“Good morning, Dr. Haven.”
“Please call me Cyrus.”
“Sorry. I keep forgetting.”
“I think you do it on purpose.”
She smiles again before handing me a cordless phone.
Mrs. Patel, a widow, has two daughters, one studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh and the other doing her A Levels. In all the years I’ve known the family, I’ve never seen Sonny and Bittu playing in the street like other kids. They were always at school or studying or working behind the counter of the shop, which opens at seven every morning and doesn’t close until late. Mr. Patel, an alcoholic, died of a heart attack a decade ago and it took four paramedics to carry his body down the narrow stairs. I never saw him behind the counter.
I make the call. Robert Ness picks up on the first ring.
“When are you going to get a phone?”
“Why, do you want to sext me?”
“Very droll,” says Ness. I can hear him sipping a coffee. “The lab in America has managed to pull DNA from fetal matter in Jodie Sheehan’s womb. The results will take another few days, but they can rule out Farley.”
“He’s not really boyfriend material. What does Lenny say?”
“She can’t look past the confession,” says Ness. “And I can see her point. I mean, the idea of a second perpetrator makes it harder to get a conviction.”
“Jodie could have had consensual sex earlier in the evening.”
“Yes.”
“Which means we should be looking for a boyfriend.”
“Or leaving it well alone.”
“What if I’m right?”
“You’ll still be wrong.” He laughs and keeps talking. “The condoms you found in Jodie’s locker. We pulled a full thumbprint. The computer found a match—her uncle, Bryan Whitaker.”
“What did Lenny make of that?”
“She wants to put all men in a sack and drown them. Apart from you, of course—her golden boy.”
“Get lost!”
“Happy to.”
Ness hangs up and I hand the phone to Mrs. Patel. I offer to pay but she waves me away. I buy a carton of milk instead.
“I met your cousin the other day,” she says with an inflection in her voice.
“Who?”
“Evie. She seemed very nice. She said she was visiting.”
“Oh.”
“She came in to buy turpentine to clean her paintbrushes. Is she going to be staying long?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Shame. You should fill that big house. Find a wife. Start a family.”
I smile and nod, aware that she’s only half teasing me.
* * *
Lenny is sitting outside the house with her car door open, listening to the radio and tilting her face up to the weak sunshine filtering through the branches.
“Nobody answered,” she says. “I thought I might meet your new house guest.”
“She’s sleeping,” I reply, amazed at how easily the lie rolls off my tongue.
“How is she settling in?”
“Good. Fine.”
I should tell Lenny. Perhaps she could make some discreet inquiries. That way I’d know if Evie was lying unconscious in a hospital bed or languishing in a police cell or worse. But I can’t ask Lenny to keep a secret like this—it wouldn’t be fair or professional. And there’s still time for Evie to come home. Once I report her missing, it will be out of my hands.
Lenny is watching me, puzzled by my silence. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah. I just need a coffee.” I hold up the carton of milk.
“No time,” she says, unlocking the passenger side door.
“Where are we going?”
“We enhanced the CCTV footage of Jodie Sheehan when she was outside the fish-and-chip shop in Southchurch Drive. A reflection in the shopwindow gave us a partial plate and model of the car that picked her up: a Peugeot 207. Turns out a teacher at her school has that same model and plate. Her form tutor—Ian Hendricks.”
“Why didn’t he say anything?”
“Exactly.”
Lenny pulls out, accelerating between each gear change. A second unmarked police car, three-up with plainclothes detectives, slots in behind us.
“What do we know about Hendricks?” I ask.
“Married. Three kids. Wife pregnant with a fourth. No priors, not even a speeding ticket. According to the school trustees he’s a rising star. Popular with his students and his colleagues.”
A school bus pulls out in front of us and chugs gently forward until the next stop. Schoolkids jostle to get on board, some staring at mobile phones or plugged into earbuds.
Lenny is still talking.
“Hendricks graduated from University of Leeds in 2011 and transitioned to teaching two years later. He’s been at Forsyth Academy since 2014 working in the English department and taking religious education classes.”
“The righteous ones are the biggest hypocrites.”
“What about the liars?”
“Them too.”
The two-story bungalow looks like a cookie-cutter version of every other dwelling in the cul-de-sac. Signs urge motorists to slow down because children are ahead. This is also evident from the turning circle, which has become a playground full of ramps, hopscotch grids, and an obstacle course made from orange traffic cones and garbage bins.
At least a dozen youngsters are playing outside, some waiting to be taken to school and others too young to be institutionalized. They’re riding an assortment of bicycles and tricycles and scooters beneath a large laminated “Neighborhood Watch” sign.
Lenny presses the door buzzer and glances at her feet, where the doormat reads: “This house runs on coffee and Jesus.”
A woman answers. She’s holding a toddler on her right hip and has a familiar bulge beneath her sweater. Her curly hair is cut too short for hair clips so that stray locks have fallen across her eyes. She puffs her cheeks and blows them away.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Parvel; this is Dr. Cyrus Haven. Is your husband at home?”
Her forehead creases just above the bridge of her nose. Two young boys sprint up the front path, pushing past us and grabbing at her thighs, afraid of missing out. Both are dressed in school uniforms and have their hair neatly combed, parted on the left.
“Ian is about to leave for work,” she says, glancing above her. “Can this wait?”
“No, I’m sorry,” says Lenny apologetically.
The sound of an electric keyboard reverberates from upstairs, thumping out chords to a rock beat.
“I’m Cathy, by the way,” she says, showing us to a front room while her oldest boy is sent to fetch his father. He sprints up the stairs. Moments later, the music stops.
“Ian plays in a band at our church,” she explains.
“What church is that?” I ask.
“Trent Vineyard.”
I know the place. It’s one of those newer churches where Christianity comes with a light show and pumping rock music in a cavernous warehouse on an industrial estate in Lenton. Thousands of people show up every Sunday, praising the Lord and opening their wallets because salvation is available on a weekly payment plan—all credit cards accepted.
Ian Hendricks appears behind her, looking concerned yet greeting us warmly.
“I’ll take the boys to school,” Cathy says, shooing them into the hallway, where she wrestles them into coats and scarves. We can hear her talking. “Daddy is busy. Yes, the police . . . No, nothing is wrong.”
Hendricks smiles tiredly.
“Do you remember us?” asks Lenny.
“Yes, of course,” says Hendricks. “You’re DCI Parvel and . . . ?” He clicks his fingers, trying to remember me.
“Cyrus Haven,” I say.
“Yes, that’s right. The psychologist.”
Lenny unbuttons her overcoat, letting it flare out as she settles into an armchair.
“
What car do you drive, Mr. Hendricks?”
“We have a Honda Odyssey—a seven-seater.”
“Do you also own a Peugeot 207?”
“That’s my wife’s car.”
“Were you driving a Peugeot 207 on the night of the fireworks?”
Hendricks hesitates. “To be honest I can’t remember.”
“You went to the fireworks.”
“Yes, but we left early. Tristan had a temperature. We brought him home.”
“But you went out again.”
Hendricks’s tongue pokes out, looking to moisten his top lip, but can’t find the spit. I can see him trying to work out how much Lenny knows.
“I went to get fish and chips for dinner.”
“In Southchurch Drive?”
“Yes.”
Lenny waits.
Hendricks breaks. “I bumped into Jodie Sheehan. She was outside on the footpath. I offered her a lift home. There were lots of young lads roaming about. Some of them were drunk. Rowdy. I thought it wasn’t safe.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?” asks Lenny.
Hendricks seems to gaze past us helplessly. “I didn’t think it was important. I mean, you’d already arrested someone, so I knew . . . I didn’t want to . . .”
“Get involved.”
He nods, searching for understanding.
“We hadn’t arrested Craig Farley when we spoke to you,” says Lenny.
“I knew it wouldn’t look good. Teachers aren’t supposed to fraternize with students outside of school.”
“By ‘fraternize’ you mean . . . ?”
“Be alone with them.”
“But you ignored the rules.”
“We were only talking.”
“Alone in your car.”
“I know it’s frowned upon, but Jodie was different. She’d come along to our church a few times.”
“At your invitation?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He takes a moment to collect his thoughts. “I knew Jodie was struggling with things. She was exhausted, what with her training, traveling, and competing. She wasn’t allowed to go to parties or to have a boyfriend.”
“She told you this?”
Hendricks nods. “I thought that maybe she might find some answers, if she talked to Jesus.”
“You were trying to convert her.”
“We don’t convert people—we embrace them.”
“Did you embrace Jodie?”
“Not like that. I don’t appreciate what you’re insinuating.”
“Did Jodie ever write notes to you?” I ask, remembering the Valentine’s card we discovered in her school locker.
“No.”
“Did she send you a valentine?”
He falls silent.
“Did you give her one?”
“No, of course not.”
“I can see how these schoolgirl crushes can happen. “You’re young and good-looking. It must have been flattering.”
“Nothing happened!”
“You took an interest in her. You listened.”
“I was tutoring her.”
“Because she fell behind?”
“Yes.”
“You gave her more attention in class—called on her first.”
Hendricks is shaking his head.
“Soon you were sharing private jokes and secret smiles and stray touches. You told her she was special. You found excuses to be alone with her. If only you were ten years younger, you thought.”
“Stop it!” the teacher whispers. “I’m a Christian.”
“So was Myra Hindley,” Lenny says, “and the Yorkshire Ripper.”
“I can’t help it if she had a crush on me,” says Hendricks. “I gave her spiritual advice, that’s all. As God is my witness.”
“Do you need God as a witness?” I ask.
“It’s a figure of speech.”
He drops his head into his hands. I can see the top of his scalp, where faint traces of dandruff cling to the parting in his hair.
“Were you sleeping with her?”
“Never! I wouldn’t.” His voice has risen in pitch.
“Did Jodie tell you she was pregnant?”
The teacher’s head snaps up and fear sparks in his eyes. “What? No!”
Lenny reaches into her jacket pocket and retrieves a small sealed plastic tube with a cotton bud inside. At the same time, she takes out a pair of latex gloves.
“Have you ever heard of Locard’s exchange principle, Mr. Hendricks?”
Hendricks shakes his head.
“It holds that every perpetrator of a crime will leave something at the crime scene and take something away from it. It could be soil, fibers, semen, skin cells, or a single strand of hair. Wherever they step, or whatever they touch, they cross-contaminate.”
Lenny unscrews the lid of the plastic container.
“What are you doing?” asks Hendricks.
“Collecting a DNA sample. Science is going to put Jodie in your car. Science may also find your semen on her body and your baby in her womb.”
“That’s crazy! I’m a happily married man. A father. I would never . . . I didn’t . . . We talked that’s all. Nothing happened.” His voice has a wheedling, pathetic quality.
“Open your mouth.”
“No.”
“Are you refusing to cooperate?”
“I want a lawyer.”
Lenny sighs in disgust. “In my experience, conscientious teachers don’t ask for lawyers and refuse DNA tests. Conscientious teachers rarely lose their jobs—unless they’re sleeping with a student.”
Hendricks takes a moment to weigh up his choices, before allowing Lenny to swab the inside of his mouth.
His wife has returned from the school drop-off. Her toddler is rugged up in a colorful coat that makes her look like a beach ball with limbs. Outside two men in overalls are winching a rust-streaked Peugeot 207 up the sloping ramp of a truck with a police insignia on the doors.
“That’s my car!” she exclaims.
“It’s all right, Cathy, they have a warrant,” says Hendricks.
“It’s that girl, isn’t it?” she says.
“Did you know Jodie Sheehan?” I ask.
“She came to our church.”
“Did you see her at the fireworks?”
“No.”
“Your husband has told us that he borrowed your car that night and picked up Jodie Sheehan,” says Lenny.
Cathy Hendricks glances coldly at her husband and something passes between them.
“What time did he get home?” asks Lenny.
“I can’t remember.”
“I thought he was getting fish and chips for dinner.”
She struggles to find an answer. “Tristan had a temperature. I put him into our bed and fell asleep.”
“Where did your husband sleep?”
“In the boys’ room.” She fixes her husband with a stare that doesn’t need translation.
“I gave her a lift that’s all,” says Hendricks. “It was a mistake, but nothing happened. I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . .”
Cathy hoists the toddler higher on her right hip and turns away, carrying the child deeper into the house. With that last gesture, I recognize a woman who favors castrating her husband rather than giving him an alibi.
Unless . . .
Unless . . .
The Peugeot is Cathy’s car. What if she went looking for Jodie that night and her husband is covering for her? A mother of three, pregnant with a fourth, has a powerful reason to protect her family, particularly from a pretty teenage girl with a crush on her teacher. One rumor, one allegation, and Jodie Sheehan could unpick the seams of Cathy’s perfect life and leave her marriage in tatters.
Ian Hendricks is standing on the front path watching the wheels of the Peugeot being chocked and chained.
“You didn’t just talk to Jodie. You gave her a lift,” says Lenny.
Hendricks doesn’t answer
.
“Where did you take her?”
“She got a message on her phone and asked me if I could drop her off.”
“Where?”
“An address in the city—a house in The Ropewalk.”
Lenny and I exchange glances.
“Could you find the house again?” she asks.
“I think so.”
Lenny points to her car. “Get in.”
“But I have to be at work.”
“You can be late.”
42
* * *
ANGEL FACE
* * *
The café smells of sugar and cinnamon. I finish two pain aux raisins and two milky coffees, trying to ignore Felix, who is watching me eat and smiling like it gives him pleasure. Maybe he’s a feeder and he’s looking for some fat chick to stuff like a foie gras goose. Well, that’s not me.
He talks constantly without saying anything—making observations about people or the weather or the traffic beginning to build up outside or the homeless guy washing windscreens with an old Evian bottle and a squeegee.
“What’s your name?” he asks, having cleaned up my crumbs.
“Does it matter?”
“I have to call you something.”
“Evie.”
I notice the scars on his knuckles and the heavy silver necklace dangling against his hairless chest.
“OK, that’s a start. Now what do you want, Evie?”
“I want to go to London.”
“OK. And then what?”
“That’s my business.”
“Yeah, of course.” He leans back and lifts his foot onto a chair between us. “But without money—you won’t get very far. Ten quid is a bus ticket—then what? How will you live? You can’t sleep in a park. It’s not safe—not for a girl. Not for anyone.”
“I’ll find a job.”
“You don’t have any work clothes. No phone. No plan. The police will find you and send you back home. I’m assuming you don’t want to go home.”
I don’t say anything. Felix scratches his cheek.
“Most people want something, Evie. A nice house. A flash car. Holidays in the sun. Love. Money.” He is watching my face, as though waiting for the wheels on a slot machine to stop spinning and tell him if he’s hit the jackpot. “Sometimes they just want to be safe. Me? I want respect. Independence. I want to make more of myself than my old man did.”
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