Songbird

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And the first one was on the Tuesday evening. Then they occur at regular intervals over the next two days, and occasionally she gets a reply from him. I know he has accounted for it even though he doesn’t seem to have a good head for numbers, but we should see the texts she sent him, ma’am.’

  Terek said, ‘I agree, we should. But it might be more useful to establish where Michelle Simms’ mobile was on the Thursday evening, as far as finding her murderer is concerned. Have we looked at that? Can we track its final locations, Serena?’

  He knew they should be able to find something, of course – Terek’s point was really to ask whether she had done anything about it yet. But pinging phones is an inexact science. They’d know if Michelle’s phone had left the area, they could find the moment when it last responded to a signal, and this would all be useful information, but there are only so many hours in a day. Whatever else Serena Butler was, she was never lazy.

  Yes, she said, she could do that next if he thought it was the priority.

  Awkward pause.

  Cara Freeman had stopped making notes. She sat with her elbows on the arms of the chair, her fingers interlaced and her chin resting on the arch they made. And Waters had the thought that she wasn’t looking at any one individual; she was studying the whole group and its interactions.

  Reeve came to a decision, and said, ‘No, let’s see if we can clear this up first. Serena, get back to Fletcher and remind him about the texts. Tell him we’d like them this afternoon, he’s had twenty-four hours. I’m sure he’s phone savvy, it’ll only take him a couple of minutes. Nip out and do that now.’

  As soon as Serena had left the room, Terek took over the interactive board and moved it on to the list of men convicted of crimes that might be relevant to the present case. He had his first candidates in place and they could read these thoroughly depressing curricula vitae of crimes against the female person. So many, and several within a few miles of Pinehills. One has to ask the question sometimes – what has gone wrong? Or has anything “gone wrong”? Was it always like this throughout human history? Have there always been sexual predators, and if so, what evolutionary sense does that make?

  The little study group was quiet and a couple of them were making notes. Waters abandoned the philosophical questions and made an effort to come to terms with the reality on the screen, because it was possible that the name of the man they were hunting was there. Serious sexual offenders invariably have a history of escalation and…

  And yet Dr Robinson had said it – no evidence of rape or of sexually motivated interference. The dangerously sad individuals listed here specialised in the very offences that the pathologist was telling them had not been committed. There’s a problem here, he told himself.

  Fifteen minutes had passed before Detective Constable Butler re-entered the room. She didn’t look happy and Waters knew immediately that she’d failed to get hold of the messages on Graham Fletcher’s mobile phone. Reeve had picked up the same signals and said simply, ‘Go on.’

  ‘He can’t find his mobile, ma’am. He says that when he got back to his office yesterday after talking to us, he looked for it but it wasn’t on his desk where he thought it was. He’s been searching for it on and off ever since but it hasn’t turned up.’

  Alison Reeve took a slow breath with her eyes half-closed. Then she opened them and said, ‘If he doesn’t have the phone, how did you just get in touch with him?’

  ‘It kept going to “unavailable to take your call”. I remembered the name of his company, looked that up and rang the business number. He wasn’t there but they’ve got a system to page callers through to him. He apologised and said he’d keep looking for it. Sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘Not your fault. We should have gone after it while we were in Luton yesterday. Bugger!’

  Terek said, ‘Some people lose their phones every day, ma’am. It might turn up. We can keep sending him reminders about it.’

  ‘Or,’ said Waters, surprising himself, ‘we could go back down to Luton and help him look for it. If he can’t find it, he could write down for us what was in the texts between them. That way we’d have something and he’d know we’re serious, ma’am.’

  Every eye was upon him now but he was most aware of DCI Freeman’s gaze.

  Reeve said, ‘Serious in what way, Chris?’

  He shrugged and she said, ‘You want to take a look at him?’

  This is a significant moment in any investigation, the moment at which you put forward the name of someone you believe might be involved. Waters had enough experience to know one does not do this lightly.

  ‘Too soon to say that, ma’am. I didn’t interview Michaela Fletcher, I haven’t met her, but she didn’t mention them having any sort of row when Michelle was in Pinehills, did she? In fact, I’ve somehow got the impression they were enjoying themselves.’

  He looked at Reeve who looked at Terek before she said, ‘You’re right. Michaela didn’t say they had argued, except for some reference to when they were younger. Of course, they might have done so and she simply didn’t tell us.’

  Waters said, ‘But at the moment we only have Fletcher’s word for it. I haven’t met him either, I know, but the only evidence that Michelle was fighting with Michaela has just become unavailable. We do know they were communicating but we only have Graham Fletcher’s word as to what it was about.”

  Behind DCI Reeve, the interactive whiteboard went into power-save. Suddenly the senior investigating officer appeared to be seated beside a blue lake surrounded by virgin pine forest, with tall mountains in the misty distance. North America, Canada maybe.

  Reeve said to Serena, ‘Thoughts? You were present when we interviewed Michaela.’

  Serena said, ‘I remember her saying there was something on her sister’s mind. She mentioned the texts. But didn’t she tell us Michelle told her it was work, people from the salon?’

  ‘Yes, she did. But yesterday we heard from Gavin at the salon that the last thing Michelle said was not to bother her with work. From what I understood him to say to us, they didn’t.’

  Just a little lie, the kind we tell our siblings every day, but for some reason Michelle had concealed from her sister who the texts were from and to whom she was replying. For some reason? For the very obvious reason that it was her sister’s husband – the metadata was unequivocal. And for argument’s sake, Waters, let’s say it wasn’t about squabbles with her sister; in that case, it was about something else. It’s not a huge leap from there to suggest that if the topic of those texts was, shall we say, awkward in some way, the loss of an iPhone XS might be a price worth paying.

  Serena said then, ‘And I remember Michaela telling us her sister was fine on the Thursday night, chatting to people in the bar. The Donnellys confirmed that more or less, didn’t they?’

  Waters nodded, but it was Terek who said, ‘Yes. I certainly think we should pursue Graham Fletcher for his phone content, but we must remember that he was two hours away from Pinehills. Even without his device, we can check that, in the same way we should be able to geolocate Michelle’s phone. Eventually. We shouldn’t spend too long focusing on evidence we don’t yet have. It won’t be long before we get a lot of it from forensics.’

  Was it difficult for Terek not to glance to his left where DCI Freeman was sitting? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the thought had never occurred to him, Waters reflected, but one that should have was that electronically establishing the whereabouts of Graham Fletcher’s mobile phone last Thursday evening established only that – it did not establish the whereabouts of its owner in any way, shape or form.

  Reeve said, ‘Serena, stay on Mr Fletcher’s case over the missing phone. Keep nudging him about it. Simon is right – we’re still in the early stages with this one and we haven’t had any breaks yet. But we will, something will turn up. The sooner we get back to our desks, the sooner that might happen. Thank you, everyone.’

  As the room emptied, Serena
came back to the seat she had originally occupied, next to Waters. He said, ‘Well done. Everyone was impressed.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I should’ve had that bloody phone off him yesterday.’

  ‘Perhaps you weren’t meant to.’

  ‘What does that mean? It was destiny? Fate decreed that I must never see that iPhone?’

  Sometimes you must just give her a moment, and Waters did so before he said, ‘What I mean is, Fletcher knew you were coming to the house to interview Michaela. He decided to be there himself. He had probably decided to mention the texts and the call – he might also have decided not to bring the phone.’

  She sat down next to him and lowered her voice. Richard Ford had already left the room, Reeve and Terek were talking in the doorway and Cara Freeman was behind, looking at her phone.

  Serena said, ‘But if he didn’t want us to see the texts, why mention them to me? Why not keep quiet about all of it?’

  Waters didn’t answer straight away. Reeve left the room, and DI Terek looked back at the two of them as if he wanted to say, you heard the DCI, back to your work-stations. If that was the case, he thought better of it and followed Reeve down the corridor.

  ‘Why not? That depends on how smart he is, and maybe whether he was a fan of Crimewatch.’

  ‘Oh good, we’re doing it that way – I have to work it out for myself. Now where I have seen this before?’

  But she did work it out, in just three or four seconds.

  ‘Because he knew we’d look at her phone records through the service provider. Alison said this yesterday. His number would come up there, so better to disclose it than be questioned about it. You’re serious about Graham Fletcher?’

  ‘No, not yet. Just too many loose ends, at the moment. He could have behaved that way and still be perfectly innocent of doing her any harm – it would still make sense to tell us about the texts.’

  ‘Good work on the phone records, Serena. I know where to come if I need that sorting out.’

  They looked up to see that Freeman had approached without them noticing, and she was standing in the aisle, close to Waters’ chair.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. The other bit of phone work wasn’t so good.’

  Freeman smiled and said, ‘That’s not all on you. DCI Reeve was in the room as well, wasn’t she?’ – which was true, though it required an officer of equal rank to point it out. Whether she should have done so here and now was a different matter.

  Serena nodded and Freeman said, ‘Anyway, I’ve got some dates for a couple of training days next month. I’ll find you before I leave the building. Will you be at your usual desk?’

  She would, she said, and stood up to leave, understanding what the DCI was saying before Waters himself. Serena seemed to have considerable respect for her ‘other’ boss, but was it more than that? Was she a little afraid of her? That would be something of a novelty.

  When Serena had gone, just the two of them remained. Freeman took the empty seat next to him and said, ‘So, sergeant, how is it going?’

  She had a pleasant enough face and was easy to talk to, so he told her what had been keeping him busy for the past few weeks, but you don’t lower your guard all the way, not with people who’ve climbed the ladder as quickly as Cara Freeman.

  She listened and then said, ‘So that’s what you’ve been doing. But how is it going?’

  Still the same smile, but the dark eyes – there was something a little foreign about her when you studied her face carefully – were searching his own for a reaction to her question, testing him.

  ‘Pretty well, I think. I don’t get a report every day. I’m not getting many complaints, ma’am.’

  ‘I hear only good things, Chris.’

  From whom? Who was discussing his progress as a detective sergeant with a DCI who wasn’t even based in the building? He could recall his first meeting with her as he and DC waited to board the helicopter that would fly them to the gas rig in the North Sea, at the very beginning of the investigation into the disappearance of James Bell. She’d been standing with her own sergeant, Terry Christopher – who was uncharacteristically missing this morning – and before the introductions, he, Waters, had assumed that the sergeant was in charge and she was a detective constable. Even now he wasn’t sure of her age but she wasn’t many years older than him – maybe thirty-two, thirty-three. How was that possible? What sort of individual do you need to be to manage that?

  He said, ‘I know there’s a long way to go on this case, ma’am, but it’s definitely a murder. I’m not the only one wondering why it hasn’t gone to the new squad.’

  She raised her eyebrows a little, and said, ‘I’ve no idea. We don’t get to pick our cases, someone from on high allocates them. Then we just turn up and solve them. At least that’s the plan!’

  She was friendly, easy to talk to, and the gulf you felt with many senior officers wasn’t there. It would be a simple matter to trust her and offer her confidences.

  She went on, ‘But obviously, if there’s not much progress, we might end up getting involved…’

  Was that meant for his ears only? Freeman’s expression never altered as she said these things but had she just delivered an opinion or some sort of warning?

  ‘So, tell me why you’re looking at the brother-in-law, Chris.’

  ‘I don’t think we are, not yet. His mob-’

  ‘No. Tell me why you are looking at him.’

  They say that a laser beam can travel across a million of miles of space and yet its intensity remains undiminished. What sort of an individual do you need to be to become a DCI running a murder squad before your thirty-fifth birthday? The sort with a laser hidden in the left hemisphere where most of us process language. Some detectives have it – Freeman wasn’t, after all, the first he had encountered with such a weapon.

  He said, ‘OK, ma’am. I’m not a numbers person-’

  ‘History – that was your subject, yes?’

  Oh, she’s friendly and so easy to talk to… But why would she know anything about his degree?

  ‘Yes. As I said, I’m not big on numbers but I keep up with the annual reports, the statistics. Sixty-three per cent of murders are carried out by a partner or close relative. DC always said, if you’ve got nothing else, start there, with the numbers.’

  ‘Ah. The one and only. The inimitable…’

  She looked at Waters for some time and then went on, ‘I expect he also said things like follow your nose and listen to your gut.’

  He could not tell whether she was mocking Smith but he went to defend him anyway.

  ‘He did, ma’am. But when you got down to it, his intuitions were always based on something he’d observed or worked out. He didn’t believe in magic, just logic.’

  She was smiling as she stood up to leave.

  ‘And loyalty, of course. I imagine he was a great believer in that.’

  ‘He was, ma’am.’

  When she was three or four steps away from him, Freeman turned and said, ‘Your sixty-three per cent?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘If you include the unsolved cases, I’d say it’s closer to seventy. I’ve no proof of that but… Just a gut feeling. Good luck with your case, sergeant.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  It wasn’t until Saturday Janey told him directly that the company in Manchester had offered her the job. She would wait, she said, until she had it all in writing so she could study the details, and she wouldn’t make up her mind until she had done that. Tomorrow, perhaps they could drive up to Barnham Staithe and visit her uncle. He’d want to know what had happened, and Waters thought that she too would want to know Sam Cole’s opinion of the matter. Though he could tell her himself here and now; Cole had said to Waters more than once in a general but somehow still personal way that he didn’t want Janey getting too involved and not making the most of her education.

  And this was a great success, we should celebrate, Waters told her. He booked a table at Sandrine’s
for seven that evening, and afterwards they could go on somewhere and make an evening of it. She looked relieved and then suddenly very happy. She told him more as they lay on his bed in the flat, about how the company was a major player in pharmaceuticals research, with its headquarters in America, how they took on only ten graduate trainees a year in the UK, and how she would almost certainly get the chance to spend some time in Boston.

  She was happy and he was happy for her. But afterwards, when she’d fallen asleep in his arms and then turned away in her sleep, he spent a long time watching her and remembering the girl in the bows of the Lady Ann as the four of them – Sam Cole, Janey, DC and himself – sailed down the creek to take samples of sea water, almost exactly a year ago. Her face and arms had been tanned by a summer working on the seal trips, and her hair had been bleached by the sun. A red T shirt and denim shorts, bare feet on the wooden boards… At first she had worn sunglasses but after a couple of minutes she’d taken them off, and he knew why, of course. As the boat picked up speed, she had kept watch on the water ahead, but every few seconds she looked to the side, over the saltmarshes and then back into the boat, catching his eye every time.

  Janey Cole had looked as natural and as pretty out there as the flowers of sea lavender and sea aster that grew in profusion beside every wild and secret creek of the marshes. She belonged there in a way that he, Waters, thought he had never particularly belonged anywhere; even her surname was one of the oldest along the North Norfolk coast. And now she would be a trainee executive in pharmaceuticals in Manchester, now she was going to Boston. She lay asleep in his bed as she had many times over the past year; she would wake up and tell him she loved him and that everything would work out. But the Janey Cole in the bows of the Lady Ann, the Janey Cole he could see in his mind’s eye, was already just a memory.

  Was he secretly a little annoyed with her, a little angry? Was that why, when she asked what they were doing after that meal, he said they should go to The Blue Note again? It had been alright last Saturday night, just somewhere they could relax and have a drink. Janey didn’t ask whom he’d met there – if she had done so, he would have told her. He didn’t mention the texts from Katherine Diver either, and it wasn’t as if he had arranged to meet with either brother or sister, was it? But if he was being honest, Waters would have admitted he knew the music had no interest for Janey, and she would have been happier to return to his flat and talk some more about the future. She was being especially loving, trying to make it up to him, her absence this week and her absences to come, and he was annoyed with himself too because he understood but could not simply accept it.