Читать книгу A Bad Bad Thing - Elena Forbes - Страница 14

Eve walked slowly out of the room and back through the series of corridors and security checks to the main entrance. She wondered if he had planted spies to observe her and she decided to take no chances. There must be no signs of her inner turmoil to be reported back. Her footsteps echoed distantly on the lino and she felt as though she were sleepwalking, as she went over and over in her mind what Duran had said. ‘If you do me this favour, your secret’s safe with me.’ How much did he know? Could he really have found out something material? The more she thought about it, the more it seemed unlikely. The fact that she shared somebody else’s name and birth date could be dismissed as a coincidence. But in trying to blackmail her showed he was desperate, for some reason. Maybe she could play it to her advantage. Again, she kept coming back to why he had decided to take up Sean Farrell’s cause. Had he really had some sort of Damascene conversion? She doubted it. ‘It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,’ Duran had once said to her, in one of his more forthcoming responses during his interrogation. At the time, she wondered if he had actually read Milton, or knew where the quote came from, or if it was something he had picked up second-hand, just liking the sound of it. But he was right about one thing. ‘What have you got to lose?’ he had asked. What choice did she have? There was a good chance he might know who had set her up, and why. Even if he didn’t, or if she did what he asked and he then reneged on the deal, she would be in no worse a position than she was now. If he honoured his side of the bargain and gave her the information she needed, it might change everything at the disciplinary hearing. Also, whoever had done it would be made to pay. On balance, it was a risk worth running. Apart from anything else, she needed to stop him delving any further into her past.

She collected her belongings from the visitor centre, went into the ladies, checked to make sure it was empty, then locked herself in a cubicle. She closed the lid of the toilet, sat down and took out her phone. Was there any way Duran could find out her true identity? She was wondering whom to contact, who could possibly know, when the phone vibrated in her hand. She checked the screen. No caller ID. When she answered, she heard Alan Peters’ flat, nasal tones at the other end.

‘Where are you, Miss West?’

‘Still at Bellevue,’ she said, although she imagined he knew this. Duran’s chauffeur, would have told him that she hadn’t yet come out. ‘Just getting my things from the visitor centre.’

‘I understand you’ve now seen Mr Duran. Would you like the papers sent over to you?’

She took a deep breath. She had no choice, she told herself again. ‘Yes.’

‘When will you be back home?’

She looked at her watch. They would soon be hitting the beginning of the rush-hour traffic. ‘Say a couple of hours.’

‘There’s somebody you should talk to. His name’s Dan Cooper. He’s a journalist and he knows a lot about the case. He works for a charity called 4Justice. It was set up by Cooper and his ex-partner, Kristen Harris. She’s another journalist. They investigate miscarriages of justice and they’ve had some notable success.’ He reeled off a few names, a couple of which were familiar. ‘It’s all linked to a TV programme of the same name on Channel 4. Luckily for Sean, they’ve taken up his case. I’ll fix up for you to see Cooper first thing in the morning.’

‘What if he finds out I work for the Met? This is a very sensitive time for me, with the disciplinary hearing coming up. I can’t afford for word to get out that I’m doing anything like this.’

‘If anyone asks, just say you have a personal interest in the case,’ Peters said. ‘That’s allowed, isn’t it? There’s been all sorts of stuff in the papers, as you might’ve seen. Maybe it’s piqued your curiosity. Nobody’s going to blame you for offering to help free an innocent man.’

She said nothing. He made it sound so easy and reasonable but she knew how her superiors wouldn’t view it that way, if they found out. But what choice did she have? She would just have to be careful.

‘As far as Mr Cooper goes,’ Peters continued, ‘I’ll make it very clear you’re acting in an unofficial, voluntary capacity. The charity’s short of funds and we’ve made a small financial donation to help oil the wheels temporarily. Cooper will be told to cooperate and to be discreet. To be honest, the way things are going, he should be grateful for any help he can get. But any problems, you just let me know and I’ll have a word with him. You can then go back to Bellevue tomorrow afternoon to meet Sean Farrell.’

The files from Peters arrived by courier just after eight that evening. The sealed box contained a large, thick, black ring binder, labelled Jane McNeil Murder, as well as a bulky brown envelope, shaped like a small brick. Even without feeling through the paper, she guessed what was inside. She held it in her hand for a moment, loath to open it, then tore open the flap and pulled out a block of new fifty-pound notes, with a yellow sticky note attached, in Peters’ handwriting: £10,000. For expenses. AP. It was way more than what was reasonable for a couple of weeks’ work, plus expenses, and it stank of a bribe. She took a photograph of it with her phone, as well as the note, in case she ever had to explain. She wouldn’t take a penny of Duran’s money, over and above what was needed for expenses. There was also an old-style Nokia phone, still in its box. The yellow sticky note attached to it said: Use this if you want to call me or Mr Duran. Numbers are pre-loaded. It’s untraceable.

She made a pot of mint tea, sat down on the sofa and picked up the file. The first page was a large, A4-sized colour photograph of a young woman, slotted into a plastic sleeve. In spite of a pair of unattractive, heavy-framed spectacles, Jane McNeil had been nice-looking in an unremarkable way, with small, neat features and shoulder-length, wavy, dark-brown hair. She was slim, dressed in jeans and a fitted denim shirt, but her body language was awkward, arms folded tightly over her chest, her smile shy and forced, as though she was unused to posing for the camera. A photocopied press cutting had been tucked behind the photograph.

The semi-naked body of Jane McNeil, 27, was discovered in the West Woods, near Marlborough, on Friday evening, thirteen days after she was last seen at a party on the nearby Westerby estate. She was found in a densely-wooded area, half a mile from the main car park. Someone, presumably her killer, had attempted to burn Miss McNeil’s body. Although thirty officers from Wiltshire Constabulary have been involved in the inquiry, questioning locals and Miss McNeil’s former boyfriend, nobody has yet been able to shed any light on how her body came to be there, according to a police spokesperson. ‘One theory we are looking into is that she may have been out jogging, as she liked to keep fit. But it’s early days and we are keeping an open mind.’ Det Supt John Hamill, who is heading the inquiry, yesterday renewed an appeal for anyone to come forward who may have seen Miss McNeil between the evening of Saturday 6th December and Friday 19 th December, the day her body was found. ‘We are talking to her family, friends and colleagues and anyone else who may have relevant information, in an effort to find out more about her,’ he said. ‘It’s an ongoing process and will take many days. It is far too early to comment on a possible motive. We would like to hear from anyone who has information relating to this investigation and we hope that by releasing a photograph of Jane, it will jog the memories of anyone who may have seen her prior to her death.’ The surrounding area was sealed off by police yesterday. Further tests are still being carried out to determine the cause of Miss McNeil’s death.

She skimmed through the first few pages, which were enough to give her the gist of what had happened. Jane had worked as an administrative assistant in the office of Westerby Racing and had lived in a cottage on the Westerby estate. The timeline was clear and straightforward. On Saturday, 6th December, shortly after nine a.m., she had visited a gym, just outside Marlborough. According to the security system, which required an electronic log-in and log-out, she was there for just over an hour and a half. Her ex-boyfriend, Sean Farrell, belonged to the same gym and he arrived there around ten thirty. Several witnesses at the gym described overhearing an argument between the two. Between one p.m. and six p.m., Jane was at the Westerby Racing client Christmas party, serving drinks and canapés to their clients, as well as helping to clear up afterwards. According to several people who were there, she left before the end, claiming she had a headache and was going home, although nobody saw her leave. The last recorded call from her mobile phone was made from the Marlborough area to her mother, at 7.16 p.m. that evening.

A work colleague of Jane’s, Annie Shepherd, drove past the cottage where Jane lived just before seven p.m. that evening and noticed a couple of lights on inside. When another woman, Susan Wright, went past half an hour later, the lights were all off. She also said that she saw a man hanging around Jane’s cottage, peering in through the windows and hammering on the door. It was dark, but she thought he was Jane’s ex-boyfriend, Sean Farrell. When Jane failed to arrive for work on Monday morning, Melissa Michaels, the daughter of the owner of the Westerby estate, went over to the cottage to see if she was alright. One of the ground floor windows at the back of the cottage had been forced open and a pane of glass broken. There was no sign of Jane, or her car, and she called the police. Just over two weeks later, a couple of women out hacking in the West Woods with their dogs discovered the partially burnt and decomposed remains of a woman’s body. It was tucked away in a gulley behind a fallen tree trunk, covered by a pile of dead leaves. The body was later identified as belonging to Jane McNeil. Her car was eventually found in a pub car park next to the Kennet and Avon canal, about two miles south of the cottage where she lived. The only recent prints in the car were Jane’s, although a partial fingerprint belonging to Sean Farrell had been found on the inside of the passenger door-frame. There was no means of saying when the fingerprint had got there, but the absence of any other prints was odd.

Further down the page, Eve found a handwritten note to say that Jane had taken the car to be professionally cleaned a few days before she disappeared. The police assumption was that either Jane had driven herself to the pub to meet somebody, presumably Farrell, or that whoever had driven it had either wiped it clean afterwards or had worn gloves. Farrell’s defence was that he had been in Jane’s car countless times when they were still seeing each other and that the print had been missed by whoever had cleaned the car earlier that week. Nobody at the pub recalled seeing the car arrive, or either Jane or Farrell there that night.

Judging from the press clippings, Farrell had been a suspect right from the start, but there was nothing unusual in that. Stranger-killings were very rare, and in all crimes of violence against women, particularly those with a sexual motive, the obvious place to start was with men known to the victim. The autopsy summary gave the cause of death as undetermined, but of particular interest was a note relating to the presence of seminal fluid on the victim’s thigh, although there hadn’t been sufficient biological material to develop a full DNA profile. Ten years on, there had been a huge advance in the sensitivity and scope of DNA profiling techniques. Had this been a cold case review, re-testing the exhibits would have been a priority. But with Farrell convicted, the case was closed. Somebody – it looked like Alan Peters’ writing – had also made a handwritten note on the page saying: ‘See biologist’s evidence’. Attached to the back of the pages was a passage from the transcript of the trial. The biologist who had analysed the samples taken from the body had given evidence to the effect that the few sperm that had been recovered were all ‘deformed’. ‘A couple of the spermatozoa have two tails, some have bent heads, or twin heads,’ she had noted. Again, written by hand and outlined with a highlighter were the words: ‘Sean Farrell had a vasectomy. No sperm should have been found, deformed or otherwise’.

Eve turned to a short section labelled ‘Prosecution Case’, which contained a summary of the evidence against Sean Farrell. It also contained what looked like copies of documents taken from his official police file, which were not in the public domain and she wondered who Duran or Peters had bribed in order to obtain them. She also found annotated transcripts from the trial, both from the defence and the prosecution. She wondered if Duran himself had made the notes, or if he had had someone else review the file. The case against Farrell hinged on a motive of jealousy. A couple of months before the murder, Farrell had made a scene in a bar where Jane was having a drink with another man. Jane had also made a complaint to the local police about Farrell stalking her, although it appeared he had been let off without a caution. Taken together with the argument at the gym just before she disappeared, the witness sighting of Farrell outside Jane’s cottage that evening, and other information gathered from Jane’s work colleagues and Sean’s ex-wife of ten years, Farrell seemed an obvious fit.

On the Sunday morning after the Christmas party, Farrell had been seen by a neighbour carrying a large, heavy-looking roll of carpet out of his house and struggling to load it into his van. This was instantly viewed as suspicious, even though various friends of Farrell’s told the police that he had been doing up his cottage over the previous couple of months, with a view to selling it. Although he said he had taken the carpet to the dump, it was never found. Apart from that sighting, Farrell had no alibi either for the Saturday night or for a large part of Sunday, the twenty-four-hour window of time during which it was assumed that Jane had been possibly abducted, and murdered. When questioned two weeks later, he had given misleading information regarding his whereabouts on the Sunday morning, saying that he had to visit his mother, who was ill. It turned out that this had been the previous weekend. When this was discovered, he had claimed unconvincingly that he had ‘got confused and had mixed up the weekends’. From the police point of view, he was now a proven liar. Whilst Eve understood why they had seen this as further proof of his guilt, in her own experience perfectly innocent people made mistakes about dates and times when put on the spot, particularly in a formal interview situation. Also, not everybody had perfect recall of what they had been doing even a week before, let alone two or longer. But on top of everything else, it was damning for Farrell. It was not clear from the file if there had been any other suspects and, if so, who they were.

The final section was labelled ‘Defence’. The police mugshot of Farrell taken at the time of his arrest showed a man in his mid-to-late thirties, a broad, fleshy face, with regular features and thick, short, fairish hair. He looked shell-shocked, with the drawn, exhausted expression of somebody who had been put through the mill. She wondered how long the process of questioning had taken before he was formally charged. The psychological assessment had painted him in a positive light, but the defence case, as it was, appeared to have rested entirely on the absence of direct evidence linking Farrell to the crime or the deposition site. The actual crime scene itself had never been identified. Based on what Eve had seen so far, it was surprising that the CPS had managed to get a conviction and she wondered if Farrell had come across poorly during the trial. Given what Duran had said, it was more likely that the defence team had failed to bring out, in any meaningful way, the absence of direct evidence against Farrell. Instead, they appeared to have lost the case because the jury had accepted the picture painted by the prosecution of Farrell’s poor character. At the end were a few sheets of paper containing the logs for both outgoing and incoming calls covering the four weeks up to the Monday morning when Jane McNeil was reported as missing. This also included some voicemail transcripts. She flicked through them but nothing stood out as particularly interesting. Also, without knowing who the people were behind the names, it all meant very little. The file was better than nothing, but it was hardly comprehensive and she wondered whether information had been left out deliberately, or if it was all Peters/Duran had been able to put together. Hopefully, she would learn more from Dan Cooper.

She felt suddenly tired. She had read enough and went into the bedroom, pulled the curtains tightly shut across the blinds and switched on the shower. As she undressed, she had a sudden image of Jason, lying on the bed, looking up at her in the dimly lit room. ‘Why is it always so dark in here? You can’t tell if it’s day or night. I want to see your lovely face.’

‘I can’t sleep if there’s any light,’ she had replied, although that was only the half of it. Sleep, or not sleeping, had been an issue for many years. Even the smallest pinprick of light was a disturbance. She had fitted special blackout blinds behind the curtains and bought the most comfortable bed she could afford, but it still wasn’t enough. She had tried everything, from hypnotherapists to special sleep clinics and cognitive behavioural therapy, some more effective than others for a temporary fix, but it had all been a waste of time. Nothing had come close to curing her insomnia. It was why she usually preferred to sleep alone. As with everything else, the problem was in her head and nothing could fix that. When she did manage to fall asleep, the nightmares would often come, so vivid and desperate that when she woke up she was bathed in sweat, struggling to remind herself that they were only dreams. ‘You sleep fine when I’m here,’ Jason had said. He was right and it had surprised her. He had been her short-term therapy and, for a change, she hadn’t needed the nightly pills. It was why she put up with his being there all night. She could curl up close and warm in his arms and, for a moment, imagine she was somewhere else.

She showered quickly and got into bed. She opened her laptop and found the 4Justice website. It was impressive, with a digital counter at the top, showing the number of cases they had been asked to investigate since the unit had been set up seven years before. There were links to a huge number of press articles on a range of subjects associated with miscarriages of justice, from a variety of renowned contributors. One page documented a list of cases that 4Justice had taken up, some with links to video footage. In many instances, a successful result had been achieved, with the sentence quashed and an innocent person having been released from prison. The advisory panel included a number of well-known forensic specialists, QCs, criminal law solicitors and journalists, including Dan Cooper and Kristen Harris. It seemed that, as well as Duran, Sean Farrell had the angels on his side. Could they all be wrong?