Blood Evidence Page 17

  “I spoke to Fairlight,” Will says, picking a piece of mushroom off the top of a slice and eating it.

  “Yeah? What did he say?” I ask. I’m not mad that he would have called him behind my back. It’s not like I was having a great success rate.

  “Predictably, he started by telling me to leave him alone about the video footage,” Will says, smiling wryly. “But then I asked him about Johnny’s conviction. He put me on the phone with some junior detective, who had to sit there and read out notes from his screen. All very tedious for him, I’m sure.”

  “And?” I ask, scooping up a slice and biting off the end of the triangle.

  “This isn’t on his official record, but apparently he was brought in for questioning about six months ago,” Will says, looking extremely smug. “About a fellow employee who went missing, and hasn’t yet been found.”

  I look at him with wide eyes. Greasy cheese slides down off my slice, hitting the cardboard pizza box with a plop that brings me back to reality. “A missing persons case,” I say, more to myself than anything, hastily scooping the cheese back up.

  “Coincidence?” Will says, eating another mushroom.

  “Coincidences do happen,” I say, in my best gruff Fairlight impersonation. “But that seems like a bit of a stretch.”

  “Well, here’s one more,” Will says. “He was staying at the Highgate Inn for the night when Ray Riley went missing. And he was also booked in for a one-night stay when this other missing person’s case cropped up.”

  “Holy shit,” I say. “That’s definitely more than a coincidence. This guy is the biggest and reddest of all red flags.”

  “We should go back and talk to him again,” Will replies, grinning.

  “Abso-fucking-lutely,” I agree. “Just as soon as you eat an actual slice of pizza.”

  Will gives me a put-upon look.

  “You just got us a big break in this case,” I say. “You earned it.”

  Begrudgingly, but seemingly accepting my logic, he takes a slice and begins to delicately eat it. He reminds me of a housecat, kept by some rich old lady in diamonds and furs, prissy about so much as stepping on the grass and getting its paws wet.

  Of course, I’m not about to tell him that. I might be brutally honest from time to time, but I’m not an idiot. He knows where I sleep.

  And where I keep my hair products.

  Twenty-eight – Will

  We found Johnny at home, off-shift. It was easy enough to get his address once his boss heard that we were consulting with the police. It’s like a magical password. He wasn’t even legally obligated to give us anything, but we weren’t about to correct that misconception.

  “How are we playing this?” Ram asked me, outside the flat.

  “He’s got a temper problem,” I said. “If anyone knows about having a short fuse, it’s me.”

  Ram gave me an oh-you-think-so? kind of look that I chose to ignore.

  “We go up there and start telling him we know what he did,” I said. “Layer it up, accusation on accusation. Make him angrier and angrier until he snaps. Get him to confess. Hell, even if he hits one of us, we can have him taken in on assault charges.”

  “I’m not very keen on that last part,” Ram said, twisting his mouth. “What if he hits you?”

  “Well, I’m prepared for that,” I said.

  “No chance.” Ram shook his head. “If he hits me, fine. But not you. You should get behind me if he starts getting worked up.”

  “Why is it okay for you to get hit and not me?” I asked.

  “Don’t pout,” Ram threw over his shoulder. “We’re going in.”

  I scowled, but followed him as he walked up to the door and pressed the buzzer. Johnny allowed us in, perhaps not realising it was us. I don’t think he would have been so quick to unlock the door if he had known.

  But we were in before he had a chance to change his mind.

  “What is it this time?” Johnny asked, sighing as we walked into his sparse living room and faced him.

  “We’ve got a few more questions for you,” I said.

  “There are some things you didn’t think to mention to us before, aren’t there, Johnny?” Ram asked.

  He looked from me to Ram and back again, a frown wrinkling his forehead and pushing his eyes together. “What do you mean?”

  “You forgot that you’d been questioned by the police a few months ago, did you?” Ram asked, his tone accusatory and aggressive – exactly the right kind of inflection that could drive someone to anger.

  Johnny’s expression hardened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Johnny, we’re working with the police. Did you really think that we wouldn’t find out?” I said. “Come on. You were suspected of involvement in the disappearance of one of your colleagues.”

  “Not the last person to disappear around here, we might add,” Ram said. “Turns out that someone staying at the Highgate Inn also vanished without a trace recently.”

  “And then there’s Isabelle,” I said, volleying back and forth with Ram to prevent Johnny from having any time to cool down. “Who just happens to turn up dead at the Highgate Inn, the night you’re staying there, after dancing with you all night.”

  “And why do you stay at the Highgate Inn so regularly, anyway? You live less than thirty minutes away. What’s that about?”

  “Is that where you like to go to try and cover your tracks? Is that how you think you’re going to get away with all of it, by putting yourself in a different environment? Were you really that thick you didn’t think we’d all put it together?”

  “What happened, Johnny?” Ram asked. “You need to tell us. If you don’t, they’re going to lock you away for a very long time. Previous conviction for violent assault, followed by a murder? They’ll throw the book at you.”

  Johnny’s face contorted, through confusion and past disbelief to outrage. “I didn’t -” he started, but I cut him off.

  “Did she blow you off when you tried to get her upstairs?” I said. “Did that make you mad? Did you lose control?”

  “Did you just lash out, Johnny?” Ram followed up. “It was so easy, wasn’t it, to just lash out with that knife…”

  Johnny’s face was red, his veins bulging at his forehead and neck. His fists were opening and closing at his sides. He looked positively murderous.

  “I didn’t do anything!” he managed to get out.

  “Do you think anyone is going to believe that?” Ram asked. He took a step forward, in front of me. I wanted irrationally to go one better and step in front of him, but I controlled myself. “Do you think anyone’s going to look at your record of violence and believe you aren’t a murderer?”

  “Low-income job,” I said. “Previous conviction. Connection to a missing person. This wasn’t even your first murder, was it?”

  “Everyone already thinks you’re scum,” Ram said. “This just confirms it.”

  Johnny growled, low in his chest, a strangled noise that was anger with no outlet. His arms were moving almost of their own accord now, the muscles bunching, ready to strike.

  He shook his head, bared his teeth, spun around, and punched a fist hard into the wall at his left side.

  Ram and I watched, awestruck, as he cradled his broken and scuffed fingers with his left hand, the rage flooding out of him with the release. He sat, his face paling, as a single tear worked its way out of his closed eyes.

  We both waited in silence for him to say something. We were on tenterhooks. Either he was about to confess his involvement in a murder, or something very different was going on. But which was it?

  “What’s happening, Johnny?” Ram asked, at length. “Talk to us.”

  Johnny drew a ragged breath, and opened his eyes. “You fucks are trying to make me confess to something I didn’t do,” he said. “Which I don’t appreciate.”

  “But what did the wall ever do to you?” Ram pushed. “You could have hit me.”

  “I’m tr
ying to break those habits,” Johnny said, his nostrils flaring. “And you’re not making it easy, believe me.”

  “You need to make it easy for us.”

  Johnny sank down onto the sofa, still cradling his hand. He looked tired, drawn, when he next spoke. “I’ve been staying at the Inn because I’m going through counselling,” he said.

  This was an unexpected turn.

  “What kind of counselling?” I asked, picking just one of the many questions that had come into my head.

  “Anger management,” Johnny said, staring up at the cracked plaster on that spot on the wall. His eyes looked hollowed-out. “Court mandated at first. I finished the course they sent me on and it wasn’t enough. I could still feel I was ready to blow.”

  “Why the Inn?” Ram asked.

  “Neutral territory,” Johnny shrugged. “And I couldn’t do it here. Roommates. Didn’t want to go to some stuffy office. I wanted to be comfortable. Have food and drink on hand, people waiting on me. No need to do chores or make the bed. I can just think about the therapy while I’m there, work on that and nothing else.”

  “You have to admit it still doesn’t look great,” I said. “You’ve admitted you have an anger problem and a violent past. And you’re the last person we know to have had contact with Isabelle.”

  “Cameron Winter is the last person to have had contact with her,” Johnny sneered. “He’s the one that killed her. And even before that, Jude saw them together.”

  “We haven’t been able to corroborate that,” Ram said. “But we saw you with our own eyes, dancing with her.”

  Johnny passed his uninjured hand across his face. “She was hot,” he said, a small shake in his voice. “Why would I want to kill her? Even if I struck out, I’m not… I’m not going to kill a woman just for not wanting to sleep with me.”

  Ram and I exchanged a meaningful glance, messages transmitted between our eyes. It seemed we were both on the same page with this one.

  “Get those fingers wrapped up,” Ram said. “And maybe consider getting a new therapist.”

  “You don’t get it,” Johnny said, smiling ruefully, no real humour in it. “The way I used to be, I would have nutted you just for walking in the door. This is progress.”

  “We’ll take your word for it,” I said. “We’ll be back if we need anything else.”

  Johnny gave me a blank, dead-eyed stare. The look of a man who is attempting to turn his emotions off completely, to stop his reaction. In a way, it was more haunting than many other things I had seen.

  We were silent as we left the flat, silent walking down the street. I was a little shaken from our interaction, and perhaps Ram was too. Not that I would ever have expected him to admit it. But there was one conclusion that I kept coming back to, even as my thoughts circled and circled.

  “I believe him,” I said, as we walked to find a taxi.

  “I hate to say it, but I do too,” Ram said, twisting his mouth in disappointment. “I wanted it to be him. But he’s too genuine. That wasn’t a scripted reaction. We really did work him up, and he decided to hurt himself rather than us.”

  “So, he’s not the one,” I said. “And we’re back where we started.”

  “Back looking at Cameron facing life in prison,” Ram agreed, taking a flask out of the inside pocket of his jacket and throwing his head back to drink.

  29 – Ram

  Where do we even go from here?

  “It has to be the CCTV tapes,” I say, climbing out of the taxi and waiting for Will to catch up with me as it speeds away. “That’s the only lead we have left.”

  “Find out who tampered with them, find out who did it?” Will asks.

  “Exactly. We need to know the security situation. Where are the tapes kept? How do you control the cameras? Is this something that could have been done by just anyone, or is access restricted?”

  “Problem is,” Will says, popping a piece of gum into his mouth and starting to chew it. “Who do we ask? The only people who might know are suspects, or are very close to those who are.”

  “Richard,” I say decisively, looking ahead instead of at his jaw and gritting my teeth against saying something. “We’ve already ruled him out, haven’t we?”

  “Unless he’s one of those old detective movie tropes.”

  I look at Will for clarification as we enter the Inn.

  “You know,” he continues. “He can’t possibly have done it because of his injuries, but then at the end they reveal that he could walk fine all along and is much stronger than he pretended.”

  That’s a disturbing image.

  A very disturbing image, actually.

  “Nah,” I decide. “He’s old. I mean, he’s really old. I’m buying it.”

  “Just let it be known that you were the one who was fooled, and I was the one with the open mind,” Will says, shrugging his shoulders with an infuriating grin.

  We head further into the Inn, rounding the corner into the bar, where we find Richard sitting with that fluffy white cat of his.

  “Ah, Richard!” I say, as if it was a total coincidence for us to meet and we hadn’t actively been looking for him.

  “Hullo, gents,” he says, stroking the cat calmly.

  “Mind if we join you?” I ask. I wait, as if it was actually a request.

  “Of course,” Richard says. “Happy to have company. Always nice to have a lazy afternoon, isn’t it?”

  We agree and sit. Will sits as far as possible from the cat, which makes me want to laugh out loud, but I don’t want to spook our host.

  “Can I get you some drinks?” he asks, making to lift his old body out of his seat.

  “Not at the moment,” I say, hastily. The last thing we want is to wait four years for him to make his way over there and back again. “I don’t want to disturb you. You just relax.”

  “I don’t mind,” Richard says, though he settles back in his seat and makes no further move. “It’s my job.”

  “We’re just facing an empty afternoon ourselves,” Will says. “It’s nice to find someone to chat to. It’s a little quiet around here in the week, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, well, we had a couple of cancellations,” Richard says, his expression turning downcast. “People heard about the, ah…” He trails off, his hand waving in the vague direction of the dancefloor where Isabelle had lain dead.

  “It’s a shame,” I sigh. “You’ve got us for a bit of extra time, though.”

  “Yes, that is a boon,” Richard says, his expression quickly turning to a smile. It doesn’t seem to take much to cheer him up.

  “We’re almost done now,” Will says. “Just wrapping up the investigation.”

  “Oh? I suppose there wasn’t much to do, given that he handed himself in,” Richard says. He has a good-natured tone and expression, but I wonder if he is trying to dig for information. Or is that just paranoia?

  “No, just checking statements and looking at the CCTV,” Will says.

  “Yes, your man, ah – DCI Fairlight – already had a word with me about that,” Richard says, shaking his head and lifting a finger to wag in the air. “Our system isn’t good enough. Needs more angles. That’s what he says.”

  “I tend to agree,” I tell him. “There should be some coverage of the hallways at least. And maybe the bar – what if a drunken fight broke out and someone decided to press charges?”

  “Well, it’s a little cynical,” Richard said doubtfully.

  “Or what if someone caused deliberate damage, and you needed proof to claim your insurance?” Will pointed out. “You should look into it, really. Get some more cameras set up.”

  “It’s not my domain, really,” Richard shrugged helplessly. “I don’t understand it all. I leave all that to Jude.”

  “Oh, really? He’s quite new, though, isn’t he?” I ask.

  “A couple of months, probably,” Richard says. “Before that it was a chap called Simon. He headed off to South Africa or something like that.”

 
“Simon Shystone?” Will asks, out of the blue. My eyes flick up to his. What’s this about?

  “That’s right,” Richard nodded, wearing an expression of confusion that must have been much like my own. “How did you know that?”

  “The police have him listed as a missing person,” Will says. “I didn’t realise he worked here.”

  “Yes, here and at one of the pubs in town,” Richard says, sighing. “He was a hard worker. He did weekends and parties, like Jude does now. It was a shame to have to replace him.”

  “But you said he’s gone to South Africa? Does that mean you know where he is now?” I ask.

  “Not really,” Richard says with that vague way of his. “He left some sort of email. I leave that to Beverley. Anyway, the police say they couldn’t find him. It all sounds like a mix-up to me. He just moved to a new country, and that’s why it’s hard to track him down.”

  Curiouser and curiouser. So, this Simon must be Johnny’s former colleague – the one he was questioned about. Another link to the Highgate Inn. Another, even stronger link to Johnny. Was he pulling the wool over our eyes with that little performance, before?

  “It’s a lot of trust to have to place on someone new, isn’t it?” Will is asking. “Looking after all of your security systems.”

  “We don’t have much go on here, really,” Richard says, giving us one of his bright yet vague smiles. “You probably won’t believe me when I say this, but we’ve not had many problems in the past. Mostly it’s just hysterical brides and teenage parties where someone sneaks in alcohol and we have to ask them to leave.”

  “Well, and I suppose you and Beverley can always check on everything,” Will says.

  “Oh, no,” Richard says, shaking his head. “We don’t do that at all. There’s no need. I can’t operate the system anyway.”

  “The CCTV system, right?” I clarify, some kind of shape beginning to form in the fog. “So, Jude is the only one who has access to it?”

  “It’s all locked away,” Richard says. “We did have a spare key, but Simon never gave it back. Now Jude has the only one.”

  “It has a separate room, does it?” I ask. “I’m not much up to date with CCTV systems, myself. I’ve always wondered how it all works.”