Chapter 48
Sarah frowned at the screen. Broken down, area intelligence was clearly Todd Mitchell, and officers who had conducted house-to-house inquiries was also Todd Mitchell, or, at least, there was every reason to believe he’d had a pretty big hand in taking the residents’ statements and making sure that Jamie’s name came up.
And what exactly did pointed out by local residents mean?
What had they actually said at that time?
When exactly had Benfield and Norris become eyewitnesses?
Mitchell had taken Brenda Barlow’s statement, by his own admission. Had he managed to get to them, too?
She sat back in her chair, thinking it through, casting her mind back to the events that had sealed Christy’s fate.
Her meeting Jamie in the corner shop that day in March might well have been the catalyst, along with the – completely coincidental, as Sarah now knew – burglary at Louise Coulter’s house.
But not for the reasons the jury had been given.
Not because Jamie had meant Christy any harm, but …
But because Todd Mitchell had wanted Christy and couldn’t have her.
That had to be it. And he couldn’t handle the rejection.
After all, Phillipa had rejected him, and look what he had done to her.
So, Mitchell had met Christy during the house-to-house and taken a shine to her.
He had been rebuffed by her, then gone back to take what he couldn’t have.
Jamie was in the way. Jamie already had what Mitchell wanted.
Mitchell had been jealous of Jamie. And once he had decided what he was going to do, Jamie had been the perfect candidate to take the fall.
Sarah felt a shiver run down her spine. Christy’s rape had been premeditated – this was clear from the duct tape gag and the binding that had come with the rapist to the crime scene – but just how carefully, and for how long?
Had Mitchell always planned to let Phillipa off the burglary in order to point the finger at Jamie?
Or had he simply realised, after he’d raped Phillipa, that he needed a new suspect for the burglary and that Jamie would fit the bill?
She looked up gratefully as Will placed a large bowl of pasta and a glass of wine next to her laptop.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked, bringing over his own bowl and glass.
She smiled. ‘Of course not.’
He sat down and tucked his knees under the table. ‘You want to run it by me?’ he asked, raising a brow.
‘Christ, Will,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know where to begin.’
He looked at her sympathetically, then nudged her pasta bowl towards her. She picked up her fork. As she ate, she could feel the glucose refuelling her brain and she was soon able to begin putting her thoughts into some kind of order.
‘OK,’ she began. ‘So, I think Jamie was framed by a cop.’
‘By … a cop?’ Will stared at her.
She nodded. ‘I know it sounds incredible, but—’
‘Which cop?’ Will’s eyes narrowed.
‘Todd Mitchell. The burglary SIO.’
‘How? Why?’ He leaned forward.
‘Because he wanted Christy Nicholls and she rejected him.’
He put down his fork. ‘And so he killed her?’
‘Raped her first, then killed her to shut her up.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘Pretty sure.’
‘Can you prove it?’
She hesitated. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’
His forehead creased. ‘Then you need to be careful.’
At that moment, her phone rang. She picked it up. It was a number she didn’t recognise.
‘Hello?’
A female voice said, ‘Hello. Is that Sarah?’
‘Speaking.’
‘My name’s Sandra Robbins,’ said the voice. ‘I think you wanted to talk to me?’
For a moment, Sarah couldn’t place her.
‘About my aunt,’ the woman said. ‘Brenda Barlow.’
Sarah turned back to Will and made an excited face. ‘Yes,’ she said quickly. ‘I do want to talk to you. Very much.’ She pulled her pen and pad towards her and turned up the volume on her phone.
‘It was the woman we sold the house to who gave me your number. She said you’re a solicitor? Is that right?’ Sandra Robbins was saying. ‘Only, I wasn’t there when it happened. I wasn’t an actual witness.’
‘That’s fine,’ Sarah said quickly. ‘I’m really just looking for any information you can give me … and to see if you can shed any light on one or two things for me. And then maybe you could put me in touch with your aunt?’
‘I’m afraid not. She died the year before the house was sold. That’s why we had to deal with the sale.’
Sarah hesitated, disappointed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Were you close?’
‘I was her only relative,’ Sandra said. ‘So, yes, we were pretty close. My mum and Brenda were sisters and all of the rest of her family had passed on, so I was all she had, really.’
‘And did she talk to you about what had happened to her next-door neighbour?’
‘Well … yes. Of course. She was really upset. She called me and I went straight over.’
‘You went to the house?’ Sarah asked surprised. ‘That day?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What time was that?’
She hesitated. ‘Gosh. It’s hard to remember now.’
‘OK. Well … were the police still there?’
‘They were still there next door, yes. It was all taped up outside. And someone was with my aunt when I got there. A witness support lady, I think it was.’
‘A female officer?’
‘Yes. She asked if I could stay with my aunt and I said I could, so she left. My aunt was very quiet and I even thought about calling the doctor. She was in shock, as you would imagine. It was pretty awful for her, seeing the woman’s body, and …
well, it was terrible, wasn’t it? What he did to her? ’
Sarah paused. ‘Sandra, I need to tell you … I’m Jamie Clarke’s solicitor.’
‘The guy they convicted?’
‘Yes. The guy they convicted. I’ve been working on lodging an appeal.’
Sandra didn’t speak for a moment and Sarah felt the tension creep into her neck.
‘So you don’t think he did it?’
‘Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out and I’d really appreciate your help. Anything you can think of. Anything you can remember, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.’
Sandra breathed heavily into the phone. ‘You know, I did always wonder about the fact that he could have been out so much sooner if he had just admitted it.’
‘Right,’ Sarah agreed.
‘And the way he looked.’
‘The way he looked? You mean on the news?’
‘No. I mean … in real life.’
‘You met him?’
‘Well, just over the fence. You know, when me and Aunt Bee were in the garden.’
‘You saw him in Christy’s garden?’
‘A couple of times, yes.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Oh, just pleasantries, you know, about the weather or the garden. He seemed to be a bit handy with the plants.’
‘You saw him … gardening?’
‘Well, not exactly, but they were stood by the flower bed one time and they were talking and he seemed fairly knowledgeable.’
‘You saw them together?’ Sarah breathed in sharply.
‘Well, yes. Once or twice.’
‘What were they like? Together, I mean.’
‘They seemed happy.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, you know the way it is with a new couple,’ she said. ‘You can kind of tell it’s new. They have a kind of energy around them.’
‘They seemed like a couple?’
‘Well … yeah. They did.’
Sarah knew she had to ask open questions and not lead the witness. ‘Could that energy have been because she was afraid of him?’
‘It’s hard to say, but I don’t think so.’ Sandra paused. ‘We heard them laughing a lot.’
‘Laughing?’ Sarah repeated.
‘Well. Yes. She often had her back door open and you could hear them inside the house. Whenever he was there, she seemed happy. There was nothing that made me think otherwise and I remember being shocked when I found out who they had arrested. I didn’t realise until later that day that it was him.
A couple of days afterwards, when they’d charged him, the news came on and his face flashed up and I turned to my aunt and made a face, as if to say that I couldn’t believe it, and she looked back at me and then she shook her head and tutted.
I couldn’t believe he could do that to a woman, and neither could she. ’
‘Did you tell the police any of this?’
‘My aunt did.’
‘When? What did she say?’
‘Just that she didn’t believe he’d done it,’ Sandra said. ‘And that she didn’t think it was in his character.’
‘So why was there nothing about that in her statement? Your aunt was a key witness. Why didn’t she mention this? Why wasn’t she called to give live evidence at Jamie’s trial?’
The line fell quiet and then Sandra said, ‘I did wonder about that.’
‘Did you ask her?’
A sigh. ‘She clammed up when I tried. I wasn’t there when the police took her statement and it was a month or so later when she said she didn’t have to go to court, and that was that.’
‘So, she never discussed it with you again?’
‘No,’ Sandra paused. ‘But she seemed frightened. At the time, I assumed it was because of what had happened to the woman next door. I kept saying to her, “Bee, it’s OK. They arrested him. He’s in prison.” But she didn’t seem to be comforted by this.’
Sarah closed her eyes. ‘And now?’ she asked. ‘What do you think about that now?’
‘Well, like I said, I have wondered over the years, especially after he served his sentence and could have been let out. But … you don’t know someone just by meeting them in the garden, do you?
You hear about it all the time, about somebody seeming normal and then people finding out they’ve been living next to a psychopath.
Even the wives and families of murderers say they had no idea. ’
‘Did you go to the trial?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Did your aunt?’
‘She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be upset by the evidence.’
Sarah hesitated. ‘Was that the only reason?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Had someone pressured her not to go, do you think?’
There was a long pause, and then Sandra said, ‘I’d never really thought about that, but I suppose it would explain a lot.’
Sarah put her phone down on the table and typed up the notes from the conversation she had just had, then closed her laptop and walked along the hallway to the living room and looked through the door.
Will was on the sofa, wine glass in front of him, watching reruns of QI and laughing his head off.
She smiled, then went softly upstairs and put her head round Ben’s door.
As she did so, he flipped over from one side to the other, his limbs heavy with sleep, his mouth ajar.
She closed the door again and crept back downstairs to the kitchen.
As she went, she ran through everything she had been told that day: Joe and Christy had been happy.
Brenda had been frightened. Bella had been unsure. Phillipa had been raped.
And there was one man – one man – at the centre of it all.