Usually, a DC would have interviewed Ollie Garrett but Rego’s team was already stretched, so he decided to do this one himself – in fact, he was looking forward to it. It had taken less than an hour to find Garrett because he’d told Tamsyn that he was working at a holiday park outside Carbis Bay and there were only a limited number of those. Unfortunately, there was no duty solicitor available to attend the interview in the Camborne custody suite until the afternoon.
Rego had requested Tamsyn’s presence, firstly to find out what else she could tell him about Garrett, and secondly to reassure her that she wasn’t in any trouble. Although now Garrett was a person of interest, Rego definitely wanted to know more about why she was at a party with him.
Tamsyn looked nervous when he found her waiting outside CID shortly after lunchtime.
He waved at her to come in.
“Take a seat, Tamsyn. Thanks for coming in early.”
“No problem, sir,” she said formally.
“So, tell me everything you know about Ollie Garrett.”
Tamsyn cleared her throat.
“We both went to Humphrey Davy, that’s the secondary school on Treneere estate, up near the hospital.”
Rego nodded.
“He left in … I think it was Year 10 because his parents were getting divorced, and I saw him again on Monday.”
“You had no contact with him in between? Snapchat? Instagram? Follow each other on TikTok maybe?”
“No, nothing. I didn’t even remember him when he told me his name. I mean, vaguely, but I can’t picture him from those days. It was five years ago, sir.”
She said ‘five years’ like it was a century.
“And when you met him on Monday?”
“I’d been for a run and I was nearly home. An old Mini pulled up outside the Coldstreamer in Gulval, and this guy called my name.”
“Number plate?”
She flushed. “I don’t remember. It was an older car and made a noise like the exhaust was blown. It was dark blue with white racing stripes.”
“How many people were in the car?”
“Four, but I didn’t recognise any of them.”
“All men?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, what happened next?”
Tamsyn collected her thoughts.
“Ollie said he was back living in Cornwall now, and that he’d left here when his parents got divorced. He went upcountry with his mum.”
“‘Upcountry’ meaning?”
“Anywhere north of the Tamar, like Devon or whatever,” Tamsyn shrugged. “But he said he’d been living in Kent for the last couple of years. And then later in the car was just, you know, talking about surfing, people we knew from school. Um, that’s all I remember.”
“And at the party, when you saw his friend dealing, did he say anything else?”
Tamsyn screwed up her eyes, trying to remember.
“I didn’t know we were going to a party – we were supposed to just be meeting for a drink at my local. But as soon as I got there, he said we were going to this party in town. So we got there, and we had a drink and people were dancing … um, he saw me looking at this guy with the bags of powder – he didn’t give me a name – and I said, ‘I’m going’ and he said ‘you’re not even on duty’. I said that I was still a police officer even if I wasn’t in uniform. He said, ‘you can’t report him, he’s my mate’. I said, ‘your friend is a drug dealer’ and oh! I just remembered, he said, ‘it’s just some molly’. That’s right – I’d forgotten that bit.”
Rego tapped a finger on his desk. “Could the second man in the photograph be Garrett’s ‘mate’?”
“I don’t think so,” Tamsyn said slowly. “The guy dealing was really tall and skinny. The man in the photo looks shorter than Ollie.”
“What did you say to Garrett when you saw the deal going down?”
“What I said before: I told him that his friend was a drug dealer. He called me a bitch and I left. That’s when you saw me.”
“Well done, Tamsyn. You did the right thing.”
She looked relieved and Rego hoped that she’d told him everything, for her own sake.
He decided to pass on his thoughts on the subject and hope she learned from them.
“When I was a student officer, my tutor was an old-school copper. At the end of my first week, we all went for a drink together and he saw a group of kids in the pub that he knew were underage – they were friends with his neighbour’s son. He didn’t do anything at the time, but told me he was going to have a quiet word with his neighbour later. And then he said – and I always remember this – ‘We were all young once. You’re off duty now’.”
Rego pinned her with a look.
“The thing is, it was the wrong thing to do. He should have told them to leave the pub immediately and reported the publican to the local licensing authority. Because we don’t know where this could lead. How would you feel if one of them was injured or killed on the way home? Or one of the girls was so drunk she didn’t know what she was doing or consenting to – or if she’d fallen in front of a car. Not only that, it’s unprofessional; it’s wrong.” He leaned forwards. “What you did, reporting the incident to a senior officer, that was the right thing to do.”
Tamsyn straightened in the chair. “Yes, sir.”
“By the way, has he tried to contact you at all since then?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t give him my number.”
“Can you think of anyone from school that he might have stayed in touch with?”
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t really remember who he hung out with. I barely remember him at all.”
“You were at school with Chloe Rogers, right?”
Tamsyn looked as if she was sucking on a lemon when she nodded.
“Could she have known Garrett?”
“We were all in the same year so … maybe, I guess.”
He gave her a penetrating look. “Do you have a problem with Ms Rogers?”
Tamsyn didn’t know where to start. The girl had been a bully since primary school and had always hated Tamsyn. Jess said it was because she was jealous, but Tamsyn found that hard to believe.
“No, sir,” Tamsyn said. “No problem.”
Rego didn’t look convinced but didn’t challenge her either.
“Send her in, please, and meet me at my car in ten minutes. Take the time to go through your emails and get up to date with the crime reports. DS Stevens will be meeting us at Camborne to sit in on the interview.”
“Sir.”
She stood up and he glanced across at her.
Tamsyn looked like she’d rather shovel shit than speak to Chloe, but it was an order, however politely given.
A few minutes later, Chloe sauntered into his office, standing silently until Rego pointed at a chair.
“Thanks for coming, Chloe,” he said pleasantly. “I understand you were at school with Oliver Garrett, known as Ollie.”
“No.” Her dark eyes gave nothing away.
“I’ve already spoken to PC Poldhu and she says that you were all in the same year at secondary school.”
She shrugged. “Well, if Tamsyn says so.”
“You don’t remember him?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
She looked irritated. “There were 130 kids in the year, more than 30 in my house.”
“And you were in the same house at school as Tamsyn, but she remembered him.”
“So? She didn’t have any friends so she probably spent more time watching everyone else.”
Rego was taken aback at the venom in her voice.
“Is there a problem between you and PC Poldhu that I should be aware of?” he asked, his tone cool.
“No,” she said sullenly. “We’re just not friends.”
“I can see that. Do you like your job here, Chloe?”
Her eyes widened and she gave a curt nod of her head.
“Good. And you can work with PC Poldhu without friction?”
He’d phrased it as a question but it wasn’t one.
“Yes,” she said, her mouth twisting.
“Okay. Thank you for your help.”
He had no idea what had gone on between Tamsyn and Chloe and he really didn’t care, but he didn’t want personal grudges to get in the way of performance either.
He made a note to read Tamsyn’s police application as well as Chloe’s most recent appraisal.
Tamsyn was waiting by his car, as instructed.
“Right, let’s go and see what Mr Garrett has to say about his dubious friends.”
He pressed the key fob and Tamsyn slid into the passenger seat, quietly buckling her seatbelt.
Rego reversed out of the parking spot then waited until they were on the road before he started speaking.
“There are three objectives in the Garrett interview: firstly, find out his involvement with Ruçi – we need to establish if Ollie was a customer of hers; secondly, identify the other man in the photograph; and thirdly, identify his drug dealer friend. The interview could go one of two ways: he’ll clam up and answer ‘no comment’ to everything – that’s quite common, so don’t worry about it.” He gave a quick smile. “It’s not evidence, but you’d be surprised how much we can learn from reading their body language when we ask questions. Or, he’ll try to play down how much he knows them and give us the ‘I only just met them’ line. In a way, I’m hoping that’s what he does, because then I can confront him with the fact that he described this drug dealer as his ‘mate’ to you.” His smile widened. “Of course, there’s a third possibility – that he tells us everything we want to know and ties it all up with a pretty red bow.”
Tamsyn didn’t smile.
“What do you want me to do, sir?”
“You’ll be outside: watch, listen, take notes. If you think of a question, write it down and have another officer bring it in to me. I’ll decide later whether or not I want Garrett to see you.”
She swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Suddenly she sat upright.
“Oh my God, I forgot to say! I showed Grandad that photograph of Saemira Ruçi, right? And he remembers seeing her at the Mack Shack – I mean the Mackerel Inn at Newlyn. I’m so sorry! I completely forgot when I recognised Ollie.”
Rego was irritated – he could have done with that information several hours ago.
He used the in-car phone and called Jack Forshaw.
“Jack, I want you to go and talk to…”
“Ozzie Poldhu,” Tamsyn whispered.
“Talk to Ozzie Poldhu about seeing the murder victim at the Mackerel Inn. I want as much information as possible about times and dates. And Jack, he’s PC Poldhu’s grandfather.”
“I’m sorry I forgot,” she said again when he ended the call.
He nodded. “Jack will talk to your grandfather. Right now, we have to interview Garrett.”
“Have you arrested him?” she asked in a small voice.
“No. At this stage, it’s a voluntary interview, an interview under caution. Garrett has been asked to be present and he indicated that he wanted a solicitor with him. I’ll invite him into an interview room, but tell him that he’s not under arrest and is free to leave the station if he so chooses. There’s no record on him, so if this is his first brush with the law, he’ll want to get it over with as quickly as possible. If he’s not as innocent as he’s pretending, he’ll stay anyway because he’ll be worried that by getting up and walking out, he’ll be arrested, which then means that the custody procedure kicks in and he’ll spend some time in a cell, and there will be a significant delay in getting out.”
He glanced across at her.
“I’ve emailed you the interview plan, so read it through now.”
The rest of the journey passed in silence.