Fever of the Bone

CHAPTER 40

Tony and Carol were both totally focused on the scene being played out on the other side of the two-way mirror. It had taken a while to get back from the DPS farm to Bradfield Police HQ. First they’d had to wait for the ambulance and the paramedics to confirm that Ewan McAlpine was well enough to be moved to Bradfield Cross under police guard. Then they’d had to wait for Diane Patrick’s hysterics to subside. Once they’d booked her into custody, she recovered herself enough to ask for a solicitor. All of this had given Carol and Tony time to plan the interview.

‘I think you should let Paula lead off,’ Tony had said without waiting to be asked.

‘It should be me, I’m the SIO. It gives status to the interview. Which unsettles people whether they’re innocent or guilty as hell.’ Carol opened her office door and shouted, ‘Someone, anyone . . . We need coffee in here.’

Tony started pacing. ‘It’s precisely because you’re the SIO that you should back off. Diane Patrick has clearly played a role in these crimes. She may have been coerced. But she may have been an active participant. If she was, then she’s going to be pissed off at not being taken seriously enough to be interviewed by the boss. And pissed off is good. You know that. We like them pissed off. It makes them more likely to lose at least some of the plot.’

‘Believe me, I can find other ways to piss her off,’ Carol said.

‘And if she’s been coerced, she’ll be much more likely to respond to someone she doesn’t see as a threat. In other words, a junior officer. It’s a win-win, letting Paula take first crack at her. I’m not saying you won’t get your turn. But let Paula go first.’

‘Will you sit down? You’re making me crazy, storming up and down in this tiny space,’ Carol fumed.

He dropped into the nearest chair. ‘It helps me think.’

A knock on the door. ‘Coffee,’ Kevin said.

Carol opened the door, took the two mugs from him and used her hip to close it behind her. ‘I’ll put the earpiece in. You can keep me on track.’

‘You know there’s nobody better at this than Paula.’ He knew he was playing with fire, but it had to be said.

‘Are you saying she’s a better interviewer than me?’ She thrust the coffee at him. He thought she was inches away from having thrown it. He’d seldom seen her this wound up over an arrest. He assumed it was because Warren Davy was still out there in the wind.

‘This isn’t a pissing contest, and you know it,’ he said. ‘You’ve got no grounds for doubting your professional capability. Your leadership of this team made this result possible. It works because you let them do what they’re good at, even when it’s part of your skill set.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, brows drawn down in a mulish stare.

‘Take Sam,’ he said. ‘You know he’s a maverick. You know he doesn’t like to share because he thinks he can do whatever it is better than anyone else. He’ll stab people in the back if he thinks it will further his career, but only when it doesn’t jeopardise the investigation. A lot of SIOs would have canned Sam because he’s not a team player. But you keep him close. You let him play to his strengths.’ He paused, an ‘am I right?’ expression on his face.

‘Of course I do. He’s got tremendous ability.’

‘That’s only part of the reason. The other part is that you see something of yourself in him. Something of the early Carol Jordan, the scrapper who hadn’t risen to her natural level yet. You do it with all of them.’ He pulled a face. ‘Well, maybe not Stacey. But you know Paula’s a great interviewer. You know it because the great interviewer in you recognises it in her. So let her do it, Carol.’

He saw the doubt on her face. ‘Sometimes I feel I do all the graft round here and get none of the fun,’ she complained.

He smiled. ‘I love a good bit of self-pity. That’s very generous of you. Besides, if it hadn’t been for the new girlfriend being in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge, this might have taken us a lot longer to put together. Paula’s earned her moment in the sun.’

Carol glared at him. ‘I hate it when you make me behave well.’

‘You’ll respect yourself in the morning, though.’ He drank some coffee and made a face. ‘Come on, let’s go and watch Paula do her thing.’

Paula kept Diane Patrick and her solicitor waiting for almost twenty minutes. She made the decision when she discovered the woman’s lawyer was Bronwen Scott, the doyenne of Bradfield’s criminal solicitors. Scott had earned her reputation by winning reprieves for the guilty as well as clearing the innocent so she was never going to be loved by the police. But she liked to rub their noses in her successes. Carol made no secret of her loathing for Scott, and her team cheerfully backed her to the hilt.

The disparity between the two women opposite Paula could hardly have been greater. Scott was immaculate in a suit whose cut and fabric screamed the opposite of state-funded legal aid. She’d always had a haughty expression, but these days her face hardly seemed to move at all. Paula suspected Botox or a face lift that had ended up a fraction too tight. Diane Patrick, by contrast, was dishevelled and ravaged by her earlier tears. Her hair was chaotic, her dark eyes puffy and bloodshot. She looked at Paula with piteous eyes, lower lip quivering. Paula remained unmoved by the pair of them.

She made sure Diane was cautioned on tape and then opened her folder. ‘You abducted and drugged a fourteen-year-old boy this evening, Diane. When we walked into the house where you live with your partner Warren Davy, we found you alone with Ewan McAlpine. He was unconscious. On the table in front of you were a transparent polythene sack, a roll of packing tape and a scalpel—’

‘Are we going to get to a question any time soon? We know all this. You have given us disclosure,’ Scott interrupted.

Paula refused to let herself be needled. ‘I’m just reminding your client of the seriousness of her position. As I was saying. The things on the table - they were identical to the paraphernalia of four murders committed against fourteen-year-olds in the past two weeks. It’s hard not to draw the inference that you were about to murder Ewan McAlpine.’

Diane Patrick’s eyes opened as wide as her swollen lids would allow. She looked horrified. ‘I wasn’t. No.’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘I never killed anybody. You’ve got to believe me. It was Warren. I was waiting for Warren. He made me do it.’ She let out a terrible racking sob. ‘I hate myself, I wish I was dead.’ She buried her face in her hands.

Paula waited. Eventually Diane raised her head, tears streaking her cheeks. ‘Is it your contention that Warren Davy murdered Jennifer Maidment, Daniel Morrison, Seth Viner and Niall Quantick? And that he planned to murder Ewan McAlpine.’

Diane gulped and hiccupped. Then she nodded. ‘Yes. He killed them all. He made me help. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do what he told me.’

‘And you believed him?’ Paula deliberately sounded incredulous.

Diane looked at her as if she was mad. ‘Of course I believed him. He already killed my baby. Why would I not believe him?’

‘He killed your baby? When did this happen?’

Diane shuddered. ‘Last year. She was just hours old.’ A long sigh seemed to liberate her into words. ‘He’d virtually kept me prisoner for the last few weeks of the pregnancy. I gave birth at home. He said there was no need for hospital, women had been doing it at home for generations. And he was right. It was OK. Jodie, I called her. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was all I’d ever wanted. And then he took her away and put his hand over her mouth and nose till she stopped breathing.’ Her words began to jerk like a DJ scratching a record. She wrapped her arms round herself. ‘He killed her. He killed her right in front of me.’ She began rocking back and forth, her fingers clawing at her upper arms.

Again, Paula just sat out the storm. She knew Scott wanted this to end but she wanted the reason to be Paula. And Paula was determined to give the lawyer no excuse. ‘Why would he do that?’ she said once Diane was composed again.

‘He did a bad thing. I don’t know what it was. He couldn’t tell me. It was something to do with a client’s data. He did something and somebody died.’ She seemed to be looking inward, as if reliving some scene in her memory. ‘And something inside him seemed to come loose.’ She met Paula’s steady gaze. ‘I know that sounds weird, but that’s what it was like. He kept talking about carrying evil inside him like a virus. And he said my Jodie couldn’t live to carry his virus to the next generation. He was crying when he did it.’ She put her hand to her mouth and began rocking again.

Paula had been prepared for Diane to blame it all on her partner, particularly since he’d slipped through the net and wasn’t there to present his version of events. She’d started from a position of scepticism, but as the interview proceeded her doubts were shrinking. There was something horribly convincing about Diane Patrick’s narrative. And she was certainly in a state. It was hard to imagine how she could be faking this come-apart. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said. ‘But here’s where you’re losing me. How did he go from killing his own child to murdering these teenagers?’

Diane Patrick’s face registered naked astonishment. It was so blatant that it cast doubt over the rest of what Paula had seen. ‘Because they were his children too. You didn’t know?’

‘How could we know?’ Paula said. ‘We knew they were connected by the same sperm donor, but we had no way of finding out it was Warren. Nobody gets access to that information. Not even police officers with a warrant.’

Diane stared at her, apparently lost for words.

Paula smiled. ‘Which kind of begs the question. How did Warren find out who they were?’

There was a long silence. Paula would have bet Diane was weighing up whether a lie was going to be caught out. At last, she spoke. Slowly, as if feeling her way. ‘He forced me into it. He threatened to kill me.’

‘I got that, yes. He killed your baby then he threatened you. It didn’t occur to you that you could escape?’

Diane gave a bitter little laugh. ‘It’s obvious you know nothing about the way the modern world works. When it comes to cyberspace, Warren is one of the masters of the universe. I could maybe run, but I could never hide. He’d have found a way to get me.’

‘You’re talking now,’ Paula pointed out.

‘Yes. But you’re going to catch him and keep him away from me,’ Diane said, completely calm for the first time in their interview.

‘So where is he? Where are we going to find him?’

‘I don’t know. He hasn’t spent the night at home since the first murder.’

‘You told my colleague he was in Malta.’

Diane looked at her lawyer. ‘I was afraid,’ she said.

‘You heard my client,’ Scott said. ‘She has been in fear of her life. Her actions have been the product of duress.’

‘Duress isn’t a defence to murder,’ Paula said.

‘And so far, nobody is suggesting my client has committed murder or attempted murder or treason, which are the only exceptions to the defence of duress,’ Scott retorted, the steel of her tones matching her expression.

‘I want to back up a little,’ Paula said, looking directly at Diane, who had been apparently ignoring their exchange. ‘How did Warren find out the names of the children he’d fathered?’

Diane couldn’t hold Paula’s stare. She picked at the edge of the table with her thumbnail and watched her hand intently. ‘The HFEA employ a data security firm to hold their back-ups. We’re a small community. Everybody knows everybody else. Warren found out who does the HFEA and basically bribed them. He said we’d do the back-up and hand it over to them and we’d pay them the same as the HFEA. So they’d get double their money for no work.’

‘And they didn’t wonder why you wanted to get your hands on the data? They weren’t worried about compromising their security?’

‘It’s not compromising your security when you’re dealing with one of your own.’

Paula thought that was bullshit and made a note to come back to it another time. ‘So Warren went into the HFEA and backed up their database?’

She chewed the skin round her thumbnail. ‘It was me. He thought they’d be less suspicious of a woman.’

‘So you helped yourself to the data that would identify who got Warren’s sperm?’

‘I didn’t have any choice,’ she said, stubborn now.

‘We all have a choice,’ Paula said. ‘You chose not to exercise yours and four children are dead.’

‘Five,’ Diane said. ‘You think I don’t know that?’ Scott leaned over and whispered something in Diane’s ear. She nodded.

‘Did you know what Warren intended when you stole that data?’ Paula asked.

‘I wasn’t thinking straight about anything at that point. I was half-mad with grief.’

‘We need to find Warren, Diane. Frankly, at this point you need to be thinking about yourself. Under the principle of joint enterprise, which I’m sure Ms Scott will be happy to explain to you, you’re looking at four murder charges. I can’t make any promises because we don’t have the power to do deals like they do on the telly. But if you help us now, we’ll help you down the line. Where is he, Diane?’

She blinked back more tears. ‘I don’t know. I swear to God. We’ve been together for seven years and he’s never gone off anywhere like this. He’s only ever away when it’s business, and then I know what hotel he’s in. He’s never hidden from me before.’

‘What was the plan tonight? Was he supposed to come over to kill Ewan?’

‘He should have been there before I picked Ewan up. He told me he’d be back in plenty of time. When it came time to collect Ewan, I didn’t know whether to go or not. But I was scared of what he’d do if I screwed up. So I went and got him.’ She almost smiled. Paula detected triumph. ‘He won’t show up now you lot are there.’

‘He won’t see us,’ Paula said.

‘That’s what you think. He’ll be able to watch everything you did this afternoon. He’s got remote access to all the cameras. He’ll have known as soon as you drove up to the gate. He knew all about the big black cop who came on Sunday even before I emailed him. Wherever he is, he’s one step ahead of you.’

‘You sound pleased about that,’ Paula said.

‘If that’s what you think then there’s something wrong with your hearing.’

It was the first sign of combative spirit Diane had shown and it intrigued Paula. ‘What about family? Parents, siblings? Friends?’

‘We kept ourselves to ourselves,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t get on with his parents. He’s not in touch with them.’

‘You’re not doing yourself any favours here, Diane,’ Paula said. ‘We’ve got your computers now. You said Warren was a master of the universe with computers. Well, I’ve got a colleague who’s even better than that. She’ll be all over your contacts book by now.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Diane said. ‘We’re security specialists. If she tries to get in, the data will all rewrite itself as gobbledygook. ‘

Paula chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t bet on that.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘If you’re not in the mood to be helpful, I don’t want to waste my time. We’ve got you bang to rights on abduction, false imprisonment and attempted murder.’

‘Then charge my client or release her. You’ve got nothing. The boy went with her willingly. He passed out. My client cannot be held responsible for whatever her partner left lying around on their kitchen table.’ Scott was working up a head of indignation but Paula cut her off.

‘Tell it to the magistrates tomorrow morning. I’m done for now. We will have further questions later, so it would be helpful if you could keep yourself available, Ms Scott.’