Dark Truths

by A. J. Cross

  ‘Claire?’

  He looked down at compacted ground, then on to where it met old wood fencing. No soft earth here which might offer concealment. No space. Continuing slowly along the car park’s perimeter it was the same story. He closed his eyes, looked up. The high boundary wall was directly ahead. He recalled the workmen who had come here a lifetime ago to carry out safety work and were sent away. He walked to it, looked up at it, his eyes moving over dark brick, ivy and other vegetation covering it to a height of many feet, then down to vigorous bushes and nettles at its base. Pushing his way through and along, he came to the brick buttresses he’d looked at that day. He ran his hands over them, followed the wall along, thick tendrils and thorns pulling at him. He stopped where two of the buttresses were closer together than the others he had passed, the undergrowth around and between them particularly dense. He walked further along, not finding any others similarly placed. He came back, placed his hands against the cool brick of the two buttresses built so close together. A stand-out feature in a long, long wall. A memorable marker for something someone had left here? He dropped the spade and bent to the flourishing green undergrowth. He was here to find his wife. His life. He would use his hands.

  He pulled at thick branches, tore ivy from its moorings. Quickening his pace, he seized more, cast it behind him, his breath coming in harsh gasps, sweat coursing into his eyes. Robotic, oblivious to stings from wild roses and nettles he watched the soft dark earth slowly revealing itself. He went to his knees, lowered his face to it, breathed in its rich loamy scent, looked at a mired stick, slender, delicate, resting against the dark brick. He reached out to it, touched it, ran his finger down its length, gently lifting away soil, an express-train roar inside his head.

  It was a human radius. Hands shaking, he pulled away thorny branches and nettles. The fragile bone was a ten-year testimony to this place being the ideal burial ground for the victims in the case. For Claire. Gently, carefully, he scooped away earth. Distant thunder rolled. Rain spots, big as medals, splashed nearby leaves. Pushing his hands deep, he lifted away more earth, flung it from him, pushed again, stopped. His fingers had hooked something. He lowered his face to the earth, his eyes fixed on a small, earth-covered hoop. Breath catching in his throat, fingers gentle, he eased away the soil, looked at another next to it. He continued on, a pain in his chest, the like of which he’d never felt as more small hoops appeared and a curving column of small bones. He stopped. Got to his feet. He had to call Chong. It was her domain now. She would tell him what he already knew. There was nothing more he could do for Claire except stay here and be with her. He raised his arms, damaged hands clenched into fists, let his head drop back and roared out his grief. Staggering backwards, stopped by a tree, he slid down it.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Sunday 28 August. 4 p.m.

  Brophy had told Watts to prepare the handover document. He’d done it. It was on the low table in front of him, the facts of the case still in his head: Edward Arnold, David Winter, Prentiss senior, Prentiss junior, all had worn bracelet watches. For Paul Clarke there was no confirmation. Watts thought back to his meeting with him, shook his head. He couldn’t recall seeing Clarke’s watch. Traynor had said that the software legend-in-his-own-lunch hour had offloaded a previously failing business to somebody planning to give customers what they wanted. ‘I told him, they want coffee!’ When he’d heard those words from Traynor they hadn’t jibed with anything. They did now: Edward Arnold and his chesterfield sofa, his top-of-the-range coffee machine for his bookshop customers’ comfort and convenience.

  Unable to leave the case alone, even at this late stage, Watts reached for his phone, dialled the number in Traynor’s notes, waited. His call was picked up. ‘Mr Clarke, this is DI Watts, SIO in the Zoe Roberts murder investigation. I know it’s a Sunday but I’ve got a question for you.’ Clarke sounded more reasonable than he had previously. No doubt worried about the anonymous message he’d sent to headquarters. ‘You told Dr Traynor some days ago that you once owned a coffeeshop. Who did you sell it to?’ He wrote the name, ended the call, looked down at it. It meant nothing. He dialled another number, waited. His call was picked up. ‘Mr Arnold? Apologies for interrupting your Sunday, but I need to check something with you. Before you had your bookshop, did you ever own a coffeeshop?’ He ended the call. So much for intuition. No coffeeshop. He watched his pen move over paper, making loops-within-loops. Bookshop. Broughton’s last known whereabouts, prior to his disappearance. A place he’d never visited prior to that day. He flipped more pages, found the Prentiss’s home number, dialled it. Mrs Prentiss had made her feelings about him very clear but he needed one more shot at getting a realistic picture of Zoe from them. He cut the call. Nobody home. Again, he went through the accident printouts, looked at details of the one which had claimed the lives of a mother and infant. Telling himself that what he was doing was beyond desperate, he searched his phone for a name. Not finding it he got up, went to the bureau, came back with an old address book, found what he was looking for.

  He dialled, waited, grinned at the voice in his ear. ‘Hello, Dave. How’s Traffic?’ He listened to a few expletives, got down to what he wanted. ‘I need to know about a case with whiskers, Dave. A mother and baby killed in an RTA in south Birmingham fifteen years ago.’ He gave him the date. ‘I want details we haven’t got at headquarters. Can you track it down?’ Watts waited, doodled. His one-time colleague was soon back, giving only the basic information Watts already had. ‘Thanks anyway. It was a long shot.’ He listened to the voice in his ear. ‘You do? Can I have it?’ He wrote down the phone number, ‘I know. I never got it from you.’ He ended the call, tapped the number he’d been given, listened as it rang out and was picked up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Mrs Jill Woodhall?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Watts went with as few words as possible. ‘This is Detective Inspector Watts, police headquarters, Harborne. I’m sorry for calling on a Sunday. If I leave it at that for now, can I come and talk to you?’ Writing down her address, he ended the call. Fifteen minutes later he was ringing her doorbell, ID in hand. The door opened. ‘Mrs Jill Woodhall?’

  She nodded. ‘Come in.’ In the hallway, she gave him a direct look. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

  ‘Possible. It’s a common enough face.’

  She led him into a large kitchen, its doors and windows open to the garden. ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘A road accident which happened a few years ago.’

  ‘Fifteen.’ She said. ‘It’s fifteen years since my daughter was killed.’

  On the lookout for signs of upset, he saw only resignation. ‘I need to ask you for details of that accident, Mrs Woodhall.’

  ‘I was anticipating you would. Don’t look so worried, DI Watts. Memory is kind. It preserves the good and blurs the rest.’ She got up, went to a high shelf and took down a photograph, brought it back to the table. ‘This is my daughter.’ She ran her finger gently over it. ‘And that’s her baby, Jack. He was just six months old.’

  Watts looked at the photograph, then up at her. ‘What happened?’

  ‘She was taking Jack to hospital. He was ill. Convulsing. The weather was bad, around November time and obviously she was stressed about him and … her car struck another coming the opposite way. The police who were involved at the time were very kind. They told me she swerved, lost control, that it was a tragic accident in problematic circumstances.’ She took the photograph from Watts, shook her head. ‘It must happen all the time, somewhere.’

  ‘Did the police give any details of the problematic circumstances?’

  ‘They measured marks on the road or something and they said that she was going too fast and swerved to avoid an obstruction in the road.’

  ‘Did they say anything about the obstruction?’

  ‘Only that it was a skip which was clearly marked with warning signs.’ She shook her head. ‘Worry, speed, poor v
isibility all coming together.’ She looked up at him. ‘That’s what an accident is, isn’t it? It’s a pity Suzanne couldn’t have taken Jack to the hospital earlier.’

  Suzanne. Watts looked at her, telling himself it was a common enough name. ‘Why didn’t she?’

  ‘She’d gone out for a couple of hours, leaving him with a babysitter. She would have realized he was ill as soon as she arrived home.’

  ‘Do you recall the babysitter’s name?’

  She shook her head. ‘All I know is that she was young.’

  Watts looked over the notes he’d made. ‘What was your daughter’s full name?’

  ‘Her married name was Suzanne Elliot.’

  He wrote it down, a tremor in his hand, another question in his head so loud he wondered that she couldn’t hear it. ‘Was your daughter married before, by any chance?’

  She looked at him, surprised. ‘Yes. She was.’

  ‘What was her previous married name?’

  ‘Arnold. Suzanne Arnold.’

  Watts stood. She did the same. ‘I’ve just realized why you look familiar. You were on the television recently.’

  Watts drove a short way from the house and parked, getting his breathing under control and his thoughts in some kind of order. Having found no specific links during what felt like a lifetime on this case, he suddenly had them. Now he knew the reason why Prentiss had indicated Christian Roberts’ involvement in questionable dealings. Deflection. Prentiss knew the truth. He looked down at the papers lying on the passenger seat, saw doodles he’d made an hour or so before. Flowers. His head came up. ‘How did I miss that? How did he know that that’s where she died?’ He started his vehicle. He knew the answer.

  THIRTY

  Seven p.m.

  Judd was home, lying on the small, lumpy sofa, spoon in hand, a small tub of Rocky Road ice cream balanced on her chest, preoccupied with Sarge’s imminent replacement on the case and her own career falling apart before it had properly started. Chong had been right about Sarge. He’d shown Judd his evaluation of her, indicated his full support, despite the mistakes she’d made, which he attributed to ‘a combination of zeal and lack of experience’. The evaluation was now with Brophy. She doubted he would be as kind. His eyes were too sharp, his mouth too thin. Putting the Rocky Road on the floor, she lay on her side. Sarge, Dr Traynor, she and everyone else had done all they could over long hot days, following up leads which had given them nothing. They’d followed up Broughton’s neighbour difficulties, the newspaper traffic accident report which had looked promising, but wasn’t. They had nothing to connect Zoe Roberts to the other three homicide victims and now Dr Traynor was ill and Sarge was finished.

  She closed her eyes, feeling helpless, like she had when she was small. Pushing herself up, she reached for her notebook, leafed through it, words she’d written bringing back scene after scene. She pictured the wall at the Prentiss house, devoted to the activities and achievements of two children faithfully recorded by their parents, the adulation of two childhoods. She frowned. Was it all a bit over the top? She shrugged. Not having seen herself in any pictures before the age of six, she wasn’t able to judge. Her eyes moved on, stopped at a single question. ‘Is he any good?’ She recalled her surprise when Alec Prentiss asked it. Surprise, because he hadn’t appeared much interested in their investigation. Self-centred idiot. She turned a page. Despite Mr Prentiss’s observation about his son-in-law, they had found nothing to indicate that Christian Roberts was involved in any ‘questionable dealings’. She dropped the notebook on the floor. There was no sense in any of it. She left the sofa, hearing little buffets of wind rattling her window. She went into her bedroom, came back dressed in dark joggers, a hoodie, trainers. Somebody had said to her once, ‘If you don’t understand, then ask.’ Sarge was finished on the case, but there was still something she could do. She left her flat and the house under a turbulent sky, heading to her car.

  Traynor was back at the scene in the early hours after a fitful sleep. Opening the car boot, he got out his backpack, searching for his phone, his attention caught by printed words. He reached for the sheets of data Chloe Judd had produced and read them. Read them again. Shook his head. ‘This man needs help. My God, does he need help.’ He seized his phone, rang headquarters. ‘This is Will Traynor. Contact DI Watts as a matter of urgency. Tell him to alert the team that nobody should go alone to the Prentiss house.’

  Quietly closing her car door, Judd pulled up her hood against big raindrops and started towards the house. No visible lights, but the one car parked outside indicated that somebody was home. She walked between the open gates, up the drive to the front door, her eyes on the Jaguar’s personalized plate: 100 PP. Peter Prentiss. She raised her finger to the bell, listened as it rang inside the big house, listened as soft footsteps approached the door. She straightened, made her face friendly. The door slowly opened. She looked up at him.

  ‘Hello, Mr Prentiss.’

  The door opened wider. She stepped inside.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Eight p.m.

  Watts’ phone rang as he headed to the Prentiss house. It was Chong, calling from her home. ‘You asked me to let you know as soon as I had the results of the diagnostic lab’s examination of the hair fragments found on Zoe Roberts’ body. They just emailed them through.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘DNA.’

  He eyed the dashboard screen. ‘You’re kidding! How did they manage with no roots?’

  ‘Like I said, they’re specialists. Are you ready for this? We’re not talking usual nuclear DNA here, the kind yielded by semen, blood and saliva. The advantage of this kind of DNA is that it is present in thousands of copies per cell. Abundant as well as hardy.’

  ‘Sounds like my sort of evidence. I’m hearing a downside.’

  ‘It doesn’t identify individuals. Those sections of hair were on the back of Roberts’ vest, one of them pushed deep inside one of the wounds to her chest by the knife used to kill her. I suspect her killer got a haircut close to when he did it … but what … hairs have given us …’

  ‘Sorry, you’re breaking up, Connie.’

  ‘… mitochondrial DNA. He’s related to Zoe.’

  Watts stared at the screen, Winter and Clarke, the suspects he was trying to develop crumbling. He made a sudden right-hand turn, getting an irritated hoot, picked up another call, this one from headquarters.

  ‘Sarge? Dr Traynor’s phoned to say that nobody should go to the Prentiss house alone.’

  ‘I’m on my way there now. Send officers immediately. I’ll wait for them outside the house.’ He drove on through darkness. Traynor had been right all along. All of the victims were connected. Linked by a terrible accident which left a woman and child dead. Now he knew who the babysitter was all those years ago.

  He parked some distance from the house, got out of his vehicle. There was one car parked on the drive. A Jaguar. He frowned at a small car he recognized parked nearby. ‘Jesus Christ.’ Reaching it, he tried the driver’s door. It opened. He looked inside, closed it, went back to the BMW, called headquarters again, issued terse instructions then headed for the house. Reaching the front door, he found it open. Not fully, just a narrow gap around its edge. If Judd was inside, he had to go in. Pushing the door, he stepped quietly inside the silent house, listening, hearing nothing but his own blood thumping his ears. He glanced inside the sitting room, moved on to other ground-floor rooms, went quietly upstairs to the landing, his eyes moving from one closed door to another.

  A low, repetitive whimper coming from the nearest room, changing to a wail, pushed his heart into his throat. Throwing open the door, he saw her lying on the floor. He went to her, knelt beside her, patted her face. ‘Judd? Judd.’

  She opened her eyes, came up flailing. ‘Ger’off me, you lousy—!’

  He gripped her arms. ‘Stop. You’re all right. It’s me. Sarge.’

  She looked up at him. ‘He … hit me. Prentiss hit me. He’s gone.’

>   A sudden commotion outside the house, vehicle doors slamming, heavy footfalls reverberating, took Watts back to the stairs. He looked down at two officers. ‘Is it just you two?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge,’ said Kumar, ‘but there’s more coming.’

  He pointed to the youth with him. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘PC Green, Sarge.’

  ‘Up here, both of you.’

  They came upstairs, followed Watts into the bedroom. ‘A couple of the lads are here, Judd.’ They lifted her. Watts looked down at her head, seeing red among the blonde. With Kumar’s help they moved her downstairs, sat her on the bottom step.

  Kumar touched her arm, whispered, ‘What you been up to, Chlo, breakdancing?’

  ‘Sod off.’

  ‘She’s got a lump on her head that’ll be the size of an egg before it’s finished,’ said Watts. ‘I want you to take her and get her checked out.’

  Judd pulled herself to sitting. ‘I’m part of this. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Don’t give me grief, Judd.’ He looked up at Green who hadn’t opened his mouth so far. ‘Go to the kitchen, get her some water and ice in a cloth. Go on, then!’

  Green scurried away. Watts gave her head, then her face a once-over, looked into her eyes. Satisfied that she looked the best she could, he headed across the hall and into the kitchen.