter clothes she’d put on for Michaela Fletcher’s visit to the mortuary.

  ‘Mr Simms is in the fairly predictable state of shock. He changed his mind about seeing his wife’s body, so I had the phone in my hand praying that Olive Markham was still in the building and then he changed his mind again. I had to explain the coroner’s procedures twice. There was no point in keeping them here until we know more, to be honest.’

  Waters said, ‘Them, ma’am?’

  ‘The brother-in-law came with him, Graham Fletcher.’

  Serena said, ‘When did he last speak to her? Barry Simms, not the brother-in-law.’

  ‘Good question. He wasn’t sure and had to check on his phone. He had a text from her on the Tuesday afternoon, letting him know she’d arrived in Pinehills.’

  ‘And that was it?’

  The two women exchanged a look before Serena said, ‘Did you see the text for yourself, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. I asked and he didn’t mind handing it over. That’s all it said.’

  ‘Was there much before it, the last text?’

  Another look, and Waters understood that Serena was asking whether the DCI’s thumb had pulled down across the phone screen a little further than necessary so she could view texts previously exchanged between Michelle and Barry Simms.

  ‘No, there wasn’t. The last one was several days before, and that was something about him having to work late again.’

  Serena said, ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s something in a packaging factory. I got the feeling he often works nights. Maybe they’re just not the sort of people who text much.’

  Reeve was watching Serena and waiting. Even though she hadn’t asked a question, she wanted an answer – after a few seconds, she got one, and most likely the one she was expecting.

  ‘Michaela said her sister was never off her phone for long. She mentioned her sending and getting texts several times while she was staying in the caravan.’

  ‘Girlfriends, maybe. Or people at the salon she managed. Where are we with her phone, by the way?’

  Waters explained the situation, and Reeve accepted it but said no later than Monday morning, they had to begin chasing for access to the records first thing on Monday. Any problems, she said, bring it straight to me for authorisation. And Donnelly? What did he think about Donnelly?

  In Terek’s absence, Reeve was talking to him as if he was her detective inspector on this. Waters had come in this morning in part to take his mind off other matters but it might also be seen by some as a smart move by an ambitious person. Was that him? He’d become a detective sergeant within a matter of months of deciding he wanted to be one. Could the same thing be achieved again? The old, time-serving approach to promotion in the force was long gone. Everywhere you could hear the tutting of the remaining old-stagers as teenagers were put into positions of authority. Look at Detective Chief Inspector Cara Freeman.

  To Reeve he said, ‘The victim profile isn’t a good match as far as motive is concerned. On the other hand, he was there, he had opportunity. I checked which caravan he stayed in and you can almost see the Fletchers’ one from it, it’s just around one corner. He might have seen Michelle Simms before the Thursday evening. We know from the offenders’ register that he’s married to an Elsie Donnelly, so there’s no real doubt it’s the same man who chatted to the Fletchers the night Michelle was killed. That makes him more than just a witness, ma’am. We have to formally interview him.’

  Reeve sat down with them then, something she didn’t usually do, but there was still the air of Saturday morning informality.

  She said, ‘For me, he misses out person of interest and goes straight to suspect. I accept your point about his previous victims but Michelle was attractive, and on a night out with a few drinks, she probably didn’t look or act her age. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but… So we’re certainly going to interview Donnelly early next week. We’ll do it ourselves, I’m not passing this to the local force in Barnsley, so make sure you’ve got a full tank, Chris, and some expenses forms.’

  She had decided then that he would be going to interview the one and only suspect at present. Not alone, obviously, she or Terek would be there, but this was another vote of confidence in him – and it was something else to have in the back of his mind for the rest of the weekend.

  Reeve said to him, ‘If your crime scene report is organised, you should clear off. I’ve got a bunch of inadequates in today,’ with a smile at Serena, ‘but we’ll muddle through. Next week will be busy. You must have something worthwhile you could be doing instead of unpaid overtime.’

  With a serious face, Serena said, ‘He does, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to ask what it involves. See you Monday, Chris. No doubt your partner-in-crime will let you know if anything significant develops.’

  She meant Serena, and he wondered whether that’s how they we
re seen by others, as one of those detective partnerships which arise as much by processes of evolution or elimination as by any management decision. He was Serena’s boss now but for some time they’d worked effectively together as constables, especially on the investigation into the disappearance of Zoe Johnson. Their interview styles were quite different but fitted together well. She was street-wise, whereas he could sometimes see the bigger picture, the one outside the box. But partners-in-crime?

  He said goodbye to the two of them, closing the door, but then he stood there as he checked his phone for any more missed calls or messages. When he looked up and through the glass, the two women were talking again. Or rather, Reeve was talking and Serena was listening as if she meant it.

  Waters stood and watched for longer than he should, but then something odd happened. Serena reached out and placed a hand on the detective chief inspector’s forearm – she kept it there for several seconds and asked something, to which Alison Reeve replied with a headshake and a smile. Then the hand came away and the talk went on. Women’s talk, girl talk perhaps, and the tales they tell of men. Perhaps, but he could not entirely convince himself that it was so.

  Things seemed good with Janey. They spent nearly an hour on the phone in the afternoon, and she got herself upset because she’d left him on his own all weekend. He made a show of putting on a brave face, and even suggested it was good for them to spend some time apart to see how they really felt about each other. She told him off and threatened to go and get on a plane from Manchester to Norwich. She sounded as if she was serious at one point, so then he had to persuade her to stay, and tell her how well she’d done to get herself invited to the second stage of the interviews. It was an opportunity with a major pharmaceutical company who took on only a handful of new graduates a year, and she would be crazy not to go for it. As soon as she agreed, he pointed out that without his assistance in all those hours of revision, she probably wouldn’t have got the first-class degree that had earned her the opportunity, so…