None of the initial interviews lasted long. Vogel had one immediate aim, which was to check alibis and therefore hopefully narrow down the list of suspects. He was also aware that the homes of all seven of those arrested were being searched while they were detained at Charing Cross. Vogel wanted evidence. He had no time at all for guesswork and inspired hunches which turned out to be anything but.
Karen was the next to be questioned. She cried through most of her interview. When she was asked who might be able to pick her children up if she were still detained by the time school was out, the crying turned into gut-wrenching sobs. She did, however, manage to say that her mother would look after the kids and to supply contact details.
She was also quite clear about her own whereabouts at the time of Michelle’s murder. And she stopped crying for long enough to make sure Vogel was clear on that too.
‘Same as always,’ she said. ‘I took the kids to school. There are loads of other mums who will have seen me. Afterwards I went straight to Tesco. Nine till one, every day, I do a shift on the till.’
Then she started crying again and her words became jumbled. Vogel could only just make out what she was saying.
‘Greg... my Greg... is he here?’
Vogel told her that he was.
Karen looked up at him, both fear and pleading in her swollen red eyes.
‘He’s a good man, my Greg,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t mean no harm, honestly. Don’t be too hard on him, will you?’
Vogel stared at her.
‘Mrs Walker, I am conducting a murder inquiry,’ he said. ‘My only immediate consideration is to find out who killed PC Michelle Monahan. We have also reopened our inquiries into the murder of Marleen McTavish. Now you are beginning to sound as if you are afraid that your husband had something to do with one, or both, of these murders. Is that the case?’
Karen’s eyes widened. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. How could you think that? How could anyone think that of my Greg?’
And then she burst into tears again.
Billy claimed to have been at work at the offices of Geering Brothers, and told Vogel he had arrived just after 8 a.m., as usual.
‘Your guys picked me up there, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Did they think I’d just popped in for coffee and a chat? Ten hours a day I’m in that place, minimum. Sometimes I get out at lunchtime, that’s all, and not for long.’
‘I am just trying to eliminate you from our inquiries, Mr Wiseman,’ said Vogel. ‘You must see how important that is both for you and for us.’
‘And now I suppose you’re going back to Geering’s to check whether I’m telling the truth?’ demanded Billy.
‘We will do whatever is necessary to confirm your whereabouts at the time in question, yes, sir,’ said Vogel.
‘In which case I might as well kiss my fucking job good-fucking-bye, mightn’t I?’ said Billy. ‘Mind you, I suppose the damage has already been done — two fucking great plods coming to get me. You could have phoned. I’d have come in. I’m not a criminal.’
‘I’m sure you’re not, sir,’ said Vogel, deadpan. ‘We have certain procedures to follow in a murder investigation, that’s all.’
Tiny claimed to have left home soon after Billy had departed for work, and taken the tube to Uxbridge at the end of the Bakerloo line.
‘I was checking out a litter of cockerpoos we found on the net,’ he said. ‘Billy and I are thinking about getting another dog. We’re trying to move on.’ He paused. ‘Or we were, ’til this happened.’
Once Vogel had learned what a cockerpoo was — the progeny of a cocker spaniel and a poodle — he began to establish the timing and logistics of Tiny’s professed journey.
‘It’s about fifty minutes each way on the tube,’ said Tiny. ‘And I guess I spent a couple of hours at the other end, time I’d walked to and from the house where the puppies are. It was twenty minutes or so from the station.’
‘Do you know what the time was when you arrived at the house?’
‘Yes. Nine o’clock. Well, actually it was a few minutes before. My appointment was for nine o’clock. I was early. I just waited around for a bit outside.’
‘And what time did you get back to central London?’
‘I’m not sure. Around noon, I think. I did some food shopping in Marks on the way home. I guess I’d been in about an hour when the heavy brigade arrived.’
Vogel nodded. He mulled this over for a moment before putting his next question.
‘Mr Stephens, as members of a group of friends who have been the victims of an increasingly nasty succession of crimes culminating in murder, you and your partner had been through a very traumatic time. You had lost your dog in most distressing circumstances and, as you say, you were trying to move on, so you were looking for another dog, and you were going to perhaps choose one. I understand that. But I find it rather odd that your partner did not accompany you on such an important mission.’
Tiny was no longer meeting Vogel’s steady gaze. The big man looked down at his hands.
‘Billy’s always busy,’ he said. ‘He works very long hours. So it makes sense for me to check things out. I found those dogs advertised on the net. I didn’t know anything about the people who’d bred them, or about the dogs, ’til I went out to Uxbridge to see them. If I hadn’t liked the set-up, if it had turned out to be a puppy farm or something, then I wouldn’t have needed to waste Billy’s time. I wasn’t planning to actually buy a dog without him seeing it first, without his say-so.’
Vogel was silent for a moment. He had an idea forming.
‘Mr Stephens, did your partner know that you were going to Uxbridge to look for a new dog?’
Tiny wriggled in his seat.
‘Well, not exactly, no,’ he said eventually. ‘I mean, we’d talked about it, but he didn’t know I was actually looking.’
‘So Billy thought you were at home this morning. He didn’t know you had gone to Uxbridge?’
‘No — you see, he didn’t think he was ready for a new dog. He didn’t think either of us was—’
Vogel interrupted. ‘Mr Stephens, I’m not interested in whether or not you and your partner acquire a dog, I just need to establish your whereabouts at the time of Michelle Monahan’s death.’
‘I told—’
‘Yes, and you’ve also told me that your partner, the man you share your life with, thinks you were somewhere else entirely. You had better give me the details of the people you visited in Uxbridge and you’d better hope they back your story up.’
Vogel felt sure that the man’s alibi would prove to be genuine. It was almost too absurd not to be genuine. However, this didn’t particularly please the detective. He was beginning to run out of suspects.
George was interviewed next. Vogel remembered him as being the most cocky of the friends. Now George Kristos didn’t look cocky at all. His eyes were red and, like Ari Kabul, his hands were shaking.
‘I can’t believe another one’s dead, not Michelle, she was so lovely, so young and pretty and everything, and now it’s all starting again, and it can’t be Alfonso who did it because he was in jail, but none of us ever thought he could be capable of murder, not me anyway, and he’d never have hurt Marlena, certainly not her, he worshipped her you see, so—’
‘Mr Kristos,’ Vogel interrupted sternly.
George stopped talking. His eyes were open almost unnaturally wide. His jaw was slack. Vogel thought he looked like a scared rabbit caught in headlights.
‘Mr Kristos, I need to establish your whereabouts earlier today,’ Vogel continued. ‘Could you tell me please where you were between the hours of nine and eleven?’