The Stranger You Know (35 page)

‘And what was that, exactly?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But he disappeared not all that long before Deena Prescott died.’

Maitland gave a sigh that came all the way up from his boots. ‘Bloody marvellous. However you cut it, he should be here and he’s not, and we’ve got a big problem.’

My problems were made a lot worse because I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the Rest Bar. Maitland gave me the option of running away but I turned it down. I wanted to stick around for as long as possible, the urge to know what was going on drowning out the small voice that advocated caution. Godley was taking no chances: a possible lead in the investigation was going to get every resource available. They came in force: SOCOs led by Kev Cox who was as imperturbable and good-tempered as ever, and a spaniel trained as a cadaver dog who might catch a scent of blood or a speck of human remains that we would otherwise miss. Una Burt arrived with Andrew Bradbury and James Peake, fresh from the conference where they’d been discussing Derwent’s likely status as a suspect. I didn’t doubt that Burt was annoyed I had interrupted it, especially since it was to draw their attention to the fact that there was someone else to consider. Peake was the only one of the three who looked pleased to see me, but in enthusiasm he more than made up for the others. His eyes lit up when he saw me standing outside. He made a beeline for me and I was glad to have him to talk to, if it meant I didn’t have to acknowledge the disapproving looks I was getting from his boss and Burt.

‘Found a suspect for us, have you?’

‘Possibly. We’ve found a lot of nothing so far.’

‘Did you search the place?’

‘We gave it the once over, but Maitland wanted to get the SOCOs in before we trampled all over the place.’

‘Is this guy really a serious contender? How did you find him?’

I answered the second question first. ‘He was involved in a cold case that had possible relevance to the current inquiry. And I don’t know if he’s a proper lead or not, but he’s the closest thing we’ve found.’

‘You’re telling me.’ A helicopter hovered overhead and Peake looked up, shading his eyes. ‘Not ours. That’ll be a news crew.’

‘Already?’

‘We passed a load of them setting up down the street when we were driving here. There are five or six satellite vans parked up.’

‘For God’s sake. One of the bar staff must have tipped them off. That’s not going to help us if he’s on the run. If he knows we’re chasing him, it’s not going to make him easier to catch.’

Peake shrugged. ‘Big news, isn’t it. Everyone wants a breakthrough in this case. And speaking of big news, you’ve had an exciting week of it, haven’t you?’

I half-smiled, reluctant to talk about it. Leaning sideways, I saw Burns and Groves making their way up the alley and I went to meet them. We had almost an identical conversation, except that their side of it was full of the double-act banter that came naturally to them.

‘Give you a week and you’ve got a suspect for us. We had months to track him down.’ Groves was twinkling at me, obviously delighted.

Burns sniffed. ‘Tell you now, I never heard of this bloke before we got the call, but if you’re right about him that’s all that matters.’

Godley was the last to get there, unusually. Maitland had come to join the group outside in the alley, kicked out by Kev who needed the space.

‘Sorry, Harry. I got held up by the press at the cordon.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘That I would make a full statement later. But it took a while.’ He grinned, then turned to me. ‘Maeve. Why am I not surprised to find you here?’

‘I asked her to come along,’ Maitland said. ‘It was my idea.’

‘I’m sure it was.’ I thought he was going to have a go at me but instead he looked back at Maitland. ‘Please tell me you got a search warrant before all this started.’

‘We were lawfully on the premises, boss. We were concerned for Mr Poole’s safety.’

Godley held up a hand. ‘I’m not blaming you, Harry. You have to take the opportunities when they come. But I want the rest of this search to be completely unquestionable in court. If he is our killer, we want to throw everything we can at it.’

‘Right you are.’

‘What stage are we at?’

‘Kev is going through the place at the moment. We gave it a quick look before he started, but we didn’t find anything suspicious except his phone and his wallet.’ Maitland glanced at me. ‘We thought that was potentially his choice, to avoid being tracked.’

‘It’s possible.’ Godley looked up at the building. ‘How big is the flat?’

‘Not very.’ I described it for him and he nodded. ‘I don’t want everyone tramping around in there when Kev lets us back in. I want a thorough, proper search done. Harry, you can do it, and Colin Vale. I’d like him to do the office to go through the paperwork.’

‘Who else?’ Maitland asked. ‘Just us two? Might take a while.’

Godley turned. ‘What about you, Maeve? Searching is your speciality, isn’t it?’

I blushed to the roots of my hair. It was a reference to the first time I’d come to his attention a few years before, and I had assumed he would have forgotten it long ago. I hadn’t but that was because it was a decisive event in my life. I hadn’t expected him to recall a two-minute chat with a uniformed officer on a case that had just blown wide open, even if it was the reason I was working for him now.

Behind him, Una Burt’s eyebrows drew together. From his tone, and the fact he was offering me a chance to get involved, it was clear that I was back in his good books. It would burn her, too, if she didn’t know the background to his comment.

‘I’ll do it.’

‘Good.’ Godley turned around to address the rest of the officers gathered in the alley. ‘The rest of us had better find somewhere to wait, I’m afraid. Once we know all we can about Shane Poole, we can start making some plans. Until then—’

‘The pub’s closed,’ Groves observed. ‘That might make a good place to wait.’

‘Trust you,’ Burns said affectionately, then added, ‘Not a bad idea, mind.’

‘Indeed not.’ Godley nodded to Maitland. ‘Keep me informed, Harry. We’ll wait down here.’

Knowing that the pub below us was full of police officers who would have traded places with us in a heartbeat made me a little bit edgy as I searched Shane Poole’s home. Maitland allocated me his bedroom and I spent a long time going through the pockets of everything in his wardrobe. I searched inside shoes and drawers, turning them upside down to make sure there was nothing taped to the underside. I looked inside the cistern of the lavatory in the en suite, and checked that the panelling on the side of the bath didn’t come off. I cleared shelves, unfolded jumpers and socks, shook out bedclothes and lay on the floor to check under the bed.

‘Anything?’

I looked up at Maitland and shook my head. ‘You?’

‘We found the safe.’

I’d heard the drilling. ‘And?’

‘Should have had the week’s cash takings in there, but the notes were gone. He hasn’t been to the bank with them, either.’

Unmarked, untraceable, non-consecutive notes. I swore quietly. ‘Whatever he needs money for, he’s got it.’

‘Yeah. Are you almost done?’

‘Almost. Give me a hand to lift the mattress, would you?’

He went to the other end of the bed and helped me lever it off the base. There was nothing shoved underneath it, and the mattress itself was as it had come from the manufacturers. The divan, on the other hand, had a hole in it, as we both spotted immediately. Maitland adjusted his gloves and stuck a hand in, retrieving a small envelope.

‘Kev,’ he yelled. ‘You probably want to have a look at this.’

Kev arrived and spread paper on the divan so he could tip out what was in the envelope. A pair of earrings came out first, little silver bows tarnished black. Then came two rings that looked like they had been much worn.

‘A wedding band and engagement ring.’ I leaned over. ‘Quite old-fashioned. His mother’s, maybe?’

‘Maybe. But the earrings?’

‘Angela Poole was wearing them when she died,’ I said. ‘I recognise them from the crime-scene pictures.’

‘What about this?’ Kev shook the envelope again, coaxing out the last items. A curl of honey-blonde hair, dry and slightly faded, tied with a scrap of black ribbon. A photograph, passport-picture size, cut from a strip of them – Angela Poole laughing as she sat on the young Derwent’s lap. He had his face in her hair, nuzzling her neck. Someone had scraped Derwent’s face away with short, angry jabs. And the last thing: a cutting from a newspaper that was some years old, covering the sentencing at the end of a murder trial. An elderly woman, mugged for her handbag, had died of head injuries sustained in the attack and two seventeen-year-olds had been convicted. Highlighted in yellow, near the bottom, a quote from DS Josh Derwent: ‘For Beryl’s family, this conviction doesn’t make up for her loss. She was in good health before the attack and might have had many years ahead of her. Although the people who committed this despicable act are young, they must take responsibility for their actions and I’m glad the court has recognised the serious nature of their crime.’

In the margin beside it, someone – Shane, presumably – had inked an exclamation mark.

I looked at the little pile of things and felt a creeping sense of unease about Shane Poole, and where he might be, and what he might be planning to do.

Chapter 28

It was probably inevitable that I’d be the focus of attention at the conference in the pub. Out of all the police officers in the room, I was the only one who had actually met Shane Poole. I wasn’t altogether comfortable with being the main attraction but there was nothing I could do about it. I got a coffee from the bar before the last member of staff was asked to leave, and took a seat near the back, which just meant that everyone turned around to look at me every time my name was mentioned. Godley had got hold of Dr Chen. She was sitting at the front, arms folded, slight but formidable in a navy suit.

The bar staff had drawn the blinds to give us some privacy and the place had the feel of a lock-in, albeit with no booze on offer. The big television in one corner was on with the sound muted, showing a rolling news programme that intermittently displayed live footage of nothing happening outside the pub. Groves was near a window. Now and then he twitched one of the blinds, trying to tempt the cameraman to zoom in on it.

Godley stood by the bar with Maitland and filled in the blanks for those who didn’t know. He started with who Shane Poole was. What had happened to his sister. How the current crimes resembled the death twenty years before. Why DI Derwent had come up as a suspect, and why he might be a target for Shane.

‘Or,’ Una Burt said, ‘they could still be friends. Shane could have killed Deena on Derwent’s instructions.’

‘Shane hates Derwent,’ I said, unable to stay quiet. ‘He blames him for what happened to Angela. He wanted me to arrest him for statutory rape.’

‘A smokescreen.’

‘No. He meant it.’ I told them about the photograph, coloured in to hide Derwent, and the other picture that was scratched.

‘Let’s leave Josh Derwent to one side for now,’ Godley said. ‘What about Shane? He was a teenager when his sister died. Was he a suspect?’

‘He had an alibi but it was faked.’ A murmur ran around the room. I went on: ‘It’s worth considering one feature of Angela’s death that we’ve seen in the current series of murders. No obvious sexual element.’

‘That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a sexual thrill involved for the perpetrator,’ Dr Chen said.

‘I know, but if it was Shane who killed her, that could explain it. Instead of him killing her because he wanted to have sex with her, maybe he wanted to punish her for sleeping with her boyfriend. He was obviously disgusted by the thought of her having sex with Derwent when he spoke to me about it.’

‘Okay. Let’s look at that,’ Godley said. ‘He kills his sister. Then what?’

‘Then he spent some years taking an awful lot of drugs,’ I said. ‘And then he got clean, got some money together and started this bar, which is doing very nicely according to the paperwork in his study.’

‘A success story. He’d left his past behind him. So why would he risk everything by starting to kill women in the last twelve months?’

‘There could have been a triggering event,’ Dr Chen said. ‘Something that reminded him of what happened twenty years ago. Something that brought him back to the state of mind that made him want to kill.’

‘His best friend died,’ I said. ‘In Afghanistan, about two months before Kirsty’s death. He was a big influence on Shane, and he knew Derwent too.’

Dr Chen was nodding. ‘That sounds like a possible source of trauma.’

‘So what?’ Bradbury had folded his arms and his face was stony. ‘We’re supposed to ignore the evidence pointing us towards a police officer so we can chase a missing bar owner? Was there anything upstairs that connected Shane Poole to the current killings, or did I miss something?’

‘Nothing so far,’ Maitland admitted. ‘But all the forensic work might throw something up.’

‘That could take months,’ Bradbury pointed out. ‘We’ve got a good suspect already, and we know where he is. I say we stick with the original plan – covert surveillance on Derwent and quietly investigate every single thing we can think of that might prove he’s our guy. And if that doesn’t work, arrest him and sweat it out of him.’

I couldn’t help myself: I laughed. ‘Do you really think Derwent would confess because
you
put him under pressure? Good luck.’

Bradbury glared. ‘We know where you stand.’

Burt leaned across and whispered something in his ear, shielding her mouth so no one else could hear. He nodded in response. I burned to know what it was while being quite sure it was better not to. If Burt was throwing in her lot with Bradbury, I didn’t feel quite the same need to impress her.

Godley cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention back to the front of the room. ‘Some of you know Josh Derwent personally and most of you know him by reputation. I will be extremely relieved if we can rule him out of any involvement with these murders, but I am not going to make the mistake of moving on to a new suspect without investigating him properly. So there’s no need to worry, Andy.’