It was nearly lunchtime and Marlborough’s broad High Street was buzzing with activity. The lamp posts were festooned with unlit Christmas decorations in the shape of swans and the pavements below were crowded with shoppers. It appeared to be market day, the centre of the road occupied by a long line of stalls selling all manner of things from cheeses and other farm produce, to ornamental plants, Christmas wreaths, and fancy wicker baskets and dog beds. A queue of cars inched along on both sides of the street, some drivers holding up the traffic as they tried to find parking spaces, others gawping through their windows at the goods on display. It took Eve a while before she eventually found a parking space near the church at the far end, close to the Rising Sun. She got out, put on her jacket, and made her way slowly along the pavement, skirting around the little knots of mothers with pushchairs and groups of uniformed school children, who were gathered chatting outside the various cafés and shops.
A young man stood behind the till of the Blue Cross charity shop, sorting through some items of jewellery in a display case. She asked to see the manager, explaining that she was looking for Annie. He disappeared for a moment into a room at the back, then re-emerged, along with a middle-aged woman, who joined him at the counter.
‘You came in yesterday, didn’t you? I’m sorry but Annie isn’t in today. Can I help?’
‘It’s personal. Is there any way I can get in touch?’
‘If you leave me your name and phone number, I’ll give her the message.’
‘I’m only here for a couple of days,’ Eve said, as the woman wrote down her number. ‘So it’s pretty urgent.’
‘Can I say what it’s about?’ the woman asked.
‘Just tell her it’s about Jane McNeil.’ There was no reaction in the woman’s eyes to the name. Most likely she was new to the area. Marlborough was a small town and it was unlikely such a murder would be forgotten, even after ten years.
‘Anything else?’ the woman asked, as she scribbled the name down on the piece of paper.
‘Say it’s to do with Sean Farrell’s appeal.’
As Eve repeated the name, the woman looked up. ‘You know, I’ve heard that name before. There was a man in here about a week ago, asking for Annie. I’m sure he mentioned that name, or something very similar.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t really notice. We were quite busy at the time.’
Eve pulled the photo of Mickey out of her bag and held it up. ‘Is this him?’
The woman peered at it short-sightedly, then nodded. ‘I think so. He left a business card with me. He was some sort of private investigator. I passed it onto Annie when I saw her, but I’ve no idea if she called him back.’
Eve walked out of the shop and down the high street towards her car, wondering if Mickey had managed to speak to Annie, and if Dan had known about it, and had kept it from her for some reason. She was due to meet Gavin at two thirty at the cottage. She bought a coffee and a bacon and avocado sandwich from a café, went back to her car and switched on the engine, turning the fan up high to get rid of the mist of condensation that clouded the front window. She called the number Harry had given her for Grace Byrne but it went straight through to voicemail and she left a message. As she reached for her coffee, her phone rang. The number on the screen was withheld.
‘Just getting back to you about the Mickey Fraser case.’ DCI Andy Fagan’s deep voice crackled distantly over his hands-free. It sounded as though he was in his car, driving, or being driven, somewhere through the London traffic. ‘I tried calling you a couple of times.’
Even over the phone, she could tell he was chewing gum, which had replaced a lifetime of smoking Silk Cuts. She pictured the perennially weary look on his pudgy face, the creased suit, the crumpled tie, spotted with yesterday’s lunch. With three children under the age of five, and a wife who worked, she had no idea how he kept it all together.
‘I’m not in London,’ she said. ‘There’s next-to-no signal where I am at the moment.’
‘Lucky you! It would be nice to be out of range for a few days. So what’s your involvement in all of this, Eve?’
‘Mickey Fraser worked as a freelance PI for the charity 4Justice. You’ve talked to Dan Cooper and I understand he filled you in about the Sean Farrell case, which has been referred to the CCRC—’
‘I know all that,’ Fagan cut in. ‘What I don’t get is, what’s your angle?’
‘I’m just helping out on an ad hoc basis, while I wait for my disciplinary hearing. It’s better than sitting at home doing nothing.’ It sounded weak, but it was the only explanation Fagan might buy.
There was silence for a moment, then Fagan sighed. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about what’s happened to you, Eve. It sounds like they’ve made a right cock-up. I just wanted you to know that you have my full support, whatever it’s worth. Hopefully, they can sort it all out and you can get back to work, but if there’s anything at all I can do to help, or you just fancy a drink and a chinwag at any point, you just let me know. OK?’
The warmth in his voice touched her. He wasn’t the first of her work colleagues to offer support and express his condemnation for the way things had been handled. It was the main thing that had kept her going since Jason’s shooting. Not that it would make any difference at the hearing.
‘Thank you. I hope so too. Meantime, I need to know if you think there’s any link between Mickey’s death and the Sean Farrell case.’
There was another pause and she heard the shriek of a car horn over the phone, then Fagan said, ‘You really think Sean Farrell’s innocent and there’s a murderer walking free?’
‘I’ve no idea. The best I can say for the moment is that, from what I’ve read, the trial process looks flawed. The scientific evidence was also inconclusive and, in my view, there are good grounds, ten years on, for retesting the exhibits. Unfortunately, the local police aren’t being cooperative.’
‘OK. Knowing you, I’m sure you’re right. But I’ve spoken to someone at Wiltshire Police and they put me in touch with the Senior Investigating Officer who was running the investigation at the time. He’s retired now. It probably doesn’t mean that much, but he still seems to be well regarded. The bottom line is, he’s absolutely one hundred per cent sure they got the right man.’
‘Of course he is,’ Eve said flatly. Every cop she’d ever known would declare he was a hundred per cent sure he’d put the right man in jail, at least in public, or to his fellow officers. There was too much professional pride at stake in a successful conviction, especially a high-profile one. Even in the face of blinding evidence to the contrary, some SIOs still refused to admit that they had got it wrong.
Fagan laughed. ‘Fair enough. I don’t know the man and I’m not ruling anything out at this stage. I’m happy to tell you where we are, if you keep it to yourself. You know Mickey Fraser used to be with the Met?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve checked him out and, personal problems aside, he was apparently a good detective. He had a handful of cases on the go apart from the 4Justice investigation, although most are pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. We’re chasing down all the leads, but so far there’s nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the Sean Farrell case. However, Fraser’s personal life was pretty colourful. He was gay, into BDSM, and happy to pay for it. There was quite a lot of traffic in and out of his flat, from what the neighbours say, and it seems he preferred them young. It’s possible somebody got a bit over-keen, or maybe tried to extract some extra cash.’
‘What about forensics?’
‘Poor old Mickey wasn’t great at housework. The place is awash with all manner of human DNA. Nothing useful’s turned up so far.’
Fagan’s tone was matter-of-fact and she couldn’t read anything into it. ‘So what do you think happened?’
‘Difficult to say at the moment. According to the post-mortem report, he was beaten about quite a bit while he was still alive, but cause of death’s a broken neck. They used plastic ties to bind him and a strip of the bed sheet as a ligature. There’s no sign of sexual activity, although we found traces of cocaine all over the flat. My first impression, for what it’s worth, is that it all has an improvised feel, rather than something pre-meditated.’
‘I heard the flat had been ransacked.’
‘Could be someone trying to make it look like a burglary, or searching for cash, or valuables. His phone and wallet and laptop were all gone. As far as we can tell, there wasn’t much else of any value in the flat.’
She picked up a vagueness in his tone, as though he was trying to play things down, for some reason. ‘Any idea when he was killed?’
‘Monday, around teatime, we think. The neighbour on the ground floor heard some funny noises coming from below, when her kids got home from school. A witness has come forward, who lives further down the street, who saw someone come out of the basement around seven p.m., when she was on her way home. Unfortunately, it was dark and she didn’t get a good look at the face, but the general description is of a youngish male, thin, not particularly tall, dressed in jeans, white trainers and a baggy, dark-coloured hoodie. She said he shot out of there like he was on fire, with his head right down, and ran off towards the Tube. He had some sort of a rucksack, she thought. We’re checking all the cameras in the area and at the Tube station, as well as Fraser’s call log, but nothing so far. We don’t know who the boy is, as yet, but at least we have a better idea of the timeline.’
‘Sounds like you think the killer was someone he knew, and nothing to do with the Sean Farrell case?’
Fagan sighed. ‘Look, I’m keeping an open mind, but a ten-year-old case, with a guy in jail? What are the odds?’
Again she had the feeling that he was playing things down. ‘So this puts Dan Cooper in the clear?’
‘So it appears. His alibi checks out for the time in question, anyway, and there’s no obvious motive. But he was the last person Fraser called from his phone, according to the O2 phone log. Fraser tried three times, in fact, between around two p.m. and four p.m. on the Monday, but Cooper didn’t pick up. Do you have any idea why Fraser would be wanting to talk to Cooper so urgently?’
‘Sorry, I don’t,’ she said, thinking back to her various conversations with Dan, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned it.
‘Cooper says his phone was out of juice and Fraser didn’t leave a voicemail. Cooper also says he has no idea what the calls were about, but that Mickey probably wanted some more money. Is Cooper a friend of yours?’
‘No. I’ve only met him twice, both times to do with the Sean Farrell case.’
Fagan gave a loud sniff. ‘Do you think he’s reliable?’
She hesitated. It was an odd question and she wondered what lay behind it. Apart from the recent brief episode of evasiveness, Dan had come across as relatively straight, at least in his dealings with her. But whether he had been totally honest with Fagan’s team was another matter. ‘I’d say he’s pretty switched on, but he’s a bit of an idealist. He’s also under a lot of pressure. The charity’s short of money and from the little I’ve gathered, his personal life’s a mess and he has a drink problem. Whether he’s telling you everything about what Mickey was up to, I can’t say. I’m not sure if he’s been totally honest with me either, but I have no concrete evidence to the contrary.’
‘So you wouldn’t know if he found anything in Mickey Fraser’s flat when he was there, something he might be keeping to himself, perhaps?’
‘What sort of thing?’ she asked, curious that Fagan had reached the same conclusion.
Fagan sighed even more heavily this time. ‘OK, Eve. There’s something perhaps you should know. We’ve gone through all the papers strewn around the flat and put the files back together, but we found absolutely nothing to do with the Sean Farrell case, no file, no documents, no papers, not even an expense receipt, nada, which is very odd. He may have been shit as a housekeeper, but Fraser kept files on all of his cases, both current and old, and like the good cop he was, he was meticulous about his paperwork. So there ought to be a file for the Sean Farrell case, right? It was the biggest thing he was working on at the time. But we can’t find one. We’ve been through Fraser’s car, the rubbish, which luckily hadn’t been collected yet, plus every other place we could think of, but sweet F.A. so far. Do you think Cooper took the file, for some reason? Is there something to do with the investigation he’s trying to hide?’
Eve thought back again to her conversation with Dan two nights before. At the time, she could have sworn he was keeping something from her, but why would he take the file? Surely he must know what was in it.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, after a moment. ‘I honestly can’t think what it might be. But then again, if Mickey’s death was to do with his personal life, or someone trying to rob him, why would the killer bother to go through his files, and why take that one? Dan said they’d been thrown all over the floor.’
‘Maybe Cooper made the mess in the flat and took the file to muddy the tracks.’
‘I just can’t see why he’d do that. At least, as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing that 4Justice would want to conceal. They’re a charity. What they do is above board.’
‘I suppose so,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But one thing I’m more or less sure of, there must have been a file. So either Cooper took it, or the killer did. If it’s the latter, it means the Sean Farrell case isn’t as dead as we think. Either way, I think you should be careful, Eve.’