Gareth was one of those people, he decided, that just being in the company of the law made him feel instantly guilty. Everything about him told them he was guilty — his voice, his sweaty palms, his increasingly furtive looks. He bet they could fasten a lie detector on him and he’d come out responsible for anything from shoplifting to terrorism. Whatever it was they were looking for when they sat him in that sterile interview room he was certain they believed they found it in him. The officer who sat opposite him told him to relax, it was only a question or two, that’s all; shouldn’t take too long. Routine. He liked how they used that word. Just being in here was anything but routine.
‘What’s all this about?’ Gareth asked, glancing apprehensively at the CCTV camera in the corner of the room.
All in good time, the officer told him. He needed to confirm his name, date of birth, address, which he dutifully did. As he was finishing another man came into the room, dressed in plain clothes, closely followed by another dressed similarly. There was an obvious handover and the uniformed officer rose and left, the other two taking his place, sitting side by side opposite Gareth.
The older of the two looked familiar. Large-framed, good head of hair but almost grey, eyes that had seen it all and needed to rest; his partner was far younger, slim, quite handsome, a jaw that sported hair somewhere between a fashionable five o’clock shadow and stubble. He guessed they represented both ends of the career spectrum; starting out, seeing it out.
The elder introduced himself in a quiet, unhurried drawl as Detective Chief Inspector Stafford of the Greater Manchester Police; his colleague was Detective Inspector Styles.
‘How long have you lived at Deller’s End, Mr Davies?’ he asked. He told him. ‘And where did you move from?’
‘London.’
His head nodded gently. ‘Bit of a change, London to rural Wales. Don’t you find it a bit isolated?’
‘It suits me fine,’ said Gareth. ‘What is all this about?’
‘You’re a photographer,’ he said, looking down at the table.
‘I get by.’
‘Live on your own?’
‘Yes. Is that unusual?’
He flashed him a pasted-on smile. ‘Not at all, Mr Davies.’ From a cardboard folder that sat on the table he pulled out a photograph and slid it over to Gareth. ‘Do you recognise that, Mr Davies?’
He did, instantly. It was the painted symbol from his living room wall and he told them so. ‘One of your guys told me it was probably a graffiti tag. Seems a lot of bother to drag someone down all the way from Manchester to investigate a bit of vandalism.’
Slowly the officer removed another photograph and pushed it across the table so that it sat alongside the first. ‘Actually this photograph is the one from your wall; the first came from elsewhere,’ he said.
Gareth held them up together. ‘They look the same. Do you suppose they were done by the same person then?’
He ignored the question. ‘Have you ever lived in Manchester, Mr Davies?’
That took no time at all to answer. ‘Never. All I know about Manchester is that it has two football teams and a canal.’
‘A visit recently?’
‘No.’
‘Not even briefly?’
‘Not even for a nanosecond. What has the graffiti on my wall got to do with Manchester?’
He slid yet another photograph over. A young woman smiling for the camera, caught in the bright glare of the flash. She looked like she’d been taken unawares.
At first glance Gareth thought he was looking at Erica, and his heart lurched. But then he realised it wasn’t her, similar yes, but definitely not Erica.
‘Do you recognise this woman?’ said Stafford. The younger officer called Styles leant forward a fraction.
Gareth shook his head. ‘Never seen her before.’
‘Are you certain? Never met her, even briefly? Perhaps at a party somewhere, on the streets, in a cafe? Take another closer look,’ he insisted. ‘See if it refreshes your memory.’
Gareth pushed it back across the table. ‘Never clapped eyes on her till this moment when you showed me this. Who is she? Am I supposed to know her?’
‘Do you recognise the name Ania Dabrowska?’
‘It’s not a name I’m familiar with,’ he said. I think I’d remember that one; Polish, is it?’
‘Good guess,’ he said passing a sideways glance at Styles.
‘Hardly,’ Gareth countered, ‘I’ve known a few Polish people. Youngsters coming over for the work.’
‘And you are absolutely certain you never knew this young Polish person who came over for the work?’
‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ he said, exasperated, ‘I have never seen this woman before. Who the hell is she and what has she to do with me? Why am I being questioned like this?’
DCI Stafford sat back in his chair, stretching his back and shoulders. ‘You mean who was she. She’s dead, Mr Davies. She was murdered.’
Gareth was stunned. Then he made the connection: the slot on the TV news some time ago, when he was in the hotel in St Davids; the young woman found dead in a Manchester flat. The man opposite him was the officer leading the investigation, the one who was asking for witnesses. That’s why he looked vaguely familiar.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Gareth, ‘you don’t suspect me of having had a hand in her murder, do you?’ He could feel his insides screw up like newspaper and his legs go weak. His mouth was mopped dry in an instant. He looked from elder to younger and back again, searching their dispassionate eyes.
‘As you can understand, Mr Davies,’ Stafford said, coming forward to lean on the table, ‘we need to chase any lead we find, and, naturally, want to eliminate you from our enquiries.’
Gareth’s hand swept back his hair in a nervous gesture he’d had since a kid. The tension was getting so tight he could hear it squeak. ‘I hadn’t realised I had to be eliminated from anything.’
‘Are you aware of how this woman died?’
‘I heard something on the news, briefly. Didn’t take too much notice if I’m to be totally honest.’
‘Every limb severed from her body.’ He stared hard into Gareth’s eyes looking for a reaction. ‘All her limbs set beside the torso, the head removed and placed on top of it all. The entire body covered in quick lime. She’d been there months before she was discovered. It wasn’t a pretty sight, as you can imagine, Mr Davies.’
His face was twisted in horror at the image the officer so brutally conjured up. He could feel himself beginning to sweat profusely. ‘It’s a terrible thing to have happened,’ he said. ‘But like I said, what has this got to do with me?’
Stafford hesitated then put an index finger firmly down onto the photo of the symbol. ‘What we can’t understand, Mr Davies, is why the same image that appeared on the flat of a murdered woman in Manchester should appear on the wall of your cottage in rural Wales. Knowledge of the symbol hasn’t been made public yet. And yet here we have the very same — same size, same colour, same black paint, in your cottage. Naturally we are more than a little curious.’
Gareth could feel a headache beginning to come on, pain blistering at the base of his skull and threatening to engulf his entire head. ‘Naturally it’s the same person,’ he said.
‘Naturally,’ he agreed, raising a brow. ‘Can we get you a drink of water, Mr Davies? You look like you might need one.’
‘Are you accusing me of murder?’ he gasped. ‘Shouldn’t I have a lawyer or something?’
‘Why, do you think you need one?’
‘I haven’t done anything!’ he said, anger building up.
‘Of course not,’ said Stafford. He smiled disarmingly. ‘Just routine questions, sir. No need to get alarmed.’ He went again to the folder. That damn folder, thought Gareth! ‘Perhaps you can explain a couple more things for us, Mr Davies.’ He brought out a number of documents, separated them and showed him a driver’s licence. ‘Do you recognise the photograph on there?’
Gareth’s eyes widened. ‘That’s me!’ he said. ‘It’s a photo I use on my website.’
‘But that’s definitely not your name, is it?’
‘No, of course not. I’m not Daniel Burgess. What is this?’
‘And so this isn’t your birth certificate either?’ he said. The name appearing on that was Daniel Burgess too.
‘I’ve no idea what all this is about. Has someone been trying to steal my identity?’
‘Or someone’s been trying to create a new one. Interestingly the real Daniel Burgess has been dead twenty-five years. These were found in the flat where we discovered the murdered woman. And one last thing…’ he turned to Styles who up till this point hadn’t said a word.
‘You’re a photographer,’ DI Styles noted. His voice was crisper, more incisive. Like he was in a hurry to get to wherever he was going.
‘So I already said.’
‘We found two of your framed, limited edition prints in one of the rooms. Bought from Foster Specialist Art Galleries. Seems you have a real fan.’
‘This is getting weird,’ said Gareth.
‘Very. You knocked over a young woman in the lane not far from your cottage, is that right? A day or so before you discovered the symbol on the wall.’
‘Yes. I gave a statement to the police.’ An officer came from behind and placed a glass of water on the table. Gareth picked it up and drank the lukewarm contents, glad of the relief on his parched throat. ‘You think the two are connected?’
‘You’d never met her before?’ said Styles. He replied no. ‘Did she give you her name? I understand you visited her at the hospital.’
‘I wanted to check on her,’ he said. ‘I wanted to check she was OK. I was worried I’d done something terrible.’ He hesitated. ‘She never told me her name,’ he lied. He felt himself heat up because of it. What was he doing? Lying to the police!
‘Did she tell you anything about herself, anything at all?’
‘Do you think she has something to do with the murder in Manchester?’
‘Please answer the question,’ said Styles. ‘Did she tell you anything about herself?’
‘No, not really.’
‘No not really, or simply no?’
‘No.’
‘Describe her.’
He did so, but remained deliberately vague about the description. ‘She looked scared though, as if she were on the run from someone. That was my first impression.’
Styles glanced down at his notes. ‘It says in your statement that someone had been snooping around your car on the night of the accident. Did you see anyone?’
He said no. ‘I thought I heard someone outside the car, thought I saw a shadow, footprints in the snow, but now I can’t be sure. Maybe I made them myself; I panicked, because I thought I’d done real damage to her.’ He took another swig and drained the glass. ‘Is she in some kind of trouble?’
‘We don’t know, Mr Davies,’ said Styles. He went on to ask where he was during a range of dates and times. Gareth managed with difficulty to provide an answer for the majority.
‘Am I a suspect?’ he asked.
‘There’s definitely something strange going on, Mr Davies,’ said Stafford. ‘But don’t worry you’re not being charged or anything.’ He smiled but Gareth wasn’t put at ease.
Just when he thought the questioning was drawing to a close they went over the same things, framed differently each time but designed, he thought, to trip him up. Another hour later he was beginning to feel the stress, his head crackling with pain, his body telling him he needed sleep. It had turned into a very long day.
It was during the final stage that Gareth inadvertently gave away the fact that he was in possession of Erica’s box of jewellery. As soon as he let it slip he cursed to himself.
‘You never mentioned this before,’ said Stafford, his eyes suddenly alight with the thrill of a new chase.
‘I didn’t think it important,’ he said lamely.
‘Where is this box now?’ he asked him. ‘And what did you intend doing with this jewellery, Mr Davies?’
‘I guess I was holding onto it in case she came back.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s back at the cottage.’
‘Holding onto it… I guess you were,’ he said. ‘You weren’t withholding information, of course.’
‘As far as I know it was a box belonging to a young woman, that’s all. Now she’s a young woman involved in something dodgy, according to you.’
‘Perhaps she is. We don’t know yet, Mr Davies. But we’d like to see this box.’
‘You weren’t planning to use the jewellery for your own ends by any chance?’ asked Styles.
‘Of course not!’ Gareth burst. ‘What are you suggesting? I’d have probably handed it over to the police eventually!’
‘Probably,’ echoed Styles.
‘Had I known there might be a connection with this Manchester thing then I wouldn’t have hesitated.’
‘Well it could be stolen,’ said Stafford. ‘A boxful of jewellery is rather suspicious. And you must contact us immediately if this woman turns up again.’
Gareth nodded dumbly. ‘One more thing which might not be important and I don’t want to sound paranoid. There’s this man; I think he’s been following me,’ he said. ‘An American or Canadian, don’t know which. He was asking about the woman at the hospital and apparently he turned up in my village looking for me.’
Styles cocked his head. ‘Can you describe him?’
He did so, as much as he could remember. ‘Seems you can recall him better than the young woman,’ noticed Stafford.
‘One of those things, I guess,’ said Gareth tiredly. ‘He was quite distinctive.’
Then it was all over. They reminded him to contact them if the woman or this man turned up again. They’d be round soon to collect the box of jewellery and run some forensic tests on the symbol. He was driven home, totally hollowed out and exhausted.
Things couldn’t get any worse, he thought.