They had been ensconced in one of the interview rooms just off the custody reception area. They emerged like rats out of a tunnel and headed towards the desk.
Brooks said to Donaldson, ‘I want to get the initial interview done before I let you loose on the prisoner. We have the facility to watch interviews taking place, so you and me can sit back and watch my detectives talking to this guy for a while.’
It was as good as it was going to get. Donaldson accepted it.
At the custody desk, Brooks spoke to the sergeant. ‘We’re ready now, Colin.’
The sergeant opened the custody record and made an entry in the log. He turned to the civilian gaoler and asked him to produce Whitlock from his cell.
‘He’s still in the solicitor’s room.’
‘What? Why? He should’ve gone back in a cell.’
‘The brief asked if it was OK if he could stay there,’ responded the gaoler petulantly.
‘And you agreed?’ The sergeant stared askance at the duty solicitor, who wilted slightly.
‘Er, yeah. . didn’t seem to be a problem. The door is locked.’
‘Next time, cell, OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Go get him.’
Donaldson watched and listened to the exchange with interest. He knew that there was a move within the British police service to appoint civilian gaolers because they were cheaper to employ than constables. The problem was that, unlike cops, who were steeped in custody procedure and dealing with deceitful baddies, civilian gaolers tended to be rather naive and trusting.
The gaoler strolled sloppily down the short corridor to the solicitor’s room, swinging his keys. He inserted one, unlocked it, pushed.
The door would not open.
He pushed harder, a puzzled expression on his face, which turned worriedly towards the custody desk.
The duty solicitor, Brooks, the interviewing officers and the custody sergeant were huddled in a chat-scrum and were unaware of the gaoler’s difficulty. Donaldson, however, had watched him all the way and seen the struggle to open the door. He pushed himself off the custody desk. ‘There’s something wrong down here.’ He hurried down the corridor. ‘What is it?’
‘Can’t get the door open.’
‘It is unlocked — yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ snarled the gaoler.
Donaldson pushed the door. It opened an inch, no more. He looked around the door frame and then stepped back, his foot slipping on something. A moment passed before he realized he had blood on his shoe, blood which was seeping underneath the door.
Without further vacillation he placed his shoulder to the door and pushed hard, his feet slithering in the blood. Slowly the door opened, inch by inch. People gathered behind him. He pushed and the door finally opened wide enough to allow him entry, revealing exactly what Donaldson expected to see: Whitlock’s body hanging by the neck from the inner door handle, his wrists slashed up each arm.
Donaldson twisted into the room, bending down to look at Whitlock, whose bloodshot eyes bulged, his tongue hanging thickly out of his mouth. The American knew even before he reached for a pulse that there was nothing that could be done for the long-distance lorry driver.
Eleven
‘Superintendent Anger won’t be very pleased,’ Roscoe pointed out unnecessarily.
‘That doesn’t surprise me, but the fact of the matter is that this body is lying within our jurisdiction, so it’s our murder.’
Henry spoke with an authority that cut Roscoe dead. She clammed up.
Henry knew the area well from many years before when he had served in the Rossendale Valley. The quirk was that to get to Deeply Vale, you had to drive out of Lancashire into Greater Manchester near Bury in order to get back into Lancashire. Deeply Vale thrust out like a peninsula surrounded by the water of a massive Metropolitan area, and if true logic had been applied then the area should probably have been part of that urban sprawl, but it wasn’t. Where Henry was now standing was definitely on his patch, which meant he knew exactly where the body was lying.
The reason why Henry knew it so well dated back to the early 1980s when the phenomenon of travelling hippies hit the country. It was a time when such groups of people would, during summer months, descend in droves on various locations, set up camps for weeks on end, and hold impromptu and illegal pop concerts and smoke a lot of hash. Deeply Vale was one of these locations. A peaceful, picturesque area, accessible only via rough farm tracks. Ideal, it might be argued, for such peace-and-love events, but not so great for local residents, councils and cops who had to clear up the mess.
There had been boundary disputes in those days and it was during them that Henry got to know well what was and wasn’t in Lancashire.
A couple of Greater Manchester detectives from Bury huddled near their car, deep in conversation and surrounded by cigarette smoke. Henry walked over to them and explained the situation. They couldn’t have left the scene any faster, so relieved were they that a ball-aching murder was not on their area. Henry watched the exit with a shake of the head, then spun round and surveyed the scene.
By virtue of its openness it would be difficult to secure. It also pained him that quite a few pairs of boots and sets of tyres had been across the scene. But there was one thing that Henry knew well and he reminded himself of it at every murder he attended: you didn’t get a second chance at a crime scene. He would do all he could to protect it in order to secure and preserve any evidence to be had. That would be his first task.
Time to get the ball rolling.
Time zones meant that the Costa Blanca in Spain was one hour ahead of Britain.
Carlos Mendoza had been up since dawn, having taken his favourite horse Flamenca out for an hour-long hack in the hills behind the winery, both returning hot and sweaty from the exertion. Mendoza handed the horse to a stable boy who led the beast away for food, water and grooming. Mendoza went into the cool house, showered, then made his way to the pool side where he swam thirty hard lengths before pulling himself out and letting his brown, muscled body dry itself in the early sunshine.
Breakfast — black coffee and warm rolls — was brought to him by a maid. He ate alone at table by the pool, looking down at a view he loved.
It was not the fact that from where his winery was situated he could see down across the coastal plain to the port of Torrevieja and beyond that to the shimmer of the Mediterranean. That was OK, yes. Pleasant, picturesque, yes. What really pleased Mendoza was the sight of dozens of huge cranes standing there in the distance, reminding him of the flamingos which could be found feeding in the salt pans further north, near Alicante. But, again, this was not what pleased him. What really made him smile was that cranes meant building sites, building sites meant new houses and new houses meant vast profit to him — eventually. Much of his money was tied up in the recent and unprecedented housing boom on the Costa, where prices had doubled in a year. Mendoza owned six large building sites which would become housing estates. He could not build them fast enough to feed the demand. He had even bought a hotel in Torrevieja in which he lodged prospective clients for high-pressure three-day inspection visits.
Although the money was tied up, it was profit for little effort, like most of his enterprises, although the housing market was perhaps the most legitimate area he dabbled in.
A noise made him glance round. He squinted against the sun as he watched his number two, his business director, emerge from the house flanked by two heavies.
‘Hola,’ Mendoza called with a little wave.
The man — Lopez — nodded and approached his boss. He wore a wide-brimmed straw trilby which shaded his pale skin and thick pink lips. In his hand he carried a briefcase containing the day’s business, which he placed on the table. The two heavies who had accompanied him dropped on to sun loungers on the other side of the pool, out of earshot. One read a newspaper, another played with a GameBoy. ‘Another beautiful day,’ Lopez commented. He flipped open the case.