No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (5 page)

“The thing is, Sally may have got the dyslexia from her father, but she also got his work ethic and determination. Despite joining the company straight from school, with no qualifications, Bill is now national sales manager. He’s based in Cambridge, but travels all over the country.”

As the conversation wound its way back to her murdered child, Jane Evans’ eyes filled with tears again. Nevertheless, she forced the words past her trembling lips.

“Sally graduated with a two-one from university. We were both so proud.” She smiled at the memory. “Bill can be a bit abrupt and stern if you don’t know him, but he cried all the way through her graduation ceremony. He truly believed that she could accomplish anything now and I think he wanted her to do all of the things he never got the chance to do. Anyway, she moved back here with us and got a job at the travel agents Far and Away.”

She paused for a moment, before continuing, “At first I think Bill was a little disappointed, but Sally convinced him it was only temporary — she wanted to learn the ropes somewhere small where she could get a lot of experience, before joining one of the big companies and maybe becoming senior management. That was the plan at least, but she’s been there for years now and seems comfortable. Lately, Bill has been pushing her to move on, but she claims that the time isn’t right with the recession. Bill thinks that this is exactly the time to move as he doesn’t think that there will be a future for small independents. They argued about it a lot.” She shrugged. “Sally says her dad doesn’t know anything about travel agents, since he’s only ever worked in sports clothing. Bill says that business is business and an outside perspective is important.” She wiped her eyes with another tissue. “Maybe they’re both right, but they kept on going around in circles and I stopped getting involved.”

“So where does Darren fit into this?”

Mrs Evans sighed. “He’s a tyre fitter and a lovely boy, he really is, but he has zero ambition and isn’t very well educated at all. Bill always felt that Sally should marry a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist — not a tyre fitter. It was something else to argue about.”

“So what was his reaction when Sally moved in with Darren?”

Mrs Evans looked even more sad. “He was really angry. He told her she was wasting her life and tried to make her feel guilty, claiming that she was throwing away all of her years of hard work. He implied that he wouldn’t contribute to any wedding plans and told her not to turn up on the doorstep pregnant and homeless.”

Warren could feel the pain in the room and struggled to find the words to ask her the questions he needed to without upsetting the poor woman further. Again, it was Karen Hardwick who saved the day.

“It sounds as if he really loved her and was afraid of losing her.”

Mrs Evans smiled through the tears. “That’s exactly right. He loves her to bits. I think that with a little more time he’d have come around and everything would have been all right.” Her voice choked slightly. “I guess we’ll never know.”

Taking over from Hardwick, Warren tried to be as sensitive as possible. “I imagine he was worried when she didn’t come home that night. Where was he?”

If Mrs Evans realised that the question was about establishing Bill Evans’ alibi, she gave no sign.

“I called Bill just before we called the police. He was working away in Leeds that night. He’s been doing that quite a bit lately. They have a new branch up there and Bill has been going up to iron out the teething troubles. He stays in a Travelodge hotel near the airport. He came back immediately, made it in record time — he was here by three a.m.”

Warren jotted down the company’s details and made a note to get his alibi checked out. It could just be that this wasn’t a stranger murder after all.

In the car on the way back to the station, Warren praised Hardwick’s questioning technique before asking her opinion on what they had heard so far.

“I can’t see Darren Blackheath being guilty. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“I tend to agree,” admitted Warren, “but we can’t rule him out just yet. It’s possible that he had a motive — what if he popped the question early and Sally decided to turn down his proposal because of her relationship with her father? Maybe he flew into a jealous rage and killed her?”

Hardwick looked doubtful. “Anything’s possible, sir, but again I don’t think he seems the type. And if her upcoming wedding was the catalyst, what about her father? Could he have had an argument with her about it?”

Warren shook his head slowly. “I don’t see how the timing would work. If, as Mrs Evans claims, her father loved her, then if he did kill her it would almost certainly be a crime of passion. The sequence of events as we know them suggests that Sally Evans left work at her usual time of six p.m. If Blackheath is in the clear and telling the truth, then she disappeared some time in the next ten minutes. Could her father have dropped by unexpectedly to offer her a lift home — and she forgot to text Blackheath — then they get into a row and he kills her and dumps her, before pretending to be all concerned when his wife phones late that night?”

Hardwick pursed her lips. “I agree, it seems a bit far-fetched. I guess we’ll just have to see if their alibis check out and what Forensics have to say.”

In other words, hurry up and wait — sometimes I think that should be the motto of the police, thought Warren ruefully.

Chapter 6

By the time they returned to the station it was more or less lunchtime. Warren scheduled a team briefing in a half-hour, insisting his officers got at least a short break and something to eat. Warren’s gut told him that this investigation might run for some time and he wanted his team to take care of themselves.

Karen Hardwick stopped by her desk and picked up her lunch box, before heading out for some fresh air. Almost exactly a minute later, Gary Hastings grabbed his lunch and followed her out of the door.

Tony Sutton sidled up to Warren.

“Do you reckon they think nobody’s noticed?”

Warren nodded, a small smile forming on his lips.

“Yup. They haven’t a clue.”

Sutton sighed theatrically.

“Young love, eh, boss. Is there any better kind?”

Warren chuckled, glad for a moment of brightness in an otherwise bleak day.

“Yeah. I think they make a sweet couple. I wonder how long it’ll be until they stop trying to hide it.”

* * *

Warren held the team meeting in the largest of the unit’s briefing rooms. Detective Superintendent John Grayson had formally delegated the lead investigator role to Warren; nevertheless he was present, since part of the agenda would be to discuss the upcoming press conference.

Grayson was a small, dapper man, with a steel grey moustache, in his early fifties. Common consensus was that he was more interested in securing his next promotion and thus a more generous final-salary pension than actively heading up investigations. Whether that was a fair assessment or not, Warren had yet to decide, but it was certainly true that he spent more time meeting with senior colleagues at the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire Major Crime Unit in Welwyn Garden City than he did at his desk in Middlesbury CID.

The man was certainly a crafty politician. Warren still remembered his first serious case at Middlesbury during the summer, when Grayson had made it clear that it was sink or swim for the newly promoted DCI. To make things worse, Tony Sutton had been extremely vocal in his opposition to Warren’s handling of the case and the two had almost come to blows. Sutton had finally confided in Warren that he was worried that the future of Middlesbury CID was under threat, with its unique role as a small, first-response CID unit outside the main Major Crime Unit in Welwyn a source of tension in a time of budget cutbacks. Sutton had been convinced that Jones had been sent to close them down.

Matters were further complicated by the fact that the strongest proponent for maintaining Middlesbury’s unique status had been Gavin Sheehy, Warren’s predecessor and Sutton’s mentor, who was currently awaiting trial later in the new year for corruption. Grayson had yet to make his views clear on whether he thought Middlesbury had a future or should be absorbed into the main unit and so Sutton and now Warren, who had grown to value Middlesbury CID’s independence and unique place in the local community, were careful around him. Both men had a strong suspicion that Grayson would happily see Middlesbury CID closed if it meant that he would be moved to a more senior role within Welwyn Garden City.

One plus, as far as Warren was concerned, was that Grayson was always willing to talk to the press. Warren, on the other hand, regarded press conferences as a necessary evil and was happy to let Grayson enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame, whilst he stayed in the background and answered the odd question. Grayson had already decided that there would be a press conference to announce the finding of Sally Evans’ body that evening, just in time for the late-night news bulletins and later editions of the next day’s newspapers; therefore he was jotting down notes and ideas as the meeting progressed.

Calling for quiet, Warren brought the team up to speed on the various interviews conducted that morning. All those present agreed that Darren Blackheath was probably not guilty of his girlfriend’s murder, although her father’s outburst couldn’t be dismissed entirely. Warren moved his name to the unlikely column on the whiteboard, until the results of the house-to-house enquiries and forensics came back.

As for her father, his behaviour was certainly strange and Warren made a note to pull him in for questioning after he’d had a few hours to cool off.

A second team, headed by DI Tony Sutton, had focused on Evans’ workmates, using the initial investigation from the missing person enquiry as a starting point. The travel agency had been closed and the entire staff, including those not working on the day that she went missing, had been questioned. By the end of the morning, Sutton and his team had built a far more detailed profile of Sally Evans’ last day and largely ruled out all of her former colleagues as realistic suspects. Confirmation of a couple of alibis were outstanding but they didn’t expect much from Maureen the obese sixty-something grandmother with an arthritic hip.

Evans had arrived at work as usual at about eight-twenty, dropped off in the same alleyway her boyfriend picked her up from after work. After smoking a cigarette, she had knocked on the fire door and had been admitted by her boss, Kelli Somerton. This was confirmed by Somerton, who said that there was still a cloud of smoke around the bin and that Evans smelled strongly of it.

The shop didn’t open until nine a.m. and at this time of the year they weren’t expecting many customers, so the staff had logged onto the computers, put the kettle on and sat around gossiping until opening time. No customers had appeared until almost midday, so the staff had spent the day preparing for the expected post-Christmas sales. Sally Evans had occupied her time unpacking boxes of promotional material and catalogues.

The weather had been cold and Evans had stayed in for her lunch of home-made tuna sandwiches, nipping out on her own for a cigarette. Evans had been described by everyone interviewed as ‘her usual cheerful self’, looking forward to Christmas. Nobody could recall her mentioning any worries or strange people that she’d met.

The shop closed at five-thirty and Evans had helped lock up, before exiting via the back door at her usual time, ready to get picked up by her boyfriend, Darren Blackheath.

Warren rubbed his eyes, his hopes of an easy collar slowly fading. He still believed that killings by a total stranger were very rare; however, if Evans and her killer had crossed paths, he didn’t seem to be in her immediate circle of acquaintances.

He said as much to the team.

“OK, let’s start to shake the trees a little harder.” He turned to Gary Hastings. “Use the PNC and HOLMES to see what we can find out about all of her acquaintances. Let’s also scan a list of recent customers and see if anybody interesting turns up.” He turned to Karen Hardwick. “You built a pretty good rapport with her friend Cheryl. She mentioned past boyfriends. See if you can get a list of friends — try and get as many as possible, right back to university if you can. We’ll chuck them all in the pot and see what comes out.”

He turned to DS Khan.

“Mo, can you continue co-ordinating the house-to-house enquiries with the neighbours? Make sure the evening shift pick up those who were out earlier in the day.”

With the jobs assigned, Warren glanced at his watch: ten to three. “I’m due a briefing on the autopsy in a few minutes. Keep feeding back to the incident desk and we’ll meet again tomorrow morning eight a.m.”

The room emptied quickly, everyone eager to complete their given tasks, hoping to be the one that found the vital link. Human nature, mused Warren, just as it’s human nature to lose energy and become frustrated as time wears on with no new leads. They were less than twenty-four hours in and already Warren had a bad feeling about the case. If it was a true stranger murder then they were probably in for the long haul. And it would be up to him to keep his team engaged and focused all that time.

Chapter 7

Warren had never been a big fan of autopsies. Some of his colleagues were happy to go into the morgue and see firsthand with their own eyes the clues teased out by the pathologist. Warren privately accused them of having a lack of imagination and a touch of voyeurism. He had no problem visualising everything he needed in his mind’s eye using a few colour photographs and a well-written report. He could see nothing to be gained by looking at the corpse on a table. Truth be told, he wouldn’t know what he was looking for. Far better that a practised expert describe what he was observing.

The expert today was Professor Ryan Jordan, a fifty-something, American-born, Home Office Certified pathologist, and he was happy to meet with Warren at Middlesbury CID rather than calling Warren down to look at the body in the morgue.

He read from his notes.

“The body is that of a Caucasian woman, mid-twenties. One hundred sixty-one centimetres tall, weighing sixty-four kilogrammes. Average build, with no distinguishing scars or body decoration. Medically, she appeared to be of average to below average fitness, with limited muscular development and lungs consistent with that of a pack-per-day smoker of about ten years; some evidence of early cardiovascular disease. Her liver was again consistent with somebody who drank more than she should, showing early signs of inflammation. It is my opinion, however, that none of these conditions contributed to her death.” He glanced up. “Give it a few more years and I reckon she’d have had a hard time climbing the stairs though. You see a lot of young women like this in the UK. It’s a ticking time bomb and I don’t see how the NHS will cope.”