Neilson had accidentally whacked Tate with his elbow. Blood sprayed out from his nose, landing on the wood floor. Neilson had helped him through to the bathroom and it had taken a few minutes to stop the bleeding. They’d taken cocaine together earlier in the evening, so Tate’s blood pressure would have been elevated and the flow more aggressive. He’d freaked out, according to Neilson. He’d kept shaking his head, so there were drops of blood everywhere. Finally the bleeding had stopped and Neilson had put an ice pack on Tate’s swollen nose. They hadn’t felt like sex after that drama, so they’d just had a couple of beers and watched some TV. Then Neilson had paid Tate as usual and he’d left.
It was plausible, Carol thought. It was also the kind of plausible a smart man could concoct to cover something much more sinister. It was highly circumstantial, but the blood spatter expert had testified that the blood was surprisingly widely distributed for a simple nosebleed. In her opinion, it corresponded to a much more serious injury.
And there was the inconvenient fact that nobody had seen Lyle Tate since.
After two days of deliberation the jury had decided by a majority of ten against two that Saul Neilson was guilty of manslaughter. Carol thought it was a borderline decision, based on the evidence alone. When you added Saul Neilson’s background to the scales, she’d have expected him to walk. Never in trouble with the police, strong family background, good job. What had happened in the courtroom to tip the balance against him? Why had the jury condemned Mr Respectable?
Carol sighed. Bronwen had reeled her in like a rookie. Only a face-to-face interview with Saul Neilson would help her understand what had gone wrong. Still she tried to convince herself she wasn’t committing herself. An exploratory meeting, that’s what it would be. Walking away from the paperwork, she told Flash, ‘I don’t owe Bronwen Scott a damn thing.’
The dog wagged her tail. At least one of them was convinced.
32
We often have very fixed ideas about the identity of the interviewer in relation to the person we’re seeking information from. ‘Send a woman to interview a man who likes to think of himself as powerful because he’ll believe he can dominate her.’ Or ‘Don’t send a young male officer to interview a young woman or she’ll try to flirt with him.’ These are the kind of judgements that don’t take account of the particular skills of individual interviewers. I advise senior officers to look at the available talent in their team and go with the person most likely to get results, regardless of age, gender or attractiveness.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Rutherford considered his options. He’d done management courses that supposedly revealed how to run a team in a major operation. And the ideas were sound, in an ideal world where there were no fast-moving changes of circumstance. The problem was that in the real world, events conspired to prevent him making the best use of his resources. Take now, for example. Somebody needed to go to York to the Mother House of the Order of the Blessed Pearl to interview the nuns who had been stationed – was that the word, ‘stationed’? – at Bradesden in an attempt to understand what had gone on there and who was responsible. His choice would have been to send Paula, who was said to be the best on the squad when it came to persuading the reluctant to talk.
But Paula had just called to say she was bringing in the groundsman from the convent to interview him under caution. He couldn’t argue with that – obviously, the discovery of the second group of bodies in the man’s personal area of the grounds begged too many questions to ignore. Either he was a serial killer – Rutherford cringed inside at the term, guaranteed as it was to whip up public hysteria and a media-feeding frenzy – or he knew who was.
Rutherford supposed there was a third possibility – that somebody else, presumably under cover of darkness – had been digging up the man’s vegetable beds, planting bodies then restoring them to their original state without the owner noticing. He supposed it was just about possible. If the killer waited till the right moment, when the crop had been harvested and the ground dug over in preparation for the next sowing, they might manage it. But it would be hard to know exactly when that would happen; surely no killer would allow their urges to be governed by somebody else’s gardening practices? No, that was a nonsense. It would be a desperate defence counsel who’d try to lead them up that particular garden path.
He was happy that they were making progress of a sort, but it was annoying that it meant his best interviewer was tied up. It could possibly wait till the morning, when Paula might have moved things along far enough to leave them on the back burner while she pursued the nuns. But that was a risky endeavour, and the longer he let things lie, the better prepared the nuns would be. Rutherford, a well-brought-up Scottish Presbyterian, had no doubt they’d have established a common line, even if it ran counter to what they believed had really happened. After all, if you could swallow the virgin birth and the resurrection and the turning of bread and wine into flesh and blood, you’d had plenty of practice in putting your fingers in your ears and going, ‘La la la la la la.’
This was supposed to be a big step up for him. On paper, it had sounded impressive. But the truth was, his options weren’t brilliant. To keep some sort of control over the
