Fever of the Bone

CHAPTER 41

Tony took his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms. ‘She’s good. She’s very good. She’s only lying when she has to, so you don’t really notice the lies. She doesn’t have a tell either.’

He swung round as Paula walked in. She leaned against the wall, looking exhausted. ‘She’s a tough cookie,’ she said.

‘Well spotted,’ Tony said. ‘She’s the best kind of liar. One of those who convince themselves they’re telling the truth.’

‘What did you make of her?’ Carol asked Paula.

‘At first, I was completely with her. I bought it all. I thought she’d truly been terrorised. Then there was one moment - I think it was when I asked the question that made it seem like we didn’t know that Warren was the father of the victims. Her reaction was so nakedly genuine that it reset the benchmark and I realised she wasn’t nearly as candid as she wants us to think.’ Paula pushed her hair back from her forehead. ‘I got nothing from her. Nothing worth a damn.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Tony said. ‘We know a lot more than we did before. The picture’s starting to become clearer.’

‘But we’ve got to find Warren,’ Carol said. ‘I’ve got Stacey covering his credit card, all his known email addresses, his driving licence and his passport. His photo is going out on the news tonight.’

‘He’ll be long gone,’ Paula said.

‘Tony thinks not. Tony thinks he’s got a mission to finish, don’t you?’

Lost in his own reverie, Tony frowned at her. ‘What?’

‘A mission. He’s got a mission to complete.’

He scratched his head. ‘That’s what I said, yes. But you’re not going to find him, Carol.’ He grabbed his jacket from the chair where he’d tossed it. ‘I need to go and talk to somebody.’ He made for the door.

‘Talk to who? About what?’ Carol demanded. But she was talking to a closing door.

Stacey wasn’t the only one who could take advantage of the information age. These days, once you’d got a warrant, things could move at amazing speed. Take the phone companies. As soon as they’d returned to the MIT squad room, Kevin had been detailed to acquire phone records for DPS and Diane Patrick. He’d managed to track down a magistrate to sign the warrant within the hour, then he’d scanned it and served it electronically. The mobile and landline companies had been just as quick off the mark for once.

He was surprised by how little phone traffic there had been from the numbers and said as much to Stacey. ‘Do you think she’s been using a phone we don’t know about? A throw-away? ‘

‘Maybe,’ Stacey said. ‘But most people in the ICT community prefer to use email or IMing. You can encrypt it much more easily. Phones are hideously insecure.’ And then she’d given him access to a bit of software that acted as a reverse directory. At the touch of a key, the names and addresses associated with the numbers spooled out on the screen before him.

He looked down the list and saw it was mainly companies. He suspected they were probably all DPS clients, but he’d have to work his way through them and make sure. There were a couple of calls to Carr’s Garage. Kevin thought that was the cousin who took in DPS’s parcels, but he made a note to check with Ambrose.

One number stood out from the crowd - the direct line for the county council’s environmental disposal unit. Diane Patrick had called them on Thursday morning. The call had lasted for eight minutes. On impulse, Kevin promoted it to number one on his call list and dialled it. It led to an inevitable automatic menu. It took three levels of options before he got a human being. He introduced himself and said, ‘I’m interested in a call made to your unit on Thursday morning. It might involve evidence in a murder inquiry.’ He’d found over the years that the word ‘murder’ provoked remarkable brisk-ness among bureaucrats.

‘Murder?’ the woman on the other end of the phone exclaimed. ‘We wouldn’t know anything about murder.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’ Kevin adopted his most placatory manner. ‘I need you to consult your records. I believe a murder suspect called you on Thursday and arranged for something to be picked up from their home. I need to know if I’m right and if so, what it was.’

‘I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that,’ she said dubiously. ‘It’s the Data Protection Act, you see.’ Kevin almost groaned. The Data Protection Act had become the knee-jerk shield of every jobsworth in the country. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘how do I know you’re a policeman?’

‘Why don’t I give you the details and you can consult your supervisor and then you can call me back either way at Bradfield Police HQ? I really don’t want to have to waste time getting a warrant for this, but if your manager insists, I will. How does that sound to you?’

‘I suppose,’ she said reluctantly. Kevin gave her Diane Patrick’s details and the main switchboard number and repeated his name and rank. As he replaced the phone, he made a bet with himself that, since it was already almost half past four, he wouldn’t hear another word from the council till the morning. He might as well start on the private sector.

He was on his second call to a DPS client when Sam waved at him. ‘I’ve got someone from environmental disposal for you,’ he called. ‘Something about a freezer?’

Kevin ended his call and picked up the other line. ‘DS Matthews. Thanks for getting back to me.’

‘This is James Meldrum, head of section at environmental disposal,’ a precise voice told him. ‘You spoke to one of my staff earlier.’

‘That’s right. About a phone call from Diane Patrick or DPS.’

‘I’ve consulted my guidelines and I believe I can provide you with the information you requested.’ He paused, as if for applause.

‘Thank you. I appreciate that,’ Kevin said, belatedly realising something was expected of him.

‘A Diane Patrick asked us to collect a chest freezer from her premises. We did so yesterday morning.’

‘A chest freezer?’ Kevin felt a burst of excitement. ‘Was it empty?’

‘If it had not been, our operatives would not have uplifted it.’

‘Do you know where it is now?’

‘We have a dedicated area for pre-disposal storage of fridges and freezers. We are obliged to take special disposal precautions according to the law. So this item will have been taken there.’ Meldrum clearly took pleasure in the detail of his work. Not to mention his grammar.

‘And it will still be there? It won’t have been disposed of?’

‘Regrettably, we do have something of a backlog in terms of actual disposal. So yes, it will be there. Along with many others, it should be said.’

‘Can you identify which one came from Diane Patrick’s house?’ Kevin said, crossing his fingers.

‘Not me personally, you understand. But it may be that the operatives who removed it will be able to state with some certainty which appliance originated with Ms Patrick.’

‘Will they still be at work, these operatives?’

Meldrum tittered. There was, Kevin thought, no other word for it. ‘Good heavens, no. Not at this time of night. They begin work at seven in the morning. If you can be at our depot then, I’m sure they will be delighted to oblige you.’

Kevin wrote down the directions to the depot and the names of the ‘operatives’ he needed to speak to. He thanked Meldrum, then leaned back in his chair, a big grin on his freckled face.

‘You look like the cat that got the canary,’ Sam said.

‘When a murderer gets rid of a chest freezer in the middle of their killing spree, I think it’s safe to assume we’re going to find some interesting evidence inside, don’t you?’

Tony found Alvin Ambrose in the MIT squad room working his way down the client list DPS had posted on their website. ‘I’m trying to find anybody who had any kind of social relationship with Warren Davy,’ he explained when Tony asked what he was doing. ‘So far, nothing.’

‘I was wondering . . . Would you mind giving me a lift out to Davy’s cousin’s garage? What was his name again?’

Ambrose gave him an odd look. ‘All right, all right. I should have submitted the report to you lot too. Bill Carr. That’s his name.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Every unit has its little joke, right?’

Tony gave a weak smile. ‘If you say so. Can you take me over there?’

Ambrose hauled his bulk upright. ‘No problem. I don’t think he knows where Davy is, though. I already spoke to him this afternoon.’

‘I don’t imagine he does know,’ Tony said. ‘That’s not what I want to talk to him about, though. I’d go myself, but trust me, I’m the world’s worst navigator. I’d be driving around South Manchester from now through till Sunday if I went by myself.’

‘And you think I’ll do better? I’m from Worcester, remember? ‘

‘That still gives you a head start over me.’

As they drove, Tony got Ambrose talking about his life back in Worcester. What the West Mercia team was like. How he thought Worcester was a great little city, the perfect place to bring up kids. Small enough to know what was going on, big enough not to be claustrophobic. It passed the time, and he didn’t need to think about what he was going to talk to Bill Carr about. He already knew that.

Ambrose turned into the cul-de-sac and pointed out the garage. It looked as if they’d just made it in time; Bill Carr had his back to them, pulling down the heavy door shutter. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Alvin, but I’ll do this better on my own,’ Tony said, getting out of the car and trotting down to catch Carr before he left.

‘Bill?’ Tony called.

Carr turned round and shook his head. ‘Too late, mate. I’m done for the day.’

‘No, it’s OK, it’s not work.’ Tony stuck his hand out. ‘I’m Tony Hill. I’m with Bradfield Police. I wondered if we could have a little chat?’

‘Is this about that business with Warren’s car the other day? Only, I told the other guy. I’m just helping a cousin out. I don’t have nothing to do with their business or anything.’ His eyes were casting about, looking for an escape beyond Tony. He turned up the collar of his denim jacket and shrugged his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Defensive as a guilty child.

‘It’s all right, I just want to have a bit of a chat about Warren and Diane,’ Tony said, his voice warm and confiding. ‘Maybe I could buy you a pint?’

‘He’s in trouble, isn’t he? Our Warren?’ Carr looked apprehensive but not surprised.

‘I won’t lie to you. It’s looking that way.’

He puffed out his cheeks and expelled the air. ‘He’s been a different bloke lately. Like there was something bearing down on him. I just thought it was business, you know? There’s a lot of folk on the skids these days. But he wouldn’t have talked to me about it. We weren’t close.’

‘Come and have a pint anyway,’ Tony said gently. ‘Where’s good round here?’

The two men walked in silence to a corner pub that had once been a working men’s hostelry but had now been turned into a Guardian reader’s haven. Tony imagined it had been gutted by a brewery in the seventies then recently restored to a faux version of its original scrubbed pine floors and uncomfortable bentwood chairs. ‘Full of bloody students later, but it’s all right this time of day,’ Carr said as they leaned on the bar and sipped decent pints of some microbrewery bitter with a ridiculous name.

‘Have they been together a while, Diane and Warren?’ he asked.

Carr thought for a moment, the tip of his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth. ‘Must be getting on for six or seven years now. They knew each other before, it was one of them slow-burn things, you know?’

Tony knew all about slow burns and smouldering fires. And how sometimes they never burst into flames. ‘It must have helped, having the business in common,’ was all he said.

‘I don’t think our Warren could have had a relationship with someone who wasn’t knee-deep in computers. It was all he could ever talk about. He got his first computer when he was still at primary school and he never looked back.’ He swallowed some beer and wiped the froth from his top lip with the back of his hand. ‘I reckon he got the brains and I got the looks.’

‘Did they get on all right, Diane and Warren?’

‘Seemed to. Like I said, I didn’t have a lot to do with them socially. We didn’t have much in common, you know? Warren didn’t even like the footie.’ Carr sounded as if that were clinically abnormal.

‘I’m a Bradfield Vic man myself,’ Tony said. That led them into a lengthy diversion which included giving Manchester United, Chelsea, the Arsenal and Liverpool a good slagging. And by the end of it, Tony had turned Carr into a mate. As they supped their second pint, he said, ‘They didn’t have any kids, though.’

‘You got kids?’

Tony shook his head.

‘I’ve got two, with my ex. I see them every other weekend. I miss them, you know? But there’s no denying life’s simpler without having to deal with them twenty-four seven. Warren could never have hacked it. He needed his space and that’s one thing you don’t get with kids.’

‘Too many people have kids and then act like it’s a big shock that you’ve actually got to interact with them.’

‘Exactly,’ Carr said, tapping his finger on the bar to emphasise the point. ‘Warren was smart enough to realise that wasn’t for him. He made bloody sure of it an’ all.’

‘How do you mean?’ Tony’s antennae were on full alert.

‘He had a vasectomy, back when he was a student. We saw more of each other in those days. He always had a right clear idea about what he wanted his life to be, did Warren. He knew he was smart and he knew he had good genes. But because he knew he’d be a crap parent, he hit on the idea of being a sperm donor. He filled their little plastic cup and took the money and then he went and got himself snipped. What was it he said at the time? I remember it was right clever . . . “Posterity without responsibility.” That was it.’

‘And he never regretted it?’

‘Not as far as I know. He never dared tell Diane, though. She was mad for a baby, especially this last three or four years. Warren said she was doing his head in with it. On and on. The only thing that would do. And because he hadn’t told her at the start about having the snip, it got so he couldn’t admit to it. Especially since he’d told her right early on that he’d been a sperm donor. It was laughable, really. There they were, trotting off to the fertility clinic and he wasn’t letting on about his vasectomy. In the end she tried using donor sperm, but it was too late by then. She’s half a dozen years older than him, so she was already the wrong side of forty and her eggs were well and truly fried.’

‘And she never found out?’ Tony asked casually.

‘Are you kidding? If she’d have found that out, she’d have fucking killed him.’

Tony stared into his pint. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking, ‘ he said.