Cath Staincliffe: Dead To Me

‘DNA swabs from the body are with the lab.’

‘In that case we can all go home till Christmas,’ Pete said, and everyone laughed. The lab took a while to process stuff. Fingerprints could be done with fingerprint-recognition software by the officers themselves. And blood groups were pretty quick to get a label on, but all the other biological gubbins took a day or two at best.

‘I know.’ Gill pointed at Pete. ‘Pain in the arse.’

Rachel watched as Kevin drew eyes, a little Hitler moustache, and breasts on his paper cup with a board marker. What a twat. Perhaps he had some relative in high command and Her Maj owed them a favour.

‘Kevin – with Andy on house-to-house. Mitch – friends and acquaintances. See what her fellow druggies can tell us.’

‘Was she on the game?’ Rachel asked. It went with the territory, one of the few ways to get money to buy the drugs.

‘Not to our knowledge. Janet and Rachel, get a full witness statement from Sean Broughton. Janet in the chair, Rachel – look and learn. He made an initial statement last night but we need to flesh it out.’

‘Here or at his?’ Rachel asked.

‘Do it here, make him comfy.’

‘I’ll talk, you write,’ Janet said to Rachel.

‘I’ve got tier two,’ Rachel said. Trained to know the definition of the offence and to prove each point in interviewing suspects.

Janet looked at her. ‘You heard Gill.’ The DCI had specifically asked Janet to run the witness statement from Sean Broughton. Did she really think Janet would just roll over and give her the task because she’d asked for it?

Rachel shrugged. ‘Fine,’ she said ungraciously.

The boy’s eyes were dark brown, the whites bloodshot, and he had a slack look to him that made Janet suspect he was high, weed maybe, not twitchy enough for coke or crack. He wore an old Adidas trackie top and a Man City T-shirt that had seen better days, jeans, trainers, hi-tops. He had not shaved and there was a dusting of dark brown hair around his chin and upper lip. His hair was shortish and dyed the colour of hay, black roots showing. Perhaps he and Lisa had bleached their hair together? He had the coffee-coloured skin of a mixed race kid but Janet couldn’t tell what the mix was. Could have been part Indian, or African-Caribbean or something else. No clue in his name either.

‘Thank you for coming in, Sean. What we’re going to do,’ Janet explained once they settled into the easy chairs in the visitors’ room slash soft interview space, ‘is get a detailed witness statement from you. Now we have this camera in the corner running – nothing for you to worry about. It can feel a bit weird at first,’ she smiled, ‘but most people soon forget it’s there. There are certain things I have to go through with you as a matter of procedure. I have to tell you that you are not ,’ she stressed the word, ‘under arrest, and you are free to leave at any time. I must also tell you that you don’t have to answer anything that you don’t want to answer but if we go to court, anything you say here can be used. And you can ask to speak to a solicitor or to have a solicitor present. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

They were sitting in easy chairs, a few feet apart, nothing between them, no desk, no barriers. ‘If you need a break at any time, that’s fine, we can stop. We might be here for quite a while – we don’t want to rush things and it’s important we take the time to get everything down as you remember. Is there anything you want to ask me before we start?’

‘No,’ Sean said.

‘OK. I need you to confirm the details you gave yesterday.’ Janet went through his name, DOB and address. No surprises. ‘Thank you. Now, can you tell me how you know Lisa Finn?’

‘She’s my girlfriend.’ He rubbed his palms on his jeans.

‘And how long have you been together?’

‘Couple of years.’

‘Thank you. Now tell me in your own words what you remember from yesterday afternoon.’ Janet sat back in her seat, giving him the floor, giving him space.

‘I went round there about half three,’ he said, ‘went in and she were in the living room and she’s on the floor, like…’

Janet nodded slowly. ‘Yes, keep going.’ She was barely aware of Rachel behind her making notes.

‘She was…’ Sean rocked forward in his chair and back again, shoved his hands between his knees, a comfort pose, a response to the distress, ‘… she was dead, like,’ he said, his nose reddening. ‘I could just tell. And I rang you.’ He choked off the end of the sentence.

‘Thank you,’ Janet said. The atmosphere in the room had changed. Sean’s grief thick in the air. She waited a moment, giving him time to regain his equilibrium. Janet remained composed, neutral, empathetic and professional. This is what all the weeks of interview training had taught her. ‘Now I’m going to go through your statement and ask a little more about it. So we can get a complete picture from you. Is that OK?’

‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. She saw his shoulders had relaxed slightly, a sign that he was feeling less threatened. Though she knew the process was fluid, his anxiety would advance and retreat as they went back and forth over the memories of him finding Lisa’s body.

‘How did you get to Lisa’s?’

‘Walked,’ he said.

‘Where had you been before that?’

‘At my place, with my cousin Benny – he lives there too. I had to sign on in the morning and then I was at home.’ He bit at his thumbnail.

‘You told me you got to Lisa’s at about half past three. Did you notice the time particularly, Sean?’

‘That’s when I said I’d be there.’

‘Which way do you walk?’

‘Down Garrigan Street,’ he said.

‘Do you remember seeing anyone on the way?’

‘No, just… the school was coming out, on the brow, they finish at quarter past.’

Janet gave a nod. It was good to get some supporting information on the basic facts, something to corroborate what a witness said. So if they got to trial there would be no chance for the defence to play silly buggers, casting doubt on the timeline and jeopardizing a conviction.

Janet made eye contact. ‘I’d like you to think about turning into the avenue: can you remember seeing anyone there?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Any cars moving, anyone fetching kids from school?’

Sean licked his lips, shook his head. ‘Don’t remember.’

‘You get to the front door, what then?’

‘I went in.’

‘You have a key?’

‘Yeah, but – well, the latch is broken, so you can just push the door, if you know.’

Janet leaned forward. ‘Lisa didn’t get it fixed?’

‘She was going to tell the landlord. Don’t know if she did. Take them years to sort it anyway.’

‘How long has it been broken?’ Janet said.

‘Few months.’

Good God.

‘You couldn’t tell, like,’ he went on, ‘’cos the door sticks so it looks shut.’

Janet felt a bit sick. Did this mean that Lisa could have been attacked by an intruder? Who what…? Persuaded her to undress, then got her to put a kimono on before raping and stabbing her? Or had an intruder found her half-undressed and attacked her? The broken latch only seemed to muddy the waters. What it did mean was that Lisa hadn’t necessarily invited her killer in, which is what they’d assumed until now.

He bent forward in his chair, hands on his knees, preparing for what was coming. Janet didn’t want him to get too wound-up. Before walking him through the discovery again, the most traumatic part of his evidence, she reeled back a few hours. ‘Had you and Lisa been in contact during the day?’

‘I rang her just after one. She said she’d be back about half three. That’s how I knew to go round, like.’