Above Suspicion (Anna Travis Mysteries Book 1) Page 32

  Langton leaned back, smiling. “So, if Daniels is our man, what do you think he’s going to feel like when it hits the press that we’ve got a suspect in custody?” It was the first time Langton had felt good in two days.

  Lewis was pissed off. “Shit, you keep stuff close to your chest.”

  “Here’s something I won’t be keeping close. Which stupid bastard checked out the bloody crusher?”

  “You don’t have to look far,” Lewis said quietly.

  Langton shook his head in disbelief. “It was you?”

  “Yeah, it was me. The documents were all legit and according to them, the Merc went through the crusher.”

  “Not all of it. You cocked up.”

  Lewis felt like shit. “Travis, eh! The little red demon.”

  Langton was staring out of the window, then he looked back. “More news. The prints came back in. We have confirmation that Alan Daniels’s prints match the ones lifted from Travis’s photo frame.”

  They remained silent for a moment, aware of the sound of the train on the tracks. Then Langton started to laugh softly.

  “Getting closer, Mike. We’re getting closer.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning, John George McDowell was taken to court and charged, not only with various drug offenses and the possession of narcotics but, more seriously, with the murder of the three victims. These latter charges he denied. Bail was withheld.

  The press were out in force. When he was taken from the court, McDowell withdrew the blanket from over his head and yelled that he was innocent. There was a flashing of camera bulbs. Langton refused to give any statement, except the usual platitudes.

  The two leather seats, shrouded in bubble wrap, underside rails intact, were placed on a raised platform table. High-powered arc lamps focused on each seat. Two forensic scientists in protective suits were using tweezers to inch away the gaffer tape securing the bubble wrap. This was a slow process since it was stuck firmly to the plastic, overlapping it like a protective bandage. They eased the tape away fragment by fragment, looking for any evidence of minuscule fibers, hair or blood spots stuck beneath it.

  Meanwhile, in the briefing room, Langton led the team in congratulating Travis on her tenacity in pursuing the evidence and her diligent police work. He updated them on the evidence from McDowell’s basement flat. Using a thick black felt-tip pen, Langton drew a line from the mug shot of McDowell to each of the victims, except Melissa. He began listing their connections to McDowell on the board behind him.

  “McDowell: Beryl Villiers worked for him at the health club. She left home to live with him. His nightclub takes a downward turn; so does our victim. She works part-time as a prostitute for McDowell and, according to him, becomes addicted to drugs. When he gets arrested for living off immoral earnings and buying stolen booze, the club is closed and McDowell goes to prison. Beryl meets up with Lilian Duffy and that mob through the house in Shallcotte Street. McDowell has confirmed that all our victims stayed there at some point or other.”

  Now Langton used a red marker pen to link all their victims to Shallcotte Street, excluding Melissa Stephens.

  “McDowell admits he was the man beating Lilian Duffy when her son, Anthony, broke up the fight. She accused her son of rape, though, as we know, she withdrew the charge later. This accusation first brought Duffy to the attention of the police. You see how our prime suspect, Anthony Duffy, aka Alan Daniels, is also linked to McDowell.

  “This connects us to Barry Southwood, who was on the Manchester Vice Squad when Duffy was brought in for questioning.

  “McDowell informed us that both Kathleen Keegan and Lilian Duffy abused our suspect as a child, actually selling the boy to customers. Both women used to sell any children living in the house for money. This ups the ante again on Daniels, but we have to remember that McDowell can’t really be trusted. For someone who maintains he was very rarely at Shallcotte Street, he seems to have a lot of information. He is also still in the frame for the three murders.”

  Langton went on to discuss the possibility that McDowell had been set up. “The three victims’ handbags could have been planted to incriminate him, although McDowell makes rather a good job of doing that himself.” Everyone laughed. Langton looked around the room.

  “OK—that’s it. The press knows we have a suspect in custody and we’ll be bringing in McDowell from Wandsworth later today to continue interrogations. So let’s keep at it. You all have a lot to wade through, thankfully. At long last.”

  Langton asked Anna to join him in his office.

  “You’ve seen the results from the fingerprints on the frame?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. Alan Daniels was inside my flat.”

  “I’m keeping up the surveillance on your place. We’re round the clock on Daniels, as well.”

  “So, McDowell is…what?” She frowned.

  “A possible suspect. But also a decoy.”

  “What?”

  “Until we’ve got more evidence, I’m not bringing Daniels in. We could arrest him on the fingerprint off your photo frame, but he was also later inside your place with your approval.”

  “Hold on—that was much later. I brought in the frame days before,” Anna said stubbornly.

  “I know. But he could say otherwise and then it gets down to his word against ours.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Anna was steaming. “Anyway, forensic can prove him wrong.”

  “I know, but we have to cover all probable explanations from his brief. We need more evidence that’ll screw him. Did he go to Manchester in the last few weeks? He certainly dropped McDowell in our laps.”

  “So, what’s next?”

  Langton pointed to her. “We watch out for you. I’m sure he’ll try and make contact with you, just to find out about McDowell.”

  “If he does, how much do I tell him?”

  Langton drummed his fingers on his desk. “Oh, I think you can tell him quite a lot. We want him staying right where we can pick him up. So the more he thinks we believe our decoy is guilty of the murders, the safer he’s going to feel. You up for it?”

  She nodded.

  “I thought you would be. Now, I want you in on the interview with McDowell, but you play by the rules, Travis. You do not, at any cost, put yourself in jeopardy. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a pause. He was still looking at her; she was unsure whether she should leave. Then he smiled softly. “The seat discovery was good, Travis. Your dad would be proud of you.”

  She swallowed the emotion that welled up. “Thank you.”

  “OK—that’s it for now.”

  Wearing handcuffs and prison-issue dungarees, freshly washed and shaved, McDowell was escorted from Wandsworth Prison to Queen’s Park. He arrived for the interview just after three o’clock. He seemed almost a new man, thought Langton, who had first glimpsed him that morning in court.

  He was remarkably coherent. The medication, the meals and a good night’s sleep seemed to have worked wonders. He understood the seriousness of the charges and, although he would plead guilty to the drug-related offenses, denied that he had committed the murders.

  When Anna and Langton entered the interview room, McDowell’s handcuffs had been removed. He was sitting beside his new solicitor, a thin-faced, dome-headed man named Francis Bellows. Langton introduced him to Anna; the two men had met earlier that morning in court. Bellows had been court-appointed and briefed from Manchester and had already had a lengthy session with McDowell at the prison.

  “DS Anna Travis will be conducting the interview with me,” Langton explained as he drew out her chair. Anna sat down facing McDowell. He was enormous and, contrary to her expectations, had a rather jaded handsomeness.

  “Right, let’s get started,” Langton said, pressing the tape machine on before swiveling round to check the video camera was also ready.

  The bubble wrap had been removed from both seats and was laid out in sections
. The forensic team had examined every square inch with magnifying glasses. They removed samples of a wool and synthetic carpet, oil stains, grit and a fraction of sand. After these samples were listed and numbered, they focused on the seats. The disappointing news was that the two seats had been well and truly cleaned before being taken to the crusher yard. The leather was in immaculate condition but smelled of mildew and some kind of leather-cleaning fluid.

  Leather is not a material that fibers cling to. The two scientists worked on a seat each, moving inch by inch, but they were unable to discover anything except a few grains of sand. They took the seats apart and removed the back to reveal the underside. Here, the leather stitching ran in parallel lines: there were accumulated dust balls and a one-pence piece. Then they got lucky. Caught in the stitching, hardly detectable by the human eye, was a strand of hair. It took a while for it to be gently teased free. It was a single long blonde hair with the root attached and it was from the passenger seat.

  The next discovery was caught in the glint of torchlight. It was embedded in the crease of the stitches on the driver’s side. The tweezers gently released what looked like a small sliver of pink glass. The hair and pink glass were placed in separate containers, ready to go to the lab for testing.

  It had been over two hours and McDowell was tearfully explaining his relationship with the victim, Beryl Villiers.

  “Beryl liked Ecstasy. She wouldn’t leave the stuff alone. She loved that euphoric feelin’, know what I mean? I couldn’t stop her. Then I had a bit of a problem, got busted and she started taking them like Smarties. I was only in for a six-month stretch, right? But when I come out, she’s up and left me. I search all over Manchester for her, then I find out she’s dossing down at Lilian Duffy’s place. I went fucking apeshit; they were a real bunch of slags there, I’m telling you. I wanted her back with me. I loved her.”

  “So, talk me through the time you went to find Beryl. You said she was staying at Lilian Duffy’s house?” Langton asked.

  McDowell hesitated a moment. “Right hovel it was, over in Shallcotte Street. By now Beryl was doing heroin and Lilian Duffy was using her out on the streets.”

  Langton began to lay out the photographs of their victims and McDowell touched them one by one.

  “Yeah, yeah, they were there. Or they came and went. Almost every tart in Manchester stayed over at that place at some time or other.”

  Langton glanced at Anna. “Did you see her son at the house?”

  “Yeah.”

  The picture McDowell conjured up was even more wretched than Anna could believe. The child, brought up in a house filled with women, was either ignored or beaten. The only temporary escape came during foster care, which was unpredictable and intermittent because his mother constantly insisted on dragging him back.

  “You were questioned about Lilian Duffy’s murder before, weren’t you?”

  “Oh fuck, that was a joke. It’s because I got in a fight with her once. She was on her feet when I left her in that alley, her kid just standing there with this crazy expression on his face. Next I hear is, she was found by the cops, beaten up and covered in blood. He done it.”

  “Done the beating?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about the murder?”

  “I dunno. It was a while after. But he certainly had reason to.”

  “What reason?”

  “Well, what she done to him, locking him in this cupboard and that. Days on end he’d be in there before someone opened the door.”

  “So, contrary to what you said before—that you only went to Shallcotte Street rarely—you seem to have been a frequent visitor.”

  McDowell shrugged. “Like I said, I went there looking for Beryl.”

  Langton tapped the desk with a pencil. “Well, you were there before that. First you say that Anthony Duffy was just a small child, next you say he was beating his mother up.”

  “Right, yeah.” McDowell sucked at his cigarette.

  “So, how many times did you visit that house in Shallcotte Street?”

  McDowell shrugged again. “It was like this—I lost my club, fell on hard times a bit and when I needed a place to doss down, I’d go there.”

  “When was the last time you saw Lilian Duffy’s son?”

  “Anthony? It’s got to be twenty years ago, pal—that time when he come round for his passport, or it could have been after he was arrested, I can’t remember. He could be dead, for all I know. Me head’s a bit muddled; it’s the drink.”

  “So, he never made contact with you? Say, in the last few months?”

  “You’re not listening to me. I never seen him since he done over his mother.” McDowell was starting to sweat. “I don’t feel well.”

  “Do you need to take a break?”

  “I need a bottle of fucking vodka, but I doubt you’re going to give me one!”

  It was just after half past six when they called it quits for the day. McDowell by now was shaking, unable to think straight, and his sweating had started to stink out the interview room. He was taken back to Wandsworth to be returned for further questioning the next morning. The legal sixteen hours with breaks was almost up.

  Langton was stunned to hear what forensics had found in the car seat. It was a hell of a lot more than he had expected.

  He contacted the lab. By now it was after half past seven and nearly everyone had left for the night. Lewis had already gone home to his new baby. Barolli was on the late shift, organizing the surveillance on Anna’s flat. Anna was sorting out her desk and putting things in her briefcase.

  “You off then, Travis?” Langton asked, squinting from his cigarette smoke.

  “Yes, unless I’m needed here.”

  “You’re not. Good night.”

  She looked from the impatient Langton to the edgy Barolli, then picked up her coat. “Good night, then.” The swing doors closed behind her.

  Barolli briefed Langton, who stood in the middle of the incident room in his raincoat ready to leave. Daniels had been at home most of the day apart from a trip to the gym in the afternoon. He came back carrying the Evening Standard.

  “At least he knows we acted on his tip-off,” Barolli said, showing Langton a copy of the newspaper. The headlines reported that a suspect was in custody for the serial murders.

  Langton inhaled deeply, the smoke drifting from his nose.

  “You going off, then?” Barolli asked.

  Langton sat down, hunching his shoulders in the raincoat. “A lot depends on the lab tomorrow, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. They say with the hair’s root attached, they were pretty positive they’d get a result on the DNA. You know, gov, maybe we should pull the bastard in tonight?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. But Travis is primed to know what to say if he calls her.”

  “You think he will?”

  “He must be itching to know what we’re doing with McDowell.”

  “Why hold off? The surveillance team is costing a lot; we are way over budget.”

  Langton stubbed out his cigarette. “Because, pal, if we don’t get the results we’re hoping for from forensic, he’ll be in and out of here like a blue-arsed fly.”

  He looked at his watch. “Who’ve we got on Travis’s flat?”

  Barolli checked his list. “Dick Field; takes over at eight.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I was just going to grab something to eat before they close the canteen.”

  “Who’s on Daniels?”

  Barolli checked his list and passed it over. Langton glanced at it and let it drop back onto the desk. He yawned; he was exhausted.

  “Why don’t you go and recharge your batteries, gov?” Barolli said anxiously. Any minute the canteen would close.

  Langton dug his hands in his coat pockets and stood up. “I’m going to have a sleep. Call me at home in a couple of hours.” As he walked out, Barolli sighed with relief.

  “He’s knackered,” Moira remarked.

&nbs
p; “Run up and get me a bacon sandwich, would you? I’m starving.”

  Moira pushed her chair back. “I hope he has something to eat; he’s not had anything all day.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Anna bought some groceries at her local supermarket. As she returned to her car, her mobile rang. She tucked it between her shoulder and her chin, juggling her shopping bags.

  “Travis,” she said.

  “Hi there.”

  “Who is this?” She dumped the bags, knowing immediately who it was.

  “Don’t you recognize my voice?”

  “I’m sorry. Is this Alan?”

  “Yes, it’s Alan. Where are you?”

  She hesitated, her mind racing. “I’m at Tesco. I’m in the middle of shopping.”

  “Which Tesco?”

  She sat in her car. “It’s the one on Cromwell Road.”

  “I know it.”

  She shut the door and locked it. How on earth had he got hold of her mobile number?

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  “Yes. Just getting in my car. I’m actually in the car park.”

  “You’re not far from Queen’s Gate. Why don’t you wait and I’ll meet you there?”

  “Unfortunately someone’s coming to fix my dishwasher and I’ve got to be at the flat to let him in.”

  “Well, another time, then.”

  “OK.”

  She wasn’t sure if he had hung up or not. As she listened—

  “How’s it all going?” he said softly.

  She jumped. “How’s what going?”

  “I read in the paper you’ve arrested someone. He was in court this morning.”

  “Yes, he was. But you know, Alan, I can’t really talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. I’m on the case and it’s just not ethical.”

  “But I was the one who told you about him.” He sounded peeved.

  Sweat started trickling down from her armpits. “I know you did.”

  “So, did they find any evidence?”