Her Dark Heart: A totally gripping crime thriller (Detective Gina Harte Book 5)

by Carla Kovach

  ‘No. Ava’s my friend, not yours. Just stay here because Dad will wonder where we both are when he comes home.’

  ‘Okay, leave me out as usual.’ Jasmine turned away from her.

  ‘Grow up. I’m just going to see my friend. I won’t be long. Just tell Dad I’ll be back for lunch.’

  ‘Where does she live? You know Dad will ask.’

  ‘The door is red, just opposite our road. It’s the only red door.’ She’d seen a red door on one of the houses. That would do. It wasn’t as if her dad would walk over and get her. If he wanted her home, he’d text and she could be home in a few minutes if she ran.

  ‘Okay, whatever.’ Jasmine turned the music video back on and slumped into their dad’s favourite chair.

  ‘See you later.’

  Lying had come easier than she thought it would. She had to lie. Her dad and Jasmine would understand when or if they found out. Her mother had asked her to come and she needed her help. A smile fanned across her face. She was going to see her mother and finally find out what was going on.

  Forty-Two

  Ryan leaned over the desk in the interview room, rubbing his stubble as the recorder continued. Gina suspected he hadn’t properly got up that morning as the smell of pine-scented aftershave was fighting with his sweat, and the sweat was winning.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m here. My kids’ mother is missing and all you do is get me here. I have to get back soon as my neighbour has to go out. I don’t know where Susan is or where she went, we hadn’t talked properly for ages. I didn’t even see her that day. I rarely see her at all. I picked the girls up from school and took them to mine as we’d arranged.’

  Gina glanced at the notes that Jacob was making. So far, he’d given them nothing useful. She yawned as she played with her biro under the desk. ‘I’m sorry this is taking up your time and we appreciate that you have the girls to look after, but Susan is still missing and we are asking everyone she knew the same questions. This is a voluntary interview and we appreciate you coming in. Please tell me of your whereabouts on the day of Tuesday, November the twelfth, the last day Mrs Wheeler was seen.’

  ‘Working.’ He folded his arms and looked down.

  Gina sighed. If he was going to give her nothing but one-word answers, the interview was going to take a long time. ‘You work for yourself, is that right?’

  ‘I have a gardening business which means I work all over the place, whenever I’m required.’

  ‘Where were you working on Tuesday?’

  ‘I attend the grounds of Cleevesford Manor one day a week and that’s where I was.’ Gina knew this to be the passed-down house of a family that had lived in Cleevesford for centuries.

  ‘What time did you get there?’

  ‘About nine in the morning.’

  ‘Did you leave at all during the day?’

  He shrugged and began rubbing his fine prickles of hair. Could he have been the figure hanging around Damson Close, outside their witness Alicia’s house? Was he there checking up on Susan after knowing where she was because he’d fitted a tracking device to her car?

  ‘I grabbed a sandwich from the Co-op, probably about twelve, maybe one, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’

  He scrunched his nose up and placed his elbows on the desk. ‘No. Well, I saw lots of people but no one I knew.’

  He definitely had the opportunity. If he’d planted the tracking device, he could have easily turned up to where Susan’s car was and waited for her to return. She would have trusted him enough to talk to him if she’d seen him in Damson Close. Maybe he made up a story about attending to a garden in the area. Most of the residents would have been at work. He could have called her over for a word and once she was close enough, encouraged her in and drove off with her. Maybe she resisted and he bundled her in his car before driving away. She would have been an easy target for him. She glanced at his physique: muscular, strong. Susan would be no match for his strength.

  ‘Do you know this man?’ Gina pushed a photo of Dale across the table.

  He leaned back and laughed. ‘Jeez, I knew this would come up when I saw his mugshot on the news yesterday.’

  They were finally getting somewhere. ‘Tell me how you know Dale Blair.’

  ‘I argued with him in the Angel Arms sometime back in June. Caught him having a lovely cosy evening at the Angel Arms with my wife but I haven’t seen the geezer since. I mean look at him, I don’t know what she was thinking. He looks like a bloody slob and he was a whimpering mess. Since that night our relationship went sour. She wouldn’t come clean to me that she was seeing him, kept saying I knew nothing. When I asked her to tell me, she just pushed me away, then a few weeks later she’d packed my bags – all because of him.’

  Gina watched as Jacob scribbled a few notes.

  ‘Can we go back to Tuesday? Where were you that evening?’

  ‘What a stupid question. I picked the girls up just gone three. I was at home looking after them.’

  ‘Did you pop out, leaving them alone?’ Was he hanging around by Susan’s car on Damson Close, wondering what to do with it?

  ‘No, I picked the girls up from school and took them to mine.’

  ‘And you didn’t pop out after that?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t leave my kids at home on their own while I went out, which is why I need to get home before my neighbour has to go out.’

  Gina placed the photo of Dale back into the folder and closed it. ‘One last thing, do you know anything about trackers, in cars?’

  He sat bolt upright and held her gaze for a second too long. He went to speak, then stopped. ‘Why would I know anything like that?’

  ‘We found one in the boot of Susan’s car, under the spare wheel.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wheeler. Is there anything else you think we should know?’

  He scraped his chair on the floor as he stood and shook his head. ‘Only that she cheated on me, then she threw me out. I left as she asked. She wanted the kids, the house and more money in maintenance that I could possibly ever afford. She became secretive, hiding things, going out and trying to say it was work all the time. She came home smelling of alcohol and kept pushing me away. That was around the time I caught her with him at the pub. It was probably down to him, that Dale. He probably promised her the world and then let her down.’

  He stood and stretched, flexing his muscles. Gina couldn’t help think of what Ryan had said. Dale was unfit, a little scruffy and had barely any handsome features and he was on the chubby side. Ryan was the opposite, light tan from working outside even though they were heading towards winter, muscular and lean, chiselled jaw – he certainly was a closer match for Susan. Something wasn’t adding up and it wasn’t solely to do with how they all looked.

  ‘She accused me of having an affair, in the court papers, but there was no affair. One of the kids had told her I’d been on a date. I leaked that to Phoebe on purpose. I wanted Susan to hear that because I was trying to make her jealous. I did go on a date to prove a point but it meant nothing and led to nothing. Thought I’d tell you in case that comes out next. Her mother Mary is bound to say something to make me look bad.’ Gina sensed the tension between Ryan and Mary.

  ‘Who did you date?’

  ‘No one of any significance, just a woman I met in the pub and it was only a dinner out. I didn’t even think anything of her and the date led to nothing.’

  ‘Did Susan ever speak to you about her childhood, about running away?’

  ‘She mentioned it. She was a bit of a rebel. She mentioned running away with friends and staying in some caravan. That’s all I know. Look, I really have to go. Besides, she came back and she’ll come back again, I’m sure of it. She loves the attention, that’s all.’

  Gina clenched her fists. Everyone used Susan’s past as an excuse not to worry about where Susan was, dismissing her whereabouts as attention-seeking. She could see why Mary was frust
rated with it all, but she still had to keep that fact at the back of her mind.

  ‘We know, and we don’t have any reason to think that this is the same. She is missing and her whereabouts are important to us and they should be to you.’ He kept looking at his watch. She could tell he needed to leave. ‘Interview terminated at ten sixteen.’

  Ryan opened his mouth to speak and obviously thought better of it as he picked his keys up from the table.

  Jacob held up his pad and Gina squinted to read his tiny writing.

  Post-mortem is being prepped. We need to get there.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wheeler. We’ll be in touch. If you think of anything in the meantime, please contact us immediately.’

  He nodded, zipped up his hoodie and left.

  ‘We best go then. Never a dull moment in this job. Everyone is certainly jumping on the dismissive bandwagon, just because Susan ran away as a child. We don’t know why she ran away. What we do know is it doesn’t mean the same thing has happened again.’ Gina dropped her pen on the table.

  ‘With Dale’s murder added to the equation, it’s looking more like she could be on the run rather than running away.’ Jacob waited for her response.

  ‘Firstly, I hope you’re wrong and secondly, I hope you haven’t had breakfast yet.’

  Forty-Three

  The pathologist acknowledged Jacob and Gina as they stood behind the glass divide. The scalpel he held glinted as it caught the intense light above. All fully donned in gowns and masks, Gina was glad she wasn’t the other side of the glass. They looked restricted, almost stifled by their clothing. She could equate it to attending a crime scene and having to wear the crime scene suit, hearing muffled material with every move and struggling to grip as well in the gloves.

  The clean crime scene investigator moved in front of the pathologist for a moment, taking a few last shots with the camera. Gina swallowed. She’d seen it so many times but it never failed to send a shiver through her. The bodies couldn’t feel pain any more, her logical brain told her that, but knowing didn’t make it any easier to watch. He placed the scalpel into the metal kidney dish. He was just prepping.

  Dale Blair lay on the stainless steel slab and his body was no longer anything more than something to process, turn into data. Weights of organs, swabs, blood tests. Gina forced herself to look at his pale, abused body and took in the greenish tinge to his skin. She knew that his internal organs were beginning to decompose. She stared at the lower parts of his body. Overnight the blood had settled along his back, bottom and his lower legs, a look Gina had also seen many times. His knee was bent slightly up off the table where rigor mortis had started to set in while his body was in the woods.

  ‘What are your thoughts?’ Gina glanced at Jacob as the pathologist made the first incision.

  ‘He’s a large bloke.’

  ‘I mean about him or his injuries.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking about. Do you think one person could realistically take him from a car and drag him, alone, from the farmer’s field to the shrubbery alongside the river? I know it isn’t too far and maybe if the person was of average weight I might be convinced. I’m not. I don’t care how much iron a person is pumping at the gym, that kind of weight would be a challenge for anyone. I think two average people would struggle to carry him out of a car and drag him to where he was found.’ Jacob ran his tongue over his tooth and flinched.

  ‘Cause of death confirmed, strangulation. See the ligature marks on the neck?’ The pathologist held a ruler to his neck and muttered something to the CSI. She headed to the back wall and began tapping away on a calculator.

  ‘0.8 centimetre diameter.’ The CSI filled in a box in the chart and re-joined the pathologist.

  ‘Rope. See the little pinpricks where the fibres have penetrated the epidermis?’

  The CSI nodded.

  Gina watched as more photos were taken. A few days ago, Dale was going about his business as a plasterer, not expecting to go missing and turn up dead. What had happened since? Susan had happened. Susan had gone to his house and he hadn’t been seen alive since.

  The cuts and bruises on his body appeared to be torturous now that she could see them without being surrounded in woodland. From where she was standing, it looked like he’d taken a major beating before he was dumped. The surroundings were too clinical, stark white, light, overly bright – so bright, she felt as if she needed sunglasses as her temples throbbed. Everything reflected off something else. Even if she focused on another part of the room, she’d see Dale’s reflection in something. He wasn’t just a cadaver on a slab, he was someone’s son – she had to remain connected to that. He was a person.

  She glanced across at the evidence trays. His checked shirt had been bagged and labelled up.

  The pathologist kept murmuring measurements, those of the wounds, areas of bruises, length of scratches and it went on. He then peered over his face mask and began taking swabs from all orifices, hair and then nails. The other CSI took those from him, bagged them and made notes as they went.

  ‘I’m glad I didn’t have my breakfast now,’ Jacob said as they both heard the scraping of metal on metal. The pathologist stretched his arm for a moment as he continued talking.

  ‘Talking about eating, how’s your tooth?’

  ‘A bit painful. I’m booked in for a check-up and hopefully a filling.’

  Gina didn’t want to see the incision, she looked down at her chewed down fingernails, only glancing up as he came to the end. The perfect Y. The pathologist opened the chest cavity.

  ‘I hope we’re not here too long. We have to visit Dale’s parents soon. It’s always the worst part of the job.’

  Jacob welcomed the conversation as he looked away too. It was bad enough that they could hear the organs coming out, then being weighed in the metal scales that dangled above the slab as the pathologist shouted out more numbers. ‘Yes, never a good thing, visiting the relatives, but hopefully we’ll find out more about Dale.’

  ‘I’m hoping they may know who he was in a relationship with.’

  Gina glanced back after what seemed like a long spell of silence between her and Jacob, and she exhaled as she caught the pathologist sewing the cavity up while the others began scrubbing down.

  ‘We’ll have a chat with the pathologist and then get going.’ Gina smiled as he looked up, hoping to get his attention. He held his hand up indicating that he’d be five minutes.

  ‘Detective Harte,’ the pathologist said as he entered through the side door looking more human. He wiped his brow, shifting his fringe away from his eyes and put his glasses on as he examined the report.

  ‘What can you tell us?’ She smiled.

  ‘Definitely strangulation. We have found traces of rope in his fingernails and in the epidermis around his neck. There is dried blood around his nose and ears, which is common when the windpipe is violently compressed. The bruising on his neck also backs this up. He fought to get free from what we’ve seen. One of his fingernails is completely off and he has a broken finger.’ As he spoke, he used his arms, waving them to the beat of every word. Enthusiastically reeling off his early findings.

  Gina scrunched up her nose as an image of a nail being torn from skin flashed through her mind. Of all the things Dale had been through, that would be the one she would end up rerunning in her mind.

  ‘As you can see, there is evidence of recent beatings. The bruising is deep. We can detect that he’s been kicked and punched, a lot. Molly has taken photos of everything. As soon as we’ve uploaded and processed them, I’ll get them emailed across.’ He pushed his glasses up his nose, waiting for her to reply.

  Gina nodded slowly. ‘That would be much appreciated. What else was there?’

  He cleared his throat and smiled. ‘There was also the presence of black mould in his nasal passages, the type of mould you get in really old, damp buildings. There was something else, something really sinister which is why I saved it for last.’ He clenched his sho
ulders, hesitating as he awaited Gina’s response.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We found a string of red liquorice fed down his windpipe, this was placed there post-mortem.’

  ‘Red liquorice?’ Now Gina’s mind was whirring. That had to be the most bizarre and unexpected thing she’d heard at a post-mortem.

  ‘I thought I’d seen it all,’ Jacob said as he made a note.

  The pathologist nodded. ‘We’re now going to get everything processed and updated on the system. Anything else you need to know for now?’

  ‘Have you got anything else?’

  ‘His liver is fatty and he’s pre-diabetic. He wasn’t in good shape at all.’

  She hoped that he could answer the next question with some accuracy. ‘Do you have a more precise time of death?’

  ‘Given the conditions in which he was left out in, the development of his injuries and the stages of decomposition, between eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred on Thursday.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll email you in a while.’

  The pathologist gave a slight bow, before turning on his heel and leaving them in the viewing room.

  ‘Why would the killer place red liquorice in his throat after killing him? Red liquorice? What’s all that about?’ She shivered as she thought of Dale being beaten and tortured. She pictured the coarse rope constricting his throat as he choked. His fingers grabbing at the rope as his nail tore away from his skin, as his nose and ears began to bleed until he convulsed then died. Two people, there had to be two, she knew Jacob was right about that. Were they both at the murder scene? She imagined a damp, mouldy building. That could be anyone’s garage or lean to. Mould was common. There were a lot of old estates and buildings in Cleevesford.

  ‘You alright, guv. You look a bit green. It’s not like you to get sick at post-mortems. Shall I grab the bin?’

  She shook her head and tapped him on the arm. ‘Don’t be daft. I just keep thinking about the torn fingernail and the liquorice. Gross. Do you think person number two in all this could be Susan?’