Born in a Burial Gown (21 page)

Like the hall, the stairs were tastefully decorated. No flying geese in this house. Prints and maps of old Carlisle were on the wall. A huge black and white photo of local landmark, Dixon’s Chimney, was on the wall where the stairs turned left. Fluke had never seen that available commercially and wondered if it had been specially commissioned or whether someone in the house had taken it.

He could hear muffled cursing as he followed the sergeant into the bedroom. He stared at the scene in front of him. Nathaniel Diamond was face down on the bed. PlastiCuffs securely bound his wrists and leg straps meant he couldn’t kick out. Fluke brought his attention to the woman, the screamer, also held securely with cuffs. He stared at her, not immediately registering what he was seeing for a second. When it did, the smirk from the armed officer he’d passed in the hall made some sort of crude sense.

Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that.

The woman being held securely by uniformed officers wasn’t a woman. She was a man. A very pretty man, but a man all the same. He was naked. So was Diamond.

Fluke’s immediate thought was that he had just met another rent boy. Two in one case would be a record for him, the previous high score being zero. It was his first thought but he quickly dismissed it as he studied the rest of the room. There were photos spread around the bedroom, and the blond and Nathaniel Diamond were in all of them. It was clear that they were in some sort of relationship, and seemed to be happy, judging by their expressions. It was also obvious that they’d been a couple for a long time. They’d aged together in the photos which were all taken in different locations: Las Vegas. New York. Another one looked like Paris. Another was shot on safari somewhere, probably Africa, although it may have been Australia. There was one taken at an outside cafe in a European city Fluke didn’t recognise. Florence or Venice, possibly.

Fluke looked around the rest of the room. There were two condom wrappers in the bin, different brands. One for each of them?

Fluke needed to make a decision. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Nathaniel Diamond looked like a thug in the one photo they had of him and in truth, he looked like a thug trussed up on the floor. Shaved to the bone, not smooth and shiny but rough like emery cloth. He obviously tried to keep on top of it with a razor but the hair kept winning. He had the obligatory black tribal tattoos, all over his arms and back. He was heavily muscled but not in the steroid-induced way McNab had been. They were like the muscles Towler had. Built for stamina and speed. He looked dangerous. He was watching Fluke calmly, the early anger had been replaced by curiosity.

Gay men living together in Meadowby wasn’t unheard of but the estate wasn’t exactly known for embracing diversity. People who were different didn’t go unnoticed for long. The fact that Nathaniel and his boyfriend were in an openly gay relationship, unmolested, was testament to the reputation of his family. The fear and respect his family commanded was the only reason the animals on the estate would have left them alone. For anyone else, it wouldn’t be a tenable way to live.

There was no intel on file that he was gay and Fluke wondered why that was. There was always some little scrote who’d pass on information like that to try and curry favour with the police or to get charges reduced. Either it was a very recent thing, which evidence suggested it wasn’t, or the family had more influence over the criminal class than anyone had imagined. As Fluke stared into Diamond’s cold intelligent eyes, he had no problem believing it was the latter.

Nothing was going to get sorted there. ‘Take them to Durranhill.’ he said. ‘If they resist, arrest them. If they refuse, arrest them. I’m going downstairs to check in with the other teams.’

There weren’t enough cells at Durranhill, so some of the Diamond family were being transported to outlying stations. A team of detectives was interviewing them, and SOCO were taking DNA samples and sending them off to the lab.

It was going to be a close-run thing. Fluke had the power to hold them without a charge for twenty-four hours only, so the DNA results would start coming in from the lab at about the same time he’d have to start releasing them. It was possible, probable even, that when they matched the DNA found on Samantha to one of the Diamonds, they would have their killer. However, there wasn’t a superintendent in Cumbria who would authorise continued detention beyond the twenty-four hours if all Fluke had was ‘It could be any one of them, sir.’

Fluke needed something more. Enough to charge someone or, at the very least, convince a senior officer to extend their time in custody to thirty-six hours. By then, all the DNA results would be back and he’d either have a slam-dunk rape with a conspiracy to murder charge on at least one of them or have no reason to hold any of them.

Of all the Diamonds arrested that night, Fluke decided Nathaniel Diamond was most likely to slip up. When he explained the reason for his arrest – that he wasn’t a suspect in the rape and was, in effect, helping the police with their enquiries, Fluke hoped he’d get cocky and make a mistake. He was hoping to do mentally to Nathaniel what Towler did to McNab. Nathaniel was in the frame for the murder but he didn’t know that yet.

Along with Nathaniel, Fluke had wanted his brother, Wayne, and his father, Kenneth. The three said to be in control of the family business. Wayne had been picked up without incident, but the father seemed to have disappeared. The team raiding his house said it didn’t look like he’d been there since the weekend, judging by the mail that had built up. However, they’d collected a toothbrush and a comb and were confident they had enough for lab to get his DNA profile to rule him in or out. Everyone else named on the target sheet was in custody. A good night’s work.

It was unusual for anyone above sergeant to conduct interviews but Fluke always liked to do the big ones himself. He also preferred to interview with Towler, who had the knack of unnerving suspects without actually saying anything.

But first, he needed something to eat and a coffee. They headed for the canteen.

‘How we gonna play it, boss?’ Towler asked, through a mouthful of bacon sandwich.

Fluke shrugged, his own mouth also full. It was an interesting question. If their dad was the brains of the outfit, there was no doubt that Nathaniel was the enforcer. Everything about him screamed it. The very fact he flaunted his homosexuality on the Meadowby estate was proof enough of the fear he installed in people. He was probably bright enough to not be the triggerman but he’d know who had been. Even if they’d brought in someone from outside the family to do the actual hit, it was inconceivable he wasn’t involved in the decision.

‘Dunno know yet. We’ll play it by ear to start with. See how chatty he is. Is he lawyered up yet?’

‘Yep, they all are, the waiting room looks like a right wankers’ convention.’

Fluke laughed but found the woman who’d driven him home the other night had popped into his mind. She’d said she was a solicitor and suddenly Towler’s comment didn’t seem quite so funny. The smile dropped from his face. ‘Right let’s do this. I’ll lead.’

Nathaniel Diamond was wearing a white paper boiler suit. He’d been allowed half an hour with his solicitor. When Fluke entered the interview room, they were hunched over, talking together quietly. Actually, the solicitor was doing all the talking, Fluke noticed. Diamond wasn’t saying anything.

Fluke often wondered how much information he could get by bugging privileged conversations. How many lives could he save from being ruined? Would a spared victim care if the intelligence came from the fruit of the poisoned tree? He doubted it.

Fluke believed in the law. Rather, he believed in the spirit of the law. But when he had to, he was prepared to work in the grey area that existed between the letter of the law and justice. He was proud that he’d never extracted a confession by force or planted evidence. He’d never taken money for looking the other way. He wasn’t a dirty cop. If the occasional suspect got hurt while resisting arrest, that was something he could live with. If a paedophile banged his head getting into the police car, then he didn’t care. He expected officers who worked with him to be sensible, not saints. Fluke’s conscience was clear.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t have tricks up his sleeve.

Fluke sat without saying anything and spent a minute setting out various photos and documents from the file he’d been carrying. Diamond’s solicitor was casually trying to read them upside down. At that point, Diamond would have no idea why he was there. It could potentially be any one of their criminal enterprises. He’d be concerned but not overly worried. Fluke assumed there were safeguards against the main players being found with anything too incriminating. He glanced up at Diamond and found him looking back with an amused expression. He was ignoring the documents Fluke was laying out.

Diamond was an interesting-looking man. Although he was of average height, a certain aura of power emanated from him. It was clear his solicitor was scared of him. From a distance, Diamond looked exactly like he did in the various photos the police had of him. He kept his ginger hair short, shaved it every day, Fluke guessed. He had heavy stubble but no one had had time to shave that morning. He knew some heavy gold rings and a thick gold chain had been taken from him as part of the booking-in process. The custody sergeant had told him that they were not the usual cheap rubbish habitually favoured by criminals. They were the real deal. Thousands of pounds’ worth, he estimated. Not a bad way of carrying currency around with you if you needed cash in an emergency.

Nathaniel Diamond looked exactly like he was supposed to. A thug. A bouncer with attitude. A violent man in a violent business.

However, although he was undoubtedly all those things, Fluke suspected there was more to him than that.

It was the eyes that gave it away. The photos didn’t do them justice. They had intelligence behind them. They were looking at Fluke shrewdly. Without panic. Fluke couldn’t detect concern. He couldn’t even detect curiosity.

Although there’d been a press release on the murder, there hadn’t been one on the rape. The details of the murder released to the
News and Star
did not include a photo and Fluke wanted to gauge his reaction when Diamond saw it for the first time. It would be the key moment in the interview. Diamond had been there enough times to keep quiet but human reactions aren’t so easily controlled.

Fluke sometimes used an unorthodox and unapproved method when interviewing suspects.

Some years before, after attending a multi-agency public protection meeting in Liverpool, Fluke had been having a coffee with a forensic psychologist and had idly asked him what he was working on, more for something to say than anything else – the type of thing said when two people who don’t know each other are thrown together.

The psychologist had told him that he’d been commissioned to develop a two-minute interview for airlines which had flights leaving the UK for the States. They wanted to have staff talking to passengers while they waited to check in. And they wanted it to appear casual. They were trying to spot signs of deception before they progressed to the formal security checks.

He explained they’d been encouraged with the early results of a technique they’d been piloting. The theory was that the member of staff would ask a series of questions so normal it would appear the interviewer was simply killing time. Questions designed to put the passenger at ease. But they didn’t want rehearsed answers. They wanted honest answers. And the best way to get honest answers was to ask questions so mundane there would be no reason to lie.

‘But terrorists plan for this, don’t they? They have legends that they memorise, they know which schools they went too, they know where they were last night and what they watched on television. They certainly rehearse the “did you pack your own bag” question,’ Fluke had asked. He’d never worked counter-terrorism but had a rough understanding of it.

‘Can I ask you something, Mr Fluke? Which was the last supermarket you shopped at?’ the psychologist had asked.

Fluke paused, confused. ‘Sainsbury’s,’ he said finally.

The psychologist looked at him. ‘This is the type of thing we ask. We ask mundane questions, yes. But some of the questions we ask are that random they can’t possibly be predicted and therefore rehearsed.’

He’d gone on to explain that the human brain wants to tell the truth and, in the absence of a reason to lie, will normally tell the truth. The passenger’s facial micro-expressions, essentially very brief expressions, when they answered those questions contained what he called truthful indicators. If those micro-expressions were different when answering questions that could be rehearsed it indicated possible deception, and a far more rigorous security check followed. The two-minute lie detector, the psychologist called it. Passengers don’t even realise they’ve had it.

Fluke had adapted and refined it to the point where he believed he could tell when someone was lying to him almost every time. It was virtually infallible. He couldn’t remember the psychologist’s name and had never seen him again to thank him.

After the usual formalities were covered: who was present, an explanation of how the digital recording worked, and what happened to copies afterwards, they began. Towler stayed silent. Silent but staring, Fluke knew without having to look. It was unnerving for the suspect. Usually.

Fluke had checked. Diamond had been arrested and interviewed eight times. To date he’d never been charged. He’d read the interview transcripts and he always went no comment. Not the McNab no comment, Diamond never actually said anything. Eight times, from the point of arrest until he walked out with no charge, he’d never said a single word. Nothing that could be misconstrued or misheard.

‘Who was that you were with earlier, Nathaniel?’

For a moment, Fluke thought the interview was going to go the way of all the others. He’d planned for it, which was why he’d a whole range of photos with him. They were going to be his questions.