‘There’s something troubling you, I can tell.’
‘You’re not kidding.’
The cell in which Geri Peters had been incarcerated was locked, unlike the others where the doors were wide open, ready for the next incumbent. The sergeant opened the cell door and at the same time took something out of his pocket which he held up, dangling. It was a bootlace.
‘This is the same length and thickness as the one she tried to hang herself with. The original is bagged up.’
‘OK.’ Henry was intrigued.
The sergeant took a breath. ‘It’s been on my mind ever since she tried to top herself, so much so I couldn’t sleep. I was back in here at ten o’clock this morning. The first thing is that I’m a hundred per cent certain the prisoner was thoroughly searched. You were there, boss. Two WPCs searched her, found some drugs and a hidden knife. She was strip searched and given a zoot suit, so how she got the bootlace worries me.’
‘Maybe it was in the cell already.’
‘When I come on duty, I make a point of searching all the cells in the complex. I did that last night and this cell did not have a bootlace left in it. I had a prisoner kill himself on me once using a razor that’d been left lying about. I’m very touchy about things like that.’
‘So you searched this cell when you came on duty last night?’
‘I did. But OK,’ he said slowly, ‘it is possible I could have missed the lace. I admit it,’ he said honestly, ‘but I don’t think I did. I am as certain as I can be that she was put into a clean cell, which had been searched properly. Of course, she could have had it stuffed up her vagina or anus — but the lace was dry and it didn’t smell, so I don’t think she did.’
Henry waited uncomfortably. The sergeant was obviously a professional who cared deeply about the job he did. Henry was impressed.
‘So that’s one part. The next part is this.’ He dangled the bootlace. ‘I know full well that it’s possible to loop ligatures around the door hatch plates and it causes us major problems. Hatches come loose with use, the metal warps and prisoners who are intent on taking their own lives will do it. Having said that — ’ He went to the door and closed the cell hatch. From inside the door he pushed the hatch and was able to feed the bootlace through the gap between the bottom of the hatch and the door where the metal had twisted slightly. ‘I can do this, but I can’t manage to loop the lace around the hatch handle like the girl did.’ To prove his point, he made a loop in the lace and tried to manoeuvre it around the handle without success. ‘I spent an hour trying to do it this morning. I tried it on other cell doors and I could do it on some of them, so it’s not as though it’s impossible. But I cannot do it on this cell door,’ he said firmly.
‘Let’s have a go.’ Henry took the lace off the sergeant. He held both ends of it and fed the loop through the gap, letting it hang down. He tried to swing it up over the catch. Missed. Tried again. No joy. After five minutes he gave up.
The sergeant stood and watched patiently. Henry handed the lace back to him. A horrible feeling was in the pit of his stomach.
‘You believe there is no way she could have got into the cell with that bootlace in her possession, unless it was maybe inside her, and you don’t think that was the case?’
‘No.’
‘And even if she had somehow smuggled it in, she could not have used it to hang herself in the way she did?’
‘Correct.’
‘What are you saying?’
The sergeant inhaled a deep breath and shook his head despondently. ‘I don’t know, I just don’t know.’ He looked to Henry for assistance.
Henry stalked up and down the corridor, kicking an imaginary stone, reviewing what had just been revealed. He stopped walking abruptly.
‘She must have had help to hang herself, or she must have been hung by someone else. Either way, another person is involved,’ Henry stated. Then what had been a vague memory came back into his mind: the comment the pathologist had made about a bump on the dead girl’s head sometime prior to her death. Henry was certain she did not go into the cell with any injuries, even after the tussle he’d had with her when he made the arrest. Perhaps this explained the bump — being overpowered in a cell, maybe knocked senseless while the bootlace was wrapped round her throat then attached to the door. Henry felt slightly queasy. He said nothing to the custody officer.
The sergeant looked down at the tiled floor.
‘I do not like what I’ve just said.’
‘Nor do I,’ replied the sergeant.
‘Right, keep this cell out of use. Get scenes of crime to come and take some photos of the door, the hatch and everything — just keep it a matter of course for now. No scaremongering, OK? Find out, if you can, the name of everybody who came into the custody office last night from when I brought her in to when she was found and obviously anybody who you saw going up to the female cells — not easy, but do your best. And let me have a think about how to take this forward. Bob, I don’t like what you’ve turned up here, but well done.’
The relief of unburdening himself was very visible on the sergeant’s face. ‘I’ll let you have a list of everybody I remember within the hour.’
‘Right.’ Henry nodded. ‘Let’s just keep it low key for the moment, between you and me. If what you’re suggesting is right, we don’t want to spook whoever might have done this. In fact, we don’t really want anyone to know that we might have an attempted murder in our own cells, possibly committed by one of our own people.’
Henry did not have any time to consider what course of action he might take in the matter as once again, his accursed personal radio squawked up and asked him to make his way to see ACC Fanshaw-Bayley urgently.
Eighteen
David Gill had some time to play with. Not much, because he had things to do, appearances to keep up, but he could not resist visiting his prisoner. He had to see her, talk to her, just for a little while, because he thought she was wonderful. Delivered into his hands by divine intervention. Turning up on the doorstep like an offering from the gods.
He made his way to where he was keeping her. A safe place, entirely appropriate for the occasion. He made his way to the locked room underneath ground level, a room no other person in the whole world knew existed. His own private room which he entered torch in hand, the beam shining into his captive’s eyes.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d pop in and see you.’
Jane Roscoe did not respond, or move. She was stricken with terror.
‘What’s up, cat got your tongue?’
Roscoe tried to see beyond the torch light to see his face. It was impossible. She was having trouble focusing with the beam burning into her pupils after having been in the dark for so long.
‘No point being difficult,’ Gill said, ‘that won’t get you anywhere.’
‘You won’t get away with this,’ she croaked dryly.
‘Oooh, she speaks,’ he applauded. ‘Get away with it? Course I will, you silly girl. I always do.’
‘Always?’ Roscoe said, picking up on the implication of the word.
‘Always,’ he confirmed.
‘You’ve done this before?’
‘What, is this an interview, Jane?’
She fell silent. The light was in her face. ‘Where’s DS Evans, the officer I was with?’ She had been trying hard to remember what had happened when the door to Gill’s flat had opened, but could not. It had been a blur.
‘Dead, I’m afraid,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way.
Roscoe gasped then screamed, long, loud and piercingly. She could not help herself, it had welled up inside her uncontrollably, something she did not wish to do, but was unable to stop.
‘Oh now shut up,’ Gill said impatiently. ‘Come on, shut up.’
Still she screamed.
‘It’ll do you no good,’ he said, becoming angry. ‘No one will hear you. You are in a sealed tomb.’ Roscoe continued to scream. ‘Right, if that’s the way you want it, you can suffer.’