‘I’m not sure, boss,’ said Saslow. ‘I mean, she set up her house here around nineteen years ago, and is held in pretty high standing locally, as you’re aware. Not much beyond that, I don’t think.’
Vogel had already checked all the obvious computer sources. He knew that Helen had no criminal record, that both she and Helen’s House, which operated as a registered charity, were solvent, if barely so, that there was no mortgage on the House, nor did Helen have a mortgage on any other property, nor indeed own a property other than the House, that she was not a director of any company, that she appeared to have no professional qualifications, and that her dealings with the police and officialdom generally had always been conducted in an exemplary manner.
Vogel was good with computers. He had, in the past, been accused by colleagues, and even his wife, of preferring them to people. Often he could extract online information which others had failed to discover. But not in the case of Helen Harris.
The House had its own website which described its philosophy and detailed exactly what it could offer victims of domestic abuse. That too gave very little personal information on its founder and owner-proprietor, beyond saying that Helen had previously worked as a social worker specializing in cases of domestic abuse, and been deeply moved by the plight of abuse victims. She had ultimately come to feel limited by the confines of her position and, inspired by Sarah’s House in Arizona, had decided to create a unique independent support service.
Basically the website chronicled almost everything about the project, and next to nothing about the woman who had founded it, thought Vogel. He suddenly had the desire to delve deeper into the life of Helen Harris. Much deeper...
‘Who might be able tell us more?’ he asked.
‘DI Peters, boss,’ replied Saslow at once. ‘She was born and bred around here, what in these parts they call a “proper Bideford maid”, boss. And she was stationed in the town as a young PC. If anyone can help, it’ll be her.’
Vogel called Peters in.
‘Oh yes, Helen had just opened the House when I joined the force here as a probationary,’ the DI began, in answer to the DCI’s query. ‘It was all a bit controversial at first, and I’m not sure the neighbours are mad about it even now, but Helen quickly became quite a respected figure in the town. She was go-to for us. She lightened our load, you see. No copper likes domestics, boss, do they? Suddenly there was someone to call on who would help sort it.’
‘Was she known locally when she arrived?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘On the Helen’s House website, there’s a reference to her having previously been a social worker. Do you know where she worked?’
‘Bristol, I believe, boss.’
‘Right. I couldn’t find a record of any professional qualifications. She’d have had to have something to work in any area of social services, wouldn’t she?’
‘I believe so, boss.’
‘And surely there should be some employment history listed somewhere. Let’s do some more digging, please Janet. Get on to social services in Bristol. I want to build a past for our Helen. I’d like to know exactly what I’m dealing with. I think there may be a lot more to her than meets the eye. I know it’s after office hours, but there must be somebody on duty. Just tell them it’s a murder investigation.’
DI Peters returned to Vogel’s office less than an hour later. She had managed to get Bristol social services on the case and had just heard back from them.
‘They say they have no record at all of any Helen Harris being employed by them in any capacity,’ Peters reported.
‘Can they be certain?’ asked Vogel. ‘Maybe she slipped through the net. It’s possible she was employed before computer records. Do they still keep paper files from previous to that?’
‘Apparently they started computerizing their data, including employment records, in the early 2000s,’ said Peters. ‘And they plumbed in most of the paper files going back over a decade. But it is possible that Helen could have slipped through the net, I suppose. It’s also possible that she worked in social services somewhere else. I certainly can’t be absolutely sure that it was supposed to be Bristol.’
Nonetheless, Vogel called his old number two at the Avon and Somerset, DI Margot Hartley, who had served as his deputy SIO on a number of major cases during his time there, and still worked for MIT in Bristol.
He gave her a quick rundown of his so far unsuccessful quest to build a background on Helen Harris, and why.
‘We’ve drawn a complete blank with Bristol social services,’ he told her. ‘But you’re the one with the local knowledge.’
‘From what you’ve told me she would have been working here twenty years or more ago, it might be a big ask, and being out of hours doesn’t help. But I’ll give it my best shot, David,’ Hartley responded.
Vogel knew from his previous experience with her that DI Hartley’s ‘best shot’ was about as good as it got. She was fast too. So he was optimistic when she called back a couple of hours later.
‘I’ve tried all the usual sources,’ she said. ‘I’m still looking, of course, but thought you’d want to know, I’ve found nothing so far. I’ve checked medical and education records, even looked for old parking tickets. I’ve double checked with social services too. Officially and unofficially. I have a contact who used to run human resources for the entire social services network in Bristol. Ted Martin. Has a brain like a Rolodex. You can virtually hear it clicking. And he’s never heard of Helen Harris. I can’t swear to it, David, but in my opinion, if Ted hasn’t heard of her, then she didn’t ever work as a social worker in Bristol.’
Vogel was now like a hound following a scent. He was aware that he might be veering off onto a tangent that could well prove to be irrelevant. After all, not only did it seem highly unlikely that Helen Harris was ever going to be a plausible suspect in this case, but he also very much doubted that her credibility as an alibi was in any serious doubt. And he was beginning to feel increasingly confident that they already had Thomas Quinn’s murderer locked up a cell at Barnstaple nick. Even though Gill Quinn, the victim’s wife and mother of the arrested man, had just done her utmost to destroy her own alibi for the crime. Vogel was, however, becoming more and more convinced that there was a mystery surrounding Helen Harris. And it was a mystery he was determined to solve.
He’d had an idea. DVLA and Passport Office records could be routinely accessed through the PNC, the police national computer. Vogel initiated a search of both. He found that Helen Harris held a valid UK passport which had been first issued in 2000. There was no record of her having held a passport before that. She also held a valid UK driving licence which had been first issued in 2000. And there was no record of her having held a driving licence before that.
Vogel was not surprised. He was starting to arrive at a conclusion which he was confident would cause him nothing but trouble. All the same, he now felt he had no choice other than to proceed.
He was just about to make a third call, to the head of MIT, Detective Superintendent Nobby Clarke, when Peters returned.
‘We’ve heard from Forensics, they’ve got DNA from a fingerprint taken from Thomas Quinn’s shirt,’ she began excitedly. ‘It’s an exact match to Gregory Quinn. I think we’ve got him, boss.’
‘Well, well,’ said Vogel.
Recovering fingerprints from fabric, and subsequently extracting DNA, was a relatively new procedure first developed by forensic scientists in Scotland ten years or so previously. It was not always a successful process, and still depended to a considerable extent on the type of fabric. All he remembered of Thomas Quinn’s shirt, from the crime scene, was that it had appeared to have once been a particularly pale shade of blue. Or maybe it had just looked that way in contrast to the abundance of blood splattered all over it.