‘Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty of the false imprisonment of Michael Cannon?’
‘Not guilty.’
Nathan felt as though he were swimming underwater as he listened to the clerk ask the same questions and receive the same answers four more times.
27
‘You did good,’ said Stanford as Ramouter entered the room and Eastwood stood up and gave a slow clap.
‘Yes, Ramouter. Well done for being able to read from a script,’ Eastwood teased.
‘All words, no pictures. Like a proper grown up,’ Ramouter replied. ‘Has there been much of a response since the conference?’
‘Response is an understatement,’ said Henley from her desk. ‘Jo hasn’t been off the phone since the conference started. Unfortunately, the calls have been less than helpful. Nine times out of ten it’s people calling to say they’re glad Fox-Carnell is dead.’
‘I can’t say that I disagree with them.’ Stanford picked up the notebook on his desk. ‘I hated every single minute of that original investigation and was glad to see the back of her and now she’s back on my bloody desk.’
‘What made her case so bad?’ asked Ramouter. ‘It’s not as if it was your first serial murder case.’
‘But it was the first one with kids. Fox-Carnell was charged with two murders and two attempted murders, but we’d originally arrested her for eight murders. There were three more children. The youngest was six years old.’
‘We all know she did it, but the CPS said the evidential test hadn’t been met.’ Henley’s tone was bitter. She’d thought the passage of time would have subsided the anger, but it was still there, like lava in a dormant volcano.
‘I can still remember Rhimes’s reaction,’ said Eastwood.
‘I can still hear the sound of the glass breaking when Rhimes put his fist through the window in his office,’ remembered Stanford.
Henley found herself drifting in and out of the conversation as she felt the full weight of carrying Rhimes’s secrets. She knew telling the team was the right thing to do but the question was, what would it do to them? It could strengthen or fracture the SCU.
‘We need to focus on the here and now,’ said Henley. ‘Fox-Carnell is our victim. Our case. Whether we like it or not. Stanford and Eastie, tell us how you got on with Durant and where he fits.’
‘We can find no links or associations between Durant and Fox-Carnell,’ said Eastwood as she jogged over to the smartboard with her laptop in hand.
‘With the exception of a caution for threatening words and behaviour, he’s as clean as a whistle,’ added Stanford. ‘Teaches economics at London South Bank University. Four kids, who I’m in the middle of checking out, and a crateful of kittens.’
‘We asked him about his whereabouts last Sunday, when the Ashcrofts were attacked, and he says that he was home,’ Eastwood continued.
‘Any way to verify that?’
‘Unless you’re Doctor Dolittle and can talk to his cats, then no,’ Stanford confirmed. ‘He denied harassment and blackmail and then refused to answer any more questions without a lawyer.’
‘So, we left.’ Eastwood turned to the smartboard and switched it on. ‘But the thing is, Durant lied to us when we asked him about his car. He said he sold his car, a 2012 Skoda Octavia, when his wife died. That was a lie.’
Eastwood tapped the screen, and a photograph of the car appeared. ‘This is the car Durant said he no longer owned, and these are photographs of the damage to the windscreen and bumper.’
‘It can’t be a coincidence,’ said Ramouter.
‘It’s impossible to say until we get forensics verified one way or the other,’ said Eastwood. ‘I also observed scratches to his hand and on the side of his face.’
‘We need to get him in.’ Henley walked over to the whiteboard and wrote ‘suspect’ and ‘Laurence Durant’ on the board. ‘The only problem is that I don’t want him sitting in an interview when we don’t have anything evidential to put to him. Any half decent legal rep or solicitor will advise him to keep his mouth shut and accuse us of fishing and they’d be right.’
‘I’m halfway through making an application for seizure,’ said Eastwood. ‘I should be done in an hour which means we could have the vehicle in our yard this evening if the application is granted.’
‘Great. If we get a hit with the car then I’ll be happy with our grounds for arrest.’ Henley turned to Ramouter. ‘Where are you with CCTV?’
‘Progress was slow because Southwark Council decided to dump us with footage that we don’t need. But it’s going to seem less like looking for a needle in a haystack now I’ve got Durant’s car details. I’m also waiting for the enhanced footage that we took from the neighbour to come back. I’ll chase them up.’
Henley felt herself relax a bit. ‘We seem to be making good progress. Ezra’s currently going through the data we downloaded from Soteria. He’s suggesting that a Soteria employee was responsible for the monitoring system being disabled.’
