by J. E. Mayhew
Blake paused, letting what she had said sink in. “Good point. But shutting the cellar door would require opposable thumbs, I’d have thought…”
“A good shove with a big enough body and that cellar door would click shut on its own,” Laura said.
“So you left all the lights on when you were searching for Charlie?”
Laura blushed. “Well, no. It’s this house, Will. It gives me the creeps sometimes…”
“Fair enough. But, you don’t have to stay here, you know. I’ve offered to come to your…”
“It just feels like a mausoleum, sometimes. You need to sort it out, one way or the other, Will. Redecorate or sell. Maybe both. It would sell better if you redecorated it.”
Blake looked into Laura’s eyes. “There’s something else, isn’t there? What’s up, Laura?”
Laura hugged Charlie to her, turning her head away as he frantically licked her chin. “There was a car the other day. It slowed down and the driver stared at me while I was in the front garden. It just gave me the creeps, that’s all. I thought I saw the same car again tonight. I dunno. I suppose I put all the lights on to make out there was a party or a gathering or something. The house felt less empty.”
“What kind of car was it? Did you get any details? What did the driver look like?”
“No. I’m not a detective! It was a black car with tinted windows. I’m pretty sure it was a man driving it. It just freaked me out, that’s all.”
Blake put his arm around her. “That’s okay. Completely understandable given what happened.” Josh Gambles had taken Laura hostage in this house and Blake himself had nearly been killed not far from here. “Nothing wrong with feeling anxious. You never know who is lurking about. I believe Gambles has his own twisted fan club these days. It could have been a sightseer, some kind of ghoulish tourist.”
“Wow, thanks. I feel much better about it now,” Laura said, smiling and scratching Charlie’s chin. “God, I’m so tired. I’d better get this one back in his basket.”
Blake paused and then looked at the dog. “Bring his basket up to our room,” he said at last. “You need some rest, too.”
“Really?” Laura’s face lit up. Over her shoulder, he saw Serafina blink at him and lick her lips. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d shaken her head in disappointment at him.
“Come on,” Blake said, glancing out of the windows into the darkness. “Let’s put this day to bed.” But something had slotted into place. Maybe he was getting somewhere. He’d see tomorrow.
*****
Jeff Blake saw the private hire car pull up outside the Seraph and breathed a sigh of relief. Boredom McClague nodded towards the door. “Off you go, now,” he said. “Get straight into the taxi and don’t talk to anyone. You’ve got about four feet of pavement but I think you’ll make it.”
What worried Jeff the most was that McClague wasn’t joking as far as he could tell. “Thanks,” Jeff said and hurried outside. The cold air hit him and he was conscious of a few dark figures lurking in the shadows on the other side of the road. He ignored them and climbed into the back of the car. The door lock clicked and Jeff instantly realised his mistake. The seat next to him was occupied by a burly, bearded man in a black leather jacket. In panic, Jeff scrabbled at the handle but it didn’t open the door for him. Instead a hessian sack went over his head, scratching his face and plunging him into darkness. “Keep still,” the man said and Jeff felt the sharp point of a needle in his neck. He thought to himself that this would make one hell of a chapter or the book would never get written. Then darkness consumed him.
Chapter 22
Leonard Hill looked weary. His brief looked similarly wrung out. It was clear she didn’t relish representing a potential child-killer and was doing mental gymnastics trying to justify her role. But Blake believed that everyone deserved a fair hearing.
“My brief says that unless you’re going to formally charge me, you can’t keep me here much longer,” Hill said, picking at his thumbnail.
“I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere, Leonard,” Blake said, sharing a look with Vikki Chinn who sat next to him. “We’ve had the forensic results back and the underwear has Florence’s DNA all over it. And traces of your semen. Care to explain that?”
Hill went pale and swallowed hard. “That’s impossible.”
“Not from where I’m sitting, Leonard. It looks like you took the girl from Birkenhead Park and sexually assaulted her. Where did you dump her, Leonard? Where’s Florence’s body? Did you drop her in the lake like you did Undine Percival?”
“No comment.”
“What is it about the Percivals that brings out the worst in you, Leonard?” Blake said, leaning forward on the table. “Did it give you more of a rush, thinking of how devastated that family would be, again?”
“Devastated?” Hill sneered. “Ha! You have met them, haven’t you? The Percivals don’t do ‘devastated.’”
“Then why did you take Florence? Or was it just a massive coincidence?”
“No…” Hill began to say and then his shoulders slumped. “No, it wasn’t because I didn’t take her. I never even saw her. I waited for Geri and then, when she didn’t turn up, I went home to meet her. You’ve seen my texts on the mobile phone.”
Blake produced the phone. “Yes, including two texts from Geri asking where you were. Obviously you were late back from the park. Something very important must have detained you. What was it Leonard?”
Hill blinked at Blake as if he hadn’t understood. “What do you mean? What texts?” Blake scrolled through and turned the screen to face Hill.
“You see my problem, Leonard. You lied to us about being at the park at first. Then you told us you waited there maybe half an hour until 9:30, arriving home at 9:50. But Geri texts you twice asking where you are, the last one at 10:30. So you can’t have been at home before then, can you?”
“I-I was… I’ve never seen those texts before…”
“Look now. They’re there, large as life. Maybe you were too preoccupied with something else to notice them. Do you want to tell me about that?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I can’t because I arrived at my house about 9:50.”
“Tell me about your friendship with Paul Percival,” Blake said, hoping a change of tack would wrong foot Hill.
Hill shrugged. “We hung around together in school. After he killed Undine, I had nothing to do with him. He’s a psychopath.”
“You say, Paul Percival was responsible for his sister’s death but you were arrested for that, were you not?”
“I was framed…”
“Bit of a pattern forming here, don’t you think?”
Leonard Hill pushed his glasses back up his sweaty nose. “I don’t care what you think. I didn’t kill Undine or Florence Percival.”
“So take me through your version of what happened to Undine.”
“It was horrible,” Leonard said and Blake was struck by the sorrow in the man’s voice. “Paul hated her. He was so jealous of her. Mr and Mrs Percival were totally focused on her, you see. That wasn’t on. Paul constantly moaned about how she got special treatment from their parents. Paul is a very selfish person, you see, Mr Blake. I remember him grumbling about how he could have gone to a ‘decent’ private school instead of the Birkenhead School we went to. He wanted to go to a ‘proper boarding school,’ but his parents said that they had to save for Undine’s future. He resented that. Never shut up about it.”
“Why did you hang around with him then?”
Hill reddened. “Because I had nobody else and… I was lonely. The Percivals were rich. Everyone at that school was rich except me and a couple of other scholarship kids. He got all the latest computer and video game stuff. I helped him set it up and he pretended he’d done it.”
“Right,” Blake said, unimpressed. “And Undine was there, too. Helpless and, maybe one day, she’d be at your mercy…”
“No,” Hill said, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. “She was cute and innocent. I was just nice to her. You couldn’t help it, Blake. She brought out the best in most people. Not Paul, though. Then one night, we were asked to babysit her. Paul was disgusted but agreed. When his parents had gone, he suggested a drinking contest with some of his mother’s vodka. Paul was always doing stuff like that, little dares, or downright dangerous stuff just for a laugh. I thought we were both drinking the vodka, but I reckon now that Paul had filled his bottle with water.”
“So he got you drunk…”
“Very drunk. I wasn’t used to alcohol. I can’t remember much of that night. But I do remember waking up by the lakeside and Paul pointing at Undine’s body floating in the water. I’ll never forget him shaking his head and saying, ‘what have you done?’ like I was a naughty kid who’d broken a window rather than doing anything to try save his sister. He ran off then, leaving me to thrash around in the lake, and pull Undine out. She was dead, though.”
“The jury found you not guilty of murder.”
“Manslaughter. That was the best I could hope for according to my brief. Everything was stacked against me. Dysfunctional family background, a loner, my unhealthy obsessions. D’you know, Blake. I truly believe that, if Paul hadn’t murdered Undine, I would have come to my senses. I was young. Maybe I could have got help or even grown out of it. Instead, I was branded a pervert and dumped in a secure unit with a load of other perverts. It did me no good and set me on the path I’m on now.”
“So, imagine for a moment I believe your version of events, that could easily explain why you took Florence. Revenge is the oldest motive in the book.”
“Except I didn’t,” Hill’s eyes were glittering with tears of frustration. “All I can say is this is exactly like the first time. Somebody has set me up and I don’t know how or why.”
*****
A loud cough brought Jeff Blake to his senses and he instantly wished he was still unconscious. The bag over his head rendered him sightless but he didn’t need his eyes to know that he was tied to a chair. His head throbbed and his mouth felt like it was full of cotton wool. One gangster torture film scene after another played over in his head and he suddenly felt the need to urinate. Any minute now, the bag would be torn from his head and a gorilla holding a pair of bolt cutters would be leering at him. He squeaked and clenched his fists at the thought. Then the bag was ripped from his head.
Jeff winced in the sudden light and groaned. He was in a plush office with a green carpet. A large oak desk sat at one end of the room and a couple of chairs faced it. There were bookshelves filled with files, a drinks cabinet and a TV screen. He could have been in his agents office if it weren’t for the three burly men dressed in dark trousers and leather jackets. Jeff scanned their hands and breathed a sigh of relief at the absence of bolt cutters.
A man stood at the other end of the office, wearing loud check trousers, a pale blue Pringle tank top and a pink, open-necked shirt. His silver hair was slicked back over his scalp and made his tan look deeper than it probably was. He held a golf club and was concentrating intensely on putting a ball into a paper cup.
“Ah, you’re awake, Jeffrey,” the man said, popping the ball neatly into the cup. “Yuss!” He punched the air, even though there was no way he could miss. He held up the club. “Gotta keep up to scratch. Little and often that’s my motto when it comes to practise. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, I would… little and often…”
“I think someone overdid the dose of that tranquiliser. What did you give him, Bjorn?”
Bjorn shrugged. “Dunno, boss, it was in the back of the fridge. First thing that came to hand.”
Harry shook his head. “Blimey, Bjorn, that could’ve been my Hep B vaccination for my holidays, you pillock.” He turned back to Jeff. “You’ve been out for the count all night. Did you know that? You hungry?”
“N-not really,” Jeff said. “But th-thank you…”
“Manners,” the man said, shaking his golf club at the big men. “I like that. You can tell you’re a man of culture, Jeffrey.” He squatted down in front of Jeff. “I’m Harry Thorpe.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Jeff said, hoping he didn’t sound sarcastic or too flip. The fact that he was still tied up told him that his fate hung by a thread.”
“I’ll get to the point. One of my chaps here heard you blabbing in the pub last night. Asking questions about Kyle Quinlan. What I want to know is why are you interested?”
Jeff pursed his lips. If he got out of this in one piece, he’d give Josh Gambles a kick up the arse for getting him into all this trouble. “I’m writing a book. A biography of Josh Gambles. You might have heard of him.”
Harry Thorpe pulled a face. “I read about that bloody psycho. What you writing about him for?”
“Crime pays,” Jeff said, smiling and trying a little of his old charm usually reserved for female editors and agents.
“That loony gives criminals a bad name. It’s worse than the films. I mean, I bet you thought we were going to torture you and cut your fingers off with a bolt cutter or something…” Harry Thorpe looked round at his men who all laughed.
“No, not at all,” Jeff said, his voice hoarse.
“Get the bolt cutter, Bjorn,” Thorpe said, his face deadly serious. Jeff felt his stomach lurch and he gasped, only for Thorpe’s face to crack into a huge grin. “Ha! See! I told yer. Honestly, what kind of monster do you think I am?”
Bjorn reappeared with a pair of bolt cutters. “Here you go, boss.”
Thorpe closed his eyes and shook his head. “It was a joke, Bjorn. I’m not going to cut Jeffrey’s fingers off.” Bjorn looked slightly puzzled and Jeff wondered if he was confused or just disappointed or both. “So,” Harry Thorpe continued, “you’re writing a book about this Gambles character. Where does Kyle Quinlan come into it?”
“He’s an old friend of Gambles. Apparently, he’s gone missing and Gambles wants to know where he is.”
Thorpe pulled a face. “So he asked a writer of literary fiction to hunt him down. What a plonker.”
“It’s a bit complicated. You see, Gambles has a bit of a fixation on my brother…”
Thorpe’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I heard you were Will Blake’s brother. To be honest, that’s the only reason you aren’t in Arrowe Park breathing through a tube. I don’t want plod trampling all over me. So I’m still none the wiser. What does Gambles getting a stiffy over your brother have to do with Quinlan?”
“His ex, Laura Vexley, is my brother’s girlfriend…”
Harry Thorpe raised one eyebrow. “Well, well, well,” he said, quietly. “Now you’re talking. Bjorn, untie the man. What’re you thinking of leaving him all trussed up like a Christmas turkey? Cut him free.”
Bjorn pulled a knife from his pocket and sawed through the ropes. Jeff shook the blood back into his hands and feet as the bonds fell to the ground. Harry Thorpe brought a decanter of amber spirits down from the cabinet and two heavy tumblers and went and sat at his desk. “Come and tell me all about the lovely Laura Quinlan. I’ve been dying to catch up with her.”
Chapter 23
When Vikki Chinn had asked whether or not Blake wanted Leonard Hill’s girlfriend bringing in for a chat, Kath had smirked. Geri Sharpe wouldn’t be the kind of person you ‘brought in.’ She did have a record for prostitution, and possession but she’d also knocked out a police officer whilst resisting arrest and Kath noticed a complaint against her from a neighbour for smashing windows. Her name cropped up as a peripheral witness in numerous altercations and cases of public disorder.
Just out of courtesy, Kath tried to phone the number they had for her from Leonard Hill. A continuous tone told Kath that the phone was dead. Maybe ditched once she realised what Leonard was involved with. Kath hoped that Hill’s star witness had done a runner, to be honest. As far as she was concerned, they were wasting everyone’s time listening to the man’s desperate ali
bis. The last thing Kath wanted was for Leonard to walk out of the custody suite a free man. He didn’t deserve that.
*****
Harry Thorpe sipped at his whiskey and Jeff passed his own glass under his nose. Even though he’d been out for the count, he was pretty sure it was early in the morning. It was a fine whiskey, not cheap but at this time of day Jeff’s stomach lurched. He wondered how he was going to drink it without throwing up on Thorpe’s carpet. That might just stretch the man’s hospitality to the limit.
“God! What am I thinking?” Thorpe said suddenly, making Jeff jump and almost spill his drink. “Lads, get this man a bacon butty. He must be starving. You can’t enjoy that on an empty stomach.”
Jeff smiled. “Thanks, Mr Thorpe…”
“Harry. Call me Harry,” he said. “So where’s Laura been hiding since she left Kyle Quinlan?” he said it as though he was concerned for her welfare and Jeff started to worry that Thorpe had other motives for asking.
“I’m not sure,” Jeff said, honestly. “I’ll be straight with you, Harry, Will and I don’t see eye to eye all the time. So I don’t see much of him or her. I think she spends a lot of her time at Will’s in Rock Park. She has a flat in Wallasey somewhere.”
“Interesting,” Thorpe said, swirling his whiskey around in the glass. “Hiding in plain sight. Clever.”
“Can I ask,” Jeff said. “How did you know Kyle Quinlan and Laura?”
Thorpe weighed Jeff up. “This goes no further, right? I don’t want to open the book about Gambles and find my name plastered all over it.”
Jeff put the glass down and held up both hands. “I assure you Harry. I am the soul of discretion. I’m not sure it would ever get into the book, anyway. I think Gambles is just trying to stir up trouble for my brother.”
“Oh,” Thorpe said, looking slightly crestfallen. “I mean, you COULD write about it. Just don’t go naming names and all that.”
Jeff nodded and wondered if he was looking at another potential customer. ‘Jeff Blake, Biographer to the Underworld,’ had a certain ring to it. “I wouldn’t dare,” he said, winking.
