Deadly Alibi Read online

  Sam’s dilemma reminded Geraldine of her former sergeant. Ian’s wife had blamed the break up of their marriage on the time he spent working. It happened a lot to Geraldine’s fellow officers. Long hours and extreme stress were not conducive to a settled home life. She felt sorry for Sam who had seemed so happy with her girlfriend. She gave a sympathetic smile, but resisted trotting out platitudes. This was a situation Sam was going to have to resolve for herself.

  ‘Emma’s fine. It’s not that. She’ll be nice about it, and understanding. She always is. But it’s not fair on her. She’s always there for me.’ She sighed. ‘It’s just hard, sometimes, trying to juggle two lives.’

  Needing a sample of Chris’s DNA, they set off. He was staying in a hostel not far from the council estate where he lived, not far from Highgate High Street, near Waterlow Park.

  ‘It was him,’ Sam said. ‘It had to be.’

  Geraldine suspected her sergeant was right.

  ‘No wheelie bin outside,’ Sam muttered as they drove past.

  Geraldine nodded. Not everyone kept their bins on display at the front of their house, and many households had more than one bin, but it could be significant.

  Unkempt and unshaven, Chris looked and smelled as though he had slept in his clothes.

  ‘Do you know who did it?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Have you got him?’

  ‘We think so,’ Sam replied.

  Chris inhaled deeply and his expression relaxed slightly. ‘You’d better lock him up or I’ll – I’ll smash his face in,’ he said, clenching his fists.

  His threat sounded pathetic. He looked as though he could no more attack his wife’s killer than he could fly. Geraldine wondered if he really had killed his wife. If he had, he was a good actor.

  ‘We’re working on several leads,’ Geraldine said, when they were inside and sitting down. ‘But we came here to ask for a sample of your DNA.’

  ‘What for?’

  Geraldine answered quietly. ‘Just for the process of elimination.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ His eyes widened in alarm. ‘You can’t think I killed her! She was my wife!’

  ‘Everyone who was in contact with your wife before she was killed has to be ruled out of the investigation. That’s the way we work, Chris, narrowing it down and excluding people until we find our suspect. You do want us to find out who killed Jamie, don’t you? So come on, it’s standard procedure, and nothing to be worried about.’

  ‘Assuming you’re innocent,’ Sam muttered.

  Geraldine gave her sergeant a warning glare.

  He acquiesced with a surly growl. ‘Oh well, go on then, if you must you must, I suppose.’

  He opened his mouth and submitted to Sam collecting a sample. As the sergeant finished, Geraldine casually mentioned there was no bin outside the house.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t have a bin outside.’

  ‘Oh yes, we had one, of course we did, but it was stolen.’

  ‘Stolen? When was that?’

  He frowned. ‘As it happens, I noticed it had gone on Friday, the same day Jamie went missing.’

  ‘You didn’t report it,’ Sam said.

  ‘What? No, of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Are you people for real? My wife had gone missing. Why would I be thinking about a bin? Wife. Bin. Which would you worry about? You really think I could think about anything other than Jamie at a time like that? Really?’

  The two women left soon after. Sam thought it was significant that Chris’s bin had disappeared, but Geraldine pointed out that the missing bin proved nothing. With a van, or a hatchback, anyone could have driven the bin to the High Street after dark. A team had been studying CCTV film from cameras closest to the charity shop. So far no one had been spotted pushing a wheelie bin along the street on Thursday night. A camera nearly opposite the charity shop had recorded a van stopping outside the shop at half past two, but in the darkness the vehicle had blocked the view of the shop doorway. It was possible someone had trundled a bin out of the back of the van and into the shop doorway. The Visual Images, Identification and Detections Officers were trying to enhance the image of the number plate, but so far without success. The street was empty at night. It had been easy for the van to pull into the kerb without turning far enough for the registration plate at the front or back to face the camera.

  ‘We have to be patient,’ Geraldine told Sam.

  ‘It won’t be long now,’ Sam answered cheerfully as she drove them back to the police station. ‘We just need to know if the DNA is a match, or find the driver of that van, or both, and it will all be sewn up.’

  Geraldine hoped her sergeant was right. It was tantalising to have so much potential evidence, none of it yet conclusive.

  13

  ‘There are ready meals in the freezer, and I’ve filled the fridge,’ Louise called out. ‘And I’m up to date with the washing.’

  ‘Stop fussing, will you?’ Tom replied. ‘You won’t be gone for long. I think I can survive a couple of days without you.’

  ‘OK, I’m off to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

  Tom didn’t answer. As soon as she set off in the morning, he intended to follow her. She had told him she was going on a training course in Birmingham, catching a train from Euston in the morning, but he suspected her trip had nothing to do with her training as a hair stylist. If she was off to catch an early train to Birmingham, he would be very surprised. When he went upstairs to the bedroom, she was repacking. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she folded her new jeans, and laid them carefully in the case, with several of her favourite shirts. He wanted to take a look in her case while she was in the bathroom, to see what else she had packed, but decided against it. If she caught him ferreting around in her case, it would be difficult to explain what he was doing.

  He slept uneasily, constantly checking the time on his phone and listening out for any movement. It was a relief when she clambered out of bed. He could tell she was taking care not to disturb him. Convinced she wanted to creep out silently because she was hiding something from him, his unspoken accusation was making him suspect her of being similarly furtive. He hated himself for being so distrustful, but he couldn’t bring himself to confront her. He didn’t want to listen to more of her lies. In the meantime, not knowing if her affair was still going on was driving him nuts.

  If he could catch her meeting her lover, at least he would know the truth. He was positive she was going away to spend the night with another man. The thought that she might not come back terrified him. He had told her glibly that he could manage without her for a couple of days. That was true. But the prospect of spending the rest of his life without her was too painful to contemplate. All the same, he had to know what was going on before he lost his mind.

  The station was fairly busy as he followed her on to the platform at Holloway Road. Wearing a hat he had bought especially to help him pursue her unrecognised, he peered out from beneath the brim. She didn’t even look round. She had no idea he was there. Her innocence gave him a slight pang, but he remembered seeing a man creep out of his house at midnight and his resolve hardened. She changed trains at Kings Cross. Here there was no problem keeping out of sight, the station was so crowded. At Euston Square she left the station and hurried along the street to the mainline station. Watching her studying the departures board, he realised she really was going to Birmingham, and she appeared to be travelling alone.

  He had been a fool to follow her to Euston. Short of stalking her all the way to Birmingham, he still had no way of knowing whether she was travelling there for a hairdressing course, or to meet someone. But he was going to find out.

  14

  The next morning Geraldine arrived at work early, determined to carry out an extensive search on Jamie Cordwell. Th
ere was no mention of any injuries in her medical records, and no evidence of any hospital visits. Geraldine studied all the documentation, but couldn’t find anything useful.

  Before she had time to do anything else, results came in from the forensic team, seeming to confirm Chris’s guilt. The Detective Chief Inspector summoned the team together as soon as the news came in. There was a buzz of excitement in the major incident room as they gathered. Geraldine saw Sam hurrying along the corridor and stopped to wait for her. They went in together.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Sam asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Didn’t you see the latest report?’

  ‘I’d just popped down to the canteen for a quick breakfast. Honestly, you can’t even take a five-minute break in this place without something happening.’

  ‘Sam, your talents are wasted here. You should be working in a restaurant. Or you could be a food critic, judging pub grub.’

  ‘So? What’s the latest?’ Sam asked, ignoring Geraldine’s teasing.

  Before Geraldine could reply, Adam Eastwood marched into the room. In his mid-forties, dark-haired and dapper, the detective chief inspector’s eyes shone with suppressed excitement, although his expression remained stern. His voice rang out clearly across the room as he made his announcement.

  ‘We’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. The results of the DNA tests are back. Those of you who’ve seen the latest report will know that the scraps of skin found beneath the victim’s fingernails belonged to her husband. They were fighting shortly before her death. His DNA and fingerprints were found on the bin in which her body was dumped.’

  Whatever had sparked the row, something had thrown him into a violent rage, resulting in a fatal attack. There seemed little doubt that they had found the killer. The Visual Images, Identification and Detections Officers were still hunting for the van in which Chris had transported the wheelie bin to the High Street during the night.

  ‘That will be the final piece of the jigsaw,’ Adam said.

  ‘If we’ve got the right man,’ Geraldine added, more loudly than she had intended.

  Everyone in the room turned to stare at her.

  ‘You met our suspect,’ Adam said. ‘What was your impression of him? You seem to be implying that you don’t think he’s our man.’

  Geraldine hesitated. ‘I don’t see that finding his DNA on the victim means anything. She was his wife. Of course his prints and his DNA are going to be all over her.’

  ‘And his skin beneath her fingernails?’ someone pointed out. There was a murmur of consent around the room.

  ‘She could have been scratching his back,’ a constable suggested.

  The mood in the room dampened slightly. It was true, they had been very quick to reach a conclusion on limited evidence.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, Geraldine,’ Adam said. ‘What’s your impression of him?’

  ‘He seemed a bit feeble,’ she replied cautiously.

  ‘Feeble-minded?’ someone called out.

  ‘He beat his wife up before he killed her,’ Sam pointed out, glancing up from her phone where she had been checking the data.

  Geraldine nodded. ‘Yes, it certainly looks that way.’ She paused, struggling to explain herself. ‘There was something sneaky about him, but he didn’t strike me as violent.’

  ‘A surreptitious wife beater,’ Sam said.

  There was no denying the findings looked conclusive. Before Geraldine set off to bring the suspect in for questioning, she went to see Adam.

  ‘Geraldine, there’s something I’d like you to be aware of, but this isn’t to be spread around.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘It hasn’t got any bearing on our present case, but two months ago, Chris Cordwell was falsely accused of abducting a young woman from outside Cockfosters station.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘It came to nothing at the time, so we’ll have to discount it for now. There isn’t an official record of it as such, because the accusation turned out to be completely groundless. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, only it might help you to put pressure on him. Bear it in mind.’

  ‘Do you think we should look into it?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘It was investigated at the time and the accusation was dismissed.’

  Nevertheless, Adam had thought it worth mentioning.

  ‘Are you suggesting I let him know we’re aware of it, when I question him?’

  Adam nodded. ‘It won’t do any harm for him to understand he can’t hide anything from us. Let him think we know everything there is to know about him. You know the drill. But we’re not ready to make a formal arrest just yet.’

  Geraldine understood the detective chief inspector wanted to wait until they had compelling evidence against Chris. It wouldn’t require a particularly skilled lawyer to argue that the suspect’s DNA and fingerprints at the scene of the crime proved nothing. Even if they knew he was guilty, they still had to prove it.

  ‘Let’s bring him in for questioning, see if we can get him to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get him here and work on him.’

  ‘Are you in any doubt he’s our man?’

  ‘No,’ Geraldine replied, but the uncertainty in her voice was apparent to them both. ‘Not exactly,’ she added. Adam raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. ‘That is, I do think he’s guilty, but until we can prove it definitely, there’s always a chance we could be wrong. I’m trying to keep an open mind.’

  ‘OK, well bring him in, and I daresay we’ll get a confession which will clear things up nicely.’

  Before she went to see Chris, Geraldine checked the database, looking for a report of a missing woman, last seen at Cockfosters station. There was no mention of Chris’s name, but she found the report Adam had mentioned. A young woman had allegedly been abducted from the train station two months ago. The missing woman’s father had levelled the accusation based on the fact that he had seen a man driving a van away from the station on the night in question. As the area was otherwise deserted, the worried father had noted down the registration number of the van. His missing daughter was blond. So was the suspect’s wife, who had confirmed that she had been in the van with her husband that night. The story had checked out in every respect. All due procedures had been followed in what had turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

  Geraldine took Sam with her to see Jamie’s husband. They drove slowly through the London traffic without saying much.

  ‘It looks like you might get away for the weekend after all,’ Geraldine said at last. ‘Emma’ll be pleased.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I’m hoping we’ve got this right.’

  ‘I take it that remark was prompted by your passionate desire to see justice done, not by your passionate desire for Emma,’ Geraldine replied, a trifle sharply.

  ‘Oh come on, Geraldine, you know what it’s like. You must have…’ Sam broke off, clearly afraid she had spoken out of turn.

  ‘Yes,’ Geraldine hurried to reassure her she was not insulted by Sam’s comment. ‘I do know what it’s like to be in love. Being single doesn’t mean I’m a nun.’

  Her words sounded peevish. For a long time she had resisted the advances of one of her colleagues, aware that he was married. Eventually he had convinced her that he and his wife were estranged. Their affair had only just begun when he had been brutally murdered. To her dismay Geraldine felt tears in her eyes. Her mother’s death had followed soon after the loss of her colleague with whom she had fallen in love. It had been hard to cope with so much loss, not least because she had kept her love affair a secret. She was accustomed to dealing with death in her professional life, but it might have been a mistake to think she could cope unaided with so much personal grief.

  ‘Geraldine? Are you all right? Geraldine?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied, staring out of her
window. ‘I’m just thinking about Chris Cordwell. If he’s innocent, what’s about to happen is going to be horrible for him.’

  ‘It must be horrible for anyone to be a suspect, if they’re innocent. And if he’s not, he deserves what’s coming to him. But I don’t know why you feel sorry for a wife beater.’

  ‘He’s just lost his wife, and now we’re going to accuse him of murdering her. All I’m saying is, if he loved his wife, and if he didn’t kill her, all this would be pretty horrible.’

  ‘If he really loved his wife, even if he didn’t kill her, I don’t suppose he’s going to care much what happens to him. And anyway,’ Sam went on brightly, ‘the chances are it was him, and if he’s as pathetic as he appears, he’s bound to break down and confess, and…’

  ‘And you’ll be able to go away for the weekend without missing anything.’

  ‘That’s not what I was going to say.’

  ‘It’s what you were thinking though.’

  ‘Absolutely not! What an outrageous accusation! Nothing was further from my thoughts.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Geraldine teased her sergeant, who protested, red-faced.

  Geraldine laughed, her good humour restored. It was difficult to remain miserable for long in Sam’s company.

  ‘Let’s see what he has to say when we take him back with us for questioning,’ Sam said. ‘I can’t wait.’

  15

  Chris glared sullenly across the table at Geraldine. ‘Before you start with your questions, I want a lawyer. I’m not saying another word until I have a lawyer. I know what you people are like.’

  Sam looked interested. Before she could question the suspect, Geraldine gave her a warning frown.

  ‘Then you must be aware that we know everything about you, Chris.’

  He gave a dismissive grunt. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘We know that you were recently accused of abducting a woman.’

  Chris scowled. ‘That nonsense again? Yes, some young girl ran away from home, but it had nothing to do with me.’