One Dead Witness (45 page)

‘
Detective Sergeant Furness, Blackpool CID.’ She wafted her
warrant card and badge under his nose. ‘Are you Charles
Gilbert?’

He nodded, perplexed.

‘
I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Claire
Lilton.’ Danny cautioned him and waited for his reply.

He blinked rapidly a few times. Then, patronisingly, said,
‘Dearie, you are making one hell of a mistake here. Do you know who
I am?’

‘
I know exactly who you are, Mr Gilbert.’ Danny smiled sweetly
and waved the search team into the house.

‘
What the hell’s going on here?’ Gilbert demanded. He moved his
bulk and wedged himself into the doorway. ‘You’re not coming in
here. Where’s your warrant?’

Danny regarded him, rotating her lower jaw as if chewing gum.
‘Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, we don’t need
one.’

The officer leading the Support Unit search team was standing
at Danny’s shoulder, his troops behind him, eager to get on with
the job. He poked his chin over Danny’s shoulder and said, ‘So if
you don’t get out of the way, you big fat tub of lard, we’ll
happily move you.’

Gilbert nodded, beaten. He moved aside and whined, ‘I want a
solicitor - now.’

‘
You’ll get one when you reach the police station,’ Danny told
him. ‘Now what I’d like you to do is accompany these two officers
to that van, get in and be taken to Blackpool police
station.’

‘
I said I want a solicitor now.’

Danny remained pleasant in tone. ‘Sooner you get in the van,
sooner you get to the station, sooner you get a brief.’

One of the uniformed officers on the arrest squad reached out
and tried to grab Gilbert’s upper arm. It was too big and fat for
his hand.

‘
Don’t you dare touch me,’ Gilbert said, shaking him
off.

‘
No more delay.’ Danny’s voice hardened. ‘Get in the back of
the van,
now.’

Gilbert eyed her dangerously and pushed past her.

As an aside, the uniformed officer said to Danny, ‘I honestly
don’t think he’ll fit in. We should’ve brought an HGV for the fat
bastard.’

Danny sniggered. Stage one over. With a sense of satisfaction,
she prepared to send Henry a message over the airwaves: mission
accomplished.

Her boss had decided on a less subtle approach for Ollie
Spencer. A rapid entry was needed in this case, because if the
police took too much time getting in, Spencer might be able to
dispose of vital evidence; with his flat being the supposed scene
of the murder, Henry wanted as much from it as possible.

The entrance to the flat was by way of a door at the rear of
an electrical shop, leading directly to some stairs and up onto a
landing; the doors of the flat were off this landing.

Henry’s team had to get in, get up the stairs and locate
Spencer before he knew what had hit him. To assist the team they
had a map which had been drawn initially by Grace, then improved by
a detective. According to this floor plan, once on the landing,
there was a bedroom door to the left, bathroom, toilet and kitchen
through doors on the right and dead ahead, a living
room.

The Support Unit were going to do the entry, race up the
stairs, split like the Red Arrows and hit each door virtually
simultaneously. Maximum fifteen seconds from going in the door to
locating and neutralising Spencer, they promised.

The officers gathered around the outer door with the ‘Ram-it’
in the hands of one of them.

He shuffled his shoulders, flexed his fingers on the handles
of the thirty-inch, thirty-five pounds of solid metal tubing with a
flattened end. He swung it backwards about two feet to gain the
necessary momentum, then let it swing towards the door.

Fourteen thousand pounds of kinetic force burst the door open
with one blow. The officer pivoted out of the way.

The Support Unit teams raced in and bounded up the stairs in a
well-practised drill.

At the top of the stairs they split and hit the
doors.

Twelve seconds after entry the shout went up: ‘Suspect located
- neutralised - bedroom.’

Henry Christie jogged up the stairs to -the bedroom where he
saw Spencer, naked, lying spreadeagled on the bed, a rather flaccid
erection meandering up from his ginger pubic hair. A young boy who
looked no more than nine, also naked, was sitting next to him on
the bed.

‘
Found this one, too.’

Henry turned at the voice. An officer was holding another
youngster, this time a girl, who had only a towel wrapped loosely
around her.

Henry looked at Spencer and arrested him for
murder.

‘
One arrested - no problems,’ Danny informed Henry over the
radio, just moments after he had cautioned Spencer and thrown a
pair of
trousers at him.

‘
Received,’ he replied. ‘Ditto - no problems either, just a
couple of
house-guests, probably
mispers.’

‘
Understood.’

‘
We’ll probably be at the nick before you, so we’ll book our
chap in, then I’ll call you when the coast is clear.’

‘
Roger,’ Danny replied.

Henry turned his attention back to Spencer, who was making a
meal of
getting dressed. ‘Get your fucking
clothes on,’ the DI growled, ‘or I’ll drag you naked through the
streets of
Blackpool and show everyone what
a pervert you are.’

Spencer eyed him unsurely; decided he was probably telling the
truth.

He was fully dressed within a minute.

Spencer was processed into the custody system fairly smoothly.
He was quiet and easy to deal with, saying little, exercising none
of
his rights until he found out where he
stood. When he was sitting in a cell, Henry radioed Danny to bring
Gilbert in.

By this time he had been sitting in the back of
the van in the rear yard of
the police station for about fifteen minutes, getting
increasingly restless.

Danny opened the van doors, then the inner cage
door.

Gilbert eased himself through the gap.

‘
You are going to look so stupid,’ he told Danny.

‘
Yeah, right.’ She pointed to the back door of
the police station. ‘I believe you made an
official visit here a few weeks ago, so you’ll know the way to the
cells.’ She pushed him gently. He snapped her hand away.

‘
Don’t ever touch me.’

‘
Don’t make me have to.’

He walked to the door. Behind him one of
the uniformed officers imitated his rolling gait, blowing his
cheeks out like a trumpet-player and forcing his belly out. Danny
laughed silently ... but the smile dropped from her lips as, right
at the back door, the one and only police witness in the case
appeared in the company of a social worker and literally walked
straight into Gilbert.

‘
How could that have happened?’ FB demanded furiously. ‘Your
most vital witness walking right into the main suspect. Come on
-
how?’

‘
I don’t know, sir,’ Danny admitted. ‘It just happened - one of
those things. I feel bad about it. It should not have happened ...
just an unlucky coincidence.’

‘
Someone should swing for this,’ FB blazed.

Henry had watched him browbeating Danny for long enough.
‘What’s done is done,’ he said reasonably. ‘No one’s to blame for
it. Grace had been handed over to Social Services and was leaving
the station.’

Danny slumped heavily onto a chair. They were all back in
Henry’s office.

‘
I’ve really cocked up again, haven’t I?’ Danny admonished
herself. She was close to tears. ‘I did it with Claire, now I’ve
done it with Grace.’

‘
What do you mean?’ FB asked.

‘
I mean I promised Grace we’d protect her if she gave evidence
and look what happened.’ Danny shook her head in frustration.
‘Slap-bang into him. You should have seen his face. As soon as I
get the chance I’ll visit Grace, spend some time with her, reassure
her. She’ll need all the support we can give her now.’

‘
Fine, do that,’ FB said. ‘Now, where are we up to?’

‘
Gilbert’s in with his solicitor; Spencer hasn’t requested one.
Danny and a DC are going to interview Gilbert first,’ Henry
explained.

‘
No,’ FB said firmly to Henry. ‘I want you and Danny to
interview them both.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Because I say so, that’s why. I want the best interviewer on
this, and that’s you.’

Henry didn’t know whether to be pleased or pissed off. On the
one hand he was glad FB had said something nice about him for once;
on the other, it wasn’t his job to interview.

‘
I want those bastards charged and convicted of murder,
Henry.’

‘
Is this place bugged? Can they hear what we are
saying?’

Gilbert and his solicitor, Maurice Stanway, were in the
solicitor’s room. Stanway had been Gilbert’s brief for almost
twenty years. They knew each other well.

The room was basic. One table screwed to the floor, three
plastic chairs. They faced each other across the table. Gilbert’s
bulk overflowed his chair and the thin metal legs
sagged.

‘
It’s always possible, but I doubt it,’ Stanway said. ‘Believe
it or not, they’re pretty ethical these days.’

‘
Fools,’ Gilbert laughed. ‘So, what’s going to happen
now?’

‘
You’ll be interviewed, probably fairly cursorily at first.
They’ll establish a few facts, ensure you know why you’ve been
arrested, things like that. Then they’ll start asking you
questions, probably hoping you’ll crack before they declare any
real evidence at this stage.’

‘
In other words, they’ll offer me the chance to
confess?’

‘
In other words, yes.’

‘
And if I don’t?’

‘
They’ll start to declare evidence, bit by bit. Forensic,
direct evidence from witnesses ... hoping you’ll admit.’

‘
What forensic do they have?’

‘
I don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait and see.’

‘
They won’t have any.’

‘
You sound certain.’

‘
I am.’

‘
They may well have witnesses.’

‘
They have. I saw her when I came into the station.’

‘
All it takes is one witness,’ Stanway stated.

‘
I think they’ll rely heavily on her.’

‘
Her testimony may well be enough - at least to get you charged
and put before a court. But let’s see how it pans out, shall
we?’

‘
Okay.’

‘
Will the police find anything at your house,
Charles?’

‘
Books, videos, magazines, photographs ... you know the sort of
thing.’

‘
Anything to link you to the dead girl?’

‘
No.’

‘
Well, that’s good. Let’s go and see what they’ve
got.’

Ninety minutes later Gilbert and Stanway were back in the
solicitor’s consulting room. They were buzzing, feeling very
confident.

‘
You handled the questions skilfully, Charles. I applaud you.’
They shook hands and sat down. ‘So,’ Stanway said, ‘that was the
opening salvo.’

‘
And pretty tame it was, too.’

‘
If you’re sure about the forensic side of things, I’d suggest
they will have only the girl’s eyewitness testimony. And, of
course, Ollie Spencer, who has not been interviewed yet, nor
requested a solicitor.’

‘
In that case, you should offer your services. I would hate for
him to say anything stupid.’

Stanway nodded.

‘
When will I be out of here?’

‘
Oh, they’ll keep you in as long as possible. They always do in
cases such as these.’

At midnight Henry Christie and Danny Furness were sitting on a
bench on the promenade, near to Central Pier. From having been a
cold day, the night had become idyllic and still. The tide was way
out. The sky was clear and the moon almost full. It was even quite
mild, verging on warm.

Henry rubbed his neck and rolled his head. His bones creaked
and cracked. ‘God, I’m whacked.’

Danny stood up and walked behind him. She began to massage his
shoulders through his jacket. Her fingers probed into his muscles.
He groaned, not far short of ecstasy.

‘
That is wonderful,’ he murmured. His toes tingled. He dropped
his chin onto his chest and revelled in the sensation.

‘
In another time, on another planet, I’ll lay odds we could
have been good together,’ Danny whispered into his ear.

‘
It’s a nice thought,’ he responded, taking one of Danny’s
hands and squeezing it.