Page 49

FORTY-EIGHT

The three of them met at the same coffee shop in which Thorne and Tanner had spoken to Brigstocke a few days before; where they’d told him about the voice Emily Mead had heard.

This new revelation was almost as shocking.

‘That’s how they got Peter Brightwell’s DNA into Siobhan Brady’s rape kit,’ Thorne said. ‘All the time we’ve been banging our stupid heads together, trying to figure out how they could have had the access they needed to make the switch, and they did it while the sample was on the way to the lab.’

‘And who knows how many times they’d done something similar before?’ Tanner said.

‘Easy enough when you’ve got one of the couriers in your pocket.’

Holland just stared. He hadn’t touched his coffee.

‘Sadler picks up the kit,’ Thorne said. ‘Signs for it, pops it in his bag same as he’s done a hundred times and he’s away on his bike to the lab. Then all he has to do is pull over en route, wherever he’s been told to stop and meet someone.’

‘Someone who replaces the tissue in the rape kit with the one that Tully picked up from the sex worker’s flat,’ Tanner said.

‘Someone who’s got a tidy little system going.’

Thorne looked across the table at Holland, waiting for a response, some input, anything.

He knew that ever since they’d told him what they’d inadvertently discovered while they were at Fin-Cel, Holland had been thinking about Daniel Sadler’s wife.

Processing this new information and reconsidering the woman’s conviction that her husband had not been someone who would have taken his own life, that he had been a happy man and a good one.

Thorne knew that Holland was a diligent copper and a thoughtful one, but in this instance, he’d been wrong in believing that the spouses of suspects or victims knew them better than any police officer ever could.

Karen Sadler had not known her husband at all.

‘You were talking about blackmail,’ Holland said, finally.

‘Remember? The possibility that whoever was leaking information might be being forced into it.’ He picked up his mug of coffee, but still didn’t look very interested in it.

He looked gutted. ‘All the time, Daniel Sadler was the one being blackmailed.’

‘Seems that way,’ Tanner said.

‘Those child pornography charges,’ Thorne said. ‘Someone made them go away officially, but could also make them reappear whenever it suited them. If Sadler didn’t do what he was told.’

‘Still possible it was suicide then, do you think?’ Holland looked at them both, but it was clear that he already knew the answer.

Tanner bit into a cookie. ‘Possible, but I don’t think it’s very likely.’

‘Be a bit strange to do it now,’ Thorne said.

‘When we know Sadler’s been doing this for at least three years.

His involvement in the Brightwell switch might have been a one-off, but I doubt it, so why suddenly decide to end it all?

I think the decision was made to get rid of him once Tully was killed.

Once it looked like it might all be starting to unravel. ’

‘He was called and told to meet someone, so he did what he was told, same as always.’ Tanner brushed crumbs from her lap. ‘Then he was taken to that bridge and either coerced into jumping or just pushed. Doesn’t really matter which.’

‘You think we can get Russell to open another murder investigation?’

‘I’m not sure we have to,’ Thorne said. ‘Sadler’s death is now very much tied to the one that already exists. We can just . . . add him to the list.’

A waiter came to the table to take away Thorne and Tanner’s empties. He saw that Holland’s coffee was untouched, so left it.

‘We keep talking about this “someone”.’ Holland leaned forward.

‘Yeah, so we know there is a someone, and he’s probably the same person who organised the various DNA samples being switched or destroyed and who turned up to whisper encouragement at those rapes, but as far as Daniel Sadler’s murder goes, isn’t there a more obvious suspect? ’

‘Obvious, as in Alex Brightwell?’ Thorne asked.

‘Makes sense, I would have thought. He’s been knocking off anyone involved in framing his brother and now we know that Sadler was very much part of it, so why not? He’s poisoned people and stabbed them, he’s . . . run them over, so why not add chucking someone off a bridge into the mix?’

‘How could he possibly have known about Sadler?’ Tanner asked.

‘We only found out ourselves an hour ago,’ Thorne said.

‘How did he know about Tully ?’ Holland sat back hard and held out his arms. ‘We certainly didn’t.’

It was a good question and one that had not stopped bothering Thorne ever since those first four deaths. ‘How the hell does Brightwell know anything ?’ he said.

‘At least you can call Sadler’s wife now,’ Tanner said. ‘Tell her she was right . . . about it not being suicide, at least.’

‘Yeah, course. Piece of piss that’s going to be.’ Holland grunted, shaking his head. ‘Maybe I can pop round and give her the good news in person, she might bake me a cake.’ He saw that Tanner was not best pleased by the sarcasm, especially when she had been trying to help. ‘Sorry, Nic.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tanner said.

‘It’s just . . . I tell her that her old man didn’t top himself, she says so, was he murdered?’

‘Whatever she says, it’s got to be done,’ Thorne said.

‘I say yes, it looks that way and she says, by who? Or even worse, she asks why? How the hell am I supposed to answer that?’

‘Maybe you’re in the wrong job, Dave.’ Thorne stood up, ready to crack on. ‘Because the only easy answers are on Tipping Point .’