The Kate Fletcher Series

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Anybody heard of women being attacked and left with abdominal wounds – possibly connected with pregnancy? Maybe strangulation involved?

  The message was anonymous – her username had no link to her real name and she’d not filled in the location box when she’d signed up to the forum but it still felt like a betrayal to go outside her immediate circle and ask for help.

  She was about to ask Cooper to do some data mining as soon as she’d finished with the CCTV when Hollis pushed his seat back and clapped his hands together.

  ‘Kate. You’re going to want to see this,’ he said, his face flushed with excitement.

  Chapter 29

  ‘What’ve you got?’ Kate asked, rushing over to Hollis’s desk.

  ‘A familiar face,’ Hollis said with a grin. He’d paused the CCTV footage on a grainy image and pointed to a male figure. ‘This is Madrigal’s camera about fifteen minutes before Chloe arrives. Look at this man.’ He tapped a key and zoomed in and then did something else and the image sharpened slightly. Kate immediately suspected some sort of software enhancement of Cooper’s that wasn’t technically supposed to be at their disposal. She squinted at the screen trying to see what had got Hollis so excited.

  ‘Shit,’ she said as she thought she recognised the figure on the screen. ‘Is that…?’

  ‘I think it’s Tim Matthias,’ Hollis announced jubilantly.

  Kate leaned in closer. It certainly looked like Matthias. The angle of the camera made it hard to see his features clearly but the bald head and the bulk were obvious.

  ‘Have we got anything clearer?’

  Hollis shook his head. ‘No, this is it.’

  ‘Have you found him leaving?’

  ‘No, but now that I know who I’m looking for I’m going through everything really slowly. I haven’t seen him so far. The trouble is that, if he’s put something over his head like a jacket I wouldn’t necessarily spot him. I’ve got five possibles so far but nothing definite and I’m just about up to the time that Chloe left.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Hollis clicked on a file and opened up a series of stills from the footage. Each showed somebody with a covered head leaving the bar.

  ‘That’s not him,’ Kate said immediately, pointing out one figure. ‘Look at the position of his hood against the wall. He’s too short.’

  Rather than being disappointed, Hollis was energised by her observation and Kate shared his optimism. By ruling somebody out they were narrowing down Matthias’s movements. Unfortunately, none of the other images were conclusive.

  ‘Show me Umbrella Man again,’ Kate said, drumming her fingers on Hollis’s desk while he scrolled to the best image they had of their earlier suspect.

  ‘Damn,’ she muttered. The umbrella’s canopy obscured too much of the man’s head and upper body. It could have been anybody, including Matthias. She instructed Hollis to zoom in on the hand holding the umbrella’s handle, searching for a ring, a tattoo, a scar, anything that would rule Matthias in or out but the image was grainy and she couldn’t see anything to distinguish this hand from a million others.

  ‘Keep looking,’ she said. ‘And if you don’t see him then he must be one of the ones you’ve already got or he’s Umbrella Man. I think we might need to talk to him again.

  ‘I’m checking X-Ray,’ Cooper said. ‘So far I haven’t seen anybody who’s definitely him but I’ll get Dan to check because he’s met him.’

  Kate checked her watch. Matthias would be at work. Was it worth questioning him again? Even with the CCTV footage what had they got? He could easily say that he’d forgotten that he’d popped out for a quick drink, and Kate hadn’t specifically asked him if he’d been to Madrigal’s. He might also deny that the image was him – it was far from conclusive. If they did, it might alert him to their suspicions and, if he was their killer, they had nothing to charge him with yet. He could do a runner before they got something more concrete. Better to leave him alone – for now. Instead, she decided to try the bar. There might be somebody around taking deliveries or stock checking. It was worth a try and she needed to do something to take her mind off Anna’s theory that their killer was much more experienced than they’d first anticipated.

  Madrigal’s had gone through a number of incarnations since Kate had left South Yorkshire. In the early 1980s it had been converted from a small church to a flashy nightclub; she’d never been but she’d heard tales of cheap drink and loud music from some of the older teenagers on the estate in Thorpe. She’d heard that it had served a short spell as a community centre and as an independent cinema before being opened as a wine bar; famous for its Friday happy hour and cheap tapas.

  The front doors with their fake ecclesiastic stained glass were firmly closed when Kate tried giving them a hefty shove. She glanced up and saw the camera that had recorded much of the footage that had been giving Hollis and Cooper such a headache for the last couple of days. An alley ran down one side of the former church and Kate followed it to the back doors that opened onto a wide yard. A lorry was just pulling away and a young man stood in the bar’s courtyard with a clipboard in his hand. Dressed casually in ripped jeans and a tight-fitting, stained white t-shirt, he looked frazzled, as though the recent delivery had been as much as his nerves could take.

  ‘Hello,’ Kate said giving him a redundant wave considering he was less than ten yards away.

  He glanced up, dark eyes peering out from beneath a long blonde fringe, which he pushed back to get a clearer view of whoever had interrupted him. ‘You’re not supposed to be back here,’ he said. ‘It’s private property.’

  Kate took out her ID. ‘Can we talk inside?’ she asked, nodding towards the open door.

  ‘Just a minute.’ He made a point of finishing whatever he was checking on his list before finally leading the way inside the club.

  Kate had been in dozens of pubs and bars and clubs while they were closed and she found them all, without exception, utterly depressing. It used to be the smell; stale cigarette smoke mixed with spilled drinks, but after the smoking ban the odour had changed to sweat and loss of hope. Madrigal’s was no different. Pale sunlight filtered through more stained glass, highlighting scuffs on the wooden floor and spills on the table tops. Obviously the cleaners hadn’t been yet, unless that was why the man with the clipboard looked so fed up. Maybe it was his job and he just couldn’t face it.

  He gestured towards a table set in a gloomy alcove. ‘Have a seat. Want a drink? Coffee? Tea?’ Kate declined, not trusting the kitchen to be any cleaner than the rest of the place. Social niceties observed, the man sat opposite her, folding his long legs beneath the table being careful not to touch hers. He introduced himself as Ed Carpenter: manager, head barman and ‘general dogsbody’.

  ‘So what’s this about? Is it to do with the CCTV footage that we sent you?’

  ‘Just following up a couple of things,’ Kate said, deliberately vague. ‘Were you working on Friday night?’

  ‘I work every night,’ Carpenter said, his voice heavy with resentment. ‘My uncle owns the place and he wanted somebody from the family keeping an eye on it. I got the short straw.’

  ‘And your uncle is?’

  The man looked at her as if he was assessing her suitability to be trusted with sensitive information. ‘Tony Benton,’ he said, finally.

  ‘Of Benton’s garage?’

  ‘The one and only,’ the sarcasm distorted Carpenter’s face as he sneeringly gave an account of his uncle’s ownership of Madrigal’s and how he’d installed his nephew as manager on not much more than minimum wage.

  Kate tried to follow his account but she was already thinking about Barratt and his trip to Benton’s garage. It looked like it might be pointless now that she had a possible link to the umbrella. Kate took out her phone and scrolled to a picture of Chloe that her friend Siobhan had supplied.

  ‘Do you recognise her?’

  Carpenter looked carefully at the picture before shaking his head. ‘No, sorry
. We get a lot of people through here and I’d say about twenty per cent are regulars that I’d recognise. She’s not one of them.’

  ‘How about him?’ Kate flicked to the still image of Tim Matthias.

  Again, Carpenter shook his head. ‘I’m guessing that’s from our camera but I don’t know him.’

  ‘I think you might recognise this though.’ Kate showed him the picture of the umbrella causing Carpenter to scowl at her.

  ‘I don’t recognise whoever’s holding it, but that umbrella’s mine. I kept it out the back in case it’s raining when we get a delivery and it wasn’t there when I went to look for it last Saturday. If you find out who he is, tell him I want it back.’

  ‘When did you last see it?’

  He thought for a few seconds. ‘Earlier in the week. Must’ve been Wednesday because I used it when we had a soft drinks delivery and that usually comes on a Wednesday morning. It wasn’t there on Saturday when I was tidying up in the back.’

  ‘Can I have a look where you kept it?’

  Carpenter shrugged as though it was no business of his if Kate wanted to waste her time and led the way behind the bar. He pointed to a corner next to a door.

  ‘It was there, leaning against the wall.’

  Kate studied the layout of the bar area. The corner where the umbrella had been kept would be just about visible to customers but any bar staff would have their backs to it while they were serving drinks.

  ‘Where does this door go?’

  Carpenter opened it, allowing Kate to step through into a dark corridor. There was another door immediately opposite with GENTS stencilled across the top panel. She tried to imagine the sequence of events. Could Chloe’s killer have spotted the umbrella and realised that it could provide him with cover from the camera as he left? It would have been fairly easy for him to head for the toilet and stick his hand round the door to the bar area. He could then hide his identity as he left Madrigal’s and entered X-Ray.

  It wasn’t much, but it was another piece of the puzzle.

  Chapter 30

  ‘Tim Matthias,’ Kate said, pointing to the picture displayed on the whiteboard. ‘He works as a counsellor at the fertility clinic and had contact with Melissa Buckley and Chloe Welsh. By his own admission he only has an alibi for part of the Saturday when Melissa was murdered. This picture is from Madrigal’s fifteen minutes before Chloe Welsh entered the bar.’

  She looked around at the team who were studying the image intently. ‘We have him arriving but nothing showing him leaving. Sam and Dan have found three people who might be him but we can’t be sure. Then there’s this.’

  She moved on to the pictures of the man with the umbrella.

  ‘He leaves Madrigal’s soon after Chloe, arrives at X-Ray soon after Chloe, and leaves again soon after Chloe.’

  She showed three stills in turn, highlighting each instance of him being recorded on camera. ‘Notice that the umbrella is up when he leaves the club even though it wasn’t raining by that time on Saturday morning. Which makes me wonder if he was trying to disguise himself.’

  ‘Anything showing Matthias at X-Ray?’ Barratt asked.

  Sam shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So,’ Kate continued. ‘Either one of our three unidentified figures is Matthias or he’s the man carrying the umbrella. It would have been easy for him to steal it from behind the bar and then dump it once he was out of range of any cameras. Which is where you come in.’

  She raised her head so that she was addressing the group of uniformed officers who’d gathered at the back of the room. ‘DS O’Connor is going to coordinate a search of the area around X-Ray in the hope that the umbrella’s in a skip or has been dumped in somebody’s front garden.’

  O’Connor turned and grinned at the group.

  ‘DC Cooper and DC Barratt have an appointment today,’ Kate said with a wink at Sam. She’d already briefed Cooper but hadn’t had chance to catch up with Barratt and she was keen to see his reaction to her proposal. ‘Sam, Matt, I’ve arranged for you to visit the fertility clinic for a psychological assessment. You’ll be posing as a couple – I’ll leave the details to you – but you’ll have a counselling session with Matthias.’

  ‘What?’ Barratt spluttered. ‘I’m not… I mean she’s…’ He looked at Cooper expecting her to help him out but she was grinning at his shocked expression.

  ‘Come on, Matt, I’m not happy about being your wife or girlfriend or whatever but Matthias has met Dan already and Kate’s a bit old for…’

  She blushed deeply as she realised what she’d said. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said, turning back to Kate. ‘I didn’t mean… you’re not that…’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Kate reassured her with a smile. ‘You’re right, as long as you were going to say that I’m a bit old for having any more kids. Anything else and you’ll be back in uniform by Monday.’

  She was glad of the light relief; it broke the tension and she needed her colleagues open and receptive to what she had to say next. After a brief outline of her previous experience with Anna Carson she explained that she’d contacted the psychologist who’d given her some insight into their killer.

  ‘He’s done it before?’ Hollis asked. ‘Wouldn’t we have heard? It’s pretty unusual.’

  Kate took a sip of her coffee trying to decide how to respond. She didn’t want to suggest that she’d dropped the ball and not searched for other similar crimes but she also wanted to be clear that she trusted Anna’s assessment. ‘He might not have done this before, but he may have done something similar. I checked the PND but I don’t seem to have been very imaginative with my choice of key words so I drew a blank there.’

  Cooper raised a hand like a child in primary school desperate to give a correct answer.

  ‘Hang on, Sam,’ Kate said. ‘Let me finish. I’ve been in touch with DIs from other forces around the country to see if our cases ring any bells with them and I got a possible lead.’

  She couldn’t tell them how excited she’d been that morning when the icon for DI Blues on her desktop had a red asterisk next to it. She’d read the response and, even though the similarities to Melissa and Chloe were superficial, something about it felt right.

  ‘There was a case in Haltwhistle, in Northumberland, four years ago. A woman was attacked on her way home from a night out. The attacker strangled her into unconsciousness and, when she was discovered, she had a cut across her abdomen.’

  ‘Shit,’ O’Connor said. ‘That’s a bit close. What happened to the woman?’

  This was the part that Kate had been dreading telling them. ‘She survived. Made a full recovery. Sadly, her baby didn’t.’

  ‘He cut the baby out of her?’ Hollis’s face was contorted with disgust. ‘What kind of sick bastard…?’

  Kate held her hand up, palm out as though holding up traffic and the buzz of conversation around the room stilled. ‘She was only a few weeks pregnant at the time. She lost the baby a couple of days after the attack. My source said that her doctors suggested the stress of the attack may have caused a miscarriage.’

  ‘And the attacker wasn’t caught?’ Cooper asked.

  Kate shook her head. ‘According to the woman’s statement she can’t remember the attack. Nothing at all.’

  ‘What about the father of the baby?’ Barratt wanted to know. ‘Was he questioned?’

  ‘I don’t have all the facts yet but I’ve requested contact details for this woman. I’m hoping to interview her later today. Fancy a road trip, Dan? Right. Same time tomorrow morning unless I tell you different.’

  ‘I can’t believe you did that to Matt,’ Hollis said with a smirk as soon as the incident room had emptied. ‘He’ll be imagining all sorts. I bet he thinks he’s got to give a sample.’

  ‘He’ll be fine. He’s a big boy. Sam’ll look after him, she’s good at thinking on her feet.’

  ‘And are we really driving up to Northumberland? That’s your old stomping ground, isn’t it?’

 
‘I lived in Cumbria,’ Kate corrected him. ‘Northumberland’s the next county over. Did you not take geography at school?’

  ‘I get a bit confused about the frozen wastes of the north. Isn’t it just hills and sheep up there?’

  Kate was suddenly reminded of the view from the back door of her house in Kendal.

  ‘Mostly,’ she agreed.

  ‘Not seen any sheep yet,’ Hollis said as they turned onto the A69 at Newcastle. ‘It’s all a bit built up.’

  Kate had accessed the case notes from four years ago and got an address and phone number for Sarah Armstrong. She’d briefly considered phoning her but her gut was telling her that she needed to have this conversation face to face, so she’d booked a pool car and they’d set off up the A1 just after 9am. As soon as they’d stopped at the services at Wetherby for coffee, Kate knew that she’d made the right decision in bringing Hollis. He seemed to have shrugged off some of his despondency from the past couple of weeks and was much more like his old self. She’d asked about Suzanne and had been relieved when Dan had told her that he hadn’t heard from her since her revelation about his possible paternity.

  ‘Just wait,’ she told him. ‘You’re in the land of big skies now. That’ll cheer you up.’

  And, just as she’d promised, the landscape opened up as soon as they’d passed the billowing chimney of the chipboard plant at Hexham. Towns gave way to fields which rose up from the narrow thread of road like the panels of a patchwork blanket, stitched together by drystone walls.

  Kate checked the address she’d been given against the satnav. ‘Ten minutes,’ she said. ‘It’s just this side of the town.’

  They turned off the main road onto a street of dark stone terraced houses, which looked like they might have been built from the remains of the famous Roman wall that lay just a couple of miles to the north.

  ‘Just here,’ Kate said, pointing to a gap in the cars parked along either side of the road. She checked her watch. According to the most recent information she’d been able to find, Sarah Armstrong worked part-time as a teaching assistant at the local primary school. A quick phone call had established that it was her day off but she’d be in work the next day. As long as Sarah hadn’t planned a shopping trip to the Metro Centre or a coffee morning with friends, Kate thought they had a good chance of catching her at home.