The next day, with Danny safely in custody and everyone fairly sure they had their man, Cross now did something that was so counterintuitive it always drove his colleagues crazy. Whenever they reached a point in a case like this – namely a suspect with no alibi, but with all the available evidence pointing in his direction and who was denying the charge – Cross would do his best to find an alibi for them. That is to say he would try and determine if the suspect had a legitimate alibi that they couldn’t, as yet, prove.
Cross did this because, on the one hand, if they weren’t guilty of the crime, it was important to rule them out so that the real culprit could be found and apprehended, but also because, in trying to find an alibi, Cross would often come across a crucial piece of evidence confirming the suspect’s guilt. Many a junior officer had complained when asked to do this, saying their job was to find evidence against the suspect, surely. No, Cross would reply. Their job was to find out who committed the crime, and if it involved excluding someone they ‘thought’ was guilty, that in itself was progress.
Those who took his advice on board benefitted hugely in their career from this single observation. The ones who didn’t, wasted a lot of their time trying to find evidence to fit the suspect, rather than the other way round, and ended up either without a charge in the first place, or with the case falling apart in court. This meant that, either way, the real culprit was still out there months later.
Mackenzie had been tasked with looking through Danny’s social media, along with his bank and credit card statements. Another member of the team was trying to track his mobile phone pinging off any masts on the night in question. Catherine in CCTV was now asked to check his building’s CCTV. It had cameras at the entrance, covering the corridors and in the lifts. The problem was that the footage was erased every month and so no footage existed of the night Flick died. This meant she had to try and piece together his movements from the dry cleaner’s to wherever he was going. She would have to find and look at all the street cameras and any on buildings in the surrounding area. Cross told her to work on the assumption that Danny was telling the truth. This would save her time.
*
While they interviewed Danny, uniform had returned to the area surrounding Flick’s flat and were canvassing the neighbours again. They wanted to see if anyone could place him at the scene. This time, the two uniformed officers had a photograph of Danny Stokes and were trying to ascertain whether he’d been seen in the vicinity of Flick’s flat at all. It was mostly inconclusive until one of them went into the mini-market. The shop was still clad in scaffolding with a couple of butt-crack-exposing builders on the roof. The woman behind the counter Sunetra, who owned the shop with her husband, studied the photograph. Yes, he had gone to Flick’s flat on the day of her death. She was sure of it. The curious thing, though, was that it was the wrong Stokes. The photograph was of Danny with his father Gerry. She had picked out the father.
Cross phoned the shop to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake. But she said she was sure. During the earlier canvass she’d mentioned to a uniformed officer that a man had been to the flat on the day of the murder. Cross checked and found that uniform had recorded Sunetra as saying she’d seen the boyfriend go into the flat. Uniform had made a mistake, as a further call to her led to her confirming she’d said no such thing.
‘How could a mistake like this have happened?’ Cross asked Ottey.
‘Don’t fret, George. It would’ve surfaced eventually. I mean it has – we’re discussing it now,’ she said.
‘It’s the principle, and it’s our job to educate new officers,’ said Cross, as it had been a rookie who’d made this mistake.
The hapless young man was called up to Carson’s office. Cross was instructed to go easy on him because he was a new recruit.
‘I assumed it was the boyfriend because she’d just been talking about him sleeping in her doorway,’ he said, checking his notebook.
‘What does your notebook say?’ Ottey asked.
‘“Victim’s bf slept in doorway.” Then, I’m not sure what that is, but then – “seen going to the flat”,’ he said.
‘Could it be “man”?’ Cross asked.
The PC looked at it again. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I just assumed it was the same man.’
‘Two lessons to be learnt here. One – write legibly. “Man seen going to flat” is quite different to “bf slept in doorway… seen going into flat”. Secondly, never make assumptions. We deal in facts. The evidence in front of us. Don’t make assumptions about those facts. Facts back up facts – not assumptions, not theories, not hypotheses. Assumptions lead to a huge waste of time in investigations. So don’t make them.’
With that Cross left, followed by Ottey.
Carson looked at the PC. ‘You’d do well to remember what DS Cross just told you,’ he said – the man who, on a daily basis, made more assumptions than the entire department put together.