by A L Fraine
“He did it, didn’t he? Seth. He killed her.”
“I wouldn’t like to say, Mrs Richards. It could be anyone at this point.”
“I knew he was trouble. I always said it. I told her. But she wouldn’t listen.”
“Do you know where Seth lives?”
Iris shook her head. “No, sorry. Harper was always cagy about it. I don’t think she wanted me to see it, or know where she was. Her little way of telling me she didn’t need my help. All her post still comes here, too.”
“Okay. I’m sure we’ll be able to figure it out..”
“Good. You know, I’m sure he did it. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I don’t know what they were fighting over, but that has to be it. It must be him.”
Jon had to admit, it did sound compelling. But the way Harper was killed, it didn’t say crime of passion. It said just the opposite.
Beside him, Kate’s phone rang. Apologising, she got up and rushed out of the room to take it. Jon watched her go and wondered if that would be Nathan again.
“Okay, thank you, Mrs Richards. I think we have everything we need for now. Faith will stay with you, take a more detailed statement, and help with anything you need. But we’ll leave you for now. You’ve been really helpful. Thank you.”
“Of course. Anything I can do, please just let me know.”
“We will, thanks,” he said and got up. Faith followed him out into the hall where Kate finished her call. “Nathan?”
Kate nodded. “All done?”
“For now,” Jon replied before he turned to Faith. “Are you alright here?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll stay for a while and make sure she’s okay, and see about arranging someone to come over and stay with her. I’ll take that statement too.”
“Thanks, Faith.”
She nodded and returned to the front room.
“Shall we go?” Jon asked.
“Yeah. We need to make a slight detour on the way back to the station, though.”
7
“So, any updates from Nathan?” Jon asked.
“Not much, no,” Kate replied. “I think there are a few more days left in the court case yet.”
Jon nodded. “So, this guy, Abban. What did he do?”
“Kidnapped an old lady, amongst other stuff,” Kate replied. “He’s a piece of work.”
“Sounds like it.” Jon had a distinct feeling there was more to it than that, but again, he didn’t really feel like pushing things too much. There was something about the Devlin case that had its claws in Kate, but she just kept dodging his questions and being vague. He could pull rank and find out more, but he didn’t want to do that. He’d much rather wait for her to open up to him in her own time.
Besides, they had an active case going on and couldn’t afford to get too distracted.
“So, the Seth angle seems like it might turn something up for us,” Kate commented.
“He’s high on the list of suspects,” Jon agreed. “This whole thing stinks.”
“Drug dealer turned boyfriend. Yeah, like that’s not a recipe for disaster. I don’t know what gets into people sometimes.”
“Maybe she liked the rough ones?”
Kate smirked. “Yeah, maybe. Looks like it backfired on her though. Iris wasn’t big on details. Do you think their fight turned violent?”
“I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised,” Jon replied.
“Yeah, me neither. Whatever it was, it was serious enough for Harper to run to her mother, even though their relationship doesn’t sound great.”
“Well, we have her phone,” Jon said. “Maybe that will shed some light on Harper’s relationship with Seth, her mother, and maybe even her father.”
“You never know,” Kate agreed as Jon navigated his way into Guildford. Kate gave him directions until he drove down a side road and passed the city’s cinema complex and came out in front of the courthouse. Jon spotted journalists and photographers out front on the steps, waiting for the next juicy morsel to drop into their lap.
“Oh look, it’s the press. Great,” Jon remarked sarcastically as he drove by the court’s main entrance.
“Yeah,” Kate agreed, sounding equally wary of them. “Drive round there, you can park in here,” Kate suggested, indicating the car park that was opposite the building. Jon soon found a space and eyed it critically. “Jesus, how small is that space?”
“I’ll get out now.” Kate undid her belt.
“Sure,” Jon replied, and once she’d exited the car, he spent the next few minutes cursing up a storm as he manoeuvred his Astra into the frankly tiny space. He could see other spaces nearby, and they looked just as tiny, if not more so.
Was this car park designed for Hot Wheels cars or something?
He eventually got it parked, and squeezed out the door, doing his best not to chip the paint on the car beside his.
“Well done,” Kate said and gave him a mocking round of applause.
“You can drive the next time we come here,” he replied.
“With pleasure,” she answered and then pointed to her right. “I’ll park in there, though.”
Jon looked over at the enormous, spacious, multi-story car park next door to this obstacle course, and screwed his face up. “You could have said something.”
Kate shrugged. “And ruin your fun?”
“Any scratches on this puppy, and I’ll bill you for their repairs,” Jon said, grumbling to himself.
“Why bother? They’ll just blend in with all the other chips and scratches and add to the car’s character.”
“Its character?”
“Don’t all surly DCI’s need to drive a banged-up motor? It’s part of the job description, isn’t it?”
“I’m not surly,” Jon protested. “I’m a fluffy teddy bear.”
Kate laughed. “If you say so. I’ll reserve judgement. I’ve only known you for a few hours.”
“I’ll be sure to be on my best behaviour then. Wouldn’t want to get a bad report from Miss O’Connell.”
“You do that. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to get the cane out,” Kate replied as they exited the car park and approached the courthouse entrance.
“Is that a promise?”
“You’ll have to wait and see, teddy.”
Jon laughed.
The waiting press ignored them for the most part and seemed to be focusing their attention on the main entrance. But as they approached the front doors, walking up the front steps, a blonde-haired man stepped up to them.
“DC O’Connell,” the man called out.
“Oh shit,” she whispered, just loud enough for Jon to hear. Kate turned and looked at the man. “It’s DS O’Connell now, Chester. You know that.”
“Of course, my apologies,” he replied with a fake sincerity and smile that Jon could spot a mile off. “Care to comment on the case?”
“Not really,” Kate replied as she continued to walk.
“Who’s your new partner? Did you finally have enough of Nathan’s theories?”
Kate ignored him, as they continued to approach the main front doors.
“Theories?” Jon asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Kate replied with a smile as they walked into the building. Jon spotted Nathan right away, and they walked over to him.
“Hi,” Nathan said in greeting. “Sorry to call you in. I got a lift here, but my ride back to the station got called away.”
“It’s okay,” Kate replied. “How’s it going?”
Nathan was about to answer but apparently noticed something as he suddenly moved past Kate. Jon turned and watched him step between her and an approaching woman.
“Oi, you! Kate. Come here, you bitch,” the woman shouted. Jon recognised her right away as the woman he’d seen on TV this morning. Abban Devlin’s wife, Faye.
“Hey, whoa, oh no you don’t,” Nathan said, standing in her way. Jon stepped forward too, putting himself between Kate and Mrs Devlin.
�
��You heartless fucking bitch. You set him up. You can’t do this to him!” Faye shouted. “He’s innocent!”
“Mum,” a young man beside Faye called out, reaching out to pull her away. “Mum, please. She was just doing her job.”
“Doing her… Piss off. You heard what she accused him of. He’s no murderer. Come here, you cow!” she shouted again. “I’ll show you!”
“Mum, stop, please. You’ll get in trouble.”
“I don’t care.”
“Mrs Devlin, that’s enough,” Nathan called out. “I know you’re upset…”
“Upset?” she raged, trying to launch herself at Kate. Jon quickly stepped in the way and fended her off, only for her to scream at him and hold her hand up in a V-for-Victory sign. “Get out of my way, we’ll win this.”
By now, several other officers and guards had joined the fray. She was pulled away and moved off as she continued to proclaim Abban’s innocence. Jon watched with fascination as Faye continued to rage and shout, calling Kate all the names under the sun.
He turned, to find her stood watching the scuffle with a troubled expression on her face. Nathan was still helping pull Faye away, having been caught up in the chaos.
“You okay?” Jon asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t think she likes me very much.”
Jon laughed. “Yeah, no shit.”
“We should get Nathan and go.”
Jon nodded and looked over. Nathan slowly extracted himself from the knot of people and straightened his suit as he walked over.
“Well, that was a bit of excitement in an otherwise boring day.”
Jon raised an eyebrow. “If you say so,” he replied. Nathan probably didn’t know about the case they were working on.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Kate urged.
“Good idea,” Nathan agreed, and they started to walk out when a voice called out to them.
“Detectives?”
Jon looked around and spotted Faye’s son, jogging over to catch them up. Jon moved to stand in his way. “What’s up?”
The young man held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I don’t want any trouble,” he said, looking past Jon to Kate. “I’m sorry for my mum. She just doesn’t want to believe what my dad’s been accused of.”
“That’s okay, Brendan,” Kate replied.
“Thanks for coming over,” Jon added, making sure there was an unsaid, ‘piss off’ in there somewhere.
“Okay. Sorry. I don’t mean to take up your time. And, for the record, despite what my mum thinks, I believe you. My dad was always secretive. Now we know why.”
“Okay, thanks,” Kate replied.
“Bye,” Jon said, moving between him and Kate.
The young man looked up, and after a beat, smiled. “Oh, okay. Yeah, bye,” he said, and turned away, walking back towards where his mother was still making a scene.
The press had apparently gotten wind of the altercation and were already swarming around the entrance as they walked out. Several of them called out to Kate and Nathan, asking them questions or wanting a statement from them. It was chaos, and the shouted words mixed together, making it tough to make much out as Jon focused on keeping up with his colleagues and pushing through the scrum.
Luckily for them, it seemed that they were far more interested in the Devlins and the juicy story of Faye and her protests against the case, than they were in Jon’s fellow officers.
They were soon through them and crossing the road, leaving the courthouse behind. Jon made a bee-line for the car, and a few moments later, they were on their way, leaving the city.
“So, how’s the case going?” Kate asked Nathan from where she sat in the front passenger seat.
“If I had to guess, I’d say Abban will see some time inside. I can’t see him getting off. Terry is still trying to take the heat for everything, though.”
“Terry?” Jon asked.
Kate took a breath. “This was our last big case,” Kate began. “It started with a robbery gone wrong. Terry Sims and his crew murdered an old man while they were trying to rob him. But from what we can tell, Abban was the one behind it all. Terry was just his thug.”
“Oh,” Jon replied. “And the kidnapping charges?”
“Abban and Co. were after an old, valuable book, but we got to it first and brought it to the station. Abban wanted that book, so he kidnapped my neighbour and tried to blackmail me into giving it to him.”
“Wow,” Jon replied, shocked at the details of the case. “No wonder you’re invested.” Kate nodded in reply, clearly affected by it. “Sorry you had to go through that.”
“It’s okay,” she replied. “At least he’ll see some time.”
“He should,” Nathan replied. “And then there’s the murder he committed in Ireland. He’s going to be extradited to Ireland in a few days to stand trial for that.”
“Good,” Kate replied.
“Sounds like you did your jobs,” Jon commented. “You should be proud of yourselves.”
“Heh,” Kate chuckled, but it wasn’t a terribly happy sound. “Yeah, I guess.
“So,” Nathan began, “what have you guys been up to?”
Kate looked over at Jon with a single raised eyebrow. Jon returned the look, with an equally incredulous expression.
“Do you want to tell him, or should I?” Kate said.
“Tell me what?” Nathan asked.
8
“Right then,” Jon said, sat at the head of the table in the dedicated incident room that they’d chosen to use for the case. A large free-standing whiteboard on casters stood to his right, displaying a photo of Harper when she was alive. Beside it, pictures from the crime scene picked out details such as the severed fingers, the cuffs, the cuts on her wrists, and the general location.
There was a family tree drawn up, as well as a list of known friends and associates. Seth was on there too, with a photo that Dion had pulled from police records.
Jon went over the case with them all. He described the crime scene and the timetable that the SOCO team and the Pathologist had worked out, plus the timing of the events that Iris Richards had provided.
“From what we can tell, it looks like Harper was snatched from the street close to where her mother lived. Given the approximate time of her death at around midnight, and the time she walked out of her mother's house at around 9 pm, that gives us a three-hour window. So we need to go through CCTV around her mother’s place, and around the factory. My guess, based on what we know so far from the killing, is that this guy knows what he’s doing. I would be surprised if we found something. But, you never know. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, so let’s get looking and keep our fingers crossed. Alright, Rachel, how’s the door-to-door going?”
“We’re still neck-deep in it, but nothing major to report yet. I think we have a couple of possible sightings of her shortly after she left her mother’s which gives us an idea of her route, but that’s all so far.”
“Okay, good work, keep going. Dion, what about her phone? Anything there?”
“We’ve got the records of her calls and we have transcripts of her messages,” he said and handed out copies of them. “There are a few things to note in there, which I’ve highlighted. There are some messages between Harper and Seth, with Seth apologising for the fight they got into. There’s no mention of him hitting her, but it sounds like it got physical from what Harper says. On page three, you can see she says he hurt her and that she had a bruise.”
“I see,” Jon replied, reading the message.
“She’s apologising to him here, too,” Kate said, pointing to the page. Jon glanced at where Kate was pointing on her transcript and found it on his. Harper had written a suitably vague, ‘Sorry for what I did,’ note, but hadn’t elaborated.
“Yeah,” Dion replied. “Don’t know what that’s in regards to, though. Looks like she did something to annoy him, but it looks like she did it in retaliation for something he did.”
“Look
s like they had an acrimonious relationship,” Jon remarked. There were huge gaps in the narrative of the messages, probably because they were doing much of their talking face to face, and using the messaging apps to supplement it when they were apart. What was clear, though, was that something had happened between them, something that was bad enough for her to go to her mother’s house. But was it bad enough for him to murder her?
“What more do we know about Seth? Is he still dealing?” Jon asked.
“We’ve not picked him up for a while,” Rachel replied. The last time was over six months ago, and that was for dealing again. But he’s got previous for assault, possession with intent to supply, robbery, etc. etc. He’s a career criminal.”
“He was dating Harper when we last picked him up, then?” Jon asked.
“Yep. We have his current address too.”
“Excellent, that will be our next port of call. Okay, her absent father. What do we have on him?”
“We’re still looking into him, but it doesn’t look like he lives locally anymore,” Rachel replied.
“I saw some messages from him,” Dion said, flicking through the transcript. “Yeah, here. Page six. Nothing earth-shattering, though.”
Jon turned to the relevant page and scanned the messages. It was just Peter asking how her day was, what she was up to, and Harper messaging back.
“Okay, there’s nothing in the messages. See what you can find out about him. Where is he these days? What’s he doing? Who does he associate with? That kind of thing.”
“Will do,” Rachel replied.
“I don’t think Iris knew Harper was in touch with her dad,” Jon added.
“Maybe not,” Kate agreed.
“Anything else?” Jon turned to Sheridan, who looked very different out of her crime scene gear with her long blonde hair tied up at the back of her head. “Anything about the crime scene?”
“No fingerprints, from what we can tell,” Sheridan replied. “He was most likely gloved. The report from the pathologist came in. She found bruises on Harper’s body, consistent with being strangled, and punched in the face. Several more elsewhere on her body that could suggest a fight or struggle. But there’s no way to know if they were by the killer, or from the domestic with Seth. I’ve also entered the cuffs into the case’s exhibits.”
