Jigsaw Man (37 page)

Wightman shook his head. ‘But you were staying at her house.'

‘I never saw her, I tell you. Dave said she was in a nursing home, that she had dementia.'

Minderedes leaned forwards towards her, his palms flat on the table. ‘That's a load
of rubbish and you know it. If she was still alive, why would she give Dave Simpson
free run of her house? He wasn't family.'

Chantal pulled her cardigan tightly around herself and wiped her eyes with the back
of her hand. ‘He was like family to her. She met him when she was staying at the
hotel. She used to go there a lot. She was one of the backers for the restaurant
Dave was going to open and he looked after the house for her when she went away.
That's what he told me.'

She practically shouted the last sentence and, as she did so, there was something
about her expression and body language that rang true. Was it possible she was actually
telling the truth, Tartaglia wondered?

Simpson was in hospital, alive but unconscious. As well as some minor cuts and bruises
from flying glass and masonry, when the explosion had thrown him to the ground he
had hit his head hard on some paving and was being treated for head trauma. It was
potentially serious and he was being closely monitored. The consultant could give
no estimate of when he was likely to come around or what state he would be in. In
the meantime, Chantal Blomet was their only source of information as to what had
happened to Jane Waterman, and to what lay behind the so-called Jigsaw killings.
Over and over again, she insisted that she knew nothing about Richard English's
death,
let alone about the other murders or what had happened to Jane Waterman. She said
she had never heard of Jake Finnigan or John Smart, nor did she have any idea who
the other two unidentified bodies were, belonging to an elderly woman and a young
man. In the meantime, they were trying to trace Jane Waterman's immediate family
to see if they could get a familial DNA match with the female body. The supposed
nephew had been identified by the next-door neighbour in Castelnau as being Dave
Simpson. Whether it had been Jane Waterman in the wheelchair, or a dummy, was something
only Simpson could answer.

‘What do you think?' Steele asked, turning to Tartaglia as a uniformed PC brought
a tray of coffee into the interview room on the other side of the glass. ‘Is she
another Myra Hindley, or is she a Rose West?

‘Neither, probably,' he said, his eyes still on Chantal. Depravity and wickedness
came in all shapes and sizes, but he didn't see Chantal belonging in either category.
‘Whether Simpson manipulated her, or she was a willing partner, she'd have known
about Jane Waterman too. I have to say I believed her when she said she didn't.'

‘I agree, she did seem convincing. So you think he kept it all from her?'

‘I don't know. She's definitely holding something back. Why else would she lie to
me earlier about not knowing if Simpson was alive or dead? She said she hadn't seen
him since he was in Dartmoor. Unless she knew he'd done something seriously wrong,
why not just tell me where he was?'

Steele nodded slowly in agreement.

‘As far as we know,' he continued, ‘Richard English's murder kicked this whole thing
off. Mrs Tier identified Chantal as the woman she saw with “Spike” when he was living
in the Peckham
squat, so she's been with him right from when he left his wife. She
must know something. Just how much, is the question.'

‘Well, we can charge her with being an accessory, but if she keeps up her version
of things, without Simpson to testify otherwise, we'll have difficulty making it
stick. Basically, we have nothing to link her to what happened, other than the fact
that she stayed at the house with him on a fairly regular basis. If her useless brief
gets his act together, she'll be out of here in no time.'

He folded his arms, still staring at Chantal's tearstained face through the glass.
Colin Price and Ellie Simpson had described her as some sort of groupie or hanger-on,
which he decided was a bit unfair. Although she had an innocent, self-contained quality,
she certainly wasn't a desperate, flaky teenager. She may have been star-struck when
Simpson was an up-and-coming young chef with the world at his feet, but he doubted
she would have stuck with him once she knew the horrors of what he had done.

‘We'll just have to keep the pressure on, then,' he said, with the feeling that it
was going to be a long night. ‘My guess is that if she hears the full details of
what he's done, it's likely she'll give up what she knows. I think we should tell
her about the victims, show her some photos. Make it graphic and real. Any normal
person would be horrified to find they've been sleeping with somebody who could
do that sort of thing.'

‘And what if you're wrong and she was a willing part of it all?'

‘Then we'll just have to play her off against Simpson.'

‘Simpson's still out cold.'

‘She doesn't know that.'

Forty-four

‘He says you knew all about it,' Minderedes said. ‘That makes you an accessory to
murder. You're going inside for years, Chantal, unless you tell us what you know.'

Chantal Blomet stared at him bleary eyed, her hair sticking to her wet cheeks. ‘I
don't believe you. You're lying.' Her voice cracked, but the look of shock on her
face seemed genuine. ‘Why would he say that, when it's not true?'

They were nearly there, Tartaglia thought, her resistance gradually ebbing. They
had shown her photographs, first of Finnigan and then Smart, taken when they were
still alive, and explained their connection with Dave Simpson. Given that she'd known
Richard English and clearly hated him, they hadn't bothered to show her any of him.
They talked about Smart's background and family in particular, and how he had disappeared
without a trace just before his birthday. They had then given her the details of
the Sainsbury's car park fire in south London and the Guy Fawkes fire in Aldford,
mentioning the other two unknown victims – one assumed to be Jane Waterman – and
shown her photographs from the postmortems. Again, they left the fire in Peckham
to one side for the moment. Tartaglia didn't want Blomet's feelings about English
to cloud the situation. At first she refused to listen, saying they were making it
all up, that it was just fiction. But gradually the full horror of what they described
sank in.

They had deliberately not allowed her a break, except once to visit the ladies'.
She returned having washed her face, but
rather than looking refreshed she appeared
even more deflated, as though she had perhaps caught sight of herself in the mirror
and reflected on what the future might hold; that the reality of her predicament
had finally dawned on her. It was often the way with people who were not used to
being questioned, particularly when the possible charges were so serious. Would she
have stuck with a man like Simpson if she had known about the murders? From the little
he'd seen of her, it didn't stack up. Also, if she had been involved, why would Simpson
have taken the risk of using Tatyana to get to Finnigan? It seemed that, after all,
Chantal really had no inkling as to what he was doing. Yet instinct told him she
was still holding something back.

Minderedes leaned forwards across the table. ‘Why did you lie to Detective Inspector
Tartaglia and tell him you thought Dave Simpson was dead, unless you knew what he'd
done and you were trying to protect him?'

‘I don't know. I don't remember.'

‘But it was just this morning,' Wightman said. ‘How can you forget? You told him
you hadn't seen Dave Simpson since he went to jail. You also said that you didn't
have a relationship with him. Yet we find you living with him under the same roof,
sharing his bed. Basically, everything you've told us is a lie and there's only one
way to interpret that. It's not looking good for you.'

She bowed her head and was silent for some moments. Then, ‘I shouldn't have lied.
I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I just didn't want Dave getting into any trouble.'

‘What trouble would that be? You said he hasn't done anything wrong.'

‘Dave Simpson's as guilty as hell and you knew all about what he did,' Minderedes
said. ‘You helped him.'

She shook her head wearily. ‘No . . .'

‘What did you say?'

She sighed. ‘It's not true. Whatever he's done, I knew nothing about it.'

‘You ditched him when he went to jail, then picked up with him again when he came
out. You were the one in control.'

‘I
didn't
ditch him, I
wanted
to see him. I wanted to help him, but he said he didn't
want to see me. He told me not to come.
He
didn't want
me
.'

Wightman shook his head in disbelief. ‘If you want to save yourself, you're going
the wrong way about it. Do you think a jury will buy your story? Do you think they'll
believe that you knew nothing about what Dave Simpson was doing?'

Minderedes leaned forwards to catch her eye. ‘Well? You're a clever girl, Chantal.
He was your lover and you stole him away from his wife and child. Think about it.
Man like that, he'd tell you everything, wouldn't he? He'd have no secrets from you.
Maybe you were the one pulling his strings.'

She made no reply, just stared down at her hands as though her thoughts were far
away.

Wightman then described what they thought had happened to Richard English, how he
was drugged and left senseless in the basement while Simpson set the house on fire,
knowing that the still in the back room would explode. He read out the paragraph
from the post-mortem that detailed the evidence of smoke inhalation. ‘He burned alive,
Chantal. Think of that. You knew Richard English and you hated him. Did you lure
him to the house in Peckham so Simpson could kill him?'

‘Even if you didn't light the match, you're as guilty as he is,' Minderedes said.

She had begun to shake at the mention of English and the fire, and hid her face in
her hands, mumbling something that Tartaglia couldn't hear. Her reaction spoke volumes.
This was
what she had been hiding all along. She knew something about what had happened
to Richard English. Just how much, was the question.

‘Speak up,' Minderedes said. ‘You helped Simpson kill Richard English, didn't you?'

‘What are you saying?' Wightman asked.

She looked up. ‘It wasn't like that . . .' She turned imploringly towards her lawyer,
Keith Whitely.

‘Well, what
was
it like? Tell us.'

Whitely intervened. ‘Hang on a minute,' he said. ‘Before we go any further, I need
to speak to my client. In private.'

As he spoke, Tartaglia's phone started ringing. It was Chang. He answered, to be
told that Chang was calling from the hospital. Simpson had regained consciousness.

Shouldering his small rucksack, Adam walked down the street towards Sam Donovan's
house. He had been back to Bedford Gardens first, showered quickly and changed, then
packed up his few belongings and locked them in the boot of Kit's car, along with
Hannah Bird's body. He had parked only a block away from where Sam lived. When it
was over, his plan was to drive to Dover and get on a catamaran to Ostend first thing
the next day. He had looked at the times and been through it all very carefully.
The sea journey took only forty-five minutes, but he reckoned there was little rush.
It was unlikely that Sam would be found until the next day at the very earliest,
and Hannah even later, by which time he would be safely on a long-haul flight out
of Europe to somewhere hot. He missed the warmth of the sun, the scented breeze from
the sea at night. He had enough cash to last him a good while, particularly in some
cheap backpacker destination. There would be another Kit somewhere along the way,
female or male, it didn't matter.
Maybe he would never return to the UK again. But
first, he had some unfinished business to attend to.

He stopped by a hedge opposite Sam's house and looked across the road. There were
no lights on and the curtains were pulled tightly across the windows on both the
ground and first floors. She had been there most of the day, only going out for a
while mid-morning, and he wondered what she'd been doing all that time on her own.
Probably sorting through her sister's things. He looked forward to telling her how
pointless it all was. He was about to cross the road when he heard the thud of muffled
footsteps coming up fast behind him. A jogger, wearing a dark tracksuit with a hood
pulled low over his face, emerged from the shadows and ran, head bowed, in Adam's
direction. Adam ducked into the garden behind, pressing himself against the hedge,
listening to the rhythmic pace of the man's feet as they passed by in front of him.
Cautiously, he stepped out of the shadows, watching until the jogger disappeared
around the bend at the end of the road. He waited a moment, then felt for the keys
in his pocket and crossed over to the Donovan house.

He tried all three of Claire's keys but none of them worked. Sam Donovan had fucking
well changed the locks. He threw the useless keys on the ground and kicked them under
a bush. As he wondered what to do next, he noticed that one of the windows in the
bay to the right of the front door was open a fraction. Maybe he wouldn't have to
break the glass after all. He tried pushing it up from the glass, then levering it
up with his fingertips, but it wouldn't budge. It was either too stiff or she had
locked it from the inside. He took a heavy-duty screwdriver out of his bag and,
after several attempts, managed to prise it open a couple of centimetres. The stupid
bitch had forgotten to lock it. She wasn't so clever after all. Careful not
to make
any sound, he pushed it up bit-by-bit with his fingers and climbed in. The window
was screened from the road by a tall hedge and he decided to leave it open, in case
he needed a quick escape route later. He drew back the curtains and glanced around
the small sitting room, which was illuminated by the orange glare from the street.
He had never been there before but it was just as dull as he had pictured it.