‘ We are unable to match with DNA from here, regrettably.’
‘ Send me the sample. I’ll get it done.’
‘ We’ve yet to find any hard evidence against anyone at this stage. The result of the analysis of Agent Dawber’s blood shows a high alcohol content — which doesn’t help you, I’m afraid.’
‘ Take a good long look at Scott Hamilton at the Jacaranda. He’s the connection.’
‘ Exactly what we are doing. He is now under twenty-four-hour surveillance.’
Annie was deeply distressed. It manifested itself in different ways. She moved from almost violent hysteria to a silent, trance-like state in a flash. Tears flowed, dried up, burst again. One moment she was on her feet, the next sat down, head buried in a cushion, trying to deal with the enormity of the situation.
She had returned to the house, in spite of others urging her to stay out. She wanted to remain in situ, in the home she and Derek had created in the six months of their wonderful marriage. To stay with memories which, with the exception of the final one, were good ones. She wanted to touch the things they had owned, bought and paid for together with their hard earned cash.
The hallway was being inspected by a forensic team. Two scientists clad in white plastic suits were crawling about, lifting fibres, scraping up blood; a scenes of crime officer was daubing excessive amounts of grey fingerprint powder all over shiny surfaces, leaving dirty marks that would be hell to clean later. They were finding little. It had been a very clean kill.
The house would never be the same again, physically or spiritually.
Annie was in the lounge with her mother and a male police officer who had replaced the policewoman. Both seemed to have no clue what to say or how to deal with her.
She was in the middle of one of her trance-like states. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the gas-fire from her position on the settee. Heavy rain lashed against the window. Snow doesn’t last long in Blackpool. Henry sat next to her.
‘ Annie? I need to ask you some questions. Important questions. Things we need to know quickly. Annie?’ He found it hard to tell if he was getting through to her. ‘Annie, do you hear what I’m saying?’
No response.
He laid a hand softly on her shoulder. She shivered and came back from wherever she’d been, blinked at him for the first time in the half-hour he’d been there. He kept her gaze locked into his. ‘Annie, we need to talk.’
She swallowed, nodded and ran the back of her hand across her nostrils and sniffed up.
‘ What did Derek say when he got home from work last night?’
She screwed up her pretty face and tried to concentrate. Her brain was making this difficult. She put a hand on his and squeezed it, then collapsed against him. Deep sobs shook her whole being, like a monster struggling to free itself from inside her. Henry put his arms around her. She crushed her face into his chest and cried.
In twenty minutes she’d cried herself out.
For the moment.
Henry’s shirt and tie were soaking wet, a mix of tears, snot and saliva.
Annie sat upright. Henry handed her a paper handkerchief. She wiped her face with it and blew her nose.
‘ Questions,’ she stated. In answer to his look, she said, ‘Ask them now, Henry, while you’ve got the chance. I’m in control of myself at the moment. Not sure how long it’ll last.’
‘ What did he say when he got home last night?’
‘ Very little.’
‘ Did he seem his normal self?’
‘ No… odd, distracted.’
‘ He must have said something, Annie.’
‘ Kept muttering about a statement, how he couldn’t believe it. He’d been there, yet it was different, changed… something like that, anyway. He was waiting for you to call. He was sure you would. I didn’t know what he was on about.’
‘ He’d left a note on my desk, but I went straight home last night. I didn’t go into the office.’ Like maybe I should have done, Henry thought agonised. Then: Fuck that for a thought. What’s done is done. ‘And what happened after that?’
‘ We went to bed round about midnight. He read for a while, then he was tossing and turning, going to the loo. I was aware of it, but I was asleep. D’you know what I mean, Henry?’
He nodded.
Annie stopped talking. He hoped she wasn’t about to weep again.
‘ I don’t remember anything else,’ she said faintly.
‘ Think, Annie,’ he encouraged her softly. ‘It could be important.’
She stood up and crossed to the window, staring at the rain. There were two police cars and a van outside. The whole of the garden had been taped off. Officers from the Support Unit were on their hands and knees, searching for evidence in what was quickly becoming a quagmire.
‘ There is something,’ she said eventually. ‘He got up. I mean, obviously he got up or he wouldn’t be dead now. Hang on, hang on, let me get a grip.’ She put her head into her hands and pummelled her forehead with the base of her hands, wracking her brain, shimmering with frustration. She turned to Henry again. ‘Yes, that’s it. He got up. Someone was knocking on the door. He went to the window. He said it was two o’clock. Then he went downstairs. I turned over and went back to sleep.’ Her eyes rested accusingly on Henry. ‘He thought it was you at the door. He thought you’d come to see him… only it wasn’t.’
Her face creased like a screwed-up ball of paper.
‘ Did he bring anything home with him?’ Henry asked quickly.
‘ I don’t know.’ Her bottom lip, her whole chin quivered. She was trying vainly to keep control, but was slowly losing the struggle.
‘ Annie, we need to have a look through his things. There could be something to help us. May we?’
‘ Yes, sure, but someone’s already done that.’
‘ What?’ said Henry, perplexed. ‘Who?’
Annie didn’t know.
Henry turned to the policeman. ‘Who?’ he demanded.
‘ Two detectives from that lot in Blackburn.’
‘ The Organised Crime Squad?’
‘ Yeah, them.’
‘ We couldn’t find anything, boss,’ Siobhan Robson said to her Detective Chief Superintendent.
‘ What sort of a search did you do?’
She sighed with frustration verging on anger. ‘Cursory — that’s all we could do. We couldn’t very well tear the place apart, could we? It would have looked a bit too suspicious.’
‘ Maybe he didn’t have anything with him.’ This was a suggestion made by a Detective Inspector called Gallagher, who had been with her during the search.
‘ Oh he did, I’m sure of it. Copies of the original statements at least. That’s what the little bastard did — made copies, as we have seen from his locker. So where the hell are they? We need to find them — soon. And my bet is that they’re in his house — somewhere.’
Henry stormed into the murder incident room. Two policewomen were inputting details into the HOLMES terminals. DC Robson and DI Gallagher were in deep, muted conversation with Tony Morton. As Henry closed in on them, they looked up and stopped talking. A smile appeared on Morton’s face.
‘ Henry, good to see you. I’ve been looking for you.’
Henry liked and admired Morton. He thought he was a good cop who got results. But at that moment in time, Henry was enraged and when something annoyed him, his mouth had a nasty habit of speaking quicker than his instincts for self-preservation.
Without courtesy, he launched into a tirade of invective which stopped all activity at the HOLMES terminals. ‘What the fuck right do you have to go rummaging about in Derek Luton’s belongings for? Not only have you been
