A Date With Death

by Mark Roberts

  Hendricks turned over a photograph of Richard Ezra staring lovingly into a doctored space.

  ‘Is this the Richard Ezra you’ve just mentioned?’ asked Clay.

  ‘He used to work for me. What of it?’

  ‘Keep going with the list,’ said Clay. ‘There’s one more name on it. Read it to us.’

  ‘Michael Towers. What are you driving at, DCI Clay?’ asked Norma Maguire.

  ‘All the people on the second list you’ve read have two specific things in common. They were all permanent members of staff at Maguire Holdings and they all walked away from you. With the exception of Francesca Christie and Richard Ezra, the list you provided was fallacious, a set of half-truths meant to misguide me. The other four names of the six you provided were agency staff, temps who came and went. Do I carry on or are you going to tell me about the list in my handwriting that I’ve just given you?’

  Ms Rice glanced at Norma Maguire with a cloud in her eyes and a knot in her brow that told Clay the suspect had withheld information from her solicitor. Clay met the solicitor’s gaze and guessed that Norma Maguire’s untruthfulness had centred on the list of former employees.

  ‘I find rejection very difficult to come to terms with.’

  ‘All that statement gives you is something in common with billions of other people on this planet. Frankly, you’re avoiding the question I’ve just asked you.’

  Norma wheeled herself back from the table.

  ‘You’re going nowhere, Ms Maguire,’ said Clay. ‘Because there’s nowhere for you to go.’

  ‘If you’re not happy, Norma, you can always go no comment,’ said her solicitor.

  ‘Are you aware of the name Sandra O’Day, Ms Maguire?’ asked Hendricks.

  She said nothing and as seconds ticked away, Clay said, ‘I’ll take your silence as a yes. Annie Boyd? Ring any bells?’

  ‘I heard about her on the radio.’

  ‘Was this after you’d been a party to her murder?’ pressed Clay.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said Ms Rice. ‘I’d like to suggest an adjournment to this interview. I need to speak with my client.’

  ‘OK,’ said Clay. ‘But before we do that, I need to know. Are you aware of the existence of a person called The Ghoul?’

  ‘Through the newspapers,’ said Norma Maguire.

  ‘The Ghoul has used an internet dating site called Pebbles On The Beach to track down his victims. Are you aware of the existence of Pebbles On The Beach?’

  ‘No, no comment­—, yes of course I am, I tried to warn Fran off going on it, for heaven’s sake. I’ve told you already, the first time I met you.’

  ‘The thing is, Ms Maguire,’ said Clay, ‘The Ghoul has been masquerading under a series of false names. The list in my handwriting, with the exception of Francesca Christie, they’re all men, and the men on the list have three things in common. One and two. They all worked for you and resigned. Established fact. And three? The Ghoul assumed their names as it hunted down lonely women on the internet. I’m 100 per cent certain that The Ghoul isn’t one person acting alone.’

  Ms Rice looked hard and sideways to her right.

  ‘Wait! The Ghoul could be anybody associated with Maguire Holdings with insider knowledge of the comings and goings of my firm. Just because I own Maguire Holdings doesn’t automatically mean that I’ve got anything to do with these horrific crimes. It could be a lot of people.’

  ‘Point taken, Miss Maguire,’ said Clay. ‘It’s your job to convince us now that you haven’t had anything to do with the abduction, murder and mutilation of Sandra O’Day, Annie Boyd and Amanda Winton. But there’s something else I’m desperate to know about in the here and now. Something really pressing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s Francesca Christie?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If you won’t tell me, maybe someone else will.’

  ‘What do you mean, DCI Clay?’ asked Norma Maguire, her colour rising.

  Clay looked to Hendricks and he turned over the second photograph on the table, pushed it towards Norma Maguire. It was a copy of the mug shot Sergeant Harris had taken of Edgar McKee as he’d been taken into custody.

  ‘Don’t look away, Ms Maguire,’ said Clay. ‘Look at the picture.’

  Norma Maguire lowered her eyes, looked at McKee’s meaty face and cropped ginger-grey hair.

  ‘Do you know him, Ms Maguire?’

  ‘I have never seen this man before in my life.’

  Norma pushed the photograph back to Clay as if it was an obscenity.

  ‘We’ve got him in custody. His name’s Edgar McKee. He’s in custody for the same reason you are. Are you sure you don’t know him?’

  ‘No, I don’t know him. You’ll be telling me next that he used to work for me and that he left me and that he’s now killing young women.’

  ‘He’s not exactly a Maguire Holdings kind of guy. But you do know him.’

  ‘You have to prove that, DCI Clay.’

  ‘I get that, Ms Maguire. Talk to Ms Rice, go to your cell and think things through. I’m offering you the same break I’ve offered him. So far, neither of you have cracked. He’s in one cell. You’re in another. Same crime. This is your chance to get in first and tell your side of the story before he does.’

  ‘When I go back to my cell, DCI Clay, I’m going to try and work out how you think I’d even be capable of taking part in such murders. Look at me. Look at my wheelchair. I’m a cripple. How could I possibly take part in abduction or murder or mutilation? Why should I even want to do such horrific things to other women?’

  Clay looked at Norma Maguire, locked her in with her eyes.

  ‘That’s an interesting slice of superficial logic. But you don’t need legs to take part. You have Edgar McKee’s legs at your disposal. Go back to your cell and think damage limitation. Your arrogance isn’t helping you here, Ms Maguire.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Clay held up the list of names. ‘Christie. Campbell. Griffiths. Saddler. Ezra. Towers. You couldn’t help yourself, could you? You couldn’t stand them leaving you. You couldn’t help relegating these traitors to the level of low-life murdering scumbags.’

  Clay waved the paper in the air.

  ‘For your information, Carolyn Wilkes blew the whistle on you. She told us that four of the people on the list you provided were temps and you didn’t care less when they stopped working for you.’

  When Norma wheeled herself to the door of the interview suite, Clay said, ‘Wait there for Sergeant Harris.’

  Standing behind her, Ms Rice folded her arms and looked down on her client with the bitterness of a woman who had been treated like a prize fool by someone she had done her best to help.

  ‘You need to tell me everything, Ms Maguire,’ whispered Ms Rice. ‘And when I say everything, I mean everything!’

  ‘As I said the first time we were in the room together,’ said Clay. ‘You’re a liar! And before you know it the truth will tie you in knots.’

  118

  9.30 am

  Detective Constable Karl Stone sat at one of two tables specially set up in Interview Suite 3 and looked at two large scrapbooks taken from the loft of Norma Maguire’s house in Grassendale Park. There was a thick layer of dust on the covers of the blue leather books and the condensed smell of decades rose from the pages.

  At the second table, PC Ryan Marsh and WPC Dana Wallace sat in front of two folders of receipts, with DC Barney Cole between them.

  ‘Show me everything you look at as we go through the receipts and invoices,’ said Cole. ‘When you’ve got the hang of it, I’ll leave you in peace.’

  The filing cabinets from Norma Maguire’s office, which had housed the receipts, now lined the back wall of the interview suite.

  ‘What are we looking for, DC Cole?’ asked PC Marsh.

  ‘Stick anything incongruous in one pile. In another pile, place anything
that’s been paid for between 1st July and 31st August this year. Make a third pile of any purchases relating to Warrington.’

  ‘The Sandra O’Day set?’ confirmed Wallace.

  ‘Two piles for Sandra,’ said Cole. ‘Any receipts from the last month, stick into a fourth group. That’ll cover anything that may relate to Annie Boyd, Amanda Winton and Francesca Christie. Anything outside those categories leave to one side and we’ll sift through it when we’ve squeezed the lemon dry on the others. They’re ordered chronologically. Norma Maguire’s an OCD stickler and that’s to our advantage.’

  Stone looked at the staff portraits from the wall of Norma Maguire’s office, set out in the same order. They were on the floor, propped against the wall, and there was something about them that caused an itch beneath his scalp.

  He opened the first of the two scrapbooks and, when he did so, the mustiness intensified.

  On the first page, there was a small black and white picture and two columns of newsprint. It was a review for a provincial theatre production of Seán O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock.

  From the grainy picture, Stone picked out a very young-looking Cecily Levin and skimmed and scanned the newsprint. It was deemed to be a good production with a great performance from Cecily Levin as Mary Boyle: a poignant hymn to a young woman’s disillusionment in the narrowness of human nature.

  He flicked through the next few pages and saw more positive newspaper reviews for theatre productions up and down the land in which Cecily Levin was singled out for rich praise.

  Turning to the back pages of the book, Stone saw that Cecily was still working prolifically in theatre at the tail end of 1967.

  He pushed the first book away from himself and opened the next one at the first page, where he saw a monochrome shot for a TV drama, Z Cars, in which Cecily Levin was dressed and made up to look brassy.

  Under the picture, Cecily had written: First break into TV.

  Stone’s instinct told him that the pickings were going to be richer in the second scrapbook.

  While the pages of the first scrapbook sat level, the pages of the second were parted by bulk. He turned the pages over and over and saw publicity stills from a range of 1960s’ TV shows, all featuring Cecily Levin.

  Stone looked at the table next to him and saw that Cole and the constables were already constructing separate sets of receipts.

  He looked at the clock on the wall and worked out that DS Terry Marsh was just over an hour and a half into his DNA testing of the hairs found in Edgar McKee’s hairnets from the abattoir. At three o’clock or thereabouts, there would be a result, for better or worse.

  With each turn of the page, Cecily Levin’s star rose higher.

  Oh my God, thought Stone, as he came to a colour publicity still from The Vampire Lovers: Cecily Levin with fake fangs and a plunging neckline.

  In a pair of dusty scrapbooks, she’d walked on to the stage in a Sean O’Casey play as little more than a girl but had waltzed into the Hammer House of Horror as a fully grown woman and screen siren.

  As he turned the pages of the scrapbook, the earliest days of his love affair with horror films were brought vividly to life.

  In between the film stills were newspaper reviews for shows Cecily Levin had been in at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, her bread and butter between her work on the big screen.

  He smiled at a picture of Cecily Levin and Christopher Lee, a still from Dracula AD 1972.

  As he turned the page, Stone realised he had come to the end of his whistle-stop journey into Cecily Levin’s acting career and reached the point where real life had kicked in.

  Cecily Levin was dressed in a white bridal gown. She stood next to a tall, muscular man in a dark suit on the steps of a church, an intimidating individual who looked at the camera as if he was staring down Satan.

  ‘Terry Maguire,’ said Stone to himself, turning the page and seeing bride and groom among their guests. Marrying Terry Maguire was the end of your acting days, he thought, with a great degree of sadness. He was loaded and called the shots, offered you the security and lifestyle that film, TV and theatre probably never would.

  He came to a picture of Cecily in a hospital bed on a private ward, holding a newborn baby. He guessed the baby was Norma Maguire. Cecily looked tired but enormously happy.

  As he turned the pages, he saw the little girl growing up next to her mother and he looked at the pictures from Maguire Holdings propped against the wall. Norma Maguire in the different stages of her life.

  He came to the end of the scrapbook and found two envelopes glued to the surface of the last page.

  He opened the top envelope and saw Norma Maguire’s birth certificate.

  He opened the bottom envelope and saw a marriage certificate.

  Stone looked at the boxes and the neat cursive print inside them. Bachelor – Terrance Maguire. Spinster –

  He looked at the bride’s name and muttered, ‘Holy fuck!’

  Stone picked up his iPhone as Cole, Marsh and Wallace stopped sorting through the receipts and looked directly at him.

  ‘Found something?’ asked Cole.

  He nodded.

  ‘Eve?’ He picked up the marriage certificate and headed for the door. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The incident room. You OK?’

  ‘Better than OK. I’ve something to show you. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.’

  119

  10.05 am

  Susan Hurst’s mother snored in the armchair in the corner of her daughter’s front room, buried alive in the deepest of sleeps.

  In a playpen in the middle of the room, Susan’s elder son, Charlie, played with a set of interconnecting bricks while her baby son, David, sat on her lap drinking formula milk from the bottle in her right hand.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice,’ said Winters. ‘I can see you’re busy.’

  ‘On the phone you said it was about Edgar McKee. Is he still in police custody?’ asked Susan.

  ‘He is.’

  ‘I told you last time. You’ve got the wrong man.’

  ‘Time will tell, Susan, but for now he’s a suspect in a pretty disturbing series of crimes.’

  She plucked the empty bottle from her baby’s lips and transferred him on to her shoulder, where she patted and rubbed his back with motherly love.

  ‘How can I help you, DC Winters?’

  ‘Mind if I film our conversation?’ He took out his iPhone.

  She looked around the room. Charlie peered over the side of the playpen and sank on to his bottom as Susan’s mother descended even deeper into sleep.

  ‘OK.’

  Winters turned to video, pressed record and pointed his iPhone in Susan’s direction.

  ‘We need to learn everything we can about Edgar McKee, and as quickly as possible. We’re trying to build a picture of who he is. He’s a loner. Judging from the notes in his diary, you’re the person he has most social contact with. He sees two other women from Dream Girls but not anything like the amount he sees you. What do you know about him?’

  ‘He’s polite, generous and works in an abattoir.’ She fell silent. ‘That’s about it. He’s not a great conversationalist. Some of my clients don’t know when to shut up. But not Edgar. He’s quiet.’ Her baby brought up a volley of wind. ‘Good boy.’ Susan lay the baby down on the sofa next to her and, as she patted his chin and cheeks with his bib, she asked, ‘Did you tell him you’d been to see me?’

  ‘I did.’

  She looked up, appeared interested.

  ‘What did he say about me?’

  ‘The relationship was straightforward. Sex for money.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve got to understand, DC Winters. I don’t get to hear what my clients say about me when I’m not there. I’m helping you. You help me. Don’t mince your words. I want to know. What did he say?’

  ‘He recommended your services but he didn’t put it so p
olitely.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He suggested I should, quote, fuck your brains out.’

  She looked astonished and sourly amused.

  ‘Did he really say that?’

  She pressed her face close to her baby’s and he made a noise rich in contentment.

  ‘You’ve got him marked down as a gentleman, Susan. I didn’t find him particularly gentlemanly in the way he spoke about you. Quite the opposite, in fact.’

  ‘Just for the sake of, we are on the same hymn sheet here? He indicated that you should have sexual intercourse with me.’

  ‘He also said that he satisfied you and other women he paid for sex. That you had orgasms as a matter of course because he was so skilled at sex.’

  She picked up her baby and, walking to the playpen, placed him inside with his older brother.

  Susan turned. ‘How would he know what sexual intercourse with me or any of the other girls is like?’

  ‘Susan?’

  ‘If you want further clarification, I can give you the mobile numbers for Chloe and Erica, his other regulars from my agency.’

  ‘I’ll take those numbers before I go but for now, tell me what you mean, Susan?’

  ‘Edgar McKee’s impotent. It’s all in his head. He tried Viagra. Even that didn’t work. The brain to penis highway’s closed and bombed out. He simply can’t get a hard on.’

  ‘You wrote down that he performed anal sex on you.’

  Susan shook her head as she sat down next to Winters.

  ‘Wrong way round. I perform it on him.’ Two images from Edgar McKee’s phone sailed through Winters’ mind. ‘I use a range of phallic-like objects and insert them into his anus.’

  ‘What about the other activity you mentioned?’

  ‘He likes to go down on me. It goes on for ages. It’s the best he can do. It’s all he can do. It’s boring beyond belief but I charge him top rate for it. He likes me to talk dirty while he’s doing his thing, which I can do on automatic pilot. I’m usually thinking about the kids, or what’s going to happen next with my mother, or what to buy for dinner when I go to Tesco.’

  ‘That’s an incredibly useful insight, Susan, thank you.’