‘Sounds like a plan!’
‘Are you eating properly?’ she asked, motherly suddenly. ‘Have you had some dinner?’
‘Sort of,’ he said evasively.
‘An ASDA pot noodle?’
‘A sandwich,’ he confessed.
‘That’s not healthy! What kind of a sandwich?’
‘Beef.’
‘God, Roy. Fatty meat and carbohydrate!’
‘It had a lettuce leaf in it.’
‘Oh, well, that’s all right then,’ she said sarcastically. Then her voice changed. ‘Can you hang on a sec? There’s someone outside the building.’ She sounded worried.
‘Who’s there with you?’
‘No one, I’m on my own. Poor Darren and Walter came in at four this morning. I sent them home a little while ago. I’m just going to check this out, OK? Call you back in a sec.’
The phone went dead.
�
86
I received a letter this morning from someone called Lawrence Abramson at a firm of solicitors in London called Harbottle and Lewis. It is a really unpleasant letter.
I recently wrote to the man who looks just like me, who started this company, suggesting that, as it was my idea – and I have all the paperwork from my patent agent, Mr Christopher Pett at Frank B. Dehn & Son, to prove it – he should be paying me a royalty on his revenues.
Mr Abramson is threatening to obtain an injunction against me if I ever approach his client again.
I’m really very angry.
�
87
Leighton Lloyd looked as if he’d had a hard day. Exuding a faint smell of tobacco smoke, he was sitting in this windowless, airless, enclosed interview room, dressed in an expensive-looking but crumpled grey suit, cream shirt and a sharp silk tie. A well-travelled leather attach�ase was on the floor beside him, from which he extracted a black, lined A4 notebook.
Lloyd was a lean, wiry man, with close-cropped hair and an alert, predatory face that reminded Branson a little of the actor Robert Carlyle when he was playing a Bond villain in The World is Not Enough. Branson got a kick out of matching a movie villain’s face to all lawyers – and he found it helped him to avoid feeling intimidated by them, particularly when being cross-examined by defence barristers in court.
Plenty of officers got on fine with solicitors. They took it in their stride, saying that it was all a game that sometimes they won, sometimes they lost. But for Branson it was more personal than that. He knew that criminal solicitors and barristers were only doing their job, and formed an important part of the freedoms of the British nation. But for nearly a decade before joining the police, he’d worked several nights a week as a nightclub bouncer in this city. He’d seen and tangled with just about every bit of scum imaginable, from drunk braggarts, to ugly gangsters, to some very smart criminals. He felt an intense obligation to try to make this city a better place for his own children to grow up in than it had been for him as a kid. That was his beef with the man sitting opposite him right now, in his hand-made suit and his black, tasselled loafers, with his big swinging dick of a BMW parked out front, and no doubt a flash, secluded house somewhere in one of Hove’s swankier streets, all paid for out of the rich pickings from keeping scumbags out of jail – and on the streets.
Branson’s mood had not been improved by a blazing row with his wife, Ari, on his mobile phone as he had walked over to the custody block. He’d called to say goodnight to the children and she had pointed out acidly that they had been asleep in bed for some time. To which his response, that it was not much fun still being at work at nine o’clock, received a torrent of sarcasm. It had then degenerated into a shouting match, ending with Ari hanging up on him.
Nick Nicholl closed the door, pulled up a chair opposite Branson and sat down. Lloyd had positioned himself at the head of the table, as if arranging the stage to assert himself from the getgo.
The solicitor made a note in his black book with a roller-ball pen. ‘So, gentlemen, what information do you have for me?’ He spoke in a brisk, clipped voice, his tone polite but firm. Above them, an air-conditioning unit was starting, noisily, to pump out cool air.
Lloyd made Branson nervous. The detective could deal with brute force, no problem, but cunning intellects always unnerved him. And Lloyd was observing everyone with an inscrutable, unreadable expression. He spoke slowly, articulating each word as if he were addressing a child, thinking very carefully about what he was going to say next.
‘We have spoken to Mr Bishop over the last four days, as you will appreciate is normal in these circumstances, in order to get background information regarding himself and his wife. There is some information that we have been given which we will be covering during the interview, concerning his movements and location around the time of the murder.’
‘OK,’ Leighton Lloyd said, a tad impatiently, as if flagging that he wasn’t here to listen to waffle. ‘Can you bring me up to speed on why my client has been arrested?’
Branson then handed him the Pre-Interview Disclosure document that had been prepared. ‘If you would like to read this, we can go through any questions you may have.’
Lloyd reached across the desk and took the short document, a single A4 sheet, and read it in silence. Then he read parts of it out aloud. ‘Possible strangulation by ligature, subject to further pathology tests . . . We have certain DNA evidence which will form part of the interview.’
He looked up at the two officers for a moment, then continued reading out aloud, his voice now sounding quizzical: ‘We have reason to believe that Mr Bishop has not been telling the complete truth. Accordingly, we wish to put certain questions to him under caution.’
The solicitor dropped the sheet back down on the table. ‘Can you put any flesh on this document?’ he asked Branson.
‘How much information do you have?’ Branson asked.
‘Very little. Obviously I’ve been following the report on the murder of Mrs Bishop in the papers and on the news. But I haven’t spoken to my client yet.’
For the next twenty minutes, Lloyd quizzed the police officers. He started by asking about the cleaning lady and the details of the crime scene. Glenn Branson gave him the very minimum information he felt he needed to. He outlined the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Katie Bishop’s body, and the pathologist’s estimate of the approximate time of death, but held back the information about the gas mask. And he firmly refused to reveal any information on their DNA evidence.
The solicitor finished by trying to trip up Branson into revealing why they believed that Brian Bishop had not been telling the truth. But Branson would not be drawn.
‘Has my client given you an alibi?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he has,’ Branson replied.
‘And presumably you are not satisfied with it.’
The Detective Sergeant hesitated, then said, ‘That is something we will be dealing with during the interview process.’
Lloyd made another note with the roller-ball pen in his book. Then he smiled at Branson. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me at this stage?’
Branson glanced at Nicholl and shook his head.
‘Right. I’d like to see my client now.’
�
88
It was now almost completely dark outside. Distractedly, Roy Grace ran his eye down the pages and pages on his screen of today’s incident reports log, looking for anything that might be relevant to the two cases. He found nothing. He scanned through his email inbox, deleted several where he had just been copied in and fired off a few quick responses. Then he looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes since Cleo had said she would call him right back.
He felt a sudden knot of anxiety in his stomach, thinking how much he cared for her; how he could not bear the thought of anything happening to her. As Sandy had been for so many years, Cleo was starting to feel like the rock to which his life was moored. A good, solid, beautiful, funny, loving, caring and wise rock. But sometime
s in shadow, not sunlight.
Roy, this is not the woman Lesley and I saw last week. We really are convinced we saw Sandy. Best, Dick
God, he thought, it would have been so much simpler if Dick had replied to him that yes, this was the woman they had seen. It still wouldn’t have given him the closure he sought, but at least it would have put Munich back in its box. Now it was drawing him towards another journey there. But at this moment, he wasn’t able to think about that. He was remembering only too vividly that some creep had slashed the roof of Cleo’s MG yesterday, in broad daylight, outside the mortuary.
The place attracted every imaginable kind of weirdo and sicko, of which Brighton had more than its fair share. He still found it hard to understand how she could enjoy working there as much as she claimed she did. Sure, you could get used to just about anything. But that didn’t mean you could like anything.
Car roofs mostly got slashed in urban streets, either by people breaking in to steal something or by swaggering yobs late at night, high or drunk, who were passing by. People didn’t pass by the mortuary car park, especially not on a hot Sunday afternoon. Nothing had been stolen from the car. It was just a nasty, malicious piece of vandalism. Probably some lowlife jealous of the car.
But was that person outside the mortuary now?
Call me. Please call me.
He opened an attachment and tried to read through the agenda for this year’s International Homicide Investigators Association annual symposium, in New Orleans, now just a few weeks away. It was impossible to concentrate.
Then his phone rang. Grabbing it, he blurted in relief, ‘Hi!’
But it was Jane Paxton, telling him that Bishop was about to see his solicitor and she was heading over to the observation room at the custody block. She suggested that he came over in about ten minutes.
�
89
Brian Bishop sat alone in his silent cell, hunched forward on the edge of the bench that was also the bed. He could not remember ever feeling so low in his entire life. It seemed that half his world had been ripped away from him and the other half was turning against him. Even gentle, non-judgemental Robert Vernon had sounded less friendly than usual on the phone earlier. Why? Had word got round that he was damaged goods, to be left alone? Poisonous to touch?
Would it be Glenn and Barbara next? And the other couple he and Katie saw a lot of, Ian and Terrina? And the rest of the people he had once considered his friends?
His blue paper suit felt tight under the armpits and his toes could barely move inside the plimsolls, but he didn’t care. This was all a bad dream and some time soon he was going to wake up, and Katie would be all big smiles, sitting up in bed next to him, reading the Daily Mail gossip column, the page she always turned to first, a cup of tea beside her.
In his hands he held the yellow sheet he had been given, squinting at the blurred words, struggling to read them without his glasses.
SUSSEX POLICE
NOTICE OF RIGHTS AND ENTITLEMENT
REMEMEMBER YOUR RIGHTS
His cell door was opened suddenly by a pasty-faced man of about thirty, with no neck and the physique of a jelly baby, who looked as if he used to pump iron but had recently let his muscles run to fat. He was wearing the Reliance Security uniform of monogrammed white shirt with black epaulettes, black tie and black trousers, and was perspiring heavily.
He spoke in a courteous, slightly squeaky voice, avoiding eye contact, as if this was standard practice for addressing the scum behind the barred doors of this place. ‘Mr Bishop, your solicitor is here. I’ll take you through to him. Walk in front of me, please.’
Bishop walked as directed from behind, navigating a network of blank, cream corridors, the only relief on the walls being the continuous red panic strip set in a metal rim. Then he entered the interview room, which Branson and Nicholl had temporarily vacated, to allow him privacy with his lawyer.
Leighton Lloyd shook his hand and ushered him to a seat. He then checked that all the recording and monitoring equipment was switched off, before sitting back down himself.
‘Thank you for coming over,’ Bishop said.
The solicitor gave him a sympathetic smile, and Bishop found himself instantly warming to the man – although he knew that, at this moment, he would have probably warmed to Attila the Hun if he’d said he was here to help.
‘That’s my job,’ Lloyd said. ‘So, have you been treated all right?’
‘I don’t have much to compare with,’ Bishop said, attempting a stab of humour that bypassed the lawyer. ‘Actually, there’s one thing I’m really angry about – they took my reading glasses.’
‘Normal, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, great. So if I had contact lenses, I could keep those, but because I choose to have reading glasses, I’m now not able to read anything.’
‘I’ll do my best to get them back for you quickly.’ He noted this down in his book. ‘So, Mr Bishop, I’m conscious that it’s late and you are tired. The police want to conduct one interview tonight – we’ll keep it as brief as we can – then they’ll continue again tomorrow morning.’
‘How long am I going to be here? Can you get me out on bail?’
‘I can only apply for bail if you are charged. The police are entitled to keep you for twenty-four hours without charging you, and they can get a further twelve hours’ extension. After that they have to release you, charge you or go to court to apply for further time.’
‘So I could be in here until Wednesday morning?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
Bishop fell silent.
Lloyd held up a sheet of paper. ‘This is what’s called the Pre-Interview Disclosure document – it is a summary of the information the police are prepared to let us have at this stage. If you’re having problems reading, would you like me to read it aloud to you?’
Bishop nodded. He felt sick and so drained that he did not even have the will to speak.
The lawyer read out the contents, then expanded, filling him in on the little extra that he had been able to glean from DS Branson. ‘Is that all clear?’ he asked Bishop, when he had finished.
Bishop nodded again. Hearing the words was making everything worse. They sank like dark stones, deep into his soul. And his gloom deepened even more. He felt as if he was sitting at the bottom of the deepest mineshaft in the world.
For the next few minutes, Bishop was briefed on the questions he would probably be asked at his first interview, and how he should reply. The solicitor told him to speak economically and be helpful but to give short answers. If there were any questions that either of them felt were inappropriate, the solicitor would step in. He also asked Bishop about his health, whether he was up to the ordeal ahead, or whether he needed to see a doctor or to have any medication. Bishop told him he was fine.
‘There’s one final question I have to ask,’ Leighton Lloyd said. ‘Did you murder your wife?’
‘No. Absolutely not. That’s ridiculous. I loved her. Why would I kill her? No, I didn’t, I really didn’t. You have to believe me. I just don’t know what’s going on.’
The solicitor smiled. ‘OK. That’s good enough for me.’
�
90
As Grace walked across the tarmac separating the back entrance of Sussex House from the custody centre, passing a row of wheelie bins, shadows jumped inside his mind. His mobile phone was clamped to his ear and the knot of anxiety inside his gullet was tightening more and more. His mouth was dry with worry. It was now over twenty minutes. Why hadn’t Cleo called back? He listened as her mobile phone went yet again straight to voicemail without ringing, then dialled the mortuary phone. As before, it was picked up on the fourth ring by the answering machine. He toyed with just jumping in a car and driving over there. But that would be irresponsible. He had to be here, scrutinizing the interview all the way through.
So he phoned the resourcing centre and explained to the controller who he was and what his concerns were. To his
relief, the man replied that there was a unit in that part of the city at the moment, so he would send it straight up to the mortuary. Grace asked if he could call him back, or have one of the officers in the patrol car call him when they were on site, to let him know the situation.
He had a bad feeling about this. Really bad. Even though he knew Cleo always kept the mortuary doors locked, and there were security cameras, he did not like the idea of her being there alone at night. Particularly not after what had happened yesterday.
Then, holding his security card up to the grey Interflex eye beside the door, he entered the custody centre, walked across past the central pod, where, as usual, some sad bit of lowlife – this one a skinny Rasta youth in a grubby vest, camouflage trousers and sandals – was being booked in, and headed through an internal security door up the stairs to the first floor.
Jane Paxton was already seated in the small observation room, in front of the colour monitor, which was switched on but blank. Both the video and audio would be off to give Brian Bishop privacy with his lawyer, until the interview formally started. She had thoughtfully brought over two bottles of water for them. Grace put his notepad on the work surface in front of his empty chair, then went down to the small kitchenette at the end of the corridor and made himself a mug of strong coffee. It was a cheap brand in a big tin that looked like it had been there a while and smelled stale. Some prat had left the milk out and it had gone off, so he left his coffee black.
As he carried it back into the room he said, ‘You didn’t want any tea or coffee, did you?’
‘Never use them,’ she said primly, with a faint reprimand in her voice, as if he had just offered some Class A drugs.