Chapter 71
It’d been a couple of hectic weeks. With calls to the Crown Court to give evidence, adding the finishing touches to existing case files, dealing with the McAvoy, Fenton and Brannan issues, interviews with generally supercilious, unsympathetic IPCC investigators and his weekends with Lizzie being so precious he’d forgotten all about Jack Buchanan and Hirek Kamiński.
Roger Chapel’s phone call had made him feel guilty so he’d pulled his hard copy of the file out of the drawer, given it the once over and discovered the statement Chewy had taken and he’d forgotten to read.
It was from the ex-military man Tom who, when he was home, lived above Jack. According to the statement, his work in the security industry took him all over the world for long periods but was not specific as to what he did when he got there. It was specific, however, in saying the night of Jack’s death he was leaving his flat with his bag, to go to Liverpool airport at 2:00 AM, when he heard Jack’s door being closed. By the time he’d taken the stairs, there was no one about but on getting outside he’d seen a figure disappear up the street. Too far away to describe, he’d thought no more of it and took his taxi to JLA, the rest being a hidden history.
Thurstan tried to visualize what exactly Tom did when he was away, knowing there were no commercial night-time flights from JLA; simply postal and the odd military flight. Maybe ‘odd’ was the word.
He shook himself back to the task in hand. So, the night he’d died, Jack had a visitor. Now Thurstan had a suspect. His problem? He didn’t know who the hell it was. He scanned through the file again, finding a note he’d written to himself, a little book of clues to the actions and enquiries he’d considered needed to be done; to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
Opening his emails, he winced at the size of the inbox. There were no excuses anymore, he knew he had time to go through it. A walk along Church Street wasn’t even on the cards because it was pouring down. He sighed and left his desk behind, walking with determination to the drinks station. One more coffee then he’d crack on. He’d need to if he was going to keep his date with Liz.