Cut Dead (25 page)
Authors: Mark Sennen
‘Where were you yesterday, Phil?’ Calter had taken over. ‘Afternoon and evening.’
‘I told you.’
‘Look,’ Calter leaned forward and lowered her voice. Flicked a lock of hair away from her face. Smiled. Classic interview technique, Savage thought. ‘It would be far simpler if you admitted you were away from the house yesterday afternoon and evening. Who do you think we’re going to believe, you or your wife?’
‘I hope,’ the solicitor said, ‘that you are going to base any case on evidence. Not on one disturbed woman’s voice against my client’s testimony.’
‘Phil?’ Calter said, ignoring the solicitor. ‘How about if I told you we
know
you went out. With a little more work we’ll get the full picture. Eyewitnesses, cameras, mobile phone records. It won’t be long before we have comprehensive proof you weren’t in Salcombe for a large part of the twenty-first of June.’
Glastone looked at his solicitor again and then put his hands down on the table.
‘OK. I wasn’t at home. I did go out.’
‘Good. Now we’re making progress.’
‘Where, Mr Glastone?’ Enders. No Phil from him, Savage noted.
‘I drove into Plymouth to get some parts for the engine on my boat. But I was back home by late afternoon. I suppose I was only gone for a few hours.’
‘Phil, Phil, Phil,’ Calter said. ‘Just when I was beginning to think you and I were getting on.’
The solicitor bent to Glastone’s ear and whispered something. Glastone nodded and then spoke.
‘Receipts. They’ll be in my wallet. You’ve got that. Took it off me when I was booked in.’
Savage saw Calter and Enders exchange a glance and then Enders wound the interview up, saying aloud for the benefit of the recording that they were taking a short break. Enders reached for the controls of the audio and video equipment and the screens in front of Savage and Wilson went blank.
‘Well?’ Savage said. ‘Changed your mind?’
‘No,’ Wilson pointed to the blank screen. ‘I haven’t. I can guarantee you Phil Glastone is not the killer. Nothing fits. Not his demeanour or anything about him.’
‘He’s clever, organised and, from what we’ve seen of his wife, prone to violence.’
‘If those three things make you a serial killer then you’ll need to bring in half the male population of the West Country. If Mrs Glastone is telling the truth,
if
mind you, then Glastone is at worst a rapist in his own house. A violent rapist, yes, but don’t go all politically correct on me and pretend that’s as bad as someone who commits multiple homicide.’
‘It’s bad enough.’
‘Yes, I agree. However, raping his wife doesn’t make him the Candle Cake Killer, does it?’
‘We’ll see. We’re gathering evidence right now.’
‘Looked to me as if Glastone was furnishing his own evidence and I don’t blame him one bit.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘The first time, you lot tried to fit him up. If the killer hadn’t struck again you’d have had Glastone locked away. An innocent man.’
‘We don’t—’
‘Yes we do!’ Wilson raised his voice, his face contorted for a second. ‘That man down there is not the killer. He’s not clever enough for a start. There’s no motive either. Nothing.’
‘He’s a programmer. Earns a packet, enough to buy a nice house in Salcombe and run an expensive motorboat anyway.’
‘Motive, Inspector, motive.’ Wilson paused and then nodded and lowered his voice. ‘Sorry for shouting. I just don’t want to see the wrong person banged up. Worse, I don’t want the killer to be the one on the outside running around and murdering at will.’
‘Well, we’re on the same side then.’
There was a moment’s embarrassing silence and then a knock on the door broke the spell. Enders’ face peered round, his usual beaming expression absent.
‘Gaelforce, ma’am,’ he said, holding out a piece of paper. ‘They’re a commercial chandlers down on the dock at Sutton harbour. This receipt is dated twenty-one June. Yesterday. One thirty-seven p.m. Telling the truth about where he went after you lost him at least, isn’t he?’
Wilson smiled as Savage shook her head.
‘Doesn’t prove a thing. He could have taken Paula afterwards. Get on to Hi-Tech Crimes, Patrick, and tell them to prioritise getting the data from Glastone’s mobile phone. When we’ve got the information we’ll know for sure.’
‘Yes,’ Wilson said, smiling again. ‘We will.’
Joanne Black spent Sunday morning on the tractor de-heading thistles on the three big pastures she owned up Bere Alston way. The rotary cutter on the back of the tractor whined and hissed as she sped around the field seeking out clumps of the purple flowers, lazy sheep watching her activities with bemused faces. By lunch time she’d finished and for a moment, as she stood by the gate and surveyed her work, the events at the farm were almost forgotten. Normality would return, she thought. It might be weeks or months in coming, but life carried on whether you fretted about your troubles or not.
Back home for lunch a police officer in the farmyard broke the news to her: the Candle Cake Killer had struck again. Joanne shook her head. The return of normality, it appeared, had been postponed. She turned on the radio as she made a couple of sandwiches. BBC Devon were trying their best to be sensationalist in a non-sensationalist way but failing miserably, the glee in the reporter’s voice evident as she interviewed people on the streets of Plymouth. The questions were as dumb as the answers. Small talent meeting big story. Joanne re-tuned to 5Live where inevitably the failure of the police to prevent the kidnapping of the latest victim was being turned into a debate about funding. It wasn’t until the top of the hour that she got the full story.
Radio off, she pondered developments for a moment and then went across to the phone. On the wall behind was a pinboard where she’d stuck a business card given to her by one of the young detectives. She removed the card and held it in her hand for a moment. Jody was probably right about her fears. The girl, the bungalow and her uncle were history, nothing to do with the Candle Cake Killer. Still, if there was any kind of link the police would be in a better position to find it than she would. Joanne reached for the phone.
The sheet rustles as the girl moves and for a moment she looks confused.
‘Plastic,’ you say to her. ‘0.254 millimetres. We like to keep things nice and tidy, don’t we, Mikey? Saves a mess.’
‘Yuuuhhhh. Mess. Fucking mess. Awwwfuuul.’
‘Awful. That’s right, Mikey,’ you say. ‘Awful.’
‘Help!’ the girl yells at the top of her voice. ‘For God’s sake let me go!’
Let her go? What is she on about? There can be no going back now. Not after the choices she’s made.
‘We can’t do that, can we? You’ve been so naughty, see? Done things which need … how can I say this … punishing?’
‘Pose her, Ronnie, pose her,’ Mikey says, tongue hanging out. ‘When we gunna pose her?’
‘Expose, Mikey,’ you say. ‘The word is expose. And we’ll be exposing her soon, don’t worry.’
You move away from the table, reach for the Big Knife. You hold it out in front of you, the steel glinting in the light, the thing like some giant phallus. You return to the table and place the knife down near to the girl’s waist, slide it in under her blouse and slice upwards. The material rips, threads parting with hardly a sound.
‘This is my favourite toy, Paula,’ you say. ‘And its purpose is to explore, reveal and expose.’
The blade flashes again and again, Mikey moving close and pulling away the blouse, then reaching for her bra, dirty fingers scrabbling at her breasts.
‘Leave her alone, Mikey,’ you say. ‘You’ll get your turn later.’
‘Aaawww!’ Mikey snorts and then jumps down towards the girl’s feet. You cut through her skirt, Mikey paws again and in seconds she’s lying there in nothing but her panties. You slip the point of the blade in at the side and flick it up, Mikey grabbing and pulling until away they come.
‘Lovely,’ you say. ‘Beautiful. As naked as the day you were born.’
Mikey sniffs the air, wrinkles his nose. Looks the girl up and down. You pause for a moment, examine the point of the blade, test the sharpness on the back of a fingernail.
And then you begin.
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Sunday 22nd June. 2.21 p.m.
After Corran’s post-mortem Riley and Davies returned to Crownhill. The station, usually quiet on a Sunday, was packed to overflowing. A press conference with the parents of the Candle Cake Killer’s latest victim was due to take place later and the Chief Constable was in attendance. His visit had brought on a bout of presenteeism not seen since a minor royal had toured the station a few years back. Riley and Davies snuck in under the radar, their case overlooked in all the excitement. As they tucked into a late lunch in the canteen Riley put his thoughts to Davies.
‘Despite initial appearances – the shot to the head – I don’t believe this was a professional hit.’
‘Been thinking along the same lines myself, Darius.’ Davies cut into his pie and shovelled a forkful into his mouth, chewing the bits of steak and onion while waving the knife at Riley. ‘Too messy, too risky, too bloody crazy.’
‘Agreed,’ Riley said. ‘Which tends to suggest Corran wasn’t blackmailing some big crimo. If he had, the hit would have been carried out by a pro.’
‘So it was someone else then. Who?’
‘I was wondering about white-collar. Plenty of them in HMP Dartmoor. Corran got wind of some scam or fraud and wanted in. It all works out to start with and then the victim gets shirty at Corran’s increasing demands. He cracks and goes after Corran. Whoever the blackmailer was Corran wasn’t expecting trouble. Otherwise he’d have taken more precautions.’
‘All well and good,’ Davies said, attacking his pie again. ‘But what about the gun?’
‘That’s where you come in. Once we know the calibre you’ll have to ask around and see what might have changed hands recently. Your casual killer doesn’t tend to have a weapon lying around at home and they may well have drawn attention to themselves when trying to buy one.’
‘Right.’ Davies brought his fork down on a piece of potato. ‘The business end of all this, the money. Still don’t know about that. How he picked the cash up.’
‘We’re waiting on Hi-Tech Crimes. Hopefully they can get something from the laptop. But I reckon Corran was working some kind of clever drop and pickup which on the final occasion went wrong.’ Riley stared at Davies’ plate where the DI had mashed the potato and mixed it with a whirl of tomato sauce. ‘Very wrong.’
The second interview session with Glastone didn’t prove any more productive than the first. Again, the double act was Calter and Enders, the two of them trying to home in on the little slivers of information which Glastone provided. Again, nothing he said was of much use. He claimed that after he’d visited the chandlers he’d driven around a bit and was home by eight o’clock. Enders put it to him that Carol said he didn’t get back until the early hours of the next morning. Even if they took the eight p.m. time as gospel there were several hours to account for. Glastone shrugged, continued to deny he was the Candle Cake Killer and said he didn’t know who Paula Rowland was.
‘He’s hiding something, ma’am,’ Enders said to Savage when the interview was over. ‘What did Wilson think this time around?’
‘Nothing,’ Savage said. ‘He wasn’t listening in. Said there was no need, so he went home.’
‘He’s bloody confident Glastone isn’t the killer then?’
‘Too confident.’
Which, Savage thought, wasn’t something they could afford to be. Paula Rowland was out there somewhere. She was probably dead, but they had to cling to the possibility she was still alive. Either way, they needed to find her. John Layton had put a team into Glastone’s house but with no news so far there was only one alternative: they needed to press Glastone harder in the third session.
Savage began to go through the interview strategy with Calter and Enders when Doug Hamill from the Hi-Tech Crimes Unit called. The unit didn’t usually do Sundays but Hamill had come in as soon as he got word they’d arrested Glastone. He knew the man’s background and figured there’d be a lot of data crunching to do. A clue to the whereabouts of Paula Rowland might well be hidden on one of the four computers Glastone owned. Then there was the information on Glastone’s mobile phone to deal with too.
‘So do you have anything for me, Doug?’ Savage said.
‘Only where he’s been, Charlotte,’ Hamill said. ‘All day Saturday. Salcombe, Plymouth, Noss Mayo, Salcombe.’
‘Noss Mayo?’
‘Noss Mayo. We didn’t need the mobile data from the company. There’s location history on Glastone’s phone. Pretty little lines all over the map. Shows he went to Plymouth and then to the Ship Inn in the village of Noss. He must have switched his phone off for a while because we get a jump to a place about half a mile outside the village. After that the data show him returning to Salcombe.’
‘Any idea of times?’
‘Yup. He was only in the chandlers for around ten minutes. The time correlates with the receipt. Drove to the pub, got there some time before three and stayed until four-fifteen. Then we have the gap when his phone was off but the track resumes at around seven-thirty. He was back home at eight.’
‘
Eight
?’
‘Yes, ’fraid so.’ Hamill was silent for a moment. ‘Of course this only proves the location of Glastone’s phone, but I can’t see our good friends in the CPS wanting to build a case on Glastone’s phone doing walkabouts and then somehow miraculously reuniting itself with him. Then there’s the fact Glastone is a programmer. His phone is pretty high-end, but he’d surely know all about its capabilities. He’d turn off the location features if he was worried about being caught or at least clear the history.’
‘Wilson said the killer is arrogant. He wouldn’t believe he was
going
to get caught. Also, the phone
was
off for a while, wasn’t it?’