Both Guy and Tanja were aware that Roy Grace was watching the live video feed in the tiny observation room next door. And they were also aware that they could only keep a suspect for thirty-six hours. To keep Jodie any longer they would need to go before a magistrate and present good reasons for an extension. She had already been in custody now for just over twenty-four hours. They had until ten o’clock this evening to charge her or else come up with grounds for seeking an extension.
Across the table, littered with glasses of water and mugs of coffee, sat Jodie Carmichael, quiet and sullen, dressed in a black top and blue jeans, toying repeatedly with the chain of the locket round her neck. Beside her was her brief, a tough, sharp London solicitor from a leading criminal law practice, suited and booted and with freshly gelled hair. He spoke with a strong Brummie accent.
The two police officers were expecting a fight.
‘This is the second interview with Jodie Carmichael, née Danforth, also known as Jodie Bentley and Jemma Smith, among other possible names.’
‘Other names?’ the lawyer interjected. ‘Would you care to specify them?’
‘Not at this stage. We are carrying out investigations into your client’s background and we believe she may have used other aliases in the past.’ Then Batchelor looked at Jodie. ‘You married Christopher Bentley when you were twenty-two. Is that correct?’
She glanced at her solicitor before answering, ‘Yes.’
‘And am I correct in saying that some years into your marriage, your husband died after being bitten by a saw-scaled viper snake that he kept at home?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. It was terrible. He understood those snakes so well, and he knew their dangers.’
Batchelor went on. ‘Am I correct also that your second husband, Rowley Carmichael, died from venom from the same snake – the saw-scaled viper?’
‘According to the post-mortem report, yes.’
She pulled, theatrically, a handkerchief out of her bag.
‘Would I be correct also in saying that you currently keep several of these snakes in a room at your house in Roedean Crescent, Brighton?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Are you aware just how deadly these creatures are?’
‘Absolutely. You’d have to be a bit stupid not to be.’
‘Are you aware that a licence under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act is required to keep these creatures?’
‘I am.’
‘You told us yesterday in interview that your late husband, Christopher Bentley, had such a licence. Despite his death, you maintained the licence in his name at an unoccupied flat in South Kensington, London. May I ask why you never transferred the licence to your own name and never notified any relevant authority that you had moved these reptiles to Brighton?’
She looked at her solicitor again, who nodded that it was OK for her to answer.
‘I’ve been busy,’ she said. ‘I suppose I just haven’t got round to it yet.’
‘Busy for all those years?’ Tanja Cale asked her, with a hint of sarcasm.
‘I thought that if it was a valid licence, it didn’t matter where they were actually housed.’
‘You certainly have been busy,’ Batchelor said. ‘Let’s go back in time a little. I understand that you were present when your older sister, Cassie, died. You outlined the brief details in yesterday’s interview but could you tell us the circumstances in detail?’
‘No comment,’ her solicitor interjected.
‘No, it’s OK,’ Jodie said. ‘It was a terrible accident. Our parents had taken us over the October half-term to Cornwall. We were staying in Boscastle. Cassie and I went for a clifftop walk. She asked me to take a photograph of her at a particular high point. She stepped back right to the cliff edge. I was really worried and told her to move away. She told me I was being a wuss and instead she took a step further back. Then she stumbled and – she – she – suddenly—’ Jodie closed her eyes. ‘Oh God.’ She opened them again. ‘I’ll never forget the terrible look on her face. One second she was there, then she – she—’ Tears filled her eyes. Her voice broke. ‘She just dropped out of sight.’ She paused, apparently to compose herself, then sniffed. ‘I crawled to the edge and looked, and I could see her body down on rocks, way below. I don’t know how far. Two or three hundred feet.’
Tanja Cale passed her a box of tissues. Jodie pulled one out and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her handkerchief still clutched in her hand.
‘How did you feel at that moment?’ DS Cale asked her, gently.
‘It was the worst moment– the worst moment of my life.’
Jodie then described what happened in the aftermath and the impact on her family.
Guy Batchelor pulled a sheaf of paper from his inside jacket pocket. He handed one sheet to Jodie, one to her solicitor and one to Tanja Cale. ‘Jodie, search officers found a diary from your childhood in your house, yesterday. This is a photocopy of an entry from it. For the benefit of the tape it is marked exhibit GB/9, the first anniversary of your sister’s death, after you had visited the grave with your parents. I’ll read you the last part of what you wrote:
‘My family. My embarrassing family. The things they say. But this really made me laugh. Mum suddenly said she wanted to light a candle for Cassie, have it burning on the table with us during our meal. So my dad went up to the bar and asked if they had a candle they could light for his daughter. Ten minutes later the chef and two other members of staff appeared with a small cake, with a candle burning in the centre of it, and walked towards us, all smiling at me and singing “Happy Birthday to You”!
‘I’m still laughing about that, even though it’s nearly midnight and I’ve got homework to do for tomorrow that I’ve not even started yet.
‘But, honestly, I have to say, I’ve not felt so great in a long time!’
He laid the sheet of paper in front of him. ‘That doesn’t sound much like a grieving sister to me.’
Jodie stared into his eyes as if she was looking right into his soul. ‘Really? Have you ever lost someone you loved? I had a year of hell living with the guilt that I was somehow responsible. Sure, I remember that day with my parents, and the ridiculous mistake that pub made bringing a birthday cake. It did make me laugh, of course it did. The whole stupidity of it. It did cheer me up; for the first time in a whole year I actually smiled.’
‘OK, Jodie, let’s move forward to Christopher Bentley. He was an experienced reptile handler – one of the world’s foremost experts in venomous snakes among other creatures. Yet he allowed himself to be bitten by a deadly saw-scaled viper. Can you tell us how you think that might have happened?’
Jodie and her solicitor exchanged looks. She gave him a steady nod and turned back to the detectives. ‘I’m afraid that all experts get over-confident. To be honest, the way he treated some of his venomous creatures really worried me and I warned him several times. From the way he acted with them, he was starting to believe that he had somehow tamed some of them, and he was taking fewer and fewer precautions handling them.’
For the next fifteen minutes they asked a number of questions about the day it happened.
Batchelor studied his notes for some moments. ‘We’d now like to ask you some more questions about Walt Klein. When did you meet him exactly?’
‘In August, last year, in a hotel bar in Las Vegas – the Bellagio.’
‘Can you tell us what happened about a month ago?’
Without looking at her lawyer, she said, ‘Sure. We went skiing to Courchevel in the French Alps – he was a very keen skier.’
‘What was the nature of your relationship?’
‘We were engaged to be married.’
‘And what happened while you were there in Courchevel?’
‘Walt was a real – what we skiers call powder hound. He loved skiing fresh powder snow – they get a lot more in the US than we do in Europe. We’d been there several days and there was finally a really great dump of snow overnight. But
it was still snowing heavily in the morning. He woke, raring to get up on the slopes. I tried to dissuade him, as the forecast was for the weather to improve later in the morning, but he was determined to get the fresh powder before it was skied out. So we went up together.’
She sniffed, and sipped some water. ‘We got to the top of the cable car and I told Walt to follow me – I’d skied there before and he hadn’t. I made several turns, then stopped to wait for him – and he never appeared. I figured he must have taken a different run – I’d taken a blue – the easiest – because of the conditions – but thought he might have taken a red or a black. After a while I realized he must have gone on, so I skied down to the bottom, to the place where we’d agreed to rendezvous if we lost each other.’ She shrugged. ‘But he never showed up. And that evening . . .’ She again raised the tissue to her eyes, hoping she wasn’t overdoing it.
‘What happened that evening?’ Cale asked, gently again.
‘A police officer told me he had been found at the bottom of a sheer drop.’
‘You were engaged to be married,’ Batchelor said. ‘Did you know that Walt Klein had written you into his will?’
‘No comment,’ her solicitor said.
‘It’s OK,’ she said to him, then turned to Batchelor. ‘He was worried, he’d had some heart issues. He didn’t get on that well with his two children, he said they were spongers and hardly ever bothered to contact him or come and see him. It was his idea – he wanted to stop them getting every cent when he died.’
‘Very kind of him,’ Batchelor said.
‘What are you implying?’ Clifford Orson said.
‘I’m making an observation. Let’s move on. Jodie, you say you were engaged to be married to Walt Klein?’
‘Correct, yes.’
‘Did Walt Klein ever talk to you about his financial affairs?’
‘No, never.’
‘Did you love him?’
‘I was engaged to him, of course I loved him very much.’
‘So was there a reason why you didn’t attend his funeral?’
‘No comment,’ her solicitor said firmly.
Ignoring him, Jodie replied, ‘Actually, there was. His son and daughter met me at the airport when I arrived back in New York and made it very clear I would not be welcome. I felt it would be extremely disrespectful to attend in those circumstances.’
The two officers then asked her a number of questions about the meeting at the law firm in New York and the circumstances of her stay at the hotels.
‘OK, thank you, Jodie. Let’s move on to your second husband, Rowley Carmichael. You told us yesterday that you first made contact with him through an internet dating site and had spent several months exchanging messages. When did you actually meet him?’
She reddened, then thought hard, and knew it was not going to look good. ‘Last month,’ she said.
‘Can you remember the date?’
‘February 24th.’
Batchelor studied his notes again. ‘Tuesday, February 24th?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your fiancé, Walt Klein, was buried on Friday 27th February. So you were dating Rowley Carmichael three days before your fiancé’s funeral?’
Jodie turned to her lawyer.
‘My client would like to take a short break,’ Clifford Orson said.
118
Sunday 15 March
‘The time is 11.35 a.m., Sunday 15th March, interview resumed with Jodie Carmichael in the presence of her solicitor, Clifford Orson,’ DS Guy Batchelor said.
He repeated the question he had asked before and reminded her she was still under caution.
‘I was feeling desperately low,’ Jodie replied. ‘I’d just lost my fiancé and his family made it clear I wasn’t welcome at his funeral. I went out for a drink to my favourite bar in Brighton to try to cheer myself up – and I arranged to meet Rowley there. His wife had died a while ago and he seemed like a lost soul. We just sort of connected as we had done over the internet – it was as if we knew each other after our online chats.’
‘Is that so?’
‘We had dinner and then, later, he told me he was booked on a cruise and asked if I’d like to accompany him. I thought why not, what the hell. I had nothing else on, and I was feeling pretty distraught about Walt – I thought it would be good to have a total break.’ ‘You didn’t know Rowley Carmichael well at the time you were dating – and engaged to – Walt Klein?’
She hesitated. ‘No, not really, we had never met.’
‘So you were in regular email correspondence with him for several months prior to going on the cruise with him – during the time you were seeing and dating and subsequently engaged to Walt Klein?’
She turned to her solicitor.
‘My client has no further comment to make,’ Clifford Orson said.
‘We have a few further questions,’ Batchelor responded. ‘Jodie, can you confirm that you were registered with at least three different internet dating agencies for single ladies to meet wealthy men?’
Despite another warning glare from her lawyer, Jodie said, ‘Are you married, Detective?’
‘I’m asking the questions.’
‘I’m thirty-six. I don’t know if you are aware just how hard it is for a woman my age to meet a decent guy without baggage. My biological clock is ticking. All I’ve ever wanted is to be married to a man I love and raise a family. I’m getting increasingly desperate and I’ve registered with loads of dating agencies. Is there something wrong with that?’
Choosing men in their late seventies as potential life partners and fathers is unusual, Batchelor wanted to say. But instead he merely shook his head. ‘Not at all. But it’s certainly at best unfortunate that your late husband, Rowley Carmichael, a very rich man, died within days of your wedding. But very fortunate for you that the ship’s captain was a legally registered celebrant. So many ships’ captains aren’t, so although they perform weddings at sea, they are not recognized in law. But in your case, your marriage was completely legal.’
‘What are you implying about my client, Detective Sergeant?’ Orson demanded. ‘She didn’t book the cruise.’
‘I’m merely making an observation. And of course I would like to point out the coincidence of the terrible tragedies, that both your client’s first and second husbands died from the venom of saw-scaled vipers.’
‘Precisely,’ Orson said. ‘Your words. She is completely innocent. You have no evidence at all. Everything you and your colleague have said is pure conjecture. Unless you have any real evidence, I want my client released immediately.’
Batchelor replied, ‘At this moment in time that’s not going to happen. The investigation continues as we speak and we believe your client is responsible for the deaths of at least three men and was possibly already planning to kill her latest victim, who narrowly missed being blown up by a car bomb yesterday morning. Your client’s house continues to be searched and we are looking in detail into the exact circumstances of the deaths of Christopher Bentley, Walt Klein and Rowley Carmichael. The case may be circumstantial at present but we have many more questions for your client.’
Orson responded, ‘Circumstantial and no more, she is entitled to be released.’
The door opened and Roy Grace, holding a laptop, entered the room. He introduced himself to the solicitor and to Jodie Carmichael, as well as formally for the benefit of the tape, then placed the computer on the table and said, ‘I am about to show your client some material held on a laptop that has been seized from another suspect.’
He opened the computer’s lid. ‘Mr Orson, your client is probably not aware that her house was very elaborately bugged with cameras concealed in every room. We believe the person who fitted them had come to collect items he had been sent to recover, that he suspected your client had stolen from a person in New York.’
‘Do you have any evidence to support this accusation, Detective Superintendent Grace?’
‘Actually, I do. What
I’m about to show you is from a clone of a hard disk taken from a computer we found in a car close to your client’s residence in Roedean Crescent, yesterday morning.’
He tapped some keys on the laptop, then turned it so all present in the room could see the screen clearly.
The images were from a camera, positioned high up on the wall of a room containing glass tanks filled with snakes, scorpions, frogs and spiders.
Jodie Carmichael was standing at one end of the room, lifting the lid from a tank containing a large snake. There was a loud boom, causing the camera to shake for some moments. Then a small man ran into the room. As he did so, Jodie lifted the snake from the tank and hurled it at him. The creature hit him full in the chest, sending him tumbling backwards onto the floor.
They all watched in silence.
‘Yurrrrggggghhhh!’ the man yelled, trying to get up, as the snake instantly began winding itself round him, as well as biting him, furiously, on the hand.
‘Yowwwww!’ he yelled, rolling over and over, as the massive snake wrapped itself round him, pinning his arms to his midriff, then continuing to wind round his shoulders. They saw him scream and shout out in pain and rage. ‘Get him off, you bitch!’
Jodie grabbed a glass vivarium containing what looked like four tarantulas, raised it in the air and held it over him.
‘Who the hell are you?’ she shouted. ‘Are you police?’
He looked up at the spiders, clearly terrified. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he shouted back. ‘Jodie? Judith?’
‘Both of them,’ she replied, clearly. ‘And more.’
‘Get this thing off me!’
‘Oh yes? And then what?’ She raised the vivarium higher as if preparing to bring it smashing down onto him.
‘No. Noooooo! Please, I hate those critters, please. Look, lady, I’ll go away, I promshhhh.’ The snake was winding more tightly round his throat.