by Liz Mistry
‘What have they done with the real DS Parekh?’ Saj whispered in her ear.
‘Gotta bloody be nice to them. Last thing I want is a whole load of angry reporters on my back when the crap does go viral. I’m playing nice to get them onside.’ She nudged Saj. ‘Not that I think it’ll work. Particularly not with Kane. It’ll take more than a few sucking-up type comments to get her off my back – she’d like nothing more than to string me up by my bollocks.’
Smiling, Nikki held her badge up for the woman in the car to see. Kussum wound down her window. In her mid-forties, she wore a worried frown and her lips were dry and cracked as if she’d been biting them. Smiling reassuringly, Nikki introduced herself and Saj.
It wasn’t hard to work out the woman’s reluctance to re-enter the house. What she’d witnessed earlier would haunt her for a long time to come. ‘Hey, Mrs Lad. Can I call you Kussum?’
The woman nodded and Nikki continued. ‘Look, we’re really grateful to you for doing this. You appear to be the only person who ever had any personal contact with Mr Hudson, so whatever you can tell us could be really valuable in finding out who did this to him.’
Kussum exhaled, her eyes flitting around, not settling on either of the officers, her fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Nikki doubted she even realised that she was doing that. ‘Tell you what. If it’s okay with you, Kussum, myself and DC Malik will conduct the interview here in the car and then we won’t have to spend so long in Mr Hudson’s house. How does that sound?’
With a quick nod Kussum agreed and Nikki opened the front passenger door and slid in beside her whilst Sajid squeezed himself into the cramped back seat. ‘What can you tell us about Mr Hudson?’
‘Nothing really. He was always okay with me. I only came in a couple of mornings a week. Brought him his shopping – mainly microwave meals. He was quite independent, despite needing to use the Zimmer frame. He made himself drinks, pinged his food in the micro and spent his days either watching TV – rubbish mainly – looking out his window and doing them Sudokus and crosswords and such. I had to buy him a new collection every other week.’
‘What else did you do for him?’
Kussum relaxed a bit, her eyes meeting Nikki’s now as she answered. That would change of course as soon as Nikki led her to describe how she’d found him, but for now, Nikki wanted to just get a general feel for life chez Hudson.
‘Well, by the time I’d got his shopping, I didn’t have much time so my jobs were to hoover the living room and hallway and dust and polish his furniture – heavy old-fashioned wooden stuff it was, but Gerry took pride in it.’
‘So, you polished the surfaces where the photos were?’
‘Yes, he made me lift one and polish under it and replace it exactly where it had been. I was due to do that today – only did the photos once a fortnight.’
‘Did he ever talk about the photos – you know reminisce about who was in them? Their names, how he knew them?’
Kussum smiled and shook her head. ‘Most of them were ones with fake photos in them. There were only a few real photos.’ She caught Nikki’s eye. ‘He was a lonely old man, really, DS Parekh. Most of the time I spent with him we chatted. He loved to hear about my kids.’
I bet he did! Nikki exchanged a glance with Sajid. This was another nightmare this poor woman would have to face when the truth came out – that she’d shown her kids’ photos to a suspected paedophile. It would change the way she interacted with her other clients. The seeds of doubt would begin to grow and she’d grow a prickliness – a distance that would make her less sociable. She’d do her job – no doubt she needed the money – but she’d hate it. Every conversation would leave her wondering if the person could be trusted, every innocent question about her family would be shot down and she’d look at people differently for the rest of her life. Her children would be coddled and they’d rebel at her overprotectiveness. They’d not understand – how could they? They were too young to understand a mother’s fear for her children – that fierce visceral love that would turn a frightened mother into one who saw danger on every corner. Nikki knew – she was that mother.
‘… and what they were doing at school. I always brought photos to show him. He loved to hold them as we were talking. I brought my youngest a couple of times in the holidays – Gerry always slipped him a fiver and Dipesh was happy to sit chatting to the old man – on those days I was able to clean a bit more.’
The mere thought of a young lad entertaining Gerry Hudson, no matter how innocently, made Nikki want to scream. Her headache was moving up her skull and now pounded in time with her breathing. Realising that she had looped her index finger round her elastic band ready to twang, Nikki decided to move the conversation away from Kussum’s children. ‘So what other jobs did you do for Mr Hudson?’
‘Well, I cleaned the kitchen table and the fridge and one of the worktops. He was very specific about that. Said he’d rather spend the time chatting than live in a palace.’
Yeuch! Palace? True the areas that Kussum cleaned were pristine, but the rest was an advert for salmonella in the making. Clearly Nikki’s idea of how royalty lived was vastly different from Gerry Hudson’s.
‘I didn’t like it.’ Kussum shuddered. ‘Truth is, it made my skin crawl, but he was adamant and …’ She splayed her hands towards Nikki. ‘What can you do? A lot of the old dears are like that. Being a care worker is more than just cleaning and shopping. For some of them it’s their only lifeline to the outside world – Gerry was one of those.’
‘Other than yesterday, did you ever go upstairs, Kussum?’
Now that they were veering closer to her discovery of Gerry Hudson’s body, Kussum tensed and her eyes filled with tears. From the back seat, Sajid offered her a handkerchief.
Nikki glanced at him, eyes wide in mock disbelief and decided to lighten the moment a little to allow Kussum to prepare herself. ‘Really, a proper hankie – made of material? – a tissue not good enough for you?’
Saj’s grin was wide as he shrugged. ‘I like my little luxuries. Besides, it’s not too good for Kussum here.’
And he turned his reassuring smile on their witness. Nikki could almost see the moment Kussum’s heart melted. Saj had a way of making witnesses view him as their little brother or their son. Worked every time! As she’d hoped, the brief exchange between Nikki and Saj relaxed Kussum and despite her tears, the carer grinned. ‘You remind me of my oldest son – charming and sensitive.’
Nikki rolled her eyes, there it was – the Malik Magic.
Kussum blew her nose long, loud and by the sounds of it very productively, giving Nikki the satisfaction of seeing Sajid’s mouth turn down. He wouldn’t be wanting that particular hankie back.
‘Once a fortnight, I changed his sheets – supposed to be once a week as per regulations, but he insisted. Whilst I was up there I bunged some bleach down the loo – that was all I had time for on those days as I had to take his sheets and clothes hamper to the launderette.’
‘When did you last change his sheets, Kussum?’
‘I was due to change them again tomorrow.’
Nikki exchanged a look with Sajid. So, Hudson had put the diary excerpts under his pillow in the last two weeks. Did that mean he’d also received them sometime during that time or had he always had them and only just placed them there?
‘Did Mr Hudson give you anything to post recently?’
Kussum shook her head and watched as a huge bin truck drove up between the rows of parked cars, stopping every few yards so the bins could be emptied into its bottomless belly.
‘What about any mail he received? Anything with a handwritten address in the last couple of weeks?’
Kussum started to shake her head and then stopped, her brow gathered together, then cleared. ‘Yes, it was maybe the last week. When I arrived, there was an envelope on the table next to his chair, but it hadn’t been posted.’ She flushed. ‘I had a good look at it – he didn’t get any letters except bills an
d stuff. This was one of those big brown envelopes with his name written across the front.’
Keeping the excitement from her voice, Nikki said, ‘Any idea what was in it?’
But this time Kussum was quite definite. ‘No, he didn’t show me and when I came in the next day, he asked me to bin the envelope, so I chucked it in the recycling.’
‘Saj …’ Nikki’s gaze was on the bin lorry that was progressing up the street.
‘On it …’ Saj jumped out of the car, pulling on the latex gloves that most detectives carried somewhere about their person, and sprinted towards the bins that were lining the street. ‘Stop, Police, stop, don’t tip those bins in.’
The bin men, spun round, glaring at him. ‘What you on about? Eh? We’re on the clock here, mate. What’s up?’
Saj flashed his badge at them. ‘I need number 83’s recycling bin.’
A young lad in boots that looked too big for him, marched up the street. ‘This one, mate. Number 83?’
Nikki hadn’t realised she was holding her breath until Saj turned with a thumbs up to her, before jogging up to the bin. The lad had already flipped the lid open and was just about to reach inside, when Saj grabbed his arm.
‘What you looking for mate? I’ll help.’
Saj shook his head. ‘It’s okay, son. I’ve got this.’ He peered inside the bin, reached in and came out with an A4 envelope that he took back to his Jag and sealed in an evidence bag.
‘So, the letter is important?’ said Kussum, her voice filled with wonder.
‘Just covering all our bases, that’s all. Now, apart from his bedroom and the upstairs toilet did you go in any of the other rooms?’
Kussum shook her head. But her eyes flitted out the window and Nikki had the sense that she was lying.
Keeping her tone gentle, she reached out and touched the other woman. ‘I don’t care if you had a peek in any of the other rooms – it’d be human nature to do so.’
When Kussum hesitated, Nikki pressed a little harder. ‘It could really help. You see, Kussum, we’ve got nothing to go on. Not really, anyway. By all accounts, Mr Hudson never went out and never had visitors, so you’re our only hope. Anything, anything at all that you can tell us might be important. You want to find out who did this terrible thing to poor Mr Hudson, don’t you?’
The word poor might have stuck slightly in Nikki’s throat, but she needed something to go on. Something to blow the case wide open, something to point them in the right direction, maybe even give them some sort of link to the murdered Cambridge researcher.
Saj had returned to the Corsa before, at last, Kussum nodded. ‘I did just glance in the room next door to his bedroom.’
‘And …?’
‘Filled with box files, you know? Them sort of black and grey files.’
‘Did you look in any of them?’ Nikki knew the answer before the carer replied, because if Kussum had looked in any of those, she wouldn’t be so sympathetic to Gerry bloody Hudson.
‘No, ’course not.’ Kussum’s hand raised to her chest, emphasising the veracity of her denial.
‘Kussum, it’s time now for us to walk through the house. You’ve been such a great help so far and we just need you to do this one thing more. We’ll be with you all the way. We need you to focus on anything out of the ordinary – anything that you notice that’s different from the last time you were there, okay?’
Without a word, Kussum got out of her car and followed Nikki and Sajid towards Gerry Hudson’s house. The crime scene tape was still in place and a uniformed officer stood outside the gate. Nikki nodded to him, signed his book, on behalf of herself and Kussum, and Sajid did too, then she walked up the path. Kussum’s breathing became heavier as they approached the door, so Nikki took her arm in a gentle hold. ‘We’re with you. I know you’ve already told the other officers what you did, what you touched and where you went when you came in, so you don’t need to tell us that. I just want you to look for things that are out of place, different or odd in some way, that’s all.’
Nikki led Kussum first into the kitchen. Standing just inside the door Kussum took her time glancing round the room, then shook her head. ‘Can’t see anything out of place here.’
Nikki nodded and they retraced their steps back into the living room. Kussum gasped. ‘Someone’s tipped his drawers out all over the floor.’
‘Would you know if anything was missing from the drawers?’
Kussum shook her head. ‘Maybe some money? I don’t know where he kept it because he always had the shopping money on the table next to his chair.’ She took Sajid’s hankie and gave her nose another blow. ‘He was always here when I polished so I never opened the drawers.’
Saj smiled at the inference that, had she had the chance, she would have been tempted to have a peek.
Not wanting to lead her in any way, Nikki said. ‘What about the rest of the room. Take your time. Is anything else out of place or strike you as unusual?’
Kussum stepped forward and then stopped, frowning. ‘There’s two pictures missing. Two of his photos – the real ones like, not the pretend ones.’
Nikki understood what she meant by not the pretend ones. ‘Can you remember what or who was in the photos?’
A smile drifted over Kussum’s face. ‘Well of course I can. One of the photos had a boy and girl sitting on a chair – I think it was that one over there. They were huddled together. Gerry said they were his great-niece and nephew. Now what were their names? I should remember – he told me often enough.’
The urge to shake the memory out of the woman was almost too strong for Nikki. This could be their first real clue. That photo was obviously important to their killer and if Kussum could give them a name, then it might lead them somewhere.
‘That’s it, Dexy and Candice – that were their names. He loved that photo. Said he had precious memories of many happy times with the two of them. Pity they never visited the old man.’
Maybe they did. Maybe one of them was the last one to visit Gerry Hudson. Nikki’s blood ran cold at the thought of just what type of memories Hudson had with those two kids. Were those kids’ images in any of the box files they’d taken? She glanced at her watch. Time was flying by. They’d have to ask Kussum to come to the station to get a uniform to take as detailed a description of the two children in the photo as Kussum could give. At some point she was sure, Kussum would have to look at a series of carefully edited images of kids from the files who matched whatever description she gave. ‘What about the second photograph? Can you remember it?’
‘Oh that? It was of Gerry and his friend, Freddie. Gerry always said they shared a delightful hobby and that he missed his old friend.’
Nikki’s mouth filled with bile as she pushed past Sajid and out the front door into the fresh air. She barely made it to the side of the road before vomiting.
Chapter 31
Fuck’s sake! You’d think the old perv’s body would have been discovered by now. I mean, he must have a carer or somebody checking up on him. Then again, maybe not. The damn house was a bloody cesspit on Saturday night. Stank too.
I put the radio on a little louder. Nearly time for the news. Surely they’ll have found him by now. I’d been a bit off my game over the weekend. Him having a go at me hadn’t helped either. Bloody tosser. Makes me want to smash his bloody face in. I listen as Ed Sheeran fades away and the bong, bong, bong sound of the news announcement comes on. Still nothing. Not a damn thing.
Oh well, so what. I’ll just work my way down my list and they’ll catch up sooner or later – not with me, like. No they’ll not make a connection to me, but at least I’ll see the results of all my planning on the news. Gives me a buzz, that. A real buzz. The names are ingrained on my brain. The thing is, who shall I opt for next? I’ve located all but one of them, so it’ll have to be one of those. Trouble is, it’ll mean another trip to Bradford. Not sure whether to go for one of the bints or that old ice-cream guy. I’m tempted with the other old whore, but the
n again, that might be too obvious. Last thing I want is them closing in and offering protection for my targets, if they make the links. Not that they can. How could they? I’ve left no clues. I tap my steering wheel, waiting for the traffic lights to change. Maybe I should focus on finding the one person I’ve been unable to locate so far? Hold off on killing another till I’ve found him. But where would be the fun in that, eh?
I pull up outside the florist’s. I know just what’ll make her feel better. A huge bunch of flowers. That waste of space never thinks to bring her anything. I might splash out on a box of choccies too. Got paid on Friday and the money’s burning a hole in my wallet. ’Sides. It’s good to be kind and nobody can say I’m not kind. Always been kind I have, right from when I was a kid. Taking in stray pets and all. Used to do my mum’s head in. Used to make her cranky. I know now that’s because we didn’t have much money when I was a kid. No spare cash for cat food or dog food. That’s why she was always crying. No money made her worry. It wasn’t my fault, I know that, but who else could she take it out on?
It got better though. Later we had more money – well I suppose we must have. Cos that’s when we got a cat. It wasn’t my cat. It belonged to my sister and she called it Graham. Bloody Graham? Who the hell calls a pet Graham? I laughed like billy-o when it had kittens though. Stupid cow thought it was a boy until it snuck under her bed and she ended up with five little kitties to deal with. Nobody knew what to do with them. She tried to give them away, but nobody wanted them. As usual it was left to me to sort it out. A trip down to the reservoir with a sack and it was done.
The bell rings as I walk into the shop. The old dear behind the counter smiles at me. I’m a regular here and she loves that I buy her flowers every payday. ‘I’ll have the biggest bunch you’ve got, darling.’ I lean on the counter. ‘You done something to your hair? You look gorgeous today – radiant.’
Chapter 32
Bent double, hands on her knees, Nikki gulped in the fresh air, but the taste of bile still soured her mouth. The words “shared a delightful hobby” echoed through her mind. This was so sick – so twisted. Footsteps approached her, so Nikki sniffed, wiped the back of her hand over her mouth and straightened. The heavily pregnant woman who lived in the house Nikki had lived in as a child – the one with the toddler – stood there, a glass of water in her hand. Her eyes were the only part of her face that was visible, yet they were full of concern. ‘Are you okay?’
