Twenty
Tobias’s file was waiting for her the next day. He’d seemed convinced that there was more evidence exonerating Cooper. But Anna wanted to know if there was evidence implicating someone else buried in the file, too. It lay open on her desk at Portishead and she read through it avidly. The top five sheets were poor photocopies of what appeared to be itemised evidence lists. All five had the same date of 10 March 1998 and all contained roughly the same content. The numbers 1 to 5 were ringed in another hand at the bottom. The sixth sheet was a copy of a typed letter from a company called Nordoc Document Laboratories. Anna turned back to the lists. They each contained several scrubbed-out entries. The signature at the bottom of each page belonged to Maddox.
Khosa came in with two mugs of tea and caught Anna shaking her head as she thumbed through the papers again.
‘Interesting reading, ma’am?’
‘You’ve seen it?’
Khosa nodded. ‘Glanced at it. Trisha made a copy.’
‘Multiple lists?’
Khosa shook her head. ‘I asked Tobias. It’s one list. The same list, in fact, modified and rewritten at least half a dozen times. Maddox was writing all this in his notebook to include or exclude whatever evidence was thought to be helpful to the investigation.’
‘Like no cinema ticket?’
‘Exactly. And he was a great one for lists was Maddox.’
‘I presume Tobias asked for the ESDA test as part of the appeal?’
Khosa nodded. Electrostatic imaging for indented writing often revealed a great deal more than what was actually written down. Anna’d researched how the detection analysis worked; by stretching Mylar film over an indented page and picking up the difference in electrostatic charge between the indented paper and the background. It varied with the type of paper, the type of pen or pencil or stylus used, humidity, the number of sheets between the actual page that was written on and the page the indent was being read from. It was clever science and very damning evidence. Nails in the coffin of the Crown prosecution’s case against Neville Cooper, if Tobias could get the jury to accept it at retrial, she was sure.
The reports and the files made compelling and harrowing reading, but they still weren’t exactly what Anna was after. She busied herself with trivia and came back to the file at lunchtime. Between mouthfuls of an overpriced ham and mustard on granary bread, Anna sifted through sheaves of photocopies and a flotsam of unrelated items. On each page, Tobias had carefully stapled a brief explanatory note to himself, indicating source and occasionally a cursory explanation or query.
Anna sipped her tea, flicking through the file until a police fingerprints report caught her eye. She called Khosa back in to her office.
‘Is this the mysterious cinema ticket?’
‘As mentioned,’ Khosa said. ‘Maddox covered his tracks expertly. He submitted a false witness ID and a different scenario to the lab when he asked them to report on the ticket. The report confirms that the prints on the ticket are Cooper’s, but the ticket itself is missing. This was Maddox camouflaging their paper trail.’
‘So Wyngate knew exactly what was going on?’
‘Maddox was his protégé. It’s difficult to believe otherwise. I’m trying to pick out stuff that’s relevant, ma’am,’ Khosa said as she headed back to her desk. ‘Slim down the file.’
‘That’s a really good idea, Ryia,’ Anna called after her.
It was Khosa who finally found something. Another piece of revealed writing in Maddox’s, by now recognisable, hand. The explanatory note said: Maddox’s daily notepad – torn sheet
The ESDA method had revealed a list of witnesses who’d purportedly seen Emily Risman in Coleford on the day of her murder: a woman who had spoken to her as she left the hairdresser; a shopkeeper who had sold her a salad roll; a list of hairdressing colleagues. It looked very much as if this sheet was the page of Maddox’s notepad he’d used on a visit to Coleford – a list of potential witnesses who would be contacted later for statements.
Khosa brought it through to Anna who peered at the indented image of the fragment. It was a brief entry – a name and a scribbled note.
Mr J Stanton, van driver. Car park at approx. 3.15-3.30. Blue saloon
tel. 38517
Odd that this should have been torn out. It was an anomaly, because Anna had seen witness statements from everyone else on that list but not from any van driver called Stanton.
Ann walked out into the squad room with Khosa and on the whiteboard, she wrote:
Cinema Ticket
Coleford
Van driver witness
She asked Trisha to contact the DVLA about any Stantons owning a van in and around the patch.
On the way back to her office with Khosa, Anna was buttonholed by Holder, looking unhappy.
‘Slack rang. Neville Cooper’s in hospital. Tried to hang himself.’
‘Oh, no,’ Khosa said.
‘Christ,’ said Anna. She knew it happened. They all did. People tried to commit suicide in detention and prison all the time. ‘At risk’ prisoners were put on suicide watch. Obviously, Neville Cooper had not been. Knowing that did little to numb the shock. ‘When?’
‘Last night.’
‘OMG,’ Khosa muttered.
Anna immediately rang Harris but got no answer. Slack, too, was unavailable. Frustrated, Anna stayed late at Portishead, writing up the report on Shaw’s disclosure, but it was a struggle because she kept being distracted by Tobias’s file and a burning anger over what had happened to Cooper.
There was a growing conviction in her mind now that Emily Risman’s and Nia Hopkins’ killer was linked to the serial rapes. Shaw, damn him, had planted the seed with his enigmatic online encounter with the chat-room ghoul who’d known about the dress with the floral rose print. Nia and Emily had marks on their necks consistent with non-fatal strangulation. Megan Roberts had told her how her attacker had ‘put his hands around my neck and squeezed’. And the other rape victims who’d come forward told the same harrowing story. But it was what Shaw had said, in his inimitable way, that she kept coming back to.
Maybe he likes to take them to the edge before bringing them back for more.
There was a pattern here. A very obvious one. All she needed was that one little piece of the jigsaw to make the picture whole so that everyone else could see it, too.
Despite ringing twice more, Harris was still not answering his phone so Anna turned again to Emily Risman.
The police had traced her movements from the hairdresser in Coleford to a bakery, where she had bought a sandwich on the day she was killed. After that the trail went cold until her body was found in the Forest of Dean. Was it that easy to disappear?
The prosecution witness the Crown produced made a statement saying that Emily Risman boarded a bus to Millend at 2.05 p.m. on the day of her murder. This was the Monmouth to Lydney bus, which would have taken twenty minutes to get to Millend from the square in Coleford. The defence questioned the witness’s memory. She had been a seventy-five-year-old commuter from Yorkley, a village two stops down the bus route from Millend, who travelled in to Coleford every Thursday morning for a weekly shop and returned home again at lunchtime. In her testimony, she remembered Emily Risman as a regular traveller who sat at the rear of the bus reading magazines. The very regularity of this journey was the flaw that the defence went after. How could she have been sure that Emily had been on the bus that day? The bus driver, another regular on the route, had not been able to swear that Emily had been a passenger. As a result, the jury saw no reason to doubt the prosecution’s contention that Emily had met Cooper in Millend.
They might not have been so quick to think this had they been shown another witness who may have seen Emily getting into a car in the car park that afternoon. And Maddox had conveniently torn out the entry in his notebook regarding that witness.
Anna groaned. She was tired. The more she read, the more disgusted she became. The whole case seemed mired in filth. She closed the file and left, hit the gym and had an early night. All she wanted was a few hours of not having to think about Emily and Nia and a man who liked squeezing apples. But even in sleep, she knew that the algorithm in her head was still running.
In the morning, Anna’s phone rang early. It was an unfamiliar number, but she recognised the animated voice as belonging to Tobias.
‘You’ve heard about Neville?’
‘How is he?’
‘A mess.’
‘What happened?’
‘What happened, Inspector, is that Chief Inspector Harris appears intent on trying to send my client to an early grave.’
‘That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?’
‘You be the judge. And I am telling you this because I’m certain that Harris wouldn’t volunteer this information. Yesterday afternoon, I was with Neville. He likes me to call, bring him news about his mother. We talked in a seminar room. He was feeling well and buoyed by me telling him that you were also on his team.’
‘I don’t know about—’
‘Let me finish. We left together. Me to my car, Neville to go back to his cell. There was someone in the corridor with Harris. Does the name Wyngate mean anything to you?’
‘Yes.’ The word hissed out of Anna’s mouth like steam from a kettle.
‘Obviously, Neville recognised him. When he did I saw him tense. I saw his whole demeanour change. He looked terrified. As we passed, Wyngate said something. Neville didn’t respond. But I saw he’d gone very pale. I asked him if he was OK and he said he was, but I knew something was wrong. An hour later I get a call to say that Neville tied his shirt to the metal legs of his bed and tried to strangle himself. Wyngate is a bogeyman from Neville’s past.’
Anna shut her eyes, her imagination working overtime. ‘What was Wyngate even doing there?’
‘I don’t think it was a coincidence,’ Tobias said.
‘A set-up?’
‘My money is on that.’
She exhaled loudly. ‘God, you’d think they’d learned their lesson, wouldn’t you? Thanks for letting me know.’
Tobias’s tone was grim. ‘Believe me, it gives me no pleasure at all.’
Anna grabbed her coat and went directly to her car. She headed north for the M5, phoned HQ and left a message on Trisha’s answerphone.
‘Anyone asks, I’ve had to go to Gloucester.’
It wasn’t strictly true. But Harris wasn’t answering his phone and what she had to say to him would undoubtedly be better done face to face.
Slack pretended to hide behind his computer screen in the squad room at Gloucester.
‘Where is he?’ Anna demanded.
‘Just come out of a roasting with the ACC. He isn’t talking to anyone.’
‘He’ll talk to me,’ Anna said.
‘Ma’am, it might be better to wait until tomorrow—’
‘I think we’ve waited far too long already.’
‘We’ve had orders that he’s not to be disturbed,’ said Slack. Anna read it as more of a show to the others in the room than a real warning, especially as he made no move to stop her.
Harris’s office was at the very end of the large squad room, which was filled with desks and filing cabinets. Five sets of eyes looked up as Anna walked by and the subdued buzz trickled to silence as they tracked her progress to the glass-panelled door at the end.
Harris looked up as she knocked and entered without waiting for an invitation, his face dark with a brooding anger. On recognising her, the anger died to a sullen defiance.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, shuffling the papers on his desk.
‘Guess,’ Anna said, folding her arms and standing with her back to the door.
‘Look, I didn’t plan for Cooper to end up in the bloody hospital.’
‘No? Then what did you plan for, Chief Inspector? Or was Wyngate there by pure coincidence?’
Thunder gathered again on Harris’s brow. ‘Be careful, Acting Inspector Gwynne.’
Anna shook her head, walked across the room and sat opposite Harris, matching his glare with one of her own.
‘I’m not really interested in your motives, sir. I can almost begin to grasp the vague idea that you, or Wyngate, may have suggested that letting Cooper see him might just scare him enough to…’ She shook her head again.
‘You think you’re so bloody smart, don’t you?’ His belligerence said it all. It had been his idea.
‘I had you down as misogynistic, patronising and bloody-minded, but not stupid,’ Anna said.
The skin on Harris’s neck turned an ugly shade of purple. ‘Who the hell do you think you are—’
‘Everyone’s been telling me that you can be a pious pain in the arse, but beneath it all a good copper. That’s why I can’t believe you’d do anything so crass as goad Neville Cooper like this.’
Harris’s lips kept opening and shutting like a fish out of water. Whatever words he was searching for seemed stuck in his throat.
Anna leaned in close. ‘Wyngate has his own agenda, which has nothing to do with the truth.’
‘Cooper is still our prime suspect.’ Harris remained defiant, but it was almost as if he was appealing for understanding rather than trying to shout her down.
Anna’s hands came up to the side of her head as if she were about to tear out two clumps of hair. She exhaled loudly before speaking with exaggerated calmness. ‘Cooper did not kill Emily, but it is very likely that whoever did kill her also killed Nia. In arresting Cooper, you’re simply chasing your own tail. Whatever misguided loyalty you feel for Briggs or Wyngate, or whoever else you were buddied up with, you have to walk away from it.’
‘You don’t know anything.’ He dropped his gaze and began massaging the back of his neck.
‘I know enough to see a good officer’s reputation going down the toilet.’
Harris’s head snapped up, ready to protest, but Anna quelled him with a sweep of one hand.
‘This stops now. We have two choices. Either I walk away and let you handle this your own way, which, as far as I can see will be a disaster. Or, I can tell you what I think should be done and we remain on the same team.’
‘And you think I’m bloody arrogant?’
‘Call me what you want, the choice remains the same. Like it or not, I still have a brief and either you come with us on this or you don’t.’
Harris stared.
Anna cocked her head, cheeks burning, her pulse throbbing in her throat.
Harris said, ‘I’m listening.’
Anna nodded. A small, barely perceptible movement. ‘Try to take a small step back for a moment. Let’s take it as a given that Cooper did not kill Nia Hopkins. Accept that and you must also accept that someone wants very much for us to believe that he did by planting evidence at Cooper’s workplace.’
‘Who?’
‘The same person that planted Emily Risman’s underclothes eighteen years ago.’
Harris considered this thought for all of two seconds, before anger once again erupted. ‘If you believe all the press are saying, that could have been the CCRC.’
Anna shook her head. ‘Wyngate and Maddox and Briggs were responsible for many unforgivable things, but I don’t think they did that – even if Maddox was Tonto to Briggs’ Lone Ranger.’
‘John Wyngate isn’t like that.’
Anna held up one hand, palm open towards him. ‘At least accept that someone planted evidence. It’s inconceivable that Emily’s undergarments were only found on the third search of Neville Cooper’s property in 1999.’
‘You have a name?’
‘Not yet. But whoever it is, he’s played you and Wyngate like an expert fisherman with an irresistible lure. He’s relied on the fact that the police were willing to make a case against Cooper once – so why not again? Now he’ll be praying that the case sticks. So, here’s the choice we must make. I’m asking you to perpetuate the lie. That way we can continue the hunt in the faint hope that he might be slightly off his guard. It’s the stealthy approach and definitely the one I’d prefer.’
Harris let out a mirthless laugh. ‘Stealthy? Yeah, right. I’ve just had my arse kicked from here to Sunday by the ACC and she has very sharp boots. What’s going to happen is that I have to call a press conference with me eating a two-hundredweight slice of humble pie and releasing Cooper from custody. At least while he’s in hospital. The ACC says it’ll show compassion.’
‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘No?’ Harris’s mock surprise was pure am-dram. ‘And there’s me thinking you’d be applauding the loudest.’
‘I’m sure it would be good for Cooper, but it’s asking for trouble.’
‘What trouble?’
‘It’s too provocative. With Cooper still under suspicion the real killer feels safe. Take away that safety net and who knows what he’ll do.’
‘You don’t think that flushing him out is an option? Isn’t that exactly what we want?’
Anna recoiled. ‘No.’
Harris’s eyes were shining now. ‘Why so negative? I thought you’d jump at the chance?’
Once again, she found Shaw’s words fuelling her train of thought.
And then maybe our special boy can get back to business.
She felt trapped, like a thumb in a vice. She didn’t want him to ‘get back to business’ if the business meant stalking and raping. She hated the thought of it. But contemplating the alternative made something reptilian coil and uncoil in her gut.
‘I despise the fact that Cooper’s been targeted by you again, but if you let him off the hook, it’s likely the killer will panic. This man has killed coldly and cynically to keep himself free. He picked out Nia Hopkins for maximum effect because of her link, through her father, to Cooper. I think he’s capable of anything and I don’t want to be responsible for that. Frankly, it smacks of real unfettered malevolence and it scares me silly.’
Harris stood up and crossed to a large pinboard, which was covered by the monstrous collage of photographs, drawings and details that told the dreadful story of Nia’s murder. When he spoke he was still facing the board. ‘John Wyngate made a promise to Emily’s parents that he would find the killer of their daughter. He’s still driven by that promise. We all learned a lot from Briggs. He’s the sort of boss that commanded fierce loyalty. They were desperate for a result.’
‘Desperate enough to plot a confrontation that put Cooper in hospital?’ Anna knew she shouldn’t have, but the words slipped out anyway.
Harris pivoted, his face flushing a dusky red. ‘Wyngate just asked him how his mother was.’
Jesus. Anna shook her head.
‘It was only meant as one more little turn of the screw, that’s all.’
She rounded on him. ‘God, don’t you get it? It’s not enough for us to find the guilty. We’re here to protect the innocent as well.’
For the first time since she’d met him, the fierce conviction left Harris’s face, to be replaced by… what was that? Doubt? But this was Harris. It didn’t last.
‘The ACC hasn’t given me any choice. We go ahead with the press conference.’
Anna rolled her eyes.
Harris said, ‘And she wants you to be a part of it.’
‘I’ve just told you. I think it’s far too dangerous.’
‘I heard you. But she wants to show solidarity.’
‘Who are you doing this for? Yourself or Wyngate?’
‘This is all for Nia. Believe you me.’
‘The answer’s still no.’