Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller (17 page)

Clapham Police Station, South London

Tuesday, August 13, 1991; 10:00

Next morning, I clicked open the forensic report and began re-reading intently.

Now that Marion’s daytime appearances had proven relevant to the case, I felt convinced that her night-time attacks also held clues to her killer. To crack this case, all I needed to do was decipher her macabre nocturnal charades.

The theme of both her visits had been slamming doors. I concluded that she must have been leading me to the front door of her flat. The key to finding her killer must somehow be connected to that door. I just needed to figure out in what way.

We knew already that the fingerprints of Peter Ryan and Karen Foster had been found on both the front door of 21 Sangora Road and the door to Marion’s flat. This fact in isolation was evidentially useless. But what if Karen had carried out the crime with another, unidentified male accomplice? The violence of the attack meant it had to be carried out by a man. Was that what Marion had been trying to lead me to? Was there a third person we hadn’t identified?

Forensics had found sixteen unidentified prints on the front door, seven on the flat door. None of them matched known offenders. But did one of these prints belong to the muscle; the knifeman? This
had
to be what she’d been trying to tell me. I needed to identify the owners of those twenty-three unknown fingerprints. But how?

Marion was clearly security-conscious, cautious. I figured that she wouldn’t have let Karen into her flat with a stranger; Karen probably knew better than to even try. Whoever she recruited, Marion must have known at least by sight or by first name. The common denominator could only be the Pines care home. Peter and Karen worked there. Peter and Marion lived there in staff accommodation for seven months after their marriage. I decided to ask Shep if we could take the fingerprints of every employee at the home, including contractors and any workers who’d left within the past year. If we cross-referenced their prints with those found at the scene, I felt sure we’d find the missing link in this case. Well, it was the best I could come up with.

Shep said he’d only sanction this expensive and time-consuming operation if they got nothing out of today’s interview with Karen. He seemed more ratty and irritable than usual.

‘You okay, Guv?’

‘No I’m not fucking okay,’ he spat.

He looked at my startled face and softened: ‘I’m just back from Marion’s family. I had to tell her mum and dad that Peter used to go out with Karen Foster, and that they may have resumed their affair. I might have known he wouldn’t have had the balls to tell them himself. They took it badly. I had to call an ambulance for Mary.’

‘Christ,’ was all I could think to say, then: ‘Surely he can’t carry on staying with them now?’

‘My worry is, if Peter moves out, his family or friends might convince him to do a midnight flit to Ireland. You know what the extradition situation is like right now. It could drag out for years. And we haven’t got enough to charge him.

‘So I had to ask her dad John – would you mind keeping him a bit longer. While I’m asking him I’m thinking, “if he’d done that to either of my daughters, I’d have thrown him out the fucking top floor window.” But John agreed, right away. “If it helps catch Marion’s killer, we’ll do it,” he said. Can you imagine? They’re living fucking saints, that family.’

Shep’s voice cracked and eyes moistened: something I hadn’t seen before.

‘Anyway,’ he coughed, instantly regaining control, ‘Mick and Colin are limbering up for Karen’s interview. Why don’t you come and watch with me? I could use a spare set of eyes and ears.’

I remembered those dank, fusty interview suites from when I’d made my statement the day after Marion’s murder. As we walked along that single long corridor to the adjoining block, Shep explained that Karen Foster had been formally cautioned and brought in first thing. Peter Ryan had agreed to come in voluntarily at ten a.m. tomorrow.

When we came to the security doors, Shep dialled in the code and invited me to go through first. I pulled down the handle and pushed.

‘Put your shoulder into it, man,’ he said. It was another one of those tightly-sprung, self-closing fire doors. My mind shot back to Marion’s flat: what the hell was I missing on that door?

I pushed it open, held it for Shep, then followed him along more corridors and left into a small kitchenette. Like two prize fighters pre-bout, Mick and Colin stalked about, psyching themselves up, mentally ordering their verbal combinations.

Shep brought them up to speed on the loose ends from last weekend’s purge of Peter’s workplace, the Pines care home. ‘As we know, Karen took a few hours off work. She told colleagues she was going shopping in Blackheath with her younger sister, Laura. One of the nurses there, Sharon Healy, finished work at four p.m. and saw Karen driving her purple estate car out of the clinic car park. She was alone, with her hair tied up, wearing shades and a red top. Colleagues report her wearing a red top and jeans throughout that day and evening.

‘Another employee, Valerie Donald, left the clinic at six p.m. on the dot. She knows this because she has to pick up her kid from childcare. She saw Karen’s purple estate car stationary at the end of the driveway, facing towards the home. Sitting inside it was Karen still wearing her shades and, she thought, a dark top. She remembers Karen waving back at her.

‘The question is, of course, what had Karen been up to in those intervening two hours? And with whom? What’s your strategy, gents?’

‘We don’t want her clamming up, so we’re going to take it nice and gently,’ said Colin.

‘We’ve got all we need to peel her open like a can of sardines,’ added Mick, calm but focused, ‘there’ll be no need for bawling and shouting.’

‘Follow me, Lynch,’ said Shep, careering up the corridor and through a door.

‘Ringside,’ he said, taking the furthest of four seats facing a window. On the other side of the glass, Karen sat nearside of her duty solicitor, her arms folded, chewing a piece of gum. She might have been waiting for a bus.

‘She can’t see us, right?’ I whispered.

‘Or hear us,’ boomed Shep.

I was grateful for the chance to have a good ogle at Karen. As
femmes fatales
go, she was something of a let-down. Her best feature: long, glistening brown hair. Her face was several cheap tanning booths too teak, resembling a glazed bagel. Her tight black jeans and t-shirt served only to highlight her excess flesh, forcing it to spill out in the places she probably least wanted it to.

‘She reminds me of a busted bin bag,’ said Shep.

Her lifeless blue eyes conveyed a sullen insolence. When she spoke to her solicitor, she ended most sentences with a questioning, ‘you know?’ that implicitly granted her victim status. ‘This is the third time I’ve had to take time off work, you know? I can’t believe I have to go through it all again. It’s quite traumatic for me, you know?’

‘If the Foster family ever fall on hard times,’ piped up Shep, ‘they could charge people to slap her.’

The boys started on the afternoon of the murder: nothing too taxing. Karen parroted her original alibi: afternoon shopping in Blackheath with her sister Laura; she wore the same thing all day – jeans and her red Levi’s t-shirt; back to the Pines just after five p.m.; meeting Bethan Trott in the communal kitchen and heading to her room for tea and a soap opera; fish feeding with ‘Pete’ at six.

Problems verifying these events cropped up early. Karen and Laura didn’t buy anything in Blackheath, and she couldn’t remember any of the shops they’d visited.

Shep shook his head: ‘I mean, really, are you telling me a woman wouldn’t remember
every
shop she went into, on any shopping trip?’

Karen couldn’t recall being in her car outside the home at six p.m.: ‘I may have popped out to get cigarettes which I sometimes leave in the car, or a bottle of water.’

While helping to clean out the fish tanks, Karen developed an upset stomach. At about 7.45 p.m. she went to use the toilet and agreed to meet Peter by her car at eight p.m. She went back to her room to pick up her car keys and car park pass.

Almost inaudibly, she took up the story: ‘There weren’t any parking spaces on Sangora Road at that time of the night. So I parked on a street around the corner. I don’t know what it’s called. When we got to the house, Peter was surprised that the front door wasn’t double-locked. Marion always locked the mortise lock.’

‘And why did you go into the flat, Karen?’

‘My stomach still wasn’t right. I needed to use the toilet. I also wanted to say hello to Marion. We were good friends, you know?’

‘So you’re in the hallway of the house …’ prompted Colin.

‘He unlocked the door to the flat and went ahead of me up the stairs. When I heard him call out “Marion! Marion!” I ran upstairs. Pete felt Marion’s hand for a pulse and put his hand on her forehead. He said she was still lukewarm.

‘I felt for a pulse in Marion’s neck. I put my hand underneath her head and tried to lift her up. I told Pete that she was all stiff. I noticed Marion’s eyes were bloodshot and I saw cuts all over her dress. I saw blood around her mouth and ears. I started to scream. I must have gone into shock.’

She stopped, bowed her head and pushed her hair back with a trembling hand: rattled by grief or guilt, I couldn’t tell.

‘What was Pete doing?’

‘Pete didn’t touch her again. He said he was going downstairs to the neighbour’s flat to ring the police. I remembered seeing a police officer on the street as we were looking for a parking space. I ran outside to try to find him.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ I interjected, ‘we were the nearest cops. That’s why we got there first.’

Karen carried on: ‘I looked around but I couldn’t see him so I ran into the pub and told them to call the police because someone was dead. A few of the guys at the bar tried to calm me down and were asking me what had happened. I was hysterical.

‘Three or four people from the pub came with me back to the flat. They went upstairs to see what had happened and I followed them up. They looked at Marion, then went back downstairs.’

My heart sank; this explained all the prints on the doors.

I could barely hear Karen now. ‘Her skirt had risen up around her waist. I didn’t like people seeing her like that so I pulled it down and pushed her hair away from her face. I realised I had blood on my hands, so I went to the bathroom to wash them.’

Karen stopped for a quivering sob as Shep bucked in his seat.

‘I tell you what really troubles me here, Lynch,’ he ranted, ‘most people are instinctively wary of touching a dead body. It’s just not something civilians in that situation do. I mean, take Peter. He touched Marion’s hand and forehead. Once he knew she was dead, he didn’t touch her again. And he’s her husband. That might sound cold, but that’s the natural response.

‘What isn’t natural is Karen touching every part of the body, getting people in to trample the crime scene, washing her hands in the sink. The one place that she wouldn’t have been able to explain away her fingerprints would have been in the bathroom sink. She’d even thought of that, the crafty bitch. I’ll tell you what she was doing, Lynch. She was systematically contaminating the crime scene.’

Karen regained her composure. ‘Pete came back upstairs. He wanted to see if they’d been burgled. I followed him into the sitting room to check.’

Shep tutted: ‘Good old Pete. Wife dead on the landing, better check no one’s made off with the telly.’

‘Everything seemed normal and undisturbed. On my way back downstairs, I opened the window on the landing because I felt sick and wanted some fresh air. I remember the clasp on the window seemed loose.’

Shep shook his head: ‘While everyone else was in shock, she was busy destroying evidence and creating fake suspects.’

‘Okay, Karen, we want to move on to another area of interest now,’ said Mick.

Colin began. ‘What was the nature of your relationship with Peter Ryan?’

Karen bristled, ‘As I’ve said before, we’ve been working together for five years. We became friends. Then he met Marion and I became friends with both of them, you know?’

Colin went hunting through his papers, settled on one sheet and laid it carefully before him.

In a deadpan voice, he said: ‘On October 23rd, 1990, you listed the presents Pete had bought Marion for her birthday. At the bottom of the list, you wrote the words “sick, sick, sick”. Do you remember this, Karen? Would you like to see the piece of paper to confirm this is your writing?’

Karen’s bottom lip dropped slightly. I could sense her insides collapsing like cliffs into a raging sea.

‘What I want to know, Karen, is how you managed to listen to them in their room? Your room was four doors down the corridor.’

‘I had a key to Bethan’s room, which was next to theirs. I went in there to watch telly sometimes. I overheard them next door.’

‘You went in there to eavesdrop, to spy on them, didn’t you, Karen? You were obsessed with Peter Ryan. You wanted him all to yourself.’

She shook her head.

Colin raised his voice: ‘You told a witness that Peter was up to something behind Marion’s back. What was Peter up to, Karen?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Peter took Marion away for the weekend, but he wouldn’t even spend a night with you. Isn’t that what you said?’

‘I never said anything of the sort.’

‘Sex in a shed, Karen. That can’t be very comfortable.’

She remained stoically inscrutable.

‘We have a witness who saw you and Peter going at it in a shed at work last November. Must have been chilly too.’

Karen folded her arms, looked to one side and sighed petulantly.

‘You’re not denying it then, Karen? You admit having sex in the shed at work with Peter Ryan, last November?’

Karen’s gaze remained locked onto the side wall.

Good cop Mick interjected calmly.

‘Karen, we know you and Peter were having sex last year and that you used to go out together. There’s no point wasting our time here. So, why don’t you tell us, when did your sexual relationship with Pete begin?’