Chapter 67
He sipped the mug of tea a trainee detective had been kind enough to make for him and watched, via a computer monitor, as Devon and Fred interviewed McAvoy in the custody suite. Spud came in and sat down. “How’s it going, Boss?”
The DCI squinted at her, smiled then replied, “Very well, Alison. Young Darius should bottle it any moment now ... look, he’s teetering. Here it comes ...”
From the speaker came, “It was her fucking idea. She said it was an accident but she could use it against Mickey!”
Thurstan sat back in satisfaction. “There you go!”
Fred and Devon glanced at each other. “You’re still not telling us the truth, Darius. At one o’clock in the afternoon, you make arrangements for something you claim you didn’t know was going to happen until later that day. Doesn’t make sense, does it?” Devon looked at Fred who shook his head. “See, Fred agrees. It doesn’t make sense.” He smiled benignly. “So let’s have another go.”
A mobile rang. “Sammy! What have you got?”
“Well, Boss, I managed to get the warrant and we’re about to leave Brannan’s now. The place is pretty clean anyway but the CSIs who did the cellar have just commented that it’s spotless, the cleanest part of the house, apart from some ingrained marks where a chair of some sort was positioned, more or less in the same place, probably for years. There’s no chair now and there’s no match for the marks amongst the dining room set and any others. There are a couple of plug points though. There’s nothing in the garage or the rest of the house and we’ve snaffled all the camera security system as well.”
“How’s she taking it?”
“Very agitated. Oh, and you were right. She’s got a little office at the back, upstairs. There’s several framed certificates to do with computer courses, photo editing and the like. I’ve taken some photos of them.”
“Ok. Let the CSIs go but you and the crew hang back out of sight, just have one of you with eyeballs on. Alison and I are going to take Sharon in for interview now. I’ll get back to you later.”
****
Thurstan leaned forward on the desk. “Sharon, why do you persist in this? Darius is sat in another interview room, right now, telling us everything. I watched him bottle out. Do you know what? You’re getting all the blame.” He paused. “So, once again, just so you understand. We know all about the money, about you and Darius, you and John Brannan, you and Laura and all the building society accounts. We all know the security tape Laura gave us is fake. Do you want us to play it again?"
She looked down at her hands. "No, I thought not. If there’s a lifeboat for you, Sharon, you’d better get in it now. It’s your last chance. We’re not going to sit here any longer. We don’t need to sit here any longer.”
He glanced at his watch and clipped his pen back inside his jacket pocket. Spud’s chair scraped back and she stood up. Sharon looked desperate. Her brief leaned towards her to whisper something but she pushed him away, “Oh, fuck off, will you!”
She looked coldly back at them. “It wasn’t my idea. She made me do it. You’ve no fucking idea what she’s like.”
****
Mobile to his ear, he accepted the drink from the vending machine. “Derek, Sharon’s coughed the lot. Everything came down to Laura Brannan. The grieving widow, eh? My God, she was good. Had me fooled.”
The DI was puzzled. “Are you saying he was killed at home? But we viewed the CCTV. He left that morning and never came back?”
Thurstan exhaled sharply. “If you remember, Derek, I got impatient and we skipped through the rest of it on fast forward. That meant we didn’t notice the date-time group properly. No one else picked it up either, if it makes you feel any better. My fault entirely. Anyway, when we’ve looked at it again in normal time, there it was, a big section where she’s inserted footage from a different day when the date group hadn’t been activated. That was, probably, no chance occurrence nor the restricted view. Of course, it could have been done by someone on her behalf but I think we’ll find she’s got the relevant knowledge to do it herself.
“According to Sharon, it all took place in the wine cellar and was all about the money. After he coughed where it was and how to get to it, Laura, his loving wife, stuck a bag on his head and watched him die.”
Degsy was now slightly bewildered. “If he left in the morning, how did they get him to go back? And how did they get him downstairs?”
Thurstan laughed. “Sex. They lured him back on the promise of forgiveness and a threesome. When he arrived, they all had a drink; his was drugged with some of her spare sleeping tablets. After a few minutes of foreplay, he was away with the mixer. It was a struggle, she said, but they managed to get him down and then back up the stairs; that’ll be where the bruising on his back and legs came from. They even got him in the boot of his car but needed McAvoy’s mates to get him out at the rendezvous.”
He smiled. “It seems all that working out at the gym does work. I might start going myself. Anyway, got to go. I need to call Sammy.”