The interview had gone badly, Isaac had to concede. He had tried rapid-fire questioning of Rees, hoping the man would have become confused and blurt out the truth, making a statement contrary to the known facts, indicating knowledge of a person or a location that placed him at a crime scene, but it hadn’t worked. Jacob Jameson wanted the man released; Isaac did not.
Gareth Rees, a self-confessed killer under military orders, a killer under the orders of Ian Naughton, whoever he was, or of his own volition, was led down to the holding cells at Challis Street. The team had less than twenty-four hours to come up with more substantive evidence, a possible forty-eight if they could provide proof that the charge against the man for the murder of Sean Garvey was likely to result in a conviction.
***
It was a tense time in Homicide, and Isaac was concerned that the two days he had promised to Jenny before he could focus time on her would not be enough.
Gwen Pritchard was brought back into the team; she would be working with Wendy and Bill Ross out at New Barn Street, looking for people who could have seen the shooter fire the shot, people with smartphones taking selfies, unaware of what was in the background.
Larry was going to follow up on where Gareth Rees was arrested and try to find his home address. Bridget was still trying to find out Rees’s mental state from the military, as well as trace the movements of the car that he had been driving, a rental hired by him for the day of Garvey’s death.
Isaac wanted to know how Rees would have known that Sean Garvey would leave the building where he lived and walk down the street, not that he got far. The phone that Rees had been carrying did not have Garvey’s number on it, which led to two conclusions. The first was that Rees had staked out the area on the off-chance that Garvey would come out, which seemed unlikely. It wasn’t the best area, and a well-dressed white male would have stood out, and curious people would have started to ask questions. The second and more probable was that he had used a ‘burner’, the slang for a throwaway phone favoured by criminals. Used for a day, thrown in a bin at the end of it. Phones were cheap enough and monitoring them, even with the number, was a laborious chore.
As for Isaac, he had to take a couple of hours, go with Jenny to the gynaecologist. His responsibility with Homicide told him that he shouldn’t, but his heart told him that he had to. After that, the house in Holland Park where he and Larry had first met Ian Naughton and Analyn.
Wendy phoned the Robinsons and the Winstons back in their respective houses after the threat level had been reduced since the arrest of Gareth Rees. She also called Gabbi Gaffney, told her that her first husband was in custody and her help had been invaluable. The woman was not pleased to hear of the arrest, and there was a sense of fear in her voice.
Meredith Temple had been updated, but still Wendy told her to be careful.
Ian Naughton and Analyn remained at large. Gareth Rees had not admitted to knowing either, but he had definitely been in Godstone with one, in Canning Town with the other, but in English law a man was innocent until proven guilty. And there was no indisputable proof, only a large number of events leading to that conclusion.
Isaac honoured his time with Jenny. There were no problems, and the birth was due in six weeks, long enough to move houses and at least fix up the baby’s bedroom. He had even taken Jenny to lunch and then driven her home.
It was just after three in the afternoon when he drew up outside the house in Holland Park. The estate agent had since let the home to a family, the husband transferred to his company’s head office in London.
Inside the house, little had changed apart from the family’s attempts to make it their own.
‘It’s only for a short time until we find a place of our own,’ the wife said.
‘You’re aware of why I’m here?’ Isaac said. He was on his own; everyone in Homicide was busy, and besides the threat that Naughton would have possibly posed was no longer present.
‘Not really.’
‘I met a man and a woman here. He was English, she was from the Philippines.’
‘They’re not here now,’ the woman said as she knelt down to pat a small dog that wanted attention.
‘I know, and it’s unlikely they’ll come near here. After we had been here, they soon disappeared. The problem is finding them.’
‘I can’t help. The place was clean and freshly painted when we moved in, no sign of the previous occupants.’
‘No letters addressed to a previous tenant?’
‘None.’
Isaac took a seat, looked around him. It was a lot bigger than the house that he and Jenny had just purchased, but Holland Park was a step up from Willesden; it was the suburb of the wealthy and famous, the haunt of celebrities and young upwardly mobile high-flying currency traders. Isaac hadn’t the heart to tell the woman that two blocks away Spanish John lived in another equally impressive house. She looked a gentle woman, the sort of person who saw the best in people, who had never experienced life on the edge. Yet now she was living in a house that was inextricably linked with violent deaths. Isaac also knew that the estate agent, when he had shown the house, had not mentioned the police interest in the place.
‘The two people I met here
