Paul Gitsham - DCI Warren Jones

After determining that Rice had nothing else to offer, Warren thanked them both for their time. Mr Rice got up quickly, leaving the interview suite. His daughter lingered. It was clear that she had more to say, and would rather her father didn’t hear it.

It wasn’t what he expected.

‘Are you Mrs Jones’ husband?’

Damn. He’d had no idea that she was one of Susan’s pupils. He thought for a second, but couldn’t think of any obvious conflict of interest.

‘Yes. I assume she teaches you biology?’

‘Yes.’ She glanced over at the door and lowered her voice. ‘Ignore what Dad said, Miss is a really good teacher. Even with a tutor, I’m just not, you know—’

‘Come on Beth, I need to get back in time for a conference call to New York,’ her father called from the corridor outside.

‘That’s very kind of you to say.’ Warren could see no harm in passing on that little bit of praise to his wife; he knew she’d be touched.

Rice glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice even more.

‘I’ll be eighteen soon. Do the police offer work experience?’

* * *

Purbury Hostel was on the far side of town to the Phoenix Centre. Ruskin decided to park around the corner and walk. The car was out of his direct sight, but hopefully nobody would realise it belonged to him and add to the petty vandalism.

‘How can I help you officer?’ asked the apparently teenaged security guard in the tiny security cubicle in the lobby of the apartment block. He looked excited; no doubt a visit from the police would be the highlight of his shift.

‘Am I wearing a badge or something?’ asked Ruskin.

The man shrugged.

Ruskin pushed a copy of Furber’s photo under the glass partition.

‘Oh yeah, I know him, Lucas. He was here for a few months before Christmas. Managed to get himself kicked out in January.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Between you and me he probably should have been given the boot before then, but I wasn’t going to kick a bloke out before Christmas.’

‘Why was he asked to leave?’

‘The usual, booze and drugs. They’re not supposed to take either in their rooms. Strictly speaking, they shouldn’t even smoke in there, but we gave up that fight long ago. I smelt weed a couple of times and told him to knock it on the head, just friendly like, but he wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t turn a blind eye though when one of the cleaners found a bong in his room.

‘So you told him to leave?’

‘Yeah, no choice really. There’s a waiting list for a room.’

‘Any idea where he went?’

‘No, I don’t usually deal with that side of things, I’m just security, but the manager, Sunil, reckons Lucas got the hump, grabbed his bag and disappeared before we could try and arrange for a place in one of the emergency shelters – not that there are any places these days, but you never know …’

‘So he’s homeless? Sleeping rough?’

‘Probably. You could try one of the homeless shelters, or one of the street teams. Have you tried the Phoenix Centre?’

Ruskin confirmed that he had.

‘Not a lot else, I can suggest, sorry.’

‘Results are back from traffic about Rodney Shaw’s alibi on the night of the fire.’ Mags Richardson was excited. Warren and Sutton hurried over to her desk.

‘They picked up his licence plate on numerous ANPR cameras, as well as several CCTV cameras that evening.’

On one of her monitors a detailed street map of Middlesbury was marked with the location of the abbey and Shaw’s flat. Blue dots showed the location of junctions with working cameras.

‘This is his journey to the abbey after he was called on his mobile phone.’ A red dotted line appeared on the map, joining up several blue dots, each of which had a time stamp next to it.

‘Well, despite what he claimed when he was interviewed, he clearly wasn’t home in front of the news when his phone went off,’ said Sutton immediately.

Sure enough, the red dotted line started in the south of the town, with the first sighting of the car on an ANPR camera three and a half miles south east of his flat, eight minutes after he received the call about the fire.

Warren squinted at the map. ‘I can’t see any way that he could have got to that part of town from his house without going past at least one camera. What time did his car arrive there?’

‘He drove there immediately after work.’ Richardson clicked the mouse and an irregularly shaped area of the map was shaded in grey. ‘All we can say, location-wise, is that his car stayed somewhere within this area for almost the next five hours, from 5.19 p.m. until seven minutes after he was phoned at five past ten.’

‘It’s a pretty large area,’ said Sutton. ‘We’ll need to narrow it down. Mobile phone records?’

‘He’s clearly lied about his whereabouts that night, I’d say that is enough justification for a warrant,’ said Warren.

‘How far is it from the abbey?’ asked Ruskin, who’d just arrived back in the office.

‘The one-way system increases the journey length, but assuming quiet traffic that time of night, then by car it would take between thirteen and eighteen minutes at normal speed, depending on where he started from within this area. But we know that he didn’t use his own car, as it wasn’t spotted on cameras again until after he was called back because of the fire,’ said Richardson.

‘See if any of the other cars that were in that area are related to Shaw,’ instructed Warren. ‘He could have borrowed a friend’s car. Check if his wife has her own car.’

‘I’ll also get onto the bus companies and cab firms and see if they picked up Shaw,’ said Richardson.

‘That’s if he used public transport,’ cautioned Richardson. ‘It’s only between 1.2 and 1.6 miles as the crow flies and Shaw’s a pretty fit man. He would have been able to easily cover that distance between the fire being set and his car re-appearing on the cameras.’

‘But why did he park his car there?’ asked Ruskin.

‘Presumably he didn’t want to park too near the abbey in case he was spotted, and his flat was too far to walk from,’ said Richardson.

‘Probably, but why here specifically? And what was he doing in the almost five hours between him driving there and going to the abbey?’ asked Sutton.

‘Location data from his mobile phone should help narrow down his exact position. In the meantime, get Rachel to compile a list of local businesses within that area. Knowing his proclivities, he could have spent some time in a local bookie or had some Dutch courage in the pub.’

It had been over five days since Father Nolan had been set on fire. Unusually, the murder was still being reported as a suicide, with limited information released to the public. The decision to do so had been justified on the grounds that the killer probably assumed that they had got away with it, and would therefore not be on their guard. Hopefully, this would increase the likelihood that they would slip up. How much longer the subterfuge would be allowed to continue was a decision well above Warren’s paygrade.

However, although Warren and Grayson ran a tight ship at Middlesbury, the number of seconded officers involved was rising rapidly, increasing the risk of a leak that the death was suspicious. And if the investigators themselves didn’t let something slip, how long would it be before members of staff and residents at the abbey started to question the ongoing presence of so many police and forensics officers?

In those five days, a lot had been accomplished, but after the first flurry of activity, the team was starting to get into a routine. It would be unfair to say that they were in a slump, but Warren knew that they could end up that way if he wasn’t careful. Fortunately, this morning’s briefing had two new, exciting leads.