When she opened her email first thing the next morning there was another request from the IPCC team for a follow-up interview.
Ferriter came in backwards through the door. She was down to a single crutch now; in her free hand she held a cup of coffee from Starbucks. ‘I thought you didn’t drink that,’ said Cupidi.
‘Decaf.’
‘Anything from Najiba?’
Ferriter shook her head. ‘She’s not at the flat either. Nothing.’
‘Damn.’ Cupidi closed the email from the IPCC without answering it. ‘Show me what you found on Freya Brindley.’
Ferriter sat at her computer and entered her password. ‘The case was never closed. It’s pretty grim, I warn you. Come and see.’
She double-clicked on a folder, then on a JPEG. The file must have been digitised some time ago. The grainy picture of Freya Brindley was an arrest shot from one of her drug convictions in the early 1990s. ‘I printed one out, too.’ She pulled one from a pile of paper on her desk.
Cupidi took it, walked across the room and held it up next to the picture of the dead woman that was on the board. Though there were twenty-five years between the photographs, they were unmistakably the same woman. There was no doubt about it this time.
‘Listen to this, Sarge,’ Ferriter said. ‘In 1995 there was a fire at a traveller camp just outside of Evesham. It was in a small clearing in woodland. Six vehicles were destroyed. Two young boys, aged five and seven, were in one of them. Both dead. And another man was seriously injured, though he survived.’
‘Daniel Kay,’ she said.
Ferriter peered at the screen. ‘How did you know?’
That would explain the scarred face. It had been burns. ‘He’s the one who gave me Freya’s name.’
‘Bloody hell. I just spoke to someone at West Mercia Police about it, someone who worked on the case twenty-something years ago. It was arson. Someone deliberately poured petrol around a bus and set light to it, possibly intending to murder the owner.’
‘The owner was Daniel Kay.’
‘Yes.’
‘However, it went wrong. It was a windy night apparently. There were other accelerants present on the site and the flames spread through the place. The two boys were in a nearby caravan which caught fire before anyone could rescue them. They both died. From interviews with the surviving mother, and other people from the community, it became clear that the fire was a result of an ongoing dispute on the site.’
‘Between Freya Brindley and Daniel Kay.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Because I’m very clever. Carry on.’
‘They believe it was an argument—’
‘Over drugs and money.’
‘Give me a chance,’ she said, frowning. ‘That’s what they said. Two boys, aged five and seven. Jacob and Finn Olsson.’
‘And that’s them,’ Cupidi said, pointing to the photograph she had recovered from the remains of the caravan. Two smiling urchins in a sunlit field. They had names now: Jacob and Finn.
The awful meaning of the photograph and why it had been kept sunk in. ‘Freya Brindley killed them by mistake when she was trying to get revenge on Daniel Kay.’
‘Oh God,’ said Ferriter, looking at the picture.
‘If it’s them, and I bet you it is, then Freya Brindley kept the photo of the two boys with her for the rest of her life. She had it above her bed.’
Ferriter shook her head. ‘Why would you do that? To wake up every morning and see them. And to know what happened. That’s gruesome.’
Cupidi looked at the photograph and imagined Freya Brindley. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. She had done a terrible thing. I think she wanted to remind herself. Punish herself, maybe.’
Officers were starting to stream into the incident room for the morning’s meeting, clutching mugs of tea and sheets of paper.
‘So they are convinced it was her that set the fire?’
‘Yep. Definitely her. The mother of the dead boys gave a full statement to the police. She knew who had killed her children, for sure.’
‘What about Daniel Kay? Was he arrested?’
‘They charged him with possession of a controlled substance but the case was dropped because of his injuries. He was pretty badly burned, apparently. He refused to say that Freya Brindley was trying to kill him, but there was enough evidence from the others. But the thing was, nobody’s ever found Ms Brindley. She seems to have vanished completely from sight.’
‘Until she turned up in our ditch. Because she was living under the assumed identity of Hilary Keen. The real Hilary Keen had left the country and was living in Spain off her head on drugs.’
‘Jesus. What a miserable story,’ said Ferriter. She picked up her coffee, took a sip and made a face. It had gone cold.
Cupidi let Constable Ferriter tell the whole story again when the room was full.
The young woman stood at the front of the room, explaining the whole thing in detail, pointing to the photographs, one by one.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Sergeant Moon. ‘What about the children?’
‘Apparently they were just innocent bystanders. Their mother had pulled onto the site a couple of days before. As far as the West Mercia Police could figure, their mother knew nothing about the conflict, poor woman.’
‘Poor kids,’ said a detective constable. ‘At least Freya Brindley got what she bloody deserved.’
‘Good job,’ said McAdam. ‘Very good job.’
‘Only we still don’t know who killed her,’ said Cupidi, finally.
‘Stanley Eason,’ somebody said.
‘No. We still don’t know that. Don’t you see? We have to consider whether Freya Brindley was murdered because of her involvement in the incident in Evesham in 1995. Or whether she was still involved in dealing drugs.’
‘We’ve tried that avenue,’ someone said. ‘There’s nothing to suggest that she was dealing.’
‘But we do know that she was guilty of identity theft, manslaughter and/or attempted murder,’ said Cupidi ‘She was not a nice woman. I’d say it’s odds on she wasn’t simply the victim of a robbery and murder by an unscrupulous landlord – a man with no previous record. She was involved in something, but we just don’t know what yet. And obviously, it’s a good thing Inspector McAdam here took the decision to keep the case open, otherwise we’d never have known any of this.’
McAdam nodded his head. Out of the corner of her eye, Cupidi saw Ferriter rolling her eyes. When she turned to look, she was mouthing, ‘Creep.’
Cupidi smiled back at her and winked.
Cupidi’s phone rang. Sergeant Moon was sitting next to her, taking notes about Brindley’s record. Ferriter was next to him, tapping on an open laptop.
‘Can you get it?’ Cupidi asked Moon. ‘If it’s Dolores Umbridge from the IPCC, tell her I’m busy.’
‘Who?’
‘Didn’t you read Harry Potter?’ said Ferriter. She leaned across Moon and picked up the handset.
‘I’ll ask,’ she said, cupping her hand over the receiver. ‘It’s a Superintendent David Colquhoun.’
‘Tell him I’m not available.’
‘She’s not available, sorry.’ She put down the phone. ‘Oooh.’
‘What?’
‘Is that who I think it was?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Cupidi.
She leaned past Moon. ‘Your ex. From London.’
‘How did you know about him?’
‘Just goss,’ she said.
‘Gossip? So everyone knows.’ Cupidi looked around the office angrily. People concentrated on their screens or phones.
Ferriter looked down at her laptop. ‘Not everyone.’ The phone rang again. They both looked at Moon, who picked up the handset a second time.
Moon listened for a second, then said, ‘It’s him again.’
‘Christ’s sake.’
‘He says it’s important.’ And handed the handset to Cupidi.
And David’s voice was saying, ‘Don’t cut me off, please. I have something important to say.’
‘This is my work number,’ said Cupidi.
‘No, listen. Please. You think this is all about you,’ he mimicked. ‘We’ve found her.’
‘What?’
The office around her was silent, and she was conscious of everyone in the room straining to hear the conversation.