The Kate Fletcher Series

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Chapter 18

  ‘Nice place,’ Hollis remarked as they pulled up outside a Victorian house on a shady street that ran south off Thorne Road. ‘Wouldn’t have thought tattooing would be very lucrative.’

  Harrington had rung back within Kate’s ten-minute deadline and given his address. She and Hollis had driven separately to Doncaster Central where Kate had left her car, allowing Hollis to drive to their destination.

  ‘It’s probably been knocked about inside,’ Kate said. ‘Flats and bedsits. The building’s probably all fur coat and no knickers.’

  She led the way up the laurel-shrouded path to the imposing front door and her suspicions were confirmed as she scrutinised a row of labelled door bells. She pressed the fourth one down and the main door opened, with a buzz, into a dingy hallway which smelled of cooking with an underlying hint of cat pee.

  ‘Maybe it’s not such a nice place,’ Hollis mumbled.

  Two scuffed and peeling doors led off left and right with an imposing staircase dominating the middle of the hallway. Kate checked the doors but they were numbers one and two so she started to climb the stairs which wound round to the upper floors. The stale smell seemed to dissipate as they climbed higher and the next floor was brighter – lit by a skylight in the landing to the second floor.

  ‘There,’ Kate pointed to a door at the foot of another staircase. It looked like the ones below, shoe marks near the base where it had probably been held or kicked open and the paint around the lock and handle a peeling off-white.

  The door was slightly ajar so Kate pushed it open. ‘Mr Harrington?’

  ‘In here.’ The voice came from a room at the end of a short hallway. Kate pushed open the next door to reveal a crowded sitting room which smelt of cigarette smoke and something sweeter, possibly incense, possibly cannabis. A sagging sofa faced a huge flat-screen television. Beneath it was a games console – four handsets lay clustered around an overflowing ashtray on a grimy-looking coffee table. Kate instinctively checked the contents of the ashtray and noted that the smell definitely wasn’t incense.

  A small figure was hunched on the sofa; tracksuit bottoms and a grey hoodie doing nothing to disguise his slim frame or the trembling in his limbs.

  ‘Josh?’

  The man looked up at her and Kate saw grey slashes of tiredness beneath his eyes. She introduced herself and Hollis and looked around for a seat. Taking one of the straight-backed chairs next to a compact dining table she nodded towards the other, indicating that Hollis should sit down. The last thing she wanted to do was intimidate the witness before they’d had a chance to talk to him properly. With the light from the window behind her, Kate was able to get a better look at Josh Harrington. She was surprised at his stature, expecting a tattooist to be imposing, or at least a little unusual in physical appearance, but Harrington looked like a teenager awaiting a telling off from his parents. The only thing that put him in his twenties was a straggly beard that might have been called ‘hipster’ by somebody more generous that Kate.

  ‘You understand why we’re here?’

  ‘It’s about Chloe, int it?’ Harrington responded, his grey eyes suddenly glassy with tears. ‘She’s dead, int she? That’s what Jill told me.’

  He’d obviously rung his employer back after he’d spoken to Kate. ‘I suppose you want to know about me and her?’

  Kate took out her phone and scrolled through to the pictures of the dead woman’s tattoos. ‘Can you confirm that this is your work?’

  She passed the phone to Harrington who zoomed in on the first image – the Chinese character.

  ‘It could be mine,’ Harrington said. ‘But lots of women get this design.’

  ‘Have a look at the next one.’

  He flicked the screen and the nervous twitching suddenly stilled, his breathing turning to shallow gasps.

  ‘Josh,’ Kate prompted gently.

  ‘It’s hers. I remember the shape of the petals, I gave them an extra bit of curve – redesigned the original pattern. She never had it coloured.’

  ‘Jill Ogden gave us a description of Chloe, Josh. It matches a body that was discovered this morning. The tattoos confirm the ID.’

  Harrington hung his head. ‘And I suppose I’m a suspect, being the ex-boyfriend?’

  ‘We just want to build up a picture of Chloe’s life.’ Kate ignored his question. ‘You split up what, two years ago?’

  ‘Nearly three,’ Harrington said miserably.

  ‘Why was that?’

  He sighed. ‘She dumped me. She was ambitious, you know? She wanted to get on. She’d decided that she was going to do a degree and she said I was holding her back. Said that she could do better than this.’ He waved his hand limply in the air, indicating the state of the room. ‘She said I was a waste of space and I wasn’t making anything of my life. Probably right.’

  Hollis had taken out his notebook and was jotting down Harrington’s responses.

  ‘And when did you last see Chloe?’ Kate asked.

  ‘I’ve seen her around. Pubs and clubs and that. But we’ve not really spoken since she dumped me. I suppose the last time was in The Lion a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Who was she with? Was she on a date?’

  ‘No, she was with a group of women. They were pretty rowdy. Looked like it was a hen night or something. No blokes.’

  ‘And how did she seem?’

  Harrington frowned at Kate. ‘She seemed like she was having a good time. Laughing and that. I was a bit wasted so I’m probably not the best judge.’

  Kate considered his answer. Could he have been enraged seeing her so happy and decided to do something about it? It was plausible; but three years later? That seemed a long time to wait. And how could he have known about Melissa Buckley’s injuries and copied them? Unless he’d killed Melissa as well.

  ‘We’ve not had time to find Chloe’s family. Obviously we need to inform them. Do you have any idea who we can contact?

  ‘There’s nobody,’ Harrington said. ‘Her friends were her family. Her mum and dad were killed in a car crash when she was ten and her nan brought her up after that. The nan had a stroke a few years ago and died.’

  ‘So who did she live with?’

  ‘She shared a flat with a friend called Siobhan something when we were going out. I can give you the address.’

  Kate tried to work out the implications of Harrington’s revelation. Chloe could have been a lonely and vulnerable young woman – an easy target. But that didn’t quite gel with a woman out enjoying herself surrounded by friends. It was time to get to the important questions. She turned to Hollis and raised her eyebrows indicating that they were about to start on the ‘good stuff’ and that he should note down everything.

  ‘Josh, where were you last night?’

  Suddenly Harrington couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I was out with my mates.’

  ‘Out?’

  ‘We went to The Star and a couple of other places then on to X-Ray.’

  ‘What time did you leave?’

  ‘Two, half two. I’m not really sure. I’d had a fair bit to drink.’

  ‘And did anybody see you leave? Did you leave with anybody?’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t pull if that’s what you’re getting at. I told my mates that I was leaving, one of them might remember the time.’

  ‘We’ll need names and numbers.’

  Harrington removed his phone from the front pocket of his hoodie and turned to Hollis. He gave the DC four male names and had to look in his phone for their mobile numbers.

  ‘We were all pretty wasted,’ he said. ‘Not sure how much they’ll remember.’

  Again the shifty look.

  ‘What about last Saturday?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Last Saturday?’ he looked confused.

  ‘Where were you last Saturday,’ Kate repeated slowly.

  ‘Same probably. Had a few drinks with my mates. That’s what I usually do on a Saturday.

  ‘And in the d
aytime?’

  ‘Home in the morning. I’m usually a bit hungover after a Friday night out so it takes me a while to surface. Then I went to work.’

  Kate looked around the room. There was enough seating for three or four people – and then there were the games handsets. ‘Do you live here on your own?’

  He looked suddenly relieved, as though Kate had thrown him a lifeline when he’d felt certain that he was going to drown.

  ‘No,’ he said on a huge exhalation. ‘I share the flat with two other guys. Mikey’s away for the weekend but Jack’s around somewhere. He was still up when I got in this morning – he’ll remember what time it was, he’s not much of a drinker. I’ll see if he’s in his room.’

  He went out into the flat’s cramped hallway and Kate heard a sharp knocking on a door. Two more taps and Harrington was back.

  ‘Must’ve gone out. I can give you his mobile number.’ His eagerness to please was almost pathetic. He’d found a possible way out of his predicament and he was desperately clinging on to it.

  Hollis took the number and Chloe’s address and they left Harrington with an instruction to contact Doncaster Central if he thought of anything else that might help.

  ‘He doesn’t feel right for this,’ Hollis commented as soon as they closed the car doors. ‘I think his ex was right – a bit of a waste of space. Not sure he could be bothered to make the effort to kill somebody.’

  Kate agreed. Harrington had seemed genuinely upset by their visit and there was no obvious link to Melissa Buckley. She’d resisted asking if he knew her in case he’d already heard about her case. She hadn’t wanted him to make the link between the two murders and go running his mouth off in a drunken stupor.

  ‘Let’s try the address he gave us,’ she said. Hollis checked his notebook and then slipped the car into gear.

  Chapter 19

  The address that Harrington had given them was for a flat in a converted factory in Balby. More upmarket than Harrington’s own building, this one had a glass entrance door which opened onto an airy vestibule. The door bells were in a row above a speaker, an additional layer of security, allowing residents to ascertain who was visiting.

  Harrington had given the address as Flat 6 – the label next to the buzzer bearing that number was blank. Kate was impressed. If two women lived here they were sensible enough not to advertise their names to any casual caller. She pressed six and a metallic voice answered almost immediately. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Siobhan?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  Kate introduced herself, approving of the woman’s caution. She explained that she also had DC Hollis with her and that they wanted to talk about Chloe. After a second’s hesitation they were buzzed into the foyer with instructions to follow the stairs up to the second floor. The building looked like quite a recent conversion. The paintwork was scuff-free and the cathedral-sized windows on each landing looked like they had been recently cleaned, allowing the bright afternoon sun to stream through to the industrial metal staircase.

  The door to Flat Six was open. Kate tapped twice and a voice invited them in. Inside was as bright and modern as the entrance hall and staircase but with the addition of swathes of colour. The walls of the hallway were painted yellow and pale blue, and one was adorned with film posters from the 1990s. Tim Robbins, shirt blowing in a storm, leaned back to embrace the rain on an advertisement for The Shawshank Redemption and next to him, Keanu Reeves was a tall dark triangle on a poster for The Matrix.

  ‘Through here,’ the voice said, leading them into a large living room which made full use of the light from the two floor-to-ceiling windows. It could have been a Manhattan loft – if it hadn’t had a view of the main road through Balby.

  ‘Siobhan?’ Kate asked.

  The woman confirmed her identity and Kate reintroduced herself and Hollis. Siobhan looked pale, her pallor accentuated by dark, almost black hair. She was wearing a towelling dressing gown – white hearts dotted across a garish cerise. Her eyes flicked from Kate to Hollis – she was frightened. ‘Has something happened to Chloe?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Kate kept her tone gentle, neutral.

  ‘She didn’t come home last night and she didn’t text me. We always text each other if we cop off. Sometimes we even send pictures of the bloke or his address. Just in case.’

  ‘So you think she might have met somebody last night?’

  ‘Well, that’s kind of what I assumed. Is she all right?’

  Kate sent Dan to find the kitchen and put the kettle on while she sat next to Siobhan on the sofa. ‘She’s not all right. I’m very sorry, Siobhan – a body was found earlier this morning. We still need to find somebody who can confirm the identity but we’re almost certain it’s Chloe. It looks very much like somebody killed her.’

  Siobhan was obviously trying to hold herself together but her chin trembled as she asked if Chloe had been sexually assaulted.

  ‘It’s too early to tell,’ Kate said. ‘There are a lot of tests to be done.’

  Siobhan gave a small nod of understanding then stood up. ‘Do you mind if I go and get dressed? It feels disrespectful to be talking about her like this with me slobbing about in my dressing gown.’

  ‘That might be a good idea. Would you mind if we had a look in Chloe’s room while you get yourself sorted? There might be something there that could help.’

  ‘Second door on the right,’ Siobhan said. ‘I doubt you’ll find anything. Chloe and me didn’t have any secrets. We were like sisters.’ Her voice broke on the final word and she dashed to the door of her bedroom, closing it firmly behind her. Kate collected Hollis from the kitchen where he was gazing out of the window waiting for the kettle to boil and shoved him towards the door of Chloe’s room.

  ‘She says it’s okay if we have a look around. I doubt we’ll find much but it’s worth a try.’

  Chloe Welsh’s bedroom was much more spartan than Kate would have expected of a woman in her late twenties. The walls were cream as was the duvet cover on the double bed and a series of framed prints of views of world cities were the only pictures on the walls. No friends or family, Kate noticed. There was a wardrobe in light wood and a matching chest of drawers which served as a dressing table. The surface was littered with make-up and a mirror reflected the light from the tall window. Kate opened the top drawer – underwear and more make-up. The second contained tops and the third seemed to be a mix of sweatshirts and socks. Not very organised.

  The wardrobe was similar. Dresses and trousers hung askew with no apparent system and the bottom of the space was awash with shoes, obviously thrown in and mostly mismatched. There was nothing here to give much sense of the woman that Chloe Welsh had been, beyond her chaotic approach to storage.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked Hollis who was standing behind her, leaning on the door jamb.

  ‘Looks fairly conventional to me. No laptop or tablet? I would have thought if she was studying for a degree she’d have needed a computer.’

  This was much more like the Dan Hollis she knew; shrewd and observant.

  ‘It might be in the living room. I wasn’t really looking.’

  She sent Dan back to the kitchen and sat down on the sofa to wait for Siobhan, casting her eyes around for a computer. Lodged between an armchair and a side table she could see a neoprene case and a charger. Just what she was looking for. She considered leaning down to inspect it but they had no warrant and, for all she knew, it could belong to the other woman in the flat. Better to wait.

  Hollis came in with a tray containing three mugs of tea placed carefully on coasters. Kate noticed that hers was strong with only a dash of milk – just how she liked it – Hollis was definitely back in the game. His eyes were drawn to the laptop case and he gave Kate a questioning look to which she shrugged in response. The quick shorthand gestures were familiar and reassuring.

  Siobhan strode back into the room and sat down on a chair opposite Kate. She glanced at the mug of tea on the
table near her elbow but didn’t pick it up. She looked more composed, less vulnerable, now that she was dressed in skinny black jeans and a pink T-shirt and she’d obviously applied a little make-up but it didn’t disguise the redness around her eyes or the sad droop of her mouth as she looked expectantly at Kate. ‘I suppose you want to know about Chloe? What she was like, who she was seeing, that sort of thing.’ Again, the trembling of the chin but she was obviously trying desperately to keep herself together.

  Kate admired the effort and the amount of respect it demonstrated for her friend. She’d interviewed family and friends who could barely form a coherent sentence, so devastated were they by grief, but not this woman. She clearly wanted to help but she’d probably fall apart as soon as Kate and Hollis left and the enormity of her loss hit her full force.

  ‘Can I take your full name,’ Kate began.

  ‘Siobhan Dunne,’ the other woman responded.

  ‘And how long have you and Chloe shared this flat?’ Kate began.

  ‘Four and a bit years. My dad’s a developer and he bought the building. The flat’s mine but Chloe pays me rent. It’s minimal to be honest but she’s a friend and it’s not like she has much money.’

  ‘You’ve known each other a long time?’ Kate was careful not to use the past tense.

  ‘A few years. We both worked in the same restaurant in town when we were in our late teens. Fabrio’s?’ Kate knew the place. It was well known in the Doncaster area for cheap and plentiful Italian food.

  ‘Where do you work now?’

  ‘I’m a junior buyer for the NHS. I travel a lot during the week but I’m always home for the weekend.’

  ‘And Chloe?’

  ‘She’s been working at an organic farm shop off the Bawtry Road. Chilcott’s. She’s been there about two years. I don’t think it pays well but it gives her time to study.’

  Kate glanced down at the computer case. ‘What was she studying?’ There was no way to phrase the question in present tense. Siobhan obviously registered the shift as her eyes welled with tears.