‘What do you suppose we might be doing today if we weren’t both working?’ she asked.
Ian’s puzzled frown made it clear that he had not been considering the same question.
‘We are working. We’re always bloody working.’
‘I know, but if we weren’t on a case right now, what would you be wanting to do?’
He smiled, gathering her drift. ‘We would still be in bed. Asleep,’ he added quickly, seeing her grin. ‘We’d get up late –’
‘And go out for breakfast,’ she interrupted.
‘Somewhere out of town,’ he said. ‘We’d drive to a village and sit outside an old pub, quaffing beer.’
‘Outside with all the smokers,’ she said, ‘drinking beer for breakfast.’ She laughed. ‘Maybe we should stick to work after all. Your suggestion doesn’t sound too healthy.’
Ian laughed too. Watching him, she was gratified to see that he seemed to be recovering his usual good humour.
‘No one has been back to question Jason’s work colleagues after the initial flurry of activity,’ Ian said. ‘I wonder whether we ought to do some more digging?’
Geraldine grunted. Jason’s colleagues had of course been notified about his death when his body was discovered four days earlier. They had been told that he was the victim of a fatal accident, but not that he had been killed and his body thrown over a fence. The details of his murder had not yet been made public.
‘They must think it’s a bit odd that he went missing for a week before his alleged accident,’ she replied. ‘And presumably they must know that his daughter’s gone missing. It’s been all over the news. Surely they’ll have joined the dots by now.’
‘All the more reason to go and speak to them to try and scotch any idle talk.’
Geraldine laughed at that. ‘With his high-profile father-in-law murdered, his baby daughter missing, and his own allegedly accidental death, I think it’s going to be impossible to prevent people spreading rumours. But you’re right, we ought to try and keep a lid on things as far as we can.’
Ian stood up. ‘Come on then, let’s go and see Jason’s work colleagues, and find out what they have to say about him.’
As they drove into town, Geraldine tried to pretend they were an ordinary couple going out for the day, not two detectives working a case.
‘As soon as it’s over,’ Ian said, ‘let’s take a week off, go away somewhere, have a break.’
‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Where do you fancy going?’
In some ways they knew one another so well, yet she had no idea about the kind of places he liked to visit, or the sort of holidays he preferred.
‘Somewhere interesting,’ he replied. ‘Historical sights, maybe ancient ruins to see, or beautiful architecture, but with empty stretches of beach as well, and not blisteringly hot and definitely not cold.’
She laughed. ‘Sounds perfect. Probably not in England then.’
‘And I want to meet your sister,’ he added. ‘I mean the sister you grew up with. I want to hear all about what you were like when you were younger, and see embarrassing photos of you as a child.’
They chatted all the way to their destination. Jason had worked for an estate agency in the centre of York. Geraldine followed Ian inside where a young blonde woman was sitting behind a desk. The desk beside her was empty. Behind her two middle-aged men were staring at computer screens. The young woman rose to her feet with a welcoming smile. Geraldine went over to her while Ian went to speak to the two men seated further back in the room.
‘Hello, please sit down. I’m Alex. What are you looking for –’
‘Thank you. We’re not here to buy a property.’ Geraldine cut off the agent’s friendly patter, and held up her identity card as she spoke. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Geraldine Steel, and that’s Detective Inspector Ian Peterson over there, talking to your colleagues.’
The young woman’s expression grew sombre. ‘I take it you’re here about Jason?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid you’re right.’
The estate agent let out an impatient sigh. ‘Will this take long? Only I’ve got a viewing in an hour.’
‘We’ll be as quick as we can. Did Jason have any enemies that you were aware of?’
‘We didn’t talk about personal matters. We were here to work.’
‘How did he seem recently? Did you notice him looking stressed?’
‘You mean before he left?’ She paused. ‘We heard he’s dead. What happened to him?’ Unexpectedly, her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
‘Did you notice anything unusual before he disappeared?’ Geraldine asked, ignoring the other woman’s question.
Alex shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she replied. ‘He was at work as usual and then he was off on the Friday because he was going away.’ She screwed up her pretty face in an attempt to remember. ‘He said he was going to a stag party; I can’t remember where. Anyway, that was a couple of weeks ago and after that he never came back and now… well, he won’t be back, will he?’
A single tear rolled down her cheek and she dabbed at it with a tissue. Geraldine couldn’t help noting the contrast between Alex and Jessica. Geraldine and Ian compared notes in the car on the way back to the police station. Ian agreed it was perhaps interesting that Alex appeared so distressed on hearing about Jason’s death. They wondered whether Jason and Alex could have been having an affair. But a little digging revealed that Alex had a boyfriend, and they could only conclude that Jason had been well liked at work, nothing like the cruel and violent man he seemed to be at home. No one working at the estate agency had been able to shed any light on what had happened to him.
‘Another one ticked off the list,’ Ian said as they reached the police station. ‘And we’re no closer to finding out why he was killed.’
Geraldine didn’t answer but she felt more determined than ever to discover the truth behind Jason’s murder. She had a feeling they might already know who had killed his father-in-law, although they had yet to prove anything.
49
For a short time everything seemed to be going well. Even her knee was less painful now she could rest her leg. But Ella knew she couldn’t stay with Christine indefinitely. Having arrived late on Friday afternoon, there had been little time for them to talk about much except practicalities like who was going to feed the baby, and where Ella and Lily would sleep. Christine had two bedrooms in her flat, the smaller of which barely had space for a bed. The original second bedroom had been partitioned into a small bathroom and a box room. Ella assured her hostess that she and Lily would be fine in the smaller of the two rooms, but Christine insisted on giving up her own bedroom for them. They spent more than an hour changing the bedding on Christine’s bed and carting junk from the box room into the living room so that Christine could sleep in the small second bedroom where a bed was concealed beneath piles of clothes, obsolete kitchen appliances, boxes of washing powder and cleaning materials, old framed photographs, a hoover, an iron and ironing board which she admitted she never used, along with all sorts of random bric-a-brac she had gathered over several years of living alone in the flat.
‘I don’t like to throw anything away,’ she explained. ‘You never know when you might need something.’
Ella wondered what use a blind person might ever have for old photographs, but she merely grunted in agreement. Once she was settled in Christine’s bed for the night, with Lily asleep in a makeshift cot on the floor, Ella began to make plans. Christine was evidently unused to living with a baby. She seemed to be enthralled with Lily, constantly enquiring what the baby was doing, and asking to hold her, but the novelty might wear off after a few disturbed nights. Ella had a feeling she had read somewhere that blind people had a very heightened sense of hearing. But more worrying was the thought that Ella could hardly insist that Christin
e keep her guest’s presence secret. Ella had done her best to drum into Christine that she did not want her violent husband to be able to track her down, but Christine was bound to blab to someone. Even if Ella insisted she was sharing the news in confidence, it only took one person to suspect that Christine’s unexpected visitor was the woman who was plastered all over the news for disappearing with a baby, and the police would be knocking on the door to investigate, and then everything would be over. They were bound to take Lily away from her, and that would be worse than the prison sentence she might have to serve.
Christine spent most of the next day holding the baby and giving her the bottle which Ella prepared, handing her to Ella only when her nappy needed changing. Ella tolerated Christine’s hogging the baby. Not only did it help to cement a relationship between Christine and the baby, making Christine less likely to expose Ella, but it kept Christine indoors. If she went out, there was no knowing who she might meet and what she might say.
‘What’s she doing now?’ Christine asked repeatedly.
Swallowing her irritation, Ella would reply with various fibs. ‘She’s looking at you’, or ‘She’s following you with her eyes’, and ‘She’s watching your lips really closely when you talk’.
Her lies were rewarded with a smile from Christine. Ella was not spinning her falsehoods out of an altruistic wish to make Christine happy. It suited Ella to persuade Christine to allow them to stay in her home as long as possible. But it was wearing, pretending to befriend Christine and having to be grateful to her all the time. However easy or difficult Christine proved to manipulate, there were other considerations. Sooner or later her neighbours were bound to notice there was a baby living in the house next door, and their curiosity might be aroused. Besides which, Christine had friends who visited her. It was going to be impossible to keep the baby’s presence secret for long.
On Monday morning, the doorbell rang. Ella was instantly on her guard.
‘Don’t answer it,’ she hissed.
‘It’s only Gina,’ Christine replied.
‘I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.’
Christine laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Gina won’t tell anyone.’
‘If she finds out I’m here, I’m leaving and taking Lily with me. You won’t see her – you’ll never hold her again. You don’t want that, do you?’
But it was impossible to dissuade Christine from opening the door. Having made Christine promise not to tell Gina about her new housemate, Ella took Lily upstairs. She cuddled her and fed her and soothed her, desperate to keep her from crying and betraying their presence upstairs. Christine’s visitor seemed to stay for hours, but at last Ella heard the front door slam. She was glad she had invented her cover story about a violent husband who was hunting for her, without which it would have been very difficult to explain why she wanted her presence in the house kept secret. But she knew she couldn’t continue to rely on Christine remaining silent about her visitors. Leaving Lily downstairs with Christine, she announced she needed a shower. With the water running, she crept silently along the landing to the box room where Christine was now sleeping, and searched until she found over two hundred pounds in cash stuffed in a wallet in a drawer beside the bed. Pocketing it, along with a pair of sunglasses belonging to Christine, she went downstairs.
Moving as quietly as she could, she made up a bottle of milk. While the kettle was boiling she filled two carrier bags with food that was ready to eat: apples, bananas, biscuits, cereal, cheese, bread, and a large bottle of lemonade. She also grabbed a handful of tea spoons which she dropped into one of the bags.
‘I have to pop out to the shops,’ she said, returning to the living room and putting the bags down as quietly as she could.
Fortunately, the baby began gurgling loudly, distracting Christine.
‘You can leave Lily here.’
‘No, she’s been inside for long enough. She could do with some fresh air. It’ll do her good to go out in the pushchair.’
‘What if he sees you?’ Christine asked.
‘He won’t. He’ll be at work. We won’t be gone long, I promise, but I have to get out for a bit. I haven’t been out of the house all weekend, and nor has Lily.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Christine heaved herself to her feet.
‘No, you stay here and get some lunch ready. We won’t be long. Do you want anything from the shops?’
To Ella’s relief, Christine subsided into her chair again and reached for her bag.
‘Here,’ she said, holding out her purse. ‘Take some money and you can bring back the change. There should be more than enough there to get whatever you need for Lily.’
Ella opened the purse and removed fifty pounds in notes as silently as she could, before putting the purse down on a chair. ‘Thanks, I’m sure that’s way more than I need.’
Shoving the money in her pocket, she bundled Lily into her pushchair as quickly as she could, slipped the bags of food on the handles, put on the sunglasses and left. Visiting Christine had bought her some time, but now she had to find somewhere else to stay where no one would recognise her. At least she had enough money to buy a store of jars of baby food and nappies to keep them going while she was looking for somewhere to hide out.
50
As she was on her way to the police station, Geraldine was summoned to an early morning briefing. There was an air of expectation in the incident room as they waited for Eileen. At last the detective chief inspector strode into the room and began to speak.
‘We have had a report from a social worker that a woman with a baby answering to the description of Ella and Daisy has been traced. They were staying with an old school friend of Ella, a blind woman called Christine. Ella and the baby, whom she is calling Lily, have left, and Christine says she doesn’t know where they went.’
‘The baby Ella lost was called Lily,’ Geraldine said. ‘It has to be her. She must know we’re looking for her, so she went to stay with a blind woman who wouldn’t have seen her face plastered all over the news.’
‘That’s clever,’ Ariadne muttered.
‘Not clever enough,’ Geraldine replied. ‘No one can disappear completely without leaving any trace at all. You just have to know where to look, and who to ask.’
‘Exactly,’ Eileen agreed, with an approving nod at Geraldine. ‘We need to question Christine and the social worker who reported this. So far Christine has refused to say anything, and the social worker knows only what Christine told her. Apparently the social worker found soiled nappies and empty jars of baby food in the house and questioned Christine about what was going on. But Christine is refusing to tell us where Ella is now. She may not even know where Ella has gone.’
Geraldine was sent to speak to the blind woman. Christine lived alone, and when Geraldine arrived there was no one else with her.
‘How do I know you are who you say you are?’ Christine asked, reasonably enough, since she could not see Geraldine’s identity card.
‘Please call the police station and verify who I am, or you can invite a neighbour to look at my identity card.’
She waited on the doorstep while the blind woman checked her out. Finally Christine was satisfied, and reluctantly agreed to answer a few questions after Geraldine suggested she could accompany her to the police station if she did not want to talk to her at home. Christine did not invite Geraldine in, but at least she agreed to talk to her.
‘You recently had a woman staying in your house,’ Geraldine began.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Christine retorted, but she did not deny the statement.
‘A woman with a baby.’
Christine’s expression softened, while her eyes wandered past Geraldine and back again, seeming to circle her.
‘The baby’s only six months old. We need to put her welfare above everything else. She’s just a baby. Did you hold her?’
Christine didn’t answer.
‘The baby was fine when she was staying with you, but we think she might be at risk right now.’
Christine’s expression changed again, this time to one of alarm. ‘Lily’s at risk?’ she faltered. ‘How? What do you mean?’
‘Ella told you she was the baby’s mother, didn’t she?’
Christine nodded warily.
‘Christine’s baby Lily died three months ago.’
‘No, no, you’re wrong. Lily’s alive and well. I held her. I fed her. She’s not dead. She was crying and kicking and –’
‘The baby Ella brought to your house is called Daisy. Ella stole her from her mother, and is taking care of her as though she is her own. But she’s not. And Daisy needs to be returned to her real mother. Christine, we’re all very worried about the baby’s welfare. Ella is homeless and we believe she is mentally unbalanced. She can’t take care of a baby properly. She stole another woman’s baby, and she has no money and nowhere to live.’
Christine shook her head and her voice hardened. ‘She stole nearly three hundred pounds from me,’ she muttered. ‘She told me she was just going to the shops but she took so much with her, the pushchair, the baby, food for herself. She didn’t mean to come back, did she? She was planning to go away for good.’
‘She’s stolen money from you, and a baby from someone else. Christine, Ella is a criminal and a dangerous person. You were lucky she didn’t knife you in your bed.’ Geraldine was exaggerating, but it was essential she turn Christine against Ella if the blind woman was going to help them find her. ‘I know she’s your friend, but –’
‘No,’ Christine replied. ‘Ella was never my friend. She was just someone I was at school with. She turned up here out of the blue, and wanted to stay. I wouldn’t have let her in only she had a baby with her, and it was raining.’ She began to cry.
‘You did the right thing, Christine. You probably saved little Daisy’s life. But now you have to do the right thing again and tell us where Ella has taken her.’
Deadly Revenge Page 24
