Fever of the Bone (48 page)

‘Regrettably, we do have something of a backlog in terms of actual disposal. So yes, it will be there. Along with many others, it should be said.’

‘Can you identify which one came from Diane Patrick’s house?’ Kevin said, crossing his fingers.

‘Not me personally, you understand. But it may be that the operatives who removed it will be able to state with some certainty which appliance originated with Ms Patrick.’

‘Will they still be at work, these operatives?’

Meldrum tittered. There was, Kevin thought, no other word for it. ‘Good heavens, no. Not at this time of night. They begin work at seven in the morning. If you can be at our depot then, I’m sure they will be delighted to oblige you.’

Kevin wrote down the directions to the depot and the names of the ‘operatives’ he needed to speak to. He thanked Meldrum, then leaned back in his chair, a big grin on his freckled face.

‘You look like the cat that got the canary,’ Sam said.

‘When a murderer gets rid of a chest freezer in the middle of their killing spree, I think it’s safe to assume we’re going to find some interesting evidence inside, don’t you?’

Tony found Alvin Ambrose in the MIT squad room working his way down the client list DPS had posted on their website. ‘I’m trying to find anybody who had any kind of social relationship with Warren Davy,’ he explained when Tony asked what he was doing. ‘So far, nothing.’

‘I was wondering . . . Would you mind giving me a lift out to Davy’s cousin’s garage? What was his name again?’

Ambrose gave him an odd look. ‘All right, all right. I should have submitted the report to you lot too. Bill Carr. That’s his name.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Every unit has its little joke, right?’

Tony gave a weak smile. ‘If you say so. Can you take me over there?’

Ambrose hauled his bulk upright. ‘No problem. I don’t think he knows where Davy is, though. I already spoke to him this afternoon.’

‘I don’t imagine he does know,’ Tony said. ‘That’s not what I want to talk to him about, though. I’d go myself, but trust me, I’m the world’s worst navigator. I’d be driving around South Manchester from now through till Sunday if I went by myself.’

‘And you think I’ll do better? I’m from Worcester, remember? ‘

‘That still gives you a head start over me.’

As they drove, Tony got Ambrose talking about his life back in Worcester. What the West Mercia team was like. How he thought Worcester was a great little city, the perfect place to bring up kids. Small enough to know what was going on, big enough not to be claustrophobic. It passed the time, and he didn’t need to think about what he was going to talk to Bill Carr about. He already knew that.

Ambrose turned into the cul-de-sac and pointed out the garage. It looked as if they’d just made it in time; Bill Carr had his back to them, pulling down the heavy door shutter. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Alvin, but I’ll do this better on my own,’ Tony said, getting out of the car and trotting down to catch Carr before he left.

‘Bill?’ Tony called.

Carr turned round and shook his head. ‘Too late, mate. I’m done for the day.’

‘No, it’s OK, it’s not work.’ Tony stuck his hand out. ‘I’m Tony Hill. I’m with Bradfield Police. I wondered if we could have a little chat?’

‘Is this about that business with Warren’s car the other day? Only, I told the other guy. I’m just helping a cousin out. I don’t have nothing to do with their business or anything.’ His eyes were casting about, looking for an escape beyond Tony. He turned up the collar of his denim jacket and shrugged his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Defensive as a guilty child.

‘It’s all right, I just want to have a bit of a chat about Warren and Diane,’ Tony said, his voice warm and confiding. ‘Maybe I could buy you a pint?’

‘He’s in trouble, isn’t he? Our Warren?’ Carr looked apprehensive but not surprised.

‘I won’t lie to you. It’s looking that way.’

He puffed out his cheeks and expelled the air. ‘He’s been a different bloke lately. Like there was something bearing down on him. I just thought it was business, you know? There’s a lot of folk on the skids these days. But he wouldn’t have talked to me about it. We weren’t close.’

‘Come and have a pint anyway,’ Tony said gently. ‘Where’s good round here?’

The two men walked in silence to a corner pub that had once been a working men’s hostelry but had now been turned into a
Guardian
reader’s haven. Tony imagined it had been gutted by a brewery in the seventies then recently restored to a faux version of its original scrubbed pine floors and uncomfortable bentwood chairs. ‘Full of bloody students later, but it’s all right this time of day,’ Carr said as they leaned on the bar and sipped decent pints of some microbrewery bitter with a ridiculous name.

‘Have they been together a while, Diane and Warren?’ he asked.

Carr thought for a moment, the tip of his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth. ‘Must be getting on for six or seven years now. They knew each other before, it was one of them slow-burn things, you know?’

Tony knew all about slow burns and smouldering fires. And how sometimes they never burst into flames. ‘It must have helped, having the business in common,’ was all he said.

‘I don’t think our Warren could have had a relationship with someone who wasn’t knee-deep in computers. It was all he could ever talk about. He got his first computer when he was still at primary school and he never looked back.’ He swallowed some beer and wiped the froth from his top lip with the back of his hand. ‘I reckon he got the brains and I got the looks.’

‘Did they get on all right, Diane and Warren?’

‘Seemed to. Like I said, I didn’t have a lot to do with them socially. We didn’t have much in common, you know? Warren didn’t even like the footie.’ Carr sounded as if that were clinically abnormal.

‘I’m a Bradfield Vic man myself,’ Tony said. That led them into a lengthy diversion which included giving Manchester United, Chelsea, the Arsenal and Liverpool a good slagging. And by the end of it, Tony had turned Carr into a mate. As they supped their second pint, he said, ‘They didn’t have any kids, though.’

‘You got kids?’

Tony shook his head.

‘I’ve got two, with my ex. I see them every other weekend. I miss them, you know? But there’s no denying life’s simpler without having to deal with them twenty-four seven. Warren could never have hacked it. He needed his space and that’s one thing you don’t get with kids.’

‘Too many people have kids and then act like it’s a big shock that you’ve actually got to interact with them.’

‘Exactly,’ Carr said, tapping his finger on the bar to emphasise the point. ‘Warren was smart enough to realise that wasn’t for him. He made bloody sure of it an’ all.’

‘How do you mean?’ Tony’s antennae were on full alert.

‘He had a vasectomy, back when he was a student. We saw more of each other in those days. He always had a right clear idea about what he wanted his life to be, did Warren. He knew he was smart and he knew he had good genes. But because he knew he’d be a crap parent, he hit on the idea of being a sperm donor. He filled their little plastic cup and took the money and then he went and got himself snipped. What was it he said at the time? I remember it was right clever . . . “Posterity without responsibility.” That was it.’

‘And he never regretted it?’

‘Not as far as I know. He never dared tell Diane, though. She was mad for a baby, especially this last three or four years. Warren said she was doing his head in with it. On and on. The only thing that would do. And because he hadn’t told her at the start about having the snip, it got so he couldn’t admit to it. Especially since he’d told her right early on that he’d been a sperm donor. It was laughable, really. There they were, trotting off to the fertility clinic and he wasn’t letting on about his vasectomy. In the end she tried using donor sperm, but it was too late by then. She’s half a dozen years older than him, so she was already the wrong side of forty and her eggs were well and truly fried.’

‘And she never found out?’ Tony asked casually.

‘Are you kidding? If she’d have found that out, she’d have fucking killed him.’

Tony stared into his pint. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking, ‘ he said.

Carol stared at Tony, clearly astonished. ‘A vasectomy? Are you serious?’

‘As serious as I’ve ever been. Warren Davy had a vasectomy when he was in his early twenties.’ He’d found Carol in the observation room with Paula, talking over strategies for the next interview with Diane Patrick.

‘So how did she manage to have his child last year?’ Paula asked.

‘She didn’t,’ Tony said. ‘It’s the big fat lie that underpins all her other lies. Take that away and the whole story falls apart. No grounds to fear for her life. So why is she helping Warren to kill his children?’ He looked eagerly at them both, flapping his hands upwards like a teacher encouraging an answer from his pupils.

The two women exchanged perplexed looks. ‘She’s not?’ Paula ventured.

‘Right answer,’ Tony said.

‘But she picked up Ewan McAlpine and drugged him,’ Paula said. ‘There’s no getting away from that.’

Tony play-acted disappointment. ‘Right answer, wrong reasoning. She’s not helping Warren. She’s doing it off her own bat.’ He cocked his head and looked up at the corner of the ceiling. ‘She probably killed Warren first, come to think of it.’

‘You’re going to have to back up a bit here,’ Carol said. ‘I’m struggling with this.’

‘It’s horrible, but simple. Her biological clock started ticking. She wants a baby, but not any old baby. She’d become obsessed with having Warren’s baby. I mean, really obsessed. The kind of obsessed that wants to ram cars with a “baby on board” decal because they’ve got what she doesn’t. She knows Warren was once capable of fathering children because he was a sperm donor, so he’s got to be a prime candidate. They keep trying to have a baby, but the years are drifting by and it’s not working. So they go to the fertility clinic and sooner or later they realise Warren’s firing blanks. They try donor sperm, but that’s not really what she wants. She wants Warren’s baby. But they’ve left it too late, and her eggs are past their sell-by. She’s devastated. Probably suicidal. With me so far?’

‘I think I’m just about managing to keep up,’ Carol said sarcastically.

‘Now we get to the bit I’m not sure about. Somehow, Diane discovered Warren’s dirty little secret - that after he’d done the sperm donor thing, he had the snip.’

‘Maybe she wondered how he lost his fertility. Or maybe she just can’t help herself. She’s the queen of hacking, isn’t she? All sorts of medical records are online now,’ Paula said. ‘Maybe she just likes to be the person who knows everything about everybody else in the room.’

‘Maybe. The key thing is that somehow she does find out. And that uproots her anchor to reality. She completely flips out. This man that she loves so much she wanted to have his baby and nobody else’s has betrayed her. Not only can he not give her a baby, he’s effectively stopped her having a child by someone else because they spent so long trying. Trying pointlessly. And to add insult to injury, he’s already fathered God knows how many little bastards.’ Tony was almost shouting now. ‘None of them deserve to live. Not that lying bastard Warren, not his brood of bastards.’

Carol clapped her hands in a mild mockery of applause. ‘Lovely performance. And how do we prove any of it?’

Tony shrugged. ‘Find Warren’s body?’

‘She’s too good for that,’ Carol said. ‘If you’re right, her long-term plan was probably to blame it all on Warren and either fake his suicide or pretend he’d gone underground. His body isn’t going to be anywhere obvious.’

No one spoke for a couple of minutes while they contemplated their problem. Finally Paula said, ‘You could always beat a confession out of her, chief.’

Carol managed a tired smile. ‘This isn’t
Life on Mars
, Paula. They don’t like us doing that any more.’

Tony crossed the room and hugged Paula, who looked astonished. ‘But she’s right, Carol,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Not with fists but with words.’

‘You’re the only one who can do that,’ Carol said. ‘And Diane Patrick’s got Bronwen Scott. No way is she going to let you in the room.’

‘She can’t keep me out of your ear, though.’

Tony watched as Carol and Paula walked into the interview room. Bronwen Scott, who had been leaning over and talking to her client in a low voice, sat up straight. Carol sat down and slammed her file on the desk. ‘When did you find out about Warren’s vasectomy?’ Carol demanded.

Diane Patrick’s eyes widened.

‘Beautiful,’ Tony said into the mike. ‘Hit her again.’

‘Let me ask you again. When did you find out that Warren Davy had had a vasectomy?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Diane had opted for fearful and piteous. Tony didn’t think that was going to work for long.

‘Warren Davy had a vasectomy fifteen years ago. You do know what a vasectomy is, Diane?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘But I don’t believe you. I had his baby.’

Carol snorted. ‘Oh yes. The mythical baby. It’ll be interesting to see what your medical records say about that.’

‘My client has already explained that Mr Davy kept her away from medical intervention when she was pregnant,’ Scott interrupted. ‘I see no need to go over this again.’

‘Tell her there was no baby,’ Tony said. ‘Tell her, not ask her.’

‘There was no baby. There couldn’t have been a baby because Warren Davy had a vasectomy when he was twenty-one. ‘

‘You’re badgering my client,’ Scott said. ‘Ask the question and move on.’

‘Ask her how,’ Tony said in Carol’s ear.

‘How did you have a baby with Warren after he’d had the snip?’

‘People do. I’ve read about it. People do have babies after that,’ Diane said. ‘If you’re right, which I don’t believe, that’s what must have happened.’

‘Ignore her answer, Carol. Move on to how she couldn’t have a baby, how she’ll never have a baby.’