‘Caleb?’ she says, louder now.
He turns at last and looks up at her.
‘Sorry, babe. I was miles away.’
She sits down next to him and puts her arm about his shoulders. ‘It’ll be OK, babe. Really.’
He nods, but he’s not looking at her. His body is rigid against hers.
* * *
Gislingham puts the phone down. ‘OK, so that was the CPS lawyer. Apparently she told Fawley there are still some issues she’d like to see bottomed out on the Fisher case before she makes a final decision on whether to pursue it.’
‘Fucking waste of fucking time,’ mutters Quinn, but the mood in the rest of the team isn’t much brighter.
‘Come on, guys,’ says Gis, trying to inject some energy into his voice. ‘Quicker we do it, quicker we get it over with, one way or the other. So – where are we?’
Baxter glances at Quinn, but he’s clearly too pissed off to reply.
Baxter takes a deep breath. ‘Well, there were deffo some inconsistencies in the statements. Fisher’s especially. She claimed not to know how her dress got ripped but Bryan Gow reckons she’s lying, though when she says she can’t remember any sort of contact with Morgan, she’s telling the truth.’ He shrugs. ‘Whichever way you look at it, that’s odd. What’s so special about the dress that it’s worth lying about?’
‘Good question,’ says Gis. ‘Let’s get her in and ask her, eh?’
* * *
The mood in the Major Crimes office is a good deal more animated than it is next door. Rape and murder, with a DI in the frame; whole careers have been built on less. But Simon Farrow’s under no illusions about his own place in the food chain. He hasn’t been a DC long – not even a year yet – so he tends to have ‘OK to dump on’ tattooed on his forehead. Not that he’s complaining. He’s always wanted to be a detective, ever since he was a little boy and got a Sherlock Holmes set for Christmas. His mother likes to attribute it to growing up with wall-to-wall Inspector Morse – ‘and we were living in Oxford too’ – but at least he’s managed to persuade her not to trot that one out in front of his girlfriends. Though it’s hard to see John Thaw putting up with the sort of crap Simon’s getting lumbered with at the moment. What with the online appeals and the sign posted at Walton Well bridge, they’ve been inundated with calls, but dealing with them is the arse-end of the task list. They share it round because it purées your brain after a while, and right now it’s his turn on the shit shift. Still, as his gran always used to say, they also serve who only stand and wait. Or, in this case, sit and sieve.
He’s about to get up for more coffee when one of the other DCs calls across at him.
‘Hey, Farrow – must be your lucky day. King just called. He wants you down at Newbury. Pronto.’
* * *
DK: Interview resumed at 16.10. DC Simon Farrow is now present in place of DI Gallagher. So, let’s cut to the chase, shall we? I’ve listened to everything you’ve said, Fawley, and some of it makes sense, and no doubt some of it can even be corroborated. But there’s no getting round the fact that, right now, everything’s pointing to the same conclusion: some sort of sexual act took place between you and Emma Smith and she ended up dead –
AF: No – that’s not what happened –
DK: You panicked – your career, your marriage, your whole bloody life would be wrecked if this came out. So you wrapped the body in something – plastic or sheeting –
AF: [shaking his head]
DK: And shoved it in the back of your car. Your dark-blue Ford Mondeo.
AF: [emphatically]
No.
DK: The car was seen. You were seen. The neighbours identified a vehicle matching yours, and a man wearing exactly what you say you were wearing, outside Emma Smith’s flat on the evening of the 9th July.
AF: How many more times – I told you – I was there. Of course they saw me –
DK: And then you went home to your wife as if nothing had happened. She remembers you chatting for a couple of minutes in the kitchen, making her that cup of tea. What she didn’t know was that that whole time the dead body of one of her oldest friends was in the boot of your car –
AF: This is insane –
DK: You had a glass of wine, watched the telly, and later, when you could be sure there was no one about, you slipped out in the dark and drove to Walton Well bridge. You knew you had to get rid of that body, and you had to do it fast. And where better than on the railway line – a freight train would pretty much do for the evidence, even assuming anyone bothered to investigate. If you were lucky, it would just be filed under suicide and that would be that. But you couldn’t risk hanging around, could you, in case you were seen, so you just tipped the body over the parapet and legged it. It wasn’t until the following day that you realized what a catastrophic balls-up that was.
PM: For the record, my client categorically denies every single one of these ludicrous allegations.
DK: You dumped the sheeting in a bin somewhere on your way home, and probably did the same with Smith’s phone. Though let’s not forget, the canal’s only a few yards from that bridge –
PM: It’s an ingenious story, Detective Sergeant, but speaking purely practically I find it very hard to believe that my client could have driven from Risinghurst to Walton Well bridge – a distance of, what, five or six miles? – without passing a single ANPR device or CCTV camera.
DK: [passing over a sheet of paper]
In fact, as you can see, there is a perfectly feasible route. Anyone with
