“That is not strictly true, is it, Chief Inspector?” The lawyer enjoyed the puzzlement showing on the faces opposite. “If the contact lens had been found in a house, or perhaps an office or something else immobile that might be true. But even then we would have to accept the possibility that the contact lens could have been placed there long before the crime took place.
With a vehicle involved, your assertion becomes even more questionable...”
Coombes could bear it no longer and boomed, “Are you telling me that your client is denying that she lost her contact lens in that car? Mobile or immobile, it makes no difference. That is where it was found!”
“That may well be true, Chief Inspector, and if you had been listening you would have heard me say that, subject to testing, my client does not necessarily deny that she lost her contact lens in the car.
Unfortunately, you have allowed a single piece of flimsy evidence to blind you to other suspects. You have found one piece of forensic evidence and have fabricated - and I’m sorry to have to say it – a sloppy case around it.” The man reached down into his briefcase and extracted a few sheets of paper. DS Scott placed his hand on his superior’s arm to calm him down; the lawyer was in real danger of being throttled by Coombes, whose veins were now bulging.
“As you failed to conduct proper and fulsome enquiries, I have taken up the cudgels, as I think you say, and have made enquiries myself.
The car in question is a hire car, available to anyone with a driving licence. It has been hired out regularly since it was delivered some seven months ago. The car hire firm are able to say, with some precision, that they have rented out that car fourteen times for varying periods. Obviously, at any one of these junctures my client could have lost her contact lens. However, in an effort to assist the police, and to defray any accusations that her silence may be the equivalent to guilt, my client asked her former company to search their database to see if she had ever travelled in the said car.”
“Are you saying that she can’t remember travelling in an armoured car? Come on!” Scott interjected impatiently. The lawyer looked at Scott with an equally impatient glare.
“No, son, my client is saying she does not know if she had travelled in this particular car. She has travelled in many protected vehicles. Now, if I may proceed without further interruption.”
Dee and Steve were deeply unhappy. The interview was swinging in the suspect’s favour, and they were concerned that worse was to come. The lawyer hadn’t finished yet.
“Here we have a print out of the Celebrato accounts database. It shows that they hired a specialist vehicle from Exotic Cars of Longford for a business awards dinner. The tags – sorry, the licence plate - read X14 ECL, the very same car in which you found my client’s contact lens. Now, my client says she was a little the worse for wear the night of the awards dinner, and so she cannot swear that she lost her contact lens that night, but it does seem likely.” The lawyer pushed across the Celebrato Database record.
“Obviously as an attorney I am aware that a suspicious policeman might think that Celebrato have made this whole story up to allay suspicion, so I dug a little deeper.” He handed over three more pieces of paper.
“Sheet 1 shows a photograph of my client, on the night of the awards dinner, the same night the car was hired. Sheet 2 shows the Exotic Cars of Longford Hire Record Database for the period, clearly showing the hire to Celebrato. Sheet 3 is a sworn deposition from the manager of Exotic Cars that this is a proper extract from the said database, and a statement saying that, whilst the cars are thoroughly cleaned after each hirer, he cannot swear that a single contact lens would be discovered.”
DCI Coombes glared at DS Scott, whose mouth gaped open.
“Shit!” Pete shouted almost in Dee’s ear. Steve Post was already typing rapidly and accessing the CJIS database. After a moment the screen cleared and a pop up window appeared. The words, ‘This is Special Agent Connor Williams. May I help you?’ appeared in the dialogue box. Steve typed rapidly. The dialogue box flickered and Connor typed, ‘I will come back to you in a few minutes.’
Seeing the total disarray in the opposing ranks, Pat Monaghan suggested a short break, with the parties reconvening in an hour. He requested into the microphone the use of a quiet room, and some coffee and sandwiches. Gillian Davis and her counsel walked out of the interview room, to be met by the young FBI man who would lead them to their private room.
Chapter 5 9
FBI Field Office, Richmond, Virginia. Thursday 1pm.
Four glum faces sat around the table, ignoring the sandwiches that had been provided. Nobody had an appetite for them any more. DCI Coombes and DS Scott were not speaking and Pete was shaking his head slowly. He looked defeated. The thought passing through all of their minds was, ‘How could we have missed that?’
Dee, however, was not as downhearted as the rest of the team. She had spoken to Steve Post before they broke for lunch, and he had suggested pursuing a sequence of enquiries that had crossed her mind, too. They were still sitting in silence when Steve Post returned with a sheaf of papers in his hand.
“OK, listen up, everyone. It’s already 6pm in London and so not everything is buttoned down yet but here is what Dee and I think has happened. Steve sat at the head of the table and began his narrative.
“Gillian Davis has been a paid killer for ten years. Who knows how many people she might have killed in the service of Queen and country? Maybe she doesn’t even know the exact number. However, one thing is certain; she has never been caught. Gillian Davis is one clever girl. My guess is that, like most covert operatives, she is adept at misdirection, creating false alibis and manipulating evidence. If she wasn’t she wouldn’t be much of an assassin.
Psychologically we all know that witnesses are suggestible. They can often be manipulated into remembering things that did not actually happen. In the FBI manuals we have study after study that discusses witness behaviour. We regularly encounter witnesses who are sure they have seen something but, when it is put to them, by a clever attorney, that what they saw was not possible, their recollection suddenly changes and they revise their memories to incorporate the new facts. The truth is that once they have changed their story their testimony is useless. The profilers call this cognitive dissonance; if what we see doesn’t make sense, we create a new memory that does make sense. Psychologists say that if we humans behave that way, we would have continual internal conflicts and mental anguish.”
“In our view, the manager at Longford Exotic Cars was in just such a position. I just got off the phone to him. It seems that, whilst he has no recollection of that car being hired by Celebrato, he checked the records as requested and they showed that a hire had been arranged on that date. He has persuaded himself that he must have been busy elsewhere and so it had slipped his mind. Invited to do so by their investigator, he printed off relevant pages of the hire database and signed off on it. As for his testimony on the cleanliness of the car, I think a jury could foresee the possibility of a tiny, clear contact lens escaping the attention of a minimum wage car cleaner.
Given our conviction that you’re right about Gillian Davis being the murderer, Dee and I drew up a list of three questions for the manager that we felt might clarify the matter once and for all.
Question one - is there an invoice in the system for the hire, or did it appear only on the database?
Two - are Celebrato on Exotic Cars customer contact list? If so, when were they entered onto it?