Written in Blood Page 5

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In reception,’ Drake said. ‘I’ve been at Wixley’s post-mortem.’

  ‘Bring me up to date.’

  Drake arrived a few minutes later and Price noticed his navy suit and double-cuffed shirt. The red spotted silk tie was perfectly knotted; Drake always looked the part, Price thought.

  ‘Sit down.’ Price waved to one of the visitor chairs. ‘Did the pathologist have anything interesting?’

  Drake chose his words with care as he settled himself in the chair. ‘He might have discovered pubic hairs in Wixley’s mouth and his genitalia.’

  Price grimaced.

  ‘And Kings thought he removed the remains of cocaine from his nose.’

  Price reached a hand to his shaved head and gave the back a good scratch. ‘That’s all we need. I hope the press don’t get hold of any of this.’

  ‘When I initially spoke to Mrs Wixley, she couldn’t offer us any explanation for her movements yesterday or Saturday.’

  Price squinted over at Drake as though the mere act of doing so was painful. ‘You’re not suggesting?’

  ‘If Nicholas Wixley had an interesting private life—’

  ‘Interesting.’ Price snorted.

  ‘We need to know what Laura Wixley knew about her husband and what she thought about it.’

  ‘This could turn out to be really messy. She’s a deputy chief constable.’

  ‘Everything about her reaction felt distant, wrong somehow.’

  ‘That doesn’t make her a killer,’

  ‘I know but—’

  ‘No buts about it, Ian. The crime scene suggests it’s a copycat killing inspired by the alphabet murders. Any inkling that Zavier Cornwell was innocent?’

  Drake shook his head, recalling the horror on Justin Selston’s face at the mere suggestion Cornwell wasn’t the alphabet killer. We need to give this top priority.’ Price paused. ‘He was a judge for Christ’s sake. The chief constable and both assistant chief constables in Cardiff have emailed me asking to be kept in the loop.’

  Price watched as Drake buttoned his jacket and left.

  * * *

  Gareth Winder and Luned Thomas both jumped to their feet when Drake entered the Incident Room. Drake shared a ‘good morning’ with his team, and Sara nodded a greeting. A grainy photograph of Nicholas Wixley had been pinned to the board.

  Winder said, ‘I printed it from an image on the barristers’ chambers’ website.’

  Drake made his way over. Nicholas Wixley’s eyes suggested he really did know better than anybody else. He had full lips and a healthy-looking complexion. It was a world away from the decaying mass of flesh Drake had seen that morning. It was almost difficult to believe the face in front of him belonged to the same person.

  He turned to face the team.

  ‘The pathologist believes there is evidence to suggest he was entertaining at least one other person last night – let’s assume for the time being it was a woman. She’s the focus of the inquiry.’ Drake tipped his head at Luned and Winder. ‘I want both of you over in Pwllheli as soon as we’ve finished. Get the house-to-house organised and talk to Horton and any of Wixley’s sailing pals. Try and find out if they knew anyone he was seeing. And we need to trace the man who fought with Wixley – Jamie someone – he works for a John Speakman. There was an argument between Wixley and Jamie the day before he was killed.’ Winder and Luned barely moved, clearly understanding this was going to be a high-profile inquiry.

  Drake drew himself up to his full height. ‘Superintendent Price is taking a personal interest in this case, but we treat it like every other murder inquiry. What makes this case different is that Wixley was a newly appointed judge and his wife is a senior police officer. So, if you get anybody from the press making contact with you, I want to know immediately.’

  Three serious pairs of eyes registered their understanding of what Drake told them.

  The main door, banging against the wall as Mike Foulds barged in, broke the silence in the room. ‘I need a word, Ian.’

  Chapter 7

  Tuesday 26th March

  11.08 am

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the pressure I’ve had from Superintendent Price.’

  Mike Foulds sat in one of the visitor chairs in Drake’s office, and put the laptop on the desk and a plastic evidence bag carefully on top. It had been three days since Drake had last sat in his room. It meant he needed to check the position of his daughter’s photographs, make certain the columns of Post-it notes were in the correct order. He even surreptitiously gave the bin at his feet a checking glance. He hoped his rituals went unnoticed by Mike Foulds, who clearly had the recent hassle and aggravation from Price prominent in his mind.

  ‘Nicholas Wixley had recently been appointed as a judge. And—’

  ‘I know all that. It’s all this implied criticism that we’re not going to do a decent job I don’t like. And he wanted everything to be done in double-quick time. All my spare investigators worked late last night. And they were back first thing this morning. Some of them have only had five hours’ sleep.’

  Drake wondered why Foulds wasn’t there with them. The crime scene manager continued. ‘I was in early finalising work on this laptop and mobile we recovered from Wixley’s house.’

  A delay of a day or two was normal in getting electronics cleared for his team to examine so it impressed Drake that the forensics department had released the computer so quickly.

  Foulds continued. ‘I’m going to report to you on this. You’re the SIO. You can deal with Price.’ Foulds adjusted his position and leaned on the desk with one elbow. ‘The white powder we found has proved positive as cocaine. And it was enough for substantial personal use.’

  ‘We need to trace his dealer,’ Drake said, thinking aloud.

  ‘I’m going to expedite an analysis but the preliminary testing I did this morning suggests it’s of reasonable quality.’

  ‘The pathologist thought he had recovered cocaine from Wixley’s nose.’

  Foulds nodded. ‘And we discovered semen on the bedding. I should have the DNA results very quickly.’ Foulds stood up and glanced at his watch. ‘I had better get back there now. Was Wixley from Rotherham by any chance?’

  Drake looked puzzled. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘He was wearing Rotherham United socks. The name of the club is sewn vertically on the back.’

  Once Foulds had left, Drake scooped up the bag with Wixley’s mobile and walked out into the Incident Room and over to Sara’s desk. ‘The CSIs found a quantity of cocaine at Wixley’s house.’

  Sara raised an eyebrow. ‘Do we interview Mrs Wixley in relation to a possible possession charge?’

  The same thing had briefly occurred to Drake, but she was the wife of a murder victim and she wasn’t in possession even if it had been in her home. ‘The best we could consider would be to report it to the City of Manchester Professional Standards Department but as DCC Wixley is the head of that department it might be tricky.’

  He placed the mobile telephone on her desk. ‘You get started on his mobile contacts while I work on his laptop.’

  Before returning to his office, Drake detoured to the kitchen and organised coffee. After spooning the correct proportion of ground coffee into a cafetière, he waited for the kettle to boil and cool, for the required minute and a half. Walking back, brewing coffee in one hand and a china mug in another, he was reminded of how Annie pulled his leg about the way he fussed over making coffee. Her gentle ribbing had been far different from the critical comments of his ex-wife Sian.

  Drake booted up the laptop easily enough. Most of the icons he recognised as familiar – Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. Navigating his way to the Documents section, he found various folders, and clicked open one entitled ‘financial planning’. More yellow icons for each of the past eight years suggested Nicholas Wixley was fastidious. Opening the oldest folder, Drake noticed several more with titles relating to investment
s and savings accounts. Even eight years ago, Nicholas Wixley’s income had exceeded Drake’s ten times over. The tax Wixley paid made a substantial contribution to reducing the national debt, Drake thought. Becoming a circuit judge clearly wasn’t going to benefit him financially – it was likely to mean a pay cut – but the appointment meant he became ‘His Honour Judge Wixley’, a status he must have coveted. Drake moved onto the most recent year, when the investment strategy Wixley adopted had paid healthy dividends. Any reduction in income as a result of his elevation to a judge would have been softened by the several million pounds he had already saved.

  Drake jotted down the details of Wixley’s bank accounts, and put in hand all the usual protocols for a full financial search. He made a mental note to delegate Luned to complete that task; she had a more thorough mindset than Gareth Winder, even though he was her senior.

  Drake turned to some of the other personal files in the Documents section. One was called genealogy and it piqued Drake’s interest. Other folders emerged after he’d clicked it open. Another was entitled clippings, and Drake pored over a selection of newspaper articles about a Neil Thorpe. He was a prominent rugby league player in the Wigan squad, who had played for Great Britain in the last Rugby League World Cup. Others related to more Thorpe family members and went back several years. There appeared to be no obvious connection between Thorpe and Wixley. Why had Nicholas Wixley assembled this collection of cuttings?

  By midday Drake’s stomach and headache reminded him he had eaten very little. He had one more folder to read before lunch – the title ‘Betting Shops’ intrigued him, as did the mass of files and spreadsheets inside. Each had an address and in the first he read down the list of names to discover if Wixley was on the list. He wasn’t; although there were lots of ‘Williams’. He mulled over its significance as he heard Sara in the Incident Room answering a call.

  Sara raised her voice. ‘Were on our way.’ Moments later she appeared on the threshold of his door. ‘We’ve got an eyewitness, boss.’

  Chapter 8

  Tuesday 26th March

  2.45 pm

  Drake hammered the car along the A55. Sara didn’t bother with the satnav; they both knew the route back to the Llŷn Peninsula. She had spent the morning working her way through Nicholas Wixley’s mobile telephone, identifying texts and calls: several to Colin Horton, Wixley’s sailing companion, and other individuals she’d have to identify. Sara assumed a WhatsApp group called PI referred to his boat and its crew. She would call each member in turn. On Saturday Wixley had texted his wife three times but not at all on Sunday. It was difficult to make out the tone from a message with few words, but they struck Sara as cold, businesslike, and not a digital kiss in sight. Sara scolded herself – she wasn’t dealing with a teenager, but a barrister recently appointed a judge.

  ‘What did Mike Foulds have to say?’ Sara said as they approached the Penmaenmawr tunnel.

  ‘He confirmed the white powder we found was cocaine, which ties in with the pathologist’s comments about a white substance he removed from Wixley’s nose at the post-mortem.’

  It didn’t surprise Sara that a senior member of the legal profession had a recreational drug habit. Cocaine was now the drug of choice for the intelligentsia.

  ‘I’ve emailed the company that distributes the Michael Jason clothing brand. Hopefully we should have details of all the retailers quickly,’ Sara said. ‘The pink gilet cost over a hundred and fifty pounds on the high street so it’s not a run-of-the-mill item.’

  ‘We’ll need to work on the contacts in his mobile over the next few days.’

  That was exactly what Sara feared. The vacation she had booked to Ireland with a group of friends over the Easter bank holiday would be impossible now. Sometimes she just hated being a detective. On occasions like this she rued her decision not to train as a teacher or a lawyer.

  They reached the road leading to the Wixley property and Sara noticed a scientific support vehicle parked in the drive – a yellow crime scene perimeter tape flickered gently in the early afternoon breeze. Sara guessed it would be several more days before the investigators had finished their painstaking work. On the opposite side, two men in their sixties stood gossiping. One had a brightly coloured check shirt and red cord trousers. His companion wore a pair of Bermuda shorts.

  ‘You can always spot the tourists,’ Drake said, nodding at the man’s bare legs. ‘They wear their shorts whatever the weather.’

  They left the car and Sara took in the surrounding properties. On their first visit, she hadn’t paid them much attention. Now she took in the collection of old bungalows with dormer windows, suggesting bedrooms in converted attics, others with newly slated roofs. Paved drives and neat gardens meant owners with money to spend on the upkeep of their properties.

  ‘We need to speak to a Mrs McAllister and the name of her property is Haul a Gwynt.’ Drake tipped his head towards a small bungalow tucked between two large extended older houses.

  Sara reached the gate and registered the paint peeling around the window frames, weeds punching their way through a slate-waste strewn drive. The property appeared out of place, as did the ten-year-old Fiesta parked in front of a rusting garage door.

  Mrs McAllister opened the door and invited Drake and Sara inside. It was like walking back in time. She matched her home and car perfectly. Sara paused for a moment, enjoying the view over the sea and headland.

  ‘Can I make you a pot of tea? McAllister said. She was in her late seventies, no more than five foot four, and her Crimplene skirt reminded Sara of her grandmother.

  ‘Thank you,’ Drake said.

  He even smiled. When Sara first worked with him he would have declined the offer of tea and definitely refused coffee, and she put his new human face down to his relationship with Annie. Sara had yet to meet this mysterious new girlfriend, but she was convinced Annie was having a positive impact on Drake’s interpersonal skills.

  The room had a warm, lived-in feel, Sara thought, even if it could do with a good coat of paint. Tassels dangled from the bottom of a sofa covered with highly patterned scatter cushions.

  Mrs McAllister returned with a pot of tea and three cups and saucers. She fussed about, announcing that the tea had to brew properly, and sat down on the chair opposite Drake and Sara.

  ‘I understand you spoke with one of the uniformed police officers about what you saw on the night Nicholas Wixley was killed.’

  ‘I’ve known Mr Wixley and his wife since they bought the house. My Bill used to do some gardening for them. He never did have much of a pension, so the extra income was a help.’

  She got up and poured tea. ‘I must say I preferred Mrs Wixley. I thought that he was a bit of a cold fish.’

  ‘How long have you lived here Mrs McAllister?’ Sara took the initiative, fearing Drake would get straight into asking what she had seen rather than asking some preliminary questions. Mrs McAllister struck her as a lonely old woman, so spending a few moments passing the time of day with her might be time well spent.

  ‘Bill inherited the house from his father who was a local farmer. We moved here after Bill left the merchant navy.’

  Mrs McAllister gazed off into the distance towards the horizon through the windows of the sitting room. ‘I don’t know what’ll happen to the place after I’ve gone. My Jennifer wouldn’t be interested.’

  ‘Is that your daughter?’

  Mrs McAllister gave her a wistful glance. ‘Jennifer lives in Brisbane. I haven’t seen her for…’

  ‘Were you at home last weekend when Mr Wixley was killed?’ Drake interrupted their chat, clearly eager to get the interview under way. Mrs McAllister put her cup and saucer down on a small table by her side and nodded seriously.

  ‘Can you tell us what you remember?’

  ‘I saw him arriving on his own on Saturday afternoon. He pulled a suitcase and a briefcase out of the boot of his car.’ It sounded like Mrs McAllister had been keeping a very careful eye on her neighbo
ur. ‘He passed me later in the car when I was going out for a walk. He completely ignored me. He didn’t even raise his hand. Some people have got no manners.’

  ‘Did you see anybody visiting the property?’ Drake said.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs McAllister paused theatrically and took another sip of tea. ‘It was on Sunday evening. A red car arrived and a woman… young woman… a girl really, got out. I was sitting in my favourite chair.’ She tipped her head towards a recliner in the window. ‘And it must have been nine o’clock. There’s a street light outside the house. I saw him making certain the car was parked right out of the way as though he wanted it hidden.’

  ‘Can you describe the woman?’

  ‘She was tall and thin and wore high heels.’ Mrs McAllister struck a prudish note.

  ‘And did you notice the registration number of this red car?’

  Mrs McAllister shook her head.

  ‘And have you seen the woman here before?’ Drake said.

  Another shake of the head mixed with a look of disgust.

  Sara asked. ‘Did you see what clothes she was wearing?’

  Mrs McAllister paused before shaking her head once more. Sara finished scribbling notes in her pocketbook while Drake continued, establishing that none of the other neighbours had visitors and that the road had been quiet that evening.

  ‘If you remember anything else then do please contact us.’

  Sara complimented Mrs McAllister on some of the china exhibited in a glass cupboard in the hallway as they left, and the older woman smiled at Sara when she admired her pictures of Pwllheli and Cardigan Bay. Walking down the path, Drake and Sara stood by the corner of the property looking over at Nicholas Wixley’s home.

  There was an unobstructed view towards his driveway. Was Mrs McAllister more than a nosy neighbour?

  ‘How reliable do you think she is, boss?’

  ‘She was quite clear about what she saw. And we have the gilet the woman possibly left behind. Now we need to find her.’