He looked at the dark stains on the white rubber. Dirty enough after the last few days that he thought they could pass for grease or oil. He scrunched his toes away from the blood, skin scraping against the canvas upper.
‘So, we’ll come up with a nice, logical story for the local police. Just to keep you out of trouble. But before we do, you are going to tell me what really happened. Because I won’t help you if you keep lying to me, Nathan.’
Zigic went over to the murder board to check what progress had been made while they were out. Saw that Parr and Wheatley had run down another man apiece, meaning they were less than a quarter of the way through Dawn’s lovers. Eight of them ruled out, one missing in action but according to his boss he was always unpredictable.
Colleen Murray was in the process of trying to break or establish Ian Bowe’s alibi, such as it was.
At this rate, with this size of team, the job was going to take days, and so far they’d been lucky. Or as lucky as they could be without actually identifying Dawn’s murderer. The men had come quietly, wary of gossip or repercussions at work, and had provided decent alibis which were swiftly checked with minimal legwork.
The contamination of the crime scene remained the biggest stumbling block and left them with little leverage or direction. No fingerprints, no murder weapon. The only DNA they had was from the bathroom, snagged in a bloodstained towel. Damning to them but not enough for the CPS to build a case on.
Zigic’s phone rang and he started at the sight of Rachel’s name on the screen, walked into his office before answering.
‘Have you found Nathan?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I’ve got him,’ she said, her voice echoing slightly.
‘When can I talk to him?’
‘Tomorrow maybe. It depends on how he’s doing. He’s exhausted.’
‘So why are you telling me this now?’ Zigic asked.
‘Professional courtesy.’ He could hear the smile in her voice, more of a sneer. ‘And there’s one thing I thought you should know as soon as possible. Might be important to your case.’
‘What?’
‘Nathan saw a man hanging around Dawn’s house. In a red car.’
Arnold Fletcher. Back again.
‘When was this?’
Rachel let out a small sigh. ‘The thing you have to understand about Nathan is he’s delicate, okay? He’s suffering from PTSD, he’s got anxiety and depression and I’m sure you get how tough that is for a boy his age.’
‘Does he have dissociative episodes?’ Zigic asked.
A beat before she answered, considering the implications. She was smart enough to know it made him potentially unreliable as a witness.
‘Occasionally, yes, he does. But judging by how agitated he was by the sight of this man I’d say it’s fair to assume he saw him quite close to the time he ran away.’
It was too vague to be useful and made Zigic even more determined to talk to the boy properly. He’d thought from the very start that Nathan was an important witness and she was as good as admitting it now.
‘Is this why he ran away? Did he see something bad?’
‘I’m still trying to find that out,’ she said. ‘He needs to be handled carefully. I’ll be in touch if I find out anything more.’
She ended the call.
Now they had a witness of sorts. A little bit of leverage to use on Fletcher.
Ferreira was going through his record, searching for some raw nerve to scratch at during the interview. Without forensic evidence they were left with psychology and outright bluff and he suspected neither would be much use against a seasoned agitator like Fletcher.
It was her style, though, and he’d seen it work often enough in the past to respect the attempt this time.
As Zigic went back into the main office she shot up straight in her chair.
‘Fuck. Me.’
‘I take a bit more finessing than that,’ Wahlia said.
‘No, you don’t.’ She pushed away from her desk. ‘Boss, you need to look at this.’
Zigic took her seat, felt her breathing down the back of his neck as he read through the report on screen, seeing that she’d already gone beyond Fletcher’s police record, digging for the kind of dirt which didn’t get a person arrested but could sometimes tell you more about them than bald facts about time served and sentences suspended.
‘Is his solicitor here?’
‘He didn’t want one,’ Ferreira said.
On the way down to the interview room he filled her in on the phone call from Rachel, saw her toying with how to fit that information around what they’d just found out. They decided she’d lead with Fletcher, but play nice. Since he’d already called Zigic a ‘psycho’. Best to feed into that perception.
‘You took your sweet time,’ Fletcher said, when they went in. He was sitting with his arms folded, a picture of belligerent but passive resistance.
Ferreira apologised and placed the file she’d brought with her on the table.
He eyed the camera as she set up the recording equipment, a new development since the last time he’d been in a police station and Zigic wondered what kind of memories the small white room was evoking. He was old enough to have experienced a more brutal form of interrogation than they could use, all the creative and now illegal techniques which a previous generation of officers had employed to get the result they wanted.
‘Okay, Mr Fletcher, why don’t you tell us how you first came to be interested in Holly Prentice?’
‘I found her out through her blog.’
‘You weren’t just cruising the Internet looking for disabled teenagers?’ Zigic said. ‘Were you?’
Fletcher gave him a filthy look. ‘My organisation is committed to protecting disabled people who are under pressure to end their lives. She seemed to be at risk of coercion.’
‘Your organisation is Compassion Not Killing,’ Ferreira said. ‘How would you describe it?’
‘We’re a resistance organisation. We’re fighting against an ableist establishment that treats people who have been injured or limited through illness as second-class citizens.’
‘You mean the right-to-die movement.’
‘That’s what they call themselves,’ he said. ‘I’d call them fascists. They think anything less than perfection is worthless. It’s eugenics, plain and simple.’
‘You honestly don’t believe there’s such a thing as a mercy killing?’ Ferreira asked. ‘Not even when somebody is suffering terribly?’
Realisation widened Fletcher’s bloodshot brown eyes but he didn’t answer her.
‘In your sister’s case, for example.’
‘She was murdered.’ He spat out the words. ‘And you fucking know that or you wouldn’t be bringing it up now.’
‘The judge didn’t think so,’ Ferreira said. ‘He found her husband innocent, he even praised him for providing her with such diligent care for so many years.’
‘Three years.
Three
. That’s all he could stand it for. And she’d waited on him hand and foot for nigh on thirty.’ Fletcher jabbed at the table, ramming his point home. ‘This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. As soon as you’re not useful any more you become disposable. Just like Jackie was.’
‘Maybe he loved her too much to see her like that.’
‘When you love someone you take care of them, even when it breaks your fucking heart to see that they’re not in there any more. Me and Jackie did it for Dad. I’d have done it for her but that piece of shit wouldn’t let me. He just wanted shot of her.’
Fletcher covered his face with his hands, angry rather than sad, angrier than he wanted them to see him. He looked murderous just sitting there remembering it. Abruptly he dropped his fists onto the table.
‘Nobody should have the right to do that. Murder someone because they’re an inconvenience.’
‘That’s why you set up Compassion Not Killing?’ Ferreira said. ‘To save people like Jackie?’
‘If I can save one person it’ll be worth it.’
‘One person like Holly?’ Zigic asked.
‘Especially someone like her. She still had her faculties. There was loads she could do with her life.’
‘But Holly was an active right-to-die blogger. She believed people in her situation should be allowed to end their lives.’
He snorted. ‘You don’t know what she believed. Who’s to say she wrote any of that stuff herself?’
‘Why would you think she didn’t?’
‘She was a child. She wasn’t old enough to make that decision.’ He leaned forward, big forearms coming down on the table. ‘How do you reckon it feels to know you’re a burden?’
Ferreira recrossed her legs under the table and Zigic noticed her fingers twitch.
‘Do you think Holly would’ve thought for a second about killing herself if her mother was looking after her right?’ Fletcher was swelling with his belief now. ‘No. That woman didn’t want the hassle. Any idiot could see that. The way she went on, men coming and going all hours. She put Holly in a position where death was better than life.’
‘There’s nothing in her blog to suggest she felt that way,’ Ferreira said.
‘If you think that you weren’t reading it right.’
‘To be fair, we’ve only just come to this,’ Zigic said, drawing Fletcher’s attention. ‘Whereas you’ve been spending a fair old chunk of your ample free time sitting around outside Dawn’s house.’
Fletcher struck an indignant pose. ‘I went there two or three times to try and talk to the woman.’
‘And did the woman want to talk to you?’
‘She had company,’ he said, visibly disgusted. ‘You tell me how that’s right. Young girl in the house, stuck in her bed, and her mother’s got one strange bloke after another coming in to give her a seeing-to. That’s child abuse. You should have arrested her.’
‘Hanging around her house for hours on end, week in, week out, is technically stalking,’ Zigic said. ‘Maybe we should arrest you.’
‘There’s no crime parking your car on public land.’
‘It depends on what the purpose is. If it’s to harass someone, it’s a crime.’
‘Did she make a complaint?’ Fletcher asked. ‘No, she didn’t, or you’d have had me in here weeks back.’
‘We’re not interested in what you did weeks back.’
Zigic opened the file. A photograph of Dawn, lying dead on her kitchen floor, was on the top; her bloated and blistered face, the knife wound at her neck.
‘We’re interested in what you were doing there on Thursday night.’
Fletcher kept looking at the photograph, repulsed but attracted. ‘I wasn’t there Thursday night.’
‘We have a witness who says otherwise.’
‘Then they’re mistaken.’
‘Not lying?’ Zigic asked.
Fletcher finally managed to drag his eyes up. ‘I was there in the afternoon. I put some leaflets through her letter box and then I left.’
‘Did you see anyone hanging around the house?’ Ferreira asked.
‘No. I wasn’t there two minutes.’
‘But you went to talk to Dawn,’ Zigic said. ‘You must have knocked on the door. That’s your usual MO. What happened? She didn’t answer? You got annoyed at being ignored – again – so you went around the back, found the door unlocked, let yourself in.’
‘No.’
‘Come on. She’s been ignoring you for weeks. Tell me you weren’t angry about that.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Even though you thought Holly’s life was at stake.’ Fletcher was sweating, crescents under his arms, his denim shirt sticking to his chest. ‘For the first time you get there and she’s home alone. No builders, no boyfriends. You’ve got Dawn all to yourself.’
Fletcher stared back at him, breathing heavily, trying to hold it together. ‘I put the leaflets through her door and I left.’
‘And went home?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you don’t have an alibi?’
‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Maybe you don’t think you have. You’re a man of convictions, you probably think you’re morally in the right.’
‘I’m morally and legally in the right, because I didn’t kill her.’ Fletcher stood up, uncertain on his legs. ‘And unless you’ve got something you can charge me with, I’m going home.’
Zigic stood up as well, towering over the man. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Not yet.’
Everyone was home when Ferreira arrived at the kennels in Elton, a patrol car behind her, two uniforms inside, ready to bring Benjamin in. Sally appeared from around the back of the house and stood shielding her eyes against the afternoon sun, watching them approach, but as they drew up she disappeared down the path, off to warn whoever she thought was most likely to be guilty of what was coming.
Ferreira had brought Green and Jones with her, two capable female officers she trusted to do the job with minimum fuss. She specifically wanted Benjamin taken in by them, aware of his attitude towards women.
They followed her past the side of the house and she heard Jones give an ‘aww’ when she saw the dogs penned up in the yard.
Warren was in with them, holding up a small grey terrier as he checked one of its back paws, blood on his hands from some wound it had suffered. He put it down and came over to the gate.
‘What is it?’ he asked, looking at the PCs. ‘Why are they here?’
‘Inside,’ Ferreira told them and they went without a word. She turned back to Warren. ‘We’ve come for Benjamin.’
He barrelled past her, in through the back door, into the kitchen where Sally had abandoned a pile of cooking apples she’d been peeling, one still trailing its skin where she’d left it, next to a small knife with a wicked blade. Ferreira picked it up and tossed it in the sink.
‘Benjamin!’ Warren hollered his name, headed for the door into the hallway.
‘Let them do their job,’ Ferreira said.
From above she could hear Sally’s voice, shrill and questioning, and Benjamin’s rumbling replies. Then there were feet coming down the stairs and Warren backed up into the kitchen again, red faced and raging.
‘What have you done?’ He glanced at Ferreira. ‘Did he kill them?’
‘We just need to talk to him,’ she said. ‘It’s to do with the harassment, that’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ he snarled. ‘Oh, well, okay then. If that’s
all
he’s done.’
PC Green put her hand in the middle of Warren’s chest and walked him away a few steps. He gave the ground easily.
Jones followed her, holding Benjamin by the arm. His hands were cuffed behind his back and he was protesting every step like the petulant child he was, twisting and trying to shake her off, but she held firm. He was a tall, gangly boy, couldn’t have weighed more than nine stone, arms pipecleaner thin sticking out of his T-shirt.