One Last Lesson Read Free Page B

period.’
    ‘We also need to trace his wife, the one he said cleared off to Scarborough, which is probably true as I’m sure that wasn’t her back there in the bushes. We need to know why she left; was he violent or was she running away from something he was involved with? Now, if it was him, it would be the easiest case I’ve ever dealt with since moving down south, but somehow I doubt it.’
    *
    Sussex House, the home of Sussex Police - Serious Crimes Unit, was a bland concrete block, adjacent to a small industrial estate and a large Asda supermarket in the east end of Brighton. The small-time cons of the town were more familiar with the city centre police station in John Street where they were taken when first apprehended, and next day, across the road for an appearance in the Magistrates’ Court. They only came to Sussex House if their thieving became violent, the flasher in the park decided to have a more personal relationship with his victim or an assailant graduated up the scale to GBH and murder.
    For the next few hours, Henderson worked non-stop. A Murder Enquiry Book was opened, a Holmes operator appointed, who was already banging data into the computer, senior officers were briefed about what was now known as Operation Jaguar, and several lines of enquiry were being mapped out by the skeleton team of officers already assembled, ready to hand over to the rest of the team when they joined the squad, early the following morning.
    The press briefing at five-thirty was exactly that, brief. Neither he nor his boss, Chief Inspector Steve Harris said much, other than the basic facts of the case - the body of a young woman was found on Mannings Heath golf course by a man walking his dog and enquiries were continuing. A few hacks had already interviewed Mike Ferris and were keen to ask questions about him, several referring to his large size, robust manner and the bruises on his hands and face. He tried to be as conciliatory as possible, despite his own misgivings, and made a point of thanking him for finding the body as he didn’t want them hounding him out of town or making him wary and driving him underground.
    In the three years he had been with Sussex Police, he had been trying hard to improve his relationship with journalists. His epiphany came when he was involved in a fatal shooting in Glasgow. He was an officer with Strathclyde Police at the time and working for an undercover unit with responsibility for keeping various drug gangs under surveillance and infiltrating the most active. In one raid, Sean Fagin, a Glasgow-born dealer in heroin and cocaine, pointed a gun at him and he had no option but to fire back. Fagin’s bullet grazed his shoulder giving him a flesh wound; Henderson’s bullet hit him between the eyes, killing him.
    The resultant hysterical publicity cost him his marriage and almost wrecked his job and health, as he hit the booze with an enthusiasm once only reserved for police work. Despite being exonerated by an internal enquiry, there was nothing left for him in Glasgow and so he transferred to Sussex Police. Now, his attitude was not, ‘what can they do for me,’ but ‘how can we work together to solve this’ and as a result, tried to be as open and candid as possible without compromising the investigation.
    It was a dangerous path to tread , but as time went on, it was gradually paying dividends with less speculative stories and fewer personal attacks on him, particularly about the Glasgow shooting or the time it was taking to solve a particular case. He was being coached by his girlfriend, Rachel Jones, a journalist with Brighton’s main local newspaper, The Argus on what he realised now was a subtle, black art. Although crime was not her area of expertise, she encouraged him to see the press as an ally, not as an adversary and gave him ideas on how to present his story better.
    The first meeting of the murder enquiry team included little more than he and CI Harris presented at the