A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy) (26 page)

“Did you dream of a dead body last night?”

“How sweet of you to ask.”

“Did you?”

“No. But I was high; I’d had the good news of my promotion, and I’d had a drink or two to celebrate. I don’t think I dreamed anything last night.”

“You didn’t dream anything last night?”

“You want a cracker?”

“For a man facing fifteen, you’re very flippant.”

Roger became thoughtful, lowered his eyes. “I still think it’s a foul up; it’ll be sorted by the end of today and…” he trailed off, slipped back into his thoughts.

“No, Roger. It won’t go away. No one has fouled up and I think it’s about time you started to take this seriously.”

“I don’t have to prove my innocence, Graham.”

Shelby ignored the remark. “So, you have nothing to substantiate this feeling of depressive instability. Is this something to go hand in hand with nightmares, something you take with you to your counselling sessions, so you could continue to meet with Alice Taylor and fantasise about her?”

“You should be on telly.”

Shelby waited there for a moment, studying the man, trying to destabilise him, waiting to see if Roger felt the need to fill the silence. He didn’t. “Another thing I find a little intriguing, if not disturbing, is that a man of your status, married with good prospects, a man of the law, respected and middle-aged, finds it necessary to patrol the night-clubs of Wakefield looking at young women. Do you think I’m reasonable in finding that fact disturbing?” Shelby watched the shame crumple Roger’s features, and chalked up another point in favour of ‘guilty’.

“Yes, I do. I hold up my hand to that one. I can guess where you got your information, and Chris is right. I nicknamed it ‘cruising’, because that’s what I did. After working late and finishing in the early hours of the morning, I would cruise slowly through the streets and yeah, I looked at the girls.

“My marriage was at a low point, and seeing young girls baring all put a little sparkle back into my life. I did nothing wrong, I broke no laws; I wasn’t kerb crawling or stalking or harassing anyone. I certainly didn’t speed,” he almost smiled. “But I want to emphasise to you that I never picked anyone up. That I can promise you.”

Shelby folded his arms. “You finish work early, and coincidentally of course, a young girl called Nicky Bridgestock dies at roughly the same time? Can you explain why we found your name and number on the back of her left hand at the post-mortem?”

“Maybe she wrote it herself—”

“She’s left handed. She wouldn’t have chosen to write it on her left hand.” He pulled a photograph of the strangely lit inscription from the folder and showed it to Roger, proclaiming the action for the tape. “It’s not complete, I know, but it goes a long way towards your own details. Here’s another photo, same hand, same writing, enhanced by PolyLight. Convinced?”

Roger accepted the evidence.

He was a scrap of the man he was ten minutes ago. Shelby expected the request for a solicitor about now, but it didn’t come. Roger looked fraught, and Shelby thought he detected in him the first signs of real fear, though unusually for a fearful suspect, he didn’t fidget much.

“I can see why you came looking for me,” Roger said. “But I’ve never set eyes on her, never been to her house. Yet my name and number are on the back of her hand?” He appeared to surrender, and leaned forward submissively. “I can’t answer you, Graham, like I can’t answer the fingerprint. I honestly do not know how they got there.” Then his posture relaxed, his shoulders slumped, as had become the norm for this interview.

“Have you ever suffered from black-outs?”

“No.”

Shelby asked more questions, Roger grunted answers, occasionally expressing astonishment or wonder, but usually his eyes were pointing south. Now though, he didn’t conceal his feelings, and Shelby noticed a sparkle of hope.

“
I
know how all this bloody evidence got there, and I’ll be fucked if it never crossed your mind as well!”

“How?”

“Planted.” Hope shone in Roger’s eyes.

“Who by?”

“Who has a grudge against me?”

“You tell me.”

The sparkle died. “It’s obvious when you actually stop and think about it. Weston.”

Shelby gave no reaction, perhaps a tinge of sadness, that was all. “Weston?”

“He hates me.”

“The grudge thing?” Shelby asked.

“
His
grudge thing.”

“Okay, for the tape: you suspected Inspector Colin Weston of stealing weapons that were in his custody, yes?” Roger nodded. “Inspector Weston was investigated and subsequently vindicated. Since then, you both share a mutual dislike. Is that a fair summary of the situation?”

“I reported him for stealing weapons and he was questioned about it. He objects to me having a heartbeat.”

Shelby folded his arms, and said, “Roger, that was months ago. Everyone knows Weston had nothing to hide from that investigation. In fact, he’s the aggrieved party in all of this, and he laughs about it now.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“You think a police Inspector would go to the trouble of killing someone and planting all your evidence around the scene because he was questioned about an
alleged
theft?”

Roger grabbed at straws. “He beat me in the cell, only an hour ago.” His voice rose, his desperation made it to the surface, and that’s what Shelby clearly saw. A desperate man.

“Okay, Roger,” he said, “I’ll look into it.”

“You really don’t believe me, do you?”

Shelby made no reply.

“Gee, thanks.”

“How did he plant the evidence, how
could
he plant the evidence?”

Roger thought for a long time before looking back at Shelby, before looking through him. “I have no idea.”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“Who, Nicky Bridgestock?”

“Yes, Nicky Bridgestock.”

“I’ve already said I didn’t know the girl.”

“This is a picture of Nicky’s face; perhaps she went under an alias.” Shelby handed Roger another photograph.

“No, I’ve never seen her before.” He slid the picture back across the table. “Why ask me if I’ve ever had sex with her? What sham have you come up with now?”

“It’s no sham, Roger. We found a hair, a pubic hair in amongst her own—”

“Oh go on, you think that’s mine, too?”

“Judging by the evidence we’ve collected so far, I’d say it was a pretty safe bet, wouldn’t you?”

“But, just one?”

“Yes. Why?”

“It’s a plant, Shelby!” Roger’s arms shot outwards to emphasise his eureka moment. “I’ve never found only a single hair. Two, three or a clump of them, but never just one. Doesn’t that suggest a plant to you?”

“It represents good, hard evidence.”

“Go on, surprise me, it
is
my pubic hair, isn’t it?”

“Don’t know for sure yet. I was hoping you could save us a couple of grand trying to find out, really. All you’ve got to do to make things easier on yourself is admit having sex with her.”

Now Roger’s temper surfaced again. “I didn’t have sex with her! Since I was twenty-three, I have slept with only two women: my wife and Alice Mary Taylor. Did you find any semen, any trace of lubricant from a condom?”

“What car do you drive?”

“Did you find anything? Answer me, Shelby, otherwise I stop being so fucking co-operative and demand a solicitor.”

Shelby stared at Roger. “No, we only found the hair.”

“Then it’s a plant, man. Are you so blind? It all makes sense to me, but you can’t see the weather for the twatting snow! Open your eyes.”

“Calm down, Roger.”

“Piss off with your ‘calm down’. Put yourself in my shoes – wherever they are – would
you
be calm with someone’s murder pinned to you? Well? Would you bollocks.”

“What car do you drive?”

“Sierra.”

“What year?”

“Ninety-five.”

“Seats?”

“Four.”

Shelby cursed under his breath. “What material?”

“Why don’t you tell me what fibres you found on her clothing, I’ll just agree with you and we can move onto the next load of shit you’ve got lined up.” He slouched in his chair. “If I did kill her,” Shelby sat up, “don’t you think I would have cleaned the inside of my car to remove her fibres from them? Or if I was really clever, I could have used one of those polythene seat covers that mechanics use.” He shook his head, rubbed his fingertips. “If you find fibres belonging to a Sierra on her clothes, bully for you, it proves she rode in a Sierra, it doesn’t prove she rode in
my
Sierra.” Shelby’s face remained expressionless. “It’s in the car park, impound it and SOCO it.”

“Already done, Roger.” Shelby flicked the corner of a file with a fingernail.

“So what’s with the stupid questions then?”

“Answers, that’s what’s with the questions.”

Suddenly Roger beamed. “I had a pair of underpants go missing.”

“What?”

“It all makes sense now.”

Shelby said, “What the hell are you blabbing on about?”

“I know where Weston got my pubic hair. You can ask Lenny Firth.”

“Ask Firth what?” Shelby couldn’t understand where this was going.

“Last time I played squash with Lenny Firth, we got back to the locker room and a pair of my underpants had been stolen.”

Shelby barely managed to conceal a smile, but he got the impression Roger detected it anyway.

“Go on and ask him if you don’t believe me.” He sat back quickly and folded his arms like a chastised child, and it wouldn’t have surprised Shelby if he stuck his tongue out.

“Someone stole a pair of your underpants from the locker room?”

“Correct.”

“Why would they do that?”

Roger faced forward. “To plant evidence on a fucking corpse? I thought it was someone taking the piss at first, and eventually I forgot about it; but it all makes sense now.”

“To you maybe.”

“Weston must’ve rooted around in my locker, stole things that didn’t belong to him, and then planted them on the body. I think that makes a whole shit-load of sense. Don’t you?”

“Incredible, I’d call it. Weston stealing your pubic hair?”

“That it belonged to me hasn’t been established yet.”

“I’m assuming that it’s yours since your fingerprints and your name and number have been found around the scene. A fair assumption, wouldn’t you agree?”

Roger said nothing.

“So, Weston placed your fingerprints at the scene as well, did he? Explain it to me. Go on, I’m all ears.”

“Tell me and then we’ll both know. But someone sure as hell did, didn’t they?”

“Yes. You!”

Roger offered a weak laugh. “You know, this whole thing is preposterous. You’ll accuse me of killing Sally Delaney next.”

Shelby stopped flicking the file. He blinked, sat up straight and watched the smile fall off Roger’s face. “Did you?”

“No! I did not.”

“They were both stabbed in the neck.”

“So you’re sharing info with me now, huh. Hoping I’ll slip that little nugget into the interview somewhere? Well, I didn’t know Nicky was stabbed in the neck—”

“But if you
did
kill her, Sally I mean, the scene’s messed up now; you’ve contaminated it since you were there to examine that scene. You had legitimate access,” Shelby suggested.

“Ah, but I didn’t do Nicky’s scene, did I?”

“Exactly. And we found your evidence at Nicky’s scene.”

“If I wanted to corrupt that evidence, supposing I did kill Nicky – which I did not, I would have volunteered to do her scene with Chris.”

“No, no; Chris Hutchinson said you had other commitments. Like visiting Alice, we’ve since learned.”

“If I had killed Nicky Bridgestock, I would have gone to the scene to nullify the evidence. If I’d wanted to ruin the fingerprint theory, I would’ve accepted Chris’s invitation to do the PolyLight.”

“Your marks were already at the bureau by then.”

“That’s my proof! How would I
know
that?”

“But even if you visited Nicky’s scene, you couldn’t eradicate your name, number and hair, could you?”

Roger sat back in his flimsy plastic chair, sweat glowing on his forehead. “If I was going to kill Nicky Bridgestock, why would I write my details on her hand and then kill her?”

Shelby kept the distance between them constant; he leaned forward, laced his fingers and grinned an old dog grin, eyes twinkling. “Double bluff.”

“Bollocks. I’ve heard of kids doing that sort of thing with graffiti, but come on, this is murder. I wouldn’t do it, Graham. I wouldn’t take the risk.”

“I don’t think she was your intended victim. Maybe you met her in Wakefield, exchanged numbers and then you ran her home. You wanted sex then, and maybe she did something to offend you, just as you were close to penetration. And you lost it, Roger, you lost it big style and you stabbed her in the neck!”

“
I
did not!”

“It’s rough, I grant you. But I was hoping you’d fill out the details for me.”

“Fuck, Shelby, make ‘em up. You’re pretty good at storytelling.”

Chris found Firth in the Major Incident Room. It was a large office attached to the briefing room, and set up specifically to deal with the murder of Nicky Bridgestock and nothing else. When the investigation was complete, the room would be mothballed, HOLMES 2 would be shut down and the team disbanded back to whatever division from which they had been abstracted, resuming work of a more routine nature.

Taped to the Incident Room walls were plans of Nicky’s house, maps of the surrounding district, dates, times, names, associates, her recent whereabouts, her last known activities – everything that was known about the short life of Nicky Bridgestock. And next to the whiteboard at the head of the room, there was a blown up photograph of the girl herself, smiling, happy and young.

And dead.

“Lenny, have you got any news about the interview yet?” Chris asked.

“Nope, not a sausage.”

“Well,” he whispered, “I think it’s only fair to go and tell his wife what’s going on. It’s four o’clock; he’s due home in an hour and when he doesn’t show, it’s going to worry her.”