Seventeen
‘Most importantly, the alibi provided by Mrs Cheshire during her initial conversation with DS Xiu at the scene has now been confirmed. Officers made contact earlier this morning with three of the four people with whom Mrs Cheshire spent yesterday evening, in the Peek-A-Booze cabaret and karaoke bar.’
Under normal circumstances, Miller’s struggle to keep his eyes open would not have been unconnected to the fact that DI Tim Sullivan was doing rather a lot of talking.
In this instance, however, it had more to do with the paltry amount of sleep he’d managed to get between arriving home from the Cheshire house and heading back to work to formally interview those of its occupants who hadn’t been murdered.
‘Bearing that in mind, I think we can safely eliminate Mrs Cheshire from the inquiry. As far as her status as a suspect is concerned, at any rate.’
Sullivan certainly wasn’t helping, though.
‘That is, unless anyone can provide a compelling argument to the contrary …’
Miller thought there was a compelling argument for tying Sullivan to his chair and wrapping duct tape around his face, but did not have the energy to pursue the idea.
Instead, he just hummed his agreement with the DI’s overly long-winded summing up and looked across at Susan Akers.
She either failed to catch his extravagant eye-roll or simply chose to ignore it.
‘That all seems to make sense,’ she said. ‘But what do we think about the husband?’
‘Ah yes … Barry.’ Sullivan nodded knowingly. ‘“Bad Luck Barry”, that’s what I’ve taken to calling him.’
‘Is it?’ Miller asked. ‘I’m betting there’s some altogether hilarious reason for that. Am I right, Tim?’
‘Well, whether it turns out that your mate Barry’s guilty of anything or not, the people he has … interactions with do seem to wind up coming to sticky ends.’
Miller thought that the whole duct-tape thing would be too much like hard work and that, if he could lay his hands on one, a simple bag over the head would do the job every bit as well. A ‘Bag for Life’ would be perfect.
‘I think we should remain focused on this case,’ Akers said.
‘Ma’am,’ Sullivan said.
‘We’re still checking for any useful CCTV, so who knows what that might throw up.
Obviously, we won’t be getting forensics back for a while and with luck they’ll give us a definitive answer one way or another, but until then, what do we make of Barry Cheshire?
’ The DCI tapped a pen against her desk.
‘Prime suspect or just … wrong place, wrong time?’
‘Again,’ Sullivan muttered.
Akers looked at Sara Xiu who appeared unusually reluctant to venture an opinion. The DCI turned to Miller. ‘You’ve probably spent the most time with him, Dec …’
Miller glared at Sullivan. ‘That doesn’t mean he’s my mate.’
‘I’m asking you what you think, that’s all.’
The Cheshires had been collected from their home address first thing and interviewed separately over the previous couple of hours.
Stacey Cheshire’s interview had proved to be pretty straightforward once her alibi had been verified.
Then there were just a few formalities before she was driven home again.
With nobody who could confirm the subject’s account of his movements and activities the night before, Barry Cheshire’s interview had taken a lot longer and not been anywhere near as definitive.
All the same, Miller was no more convinced that he was talking to a murderer than he had been two days before.
When the on-call solicitor had arrived – despite Cheshire’s insistence that having one at all was a massive waste of time and taxpayers’ money – Miller and Xiu had begun their questioning.
Sullivan had monitored proceedings via video-link from another room, occasionally texting comments and suggestions to Miller’s mobile that he thought were helpful or incisive, though they were neither.
Susan Akers had reviewed footage of the interview once Barry Cheshire had returned home.
‘Well, he didn’t do himself any favours,’ Miller said. ‘I can see that.’
Cheshire had claimed complete ignorance of events outside his house late the night before.
He calmly repeated his assertion that he’d been asleep the entire time the murder – if that’s what, ultimately, it would officially become – was being carried out.
Then, acting against the advice of the solicitor, and speaking with a lack of emotion which some might have said bordered on the sociopathic, Cheshire had once again made his feelings about the man found stabbed to death in his garden abundantly clear.
‘You mean his obvious antipathy towards Darren Grant?’ Akers said.
‘Right, but there is another way of looking at that—’
‘Not doing himself any favours, is putting it mildly,’ Sullivan said. The DI glanced down at his notes. ‘“I can’t say I’m remotely sorry he’s dead. He was a massive bellend.”’
‘Which he’d hardly be saying if he’d been the one who’d killed him.’
‘True,’ Akers said.
‘It would be highly unusual,’ Xiu said.
‘Or maybe that’s exactly what he’d be saying, if he wanted to throw us off the scent.’ Sullivan looked at each of the officers gathered in Akers’s office, as though expecting a round of applause or gasps of admiration for his incisive analysis. ‘Like a … double bluff.’
Miller stroked his chin theatrically, as if he might actually be considering Sullivan’s theory.
‘Or … maybe he was just saying it because Darren Grant was a massive bellend.’ It was his turn to look around in a near perfect parody of Sullivan’s misguided search for approval.
‘Oh, and because Mr Cheshire had nothing whatsoever to do with his death, so feels free to say exactly what he thinks, because he has absolute faith in our ability as police officers to get to the truth and find out what really happened. Same as he did when he walked into this station after Ezra Simmons’s body had been discovered. ’
‘Well, he was right, because we did find out what happened,’ Sullivan said.
‘Priya Acharya found out,’ Xiu said. ‘We just took the credit.’
‘Talking of Dr Acharya, she’s been in touch to confirm that the PM on Darren Grant will take place at two o’clock.’ Akers looked at Miller and Xiu. ‘Dec, Sara … I presume you’ll—’
She stopped at the knock, which was immediately followed by the door opening and the florid, pudgy face of DC Tony Clough appearing around it. Akers beckoned him in.
‘Something interesting,’ Clough said, brandishing a sheet of paper.
Miller was sceptical. Though he’d become oddly fond of the useless twonk, he’d known Clough long enough to doubt that their definitions of ‘interesting’ were even remotely similar.
‘We’ve got a vehicle of significance that was flagged up late last night on one of the ANPR cameras half a mile or so from the Cheshire house,’ Clough said. ‘Fits the likely time frame, too. Driving towards the crime scene after Barry Cheshire had got back from walking his dog—’
‘If he walked his dog at all,’ Sullivan said. ‘We’ve only got his word for that.’
Akers raised a hand. ‘Let’s assume, just for now, that he did.’ She nodded at Clough to carry on.
‘… and driving away again before Stacey got home.’
Miller cocked his head, considering what he’d heard. He said, ‘To be fair, I wouldn’t call it hugely interesting.’
‘Oh, but I think you will.’ Clough held his piece of paper aloft as though it was the smokiest of smoking guns. ‘When I tell you that the vehicle in question, a black Audi A5, is actually a company car, and that it’s registered to a JMC Ltd.’
‘Oh.’ Miller sat up a little straighter. ‘I take it all back, Tony.’
‘Told you,’ Clough said.
‘What am I missing?’ Sullivan asked.
Fighting the temptation to reel off a very long list, Miller stood up and reached for his jacket. ‘JMC Ltd is one of umpteen shell companies owned by the Cutler family. JMC … Jacqueline Margaret Cutler.’
A deflated Tony Clough screwed his piece of paper up and lobbed it unsuccessfully towards the bin. ‘You could have let me say it.’
‘Sorry, Tone,’ Miller said. ‘But we haven’t got a lot of time to muck about.’ He looked to Xiu and could see that not only had she recognised the name of the company, but that she understood what it meant.
It was obvious that Susan Akers had put it together, too.
She got to her feet, and as soon as she’d given Miller the nod to leave he told Xiu that he’d meet her at the PM and headed quickly for the door.
Only Tim Sullivan stayed where he was, clearly still a little confused as to why the meeting had broken up so suddenly.
‘What’s …’ The DI looked to Akers for help. ‘Where’s …’
‘I need to get back to the crime scene,’ Miller said. ‘Talk to Barry Cheshire as soon as I can.’
‘Right,’ Sullivan said, none the wiser. ‘Makes sense.’
It was exactly what Miller had been worried about, in the wake of what had happened to Ezra Simmons.
The short-term confusion about the manner of his death and who might be responsible for it.
The concern that certain criminal types who worked with a small-time drug dealer – or rather certain criminal types for whom said small-time drug dealer worked – might jump to all sorts of misguided conclusions and decide to act upon them.
To get revenge, if nothing else. Miller had meant to share his worries with Xiu, see what she thought, but he hadn’t got round to it.
Now, it was too late, and someone else was dead.
As ‘good news/bad news’ routines went, it was a cracker.
Miller needed to tell Barry Cheshire that he was no longer a suspect in the murder of Darren Grant, but only because he’d almost certainly been the target.