by Roberta Kray
‘Redding?’ she said. ‘I don’t see much point in telling him at this stage.’ She got up to leave, but Swann hadn’t finished yet.
‘Are you sure about that?’
She stared at him, her eyes growing cautious. ‘What are you trying to say exactly?’
‘That was his case, guv. If you start reviewing the original investigation, he’ll want to know. I don’t suppose he’ll be that happy about it either.’
‘Damn it!’ she muttered. ‘That’s all we need.’ And damn Harry too, she thought. Something else he hadn’t bothered to tell her.
30
Jess opened her eyes and blinked, confused for a moment as to where she was and what she was doing there. And then, all in a rush, it came flooding back. She remembered the fire, the smoke pouring into the bedroom, those last few panic-filled seconds before she’d been rescued. She recalled, with a sinking heart, how everything she’d owned was now ashes. A low groan escaped from her lips. Before self-pity could get the better of her and send her diving back under the duvet, she forced herself out of bed and padded across the room. She put her head round the door and peered along the hall. ‘Hello?’
There was no response.
Pulling on Harry’s dressing gown, she went through to the living room. It was empty, but sitting in the middle of the table were a heap of carrier bags, a laptop, a mobile phone and two sets of keys. There was a white envelope with a scrawled note from Harry on the front: Just some things to tide you over. Your car’s outside. If you need me, I’ll be downstairs. H. Inside the envelope was a hundred quid in twenty-pound notes.
Jess walked over to the window and looked down on the street. Her red Mini Cooper was parked behind Harry’s silver Vauxhall. She shook her head in astonishment – how on earth had he managed that? Returning to the table, she examined the contents of the bags and found clothes, underwear, toiletries and even some make-up. As she stared down at everything, a lump formed in her throat. She had woken a few minutes ago imagining she had nothing, and now she had all this. In a crisis, she thought, it was the kindness of others that made the difference between staying afloat and drowning.
She was still gazing down at the table, her emotions in tumult, when she heard the front door quietly open and close. A few seconds later, Harry walked into the room.
‘Hey, you’re up. Did you manage to get some sleep? How are you doing?’
‘I can’t believe you did all this,’ she said, raising her grey eyes to him. Her voice was shaky, her lower lip trembling.
Harry pulled a face. ‘You’re not going to cry, are you? I hate it when women do that. It’s only a few bits and pieces. And I’m not responsible in any way for the shopping – that was down to Lorna.’
‘And the car?’
‘That was Snakey Harris. Granted, I made the phone call, but he was the one who did all the hard work.’ He grinned. ‘It is your Mini, isn’t it? I couldn’t remember the registration.’
‘Yeah, it’s mine.’
‘Thank God for that. I didn’t fancy a visit from the law.’
Jess managed a faltering smile. ‘Thanks, Harry. For everything you’ve done. I really appreciate it. I don’t know what to say. I—’
‘You don’t need to say anything. That’s what friends are for. Look, why don’t you get dressed – hopefully you’ll find something that fits – and I’ll make us some coffee.’
Jess gave a nod, picked up the bags and retreated to the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, trying to fight back the tears. She had a horrible feeling that if she started crying now it would be a good few days before she stopped. ‘Pull yourself together, Vaughan,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t be such a wimp.’ Then she took three deep breaths, rose to her feet and dived into the bags.
Lorna’s choices had been conservative, for which she was grateful: plain black joggers, one loose black T-shirt and one white, a light grey sweater, socks and a pair of black pumps. There was also a three-pack of white cotton pants and a white bra. The bra was a size too small, but by loosening the straps she could just about manage to squeeze into it.
After getting dressed, Jess looked in the mirror. She was all in black and it suited her mood. She was still in mourning for everything she’d lost. The clothes were fine, but the same couldn’t be said for the face that returned her gaze. It was ghostly pale, with dark rings under the eyes. She wrinkled her nose, unimpressed with what she saw.
Turning back to the bed, she found the bag with the cosmetics and rooted through the contents. Five minutes later, after the application of tinted moisturiser, eyeshadow, mascara and a lick of lipstick, she was beginning to look almost human again. She ran a comb through her hair, stood back and nodded. Well, hardly perfection, but at least she wouldn’t be mistaken for an escapee from the morgue.
As Jess walked back into the living room, she was greeted with the smell of real coffee. Good, just what she needed to give her a kick-start and get her moving again. She had a lot to do this afternoon. Already she was going over the list in her head, prioritising a visit to the bank and a call to the insurance company. Automatically she glanced down at her left wrist, but of course her watch wasn’t there. That was something else she’d have to buy.
Harry came out of the kitchen brandishing a plate of scrambled eggs on toast. ‘Grab a seat,’ he said. ‘I made you some breakfast, or brunch or whatever you want to call it. I know you might not feel that hungry, but you should try and eat something.’
Jess pulled out a chair and sat down. She went for the mug of coffee first, adding a splash of milk and then blowing on the surface before she took a couple of fast gulps. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘That hit the spot. And actually I am quite hungry.’ She picked up the knife and fork and dug into the eggs.
While she ate, Harry went to stand by the window. He stared out at the street for a while with his hands in his pockets.
She glanced over at him. ‘Is everything okay?’
He didn’t answer straight away.
‘Harry?’
‘I’ve got some news,’ he said, coming back over and sitting down opposite her. His face was solemn, his eyes full of concern.
‘I can guess,’ she said. ‘The fire was deliberate, right? Don’t worry. I’d pretty much figured that out already.’
‘Yeah, someone poured petrol through the main letter box and then set it alight. Course, it could have just been your friendly passing arsonist, but—’
‘But it’s unlikely. Especially with everything else that’s been going on recently. And anyway, I’m sure someone was watching me when I went to the shops last night. I had this really creepy feeling. I looked around and couldn’t see anyone, but I’d swear I wasn’t imagining it.’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t think you were.’
Jess put down her knife and fork and pushed the plate to one side. ‘So someone’s probably trying to kill me. That’s a cheery thought. Not that I can prove it. I mean, there are six flats in that block. Theoretically, any one of us could have been the target.’
Harry put his elbows on the table and sighed. ‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘I’ve just come back from Cowan Road.’
She only had to hear the tension in his voice to know there was more bad news on its way. ‘Tell me,’ she said softly.
He hesitated, unwilling or perhaps just unable to find the right words.
She stirred uneasily in her chair, alarm starting to grow inside her. ‘Harry?’ she prompted.
‘It’s Becky Hibbert,’ he said finally. ‘She’s dead.’
The shock of the announcement was like a thump to her stomach. The breath caught in her throat. ‘What? How? I don’t understand.’
‘They found her this morning on the Mansfield. She’d been strangled.’
‘She was murdered? Oh my God! Do they … do they know who did it?’
Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet. The police found your card in her flat and it had my number written on
the back. Val called me this morning. I went down to the station and told her what I could.’
Jess was still desperately trying to absorb the information. ‘Right,’ she murmured.
‘But she’s going to want to talk to you too,’ he added gently. ‘I can come with you if you like.’
Jess raised a hand to her mouth and chewed on a fingernail. She could feel her heart beating faster, thumping in her chest. For a while, unfocused, her eyes gazed off into the middle distance. Then suddenly, as if all her bones had turned to jelly, she slumped forward and covered her face with her hands. ‘Jesus,’ she groaned. ‘What have I done? This is all my fault.’
‘How the hell is it your fault?’
But Jess could only think of the pressure she’d put on Becky Hibbert, of how she’d deliberately targeted the girl she believed to be the weakest link in the chain. And Becky had_talked and now she was dead. Had someone guessed that she wasn’t going to keep her mouth shut, that she couldn’t be trusted? Was that why she’d been murdered?
Harry leaned forward and laid the tips of his fingers on her arm. ‘Jess, you’re not to blame for this.’
She dropped her hands and stared at him. ‘And how do you figure that out? If I hadn’t gone round there, if I hadn’t—’
‘You can’t go down that road. We don’t know why she was murdered.’
‘What does Valerie think? You told her about Minnie Bright? About Sam? About everything that’s been happening?’ She could hear the hysteria in her voice and tried to swallow down the panic. A combination of fear and guilt and remorse was running through her head, a dizzying rush that made her feel sick.
‘Of course I did. But she has to keep an open mind. They’re still waiting on forensics.’
Jess rubbed hard at her temples, fighting a fruitless battle to get her thoughts in order. ‘But it must be connected to Minnie. It has to be.’
‘We don’t know anything yet – not for sure.’
Jess stood up quickly, but her legs felt so weak she had to grab hold of the edge of the table. ‘I have to go to the station. I have to see Valerie.’
‘There’s no rush,’ Harry said.
And of course there was no rush. Not really. Becky Hibbert was dead, and nothing Jess could say would ever bring her back. But she still felt the need to be doing something, to be moving, to be contributing in any way she could. Her legs, however, refused to cooperate. As her knees buckled, she dropped back into the chair.
‘You’d better give her a call first,’ Harry continued. ‘Or I can ring for you and arrange an appointment. She may not be able to see you today.’
Jess was only half listening, the words washing over her. She was remembering Becky Hibbert standing on the walkway at Haslow House, her hands gripping the handles of the pram, her face sullen and wary. She was remembering how she had tried to manipulate her into revealing the truth about the past. ‘I pushed her too hard. I forced her into making that call to you.’
‘You didn’t force her into anything,’ Harry insisted. ‘And you didn’t kill her. You’re an investigative journalist. It’s your job to put pressure on people. If you recognised that she was the one most likely to break, then someone else could have realised it too. Maybe Becky panicked, maybe she called someone else and … I don’t know. But that’s the thing. Neither of us knows at the moment, so let’s not start jumping to any conclusions.’
Jess rubbed at her forehead again. She wanted to believe him, wanted to find a way out from the tugging quicksand of guilt, but nothing he said could free her from her conscience. And then another shocking thought suddenly occurred. Her eyes widened with alarm. ‘Oh God, what about Sam? What if—’
‘She’s fine. I called her a couple of hours ago and told her about Becky. I don’t think she’s in any danger. Whatever’s being covered up has nothing to do with her. At the beginning someone clearly wanted to warn her off, to stop her getting involved with you, but I think that’s as far as it goes. She obviously doesn’t know enough to be a direct threat to anyone.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
There was a short silence, broken only by the sound of the rain falling gently against the window pane. The room was warm, the pungent smell of paint still lingering. Jess felt a desperate need to get outside and breathe some fresh air. Heaving herself to her feet again, she swept up the keys, the cash and the phone from the table.
‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got things to do.’
Harry stood up too. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘I don’t need a bodyguard,’ she snapped, but then immediately felt bad about it. ‘Sorry, I’m sounding like an ungrateful bitch. I don’t mean it like that. I just want to be on my own for a while.’
Slowly, he sat back down again. ‘It’s okay, I understand. But watch yourself, yeah? Come straight back when you’ve finished.’
‘Sure. I’ll see you later. And thanks again – for everything.’
‘No problem.’
Jess was aware of his eyes on her as she walked across the room. Her legs still felt unsteady, but sheer determination got her into the hall and out through the door. She gripped the banister as she descended the stairs. Pausing on the first-floor landing, she could hear the rhythmic tapping of fingers on a keyboard coming from the office of Mackenzie, Lind. Should she go and thank Lorna now, or leave it until later? Later, she decided. She wasn’t yet strong enough to face all the inevitable questions about how she was and how she felt and what she was going to do next. She was already standing on a precipice. Lorna’s maternal instincts might just be enough to tip her over the edge.
Jess went quietly down the last flight of stairs and out into the street. She raised her eyes to the cooling rain and let it trickle down her face. It seemed like a long time since she had tried to open that window in her flat, since she had lain down on the floor and curled up into a ball, since she had felt the hot grey smoke creeping into her throat and lungs. She had been lucky. Becky Hibbert had not.
Shaking the rain from her hair, she opened the door of the Mini and climbed in. She dropped the keys, the phone and the money on to the passenger seat. Then, as if it might anchor her, she grabbed the wheel tightly with both hands, leaned forward and breathed deeply, in and out, in and out. What now? She didn’t know where to start. What she wanted was to make things right, but it was way too late for that.
31
Detective Inspector Valerie Middleton leaned over the shoulder of DC Lister and viewed the grainy images from the CCTV. There was no coverage from inside the estate – cameras had been installed a few years ago, but they’d been vandalised with such frequency that the council had long since given up repairing them – but there was one surviving camera on the Mansfield Road, set up high and covering the main entrance.
‘That’s him,’ DC Lister said, staring at the image that was frozen on the screen. ‘That’s Dan Livesey. I’m sure of it. We pulled him in when I was still in uniform – it must have been about ten months ago. A fight broke out at the pool hall, the usual carnage, and he was interviewed along with several others.’
Valerie wasn’t surprised to hear about the trouble at the Lincoln. It was one of the Streets’ businesses, a place where the Kellston lowlifes gathered to get hammered, do their dodgy deals and make contact with other local criminals. The building had burned down a few years back but had since been rebuilt.
She peered down at the screen. Livesey was in his mid-thirties, an ugly, thickset man with a square face and a shaven head. Dressed in a long dark overcoat, he had his hands deep in his pockets, thus making it impossible to tell if he was wearing gloves or not. She checked the time on the screen: 00:03, about twenty minutes after Becky and her two friends had arrived back from the Fox.
‘Have we got him leaving?’
‘Yes,’ Lister said, pressing a button and fast-forwarding the tape. ‘Here it is. A quarter past twelve.’
Valerie stared hard at the screen. Did he look like a man who had just
strangled his ex? Livesey was walking quickly, his shoulders hunched, his collar up, head down. Was he hurrying to escape the scene of a crime? Was he trying to hide his face or simply protect it against the chill of the night air?
‘Play it again,’ she said.
The second and third viewing didn’t help her come to a decision. The camera picked up Livesey as he approached the gateway, exited the estate and turned left along Mansfield Road. He disappeared from view within a few yards.
‘I take it we’ve got the victim on tape too?’
‘Yes, guv,’ DC Lister said. She pressed the button again, rewinding until the time read 23:40. Valerie saw a few seconds tick by, and then suddenly the living breathing version of Becky Hibbert appeared, her elbows linked into those of her mates, the three of them walking through the gates in a line. They were laughing and joking, clearly drunk but not completely inebriated. Valerie felt a lurch in her stomach. She was watching a smiling woman who was heading towards her death.
‘And then a few minutes later we get the lads they passed,’ Lister said. She forwarded the tape again, and four boys came in to shot. They were all wearing the familiar garb of the young, low-slung jeans, trainers and hoodies. Their faces, framed by the pulled-up hoods, were no more than a blur. How old were they? Valerie reckoned mid- to late teens. Beyond their age – and she couldn’t even be sure of that – there was nothing to identify them. They could have been any four lads from anywhere in the country.
‘Let’s run off some prints and show them around the estate. Someone might come up with a name.’ It was a shot in the dark, bearing in mind the residents’ general reluctance to talk to the law, but it had to be done. The lads could be potential witnesses. They might have seen or heard something vital.
‘So,’ Valerie continued, ‘Livesey’s on the estate for about twelve minutes. Not long, but long enough. We haven’t got an exact time of death for the victim, but it seems to fit in with the ME’s estimate. He could have gone looking for Becky Hibbert, got into an argument with her and …’ She stopped and frowned. ‘But if Becky had arrived back twenty minutes earlier, why wasn’t she in her flat?’
