The Anglesey Murders Box Set

by Conrad Jones

  ‘You said they’re racist.’

  ‘They are when it suits them. If they think that someone could be of use to them, then who knows where their prejudice stops and starts.’ We walked by other cars as we talked. I noticed that there were some top-of-the-range BMWs parked outside the apartments. The development was fairly new, and they looked expensive. As we reached the foyer, I noticed the ceiling was vaulted and tiled with white squares. ‘What happens to Fabienne now?’

  ‘We need to decide if she’s crazy or telling the truth.’ Peter spoke to the officer at the entrance and then waved me in. ‘SOCO have finished; we can take a look.’

  Fabienne’s apartment was on the ground floor, thirty yards down the corridor from where we were standing. The floors were carpeted with beige cord and the walls were painted in neutral colours, whites and beiges. Peter pushed open the apartment door and we stepped into a hallway which revealed nothing about the person who inhabited it. Peter scanned the hall. ‘Looks normal.’

  ‘You sound disappointed,’ I said. ‘Did you expect pentangles on the floor and reversed crucifixes on the wall?’

  ‘Maybe. Look around, but don’t touch anything.’ Peter didn’t see the humour in my comment. I needed to be normal and make light of things. The morning’s events had put me into shock. My head ached and my eyes hurt.

  The apartment was spacious. There was a lounge with a small kitchenette at one end and a balcony at the other. The bedroom had a double bed, a dressing table and a chest of drawers. There were fitted wardrobes on the wall opposite the bed. One of the wardrobe doors was open. It was empty. There were no clothes hanging up, no dresses, jackets, skirts, blouses, or shoes. Even the hangers were missing. She had a large television set on the drawers and there was a used cup from McDonald’s next to her bed. The whole place was bland and nondescript. If we were to discover anything about Fabienne’s personality, then we weren’t going to find it here. The place felt like it had been cleansed.

  In the living room was a three-piece suite in white leather. The cheap, wooden laminate floor was featureless, and the walls were magnolia. There were no ornaments or photographs. She had no books or DVDs and there were no magazines or personal stuff. The kitchen was new and spotless and looked as if she never used it. The cooker gleamed and the kettle was empty. No one ever switched it on.

  ‘This place looks like a show home,’ I said. ‘Apart from the coffee cup, there’s nothing here.’

  ‘It looks like it’s been cleaned recently,’ Peter said. ‘Sterile.’

  ‘Why would anyone do that?’ I asked. I could understand why a gangster, or a hoodlum, would clean a crime scene, but this was a young woman’s apartment. What was the point?

  ‘To remove any evidence that Fabienne may have left behind,’ Peter shrugged. It was a mystery. ‘Maybe she hasn’t been here for a while.’

  ‘I can’t see how you will learn anything about her unless she tells you herself,’ I shrugged. ‘You need to get her to talk to you.’

  ‘That’s proving impossible at the moment.’ Peter opened the bathroom door and revealed more of the same: nothing.

  ‘Look, I know it’s a bit odd, but if Fabienne is telling the doctors that she wants to talk to me, why don’t you let her?’ I looked out of the balcony window at the marina below and wondered how long it would take to fall into the water. Although it was a ground floor flat, the sea was way below the balcony. I have a real fear of heights, so it pops into my mind when I look over the edge of a drop. I don’t like driving over bridges or even climbing a ladder. As I looked over the balcony, I decided it would take about four seconds for me to hit the water if I jumped. I wonder what goes through someone’s mind when they jump. Do they have second thoughts? I can’t imagine being desperate enough to jump. I watched the poor souls trapped in the Twin Towers, faced with the choice of burning to death or jumping to certain death. Can you imagine fate landing you with that choice?

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ Peter put his hands in his pockets while he listened to my idea. His trousers had dull patches where they were worn from sitting down and his black shoes were ridiculously shiny. He leant against the doorframe while I spoke.

  ‘I don’t have a clue how it would work, but she might talk to me. I know a little bit about satanic cults, maybe she’ll open up.’ I moved away from the drop. ‘What have you got to lose?’

  ‘Well the doctors are getting nowhere. I can ask if we could set up an interview with me as lead detective and you as an observer. Might be worth a go.’ He looked me in the eyes, searching for something. Was he looking for my motive? Why would I want to get involved after all the trouble it had caused so far? If he was looking for the answers to those questions, he wouldn’t find them because I didn’t have them.

  Every bone in my body was screaming at me to run a hundred miles an hour in the other direction, but I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to help her. I had another idea, too. I was going to write to Eddie Duncan in prison and ask him if he would speak to me. He was protesting his innocence about the murder of Pauline Holmes, and Fabienne Wilder was equally as adamant that she hadn’t murdered Caroline Stokes. The police believed that they were murdered by the same killer, so by hearing his side of the story I may have been able to help Fabienne. I decided not to discuss my idea with Peter, not yet anyway.

  ‘I think it’s worth a try. You might not be able to use any of it in court, but at least we could learn about her. It could shine some light on the murder.’ I tried to sound convincing.

  ‘I’ll make a call and set it up. Are you busy?’ He took out his mobile. I shrugged and smiled. What else would I be doing?

  CHAPTER 9

  Eddie Duncan – Risley Remand Centre

  Peter dropped me off at home an hour later, and on our journey, I had casually asked which prison the original suspect was being held in. I think my interest appeared to be innocent and Peter didn’t ask any awkward questions. When I got home, Evie Jones made a big fuss and it was a struggle to switch on my laptop and write a quick letter to Eddie Duncan while she was demanding attention. I made it brief and to the point. Fifteen minutes later the letter was posted and on its way to Risley Remand Centre. We were never destined to meet, but he called me from prison.

  From talking to Eddie Duncan, I knew that as he sat in his cell, he felt helpless. I knew what it was like to be arrested and locked up for something I hadn’t done, so I had sympathy for him as his situation was a thousand times worse. He was looking at a murder charge and he’d already been locked up for over a month. How he coped, I can’t imagine. He was a tough man, a survivor from the back streets of Moss Side in Manchester. As a boy he ran with a bad crowd and many of his friends didn’t make it to school-leaving age. Some of them were shot dead by the teenage gangs that controlled the drugs in the area, and some of them joined the gangs and ended up in prison.

  Eddie was gifted with a good business brain and he realised that running with a gang would never make him wealthy for life. The profits from selling drugs from a gang were huge, but the downsides were numerous and the pension scheme non-existent. He branched out on his own, dealing a few ounces of weed here and there before moving up into the lucrative hard drug market. Hard drugs are chronically addictive and very expensive, and he used the nightclub scene to sell his wares.

  He was a good-looking guy with a nice smile and a charming personality to match. Eddie soon had dozens of female customers who needed the drugs but didn’t have the money to pay for them. Sex was often the only currency they had. He didn’t want sex with most of them and so he turned into a pimp almost by accident. He moved away from the city to Llandudno but kept his business interests separate from his private life. The drugs and prostitution worked side by side, and he made a good living. Pauline Holmes was different, though.

  When he met Pauline, she was working near to Piccadilly station on her own. Other working girls often attacked her for straying onto their patch, and without the support of a good pimp she
was at their mercy. When Eddie first set eyes on her, her looks stunned him. Much the same as Fabienne had done to me. He approached her and they got chatting. He took her for some food and by the end of the night he’d agreed to look after her. Pauline liked Eddie. She hoped that one day he would tell her to stop working the streets and move in with him. She wanted children, Eddie’s children. Eddie wanted her too, except he couldn’t ruin his street cred by shacking up with one of his girls.

  As he lay in his prison cell, he wished a million times that he had swallowed his pride and taken her off the streets. If he had, she would be alive now and he would be free. He was looking at life in jail until they arrested Fabienne Wilder for a similar murder. Eddie’s solicitor jumped on the arrest immediately and there was suddenly a light at the end of the tunnel. If Eddie didn’t kill Pauline, then who did? That was the dilemma that the Nine Angels had. Eddie’s arrest meant that their involvement would never be investigated. If Eddie was freed the police would reopen the Fabienne Wilder investigation, and that would cause problems for the Niners. Eddie Duncan could not leave prison. I knew that if he was released in the light of new evidence, he would never talk to me on the outside. I didn’t realise it then but asking him for that meeting was like signing his death warrant. I may as well have slit his throat with my own hands. Four hours after calling me, he was dead.

  CHAPTER 10

  Blood Ties

  After posting my letter and walking the Staffie, I grabbed a few hours of broken sleep. Peter called me and said that the interview was on and that I had to meet him at Denbigh Hospital as soon as I could. I arrived at the asylum later that day and parked the truck in the same spot as I had on the previous visit. The weather had cleared, and the sun was trying to break through the clouds, though the light was fading as the day came to an end and night-time approached. The building was not as frightening in the daylight, but it still looked like a lunatic asylum. There was an aura of malevolence about it. I think it’s the wire and the fences. There’s something not right about enclosures built specifically to keep humans in rather than out.

  I walked into the reception and waited for Peter. He came from the corridor where the interview rooms were and waved me over.

  ‘Okay, the doctors have agreed to let me talk to her. You’re an observer. At the first sign of her being aggressive we pull the plug on the interview, okay?’ Peter was talking at a hundred miles an hour. ‘Before we begin, I need you to see the pictures of the victim, Caroline Stokes.’

  ‘Why do I need to see them?’ I’m not squeamish, but I knew there was a reason why he wanted me to see them before I spoke to Fabienne. I had my own opinion on the subject of her guilt. I could tell by the way he looked at me in her flat that he had concerns about my interest in her. ‘Is this to make me realise what a monster she is?’ I joked.

  ‘I need you to have no doubt in your mind that she is the chief suspect in a terrible murder,’ Peter said with a stern face. Looking back, Peter always exaggerated his facial expressions, like a bad actor in a low-budget soap opera. ‘They found her next to the body with the victim’s blood all over her face and hands. I need you to remember that when we talk to her.’ He opened a door and ushered me into an office which the detectives had borrowed temporarily. There were two other detectives there already and neither of them looked pleased to see me. Both men nodded silently when we entered. I pulled up a chair and sat down.

  ‘Take a good, long look at them.’ There were four glossy photographs, each six by five inches. Some were close-ups of the victim’s face. She was a pretty girl, but she looked older than her years. Her eyes were blank and staring. There was a savage rent in her throat reaching from her windpipe up to her left ear. I had seen crime scene pictures before, but the victims were anonymous then. This victim seemed different because I was familiar with the case. Knife wounds vary according to the shape and type of blade used. The wounds in the victim’s throat were ragged. The edges of the remaining flesh looked ripped and torn rather than cut. Other photographs showed her blood-soaked chest with the satanic symbol etched into it. The murderer had crushed her ribcage. She was wearing a white blouse, a pair of black high-heeled boots, white briefs and bra, a black leather miniskirt and a denim jacket.

  ‘There was hardly any blood left in her body. Pauline Holmes was the same. Now that’s not all that surprising considering that they’d been stabbed in the chest and throat, but there wasn’t much blood on the ground where we found the body, and like I said, Fabienne’s clothes were clean.’ Peter tapped the photograph. If things were not so weird, I may have made a vampire jibe, but the demeanour of Peter and his detectives was not akin to making jokes just now.

  ‘Okay, I get the message. I thought suspects were innocent until proven guilty in this country.’ I smiled but they did not return it. The detectives looked at me as if I had taken a dump in a church. ‘That was a joke.’ Nobody laughed.

  There was a knock on the door and a guard poked his head around it. ‘She’s secured in room F. We’re ready when you are.’

  ‘Okay, thank you.’ Peter tapped me on the arm. ‘Let’s go. We’re on.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said to the detectives as we left. They didn’t even look at me. ‘Nice to meet you too, Conrad,’ I muttered sarcastically.

  Peter threw me a withering glance as I followed him out of the room and down the corridor. My heart was racing at the thought of seeing Fabienne again. I wanted to know who she was and what her involvement with the victim was. I was convinced she’d not murdered her. The lights were bright, and I was tired, and I think the adrenalin in my bloodstream made me dizzy. My knees seemed to buckle. I wobbled and shut my eyes, and suddenly I was looking down at the body of the victim, Caroline Stokes. It was as if I was there. Something or someone had taken control of my mind.

  She was right there in front of me, looking straight back at me. She was dying, but there was life in her eyes. There was a man kneeling over her, sucking on the wound in her throat. His eyes were dark circles. He turned to me and smiled. Blood ran from his chin and his teeth were smeared red. He beckoned me to drink. He was no vampire from a movie set, nor was he a monster. He was human. He was a feeder. Somewhere in his twisted mind he believed that killing an innocent victim, looking into their eyes as they died and drinking some of their blood would help him to become immortal. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. I have a vivid imagination, all writers do, but this image was as clear as day.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Peter’s voice interrupted my thoughts. He grabbed my arm and stopped me from toppling over. I felt like I had fallen back into my body and the image was nothing more than a fading memory, like a dream just before you wake up. My head was fuzzy, and I felt weak. The hallucination had left me exhausted.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I was miles away there,’ I answered, embarrassed. ‘I’m tired. I think this morning is catching up with me.’ I felt like a light had switched on in my head, but what could I say to Peter? He is a hardened detective who deals in black and white, guilty or innocent, and I didn’t think that telling him I’d just had a hallucination would be the best way to start an interview with a woman who was locked up an asylum. ‘I’m just tired and nervous, I think.’

  ‘Are you worried about talking to the girl directly?’ Peter asked, concerned.

  ‘Sort of, I’m all right though.’ I smiled. I had to talk to her. ‘I think we should give it a try.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Peter frowned.

  ‘I’m fine.’ I nodded and smiled again. This time it was more convincing. Peter opened the door to room F, and we stepped into the small interview room. It was nine feet square, and the floor was covered in brown carpet tiles. The table was bolted to the floor and the only light came from a powerful fluorescent tube, protected by a wire mesh. Inside the room, the two-way mirror was unnerving. Knowing that people were watching your every move from behind it was unsettling. Fabienne was sitting on a chair and her head was on the table, restin
g on her arm as if she was sleeping. Her wrists were manacled to a thick leather belt around her waist. She raised her head and looked at us when we walked into the room and her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

  ‘I knew you would come. I knew it.’ She reached out her hands as far as the straps would allow her to. I smiled back at her nervously. Her eyes held me in a spell. ‘The doctor told me all about you. You were here the other night, you’re the writer; you’ve written about them, haven’t you? I knew it. I knew I was right.’ she babbled excitedly.

  I looked at Peter for an explanation. I wasn’t happy with too many details being handed to a murder suspect, even if I did think she was innocent.

  ‘The doctor had to apologise for ignoring what Fabienne told him about the observers behind the mirror. He has told her your name and that you are indeed a writer,’ he explained. I swallowed hard. My throat was dry and tacky. I tried to smile at Fabienne without looking too concerned that she knew all about me.

  ‘He’s a prick. The doctor, I mean, not you,’ she said to Peter. ‘I knew you were a writer and I got the first letter of your name. I guess things sometimes; sometimes I know things that I shouldn’t. I don’t know how I know them, but I do.’ Fabienne giggled. Her black eyes sparkled. ‘You look a little shocked; maybe even a bit scared.’

  ‘I’m okay. I’m tired, that’s all.’

  ‘No, there’s something else in your eyes.’ She frowned and stared into me. Her expression changed to one of realisation. ‘You saw him, didn’t you? I know you saw him.’ She pointed to my head. ‘I was thinking about him and you saw him too.’

  ‘Who did I see?’ I asked. She stopped smiling immediately. Her expression darkened.

  ‘Don’t treat me as if I’m stupid, Conrad. The doctor doesn’t understand me, but you do. You do because you have an imagination.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘We are similar, you and me. You see imaginary things in your mind, whereas I see things that are real, and I know you saw him, but we see them.’ She pointed to her head again. ‘You saw him in your head, didn’t you?’