by Louise Voss
‘Police!’ Carmella shouted and the boy turned his stricken face towards them, his mouth dropping open. Tears streaked his spotty cheeks and his fists were red from where he’d been thumping the door.
Patrick ran towards the teenager and for a moment he thought the kid was going to do a runner, that they were going to have to chase him. But then he heard a window open above them and they all looked up.
A muscular man with cropped hair – Patrick remembered him from the reception area at Global Sounds – leaned out and called down, ‘Are you the police? You got here quick – I only just put the phone down.’
‘Are you Kerry Mangan?’ Patrick asked, but the man’s reply was drowned out by the boy screeching, ‘Where’s Jade? She’s in there with you, isn’t she? Jade! Come out! I love you!’
‘This little twat thinks I’ve got his bird in here.’ Mangan laughed.
We’ve got it wrong, Patrick thought with a lurch in his gut, peering up at the bodyguard, at the mixture of irritation and amusement on his face. Got it wrong again.
‘Shut up, you,’ he said to the boy, who was immediately cowed. He muttered something about Mangan being a ‘homewrecker’, then hung his head.
‘What’s your name?’ Patrick demanded. ‘And how do you know Jade?’
‘She’s my girlfriend,’ the boy said meekly.
‘And your name?’
‘Kai Topper.’
‘Is Jade Pilkington in there?’ Carmella asked, calling up to Mangan.
‘What, that OnTarget nut? You must be fucking kidding.’
‘He’s lying,’ Topper said.
‘Can you let us in?’ Patrick asked.
Mangan pointed at Kai Topper. ‘As long as you keep that dickhead away from me.’
Some bodyguard, Patrick thought. He turned to the teenager. ‘Kai, I think you need to cool down, all right? Let’s put you in the back of our car for a minute while we have a word with Mr Mangan.’
‘Are you arresting me? I ain’t done nothing!’
‘We just want you to cool down, OK? Come on . . .’
He escorted Topper along the road to the car, put him in the back seat and locked the doors so he couldn’t get out.
Kerry Mangan was waiting on his doorstep when Patrick got back to the house, talking to Carmella. Mangan was unshaven and wrapped in a navy towelling dressing gown, with bare feet. ‘I was in the bath when I suddenly heard someone banging on the door and yelling.’ He yawned. ‘Stupid prat. Why the hell does he think his bird would be here? Come in and see for yourself.’
They followed Mangan up a staircase and into his flat. He led them into the living room. It was all very tastefully decorated, if somewhat uninspired, framed prints from Ikea above furniture from the same store.
‘Mind if I take a look around?’ Patrick asked.
‘What, you really think she might be here?’
‘We just need to check.’
Mangan shrugged. ‘Fine. Whatever. But it’s a bit messy. Like I said, I just jumped out the bath. I’ve been asleep all day, had a late one last night.’
Patrick left Mangan with Carmella – he heard her start to make small talk about a framed photo of Mangan in Dublin – and went into the little kitchen first, then the bathroom. The bath was still filled with water and the choppy remains of bubbles. A plastic eye mask hung from the tap and a paperback novel lay face down on the toilet lid.
Next he checked the spare room, which was piled high with junk, before going into the bedroom. A double bed with a crumpled duvet, piles of clothes on the floor. He checked the wardrobes and under the bed, feeling foolish. As he was about to leave the room, he noticed a framed photo on the bedside table. Kerry Mangan and a good-looking tanned man, their cheeks pressed together, beaming at the camera.
‘Satisfied I’m not hiding any teenage girls?’ Mangan asked as Patrick re-entered the living room. The bodyguard was seated in an armchair, Carmella on the sofa opposite. Patrick took a seat beside her.
‘Jade Pilkington is missing,’ he said. ‘We’re extremely concerned about her well-being. Do you have any idea where she might be?’
‘Shit, you think . . . ? Like those other poor girls? Fuck.’ He pulled his dressing gown tightly around him. ‘I gave her a lift home from this party Mervyn had at his place last night. She said her boyfriend was doing her head in and asked me if I was heading back into town. I don’t normally give lifts to girls I don’t know, by the way. But the party got so wild towards the end, everyone was off their tits all of a sudden – not me, ’cos I was driving, obviously. I felt a bit worried about her, so I offered to drive her back. She’d already said she lived quite close to me.’
‘Did anything happen between you?’ Carmella asked.
Mangan laughed. ‘What, you mean, did I bring her back here and shag her? I don’t think my boyfriend would like that very much.’
‘Oh,’ said Carmella. Patrick couldn’t help but smile, and wished he’d had a chance to tell Carmella about the photo in the bedroom.
‘Is that why you were discharged from the army?’ Patrick asked.
Mangan’s expression darkened. ‘Yeah. They still did that in the nineties. I had to, like, hide it when I first joined up, but they found out, the fuckers. That’s one of the reasons Mervyn took me on . . . When I applied for the job at his company I told him the truth about why I was discharged and he was furious, said it was a disgrace.’
Something struck Patrick. Mervyn Hammond had never been married. He lived the life of a bachelor. ‘Is Mervyn gay too?’
‘Nah. I thought he was, at first. Thought he was in the closet, like a lot of blokes of his generation. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in men or women. He’s one of them asexuals. All he’s interested in is his business and his model railways.’
Patrick wanted to get back onto the subject of Jade, but there was something he needed to know first. ‘Kerry, why did you and Mervyn visit St Mary’s Children’s Home the other night?’
‘Hasn’t he told you? I guess he wouldn’t. He doesn’t like anyone to know about it. Very private, is Mervyn.’
Patrick nodded. This chimed with what Chloe Hedges’ mum had told them about his work helping kids with cancer.
‘He helps them with their fundraising. Plus he works with the kids, gives them inspirational talks about never letting themselves be handicapped by their background, their start in life. He tells them they can achieve anything if they put their minds to it. He’s great at that stuff. I’m always telling him he should go public, put his talents to wider use, but he won’t.’
‘Why does Mervyn need a bodyguard?’ Carmella asked.
Mangan grinned. ‘He doesn’t really. It’s all for show. Good for his image, you know, makes him look important. Plus I think he likes my company. He might act like he’s the king of the world half the time, but I reckon he’s lonely really. Christ, don’t tell him I told you that.’
‘We won’t.’ Patrick felt slightly ashamed. First, Rebecca Hedges had told them about Mervyn’s work with children, and now this. They had got him all wrong – although it was understandable with the image Hammond projected of himself. Patrick couldn’t decide if the public relations man was brilliant or terrible at doing his own personal PR, but it reminded him of a lesson this job had taught him over the years: never take anyone at face value. Everybody has secrets, and not all secrets are bad.
‘Let’s get back to Jade,’ Patrick said. ‘Where did you drop her? At home?’
‘Yeah. It was about three by the time we got there. I was knackered, but she kept me awake on the way home babbling on about someone who’d messaged her.’
Patrick leaned forwards. ‘Did she say who?’
Mangan twigged to the importance of what Patrick was asking. ‘Shit. I wasn’t really listening, to be honest. She was going on and on about how “someone amazing” had
told her he’d seen her and wanted to meet her. It was like she wanted me to ask her who this amazing person was, but I wasn’t that interested. I just wanted to get home.’
‘Do you remember if she said when she’d got the message?’
‘I’m pretty sure it was at the party.’
‘And the person who sent the message was at the party too?’
‘I think so. God, I’m sorry, hang on.’ He propped his chin on his fist, thinking hard. ‘Yeah, I’m sure she did. She said something like, “Maybe he liked me in my waitress uniform,” and started giggling.’
‘But she definitely didn’t give you a name?’
‘No.’
‘Not Shawn Barrett?’
Mangan’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t think it’s him, do you? I thought you questioned him already.’
‘I think it’s someone pretending to be Shawn.’
Someone who was at the party. The same person who’d planted the evidence to frame Mervyn.
They thanked Mangan and headed back to the car. Patrick had almost forgotten that Kai Topper was on the back seat, looking like a dog who’d been locked in by a thoughtless owner. Patrick slid into the driver’s seat, Carmella climbing in next to him, and turned round to talk to Topper.
‘She’s not there,’ Patrick said.
‘Are you sure?’ His eyes were bloodshot and watery and Patrick was sure he’d been crying again. Did he realise how much danger his girlfriend was in?
‘We’re going to take you back to the station,’ he said. ‘We— For fuck’s sake!’
Topper had produced a knife from his inside pocket. Patrick immediately dived between the seats, grabbing the boy’s wrist and twisting his arm. Topper cried out and the knife fell onto the car seat. Patrick snatched it up. Carmella had already exited the car and yanked the door beside Topper open, handcuffs at the ready.
‘I wasn’t going to stab you!’ Topper blurted. ‘I just thought I’d better tell you I had it.’
‘Got any more concealed weapons?’
‘No. I swear.’
‘What were you doing, Kai? Planning to stab Kerry Mangan?’
Topper’s eyes fell. ‘I wouldn’t have actually done it. But he’s a hard man, a bodyguard. I thought he might attack me. I just . . . I just want to find Jade.’
As he spoke, Carmella searched him and cuffed his hands behind his back, just in case.
‘You’re going to tell us everything you know, Kai,’ Patrick said. ‘If you do, I’ll think about letting you off with a caution. Understand?’
The boy refused to meet his eye. ‘Yeah.’
‘Good. And in the meantime, you know what I want you to do?’
‘What?’ The boy’s voice was a squeak.
‘I want you to shut the fuck up.’
Chapter 54
Day 14 – Patrick
The incident room was packed full of bodies, every pair of eyes focused on Patrick as he paced up and down in front of the whiteboard. Photos of Chloe Hedges and Jade Pilkington had been pinned up beside the pictures of Jessica and Rose, plus the smaller one of Nancy Marr. Patrick stopped pacing and raised a hand, the whole room falling silent, including Winkler, who was skulking in the corner. Gareth was there too, refusing to meet Patrick’s eye, and Suzanne, standing upright by the door with her arms crossed, one foot tapping anxiously. It was 7.30 p.m. but nobody wanted to go home. Patrick knew this team would stay here all night if they were needed.
‘I’ll keep this brief,’ Patrick said. ‘But I want everybody up to speed with what’s going on. The first thing to say is that, contrary to rumour, we do not believe Mervyn Hammond is guilty of the murders – not least because he’s been here all day and, before that, DI Winkler was with him.’
Several heads turned towards Winkler, who pretended to be examining something beneath his fingernails. Fifteen minutes earlier, Winkler had called Sandwell, the journalist who accused Hammond of molesting a teenage girl years before. Hearing that Hammond was in custody, Sandwell had panicked at the thought of testifying in court and admitted to making the whole thing up, trying to settle old scores.
‘However, we are keeping Hammond at the station for the time being as we believe he holds important information and we don’t want to lose track of him. We also have Jade Pilkington’s boyfriend, Kai Topper, here for an interview.’
He turned to the whiteboard.
‘Here’s what we know at the moment: Jade Pilkington got a lift home from Hammond’s party last night and was dropped off just after 3 a.m. At noon, Topper went round to her house, but she wasn’t in. Luckily for us, Topper had an app linking his and Jade’s phones, so he could trace where she was.’
‘Creepy little fucker,’ said Winkler.
‘The phone signal told him Jade was at a place called Platt’s Eyot. He went there and looked round, but there was no sign of Jade or her phone, and the signal had gone, like the phone had been turned off. He then assumed she must have hooked up with Kerry Mangan after the party and headed round there, having looked up his address online.’ Patrick paused for a moment. Most people were shocked to discover how easy it was to find home addresses on the Web. ‘But Mangan hasn’t seen Jade since he dropped her home at 3 a.m. I’ve sent a couple of uniforms to this Platt’s Eyot place to look for the missing phone.
‘Chloe Hedges went out at around 4 p.m.,’ Patrick went on. ‘She told her mum that she was going to meet a friend and that they were planning to go shopping in Kingston later. We’ve contacted the friend, Pareesa, who tells us she had no plans to meet up with Chloe and, in fact, hasn’t heard from her for a few days. We called the Bentall Centre in Kingston who put out a tannoy announcement that got no response, and I’m going to ask one of you to go down there to review CCTV footage, though we don’t believe she ever went there. We are trying to pinpoint the location of Chloe’s phone, but it appears to be switched off.’
He paused and surveyed the room, ensuring that everyone was listening.
‘Here’s why we believe Chloe and Jade are in danger, why they may have been targeted and haven’t just gone off somewhere, either together or separately: we discovered that Rose and Jessica were the co-authors of a piece of fiction on a website called StoryPad.’
Martin Hale nodded as Patrick said this.
‘There were two other co-authors: Chloe and Jade. We don’t know what it is about this story that has made them the target of the killer – we’re going to talk to Kai Topper about this shortly.’
Winkler finally piped up. ‘You reckon someone killed them because of a story? What’s it about?’
Patrick counted to three under his breath before replying. Stay calm. Don’t let him rile you.
‘It’s about OnTarget. Carmella and I have read parts of it, but it doesn’t appear to contain any clues – certainly not clear ones. StoryPad have provided us with a huge number of comments that were made about the story by other users and we’ll need a couple of you to go through these. Though we’re hoping Topper will be able to save us the trouble. We’ve also spoken to Strong’s team who have confirmed that Wendy had been looking at StoryPad shortly before she left the station and headed to the Rotunda. My belief is that she discovered something that put her in danger – that she made contact with the killer.’
There was an audible puff of breath from half the officers in the room. Patrick thought he could feel a draught.
‘Finally, we all know that somebody called the station this morning informing us that we would find Rose’s underwear at Hammond’s house, which led to his arrest. We believe that this caller planted this evidence during the party last night and made contact with Jade at the same time. Given everything that has happened today, it’s likely that this was a diversionary tactic – intended to distract us today while they went after Chloe and Jade.’
He gestured at the photos of the two missing girls, draw
ing every pair of eyes in the room to the pictures.
‘I want you all to be aware that we don’t have much time. The man who murdered Rose and Jess did not keep them alive for long. And during the time he did have them, he tortured them. Chloe and Jade may already be dead. And if they’re not dead yet . . .’ He let his words hang in the air.
‘I’ve got a theory,’ said Winkler.
Patrick suppressed a groan. ‘Let’s have it, then.’
‘What if Chloe and Jade are the killers? They murdered the other two girls. Jade planted the knickers at Hammond’s gaff last night. All this stuff about her getting a mysterious message is bullshit. They’ve got scared and done a runner.’
Patrick had already thought of this. ‘Chloe has a solid alibi for the time of all of the murders. And Kai Topper says Jade was at her house with him, with her mum downstairs, when Rose and Wendy were murdered. We can’t get hold of Jade’s mother at the moment to corroborate this, but we believe him.’
‘And how does the old lady fit in?’ Winkler asked. ‘She writing stuff about OnTarget too?’ He laughed and looked round for others to join in. Nobody glanced at him.
‘We don’t know that yet. But we’re going to find out. And we’re going to find these girls.’
‘Dead or alive,’ said Winkler. Before Patrick could respond, he added, ‘Right, I’d better go and talk to Hammond, find out who else was at this party last night.’
‘No way.’
Patrick turned his head. It was Suzanne. She took a step towards Winkler, a fierce expression making the other detective visibly shrink away. ‘Everybody else can leave the room now. But don’t leave the station. You’d better call your partners and spouses: tell them not to wait up.’
The rest of the officers filed out, leaving Patrick, Suzanne, Winkler and Carmella, whose arm Suzanne had caught as she went to exit the room.
Suzanne addressed Winkler again. ‘I’ve already spoken to Mr Hammond and he’s willing to help us.’
