“At some point that night, or early morning, Nick Lacey parks his BMW outside the Moor Side Estate,” said Kate. “What if Nick and Bill know each other? Bill was on his own at the flat from eight forty-five p.m. until midnight, when Fred dropped Bev back at the flat. They could have met?”
“Bill also has the time from when he went to work at four forty-five p.m. until he got back to the flat at eight forty-five p.m., and then between eight forty-five and midnight,” said Tristan.
“He answered the landline at Bev’s house at eight forty-five,” said Kate.
“Okay, Bev says in her statement that she phoned him again at ten thirty and he answered,” said Tristan, reading from the case file.
Kate came over to the computer and searched through the case file folders.
“Two of the construction site workers at Teybridge House gave Bill his alibi to say that he arrived at the site just after four forty-five p.m. on Saturday, September seventh, and stayed for around four hours, leaving just before eight forty p.m. Where are they? Here. Raj Bilal and Malik Hopkirk are the two witnesses who worked there . . .”
Tristan watched as Kate scrolled through the scanned statements.
“They’re both signed, I checked,” he said.
“The two people willing to go on the record and give Bill an alibi are both construction workers, working for him, and presumably on a low-income wage. Could they have been lying for him?” said Kate.
“Isn’t the bigger question why Nick Lacey was also parked outside Bev’s flat on the same night?” asked Tristan.
“Yes. Why would you park a top-of-the-range BMW on that dodgy estate overnight?”
“What if Nick had a lover? A bit of rough on the council estate?” asked Tristan.
“We seem to constantly be asking ‘what if’ and ‘who is he’ questions about Nick Lacey. But are we asking the right questions? So far, we’ve heard that he’s a highly successful, rather ruthless businessman. His neighbor Elspeth says he’s a lovely man. He was around when Max had the commune, which means he could have met David Lamb, Gabe Kemp, and Jorge Tomassini.”
Kate’s phone rang.
“Speaking of. It’s Jorge Tomassini,” she said, answering the call and putting it on speakerphone.
“Hi, Kate,” said Jorge. “Listen, I had a look in my attic, and I found my photos from when I was living in England. There are eight packets of twenty-four photos. I scanned them all.”
Tristan clenched his fists and mouthed, Yes!
“That’s very kind of you, thank you,” said Kate.
“I scanned them in groups of eight on the scanner at work. It saved time. You’ll have to zoom in on the photos.”
“As long as they’re clear images, that’s brilliant,” said Kate.
“There’s quite a few from the commune, when I went to a couple of parties there. There’s one of me and my boyfriend at the time with Noah Huntley, a couple of Max, and one of me sitting on the sofa in the commune with Max and his boyfriend, Nick Lacey.”
“This is so helpful, thank you,” said Kate.
“Okay. I’ll get my assistant to email them over,” he said.
Ten minutes later, the photos came through, spread in two emails. Kate and Tristan went to their laptops. Each JPEG image in the folders contained a scan of eight photos. They downloaded the images and started to scroll through. There was a photo of an intoxicated-looking Noah Huntley, red-faced, with his arm draped over Jorge and a muscular blond-haired youth.
“Jesus Christ,” said Kate, when she came to the photo of Jorge and Max sitting on a sofa with a third man. “Tristan, come and look at this.”
Tristan got up and came round to look at her computer screen. “Jesus Christ, indeed,” he said. “That’s Nick Lacey?”
“Yes . . . ,” said Kate, shaking with shock. “Oh my God. That photo is it. The key that makes this all fall into place.”
45
Late on Saturday night, Nick Lacey was driving through Southampton on his way back from a business trip.
Whenever he visited Southampton, his route home went through its own unofficial red-light district. The street was brightly lit by the lights from the busy dockside, and over the years, attempts had been made to clean it up and banish the curb crawlers. It was one of those streets in Britain that reinvents itself every hundred meters, moving from run-down to residential and then back again.
He’d circled the block twice, passing the same brightly lit gay pub, checking if there were any street cameras or CCTV.