by Iain Cameron
‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’
‘I’m afraid I must insist.’
Henderson bowed to the inevitable and agreed to go. He turned to Adam and extended his hand.
‘Thanks for all your help, Adam,’ Henderson said shaking his hand. ‘You really did great out there, even though at first you did think me a complete nutter.’
‘Just another exciting day at the Ardingly Activity Centre,’ he said grinning.
‘I’ll bring these clothes back in a few days.’
‘No problem, we’re not about to run short. There’s not much call for sailing courses in winter.’
Henderson waved goodbye to all their helpers and was about to step out of the door when he stopped and searched for something in his bag of wet clothes. He found his car key and lobbed it towards Adam.
‘Just in case you need to move it, that is if the key still works.’
‘I’ll make sure I dry it off first.’
Henderson took a seat in the ambulance feeling like a fraud, as with every minute that passed, his wellbeing improved. The shivers and shakes had all but disappeared and he no longer smelled like a wood-dwelling troll. What else could a hospital do?
A few minutes later, Lily was led out to the ambulance by the female paramedic. She looked worse than he did, but no wonder as she had been in the water longer, much longer than he, and her heart had stopped beating. They helped her into the ambulance and laid her down on the bed and attached an oxygen mask to her face.
He felt a frisson of disappointment as he wanted to talk to her while they journeyed to East Surrey Hospital, the Princess Royal or wherever they were headed. He wanted to ask her why she had decided to end it all, and if she didn’t feel any different than she did earlier today, had he wasted his time in rescuing her? In essence, would she try and do the same thing all over again when her health improved?
It didn’t fall within the remit of the job to talk Lily down from notions of suicide or rescue her from perilous situations, but as the detective investigating the deaths of her husband and lover, for the moment at least, he felt a sense of responsibility.
Any questions could wait for another time. Looking at her face now, her pale, almost porcelain complexion and listening to her laboured breathing, he doubted she would be out of hospital any day soon.
TWENTY-NINE
‘Are you working late tonight, Cindy?’ Christine Sutherland asked.
‘No, I just want to get this thing finished for Brendan. He needs it for tomorrow’s meeting.’
‘I thought you completed it days ago.’
‘I…I did but he made some last-minute changes, you know what he’s like.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Are you off to your Institute shindig?’
‘Yep. ‘Strategy Formulation for The Modern Business,’ the seminar’s called but you know I only go for the wine and networking afterwards. Goodnight Cindy.’
‘Goodnight Christine.’
Cindy Summer breathed a sigh of relief. Her boss, Christine Sutherland, was a skilled interrogator, looking intently at you in meetings after skim-reading anything you produced. It put her on edge every time. Summer didn’t often work late and felt nervous at trying to convince her that her presence tonight had a valid purpose. She could be a controlling bitch, with a handle on what everyone was doing and where they were going.
The key to manipulating her was using the word ‘Brendan’. Sutherland hated the company’s Commercial Director, Brendan Flaherty, and the mere mention of his name had her lip curling, ending any further discussion.
She walked over to the drinks machine and pressed the button for a black coffee, even though she didn’t want one. Sipping the hot drink slowly, she strolled to the window as if pondering a thorny problem. In reality, there wasn’t any need to be this careful as at five o’clock the building emptied and now at two minutes to six, the place looked and sounded deserted.
She looked over at the car park and could see three cars. She knew exactly who they belonged to: her own, the big BMW of the MD and a scruffy Beetle belonging to a hairy oik from IT. She knew the owners of every car in the car park. Cindy made it her business to know.
She turned and walked back to her desk, looking surreptitiously around for any unusual activity. Finding none, she reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a set of keys. She moved to Christine Sutherland’s desk and sat down. She selected a small silver key and opened her desk drawers. A week ago she’d done the same, and found letters addressed not to Sutherland, but someone called Melanie Lewis. Assuming this to be a relative or a friend, she had glanced through a couple but became so nervous she stopped.
She felt emboldened now, not because of doing anything different, but she believed the police investigation into Marc Emerson’s murder had now ground to a halt. Without a firm suspect, they would push it under the carpet and forget about it, but she wouldn’t let them. Marc was special to her, not in a boyfriend-girlfriend way, he was too good-looking for her, but they had been good friends. She owed it to Marc to find out who killed him and she knew he would have done the same for her.
She ignored the letters for the moment and took a closer look at the hanging files, something she didn’t do last time. Tucked at the back she pulled out a folder from a file labelled ‘Admin’ with a ‘CV’ sticker on the front and laid it out on the desk. It contained a number of neatly formatted CVs. She picked up the one on top and looked through. This was the first time she had seen Sutherland’s CV and found it remarkable to see listed all her previous experience, as the woman didn’t seem to know much, delegated all the time and never talked about the places where she used to work.
She put the CV back in the file and sifted through the others. Expecting to see older versions of the one she had just looked at, she was surprised to find the next one headed, ‘Amanda Sherman’. Why Sutherland had this other woman’s CV in her file, she didn’t begin to understand but when she examined it in more detail, the information mirrored that of Christine Sutherland, down to dates, places and employers.
She put the papers down on the desk, leaned back in the chair and wrapped her finger round and round the end of her hair, something she did when thinking seriously. In a fair and decent world this would prove that her boss, Christine Sutherland, was a fraud and all Cindy’s suspicions had been validated. But the world wasn’t fair and decent as maybe it indicated something more boring instead, such as she didn’t like her own name or used it as a nom de plume for dating websites.
The truth perhaps lay somewhere in between but it didn’t resemble the behaviour of any financial directors she knew, where words like ‘conservative’ and ‘prudent’ were more common fare. It smacked of criminal intent or a past or a person Sutherland didn’t want catching up with her.
She picked up the letters addressed to Melanie Lewis and read each one carefully. They had been sent from a mother pleading with an errant child to come home and face the music. She didn’t go on to say in any detail what the ‘music’ might be, but mentioned the presence of police around the family home in Lincoln and their desire to speak to her. The letters made little sense when she first read them a week ago, but knowing her boss used Amanda’s name on her CV, it was a small leap to assume that Melanie Lewis was also one of her names.
She knew it! The woman was a crook!
She returned to her desk and fished out the business card left by the policewoman who came to Quinlan’s offices to speak to Christine Sutherland and Josh Gardner, Sergeant Walters. She dialled the number.
‘Detective Sergeant Walters, how can I help?’
‘Eh, hello Sergeant Walters, it’s Cindy Summer here.’
‘Cindy Summer? Sorry? You’ll need to jog my memory.’
‘I talked to you outside Quinlan’s a few weeks back when you and that big skinny guy came to see Christine Sutherland and Josh Gardner about Marc Emerson’s murder.’
‘Ah, yes I remember. How can I help you
?’
Cindy went on to explain about the file, the CV in Amanda Sherman’s name, the mother’s letters and mention of the police. She didn’t mention Melanie Lewis’s name as she didn’t want to confuse matters. To her surprise and dismay, Walters didn’t jump up and down with excitement.
‘Cindy, in my job I’ve met many people who’ve changed their names. Some because they’re being stalked by a former partner or been the victims of rape and others because they don’t like their birth name.’
‘I appreciate that but you must admit, it’s strange behaviour for a senior finance professional.’
‘Sorry, I don’t. People from all walks of life do it.’
‘What about the letters from her mother telling her to come home because the police have been to their house?’
‘Yes, but we don’t know what for, do we? It might be for something trivial like an unpaid parking fine or a complaint she’s made about someone in her street. Listen Cindy, if you have a problem with your boss, talk it over with Francis Quinlan. It’s not a police matter.’
‘Don’t you see? If she could do something as creepy as this, she could be Marc Emerson’s killer.’
‘I hope she’s not in earshot, Cindy, as she could accuse you of defamation of character. You can’t go around accusing someone of a crime without producing any hard evidence, and in my opinion, you don’t have any.’
Cindy put down the phone and sulked. It was not the result she expected. She walked over to Sutherland’s desk and returned all the papers back to their rightful places and locked the desk. She tidied her own desk, grabbed her jacket and headed downstairs. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to instigate the second phase of her plan, but yet again, lack of action by the police had left her little choice.
**
Christine Sutherland lived in Steyning, one of many small villages to the north of Brighton. Cindy had been there before, but only to take a look. Sutherland didn’t own the house, only renting, she said, until she could find a property she wanted to buy. When taken in conjunction with an up-to-date CV, it suggested a woman who didn’t intend sticking around.
She found the house without difficulty but drove past and parked further down the road as a precaution. Steyning was a typical Sussex village, with different shapes and sizes of houses on either side of a narrow main road. ‘Individual’ the house owners would call them, creepy and quirky would be Cindy’s view. Sutherland lived in a detached stone-fronted house, extended into the roof to provide extra rooms, and not for the first time she asked herself why a thirty-one-year-old woman chose to live here.
If Cindy earned the big bucks of her FD, she would have a top-floor apartment smack-bang in the centre of Brighton. She would eat out a couple of days a week in many of the fancy restaurants that she couldn’t afford even to walk into, attend gallery openings and watch lots of plays and shows at the theatre. No way would she choose to be stuck out in the sticks, living amongst young wannabes with their noisy and unruly broods, untidy gardens and the retired who spent their days gazing out of the window.
She walked up the path, self-conscious at being there but partially hidden by an over-grown cotoneaster plant and darkness not well illuminated by weak street lighting. For burglars, getting into a house was often their biggest anxiety; a neighbour could hear them breaking a window, the house might be alarmed or the kitchen could house a large dog. She had no such worries as Sutherland didn’t have an alarm or a dog and the spare key was under a flower pot, its location revealed by Sutherland during an office discussion about being locked out.
She walked into the house, closed the door and stood for a moment, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. She had never been in the house before and neither had anyone else from the office except Marc, but she knew what she was looking for. In a study or filing cabinet, she hoped to a find an official document such as a gas bill or a passport, to verify the identity of the woman she knew as Christine Sutherland, and if she was really lucky, something to prove that she was a fraud.
A quick search of the downstairs rooms revealed nothing and up the creaky stairs she went, looking at her watch as she did so. She knew the accountancy institute seminars Sutherland attended ran from 7pm to 8:30pm with a half hour period afterwards to drink wine and network. She wouldn’t be back for another couple of hours.
She took her time in the main bedroom but was disappointed to come away with nothing, and she fared no different in the spare room. This left the room at the end of the corridor and given the reasonable size of the other two bedrooms, it was most likely a box room.
To her surprise, it wasn’t full of junk but almost empty, except for a chair and a simple wall unit with a few boxes resting on the shelves. Her spirits fell as she expected someone as fastidious as Sutherland to own a filing cabinet or at least a big set of box files. What did she do with important documents like utility bills and tax returns, bin them?
She removed one box and set it down on the floor beside the conveniently sited chair. She sat down and opened the lid. Inside were various folders and when she opened the first one, found it full of newspaper cuttings. The box room was situated at the back of the house and didn’t benefit from an intrusive streetlight, so she couldn’t make out much. She lifted the folder towards the un-curtained window.
Her heart skipped a beat. The articles concerned a woman called Melanie Lewis. In one, a picture of a woman being led in handcuffs to a white Serco van. She held it up to the light to get a better look at her face. Christ! The caption read, ‘Melanie Lewis’ but she looked like a younger version of Sutherland; a sister perhaps, or was this Summer’s FD a few years back?
She tilted the cutting in the direction of the moonlight to try and read the date at the top, when she heard a noise behind her. She turned and saw the shape of a hammer coming towards her before the black of the night enveloped her for good.
THIRTY
Henderson left his ward in the East Surrey Hospital at eight in the morning. The doctors had prodded and poked him, run various tests and kept him in for overnight observation, but still couldn’t find anything wrong after his unenforced dip in Ardingly Reservoir.
It was more than could be said for Lily Barton. When he went round to see her last night and again this morning, she was unconscious or more likely sedated. He guessed it had something to do with her prolonged time in the water and also her passive approach while in there. When he jumped overboard, he tried not to swallow water, broke the surface to take in air, and when swimming underwater he held his breath, but she did not.
He walked past the main reception area and out of the large doors at the front of the hospital. He stopped walking and looked around for his lift. He felt sympathy for those unfortunates approaching the hospital for treatment or those departing on wheelchairs or crutches to convalesce at home, but not for those having a smoke or taking a sly drink from a hip flask which he suspected didn’t contain an energy booster.
He saw Walters’s car parked on a double yellow line. He could only see the top of her head, her face lit in an eerie glow as she bent over, looking at something on her phone. He was about to head there when she finally looked up. She drove down, he climbed in and was immediately assailed by a wall of heat.
‘My God, it’s like a sauna in here.’
‘I felt cold waiting for you and don’t forget, you’ve been in hospital with hypothermia. I thought you’d be suffering from the shivers.’
‘Nothing wrong with me that a nice glass of Glenmorangie last night couldn’t cure,’ he said, easing the heating control back to a reasonable 22 degrees.
‘Office or home?’
‘Home, if you please. I want to change out of these clothes before Rachel drives me back to the reservoir to pick up my car. Then, I can return the stuff I borrowed from the good people at the Activity Centre.’
‘No need to go for the car. We picked it up last night. It’s outside your house.’
‘You did? Great. I hope I di
dn’t put you out.’
‘Me? Not one bit.’ She paused. ‘I asked Phil and Sally to do it.’
‘Nevertheless, I’m grateful. Still head for home as I need to change and pick up the car.’
‘Did they lend you that gear? If their stuff’s as nice as that, maybe I should take a look in the shop.’
‘Not these clothes you dope. They’re mine. Rachel brought them up to the hospital last night. I meant the things in the plastic bag.’
‘Oh, I see. I assumed hospitals were like prisons and they gave you a bag of personal things when you left.’
‘What, like a shaving kit, toothbrush and a bus pass? MPs would have apoplexy if the NHS started wasting money on such frippery.’
‘Did you see yesterday’s Argus?’
‘Nope. The only newspaper I saw was the Surrey Mirror and now I know enough about business rates in Guildford and bin collections in Reigate to last me a lifetime.’
‘You and Lily made it on to the front page.’
‘Really? I didn’t see any reporters at the scene.’
‘A guy called Adam Weir gave a first-hand account of the rescue and took a number of dramatic pictures.’
‘What!’ Henderson’s first reaction was anger at someone intruding into Lily Barton’s grief, but he soon calmed as he realised it was Adam at the Activity Centre. Lily would have died without his help.
‘He deserves his day in the sun. He helped me loads. How did the whole thing look in print?’
‘Dramatic and cold. He got a good one of you in the water, pulling Lily back to the boat. How is she, by the way?’
‘Hard to tell. I don’t think she’s been conscious since she came out of the water but the doctor I spoke to said he expects her to make a full recovery.’
‘That’s good. Why did she do it? I mean, I might be asking the obvious as she’s just lost her husband and her boyfriend, but did she really need to go out there to try and top herself? The woman is smart, good-looking and she’s got a good job. She’s got a lot going for her.’
