The Innocent Bystander - Part 3

It was a long and lonely weekend.

I desperately wanted to share my situation with someone. I was still really shaken by my time in the cells.

I rang my father and, not wanting to alarm him, just said I couldn't use my car so my plans had changed.

I went to the gym and had a hard workout. It was cool and grey and showery outside. I binge-watched some TV and moped, going over and over what I knew about Hannah, the police and everything connected. The worst trouble I’d ever been in before was when I was fined for speeding. This was off the scale. I hardly slept.

On Sunday morning I had what I thought was a bright idea. My boss, Christine, would surely be back from wherever she'd been on holiday wouldn’t she? I'd contact her and tell her about the missing vials. She'd know where they were and we'd be closer to sorting it all out. I needed progress. Except that her mobile appeared to be switched off and all I could do was leave a voice message.

Sunday dragged on even longer than the day before.

—

On Monday morning, I took myself to the police station to report in at 10am as agreed. I’d been told not to go in to work. It felt as if my job was on the line.

The desk officer asked me to wait, and then DS Crisp came to the reception area.

I was escorted back to the interview room. A few more questions. Did I want my solicitor present? I said I'd hear the questions first.

"Why were you contacting Christine Newburn yesterday?" Martin Crisp asked me.

How did they know I was trying to do that? This was way beyond my understanding of anything I had ever experienced before. Were they tapping my mobile? Is that allowed? Shouldn't I have been asked or told or shown a court order? I needed my solicitor back, that was for sure. I told him I wanted to speak with Mr Johnstone. They said they would contact him and I could wait in the interview room. At least it wasn’t the cells.

It was almost lunchtime before Steven Johnstone arrived. I told him what appeared to be going on and he also found it very odd. We needed to ask for an explanation. He said that under normal circumstances the police would not have access to one’s phone calls.

When DS Crisp came back, my solicitor asked him to explain how he knew I had been trying to contact my colleague. His answer was not one we expected.

"Dr Newburn has been helping us with our inquiries since yesterday. She was being interviewed when your client tried to contact her. His number and name lit up on her phone.

"What I can tell you is that this is still a fast-developing investigation and we are pursuing a number of lines of inquiry. We are not about to charge Mr Rockingham at present but his cooperation could help us resolve a number of issues. It would assist us if he were to remain here so we may continue to ask him questions as matters evolve."

There was some legal discussion between my solicitor and DS Crisp, after which it was agreed that I was not going to be charged with any crime or sent back to the cells. They needed to ask me more questions.  

“Before we can go further we need to check a few developments with the senior investigating officer.”

Mr Johnstone and I were left us alone together for some minutes. While they were out of the room my solicitor went over the likely procedures.

What we hadn’t expected was that when they returned it appeared that they were about to take us into their confidence. DS Crisp glanced at DC Spire, then back at me, as though he'd come to a decision he wasn't entirely comfortable with.

"What I'm about to tell you doesn't leave this room, Mr Rockingham. Understood?"

I nodded. Beside me, Steven Johnstone nodded too, more slowly.

"Hannah Mason died as a result of an accident or was killed. She was involved in a major crime at your lab. She was being given research vials and ferrying them out of your building. Somebody on the outside was paying very well for it,” DS Crisp said

"Ferrying them — where?"

"To a US company working on the same anti-malarial line as you. Call it industrial espionage if you like, although there’s a plainer word for it."

I thought of the missing vials. Of logging the discrepancy online almost apologetically, worried it would make me look incompetent, or worse, guilty of something myself. "The vials that went missing. That was her?"

"Maybe. We don’t know it all yet. What we do know is that the day your Mr Blake asked you to give her a lift, she already had them in her bag. We don’t yet know exactly how she got them. But we have been told you were not involved in any of that.”

“Told by whom,” I asked. DS Crisp looked slightly annoyed. “I’ll come to that. All in good time. What we do know is that one or more of the tubes broke in your car — that's your glass, that's your substance."

"She was looking at the floor the whole way home," I said, half to myself. "I thought she was just shy."

DS Crisp went on: “I need you to explain what you can about what was in those vials, Mr Rockingham. No scientific mumbo-jumbo please. Just how dangerous would it be if you got some on you. That sort of thing.”

I explained the dangers, possibly to a person who came into contact with the serum and to the wider environment. They made notes.

Karen Spire then took over. "Ms Mason was probably terrified when you told her where you worked in your lab. She may or may not have known that the materials she stole were from where you worked in the lab.”

My solicitor intervened. “And why is my client involved in a possible murder inquiry?”

“Yes, we’re coming to that,” DC Spire told him. “The courts will have to decide whether Ms Mason was murdered.

"Her brother, Josh Mason, the man your client saw in the doorway, is a person we have some knowledge of.”

I’d wondered why they had a photo of him.

“From what we now have been able to discover he's the one who put her up to removing stuff from the lab.

“When she got home with broken vials we believe he lost his temper and hit her. He says she fell and hit her head on the hall table. He claims he panicked."

"So he didn’t kill her then, did he," I interrupted.

"Well, he told us it was an accident. Forensics are still piecing that together. It’ll be up to the the CPS – then a jury.”

Karen Spire explained: “What isn't in question is that he put her body in his car in the early hours and drove her out to Basing Wood and just dumped her there. Maybe she could have been saved."

I sat with that for a moment. Steven Johnstone, beside me, said nothing. How could someone do that to their own sister?

"And Christine," I said eventually. "Why were you interviewing Christine?"

Crisp and Spire exchanged a glance I didn't much like.

"You might as well know she brokered the sale," DS Crisp said rather quietly. "She wasn't on holiday, Mr Rockingham. She spent much of the week on calls to a lab in Maryland, agreeing terms. We’re still collecting details, inquiries are continuing. Your colleague has been arrested.”

"She made me think I was losing my mind over a discrepancy," I said almost to myself. "It was down to her that I had to spend hours in your cells here suspected of…" I couldn't finish.

"For what it's worth, she's the one who assured us that you have not been part of any of this," Karen Spire said, more gently than she'd said anything to me all week. “It tallies with everything else we have been able to discover so far. So we believe her. She told us you had no idea what was going on. Her words were that you were" — she checked her notebook — "'an innocent bystander.'"

I almost laughed. Almost. It was the exact phrase I'd used to myself, alone in that airless room, days before.

There were loose ends, many. Some I thought of then. Others have come to me since. But that’s not what I blurted out: "Am I free to go?"

"Yes," DS Crisp confirmed. "You’re being released without charge. We'll certainly need to ask you some more questions down the line and we’ll need a signed statement from you. But not right now. We’ll be in touch. Our inquiries are not complete. And I am sure you will be called as a witness when any of this comes to a trial.”

I pondered this in my mind. I wanted it all to end but it wouldn’t. More police visits, signed statements, sitting through a trial. I was trapped.

Karen Spire might have caught my mood. “We know now that all you did was have the bad luck to give Hannah Mason a lift home. The fact that what she was carrying was your own research material was very unfortunate and really complicated things, for her and for you – and of course for us."

It was as if they were excusing themselves for what they had put me under. It was as close to an apology as I was going to get.

I stood up. “I need some air.” Neither of them said anything. 

Outside Steven Johnstone shook my hand and told me that I'd probably want a stiff drink and an early night. He wasn't wrong. I thanked him for his help. He gave me a lift home. Later someone in blue overalls returned my Skoda. It smelled different.

The next day I got a call from Dr Vincent. I was to take the rest of the week off. I was being paid. He said changes would have to be made. I was not to worry. Easy for him to say.

I went to Aylesbury. Dad and I talked through what I could tell him. We both had unanswered questions. He gave me a much-needed firm hug before I left.

—

Jenny and I have been seeing more of each other since all this unfolded… and both the crime and the two of us have become the stuff of considerable office gossip.

Blakey has never asked me to give anyone a lift home again. I think he knows what my answer would be!