A Date With Death

by Mark Roberts

Stone dialled Clay on speed dial.

  ‘Karl, what’s happening?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Look at your photo gallery on your iPhone, Eve. The group portrait, Maguire Holdings, two back from the latest featuring Francesca Christie. Look at the man standing next to Norma Maguire. He’s not in the next two portraits after that one. Richard Ezra, the real one, the one the killer’s claiming is him. Ezra worked for Norma Maguire before he worked at Doherty Estates and Properties. Just like Francesca Christie.’

  ‘Get your coat on,’ said Clay. ‘Get yourself over to Maguire Holdings and grab the office manager, Daniel Ball. Richard Ezra leaves and his identity gets stolen by The Ghoul. Francesca Christie leaves and she gets abducted by the bastard. We need a list of names of former employees. I’m going to Doherty Estates and Properties. I need to speak to Mr Doherty.’

  74

  12.30 am

  As Neil Wren drove past Broadgreen Hospital and over the flyover on Queens Drive, his son wound the window down in the passenger door.

  ‘Wind the window up, Wren, or the rain’ll soak you to the skin!’

  Wren wound the window up and asked, ‘When’s Edgar coming back to the abattoir?’

  ‘I’ve told you before. I’ve told you dozens of times. When his symptoms have cleared up, he’s got to wait for at least forty-eight hours before he can come back to work.’

  ‘Well, when will his symptoms clear up?’

  ‘I… don’t… know…’

  ‘It’s Friday, half past twelve. If his symptoms have cleared up now…’

  ‘There’s no point in speculating, Wren.’

  ‘Saturday lunchtime, Sunday lunchtime, he could be back in on Monday morning. Yay! Dad, Dad, Dad. Why don’t you give him a ring and ask him if his symptoms have cleared up?’

  ‘I’ve explained to you over and over, I’m Edgar’s line manager. As his line manager, I’m not allowed to contact him because he’s off sick. If I contacted him, it would be rightly read as harassment. So, no, Wren, and please don’t ask again. I am not going to phone Edgar, end of.’

  ‘How long’s he worked at the abattoir?’

  ‘Years and years. He was there before me.’

  ‘Did he ever meet Mum?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever talk to him about Mum?’

  ‘After she died. Yes, when everyone else in work was pretending that nothing had happened half an hour after I got back there. He’s a very good listener. He gave me some great advice. Can we stop talking about Edgar now!’

  ‘What great advice did Edgar give you, Dad?’

  ‘Cling on to your memories of your wife tightly, but cling on to your son with all your heart and soul.’

  Keeping perfect time with the windscreen wipers, Wren said, ‘Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.’

  ‘Listen, Wren! OK, now I’ve got to go back to work, which means I’m going to have to trust you on your own in the house. What are your plans for this afternoon?’

  ‘TV, PlayStation, drawing.’

  ‘Don’t go out on your own. The weather’s stinking, stay home, stay safe, stay dry. Promise me you’ll stay at home.’

  ‘I promise you I’ll stay at home.’

  Neil pulled up at the lights and looked at the unique artwork on his son’s Captain Cyclone lunch box and felt the same sucker punch each and every time. Such a talent, such a child, such a shame.

  ‘You promised me once in the past, and you went out. I’m going to come home early today and I’m afraid, if you’re not at home, as you’ve just promised me, then you’ll have to stop working at the abattoir and go back to the day centre. It’s as simple and as harsh as that, Wren. There’ll be no more Edgar, ever. Ever… ever!’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t want to go back to the day centre. I want to work in the abattoir with Edgar McKee, my mate. Has Edgar ever had diarrhoea before?’

  ‘No.’

  Neil Wren pulled up at a red light at the Childwall Fiveways.

  ‘I’m not answering any more questions about Edgar. Is that clear?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Think on, Wren. I’ve spoken to your Auntie Louise and she’s going to pop in to see you at some point. Understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  Neil Wren followed the traffic past the green light.

  ‘Edgar? Does he have other mates or does he only have one mate? Me.’

  75

  1.15 pm

  Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay faced Brian Doherty across his desk and noticed that he looked like he was in physical pain.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Doherty?’

  ‘In all the years I’ve been here, I haven’t had any dealings with the police, and then two back-to-back visits all of a sudden.’

  Clay focused him on an imperative that wasn’t Brian Doherty centred.

  ‘Your newest employee, Francesca Christie, she’s still missing, by the way.’

  ‘Is that what you’ve come to tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how can I help you, DCI Clay?’

  Clay noticed the way the framed family portrait on his desk was angled so that anyone facing him could see him with his wife and two teenage daughters.

  ‘I’ve come here to have a highly confidential talk with you, Mr Doherty, and I need a reassurance you won’t divulge the content of our conversation with anyone.’ She pointed at the picture on the desk. ‘Even your family. And especially not your employees.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can help you, DCI Clay. Francesca Christie only worked here for half a day before she went missing.’

  ‘You enticed her away from Norma Maguire, right?’

  ‘Wrong. Francesca approached me. I got my fingers singed last time I head-hunted from Maguire Holdings.’

  ‘Richard Ezra?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We sussed it out,’ Clay explained. ‘He worked for Maguire Holdings before he came to work for you. Tell me the story. What happened?’

  ‘I approached Richard directly behind Norma Maguire’s back. He was the top agent at Maguire Holdings. I needed him on board here. At the time we were in a slump, to say the very least. I offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse. If he helped us to drive up our sales and lettings to the place they’d once been in and he could captain that sustained performance for twelve months, I’d make him a profit-sharing partner in the firm. He bit my hand off.’

  ‘How did Norma Maguire take this?’

  ‘She went ballistic. She sent me legal hate mail when Richard started with me. What she wasn’t going to do to me wasn’t worth mentioning. She was going to close me down and sue me in the highest court in the land if she had to.’

  ‘Did Richard know about this?’

  ‘Yes. I showed him the letters, played back the toxic messages she left on my answer machine. On the last occasion I played him her poison he quietly asked to be excused and left the room. When he came back he told me he’d called Norma on her personal mobile and had a private conversation with her. Norma immediately stopped banging the war drums. I never heard from her again.’

  ‘Did he tell you much about Norma?’

  ‘Is she in trouble?’ A light glinted in his eyes; it was the glimmer of hope.

  ‘Please answer the question, Mr Doherty.’

  ‘He didn’t tell me that much about her, just that she was consistently over-familiar with him. There was nothing overtly sexual about it but he felt uncomfortable around her.’

  A clear pattern emerged in Clay’s head.

  ‘Did Francesca Christie say anything about Norma Maguire to you?’

  ‘That she wasn’t going to work her notice, and that she’d personally take the fallout from that decision. Richard Ezra was a little less hasty. He worked his month’s notice and spun a yarn to Norma that he was going travelling for a year. I told Francesca to wait but any time I mentioned Norma it was like someone had stepped on her grave.’

  ‘How do you mean, Mr Doherty?’

  ‘She shudd
ered at the mention of her name. Norma Maguire was a touchy subject.’

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to add?’

  ‘Will I be receiving another visit from you or your colleagues, DCI Clay?’

  ‘It’s more than likely. Thank you for your time and discretion. Let’s hope your silence on my visit to you helps us to bring Francesca Christie back safe and sound.’

  ***

  When Clay stepped on to Allerton Road outside Doherty Estates and Properties, her iPhone rang out. She looked down the busy street in the direction of Maguire Holdings, connected the call and asked, ‘Karl, how did you get on?’

  ‘Daniel Ball’s gone home, thrown in a sickie, and he’s not answering his landline home phone or his mobile number.’

  Clay’s suspicions escalated.

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘721 Loreburn Road, over the road from Mosspits School.’

  ‘You can make it there in five minutes, Karl. I need that list of names of people who’ve walked out on Norma Maguire. Was she there?’

  ‘No, she was out at a meeting. No one knew the answer to my question. At least that’s what they all claimed.’

  As Clay walked towards her car, the pattern in her head became clearer.

  Richard Ezra – Maguire Holdings to Doherty Estates and Properties; his wife ends up murdered and a year later, so the story goes, he threw himself into the Mersey.

  Francesca Christie – Maguire Holdings to Doherty Estates and Properties; she is kidnapped and goes missing, and is almost certainly in the hands of The Ghoul.

  Clay fired up the ignition and drove away on autopilot as the line between bizarre coincidence and grim pattern blurred from static black and white into a moving cloud of grey.

  76

  1.55 pm

  Clay sat at her desk in the incident room and drank a mouthful of cold coffee to wash down a painkiller. She didn’t hear the door open but was drawn by Poppy Waters’ voice.

  ‘Eve?’

  ‘Poppy…’

  She walked towards Clay with Francesca Christie’s open laptop in her hands, and sat next to her.

  ‘You’ve found something, Poppy?’ she asked, trying hard not to become instantly intoxicated with hope.

  ‘Yes. I think I know why she left her job so suddenly.’

  ‘Go on?’ Clay sat up, shook off her fatigue and gave her attention to Poppy.

  ‘She kept a diary of things that went on at work in Maguire Holdings. She didn’t like her boss, Norma Maguire.’

  Clay pictured the woman in a wheelchair to whom she’d spoken hours earlier.

  ‘Norma harassed Francesca. She’s listed dates and times when Norma said or did things to her.’

  ‘Are we looking at sexual harassment here?’

  ‘Yes and no. Norma was clever, so she did things like touch Francesca but never in an overtly sexual way. But what she did, for example, was touch Francesca’s elbow and slide her hand down to her wrist. Take that on its own and its pretty much nothing, but that sort of thing happened over and over. Fran, as Norma very annoyingly insisted on calling Francesca, was forever being called into Norma’s office for motherly one-to-one chats about things that had absolutely nothing to do with the business of selling houses. As time went on, the gaps between these cosy chats grew shorter and shorter. Then there were the monthly meals out, a reward for the whole staff for good performance on the surface but Francesca didn’t see it that way. Francesca always had to sit next to Norma. It was a running joke in the office. Everyone went out on Norma and Francesca’s date nights.’

  ‘How many of these incidents did Francesca log, roughly?’

  ‘Specifically, three hundred and seventy-three over eighteen months.’

  ‘Ouch! Norma Maguire told me she had no idea why Francesca left.’

  ‘Well, there’s your answer.’

  ‘Send the log to me but, also, give me a specific example of Norma’s unwanted attentions. The most vivid one you can think of, Poppy?’

  An incoming message pinged on Clay’s iPhone.

  ‘Well, if it was me I can tell you now. The one that would make me come out in goose bumps was the office Christmas party last year. They had it in the Dovedale Towers. Francesca was understandably down because her father had died suddenly prior to Christmas and her boyfriend decided to dump her soon after that. Norma had consumed a few too many whiskies. She lured Francesca into the disabled toilet and closed the door. She laid it on with a trowel about how lonely she was. It was high octane emotional blackmail. She wanted Fran to come to Crosby Beach with her on New Year’s Day, to go for an afternoon out and have food somewhere. Francesca got out of it by playing the bereavement card. New Year’s Day was her dad’s birthday and she couldn’t leave her mum on her own.’

  ‘I need to have another word with Norma Maguire.’

  She opened the message from Stone.

  Eve - No one home at Daniel Ball’s house. I knocked a few times. According to the neighbour, Daniel would be in work. His wife, Lydia, goes to town most days. Sorry, no sign of.

  77

  2.03 pm

  When the landline telephone on Detective Sergeant Gina Riley’s desk rang out, the only person in the incident room was Detective Constable Barney Cole.

  Cole moved three desks down and picked up.

  ‘This is DC Cole on DS Riley’s telephone.’

  ‘Oliver Brown, CCTV4U. She called us to hurry up on the footage you sent us.’ He sounded like a busy man who was just about at the end of his tether. ‘I was ringing to inform her that I’ve emailed the cleaned-up footage to her.’

  ‘I haven’t got access to Gina Riley’s laptop. Can you do me a favour, Oliver? Can you email the footage to my laptop and I can distribute the images to DCI Clay and the rest of the team.’

  He told Oliver his email address.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And thank you for doing such a swift job.’

  ‘We’d have had it to you sooner but the quality wouldn’t have been as good as it is now. I’ll resend it to you right now.’

  Before Cole could reply, Oliver hung up.

  As he returned to his desk, he called Clay and, when she connected, he heard immediately that she was in her car.

  ‘Eve, we’ve got the cleaned-up CCTV footage of the white van leaving the Amanda Winton body drop-off.’

  ‘What’s it like, Barney?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, I’m opening my emails now. OK.’ He counted to five as he cued up the footage. ‘I’m watching. Oh, that’s great. Where it was overcast and grainy, the footage is much brighter and clearer. The white van’s coming away from the footpath and turning left to make it into Heath Road. It’s coming closer to the old lady’s house, it’s about to draw level with her CCTV camera. Jeez, I’m pausing it on the image of the passenger.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘It’s a male. Eighteen or nineteen years of age. Blond hair. White. Thin face with a prominent nose and forehead. I’m looking directly at him because, as the van pulled level with the CCTV, bingo, right on cue, he looks left directly at the camera. He’s not your run of the mill teenager. He looks like there’s something not quite right about him.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, Barney. Anything on the driver?’

  ‘We couldn’t see him at all, remember? He’s like a bulky silhouette now. He’s a big man. I can see his hands on the wheel. I can see his forearms, they’re knotted with muscle, and there’s some sort of tattoo just above his left wrist. I’m guessing he’s quite mature, but that’s a guess, Eve.’

  ‘Anything of his face?’ asked Clay, crossing the fingers of her mind.

  ‘No, the hands and the forearms, yes, but the rest of him is in shadow. I’m taking it off pause. And watching the van disappear down Heath Road.’

  ‘I’m pulling over, Barney. Can you send it to me now, please?’

  Cole heard the screech of her brakes, clicked on forward and sent the footage to Clay’
s iPhone.

  ‘Got it, Barney.’ She fell silent and after several moments said, ‘That’s great. The kid should be dead easy to identify. Circulate this CCTV footage to the team and give it to our PR people. I want this image of the lad on local news at teatime, Granada and the BBC. I want it repeated after ten o’clock and throughout tomorrow’s local news daytime bulletins. We’ll issue it with your landline number.’

  ‘Leave it with me. I think we’re going to have him in custody before the day’s done.’

  At the other end of the line, he sensed Clay turning very quiet.

  ‘He doesn’t look like he’s capable,’ said Clay.

  Cole heard the spark of her ignition and her shift into first gear.

  ‘Where are you off to, Eve?’

  ‘Norma Maguire and then home for an hour, to get ready for tonight.’

  ‘Good luck with that, Eve. I’ll hold the fort here and relay anything that comes in to you.’

  Cole watched the footage through again and when the young man came fully into view, he was forced to agree with Clay.

  He looked like a child trapped in the body of a young adult.

  Cole didn’t know who he was or where he came from but he was sure of one thing.

  The passenger was going to lead them to The Ghoul.

  78

  2.35 pm

  Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay stood alone at the window in Norma Maguire’s office and processed recent events.

  She had arrived at the estate agency ten minutes earlier and found that Norma was still out of the office. She had told Carolyn Wilkes, the most senior of the estate agents, that she’d wait in Norma’s office for the boss to return and had given her an instruction to call Norma and ask her to return as quickly as she could.

  Now, from the window, she saw Norma parking in the disabled bay in front of Maguire Holdings. She watched Norma get out of the car and into her wheelchair, a manoeuvre she performed with dexterity and speed.

  Clay waited, heard Norma’s imminent arrival in advance with the ping from the lift.

  The door to the office opened and Clay stayed still and where she was.