“That’s right. I was surprised this landed on my desk. We don’t get many homicides in this neck of the woods.”
“Why’s that?” Fletcher flipped open his notepad, pen poised.
“We’re in Chiswick, Mr Doherty. The rich middle class don’t often get involved in murder. And, if they do, they hide it away from their neck of the woods so it becomes someone else’s jurisdiction. Most we get around here are burglaries and fraud cases.”
“Right.” Fletcher nodded. “And you don’t think this was a botched burglary? A break-in that went wrong?”
“There was no forced entry. Therefore, the killer was known to the victim to be allowed access to the home. Or had their own means of gaining entrance.”
Fletcher wrote that down.
“Who was it that made the initial 999 call?” he asked.
Most of the questions he had planned, he already knew the answer from the original news reports. But Fletcher’s stint at sniffing out gossip had given him a few skills at detecting lies and fabrication.
Not that he expected DI Grimsby to have falsified any evidence, mind. He just wasn’t going to rule out anything. The nation had had Jackson pegged as the killer from day one. Had that been because of the media reports, or had it been fed to them from the police. Fletcher found it hard to believe that Jackson could have managed an attack on his girlfriend after a night on the booze. Fletcher had seen him drunk. Multiple times now. He’d been a witness to the state Jackson got in when intoxicated.
He’d helped him into bed—undressed him—and watched him sleep away the torment a night on the booze had cost him.
Fletcher doodled in the corner of his pad, avoiding the gaze of the professionally trained interrogator in front of him.
DI Grimsby sat straighter, folded his arms and ripped away Fletcher’s memory of a kiss that still lingered on his lips by declaring, “Jackson Young made the call. A full hour after he claims he found her.”
“What did he say?”
“You want to read the transcript? It’s all in there.” Grimsby slid a manila file across the desk. “All the other journalists have seen it. You’re a bit slow off the mark, but there you go.”
Fletcher hadn’t expected the authorities to be so forthcoming with giving access to open case files. But, he suspected, this was no ordinary case and the public interest was huge on this one.
So, flipping open the file, he sat back and skimmed through the transcribed 999 call. It was short. Simple. To the point. Jackson had declared his address, had to repeat his name to an either startled or dubious call handler, then proceeded to say he required both ambulance and police at his home due to a sudden death.
“What happened when you got there?” Fletcher asked, closing the file and not daring to flip through the photographs. He’d have to at some point. He knew that. He’d need to get to know the ins and outs of the crime scene if he planned to write his articles, or the book that sought to promote Jackson’s innocence. But right then, it was too early.
And Fletcher had just eaten.
“Dispatched officers had Mr Young detained in the living quarters. The master bedroom was taped off. No one had been in or out. As is standard for a homicide.”
“How did Jackson appear to you?”
“Shaken. Obviously. Smoking. Didn’t talk much.” Grimsby sounded as though he was reciting a shopping list and not the inner turmoil affecting the next of kin of the dearly departed.
Perhaps Grimsby was used to this sort of thing.
It still chilled Fletcher’s bones.
“He was in shock,” Fletcher stated rather than enquired. “He’d just found his girlfriend brutally murdered in their bed. His temperament must have been usual for that sort of thing.” He probably should have framed that into more of a question rather than a statement of hope.
Grimsby drew his eyebrows in, leaning across the table and entwining his fingers. “What did you say you were writing again?”
“I’m from London Lights. We’re doing a write-up on the Jackson case since his release. I’m just trying to gather all the information on what happened that night.” Better to play that card so he didn’t think Fletcher was biased.
Which he wasn’t.
At. All.
Regardless of his, perhaps, unorthodox relationship with the case subject.
Could he even call it a relationship? A brief touch of lips wasn’t conducive to a friendship, or anything more. It had been nothing but a drunken mistake. Jackson had been delirious.
From now on, Fletcher was remaining at arm’s length from the man. As he should have done from the start.
Because he was clearly now compromised due to the lingering taste of a bruised and bloodied kiss. A kiss that wasn’t really a kiss at all.
A kiss that burned on his lips like fire.
If only he could stop thinking about it long enough to do his fecking job.
“In seventy percent of domestic homicides,” DI Grimsby said, puffing out his chest. “The perpetrator is known to the victim. And more often than not, it is the one closest to them.”
“So you believed Jackson guilty on arrival?”
“No. We presume innocent until proven guilty. It’s our job to gather the evidence to aid with that.”
“And you gathered enough that night to arrest him?” Fletcher pointed the end of his pen at the detective, then chewed it in thought as he awaited the answer.
“He was the only one in the house,” Grimsby declared, unperturbed. Factual statement. As though that was enough in itself to convict. But he continued, nevertheless. “Neighbours reported no disturbance. No evidence of a break-in. There were no signs of a struggle. She was naked—which gave us the immediate assumption that sexual contact had taken place. Time of death, around midnight to one a.m. Mr Young was brought in for questioning only.” Grimsby inhaled a sharp breath that pursed his lips. “It was what he said, or rather didn’t say, during interrogation that caused his arrest.”
“What did he say?”
“No comment.”
Fletcher wrote that down, then met Grimsby’s gaze. “To what?”
“All of it. Check the transcript.” Grimsby gestured to the file.
Fletcher flipped it open, scanning along the typed-up words from the police interview. The only thing Jackson had answered was the admission of his name. Everything else was no comment. Apart from the constant requests to speak to his solicitor.
Leaning back in the chair, Fletcher tapped the pen to his lips. Why would Jackson keep to a no-comment interview? It made no sense. Scribbling down a few notes—mostly things he had to ask Jackson himself—Fletcher then glanced up to Grimsby. The detective smiled. He was too at ease with this. A career in dead bodies had given him a cast-iron stomach.
And a heart of stone.
“Did he ever have a lawyer present?”
“Yes. We interrogated him a few times whilst incarcerated. Every time he had his lawyer present.”
“Who is his lawyer?”
“It changed.” Grimsby flipped through his file, running his finger down the words in front of him. “At first they came from the Hopper Management team. After a few months, they were no longer representing him and he was provided one from the courts. Draper and Draper.”