A Room Swept White (5 page)

‘Helen Yardley’s the first . . . celebrity’s the wrong word, but you know what I mean,’ said Sam.

Simon laughed. ‘You think the Snowman’s keen to get his carrot nose and coal eyes in the papers? He hates—’

‘No choice,’ Sam interrupted him again. ‘A case like this, he’s going to get publicity one way or another, so he might as well get it for taking a strong lead. As SIO, case this visible nationally, he’s got to step up.’

Simon decided to let it lie. He’d noticed that Sam, who normally was courtesy itself, cut him off mid-sentence whenever he talked about Proust. Charlie, Simon’s fiancée and former sergeant, put it down to Sam’s concern for proper professional conduct: you didn’t badmouth the boss. Simon suspected it had more to do with the preservation of self-respect. Even someone as patient and hierarchy-conscious as
Sam could barely put up with what he had to put up with from the Snowman. Denial was his coping mechanism, one that must have been made all but impossible by Simon’s constant dissection of Proust’s despotism.

Ultimately, it came down to personal preference. Sam preferred to pretend he and his team weren’t abused daily by a narcissistic megalomaniac and helpless to do anything about it, whereas Simon had long ago decided the only way to stay sane was to focus, all the time, on exactly what was going on and how bad it was, so that there was no danger it would ever start to seem normal. He’d become the unofficial archivist of Proust’s abhorrent personality. These days he almost looked forward to the inspector’s offensive outbursts; each one was further proof that Simon was right to have cut off the goodwill supply and all benefits of the doubt.

‘You’d think Proust had an evil ulterior motive whatever he did, even if he dragged sacks of grain across the desert to famine victims,’ Charlie had teased him last night. ‘You’re so used to hating everything about him, it’s become a Pavlovian response – he must be doing something wrong, even if you don’t yet know what it is.’

She’s probably right, thought Simon. Sam was probably right: there was no way out of the limelight for Proust on this one. He had to be seen to care, so he was doing it with gusto, while secretly counting the days until he could revert to his usual mode of doing as little as possible.

‘He’s bound to feel responsible, like we all do,’ Sam said. ‘Professional considerations aside, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to want to pull out all the stops in a case like this. I know it’s early days and there’s no proof this murder’s
connected to the reason we all know Helen Yardley’s name, but . . . you have to ask yourself, would she be dead now if it weren’t for us?’

Us
. By the time Simon had worked out what Sam meant, Proust was banging his ‘World’s Greatest Grandad’ mug on the wall to get the room’s attention.
Sound to silence in less than three seconds
. The Silsford and Rawndesley lot were quick learners. Simon had done his best to warn everyone yesterday. It turned out none of them needed the tip-off; spine-chilling tales of the Snowman’s mercilessness had done the rounds at both nicks, apparently.

‘Detectives, officers, we have a murder weapon,’ Proust said. ‘Or, rather, we don’t have it yet, but we know what it is, which means we’re closer to finding it.’

That was debatable, Simon thought. He allowed no statement the inspector made to pass without rigorous scrutiny; everything had to be challenged, albeit in silence much of the time. Was this or that fact a genuine fact, or merely a dogmatically expressed opinion masquerading as the one and only truth? Simon saw the irony; he had the Snowman’s perennially closed mind to thank for his determination to keep his own open.

‘Helen Yardley was shot with an M9 Beretta 9 millimetre,’ Proust went on. ‘Not a converted Baikal IZH, as Firearms told us on Monday, nor a 9 millimetre Makarov police gun, as they told us on Tuesday. Since it’s now Wednesday, we have no alternative but to believe them a third time.’

An angry-looking Rick Leckenby stood up. ‘Sir, you forced me to speculate before I’d—’

‘Sergeant Leckenby, while you’re on your feet, do you want to tell us a bit about today’s gun of choice?’

Leckenby turned to face the room. ‘The M9 Beretta 9 mil is US army standard issue, and it’s been in circulation since the 1980s, which means it could have come back from Iraq, from the first Gulf War or more recently, or from any other war zone, any time in the last twenty, twenty-five years. Obviously, depending on how long it’s been in the UK, that potentially reduces traceability.’

‘So we’re looking for anyone with links to the American armed forces?’

‘Or the British,’ said DC Chris Gibbs. ‘A Brit could have got it off a Yank and brought it back.’

‘No, sir, that’s the point I’m trying to make,’ Leckenby answered Proust. ‘I’d say there’s no grounds for assuming the killer’s got links with the military. If the gun entered the UK in, say, 1990, there’s a good chance it’s been through several owners since then. What I would say is—’

‘Don’t tell us what you
would
say, Sergeant – just say it.’

‘The gun on the streets at the moment, used in more than half of urban shootings, is the Baikal IZH gas pistol. You buy them in Eastern Europe, convert them, and you’ve got an effective short-distance murder weapon. My first thought, at the scene, was that since Mrs Yardley was killed at close range, and since Baikals account for the majority of guns we’re seeing lately, and based on the amount of residue on the wall as well as on the body and the carpet around it, the likelihood was that a Baikal killed her. It was only after the bullet was retrieved from her brain and we had a chance to examine it that we were able to link it to the M9 Beretta 9 mil.’

‘Which means what?’ Proust asked.

‘It could mean nothing,’ said Leckenby. ‘Either gun, Baikal or Beretta, could theoretically be in the possession of anybody.
But my gut feeling is, street shooters don’t have M9 Beretta 9 mils. They just don’t. So . . . this killer’s as likely to be anybody as he is to be gang-connected or a known offender.’

‘He or she,’ a female DC from Rawndesley called out.

‘If the murder weapon is standard US military issue, Sergeant, then we’re going to look for anyone with links to the American army, and, as DC Gibbs sensibly suggests, to our own,’ said Proust. When he spoke with this sort of slow deliberation, you were intended to understand that he was taking care not to allow the dam of his disgust to burst. ‘You’ve no way of knowing how many hands it’s passed through. Guns are like cars, presumably – some sold on every three years, others loyally tended by one careful owner over a lifetime. Yes?’

‘I suppose so, sir,’ said Leckenby.

‘Good. Make sure you have a full resumé of the M9 Beretta, complete with colour pictures, by tomorrow morning, to distribute to everybody,’ the Snowman ordered. ‘Assuming you haven’t changed your mind by then and decided the murder weapon was a turbo-charged pea-shooter from the shores of Lake Windermere. Interview teams – you’ll need to start from scratch. Everyone you’ve already spoken to, Helen Yardley’s friends, family, neighbours, etc – you’ll need to speak to them again and find the military connection if it’s there to be found. CCTV teams – you’re looking for any cars with number plates that are either American or armed forces or both. Or – and I hope this goes without saying – anyone known personally to the Yardleys. CCTV could have been a sizeable headache for us, given that the two cameras nearest to Bengeo Street are on the busiest stretch of the Rawndesley Road, but thankfully we’ve done well with witnesses – more
of which in a moment – so for the time being we’re prioritising Monday morning between 7.45 and 8.15 a.m. and Monday afternoon between 5 and 6.10 p.m. for the camera outside the Picture House. For the one by the entrance to Market Place, the times we’re looking at are slightly different: 7.30 to 8 a.m. and 5.15 to 6.25 p.m. Of particular interest is any car going in the direction of Bengeo Street during one of the earlier time slots and away from it in the later ones.’

The DS with overall charge of the CCTV team, David Prescott from Rawndesley, raised his hand and said, ‘A lot of people driving down the Rawndesley Road at rush hour are going to be people Helen Yardley knew. She was a childminder. How many children did she mind whose parents lived in Spilling or Silsford and worked in Rawndesley?’

‘I’m not asking your team to red-flag anybody on the basis of CCTV footage alone, Sergeant. I’m simply suggesting that it’s an avenue of enquiry.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We don’t even know if the killer drove to Bengeo Street or walked, not for certain,’ said Proust. ‘If he walked, he might have come from Turton Street or Hopelea Street.’

‘He could have cycled,’ said DC Colin Sellers.

‘Or perhaps he fell out of the sky and landed in the Yardleys’ front garden,’ the Snowman snapped. ‘DS Prescott, instruct your officers not to bother with the CCTV footage until we’ve contacted all the hot-air-balloon suppliers in the Culver Valley.’

The silence in the room was as thick as glue.

Another one for the archive, thought Simon. The killer might have driven or walked, but the idea that he could have cycled to the murder scene was laughable and far-fetched,
because cycling wasn’t something Giles Proust ever did. Therefore it was contemptible and not worth mentioning.

‘Moving on to witnesses, then,’ said the inspector glacially. ‘Mrs Stella White of 16 Bengeo Street – that’s the house directly opposite number 9, the Yardley house – saw a man walking up the Yardleys’ path to the front door at 8.20 on Monday morning. She didn’t see if he got out of a car – her first sighting of him was on the Yardleys’ property. Mrs White was strapping her son Dillon into the car to drive him to school, not paying much attention to what was happening on the other side of the road, but she was able to give us a general description: a man between the ages of thirty-five and fifty with dark hair, wearing darkish clothes including a coat, smartly dressed, though not in a suit. He wasn’t carrying anything, she said, though an M9 Beretta 9 millimetre gun would easily fit in a large coat pocket.’

A description like that was about as useful as no description at all, thought Simon. By tomorrow Mrs White, if she was anything like most witnesses, would be saying that maybe the dark hair wasn’t so dark, and maybe the coat was a dressing-gown.

‘By the time Mrs White drove out on to the road, there was no sign of the man. She says there wasn’t long enough for him to have gone anywhere but inside number 9. We know there was no break-in, so did Helen Yardley let him in? If so, did she know him, or did he say something plausible enough to get himself inside when she opened the door? Was he a lover, a relative, a double-glazing salesman? We need to find out.’

‘Did Mrs White see or hear Helen Yardley open her front door?’ someone asked.

‘She thinks she might have, but she’s not sure,’ said Proust. ‘Now, at number 11 Bengeo Street we’ve got eighty-three-year- old Beryl Murie, who, in spite of her partial deafness, heard a loud noise at 5 p.m. that might well have been a gunshot. She said it sounded like a firework, which is an easy mistake to make if you’re unfamiliar with the sound of an M9 Beretta 9 millimetre being discharged, as I think we can safely assume most retired piano teachers are. Miss Murie was able to be precise about the time because she was listening to the radio and the five o’clock news had just started when she heard the loud noise. She said it startled her. She also said it sounded as if it had come from Helen Yardley’s house. So, assuming we’ve got a man entering the house at 8.20 a.m. and the fatal shot fired at 5 p.m., what’s happening in between? We can’t assume the man Mrs White saw is the killer, but until we track him down and find out for certain, we have to consider the possibility that he might be. Sergeant Kombothekra?’

‘Still no joy, sir,’ Sam called out from the back of the room.

Proust nodded grimly. ‘If another day passes and we haven’t found and eliminated Mr Morning Visitor, I’ll put my money on him being our man. If he is, and he was in Helen Yardley’s house with her for more than eight hours before he shot her, what was happening during those hours? Why not shoot her straight away? She wasn’t raped or tortured. Apart from being shot in the back of the head, she wasn’t injured. So, did he go there to talk to her, thinking he might or might not shoot her, depending on the outcome of the conversation?’

Simon raised his hand. After a few seconds of pretending not to see it, Proust nodded at him.

‘Don’t we also have to consider the possibility that the gun belonged to the Yardleys? We can’t assume the man brought
it with him. It might already have been in the house. Given the Yardleys’ history—’

‘The Yardleys have no history of illegally possessing firearms,’ the Snowman cut him off. ‘There’s a thin line between exploring all reasonable avenues of possibility and squandering our resources on tosh that, in our desire to be egalitarian, we’ve elevated to the status of hypothesis. Everyone in this room needs to bear that in mind. We’re forty-eight hours into this investigation and we’re without a suspect – you all know what that means. We’ve already alibied and eliminated Helen Yardley’s friends, family and close acquaintances. This is shaping up to be a stranger murder, which, for us, is about as bad as it gets, and all the more reason to channel our efforts in the right direction.’

‘You were right to raise it,’ Sam muttered to Simon. ‘Better for us to focus on it and dismiss it than not to think of it at all.’

‘Paul Yardley returned from work at 6.10 p.m., found his wife’s body and phoned the police,’ said Proust. ‘He found no one else in the house and neither did the first officers to the scene. Some time between 5 and 6.10 p.m., the killer left 9 Bengeo Street. Someone must have seen him. You know what that means: house-to-house is top priority, and let’s extend it. Someone come up with a new mile-radius.’

The Snowman walked over to the board where the enlarged crime scene photographs were displayed. ‘Here’s the input wound,’ he said, pointing at a picture of the back of Helen Yardley’s head. ‘Look at the scorch marks. The gun was so close it might even have been touching her. From the position of the body, it’s a strong possibility that she was in the corner of the room facing the wall when she was shot. A 9-mm bullet
in the brain at close range doesn’t spin a person round. But there’s nothing on the wall next to where she fell, so what was she doing standing there? What was she looking at? Had he marched her over there to kill her because it’s the only part of the room that can’t be seen from the window? Or was she standing there for some other reason, and he came up behind her, knowing she wouldn’t see the gun?’