DI Hunt hated working on a Sunday. One, because the football was on and it was Super Sunday, and two, he wasn’t paid enough. However, it would go some way to helping his promotion to DCI should he be seen to be going above the call of duty to get these cases wrapped up. What Doctor Moore had told him had spurred him on. Meanwhile, he was making progress on the Brandon Stand case. Archibald Morgan was in custody, but the sister had been allowed home because she was a minor, and hadn’t yet been charged. Her brother was looking at seven years for possession. If they could prove he intended to supply, then they’d go for more. Natalie would remain in the care of her parents until her testimony was needed.
Natalie Morgan’s confession, admitting she’d supplied Brandon Stand with the MDMA that killed him, provided a potential link between this case and the murder of Monika Thorpe. And that link was Henry Nelson. He was sure that the kids were just protecting him. The Morgan kids were small fry; they had to have suppliers of their own. An ex-con, like Nelson, had ample contacts to set up such an arrangement. From what they’d seen of the brother, Arch Morgan, he wasn’t the kind of kid who’d established a complex network of contacts in the last year or so. He was clearly getting his drugs from somewhere, and that, Hunt felt, was the key. Bringing Henry Nelson in for questioning was a priority, but tracking him down was proving difficult. A squad car was tasked with waiting outside his house.
Hunt felt the sweet trickle of success coming ever closer but as one case jumped right into his lap, the other confounded him. His team had been picking through Monika Thorpe’s past for almost forty-eight hours now, but their picture of the woman was different to that given to them by Tony Thorpe. He’d chatted to his team of detectives about her.
‘It says here that she was a grade-A student, boss. She flew through her law degree and got a double first. We spoke to her mother who said her daughter worked for a law firm in Riga, before travelling and saving enough money to study a conversion course in London, but she never started. Instead, she modelled and got herself on the front cover of several low-budget magazines, though there’s no evidence of anything pornographic or glamour related.’
‘So, nothing points to the sordid life she’s accused of,’ Hunt concluded. ‘But it doesn’t rule out that she might have been on the game, on the side, to earn a few quid,’ he added. ‘Though she didn’t need it.’
‘These rich types sometimes withhold cash from their spouse or keep it on a tight rein, to control them. Her own money might have been her way of breaking away from him,’ one of his officers pointed out.
‘It’s feasible she led a double life, though we’ve found no evidence of punters. No trace of a website she used to advertise services, nothing like that. And we still haven’t found her phone. The last known ping was around the area of her address on Tuesday night, before it was switched off. Vodafone have confirmed.’
‘We spoke to the private investigator, sir, the one that Tony Thorpe gave us, and it’s legit. He told us he travelled to Riga and chased down a few ex-boyfriends.’
‘Anything sex-work related?’
‘No, boss.’
‘And the phone records from the house?’
‘Regular calls to Latvia. All to her mother’s number.’
The officer had spoken to Monika’s mother this morning and she wasn’t a fan of Tony Thorpe’s. According to the mother, Monika was extremely unhappy and planning to go home. She indicated that the marriage was doomed from the start. Interestingly the wedding, a private affair, had only two guests, who were the witnesses: Alex and Jeremy Moore. Hunt already knew that the three had been tight since their university days.
Hunt had come across plenty of couples who overcame bigger differences in age, and background, and it often led to tension. He toyed with the possibility that Monika had played her husband for citizenship: a privilege she’d managed to achieve last year. She was in possession of dual nationality but she hadn’t returned to Latvia in all the years she’d been married. So why now? Why the plane ticket they’d found during their search of the Thorpe’s house?
Hunt had detectives contact local police in the suburb of Vidzeme, in Riga, on the Baltic coast, where Monika’s wider family had lived since the Second World War. He’d never been to Latvia and knew nothing about it. Riga was a tiny city, with less than a million inhabitants. He imagined it as a cold and bleak place until he googled it and found that it was a World Heritage Site. The centre was full of old wooden buildings, painted every colour, surrounded by museums and places of culture. He warmed to the image of it and tried to imagine Monika leaving for the streets of London, on her own. With a law degree she never used, and then didn’t have to because she met a cash cow.
Tony Thorpe was a man who seemed to live to work. It had never been the other way around. His private life was pedestrian. His previous dalliances with the law had been mere brushes, and related to recreational drug-taking. But battling with Tony’s hotshot barrister just to gather intel on his private life, and dig up non-existent dirt, was perhaps unnecessary when he had Henry Nelson’s involvement staring him in the face. The knucklehead already had a criminal record. Now, Hunt needed to find a motive, and some evidence.
Despite his tradesman’s salary, Nelson was a member of a fancy gym in town, and it reminded Hunt that he still needed to speak to Grace Bridge, who was Monika’s personal trainer. The doc had mentioned her. He knew from colleagues of his who attended such places of torture that PTs spent half their time chatting to their paying customers. Grace Bridge could be a goldmine of information.
As could Alex Moore. She’d make an excellent expert witness on the stand. She was professional, savvy and smart. He liked her. He’d requested the court order for her records, as she suggested. Getting to know these characters in Monika’s life was the missing link. It was all about people in the end, when dealing with murder. Somebody who knew Monika wanted her out of the way, and somebody in her list of contacts knew it.
He called the gym and got through to member services, explaining who he was. It didn’t take long for them to check their membership list and confirm that not only was Henry Nelson a member, but so was Carrie Greenside.
‘What a web we weave,’ he said under his breath.
An officer poked his head around his door and Hunt looked up from his desk expectantly.
‘Boss, we had a witness statement come in from a neighbour of Henry Nelson’s. Our officer was there trying to get hold of him, with no luck. I checked it out. There was a car parked outside the address late on Tuesday evening. It was a brand-new Merc, and it’s registered to Carrie Greenside.’
Hunt grinned. ‘Good work.’
He called Grace’s number with a renewed sense of earnestness. She picked up and her voice was efficient and bright, typical of an open witness.
‘Grace? It’s Detective Hunt here from Cambridgeshire police. Have you got a minute?’
As he spoke to her, he entered her name into the police national computer database, and she popped up as a victim of a crime, two years ago. He sat forward and read the report as he spoke to her.
‘I was wondering if I could drop into your work and ask you a few questions about Monika Thorpe as part of our inquiries.’
The young woman had been subject to a violent rape and the perp had received ten years. He’d be out in five, and he’d already served two; the woman must be at her wits’ end. He wondered how her case had been handled. Coppers received a bad rap over rape cases because they were so damn hard to prove. Ten years was a stiff sentence, and Hunt figured the evidence must have been compelling. He read the details and concluded that Vincent Kemble was a violent thug.
‘Why?’
He could smell the fear in her voice. No doubt any contact with the law brought back terrible memories.
‘It’s standard, Grace. I’m piecing together Monika’s life and it seems that you were an important part of it.’
‘I knew her a long time, well, by personal training standards. Most clients fall away after a few weeks or months, but Monika was dedicated.’
Hunt liked her babbling. It distracted her from what he really wanted. Most of the time when witnesses prattled on about nothing, they let go wonderful nuggets of information that cracked cases. Blatherers were good omens.
‘Great. So could I come to the gym and get a feel for who Monika saw there regularly? You can give me a tour. I haven’t been inside a gym for years, you might be able to convert me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You on shift today?’
‘No, but I am tomorrow, at three.’
‘I’ll drop by tomorrow, then. I’m not coming in Lycra, though.’
She laughed.
Bingo.