Chapter 35
Henley sat alone in interview room four at Lewisham police station watching the CCTV footage of Laurence Durant’s car in Lordship Lane.
It was times like this – when they had to book and interview a suspect – that she couldn’t understand why the SCU was still housed in a run-down building in Greenwich and not the largest police station in Europe.
Her ringing phone pulled her away from the screen. It was Anthony.
‘Are you good to talk?’ he asked.
‘I’m good for the time being.’ She checked the clock on the monitor to her left. ‘Just waiting for Ramouter to bring in Durant for interview.’
‘I’ve got news for you. Some of which will help you in your interview but the rest of it, well, it’s going to give more questions than answers.’
‘I hate it when you sound so ominous,’ Henley replied. She put the phone in the crook of her neck and opened her notebook. ‘Tell me what you’ve got.’
‘First up, Durant’s car. We obviously can’t date the damage to the windscreen and the front bumper or tell you what caused the damage.
Could have been an impact with a person, or it could’ve been a deer – there’s no way to know.
On the backseat, we recovered blood and hair that we matched with Graham Ashcroft. ’
Henley felt excitable nerves in her stomach as she made a note. ‘You’re a superstar.’
Anthony chuckled. ‘That’s not all. We also recovered Graham Ashcroft’s hair and blood from the broken glass. On the steering wheel we recovered prints belonging to Durant and prints and blood samples from, let’s call them, person A.’
‘I take it that person A is not on the database?’ Henley asked as the door opened and Ramouter stepped in. She mouthed one minute.
‘Yeah, person A is not in the database but the blood we recovered from the steering wheel matches not only blood that we recovered from the Ashcrofts’ kitchen but also DNA recovered from Sian Fox-Carnell and Nathan Hall.’
‘All three.’
‘Yes. A nice little golden triangle. But the DNA from person A doesn’t match the DNA that was recovered from under the fingernails of both Graham Ashcroft and Fox-Carnell.’
Henley could hear Anthony flicking through pages. ‘I’m kind of somewhere but nowhere,’ she said. ‘Clear evidence of two suspects but no idea as to identification.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Anthony.
‘But I’m about to add a silver lining to your cloud.
Nathan Hall’s house. We recovered bloody footprints from the hallway and on the stairs.
We’ve got three sets of prints. We originally had four, but we eliminated the housekeeper’s.
The first print is a size twelve, Men’s Nike Air Max 90.
Lot of wear on the outer edge of the heel, what you would expect with an overpronator.
Second print, Vans Men’s Ward sneaker, size ten and the third,’ Anthony sighed. ‘The third is a nosy guy.’
‘What do you mean by nosy?’
‘The second print we found halfway up the stairs, adjacent to where Nathan Hall was hanged. The first prints were on the hallway floor, twelve inches from the staircase, suggesting to me—’
‘First prints held up Nathan Hall while the second print hanged him from the bannister.’
‘Exactly, but the third print carries on up the staircase and we track them into the main bedroom, the bathroom and also the living room. We then recovered fingerprints from the bannister and also the wall going up the stairs and when we ran them through the database we got a match. A Ben Trezeguet.’
‘Excuse me, say that again.’ Henley’s pen fell from her hand.
‘Ben Trezeguet,’ Anthony repeated. ‘Fingerprints and samples were entered onto the database a year ago. Suspect three?’
Henley circled Ben’s name twice and then got up and opened the door. ‘Stay there,’ she said to Laurence and his legal representative who were waiting in the hall. She pulled Ramouter into the room. ‘Sorry, Anthony, you were saying.’
‘Oh, nothing. Just that this Trezeguet geezer may be a suspect, or he could just be someone who’s getting in the way,’ Anthony opined. ‘Anyway, I’ll let you get on.’
‘What the—’ Ramouter stopped himself from swearing after listening to Henley’s update. ‘First the Fox-Carnell crime scene and then the press conference.’
‘And now we’ve got him at the Hall crime scene,’ nodded Henley.
‘Are you saying that Ben is involved and is out there perving on his handiwork?’
‘I don’t know if it’s exactly like that. Annoying as he is, my gut doesn’t tell me he’s involved in that way.’
Ramouter shook his head. ‘We’ve got direct – not circumstantial – evidence of Ben’s involvement. He was inside Nathan Hall’s house, fingerprints and there was blood on his shoes. You know how this works, boss.’
‘I do, but I have questions,’ said Henley. ‘Why would Ben make such a big mistake and incriminate himself by leaving his DNA behind in Hall’s house? Mantell, Bo Hyoo, Fox-Carnell and the Ashcrofts. Nothing.’
‘He got complacent. It wouldn’t be the first time a criminal let his ego get in the way and he gets sloppy.’
‘True,’ said Henley.
‘And even if we go with your theory, boss, why was Ben Trezeguet in Nathan Hall’s house? How did he get in? And why didn’t he call the police when he discovered the body hanging from the bannister?’
Henley smiled, both impressed with Ramouter’s determination and analysis and that he wasn’t afraid to challenge her.
‘We also can’t ignore that Ben’s got previous convictions. He’s not innocent,’ Ramouter went on.
‘No, he’s not,’ said Henley. ‘We’ll put him on the suspect board but, before we do that, let’s deal with Durant. He’s already lied to Stanford and Eastie. Let’s see if he’ll lie to our faces under caution.’
Henley kept her eyes on Laurence Durant as Ramouter completed the admin section of the interview. She had enough evidence to question Laurence but what she needed to move this case on was a confession.
Ramouter tapped the recording button on the touchscreen. ‘We’re good to go.’
‘Before we start,’ said the legal representative, a serious but young-looking woman, named Kalia Ghatak, whose black hair hung like silk curtains on her back.
She kept her head down as she wrote her notes.
‘Mr Durant is hearing impaired. You may not have noticed that he wears a hearing aid in his left ear. They failed to mention that on his custody record.’
As if on cue, Durant’s hearing aid released a low whistle.
‘I’m more than happy to put you back in the cell whilst we make arrangements to get a BSL interpreter here if that will assist you,’ said Henley.
‘No,’ Durant answered quickly, putting a finger to his hearing aid. ‘I can manage. Let’s get on with it.’
‘Fine,’ said Henley. ‘DC Ramouter, do you want to make the introductions?’
Henley checked the notes she’d made when talking to Anthony as Ramouter completed the introductions, explained to Laurence his entitlement to legal advice and the caution.
‘Right, we’ll start,’ said Henley. ‘Laurance Durant, you’ve been arrested for an offence of attempted—’
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘Let the Inspector finish,’ Kalia said.
‘As I was saying, you were arrested this morning at 6.27 a.m. for the attempted murders of Tabitha and Graham Ashcroft on the twelfth October at their home on Cullen Lane in Dulwich Village. Your legal representative has received full disclosure about the allegations and now I’m going to ask you questions about your involvement. Do you understand?’ asked Henley.
‘I wasn’t involved,’ said Larry.
‘Do you understand?’ Henley repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. So, let’s start.’
Henley paused, allowing the silence to grow uncomfortable as she scanned the questions she’d prepared. She turned the page over and decided to change tack.
‘We have no idea how we’re going to respond to death do we, Larry?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ Larry replied as he turned his head slightly, watching the door.
‘It’s one of the life events that we can never really prepare for.
We tell ourselves that it’s a fact of life and that we will be strong and won’t break.
We think we’re going to be different and then the unimaginable happens and someone you love dies.
I don’t think it makes much difference if the person is sick, and you know they’re going die or if it happens out of the blue. It hurts. You hurt. Do you agree?’
Larry cleared his throat. ‘I do,’ he eventually said.
‘Some people break down straight away and with others, it’s a very slow walk through denial until something innocuous sets them off. So, which was it for you when your wife was killed?’
Henley held her nerve despite Larry looking at her as though she were a piece of shit under his shoe. She was prepared to hit low and pinch all of the pressure points if it meant she would get what she wanted.
‘I couldn’t believe it at first. I thought they’d gone to the wrong house. My neighbour Tony is an alcoholic and spent last Christmas in hospital because he stepped out in traffic, drunk out of his skull. I didn’t think they were coming for me,’ said Larry.
‘Were you angry?’
‘Not at first. I didn’t believe that … that she was gone.
They drove me to the hospital, and I was running through all these different scenarios.
Maybe someone stole her purse and the person who got hit had her credit cards or it was someone who just happened to have the same name, but then I got there. ’
Kalia took out a tissue from her bag and handed it to Larry.
‘It was her.’ Larry rubbed roughly at his eyes, reddening the thin surrounding skin. ‘The weird thing was that her face was fine, and she was still warm. I told her to wake up. Reminded her that we had a trip booked. But she didn’t wake up.’
‘When did you get angry?’ Henley asked.
‘I’m not sure really. I woke up one day and I was angry with everyone and then I went to the funeral director’s the day before the funeral. Seeing Sherri in the coffin … it did something to me.’