Читать книгу DCI Warren Jones - Paul Gitsham, Paul Gitsham - Страница 31

‘Results are back from traffic about Rodney Shaw’s alibi on the night of the fire.’ Mags Richardson was excited. Warren and Sutton hurried over to her desk.

‘They picked up his licence plate on numerous ANPR cameras, as well as several CCTV cameras that evening.’

On one of her monitors a detailed street map of Middlesbury was marked with the location of the abbey and Shaw’s flat. Blue dots showed the location of junctions with working cameras.

‘This is his journey to the abbey after he was called on his mobile phone.’ A red dotted line appeared on the map, joining up several blue dots, each of which had a time stamp next to it.

‘Well, despite what he claimed when he was interviewed, he clearly wasn’t home in front of the news when his phone went off,’ said Sutton immediately.

Sure enough, the red dotted line started in the south of the town, with the first sighting of the car on an ANPR camera three and a half miles south east of his flat, eight minutes after he received the call about the fire.

Warren squinted at the map. ‘I can’t see any way that he could have got to that part of town from his house without going past at least one camera. What time did his car arrive there?’

‘He drove there immediately after work.’ Richardson clicked the mouse and an irregularly shaped area of the map was shaded in grey. ‘All we can say, location-wise, is that his car stayed somewhere within this area for almost the next five hours, from 5.19 p.m. until seven minutes after he was phoned at five past ten.’

‘It’s a pretty large area,’ said Sutton. ‘We’ll need to narrow it down. Mobile phone records?’

‘He’s clearly lied about his whereabouts that night, I’d say that is enough justification for a warrant,’ said Warren.

‘How far is it from the abbey?’ asked Ruskin, who’d just arrived back in the office.

‘The one-way system increases the journey length, but assuming quiet traffic that time of night, then by car it would take between thirteen and eighteen minutes at normal speed, depending on where he started from within this area. But we know that he didn’t use his own car, as it wasn’t spotted on cameras again until after he was called back because of the fire,’ said Richardson.

‘See if any of the other cars that were in that area are related to Shaw,’ instructed Warren. ‘He could have borrowed a friend’s car. Check if his wife has her own car.’

‘I’ll also get onto the bus companies and cab firms and see if they picked up Shaw,’ said Richardson.

‘That’s if he used public transport,’ cautioned Richardson. ‘It’s only between 1.2 and 1.6 miles as the crow flies and Shaw’s a pretty fit man. He would have been able to easily cover that distance between the fire being set and his car re-appearing on the cameras.’

‘But why did he park his car there?’ asked Ruskin.

‘Presumably he didn’t want to park too near the abbey in case he was spotted, and his flat was too far to walk from,’ said Richardson.

‘Probably, but why here specifically? And what was he doing in the almost five hours between him driving there and going to the abbey?’ asked Sutton.

‘Location data from his mobile phone should help narrow down his exact position. In the meantime, get Rachel to compile a list of local businesses within that area. Knowing his proclivities, he could have spent some time in a local bookie or had some Dutch courage in the pub.’