No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (23 page)

“He’s having a snooze upstairs; he did a long shift at work today. Could you come back later?” The young woman’s voice was barely a whisper and she subconsciously glanced towards what Warren assumed was the bedroom. Her hands shook slightly.

“I’m very sorry, it can’t wait, Ms…?”

“Oliver. Katie Oliver.” The name matched that in the police report, although no mention had been made of her being pregnant. Assuming she was about eight months pregnant, she would have only been about four months or so back when the complaint was filed. Maybe she wasn’t showing then. Either way, assuming it was his baby it seemed that Alex Chalmers hadn’t wasted much time before getting back into the saddle, so to speak.

“I suppose you’d better come in. I’ll go and see if Alex is awake.” The poor woman looked terrified at the prospect.

Ultimately, there was no need. As Katie Oliver led the three officers into the living room heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.

“Can’t a man get some fucking rest in his own fucking home? Who the fuck are you?” Alex Chalmers glared at a nearly tearful Katie Oliver, even as he addressed the three police officers.

Warren resisted the urge to reply with, “We’re the fucking police”, answering instead with, “Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones, Middlesbury CID, and these are my colleagues, DI Sutton and DC Hardwick. You must be Mr Chalmers? I’m very sorry to disturb you, but I’m afraid I have some bad news, sir.” He gestured towards the sofa. “Would you care to take a seat?”

Warren’s approach took the man completely by surprise and he sat down without another word. Taking the armchair opposite, Warren took a moment to scrutinise the man before him. He didn’t like what he was seeing. A hair’s breadth under six foot, with a shaven head and several days’ worth of dark stubble on his face, the man was dressed in a dirty grey vest, and a grubby pair of boxer shorts. He was sitting with his legs open and the slit in the shorts revealed more than Warren was comfortable with. The man either didn’t notice or didn’t care. His meaty upper arms and flabby beer belly spoke of a man who did a hard physical job, but also had a taste for beer and lots of it. Both biceps were encircled by those oddly pointless tattoos that seemed to be all the rage. They symbolised nothing as far as Warren could tell. He could at least understand tattooing the name of a loved one or similar, but why on earth would somebody want barbed wire around their arm?

Chalmers reached out his right arm, and ensnared Katie Oliver, pulling her down onto the threadbare sofa beside him. The gesture seemed more proprietary than affectionate. Then, without so much as a glance at his heavily pregnant girlfriend, he fished a cigarette out of a half-empty pack of Marlboros on the coffee table and lit it left-handed with a Bic lighter. Katie Oliver’s nose wrinkled, but she said nothing.

Not for the first time, Warren wondered what someone as attractive and intelligent as Carolyn Patterson had seen in such a person — he saw no hint of any unappreciated hidden depths. And why did women put up with such a man when he turned violent? Even more perplexingly, how could these men continue moving from one woman to the next, never changing their ways?

“Go on, then, out with it.”

“I’m very sorry, but your former girlfriend, Carolyn Patterson, has been killed.”

Chalmers said nothing, just took an extra-deep drag on his cigarette. After a few seconds he exhaled, before taking care to tap his ash into an already full ashtray.

“When?”

“Thursday night, we believe.”

Chalmers shrugged. “We was in watching TV that night.” He looked at his girlfriend. “Weren’t we, babes?”

Katie Oliver paused a moment before nodding. She never once raised her gaze from the floor.

Chalmers reached out again, patting Oliver’s bump. “That’s how we spend most of our nights; getting ready for the big day. Not long now, eh, babes?”

Again Katie Oliver kept her gaze on the carpet as she nodded. Chalmers patted her bump again. Warren maintained a poker face. Chalmers patted his girlfriend’s belly like a farmer patting the rump of a bull he was particularly pleased with — the man gave no indication that his future son or daughter was gestating peacefully within. God help the poor mite.

Up until this point, Tony Sutton had been quiet. Now he leant forward. “Strange, I don’t remember DCI Jones asking where you were. Why would you need to tell us that?”

For the first time since they had arrived, Chalmers’ arrogance faltered. Regaining his composure, he shrugged casually. “Well, I figured that would be your next question. I ain’t stupid. I watch
CSI
and
Law and Order
. First thing you coppers always do in a murder is go for the boyfriend, or her ex if she ain’t been able to find a new one yet. Figured I’d save you the time.”

“How do you know she was murdered? Again, DCI Jones just said she was killed. You seem to know an awful lot about this, Alex. Interesting that you had an alibi prepared.”

This time it took even longer for Chalmers to respond.

“Well, I just assumed, didn’t I? We saw the news about that other bird and then you said you’d found a body at the weekend. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?” He sat back, obviously pleased with his answer.

“Why do you think police in those shows target the victim’s ex-partners?”

“I dunno. Lazy scriptwriters, I suppose.” He grinned, proud of his wit, turning to his girlfriend for appreciation. With effort she returned the barest of smiles. He turned back to the three detectives, none of whom were smiling.

“They do it because often they are the only people with a motive,” replied Warren quietly. “Carolyn Patterson was a sweet girl that nobody had a bad word to say about. She didn’t hang around with scum and low lifes; she wasn’t the sort of girl who’d end up dead because of the people she associated with…” he paused “…at least not these days. That’s why we look to the past for clues.”

It took Chalmers a few seconds to realise how deeply he’d been insulted.

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t all sweetness and light, you know. Bitch walked out on me, remember. Took everything and just left me a note.” He paused before having a flash of inspiration. “Besides, she pissed off without paying what she owed me for rent and all that. I was saying just the other day how I needed to go to the court to get that back.” He smiled triumphantly. “Can’t do that if she’s dead, can I?”

“Strange, I heard her father paid you six hundred pounds to cover that debt.”

Chalmers faltered. “There were some other things that cropped up,” he said weakly.

The silence stretched between them, before Karen Hardwick spoke up. “I’m sorry, I know it’s rude but we’ve been on the road all day — I couldn’t use your bathroom, could I?”

Katie Oliver stirred. “I’ll take you there.” Heaving herself to her feet, she led Karen up the stairs.

Now it was just the three men in the room, Tony Sutton took over again.

“OK, let’s cut the crap. You know why we’re here. We’ve read your file and we know you like to make your women do as they’re told. What did Carolyn Patterson do that meant you had to go around and sort her out after all this time?”

Chalmers snorted derisively. “If you’d really read my file, you’d know it was all bullshit. They dropped all the charges. My neighbour was a twat — he used to hear us having a disagreement, then he’d call the police and make up shit. You can ask her anyway — she’ll back me up.”

A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Anyway, Carolyn never reported nothing to the police. You haven’t got anything on me. I never laid a finger on her and nobody claims I did.” He sat back, smugly.

Warren stared him directly in the eye, his voice low. “You’re right, she never made a report. But people know. The black eye eighteen months ago, the bruises on her arms that she tried to cover with her cardigan in the middle of July. Of course, she claimed it was the boxercise, but people aren’t stupid — they know that boxercise is non-contact.” He leant closer and spoke directly into the man’s ear. “We know. Other people know.” He gestured upstairs with his head. “She’s how many months pregnant? Make-up only hides so much.

“Well, we hear things. We’re the police. It’s our job. Sometimes things can’t be dealt with in a courtroom, but justice still needs to be done.” He sat back.

“You’re on my watch list, Chalmers.”

The air was still tense when a few seconds later the toilet flushed and Karen Hardwick reappeared with Katie Oliver in tow.

She looked at the three men, all sitting silently.

“Are we done?”

* * *

“She’s covering for him,” was the first thing that Tony Sutton said when they pulled away from the house.

“No question about that. The question is, how much and is it important?” Warren tried not to let the questions distract him as he negotiated a particularly badly thought-out roundabout.

“I can’t decide whether he was expecting us or not. All that stuff about assuming it was a murder because of the body being found at the weekend — it’s not an unreasonable guess. Besides, like he said, he watches TV. He must know that you don’t have three detectives turn up on your doorstep to tell you that your ex got knocked over crossing the road.”

Warren agreed. “And I suspect that a man like that would look for an alibi regardless. He just wouldn’t want a run-in with the police. Even if he was doing nothing more than having a quiet pint down his local, he’d go for the easy option and get the missus to claim he was in all night. Either way, I’d like to break that alibi if we can. We should also find out what he was doing the night Sally Evans disappeared.

“On a different note, did either of you notice if he had a bruise on his chin?”

Both officers said no. “He had too much stubble. He might not have the option of wearing make-up like his girlfriend, but I have to say that his five-o’clock shadow is pretty effective,” elaborated Tony Sutton.

“Speaking of his girlfriend, Karen, did you get anything from her?” Warren glanced in the rear-view mirror at the detective constable.

“Nothing concrete, sir. She’s clearly terrified of him, but she wouldn’t say anything. Domestic Violence have been around in the past but she wouldn’t admit anything to them. I gave her my card and said that she could phone any time if she ever wanted to talk.” She paused thoughtfully. “We might get lucky — she probably can’t see any way out at the moment. If she reports him for domestic abuse, it’ll be months until the court case and if it gets dropped she’ll be petrified he’ll want revenge. Even if he gets convicted, unless he’s done something really outrageous to her and gets a GBH conviction, he’ll be out pretty soon.

“On the other hand, if she breaks his alibi and he goes down for murder, he’s never coming back to harm her and her child.”

“Not to mention the fact that she thinks she might be living with a murderer — that’s got to make her worry. Nicely done, Karen.” In the mirror, Warren saw the flush of colour in her cheeks.

“Thank God women always go to the toilet in pairs, eh?” joked Sutton.

“Speaking of which,” Karen Hardwick spoke up from the back, “you couldn’t put your foot down a bit, could you, sir? Like I said, it has been a very long day.”

In response to the two men’s surprised glances, she sighed. “I was busy interrogating a witness. I only flushed the toilet for cover.” She paused. “Besides which, you saw the state of their living room — you don’t want to know about the bathroom.”

Chapter 30

Back at the station the remainder of the crime-scene forensics were waiting. Analysis of the various footprints around Carolyn Patterson’s body yielded little in the way of helpful information. The only clear footprints in the periphery of the dumping area belonged to the unfortunate teenagers who had stumbled across her body. Closer to the corpse, imprints had been made of only a couple of partial footprints. Comparing these patterns to those found near Sally Evans’ body confirmed another connection between the two murders.

Unfortunately, piecing together the fragments from both sites still produced at most forty per cent of the right shoe and thirty per cent of the left. It was enough to identify the boots as size ten, male work boots, but little more. Very little in the way of distinguishing marks were found, meaning a detailed comparison would have to be conducted with any suspects’ boots to make a connection. No matching hits were found on the HOLMES database.

Even less helpful were the foreign fibres found on both victims’ clothes. Microscopic analysis revealed them to be the same — dark blue nylon threads. Unfortunately, that proved little. Included in the briefing pack on Warren’s desk was a printout of a clothing catalogue. The Chinese writing on the front was translated underneath into English and revealed it to be the product listing for a Chinese clothes manufacturer that exported most of its product to Europe, including the UK.

The fibres were identified as being part of a standard cloth, used in many of the company’s different clothing lines. As he leafed through the book Warren saw that somebody had circled the different garments currently available using that cloth. By Warren’s estimate, at least a quarter of the company’s range of clothing could be made using that fabric if a client so desired. Everything from men’s tracksuit bottoms to women’s fleeces, even some children’s school jumpers. Furthermore, they supplied own-brand clothing to pretty much all of the supermarkets and down-market chain stores.

Tony Sutton threw down the catalogue in disgust. “Shit. I’ve probably got at least a couple of these garments in my own wardrobe.”

Gary Hastings nodded in agreement. “I think I recognised one of those tracksuits.”

“So it looks as though we’re going to get little from forensics. This bugger’s really careful,” Warren summarised.

“Well, we know at least one person who is pretty good at avoiding leaving any clues behind. I think it’s time for another visit to the farm, don’t you, DCI Jones?”

* * *

“I’ll bet he’s got an alibi, probably from that sleazy son of his,” opined Sutton as they headed out to Richard Cameron and Michael Stockley’s farm.

“I suspect you’re probably correct, but we still need to ask him,” Warren agreed.