Tom Douglas Box Set 2

by Rachel Abbott

  She had no choice. She had to do something. Maybe she could report the threatening phone calls but leave Duncan out of it? But they would ask what the man had said, and it was all about Duncan. If she told them everything, she could see the headlines now: LOCAL PLUMBER, DUNCAN TAYLOR, WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH MURDERED WOMAN. What would that do to her children? Duncan couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it, but nobody would ever trust him again. And what if Duncan was in trouble and she made it worse?

  What should she do?

  Resolving to tell the police only that her husband had left her, but that since he had gone she had received threatening phone calls from somebody, Maggie picked up the house phone, dreading the conversation ahead. At that moment her mobile buzzed. A message. No number shown, so it had to have come via a website.

  With a shaking hand she lifted her phone. If the man had somehow got hold of her mobile number, it could be him. But at least she would have some evidence for the police.

  It wasn’t him

  ‘Mags, please, I beg you, don’t go to the police. I can and will explain everything. I’ve done nothing wrong, I promise, but it might be difficult to prove. Please, Mags, trust me. Dunc xx

  21

  Friday

  The words of Duncan’s text had been spinning in Maggie’s head all night. At least she knew he was alive. She missed him so much, but why had he hidden his number? Why wouldn’t he speak to her? He wanted her to trust him, to keep away from the police. But how could she trust him when he had disconnected his phone, left her without a word and been sent a photo of a dead woman? And somebody was making threatening phone calls, somebody who clearly knew Duncan. How could she trust him?

  But he was her husband – the father of her children. How could she not trust him? She wanted to scream.

  At least it was daylight now, and the fear of last night had retreated to a dark, distant place in her mind. What she was left with was confusion and a low ache of dread – a combination of alarm at the phone calls, the horror of believing that her husband had left her forever and shuddering unease that he was somehow mixed up in the murder of a young woman.

  There was something she felt compelled to do. Yesterday, before the horrors of the evening, she had gently quizzed Josh. What time did Daddy pick you up? Did you come straight home? What time was it when he went out again? That wasn’t the only thing she had done. She’d gone into Duncan’s work diary on their shared calendar on her laptop. On Wednesday he had been fixing a boiler for a Mr Jackson. Maggie had jotted down the man’s number and decided to call him before he left for work. He sounded groggy with sleep.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early, Mr Jackson,’ she said. ‘My name’s Maggie Taylor, and I believe my husband fixed your boiler on Wednesday – is that correct?’ The man grunted a confirmation. ‘He's misplaced one of his tools, so I’m going through his diary trying to work out where it might be. Have you found a pipe cutter, by any chance?’

  She waited for him to say no before asking the critical question. ‘Do you know what time he left?’

  She knew this last question was a complete non sequitur but Mr Jackson didn’t comment. He muttered that he thought Duncan had left at about three o’clock in the afternoon and hung up.

  According to Josh, Duncan had picked him and Lily up from school at four. Josh said they had been in the after-school club for about half an hour. He could have been wrong, but since getting his first watch he was fairly keen on checking it regularly. That meant it had taken Duncan an hour to get from Mr Jackson’s house to the school. She quickly opened Google Maps and checked the journey. It should only take twenty minutes. That left forty minutes unaccounted for.

  He had brought the children home and left again at around 6.30 after receiving the image on his phone.

  Although the woman’s body was found in the morning the police believed she had been killed the evening before and the body moved to its final location during the night. They estimated the time of death to be before six pm, but depending on where the body had been kept in the intervening hours – inside or outside – it could have been earlier.

  What had Duncan been doing in those missing forty minutes?

  The ringing phone made Maggie jump.

  ‘Maggie? Are you there?’ It was Suzy. ‘Is Duncan back?’

  Maggie’s heart slowed to its normal speed. But the relief at it not being her anonymous caller coupled with disappointment that it wasn’t Duncan reduced her to tears.

  ‘He’s not back. I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost.’

  ‘Have you tried calling him?’

  Maggie choked out a mirthless laugh. ‘What do you think? But his phone’s been disconnected. I just get a long tone. He sent me a text, though – at least, I think it was from him.’

  ‘How did he do that if his phone’s cut off?’

  ‘I don’t know, Suze – there was no number, so perhaps he sent it from his laptop. Too much has happened since I spoke to you. I don’t know where to start.’

  Slowly, over the course of the next ten minutes, Maggie told her sister the whole tale. She left out nothing but felt like a traitor when she mentioned the photo of the woman on Duncan’s phone. To her credit, Suzy didn’t make it sound any more dramatic than it already was.

  ‘There’s bound to be an explanation, Maggie. Don’t panic – it won’t help. Look, I’ll catch the first train north tomorrow. I can be with you by the afternoon. We’ll sort it out. Have you called the hospitals?’

  Maggie recited everything she had done, but much as she loved Suzy, she didn’t want her here. It would make it so much more difficult for Duncan to come home if he knew he had to face her too.

  ‘Suzy, please don’t come. I’m sure it will all blow over, whatever it is, and what about the kids?’

  ‘Ian can have them. He’s been a complete twat recently. He’s cancelled so many times. Let’s see how Rampant Ruthie copes with that, shall we?’

  Maggie knew her sister was still struggling to deal with her ex-partner’s betrayal. The hurt shone through each time she mentioned his name.

  ‘Look, I’ll call you if I need you to come. Okay?’

  ‘If you’re sure. Just a thought, though. Did Duncan take his passport or any of his other papers?’

  Maggie’s breath caught. Why didn’t I think of that?

  ‘I’ve not checked. Look, sorry Suze, but I need to go. I’ve got to get the kids to school and go to work. I can’t take another day off – you’re expected to turn up even if you’re dying. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  She ran up the stairs, glad to have a sense of purpose. All of their papers were kept in the bottom of their wardrobe in a locked tin box. She retrieved the key from the top drawer of her bedside cabinet, knelt down and pulled it out from under a pile of shoe boxes. Opening the lid, the top item in the pile was Duncan’s passport, and she breathed again. Thank God.

  Slowly she went through the papers. Everything seemed to be there, but there was no birth certificate for Duncan. Then she remembered – he had used his passport as evidence of his name and date of birth when they got married. He said his birth certificate had been lost.

  She stared at the information page in his passport, which had been renewed a couple of years ago. It occurred to her that this was all she knew of his past – his date of birth and where he was born. She realised she didn’t even know what his mother had been called, and Duncan said his father had never been part of his life.

  Slapping the passport against her open palm, she started to wonder whether everything that was happening was somehow related to Duncan’s past – to the part of his life that seemed to be in the shadows, the dark recesses that he had been unwilling to shine too much light into. He had talked in general terms about growing up, but without the detail that would have allowed Maggie to picture him as a child. He was a bit like Josh sometimes – a man of few words when there was something he wasn’t keen to talk about.

  It suddenly s
eemed crucial to Maggie that she uncovered every facet of her husband’s life – as if only by knowing all there was to know would she be able to understand what was happening now. It might be a wild-goose chase, but it would provide a focus. The starting point was his birth certificate. Then at least she would know who his parents were.

  Back in the kitchen she pulled her laptop towards her. She had done this job many times for work and knew the websites that provided access to birth certificate details. She typed in his name then entered his birth date, expecting there to be a long list of Duncan Taylors born in 1982. A handful of names appeared, but only two had birth dates in the last quarter of the year. She requested the details of these, paid for the privilege and quickly scanned the results.

  She looked again, not believing what she was seeing.

  Not one of the entries matched Duncan’s details as shown on his passport. There was no Duncan Taylor with her husband’s date of birth.

  It didn’t make sense. To have a passport he would have had to provide evidence of his date and place of birth. So how could it be that there was no Duncan Taylor born on the day listed on his passport?

  She triple-checked all the details.

  Duncan Taylor did not exist.

  22

  In the absence of any ID found on or near the dead woman, Tom had hoped the artist’s drawing would tell them who she was, but the results were even better than expected. From the moment the television news had broadcast the drawing of the dead girl, the phones hadn’t stopped ringing in the incident room, and one name was coming through loud and clear.

  Hayley Walker.

  Initial investigations had gone on through the night, and had already revealed that Hayley worked at the Manchester Royal Infirmary as a staff nurse in the cardiology department. Every loss of life felt appalling to Tom, but when it was somebody who had dedicated themselves to helping others it seemed particularly unfair.

  Hayley was originally from Australia and had no relatives in the UK. Her parents had been informed there was a possibility that the victim was their daughter and had tried repeatedly to contact her, but on getting no response had decided to catch the first flight from Melbourne. Tom could only imagine what a journey that would be as the agony of uncertainty stretched for twenty-four hours.

  Becky had gone to the hospital to interview colleagues of Hayley Walker to get as much background as she could, so Tom was surprised when he received a call from one of the team manning the incident room.

  ‘Sir, a doctor from Manchester Royal has come in. She saw the news this morning and came straight here, not realising that we were interviewing at the hospital. She said she’d like to talk to somebody. DI Robinson says she’s not going to be back for hours yet, and wondered if you’d be happy to talk to her.’

  Tom asked the sergeant to show her to an interview room, and wait with her. He would be down shortly. He pulled the sparse file towards him and made his way downstairs.

  When he pushed open the door to one of their more pleasant interview rooms, an attractive young woman with mid-length wavy auburn hair was pacing up and down the room, still wearing a dark grey raincoat over jeans and flat-heeled boots. She stopped when Tom entered and turned towards him.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Louisa Knight. Can you tell me what’s happened? Is it really Hayley’s body you’ve found?’

  She looked up at Tom, her brown eyes pleading for a denial.

  ‘Please, Miss Knight, do sit down and I’ll tell you what we know.’

  She reversed up to the seat, never taking her eyes off Tom. ‘It’s Doctor, actually, but call me Louisa.’

  ‘Okay, Louisa, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas.’ He held out his hand and she gave it a brief, firm shake.

  Tom pulled out a chair facing her and sat down. He took out a copy of the drawing of the victim from the file and placed it face down on the table.

  ‘We don’t know for sure if this is Hayley Walker,’ Tom said, ‘but the body of a young woman was found yesterday morning very early, and it’s my opinion that the drawing is accurate.’

  Tom turned over the picture.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Louisa’s hand shot to her mouth and her horrified eyes turned to Tom. ‘That’s Hayley.’

  Tom could see the genuine distress in the young woman’s eyes; she was clearly fighting to retain some control.

  ‘How do you know Hayley?’ he asked.

  ‘I expect you already know she’s a nurse on the cardiology ward. I’m an anaesthetist, and I spend a lot of time with patients in that department, so I’m on and off the ward several times a day.’

  ‘It would be helpful if you could tell me a bit about Hayley – who her friends were, whether she had a boyfriend. Basically anything and everything you can think of. The top she’s wearing, for example. Is that something she would have only chosen to wear for an important occasion?’

  Louisa nodded, looking down briefly at her hands before raising her eyes to Tom’s.

  ‘It’s her one and only designer item – Issey Miyake, I think. She bought it on eBay and couldn’t stop talking about it at work. She said it was the bargain of the century. She wouldn’t have worn it to go to the shops, that’s for sure. She must have been going somewhere special.’

  Speaking quietly, Louisa Knight provided Tom with as many details as she could. She and Hayley had been friends but weren’t particularly close. They worked on the same ward and had done now for over a year. It was a small team, and they were quite sociable when they were off-duty.

  ‘Did she have a boyfriend, do you know?’ Tom asked.

  Louisa frowned. ‘I’m not sure of the answer to that. I’ve been on nights, and Hayley was on the early shift, so I saw her to say hi to as she arrived and I left, but not much more than that. There was something, though. Recently she had a bit of a glow about her – a kind of secret smile. In the one brief conversation we had a couple of days ago I jokingly asked her if she had a new man and she blushed. She said she hadn’t, but she did think somebody was interested – somebody who she’d known a while but who had never seemed keen until recently. She said she’d felt his eyes watching her.’

  Tom felt his pulse quicken a fraction.

  ‘Did you get any indication of who this person was?’

  ‘No. Nothing. She wouldn’t tell me any more because she thought it might influence the way I behaved towards him. I said, “Do you mean it’s one of the team?” and she clammed up completely, saying she was probably imagining things.’

  Tom waited, wondering if Louisa would have anything to add.

  ‘If we hadn’t been chatting in the corridor I would have asked for more details, but it didn’t seem appropriate with other people walking past all the time. I should have pushed her, shouldn’t I? If she was wearing that top I bet she was on a date, and I might at least have been able to tell you who with.’

  Tom couldn’t deny it because whoever Hayley had been planning to meet he or she hadn’t come forward. And that wasn’t a good sign.

  Louisa Knight had seemed like the perfect person to ask to give a preliminary confirmation that the dead girl was Hayley Walker. A formal identification would also be necessary, but for now Louisa’s word would be enough to use as the basis of their investigation, and as a doctor she wasn’t going to be fazed by seeing a body. The faster they had some focus, the better their chances of catching the killer, and after the debacle with Leo it was important they got this right. Tom asked Louisa to take as long as she needed.

  ‘Yes, it’s her,’ she said to Tom, her voice quiet and even. ‘That’s definitely Hayley Walker.’ She held her hand against the pane of glass, as if wishing her friend goodbye. Her eyes looked huge, swimming as they were with unshed tears, but she was composed. ‘What can I do to help you catch the person who killed her?’

  Tom looked down at her slight figure and felt an urge to reach out to her. Having been through a similar experience that morning, he knew how she must feel, and seeing the b
ody again had reminded him of Leo. He wished to God he knew where she was so that he could stop worrying about her on top of searching for this killer.

  ‘It would be helpful if you could try to remember everything Hayley said to you about the person who suddenly seemed interested in her. Was there anybody she was especially close to? Did she have a particular friend who might know more about this man?’

  ‘Not that I know of. As I said, we’re a friendly bunch and socialise quite a bit. But not in a best-friend sort of way, if that makes sense.’

  It made perfect sense to Tom. Work colleagues were great to spend time with, but perhaps not always the people you chose to share your happiness or fears with.

  ‘Could you give me any suggestions as to who it might be, do you think? It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong. I’ll get my team to interview everybody at the hospital to see if she mentioned who she was meeting or where she was going.’

  ‘As far as I can tell, they’re a harmless bunch, and I’ve honestly no idea who she was talking about. I’ll go home and make a list of everybody that Hayley came into contact with, if you like. What shall I do when I’ve finished?’

  Tom fished in his pocket for his wallet and drew out a card. ‘Give me a call. We’ll get a list from the hospital too, but it would be great to look at the two side by side to see who she’s most likely to have had some sort of relationship with.’

  Tom’s phone rang. It was Becky.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said and walked a few feet away so that Becky’s voice couldn’t be heard.

  ‘Tom, we’ve been through everything here at the hospital and nothing is standing out at the moment. We’ve been to Hayley’s flat – it’s only about ten minutes away. We’ve found nothing to indicate where she went on Wednesday afternoon or evening. We know she left work early. She said she had a blinding headache and thought she was getting a migraine. It was nearly the end of the shift, so they said she could go.’

  ‘Did anybody speak to her later, to check how she was?’