The Deep End, page 21
‘I’m sending you a big hug,’ he said.
She got back to Barnstaple by three o’clock to find an email from Crawley with ten attachments of promotional bumph for the chemical signature scheme. He mentioned nothing about the refectory scene he had witnessed between her and West, and she crossed her fingers that he hadn’t reported it. Maybe her luck would hold. When her boss rang her, she was on tenterhooks, but again she found Detective Superintendent Wells in a relatively cheerful mood.
‘We’re reorganising the caseload a little bit,’ he said. ‘As you know, we can’t have you getting involved in the investigation into the disappearance of PC Lister. I’ve moved Winterflood across to be SIO on that, with DS Moran and DC Nuttall reporting to him.’
‘What about the Alex Brown case? Isn’t Winterflood doing that at the same time?’
‘There is no Alex Brown case, Jan. There is however a Katarina Lezcano case, which is being removed from CID. PC Caldwell will tie up the loose ends.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a suicide Jan. It’s increasingly obvious.’
‘The woman took her own life because of the breakdown in the relationship with her son, who didn’t come to stay with her for Christmas. He didn’t stay for the very good reason that he was dead, and had been for months, for having dared to report Brent West to HR.’
‘Bring me the evidence, and we will look into it, or more precisely Fred Winterflood will look into it.’
‘Sir, how can I bring you the evidence when I’m not on the case?’
‘And how, DI Talantire, can you lobby everyone for this conclusion without any evidence?’ Getting no reply he said: ‘It’s been clear for a long time that you are too heavily emotionally involved in this case for your judgement, or should I say, prejudices, to be taken seriously.’
‘Where is Nadine, sir? Tell me that. Two days missing now.’
‘We are trying to find her. I don’t think I’m breaking any rules to let you know that Winterflood informally interviewed Commander West this afternoon at Portishead, shortly after he received an award for innovation in policing. The main upshot of that is a cast-iron alibi. Commander West was teaching a course at Portishead all day, in front of thirty-five officers, on the Wednesday that PC Lister went missing. He was not involved, do you understand? Now, please, stop wasting any more time on these ridiculous conspiracy theories. If you raise them again, there will be consequences. The final written warning is still there. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now, your task is to pursue this rural crime epidemic with full vigour, aided by the chemical signature scheme. I’m sure I can get you some manpower.’
‘Sir, honestly, it’s mainly a PCSO leafleting job, raising awareness. It’s not—’
‘Jan, it’s my decision, and I’m sorry you think it’s beneath you. You might be surprised at the difference you can make to this if you put your mind to it.’
* * *
Talantire got back to Barnstaple to find that her desk and computer terminal had been moved into one of the small meeting rooms at the far end of the room, behind Anorak Land, as the techie station was known. In fact, two young male technicians from that department were still connecting up the equipment.
‘What’s going on?’ she mouthed to Nuttall, who seemed to be waiting with a phone clamped to his ear for somebody to come on the line.
‘Middlemoor,’ he mouthed back, shrugged and then returned to his phone call. Talantire stalked up to the technicians and asked them the same question.
‘Ma’am, we got a job order from Exeter,’ said one with a don’t blame me I only work here tone to his voice. She watched with a sinking heart as her wheeled set of metal drawers, complete with distinctive fridge magnets, was jammed into a narrow gap at the back of the meeting room. She went into the room, unlocked the drawer, took out a stack of case files on the heating oil thefts and stowed them in a shoulder bag. Unwilling to watch this slow-motion humiliation, she scrawled a note and left it on Nuttall’s desk. It said: I’m working from home for the rest of my shift.
Her heart sinking, she descended the stairs from CID, went out into the car park and unlocked her Ford Focus. She felt everyone she passed was looking at her, the mad bitch who finally went too far. On the way home she stopped off at B&Q and got herself a doorbell camera, and a couple more proximity lights for the garden. She lived alone, after all. It was like the old joke: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
She drove into Cornwallis Avenue in the gathering dusk, reversed up to her garage door and glanced right.
There it was again. The same black BMW that had been there a few nights ago. Same number plate, definitely, no lights. There was someone sitting in the driver’s seat. A man in silhouette. She must have lingered in her gaze long enough to alert him, because he did a quiet three-point turn, flicked on the lights and headed away down the other end. The whole thing just ratcheted up her level of unease. She let herself in as if conducting a raid, PAVA spray in hand, going from room to room. The place was still a tip, but didn’t seem to be any different kind of a tip from how it had been when she left it. That was the problem when you had a housemate who left the place looking like it had been burgled. It was hard to tell if you actually had been.
She started step one of her survival plan: she rang Adam and dictated to him the number plate of the car she’d seen. ‘If anything happens to me make sure Maddy gets that registration number,’ she said. She passed across Maddy’s personal phone number to him. He seemed really worried, but she said she had lots of things to do and would get back to him really soon.
After hanging up, she logged on to the remote portal for the DVLA database of drivers’ details. She once again cited the rural heating oil investigation on the online form, before hitting ‘Search’. The registered owner’s address came up as a lease company in Falmouth. That would be a dead end without a formal inquiry.
Bemused, Talantire then set to work installing the doorbell camera, linking it up to her laptop and phone, then downloading some additional virus and spyware checkers. She went to the shed to get out the large stepladder so she could reach to install the proximity lighting.
Someone had broken in.
The shed lock was broken, the hasp levered off and away from the flimsy wood so that the still-locked padlock hung uselessly on the metal clasp. She grabbed the outward-opening door and flung it wide. There was no one within. Nothing obvious seemed to have been stolen, though she struggled to remember what junk she kept in there. She went back into the house and dug out her backup forensics kit which had been locked inside a cupboard in her bedroom. She took fingerprint gel lifts and DNA samples from all around the house, doorbell, garage door, light switches, rear door, handles and even the boot and door handles of her own car. She meticulously photographed everything she did, using plastic crime scene markers, and loaded them all onto her own laptop. All the pictures she saved across a series of email drafts, which by saving she knew would appear on servers that could later be scoured for information by investigators. She wrote up a brief description of what she had done and saved it to the cloud, then downloaded everything onto a fresh data stick which she put into her pocket.
She realised she was preparing for her own death, and for the investigation that would follow her disappearance. A ripple of terror rose in her. She felt so sure this was going to happen and seemed unable to do anything about it. Nobody believed her; even Adam had seemed a little unsure about her conviction that West was responsible for all this. Planning for catching him after she’d been killed was all very well, but it also seemed defeatist. As she cleared up inside the house, tackling the room where Nadine herself had slept, she took some more DNA and fingerprints samples. Nadine had not been abducted from Cornwallis Avenue, but it was possible that someone had visited her there when Talantire herself was away, and at work.
Seeing the room where her colleague and erstwhile friend had stayed was a poignant reminder that she had been missing more two days now. Could she still be alive? Talantire struggled to find a scenario that would fit it. The case had made the newspapers and regional TV, and her picture had been widely distributed. She was a very attractive woman, and the sunny portrait of her at the beach in a dress, presumably chosen by Roger, made her look dazzling: smiling into the camera, big blue eyes and perfect teeth, an hour-glass figure. Happier times, certainly, and presumably long before she ran into Brent West.
Talantire bagged up all her results, carefully filled out the labels and logged them on the evidence system for Maddy’s attention. She would drop them off at Barnstaple on her way to Adam’s, ready for the courier drop next morning.
What else could she do? She could get one of those phone apps for tracking kids, put the trace on her own phone as if she was the child and give Maddy the parental control. There was one other thing she could do, too. She had a fitness tracker, a present from her mother which also included GPS and could therefore be traced. The model she had was one of the cheap ones and quite ugly, which is why she rarely wore it. She took it out of its box and inspected it. It wouldn’t stretch around her ankle; it was designed for the wrist. But West would spot it there. He was far too smart not to realise the implications. However, she fiddled with it and managed to remove the strap so it was merely a two-pence-piece-sized metal disc. She used a transparent plaster to tape it inside her sports bra, under the webbing by her shoulder blade. The device was waterproof, too, so even if West drowned her, there would be a good chance of some signal.
So long as somebody was looking for her.
She had just finished this when Maddy rang. ‘You’re sending me a lot of forensic samples, Jan. What are you up to?’
‘If I should die, think only this of me: that she prepared her mates with everything they would need to find who did it.’
‘Jan, really,’ Maddy said.
‘I’m under surveillance, Maddy. I spotted this black BMW outside a few times. And someone’s broken into my shed.’
‘Have you reported it?’
‘Not yet. But there are photographs and forensics.’
Maddy said nothing for a while. ‘That wasn’t the reason for my call, Jan. I’m just giving you a heads-up. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. You’re going to be called in for questioning tomorrow and taken down to Exeter.’
‘Arrested?’
‘Not at this stage. But Winterflood wants to put some questions to you, in connection to the disappearance of Nadine Lister, following the discovery of some evidence which may connect you to the case.’
‘What evidence?’
‘Come on, Jan. You know I can’t tell you. A patrol car will come to pick you up from home at nine.’
She spent the rest of the evening taking precautions, copying all the sensitive data from her laptops and phones onto a data stick. She rang Adam and explained that she had to cancel coming over to see him. Instead he readily agreed to come to hers, and to smuggle out data sticks the next day when he left.
When he arrived, bearing a takeaway, she set it carefully down on the table, and held him close. He enfolded her in his arms and caressed her hair, and they slid together onto the sofa. She allowed herself to weep, gently. Eventually, after eating just a little, they retreated together to her room, and he held her in the darkness until she eventually surrendered to the oblivion of sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Detective Inspector Talantire, you are not obliged to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.’ The standard police caution was read out to her, as she sat the wrong side of the interview room table in Exeter police station on Saturday morning.
On the other side was DCI Fred Winterflood. There was no one else in the room, but the tape recorder was turned on. He didn’t look comfortable, but she felt worse: utterly humiliated. She was relieved the interview was being conducted down here, where Winterflood was based. To be dragged in front of the desk sergeant in Barnstaple, in front of colleagues she knew well, would have destroyed her.
Winterflood began. ‘As you know, we are investigating the disappearance of PC Nadine Lister, who was last seen by her children at 10:15 a.m. last Wednesday, leaving the caravan park in Barnstaple where she was temporarily lodging. Previous to that, she had been staying with you, is that correct?’
‘Yes, I took her in before Christmas when she arrived on my doorstep bearing injuries that looked like the result of domestic violence.’
‘I see, and according to a witness statement given by the eldest child, you and Nadine argued all the time.’
‘I wouldn’t say “all the time”. She was a hugely disruptive influence in my household, especially on those days which she spent there with the children as well. I told her I was willing to give her a place to stay for a short while, but it seemed to take a lot longer for her to leave than I expected.’
‘Did you try to throw the family out on the street on New Year’s Day morning.’
‘No. Nadine arrived with her children without even telling me, while I was still in bed after an exhausting overnight shift. Of course I wanted them to leave; I’d never given her permission to bring them in the first place. But as it happened, it was me that ended up leaving.’
‘You were angry, weren’t you?’
‘I’ve course, but I also sympathised with Nadine, what she’d been through.’
‘You’re referring to the “alleged rape”.’
‘Alleged? It’s multiple rapes, by her account. Look, where are you going with this?’
‘Have you ever been inside Natalie Lister’s Volkswagen?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you account for your DNA being found within the vehicle? I know you were there soon after it was located at Knighthayes Court, but officers present at the scene say that you didn’t approach the vehicle at that time.’
‘No, I didn’t. I’ve never been inside the vehicle; never driven it, never been a passenger. I can’t explain why my DNA is inside, unless it was contamination on one of the many objects that were moved out of my house when she and the kids moved out to the caravan park.’ Talantire leaned across the table and said, ‘Look, I liked Nadine, I sympathised with her predicament, I felt for her—’
‘Interesting that you used the past tense, there, Jan.’
‘Yes! Because I think she’s dead! Murdered by—’
‘You?’
‘No!’
‘Well, you have a motive, and as all your colleagues will attest, you have a temper. Isn’t it possible that you arranged to meet her, had an argument, put your hands around her throat—’
‘How dare you accuse me, the person who was done the most to support this struggling woman, of attempting to harm her! Yet the person who I am convinced has killed her is swanning around, utterly free, getting awards—’
‘I have interviewed Commander West. I also interviewed Nadine’s husband. They both have unimpeachable alibis. You, however, do not. On Wednesday morning, at the time of her disappearance you turned off both your work and personal phones. Why did you do that?’
‘Look, I went to search Alex Brown’s flat in Exeter and didn’t want to be called and taken off the case. I didn’t have much time.’
‘Turning off your phones is highly incriminating. Especially because on that same morning your unmarked Skoda triggered cameras on the A361 between Barnstaple to Tiverton – at an illegal speed, I may add. The last camera before the roundabout turnoff to Knighthayes, you passed just two minutes after Mrs Lister’s VW did. That seems like quite a coincidence.’
Talantire folded her arms and stared at Winterflood. ‘It is. But unlike hers, my car would additionally have triggered cameras from Tiverton all the way to Exeter, showing where I was actually heading.’
‘Some time later, yes.’
‘Look, I didn’t go to Knighthayes until much later, with other officers.’
‘So you say. Motive, means and opportunity, Jan. You are the only person who has all three.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘You are shooting the messenger. In this whole investigation, it is me who brought out the connections between the crimes, the disappearance of Alex Brown and that of Nadine.’
‘Where did you leave Nadine’s body?’
‘No one is trying harder than I am to find out where she is.’
He glanced at the clock, then tapped his papers together before addressing her. ‘Detective Superintendent Michael Wells is in the adjoining office and has been watching this interview.’ He nodded at a camera high up on the wall of the interview room. Winterflood then winked at her, subtly. ‘Sorry, it’s come to this, Jan,’ he whispered. ‘Only doing my job. I’m sure you’ll come out the other end unscathed.’
‘Unscathed! Fred, this is like something from Kafka.’
Wells walked in as Winterflood left and took over the seat that he had vacated.
‘I’m being stitched up here, sir,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t harm, Nadine. You know that.’
Wells shrugged expansively. ‘I’ve been having discussions with HR this morning and the verdict is unanimous. I’m sorry, Jan, but I can’t have you on active duties with an allegation of this severity against you. You are suspended, with immediate effect.’
‘What! While Commander West, with even more serious allegations against him, continues to work as normal.’
‘You are entitled to a police friend,’ Wells said, ‘who can be from the Police Federation or a colleague, to support you in this disciplinary process.’
She was shaking as he led her out to the desk sergeant, who brusquely took her name, address and rank, then, after writing it down, held out his hand. ‘Warrant card, lanyard, police phone.’ No please, no ma’am, no deference. Nothing that her rank would normally require. She took the lanyard from around her head and the warrant card from her pocket and placed them on the counter.
