“Lionel Gilbert mentioned something like that in one of his statements,” Lowerson remembered. “He said Victor had been in good health but he was getting on a bit because he was ‘tripping all over the place’. He didn’t mention anything about Parkinson’s, though.”
“Yes, there’s no record of it in his medical notes, which means Victor was probably unaware of it himself. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest brought on by severe head trauma, as we thought.”
“He still might have been pushed,” Phillips persisted. “It fits everything we know about his character…the fact he was blackmailing Henderson and Cassandra Gilbert. There may be even more we don’t know about because we still haven’t accounted for all the cash payments.”
“All that remains true,” Ryan nodded. “Added to which, it’s notoriously difficult to determine whether a death by falling was accidental, suicide or murder.”
He took a chair at the head of the kitchen table and leaned forward to convey his next message.
“After this latest development with Henderson, I’ve been asking myself whether we’ve been led down the garden path. We assumed Victor Swann’s death was suspicious because somebody took the opportunity to ransack his locker and his home.”
“Aye, well that’s a suspicious thing to do,” Phillips defended.
Ryan held up a hand.
“Bear with me, for a second, while I propose an alternative scenario.”
The table fell quiet as four pairs of inquisitive eyes turned toward him.
“If Pinter is right and Victor Swann’s death was pure accident, we have to assume Henderson ransacked the man’s locker and home simply because the opportunity presented itself. Whatever Swann was using to blackmail him was important enough to extort regular payments and important enough to send him rushing off on the same night the man died, risking exposure to get hold of what we assumed was Victor’s phone.”
“It must be to do with the Gilberts,” MacKenzie said. “They’re rich and we know how much Henderson liked money.”
“But what was he planning?” Yates asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Ryan answered. “I’ll be speaking to the FIU shortly to see if they’ve made any headway on finding the answer. But let’s say Henderson cleaned out Swann’s locker in the early hours of Sunday morning, while we were on site. He needed to find somewhere to stash it inside the house because he couldn’t risk being seen taking it back to his cottage.”
Ryan picked up a stray paperclip and began to fiddle with it as he transported himself inside the mind of a killer.
“I think Alice Chapman died because she found Henderson in the act of reclaiming his stolen goods on Sunday night. He thought he was alone but she’d lost track of time—as she often did—and worked after hours. She found him and connected the dots.”
“He might not have killed Swann but he still killed that girl,” Phillips said obstinately. “We’ve got his DNA.”
Ryan nodded.
“I agree that Henderson is still the most likely candidate for Alice Chapman’s murder and I wouldn’t be surprised to find more evidence coming to light once Faulkner’s had a chance to go over his home and car, not to mention his clothes.”
Phillips folded his arms and Ryan knew what was going through his sergeant’s mind because he was thinking the same thing.
“I’m disappointed too, Frank. Henderson’s death has deprived Carol and Simon Chapman of a proper trial and justice for their daughter.”
“Can’t they do it posthumously?” Yates asked.
“No,” Ryan was firm. “Trials in absentia are extremely rare; it’s almost impossible to have a fair trial if the accused isn’t there to defend himself.”
“But if the evidence is overwhelming?”
Ryan sighed.
“I understand how you feel and, believe me, if the man were still alive, I’d be doing everything in my power to see him convicted for his crimes. But the rules are in place for a reason, much as they might frustrate us.”
Ryan thought of Alice Chapman’s parents and of how he would tell them that, although he’d found her killer, they’d never be able to look him in the eye. It was easy to talk in terms of black and white but what about all the shades of grey in between? He understood very well the heartache of losing a loved one and of the desire for retribution, but it would not bring them back to life.
He pushed the thought to one side because if he allowed himself to think too long or too hard about the wheels of justice, he’d pack it all in and never come to work again.
Irritated, he flung the paperclip back onto the desk.
“If Henderson didn’t fall but was pushed, I have to ask myself why.” He looked at each of his team in turn, eyes blazing. “Why kill a man who was already under suspicion for murder? It doesn’t make sense because it has nothing to do with what happened to Alice or Victor.”
“It might have been an accident, if somebody left the lift doors open?”
Ryan turned to Yates and was glad to see she was asking the right questions.
“The Gilberts keep the lift doors shut and a safety barrier is put across each of the entrances as an added precaution,” he told her. “Even without it, you could fall against the closed doors and they’d stay shut, so it’s perfectly safe. Last night, Faulkner checked the doors on each level and there were scratches against the lift doors on the first floor, which suggests they were forced open. The CSIs are searching for something long and relatively thin, hard enough to force the doors, like a fire poker, to see if they can match traces of the metal from the lift doors.”
“You’re saying we’ve got a second killer on our hands?” Phillips asked. “But, Henderson—?”
“If we stop thinking of Victor Swann’s death as being anything other than an accident and we assume that Alice Chapman’s murder was not planned, I find myself wondering whether Martin Henderson’s death was the only premeditated event in all of this.”
Ryan sat back and watched the penny drop.
“If somebody planned to kill Henderson all along, how could they know he’d be there at that time?” Phillips asked.
“They couldn’t, but maybe they orchestrated a chain of events so that he would be,” Ryan said.
“How could they know Victor and Alice would die?”
“They didn’t—don’t you see?” Ryan tried to be patient. “If they only ever planned to kill Henderson, they must have been as shocked as we were to find out that Victor had died. When Alice followed shortly after, they were as much in the dark as we were—no pun intended.”
“If what you’re saying is true, the other two deaths have given our killer a bit of cover,” Phillips pointed out. “So long as we were looking elsewhere, they could carry on with their plan.”
“This is all conjecture,” MacKenzie said. “What makes you think this is the right line to follow?”
Ryan steepled his index fingers and rested them against his lips.
“It’s the power failures,” he said. “Two deaths happened during those power failures. What if the first one was just a rehearsal and the one last night was the real thing?”
Phillips slowly began to nod.
“I can see it,” he said. “Bloody hell, I can see it now. But how do we prove it?”