‘How do we even begin to prosecute this?’ Kelly said.
Chapter 64
‘Evening, Melvin,’ Kelly said.
It was late. Gone 9 p.m. by the time she went downstairs at Eden House to interview Melvin Stone.
Kevin Streeting was recovering from a gunshot wound in hospital, guarded by armed officers. His DNA was being rushed through the lab to compare to that found in room 13. Paul Burlington had been bailed because there was a question mark over whose jurisdiction Dow Bank House was. Sandy Cooper had been escorted to an undisclosed location and Del Booker told Kelly to back the hell off. She asked him where he’d left his balls, and he threatened her with early redundancy.
She was tempted to take it and fuck off into the sunset but she didn’t want to leave her team. She wanted to see Emma have her baby, and Dan become a great dad. She wanted to sit in Calf Close Bay on the pebble beach, sharing a flask of coffee with a nip of Baileys in it with Kate. She wanted to listen to Fin’s terrible Father Ted impressions.
In the end it was only the little people who could make a difference.
It wasn’t leaders who changed the world but people who chose to follow them.
Had she heard Joe Folly say that?
The ones who gave the orders were immune from penalty; wasn’t that always how it worked?
Not always, she reminded herself.
They got the unpleasantries out of the way.
Melvin was confused.
‘What happened to your clothes?’ he asked.
She looked at the police psychologist sitting next to him and she gave Kelly the look that suggested she was getting nothing out of this unfortunate and confused old man.
She sat back and studied him up close. He looked around the room as if he was seeing the Sistine Chapel for the first time.
It was quite a show.
He was fit to be interviewed but not to be held overnight and would be transferred to a secure ward after she’d asked him some questions.
She opened her laptop and turned it around so Melvin could see it and started the footage of him walking along the corridor behind the Heron Hall Hotel, towards the stairwell that led to Jamie’s floor, at ten minutes to five o’clock on Tuesday evening. Melvin reacted vacantly.
‘What’s that in your hand, Melvin?’
He peered at the footage. ‘That’s Ursula’s scarf! It was tied around Acorn’s neck; where did you get it?’
It was abundantly clear that Melvin Stone was so far gone into a world they didn’t understand that their only option was to hand him straight over to a public defence lawyer.
She showed him the footage they’d just watched of him in a lab, violent and aggressive, but he didn’t react.
‘That’s you, Melvin,’ she said.
He nodded and smiled.
‘Did you fight with this man when you went to his room?’ she asked.
She showed him a photo of Jamie Robbins.
He shook his head.
They’d taken DNA swabs and digital fingerprints from him, and they had a beautiful match with the smashed glass in Jamie’s room. He still wore Paul’s boots, though the mud was dry now.
It was enough to convince the CPS to charge him with Jamie’s murder.
