Lloyd was a lean, wiry man, with close-cropped hair and an alert, predatory face that reminded Branson a little of the actor Robert Carlyle when he was playing a Bond villain in The World is Not Enough. Branson got a kick out of matching a movie villain’s face to all lawyers – and he found it helped him to avoid feeling intimidated by them, particularly when being cross-examined by defence barristers in court.
Plenty of officers got on fine with solicitors. They took it in their stride, saying that it was all a game that sometimes they won, sometimes they lost. But for Branson it was more personal than that. He knew that criminal solicitors and barristers were only doing their job, and formed an important part of the freedoms of the British nation. But for nearly a decade before joining the police, he’d worked several nights a week as a nightclub bouncer in this city. He’d seen and tangled with just about every bit of scum imaginable, from drunk braggarts, to ugly gangsters, to some very smart criminals. He felt an intense obligation to try to make this city a better place for his own children to grow up in than it had been for him as a kid. That was his beef with the man sitting opposite him right now, in his hand-made suit and his black, tasselled loafers, with his big swinging dick of a BMW parked out front, and no doubt a flash, secluded house somewhere in one of Hove’s swankier streets, all paid for out of the rich pickings from keeping scumbags out of jail – and on the streets.
Branson’s mood had not been improved by a blazing row with his wife, Ari, on his mobile phone as he had walked over to the custody block. He’d called to say goodnight to the children and she had pointed out acidly that they had been asleep in bed for some time. To which his response, that it was not much fun still being at work at nine o’clock, received a torrent of sarcasm. It had then degenerated into a shouting match, ending with Ari hanging up on him.
Nick Nicholl closed the door, pulled up a chair opposite Branson and sat down. Lloyd had positioned himself at the head of the table, as if arranging the stage to assert himself from the getgo.
The solicitor made a note in his black book with a roller-ball pen. ‘So, gentlemen, what information do you have for me?’ He spoke in a brisk, clipped voice, his tone polite but firm. Above them, an air-conditioning unit was starting, noisily, to pump out cool air.
Lloyd made Branson nervous. The detective could deal with brute force, no problem, but cunning intellects always unnerved him. And Lloyd was observing everyone with an inscrutable, unreadable expression. He spoke slowly, articulating each word as if he were addressing a child, thinking very carefully about what he was going to say next.
‘We have spoken to Mr Bishop over the last four days, as you will appreciate is normal in these circumstances, in order to get background information regarding himself and his wife. There is some information that we have been given which we will be covering during the interview, concerning his movements and location around the time of the murder.’
‘OK,’ Leighton Lloyd said, a tad impatiently, as if flagging that he wasn’t here to listen to waffle. ‘Can you bring me up to speed on why my client has been arrested?’
Branson then handed him the Pre-Interview Disclosure document that had been prepared. ‘If you would like to read this, we can go through any questions you may have.’
Lloyd reached across the desk and took the short document, a single A4 sheet, and read it in silence. Then he read parts of it out aloud. ‘Possible strangulation by ligature, subject to further pathology tests . . . We have certain DNA evidence which will form part of the interview.’
He looked up at the two officers for a moment, then continued reading out aloud, his voice now sounding quizzicaclass="underline" ‘We have reason to believe that Mr Bishop has not been telling the complete truth. Accordingly, we wish to put certain questions to him under caution.’
The solicitor dropped the sheet back down on the table. ‘Can you put any flesh on this document?’ he asked Branson.
‘How much information do you have?’ Branson asked.
‘Very little. Obviously I’ve been following the report on the murder of Mrs Bishop in the papers and on the news. But I haven’t spoken to my client yet.’
For the next twenty minutes, Lloyd quizzed the police officers. He started by asking about the cleaning lady and the details of the crime scene. Glenn Branson gave him the very minimum information he felt he needed to. He outlined the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Katie Bishop’s body, and the pathologist’s estimate of the approximate time of death, but held back the information about the gas mask. And he firmly refused to reveal any information on their DNA evidence.
The solicitor finished by trying to trip up Branson into revealing why they believed that Brian Bishop had not been telling the truth. But Branson would not be drawn.
‘Has my client given you an alibi?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he has,’ Branson replied.
‘And presumably you are not satisfied with it.’
The Detective Sergeant hesitated, then said, ‘That is something we will be dealing with during the interview process.’
Lloyd made another note with the roller-ball pen in his book. Then he smiled at Branson. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me at this stage?’
Branson glanced at Nicholl and shook his head.
‘Right. I’d like to see my client now.’
88
It was now almost completely dark outside. Distractedly, Roy Grace ran his eye down the pages and pages on his screen of today’s incident reports log, looking for anything that might be relevant to the two cases. He found nothing. He scanned through his email inbox, deleted several where he had just been copied in and fired off a few quick responses. Then he looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes since Cleo had said she would call him right back.
He felt a sudden knot of anxiety in his stomach, thinking how much he cared for her; how he could not bear the thought of anything happening to her. As Sandy had been for so many years, Cleo was starting to feel like the rock to which his life was moored. A good, solid, beautiful, funny, loving, caring and wise rock. But sometimes in shadow, not sunlight.
Roy, this is not the woman Lesley and I saw last week. We really are convinced we saw Sandy. Best, Dick
God, he thought, it would have been so much simpler if Dick had replied to him that yes, this was the woman they had seen. It still wouldn’t have given him the closure he sought, but at least it would have put Munich back in its box. Now it was drawing him towards another journey there. But at this moment, he wasn’t able to think about that. He was remembering only too vividly that some creep had slashed the roof of Cleo’s MG yesterday, in broad daylight, outside the mortuary.
The place attracted every imaginable kind of weirdo and sicko, of which Brighton had more than its fair share. He still found it hard to understand how she could enjoy working there as much as she claimed she did. Sure, you could get used to just about anything. But that didn’t mean you could like anything.
Car roofs mostly got slashed in urban streets, either by people breaking in to steal something or by swaggering yobs late at night, high or drunk, who were passing by. People didn’t pass by the mortuary car park, especially not on a hot Sunday afternoon. Nothing had been stolen from the car. It was just a nasty, malicious piece of vandalism. Probably some lowlife jealous of the car.