by Carol Wyer
She held her hands under the dryer and waited until the digital display had reached zero before removing them. It was better, she argued, than wiping them on her trousers as she’d had to do many times after discovering the dispenser had run out of paper towels. The countdown ended, the whirring ceased and she moved to the sink, rooted in her bag for a tube of hand cream, which she rubbed gently into her skin. She sniffed at her armpits and screwed up her face at the sour aroma. Further hunting in her bag yielded a mini deodorant spray, which she shoved down her blouse and, lifting her arm, squirted liberally until the whole washroom smelt of roses.
She rummaged again, this time pulling out a lipstick, which she rolled over her full lips. She gave a light coral pout at her reflection. She’d do. It was only drinks and nibbles in company, not a full-on date. The door to the ladies opened and Deepa Singh’s smiling face appeared. Heather wondered what kept her colleague perpetually happy and wished she had a tiny portion of whatever it was that kept Deepa enthused.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Absolutely. Five on the dot. I’ll be there.’
Deepa was holding a baby shower and Heather had bought the most beautifully soft baby-blue blanket and a darling stuffed rabbit.
‘See you then.’ Deepa blew a kiss and disappeared. Heather unclipped the barrette holding her heavy, chestnut hair in place and let it fall naturally to frame her face. She dabbed light powder onto her eyelids to help set off her best feature: irises the colour of dark chocolate and often described as ‘come-to-bed’ eyes. Satisfied she looked good enough, she tossed everything back into the bag, hoping he’d be pleased with her last-minute decision to drop by.
Trentham House foyer was still brightly lit and although a coat was hanging on the back of the chair, indicating somebody was still around, there was nobody on reception. She was probably one of, if not the last to leave. She and Deepa had put in a full day to get on top of the backlog and clear the decks for Monday morning.
The door closed behind her and she trotted down the steps to the driveway that served as a car park for visitors. Staff had to use the municipal car park, only a hundred metres down the road. She shouldered her bag and checked her phone. There were still no messages from her source. She hoped the girl hadn’t changed her mind. With her head lowered she was unaware of movement in the bushes or the figure disentangling itself from the shadows until she glanced up. And by then, it was too late.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kevin Shire folded into his seat, and stared wide-eyed at Kate.
‘I don’t understand. Why have you brought me to the station?’
‘We need to ask you a few more questions.’
‘Shouldn’t there be a solicitor or somebody here with me?’
‘This is a voluntary interview. You’re assisting us with our enquiries but if you’d prefer to have a solicitor, we can arrange it for you.’
‘Assisting with enquiries. You’re not charging me?’
‘Why would we do that?’
The pink tongue flicked out, brushed lightly over his lips. The eyes didn’t blink. ‘I . . . I might be in trouble.’
‘Do you want to explain what you mean?’ Kate mirrored his stillness with her own.
‘You know, don’t you?’
‘Know what, Kevin?’
‘About Holly. You’ve checked out my story, haven’t you?’
Morgan took over, opening his folder and extracted a piece of paper. ‘This is a statement made by Mr Floyd Evanshaw. I’d like to read it to you.’
Kevin lowered his head and picked at the dried blood around his thumbnail while Morgan continued. ‘“Holly and I met in October 2018, at a mutual friend’s party. We hit it off and went exclusive a few weeks later. She moved in with me March 2019. She was my world. Ask any of our friends and they’ll tell you we were soulmates. In December that same year, she began to feel run-down and was tired all of the time. She thought it was work-related or a dose of seasonal flu. We didn’t realise how serious it was until she started noticing she was bruising herself frequently and was feeling increasingly lousy, so we went to the doctor’s. They discovered she had acute myeloid leukaemia. Weeks after the diagnosis, we lost her. I still can’t believe she’s gone.”’ Morgan looked up from the statement. ‘Mr Evanshaw told me you and he were friends, and you were also at the same party in Stoke-on-Trent. He felt guilty, because you’d been chatting to Holly until he cut in and took her off for a dance. He apologised to you later and you “laughed it off”. Holly was never your girlfriend.’ Morgan returned the paper to the folder and shut it. Kevin didn’t look up.
Kate let the silence hang. A droplet of fresh blood seeped from Kevin’s nail. ‘Why did you tell us that Holly was your girlfriend?’
Silence.
‘You’re not helping yourself here.’
Kevin stopped pulling at his thumb.
‘We could caution you and hold you in a cell for wasting our time. You don’t want us to do that, do you?’
He shook his head, his greasy hair glistening in the light.
‘Then put us straight.’
He stuttered, ‘I . . . I . . .’ Then, ‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘I’d like to hear it from you.’
‘I thought you suspected me of killing Laura. I panicked.’
‘If you didn’t kill her, you only had to tell the truth.’
Kevin released a snort. ‘Yeah, right.’ He lifted his head at last, fastened the eerie, grey-white eyes on Kate. ‘I only wanted her to like me.’
‘Tell me what happened on Facebook,’ said Kate.
‘You know what happened. She got annoyed about me liking her posts.’
‘Did you know she was seeing somebody at the time?’
He nodded.
‘Did she tell you who she was going out with?’
‘No, only that she was in love and she and I could never be more than friends.’
‘And that hurt you?’ said Kate.
His voice changed timbre. ‘Yes, it hurt. I didn’t know about a boyfriend. There was nothing on Facebook about any relationship. She bloody well led me on and let me believe I had a chance with her.’
‘How so?’
‘By the way she looked at me and how she spoke. It felt . . . intimate. I could sense we had a thing going on. She rubbished me when I tried to make her see that too.’
Morgan rested his arms on the table, leaning closer towards Kevin. ‘And that pissed you off big time, didn’t it? You didn’t like being given the runaround. Did it make you angry?’
Kate let him continue. The intimidation was deliberate to discombobulate the man.
‘I . . . No . . . Yes . . . I didn’t kill her.’
‘I bet you wanted to though. First, she’s all nice to you and then, when you get up the courage and invite her out, she gives you the brush-off. And then, she tells you to sling your hook. I’d be pretty annoyed if anyone did that to me.’ The words tumbled from Morgan’s lips without any pauses, a rat-a-tat-tat. Kevin blinked three times in a row.
‘No. I did exactly as she asked.’
Morgan growled. ‘You didn’t. You kept liking her posts, even stuck up stupid heart emojis under some of them. What sort of message does that send out, eh? You knew exactly what you were doing. You wanted her boyfriend to suspect she was cheating on him. And you weren’t surprised when that’s what happened. I’ll wager you were really fucking pleased with yourself.’
‘No!’
Morgan didn’t stop. ‘I guess the surprise was, she was furious with you. You’d expected her to fall into your arms, weeping and wailing. Instead, she cut herself off Facebook and from you. Not what you expected, eh? What did she say to you, Kevin?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What did she say to you?’ Morgan’s voice was loud in the small room.
Kevin’s lips began to tremble. ‘That she wouldn’t go out with me even if I was the last man on the planet.’
‘Ah! I bet yo
u hated her for that!’
‘No! I didn’t hate her. I hated myself!’ His eyes glistened with tears. ‘I hated . . . myself.’
Morgan sat back, allowing Kate to take over.
‘Did you try to apologise to her, Kevin?’ she asked.
‘No. I let it go. I gave up. Laura was somebody I’d put on a pedestal. I’d got it into my head she was perfect. Then after she’d let rip at me and told me what a douchebag I was, I saw she wasn’t. There was a side to her I’d never seen before – one I didn’t like. She sent me a message, a long, hateful message and then shut down her Facebook account so I couldn’t reply to it. To be honest, I didn’t want to reply. She wouldn’t have listened to anything I had to say. I didn’t know she’d moved to Abbots Bromley and if I had known, I’d have steered well clear of the place.’ He dropped his head into his hands. Kate watched as his shoulders shook with quiet sobs, then terminated the interview. If Kevin was responsible, they’d have to find evidence to prove it because they certainly weren’t going to get a confession from him.
Kate dunked the crispy chicken into the tiny pot of sriracha hot sauce and bit into it, without appreciating or even tasting any of the flavour. The others seemed to be tucking in with more enthusiasm, especially Morgan, who sat back in his chair, popping meatballs into his mouth like they were popcorn.
Jamie slugged from a can of Red Bull, his free hand working the keyboard. Kate marvelled at his speed and proficiency. She’d been in the job a long time, yet she couldn’t type or ‘screen surf’ as well as any of her team. They’d got a lead on one of the youths spotted in Abbots Bromley at the time of Laura’s death and were name-checking on the general database.
Emma sat on the edge of her desk, watching him out of the corner of her eye while stabbing at calamari in a cardboard tray. She paused, piece in mid-air. ‘That’s him. Davey Watkins.’ She scooted forward on her desk, eyes narrowing. ‘He’s been in trouble before.’
‘What for?’ asked Morgan.
‘Sexting. Three years ago. He was thirteen at the time. It was classed as Outcome 21,’ said Jamie, scribbling onto a yellow sticky note.
Outcome 21 allowed police to list a crime as having happened but no formal criminal justice action was taken.
‘Here you go, Emma, his contact details. He’s not from the village.’
Emma took the note. ‘Milton Farm, Dunstall. Where’s that?’
A map materialised on Jamie’s screen and he pointed out the appropriate place, almost nine miles from the village. ‘He’d need transport to get to Abbots Bromley.’
Kate nodded. ‘Talk to him. Find out why he went there rather than any of the surrounding villages, or even to Burton-on-Trent, which is closer to where he lives.’
Emma got to her feet and jangled her keys. ‘Beats me. You coming, Morgan?’
Morgan scrunched up his box and dropped it in the bin. ‘Right behind you.’
‘Emma, are you done with your tapas?’ Jamie shot her a pleading look.
‘Help yourself.’
Morgan swooped on the box first, grabbing the largest piece of calamari, before waving it triumphantly under Jamie’s nose with a ‘Too slow, mate’, before racing off after Emma.
It was past ten o’clock and they had nothing new to go on. Kate dismissed Jamie and soaked up the silence he left in his wake. She attached one paperclip to another and idly wondered who Laura’s mysterious boyfriend might have been and why she’d kept his identity secret, even from her closest friend. She added a third and fourth clip to the chain and dangled it over her desk. If only the puzzle pieces of this investigation would clip together so easily. She had no intention of leaving the office until she’d heard from Emma and Morgan. If they had reason to believe Davey was responsible for, or had borne witness to, the attack on Laura, she’d be here when they brought him in for questioning.
‘Don’t put off Cooper,’ whispered Chris.
‘I fully intend to see him tomorrow, as planned.’
His words stung. She wouldn’t set Chris aside. If what Cooper had to tell her related to Chris’s death, she would follow it up and yet, at the same time, she knew she couldn’t abandon Laura to focus on Chris. Both demanded her attention.
She shut her eyes and thought about the man who she still loved with every atom of her being. With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach she realised she could no longer picture the intense green of his irises. She hunted for memories that might rekindle the exact shade and found her mind muddying the pictures. Cold fingers clawed at her heart. Her recollections of Chris were fading. Alicia had mentioned the five stages of grief and Kate knew that unless she kept the anger over his death burning, she would pass through each stage and reach the final one – acceptance. Her desire to uncover the truth behind his death fuelled her and kept memories of him burning brightly. If she didn’t continue looking into Dickson, or the other corrupt officers Chris had been investigating, precious, clear memories would be replaced by fragmented, vague ones. She would forget the strength of his love or the essence of his being and he would be gone forever.
A new image replaced Chris’s face, one that was much clearer – Laura’s. And along with it came a fresh thought. What if Tilly had not escaped her attacker and had met a similar horrific fate? The paperclips fell quietly and she bent over her keyboard. She had to find Laura’s killer. To reach the answer, Kate needed to find out more about the woman.
CHAPTER NINE
Kate leant back against her seat, suppressing a yawn. The latest suspects, the two youths who’d been hanging around Abbots Bromley, had stuck to their stories. Neither of them had spotted Laura and didn’t recall seeing Kevin outside the pub. Although it had been necessary to interview them, it had cost the investigation precious time.
Morgan tossed the file onto his desk. ‘Flipping heck. What a waste of time. I don’t know about you but I’m knackered.’
‘I feel fine,’ Emma replied. ‘You could do with cutting out the crap food and exercising more.’
‘We can’t all be ninja experts like you,’ he replied with a grin.
‘Very funny.’
‘Actually, Emma,’ said Kate. ‘I wanted to talk to you about martial arts. It can wait until later today, after you’ve had some sleep.’
‘No, it’s fine. Like I said, I’m not tired.’
‘I’ll leave you both to it then.’ Morgan shrugged on his coat and made for the door.
Emma sat on the side of her desk. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Anything you can tell me about the vagus strike.’
‘Okay. Well, it’s a self-defence technique: one that’s quite easy to learn and execute. However, it has to be performed with a certain amount of force and, of course, precision. Get it wrong and it will kill a person. Whoever attacked Laura would have known that and I’m guessing they implemented the manoeuvre purely to render her unconscious.’
‘How much of an expert would you need to be to perform this sort of manoeuvre?’
‘You don’t actually need a great deal of physical strength or peak physical fitness to execute one; however, like any self-defence training, you need to practise it regularly. It’s always performed against a dummy, not a living person, for obvious reasons, and is never used as an offensive technique. It should only be used in the direst of situations, when the chips are down and you’re fighting for your life. So again, I’m going out on a limb when I suggest the killer is confident in employing the technique, or doesn’t care if he gets it wrong.’
‘You reckon Kevin might be able to perform it?’
She pulled a face. ‘He was only young when he took up Judo and he wouldn’t have come across it during classes back then. Still, if he still practises at home, he might be able to pull it off. It takes skill though.’
Kate folded her arms and see-sawed between their perpetrator being Kevin or somebody else altogether, and decided to keep the options wide open. ‘Then could we be looking for somebody who is trained to a high
level of proficiency or is an instructor?’
‘That’s more likely.’
‘Is it something you’ve tried?’
‘No. I tend to focus on Taekwondo kicks and punches, although I do sometimes practise neck and body strikes. These sorts of nerve strikes are practised in other martial arts disciplines such as Jujitsu, Karate or Kenpo too.’
‘Do you think you could look further into it for me? It’s your area of expertise. Ask about and see if anyone has been seen practising it in local gyms. Maybe your brother would know of somebody.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’
‘I’ve also got a favour to ask.’
‘Fire away.’
‘You know my stepsister, Tilly, is staying in the UK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you spare a little time when you’re next training to go through some basic self-defence moves with her? She’s over here on her own and I’d feel more comfortable if I knew she could handle herself when she’s out and about.’
‘Of course. I train at Greg’s gym every morning before work. If she wants to pop along, I’ll happily show her a few. Give her my phone number so we can arrange to meet there.’
‘Thanks, Emma. I really appreciate that.’ Kate had already messaged Tilly earlier on and asked if she’d be willing to take a self-defence class and received a positive answer. It might help give Tilly back some self-confidence. And, if she was going to be living the life of a single woman for a while, Kate would feel happier if Tilly could defend herself, should the situation arise.
Emma quickly packed up and departed, leaving Kate alone with her thoughts. So far, she’d not discovered anything new to help her track down Laura’s killer. Tomorrow, she’d check with Forensics and see if anything had been retrieved from her house which might cast a clue as to the identity of the man responsible.
