The Mersey Ferry Murders

3. A New Widow

CHAPTER 3

A NEW WIDOW

A knock on the door of the Hill’s apartment was answered by a petite woman police officer. Ross was pleased that DCI Lewis had possessed the sensitivity to send a woman to break the news to Adrian Hill’s wife.

He identified himself and Izzie Drake to the young officer, thinking to himself how young she looked, (or was he getting older?).

“Constable Brenda Fry, sir,” she said, her voice firm and professional sounding. “She’s through here,” as she led Ross and Drake into the well-appointed lounge/dining area of the apartment. There, sitting on a new-looking black leather sofa, her head down, her body clearly wracked with tears, was the grief-stricken figure of Pamela Hill.

“She’s hardly said a word sir,” Fry whispered, and then, in a louder voice, “Pam, this is Detective Inspector Ross and Detective Sergeant Drake. They’re going to need to speak to you.”

“Thank you, Constable,” Ross moved towards the woman on the sofa, as Fry hesitated before asking Drake, “Do you need me to stay?”

Drake looked at Ross who gave a brief shake of his head, allowing her to reply, “No thank you, Constable. You can go now. Thanks for doing a difficult job and holding the fort till we got here. The other officers are helping with a house to house, and you can see how they’re getting on, and join them.”

Ross interrupted. “Hang on, Constable Fry, you can do something for me,”

“Sir?”

“Go and see the man sitting on the step of the ambulance outside. His name’s Knott. Ask him if he’s seen any strangers hanging around the complex in the last couple of weeks or received any strange phone calls. He was pretty much out of it when we spoke to him. Hopefully, he’ll have his wits about him by now. Do that and wait for us with the Crime Scene people, please.”

Delighted to have been asked to do something she considered important to the investigation, Fry almost stood to attention as she replied, “Yes sir, I can do that,” and she turned on her heel and almost skipped her way out of the apartment.

Ross now turned to the matter in hand.

“Mrs Hill, I’m so sorry for your loss. I know you must be absolutely devastated, but we have to ask you some questions.”

It seemed to take a great effort for the sobbing woman to raise her head to look at Ross. When she did, Ross saw a good-looking woman, probably in her late forties, whose face was a mask of tears. Her make-up had run and smudged, and he noticed a half-empty box of tissues that he guessed PC Fry strategically placed beside her on the arm of the sofa, which she reached for, taking another tissue from the box, and blowing her nose. A second tissue followed which she used to wipe her already tear-reddened eyes.

“Why?” she sobbed, and then, “Why Adrian? He never harmed a soul.”

Ross took her words to lead into his first question.

“I know this is terribly difficult for you, but can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your husband?”

“Nobody,” she exclaimed, her voice weak and trembling. “The policewoman said he’d been stabbed. Is that what happened? Did someone try to mug him or something like that?”

Ross was glad that PC Fry hadn’t gone into any details of the murder with the unfortunate woman.

“We’re not sure exactly what took place yet, Mrs Hill. We’re still trying to piece things together.”

Izzie Drake pitched in with a question.

“How well did Adrian know Phillip Knott? Was he a close friend?”

“Phil, what’s he got to do with it? You don’t think he had anything to do with Adrian being attacked, surely.”

“No, not at all,” Drake reassured her. “It’s just that Adrian’s attacker used Mr Knott’s car as a decoy, a blind to draw your husband in. Mr Knott was also attacked and knocked unconscious.”

“Oh God, is he okay?”

“He’s not badly hurt, but please, can you answer my question?” Drake pressed for a reply.

“Oh yes, sorry. They weren’t what you’d call good friends. We knew Phil and Rosie, her real name’s Rosemary, as good neighbours. Adrian and Phil occasionally went for a drink together, but that’s as far as it went.”

“What did your husband do for a living?” Ross asked, and over the next fifteen minutes, he and Drake managed to draw out as much relevant information as they could about the dead man, from his widow, who was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain her equilibrium in the face of her terrible loss.

“We’re going to leave you for now, Mrs Hill,” he eventually said as he and Drake prepared to depart, “but we will need you to perform the official identification of your husband’s body. That can wait till tomorrow. Have you anyone, a relative or friend who can come and be with you for now?”

Pam had appeared to drift off into her own world of all-encompassing grief and Ross had to repeat his question, eventually receiving a reply.

“Yes, my sister, Ann, lives in Formby. The young policewoman called her before you got here. As soon as her husband, Sam gets home from work, to take care of the kids, she’ll be coming over. She should be here any time now.”

Right on cue, the doorbell rang, and Izzie Drake made Pam Hill stay seated while she answered the door, returning to the room a minute later with Ann Terry in tow. The two sisters immediately collapsed into each other’s arms and Ross and Drake took this as sign that it was a good time to leave.

Ross left one of his cards on the coffee table in the centre of the lounge, and said, “My card’s on the table, Mrs Hill. Please call me if you think of anything that might help, or if you remember anything you may have forgotten.”

It was the sister who replied, having quickly assumed the role of big sister and taken charge of the situation.

“She will, Inspector, but I think my sister needs some time to come to terms with all this, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” Ross replied, happy at least that the newly widowed Pam Hill wouldn’t be on her own after he and Drake took their leave of her.

As he and Drake reached the fresh air, he could see that Miles Booker and his crime scenes technicians were still hard at work, going over Phil Knott’s Range Rover and the rest of the car park and entrance to the apartment block. Young Brenda Fry was sitting in the back of Booker’s car with Knott, the ambulance having left with the body, followed by Nugent and Lees some minutes earlier.

Fry caught sight of him and Drake and appeared to take a few seconds to wrap up her conversation with Knott, before releasing him, and allowing the shaken man, his head heavily bandaged, to return to his apartment with his wife Rosie, who’d come out into the car park to look for her husband and much to her shock and horror, become wrapped up in the organised chaos that always accompanied such a terrible event. Fry then walked across to Ross and Drake, smiling and looking pleased with herself.

“You look as if you might have something for us, Constable,” Drake said, before Ross could speak,

“Kind of,” Fry replied. “Over the last three weeks, Mr Knott remembers at least three ‘silent’ calls, you know, when the caller doesn’t say a word and leaves you…”

“Yes, I think we know what a silent call is, please go on,” Ross encouraged her to continue.

“Sorry sir, of course you do. Anyway, Mr Knott did a 1471 to try and find out who was calling, but the caller had blocked their number. Then, he was in the pub, the Flying Horse, two weeks ago when he had his smartphone stolen. It had been in his jacket pocket, which he’d placed over the back of his chair while he talked to his friends, including poor Mr Hill. It wasn’t till they left the pub, and he tried to call his wife to let her know he was on his way home that he realised the phone had gone. Mr Hill and another mate went back to the pub, checking the paths along the way, but the landlord told him that nobody had handed a phone in. So, it seems someone nicked it, and possibly accessed all his information.”

“Didn’t he have a password on it?” Ross asked.

“No, the daft bugger,” Fry said. “He said he can never remember passwords and never bothered to set one on his phone.”

“Looks like our killer might have taken it and found out quite a bit about Knott, enough to maybe work out his routine and know when he’d be at home or at work,” Drake nodded. “He planned this murder in detail right down to using the man’s friend as a decoy.”

“In which case, we can assume he’s been watching Hill for quite some time. He probably saw him and Knott talking or going to the pub together and decided on his strategy based on the two men knowing each other,” Ross said, thinking on his feet.

“How about any strangers suddenly showing an interest in him, or his little g**g of mates in the pub?” Drake asked.

“I asked him that, Sergeant, and all he recalls is a bloke who sat with them a fortnight ago and joined in a conversation they were having about the upcoming football season and a young woman who’d had a few drinks who ended up draped around the neck of one of his mates, a Gerald Hunt. I have his addresses, both home and work. That’s about it really.”

“Good work, Constable,” Ross smiled at the young officer. “You’ve done well. Give those addresses and the name of the man in the pub to Sergeant Drake, then you can get away for the night. Call up your mates on your radio, tell them all to report back here, and if no one has anything useful for us, they can all call it a night as well,”

“Yes, sir, and thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, Fry. You did the work and got the information. Good job.”

Fry wandered off, speaking into her radio to her colleagues from the station.

“You just made her day,” Drake told Ross.

“A bit of encouragement never hurts when they’re young and keen, you know that Izzie.”

“I sure do. God, was I ever that young and keen as mustard?”

Miles Booker was their next port of call, but sadly, the Crime Scenes officer had no good news for them.

“All we’ve come up with are a few alien fibres, Andy, on Knott’s shirt. My guess is your man wore a black hoodie or something similar. They’re the right type of fibres. We’ll know more tomorrow. A look at his head showed a couple of traces of material in his hair, as well as a hair that might be from the killer or maybe from his wife. We’ve got a tech up there now getting a sample from his wife for comparison purposes.”

“We always seem to give you the next to impossible jobs, Miles. Sorry mate,” Ross apologised, knowing how frustrating some of their cases could be for the forensics people, as well as for his own team.

“You know what I always say, Andy,” Booker grinned. “The impossible just takes us a bit longer than normal, but we usually get there in the end.”

“I know you’ll do your best, Miles.”

“Yeah, we will, and if there’s anything else to find, we’re damn well going to find it. Got two lads giving the Range Rover a second going over.”

“You’ll let me know if you come up with anything, right?”

“Sure will,” Booker replied. “You and Izzie heading home for now, I take it?”

“Dead right we are. Not much more we can do here tonight. The uniform lads haven’t come up with anything from the residents, so we’ll start looking into the victims’ lives first thing in the morning.”

“Let’s just hope your killer doesn’t have any more victims lined up,” Booker said, voicing a thought that both Ross and Drake had been harbouring themselves.

“Too right, Miles. This could get sticky if he has,”

Ross and Drake were soon back in their respective cars, heading home for what was left of the night. Tomorrow promised to be a busy day.