No Smoke Without Fire. Paul Gitsham

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t know. We arrange to meet up the first weekend of each month. I log on a couple of days before and she leaves me a message telling me when to keep my mobile phone switched on for her to call. Then she tells me when we are going to meet up. I book the room on my credit card.”

      “Send her an email and ask to see her sooner.”

      “It doesn’t work that way. We keep to the arrangement to avoid getting caught. She probably won’t read her email.”

      “Can’t you phone her?”

      “I don’t have her number — she blocks it when she calls me. Besides, I think she uses a separate SIM card — I know that I do. I don’t even put it in until I need to and I’ve never had a missed call. I think she does the same.”

      Warren sighed in frustration. “You aren’t being much help here, Bill.”

      The other man gestured helplessly. “The whole point of this set-up is not to make it easy to track each other down.”

      Again he started to look tearful. “The thing is, I love my wife very much. She really is the one I want to grow old with and I know that she feels the same, ‘till death us do part’ and all that…”

      “Isn’t the next line, ‘forsaking all others’?” interjected Sutton.

      A brief flash of anger crossed the man’s face.

      “Don’t be so fast to judge, Detective. My wife is not a well woman — we haven’t been intimate for years. A man has needs…” He broke off. “Anyway, I don’t need to explain myself to you.” With that he folded his arms and stared at a spot above both men’s heads.

      Needing to get the interview back on track, Warren spoke softly.

      “You are right, Mr Evans, the details of your private life are none of our concern. However we are in the middle of a murder investigation and it is our job to eliminate suspects. For that, we need your co-operation.”

      After a few moments, Evans grunted softly and agreed to hand over what details he had of his mysterious lover and the mobile phone that he used to Welwyn’s IT specialists.

      With the interview back on track, Warren steered it around to the sensitive subject of Darren Blackheath. Immediately Evans’ eyes flashed with anger.

      “I can’t understand what she sees in that man. I really can’t. She was so beautiful and she had so much going for her… Why would she waste herself on that loser?”

      Neither detective said anything; the question was clearly rhetorical.

      “He was just leaching off her. I know for a fact that Sally paid most of the bills on the flat. She earned more than he did. And, of course, Jane was slipping her money each month. She thought I didn’t know but I’m not daft.”

      “I believe that you had a big row with Sally and issued an ultimatum when she moved out?”

      Again, Evans’ face crumpled, but he managed to speak. “I had to. I had to make her see sense. She’d come round eventually, I knew that. It would just take time.” He paused, reaching for the necessary words. “But she didn’t have that time, did she?”

      Warren paused a few moments respectfully before continuing again. “Tell me, Bill. You said that it was Darren Blackheath’s fault that she was dead. Why do you think that?”

      “She was going to break it off with him. We met up the day before…you know. She told me that she thought Darren was going to propose and suddenly it wasn’t a game any more. She didn’t say as much, but I think she was worried about what sort of husband he would be. Those holidays that she went on with Cheryl? I reckon that he thought they gave him a green light to go and sleep around on his football tours. I’ve heard the rumours: wild parties, drugs and hookers.

      “When she married him that would be it — before you know it she’d be pregnant and trapped. She’d be one of those women you see down on the estate, three kids, working full time, whilst the husband pisses all their money up the wall of the local pub.

      “He had it bloody good with Sally. If she left him, he would end up living with his mum and dad and fitting tyres for the rest of his life — where was he going to find a girl like Sally again?”

      * * *

      The two detectives decided to take a break for a few minutes to process what they had just heard. Evans was not under arrest, so they arranged for the custody sergeant to take coffee in for him and see if he needed the bathroom.

      “Well, I’m confused now,” confessed Warren. “This morning, Karen Hardwick and I heard nothing but praise for Darren Blackheath. I’d pretty much crossed him off the list. Now, we have the victim’s father spelling out quite plausible reasons why he thinks he’s a murderer.”

      Sutton gulped his coffee before answering. “He makes a good case, I’ll give him that. We’ll have to check the forensics out. But then what about him? He’s admitted he was angry with her and he clearly hates Blackheath. It’s not impossible to imagine a scenario where he kills his daughter and tries to pin the blame on her boyfriend. If they were from the Asian community, we’d call it an ‘honour killing’, but human nature is universal.”

      “I tend to agree. What’s the betting that when they met the day before the killing he picked her up in his car? That’d put the kibosh on any trace evidence.”

      “What doesn’t fit is that Cheryl claimed she was excited that Darren was going to propose and her workmates said that she was her ‘usual cheerful self’. That doesn’t fit with what her father said.”

      “I figure that leaves two possibilities — either he’s completely misjudged her attitude and is seeing what he wants to see, or he’s lying about Blackheath. It could be that she revealed to him that she knew he was going to propose and that made him mad enough to kill her.”

      Sutton nodded his agreement. “If so, then he is a sick bastard. From what we know of the crime it was well planned and of course he raped his own daughter. There is one other possibility though. He could be right. He might be the only one to have seen through Blackheath. We’ll need forensics and eyewitnesses that can place Blackheath’s car outside his house when he says it was.”

      “So it seems that in both cases it comes down to forensics and alibis. Great. Well, we have one more thing to try him on. Let’s see his reaction when we bring up his priors.”

      Sutton looked sceptical. “It’s a hell of a jump, don’t you think, from some alleged willy-waving over a decade ago to strangling and raping your daughter?”

      “These perverts have to start somewhere.”

      * * *

      Sutton’s scepticism seemed well founded. When confronted with the conviction and all that it implied, Evans was contemptuous, with no hint that he was at all concerned.

      “Ancient history and total bullshit anyway. All that happened was I got very drunk at lunchtime after we won a big contract at work. I decided to walk home to clear my head and got caught short. I was in the middle of pissing in a big bush when I heard two women yelling and I realised I was next to a bloody primary school. I should have done a runner, but I decided to stick around and try to explain. They called СКАЧАТЬ