Free Never Forget by Lisa Cutts Page A

Styles, pulled up behind us. Wingsy and I got out of our car. We waited beside our vehicle for the latest arrival to get out of her white van. She was met with a trio of genuine ‘Morning, Jo’ greetings and was filled in while we waited for the uniform officers to bring Savage out. She chatted to us as she sorted out her files, camera and equipment. We told her as much as we could, but it turned out that she knew more than us anyway. That didn’t surprise us. Wingsy and I left her to it and returned to the task in hand.
    ‘Ford or van?’ asked Wingsy.
    ‘You romantic. Mel’s a lucky girl. Ford, just in case someone is in the boot.’
    A cursory search of the Ford revealed nothing much, except the man’s obsession with fast food and scratch cards. The transit van was a little more interesting. The rear double doors on the van were unlocked. Shining the torch over the floor showed little but a couple of dust sheets in the far right corner. A glint of metal stood out against the dirty white floor.
    ‘Is that – ’ I said.
    ‘A knife,’ said Wingsy. ‘Better wait for Jo. I don’t want to climb all over the back of this van.’
    ‘I’ll go and let her know,’ I said. ‘I can see them leading a bloke out of the house so she can’t go in there yet. She may be glad to start out here.’
    Jo was a CSI, which made her a civilian employee in our force. Being a civilian, she was never allowed to be the first through the door in a volatile situation, and from the noise Mrs Savage was making it was best that Jo gave the house a wide berth for now. From across the road I could hear Mrs Savage hollering something about someone hanging around the past couple of nights in the street near their car and how the police hadn’t done anything to investigate it. Over the noise, I explained to Jo what we’d found and waited for her to get her equipment. She came back over to the van with me, shining her torch through the open doors.
    ‘Best organise a recovery truck for this van,’ she said. ‘I can’t risk getting in the back of it in an uncontrolled environment. I need to examine it under cover. The knife’s covered in blood.’

Chapter 18
    S uspect in custody, vehicle seized and the house searched, Wingsy and I went back to Riverstone nick and headed for the interview remote viewing room, equipped to allow us to watch Savage’s interview, actually taking place in the ground floor custody area, from the CID offices on the second floor.
    Pierre and another detective Wingsy and I didn’t know had already started interviewing Savage. For a long time it was slow progress; often he gave only a slight nod of the head in answer to questions put to him. But then Savage seemed to go to the other extreme. He avoided Pierre’s last question, not by refusing to answer, but by rambling on about his mum. As fascinating as it was to hear that the old girl loved a game of bingo but never went to the bookies, it wasn’t what we wanted to know. DCI Nottingham, who was also watching the interview with us, didn’t look too interested either. Several times he sighed, stopped writing and threw his pen down on to the desk.
    ‘Gary, this isn’t relevant. I’m asking you about Jason Holland,’ said Pierre. ‘I’ve told you that your DNA was found in the room where his body was discovered. Did you know Jason Holland?’
    ‘No, officer. I didn’t know him.’
    ‘Have you ever been to 17 Preston Road?’
    ‘Yes, I have.’
    ‘When were you there?’
    ‘I can’t remember the date but the council sent me to price up a job. You can check with them. Some old fella had diedand the place was a right mess. I was there for about twenty or thirty minutes and I cut my hand somewhere upstairs. May have dripped a bit of blood upstairs or down. I can’t remember where. There was nothing in the house at all to stop the bleeding so I may have wiped the cut anywhere. Check with the council. Is someone talking to them? Bloke called Andy, Andrew