Songbird

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘What is taking so long?’

  Now, a manager must ask these questions, we all know that. It’s all in the execution, and Waters caught that first millisecond of expression in the eyes of his female detective constable which suggested that execution was exactly what she had in mind. Should he step in between or-

  ‘I think in this case “long” is relative, sir. We have good contacts with most phone service providers but we’ve not had to deal with this one before. They’re playing it by the rules, as they are entitled to do. I’ve been promised something this morning.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The metadata – numbers, times and durations.’

  ‘But no content of any text messages?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  ‘Why are they being difficult?’

  Waters thought, the DI has been here at Kings Lake for almost a year; surely he has learned by now how this ends? No point stepping in any longer. It’s too late.

  ‘I don’t know that either, sir. I suppose phone companies are just like people in that way, and some are just naturally a pain in the arse.’

  Ford was looking at the DI with a vaguely-not-surprised expression, and Waters thought he’d wait a decent interval before trying to resuscitate departmental relations. But – and it might be just the heat that was to blame – Serena hadn’t quite done.

  ‘If you want to go down the formal request route, sir, I can have all the papers you need on your desk in ten minutes. It will only require a signature from DCI Reeve. After that, of course, the company might appeal to the Information Commission. Then it’s a bit of process. Sir.’

  Something encouraged Ford to join in at this point – perhaps he saw an opportunity for professional development.

  ‘Am I right in thinking the phone company might not even have the text message content?’

  Serena said, ‘Yes. They’re all different. Under RIPA, the only thing they must hand over if requested is the data, which they must keep for a year. Any content is a bonus, isn’t it, sir?’

  Terek said that it was, that they’d better get started on those previous offenders and have something on the shortlist by two o’clock this afternoon. Then he left them in peace.

  Kings Lake Central has been a police station for almost one hundred years. Fortunately, there had been room for it to expand in that time but inevitably it did so in a piecemeal fashion, with a few rooms added here and there, according to the needs and even the fashions of the time. Some early developments were single storey, whilst others, most notably that in the early 1970s, had involved imposing a small, grey tower block in the New Brutalist style on a green space behind the original station – the block which now housed the offices of the more senior staff. Waters had calculated that if Allen was promoted again, the force would either need to add an additional floor or invite him to relocate to Norwich.

  But a more immediate consequence of this architectural history was that few rooms seemed to be entirely suited to the demands of modern policing. An incident room should ideally contain all the staff working on an incident, which simplifies and speeds up communications. A major incident requires a major space, of course, and the most modern stations allow for this with flexible designs and partitions that can be moved at will. Moving a wall at Kings Lake, however, would involve a demolition team, and more than likely measures to contain the dust from blue asbestos. Inconvenient, time-consuming and very costly. Money had been spent this year, but on the main entrance. Charlie Hills’ old oak counter had disappeared along with Charlie himself. Now the reception staff were safe from attack, not only from irate council tax-payers but also from armed gangs and terrorists because the one-way glass screens were bullet and blast-proof. CCTV enabled these officers to assess the risk every time someone pressed the buzzer for assistance. At the opening ceremony, Assistant Chief Constable Devine had made it clear the force placed the highest priority on the safety of its personnel.

  Meanwhile, the incident room wasn’t big enough for the incident involving the death of Michelle Simms. Terek used it to begin briefing Wilson’s team and some uniformed people about their visit to Wells this morning, while Waters took his team of two back to their original office on the next floor down.

  Terek had said to get busy with the list of offenders in the county who might have an interest in an attractive, inebriated woman wandering around after dark on a sultry summer evening, but, as happened not infrequently, there had been mixed messages from on high – Serena was already under instruction from DCI Reeve to write up their notes from yesterday’s interviews in Luton. As these were to be on the database this morning, that had to be her priority. This left Waters and Ford to begin sifting through the records of men who had been charged or convicted with any form of violence against women in a sexual context. It’s time-consuming, laborious but essential work whenever fate has decided to hand you no leads.

  Perhaps the most significant step forward in such processes since that tower block was built has been Excel. Other software packages are available but the point remains that the digitisation of records has been a huge boon to investigators of everything, everywhere. Lists of potential offenders can be re-ordered in a split second, according to effectively infinite combinations of criteria, but as Christopher Waters knew well by now, that is still just a beginning. Databases are only as effective as their data is fresh, and who has the time or resources to continually update it? Here is a fellow who comes out as number one on our search three different ways but how are we to know whether he has since moved to Majorca, become a Cistercian monk or simply gone and died? The answer is, as it ever was, by legwork. Metaphorically or literally, someone will have to make contact and ask the old questions.

  But before any of this, Waters wanted to hear thoughts about the matter of motive, and with senior officers occupied for the moment, this was an opportunity. Serena and Ford had gone to their desks and sat down. Waters leaned against his own, the very one which had belonged to DC, and invited contributions. There is no point having bright people in your team if you never give them the chance to shine.

  Serena said, ‘Well, it’s usually sex or money, and sometimes it’s both. It looks like it wasn’t sex in this case, which seems a bit weird. But if it wasn’t…’

  Richard Ford said, ‘Maybe it was money. A mugger sees her, follows until she’s on her own. Goes for the bag and she puts up a fight. Her bag and phone are missing.’

  A possibility Waters had already considered, but there were problems with it.

  He said, ‘It’s not impossible. Muggings are on the rise in the county. But muggers are small-time individuals. They’re opportunists who aren’t usually thinking beyond how to spend the few pounds they get out of a purse or for a phone.’

  Ford said, ‘And there she was, on her own after dark, an opportunity.’

  Waters said, ‘But if she fought back – and that does fit with what we’ve learned about her – why the murder? Why not knock her down or subdue her enough to make a run for it? Strangling someone is only easy on the television. It takes some time and a lot of effort. Then, if SOCO is right, he decides to move the body a considerable distance and hides it.’

  ‘And more than that,’ said Serena, ‘he then has enough about him to decide to make it look as if she’s been interfered with. He pulls her clothing about and rearranges the body. You can’t say a mugger would never do that but it’s not typical, is it?’

  This was a question of the sort that doesn’t require a spoken answer.

  Waters waited a few seconds before he said, ‘A sex attack which went wrong? Someone who couldn’t for some reason carry it out? That could explain the post-mortem stuff – someone whose mind was working that way even if the rest of him wasn’t?’

  Serena seemed unimpressed.

  ‘A sex attack with no sex? Like a bank robbery where you leave the money in the safe?’

  Ford said, ‘And then you’v
e got to ask why he would do that. He’s just drawn attention to himself and maybe his record by making it look like a sex attack. It would make more sense if he made it look like something else, wouldn’t it?’

  Waters said, ‘So what’s left? Someone whose thrill is the violence, the killing itself rather than the sexual assault. That would be a useful starting point when we get into these lists, I’d say. We have to begin somewhere.’

  He looked at his watch, expecting to see Terek on his rounds of the offices quite soon.

  ‘Or,’ Serena said, ‘someone with another motive altogether. It wasn’t random at all. She didn’t accidentally meet up with a man who fits any of the above. It was deliberate and it was personal. It was someone she knew.’

  That brought the discussion to an end. Ford went into the database of the county’s sex offenders and began rearranging it in terms of the severity of violence involved in their crimes. It’s hard for lay people to believe but such things are given a numerical score and a letter code. Serena opened her laptop and Waters saw a Word document appear, with several paragraphs in the typical layout of an interview report; she must have begun it at home last night. He picked up his notepad, wrote a short message and then put the piece of paper on the desk beside her – it read “Tell me again why that phone data is taking so long”. It was a joke at Terek’s expense, one that might have produced an Anglo-Saxon response from his detective constable, but instead she just nodded because she had already worked it out for herself – she knew the real reason he had written that message. There was a danger she would be the first member of his team to leave and that, he told himself, walking back to his own desk, would be unfortunate.

  Waters would take his chair to sit at Ford’s desk soon but he had a moment to himself. He’d switched his phone to silent for the briefing, but now he saw he had received a text. Maybe from Janey – she would be on her way home now. Maybe from Janey, telling him the company had offered her the job in Manchester. Then what?

  He opened it and read If you’ve got read receipts on, I now know that you still have the same number. Or that someone nicked your phone, which would be hilarious. How are you?

  Waters sent back Who is this? But he knew, in the private inner space some call the heart of hearts, he already knew the answer.

  Hopefully not your very worst nightmare. How are you, Chris?

  He wrote I’m good, Katherine. You?

  Not good, so no change there.

  When he’d met her brother at The Blue Note last Saturday night, this possibility had occurred to him, but five days had passed and it had been forgotten. He stared at the exchange of texts until he saw the dots of the ellipsis appear, which meant another message was on its way.

  So, I have two more questions. One, are you married?

  Not as of this morning. You?

  Don’t be absurd. Two – what are you doing on Saturday night?

  Chapter Eighteen

  At 14.05 that afternoon, the file containing the metadata for Michelle Simms’ mobile phone record finally appeared on the interactive whiteboard in Incident Room 2, Kings Lake Central police station. Present to see it were Detective Chief Inspector Alison Reeve, Detective Inspector Simon Terek, Detective Sergeant Christopher Waters and detective constables Serena Butler and Richard Ford.

  Michelle had been a heavy user of her phone. The file showed them no message content but the list of calls made and messages sent and received stretched back several weeks, and she clearly used the phone every day, sometimes frequently. They had dates, times, durations and the numbers of the other mobiles and landlines involved in these exchanges.

  Reeve blew out her cheeks, frowned and said, ‘Serena, I’m assuming you’ve already had a look at this?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘OK. Let’s begin with Tuesday the 25th, the day she left Luton and went to the coast. What have we got?’

  Some of the activity could already be accounted for. Michelle had been in the salon that morning. She had made calls from there – Serena hadn’t checked all of them yet but the two she had were the numbers of a wholesale supplier to the hairdressing trade and a commercial window-cleaning service, the sort of people to whom one would expect the manager of a salon to be speaking on a daily basis.

  Then Serena went on, ‘The first number we recognise is the call at 10.48, that’s to her sister, Michaela. They call each other a couple of times over the next hour. I’m assuming that’s when they’re arranging for Michelle to go down and join them. We know that originally she said she was too busy, and then she changed her mind. We also know from Gavin, the deputy manager of the salon, that Michelle was present there until around one pm, sorting things out before she went. He said she seemed happy enough, even excited – he said she was, to use his exact words, “in one of her hyper moods”. She told him she was having a complete break and not to call her about work, which as far as this file is concerned is what happened. I don’t think there’s any further contact between Michelle and the salon, at least not through this phone.’

  There was a pause while every officer studied the digital prints Michelle Simms had left behind on that Tuesday morning, her last one. Busy but excited about going to see her sister and her nieces, looking forward to a break.

  Serena said next, ‘There’s a gap in the afternoon from around two o’clock when she was driving up to the coast and then a text, this one,’ indicating with the electronic pointer, ‘at 17.42, which we’ve established was to her husband, Barry Simms. One thing I did notice about this is…’

  The sound of an opening door brought the pause; every head turned to see DCI Freeman entering the incident room. She waved an apology for the interruption but didn’t seem in the slightest embarrassed about making it, taking a seat behind the rest of them.

  Reeve said, ‘Go on, Serena. What did you notice?’

  ‘Michelle is there for the next two days and nights but she doesn’t get in touch with Barry Simms. And as far as I can see, he doesn’t make any attempt to get in touch with her, ma’am.’

  ‘Fair point. For anyone who’s wondering, we haven’t gone into depth about this in the report of our interview with Mr Simms yesterday but I’d say the lack of communication between the two of them is consistent with our impressions. What’s next, Serena? I’m seeing several texts exchanged with one number.’

  ‘Exchanged only partly covers it, ma’am. Michelle sent texts to this number over the next two days, sometimes two or three in succession before she gets a response. On the Thursday afternoon, Michelle makes a call to the same number, here,’ pointing again, ‘at 14.07. As you can see, this lasted for eight minutes. Then things go quiet – very quiet for Michelle – until she sends another text to the same number at 16.17. Then she gets a call from a different mobile at 18.14. Finally, at 22.23 she receives a text from the same number, mobile that called her at 18.14.’

  Waters had shifted enough in his seat to be able to see what Freeman was doing, and she was making notes again. About the case? About her occasional team member, Serena? Who was doing an excellent job, he pointed out to himself; when she’s focused and not cross with someone or about something, she really looks and sounds the part.

  Reeve said, ‘Good work. Now, first, how does this fit with Michaela Fletcher’s account of that day? She told us her sister went for a long walk on her own down the beach on that Thursday afternoon – presumably that’s when the two o’clock phone call took place. Making the call was possibly the reason for the long walk. Whatever was said, she thinks about it – maybe – for a couple of hours and then gets back in touch. I’m a bit puzzled by the other number suddenly cropping up. Did you check? Has she been in touch with the 18.14 number before last week?’

  Serena was shaking her head, having anticipated the question.

  ‘I don’t think so. I checked back a way and didn’t find it.’

  Reeve paused, thought and then turned so she could speak to them all.

  ‘Yesterday, Grah
am Fletcher told us he had been in touch with Michelle while she was at Pinehills – by text and call, he said. He told us she was either arguing with or annoyed with her sister for some reason, and that it wasn’t unusual for him to step in and keep the peace. What he was saying about her is consistent with what others have said about her as a character, so it makes a kind of sense. Serena, put us out of our misery. Is that Graham Fletcher’s phone number all over this data?’

  It was, on a contract registered to that executive home in St Martins Gardens, an iPhone XS. Waters looked around, waiting for someone else to ask the obvious question. Then, in the absence of that person, he raised a hand, or rather the forefinger of his right hand – the habit had evolved over the past few years since he was first teased here as a schoolboy, but it hadn’t entirely left him. DCI Reeve nodded and he said, ‘Ma’am, if you had Graham Fletcher in the room yesterday, telling you about his communication with Michelle while she was in Pinehills, did you actually get a look at his phone?’

  Reeve was looking at Serena, who said, ‘No, we didn’t see the phone. He had a works phone with him, his own was back in the office. I asked him to let me have shots of the texts from Michelle, and he agreed without a problem. He hasn’t sent them yet though. My bad.’

  Waters said, ‘His office? What does he do, exactly?’

  ‘He’s a heating engineer, domestic boilers and radiators. He owns the company, built it up himself. Why?’

  ‘Just curious. When he told you he’d been in touch with Michelle, what did he say?’

  ‘That he’d had a couple of texts from her on the Thursday, and that it wasn’t unusual for him to get caught in the crossfire between the two sisters.’

  Waters studied the screen again.

  ‘I’ve just counted nine texts. Did he actually say it was “a couple”?’