The Secret Admirer: An absolutely gripping crime thriller (Detective Natalie Ward Book 6)

by Carol Wyer

  ‘She never mentioned her home life, mother, job, other students?’

  ‘I can’t see any reason why she would. I’m a lecturer not a university counsellor.’

  ‘You ever go to Chancer’s Bar in Samford?’

  ‘Would you mind, one second?’ he said, indicating the food.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  He slid a flat spatula under a burger, dropped it onto an open bun and repeated the action with a second, then, walking towards the table with them, called, ‘Girls!’ The squealing stopped instantly and both girls raced inside, eager hands outstretched. One of the children, with hair the same colour as Anika’s, reached for the ketchup, but James swooped on the squeezy bottle and squirted a dollop onto the side of the paper plate for her.

  ‘On the burger, Daddy!’ she said plaintively.

  He lifted the bun and poured the red sauce onto it. The girl took the plate, ran across to the women and dropped onto a large furry rug next to them, followed swiftly by her friend.

  ‘You want anything to eat yet?’ James said to Anika.

  ‘We’ll wait until you’re ready,’ said his wife.

  ‘I’m sure the officers are finished with me, aren’t you? I can’t really tell you a great deal more.’ He directed his words at Murray.

  ‘Chancer’s Bar, sir?’ said Murray. ‘Did you visit it?’

  ‘No. Is it in Samford? I don’t know where you mean.’

  Murray studied his face, which remained impassive. ‘Okay, that’s everything, thank you,’ he replied, then turned and asked Anika the same question.

  ‘Do you know of a bar called Chancer’s?’

  ‘Sorry, no. I haven’t heard of it.’

  ‘If that’s everything, I’d appreciate it if we could eat now,’ said James to Lucy.

  ‘Certainly, and thank you for your time, sir,’ came the reply.

  James led her and Murray back through the house to the front door, where Lucy asked, ‘Do you ever see your students privately to discuss their grades?’

  ‘Yes. I arrange meetings in my office at the university.’

  ‘And did you make any such arrangements with Gemma?’

  ‘Only for her last assessment in October.’

  ‘Did she pass the assessment?’

  ‘With an A,’ he replied heavily. ‘Such a tragic waste of an intelligent young woman with a bright future. Good day, officers.’

  With that, he shut the door behind them, and Murray asked Lucy what was bothering her. She seemed lost in thought.

  ‘I was wondering why he evaded the question about the bar. Or am I reading too much into it?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll see if we can dig anything up on him, but to be honest, I didn’t pick up on anything odd in his behaviour.’

  ‘Good-looking bloke though, isn’t he? I never trust a guy that good-looking, especially when his wife’s friend can’t take her eyes off him.’

  ‘Debbie was staring at him?’

  ‘The whole time we were talking.’

  ‘She was probably trying to hear what we were saying.’

  ‘There was more to it than that. She wasn’t looking at us. She was staring directly at him.’

  ‘Do you think he and Gemma had some sort of a relationship?’

  ‘That’s the million-dollar question and I don’t have the answer. All I know is I don’t trust him.’

  Chancer’s Bar’s forecourt was empty when Natalie pulled onto it and parked facing the orange beer van. From there she looked onto the plain rendered building, which still resembled a garage with its flat roof and brick extension that had once been an office. The owners had left as much authenticity as possible and retained the original façade, although the large metal shutter had been replaced by a tinted glass window that reflected back her own vehicle.

  She glanced at the display on her dashboard. It was almost quarter to five, twenty-five minutes since Hattie had rung her at the station, but there was no sign of the woman yet. A crow landed with an audible thump in front of her car and bumped and hopped ungainly across the tarmac in search of food. It appeared clumsy but its eyes were keen, and within seconds it took off and landed on a fence that cordoned off the skip and recycling bins, only to re-emerge seconds later with a titbit in its beak. Natalie turned her head left and right but couldn’t spot a grey Nissan Micra. Why Hattie wanted to speak to Natalie alone and had chosen this spot, outside the very bar where Gemma had worked, was perplexing. Maybe this location held some relevance and Hattie knew who had attacked Gemma. It might even have been the woman herself or somebody they’d already interviewed.

  A movement caught her eye. It was a tall figure in a coat with the hood up. Natalie squinted, but as the person passed the forecourt, it was obvious it wasn’t Hattie. Natalie twisted around in her seat but could spot nobody else. The woman was now late. Five more minutes passed and she tried the mobile number Ian had given her for Hattie. It went immediately to answerphone. Five minutes stretched to ten and still nobody appeared. She rang Hattie again and left a message, saying she was waiting, and would Hattie ring her immediately, then she waited until ten past five before she gave up and drove off, annoyed at wasting time.

  Back at headquarters she found her entire team gathered in the office and told them of her fruitless mission. ‘Could somebody try and pinpoint a location for Hattie’s phone?’ she asked as she threw down her bag and prepared to tackle any new information. Lucy raised a hand in acknowledgement and set about the task.

  ‘Do you reckon she was messing you about?’ asked Murray.

  ‘I don’t think so, and I’ll admit I’m concerned that she isn’t answering her phone. If she has information regarding the attacker, she might be in danger.’

  ‘There could be another reason she isn’t responding,’ said Murray. Natalie had already guessed what he was going to suggest but let him speak regardless. ‘She’s responsible for the attack on Gemma. She wanted to confess but got cold feet.’

  She agreed with him and then said, ‘We have to track her down. Meanwhile, let’s talk to Fran Ditton and Rhiannon Williams again.’

  ‘Transcript details and background information on both girls are all here,’ Ian said, holding up printouts.

  Murray gave a wry grin. ‘You’re very efficient today, Ian.’

  ‘Every day, mate, every single day,’ came the reply.

  Lucy had spoken to the phone company and rejoined the conversation. ‘Hattie’s phone was last used in the vicinity of Eastview Avenue at around the time she rang you, Natalie. There’s been no signal transmitted since then. I’ve asked for details of calls, contacts and messages.’

  ‘What about her car?’ asked Natalie. ‘If we could get a trace on it, we might be able to locate it.’

  Ian nodded. ‘I’ll put in a request to the traffic division to see if it has been picked up on any local cameras.’

  Natalie thought for a second before speaking to both men. ‘Would you also contact her father to see if she’s shown up there? Find out where else she might be. Lucy and I will head back to Eastview Avenue and speak to Fran and Rhiannon. We’ll check to see if she’s there.’ She glanced at the office clock. Josh would be arriving at her flat in about an hour. She didn’t want to be too late getting home. She saw little enough of Josh and they needed this time together; however, her job had to take precedence. She’d message him if she was forced to and hope he’d be understanding.

  The pathology report was in her inbox and she read it through quickly before she headed off again to Eastview Avenue. It made for grim reading. The acid had eaten away most of Gemma’s face and blinded her in at least one eye. Even if she had survived the attack, she would have had to have undergone some extensive reconstructive surgery and would have been scarred for life. Better that than dead, she thought as she stood up once again and prepared to make the journey across town.

  Chapter Ten

  Saturday, 17 November – Early Evening

  Gemma,

  It was st
upid to turn your back on me after I’d made such an effort to engage you in conversation. You have no idea how much courage that took for me to sit near you in the students’ union bar, especially as you were surrounded by others. To speak to you took even more nerves, and then to have you stare indifferently at me was, to be honest, an insult.

  You belittled me.

  You wounded me.

  It was unnecessary. You could easily have answered me or acknowledged me instead of blanking me. How would you like it if you were snubbed that way?

  You ought to be careful who you choose to alienate. Some of us take rejection very badly indeed.

  An Ex-Admirer

  Fran and Rhiannon were in the sitting room at Fran’s house, a room only large enough for a threadbare settee, an armchair and a table that bore so many coffee-stain rings that Natalie briefly wondered if they were a deliberate design. Somebody had stuck up a poster of an Indian temple on the wall opposite a television, and the only other nod to furnishings, apart from some mismatched cushions and a faded orange beanbag on the floor, was a green Buddha positioned on a shelf behind a line of empty miniature bottles, the type purchased on board aircraft or in hotel minibars. Neither girl knew where Hattie was although Fran claimed the young woman had left to stay with a friend from school and would be back by Monday.

  Fran screwed herself further into the corner of the settee and scowled at Natalie, wiry arms wrapped around herself protectively, her dark eyes flashing. ‘You have no right to go through my social media accounts without my permission.’

  ‘We do if they concern a murder investigation,’ Natalie replied.

  ‘It’s an invasion of my privacy,’ Fran continued.

  ‘It’s not up for discussion. What is, however, is the conversation you had with Rhiannon on Friday, November the second, two weeks before Gemma had acid thrown in her face.’

  Rhiannon shook her head repeatedly and said, ‘We had nothing whatsoever to do with that attack. You can’t believe we’d do that. It doesn’t matter what we said, we’d never do anything as terrible as that, would we?’ Her cheeks deepened in colour and her eyes widened earnestly.

  The silver studs in Fran’s nose and eyebrows, and the two hoops that looked like staples on her bottom lip, glinted as she moved her head and they caught the evening sunlight that streamed into the room. She was wearing ripped jeans and a lemon vest and Natalie’s eyes grazed the young woman’s upper right arm, where a tattoo of a bird fleeing from captivity had been inked in black onto her flesh. Natalie glanced at the open door of the cage, the black thorny roses and the swallow that flew towards the young woman’s collar bone, and she wondered if it was to represent Fran’s own desire to escape something. Fran raised her eyes and said, ‘I had nothing to do with what happened to Gemma.’

  Natalie read from the sheet of dialogue. ‘Can you explain, Fran, what you meant when you said, “Yeah, something that would fix her for good. I know people who’d sort her out once and for all.” That seems quite threatening to me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything. It was only a dumb online conversation that people have when they’re angry. It wasn’t serious at all.’

  Rhiannon’s face puckered and tears formed. She twisted a strand of mauve and pink beads around her wrist that matched the colour of the flowers on her patterned woollen dress and whispered hoarsely, ‘It was nothing serious, you see. We were messing, weren’t we, Fran?’

  Natalie ignored the girl’s discomfort and continued her questioning, looking directly at Fran. ‘Then can you explain what you meant when you replied to Rhiannon’s comment, “What? Get a contract out on her?” with, “Not exactly. Just rearrange her face a little.”?’

  Fran inhaled and exhaled noisily. ‘I can’t explain it. It was some random shit I said. Sometimes, I say stuff I don’t really mean. We were coming out with fantasy scenarios. Neither of us were serious. I can go off on one now and then, can’t I, Rhiannon?’

  Her friend ran a stubby finger under her eyes to remove smudged mascara and sniffed back more tears before saying, ‘Yeah, Fran gets pissed off at times, but everyone who knows her knows she doesn’t mean it. She wouldn’t do anything as wicked as this. This was Fran blowing off, wasn’t it? Gemma had been winding her up again.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘She’d been hanging about Ryan, even though she dumped him.’ Fran shot her a dark look. Rhiannon lowered her gaze for a second then apologised. ‘Sorry, Fran, but I don’t want the police to think you did anything wrong.’

  Fran didn’t respond, merely averted her eyes while Rhiannon continued explaining to Natalie. ‘Fran is keen on Ryan – has been for quite a while. Gemma split up from him but she didn’t want him to move on, and whenever he and Fran were chatting in the kitchen or in here, she’d appear and break up the conversation.’

  ‘That true?’ Natalie directed her question to Fran, who played with the fringed edges at one of the knee holes in her jeans.

  ‘Yeah. I knew Ryan before she came on the scene. We had a bit of a thing last term and I kind of thought we’d start up something this year, but Gemma arrived and he fell for her bullshit then suddenly she split up with him and I thought we’d pick things back up. For the last month, he and I have been getting on well, and that day, when I let off steam on Facebook, I’d been having a pretty heavy conversation with Ryan when Gemma swooped in and hauled him off to her room. I let rip in that conversation. That’s all I did. I meant none of it.’

  ‘She was a flirt,’ said Rhiannon with a nod to reaffirm what she was saying.

  Natalie tried to weigh up the situation. Rhiannon was clearly mortified that they were being questioned about the attack and considered as suspects. Fran less so, although she claimed to be innocent. ‘Fran, you ended the online conversation with a response to Rhiannon. Can you recall what you said?’

  ‘No. I haven’t looked back at what was said then. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It wasn’t that big a deal at the time. You’re making it out to be more serious than it was.’

  ‘It might not have been serious, yet when Rhiannon said you wouldn’t rearrange Gemma’s face you replied, “Wouldn’t I?”’ Fran stared at Natalie.

  ‘What can I say? I didn’t hurt Gemma. I wrote some stuff on Facebook that, with hindsight, was stupid. I had no way of knowing that somebody would actually throw acid at Gemma. If I’d known that at the time, I’d never have made those comments. If I’d been responsible for what happened to her, I’d have deleted that conversation because it only makes me look guilty, and I’m not. I wasn’t anywhere near the library at the time.’

  ‘But you claim to know people who could have made the attack on your behalf.’

  ‘That was a load of bullshit. I’m not a bad person!’

  ‘Yet you made claims that suggest you would harm Gemma.’

  Fran spoke slowly and loudly. ‘I… did… not harm Gemma!’

  ‘Then we need to prove that,’ said Natalie. ‘Rhiannon, where were you Friday evening between seven and eight?’

  ‘At the students’ union bar. I hung out with loads of different people. Somebody will be able to say they saw me there.’

  ‘And Fran, what about you?’

  The girl glowered but spoke all the same. ‘I was there too. I went there after the meeting, before the band went onstage.’

  ‘How long did you stay?’

  ‘We both left after they packed up, around eleven.’ Fran looked up at her, face stern. ‘I didn’t order a hit on Gemma. My mouth runs away with me sometimes.’

  Natalie continued with, ‘Which band was performing?’

  ‘Hell For Ever. They’re a local group.’

  Natalie nodded. The girls had alibis for the evening; however, either of them might have slipped away unnoticed or might even have asked or paid somebody to disfigure Gemma. The technical team would have to search for evidence to find out if either girl had made contact with anybody inside or outside the university. ‘I’d like you both to hand over your d
evices so we can check them,’ said Natalie.

  ‘You are kidding, aren’t you?’ said Fran, suddenly pushing herself into an upright position.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Natalie replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We need to make sure you’re telling the truth and you weren’t somehow involved in the attack on Gemma.’

  Fran stared indignantly at Natalie, her nostrils flaring and her lips pressed tightly together. She weighed up her options and then muttered to Rhiannon, ‘Can you fucking believe this?’

  Her friend’s wide eyes were damp with tears. ‘Mine too?’ she asked Natalie.

  ‘Yes, all your devices – laptops, iPads, mobiles. We’ll return them as soon as we’ve examined them.’

  ‘But… it was only a bit of online banter,’ said Rhiannon.

  Natalie’s reply was terse. ‘It sounded like more than “banter”. You were conjuring up ways to humiliate and harm Gemma only a fortnight before a person actually threw acid in her face. We are taking this matter seriously.’

  ‘This is utter crap, you know?’ Fran grumbled, but she got to her feet all the same. ‘Rhiannon, just do it. They’ll see we have nothing to hide.’ She stormed off upstairs.

  Rhiannon sniffed again and whined, ‘We were only messing about.’

  ‘I’ll come with you to collect your stuff,’ said Lucy.

  Rhiannon stood to join her but gave Natalie one more tearful plea. ‘Please. We didn’t mean any harm.’ Her face puckered and tears spilt.

  ‘Come on,’ said Lucy.

  Natalie used the time to gather her thoughts. Even if the pair hadn’t been involved, they might have planted seeds in the attacker’s mind. She’d have to follow up that possibility.

  There was creaking from above then light footfalls and Fran reappeared. She only reached Natalie’s shoulders, and with her slight, lean frame and shaven head, she could be mistaken for a youth. Natalie suspected her fierce appearance and attitude were mostly for show and detected a shift in the girl, who now stood with her head bowed, arms outstretched. Natalie took the Toshiba laptop covered in stickers from her.