No Smoke Without Fire

It was another point in Blackheath’s favour, Warren decided. Men who killed their partners often turned out to be domineering and controlling types; hardly the sort of man who’d let his girlfriend disappear for a week of fun in the sun without him. Nevertheless, they needed to pursue every lead to its conclusion. He glanced at Karen Hardwick, who picked up on his subtle cue.

“We’re sorry to put you through this, Cheryl — it must be an awful time for you — but we need to ask some questions. Will you help us?”

Cheryl nodded; underneath the tears, Warren could see a strong resolve to help in any way that she could to find her best friend’s killer.

The story she told was much the same as that of Blackheath. She’d texted Evans at about six p.m., inviting herself over with a DVD and a bottle of wine. She hadn’t received a reply, but about six-thirty Darren had called asking if she’d seen her. After he’d hung up, she’d put it out of her mind as she made herself something to eat and got ready to go out. Apparently Sally could be a bit forgetful when it came to charging her mobile phone and so she hadn’t been worried. By seven-thirty, Sally hadn’t phoned or responded to her text message and she had been just about to try her landline when Darren had called, sounding worried.

Picking up her address book, she’d set off for their flat, arriving about the same time as Sally’s mother, who Darren had also called. At first they’d been a bit jokey, trying to convince Darren that it was nothing, but as they finished calling all of her usual friends the worry had set in. Finally, at about midnight, they’d called the police to report her missing.

“If only we’d called sooner, maybe they’d have found her before…before…” Finally she dissolved in a flood of tears, her carefully constructed façade collapsing completely.

Hardwick leant over and took her hands and Warren was again glad that he’d decided to bring the young detective constable along with him. The two women were roughly the same age and some jobs needed a special touch that Warren, try as he might, would never possess.

“You don’t know that. It’s unlikely that we’d have found her any sooner — we wouldn’t have known where to start looking.” Karen didn’t mention, of course, that with no evidence of foul play a young woman missing for less than six hours — before the clubs even closed — wouldn’t merit much more than a few details in the duty log and a sympathetic, but firm, ‘wait and see if she turns up in the morning, then call again’.

After a few moments, the young woman regained her composure. Warren took over now. “Tell me about Darren. I believe they’d been together a while?”

Cheryl nodded. “Nearly three years. They’d been in the flat for almost a year. He’s been good to her. He has a heart of gold.” For the first time since they arrived, she smiled. “I teased her when they first started dating. He’s a right skinny one is Darren and he isn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but he really loves her and he’d do anything for you. He’s never really been one for nightclubbing or that, he prefers a quiet night in, but he always insists on picking us up if we’ve been out on the town. ‘No smoking and no puking’, he always says whenever he turns up in that car of his. Sally used to joke that she never worried about him having an affair, because, between looking after her and polishing his car, he hasn’t got enough energy.” The smile faded as the reality of the past few days came flooding back.

“So you would say that they had a strong relationship?”

Cheryl nodded vigorously, before her expression turned conspiratorial. “He was going to ask her to marry him.”

Warren blinked. It seemed a little odd that he would share his intentions with his girlfriend’s best friend. He said as much.

Cheryl laughed slightly. “Oh, he never said a word. Sal told me. The silly sod hid the ring in his underwear drawer — she found it one day when she was hunting for a missing sock. She knew exactly what he was planning but didn’t have the heart to let him know the cat was out of the bag. She was going to act all surprised when he asked her. She swore me to secrecy.” The brief moment of happiness passed and Cheryl’s face crumpled again. “I don’t suppose it matters now.”

The feeling in Warren’s gut was even stronger. Mentally he crossed Sally Evans’ boyfriend off his suspect list. Moving on, he asked Cheryl if Sally had mentioned anything strange over the past few days. Had any ex-boyfriends turned up on the scene or had she mentioned any disagreements with friends or co-workers?

To every question, Cheryl shook her head firmly, insisting that Sally told her everything.

“She didn’t have much of a history before Darren. He was her first really serious boyfriend. She dated a couple of lads at university, but never for more than a few months and I think they are all happy and married now.” She blushed slightly. “She wasn’t…inexperienced before she met Darren, you know, but she didn’t put it about and she’s been faithful to Darren ever since she met him — I’m absolutely sure of that.”

“What about co-workers? Is there anybody who could have perhaps mistaken friendliness for a bit more and got jealous?” Warren was grasping at straws now. The statistics showed that so-called ‘stranger attacks’ were far rarer than the public feared. Almost all victims had had some prior contact with their murderer, no matter how slight. Attacks by a total stranger were not only rare, they were also inherently more difficult to solve, because so many of the leads that the police would normally follow were absent.

In answer to his question, Cheryl was again equally firm. Almost the entire company was composed of females, varying in age from twenty-something to late fifties. Warren wasn’t quite ready to dismiss them yet; he’d interview them first. He couldn’t rule out that they were working a partnership with a male accomplice, but he knew it was unlikely, given that Sally Evans had probably been sexually assaulted as well as murdered.

The two male employees were added to the interview list, but again Warren’s instinct told him that, based on Cheryl’s description, Kevin the seventeen-year-old Saturday boy and Angus the openly gay former flight attendant, who lived in a civil partnership and took care of his elderly mother, were unlikely to be responsible.

Finally, Warren could think of no more questions. As they left he heard the sound of the kettle being filled again and smelt the first wisps of tobacco smoke, as Sally Evans’ best friend settled down again with her grief.

Chapter 5

The final visit of the morning, before returning to the station to take stock, was to Sally Evans’ parents.

The small house where Sally Evans had spent most of her childhood was filled with mourners. Grandparents, aunts and uncles occupied every chair. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and every surface held an ashtray, a teacup or both. The atmosphere was one of grief but also mutual support. Warren couldn’t help contrast that with the loneliness of her boyfriend — why wasn’t he here?

Don’t judge, he chided himself. For all he knew, Blackheath could have spent the last two days here and only returned to the flat to get changed. He’d probably have found the smoky atmosphere hard going as well. Warren remembered that when the law changed to outlaw smoking in enclosed public spaces, some bright spark with more legal sense than common sense had noted that when a police officer visited a person in their house, it could be argued the house was now a ‘place of work’ and so the occupants should be asked to refrain from lighting up whilst the visitor was present. Needless to say, as much as Warren and his colleagues might dislike sitting in a cloud of fumes when they did their job, it would be regarded as rather poor taste to ask a grieving family if they’d mind stubbing out their cigarettes before the police could interview them.

After expressing their condolences to the many family members, Jones and Hardwick were led into the kitchen where Sally Evans’ parents were sitting. The similarity between mother and daughter was immediately apparent, even through the tears and running make-up. The two even sported a similar haircut, although Jane Evans’ hair was running to ash-blonde, rather than the dark blonde of her late daughter.

Bill Evans bore only the most superficial of similarities to his daughter. A tall, craggy man of late middle-age, he had steel-grey hair and a slight paunch. Behind rimless reading glasses, his eyes were also puffy.

After declining a cup of coffee — there was a limit to how much he could drink in one morning — Warren turned to the matter in hand. Focusing first on Mrs Evans, he asked her to recount the events of the night Sally went missing. Again, the details matched exactly those told to the missing persons team and most recently to Jones and Hardwick by Cheryl and Darren.

Moving on to the subject of Darren, Warren asked about the relationship between the two young lovers. Suddenly, Bill Evans surged to his feet, his face reddening. “Don’t speak to me about that man in this house — if it hadn’t been for him, our girl would be sitting here safe and sound, not dead and lying on some…” His voice choked off and, brushing away his wife’s hand, he raced out of the room.

* * *

Warren rocked back in surprise at the man’s sudden outburst. Everything they had heard about Darren Blackheath had been good so far, so why animosity from Sally Evans’ father?

He turned to Jane Evans, who looked as if she was about to start crying again. Visibly pulling herself together, she waved a hand in the air as if to ward off their concern.

“Don’t read too much into that, Detective,” she started. “He doesn’t mean it really. He’s just upset.”

“I’m a little surprised,” admitted Warren. “I thought Darren was popular with Sally’s friends and family?”

“Oh, he is, just not with her father.”

“Why is that?” Warren had been all but certain that Blackheath was in the clear, but obviously at least one person wasn’t so sure.

Jane Evans sighed and took a long sip of her tea.

“Sally has always been a Daddy’s girl and she was the apple of Bill’s eye. She’s our only child and he worshipped her from the moment she was born. Truth be told, I don’t think that any man would ever be good enough for her in his eyes, least of all Darren.”

Warren waited silently as she composed her thoughts.

“Sally was a slow developer at school and she was finally diagnosed as dyslexic. That was a real blow for Bill as he is dyslexic also. It’s silly, I know, but he always felt guilty that he’d passed on some gene. Anyway, the school were fantastic and, with lots of support from them and us, Sally started to pick up the ground that she’d lost. By secondary school, she was scoring average grades and her reading and writing was almost normal for her age. She worked so hard and when she finally got the A levels to go to university we were both so proud. Nobody in our family had ever been before.”

As the topic of conversation switched from her dead daughter to her husband, Jane Evans visibly softened. Warren wasn’t certain where her long, rambling tale about her husband’s achievements in spite of a disability that forty years previously had seen him dismissed as thick and lazy was headed, but he let her talk at her own pace.

“The thing is, Sally may have got the dyslexia from her father, but she also got his work ethic and determination. Despite joining the company straight from school, with no qualifications, Bill is now national sales manager. He’s based in Cambridge, but travels all over the country.”

As the conversation wound its way back to her murdered child, Jane Evans’ eyes filled with tears again. Nevertheless, she forced the words past her trembling lips.

“Sally graduated with a two-one from university. We were both so proud.” She smiled at the memory. “Bill can be a bit abrupt and stern if you don’t know him, but he cried all the way through her graduation ceremony. He truly believed that she could accomplish anything now and I think he wanted her to do all of the things he never got the chance to do. Anyway, she moved back here with us and got a job at the travel agents Far and Away.”

She paused for a moment, before continuing, “At first I think Bill was a little disappointed, but Sally convinced him it was only temporary — she wanted to learn the ropes somewhere small where she could get a lot of experience, before joining one of the big companies and maybe becoming senior management. That was the plan at least, but she’s been there for years now and seems comfortable. Lately, Bill has been pushing her to move on, but she claims that the time isn’t right with the recession. Bill thinks that this is exactly the time to move as he doesn’t think that there will be a future for small independents. They argued about it a lot.” She shrugged. “Sally says her dad doesn’t know anything about travel agents, since he’s only ever worked in sports clothing. Bill says that business is business and an outside perspective is important.” She wiped her eyes with another tissue. “Maybe they’re both right, but they kept on going around in circles and I stopped getting involved.”

“So where does Darren fit into this?”

Mrs Evans sighed. “He’s a tyre fitter and a lovely boy, he really is, but he has zero ambition and isn’t very well educated at all. Bill always felt that Sally should marry a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist — not a tyre fitter. It was something else to argue about.”

“So what was his reaction when Sally moved in with Darren?”

Mrs Evans looked even more sad. “He was really angry. He told her she was wasting her life and tried to make her feel guilty, claiming that she was throwing away all of her years of hard work. He implied that he wouldn’t contribute to any wedding plans and told her not to turn up on the doorstep pregnant and homeless.”

Warren could feel the pain in the room and struggled to find the words to ask her the questions he needed to without upsetting the poor woman further. Again, it was Karen Hardwick who saved the day.

“It sounds as if he really loved her and was afraid of losing her.”

Mrs Evans smiled through the tears. “That’s exactly right. He loves her to bits. I think that with a little more time he’d have come around and everything would have been all right.” Her voice choked slightly. “I guess we’ll never know.”

Taking over from Hardwick, Warren tried to be as sensitive as possible. “I imagine he was worried when she didn’t come home that night. Where was he?”

If Mrs Evans realised that the question was about establishing Bill Evans’ alibi, she gave no sign.

“I called Bill just before we called the police. He was working away in Leeds that night. He’s been doing that quite a bit lately. They have a new branch up there and Bill has been going up to iron out the teething troubles. He stays in a Travelodge hotel near the airport. He came back immediately, made it in record time — he was here by three a.m.”

Warren jotted down the company’s details and made a note to get his alibi checked out. It could just be that this wasn’t a stranger murder after all.

In the car on the way back to the station, Warren praised Hardwick’s questioning technique before asking her opinion on what they had heard so far.

“I can’t see Darren Blackheath being guilty. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“I tend to agree,” admitted Warren, “but we can’t rule him out just yet. It’s possible that he had a motive — what if he popped the question early and Sally decided to turn down his proposal because of her relationship with her father? Maybe he flew into a jealous rage and killed her?”

Hardwick looked doubtful. “Anything’s possible, sir, but again I don’t think he seems the type. And if her upcoming wedding was the catalyst, what about her father? Could he have had an argument with her about it?”

Warren shook his head slowly. “I don’t see how the timing would work. If, as Mrs Evans claims, her father loved her, then if he did kill her it would almost certainly be a crime of passion. The sequence of events as we know them suggests that Sally Evans left work at her usual time of six p.m. If Blackheath is in the clear and telling the truth, then she disappeared some time in the next ten minutes. Could her father have dropped by unexpectedly to offer her a lift home — and she forgot to text Blackheath — then they get into a row and he kills her and dumps her, before pretending to be all concerned when his wife phones late that night?”

Hardwick pursed her lips. “I agree, it seems a bit far-fetched. I guess we’ll just have to see if their alibis check out and what Forensics have to say.”

In other words, hurry up and wait — sometimes I think that should be the motto of the police, thought Warren ruefully.

Chapter 6

By the time they returned to the station it was more or less lunchtime. Warren scheduled a team briefing in a half-hour, insisting his officers got at least a short break and something to eat. Warren’s gut told him that this investigation might run for some time and he wanted his team to take care of themselves.

Karen Hardwick stopped by her desk and picked up her lunch box, before heading out for some fresh air. Almost exactly a minute later, Gary Hastings grabbed his lunch and followed her out of the door.

Tony Sutton sidled up to Warren.

“Do you reckon they think nobody’s noticed?”

Warren nodded, a small smile forming on his lips.

“Yup. They haven’t a clue.”

Sutton sighed theatrically.

“Young love, eh, boss. Is there any better kind?”

Warren chuckled, glad for a moment of brightness in an otherwise bleak day.

“Yeah. I think they make a sweet couple. I wonder how long it’ll be until they stop trying to hide it.”

* * *

Warren held the team meeting in the largest of the unit’s briefing rooms. Detective Superintendent John Grayson had formally delegated the lead investigator role to Warren; nevertheless he was present, since part of the agenda would be to discuss the upcoming press conference.

Grayson was a small, dapper man, with a steel grey moustache, in his early fifties. Common consensus was that he was more interested in securing his next promotion and thus a more generous final-salary pension than actively heading up investigations. Whether that was a fair assessment or not, Warren had yet to decide, but it was certainly true that he spent more time meeting with senior colleagues at the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire Major Crime Unit in Welwyn Garden City than he did at his desk in Middlesbury CID.

The man was certainly a crafty politician. Warren still remembered his first serious case at Middlesbury during the summer, when Grayson had made it clear that it was sink or swim for the newly promoted DCI. To make things worse, Tony Sutton had been extremely vocal in his opposition to Warren’s handling of the case and the two had almost come to blows. Sutton had finally confided in Warren that he was worried that the future of Middlesbury CID was under threat, with its unique role as a small, first-response CID unit outside the main Major Crime Unit in Welwyn a source of tension in a time of budget cutbacks. Sutton had been convinced that Jones had been sent to close them down.

Matters were further complicated by the fact that the strongest proponent for maintaining Middlesbury’s unique status had been Gavin Sheehy, Warren’s predecessor and Sutton’s mentor, who was currently awaiting trial later in the new year for corruption. Grayson had yet to make his views clear on whether he thought Middlesbury had a future or should be absorbed into the main unit and so Sutton and now Warren, who had grown to value Middlesbury CID’s independence and unique place in the local community, were careful around him. Both men had a strong suspicion that Grayson would happily see Middlesbury CID closed if it meant that he would be moved to a more senior role within Welwyn Garden City.

One plus, as far as Warren was concerned, was that Grayson was always willing to talk to the press. Warren, on the other hand, regarded press conferences as a necessary evil and was happy to let Grayson enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame, whilst he stayed in the background and answered the odd question. Grayson had already decided that there would be a press conference to announce the finding of Sally Evans’ body that evening, just in time for the late-night news bulletins and later editions of the next day’s newspapers; therefore he was jotting down notes and ideas as the meeting progressed.

Calling for quiet, Warren brought the team up to speed on the various interviews conducted that morning. All those present agreed that Darren Blackheath was probably not guilty of his girlfriend’s murder, although her father’s outburst couldn’t be dismissed entirely. Warren moved his name to the unlikely column on the whiteboard, until the results of the house-to-house enquiries and forensics came back.

As for her father, his behaviour was certainly strange and Warren made a note to pull him in for questioning after he’d had a few hours to cool off.

A second team, headed by DI Tony Sutton, had focused on Evans’ workmates, using the initial investigation from the missing person enquiry as a starting point. The travel agency had been closed and the entire staff, including those not working on the day that she went missing, had been questioned. By the end of the morning, Sutton and his team had built a far more detailed profile of Sally Evans’ last day and largely ruled out all of her former colleagues as realistic suspects. Confirmation of a couple of alibis were outstanding but they didn’t expect much from Maureen the obese sixty-something grandmother with an arthritic hip.

Evans had arrived at work as usual at about eight-twenty, dropped off in the same alleyway her boyfriend picked her up from after work. After smoking a cigarette, she had knocked on the fire door and had been admitted by her boss, Kelli Somerton. This was confirmed by Somerton, who said that there was still a cloud of smoke around the bin and that Evans smelled strongly of it.

The shop didn’t open until nine a.m. and at this time of the year they weren’t expecting many customers, so the staff had logged onto the computers, put the kettle on and sat around gossiping until opening time. No customers had appeared until almost midday, so the staff had spent the day preparing for the expected post-Christmas sales. Sally Evans had occupied her time unpacking boxes of promotional material and catalogues.

The weather had been cold and Evans had stayed in for her lunch of home-made tuna sandwiches, nipping out on her own for a cigarette. Evans had been described by everyone interviewed as ‘her usual cheerful self’, looking forward to Christmas. Nobody could recall her mentioning any worries or strange people that she’d met.

The shop closed at five-thirty and Evans had helped lock up, before exiting via the back door at her usual time, ready to get picked up by her boyfriend, Darren Blackheath.

Warren rubbed his eyes, his hopes of an easy collar slowly fading. He still believed that killings by a total stranger were very rare; however, if Evans and her killer had crossed paths, he didn’t seem to be in her immediate circle of acquaintances.

He said as much to the team.

“OK, let’s start to shake the trees a little harder.” He turned to Gary Hastings. “Use the PNC and HOLMES to see what we can find out about all of her acquaintances. Let’s also scan a list of recent customers and see if anybody interesting turns up.” He turned to Karen Hardwick. “You built a pretty good rapport with her friend Cheryl. She mentioned past boyfriends. See if you can get a list of friends — try and get as many as possible, right back to university if you can. We’ll chuck them all in the pot and see what comes out.”

He turned to DS Khan.

“Mo, can you continue co-ordinating the house-to-house enquiries with the neighbours? Make sure the evening shift pick up those who were out earlier in the day.”