DC Darren Floyd lounged against a table at the back of the incident room. ‘DC Arthur and I carried out a detailed examination of the delightful contents of the refuse bins in Windermere Road,’ he drawled, ‘and found nothing out of the ordinary, though I’m sure it was six hours of police time well spent.’
Scott felt the blood rise to his face. ‘I make the judgements about how you spend your time, DC Floyd,’ he said. ‘Your opinions are the least of my concerns.’
‘If I may say, boss,’ Mike Arthur intervened, ‘what we did notice was that she was a very neat housewife – Karen. All the kitchen refuse was in bags, tied up, and the recycling stuff in the other bin. The bins at the other houses were mostly a right old mess, but not hers. Proper middle class, if you know what I mean.’
Presumably what Jason Watts meant by too up herself with no good reason, Scott thought.
‘Anything from the gardens or sheds?’ he asked Mike Arthur.
‘Nothing. Traces of blood on the front path at number thirteen stop at the pavement. He obviously got into a car.’
‘Which nobody in the street saw?’
‘So they say.’
Darren Floyd chipped in. ‘Special Eastgate disability isn’t it – blind, deaf and dumb? They get benefits for it.’
He was rewarded by a mild ripple of laughter.
‘What about the Doug Brody angle, Steve?’ Scott asked Steve Boxer, noticing as he did so that Steve was looking seedier these days. He had always had a nerdy look, but now he was grubby, with the weekend’s growth of beard not shaved off that morning.
‘Not promising,’ Steve said. ‘I followed up the known associates I got from the Liverpool end. Two of them are inside; one was admitted to the Royal Liverpool Hospital on Saturday 14th July after being knifed in a fight and wasn’t released until last Friday; the other one they have a warrant out for, for armed robbery. They know he got away to Ireland and they’re pretty sure he’s not come back. There’s a watch out at ports and airports.’
‘OK.’ Scott turned to the whiteboard, from which photos of Karen and Lara Brody gazed out at them. He tapped the photo of Karen. ‘Sarah, how did you get on with Karen’s friends?’
Sarah Shepherd got to her feet. ‘I don’t think she had what you would call real friends,’ she said. ‘She’d been back in Marlbury for a year or more but she doesn’t seem to have caught up with school friends or anything. I got the names of some of them from her father – those he could remember – but none of them have seen her. The other students on her course all say they liked her: really nice, quiet, kept herself to herself. They can’t believe anyone would have wanted to hurt her – the usual sort of thing – but I didn’t get the impression that they really knew her. I talked to her personal tutor, though. He didn’t seem to know her that well either, but he had a record of her assignment marks. She had very good marks through the year but the last assignment, which was a big one, carrying a lot of marks, was late in and pretty mediocre. He had been planning to have a word with her.’
‘Her father said he thought she was worried about something,’ Scott said, turning to Paula, ‘didn’t he?’
‘And remember how Leanne reacted when we asked her if Karen was worried about anything?’ Paula asked. ‘I thought it was just because she knew she asked too much of Karen – ferrying Liam about, getting lumbered with the dog because she couldn’t cope with it – but I wonder.’
Leanne Thomas Scott wrote on the board, next to Karen Brody’s picture. ‘Karen’s sister. Also lives on Eastgate. We ought to have a picture of her up here.’
Darren Floyd stirred himself from his lounging posture. ‘You can’t think she’s a suspect,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a woman’s crime, is it?’
Scott eyed him. ‘I’ve known women do worse,’ he said, ‘but Leanne’s a much smaller, lighter woman than Karen was so I can’t see her forcing gin down her throat, but she was probably the last person, apart from the killer, to see Karen and Lara alive. They picked Liam up from the university nursery at the end of the afternoon and walked him back to Leanne’s flat.’
‘And,’ Paula said, ‘Leanne has at least three heavy-duty locks on her front door, so what is it she’s worried about?’
‘Which brings us back to the money,’ Scott said, ‘the haul from Doug Brody’s petrol station raid. We’re pretty sure that Doug didn’t order the killings, so the next most likely motive is the money. Someone believed – rightly or wrongly – that Karen had the money, and killed her because she wouldn’t – or couldn’t – hand it over.’
‘Except—’ Sarah Shepherd spoke and then looked alarmed when all eyes turned to her. ‘Except, I was there, you know. I was the first there when the neighbour called, and it was pretty nasty – a lot of blood – but I don’t think the house had been searched – not ransacked.’
‘Which would mean that she did tell them where it was but they killed her anyway.’
‘And,’ threw in Darren Floyd, ‘it means that Leanne Thomas doesn’t have all those locks on her front door because she’s hiding Doug’s loot in her flat.’
‘We’ll talk to her again,’ Scott said. ‘And Sarah, keep going with Karen’s contacts, will you? Where are we with Jason Watts’ alibi?’
‘It checks out for what it’s worth,’ Steve Boxer said. ‘He gave us names of people who saw him working at the Caz Bar and they say they did see him but they’re none of them what you might call upright citizens.’
‘And if Jason’s got Doug’s loot then he can afford to pay them generously. Let’s put Jason Watts’ ugly mug up there too.’ He wrote the name on the board.
‘You never know,’ said Paula, ‘we might get him for hitting his girlfriend at least.’
People started stirring, gathering up their coffee cups and reaching for jackets with the sense that the meeting was coming to an end.
‘One more thing,’ Scott said, raising a hand to stop them. ‘There was an incident earlier in the afternoon on the day of the murders. It may or may not have any bearing on the case but I don’t think we can dismiss it yet. Paula, would you like to talk about it?’
She gave him a long, questioning look and then shrugged. ‘OK,’ she said.
Woman in burqa she wrote on the board. There was a gust of laughter.
‘Jesus,’ Mike Arthur said, ‘not an Islamic connection!’
‘Not with Jesus, Mike!’ someone quipped, and there was another laugh.
‘When Karen and Lara went to pick up Liam from the nursery, they had their dog with them. While she was waiting in the garden for the boy to come out, the dog got away from her and attacked an elderly woman in the full Islamic garb. No big drama. Karen got the dog back under control and the woman left. It’s probably got nothing to do with what happened later.’
‘Where had the woman come from?’ Mike Arthur asked.
‘She’d been inside the nursery. The kids were doing some sort of show. We’re assuming she was someone’s granny or some such but we haven’t tracked her down.’
‘Probably a terrorist in disguise,’ Darren Floyd called out. ‘That’s what they’re doing now, isn’t it? Putting on burqas?’
‘We don’t think so, DC Floyd,’ Scott said, ‘but we are trying to find her. How are you doing with that, Paula?’
‘I’m going into the college tomorrow.’ She turned to address the rest of the group. ‘There was an Iranian woman who spoke to her as she was leaving. I’m going to talk to her tomorrow. She goes to English classes and we thought it would be better to talk to her there. These Iranian husbands can be difficult.’
‘I’m thinking,’ Sarah Shepherd said, ‘it’s odd, isn’t it that she didn’t have a child with her when she left? If she was a granny, wouldn’t you expect her to be with her family?’
There was a silence, during which Scott realised that this was something that had bothered him about the story all along – the picture of the old woman hobbling off on her own, without the child she had come to watch. When did you ever see women in that garb on their own anyway? Didn’t she always have a man with her?
‘Maybe,’ Mike Arthur said, ‘she works at the college. Maybe she got an hour off to nip in and watch the show and then went back.’
‘In which case,’ Scott said, ‘it shouldn’t be difficult to find her.’
‘And if we do,’ Steve Boxer asked, ’what then? How would she fit in with the killings?’
Scott was reluctant to put into words the nightmare scenario that he feared. ‘The woman was humiliated,’ he said. ‘Attacked in public by a dog – and dogs are unclean animals in Islamic culture – and laughed at. The girl, Lara, laughed, apparently. We have to ask if it’s possible that someone felt honour-bound to avenge her shame.’
Silence. They exchanged glances. No-one spoke.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s it.’
As they were dispersing, his phone rang. It was Gina. He had no time for negotiating his personal life now. He let it ring and a minute later saw 1 message appear on his screen. He listened.
‘David, my colleague Malcolm has some info for you that you’ll want to hear. He’s a Samaritan and he’s pretty certain that he took a call from Karen Brody on the afternoon she died. You’ll need to hear the story from him. He’s reluctant to talk to you because of the Samaritan confidentiality ethic, so you’ll have to handle it carefully. If you can find time in your busy schedule, I suggest you come here to the college and he can fill you in. No, no, no need to thank me. Always happy to help. Byee.’
He hesitated then snapped his phone shut and put it in his pocket. She could wait.