They were working with the minutiae of Corinne’s life now, the stuff which often fell between the cracks of an investigation because there were so many other avenues of inquiry to explore. But with no witnesses and minimal forensics they had to start thinking more creatively.
Wahlia had spent the last couple of hours trawling through Corinne’s devices – picking up where Ferreira had left off – and the phone records from the Sawyer family. Murray was ploughing through more CCTV, trying to place Harry’s or Brynn’s vehicles at a place and a time where they shouldn’t be, crack their alibis that way.
Zigic had taken the most tedious piece of graft himself, going through every statement and interview again, looking for something they might have missed, some allusion which might be more significant in light of the new information they had about Harry’s relationship with Corinne.
It was the kind of task that furred up your eyeballs and made every small muscle in your back throb.
When Jenkins called him about the clothes they’d recovered from Ryan Bhakta’s house he gratefully took the excuse to leave the desk and stretch his legs. As he went up to forensics he wondered how much longer it would be such a short run. Most forces had already outsourced their scientific support operations to private contractors and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before this one fell under the cost-cutting axe too. Jenkins had lost her right-hand woman last year, poached by a private lab in Cambridge – something he knew pissed Kate off royally – and she was currently struggling to find a worthy replacement among her rawer recruits.
He found Jenkins in her office, staring at an incomprehensible diagram exploded across the screen. Her pale-skinned face was lightly sunburned across the forehead and cheeks, a white, goggle-shaped stretch over her eyes and nose giving away the skiing trip she’d only returned from this morning.
‘Good break?’ he asked.
‘Wish I was still there,’ she said. ‘God, I hate the first day back. You’d think I was the only person who worked here judging by the amount they got done last week. Hell of a backlog.’
‘But you’re onto the Bhakta clothing?’
She smiled. ‘Somebody left me a note saying it was urgent.’
‘I didn’t think you’d take any notice of it.’
The gold dress was laid out on the table, so short and narrow that Zigic could barely believe a grown person would fit in it, even one as slim as Ryan Bhakta. There was dried blood, deep brown, almost black, down the front of it, caught in the folds of the broad neckline. Blood would have poured from his broken nose and split mouth and it would serve to prove he’d been wearing it when he was attacked but it wasn’t the evidence they needed.
‘He’d got good taste,’ Jenkins said, pulling on her gloves. ‘Karen Millen, expensive.’
‘It’s been lying around for over a year. Is that going to be a problem?’
‘Do you take on board anything I tell you?’ she asked. ‘The garment’s clean, it’s been carefully stored and we’ve got minimal contamination from the wildlife in her house. Nothing even slightly problematic from a recovery perspective.’
‘So you’ve got samples for us?’
‘I have.’ She pointed to stains on the front. ‘These are probably going to be the victim’s, we’ll get you a match there. Blood’s already a positive for type.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Would I have called you otherwise?’ She lifted the dress and carefully turned it over, revealing a mess of different stains, none of them blood to Zigic’s untrained eye. ‘So, here, we have a water stain. He was attacked outside?’
‘The cathedral precincts.’
‘That explains the moss, then.’ Jenkins sidestepped and pointed to a smear near the hem, flipped it up to show more on the underside. ‘And here we have semen.’
Zigic folded his arms, reading how the attack would have unfolded. Ryan slammed to the ground, face damaged, too scared or disorientated to fight back, his attacker holding him down, raping him.
‘It’s a very small deposit,’ he said.
Jenkins raised an eyebrow but nodded. ‘It is, yes. I’d guess the primary … landing spot, if you like, was elsewhere. Or your attacker used a condom and wasn’t quite careful enough when he took it off.’
Zigic wasn’t convinced. ‘I think, in that situation, you’d be careful. Maybe it’s not from the attack. Maybe he had consensual sex before that. It could have been on the dress when he put it on that night and he didn’t notice.’
Jenkins gave him one of her withering looks. ‘Ziggy, have you ever, in your life, walked out of the house with semen on your clothes?’ She put her hand up. ‘Actually, don’t answer that. This deposit isn’t from the victim, anyway. Different blood group. It’ll be a day or two but we’ll be able to get you a DNA match. Assuming …’
‘Yeah, I know, assuming I can give you something to match it to.’
Jenkins leaned back against the room’s other examination table, nothing on that one, despite the backlog. ‘You’re the Sawyer case too, I take it?’
He nodded, hearing more than polite interest in her tone. ‘Why?’
‘Look, I’m making no promises but I think I can do a bit better with the material you have to hand on that one.’
‘We were told the samples were contaminated.’
‘There are degrees of contamination and they directly correlate with degrees of professional expertise.’ Jenkins snapped her gloves off, clearly irritated, and brushed a coil of auburn hair behind her pinkly singed ear. ‘Knew I’d miss a good case, always the bloody way.’
‘I’d have called you back for it if I could have,’ Zigic said. ‘Nobody’s as thorough as you are.’
‘Alright, enough with the flattery.’ She stamped on the bin, dropped her gloves into it. ‘I’m only doing my job. Course, any thank-you gifts will be demurely received.’
‘If you find something,’ Zigic said, heading for the door.
He heard her swear at him as he left the lab and was grateful she was back at work. He was sure she already knew she could give them something useful or she wouldn’t have raised the issue. Kate wasn’t one for making promises unless she was sure she could deliver.
It didn’t mean they could slow down though.
Back at his desk he went to call Ferreira, intending to give her an update, but thought better of it. Riggott didn’t want her having anything to do with her previous caseload from Hate Crimes and keeping her informed would only complicate matters. The less she knew, the less likely she was to try and get involved.
He returned to the last interview they’d conducted with Nina Sawyer but couldn’t keep his attention on it. He remembered her impeccable make-up and her defiant air, like a woman braced for a final reckoning.
Nina was the person with the most reason to want Corinne dead. She was the one who stood to gain most financially. She was the one Corinne had hurt for the longest, cut the deepest, and even once they’d split up, Corinne couldn’t resist putting the knife in for another thrust.
Zigic took a mouthful of water from the bottle on the table.
Harry and Brynn would lie to protect Nina. Maybe they’d go so far as to implicate Harry, believing his innocence would keep him from being successfully prosecuted.
Except they only suspected him because of information supplied by Jessica and Lily, who seemed to genuinely fear he might be responsible.
There were too many cross currents muddying the waters of this case. Zigic wondered just how frankly the Sawyer family had discussed Corinne’s murder. Did any of the innocent parties know who was responsible, or were they drawing together out of a vague instinct towards mutual preservation without ever daring to ask the vital question?
‘Sir,’ Murray piped up. ‘Harry Sawyer – I’ve found him.’
Zigic went over to her desk. An unremarkable CCTV street view on-screen but Murray’s excitement was palpable.
‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.
‘Sawyer’s girlfriend told us he left home just before half past seven, right?’ She pointed at the time code with her pen. ‘This is Harry stopped at the railway crossing at the edge of Whittlesea. Eight thirty-nine. The Golf. That’s barely ten minutes from home, which means we’ve got almost an hour unaccounted for.’
Zigic watched the barriers lift on-screen, a five-second pause before Harry Sawyer pulled away. Did that signal something? Was he reading too much into it?
Probably.
‘There are a dozen reasons why Harry might have lost an hour between leaving the house and getting to where he worked.’
Murray’s shoulders rounded. ‘There are.’
‘Can you track him back to his house?’ Zigic asked. ‘See what time he left?’
‘No, this is the first place I managed to pick him up. He obviously takes the parkways, less chance of getting spotted on them.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe it was deliberate. It’s not the quickest route. He’d be better going through town.’
‘Any sign of Brynn Moran?’
She nodded, consulted the notepad next to her hand. ‘He passed the same spot at seven fifty-eight.’
‘Meaning they’re both in the frame still.’
Murray turned away from the screen. ‘Brynn’s running late. But Harry … that’s an hour unaccounted for. It’s a major gap in his alibi, sir.’
Zigic played through the options.
‘Say Brynn did it then. He kills Corinne around seven fifteen. Goes straight home, washes up, maybe gets rid of the clothes he’s wearing—’
‘We need to search that house,’ Murray said. ‘He might be stupid enough to have just dumped them in the washing basket and trusted Nina to clean them.’
Zigic nodded impatiently. ‘Right, so he’s home and into his vehicle fast enough to only be running ten or fifteen minutes late. There’s no reflection time. Wouldn’t you expect to see some?’
‘Depends. Is he someone who can hold it together?’ she asked, reaching for a packet of mints on her desk. ‘If he wants everything to look normal – say he’s on autopilot at this point and it hasn’t hit him yet – then yeah, I suppose he might be able to get on with his day. Not many people manage that though.’
Zigic thought of how Brynn had behaved during the interview. Contained, calm. He didn’t seem guilty, wasn’t even flustered.
‘Harry had time to go to pieces,’ Murray said.
‘And cover up what he’d done. It’s a longer walk home for him, assuming he took a scenic route through Ferry Meadows and up the lynch to avoid any cameras on the way.’ Zigic went over to the map on the murder board, traced a line between the locus and Harry’s house in Castor. ‘That’s ten to fifteen minutes. He’s already running late. So, he goes home and does the sensible thing – showers, scrubs any traces off himself in case we make him our first port of call.’
‘He’ll have learned his lesson,’ Murray agreed. ‘After last time.’
‘He knows he needs to get into work or it’s going to look suspicious. But maybe he’s struggling already, can’t quite drag himself together.’
‘Or the girlfriend’s noticed and she’s asking questions.’ Murray sucked thoughtfully on her mint. ‘If that was my old man coming home when he should’ve already been at work – covered in muck – I’d be on his case about it.’
‘So, she needs to be assuaged.’
‘Or convinced to keep her mouth shut,’ Murray said.