A Question of Identity (19 page)

‘Hilary, have the doctors given you any idea how long Lynne has to live?’

‘They hedge their bets, don’t they? But I managed to get something out of one . . . he said he thought a month or so . . . not more than three, probably a bit less. That was what made me decide I had to find a way of letting Alan know.’

‘Did Lynne agree?’

‘I haven’t told her. I haven’t told anybody. I thought I‘d find out how the land lay and get some advice from the police first. She wouldn’t want to see him though, I’m dead sure of that.’

‘She wouldn’t be able to see him. Now, let me get you some tea.’

‘Coffee would be nice, thanks. Milk, one sugar.’

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, when I’ve had a word with the DCI. You won’t want to spend much time with our coffee.’

Rose was not long. The reply was brief and conclusive. There could be no contact on either side and no further information would be given.

‘So that’s it then?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Right . . . Goodbye then.’

She was about to go through the doors of the station, but turned round on an impulse, and hugged the policewoman. She had no idea why. But she was full of emotions which bubbled up and spilled over, so that her eyes filled with tears, for her sister’s miserable marriage and lonely years since, her illness, the fact that she would die soon, and for herself, because a nail of guilt had gone into her one night ten years earlier, and was still painfully there and could never be removed. The tears were of anger and frustration too, and grief for the women Keyes had murdered, and their families who had never been able to come to terms with any of it and more so because of his acquittal. It
was ten years ago and it was yesterday and today, and it would be tomorrow.

The only person she did not shed a tear for was Alan Keyes. Or whoever he was now.

MATT WILLIAMS WAS
recognised at a builders’ merchant’s in Plymouth. Forty minutes later, a car was on its way to pick him up. By seven o’clock, he was in Interview Room 1 at Lafferton Police HQ.

‘Present, Acting DI Ben Vanek, DC Frank Gilmore, Matthew Kevin Williams and Mr Iain Ferguson, Duty Solicitor. For the benefit of the tape, will you please give your full name?’

‘Matthew Kevin Williams, and the first thing I need to say is I’ve been brought here against my will.’

‘All right, you’ll get your chance to protest, but for now, you’ll answer some questions please.’

‘I haven’t been arrested.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘Or charged with anything.’

‘No.’

‘So if I want to get up and walk out of here you can’t stop me.’

‘No, I can’t.’

Matt stood up and pushed his chair back.

‘Sit down please.’

‘I’m not under arrest, I can go. You said. So I’m going.’

‘Listen, if you stay here and answer all my questions, so that I’m happy to let you go, that’s in your best interests, Mr Williams. Because if you go now, I can tell you, your action will be saying something about yourself and you’ll become the subject of even
closer police interest than you are now. In fact, you’ll be back in here before you know it.’

‘You’d have to charge me.’

‘We’d think of something, don’t fret. I think the Plymouth officer said he’d noticed the tax disc wasn’t correctly displayed on your van.’

‘Nothing wrong with my tax disc. Nothing wrong with my van.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘So I’m out of here.’

‘And you put up a bit of a push and shove with him when he asked you to go with him from the store. Made his arm ache. He said.’

‘Now listen –’

‘Just sit down, answer the questions, get it over with, we can all go home.’

‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘Then you’ve got nothing to fear, have you?’

Matt Williams glanced at the solicitor. The solicitor nodded to the surface of the table.

‘OK, get on with it.’

‘Good. Right decision there, Mr Williams. Now, I have some questions to ask you about the day before yesterday, 28 February. You were working at Duchess of Cornwall Close, is that right?’

‘Yes. Been working there for weeks. It’s new-build bungalows.’

‘Have you been working alone or with a team?’

‘Plenty of other tradesmen. Well, obviously.’

‘Other electricians?’

‘Two. But I work on my own, I’m not with a firm.’

‘So sometimes you’d be working on the electrics by yourself in a house, or a flat, other times you might be there with – what? Another electrician? A carpenter? Tiler?’

‘Could be anyone. Chippies. Ps and Ds.’

‘Did you get on all right with them?’

Matt Williams shrugged. ‘Some.’

‘But not all?’

‘Same every time. I can’t stand the skivers . . . sit about drinking tea and reading the racing pages half the day then have
a mad rush for the last couple of hours. I can’t stand the ones who want to talk all the time either. Or the ones with loud radios.’

‘Seem to be a lot of people you can’t stand then.’

‘Some.’

‘What about Nick Flint and Piotr Sikorski?’

‘What about them?’

‘You’ve worked with them?’

‘Yes.’

‘You get on with them? Or can’t you stand them?’

‘They’re all right.’

‘But you picked a fight with Flint and you were so violent Mr Sikorski had to intervene and separate you, try and calm you down.’

‘I don’t pick fights.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Nothing much. Bit of a disagreement, that’s all.’

‘What was the disagreement about?’

Matt shrugged.

‘Are you married?’

Matt looked up in surprise. ‘I was once.’

‘But not now? What happened to Mrs Williams?’

‘What’s that got to do with all this?’

‘Answer the question.’

‘Divorced.’

‘Do you have a mother?’

Silence. Then, ‘No.’

‘Father? Uncles and aunts?’

‘I’ve a brother in New Zealand.’

‘So both parents have passed away?’

‘They’re dead, if that’s what you mean.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Good few years.’

‘What – five, ten?’

‘Mother died when I was seven. Dad when I was twelve. If it’s any business of yours.’

‘It might be. So who brought you and your brother up? What’s his name by the way, your brother?’

‘Gran did.’

‘Your brother’s name?’

‘Mark.’

‘And how was it? Your grandmother bringing you up?’

‘How do you think?’

‘I don’t. I’d like you to tell me.’

‘She looked after us. Fed us and clipped us round the ear and sent us to school. Did what she had to.’

‘Did you love her?’

Matt shrugged.

‘Did she love you?’

‘She did the right thing by us.’

‘So you don’t bear her a grudge?’

Matt Williams looked at him. Ben Vanek could not fathom the look.

‘How long have you been an electrician, Matt?’

‘Why?’

‘How long?’

‘I’m a bloody good electrician.’

‘Did you do an apprenticeship?’

‘I’m properly trained and fully qualified.’

‘For how long?’

‘Long enough. Ten, twelve years. I can’t remember exactly.’

‘What did you do before that?’

Matt opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘Something different. You’re, what, forty-three . . . so you didn’t start out as an electrician.’

‘No. Car mechanic.’

‘What made you change?’

Shrug.

Ben Vanek leaned across the table. ‘You see, what I’m wondering is this. If you’re a fully qualified electrician, been one for ten or twelve years, how come you made such a muck of the electrics at the sheltered bungalows?’

‘I did no such thing.’

‘So why were there power failures?’

‘Nothing to do with my wiring. I traced it all back to a faulty lamp.’

‘What lamp?’

‘In her bungalow. Mrs Sanders, the one who got bumped off, poor old lady.’

‘So is that why you went back there at eight o’clock in the evening?’

‘No. I went there earlier because someone rang me about the power outage. I went round the other places that had people moved in and I couldn’t find anything, then I went to hers, and it was her lamp.’

‘Which lamp exactly?’

‘In her sitting room. Wiring was all wrong. She switched it on and blew the whole power circuit.’

‘And all the rest of the power in the other houses?’

‘You’ve got it. Yes.’

‘Seems a bit odd, that. Didn’t it seem odd to you?’

‘Why would it? Happens every day.’

‘One small lamp of – how many watts, hundred?’

‘Sixty.’

‘Sixty watts can bring down the electricity in an entire row of houses?’

‘It was lethal, that lamp. Time bomb. Whoever wired that up wants shooting.’

‘Right. So you sorted it out all right?’

‘I did. When I left it was working fine. Everywhere.’

‘So why did you go back?’

Matt looked down at his hands.

‘Did Mrs Sanders or someone else from the close call you back? Had something else gone wrong with the electrics?’

‘I couldn’t stop fretting about it. That lamp was dangerous, I told you. She could have electrocuted herself.’

‘And it was all right?’

‘It was fine.’

‘Let me go through these visits to Mrs Sanders’s bungalow. Where did you go? Hall, kitchen?’

‘I went everywhere. To the fuse box first – it’s in the passage, same as in all of them. But then everywhere.’

‘Sitting room?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Sanders’s bedroom?’

‘Yes. I checked everything everywhere, I just said.’

‘So by the time you’d been round you had a pretty good idea of the layout of Mrs Sanders’s bungalow?’

‘I had that anyway, didn’t I? I mean, I’d worked on them and basically they’re all the same.’

‘So you didn’t have to go back that evening to fix in your mind how to break into Mrs Sanders’s bedroom?’

‘Hang on – what are you talking about? I didn’t break in. When I went in that evening, it was through the front door and she let me in. What are you suggesting?’

‘Where do you keep your tools, Matt?’

‘In the van. There’s some in the shed behind the house I live in, but everyday stuff I use all the time is in the van. Why? Anyway, for the bungalows, they supplied all the stuff.’

‘So you didn’t use anything of your own there?’

‘I did use some of my own tools. Always do. But this was a subcontract job so it was just the tools.’

‘Who supplied the electrical flex?’

‘They did.’

‘Where is it kept?’

Matt’s face went ash-pale. ‘Now listen . . . listen . . .’

‘I’m listening.’

‘If you think . . . She was strangled with electrical flex, wasn’t she? Now listen –’

‘Sit down.’

Matt was standing, leaning across the table, his face scarlet with rage now, one fist up in front of Ben Vanek’s face. Ben did not flinch.

‘I said,
sit down
.’

A pause.

‘You touch me, you so much as put one finger on me, and I’ll have you in a cell quicker than you can say ten thousand volts. This isn’t going down too well, Matt.’

The room seemed to crackle with tension. But then Matt Williams slumped in the chair, the anger and defensiveness out of him like a gas.

‘I want a drink.’

Ben poured him some water, and handed the plastic cup over.

‘That all you’ve got?’

‘That’s all.’

Matt glared at the cup.

‘Why did you go back to Mrs Sanders’s bungalow, Matt?’

‘I told you.’

‘You know, I’m not sure I really buy this. You tell me you’re a great electrician, take a pride in your work and so forth, but not only do you race round there when someone reports a fault – fair enough, I suppose, things do happen – but when you’ve sorted it, you then worry enough to go all the way back to double-check that one bungalow. You said the power going out was down to a faulty lamp in Mrs Sanders’s sitting room?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’

‘Yes, I bloody am, I told you – I’m a good electrician.’

‘So . . . you mended it, you checked everything, no one reported any further problems. Why did you go back?’

‘I didn’t want them all to be without power in the night, did I? If they had, whose fault would that have been? Who’d have been off the case? There are far too many freelance sparks as it is. You’re only as good as your last job.’

‘So you didn’t go back in order to kill Mrs Sanders? Perhaps you didn’t leave her bungalow at all. Perhaps you stayed in there? Made yourself comfortable. Hid yourself even.’

‘Where the fuck would anyone hide in those rabbit hutches?’

‘You tell me, Matt.’

Matt shook his head.

‘Did you walk in through the door? Did you ring the bell in the middle of the night? Or did you break in through her bedroom window?’

‘Fuck off. I’m not having any of this.’

‘You see, the odd thing was that no one actually broke in through the front door or the kitchen door or through a window. Someone had actually left the bedroom window unlocked so it wasn’t secure and the arm was loose. It only took a bit of fiddling and pushing to open – no need for any noisy glass-breaking.
Mrs Sanders didn’t bother to check properly. She obviously felt safe. But she wasn’t safe, was she? Because you’d played about with the window and when you came back in the middle of the night, by which time she was in her bed and asleep, you –’

This time, Ben was ready for Matt Williams as he lunged, kicking over his chair. Both officers were on their feet trying to pin him face down, arms behind his back. The solicitor was standing too, but poised to run, not to pitch in and help.

‘Ring the bell,’ Vanek shouted. Williams was as strong as a bull.

When two uniforms burst in, it took the four of them to handcuff him.

‘Matthew Williams, I am arresting you on the charge of murdering Elinor Sanders, on 28 February 2012. You do not have to say anything . . .’

Williams went on bellowing, long after he had been put into a cell.

‘WHO’S THAT?’