The Reckless Engineer (21 page)

Jack looked distressed and clearly troubled by the revelations of his son’s and Marianne’s involvement. Jeremy observed Harry touching Jack’s hand to remind him of his advice not to admit to or say anything that Blackmoon could give in evidence at a trial.

Smith slapped date-time stamped photographs on the table in front of them at regular intervals as he related his tale.

‘Peter showed up about a quarter of an hour before 5 p.m., driving his Audi, at the Marine car park. He got out of the car as you came out of the office building, but stopped when he saw Michelle following you. He got back in his car and followed Michelle and you out of the car park. As you did so our basketball player, who had been parked around the corner, also picked up his tail behind Peter. We joined the tail a few cars behind him. Quite a procession.’

Smith was now trying to cover up his laughter by taking a sip of water, which he nearly choked on, bursting into a fit of coughing.

‘Excuse me.’ He turned away from them, covering his mouth with a handkerchief.

‘You all right, boss?’ David patted his back softly. He gestured to a passing secretary with one hand, raising his bottle of water.

You’re not the only one to find this funny, mate.
Jeremy chuckled to himself.

Smith recovered and resumes his tale.

‘Yeah. Well, Michelle and you drove to the Morrisons supermarket in Fratton and headed over to Miss Williams’ house shortly after that. Peter followed you and remained in his car, watching the house parked on the opposite side of the street. Mr. Dragon Tattoo kept watch from a distance, but lost interest and left about 7:30. I parked close to the entrance to the street and returned to the watch from our base opposite the Williams house on foot.’

The female receptionist interrupted them to bring in fresh bottles of water and glasses. Everybody poured himself a fresh drink.

‘Everything remained quiet till about 10:30 p.m.. As it fell dark Peter got out of the car a few times and paced up and down the street. Finally, about 10:30 p.m. he got tired of waiting for you and walked up to the house with a determined stride through a steady drizzle that had been falling for about an hour by then. It was dark and the house was now dimly lit. Through the living room window we could see Miss Williams and you. Peter must have seen something that clearly upset him. He ran back to his car and drove off, his tires skidding.’

Smith paused.

Jeremy’s mind flashed back to his drive in Peter’s car, the young boy taking his anger out on the pedal of his car.

‘We were relaxing by the electric fire. Shit! Peter would have seen us together through the window.’ Jack wiped his face with both hands.

‘At 11:03 p.m. you came out of the house, kissed Miss Williams good night, and drove off in the direction of your house. All the lights in the house went off at 11:26 p.m. As I then walked to my car and drove off from our watch I thought I saw Miss Marianne driving back in Peter’s car. Peter could have been in the passenger seat, but I wasn’t sure.’

Smith closed his logbooks and looked up to find the three of them listening with consumed attention.

The office suddenly felt stuffy. Jeremy noticed only then that it was not air conditioned, though the air-conditioning units were visible. It was aired through windows left slightly ajar. David broke the silence by walking to the closed window of the room and propping it open as if he had read Jeremy’s mind. A cool draft blew through the room.

‘Could you say whether Peter or Mr. Model could have posted anything through the door?’ Harry asked, as if suddenly brought back to life by the cool breeze.

‘Well, yes, it is possible though I did not especially see it being done. I could have easily missed it. The front path to the door was only dimly lit by the yellowish streetlight and the drizzle was heavy at times. Of course anybody could have returned to the door again after we left and introduced the chocolates to the scene of the crime. We weren’t commissioned to watch any of them, you see; only to watch Mr. Connor’s contacts with Michelle Williams. So when Miss Williams went to sleep, we left.’

Harry nodded. Jack had sunk under the table again.

‘We picked up our tail again at dawn, about six the next morning, with myself returning to Michelle’s house because of the activities the night before, and David picking up Mr. Connor’s tail at the McAllen-Connor house. The activities of interest resumed shortly after 7:00 a.m. again.’

Jeremy could see that Jack was finding this a difficult experience. He wondered why Harry had though it necessary to bring Jack along for this. Was Harry keeping an eye on his reactions?

‘Mr. Connor and his wife left the house for work driving the Polo and the BMW SUV respectively; Mrs. Connor left about 7:15 a.m. and Mr. Connor, about 8 a.m. with me on his tail,’ David volunteered helpfully.

‘In the meantime, the activities of real interest started at Miss Williams’ house, where I was on my watch. A couple of minutes past 7 a.m. the big man with the skull and scorpion tattoos drove up in his white van and knocked on Miss Williams’ door.’ Smith turned their attention back to himself. ‘He rang the doorbell a few times and then looked through the post box once or twice. Then he reached under the mattress and let himself in with a spare key.’

This brute was right there during the timeframe of Michelle’s death.
He’s got to have had something to do with this murder,
Jeremy thought.

‘Michelle left that key there all the time. I should have stopped her,’ Jack said.

‘So Michelle Williams was not available to answer the door at 7 a.m. on the day she died?’ Harry voiced the question they all wanted asked.

‘Well, we have pondered this ourselves. She might have called out and asked the guy to let himself in, especially since he was looking in through the letterbox. Michelle Williams normally set off to work in her car about 8:15 in the morning. I got the impression that, having left her car parked in the Marine car park overnight, she was expecting Mr. Connor to pick her up the next morning. She might have thought the ring on the door was Mr. Connor’s.’

‘Yes, I was going to pick Michelle up on my way to work that morning, but I forgot because I had had a fight and a night of cold friction with Caitlin. I was late and drove to work in a state of great stress and sleep deprivation,’ Jack explained.

All this corresponded to Caitlin’s account of events also, Jeremy noted.

‘I realized Michelle wasn’t in only about an hour after I got in. I rang her a few times to ask her to take a taxi in, but my calls went unanswered. I waited and tried her for a while longer, thinking she might be in the shower or she might have gone out for milk or something. When I couldn’t get through for over an hour I decided to drive over. I left Marine about 10:05.’

Harry warned Jack with a touch on his arm again.

‘I’d like to return to the timeline at Michelle Williams’ house again. Mr. Smith, what happened after Mr. Skull let himself into the victim’s house a few minutes after 7 a.m.? Did he have anything that looked like a box of chocolates with him?’

‘Well, Mr. Stavers, the skull & scorpion guy let himself into Williams’ house closing the door behind him, but leaving the key in the lock. He wasn’t carrying anything in his hands, but he was wearing a black leather bomber jacket half zipped up. A box could have easily been under it. I wasn’t specially looking out for such a “weapon”, you see. What I did notice, however, was the hand gun stuck into the back of his jeans.’

Everybody nodded. It was a shame that McAllen had warned Smith off Skull after the first photographs. Save for the one photo of Cossack, he had proceeded to photograph only Jack and Michelle after that.

‘Chocolates or no chocolates, Mr. Skull and Scorpion did not stay inside the Williams house for more than ten or fifteen minutes. He rushed out of the house, banging the door behind him. He locked the door, put the key back under the rug, and ran to his van that he had parked a few houses down the road—right about here—and drove off. No one has seen him after that. As you know the police are looking for him, but he has vanished after that sighting.’

‘Or no one has admitted to having seen him,’ Jeremy suggested.

Smith shrugged.

‘He could have gone into the house, killed the girl by force-feeding her chocolates at gunpoint, arranged the chocolates around the house, and run. Or he could have gone in looking for Michelle, found the girl dead, and done a runner, vanishing with whatever money he had. Or he could have gone in and been told to leave by a Michelle very much alive and well,’ Harry deduced.

‘I’ve got nothing that indicates which one.’ Smith pushed out his lower lip and shook his head.

‘Well, the next person to appear on the scene was you, Mr. Connor. You pulled up in front of Michelle Williams’ house and let yourself in.’

‘Like I said, when I could not get Michelle on the phone, I drove over to pick her up in person,’ Jack explained, undeterred by Harry’s warnings. ‘When she didn’t answer the doorbell, I let myself in. I had a key. I thought she might have stepped out for something and I was going to wait for her—she often steps out to buy fresh almond croissants and milk for breakfast. I had missed breakfast myself that day. So I went straight into the kitchen and made myself a bacon sandwich and coffee. I then went into the living room, nibbling on my sandwich, and that’s when I found her on the couch in front of the TV. The TV wasn’t on. She was in the leftmost seat of the three-seat sofa, with the box of chocolates on the middle seat, her head rolled over and fallen over to her right as if she had fallen asleep. When I tried to wake her, her head snapped forward and her upper body fell over.’

Jack paused and drank a full glass of water. This was much the same story that Jack had told Jeremy during the drive down to Blackgold.

‘I was horrified when I realized she was dead. I panicked and felt nauseous. There was a big houseplant near the window. I stumbled over to it and threw up into the pot. I ran out and was sick all over the garden again. Somehow I got my car started and drove around in a daze until I found myself in front of The Mermaid. I’d been under unbelievable pressure for months and months. All I could think was that I needed to get out of there.’

Harry put a hand on Jack’s arm to calm him down.

‘It’s hard to know what to do when faced with such a shock, Jack. Everybody reacts differently.’

‘Well, you were not at that house alone that morning, Mr. Connor. You had Mr. Cigar arriving right behind you.’

They all looked back at him expectantly.

‘Our Mr. Cigar parked his car out of sight down the road and got there behind Mr. Connor on foot. He watched Mr. Connor at the door from behind the neighbour’s front hedge. When Mr. Connor went in he crouched behind the bushes and moved to the living room window to look in. He would have clearly seen whatever you were doing in the living room. You have a witness who can help clear or convict you, Mr. Connor. You just have to find this guy, which I say will not be easy. This guy is good.’

He had to be, Jeremy reckoned. Cossack was a former US marine.

‘He would be a witness to whatever Mr. Connor was doing in the living room around Michelle Williams’ body, true,’ Harry chose his words carefully. ‘But we have to assess his credibility as a witness, know who hired him and what he was doing there. What is the reason that he hasn’t come forward to the police requests?’

Smith shrugged at Harry’s question.

‘Well, to continue, he was looking in through the living room window and ducked back behind the bushes as Mr. Connor ran out. Mr. Connor forgot to close the front door behind him. He could not make it to the gates before he had to throw up, holding onto the apple tree in the garden. As soon as Mr. Connor was out of sight Mr. Cigar rushed in like a panther on the hunt. I myself then decided to follow our friend’s techniques to see what was happening inside the house. So I left my watch point, ran across the street over to the window myself, and peered in. Mr. Cigar was on his mobile phone, a cheap disposable one, and he was cleaning up after Mr. Connor! He had latex gloves on. He put the sandwich away into a shopping bag. He came back out into the garden, dug out the vomit in the garden into a black bin bag, and covered the spot with soil. He must have missed the vomit in the pot of the house plant because Mr. Cigar had to duck back under the bushes when Mr. Connor came up to the window. He didn’t see it.’

Smith took a sip of water from his glass while they listened.

‘I wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing because I could not see Michelle from where I was; the couch she was on had its back to me. By this time her body must have doubled over. Well anyway, back inside, Cigar started going through the papers around the living room carefully and methodically. He first went through the papers on the cabinet against the right wall, and then the papers on the dining table by the window. He seemed to have found what he wanted, a letter inside an envelope neatly ripped open at the top, and a few other sheets of paper, all of which he stuffed into his jacket pocket. Then he tried to break into her laptop and, having failed, set the laptop aside by his bags. He then carefully wiped all traces of his fingerprints off the surfaces. He came out, locked the front door, took the key and exited, taking the laptop, the letters, and the bin bags with him.’