Blood Relative (3 page)

I managed to get Mariana to a dining chair, well away from Andrew’s body. I guided her with a hand in the small of her back, where there wasn’t any blood. Aside from that, I didn’t touch her. I didn’t put my arms around her to comfort her. I told myself I was doing only what my lawyer had told me. But it was more a case of self-preservation. I didn’t want to be implicated in whatever had happened here. If only I’d known what was going to happen over the next hours, days, weeks, months, I’d have let the evidence and implications look after themselves, taken Mariana in my arms and pressed her as close to me as I could, just to feel her against me. But I didn’t, and I’ve regretted it ever since.

Mariana was settled now, still very passive, staring blankly into space. I pulled up a chair, sat down and tried to talk to her, but she didn’t even seem to be hearing me. We were still there a few minutes later, as silent and still as two showroom dummies, when there was a sharp rap on the door.

The police, it turned out, had got there before the ambulance. Two cars arrived in quick succession: a pair of uniformed officers in one, two detectives in the other. When he saw Mariana, the senior of the two detectives called up his station and asked for a third car and a female PC. And that was just the start.

We were both arrested and read our rights. I imagine that for some people the words of the police caution must be part of their everyday lives, as familiar as their name and address, or the words to ‘Happy Birthday’. But I’m not one of them. As the constable intoned, ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence,’ I could barely credit that he was talking to me. When I said, ‘But I haven’t done anything,’ he didn’t even try to disguise his scepticism.

Once that was done, we were asked to give our version of events. I refused to talk without a lawyer present. I also pointed out as strongly as I could that Mariana was incapable of understanding anything that was said to her, let alone responding with a coherent answer. Finally, the police realized there was nothing to be gained by trying to get any more out of us there. One of them led me down to a police car and bundled me in the back. Mariana was taken to another car, accompanied by the female constable.

By that point our house was already making the transition from a home to a police crime scene. An ambulance was parked by the door, its two-man crew chatting to one another as they waited for permission to remove Andrew’s body. Inside the building, a pathologist was crouched over the corpse, while white-suited scene-of-crime officers got to work on the gory evidence.

We left them all behind as we were driven away. Mariana’s police car was ahead of mine. Just as we were passing through the gates, I saw her turn her head and look back, whether towards me, the house, or something quite different, I don’t know. Her face was caught wide-eyed in our headlights. Mariana’s beauty, her self-confidence and her once unbreakable spirit had all deserted her. She looked strained, helpless, frightened, with the particular fear of an animal or small child that cannot comprehend what is being done to it, still less do anything to change its circumstances.

I barely recognized her.

4

Jamie Monkton was right. We were taken to York police station, a modernist seventies block hidden away behind the Victorian walls of an old army barracks. The words North Yorkshire Police were written across the front in white sans-serif capitals.

As I arrived I caught a brief glimpse of Mariana’s back as she was led away by the WPC. I was booked into custody by a uniformed sergeant and told I could have someone informed that I was being detained at the station. I gave him the name of my business partner Nick Church. The sergeant then offered me a copy of the Code of Practices governing police treatment of suspects under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and informed me of my right to consult a solicitor, free of charge.

‘My lawyer should be getting here any minute,’ I said.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Now we need to fill in a risk-assessment form.’ Even in the nick you can’t get away from health and safety.

He asked me whether I was currently taking medication of any kind, would need to see a doctor, or suffered from any form of psychiatric illness. Then he told me to take off all my clothes except my socks and underpants. He also asked for my watch and mobile phone. They would all, he said, be needed for forensic examination. I didn’t bother to protest or plead my innocence. But I remember, very clearly, a sudden pang of fear that somehow some of Andy’s blood might have got onto me and that this would then be used to claim that I was there at the time of the murder. That was immediately followed by a spasm of guilt that my first thought was to save my own skin, rather than think of the far greater trouble that Mariana was in.

I was given a rough, grey blanket to wrap myself in and led away to a cell. I am not someone who normally suffers from claustrophobia, but when the steel door was closed and locked, imprisoning me, it was all I could do to slow my breathing and force myself to overcome the near hysterical surge of fear and panic. I lay down on the solid, padded bench that ran along one wall, closed my eyes and tried to relax. My confinement, though, was a brief one. Within minutes the door was reopened and Jamie Monkton walked in. He frowned as he saw me shifting into a sitting position, swathed in my blanket.

‘What happened to your clothes?’

‘Taken away as evidence.’

‘Well, they’re not leaving you like that.’

I wasn’t interested in my clothing, or lack of it. All I wanted to know was, ‘Have you seen Mariana? What are they doing with her?’

He shook his head, ‘They’re keeping her under close watch, making sure she doesn’t hurt herself or anything until they can rustle up a police doctor to examine her. But they’ll need a shrink, too, if they want to section her.’

‘Section her? But that’s for loonies, isn’t it?’

Monkton sat down next to me on the bench. ‘Listen, Pete, you’ve got to face facts. I don’t know what’s happened to Mariana, but she’s acting, well … unusually, to put it mildly. And if they do charge her, some kind of insanity plea may just be her best line of defence.’

‘Why does she need a line of defence?’

‘You know the answer to that question.’

‘No I don’t! She hasn’t done anything. She can’t have. I was with her in the office all morning and she was fine. I spoke to her mid-afternoon and it was a perfectly normal conversation. How could she go from that to … ?’

‘I don’t know, Pete. Better leave that to the experts to decide. I just wanted you to know, though, I was right about the girl at the party. She does do crime. You and Mariana are each going to need a lawyer, so she’s gone to get her boss. They’ll be here soon. Meanwhile, I think they want to get you sorted for a photograph, DNA swab, all that kind of thing, OK?’

‘I suppose. I mean, it’s not like I have any choice in the matter, right?’

‘Afraid not. But I will insist they get you something to wear.’

‘Just make sure Mariana’s all right.’

‘I’ll try,’ Monkton said. ‘You OK?’

‘I’ll live.’

He stood up, gave me a quick, almost embarrassed pat on the shoulder and asked to be let out. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I was given a pair of jeans intended for someone considerably shorter and fatter than me, and denied a belt to hold them up. They also found me a white shirt, made from some sort of synthetic fibre that made me feel as if I were wrapped in a plastic bag. I was asked to fill in a form giving my consent to being photographed and swabbed, then I was taken away to have the procedures done. I spent another twenty minutes back in the cell, and then I was taken away again.

5

The interview room was featureless, just a box painted an indeterminate pale grey with darker grey carpets; a rectangular table with a voice recorder and a couple of microphones; two metal-framed plastic chairs placed by each of the long sides of the table; a camera on the far wall pointing down into the room.

I was sitting on one side of the table, facing the camera. A uniformed cop stood on the far side of the room, watching me, saying nothing. Then the door of the room opened and a woman came in. She was Asian, with huge brown eyes emphasized by dramatic make-up and lips painted a glossy, almost liquid crimson. She wore a short, close-fitting, sleeveless dress, with sheer tights and teetering heels, all black, and as she walked up to the table, the room was filled with a heady, spicy scent.

‘I’m Samira Khan,’ she said. ‘And in case you’re wondering, no, I don’t normally dress like this for work. I was at the Monktons’ dinner party. Jamie said you might need some help.’

‘What about Mariana? Is someone looking after her?’

‘My senior partner, Mr Iqbal,’ said Khan. ‘He insisted.’

She looked at the policeman. ‘You can go now,’ she said, like a young duchess dismissing a footman. ‘I need some time alone with my client.’

Once we were alone, Khan sat down in the chair next to mine.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘we don’t have much time, so pay attention. You are about to be interviewed by Detective Chief Inspector Simon Yeats. He’s good and he knows it, but remember: you don’t have to tell him anything. If there’s a question you don’t like, don’t answer it. Don’t let him put words into your mouth. Words can easily be twisted. You say something one way now, it sounds very different when it’s being read out in court.’

‘But I don’t have anything to hide. I haven’t done anything,’ I said, thinking that she at least would believe me.

She gave me a smile like a mother indulging a foolish child.

‘You think that would make a difference?’

I was about to reply when footsteps sounded just outside the door. Samira Khan raised a finger to silence me as Yeats entered the room. He was about my age, early forties, wearing a dark-blue suit with a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, tie loosely knotted. He was shorter than me, but fit-looking: the kind of man who plays squash three times a week and doesn’t let the younger guys at the club knock him down the ladder.

‘Good evening, Ms Khan,’ he said, draping his jacket over the back of his chair.

‘Chief Inspector,’ she replied, coolly, but I caught an undercurrent in her voice: whether it was hostility, something sexual or a bit of both, I couldn’t tell. They knew each other pretty well, though, that was for sure.

Yeats sat down, placed a notebook on the table in front of him and smiled. ‘Ms Khan has a very low opinion of our working methods,’ he said. He had a voice like mine: middle-class, educated, but with an unmistakable trace of Yorkshire. ‘But I can assure you, Mr Crookham, at the risk of stating the obvious, that we take cases of murder very seriously. We play them by the book. So let’s proceed.’

He pressed a button on the recorder and stated the names of all the people in the room as well as the date and time. Then he repeated the words of the caution. Before he could ask a question I said, ‘I want to speak to my wife.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Mr Crookham,’ said Yeats, his tone more formal now that the tape was running. ‘She’s currently being examined by a doctor.’

‘Is the lawyer with her?’

‘She has the proper legal representation, yes.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘That’s not a question I can answer. Nor would I tell you, even if I could. You are a potential suspect in a murder case, Mr Crookham. I think we should concentrate on that. So perhaps you could start by telling me exactly what you were doing in the hours leading up to the arrival of the first officers at your house, shortly before nine o’clock this evening.’

I looked at Khan. She gave me a nod.

‘Where do you want me to start?’ I asked.

Yeats gave me another smile, more like a friendly GP asking a patient to describe his symptoms than a copper trying to nail a murderer. ‘Just talk me through the day, why don’t you?’ he said.

‘All right. Well …’ I stopped for a second to gather my thoughts. All the normal, everyday things that had happened earlier in the day seemed to belong to another lifetime, lived by a different person. ‘Mariana and I left for work at about half past eight this morning. We work together, at our architectural practice Crookham Church. Our office is in Archbishop’s Row.’

‘Very nice area,’ said Yeats. ‘Business must be good then.’

‘It’s holding up OK, yes.’

‘So you drove to work … Together?’

‘No, separate cars. We knew we’d be coming home separately.’

‘Could you tell me exactly what cars you were both driving?’

‘Certainly: I drive a Range Rover Sport, Mariana has a Mini Cooper S.’

‘And these vehicles are currently at your house?’

‘Yes, in the garage.’

‘And your brother, did he have a car?’

‘He has … had, an old Alfa, the one parked in our drive.’

Yeats made a note, then looked up and said, ‘So, how long were you at your office?’

‘Till about one. I had lunch early, at my desk. Then I had to leave for a 3.30 site visit in Alderley Edge: just a routine meeting with my clients and the contractor.’

‘Can you give me the names of these clients?’

‘Mr and Mrs Norris … Joey Norris.’

‘Like the footballer?’

‘No. The actual footballer, and his wife Michelle.’

Yeats raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and went, ‘Humph.’ He was impressed. People always were. I wondered, a little bitterly, whether he was tempted to stop the interview and ask me the same question everyone else did: ‘What are they really like?’

Instead, Yeats just asked, ‘They can confirm you were there?’

‘They could, but I’m sure they’d much rather not get involved with all this. I can give you Joey’s agent’s number, or the contractor. His name’s Mick Horton; he can tell you everything you need to know. And you can work out where people have been from the location of their mobile phones, isn’t that right?’

Khan frowned. She didn’t look happy that I might be about to volunteer information.