by Mark Roberts
‘Anything?’ she asked, hoping against hope.
‘We’ve got one long hair from inside his right boot, but it’s impossible to give it a colour. It’s like it’s been there since Noah was a baby. We’re about to start looking at his hairnets. What are you up to?’
‘Searching Norma Maguire’s house.’
‘Whoa! Norma Maguire? Why?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
Mason disconnected and Clay listened to the sound of the search above her head. She stooped to the pile of plaster and lit it up.
She found a chunk covered in black paint, the form of the letter s. She rooted through the plaster debris, found a letter n and an f, and concluded there had been writing on the wall that been hastily destroyed.
Walking up the wooden stairs to the kitchen, she called Hendricks on her iPhone.
‘Bill, ask around. Is there anyone on the search good at jigsaw puzzles?’
110
7.00 am
‘Wren,’ said Detective Constable Barney Cole. ‘We’ve given you a lot of time to process the information you were given in your last interview with DCI Clay. You spoke with your dad and Mr Robson?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘You heard what Edgar McKee said about you?’
‘Yes.’
Wren looked through Cole and it was impossible to tell what was going on in his mind.
‘What do you think of Edgar McKee?’
‘Edgar McKee is a very bad man who has lied to me by saying he was my mate but was calling me a curse behind my back. And coming here to say he was rescuing me. Lies! All lies!’
Cole could tell that Wren’s dad’s words and the advice given by Mr Robson had sunk in as Wren spent the night stewing in his cell.
‘Tell me what actually happened on Wednesday afternoon when Edgar McKee drove you home from the abattoir. Don’t leave anything out,’ said Cole.
Wren nodded.
‘We know you were in Edgar’s white van and that he drove to the footpath. What we don’t know is what happened when you were on the footpath. Did you ask him why he’d driven you there?’
‘Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do or die. That’s what he said. He said those were Captain Cyclone’s words.’
‘What else did he say?’
‘Clear the city of low-life scum. He said we could be endangering the lives of Captain Cyclone’s agents in the field if we talked. But I no longer accept the words of a liar.’
‘I see what you’re saying, Wren,’ said Cole. ‘But I don’t get the reference to endangering the lives of Captain Cyclone’s agents in the field?’
‘That’s exactly what the lying McKee said to me when he got out of the van. Stay right where you are, Wren, and watch out for enemy agents. If you get out of the van you could be endangering the lives of Captain Cyclone’s agents in the field. These are not my orders, these are the orders of Captain Cyclone himself.’
‘Do you know how far up the footpath you parked?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Did you see anything out of the window while you were waiting?’
‘In the wing mirror, I saw a green sign with white writing and there were white words – Bridle Path – and a white picture of a rider on a horse.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Cole, working out the proximity of the place where McKee had parked to the flooded sinkhole in which Amanda Winton’s body had been discovered.
‘When Edgar McKee got out of the van, what did you hear?’
‘I heard Edgar opening the back of the van. I heard Edgar slamming the back doors of the van. I heard his feet squelching in the mud as he walked away. I heard a yappy dog coming closer. I saw a speck of light in the van’s wing mirror. I thought I heard someone screaming. I heard Edgar’s heavy breathing as he got in the van. In the driver’s seat. Let’s get you home now, Wren.’
‘How did Edgar appear when he got back into the van?’
‘He was shaking. He was in a hurry to get away.’
‘He told us that you explained to him about Captain Cyclone as you were parked there?’
‘No, I said nothing about Captain Cyclone. We weren’t there long.’
Under the desk, Cole crossed his fingers and made a mental journey from the bridle path to the drop-off site of Amanda Winton’s body.
‘How long was Edgar McKee out of the van?’
In his mind, Cole walked there with the weight of a woman’s corpse in his arms and ran back to the van empty-handed.
‘Four minutes and nine seconds,’ said Wren, with supreme confidence.
‘That precise?’ asked Cole blandly, in spite of the flame that the answer ignited inside his head.
‘I counted time in my head when he was gone. It was four minutes and nine seconds exactly. I have a clock.’ He touched his forehead. ‘Inside my head.’
Cole looked at Wren’s father, who smiled.
‘We don’t need to have a clock of any description in our house. Do we, son?’
‘No. I am it. DC Cole, can I ask you a question, please?’
‘Fire away.’
‘What on earth was Edgar McKee doing on the footpath? And why did he take me there with him?’
‘Because McKee thinks he’s a genius who’s better and more clever than everyone around him, when he’s an altogether different thing in reality,’ explained Cole. ‘He thinks other people are really stupid and that no one can get the better of him.’
‘What is he?’ asked Wren.
‘An idiot. He took you there thinking you’d back up everything that he said, to cover his tracks. He underestimated you, Wren, and that insult to your intelligence is just about to come back and chew his lying arse.’
The tension in Wren’s body slackened.
‘Is there anything else you’d like to add, Wren?’
‘Another question. What was his message all about? What did he take from the back of the van and leave on the footpath?’
‘A dead woman.’
‘Can I see a picture, please?’
Cole looked at Wren’s father.
‘It could stress you out, Wren,’ warned his father.
‘I want to see.’
Cole took out his iPhone and found an image of Amanda Winton’s body. He turned it towards Wren, whose face remained deadpan.
‘He’s very good at skinning dead females,’ said Wren. He looked at his father. ‘Don’t you just wish Mum was here? She’d make this all right. Of course she would, wouldn’t she?’
111
7.33 am
‘Would you describe yourself as a truthful person, Norma?’ asked DCI Clay.
Norma looked up at the CCTV camera pointing at her from the corner of two connecting walls and said, ‘Yes.’
‘Are you a liar, Norma?’ asked Clay, across the desk in Interview Suite 1.
‘What kind of a question’s that?’ asked the woman sitting next to Norma Maguire. Clay looked at the visitor badge hanging from her neck. Rowena Rice. Norma Maguire’s solicitor.
‘It’s an essential question in a serious criminal investigation that needs addressing promptly,’ replied Clay. ‘I had a visit from Lydia Ball in the early hours of the morning. She told me that her husband, Daniel, left for work yesterday morning but didn’t return home in the evening. She called you and you informed her that Daniel hadn’t been in the office at all that day. I was there with Detective Sergeant Stone when Daniel opened the office yesterday morning. Why did you lie to Lydia Ball?’
‘What I meant was this. He wasn’t in the office for long.’
‘Lydia had no idea that she was going away for a break with her husband. You told her it was happening.’
‘Because that’s exactly what Daniel Ball told me. Maybe it should be Daniel you’re interviewing, DCI Clay? Not me.’
‘Assuming Daniel did mislead you about going away for a break with his wife, why do you think
he did it?’
‘People do all manner of strange things. People say all manner of untruthful things. I’m not one of them. If you take one tiny lapse as a sure-fire sign that I’m a liar, then you’re wrong.’
Rowena Rice leaned into her client’s ear and shielded her lips with her hand. Norma listened and nodded.
‘We asked Daniel Ball for a list of names of people who worked for or had worked for Maguire Holdings, including the ones who’d resigned. His response was to disappear, walking away from his wife, not telling her where he was or why he was hiding. Why?’
Clay watched Norma as the information percolated through her head.
‘You were there with him after we left, Norma. What happened in your office yesterday after we went?’
‘His last words to me were See you on Monday.’
‘OK, Norma. OK. So, he informs you that the police want a list of names of your former employees and that was it? Nothing else was said on the matter?’
‘I told him the list could wait until Monday. And if the police wanted it sooner, I’d sort it out.’
Hendricks slid a spiral-bound notebook and a pen across the table to Norma.
‘I gather you have a maternal relationship with your employees,’ said Hendricks. ‘Would you say that’s true?’
‘I care for the people who work for me. Yes, maybe you could say I mother them.’
‘I think you could reel out the names of everyone who’s ever walked out on you.’
‘Perhaps I could remember some of them.’
‘Write down for me on the pad the names of the last six people to walk out on you from Maguire Holdings,’ said Hendricks. ‘Start with the most recent one. Francesca Christie.’
‘Fran,’ said Clay. ‘Start with Fran.’
Clay watched Norma closely, saw how the sound of the name Fran made her blink rapidly for a couple of moments. Norma looked at Ms Rice.
‘Norma,’ said Ms Rice. ‘Give them the names they’ve asked for and be done with it.’
Norma picked up the pen and, as she wrote, she covered her forehead with her left hand and lowered her eyes. To Clay, it looked as if she was making a mask for her face.
Upside down, Clay read Norma’s words as they appeared on six separate lines on the same page.
Still looking down, Norma pushed the pad back across the table to Hendricks. Her eyes flicked towards Clay.
‘What are you smiling at, DCI Clay?’ asked Norma.
Hendricks turned the notebook around, 180 degrees, and Clay checked the names provided by Norma Maguire.
Francesca Christie
Max Rodgers
Peter Gould
Eric Smith
Richard Ezra
David Ellis
‘These are the last six people to walk from Maguire Holdings?’ confirmed Clay.
‘Yes.’
‘Absolute and final last answer?’ Clay pushed.
‘Yes,’ replied Norma Maguire.
Clay turned the pad around, showed it to Norma.
‘I’m going to suspend the interview now,’ said Clay. ‘Look at the list. The last six?’
‘Yes. The last six to leave.’
‘I’m asking you again – would you describe yourself as a truthful person, Norma?’
Norma looked at Clay with the beginnings of bush fires in her eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘You need to have a seriously candid talk with your solicitor, Norma.’ Clay tapped the list of names. ‘You’re a liar,’ said Clay. ‘Watch this space. There’s much, much more to come.’
112
7.51 am
As Sergeant Harris escorted Norma Maguire from the interview suite, Clay’s iPhone beeped with an incoming message.
Mason sent you a picture.
She opened it. There were two pictures. One of a white nylon hairnet and one of a sheet of lint roller.
Clay counted. On the lint roller there were three distinct, long hairs, their ends hanging over the sides of the sticky rectangular sheet.
Her iPhone rang out.
‘Eve, did you get the pictures?’
‘I did, Terry, thank you. You got the hairs from McKee’s hairnet, right?’
‘Right. They’re all covered in various shades of crap but they’ve each got a follicle. We can test them for DNA. Do you want us to go ahead or send them to the lab? Your call, Eve.’
She felt like a sword had descended from the sky, splitting her into two perfectly even halves.
‘How long will the lab take?’
‘Thirteen hours plus.’
‘You?’
‘I can do it a lot faster than the lab.’
‘Can the lab retest the samples once you’ve had a go?’
‘Of course they can, Eve.’
‘I’ve known you for years, Terry, and I trust you to the limits. Send one of the samples to the lab and test the others yourself. Tell them to drop everything and fast-track it. We’re hunting down The Ghoul, tell them.’
‘Eve, don’t get over-excited by this. It’s possible the hairs could have come from one of McKee’s co-workers or even one of the prostitutes he employs.’
‘You’ve done it before and made a great job of it, Terry. Tell Pricey to be on standby in case anything crops up. I’d like you to stick to the DNA hunt to the exclusion of all other things.’
She hoped with all her spirit that the hairs belonged to Annie Boyd.
‘If he’s used his abattoir skills to scalp her, I think we’ve got a better than good chance that it may be hers.’
Clay saw the remains of Annie Boyd’s face and head on the mud at the bottom of the Mersey and the indelible image electrified her.
‘Edgar McKee, we’re coming to get you.’
113
7.58 am
Waking up in darkness, Francesca Christie lay on her right-hand side, the pain from her shoulder down to her foot cranking up with each passing moment.
She tried to make out any shape in the darkness and, even though she guessed there was none, there was one thing she did know.
After she’d been drugged, she’d been moved from the basement.
As she progressed further into wakefulness, Francesca could hear her heart beating faster by the moment and the blood in her head pounding in her ears.
‘Breathe deeply,’ she said to herself. ‘And listen to the noises outside your own skin. Yes, Francesca. That’s good, Francesca. Calm down, Francesca.’
As Francesca listened, she became increasingly aware of her body. Her feet were tied tightly at the ankles with rope or cloth and her hands were tied behind her back at the wrists.
She couldn’t make out any sound beyond the space.
‘Hello.’
She spoke softly and, listening to her own voice, was certain she was no longer in the basement.
Beneath her was a blanket, and beneath the rough fabric there were indentations on the floor.
‘Hello. Hello.’
From the acoustics, she knew she was in a confined space, a place much smaller than the basement.
She drew air in slowly through her nose and her senses of smell and taste picked up metal and rubber.
Francesca rocked herself on to her front and the relief down her side was instantaneous and intense. The space rocked, a tiny motion.
I’m in a vehicle, she thought.
In the distance outside the vehicle, she heard a sound but couldn’t place the direction it came from. Der. Der.
It was a train, moving at speed, and she was filled with envy for every last person travelling away from the place where she was trapped.
Oil.
She smelled it close at hand, heard it slosh as it moved from left to right in what she guessed was a can centimetres away from where she lay.
‘Jesus,’ she whispered into the slackening darkness that still engulfed her vision. The blanket of murkiness grew grainy with dark particles of grey specks dancing in front of her.
I’m not in a car
, she thought. It’s too big. I’m not squashed into a car boot. This space is big enough for me. She sensed space above her head and beneath her feet. The space is bigger than me.
The smell of raw meat infiltrated the trinity of oil, rubber and metal.
A butcher’s van. Lamb. Beef. Pork. Chicken. Meat from different animals with one thing in common: all dead, all skinned.
For the first time in captivity, she had a feeling that was stronger than the terror that had possessed her. Nostalgia. Thoughts of her past life, freedom, boredom, excitement, work and rest, family and home, sorrow, grief, joy, love and sex drowned the all-consuming sickness inspired by what the future held for her.
‘My name is Francesca Christie.’
As she spoke, clarity swept through her brain and she put all the pieces together.
‘I am in the back of a van. The van is not moving. The van is parked within hearing distance of a length of rail track. And I am alone.’
She fell silent at the throb of an aeroplane flying directly overhead.
Francesca closed her eyes against the immediate darkness and pictured the lights on the aeroplane and the people inside it travelling to their homes and loved ones or their holidays, and she was consumed with the width of the world beyond her captivity.
She pictured The Ghoul wearing the face and scalp of a woman who had died because of it. In her mind, she stared into The Ghoul’s eyes, lurking beneath the stolen skin, and watched the mouth beneath the woman’s lips.
‘Annie,’ she said, recalling a picture she had seen on the television news and the name of the missing primary school teacher that went with it. ‘Annie, I’m so sorry.’
Annie’s hair hung down on to The Ghoul’s shoulders. It peered at her, close-up, and she felt its breath touching her skin from the flap of Annie’s lips.
I am not going to die quietly. I am not going to go easily. I will fight you…
The words flooded into her like divine commandments.
‘If I’m going to die, I will hurt you for taking my life.’
Silence.
‘I will find a way. Have you got that…’
And a single word came from her mouth, a word she had heard many times down the years but had never once used in her life.
