Chapter 47
Sarah stared at the screen in front of her, her pulse beating fast at the injustice, at the audacity.
It was all there, everything she hadn’t been able to see the first time she had read DS Mitchell’s statement – or, at least, it was what hadn’t been said that now leaped out.
The statement itself was impeccable, his justification for his presence entirely reasonable, his actions seemingly irreproachable.
But she knew what he had done, and she had his name now.
Detective Sergeant Todd Andrew Mitchell.
Mitch. Phillipa’s rapist. Christy’s rapist. Christy’s killer. She was sure of it.
At the edge of her consciousness, she could hear the music from the living room stop abruptly, then start up again in the hallway and move up the stairs.
Ben often took himself up to chill out on his bed when he got overwhelmed, but it was gone seven and she suspected he was feeling sleepy.
There was a handrail, so he could go up on his own, but it was a one-handed operation as he didn’t go anywhere without his iPad.
Sarah had never truly been able to move out of the phase you live through when you have a toddler, the one where you always need to know where they are and what they are doing. This was still how it was with Ben.
‘Sarah?’ She heard Will’s voice calling her. ‘The lark is ascending.’
‘Is he OK?’ she called back.
‘Yeah. He’s fine.’
She listened for Ben to reach the top of the stairs, then turned back to the screen in front of her.
‘He’s on his bed,’ Will said, coming into the kitchen a moment later.
‘That’s OK. So long as he doesn’t go to sleep. He needs a bath. I’ll be there in a few minutes.’
‘OK. I’m going up for a shave now, anyway. I’ll give him a poke.’
‘Thanks. Won’t be long.’
Sarah knew she should go up to Ben, but she had so many thoughts to hold on to that she worried about losing something important.
She grabbed a notepad and pen from the worktop nearby and began to jot them down quickly, her writing sprawling over the lines on the page as her hand tried to keep up with her brain.
First on the scene – opportunity to contaminate crime scene and justify later.
On his own next door with Bella and Brenda B for 30 minutes. Opportunity to contaminate Bella’s evidence about who she’d seen.
Mentions numerous times how well Bella knew him. Paving the way to claim she’s confused if point 2 fails and she ID’s him.
Ideal opportunity to ensure Jamie arrested. Enough grounds for arrest with his intel and if J then turns up and appears to be last to see C alive.
Admits he took Brenda B’s statement. Opportunity to control what goes into it.
Did he also take Benfield’s and Norris’s statements? And when?
She paused, put the tip of her pen between her teeth, then grabbed her mouse and scrolled back to the beginning of the statement, cross-referencing with the points she had listed on the sheet of paper next to her.
Was there anything else she had thought of before Ben took flight?
She found herself smiling as she was reminded of Will’s reference to the George Meredith poem ‘The Lark Ascending’, which she knew was about a skylark soaring to freedom.
Dear Ben. She knew, by now, that he would always need to be looked after, that he would never work, or marry, or have children, or have any big ambitions. He was never going to soar very high.
But Jamie could be free. He should be free.
She let out a breath. OK, well, she had enough to work with.
She placed a large asterisk beside item 6 on her list, then put down her pen and pushed back her chair.
Once Ben was in bed, she would go through the first-responder statements again, although she was beginning to see just how much could be left unsaid.
If she could only get access to the CID and murder team office diary and officer notebooks, she would be able to see all the updates for herself – find out what evidence came in, and at what time.
See who was where, and when and … Christ!
she thought, as she went into the living room to gather up Ben’s things and switch off his computer.
It all seemed so bloody obvious, in hindsight.
Of course Todd Mitchell was just a street away when the call came in from the force control room.
He had probably been sitting out there in his car for hours, ready to push his foot to the floor and race to the house, ready to offer up his relevant information and share his intelligence and pollute the whole bloody crime scene with his lies.
But whether she could prove any of this was another matter.