Little Boy Blue - страница 30

‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps our paths overlapped on the way to work, perhaps we use the same gym -’

‘Mr Elder works from home, keeps very different hours from you and to the best of our knowledge didn’t have a gym membership.’

‘I can’t explain it then.’

‘You’ve never met him?’

‘Never. I’ve said this three times to three different officers now. Perhaps if you tried listening to me, we could sort this mess out?’

Helen was about to respond when the door opened and Jackson’s lawyer hurried in. Helen knew Jonathan Spitz to be an astute and experienced lawyer and he wasted no time in reprimanding her for proceeding without him. Helen ignored his protests and carried on:

‘Mr Jackson has confirmed that he didn’t know Mr Elder and can’t account for the DNA samples we found on the victim’s face.’

Spitz looked relieved that no serious damage had been done.

‘I’d now like to ask your client about his phone history. I’m showing Mr Jackson a black iPhone. Can you confirm that this is yours?’

Jackson nodded.

‘For the tape, please, Mr Jackson.’

‘Yes.’

‘When we spoke yesterday,’ Charlie interjected, ‘you said that you’d never contacted Mr Elder via email, message, phone -’

‘Correct.’

‘Yet dozens of Snapchat messages were sent from this device to Mr Elder. I have the dates of some of them here’ – Charlie pulled a sheet of paper from her file – ‘August the tenth, August the fourteenth, September the first, September the sixth, September the fourteenth. The list goes on.’

‘I didn’t send them. The phone must have been cloned or something -’

‘It’s curious though that the gap in messages in the second half of August coincides with the dates that you and your wife were on holiday in Santorini. The data roaming charges on your account give us a pretty good picture of your movements and, of course, we’re double-checking this with Sally as we speak.’

For the first time since they’d started, Helen saw Jackson react. Clearly he was not keen on his wife being dragged into this.

‘Furthermore, we’ve had a chance to look at some of the other messages and texts you sent from this phone. And it’s interesting that the same grammatical tics that we see in your texts also crop up in the Snapchat messages that Mr Elder received. You always seem to leave a gap between a word and a question mark, for example, and you’re pretty scrupulous about using commas. Not everyone is as fastidious in their messaging these days.’

It was said with a smile, but provoked a blank response from Jackson.

‘This is all circumstantial,’ Spitz butted in. ‘Do you have any actual evidence against my client?’

‘Apart from the DNA evidence, you mean?’ Helen rejoined. ‘I should point out that no other DNA was found on the victim, hence our interest in talking to your client.’

Helen let that settle before continuing.

‘I’d like now to move on to your movements on the night of the fourteenth. You told my colleague that you left work at seven p.m. and went for a drink at the Saracen’s Head.’

Jackson said nothing. He appeared to be waiting for Helen’s next move before committing himself.

‘That’s strange, because your phone was transmitting in the Banister Park area of the city – very near to the Torture Rooms – at around eight p.m. that night and again at just after twelve thirty a.m. the following morning. I’m assuming that in the interim you were in the basement club and thus out of reception?’

‘I don’t know anything about the Torture Rooms or Banister Park. Somebody’s obviously messed up -’

‘Yet another mistake, you do seem to be unlucky…’

‘I went to the Saracen’s Head, I watched the game, had a few drinks -’

‘Why the Saracen’s Head, out of interest? You work in Lansdowne Hill, you live in Freemantle. Going to a pub near the hospital seems an excessive diversion.’

‘For God’s sake, I like the beer there, so -’

‘What beer do they serve?’

‘Shepherd Neame, I think… Adnams, a couple of local brews.’

‘Actually they haven’t served Shepherd Neame in over two years,’ Charlie interjected. ‘I went there yesterday afternoon, spoke to the bar staff. Nobody remembers seeing you there on Tuesday night. In fact, I couldn’t find a single person to back up your version of events.’