Beyond Reach (15 page)

‘And?’

‘It’s never been in the room since. Not once. Not to my knowledge. Animals know, don’t they? They know everything.’

Faraday followed her downstairs. The photo she was carrying showed mother and son at a function of some kind, a moment of time lifted from an earlier life. It had come from the dressing table.

Callan already had the front door open. The cat padded heavily down the hall and wound itself around Jeanette’s ankles. Then it looked up, mewing.

She reached down, tickled it behind the ears, murmured something Faraday didn’t catch. Then she was upright again, her eyes shiny.

‘You see?’ she said. ‘They know.’

 

It took Winter most of the afternoon to track down Mo Sturrock. Carol Legge had given him a home number. The first couple of times there was no response. Around half past four, ringing yet again, Winter found himself talking to a youngish girl. Yes, this was the right number for her dad. But no, he wouldn’t be back for at least half an hour. When Winter asked whether he was carrying a mobile she said yes but she wasn’t allowed to give the number out. Finally, gone five, Winter made contact.

‘Maurice Sturrock?’

‘Yeah. Who are you?’ He sounded gruff.

‘The name’s Winter. Friend of Carol Legge.’

‘Leggie?’ The voice softened. ‘How is she?’

‘Fine.’ Winter explained his business. He was in the youth offending game. He ran a start-up charity across the water in Portsmouth. Tide Turn Trust was starting to make an impact. There might be room for new blood at the top.

‘What are you telling me?’

‘I’m telling you it might be in both our interests to meet.’

There was a long silence. Winter could hear the blare of a TV. Then Sturrock was back.

‘Voluntary sector, you say? No local authority involvement?’

‘None, my friend.’

‘When?’

‘As soon as.’

‘Where?’

‘Your choice.’

‘Your end, then.’ He named a pub in Albert Road. ‘Tomorrow. Twelve thirty.’

Winter, surprised by the choice of pub, was about to agree but realised it was too late. Sturrock had hung up.

 

It was DCI Gail Parsons who chose the interview team for Operation
Highfield.
Normally, both Major Crime and the Road Death Investigation Team relied on specialist officers under the guidance of a Tactical Interview Manager. Road Death conducted hundreds of these interviews, all of them involving fatalities, and had won themselves a solid reputation for both thoroughness and results. On this occasion, given the sensitivities about turf and ownership, Parsons decided that Faraday and Callan should handle the interview between them. Faraday, because of his knowledge of Operation
Melody.
And Callan, because she was holding the RDIT file.

Already, in Parsons’ office, both Faraday and Callan were anticipating a quick breakthrough. They could evidence motive. Morrissey’s camper van, with its dented bumper and missing wiper blade, looked a dead ringer for the hit-and-run. Plus they could now tie the camper van to her mother-in-law’s bungalow and prove she’d been lying about her movements over the Saturday night and Sunday morning. From here on in, according to Callan, you just had to find the right buttons to press.

Jeanette Morrissey had waived her right to phone for a solicitor of her choice, telling Faraday she’d be perfectly happy with the duty brief. Her name was Michelle Brinton, a plump freckle-faced solicitor in her late thirties. Eight years in Pompey had taught her a great deal about the realities of life on the estates but she was clearly having difficulty establishing any kind of rapport with her new client.

Jeanette Morrissey sat in the bare interview room across the table from Callan and Faraday. She looked detached, her face a mask, as if she’d become a spectator at a play for which she had little taste. It seemed there were few surprises in store, least of all for her.

Callan cued the audio tapes, introduced the faces around the table, added the date and time. At her elbow were notes from the earlier conversation. She studied them a moment then looked across at Jeanette.

‘Yesterday you told us that you spent Saturday night at home in Paulsgrove. Am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So would you please take us through exactly what happened again?’

Something close to a smile ghosted across Jeanette’s face. Then she turned her attention to Faraday.

‘We first met in November,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t know whether you remember.’

Faraday nodded. Contrary to his first impression, Jeanette Morrissey had perfect recall. He’d driven up to Paulsgrove with the Family Liaison Officer the morning after her son’s murder. There’d been journalists waiting in the street outside. Later, a TV crew.

‘You had a friend with you,’ he said.

‘Katie. The one who’s just come back from Greece. She’s never let me down. Not once. Have you ever been in that situation, Mr Faraday? Depending on one individual, one human being, because you know that no one else really cares?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not with you.’

‘You’re not? Why do I find that unsurprising?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘My son had died. He’d been killed. He’d been stabbed to death. Everyone on that estate knew who’d done it, knew who was responsible. You knew too. You all knew. And yet nothing happened. Nothing was done. And next day he was out there again, parading past my house with that horrible dog of his, stopping outside the gate, laughing at me,
laughing
, Mr Faraday
.
Have you any idea what that can do to you? Then? And ever since?’

‘It was a question of evidence, Mrs Morrissey. We can’t put people away without demonstrating why.’

‘Then maybe you didn’t look hard enough.’

‘I think you’ll find that’s not true. If you have reason to make a formal complaint by all means go ahead.’

Faraday sat back, trying to steady the thunder in his head, aware of how wooden he must sound. The woman was right. They’d failed her.

‘Another thing.’ She hadn’t finished. ‘Before Tim died, before they stabbed him, they beat him up and broke his fingers. We gave you names, even addresses. Tim told you exactly what had happened, how they’d done it, everything you could possibly need. Yet still nothing happened. I know it wasn’t your lot. I know it wasn’t Major Crimes. But it makes no difference. You’re all policemen as far as I’m concerned. Yet, like I said, nothing happened.’

‘As I understand it, your son withdrew his evidence.’

‘That’s true. And you know why? Because they threatened to kill him. I said to Tim at the time that they were bluffing. I said it was his duty to go to court but he was simply too frightened. Looking back, I should have forced him because in the end it made no difference. He did what they wanted but they killed him anyway. You’ve lost it, Mr Faraday. My generation, we trusted people like you. We had some faith that you would put things right. We believed in justice. That’s gone. It’s gone totally. Today, we’re at the mercy of people like Kyle Munday. They can make our lives a misery. They even have the power of life and death. How do I know? Because he killed my son.’

Faraday held her gaze. It was tempting to enquire whether she could prove it, but he knew there was no point. Interviews like these were meant to establish matters of guilt and innocence. Hers, not his.

‘We made sure you had access to a Family Liaison Officer, Mrs Morrissey. You chose to turn that offer down.’

‘I didn’t want a Family Liaison Officer, Mr Faraday. I wanted to see Kyle Munday in court. I wanted to know someone cared enough about Tim to make sure he was punished.’

‘Punished how, Mrs Morrissey?’ It was Callan.

The question took Jeanette by surprise. Michelle Brinton muttered something in her ear but Jeanette shook her head. Then, to Callan’s irritation, she turned back to Faraday.

‘You want the truth? I wanted that man dead.’

‘That would never have been an option. You know that.’

‘Of course I do. Life imprisonment would have been acceptable. Not perfect but better than the way it turned out. It wasn’t just the next day, Mr Faraday. It wasn’t just standing in my front room watching that horrible man leering at me. It was all the other times I’d bump into him and those pitiful kids he dragged around. It went on for months. It was still happening last week. Little comments. Little digs. They’d won, Mr Faraday. They’d driven me insane.’

Faraday nodded. He understood. The next question was only too obvious.

‘So let’s talk about last Saturday,’ he began. ‘What really happened? ’

 

DCI Gail Parsons was still at her desk, bent over her PC, when Faraday and Callan returned to the Major Crime suite at Fratton. Faraday had talked to her earlier, prior to the start of the interview. She’d told him she’d be working late on a report for headquarters. She wanted an update before she packed it in for the night.

‘Well?’ Her fingers were still gliding over the keyboard.

‘Full confession, boss. She hadn’t lied about being at home on Saturday evening but she got a phone call from her mother-in-law way after midnight. The old lady was in a real state. At that kind of hour there was no way Jeanette would phone the neighbour so she had to get out of bed and drive up there herself. She said she’d done it before. In fact it was becoming a bit of a habit.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She got in the camper, drove off the estate. The route she takes goes up the hill past the hospital. That time of night there wasn’t much on the road. She says she was driving along, thirty-five, forty miles an hour, and saw someone crossing the road in front of her.’

‘Which direction?’

‘Right to left. Jimmy Suttle’s spot on. That would put Munday up near the kids’ home, sniffing around Hayley Burridge.’

‘And she recognised Munday?’

‘As she got closer, yes. She says he must have recognised her too, because he just stood in the middle of the road, swaying, obviously pissed, giving her the finger.’

Faraday paused, remembering Jeanette Morrissey in the interview room. At this stage her voice had hardened. At first Faraday had put this down to anger but quickly realised that it was something else. Excitement. After months of torment and frustration, she’d realised she finally had a chance to get even.

‘So what happened?’ Parsons was frowning, her fingers still anchored to the keyboard.

‘She drove at him.’

‘She said that?’

‘Exactly those words. She said she put her foot down and drove straight at him. That’s why there were no skid marks on the road. It wasn’t an accident at all. It was an execution.’

‘She said that too?’ Parsons had finally abandoned the PC.

‘No. But that’s what it amounts to. She was convinced Munday had killed Tim. As we all know, she was probably right. Because we couldn’t do anything about it, she’d decided to sort him out herself.’

‘You’re telling me she’d done something like this before?’

‘She told us afterwards she’d thought about it. She knew where Munday lived. She’d driven past there a couple of times wondering how easy it might be to burn the place down but in the end she’d done nothing about it. On Saturday night it was much simpler. Munday was standing there asking for it. She could see him, see the smile on his face. So she obliged.’

Jeanette had described the moment of impact in minute detail. How, in the last second or so, it had begun to dawn on Munday that she wasn’t going to stop. How his face had hung there in the lights, the frozen leer, the raised finger. And how, in an instant, inches from the windscreen, that same face had gone, swallowed up by the surrounding darkness. After the initial impact, she said, there’d been two big bumps, front wheel and back wheel, and then nothing but the empty road ahead.

‘She didn’t stop?’

‘No. She said she checked the mirror but couldn’t really see anything. Just a bundle of clothes in the road.’

‘But why didn’t she report it? She could have claimed it was an accident. We might have believed her.’

‘No way, boss. She’s a bitter woman. She’s got no faith in us. She thinks we’ve let her down. Badly.’

Parsons said nothing. Callan was perched on the edge of the conference table.

‘I think the woman’s slightly unhinged,’ she said. ‘There was a definite pleasure in killing Munday. You could see it in her eyes. Once she’d taken that decision there was no turning back. She did it for her son and for herself and once she’d done it she wanted to be shot of the whole nightmare. Reporting it would mean months of hassle with the possibility of a court appearance. Another little victory for Mr Munday. What kind of closure would that be?’

Jeanette Morrissey had driven on to the bungalow in Newtown, Steph explained. Her job at the health clinic had made her forensically aware. She knew the front and underside of the van would be covered in Munday’s DNA. So she decided to get rid of the van somehow and give herself an alibi.

‘Yet she accepted a lift from the neighbour? Next day?’ Parsons was frowning.

‘Like I say, she was unhinged. She hadn’t thought this thing through at all. But under those circumstances I guess you probably don’t. It’s a kind of madness. You think you’ve got the thing sorted but in reality you’re stuffed. There’s no way we’re not going to nail her.’

Faraday nodded in agreement. Unlike Munday, Jeanette Morrissey was a sitting target. On Wednesday evening, after Faraday and Callan had paid her a visit at home, she’d gone to Newtown. In the small hours she’d retrieved the camper van from her mum-in-law’s garage, driven it up to the car park on Hundred Acres, and used a container of petrol to set it on fire. Returning to the bungalow on foot, she’d driven back to Paulsgrove in the hire car. Within hours, thanks to Steph Callan, the next-door neighbour had demolished her carefully constructed alibi. The rest, in Callan’s phrase, had been a breeze.