Never Apologise, Never Explain - James Craig [23]
Carlyle gave his sergeant a questioning look.
‘Estate agents,’ explained Joe softly, sticking the last of the sandwich in his mouth.
‘What?’ asked Carlyle. ‘Are we selling the station?’
‘Buying it.’
‘Huh?’
‘Apparently,’ said Joe, ‘the station building was sold to a hedge fund or something as part of a job lot several years ago, in a sale and leaseback deal. The cash paid for a black hole in the pension fund. Anyway, now that the property market has collapsed we’re going to buy it back. According to the Police Review, the Met is going to make a fifty million pound profit.’
Carlyle watched as the two men disappeared round a corner, in search of other things to measure. ‘Better than the other way round, I suppose. But when did we become property developers rather than coppers?’ He scratched his head. ‘Is Henry Mills downstairs yet?’
‘Yeah.’ Joe had now turned his attention to a chocolate doughnut which then disappeared in three rapid bites. ‘He’s in interview room six. We’re ready to go.’
Riddled with prevarication, Carlyle was more interested in food. ‘I’m going to get a bite to eat,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll go and have a chat with him. In the meantime, round up all the reports, so we can go through everything this afternoon.’
‘Will do.’
‘Anything from Bassett yet?’
‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘He emailed through his preliminary findings. Nothing we don’t already know. The force used in killing her was more than you might expect from an old guy like Henry Mills, but in these type of domestic situations you never know.’
‘Quite.’
‘It looks like the skillet was the murder weapon. They found some hair and skin in the dishwasher pipes.’
‘Any fingerprints on the machine?’
‘His and hers – some smudges. But no others.’
‘Good. Nice and quick.’
‘Yeah, looks like we caught Bassett on a good day.’
‘Lucky old us. Anything else?’
‘Not really,’ Joe shrugged. ‘They found some other unidentified prints in the kitchen, but that’s about it.’
‘You’d expect that,’ Carlyle said.
‘Yeah, but some of them were on the window frame.’
Carlyle thought about that for a second. ‘Inside or outside?’
‘Inside,’ Joe replied. ‘I don’t know if they checked on the outside.’
‘Ask Bassett. I wonder if they were Chilean fingerprints?’
Joe laughed. ‘Even the mighty Sylvester Bassett won’t be able to tell us that.’
‘Shame. Anyway, see what he can tell us.’ Another thought popped into his head. ‘And see if you can find out anything about Agatha Mills on Google.’
Joe looked at him doubtfully.
‘I know, I know,’ Carlyle sighed, ‘but it’s worth five minutes. Just in case. Maybe there really is a Chilean connection of some sort.’
Joe’s frown deepened.
‘It we find anything it will help us understand where Mr Mills is coming from,’ Carlyle persisted. ‘See our way past the bullshit.’
Twenty minutes and a cheese sandwich and a double espresso later, Carlyle was sitting in interview room number six, across the desk from Henry Mills and his lawyer, a mousy, nervous-looking woman who looked and sounded Mediterranean. A police constable stood by the door to ensure fair play. Carlyle had never come across this lawyer before but he knew immediately that she wasn’t going to cause him any trouble. Not with this case, at least. Focused on that thought, he had forgotten her name even before she had finished spelling it.
Under the harsh lighting of the windowless room and missing the comforting arm of the Famous Grouse, Mills seemed jumpy. He was well on the way to drying out and clearly wasn’t too happy about it. He’s probably as uninspired by his representative as I am, Carlyle thought. He dropped an A5 pad on the desk, carefully pulled the cap off his biro, and jotted HM, 7/6 on the top of the page. The interview would be recorded but he liked to take his own notes. At least 99 per cent of what would get transcribed from the tapes would be rubbish – all ums, ahs and lawyerly equivocation – and he didn’t want to waste time by having