DI Huss was having troubles of her own. This problem, too, had a human face, DS Ian Joad.
Every office, every place of work, has someone who is generally universally reviled, and Summertown nick had Joad. DS Joad, with nearly thirty years’ history of taking small bribes, sexual coercion of prostitutes, fiddling expenses, complaining and generally being a pain in the arse.
The last few years he had added ‘stress’ to his repertoire of annoying habits and two or three times a year would come down with it. He would signal these bouts of stress in advance with dramatic sighing and waving of his arms, pantomime panic attacks. Then he’d be off for a month. It was, of course, illegal to enquire too much about Joad’s stress, because that in itself would be inherently stressful. No senior officer doubted Joad’s ability to keep just the right side of the law, and that included employ- ment legislation. No senior officer underestimated his cunning. One memorable time he tried to submit an expense claim for overtime at a court appearance he’d scheduled for himself, when he knew it was a rostered day off and he could claim a day’s extra pay for a five-minute showing. The ‘stress’ had got in the way of the actual court appearance, but he argued that had he not been stressed, he’d have received the money and so should be paid it.
It was the day Templeman exploded. No one had seen anything like it before or since. The mild-mannered, church- attending Scot had screamed, ‘Is that meant to be some sort of fucking joke, Joad?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Not exactly.’
Even Joad was alarmed. He’d pushed the DCI too far. ‘I’ve never seen a bigger disgrace than you in my life, Joad.
Now get out of my sight.’
Joad was bloodied but unbowed.
Templeman had a new prayer he added to his daily list. ‘Dear God, in Thy infinite wisdom, may DI Joad apply for a transfer.’ Huss looked again at the papers in front of her. The first problem, or irregularity, had been the CSI team missing the killer’s escape route at the scene of crime in the college. That had been bad enough. Now there was this. Huss was looking at the Scene Attendance Log for the day of the second search of Fuller’s room at the Blenheim Hotel. She corroborated this with the crime scene log, in case there were any discrepancies. The senior officer rostered was DI Joad. DS Ed Worth was also listed as present at the scene, and a forensics man called
Davies, who she didn’t know.
Huss had seen Worth not ten minutes earlier in the canteen, which is where, stony-faced, she headed now.
Worth was drinking coffee with a couple of guys from Traffic.
‘Hi, Melinda,’ said one of them. She smiled sweetly and said, ‘I need to have a word with Ed, if you don’t mind.’
‘Sure, no problems.’ The pair from Traffic got up and gathered their things. Goodbyes were said.
‘So, Melinda,’ said Ed Worth, ‘how can I help?’
Worth had one of those curiously old-fashioned faces, square-jawed with a broad, high forehead and matching haircut, that made him look as if he’d wandered out of a thirties-era film. He was a bright guy, though, and Melinda knew he detested Joad. Working for Joad meant doing two people’s jobs. Joad’s mastery of the system made getting him dismissed for incompetence very unlikely. The best they could do was cross their fingers and hope Joad committed an actual crime of a serious nature or was harvested by nature, as a result of his heavy drinking and smoking.
‘It’s the Fuller case,’ she said.
‘What about it?’ asked Worth warily. Huss’s attractive but no-nonsense face was wearing a frown. She could be quite frightening when she was angry. She was used to ordering stockmen who worked with cattle and farmworkers, tough, aggressive men, around. She was used to command.
Whatever it is, thought Worth, I bet Joad’s got something to do with it.
‘When you returned to re-examine Fuller’s room, was the search scene still intact?’
‘Well, the tape was still there and the door showed no signs of being tampered with, so yes.’
‘And Joad didn’t interfere with anything?’
‘By that,’ said Worth, ‘I assume you’re meaning plant evi- dence. No. He couldn’t have. It was pretty well hidden. The slit in the mattress was maybe a centimetre and the fabric is striped, so it’s not like it was some gaping slash. There was a tacking stitch holding the edges together, we bagged the complimentary sewing repair kit to check against the thread in the stitch, and the forensics guy said it looked like being a match.’
Relief ran through Huss’s body. When she’d heard that Joad had found them, she’d automatically assumed something dodgy was going on. Now it looked as if she was mistaken.
Worth continued, ‘If it wasn’t for the DCI’s suspicion that Fuller was guilty, we would never have been back a second time and he’d have got away with it.’
Huss nodded. She knew that Templeman thought the initial underwear and hair had been left by Fuller in order to confuse the investigation. The thinking was he’d come back for the real souvenir at a later date. It was unlikely that the mattress would have been changed by the time he wanted to use the room again.
‘And you checked that the room hadn’t been accessed?’ ‘I already told you. It definitely hadn’t.’
‘No. No, you didn’t,’ said Huss. ‘You said the door didn’t look tampered with.’ She emphasized the word look. ‘The hotel have got records of when rooms are accessed via the swipe-card key. Did you confirm it with them?’
Worth looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t know that. Maybe Joad checked.’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Huss. Her displeasure was plain to see. Worth winced. He liked Huss.
The Blenheim Hotel was only a short distance from the police station and Huss walked there, oblivious of the tourists and students around her. She went up the imposing steps of the battleship-grey hotel, which always seemed grim and unwelcoming, scowling across the road at the Ashmolean Museum. The doorway to the hotel was in the form of an oddly pointed arch that looked as if it had come from a church.
The duty manager who saw her was a charming, good- looking young Pole. He ushered her into his office, typed in Fuller’s room number and clicked on the access history to the room.
He said, in his faultless, slightly accented English, ‘Well, to answer your question, no guests or cleaners have been in during time you specified.’
Huss noticed he had the Eastern European habit of dropping the word ‘the’ when he spoke English.
‘Good,’ said Huss. That cleared that up. She guessed she could now relax. The manager held his hand up, palm outwards in a warning gesture.
‘I am not finished. There is manager’s card like this one,’ he took his wallet out and showed her a credit-card-sized piece of plastic, ‘that is slightly different.’
‘How so?’ Huss asked. Irek, the manager, smiled. ‘Cleaners’ keys will allow them access to rooms and storage
areas for linen, cleaning products, stuff like that, but not for restricted areas, where food or alcohol is stored, valuable things. My card gets me in anywhere I want. More importantly, it doesn’t show up on the system.’
‘So, there’d be no record,’ said Huss.
He nodded. ‘It’s a system flaw,’ said Irek. ‘One I pointed out, actually. We do have someone working on it now from head office. We’re part of chain, and I can get them to check. But it’ll take two working days.’
‘But it can be done,’ said Huss. ‘Oh yes, it can be done.’
Huss gave him her business card. ‘Please make sure it is, Irek.’ ‘I absolutely will do that, DI Huss. I will call you in two days.’ She exited the Blenheim feeling slightly happier. With luck, she’d be able to prove incontrovertibly that the crime scene had been completely undisturbed. She couldn’t see any way a manager at the Blenheim could be bribed into allowing someone intent on planting evidence access to the room. Not that it was impossible to believe, but that it would be risky.
But it was all too easy to believe that one of the cleaners on a minimum wage and a short-term contract, maybe someone not even in the country now, maybe with fake ID working illegally, could be persuaded to let someone into the room.
‘Here’s a hundred quid, just open this door and go away
for five minutes.’
Well, that hadn’t happened. Joad hadn’t misbehaved. It was all good.
But Huss came from generations of farmers. Caution and pessimism ran through her like a strand of DNA double helix.
Two days. She’d believe she was clear when it happened.