Dead Man's Time (31 page)

‘So if Daly and Krasniki killed these two, chief,’ Guy Batchelor said, ‘was it because they had got the information they wanted, or because they hadn’t?’

‘This kind of killing tends to be done to silence people,’ Grace said.

‘Silence them from what, in this instance?’ Batchelor asked.

It was a good question. The bacon in his teeth was really distracting him now, and Grace desperately wanted a toothpick. He tried to dislodge it with his tongue, for the twentieth time, without
success. ‘Possibly to stop them from telling their paymaster who was on his trail. Possibly because, as Norman so succinctly put it, they’re both a couple of psychos and Daly lost his
temper with them over his aunt’s death.’

‘Should we bring old man Daly in for questioning?’ Glenn Branson asked.

Grace shook his head. ‘I think Daly could be ahead of us. We should put surveillance on his son. I’ve a feeling he’ll lead us to the watch. If we find the watch, I suspect
we’ll find who’s really behind this.’

‘Eamonn Pollock?’ Branson quizzed.

‘I’d put him as our prime suspect,’ Roy Grace replied. ‘We have Gareth Dupont in custody and we’ll have to try to make him talk. In his early interviews he gave his
first account, and we developed a strategy for the interviews this morning. His detention has been extended. It’s a shame we’re not allowed to offer murder suspects a deal on sentence.
But I think our interview strategy might be to offer him another kind of deal.’

‘What do you have in mind?’ Potting said.

‘Let’s recap on what we know about Lucas Daly. This is just my hypothesis – nothing proven yet. The knocker-boy, Ricky Moore, who Lucas Daly considers responsible for his
aunt’s robbery and murder, ends up in Intensive Care with severe burns. Lucas Daly goes to Marbella, and lo and behold, Macario and Barnes end up as floaters.’ He gave Norman Potting a
quizzical stare.

‘I’m on your bus, chief.’

‘Now, with Lucas Daly’s record for vengeance, if I was shagging his wife, I think I’d want to keep it quiet. In particular, I wouldn’t like hubby to find out. Would
you?’

‘No.’

‘Murder suspects don’t get bail. If we can bang Dupont up in the remand wing, and let him know we’re going to tell Lucas Daly about him and his wife, I think he’d talk.
You don’t have many places to hide in prison. But we have one problem to overcome. We haven’t got enough to charge Dupont yet; we need something that puts him at the house. He lied to
us when we went to see him at his office, and we asked him what car he drove. He told us he owned a Golf GTI. There was a black Porsche parked outside his block of flats. The registration plate
gave the owner as a leasing company in London.’ He turned to Bella Moy. ‘Which is why your search did not reveal anything. I’ve been in touch with the company, and they tell me
it’s leased to one Gareth Dupont. At his address. But that still doesn’t put Dupont in Aileen McWhirter’s house.’ He looked around at his team.

‘We have his dab on a bronze statuette and the call made from his mobile phone, and now we know he drives a black Porsche, similar to one spotted at the scene exactly a week before the
attack,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

Grace shook his head. ‘The triangulation report on his mobile phone isn’t helpful enough. He could have been anywhere within a quarter-of-a-mile radius of the house at the time of
his call. It’s too circumstantial. On the fingerprint, his brief would argue that he might have handled the statuette at Lester Stork’s house. It’s not going to fly – we
need something more.’

‘Sir,’ asked researcher Jacqueline Twamley, ‘do we know any more about Lester Stork’s death?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard from one of the Coroner’s Officers, Philip Keay, that it was natural causes – a heart attack.’

‘Probably the excitement of handling all that stolen loot!’ Norman Potting said.

‘Isn’t it a bit too cosy that Dupont was shagging Lucas Daly’s wife, chief?’ Potting said. ‘Doesn’t that smack of collusion?’

‘I can’t rule out that she’s involved and we need to talk to her. I’m pretty sure Daly beats her, so she’d have a motive. But when Guy and I talked to her, I got
the feeling she was genuinely fond of the old woman.’ He looked at the DS.

Batchelor nodded. ‘I agree, chief. I’d say it’s more likely she was unwittingly targeted by Dupont.’ He shrugged. ‘Unhappy marriage. Dupont’s a fit guy, a
charmer. More likely they met somewhere and he pulled. I’m going to talk to her and see what she says.’

The youngest and newest member of his team, DC Jack Alexander, raised his hand. ‘I’ve found out something regarding that Porsche, sir.’

‘What’s that, Jack?’

The young DC told him. When he had finished, the whole atmosphere in the room had changed.

‘That, young man,’ Roy Grace said, ‘is pure bloody genius!’

Like most interview rooms used by Sussex Police, the one at the Custody Suite immediately behind Sussex House had a fitted CCTV camera, perched high up on a wall. By watching
and filming arrested suspects, police officers were able to study their body language and generally assess their credibility.

It was a square, featureless room containing a fixed metal table and hard chairs; its internal window overlooked the central area, dominated by a futuristic-looking circular pod made of a
dark-green marble-like material that always made Roy Grace think must have been designed by a
Star Trek
fan.

The suspect, unshaven, his shirt crumpled, was seated on one side of the table next to his solicitor, Leighton Lloyd, even more sharply dressed than when he was at the football. A wiry man with
close-cropped hair, he had a formidable track record at getting Brighton’s villains off the hook.

Grace had chosen his team carefully. Bella Moy and Guy Batchelor were both trained cognitive suspect interviewers. Batchelor, he hoped, would put Gareth Dupont on edge, from having previously
visited him at his office. Bella would seem softer, perhaps Dupont’s friend, and he clearly had an eye for the ladies.

A narrow, windowless viewing room, where Grace sat in front of a monitor, adjoined the interview room. It comprised two mismatched chairs, which were pulled up against a work surface, and on
which sat the squat metal housing of the video recording machinery and the colour monitor in front of him, giving a dreary colour picture of the proceedings.

Grace wrinkled his nose. It permanently smelled in here as if someone with rancid feet had been eating a kebab. He checked the bin beneath the work surface, but it was empty. The interview
started. Guy Batchelor asked Gareth Dupont to recount his movements on the night of Tuesday, 21 August.

‘Yeah, right, I was at home, working.’

‘Working?’

‘Doing my telesales.’

‘You do that over the phone or in person?’

‘By phone.’

‘But you drove to Withdean Road, to speak to Mrs Aileen McWhirter, right?’

Dupont shook his head. ‘Nah, I was at home in the Marina.’

‘Have you heard of mobile phone triangulation, Mr Dupont?’

Leighton Lloyd raised a hand. ‘Excuse me, what does this have to do with my client?’

‘Give me a moment and you’ll understand, sir,’ Batchelor said. Then he addressed Dupont. ‘Does it mean anything?’

Dupont shook his head.

‘I’ll explain. All mobile phones, whether switched on or on standby, communicate with base stations. These are sited on masts all over the country. They’re programmed to check
in every fifteen minutes. You know, a bit like E.T. phoning home. From the base station receiving the signal, we can tell which are the two other nearest, and triangulate from there. You are on the
O2 network, right?’

Dupont nodded reluctantly.

‘There are two O2 base stations along Dyke Road Avenue, a short distance from Withdean Road,’ the DS continued. ‘There is a third close to the A23, a quarter of a mile to the
north of Withdean Road. The report from O2 shows that you were in the vicinity of Withdean Road around 7 to 7.30 p.m. on the night of Tuesday, August the 21st. So you weren’t at home. Would
you like to explain that?’

Dupont thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Ah, yeah, I’d gone round to see a lady friend. Quite close to Withdean Road.’

‘So she could vouch for you?’

He looked awkward suddenly, and Grace realized why. He was referring to Sarah Courteney. He made a note to check later whether she had been on air that evening.

The solicitor was busy looking at a map on his phone. ‘I have the area in front of me,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t cover only Withdean Road – it’s a dense
residential area, a whole network of streets.’

‘Gareth,’ Bella Moy said, with a pleasant smile. ‘One thing that we don’t quite understand is how your fingerprint came to be on a bronze statuette owned by Mrs
McWhirter?’

Dupont reddened. ‘I dabble a bit in antiques,’ he said. ‘One of my sidelines. It’s hard to make a living out of telesales, these days.’ His body language, thought
Grace, looked increasingly flustered. Then he frowned. ‘Like – where was the – the bronze?’

‘You tell us,’ Guy Batchelor said.

Leighton Lloyd placed a hand on his client’s arm. ‘No comment,’ he instructed him.

‘Yeah, no comment,’ Dupont said. Then he turned and whispered something to his solicitor that none of them could hear. Leighton Lloyd shook his head firmly.

‘Mr Dupont,’ Batchelor said. ‘There’s something that is puzzling me. When I came with my colleague, Detective Superintendent Grace, to talk to you at your office last
Friday, we asked you what car you drove. You told us it was a Volkswagen Golf GTI. But subsequently I’ve learned you in fact drive a Porsche cabriolet. Is there any particular reason why you
lied to us?’

Dupont looked even more of a confused mess, Grace thought.

‘Yeah, well, the thing is me and my mate Andre Severs swap cars sometimes. Like, he wants to impress a bird, so he borrows the Porsche. Know what I mean?’

‘No,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘I’ve no idea what you mean. I want to know why you lied to two police officers.’

‘I guess I didn’t want to look too flash.’

Batchelor exchanged a look with Bella Moy, then turned back to Dupont. ‘All right, tell me something, how well do you know Withdean Road in Brighton?’

Dupont shook his head. ‘Don’t know it at all. Never been there.’

‘Are you sure?’ Batchelor pressed.

He nodded. ‘Well, yeah – hang on, wasn’t the football there at the Withdean Stadium until last year?’

‘Correct.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m a Seagulls fan, right. But that’s not in Withdean Road exactly.’

‘So you definitely were not in Withdean Road on the night of Tuesday, August the 21st?’

‘Absolutely not.’

The two Detective Sergeants exchanged a glance. An imperceptible nod passed between them.

‘Let’s go back to your Porsche for a moment,’ Bella Moy said. ‘It’s a nice car – very expensive, I would imagine, and nearly new, judging from the number
plate.’

Dupont shrugged.

‘The insurance must be high, I would think?’ she continued.

‘High enough, yeah.’

‘These days, on expensive cars, the insurance companies make all kinds of demands, I’m told. Such as you’d need to have a tracker fitted. Do you have a tracker on your
Porsche?’

Dupont suddenly looked deeply uneasy. He shot a glance at his solicitor. ‘I do, yes.’

‘Smart devices, trackers,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘They track your car, every few yards of every journey you ever make. And they keep a log. You’re with a company called
NavTrak, right?’

Dupont hesitated, not liking where this was going. ‘Yes.’

‘They’ve obligingly given us the log of your Porsche’s movements for the past four weeks. Every journey you’ve made, every stop, and the length of time. On Tuesday,
August the 14th, you were outside Aileen McWhirter’s house in Withdean Road, Brighton, from 6.43 p.m. to 7.21 p.m. Presumably, as you claim not to know it, you were lost?’

‘Very witty,’ Dupont said.

‘You were outside the house again, for a shorter time, on the nights of Wednesday August the 15th, Thursday August the 16th, Friday August the 17th, Saturday August the 18th, and Monday
August the 20th, the night before the attack,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Can you explain your reasons?’

Dupont gave Leighton Lloyd a look of desperation. Then turned back to Batchelor. ‘Could I have a private word with my solicitor?’

Batchelor and Moy switched off the recording equipment, including the CCTV feed, left them alone in the room, and went outside to have a quick playback of the interview with Roy Grace. After ten
minutes the solicitor asked them back in.

‘My client is willing to make a statement,’ he said, as they recommenced. ‘He accepts what your information from the tracker shows, but that doesn’t put him inside the
house. That’s a very important point he wants you to understand.’

The two detectives nodded. Batchelor signalled to Dupont to begin.

Dupont rested his hands on the table, looking confident. ‘The thing is, yeah, I was contacted by someone I know, who said I could get good money doing a driving job. A couple of overseas
blokes were coming over to do a posh house; they needed a driver who knew the area. So I had to organize a van, meet them at the airport. I admit I drove the van, but I never went in the
house.’

Neither detective spoke for some moments. Then Batchelor said, ‘Not even to give them a hand with the furniture? There were some big pieces.’

‘Well, yeah, I helped them load, outside.’

‘You are absolutely certain you never went inside the house?’ Bella Moy asked.

‘Certain. I’m certain.’

Batchelor frowned. ‘You’re going to have to help us out here, Mr Dupont. You see, there was a spot of blood found on a radiator on Mrs McWhirter’s landing – the one she
was chained to. The report from the lab, which we only got in a short while ago, shows it contains your DNA.’ Batchelor’s eyes fell on Dupont’s knuckle; the scab had gone, leaving
a small red mark.

Dupont looked stricken. He curled his thumb around the mark, twisting it as if he could make it disappear.

Leighton Lloyd raised a cautioning hand. ‘My client has no further comment.’