The Order of Things (37 page)

Suttle took one last suck of clean air and stepped across to the bed. Adrenalin scalded his veins. He’d carried Lizzie a million times before. She weighed nothing. Her wrists and ankles were bound with cable ties. He scooped her up from the bed and backed out of the bedroom, then turned and ran along the corridor. The other two officers were at the foot of the stairs. The air here was still clean. Suttle followed him out of the house, laid Lizzie gently down.

‘Get rid of the ties,’ he said.

One of the officers ran to his car for a knife while the other watched Suttle giving Lizzie mouth to mouth. He could find no pulse, no sign of life.

Suttle nodded at Lizzie’s chest.

‘CPR.’

Already kneeling beside Lizzie’s body, the officer began a series of compressions, both hands flat on her chest, forcing blood around her body.

‘Where’s the fucking ambulance?’

‘Coming.’

Suttle bent to Lizzie’s face again. Her lips were swollen. He put his cheek to her mouth, desperate for signs of life. Nothing.

The fire had taken hold now, and a glance up at the window told Suttle they’d barely intervened in time. Long fingers of flame were reaching out through the window, eating the curtains, showering sparks into the darkness of the night air. Then, suddenly close, came the wail of sirens, at least two, and Suttle bent to Lizzie again, trying to will her back to life.

‘Please,’ he implored her. ‘Please. Just for me.’

Forty

F
RIDAY, 20
J
UNE 2014, 03.15

Gemma Caton and Michala Haas were arrested for breaking and entering in the back garden of Lizzie’s house. Caton tried to attack one of the two arresting officers with a half-brick from a spoil heap beside the garage but was restrained without difficulty. Pressed for an account of what they’d been up to inside the property, she’d said nothing. When Michala showed signs of wanting to help, Caton had silenced her with a single look.

Driven to Heavitree police station, they were booked into the Custody Centre and lodged in overnight cells. The custody sergeant took the precaution of keeping the cells a distance apart.

D/S Jimmy Suttle arrived from the hospital an hour and a half later. He stank of smoke and didn’t say very much. Having checked that Caton and Haas would be available for interview first thing, he left the police station and drove to the Major Incident Room at Middlemoor. It was nearly seven o’clock in the morning, the first trickle of rush-hour traffic heading in towards the city centre. Suttle drove past the line of cars waiting at the lights on the roundabout. Life had become abruptly unreal. He was totally spaced out. Did they have commuters on Mars?

DI Carole Houghton was waiting for him in her office at the MIR. She gave him a hug and said she was surprised he wasn’t still up at the hospital.

‘They’re doing what they can,’ Suttle said. ‘It’s fifty-fifty.’

‘You should be there with her.’

‘I know. And I’m not.’

He gave Houghton his personal phone and explained how he’d eavesdropped on the bedside conversations before Caton had done her best to kill his ex-wife.

‘I’m thinking Haas jumped the gun, boss. Lizzie wasn’t quite dead when she set fire to the place. They were out of there before Caton had the chance to finish her off.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘Too right.’ Suttle shook his head.

At the hospital they’d taken him aside with a warning that if Lizzie survived he might have to expect brain damage. CPR had kept her blood circulating until the ambulance had arrived but there were no guarantees. Her heart had stopped working and a full twenty minutes had elapsed before the paramedics got the defibrillator on her and shocked her heart back into life.

‘You’re telling me you waited a while before going into the property?’

‘I did, boss.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Lizzie was doing a number on the woman. She knew the phone was still live. She knew I was probably listening. She was after an account. That’s the way she works.’

‘And you, Jimmy? Is that the way you work?’

‘I knew it was what she wanted.’

‘At the price of her life?’

‘Hopefully not.’

Houghton nodded in mute agreement. This was way beyond any call of duty, she seemed to be implying. No matter how difficult their relationship, Lizzie was still a human being.

‘It’s not about the relationship, boss. It’s about Lizzie. She put herself in this position. She needed to see it through.’

‘That’s harsh.’

‘You’re right, boss, but I got her out of there, didn’t I? That was me in the bedroom, me carrying her downstairs, me giving her mouth-to-mouth.’

‘And this is me suggesting you left it very late. Not on the record, Jimmy. This goes no further. But sometimes there are steps we shouldn’t take, risks we shouldn’t run. She may yet die. That would be a very great shame, as I’m sure you’d agree.’

‘Of course, boss. Do me for negligence. Do me for whatever you like. I did what I did. And the way I’m looking at it, once she comes round, she’ll say thank you.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

They gazed at each other. Then came the inevitable question.

‘So what
did
she say? Caton?’

‘She killed Reilly. She admitted it. There’s lots of bollocks about the spirits and Caton acting as some kind of agent, but that’s the drift. We were right first time, boss. It was a ritual killing. It’s all there.’ He nodded at his phone. ‘I wrote down as much as I could remember after the ambulance took Lizzie away. Contemporaneous notes. Best I could do.’

Houghton was looking at the phone while Suttle sorted through his notes. They had the whole morning to prepare for the interviews with Caton and Haas. Given Lizzie’s involvement, there was no way Suttle should be part of these interviews, but she wanted him to brief Myers and Rosie Tremayne.

‘What about Bentner, boss?’

‘We talk to him first. Hope he sees it our way. Let me go through those notes before we put Bentner in the interview room. You’ll be watching the video feed. We’ll shoot for a twelve o’clock start. Get some sleep. I’ll brief Nandy myself.’

It was a colleague in A & E who broke the news to Oona about the overnight admission to the ICU. He was Irish too, an acting registrar from County Carlow.

‘Woman called Lizzie Hodson. Thought you ought to know.’

Oona was preparing a line of trolleys. She toyed with a box of scalpels.

‘What’s the matter with her?’

‘Heart failure after suffocation.’

‘Shit. And you’re telling me she’s still alive?’

‘Just. The cop may have got to her in time. The jury’s out.’

‘Cop? You got a name by any chance?’

‘Afraid not. Either way, he’s probably down for a medal. Just thought you’d like to know.’

‘Great.’ Oona forced a smile. ‘Thanks.’

Suttle got his head down in one of the rooms at headquarters reserved for overnight visitors. He slept fitfully, waking from time to time to try and still the voices in his head. It was Caton, always Caton. Sometimes she was dressed as a squaw. Other times she was stark naked, plodding heavily after him, her head down, a bent, menacing figure growing slowly bigger. It was the worst kind of nightmare, denied any kind of resolution, and when he finally surfaced it was to find Luke Golding at the door.

He knew what had happened. Houghton had given him the gist.

‘You should have phoned me, boss.’

‘Bollocks. It was three in the morning.’

‘I meant afterwards.’

‘Why?’

‘It can’t have been …’ he shrugged ‘… a riot of laughs.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘Anything I can do?’

‘Yeah.’ Suttle was rubbing his eyes. ‘Give Oona a bell. Tell her I did my best.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Just tell her. See what she makes of it.’

Houghton had scheduled the next Bentner interview for midday. Suttle washed and shaved with one of the overnight kits before phoning Lizzie’s mother in Portsmouth. He briefly explained what had happened and gave her contact details at the hospital. If she wanted to come down to be with her daughter, she was welcome to stay at his flat in Exmouth. She was shocked. She’d be down as soon as possible. She said she’d find somewhere closer to the hospital to stay.

Suttle drove across to Heavitree. Rosie Tremayne and Colin Myers were waiting for him in an office off the Custody Suite. Houghton had already briefed them about events overnight.

Rosie had just finished reading the notes Suttle had made.

‘That must have been a tough thing to do.’

‘It was. Tougher for Lizzie, though.’

Rosie nodded, held his gaze, said nothing. She thinks I played God, Suttle thought. And she’s probably right.

The interview started early. Suttle had given Bentner’s solicitor partial disclosure. He’d taken a call from Lizzie. She had intruders in the house. One of them had been Gemma Caton. The phone had stayed on. He’d monitored what followed while he raced into Exeter. Mercifully, he’d been able to intervene in time to get his ex-wife out of the burning bedroom. God willing, she’d be up for a full recovery.

The solicitor made some notes and then enquired what charges these women would now be facing.

‘They were arrested for breaking and entering,’ Suttle said, ‘but I imagine it’ll go a lot further than that. They tried to burn her alive. That’s arson and attempted murder in my book.’

Bentner was waiting in the interview room when Tremayne and Myers arrived. Ten minutes with his solicitor appeared to have changed him. He seemed less defensive. Some of the wariness, the gloom, appeared to have lifted. Suttle was monitoring the interview on a video feed, curious about this change of mood.

Bentner wanted to know more about the events of last night. Tremayne filled in the gaps in the account Bentner had got from his solicitor. A fellow officer had been in the happy position of eavesdropping on more or less everything. Ms Caton, it seemed, had been agitated about a woman called Kelly Willmott. She believed Lizzie had learned information from Michala Haas that would have been valuable to the police. Hence the need to silence her.

Bentner said nothing. Then he wanted to know more about Lizzie Hodson.

‘I understand she’s some kind of journalist. Am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re telling me she knew Michala?’

‘Yes. She had dinner with Michala and Ms Caton earlier this week.’

Mention of Michala Haas won Bentner’s total attention. It appeared to be news that she too had been at Lizzie’s house last night.

‘What was she doing there?’

‘We don’t know yet. It appears that she may have been in the property before Ms Caton arrived.’

‘Staying, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re telling me she’s here? In a cell? Arrested?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you talked to her yet?’

‘No. We have that pleasure to come.’ Tremayne leaned forward over the desk. ‘You know we had an opportunity to listen to the conversation last night. Mainly between Caton and Lizzie. That conversation throws a great deal of light on what happened to your partner, Harriet. Before we go any further, Mr Bentner, we’d like to give you the opportunity of sharing your version of events.’

‘I’ve already told you.’

‘You told us you went to Tesco in the middle of the night. We checked. That turned out to be a lie. You were never in the store. You also told us that you got a call just before midnight. Which was when you decided to go shopping. You said the call was from Harriet. It certainly came from her phone, but we suspect it might not have been her.’ She softened the suggestion with a smile. ‘Can you help us here?’

Bentner thought hard about the question. Then he asked about Michala. What had she said last night?

‘Very little.’

‘But she’s charged too?’

‘We think she laid the fire. Then lit it. Watched what happened afterwards. That’s certainly arson. It may also turn out to be murder.’ Tremayne paused. ‘Why Michala? Why is she implicated?’

Bentner shook his head, refused to comment. He seemed to be back in a world of his own, but Tremayne had definitely touched a nerve.
Michala
, Suttle thought.
It’s all about Michala
.

Tremayne, it turned out, shared exactly the same thought. Without binding
Buzzard
to any definite offer, she hinted that a full account from Bentner might help Michala’s defence in court. Evidentially, she hadn’t got a prayer. Arson alone was an extremely serious offence. At the very least she could be looking at four years behind bars.

‘A full account?’

‘What actually happened down in Lympstone. Before and afterwards. Given what we know, what we can prove, we think we can make a decent case for you killing Harriet Reilly. That may not be true. Only you know.’ She shrugged, smiled again, then settled back in the chair, her arms folded over her chest. Over to you.

Bentner was conferring with his solicitor. Suttle, watching the feed from an office down the corridor, caught the tiny nods, hers first, then his. He turned back to Tremayne. He looked, if anything, relieved.

‘You’re right about the call I took that Saturday night,’ he said. ‘It was on Harriet’s phone but it came from Gemma.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said for me to come at once.’

‘Why?’

‘I’d no idea. That’s all she said. Come at once.’

‘And?’

‘I drove over there.’

‘Where?’

‘To Lympstone.’

‘What did you find?’

‘I found Harriet upstairs. She’d been butchered. Torn apart. You’ve seen the photos. That’s the way she was.’

‘And Gemma?’

‘She wasn’t around. She’d gone.’

‘Michala?’

‘I’ve no idea about Michala. She wasn’t there either.’

‘So why didn’t you phone us? Why didn’t you get in touch?’

‘Because life is never as simple as that.’

‘You’re telling me this thing was planned? That you knew it was going to happen?’

‘I knew it was possible. Not the way she did it. Not like that. But I knew the way Gemma thought about –’ he shrugged, ‘– us.’

‘Us?’