He lifted out the camera. There was no tape in it. He banged the desk in frustration. Where was it?
He went to log off from Billy’s file and click off the computer when he saw another entry. It was the time that stood out. Amelia had made three calls just after she had written the attendance note about the video. He leaned into the screen, curious, and clicked on one. The entry contained little detail. It stated that Amelia had made a phone call and cross-referenced it with a different file with the reference ABB003/1. Everything Amelia had done in the office, she had billed for it. The reference meant that he was the third client with those three letters at the start of his surname, but that it was the first file for him. A new client. There was no more activity that day, and now Billy was dead, along with Amelia.
Charlie went back to Amelia’s shelves. It was the first file he got to, right at the start of the alphabet. He pulled the lamp a bit closer so that he could see it properly.
The file was a criminal file, from one court appearance. Charlie looked at the instruction sheet. John Abbott. An arrest for criminal damage, some graffiti on the side of a building in the town centre. I am a free man and My rule: no rules. Another one was Smash the world.
It stirred a memory in him.
Charlie read on.
John was a loner. He lived on his own after his mother died. He’d been left money and property, but his life seemed empty. He was angry at the world, because it had left him with no one to care for. He had wanted to find answers and started to read on the internet how governments were colluding together to create one world power, with the so-called free world’s power concentrated in a small number of families. It made John angry, he didn’t want any part of society anymore, but he didn’t know what to do. He had told Amelia that he scrawled on the building through frustration. He wasn’t sorry though, and he was going to carry on finding the answers and fighting.
Charlie closed the file and threw it onto the desk. Something clattered onto the desk but Charlie ignored it. Abbott was just some local crackpot who was unhappy with the direction of his life, and so he was making it someone else’s fault. He had caused some damage and had wanted Amelia to turn the court speech into a protest. But why was Amelia making calls about Billy Privett using that file reference? The case was four months old. It should have been closed and billed.
Charlie reached for the file again, knowing that the answer was in there somewhere.
He went to the call logs on John Abbott’s file. All they said was that Amelia had spoken to M at NPOIU. Nothing more. Three times. Charlie didn’t know what they meant and so he pulled out the bill, hoping it would explain more. When he read it, he was shocked.
He leaned back in his chair, just quietly nodding to himself. He picked up the bill again, confused, to make sure that he had read it right. He had.
The bill was made out to the police. But why would the police pay the legal costs for a defendant in a criminal case?
He realised that there was only one thing to do, despite what he had said to Julie. He did need to speak to the police. But on his terms.
He called Julie. She answered on the third ring.
‘What’s going on, Charlie?’ she said, her voice in a whisper. ‘Andy doesn’t like me being worried about you, but I am.’
‘It’s been an eventful day, and I don’t think it’s going to lay off just yet,’ he said. ‘I need you to get Sheldon Brown to call me.’
‘I can’t just go calling inspectors.’
‘I thought you wanted me to come in.’
‘I do, but only to make it easier for yourself. And anyway, the rumours are that Sheldon Brown has been taken off the case. DI Williams from FMIT is running the show now. He’s walking round the station like it’s beneath him.’
‘No, it has to be Sheldon Brown,’ Charlie said. ‘We haven’t always got on, but he’s straight and I trust him. I don’t know Williams.’
She sighed and then said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Charlie was about to hang up when she said, ‘Look after yourself, Charlie. I don’t know what’s gone wrong today, but I still care about you.’
He would have laughed on a different day. Instead, he thanked her and put the phone down.
As he went to grab his car keys, he saw something on the desk. He was sure it hadn’t been there before. A small videotape. He remembered something clattering on the desk when he had put the Abbott file down.
There was a connection between Billy Privett’s video and the Abbott file, because Amelia had made calls straight after making it, and now a videotape had fallen out.
Charlie scrambled in the drawer again, looking for the video camera. He fumbled with the tape and then found the button that would make it play. He rewound it to the beginning and pulled out the screen at the side. As the tape scrolled forward, Billy Privett appeared on the small screen. He was sitting in a chair and looking nervous, messing with the jewellery on his wrist.
Charlie punched the air. This was it.
He turned off the camera and put it into the pocket in his jacket. He took the file too, along with Donia’s application, grabbed the car keys and headed for the door.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ted’s eyes were fixed on the road as Sheldon drove them towards Oulton. Sheldon hadn’t said much since he had been into the police station in Penwortham, but he was in a rush, screeching his car around the tights bends lined by stone walls, the long slope towards Oulton visible ahead as a long line of orange lights.
‘Do you know what is the hardest thing about losing Alice?’ Ted said.
Sheldon looked at him briefly, and then turned back to the road. ‘The thought that her killer is still out there?’
Ted shook his head. ‘No. It’s the way it hits when you are not expecting it, and so you feel like you can never live your life. I’ve tried to channel my anger, because it felt like I could control it that way, even start to rationalise it, because I know that being angry won’t bring Alice back. So it’s not that.’ He let out a long sigh and swallowed. ‘You think you are dealing with it, and then you see something, and you forget for a moment that she is dead, and so when it comes back at you, it feels like the hurt has never gone away.’
‘What like?’
‘Stupid things. A trailer for a film, some fluffy chick-flick, and the first thought you have is that Alice would like that, but then you remember that she can’t, and it seems so unfair, because everyone else’s kids will queue up for it, and Alice never will. Or a dress that would make her look pretty, or a book she might like. We tried to go on holiday, and we went to a lovely place in the south of France. The sunflowers were out and everywhere had charm and sunshine, but all we could think about was that Alice would have loved it.’
Sheldon didn’t respond, there was no point, and so they drove in silence for a few miles until Sheldon said, ‘I need to go to the station in Oulton.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
Sheldon shook his head. ‘You’re too well known. They’ll spot you and throw you out.’
‘They might do that to you.’
‘No, they won’t,’ Sheldon said, and he clenched his jaw.
Ted stayed silent for a few minutes and watched the flash of the houses past the windscreen. As Sheldon started on the long climb to Oulton, he said, ‘So what do I do?’
‘You go home until I get there.’
‘What will you do if you find out something crucial?’ When Sheldon glanced at him, Ted added, ‘Do