Chapter 17
They were a small unit in the North Lakes and they were tight as a result. Familiarity sat comfortably alongside their inquiries and the atmosphere was hushed but serious. This wasn’t the Met, where murder was standard.
Kelly had given her pound of flesh to the capital city.
She’d dreamt of joining a murder squad in the Met.
Now she was thankful that her job wasn’t overwhelmed by evil.
All crime was challenging to police, but back in those days in the capital city, she’d lived, breathed and consumed murder.
Here, they were more used to burglaries, domestics and road traffic accidents.
That wasn’t to say they weren’t prepared.
They’d had their share of serious inquiries, but they weren’t faced with it every day.
A murder changed the flow of the office. Suicides just depressed them.
Today they potentially had both.
‘I’ll start with the death of Jamie Robbins because there’s more to go on,’ she said.
‘Because it’s more fun that way?’ Kate lightened the load and everybody relaxed.
‘I heard the roads around Rydal were choked this morning,’ Dan said.
‘Rubbernecking in the extreme,’ Emma said.
‘I don’t think they’re there just for the coffin trail,’ Kelly added.
‘And they’re decamping to that posh castle in the middle of nowhere?’ Fin asked.
He referred to Tilda Dent’s intention to take her executives to the huge estate of Dow Bank House near Grasmere to recover from the shock.
‘Why don’t they just fly back to the USA?’ Kate asked. ‘Why hang around?’
‘Respect? I don’t know. They don’t strike me as sensitive types,’ Kelly said.
‘Was he drunk, boss?’ Fin asked.
‘Apparently not but we’ll have to wait for the tox results.’
‘What kind of party was it?’ Dan asked.
‘It wasn’t a party,’ Kate replied. ‘It was a conference for health and wellness.’
Dan snorted into his coffee and Emma covered her mouth.
Kelly recalled how she felt when she got a whiff of the stuff when she’d been pregnant and the nostalgic feeling of nausea caught her by surprise.
Cigarette smoke had the same effect. Now she quite liked it when Kate came in after a sneaky smoke.
‘The coroner still hasn’t made a decision on cause of death, because we didn’t find anything concrete yesterday, so we don’t know the circumstances surrounding Jamie’s death.
So I’m treating it as suspicious because the coroner is.
He’ll be autopsied this afternoon. The evidence suggests a scuffle, either in his room or in the corridor, or both, but we’re sitting on this information for now.
None of the guests mentioned hearing it so far.
I’m going back there today if nothing else comes up. ’
Jamie’s picture was projected onto the whiteboard behind Kelly’s head.
The photo they used was a professional one.
In it he beamed at the camera, as if preparing for a high-level meeting about funding for his first big gig.
He looked innocent and earnest. His teeth shone, his hair was neat, his shirt was crisp, and he looked as though you could trust him with anyone’s daughter, or half a million pounds.
The squeaky-clean image didn’t marry with the porn haul though, and it worried her.
Something about his character didn’t add up.
‘Don’t let looks fool you,’ Kelly said. ‘His bosses suspected significant recreational drug use, also he was ruffling a few feathers in the industry.’
She tapped a few keys and links came up behind her on the whiteboard. One of them was the solicitor’s emails referencing several litigation claims about corporate manslaughter. Another was a photo of Joe Folly.
Kelly considered the jobs she’d dish out to her team today and studied her little band of trusty combatants.
Within budgets squeezed as tight as a courtesan’s corset, and morale as low as the tide in Morecambe Bay when the cockles come up to feed, anyone willing to commit to the task was, in her book, a hero.
Emma Hide was her young feisty terrier, but she was intelligent too and that surprised and disarmed people.
Dan was her Glaswegian hound who couldn’t be knocked off a scent.
Fin was all Irish charm (didn’t she know it), with a serious underbelly of grit.
Kate held them together like the mother hen she was, and Kelly steered the ship.
‘Meet the DiggerMan,’ she said.
They stared at her.
‘You know him?’ she asked.
Dan and Emma nodded.
‘He’s brilliant, he talks about the most amazing stuff and he’s got millions of followers,’ Emma said.
Kelly felt old and out of touch and wondered where her youth had gone. Earning a wage and raising a child, she guessed. Perhaps the DiggerMan was somebody she might have followed before she grew up, when she lived in London with her flatmates in Bow Wharf.
‘I was researching all these influencer types and he popped up. He’s got a lot to say about Hampton-Dent and I think he’s worth looking into. On one of his YouTube videos he publicly appealed to Jamie Robbins to be a guest on his podcast.’
She waited for the information to sink in. They were beasts of a different realm nowadays, with the onslaught of the digital space, and policework couldn’t ignore it.
‘Dan, Emma, I have no idea how to find a podcaster who is a digital nomad and could be anywhere in the world, and who might not want to be found. This guy is almost invisible. Litigators can’t even pin him down and Hampton-Dent are eager to silence him for some reason. I want you to find him.’
‘On it, boss,’ they said together.
‘Fin, I’m leaving it to you to chase forensics; there are a few results I want ASAP.’
‘Didn’t you say people heard him cry out, boss?’ Fin asked.
‘Yes, exactly. The coroner wants a full picture before he’ll rule one way or the other.
I’m expecting results for fibres from the hotel bed, fingerprints from items in his room as well as his luggage.
The smashed glass has been dusted and we need to trawl through any CCTV to look for anyone wearing a purple scarf during the event.
And then there were the muddy shoe prints inside his bathroom that didn’t match his own, they looked like CAT Boots to me.
Jamie was a size eight and these were much bigger; the SOCO thought about a size ten or larger.
The porn has been sent to specialists. We’re hoping to find some kind of source for the hefty collection.
It seems like overkill to me. Why drag all that to a hotel for a four-day event? ’
More additions popped up on the board as she tapped her computer.
‘How long are we expecting the tox results to take, boss?’ Emma asked.
Kelly shrugged. ‘The coroner has called the lab to expedite. I’m heading off to chat to him after he’s finished with the autopsy.’
She drew breath.
The lack of sleep and the buzz in her head about her research made her twitchy and she fiddled with the ruby ring on her right hand. Being so close to a pregnant woman, and the fact that Water Nymph had carried a child too, made her sentimental.
‘So. Water Nymph.’
A picture of a grey squirrel appeared on the whiteboard alongside the young woman with porcelain skin and stained fingers. It was greeted by a ripple of good-natured laughter.
‘This is Skippy. Found alongside the deceased.’
A sachet of YouthBlast popped up at Kelly’s bidding and she tapped on her computer keys.
‘No ID. She was dressed plainly and could be waiting staff. We’re appealing to all Lakes hotels for missing person reports, starting with ones in a ten-mile radius. Autopsy confirmed sexual assault. She was also pregnant.’
She let the news sink in. Emma hadn’t officially informed her of her pregnancy yet but there was silence and Kelly saw Dan reach under the table to find Emma’s hand.
‘Now, you should have all received a separate brief on the business interests of Jamie Robbins. This is his product.’
She turned their attention to the bright green and orange sachet of YouthBlast on the screen and Kelly told them about the wonders of the supplement industry.
‘That’s all bollocks, boss, excuse my language,’ Dan said.
Fin laughed.
‘Language excused, Dan,’ Kelly said. ‘The point isn’t if it’s bollocks or not, the point is this. Skippy here was found dead next to Water Nymph, and he was lying on top of one of these sachets.’
She held a sachet of YouthBlast up for them.
‘Skippy and a sachet of this stuff have been sent for testing. My gut is telling me they’re linked to the Heron Hall incident, because it’s not yet on the market for public consumption, so whoever dropped it for Skippy must have been at the conference.
But first we need to find out who this woman is. ’
‘That girl is Millie’s age,’ Kate said. Nobody told her not to bring her personal life to work. Nobody told her to concentrate on the job and not make it emotional.
Everybody understood.
Death was personal and it was emotional.
That’s what made a good copper: compassion. Gallows humour aside, they were good at what they did because they kept a healthy distance while at the same time caring.
Life taken when it was so ungrown, so unlived, was such a shocking tragedy.
It wasn’t that any death mattered more than others; it was just that somebody so full of potential and so innocent made more of an impression because she was so helpless.
Young female victims always presented as powerless.
No weapons, no defence, nobody to protect them. Alone. Vulnerable. Hunted.
‘Has the public appeal flagged up anything?’ Kelly asked.
‘There is news, boss,’ Emma said. ‘We might be on to something. There’s a hotel that contacted the incident room just an hour ago.
It’s a small place over at Skelwith Bridge.
A guesthouse. The owner rang in after seeing the story on the news, and said he’s worried about a young woman who checked into the hotel on Friday and her room is empty.
A young Caucasian woman, around twenty years old, with black hair.
The manager said she looks like the girl from the sketch.
She’s also an artist; it’s what she told him she was there for, to draw. With charcoal.’
It was hopeful news but they were cautious.
‘Transient workers walk out of shit-paying jobs in the Lakes all the time,’ Kate said.
‘Exactly, that’s what I thought, but the owner said that a man had escorted her there and asked him to keep the girl safe and, I quote, “anonymous”,’ Emma said, reading from notes.
‘That’s odd,’ said Kelly. ‘Who was the man?’
‘He didn’t know but said he can describe him.’
‘And?’
Emma checked her notes. ‘White, late twenties, business-looking type, fancy car.’
Kelly’s stomach felt full of clay. ‘What type of car?’
She thought of Jamie Robbins’ M4 coupe BMW sitting in the carpark at Heron Hall Hotel.
‘This is where he got excited. It was a very expensive beamer. Grey. Red interior. He remembers it so well because he poked his nose in through the window when the woman was dropped off on Friday.’
‘If you were after anonymity, why would you drop her off in a top-of-the-range beamer?’
‘You know it, don’t you? I know that look,’ Dan said.
Kelly brought up a picture of Jamie’s car on the whiteboard. ‘This is Jamie Robbins’ car. Emma, can you check with the owner of the hotel to see if he recognises it? What’s it called?’
‘The Old Man Guesthouse.’
‘Cute.’
Skelwith Bridge was a base for climbers wanting to tackle Coniston Old Man.
Kelly had been up there countless times.
It was one of the most beautiful and interesting walks in the Lake District.
The roads were narrow but an M4 could navigate them.
It would also stand out like a sore thumb.
People who drove cars like that usually stayed in the higher-end establishments like the Lodore, or the Gilpin.
Tourists who arrived in such style rarely sought out the havens of hiking and were more interested in the fudge parlours of Windermere.
If it was Jamie Robbins’ car and he was concealing somebody – perhaps a lover – why did he show it off?
‘Things just got interesting,’ Kelly said.
‘As far as my inquiries go, Jamie Robbins wasn’t dating anyone, but let’s keep our options open.
It could turn out to be a coincidence. Emma let me know if the guesthouse owner recognises the car.
In the meantime if anybody has a burning desire to observe an autopsy, the bus is leaving in half an hour,’ she added.
She had no takers. Most coppers avoided them like the plague.
If she was honest with herself, if it wasn’t Ted Wallis conducting it, and he wasn’t her dad, then she probably wouldn’t attend either.
She dismissed the briefing group and made a quick fresh coffee before she left.
As she waited, she googled Jamie Robbins on her phone, but this time instead of concentrating on his business history and his impressive CV and climb to power, she searched his private life. Lovers, escorts, socialites, artists.
His family. They’d picked up a few details from witnesses, and they knew he’d spent his early life in care.
Wikipedia pages were always sanitised versions of true life, but Kelly read between the lines.
He was born in Slough, and his parents were civil servants, but they’d died in a car crash when Jamie was seven years old.
Then, bingo.
He had one sister, but there was no name, so she googled ‘Jamie Robbins’ sister’.
A single photo popped up, with a name. Jamie looked so young in the image, and he had his arm around a young woman with black hair, who stared at him adoringly.
They looked ecstatically and unapologetically happy and Kelly felt a sudden gut-sapping punch of grief as she stared into the face of Angelina Robbins.
The caption said it was a photo of the ‘business entrepreneur’ Jamie Robbins with his sister, Angelina, at Nobu, three years ago, celebrating the takeover of FairGro by Hampton-Dent for twenty million pounds.
She marched back into the incident room and called everyone together. She connected her phone by Wi-Fi to the whiteboard and brought up the snap of Jamie and his sister, Angelina.
‘What do we think?’
‘Holy fuck, that’s her,’ Kate said, speaking for all of them.
A searing muteness caught them unawares until Emma said quietly, ‘That’s Water Nymph.’
Jamie Robbins’ autopsy could wait. Kelly needed to get over to the Old Man Guesthouse in Skelwith Bridge.