Moment of Truth, page 8
‘Listen, there’s something I wanted to ask you,’ he continued. ‘I hope I’m not stepping out of line here, but I wondered if perhaps you fancied going out for a drink after work one day?’
Sara stood, eyes wide, not quite sure what to say.
‘Sorry, that was inappropriate of me. I meant just as a getting to know each other sort of thing. Team bonding, or whatever.’
‘No, it’s fine. It’s just—’
‘Ah. You’ve got a boyfriend, haven’t you?’
‘No. No, I haven’t. I—’
‘It’s cool. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I just… I mean, you’re an incredibly attractive woman. And it might have just been me, but I thought I felt a spark when we were chatting in the office earlier.’
‘It’s not just you,’ Sara said, finally managing to get the words out. ‘I’d love to. It just came as a surprise, that’s all. I didn’t think for one second you’d be interested in me.’
Elijah cocked his head to one side and put his hand back on her shoulder. ‘Sara, are you kidding me? Look at you. You’re gorgeous. You’re funny, you’re bubbly. Why wouldn’t any guy be interested? If anything, I wanted to make sure I got in there before anyone else did.’
Sara felt herself blushing, and chastised herself silently. It had been so long since anyone had shown an interest in her in this way, she could hardly remember when the last time was.
‘You’re very sweet,’ she replied, getting a foothold over herself. ‘But yes, I’d love to.’
‘Great,’ Elijah replied, beaming. ‘I was thinking it might be best to avoid Oakham. Walls have ears, and all that. You know what people can be like when it comes to mixing things like this with work. Especially considering the whole rank thing. You know what I mean.’
‘I know. I’d definitely give the Wheatsheaf a swerve, then,’ Sara replied, laughing. ‘That’s practically our staff canteen.’
Elijah took his mobile phone from his suit pocket. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll have a think about where we could go and I’ll text you. Saves any awkward clandestine conversations at work.’
‘Yeah. That’s a good idea,’ Sara said, typing her number into Elijah’s phone.
‘Great. I’m really looking forward to it.’
‘Me too.’
Before Sara had a chance to react, Elijah leant forward and kissed her on the cheek, before turning and heading back to the office. She stood, momentarily stunned, before letting out the breath she realised she’d been holding for far too long.
She glanced at the worktop in the kitchenette, noticing the mug of tea still sitting there.
‘Elijah,’ she called, not yet having noticed he was well out of earshot. ‘You forgot your—’
24
Caroline rested her chin on the palm of her hand, her elbow propped on her desk.
‘In any other case I’d say this was dynamite, but I think I’m even more confused now than I was before,’ she said, having digested what Aidan had just told them. ‘Thoughts, Dex?’
Dexter let out a breath. ‘Christ. Yeah, I think I’d agree. It would explain why Susan Thornton was acting so strangely when we spoke to her. If she’d recently found out her husband was having an affair, you’d imagine there’s a part of her that’s pretty glad he’s gone. But she barely said anything, and acted almost as if she just wanted to put the whole thing out of her mind and carry on. You don’t think she was involved, do you?’
Caroline gave a mock shrug. ‘Not my place to say. But without having had time to digest everything properly and look at it from a distance, my instinct would be that it was actually just very convenient timing for Susan. She doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman to organise a hit on her husband. Especially when we already know the man we’re looking for is connected with Norway in some way, with everything we know so far about his business dealings over there. It seems likely to me that’s the answer here, and that Susan might feel she was done a favour by complete coincidence. If she even knew about the affair, that is.’
‘We can easily find out,’ Aidan offered. ‘Are we doing coincidences now, then?’
A wry smile appeared on Caroline’s face. She had to give him that one. ‘Usually not, no. But they do happen. And when they do, they tend to be bigger than you might realise. I’ve seen some big cases get hampered and slowed down by detectives trying to find links where there aren’t any. I find that if you feel yourself getting bogged down by that, apply Occam’s razor.’
Aidan’s blank reaction told Caroline she needed to offer an explanation. ‘The simplest answer is often the right one,’ she said. ‘We humans tend to overthink things and look for convoluted patterns of logic. We try to make sense of every piece of information and link it all together without even realising what we’re doing. Occam’s razor says the simplest possible answer is usually the right one.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Aidan replied.
‘Either way, we need to find out what Susan Thornton knew — if anything — and when. But tread carefully on that, because she might very well have known nothing. Her husband’s just been killed, and if we wade in there, all guns blazing, firing off about how he’d been having an affair with another woman behind her back, it’s hardly likely to help matters.’
‘Do we know who the mystery woman is?’ Dexter asked.
‘Only that she’s called Toni,’ Aidan replied. ‘Or at least, that’s the name she’s saved as in his phone. It’s taken them up until now to get past the security on his phone. Honestly, it’s best not to ask.’
Caroline looked back down at the sheets of paper on the desk in front of her — printouts of messages they’d obtained from Clive Thornton’s phone. The earliest messages were only from the morning of Clive’s murder, but they appeared to be a continuation of an existing conversation. Caroline considered this must mean Clive had been systematically deleting messages to and from Toni on a fairly regular basis, hiding the evidence trail.
[Toni 09:26] Sounds good to me! Looking forward to it ;-) xx
[Toni 12:21] How’s your day going, sexy beast? Xx
[Toni 13:13] I’m guessing the joke about six coach loads of tourists came true!! :-P xx
[Toni 15:04] All messages left unread...? Hope everything’s ok and you’re just rushed off your feet. Or will Miss need to punish you later? Xx
[Toni 17:10] Are you ok? I thought maybe you might have left your phone at home but would’ve expected you to be back by now. Please let me know all’s ok xx
[Toni 17:46] MISSED AUDIO CALL
[Toni 17:47] Clive, is everything ok? I’m getting worried now xx
[Toni 17:54] MISSED AUDIO CALL
[Toni 18:18] OK, I’m presuming this is something to do with what you said the other day about her finding out. I completely understand if you don’t want to take the risk anymore. I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed but of course I totally get it. It’s not worth ruining your marriage over a bit of fun. It’d just be nice if you could let me know, so I know xx
[Toni 18:36] Clive, I’m guessing you’ve blocked my number or something. I’d rather you were able to just tell me it’s over, but I get the hint. I don’t know if this’ll ever reach you or if you’ll ever see it, but my door is always open. I really enjoyed our time together xx
‘Where did we find Clive’s phone?’ Caroline asked. ‘Was it on his person?’
‘No, he’d left it at home that day,’ Dexter replied. ‘It was charging in his kitchen. His wife said he did forget it from time to time, but it had been a while since it’d happened. I guess some people just aren’t as attached to their phones as others.’
‘Very true. Not out of the ordinary, considering his generation. And Mrs Thornton was at home that day?’
‘Yep.’
‘So she might have seen messages flash up on the screen?’
‘He had notification previews disabled. She would have been able to see there were messages, but she wouldn’t have been able to read them.’
‘Would she have been able to see who they were from?’
‘I’m not sure. But if so, it’d only show a name.’
‘That’d be enough to get the red mist to descend, especially if she was already suspicious or had confronted him over it in the past,’ Caroline said, immediately regretting the conspiratorial tone in her voice.
‘True. And for all we know, she might know the PIN code to his phone. If she did, she’d have been able to read everything.’
Caroline nodded slowly. ‘No wonder he didn’t tend to leave his phone at home much anymore. Have we put in to the phone networks to find out who this Toni’s number is registered to?’
‘Yep, we’re on it,’ Aidan said.
‘Good stuff. Once we’ve got an ID on her, we’ll go and chat with her. I’ve a feeling that’ll open up a whole lot more.’
Dexter’s mobile phone rang in his pocket. Not recognising the number on the screen, he answered the call.
‘Dexter Antoine.’
The voice at the other end of the phone was loud enough for everyone to hear.
‘Hello, it’s Andrea Ruston calling from Border Force, regarding your request for information on Mr Karlsen. Do you have a few moments? I’ve got something that might be of interest to you.’
25
Dexter ended the call and put his phone back in his pocket, having jotted some notes down on a scrap of paper during the call.
‘Okay, that was Border Force,’ he said to the others, as if they hadn’t overheard. ‘They’ve got a record of Karlsen entering the UK at Stansted Airport around midday on Friday the sixteenth, and leaving Heathrow on the evening of Monday the nineteenth. They confirmed he flew in on a Norwegian passport in the name of Oyvind Andreas Karlsen. There was a Ryanair flight in from Oslo Gardermoen around that time on Friday, and a British Airways one back to the same airport from Heathrow on Monday night. We’d have to check with the airlines, but it’s highly likely they’re the flights he was on.’
‘What are the times of those flights?’ Caroline asked.
‘The flight from Oslo on Friday arrived just before midday, and the one back on Monday was scheduled for five-past-eight in the evening, but took off about half an hour late.’
‘Five-past-eight, Heathrow,’ Caroline muttered, doing some mental maths. ‘What’s that, about two hours by road?’
‘At least,’ Aidan replied. ‘Even if he left Oakham immediately after killing Clive Thornton, he’d be hitting the Black Cat Roundabout at about five, half-five, and that’s always snarled up in rush hour. Going down past Northampton and Milton Keynes won’t have been much better, either. In any case, you’re looking at reaching the M25 at six-ish, maybe half-six. I can’t imagine that’ll have been flowing freely a few days before Christmas.’
‘Okay,’ Caroline said, nodding slowly. ‘So even with a best case scenario, assuming he kills Clive within seconds of the castle closing, then hotfoots it down to Heathrow and somehow dodges all the traffic, he’d arrive shortly after six o’clock. That’s doable for an eight o’clock flight, especially if he only had hand luggage. If you add in the likely traffic, though, we’re probably looking at, what, three hours? That gets him to Heathrow around seven, even if he left Oakham immediately. I can’t imagine trains or public transport would have been any quicker. Again, probably just about doable if he only had hand luggage, but he’d be cutting it pretty damn close. Heathrow would’ve been heaving with people flying home for Christmas.’
‘True,’ Dexter replied. ‘But at the same time, he wouldn’t have wanted to be hanging around in the UK for any longer than necessary, especially after what’d just happened.’
Caroline had an uneasy feeling. ‘I don’t know. It feels even riskier. If he missed his flight, which he had a good chance of doing, he’d have been stuck here til the next morning. He’d have had no way of knowing until it was too late. What are Karlsen’s last known movements from CCTV?’
Aidan flicked back a couple of pages in his notebook. ‘At three o’clock on Monday, he comes into the castle and takes photos of the horseshoes. He’s there just over a minute before leaving again. We don’t know where he goes after that, but he’s not picked up on CCTV in the town or the market square. If he left through the main gate, you’d expect to see him. That means it’s likely he headed across the castle grounds and up and over the steps towards the Burley Road car park. I think it’d be worth checking the reg numbers of the vehicles parked there that day and cross-referencing them with ANPR in the vicinity of the airports.’
‘Either that or he was hiding out somewhere, waiting for the castle to close. It would have been easy enough for him to find his way back in through a side door that’s not covered by CCTV. But there’s nothing on the town and council cameras after four o’clock either?’
‘No, not that we can find. Although you’d expect he’d have scoped out where the cameras were and would be deliberately avoiding them where possible.’
‘Except for having walked bold as brass, right into the Great Hall of the castle on two separate occasions, knowing he’d be picked up on all of them.’
‘But there’s no way he could be identified from those images,’ Aidan replied. ‘That’s why he wore the hat and kept his head low.’
‘And then wrote his name in the visitors’ book.’
‘A name we presume to be false. If this really is some sort of government-backed spy operation, it wouldn’t matter if he wrote the fake name that’s in his passport, because any requests we put in to the Norwegian authorities would be brushed aside.’
‘I don’t know,’ Caroline said, shaking her head. ‘The diplomatic fallout would be insane. And if they were really that casual about leaving traces, why bother with the hat? Something just isn’t adding up here. What do you think, Dex?’ she asked, noticing her colleague had kept silent while she spoke.
‘Honestly? I dunno. I think the best thing we can do is wait to hear from the Norwegian police. If they’re cooperative, we’ll be able to get all the information we need about Karlsen. If they’re uncooperative? Well… That’ll tell us even more.’
26
Having obtained the phone number of Toni — Clive Thornton’s apparent lover — from Clive’s mobile, it hadn’t taken long for them to track down her full identity through her mobile phone network.
Dexter had arranged to visit the woman they now knew as Antonia Scott at her home in Oakham. At first, Caroline had been hesitant about accepting Dexter’s request to accompany him, being hyper-aware of her need to take a back seat and allow him to come into his own. She was a sucker for a compliment, though. It only took Dexter to point out how much better than him she was at decoding body language and spotting when something wasn’t quite right with someone’s story, before she found herself in the car with him, on the way to Antonia Scott’s home.
It was a beautiful light-coloured house, constructed in the local limestone, and it yet again struck Caroline how rare it was to find an ugly building in Rutland — especially when compared to most other places.
They parked in front of the double garage, and made their way across the gravel driveway to the front door. A few moments after Dexter had administered his policeman’s knock, a woman came to the door. She seemed to be around fifty, and although she clearly wasn’t someone who tried to hide her age, her calm confidence in her own skin gave her a certain youthful innocence.
‘Mrs Scott?’ Dexter asked.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Dexter Antoine from Rutland Police, and this is my colleague, Detective Inspector Caroline Hills. Can we come in please?’
Dexter saw the familiar panic in Toni’s eyes. ‘Why? What’s happened? Is something wrong?’
‘If we can come in, we’ll be able to explain everything right away.’
Toni stepped aside, and Caroline and Dexter walked in, heading straight for the living room. They sat down on one of the sofas, silently inviting Toni to do the same.
‘Mrs Scott, I—’
‘Please. Call me Toni.’
‘Okay,’ Dexter replied. ‘Toni, I’m afraid we have some bad news. A body has been discovered locally. It’s been identified as that of Clive Thornton, who we believe you knew.’
It always felt like delivering a hammer blow, but the training had been clear: don’t prevaricate, don’t stall — get straight to the point and leave no room for misinterpretation.
Toni seemed to freeze for a moment, before a range of micro-expressions crossed her face as the news slowly sank in.
‘He’s dead?’ she croaked eventually.
‘I’m afraid so. I realise it must come as quite a shock, but we do need to ask you some important questions. Can you tell me how you knew Clive?’
Toni took a moment to compose herself before speaking. ‘I don’t really know what to say,’ she answered, her voice almost a whisper. ‘Do you want to know how we met? What happened to him? I mean… How?’
‘We’ll go into that in a short while, I promise. For now we just need to get some more information. How would you describe your relationship with him?’
Toni looked to the ceiling and slowly shook her head. ‘I think that’s probably the one question I can’t answer. He’s been getting more and more distant over the last week or so. You probably already know this, but Clive’s married. I was just his… I don’t know. His release. He told me last week that he thought his wife had found out about us. Said she’d been acting strangely. He kind of pulled back a bit at that point, and I got the impression he thought maybe it wasn’t worth the risk.’
‘Risking his marriage, you mean?’ Dexter asked, having sensed that Caroline had picked up on the same thing he had.
‘Yes. Risking everything. Clive does a lot of good. Charity work, things like that. They’ve got children. Grown up ones, but still. It’s the sort of thing that can ruin a family if it gets out.’
