Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation (18 page)

Mr Stottart glanced at Lapslie, looked away at the video camera, then looked back at Lapslie.

‘You were at the synaesthesia workshop,’ he said. ‘Mark, wasn’t it?’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie,’ he said, standing up to shake hands while trying to clutch his notes and paperwork to his stomach.

Stottart shook Lapslie’s hand. His grip was firm and dry. His mouth was a tight line and his eyebrows were furrowed together. ‘I didn’t realise you were with the Dibble. So, what is this? You’ve been following us? Checking us out?’

The Dibble
. Lapslie hadn’t heard that term in a while; not since he’d spent a year up with the Greater Manchester Police working with the Drugs Squad.

‘Nothing of the sort.’ Lapslie gestured to the sofa across from his chair. ‘Please, sit down, both of you.’ As they sat, father and daughter side by side, and as he slid back into the comfortable upholstery of his own armchair, he continued: ‘This is something of an unusual situation. I am under the care of a consultant at the hospital, as you are, but I am also investigating a murder. The two are entirely unrelated – at least, that’s what I thought until your daughter came to our attention.’

‘You think she’s involved in a
murder
?’ Stottart snapped. His arm went protectively around his daughter’s shoulders. ‘She’s
fourteen
, for God’s sake!’

‘I know,’ Lapslie continued, ‘and it’s only a possibility at the moment, based on where she was at a particular time. She’s not under arrest, and this interview is not being conducted under caution. We just need to know what she knows – if anything.’

The door opened again and Emma Bradbury slipped in. She nodded an apology at Lapslie, then took up an inconspicuous position against a wall.

‘She doesn’t know anything,’ Stottart said, and glanced down at his daughter’s head. ‘Do you?’

She shook her head, avoiding eye contact with anyone in the room.

‘Okay,’ Lapslie said, ‘then let’s start off with you. Can you tell me what you do for a living, Mr Stottart?’

‘I’m a biologist with an agricultural company.’

‘And where do you live?’

‘Basildon. Moved here from Manchester.’

Lapslie looked across at the daughter. ‘And you, Tamara? That’s your name, isn’t it? Tamara Stottart?’

‘Yeah. I live with my dad,’ she said.

‘Anyone else in the house?’

‘My mum.’ She paused. ‘My brother. And Eddie.’

‘Eddie?’

‘The dog,’ Stottart replied for her. ‘I presume he’s not a suspect?’

‘Mr Stottart,’ Lapslie warned mildly, ‘this is a serious matter. A woman has died. Horribly. We need to find out why she was killed, and who it was who killed her.’

‘Sorry. It’s just that – this is all new to us. I’ve never even been in a police station before.’ Stottart paused. ‘How did she die?’

‘Dad!’ Tamara protested, appalled.

‘That’s not information we can reveal at the moment,’ Lapslie replied. He switched his gaze to the girl. ‘Tamara, we have no reason to believe that you committed any crime, or were present at the commission of a crime, but we do believe that you have – or had – evidence that a crime had taken place—’

‘Who was it?’ Stottart interrupted. ‘Who was killed?’

‘A young woman named Catriona Dooley,’ Lapslie replied. ‘Do you know her, Tamara?’

The girl shook her head, still avoiding Lapslie’s gaze.

‘Are you sure? I’ve got a photograph of her here.’ He pulled an eight-by-five-inch print of Catriona Dooley from the pile of papers on his knees and held it out. ‘Please – look at this.’

Stottart held out a warning palm. ‘It’s not – it’s not a photograph of this woman’s body is it? Dead, like? I wouldn’t want Tamara to see something like that. That would be rank.’

There it was again – another northern expression. Lapslie suddenly felt strangely nostalgic for Manchester.

Lapslie shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that. It was provided by her family.’

‘Okay.’ Mollified, Stottart took the photograph and glanced at it, then held it in front of his daughter’s face. ‘Do you know her, Tamara?’

The girl shook her head without looking at the photograph.

‘Please,’ Lapslie urged, ‘look at it.’ He tried to gauge whether she actually did recognise the photo from the way she held herself, but the way she held her shoulders so tightly and had her arms folded severely across her chest could have been guilt or could equally just have been typical teenage passive aggressive behaviour.

She glanced quickly at the photograph, then glanced away. ‘No,’ she said in a quiet but firm voice. ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

‘She lived in Maldon,’ Lapslie pressed. ‘Does that help place her?’

‘I told you,’ Tamara said, ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

‘What about you, Mr Stottart?’

Stottart shook his head. ‘Don’t recognise her.’ His eyes scanned the photograph again. Lapslie sought for recognition in his eyes, but he just looked blank.

‘Tamara, have you ever been to Canvey Island?’ He watched the girl carefully as he asked the question, looking for a flinch, or a wince, or some kind of gesture to indicate that she recognised the place and identified it with something unpleasant in her life, but her expression was neutral. Carefully so.

‘No,’ she said.

Lapslie looked at her father for confirmation. He shook his head.

‘She’s never been, and I haven’t been for at least fifteen years. Why – is that where the body was discovered?’

He was asking all the usual questions that people being interviewed came out with – How was she killed? Where was she killed? – not so much trying to build up some kind of picture of the crime in his mind as trying to level out the inequality of knowledge between himself and Lapslie. It indicated that he, at least, might not know anything about the crime. Lapslie still wasn’t sure about the daughter, though.

‘Tamara,’ he continued, using the same relaxed tone of voice but conscious now that he was approaching the core set of questions, ‘when was the last time you were in Chelmsford General Hospital?’

‘You were asking about Canvey Island,’ Stottart said, jumping in before his daughter could speak.

‘Please – Mr Stottart.’ Back to the girl. ‘Tamara?’

The pale, smooth line of her brow furrowed momentarily. ‘Dunno. A few days ago, I guess.’

‘Why?’

‘I was waiting for my dad. He had an appointment.’

Lapslie glanced at Stottart. ‘Is this true?’

‘Yeah. One of my regular sessions with Doctor Garland, like you. You can ask him, if you like.’

‘I will.’ Lapslie turned back to the girl. ‘Was that two days ago, at about eight p.m.?’

She shrugged. It was amazing how much negative emotion a teenager could put into a simple shrug. ‘I guess.’

‘And did you use the internet café in the hospital while you were waiting?’

‘Yeah. So? It’s not a crime, is it?’

‘Tamara,’ her father warned, ‘just answer the man’s questions. Don’t try to be cheeky.’

‘Why did you use the internet café?’

‘I was on BeBo, wasn’t I?’

‘BeBo?’ Lapslie was suddenly thrown by the unfamiliar term.

‘It’s a social networking site,’ Emma Bradbury murmured from her position against the wall. ‘Like Facebook, but aimed at a younger market.’

‘Ah.’ Lapslie had a vague feeling that he knew what Facebook was: an internet site where you could put up details about yourself and engage in trivial email conversations with other people. ‘Can you confirm that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean is there any evidence apart from your word that you were using this … BeBo site?’

‘She said she was,’ Stottart said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Much as I would like to believe the word of everyone I interview, I’ve found through long and bitter experience that people
often lie to me,’ Lapslie sighed. He turned back to Tamara. ‘So – is there any proof? Were you talking to anyone else on-line?’

‘I was just checking my messages,’ she said, and paused. ‘But you have to log on to the site, with a password. I guess there’s a record of when I logged on and logged off. You could check that with …’ she hesitated. ‘With the BeBo people,’ she finished lamely.

Lapslie nodded fractionally at Emma. She could check that out later.

‘Did you,’ he asked, ‘while you were using the computer at the internet café, send any emails?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Specifically, did you send an email to me?’

‘No.’

‘How would she know your email address?’ Stottart asked.

A reasonable question, and one that Lapslie hadn’t considered. It had seemed obvious to him that a murderer who wanted to involve Lapslie in their crime would be able to find it out, but a fourteen-year-old girl?

‘Did you,’ Lapslie continued, not responding to Stottart’s question, ‘send me an email with an attached sound file?’

‘What kind of sound file?’ Stottart seemed increasingly hostile as the interview continued and as Lapslie failed to volunteer any information.

‘Well,’ Lapslie went on after a few seconds. ‘Did you?’

‘No,’ she said.

Lapslie pulled another photograph out of the pile on his lap, this time the one of the girl sitting at the internet terminal. ‘Is this you?’ he asked, passing the photograph to her. Again, her father took it and held it so that they could both see it.

‘Yes,’ she said, after a few seconds of looking at the picture. ‘That’s me. But I already told you I was there.’

‘You did, but the email that was sent to me, the email that is connected to the murder we are investigating, was sent from that terminal at the same time you were sitting at it.’

‘Maybe they put a timer on it,’ she said with devastating simplicity.

‘A what?’ Lapslie asked.

‘A timer.’ She glanced up at him with the derision that only the young can manage for their technologically illiterate elders. ‘You can delay emails so they get sent at a particular time. Everyone knows that.’

Lapslie felt like someone had kicked the legs out from beneath him. ‘So you
didn’t
send the email?’

‘No,’ she said, smiling now that she had realised she had him on the defensive. ‘But it could have been delayed until the person who sent it had gone and I was sitting there.’

‘Did you see anyone else sitting at the terminal before you arrived?’

‘No. It was empty when I got there.’

‘Okay.’ He paused, and glanced over at Emma. She shook her head slightly. They’d closed off all the avenues of enquiry. ‘Tamara, Mr Stottart, thank you for coming in today.’

‘That’s it?’ Stottart suddenly switched from defensiveness to belligerence. It was a transition that Lapslie was familiar with. He saw it at every interview and every time a suspect was released without charge. It was as if, when the pressure that kept their mood defensive was released, internal mental pressure suddenly snapped them to the other end of the psychological scale. He’d seen fear suddenly snap to anger as well, and anger to fear. The mind was a funny thing.

‘Yes, Mr Stottart,’ he said heavily, ‘that’s it. We can now return to our murder investigation, and you can return home secure in the knowledge that you have done your civic duty by cooperating
with a police investigation. If your daughter remembers anything else about that internet terminal, and people that might have used it before her, then please let us know. I’ll have a constable escort you out. Do you have your own transport, or do you need us to arrange something?’

‘Oh,’ he said, deflating. ‘Er, no. I’ve got my car outside.’

‘Come on, Dad,’ his daughter said. ‘Let’s go. I’ve got swimming tonight.’

Emma opened the door for them and watched them go. ‘So, he knows you and his daughter was sitting at the computer terminal at the same time the email was sent. That strikes me as more than a coincidence.’

‘Coincidences happen,’ Lapslie said. ‘As most barristers know, and are quick to point out to juries. Young Tamara had a convincing explanation as to how the email could have been sent when she was sitting at the terminal, but not by her.’

‘Which doesn’t mean that she didn’t do it.’

‘I know, but it does mean we can’t prove it. And why would she send it in the first place? Because she wanted to, or because her father told her to? As far as I know, I’ve done nothing to make him angry. I don’t think we’ve ever met before the workshop the other night.’

‘Even so, it’s worth checking out where he was, and where his daughter was, for the period when we think that Catriona Dooley’s body was dumped. Just to be sure. After all, we don’t know when she was killed, exactly, but we can pin down when she was left at the play area.’

Lapsie nodded. ‘And it’s also worth checking for unexplained absences in the period of time between Catriona Dooley vanishing and her body being discovered. She was tortured, and that would probably take a while. Let’s see whether Steve Stottart was absent on a business trip for any length of time.’

‘Will do,’ said Emma. ‘So where do we go from here?’

Lapslie shook his head. ‘I’m not entirely sure. I’m not sure that the autopsy has anything more to tell us. Are all the toxicology tests back?’

‘Yes. Nothing that we didn’t already know.’

‘And I’ve not seen any new information from Sean Burrows on the sound file. Have you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And now that we’ve had to let the boyfriend go we haven’t got any suspects apart from Steve Stottart and his daughter, and I don’t fancy them much for torture and murder, either separately or together.’ He sighed. ‘What about the crime scene where she was discovered? Any new evidence there?’

‘Nothing. There’s evidence that she was dragged across the floor at the kids’ play area, dead of course, but there aren’t any bloody footprints or fingerprints that we can separate out from the general flow of customers. The car park is a mess of tyre marks – no way of separating out those belonging to whoever dumped the body. And we’ve got all the CCTV footage from the area, but there’s nothing that shows us the kids’ play area specifically.’

Lapslie frowned. ‘What, not even the security footage from the play area itself?’

‘Ah,’ Emma said, ‘they only turn the CCTV cameras on when the play area is open, in order to save on storage costs for the data. The manager explained to me that they’re only worried about kids being abducted by strangers or by relatives after a family split, or about paedophiles watching kids from the bushes and trying to take photographs through the windows. Once the customers leave and the doors are locked they just don’t care any more.’