In Too Deep (Knight & Culverhouse Book 5) (5 page)

S
teve Wing was particularly
proud of his BMW 3 Series. It was a car he’d wanted for a long time, and even though he’d now had it for three years or so, it still felt like a brand new car to him. It also meant he didn’t have to walk anywhere, which was nice.

The journey from Mildenheath Police Station to Tanya Henderson’s house took a little longer than usual with the morning traffic, and it seemed even longer due to the fact that Ryan apparently wasn’t the sort of person to make small talk unless she absolutely had to.

‘So. You into cars?’ Steve asked as he pulled on the handbrake at a set of traffic lights.

‘Not really.’

Steve nodded. ‘You drive?’

‘I can, but I don’t.’

‘How do you get to work then?’ he asked.

‘Bike.’

Steve could see he was getting nowhere fast. ‘You mean a motorbike? Or—’

‘Pushbike. Zero carbon.’

He nodded again, trying to look interested. As far as he was concerned, carbon was something the scientists could deal with. His pleasure was in driving fast cars. ‘So do you live local, then?’

‘Not far,’ Ryan replied. ‘Ten minutes on the bike.’

‘That’s not bad. Probably take you twice that in a car. This your first job in CID then?’

The traffic lights turned green and Steve accelerated away.

‘Yep. It’s where I want to be. Put my skills to good use for once.’

Steve allowed himself a cheeky smile. ‘So what are your skills exactly?’

‘Focus. Determination. Spotting a bullshitter a mile off.’

‘Nice,’ Steve said, unsure what else to say. ‘We could do with a good-looking woman around the place.’

Ryan raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that what it takes to be a good detective, then? A pair of tits and a cutesy smile? And there’s me thinking you had to be, like, good at detecting or something.’

Steve could feel himself getting a little flustered. ‘Well, no, that’s not what I meant,’ he said, trying to backtrack. ‘I mean we need some young blood. We’re not sexist or anything. Well, I’m not. Far from it. Couldn’t be further from the truth. I love women. Not like that, I don’t mean. I mean, we’ve got a few women in the team now. Three in fact. Half of us are women.’

‘Good. Way it should be,’ Ryan said.

‘Yeah. That’s what I’ve always said. Make it all equal. I mean, we’re the same, aren’t we? Men and women, I mean.’

Ryan looked over at Steve with a look on her face that said ‘in your dreams, mate’.

‘So, are you into all this sort of equality and stuff?’ Steve asked.

‘If by “into equality and stuff” you mean do I think that people shouldn’t be discriminated against based on how many testicles they have, then yes. And so does the law.’

‘Well yeah, obviously,’ Steve replied. ‘I just mean that—’

Ryan decided to do Steve the courtesy of not letting him dig himself into a deeper hole. ‘So, this case. What leads do we have at the moment in this case?’

Steve breathed a silent sigh of relief. ‘Not many, to be honest. Well, that and just about everyone in a position of power.’

‘Narrows it down nicely. So what’s this? Illuminati conspiracy?’

‘I doubt it somehow. I imagine if we’re talking about the people at the top they’d at least do it properly. Not send some lowlife who can’t finish the job properly and who panics and runs off when he sees a child appear.’

‘What, so you’d rather he’d just carried on and bludgeoned the woman to death in front of her daughter, then?’ Ryan asked, sternly.

Steve could feel himself getting flustered again as he stammered, ‘Well, no. I didn’t— That’s not what I—’

‘Relax,’ Ryan said, smiling for the first time during the journey. ‘I’m kidding. I know what you mean.’

Steve parked the car on Manor Way, a little way down from Tanya Henderson’s house. The road had been blocked off a few yards further on, the cordon of police tape intending to stop passers-by from getting too close and having a peek at what was happening.

Steve flashed his warrant card at the uniformed officer on the boundary. ‘She’s with me,’ he said, thumbing a gesture at Ryan.

‘Where do you want to start?’ Ryan asked.

‘Probably best to stick with the neighbours closest to the Hendersons and then move outward. The ones nearest will be most likely to have heard something,’ he replied, walking up the path of the house next door to John and Tanya Henderson’s place. ‘An elderly couple lives here, apparently. They’ve been looking after Tanya’s kids.’

Steve pressed the doorbell, and within a couple of seconds a man of about eighty opened the door. His advancing years were fairly apparent, but he still seemed fit and sprightly.

‘DS Wing and DC Mackenzie from Mildenheath Police,’ Steve announced. ‘Can we come in?’

‘Yes, of course,’ the man replied, beckoning them through to his living room, an open plan lounge-diner.

Tanya’s children were sitting in the lounge area, the man’s wife sitting with them, trying to keep them occupied. As they entered the room, she looked up at Steve and Ryan, a regretful look on her face.

‘You’re Mr and Mrs... Aldridge, is that right?’ Steve asked, glancing at his notepad.

‘Yes. Larry and Margaret,’ Mr Aldridge replied.

‘And these must be Archie and Lola,’ Steve said, walking over to the two children, who were sitting on a rug between two right-angled sofas, watching a kids’ film on the TV.

‘We really don’t know what to say to them,’ Margaret Aldridge said quietly as she rose to her feet to speak to Steve, her knees groaning and cracking as she did so. She lowered her voice even more. ‘We just told them that Mummy had been hurt and that she needed to go to the doctor to have it made better. Do you think we did the right thing?’

‘I don’t know,’ Steve said. ‘I imagine so. I haven’t got kids.’

‘We never did either,’ Larry Aldridge said. ‘We’re just trying to keep their minds occupied until their dad gets here. We don’t want to do the wrong thing.’

‘I’m sure you’re doing absolutely fine,’ Steve replied, ‘but I’m afraid I do need to get your side of the story on record.’ He nodded to Ryan, indicating that she should start taking notes.

‘There’s not really a whole lot to say,’ Larry said, shrugging. ‘We didn’t see or hear any of it — just the aftermath. I was woken up by the sound of the letterbox flapping, which it sometimes does in the wind, but not like this. And it wasn’t a windy night. Then I heard a knocking noise at the door, so I went down.’

‘Fortunately, I was still fast asleep,’ Margaret interjected, ‘because there’s no way I would have let him go down there otherwise. I dread to think what might have happened then.’

‘I went down,’ Larry continued, ‘and I could see someone small through the frosted glass. I thought it might be kids playing silly buggers, but when I started to unlock the door, I could see that the kid was still there. I opened it on the chain at first, then recognised little Lola from next door. She said her mummy had been hurt and that we needed to help.’

‘By this time I’d woken up,’ Margaret added. ‘I looked out of the top window and I could see the light coming from the doorway next door. I couldn’t see Tanya at that point, but it was obvious the door was wide open.’

‘Yeah,’ Larry agreed. ‘Well, I opened the door properly and stepped out to see what had happened. That’s when I saw Tanya on the ground. I took Lola inside, handed her over to Margaret, and immediately called the police.’

‘And then what happened?’ Steve asked, after a moment’s silence.

‘Then Margaret asked Lola where Archie was. She said he was in bed. So I went next door and fetched him.’

‘You went into the house?’ Steve asked.

‘I had to. I couldn’t just leave him there; as soon as he heard the noise and commotion he would’ve woken up, come down, and found his mum like that. We water their plants and keep an eye on the place for them when they’re away, so I used my spare key and went in and out of the back door.’

‘It’s actually round the side, but they call it the back door,’ Margaret added.

Steve paused for a moment. ‘I might be getting this wrong, but did you not tell the first officers that you didn’t even know Tanya’s surname? Yet they’ve given you keys to their house?’

Larry blinked a few times. ‘Well, yes. It was early. I couldn’t really recall it. Besides, I don’t know if they’ve ever mentioned it.’

‘Do you not ever have to take parcels in for them? Anything like that?’ Ryan asked.

‘No, not really. Tanya, she often works from home, though I don’t really remember them having many things delivered to the house. Maybe once or twice, and we’ve picked their post up for them when they’ve been away, but we’ve never looked too closely at the names on the envelopes. Why would we?’

‘I thought it was Henshaw or Harrison or something like that,’ Margaret said, ‘but I’ve never really thought about it. To us, they were just Tanya and John.’

Steve nodded, trying to work out whether Larry and Margaret were just innocently naïve and forgetful, or whether there was something a little odder about them.

As he looked at Ryan, he realised she was wondering the same thing.

I
n the early
stages of an investigation, it seemed as though some aspects flew by really quickly, whilst others almost immediately ground to a complete halt. Getting clearance to search a crime scene was particularly slow at times, and this case was no exception. Only once the Scenes of Crime Officers had finished combing the front doorstep area was it cleared for CID officers to enter and search the house.

It was a constant frustration to CID that they were often unable to enter a scene and look for evidence immediately, but unfortunately this procedure was a necessity. Not only was there the possibility that they could contaminate the scene or destroy minute pieces of evidence — fingerprints, specks of blood, single hairs — but when the case got to court, the defence lawyer could have it thrown out within seconds if there was any doubt as to the legitimacy of the evidence. It really wasn’t a risk that was worth taking.

Tanya Henderson’s house looked just like any other of its type. It was definitely a lived-in family home, but it had been kept clean, neat and tidy. The kids’ toys had been put away, save for one or two that were left out in the living room, and the remote control sat jauntily on the arm of the leather sofa, where it had been resting since its last user had pressed the red ‘off’ button. In the kitchen, the dishes — now bone dry — sat on the draining board, ready to be put away, and that week’s shopping list was attached to the fridge with a magnet bought on holiday in Morocco.

Wendy was certain that almost every house on this road would look much the same. Decent-sized middle-class family homes full of decent-sized middle-class families, the dad working in the city whilst the mum worked from home, waiting for the kids to finish school. It sounded stereotypical, but in this part of town it was often true. Wendy had seen it many times and considered it a soulless way to live.

Tanya’s office gave away no clues to anyone who didn’t know what its occupant did for a living; it could have been anyone’s home study, save for the fact that it seemed to be far more heavily used. This wasn’t just a computer room with a small filing cabinet full of mortgage statements and car insurance documents — it was obvious that someone worked in here regularly, but there was nothing to specify what that work was.

Wendy didn’t expect to find anything that would explicitly tell her what Tanya had been working on recently. She knew already that Tanya’s working practices were extremely secretive and that she went to great lengths to conceal her information and protect her sources. But still, there had to be something somewhere — some name or place jotted down on a piece of paper, a phone number perhaps, or an important document that hadn’t yet been destroyed. Tanya’s laptop computer had already been taken in for forensic examination, and Wendy was due to receive the report any time now. It would all be gobbledegook to her, of course, but she had a plan for decoding it — the plan she’d been thinking of for a while.

There was an A4 leather-bound diary on Tanya’s desk, and when Wendy opened it — noting that it seemed to be well thumbed — she was surprised to see that not a single page had anything written on it at all. That seemed bizarre. Either Tanya had been using this diary purely to see when certain dates were, or there was something far stranger going on. Who would have a well-used diary with absolutely nothing written in it?

Wendy stood in the middle of the room, looking around her. It was extremely frustrating — lots of books, lots of artefacts, but absolutely nothing that fitted together. It was almost as if the office and its contents had been designed to confuse, to throw people off the scent. Was that a deliberate ploy on Tanya’s part? Wendy assumed so.

Just then, her phone pinged, the sound of an incoming email. She swiped the screen, typed in her four-digit passcode, and quickly read the message. As expected, it didn’t mean a whole lot to her, so she closed down the email app and opened up her contacts list. After scrolling down for a while — the names whizzing up the screen in front of her — she found the one she wanted. She tapped ‘Call’ and waited for the phone to connect.

‘Xav?’ she said, trying to sound as friendly and personable as possible. ‘It’s Wendy.’

‘Oh, hi Wendy,’ came the reply. Wendy could tell from his voice that he was pleased to hear from her, the thought making her smile.

‘Listen, I need your help again. I’ve got a preliminary report from forensics on an IP’s laptop. It makes absolutely no sense to me, as usual. I was wondering if you might be able to help me decode it?’

‘Sure. Email it over and I’ll take a look.’

‘Actually, it’s quite a delicate case. I was thinking it might be best to go through it in person. Perhaps if you wanted to come over to my place, I could cook us dinner and we could go through it.’ Even though she’d been thinking of doing this for a while, Wendy was still surprised by her own forthrightness.

Xavier Moreno paused for a few moments. ‘Okay, sure. Sounds good. When were you thinking?’

‘How about tonight?’ Wendy replied. ‘Eight thirty? I’ll text you the address.’

‘Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you tonight.’

The conversation over, Wendy allowed herself a couple of moments to smile. Up until recently, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing this. She still wasn’t sure she was entirely comfortable now, but she knew it was a start. She wouldn’t ever be able to put the experience with Robert Ludford completely behind her, but this was a step in the right direction.

All that aside, though, Xavier was a smart guy. If anyone could help her decipher the digital clues that could lead to Tanya Henderson’s attacker, it was him.