‘I’ve been thinking about that. When we used to go to the hospital, especially for the counselling sessions, Mel liked to park down there. She enjoyed the walk, said it gave her time to prepare and then time after the appointment to shake off the hospital smell. Could she have had an appointment that I didn’t know about?’
It was possible, Kate thought. The car had been found less than ten minutes’ walk from the DRI. Had Melissa been pursuing another avenue, exploring other options? If so, how had she met her killer? Unless it was somebody at the hospital.
‘Ryan,’ she said. ‘I’m going to need the names and contact numbers of everybody that you and Melissa dealt with at the hospital. Doctors, consultants, counsellors, everybody you can remember. I’m going to request Melissa’s medical records so hopefully there’ll be plenty of information there. And I want to know about her social media activity. Was she on Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? I’ll need passwords if you know them, or any suggestions. And you mentioned ex-boyfriends. Any names would be helpful.’
The man sitting across from her was much calmer than when they’d begun the interview. He’d watched intently as Hollis had made notes, keen that the DC hadn’t missed anything but now he was sitting with his hands on the table and his head lowered.
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘Melissa?’
He nodded and Kate saw tears spill from his chin onto the greasy denim of his jeans. She watched as they soaked in, adding yet another dark stain to the pattern of oil marks.
‘At the DRI.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘I think we can arrange that,’ Kate said. ‘But it’ll be tomorrow.’
‘But it is her?’
‘I’m certain that it is. The scar and the moles match exactly.’
‘I’d better take somebody with me. I don’t want that responsibility. What if it’s not her, or I’m not sure? Can you imagine? I think I’d always have some doubts. Death can do funny things to your head. I remember when my dad died, it didn’t seem real. Still doesn’t sometimes.’
Kate let him ramble. He seemed to need some sort of release, some catharsis and his inane mumbling was calming him down. They had no reason to arrest him, no evidence that he’d done anything other than fight about money with his wife and if that was grounds for arrest she’d have to haul in half of Doncaster.
Gradually, Buckley seemed to run out of things to say, his posture corresponding to his tone as he grew quieter and seemed to shrink in on himself again. It was time to let him go. She stood up, allowing Hollis to tell him that he was free to go, and headed for the door.
* * *
‘Well, what do you think?’ Hollis asked as he followed her down the corridor.
‘Gut feeling?’
Hollis nodded eagerly, his blond fringe bobbing as he inclined his head.
‘It’s not him. There’s no motive. He was at work on Saturday when Melissa was last seen, and it’s not just his word – we’ve got her car on CCTV and he couldn’t have been the one driving it.’
‘Doesn’t mean that Melissa was.’
Kate shrugged. ‘If it wasn’t Melissa Buckley in the car then it could have been anybody. But it wasn’t her husband because he was at the garage. You’ve just checked his alibi and it’s watertight.’
‘Now what?’
‘Now, we need to try to work out what the hell she was doing in the Town Fields area on Saturday. And if she went to the hospital, what for and who did she see there? And I think we’ll probably need to talk to Melissa’s family.’
I’d spotted the ambulance as I was finishing my early morning jog and I deliberately altered my route so I could get a closer look. The car park was full of vehicles; liveried police cars and white vans with the South Yorkshire Police logo more discreetly placed on the drivers’ doors, as though they didn’t want to be obvious about why they were there. I knew though. They’d found her.
It was what I wanted, of course, but the reality gave me a slight frisson of fear. I was vulnerable now. If I’d made a single mistake I’d be caught. But I hadn’t made a mistake. Everything had been exactly as I’d planned. Perfect.
I joined the growing crowd of onlookers, careful to stay outside the range of the CCTV camera, and asked an elderly man what had happened. I watched as a stretcher was removed from the rear of one of the vans and carried towards the display site. That’s how I thought about it – the display site. I’d left her there so that she would be found quickly and my handiwork, my message, wouldn’t become corrupted.
She’d been so trusting. Poor little Melissa. I wasn’t sure exactly when I’d first planned to kill her but the resemblance to the other one must have played a huge part. I almost did a double-take the first time we met but, when I looked a bit more closely, the similarities were superficial. Melissa was younger, more alive somehow and less desperate. At first.
It had happened suddenly but I couldn’t recall the exact circumstances. One minute I’d been pretending to pay attention while she spoke to me and the next I was thinking about wrapping my hands round her neck. Once the image was in my mind I couldn’t shake it. Every time I saw her all I could think about was strangling her. And then my fantasies became more detailed. I wanted to cut her as well. To show her that she was no different from everybody else; she didn’t deserve special treatment.
She’d looked stunning that morning. That was the other thing. She had so much going for her. A decent man, a steady job, close friends and family and she was a looker. I bet that she’d been popular at school and had taken it all for granted. So when I’d seen how immaculate her make-up was and how carefully she’d styled her hair I’d known that this was going to be the day.
The shock in her eyes as I’d grabbed her was almost funny. They did a strange popping out thing as though she was a surprised cartoon character. And then her face had started to go red and I’d smelt coffee as she gasped for breath. I’d watched her face until she’d lost consciousness then I’d ripped off her trousers and knickers. She was still alive. Barely but still there. I continued squeezing and pounded into her until I was sure that she was dead. Only then did I feel release.
The blade had been a beautiful pale blue in the hazy light of mid-morning. It was flawless, sharp and mesmerising. I had no hesitation at all, it felt like somebody was guiding my hand, steadying it. The flesh felt odd, waxy, even though I knew that I must be imagining it because she’d only been dead for a few minutes. But that didn’t put me off. I carved my signature smile into her belly then knelt back to admire my handiwork.
Chapter 7
She was waiting for him again the next day as he left via the back door in search of the pool car that Kate had ordered. After they’d allowed Ryan Buckley to leave the previous day they’d got caught up in phone interviews and only now had time to finally talk to Melissa Buckley’s mother and sister. This time Suzanne didn’t waste any time on pleasantries, looking him up and down like he was something nasty that she’d stepped in.
‘Got anything for me?’ she sneered and he could see that she already knew that he wouldn’t co-operate.
‘Course not,’ he said, pushing past her. ‘I told you yesterday that I’m not playing your stupid games. If you want money get a real job and earn some like the rest of us.’
She snorted in amusement. ‘Call this a real job? Hounding innocent folk and not managing to catch any of the real villains. You’re all the same. Can’t believe that my son turned out to be filth.’
He rounded on her, his face so close to hers that he could smell the alcohol on her breath. ‘Don’t ever call me that. I’m not your son.’
She didn’t move. Instead she let him have his say and then leaned in even closer. He could see make-up caked into the lines on her face, fooling nobody, and the different shades of her hair, unnatural blonde after a half inch of pale grey which dated her like the lines in a cut tree trunk. ‘Oh, you’re mine all right,’ she spat. ‘But who else made his contribution? Isn�
�t that what you’d like to know? Who shot his load in my tight little teenage twat and landed me with you? It might not just be my genes you have to contend with; maybe you’re grown from bad seed on both sides.’
Dan shook his head in disgust. ‘I don’t care. He’s probably just another sad sack of shit that I’m better off without.’
He turned back to the car park and started to walk away, not trusting himself to be physically close to her any more. He needed to get away from her poison and her spite. And he needed to be well away from her when Kate came out of the door; he couldn’t begin to imagine how his boss would react to seeing this creature that claimed to be his parent. Risking a glance back at her he tried to assess her with a stranger’s eyes. She looked like exactly what she was; an ageing whore. Her denim skirt was too short, showing ladders in her tights which were climbing up her thighs and her vest top did nothing to conceal her stick-thin arms and scrawny shoulders. The fake tan didn’t extend much beyond her neck giving her an odd two-tone appearance, as if her lower body was in shadow and her head was in sunlight.
‘He’s a copper,’ Suzanne shouted, as he turned to walk away. At first Dan thought she was talking about him to somebody else – but then he realised what she meant and stopped dead.
‘Thought you’d enjoy that,’ she cawed behind him. ‘Must be his DNA in you not mine. Nobody in my family would ever think about doing what you do.’
Dan took a deep breath and turned to face her. ‘Are you trying to tell me that my father is a police officer?’ he snarled.
Suzanne grinned. ‘Not just an ordinary copper. He’s high up. Much higher than you.’
Hollis shook his head, disgusted with her lies. ‘Bullshit. If he’s so high up why aren’t you bothering him about money instead of me? I’m sure, whoever he is, he’d be happy to pay to see the back of you.’
Suzanne’s face cracked into a wide grin. ‘Why do you think I’m here? I thought I might bump into you, but I’ve got other fish to fry.’ She winked at him and started to walk back towards the door, the tapping of her heels drilling into his brain like a migraine. What was she saying? That his father worked at Doncaster Central?
‘You’re lying!’ he shouted after her. ‘You’re making it up to get to me.’ And it was working. He was standing in the work car park shouting at a middle-aged woman. Christ, he hoped that Kate was still busy upstairs; she couldn’t see him like this.
Suzanne turned back to him, raised her shoulders in an exaggerated Gallic shrug and gave him a tight smile. ‘Am I? You’re the copper – prove it.’
‘I don’t need to,’ Hollis said. ‘Because I don’t give a toss. Stand there all day if you like. I’ve got work to do.’
He walked towards a pair of dark grey Audis, pressing the button on the key he’d been given and watching for flashing lights to indicate which car he’d been allocated. The one on the right. He grasped the handle of the driver’s door and risked another glance at Suzanne as he eased it open. She’d gone. Either she’d been lying about waiting for somebody else or she’d given up. Unless… perhaps somebody had seen her and let her into the building. Or she’d met up with whoever she’d been waiting for and he’d walked her round the corner out of the way. Either way, there was little chance of Kate bumping into her.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and texted his boss the registration number of the car and then settled into the leather seat to wait. The visit to Melissa Buckley’s mother and sister was a formality really, to see if either of them could add anything more to what was still a very sketchy impression of Melissa’s life. He’d managed to contact the third friend on the list that Ryan had given him. Ellie was on holiday in Gran Canaria and had left her phone switched off for the first day so that she could ‘chill’. He hadn’t told her about the body, just that Melissa was missing but Ellie had seemed genuinely shocked by the news. She knew about the IVF and didn’t have a bad word to say about Ryan Buckley despite being privy to some of Melissa’s rants about him. Hollis actually wondered if Ellie had a bit of a thing for her friend’s husband. The other two names that Buckley had jotted down after the first interview had yielded nothing.
This wasn’t a visit that he was looking forward to. He knew that Kate valued his insight and his compassion but he was feeling neither insightful nor compassionate at the moment. If he could only think of a way to get rid of Suzanne, his life would get back into its regular groove, but he couldn’t seem to get her out of his mind. When he tried to sleep, her face dominated his thoughts and her words seemed to echo around the cavities of his skull; so he drank. It started as a couple of beers but last night he’d polished off a whole bottle of wine. And still it wasn’t enough.
She had information about him that nobody else did and he was trying not to let it bother him. What did it matter if he never knew the identity of his biological father? He couldn’t have wished for better adoptive parents so why should he care? Except he did. He had always felt incomplete, even within the security of a loving family, he’d always wondered where he came from. He remembered Suzanne because she’d been around when he was growing up, but when he thought about his father, all he saw was snowy static like a badly tuned television set. It wasn’t just a blank, it was something hard to focus on and headache-inducing.
Now she was trying to tell him that his father was a police officer. Why would she do that? To get under his skin probably; to taunt him and laugh at his discomfort. But a small part of him was curious. Could she have met somebody on the police force when she was seventeen and working as a prostitute? Somebody who might have taken advantage of her, or even been a regular client? He thought about the men who worked in various roles in the building. It would have to be somebody who was in their fifties at least and, as a lot of long-serving officers tended to retire before they were sixty, there weren’t many candidates that he could think of. There was a desk sergeant who might be the right age – Hollis couldn’t remember his name – and one of the custody officers. There were a couple of superintendents who were coming up to retirement and there were probably at least a few older officers in traffic. It might be somebody even higher up in the food chain; he really had no idea.
He glanced in the side mirror and saw the door of the police station open. Kate. He needed to clear his head and focus on the task ahead; it wasn’t fair to interview grieving family members if he wasn’t a hundred per cent committed to helping them. And then another movement drew his attention. The DI was holding the door open for somebody – a man who was going back inside the building.
Suddenly Hollis was struggling for breath as a memory punched him in the gut. Suzanne had seen Raymond walking across the car park and had frozen before he’d told her to duck down in her seat. The DCI was in the right age range and he’d been in his office when Dan had left. Why had he suddenly popped outside at the same time that Suzanne had disappeared? He shook his head trying to clear it of the suspicion that was threatening to overwhelm him. Was DCI Raymond his father?
Chapter 8
‘What’s up with you?’ Kate asked as she plonked herself on the passenger seat of the Audi and closed the door. ‘You look like a wet weekend in Cleethorpes.’
Hollis gave her a ghost of a smile and started the engine. She studied his face in profile as he seemed to be making a point of not looking at her: checking his mirrors, looking behind him as he pulled out and then studying the traffic before he eased them onto the main road.
‘Seriously, Dan, what’s up? You’ve not been yourself for a few days now. I’m going to keep asking until you tell me something. You seem to stink of booze every other morning and I don’t know when you last had a haircut but I think it’s overdue. It’s not like you. I’m worried.’
He still refused to look at her so she took her phone out of her pocket and started to check her emails. If he wasn’t going to tell her then she wasn’t going to pretend that everything between them was normal. Two could play the not talking game. Silence was a tactic that they
often used in interviews: most people had the urge to fill it with something. But she knew that Hollis would see straight through her attempt to get him to talk.
‘Where to?’ he asked eventually.
‘Thorpe. Crosslands Estate. Melissa’s mum and sister should be back from the hospital.’ She kept her answers brief, terse, hoping that he’d break the tension when he realised where they were going. Thorpe, and especially the Crosslands Estate, held a lot of memories for both of them. Kate had grown up there, leaving during the miners’ strike of the 1980s when her father had moved the family further south. More recently the estate had been the scene of a series of child murders which had almost cost Kate her life and then a case involving a suspicious ‘mercy’ killing. It seemed like she couldn’t escape the place for long; it always drew her back.
‘Which street?’
‘I’ll direct you when we get there,’ Kate said as Hollis reached out to programme the satnav. She knew those streets as well as she knew the rooms in her flat and probably a lot better than any GPS device. She knew the feel of the concrete pavements against tender knees, the crunch of the cinder paths and overpowering smell of sun-warmed privet hedges.
They drove through Balby and Warmsworth in silence, Kate allowing Hollis time to decide if he really didn’t want to talk or just couldn’t decide how to tell her whatever was on his mind.
As they reached the water tower at the end of Warmsworth ‘drag’ he slowed down and turned his head towards her. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘There is something wrong but it’s personal, family stuff. I know I’m a bit distracted at the moment and I know I’ve let a few things slide but I’m working on it and trying to sort it out. If it gets in the way of the job then I’ll tell you and you can make me take some personal time or something. I don’t want time off and I don’t think I need it but it’s not something I can talk about.’
Bad Seed: DI Kate Fletcher Book 3 Page 6
