Grimshaw and Martinez arrived back at Middlesbury at lunchtime, with ‘Annie’ in tow. The two officers had made an effort to interview Silvija Wilson’s cousin and his wife up in Manchester, but they had stuck to the same story; that they had known nothing about Annie before receiving a phone call from Wilson begging for a favour. They were bailed pending further inquiries.
Annie still refused to comment. A local translator had ensured that she was fully aware of what was happening to her, and so the following morning she was bundled into the back of a police car, handcuffed to a female police officer. Jorge Martinez had then driven the car back to Middlesbury. It would have made more sense for Grimshaw and Martinez to split the driving between them, but Grimshaw’s reddened eyes suggested that he’d been as good as his word and found at least one pub serving a decent pint, and might not be fit to drive. A green stain on his left leg implied he’d also found a decent chip shop that served mushy peas. For his part, Martinez was dressed in a clean, freshly pressed shirt and trousers, his suit jacket looking as smart as the day before.
As Annie was booked in, the two officers reported to Warren, who was fighting sleep after spending the night awake. Susan had still been in her pyjamas when he’d arrived home the previous evening; something that she only ever did when feeling really ill. The deep shadows under her eyes that morning as he’d got ready for work testified to her own lack of rest.
He forced his attention back to Grimshaw and Martinez, ignoring the acid burn in his gut from too much coffee.
‘I had hoped that the drive home would loosen her tongue a bit,’ said Grimshaw, ‘but nothing’s doing. She’s really tearful, but we can’t get anything out of her. She’s clearly terrified. Hell, she even seemed nervous of Jorge – must be the aftershave.’
Martinez ignored his friend. Unlike Grimshaw, who seemed to have enjoyed a taxpayer-subsidized road trip back to the North West, Martinez was frustrated to have been away from the action.
‘Have the two girls said anything, now that they know we’ve arrested Annie?’ he asked.
Warren shook his head.
‘I haven’t told them yet. I figured I’d wait to see what Annie said first. Now that they’ve been charged, they’ve been moved to remand at the Mount Prison.’
‘We should try and play them off against each other. I reckon the younger one is most likely to crack first,’ said Grimshaw.
‘Let’s not forget the aunt,’ said Hutchinson. ‘She’s been changing her story left, right and centre, every time we pick a new hole in it. I’d say that Annie is a pretty big hole.’
Warren pinched his bottom lip thoughtfully. The three young women were being held separately, to minimize contact between them. Nevertheless, there was a limit to how long that could last in the overcrowded prison system. So far, Wilson had kept her head down, and had wisely decided not to phone her cousin.
‘Right, we’ll speak to Biljana and Malina first, see what they have to say for themselves. If Silvija Wilson is correct, her nieces are protecting this Annie, for whatever reason. Now that we have her in custody, we might be able to persuade them that there’s no point doing so. If they are guilty and Annie was a witness, we may be able to persuade them to cooperate. We can imply that Annie is singing like the proverbial bird, and that they don’t want to be caught in a lie.’
‘What about Silvija Wilson?’ asked Richardson.
‘We’ll bring her in and speak to her afterwards. As Hutch has said, she’s been changing her story repeatedly. It’s clear that her loyalties lie first and foremost with her nieces. I don’t know who this Annie is, but I suspect that if push comes to shove, Wilson will throw her under the bus to protect her family.’
The woman known only as Annie looked small and frightened, as she sat opposite Mags Richardson in interview suite two. Warren watched the interview on the live feed.
According to Martinez and Grimshaw, she’d been scared and unwilling to talk on her journey back from Manchester. Warren wondered if a sympathetic female officer might have more luck. Beside her, an older woman acted as translator. Warren hoped that she too, alongside the female duty solicitor, might have a calming influence.
It wasn’t to be.
The woman answered ‘No comment’ to every question put to her, including her name. The custody sergeant had been forced in the end to list her as ‘Annie’, with no other biographical details.
Warren had faced more than his fair share of obstinate, uncooperative suspects, but this was different. The woman was clearly petrified.
And whatever she was frightened of, it was clearly worse than the prospect of life in prison for murder.
They would have to hope that their other interviewees were more fruitful.
‘Well that was a waste of bloody time,’ opined Moray Ruskin, as he and Warren drove away from the Mount Prison.
The two men had just spent a fruitless two hours trying to persuade Silvija Wilson’s two nieces to open up and admit to what had really happened the day of Stevie Cullen’s murder. So far Friday the 13th had brought nothing but bad luck.
Warren had been hopeful at first. Both women had looked shocked, and then resigned when he told them that they had Annie in custody. Unfortunately, both of them requested the opportunity to speak to their solicitor, and both had returned and made no further comment.
‘Bloody lawyers,’ said Ruskin. ‘I’ll bet they were told to keep their gobs shut until they knew for certain that Annie or their aunt had spilled the beans.’
‘What the hell happened in that room? And why are they keeping quiet? They must realize how much trouble they are in,’ hissed Warren. The question was rhetorical, but Ruskin tried to answer it, regardless.
‘As far as we can tell, there were five people present at the time of the murder, aside from Cullen. I reckon we can rule out the two nail technicians; I can’t see Wilson or the sisters protecting them to the point that they could go to prison.’
Warren agreed; it seemed unlikely.
‘Which leaves the two sisters and Annie,’ said Ruskin. ‘From what we can tell from the security footage, Malina was responding to a disturbance happening in the back room. Does that mean that Cullen was being killed by Biljana or Annie and she went in after the fact, or was she involved in the killing herself? Is she covering for the other two girls, or did she take part?’
‘Maybe we need to be asking who would protect whom? And why did they send Annie away?’ said Warren.
‘The way I see it, there are two reasons to send Annie away,’ said Ruskin. ‘Either she was a witness, and they wanted her gone before she could be interviewed, or she was responsible and they were helping her to escape.’
‘So, who is she then?’ asked Warren again. ‘If their plan worked, she would have got away scot free, leaving the sisters to carry the can. Why would they – and their aunt for that matter – do that?’
‘If their plan worked, we’d still be looking for some mysterious man in a hoodie,’ said Ruskin.
‘That’s true,’ admitted Warren, ‘but as soon as we started picking that story apart, you’d expect them to ditch it and either come up with a new one or tell us what really happened.’
‘Unless, one or both of the sisters were involved in the killing. Then their best bet would be to say nothing, for fear of implicating themselves or their sister. I’ll bet they made a pact to keep their mouth shut.’
‘Unfortunately for them, they didn’t plan what to do if we found Annie,’ said Warren. ‘That’s thrown a real spanner in the works.’
‘They also didn’t count on their aunt blinking first and starting to change her story,’ said Ruskin.
‘I think the weak link is Wilson,’ said Warren. He hoped that she would break today’s run of bad luck.
Silvija Wilson looked exhausted. Warren doubted that she’d slept very much over the past few days. He hoped that the stress of the situation would be enough to make her talk.
‘We have arrested Annie. She’s in our custody. We’ve also recovered a black bag containing a bloodstained uniform. We’ll be performing forensic tests to see who was wearing that uniform.’
Wilson deflated. She clearly hadn’t wanted to risk calling her cousin now that she knew that her calls were being monitored. The news was obviously an unwelcome surprise.
‘It’s time to tell us what really happened, Silvija,’ said Warren, his tone gentle. ‘You aren’t helping your nieces now. And they aren’t helping themselves.’
Wilson’s eyes were filled with tears.
‘At the moment, all we know is that at some point, Stevie Cullen was murdered in the back room of your massage parlour. You claim that this Annie was responsible for his death, but you won’t tell us who she is or what she means to you. If you and your nieces are lying to protect her, you need to tell us why.’
The tears were now trickling down Wilson’s cheeks.
‘Your two nieces won’t tell us what really happened. Either they still think they can hide what happened that day, or they are hiding their own involvement. Regardless, as it stands, they have both been charged with murder. If they really had nothing to do with it, then you need to tell us everything you know. If I can go in there and tell them what I think really happened, then they can start cooperating and dig themselves out of the mess they’ve got themselves into.’
Wilson closed her eyes. The tissue that she had been using to dab away her tears was screwed up into a tight ball.
Warren said nothing; it was up to Wilson now.
Moments passed before finally, Wilson let out a shuddering breath.
‘No comment.’
‘We’ve got it!’ David Hutchinson sounded elated. ‘A six-inch hunting knife, wrapped in a black bag, with flecks of what appears to be blood on the blade. It wasn’t even in the water. There’s a stone wall between the end of the footpath and the river. She must have completely duffed throwing it into the river and either not realized, or not been able to climb over the wall and have another go. Even better, the area is covered in footprints, including ones that look suspiciously like they might match the shoes that Silvija Wilson was wearing that day.’
‘Brilliant news,’ said Warren. Modern forensic techniques were sensitive enough to retrieve trace evidence from even the most compromised crime scenes or suspect objects, but days immersed in water would test even the most skilled technicians. Warren looked forward to reading the report from the lab. Could this be the breakthrough they needed to finally determine what had happened that day? Perhaps Friday the 13th hadn’t been a complete disaster after all.