Borrowed Light (31 page)

The second interview with Max Oobik began a couple of minutes after ten o’clock. By now Benny Stanton had phoned to alert
his client that he’d been held up on the journey down from London and wouldn’t get to Newport until 10.15 at the earliest.
This delay, Faraday knew, was tactical, taking a hefty bite out of the interview time available on the PACE clock. Under the
rules of engagement he could lodge a protest on grounds of unreasonable delay, but he realised that this piece of gamesmanship
on Stanton’s part could play to
Gosling
’s advantage. They needed to squeeze everything from Oobik before tackling Lou Sadler.

In the absence of video from the interview suite, Faraday was obliged to rely on an audio feed. He settled in the downstream
monitoring room with Jimmy Suttle while Patsy Lowe date-and-time-tagged the interview for the benefit of the recording machine.
Faraday and Suttle had glimpsed Oobik minutes earlier in the corridor that led from the cells. He’d chosen not to shave, and
lack of sleep had darkened the bags beneath his eyes. He had walked slowly, pausing from time to time, making the turnkey
wait for him. When one of the custody P/Cs asked whether he’d like to take a coffee from the machine into the interview room
he barely acknowledged the question, and the moment he set eyes on Suttle there was something in his face that spoke of a
deep anger.

Patsy Lowe had finished. Angus McEwan got the interview under way. Earlier they’d decided to try and wrong-foot Oobik from
the start. Faraday had calculated Oobik’s average earnings at more than £1,300 a week. McEwan, sweetly reasonable, suggested
that this was good corn.

‘Corn?’ Oobik obviously didn’t understand.

‘Money. Good money.’

‘What money?’

‘Nearly one and a half thousand pounds a week, Mr Oobik – I
just told you. Was that only with the ladies? Or were you on offer to anyone who fancied it?’

‘You think I sleep with people? For money?’

‘Yes, Mr Oobik. In fact we know you do. My question is what kind of people? Women? Men? Both?’

There was a silence. So far, in less than thirty seconds, McEwan had dug more out of Oobik than at any point during last night’s
interview. The man sounded outraged. Maybe the interview strategy was working.

‘There’s no confusion here, Mr Oobik. All you have to say is yes or no. Men? Yes?’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Not men?’

‘I’m getting out of here.’ There was the scrape of a chair.

‘Sit down, Mr Oobik.’ A brief pause. ‘Thank you.’

The question again. Do you sleep with men?

‘No comment.’ Oobik had obviously got himself under control again, though his voice
had audibly thickened.

‘Do you sleep with women?’

‘No comment.’

‘Do you sleep with anyone?’

‘I sleep with Lou.’

‘And is she the only person you sleep with?’

‘No comment.’

‘So you might sleep with women? And you might earn all this money?’

‘No comment.’

The interview, once again, was bogging down. Careering down a hill he hadn’t expected, Oobik had hauled himself into the escape
lane and brought everything to a halt. Patsy Lowe took over, trying to play to Oobik’s softer side. Sleeping with women for
money wasn’t an offence, she pointed out. As police officers, in this and every other respect, they were simply trying to
get at the truth. Given the disappearance of two individuals, Johnny Holman and Kaija Luik, might Oobik be able to offer them
a little help?

‘No comment.’

Mention of Kaija Luik was McEwan’s cue to take over again. The allegation that he slept with men had clearly got to Oobik.
Now was the moment to clarify the seriousness of his plight.

‘We’re investigating what we believe to be murder, Mr Oobik. Not just one murder but two. In the first place we believe that
Holman drove to Luik’s flat very early on that Sunday morning. We know that Luik had a relationship with Holman. We believe
that Holman was
very distressed. Who would Luik phone? She’d phone Lou Sadler. And what would Lou Sadler do? She’d talk to the person beside
her in bed. That was you, Mr Oobik, am I right?’

‘No comment.’

‘You weren’t in bed with Lou Sadler?’

‘No comment.’

‘But yesterday you told D/S Suttle that you were.’

‘No comment.’

‘OK. Let’s assume you weren’t lying to D/S Suttle. Let’s say you were telling the truth. Lou Sadler has Kaija Luik on the
phone. Kaija’s very upset. Why? Because Holman is there with her and it’s very early in the morning and he stinks of woodsmoke
and he’s probably drunk. Are you with me here?’

‘No comment.’

‘OK.’ McEwan had endless patience. ‘There’s something else too. Holman tells Luik he’s got lots of drugs in the car outside,
lots of cocaine. It’s worth a great deal of money, millions and millions of pounds. He wants to drive away with Luik. He wants
to drive to a better place where everything’s going to be fine again, where he and Kaija can live happily ever after, and
nothing will ever go wrong again. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it, Mr Oobik? Except Kaija didn’t believe a word of it.’

There was a silence. Faraday could imagine the scene in the interview room, Oobik immobile in his chair, his face expressionless,
his big hands lying in his lap. He didn’t even have to bother with another ‘No comment.’ All he had to do was pretend he was
deaf.

‘So, Mr Oobik, you’re both there, you and Lou Sadler, and as it happens, you know about the cocaine already. Why? Because
you’ve been over at Holman’s place, the farm, Monkswell Farm, earlier in the week. Isn’t that true? You don’t believe me?
You don’t remember being over there? Helping Johnny dig that great big hole in his back garden? No?’

‘No comment.’

‘Ah … no comment. You’re still with us then. Good. And you know why? Because now it gets very interesting. It’s Sunday.
It’s four o’clock in the morning. Sadler tells you to get up. You take her car. You both drive over to that flat of Kaija’s.
And you know what? She’s right. Holman’s there. And he’s in exactly the state that made Kaija make the call in the first place.
He stinks of woodsmoke. And outside in a little red car is the cocaine. How do you know it’s cocaine? Because Johnny told
you so himself. When you dug it up for him. When you asked. Isn’t that true, Mr Oobik? Isn’t that the way it happened? No?
Then tell me what
did
happen?’

Again there was no response from Oobik. McEwan, undeterred, pushed the story forward. How Lou Sadler knew that they had to
get Johnny and the cocaine away from the flat. How she’d told Oobik to put Johnny in the little red car and drive him to Upcourt
Farm. Hide the car, Max, she must have said. Put it in the outhouse. And hide Johnny too. In fact, worse. Get rid of him.

‘And so you did, Mr Oobik. That’s exactly what you did. You put Johnny in the car and you drove him back to your caravan,
and you wheeled the trailer out of the outhouse, and you hid the car. But once you’d done that, you still had a problem. And
you know the name of that problem? Johnny Holman. Am I right, Mr Oobik? He’s there in your caravan. He’s probably drunk. He’s
probably in a terrible state. And so now you must do your mistress’s bidding. Am I getting close, Mr Oobik? Or are you telling
me you don’t remember?’

This, Faraday knew, was the moment
Gosling
might falter. So far everything linked perfectly together, but was it really credible that Max Oobik would kill another human
being simply because his mistress wanted to tidy things up?

Oobik had grunted something incomprehensible. Faraday bent to the speaker, trying to smuggle himself into the room. Was he
on the point of confession? Had McEwan, in his quiet Scots way, piled up the pressure of events until Oobik could no longer
hide behind silence? Was this the moment
Gosling
crested the hill and began to motor towards its day in court?

‘No comment.’

‘I don’t believe you, Mr Oobik. I don’t believe you don’t remember. I believe you remember only too well. I believe you remember
killing Johnny Holman. I believe you made a quick, simple job of it. I believe he didn’t struggle, didn’t bleed everywhere,
didn’t make it hard for you. I believe Johnny Holman was dead before it got light, before you drove back to Cowes, and I believe
something else. I believe you killed the girl too. I believe you killed Kaija Luik.’

‘No.’

Faraday blinked. A response. Sharp. Emphatic. And deeply, deeply angry. Not just anger. Outrage.

‘No?’ McEwan’s innocent response hung in the air. Tell me more. Tell me what’s so suddenly got into you. Show me which nerve
I just touched.

Oobik appeared to have opted for silence again. McEwan wasn’t letting go.

‘You didn’t kill Kaija Luik?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘No comment.’

‘Tell me, Mr Oobik. Tell me why it was so important
not
to kill Kaija? After everything you’d just done to wee Johnny?’

‘No comment.’

‘But it
was
important, wasn’t it? Not to harm the girl? Not to kill her? That’s what you just told me. That’s what you said. You said
no. You said you didn’t kill the girl. That means you
wouldn’t
kill the girl. The question is why. Why did you say that? Why should I believe it? Why is it true?’

Faraday sat back, shaking his head. He’d suddenly realised what it was he’d been missing about Oobik. Suttle was still sitting
beside him, a tiny frown of concentration on his face, trying to slot this tiny lowering of Oobik’s guard into everything
else they knew and didn’t know about the events of last week.

‘The name, Jimmy.’

‘Whose name, boss?’

‘The girl’s. Kaija’s. The other day you told me Luik means swan.’

‘That’s what Sadler said, yes.’

‘OK.’ Faraday nodded, excited now. ‘And you know what Oobik means? In Estonian?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Nightingale. It means nightingale. I’ve known it from way back.
Rossignol
in French.
Ruiseñor
in Spanish.
Usignolo
in Italian. And
Oobik
in Estonian.’

‘So?’ Suttle was lost.

‘Luik is the girl’s working name, her stage name if you like. She’s not Luik at all. That’s the name she chose. Another bird.
Another beautiful bird. No longer a nightingale but a swan.’

‘So she’s really Kaija Oobik? Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘Exactly.’ Faraday nodded at the speaker. ‘Which makes her this guy’s sister.’

Faraday called a halt to the interview several minutes later. While Oobik’s solicitor fetched a coffee for his client, the
interview team plus Faraday, Suttle and the TIA, Ian Whatmore, squeezed into the monitoring room. They couldn’t be sure until
they started on Lou Sadler, but in Faraday’s view it was a reasonable assumption that Max Oobik and Kaija Luik were brother
and sister.

‘Where’s her passport, boss?’ This from McEwan.

Faraday glanced at Suttle.

‘We never saw it,’ Suttle said. ‘And Sadler told us she hadn’t either.’

‘Credit cards? Any other ID?’

‘The girl’s disappeared. We never had a chance to look.’

McEwan nodded. This kind of oversight happened more often than you might expect, but it took Faraday to draw the straightest
line between the obvious dots.

‘This is why you rattled him over all the money he was supposed to be earning,’ he said to McEwan. ‘It wasn’t his money at
all, it was his sister’s.’

‘Right, boss. I get you.’

‘And just now, when you hit him with the second murder, the girl’s, that’s why you shook him again. He wasn’t having it. No
way would he kill his own sister.’

‘So why doesn’t he just tell us that?’

‘Because Sadler’s told him to go No Comment. That’s why she’s so relaxed. As long as he does what he’s told, they’re going
to have no problem getting their stories straight. She’s obviously worked out what to tell us. All he has to do is tell us
fuck all. That way it’s seamless.’

There was a brief silence. On the speaker, they could hear Oobik’s brief returning with the coffees.

‘You’ve got to be right, boss.’ It was Jimmy Suttle. ‘This gives him the motive, doesn’t it? Oobik doesn’t like Holman at
all. He’s all over his sister, he’s pissed most of the time, he’s pretty disgusting in every way you can imagine, and lately
he’s not even paying her. Fuck, she might even have fallen in
love
with the old dosser. So suddenly, middle of the night, our Max has the chance to make everything right. And how does he do
that? By taking the arsehole out. End of.’

There was a knock on the door. The uniformed inspector who ran the custody centre wanted Faraday to know that Sadler’s brief
had finally arrived, a full ninety minutes late. Before talking to his client he was demanding disclosure.

‘Believe me, Joe,’ he said, ‘you’re going to love this guy.’

Benny Stanton was waiting in a side office reserved for visiting solicitors. He was early thirties, squat, loud, aggressive,
gelled hair, ear stud, chalk-stripe suit, chunky watch. In the sleepy calm of the island’s only custody centre, he was deeply
exotic.

‘So what have you got?’ He’d already helped himself to a coffee, didn’t bother with formal introductions.

Faraday took the other seat across the table. He said that Lou Sadler had been arrested on suspicion of homicide. She had
lied with respect to Kaija Luik’s real address, had been slow in producing important evidence and had a relationship with
the other person suspected of murder. In the shape of a suspected consignment of cocaine, she had a motive for the killings,
and in the shape of a rigid inflatable boat, she had the means of disposing of the body or bodies involved.

Stanton was barely listening. When Faraday had finished, he smothered a yawn.

‘And that’s it? Fuck me, I should have stayed at home.’

‘Early start, was it?’ Faraday said heavily. ‘Bit of a struggle getting down here?’

‘Yeah.’ He shot Faraday a grin. ‘Where is she then? The old slapper?’