Left You Dead

82

It had happened more than once before in Roy Grace’s career, when a fresh piece of evidence out of left field had turned an investigation on its head — or at least threw into question all their lines of enquiry, he well knew.

‘This information, combined with the discovery of the tracker, is making me think there are two other dimensions to this case that we need to investigate,’ Grace said.

He had everyone’s complete attention.

‘So far we’ve been focusing on Niall Paternoster as our prime suspect, with all the evidence pointing to him having murdered Eden. Now we have evidence that he’s having an affair — and with his wife’s boss — could we be looking at a conspiracy between Niall Paternoster and Rebecca Watkins to murder Eden? Or should we be looking at something completely different altogether?’ He stared around at his team quizzically.

‘A set-up?’ suggested Luke Stanstead.

Grace nodded at him. ‘That’s my thinking. We have no body so far, despite all the evidence of murder and the deposition site. But is it possible that it could be there to mislead us? Along with the photograph at Parham House? All we have at that site are some items of clothing in and around a shallow grave, and a knife that in my view has maybe been put in the wrong place — a far too obvious one.’

He paused to let that sink in. ‘It’s possible that having murdered Eden, dissected her and buried her remains, Niall dumped the knife in a red mist of panic or, just as likely, it was dragged from the grave by an animal. But we know he, or at least his car and his phone, then went to Shoreham Harbour. So if he was going to the harbour to drop his wife’s head into the sea, wouldn’t he also have disposed of the knife there?’

He let that hang in the air for a moment, looking around at this team. No one contradicted him. ‘We always need to consider the alternatives in any case,’ he continued. ‘Let’s suppose for a moment that the kitchen knife was deliberately put in that sparse bush, instead of one of the much thicker bushes close by, so we would find it?’

DC Soper raised a hand.

‘Yes, Louise?’

The smartly dressed Detective Constable, her brown hair elegant as always, her discreet Hublot watch the only clue to her private wealth, held up a sheaf of papers. ‘It’s a good point, sir. I’ve been going through the forensic report on the Paternosters’ BMW, as I’m sure we all have, and something’s struck me — as I’m sure it must have you.’

‘Which is, Louise?’ Grace encouraged.

‘If Niall Paternoster had murdered his wife and transported her to the deposition site in Ashdown Forest in their BMW — which all the evidence from the car’s satnav and onboard computer points to — why is there no DNA evidence in the car? It’s a two-door convertible — so most likely he would have put her body in the boot, or at least on the back seat, although that would have been awkward. Yet there is no DNA evidence — so far at least — of her being in either.’

Grace nodded. ‘A good point, Louise.’

Norman Potting raised a hand. ‘But if Niall had wrapped up all the body parts carefully, say in bin liners or plastic sheeting, there wouldn’t necessarily have been any DNA in the car.’

‘Yes, Norman,’ he replied. ‘But if he’d had the presence of mind to wrap up the body parts carefully, in my thinking that doesn’t square with the seemingly careless way he’d disposed of the knife — if that is in fact what he did.’

He saw the Financial Investigator trying to attract his attention.

‘Emily?’

‘Sir,’ Denyer said, ‘as we already know, the house in Nevill Road is owned by Eden Paternoster. We found out that a year ago she paid off the mortgage, but does he know that? It looks like she used the income she had built up from her rental properties. I’ve now discovered two things of interest late this afternoon. The first is, just ten weeks ago, she raised a seventy per cent mortgage on the house of £420,000, from the Lothian Bank of Commerce. And secondly, possibly even more significant, six weeks ago she transferred that entire amount to a nominee account in the Cayman Islands. I am awaiting more information from the Land Registry but I doubt Niall is aware of any of this.’

Grace felt a beat of excitement at this new information. Am I being set up here? he began to wonder. Have I missed something? Niall Paternoster was having an affair with Eden’s boss. Had she suspected her husband and placed the tracker under their car? Or did she hire someone to do it? Did she suspect he might be about to divorce her, so she’d moved all the assets she could overseas? And, holding down a senior job in IT in a major international company, she was clearly tech savvy.

He thought back to the chessboard, with the game in progress in the Paternosters’ living room. Roy Grace’s grandfather had taught him chess when he was about seven, and he’d played often with him, and also occasionally with his dad — until his father stopped playing with him because he always beat his old man too easily.

Chess was about strategy. Thinking as many moves ahead as you could. The fact that both Niall and Eden played chess against each other indicated both were strategists. Was Eden Paternoster still alive? Who was out-thinking the other here in a game beyond the board?