Not Dead Enough (41 page)

‘What happens if he’s away?’ he asked, panicky.

‘There are some other good people. Don’t worry.’

‘I want the best, Robert. The very best. Money’s no object. It’s ridiculous. I shouldn’t be here. It’s absolutely insane. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.’

‘I’d better jump off the line, Brian,’ the solicitor said, a little tersely. ‘I need to get cracking for you.’

‘Of course.’ Bishop thanked him, then the intercom fell silent. He realized he was alone now and the door had been shut.

The cell was completely silent, as if he were in a soundproof box.

He sat down on the blue mattress and pushed his feet into the plimsolls. They were too tight and pinched his toes. Something was bothering him about Robert Vernon. Why wasn’t the man sounding more sympathetic? From his tone just now, it was almost as if he had been expecting this to happen.

Why?

The door opened and he was led into a room where he was photographed, his fingerprints were taken on an electronic pad and a DNA swab was taken from the inside of his mouth. Then he was returned to his cell.

And his bewildered thoughts.

85

For some officers, a career in the police force meant a constant, not always predictable series of changes. You could be moved from a uniform beat patrol one day to the Local Support Unit the next, executing arrest warrants and dealing with riots, then into plain clothes as a covert drug squad officer, then out at Gatwick airport, seconded to baggage crimes. Others found their niche, the way a snake finds its hole, or a squid finds its crevice in a sea wall, and stayed put in it all the way through their thirty years to retirement and, the bait on the hook, a very decent pension, thank you.

Detective Sergeant Jane Paxton was one of those who had found their niche and stayed in it. She was a large, plain-faced woman of forty, with lank brown hair and a brusque, no nonsense attitude, who worked as an interview coordinator.

She had endeared herself to the entire female staff of Sussex House some years ago, legend had it, when she slapped Norman Potting on the face. Depending on who you talked to, there were half a dozen versions of what had happened. The one that Grace had heard was that Potting had put his hand on her thigh under the table during a meeting with the previous Chief Constable.

DS Paxton was now sitting opposite Grace at the round table in his office, wearing a loose-fitting blouse so voluminous it gave the appearance that her head was sticking out of the top of a tent. On either side of her sat Nick Nicholl and Glenn Branson. DS Paxton was drinking water. The three men were drinking coffee. It was eight thirty on Monday evening and all four of them knew they would be lucky to get out of the CID headquarters before midnight.

While Brian Bishop was alone, contemplating his navel in his custody block cell, awaiting the arrival of his solicitor, the team were creating their interview policy for Bishop’s interrogation. Branson and Nicholl, who had both received specialist training in interviewing techniques, would carry out the series of interviews. Roy Grace and Jane Paxton would watch from an observation room.

The textbook procedure was to put suspects through three consecutive, strategized interviews within the twenty-four-hour period they could hold the person in custody. The first, which would take place tonight after the suspect’s solicitor had arrived, would be mostly Bishop talking, setting down his facts. He would be encouraged to establish his story, his family background, and give an account of his movements during the twenty-four hours immediately before his wife’s death.

In the second interview, which would take place in the morning, there would be specific questions on all that Bishop had said in the first interview. The tone would be kept courteous and constructive, while all the time the officers would be making notes of any inconsistencies. It was not until the third interview, which would follow later in the day, after Bishop and the team had had a break – and the team had had a chance to assess everything – that the gloves would come off. In that third interview, any inconsistencies or suspected lies would be challenged.

The hope was that by the end of that third interview, information extracted from the suspect, combined with whatever evidence they already had – such as the DNA in this instance – would give them enough for one of the Crown Prosecution solicitors, who operated from an office in the CPS headquarters in Dyke Road, to agree there was sufficient evidence to potentially secure a conviction, and to sanction the suspect being formally charged.

Key to any successful interrogation were the questions that needed to be asked and, very importantly, what information should be held back. They were all agreed that the sighting of Bishop’s Bentley heading towards Brighton shortly before Mrs Bishop’s murder should be held back to the third interview.

Then they debated for some time when to raise the question of the life insurance policy. Grace pointed out that since Bishop had already been questioned about this, and had denied all knowledge of the policy, it should be revisited as part of the first interview, to see if he had changed his story at all.

It was agreed to spring the gas mask on him during the second interview. Jane Paxton suggested it be raised as part of a series of specific questions about Bishop’s sex life with his wife. The others agreed.

Grace asked Branson and Nicholl for a detailed account of how Bishop had behaved under arrest and his attitude generally.

‘He’s a bit of a cold fish,’ Branson said. ‘I couldn’t believe it when me and Nick went to break the news about his wife being found dead.’ He looked for confirmation to Nicholl, who nodded. Branson continued, ‘Yeah, OK, he did the grief bit to start with, but do you know what he said next?’ He looked at Grace, then Paxton. ‘He said, “This is really not a good time – I’m halfway through a golf tournament.” Can you believe it?’

‘If anything, I think that comment works the other way,’ Grace replied.

All of them looked at the Detective Superintendent with interest.

‘What other way?’ Branson asked.

‘From what I’ve seen of him, Bishop’s too smart to have made such a callous, potentially incriminating remark,’ Grace replied. ‘It’s more the kind of remark of someone who is totally bewildered. Which would indicate the shock was genuine.’

‘You’re saying you think he’s innocent?’ Jane Paxton asked.

‘No, what I’m saying is we have some strong evidence against this man. Let’s stick to the hard facts for the moment. A comment like that could be useful during the trial – the prosecuting counsel could use it to help sway the jury against Bishop. We should keep it back, not bring it up in any of the interviews, because he’ll probably say you’ve misunderstood him, and then you’ve blown its surprise value.’

‘Good point,’ Nick Nicholl said, and yawned, apologizing immediately.

Grace knew it was harsh, keeping Nicholl here until late, with his young baby at home, but that wasn’t his problem. Nicholl was exactly the right soft-man foil to Branson’s hard man for this series of interviews.

‘The next item on my list,’ Jane Paxton said, ‘is Bishop’s relationship with Sophie Harrington.’

‘Definitely the third interview,’ Grace said.

‘No, I think we should bring it up in the second,’ Branson replied. ‘We could ask him again whether he knew her and if so what their relationship was. It would give us a good steer on how truthful he is, whether or not he still denies knowing her. Right?’

‘It’s a good point,’ Grace said. ‘But he’ll know that we’re analysing all his phone calls, so he’d have to be pretty stupid to deny knowing her.’

‘Yeah, but I think it’s worth asking him in the second interview,’ Branson persisted. ‘My reasoning is this: we got that witness opposite Sophie Harrington’s house, who has positively identified him at around the time of her murder. Depending on how he answers the phone question in the second interview, we can spring that on him in the third.’

Grace looked at Jane Paxton. She was nodding in agreement.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good plan.’

His internal phone rang. He stepped away from the table and over to his desk to answer it. ‘Roy Grace?’ He listened for some moments, then said, ‘Fine. OK. Thanks. We’ll be ready.’

He replaced the phone and joined them back at the round table. ‘Bishop’s solicitor will be here at half past nine.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Forty-five minutes.’

‘Who is it?’ Jane Paxton asked.

‘Leighton Lloyd.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Branson shrugged. ‘Who else?’

They turned their focus on exactly what Lloyd would be told and what at this stage would be held back from him. Then the four of them left the building and walked briskly to the ASDA supermarket, taking a short cut through the bushes at the back, to grab a quick sandwich for their evening meal.

Ten minutes later they crossed back over the road. Branson and Nicholl walked through the side gate and up towards the custody block. Inside, they were taken to an interview room, where they would outline to Bishop’s solicitor the background, and why Bishop had been arrested, without Bishop present. Then he would be brought into the room, too, for an interview.

Jane Paxton and Grace went back to their respective offices, Grace intending to use the next half-hour to catch up on some emails. He sat at his desk and rang Cleo, and discovered she was still at work at the mortuary.

‘Hi, you!’ she said, sounding pleased to hear from him.

‘How are you?’ he said.

‘I’m shattered. But it’s nice that you rang.’

‘I like your voice when you’re tired. It goes sort of croaky – it’s sweet!’

‘You wouldn’t think that if you saw me. I feel about a hundred. And you? What’s happening?’

He filled her in briefly, telling her he wouldn’t be finished until around midnight, and asked if she’d like him to come over then.

‘I would love to see you, my darling, but as soon as I’m out of here I’m going to fall into a bath and then crash. Why don’t you come over tomorrow?’

‘Sounds like a plan!’

‘Are you eating properly?’ she asked, motherly suddenly. ‘Have you had some dinner?’

‘Sort of,’ he said evasively.

‘An ASDA pot noodle?’

‘A sandwich,’ he confessed.

‘That’s not healthy! What kind of a sandwich?’

‘Beef.’

‘God, Roy. Fatty meat and carbohydrate!’

‘It had a lettuce leaf in it.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right then,’ she said sarcastically. Then her voice changed. ‘Can you hang on a sec? There’s someone outside the building.’ She sounded worried.

‘Who’s there with you?’

‘No one, I’m on my own. Poor Darren and Walter came in at four this morning. I sent them home a little while ago. I’m just going to check this out, OK? Call you back in a sec.’

The phone went dead.

86

I received a letter this morning from someone called Lawrence Abramson at a firm of solicitors in London called Harbottle and Lewis. It is a really unpleasant letter.

I recently wrote to the man who looks just like me, who started this company, suggesting that, as it was my idea – and I have all the paperwork from my patent agent, Mr Christopher Pett at Frank B. Dehn & Son, to prove it – he should be paying me a royalty on his revenues.

Mr Abramson is threatening to obtain an injunction against me if I ever approach his client again.

I’m really very angry.

87

Leighton Lloyd looked as if he’d had a hard day. Exuding a faint smell of tobacco smoke, he was sitting in this windowless, airless, enclosed interview room, dressed in an expensive-looking but crumpled grey suit, cream shirt and a sharp silk tie. A well-travelled leather attache case was on the floor beside him, from which he extracted a black, lined A4 notebook.

Lloyd was a lean, wiry man, with close-cropped hair and an alert, predatory face that reminded Branson a little of the actor Robert Carlyle when he was playing a Bond villain in The World is Not Enough. Branson got a kick out of matching a movie villain’s face to all lawyers – and he found it helped him to avoid feeling intimidated by them, particularly when being cross-examined by defence barristers in court.

Plenty of officers got on fine with solicitors. They took it in their stride, saying that it was all a game that sometimes they won, sometimes they lost. But for Branson it was more personal than that. He knew that criminal solicitors and barristers were only doing their job, and formed an important part of the freedoms of the British nation. But for nearly a decade before joining the police, he’d worked several nights a week as a nightclub bouncer in this city. He’d seen and tangled with just about every bit of scum imaginable, from drunk braggarts, to ugly gangsters, to some very smart criminals. He felt an intense obligation to try to make this city a better place for his own children to grow up in than it had been for him as a kid. That was his beef with the man sitting opposite him right now, in his hand-made suit and his black, tasselled loafers, with his big swinging dick of a BMW parked out front, and no doubt a flash, secluded house somewhere in one of Hove’s swankier streets, all paid for out of the rich pickings from keeping scumbags out of jail – and on the streets.

Branson’s mood had not been improved by a blazing row with his wife, Ari, on his mobile phone as he had walked over to the custody block. He’d called to say goodnight to the children and she had pointed out acidly that they had been asleep in bed for some time. To which his response, that it was not much fun still being at work at nine o’clock, received a torrent of sarcasm. It had then degenerated into a shouting match, ending with Ari hanging up on him.

Nick Nicholl closed the door, pulled up a chair opposite Branson and sat down. Lloyd had positioned himself at the head of the table, as if arranging the stage to assert himself from the getgo.

The solicitor made a note in his black book with a roller-ball pen. ‘So, gentlemen, what information do you have for me?’ He spoke in a brisk, clipped voice, his tone polite but firm. Above them, an air-conditioning unit was starting, noisily, to pump out cool air.