One Last Lesson (9 page)

He was not trying to expunge Sarah from his life, far from it as
there were still plenty of pictures of her on his home computer and memories in his head but in the light of her murder, he and his fellow investors did not want to encourage the police to come snooping round or alert the university authorities as to their activities.

D
eeZee turned to face him, his black greasy hair plastered across his forehead, a lollipop stick protruding from the side of his mouth and the hint of a grin spreading across his pale, podgy face, revealing an uneven row of yellowing teeth. In the Middle Ages he might have been mistaken for a carrier of Black Death or TB and be put down; chance would be a fine thing.

‘Why d’you wanna know, man? You been shagging her or somethin’ and startin’ to feel guilty about it now she’s dead?’

The cheeky little bastard. If it were not for the fear of ending up naked in a skip with an axe through his head, he would have thumped him. ‘Have some more reverence for the dead, Calder.’

‘I told you not to call me that, ’ he said, his face momentarily crumpled like a collapsed soufflé.

‘Oops must have slipped my mind. So have you?’

‘Have I what?’

‘Taken her pictures off the server and all the other places in this...’ he said sweeping his arm around expansively around the room, ‘this expensive box of tricks?’

‘Yeah man, I told you. It’s all been done. It’s all cool.’

‘It better be,’ Lehman said, his anger rising at this insolent slob’s impudence and off-hand attitude. ‘The police are looking for a murderer and if they come calling here, I don’t want to find anything that links her to me, Alan Stark or good old Uncle Dom or you’ll be dropped in the shit, or more likely, the Channel with weights in your pockets. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I hear you man.’

Even if he said so himself, he thought as he walked away, he had been masterful. He told that little prick where his place in life was, not wearing Church’s shoes, but under his.

Henderson left the hospital where
Rachel was being treated later than intended, and only after making a promise to return later in the evening. Before he could do that, he needed to head back to Sussex House and find out what the latest developments in the Robson case were that were getting Gerry Hobbs so excited. Almost as soon as he exited the hospital car park and turned into Eastern Road, his phone rang.

‘Angus? Steve
Harris here. I can’t talk long as I’m just waiting to go into a meeting with the Chief Constable but I need a status update on the Robson case. Andy Youngman is getting his ear bent by Owen Robson as he and Youngman seem to know one other from some charity foundation they’re both involved in.’

That was all he needed, the victim’s father pestering the Assistant Chief Constable,
the man with overall responsibility for CID. ‘I’m just heading back to the office now, sir as there’s been some new developments.’

‘That’s good to hear
. What are they?’

‘I
don’t know yet. I’ll find out when I get there.’

‘Have you just been
over to the hospital to see Rachel?’

‘
Aye, I have.’

‘How is she?’

‘She’s got a broken wrist, broken leg, face and arm lacerations but she’s out of danger.’

‘Good.
Tell her I wish her a speedy recovery.’

‘Thanks, I will.’

‘Now, because you’ll be visiting hospital a lot and when she comes out, looking after the invalid, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to spend all your time on this case. Therefore, I think you might need someone to join the investigation team to assist you.’

Here we go again, Harris couldn’t even be subtle about it now. It was yet another brazen attempt to parachute his friend
, DS Richard Phillips into Major Crimes, a move Harris had been trying to engineer for over a year. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. I’m away from the office for a few hours to visit my injured girlfriend and you accuse me of not being able to do my job. I’m heading back to the office right now and I’ll be working on this case for the rest of the afternoon and a good chunk of this evening. I don’t need reinforcements.’

‘Angus, you’re not thinking straight.
Rachel is going to need a lot of attention in the coming days and weeks, especially as she lives on her own. How can she do anything for herself with a useless arm and leg and I imagine, more cuts and bruises than a professional boxer?’

He took a deep breath. The same subject
had recently crossed his mind but as yet, he hadn’t come up with a solution. ‘It’s covered Steve, the investigation won’t miss a beat.’

‘Convince me.’

‘Her parents were at the hospital today and they’ve decided to look after her until she feels able to move back into her own flat.’

‘
Is that so?’

‘
Aye, they’re all for it, apparently. I mean what parent wouldn’t want their only daughter back in the fold for a few months?’

It was n
ot often he could he claim to have knocked the wind out of Harris’s sails as the Chief Inspector had more bluster than a Force 7 south-westerly, and as such it was a moment to savour. However, a deeper satisfaction would surely have been gained, if only it was true.

‘Ok, r
ight, but...I need to make sure you stay on top of this and keep the ACC happy.’ The phone went quiet for several seconds. ‘What I want then, is a twice-weekly update meeting. Just you and me and any other officers you think we might need.’

‘No can do, sir. I really don’t have the time to set aside a couple of hours each week during the middle of a high profile murder investigation like this one, especially with the
ACC looking over our shoulders.’

‘Yes but...’

‘How about I send you a weekly status report?’ He did one anyway and filed it for all to see and so sending a copy to Harris wouldn’t involve him or anyone else in any more work.

‘All right...ok then but I
need to see it first thing on Monday morning and covering all the previous week’s activities.’

‘Fine,’ he said smiling at his own deft and cunning. Offering to send a report to a born administrator like Steve Harris was like handing a
four-pack to a drunk in the park but if playing one trump card in a Harris conversation was damn lucky, what did it mean if he played two? He really needed to buy a lottery ticket.

‘Right, ok,’ he heard him saying to someone
in the background. ‘Angus, I’m getting the call to go back in. I need to go. Call me as soon as you know more about this latest development. Bye.’

He strode into Sussex House and headed straight for the Murder Suite. Throwing his jacket over an empty chair, he walked towards Gerry Hobbs, a figure of studied concentration in the corner, staring intently at a computer screen.

‘Hi boss,
’ the DS said, ‘I didn’t see you there. Give me a minute and I’ll bring up the pictures that I was telling you about.’

Havana Bay
had supplied them with copies of the recordings made by their cameras, which were mounted all around the vast club, on the night Sarah was murdered. Hobbs was looking at the one located on West Street and focussed over the main entrance, monitoring the queue. He watched as Hobbs fiddled laboriously with the keys on the computer, trying to advance the DVD to the time when her flatmates told them they had arrived. It was obvious that he and the DS were cut from the same lump of stone, as Hobbs was as gormless at using these things as he was.

‘I need to move it along a bit more... here. No, that’s
not it, a bit more, here, yes. Just a sec, I’m nearly there now.’

He looked away while
the pictures flashed by as the rapid movement was making him feel queasy. Over the room-dividing screens he could see two whiteboards that were steadily filling up with notes, photographs and connecting lines. In particular, the picture of Mike Ferris stood out. Now that they knew he was working as a bouncer at Havana Bay, moved him up from being only a ‘witness’ to a ‘person of interest,’ but as yet there was no evidence to connect him to the victim.

He returned
his gaze to the computer screen where he was pleased to see the images were now moving slower. The quality was good, even though it was shot on an outside camera at eleven o’clock at night, as it had been a dry night without the sleeting rain and gusting winds that often blew up from the seafront in winter, conditions that buggered up the pictures from another case he was involved in a month or so back.

It was that
time of the night when punters left the pubs where they had been drinking for hours, and began queuing outside one of the many clubs in this area. Already, fifty or sixty youngsters were lined up outside Havana Bay, huddling close to the wall to keep away from a cold wind, which would have been tolerable if only they were wearing more suitable clothing and not short dresses and tight fitting t-shirts.

He often drove through that
part of the city at night, returning from a restaurant in town or a late-night stint in the office and he couldn’t help but notice what a Mecca the streets around there were for young people as it contained dozens of pubs, eateries, nightclubs and cash machines, all in close proximity.

With the DVD in slow motion, the crowd crept
towards the entrance at a steady pace and when the time on the screen corresponded to what was on the piece of paper Hobbs was holding, he slowed it down to normal speed. A few seconds later, they saw Sarah.

She was standing
in the queue with her two flatmates, Jo and Nicole but it was Sarah that stood out. She was taller than the other two and stood slightly apart as if excluded from their conversation, but exuding a confidence that suggested she didn’t mind being on her own or require the succour of others.

It was a weird experience looking at a dead girl moving, looking around and talking as if she was still alive. Unlike many of the detectives he knew, he was rarely haunted by the voices of the dead
, visiting them in dreams or when out walking in the park. However, her face would never be out of his head until her killer was caught, allowing her family to move on with the rest of their lives, safe in the knowledge that the bastard who killed her was behind bars and to feel the sense of satisfaction that justice had been served.

‘Now watch what happens in the next few minutes.’

Slowly, the three girls made their way to the front where the entry criterion, according to a regular clubber in the murder investigation team, DC Sally Graham, was variable. In general, girls needed to be neatly dressed, not downright ugly, not part of a hen party and not drunk, while boys were excluded if they came in wearing football shirts, in large groups or if they were in the least bit scruffy.

From that
camera angle, which was set to scan the crowd from a height of about twelve feet, they could see the clubbers quite clearly. They were lined up against the wall of the club, a ragged line snaking down towards the seafront but only the backs of the bouncers, or Door Supervisors as they were now called, as they were facing the queue while guarding the entrance door.

When Sarah edged closer to the front of the queue, a bouncer moved out to talk to her. It was obvious they knew one another
and that he wasn’t approaching her just to tell her off, as Sarah was smiling and the bouncer’s head was nodding in response. The powerful build and close cropped haircut, suggested Mike Ferris but if confirmation was needed, his smirking mug was there for all to see a minute or so later, when he turned to walk back to his station.

‘Whoa, I can’t believe I
just saw him do that,’ Henderson said. ‘Ferris bloody well knows Sarah Robson, you could tell by the look on her face.’ He pushed the chair back, leant back on its creaky lumber support and stared at the ceiling. His gut reaction was to immediately issue a warrant for his arrest but something was niggling him.

He sat up. ‘Well spotted Gerry, excellent detective work. Can you print it?’

‘Done it already.’ He opened a folder containing a small pile of pictures taken at various stages; the time Sarah was first spotted, her meeting with Ferris, the confirmation shot of his face and the point when she finally entered the club.

‘Shall
I grab somebody and we’ll go over to Mannings Heath and wheel him in?’

‘Not yet, mate. Have you looked at
when she left the club to go home?’

‘Yes, I made a note of it somewhere.’ He began search
ing through the piles of papers, DVD’s and notes that were littering his desk and a few moments later, found what he was looking for. ‘Let me see,’ he said holding up a piece of paper, ‘it was at two-twelve.’ He fiddled with the controls and soon they were looking at the same spot outside the club but now, the queue was gone.

Minutes later, a few drunks staggered out
, some, making their way down the street towards the seafront and others crossing the street. Then, a couple came out and stood at the entrance clumsily kissing and touching one another against the cold wall. Just when it looked as though they might not make it back to the privacy of a warm bedroom, the guy put his arm over her shoulder and slowly they walked under the camera on their way up the hill towards the Clock Tower.