by Adam Croft
Steve pressed the doorbell, and within a couple of seconds a man of about eighty opened the door. His advancing years were fairly apparent, but he still seemed fit and sprightly.
‘DS Wing and DC Mackenzie from Mildenheath Police,’ Steve announced. ‘Can we come in?’
‘Yes, of course,’ the man replied, beckoning them through to his living room, an open plan lounge-diner.
Tanya’s children were sitting in the lounge area, the man’s wife sitting with them, trying to keep them occupied. As they entered the room, she looked up at Steve and Ryan, a regretful look on her face.
‘You’re Mr and Mrs... Aldridge, is that right?’ Steve asked, glancing at his notepad.
‘Yes. Larry and Margaret,’ Mr Aldridge replied.
‘And these must be Archie and Lola,’ Steve said, walking over to the two children, who were sitting on a rug between two right-angled sofas, watching a kids’ film on the TV.
‘We really don’t know what to say to them,’ Margaret Aldridge said quietly as she rose to her feet to speak to Steve, her knees groaning and cracking as she did so. She lowered her voice even more. ‘We just told them that Mummy had been hurt and that she needed to go to the doctor to have it made better. Do you think we did the right thing?’
‘I don’t know,’ Steve said. ‘I imagine so. I haven’t got kids.’
‘We never did either,’ Larry Aldridge said. ‘We’re just trying to keep their minds occupied until their dad gets here. We don’t want to do the wrong thing.’
‘I’m sure you’re doing absolutely fine,’ Steve replied, ‘but I’m afraid I do need to get your side of the story on record.’ He nodded to Ryan, indicating that she should start taking notes.
‘There’s not really a whole lot to say,’ Larry said, shrugging. ‘We didn’t see or hear any of it — just the aftermath. I was woken up by the sound of the letterbox flapping, which it sometimes does in the wind, but not like this. And it wasn’t a windy night. Then I heard a knocking noise at the door, so I went down.’
‘Fortunately, I was still fast asleep,’ Margaret interjected, ‘because there’s no way I would have let him go down there otherwise. I dread to think what might have happened then.’
‘I went down,’ Larry continued, ‘and I could see someone small through the frosted glass. I thought it might be kids playing silly buggers, but when I started to unlock the door, I could see that the kid was still there. I opened it on the chain at first, then recognised little Lola from next door. She said her mummy had been hurt and that we needed to help.’
‘By this time I’d woken up,’ Margaret added. ‘I looked out of the top window and I could see the light coming from the doorway next door. I couldn’t see Tanya at that point, but it was obvious the door was wide open.’
‘Yeah,’ Larry agreed. ‘Well, I opened the door properly and stepped out to see what had happened. That’s when I saw Tanya on the ground. I took Lola inside, handed her over to Margaret, and immediately called the police.’
‘And then what happened?’ Steve asked, after a moment’s silence.
‘Then Margaret asked Lola where Archie was. She said he was in bed. So I went next door and fetched him.’
‘You went into the house?’ Steve asked.
‘I had to. I couldn’t just leave him there; as soon as he heard the noise and commotion he would’ve woken up, come down, and found his mum like that. We water their plants and keep an eye on the place for them when they’re away, so I used my spare key and went in and out of the back door.’
‘It’s actually round the side, but they call it the back door,’ Margaret added.
Steve paused for a moment. ‘I might be getting this wrong, but did you not tell the first officers that you didn’t even know Tanya’s surname? Yet they’ve given you keys to their house?’
Larry blinked a few times. ‘Well, yes. It was early. I couldn’t really recall it. Besides, I don’t know if they’ve ever mentioned it.’
‘Do you not ever have to take parcels in for them? Anything like that?’ Ryan asked.
‘No, not really. Tanya, she often works from home, though I don’t really remember them having many things delivered to the house. Maybe once or twice, and we’ve picked their post up for them when they’ve been away, but we’ve never looked too closely at the names on the envelopes. Why would we?’
‘I thought it was Henshaw or Harrison or something like that,’ Margaret said, ‘but I’ve never really thought about it. To us, they were just Tanya and John.’
Steve nodded, trying to work out whether Larry and Margaret were just innocently naïve and forgetful, or whether there was something a little odder about them.
As he looked at Ryan, he realised she was wondering the same thing.
14
In the early stages of an investigation, it seemed as though some aspects flew by really quickly, whilst others almost immediately ground to a complete halt. Getting clearance to search a crime scene was particularly slow at times, and this case was no exception. Only once the Scenes of Crime Officers had finished combing the front doorstep area was it cleared for CID officers to enter and search the house.
It was a constant frustration to CID that they were often unable to enter a scene and look for evidence immediately, but unfortunately this procedure was a necessity. Not only was there the possibility that they could contaminate the scene or destroy minute pieces of evidence — fingerprints, specks of blood, single hairs — but when the case got to court, the defence lawyer could have it thrown out within seconds if there was any doubt as to the legitimacy of the evidence. It really wasn’t a risk that was worth taking.
Tanya Henderson’s house looked just like any other of its type. It was definitely a lived-in family home, but it had been kept clean, neat and tidy. The kids’ toys had been put away, save for one or two that were left out in the living room, and the remote control sat jauntily on the arm of the leather sofa, where it had been resting since its last user had pressed the red ‘off’ button. In the kitchen, the dishes — now bone dry — sat on the draining board, ready to be put away, and that week’s shopping list was attached to the fridge with a magnet bought on holiday in Morocco.
Wendy was certain that almost every house on this road would look much the same. Decent-sized middle-class family homes full of decent-sized middle-class families, the dad working in the city whilst the mum worked from home, waiting for the kids to finish school. It sounded stereotypical, but in this part of town it was often true. Wendy had seen it many times and considered it a soulless way to live.
Tanya’s office gave away no clues to anyone who didn’t know what its occupant did for a living; it could have been anyone’s home study, save for the fact that it seemed to be far more heavily used. This wasn’t just a computer room with a small filing cabinet full of mortgage statements and car insurance documents — it was obvious that someone worked in here regularly, but there was nothing to specify what that work was.
Wendy didn’t expect to find anything that would explicitly tell her what Tanya had been working on recently. She knew already that Tanya’s working practices were extremely secretive and that she went to great lengths to conceal her information and protect her sources. But still, there had to be something somewhere — some name or place jotted down on a piece of paper, a phone number perhaps, or an important document that hadn’t yet been destroyed. Tanya’s laptop computer had already been taken in for forensic examination, and Wendy was due to receive the report any time now. It would all be gobbledegook to her, of course, but she had a plan for decoding it — the plan she’d been thinking of for a while.
There was an A4 leather-bound diary on Tanya’s desk, and when Wendy opened it — noting that it seemed to be well thumbed — she was surprised to see that not a single page had anything written on it at all. That seemed bizarre. Either Tanya had been using this diary purely to see when certain dates were, or there was something far stranger going on. Who would have a well-used diar
y with absolutely nothing written in it?
Wendy stood in the middle of the room, looking around her. It was extremely frustrating — lots of books, lots of artefacts, but absolutely nothing that fitted together. It was almost as if the office and its contents had been designed to confuse, to throw people off the scent. Was that a deliberate ploy on Tanya’s part? Wendy assumed so.
Just then, her phone pinged, the sound of an incoming email. She swiped the screen, typed in her four-digit passcode, and quickly read the message. As expected, it didn’t mean a whole lot to her, so she closed down the email app and opened up her contacts list. After scrolling down for a while — the names whizzing up the screen in front of her — she found the one she wanted. She tapped ‘Call’ and waited for the phone to connect.
‘Xav?’ she said, trying to sound as friendly and personable as possible. ‘It’s Wendy.’
‘Oh, hi Wendy,’ came the reply. Wendy could tell from his voice that he was pleased to hear from her, the thought making her smile.
‘Listen, I need your help again. I’ve got a preliminary report from forensics on an IP’s laptop. It makes absolutely no sense to me, as usual. I was wondering if you might be able to help me decode it?’
‘Sure. Email it over and I’ll take a look.’
‘Actually, it’s quite a delicate case. I was thinking it might be best to go through it in person. Perhaps if you wanted to come over to my place, I could cook us dinner and we could go through it.’ Even though she’d been thinking of doing this for a while, Wendy was still surprised by her own forthrightness.
Xavier Moreno paused for a few moments. ‘Okay, sure. Sounds good. When were you thinking?’
‘How about tonight?’ Wendy replied. ‘Eight thirty? I’ll text you the address.’
‘Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you tonight.’
The conversation over, Wendy allowed herself a couple of moments to smile. Up until recently, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing this. She still wasn’t sure she was entirely comfortable now, but she knew it was a start. She wouldn’t ever be able to put the experience with Robert Ludford completely behind her, but this was a step in the right direction.
All that aside, though, Xavier was a smart guy. If anyone could help her decipher the digital clues that could lead to Tanya Henderson’s attacker, it was him.
15
Although Culverhouse usually liked to station himself at a desk in the main incident room with the rest of his team, there were times when he didn’t want to be amongst the hubbub and instead retreated into his own office. This was one of those times.
The situation with his wife had, of course, been playing on his mind for years. He’d gradually managed to deal with it and push it to the back as time had gone on, but since her return and subsequent re-disappearance, it had been eating away at him again. And this time it wasn’t showing any signs of going way.
He picked up his mobile phone, scrolled through the contacts list, and tapped on the screen to call Antonio García. García was an Inspector with the Spanish police in Alicante, on the eastern coast of Spain. After Culverhouse had worked with him on a cross-border case a while back, the pair had struck up a friendship. The last time they’d spoken wasn’t too long ago, when Culverhouse rang him to try and get some information on his wife’s whereabouts. After all, the last he’d heard, she’d been living in Spain. It was García who’d told him he could find no record of Helen, and that he thought it very unlikely she’d been out there at all.
Culverhouse, however, wasn’t giving up that easily. He didn’t want odds or degrees of likeliness — he wanted cold, hard facts. It was something he needed in every area of his life.
‘Jack, what a pleasant surprise,’ came the greeting of Antonio García as he answered the call. ‘I hope the weather is nice in Mildenheath.’ The constant jibes about comparing Mildenheath’s weather to that of Alicante were something García took enormous pride in.
‘Yeah, lovely. I’m sitting here in my Speedos eating a Solero. I hope it’s pissing it down over there.’
García laughed. ‘Blue skies, my friend. Beautiful weather. So what can I do for you? You want a holiday?’
‘Too bloody right I do,’ Culverhouse replied, ‘but not on the Costa del Crime. Talk about a bloody busman’s holiday. No, I need another favour from you, Antonio.’
‘Another one? I should start charging.’
‘Yeah, sounds about right,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘Even the poxy taxi driver wanted a five-Euro tip for chucking my suitcase in the boot last time I was over. I was half expecting a surcharge for breathing in the front seat.’
García let out a big belly laugh. ‘Still, where would you rather be?’
Culverhouse chose not to answer that question. ‘When I called you last time, you said you couldn’t find a record of a Helen Culverhouse living in Spain.’
‘That’s right,’ García replied.
‘And you said you didn’t think she could have stayed in Spain for long.’
García was silent for a moment before he spoke. ‘Yes.’
‘What did you mean by that?’ Culverhouse asked.
‘What did I mean? I meant that I didn’t think she could have stayed in Spain for long.’
‘But it would be possible?’
Culverhouse could hear García sighing at the other end of the line. ‘Anything is possible, Jack. You know how it is. People have ways and means. There was no record of a Helen Culverhouse on social security or any government records, but that just means she never saw a doctor, never earned a wage, never drove a car, never rented or bought a property, never opened a bank account... Do you see what I’m saying?’
‘Yeah, I see exactly what you’re saying,’ Culverhouse replied, knowing full well that there was no way Helen could have lived off cash in a foreign country for eight-and-a-half years. He knew that Helen would have needed to renew her driving licence within two years of moving to Spain, and that she could only have renewed it with the Spanish authorities, which she clearly hadn’t. And there was no way she would have had enough cash to buy a place or rent for that long. She hadn’t touched their joint bank account before or after she left, and Jack very much doubted if she had any secret accounts of her own.
How she’d managed to do it was a complete mystery to him, but then again, Helen had always been an enigma. He’d never doubted the fact that she was alive and well — the note she left him had said that much. Somehow, Helen always had a plan up her sleeve and she always came up smelling of roses, no matter what. It was just her way.
‘So, what are the options?’ he asked García.
‘How long is the piece of string?’ the Spaniard replied.
Culverhouse was always tickled by García’s usage of English idioms, but today he wasn’t in the mood for laughing. ‘What are you saying? She was living under a false name?’
‘That’s not so easy,’ García replied. ‘It’s possible, but very difficult. It all depends on who she knew. If she didn’t know any — let’s say, shady — people in Spain, or any people who had links to Spain, it would be almost impossible for her to do that.’
Culverhouse was fairly sure Helen hadn’t built up any links with Spain. They’d been there on a couple of holidays a few years back, but that was about it. No more so than anyone else. He felt guilty at not being able to be sure about this, though. The more he thought about it, the more he realised he’d known hardly anything about his wife. She’d just always been there, ready and waiting at home while he focused entirely on his work.
García continued. ‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up, Jack. And I still don’t. It is possible she was here, but there’s nothing we can prove. You need to keep all of your options open. Of course, you also have to think about the other alternatives.’
‘Like what?’ Culverhouse asked.
‘Like did she ever come to Spain in the first place? Or was she trying to make you focus here, and not on the place she really went?’
/> ‘You mean, did she lie to me?’ he asked, not liking where this was going.
García made a noncommittal noise. ‘It’s not for me to say.’
‘No, but if you were in my shoes, what would you do?’ Culverhouse said.
García was silent for a couple of moments.
‘How well do you really know your wife, Jack?’
16
Shortly after lunch, Culverhouse reassembled the team for an update. By this point, most of them had completed the preliminary stages of their investigation.
‘Knight. News from the husband?’ he said, sitting on the edge of a desk and crossing his arms across his chest.
‘Not a whole lot, to be honest,’ Wendy replied, looking down at her notebook. ‘Tanya never told him much about her work. She didn’t tell anyone who didn’t absolutely need to know, apparently. We’ve got her laptop and an external storage drive, which we believe has her files on it. Her husband, John, reckoned she used some pretty hefty encryption on it, though. I’ve passed it on to my tech contact at Milton House and he’s having a look at it.’ She somehow managed to say this last sentence with a completely straight face.
‘What are the chances of us finding something?’ Culverhouse asked.
‘To be honest, guv, slim. If she used a level of encryption that’d stop the sorts of people she was investigating from getting their hands on it, I’m not massively confident that we’ll be able to crack it.’
‘That’s what I don’t get,’ Ryan Mackenzie interjected. ‘Why didn’t the attacker nick the laptop and storage drive as well? If their aim was to stop her investigation, why would they leave all the data there?’
‘Probably because they were spooked by the daughter,’ Wendy said. ‘I imagine their intention was to kill if not seriously harm Tanya, then take the laptop and storage drive. It just didn’t play out that way.’
