“No comment.”
“Can you tell us the recommended retail price of a BMW i8?”
“No idea,” he lied.
“A steal at ￡105,000, depending on the specifications,” Ryan spoke up for the first time.
“I’m told you paid a deposit of nearly twenty-five per cent of the retail price in cash, Mr Henderson. That’s a lot of money to have lying around the house.”
Salam removed a scanned copy of the contract he had signed at the dealership and handed it to his solicitor before reciting its contents for the audio record.
“No comment.”
Henderson cleared his throat and trained his eyes on the ceiling, then looked away quickly when he realised the room was equipped with four cameras to capture his anxious face from every angle.
“There’s been a string of large cash transactions dating back over at least three years.” She reeled off a few more. “Can you tell me how you managed to fund these purchases, Mr Henderson?”
“No comment.”
Ryan watched the estate manager with mounting dislike. They had expected him to fall back on a ‘no comment’ interview but having to listen to it was frustrating nonetheless.
“Coming around to more recent events, we’d like to ask you about some cash withdrawals made from your current account last week.”
Henderson sent his solicitor a panicked look.
“Ah, just a moment, detective. How is it that you have access to my client’s personal account records?”
Ryan licked the tip of his index finger and rifled through a sheaf of papers until he found what he was looking for.
“Let the record show I am handing a scanned copy of the account monitoring order to Ms Kettering, which was executed yesterday evening through the proper channels.”
“I want a moment to confer with my client.”
“By all means,” Ryan said, affably. “We’ll leave you to talk it over.”
*
Ryan and DI Anika Salam wandered through to the observation room next door, where they joined their respective sergeants. The two men appeared to be getting on like a house on fire and Phillips was presently regaling Henry Tomlinson with some tale or other concerning Newcastle United’s footballing glory days.
“Any word from Faulkner?” Ryan asked.
Phillips pulled a face.
“Sorry, guv, I had a call from him while you were interviewing. He’s having to re-test the samples because there was some cross-contamination, which wouldn’t do us much good in court. He’s working as quickly as he can but essentially he has to start from scratch.”
Ryan stuck his hands in his pockets and jiggled the car keys he found there.
“Without that DNA, we’ve got nothing to hold him,” he muttered.
He stared through the window to where Henderson and his solicitor sat with their heads together, plotting, no doubt.
Ryan turned back to DI Salam.
“Have you got enough to hold him for twenty-four hours?”
She shook her head.
“You know as well as I do, fraud is a tough nut to crack. I need much longer to put my case together; it could take months to trace the source of the money. I only brought him in as a favour to you,” she said.
“I know, and it’s appreciated.”
Ryan nodded toward the window.
“Let me predict what’s about to happen. We’re going to spend another hour going through every suspicious transaction going in and out of his current account, particularly over the last two months he’s been resident at Cragside, and he’s going to tell us ‘no comment’ or disclaim any connection with Victor Swann. Then, his solicitor will start mouthing off about supposition and circumstantial evidence and demand to leave. We’re going to have to let them, because he’s giving us nothing to work with.”
“You never know,” Phillips said hopefully. “He looks the type to crack.”
“He’s a cockroach,” Ryan muttered. “Unfortunately, they’re very resilient.”
An hour later, Ryan walked out of Interview Room 1 and Phillips fell into step beside him. Not long afterwards, they watched Martin Henderson sweep out of the police car park with a deliberate flourish.
“Told you so,” was all he said.
CHAPTER 28
The rest of the day passed in a haze of frenzied activity. The men and women attached to Operation Lightbulb redoubled their efforts to catch a killer who had figuratively stuck two fingers up and waltzed out of police headquarters as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Ryan was hunched over his desk re-reading the witness statements taken after both incidents when there was a tap on his shoulder.
“Boss? You’ve got visitors downstairs,” Lowerson said.
Ryan knew immediately who they were and reached inside one of his desk drawers for the spare necktie he kept there for occasions requiring a greater degree of formality, such as meeting the parents of a recently murdered young woman.
His legs felt heavy as he walked along the carpeted hallway toward the stairwell that would lead him downstairs to one of the ‘family rooms’ earmarked for these occasions. He prepared what he would say to them and checked he had a spare business card containing the details of a bereavement counselling service they could contact.
As he reached the ground floor, he made his way along another corridor and then took a breath before pushing open a door marked ‘OCCUPIED.’
Planned speeches and business cards flew out of his mind.
Ryan’s first thought was that Alice Chapman’s parents seemed so small in the large room, huddled together on the foamy blue visitors’ chairs arranged around a central coffee table. A dying peace lily stood in the corner next to an assortment of leaflets touting meditation, funeral services and solicitors’ firms and he made a mental note to have them removed. Families of the deceased didn’t need ambulance chasers adding to their woes.
He cleared his throat discreetly.
“Mr and Mrs Chapman?”
They both looked up and focused their attention on the tall, dark-haired stranger filling the doorway.
“DCI Ryan?” Carol Chapman looked at him with unfocused eyes while her husband rose from his chair and put a steadying hand on her shoulder.
Ryan closed the door behind him and made his way across the room.
They seemed incapable of speech, both wearing the kind of dazed expression he’d seen many times before. It was the shock. Some families harboured a false, unrealistic hope that there had been a dreadful mistake until they met the officer in charge of investigating their loved one’s murder. He could see that hope dying before his very eyes and it twisted like a knife in his belly.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” he murmured.
They were trite words he’d uttered hundreds of times before but they remained true. He was more sorry than he could say, looking at this couple who had brought a baby into the world and watched it grow into an accomplished woman, only to see her destroyed.
It was unthinkable, unspeakable, but it was the reality he dealt with every day.