Chapter 40
First thing Saturday morning, Kelly stood in front of her team in the incident room at Eden House. Her first job was to get the team’s view on what she’d spotted in the video from Jamie’s death. She’d watched it so many times now that she questioned her sanity.
‘I want fresh eyes on this because mine have stopped working.’
She brought up the end of the footage and froze it on the character she’d seen in the foyer. The male in the hoodie.
‘Any takers? Dan, did you trawl through the attendance list?’
‘I did, boss, and there was only one who wasn’t accounted for. A guy called Greg Minda. He’s down as an Instagrammer from Chicago but I can’t for the hell of me find him on any other literature, no passport record, no paper trail. He was in room 7.’
‘Greg who?’
‘That’s what it says here, but I’ve been able to trace and account for everybody who was there except this laddie.’
‘Could we have an imposter?’ Kelly asked. ‘When I saw Joe Folly on Thursday he was wearing a hoodie like this. Look how he turns away from the camera.’
‘Little fecker,’ Fin said.
Kelly brought up a picture of Joe Folly from their records and the man in the video had a similar build.
‘Why would he go there? To the lion’s den?’ Emma asked.
‘To infiltrate?’ Dan suggested.
‘To work on Jamie?’ Kate proposed.
‘Aren’t podcasters just another kind of journalist? They dig for info,’ Dan said.
‘The little fecker.’ Fin repeated himself.
They turned to him impatiently.
‘I mean the little fecker,’ he said again. ‘Years doing the Simplex crossword in the Irish Times weren’t in vain,’ he added.
They looked at him, utterly puzzled.
‘It’s an anagram. Greg Minda. DiggerMan.’
Kelly felt her lower jaw sink down to her chest and it was a curious feeling because she was stuck in a moment of being aware she looked an idiot but being so gobsmacked that she was unable to control a part of her anatomy. It was an unwelcome realisation.
‘Fucking hell,’ Kate said.
‘Let’s release this comedian’s name, boss.’
‘I agree, let’s bring him in,’ Kelly said.
‘In other good news, Angelina’s phone has been found.
She had few phone numbers stored, and Jamie’s was the one most used.
They were close. Apart from that, her internet search history was sporadic, and recently it had been about the trimesters of pregnancy. ’
Kelly’s memory of those days made the woman’s death more poignant. She remembered Lizzie wriggling in her belly those middle months. The rollercoaster of emotions as her child grew and the day drew closer when she would meet her.
Angelina was on Instagram but not Facebook or X. Her page was full of her artwork, and they’d learnt she was a successful teacher too, running workshops from the studio at her home in Chapel Stile.
Kelly brought up several of the artworks from Angelina’s Instagram onto the whiteboard. ‘That’s Aira Force,’ Fin said.
The team chuckled with affection at his recognition of one of the most iconic scenes in the whole of the national park. He spread his hands.
‘What about this?’ Kelly asked.
‘Lone tree, Buttermere,’ Kate said.
The team appeared refreshed. Morale was buoyant. They felt as though they were getting somewhere. Emma looked radiant and Dan sat close to her protectively.
‘And this?’ Kelly asked.
‘The screes at Wastwater,’ Emma said.
‘The cradle of the storms,’ Dan added.
‘Indeed. And these?’ Kelly said. She tapped a key and the six watercolours that she’d received from the SOCO at the Old Man Guesthouse popped up.
Her team studied them.
‘Are they a set, boss?’
‘I think so. Each seems to be indicating a number from one through to six. Look – one rock, two boulders, three keystones, four stone slabs, five stepping stones and six flagstones on the bridge.’
‘They’re stunning,’ Emma said. ‘I wonder why she didn’t paint them in oil, you know, larger canvases; they’d be worth a fortune.’
‘More importantly, I want you to get your heads together and consider why she would have concealed them. Why are they so important to her? Is there a pattern to these numbers?’
Everybody took a minute to scribble notes.
‘Which brings me to the fact we’ve got to release her name to the press. It’ll cause a stir in the art world and I would imagine a media frenzy, given her reputation.’
Kelly clicked a few more keys and several articles on Angelina Robbins flashed up. In art circles, Angelina was a celebrity.
‘The DNA results are back and the coroner told me this morning that Jamie and Angelina shared 50 per cent familial DNA. They’re siblings from the same parents and the coroner is satisfied that this gives us official ID for Angelina.
We did consider asking somebody from Hampton-Dent to ID her but we decided against it given our inquiries around Jamie. ’
‘What about dentals, boss?’ Dan asked.
‘Yep, they’ve been sent off for confirmation.’ Kelly took a deep breath. ‘Kate, did you call Tommy?’
‘I did. He doesn’t recall ever seeing anybody after seven o’clock on Friday the eleventh but he was told by a member of staff that she told him she heard voices from room 13 on the Saturday morning.’
‘Emma, do you have the blood results?’
‘Yes, guv. There are two profiles. Angelina’s blood is a match for the stains in the bathroom, the pooling in the shower, the lamp stand, and the bed sheets.
There is a second profile, and it doesn’t match anyone on our database, but it is male.
It’s not a match for Jamie either; it’s not familial. ’
‘Fin?’ Kelly asked.
‘Initial reports from the lab which is testing the prints from Jamie Robbins’ room tell us that the footprint we got from the bathroom in Angelina’s room matches the one left in mud in Jamie’s room.
Again, they weren’t Jamie’s. They were too big.
Size eleven. They’re assessing it now, but they did tell me that first impressions have it as a CAT boot. ’
‘On a side to that, do either of the prints have any workable DNA in them, placing the wearer there at the time of the attack on Angelina or in Jamie’s room?’
‘Yes. The one at Angelina’s does. There was blood splatter disturbed by the shoe, so that proves the wearer was there before and after the time of the attack.’
‘So the CAT boot is solid. That’s our first concrete lead. Let’s get up the footage from the Heron Hall scene.’
They watched as the video played back and forth and they all studied the feet of those in the video carefully.
‘No CAT boots. I was looking at Mercedes man,’ Kelly said.
‘OK. Next, DNA samples. Our hands are tied on this. Hampton-Dent won’t authorise blanket DNA samples of its staff. It’s a dead end. To get them we need warrants or at least something to convince the US Embassy with and that’s not happening today.
The VIPs have moved to an exclusive stately home owned by the company, here.’
Kelly brought up a website on Dow Bank House.
Dan whistled.
Kate said, ‘Fuck me.’
‘At the moment I’ve got no reason to go over there to justify an interview, but I received a call from Doctor Sandy Cooper on Thursday which I returned.
I thought she had further information for me but it was a strange general fishing exercise for knowledge.
She talked about damage limitation to the company as if Jamie’s death was an inconvenience.
She really pissed me off. Anyway, I started to ask her about this stuff. ’
Kelly tapped a key and an information document came up about Neurohydroxy-14.
‘Dan, you were right, it is a biohazard but it depends how it’s used.
Sandy Cooper explained the difference to me.
To be fair, it was all nonsense to me, but it must be more important than they’re letting on because she denied it was in YouthBlast at first. Why would she say that if it wasn’t important?
She’s covering for something. Fin, can you get on to the lab about Skippy the squirrel ASAP? ’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Dan? The suitcase found in the walls of room 13.’
‘I’m making my way through the scientific papers.
There’s lots of information about clinical trials, additives, American food standards law and lots of recognisable names; however, I admit, I haven’t pinned them together with anything obvious yet.
And so far no mention of Neuro-whatsit-14; can we please call it N-14 from now on? ’
‘Do you need help with big words, Dan?’ Kelly asked.
‘I’m giving him a hand, guv,’ Emma said.
They laughed and Kate patted Dan on his head.
‘Fin, help me out, mate, I’m surrounded by feminists.’
‘I love it, mate, wait until you have a daughter,’ Fin said.
‘It’s a girl?’ Kate asked Emma.
Emma blushed and Dan beamed at her.
‘God help yer,’ Fin said, laughing.
‘Oi!’ Kelly said. ‘You big Irish oaf, you can’t say things like that anymore.’
‘But you can call me an Irish oaf?’
‘Because it’s true, mate,’ Dan said.
‘Emma, how far did you get with Angelina’s bank accounts?’ Kelly moved on. None of them had time for new directives from HQ unless it affected their work.
Emma tapped a few keys and lists of debits and credits appeared, from a statement courtesy of Barclays bank.
‘It looks like she was paid huge amounts by a company affiliated to Hank Hampton, but I haven’t found what they were for. Private commissions perhaps?’
‘Dan, you have some news?’
‘We’ve got the CCTV footage from the Old Man Guesthouse, boss, and Jamie is clearly identified as there on Friday afternoon as the person who dropped her off,’ Dan said.
‘There’s no evidence of Angelina leaving after that.
However, the side entrance to the hotel, which leads to the garden, and the river, is not covered by CCTV. ’
None of them had forgotten how violent Angelina’s death had been: one that started in room 13 and didn’t end until she inhaled lake water because she didn’t have the strength to lift her head out of it. And nobody had been there to protect her. Or her baby.
Dan flicked a few keys on his laptop and footage popped up behind Kelly’s head.
They watched the video clip. It showed the carpark at the Old Man Guesthouse, and Jamie arriving in his M4 coupe.
It was sleek and stunning, and Kelly knew it was a top-of-the-range edition costing in the region of a hundred thousand pounds.
She’d got her love of cars from her time in London, when her lover and boss, Matt the Twat, pointed them out.
Dan forwarded the footage, explaining that he’d trawled through it to flag up the incidents of note.
‘This is where Angelina and Jamie turn up,’ Dan said.
‘But look she stays in the car while he goes inside.’
‘What was he doing for an hour inside?’ Kelly asked.
‘Chatting to Tommy about cars?’ Fin suggested.
‘I watched the rest of the footage from the afternoon – eight hours of it – thank you.’ Dan took a bow. ‘And I found this.’
The room fell silent again and they watched another car pull up. It was a taxi. A figure got out of it but it was difficult to see her face. Then a tall shape of a male got out of the other side. His face was covered by a cap.
‘Does that look like Sandy Cooper to you?’ Kelly asked.
‘I was just thinking that, boss,’ Emma said.
Dan rewound the footage but it was impossible to ID the faces of either visitor.
‘Dan, why did you flag up this car arriving?’
‘I went through every piece of footage for last Friday and then ticked off those checking in with the list of guests provided to us by Tommy. Nobody checked in after seven o’clock and this is almost eight p.m. They’re in there for ten minutes, look.’
They watched as the taxi waited and the woman came back and got back into the car. But the man didn’t.
‘Did Tommy mention this when he was interviewed?’
‘I couldn’t find any reference to a late arrival,’ Dan said.
‘Kate, get Tommy on the phone and ask him.’
A knock on the door focused their attention away from the whiteboard and a young uniform came in and told Kelly that a man named Lee Lovett was downstairs asking for her.
Kelly raised her brows and got up.
‘Anything else?’ she asked.
She received murmurs of a collective acceptance that everybody had said their bit, so she got up from her chair to leave.
‘I’ll report back soon,’ she said.