Chapter Fourteen #2
Sam works through the countless sheets of paper, separating those with alibis from those without.
Plenty of people had access to Charlotte’s school bag and could have placed a tracker in it, but only a handful of them have no alibi for the night Charlotte was murdered.
Sam places Nigel Mathers, Jack Mathers, Mr. Patel and Jim the gardener, along with two teachers and five school friends, in the suspect pile to be reexamined.
In the absence of physical evidence, they need to build a net of circumstances that point to one individual.
She picks up Nigel Mathers’ statement and reads again how he came home and followed his usual routine: treadmill, shower, glass of whiskey in his favorite chair as his dinner warmed in the oven.
Then, he fell asleep. Something isn’t right, Sam thinks, and circles a few words in the statement to revisit later.
Next, she re-reads Jack Mathers’ statement.
He left home around 6 p.m. for a retirement party, not long after Nigel had got back from work.
He didn’t see Charlotte that evening and she didn’t call or text him.
Odd, Sam thinks. Why didn’t she call her uncle when her father failed to show up?
A little prickle runs down her neck and Toni licks her hand, sensing a change in her.
She reads on. Jack left his retirement party to buy a vape refill, and his phone shows that he was there for the rest of the evening until he shared a taxi home—his return was captured on the doorbell camera.
He comes in and heads straight to bed, having found nothing amiss.
Something niggles, feels like it’s about to click into place, when suddenly Toni goes wild.
The little dog leaps from the sofa with bone-breaking urgency.
His fur sticks up and he barks with a rage that Sam hasn’t heard before.
A moment later, there’s a knock on Sam’s front door. Despite knowing she’s safe inside, her heart pounds as she moves into the hallway. It’s past 10 p.m.—late for any caller.
“Who is it?” she calls out, feeling silly at the tremor in her voice. Maybe she should have taken her police baton from her belt.
“It’s me,” says Adam Taylor.
Sam lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and opens the door. Toni bounces over to their visitor, who reaches down and scratches behind his ears.
“Well, you’re a good guard dog,” Taylor says. “You heard me coming a mile off, didn’t you?”
“Is everything OK, Taylor? It’s pretty late. I—” Sam begins, but he cuts her off as he moves through the hallway and into her lounge as if he’s a frequent guest in her home.
“I need to talk to you,” he says, then adds, “ma’am.”
Sam doesn’t like his tone or the raised color in his cheeks.
Clearly, this is serious. She follows him into her lounge and quickly picks up a cup, bowl and Crunchie wrapper, dumping them in the kitchen.
She returns to the lounge, flicks on her jasmine-scented plug-in diffuser and sits down on the sofa.
Taylor faces her, lowering himself into her mum’s old rocking chair, which squeaks at him.
“Is it about Charlotte?” Sam asks.
He shakes his head. “I’ve fucked up, Sam,” he whispers. It’s the second swear word Sam’s ever heard him say. He looks at the floor, wipes his face. “I’ve really fucked up.”
“You’re scaring me, Taylor,” she says, honestly.
When he looks at her, she tries to smile reassuringly, but he just holds his head in his hands.
She tries Dr. Thomson’s technique and sits patiently, waiting for him to speak.
A moment later, he stands and steps into the middle of the room, leaving the chair rocking behind him like a scene from a horror movie.
“I…” he tries, pacing a little, his tall body filling her tiny lounge. He sits down next to her on the sofa. It’s a three-seater, but they’re both tall and their knees almost touch as they face each other. “It’s just that I really care about you, Sam. I mean, ma’am. Fuck.”
Sam feels her throat tighten and something else. A flutter in her chest that she hasn’t felt in a long time. Yes, she likes and has even come to trust Adam Taylor in the weeks they’ve worked together, but—
“Remember when we went to Newcastle?” he asks. Sam frowns, taken aback. She nods. “You had that panic attack and…”
“And as I’ve said several times, I’m sorry, Taylor. That shouldn’t have happened.” Sam’s face burns and she fiddles with the tassel on the sofa cushion. “Like I told you before, I don’t drink, honestly. I’m on medication, so I can’t, and even before that I didn’t—”
“Can you try to remember anything else that happened that night?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “Can you remember what happened when … when we got back here?” His eyes flick between her and the floor.
Sam feels the air leave her lungs. Her mind is wild with possibilities.
Had she tried to seduce him? Been sick on him?
“Really? Nothing?” he implores, turning to face her more fully.
She feels her cheeks burning up. His eyes are much too intense. She looks away and finds herself grasping the tassel on its own, which she’s unintentionally torn from the cushion.
He continues through the roar in her ears. “I’ve come to really respect you, Sam. I had no idea what you were wrestling with back then. I didn’t know about the—”
“PTSD?” she cuts in, not wanting to hear the letters from his mouth.
“Lots of police officers have that. One in five, would you believe?” She tries her best to ignore the wobble in her chin.
“For me, it doesn’t come from work-related trauma, but things that happen at work can trigger it.
Like DS Lowry running his fingers up my skirt in a pub corridor and whispering in my ear that he knows I’m gagging for it.
Like my own godfather convincing me we don’t have enough evidence against Lowry when it was just my word against his.
He said, she said, so…” She lets her words die away.
It’s the first time she’s spoken out loud of Harry’s betrayal.
Even with Dr. Thomson, she’s maintained that Harry did the best he could for her and always has done.
But now? Considering Harry’s recent behavior, it’s time she faced up to the truth.
Sam feels a tear run down her cheek and lifts a hand to rub at it viciously. She hates crying. Taylor catches her hand and takes it in his, using his fingers to gently rub the tear away. His fingers linger on her cheek.
“Sam…” he starts.
“No, Taylor,” she says and he drops his hand, leaning back to give her a little space.
“I need to tell you—”
They both jolt as Taylor’s phone rings, loud and insistent. Toni jumps up, barking once again. Taylor stands, slides his phone from his back pocket, his other hand in his hair. He paces and talks for a moment, then hangs up and turns back to her.
“That was the DCI,” Taylor says. “Andrei Albescu is at the station.”
The custody suite feels chaotic at night.
Bright strip lights buzz and flicker, several guests complain loudly about the accommodation and a woman wails in the waiting room.
Sam and Taylor press through and are directed to interview room number one.
Sam prepares herself to take her first look at Andrei Albescu.
The man who burned down the printer’s of How to Get Away with Murder and is receiving profits from the sale of the book.
The man who much of the evidence points to as the most likely candidate to be Denver, whether Sam agrees or not.
She tries to quell her instincts, but as soon as she turns the corner and sees Andrei, she knows.
That’s not him, she thinks. That’s not Denver Brady.
The man is very tall—around six foot five.
He manages to appear simultaneously skinny yet strong.
His face puts him around fifty, but his dense, dark hair and heavy black eyebrows suggest he’s younger.
He’s covered in dust and grime, and wears a laborer’s outfit: navy work trousers, a tatty sweater and a beanie hat that he’s removed and is kneading between his hands.
Rigger boots. A couple of days’ worth of stubble.
Brown circles under his eyes. A nervous sweat sheen on his brow.
None of them speak; they have instructions to wait for Harry. Albescu leans against the wall and closes his eyes, exhausted. Sam and Taylor simply stare at the man from their seats.
“He’s lanky,” Taylor whispers, “just like Richie Scott said. He’ll have an accent, too.”
Sam doesn’t reply. Richie Scott would love Denver Brady to confess to killing Melanie. That would be Richie’s ticket out of jail, and Sam is determined not to do anything to help that along.
Fuck Harry, thinks Sam. “Let’s begin,” she says smoothly. “Take a seat please, Mr. Albescu.”
Taylor opens his mouth to object, but catches the look in her eye and starts the interview recording.
He goes through the formalities—the caution, the introductions, recording protocols—and assures Albescu that this is an interview to aid with an investigation and that he isn’t under arrest. The “yet” is silent, but loud. All the while, Sam takes the man in.
“Mr. Albescu—may I call you Andrei?” Sam begins, and he nods and tries to smile.
“I’m sure you’re a busy man, what with a wife and little ones to get home to, so I’ll dive right in.
Do you recognize this child?” Sam slides a school photograph of Charlotte across the table, letting her eyes rest on it for a second before returning them to his face.
“I seen her on the news.” He speaks with a light accent that’s an unusual hybrid of cockney and Romanian.
“What about in real life?”
“No.”
“You know nothing about her murder?”
“No.”
“Do you own any tracking devices?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been to Holland Park?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me why someone carved this girl’s initials, and Denver Brady’s, on to a tree in Holland Park?”
“Yes.”
“Do you—wait, what? Yes?” Sam blurts. “What can you tell me about that?”
“I think the killer read How to Get Away with Murder and copy.”
Sam sits back and takes a sip of water from her plastic cup. Taylor clicks and unclicks his pen, his knee bouncing up and down beneath the table, making her drink vibrate when she puts it back down.
“So, you recognize this book, Andrei?” Sam pushes her battered copy of How to Get Away with Murder across the table.
The red spine is badly cracked, the bottom edge, below the author’s name, is forever curled and the page corners are creased where she’s folded them down to mark her place.
A scrap of paper functions as a bookmark and protrudes from among the final pages. There’s not much left for her to read.
“Yes, I recognize it,” Albescu says, stroking the cover. “I wrote it.”
Taylor’s head snaps around to look at Sam. Keep cool, Taylor, she thinks.
“You wrote this book, Mr. Albescu?” Sam asks cautiously.
“Yes. I wrote this book.”
“Alone?” Sam asks, trying to keep the incredulity from her voice.
“Yes. I wrote this book. Alone.”
“Is this book crime fact or crime fiction, Mr. Albescu?” Sam asks.
“I do not understand. I wrote How to Get Away with Murder. I am author.”
“Is the story in the book true, Andrei?” Sam tries again.
“I write how-to guide for serial killers,” he says.
Sam sits back, a little breathless and unsure of how to proceed. She can’t believe what Andrei is saying.
“Tell us explicitly: are you confessing to the murders outlined in this book?” Taylor presses.
A pause, then Andrei says, “I confess.”
“What we mean, Andrei,” Sam tries again, “is, did you kill people and then write a book about it? Are you a serial killer?”
“My name is Denver Brady.”
“I need to tell you at this point, Mr. Albescu,” Taylor says, “that I am arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand me?”
“I would like to speak to my lawyer, please,” Andrei says, sliding a business card across the table. Sam stares at it. She knows she has every piece of this puzzle; she just can’t, for the life of her, see the full picture.
Sam and Taylor take adjacent seats in the tiny meeting room, with the door firmly closed.
They each stare into their steaming tea and say nothing.
Every few seconds one of them sighs or shakes their head.
Four floors below them, Andrei sits in his cell as his lawyer is contacted.
Sam has also asked for a translator to be brought in urgently.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Sam blows on her tea, not meeting Taylor’s eye.
“Yes,” he sighs, “and I know you don’t want me to say it aloud. You don’t want to hear that Andrei matches Richie Scott’s description of the man who came to his home the evening his girlfriend was murdered.”
“It’s true,” Sam agrees, “I don’t want to hear it, but the arson, too, is leading us to Andrei.”
“Plus, his confession,” Taylor adds cautiously. “And the money from the book sales.”
Sam sighs, taking a tentative sip of her drink. “We’ll have to get a warrant to hold Andrei longer.”
“You don’t think he’s Denver, do you?” Taylor slurps a steaming mouthful.
“I really don’t,” Sam admits. “More importantly, I don’t think he’s the man that killed Charlotte.
But, sticking with Denver for the moment, Amy confirmed that Andrei looks nothing like the creep she remembers.
Sean said Denver is a northerner, born and bred.
Only Richie Scott claims Denver is tall and dark-haired with a foreign accent, and Richie’s as reliable as a wax firefighter.
” Sam swallows more hot liquid, feeling it burn its way down her throat.
“Andrei said one thing that I do believe, though. He said that Charlotte’s killer simply read How to Get Away with Murder and copied it. I think he’s right.”
Taylor nods. “Two killers. The man who killed Betty and potentially others, and the man who killed Charlotte.”
“Yes,” Sam says, “and I think both of those men are still on the loose.”
“So, what now?” Taylor stifles a yawn. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m completely shattered. The hours we’re working are…”
Sam nods. “Try and get some rest, Taylor, before we get to question him further.”
She doesn’t say that she needs to finish the book off once and for all, and that it’s time to put Denver Brady’s sick cocktail of truths, half-truths and outright lies to bed.