Class Murder

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Why not?’ Eileen asked.

  Geraldine shrugged. ‘Teenage girls,’ was all she said.

  A sympathetic murmur went round the room from a few middle-aged officers, presumably parents of teenagers.

  ‘We need to find this man Tom,’ Eileen said. ‘Geraldine, if we bring Ashley in for questioning do you think we can persuade her to tell us who this man is?’

  ‘We could try, but for some reason she’s clamming up. She didn’t even want to give me his first name.’

  ‘Do you think she’s protecting him?’ Eileen asked.

  ‘I wondered about that, but I don’t think so. She told me she hasn’t seen him for years, but there’s definitely something stopping her from talking about him. I think she’s frightened.’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t know where he is now,’ Naomi suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s what she said,’ Geraldine said.

  ‘Couldn’t Leah tell you anything more about him?’ Eileen asked.

  ‘Leah didn’t seem to know anything about him, apart from the fact that he was older than Ashley. She didn’t even know his name. According to her, Ashley had two close friends who were in her confidence. Unfortunately Leah wasn’t one of them.’

  ‘But I’m guessing the two friends who might have known about this man were Stephanie and Bethany,’ Eileen scowled.

  Geraldine nodded.

  ‘Well, get Ashley back in and find out who this man was. Thank goodness someone’s been beavering away and unearthed a new lead,’ Eileen said, giving Geraldine a rare smile.

  With Ashley back at work in York, it was a simple matter for Geraldine to go to the bank and ask to speak to her. Once again, Ashley refused to co-operate.

  ‘I don’t believe you can recall nothing about this man except his first name,’ Geraldine insisted.

  Ashley just shrugged.

  ‘He was your boyfriend. You must remember what he looked like.’

  ‘He had brown hair.’

  Geraldine tried every means at her disposal to persuade the girl to open up, but she remained obdurately silent on the subject of her former boyfriend. Realising she was wasting her time, Geraldine left. She was on her way back to the police station when it struck her that she had met one woman in the course of the investigation who not only had a good memory for names and details, but was willing to divulge what she knew. Instead of returning to Fulford Road, she set off in the direction of Saddleworth, hoping that Susan Mulvey would be at home.

  The retired head teacher answered the door at once and welcomed Geraldine with a smile.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it, Sergeant, but you must have read my mind. I was just about to put the kettle on.’

  She refused to answer any questions until she had made a pot of tea, leaving Geraldine no choice but to wait impatiently. When they were finally settled with tea and fresh scones which her hostess admitted she had made herself, Geraldine posed her question.

  Susan shook her head.‘No, I don’t remember any of the girls having a boyfriend called Tom.’

  When Geraldine urged her to think carefully, Susan answered with a question of her own.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mean Tim? I remember one of the girls was seeing a man called Tim, and I think it was Ashley. In fact, I’m sure that’s who it was.’

  Controlling her sudden excitement, Geraldine asked about Tim.

  ‘I know he was older than Ashley, and he had a car. But I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. I never saw him. But she made no secret of it. She wanted her friends to know that her boyfriend was older than all of them. It’s immature, of course, but having an older boyfriend is very much a status symbol for young girls.’

  ‘How much older than her was he?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘What can you remember about him?’

  ‘Not much, to be honest. I’m sorry.’

  Geraldine’s spirits began to sink, but she pressed on. At least she had discovered Ashley had given her the wrong name in what must have been a deliberate lie. That in itself might be significant.

  ‘Try to think. What else can you remember about him?’

  ‘Well, I do remember there was something a bit off about him. One of her friends came to see me about it to express her concern. She thought he sounded strange.’

  Geraldine no longer tried to hide her excitement. ‘Strange in what way?’

  Susan spoke slowly, frowning with the effort to remember. ‘According to her friend, Ashley wasn’t happy with this man. I called her in and had a talk about resisting unwelcome sexual advances, the usual patter. I seem to remember she wasn’t very receptive. I had the impression she didn’t really like him, but she wanted to keep hold of a boyfriend who had a car. As I said, she was very young.’

  ‘Can you remember Tim’s other name?’

  ‘Yes. It’s all coming back to me now. He was called Tim Hathaway. I remember wondering whether he could be a descendant of Shakespeare’s wife.’

  Geraldine smiled as she thanked Susan for the information, and the scone. Now they had a name, it was only a matter of time before they traced Ashley’s former boyfriend. The likelihood was that he had already given a DNA sample and been eliminated from the enquiry. But there was a faint chance she might have just discovered the identity of the killer.

  56

  Eileen immediately asked the question that had been troubling Geraldine.

  ‘If his name’s Tim, why did Ashley tell you he was called Tom? Surely she can’t have forgotten her own ex-boyfriend’s name. So why did she lie about it?’

  Geraldine shook her head.

  ‘Well, never mind about that for the time being,’ Eileen went on briskly. ‘Our priority is to find Tim Hathaway. I’ll organise a team to track him down, and meanwhile I’d like you to bring Ashley in and see what she has to say for herself.’

  Eileen smiled at Geraldine. Now that they had a firm lead, the detective chief inspector seemed to have recovered her drive. Accustomed to analysing the conduct of her senior officers in preparation for her own anticipated promotion, Geraldine found herself privately criticising Eileen for letting her energy levels drop when the investigation had appeared to be floundering. But of course Geraldine no longer needed to concern herself with her own professional development. She wasn’t even an inspector any more, and would never find herself leading a team from her own office. With a sigh, she returned to the busy open-plan room she shared with several other colleagues.

  For the second time that day Geraldine entered the bank where Ashley worked and asked to speak to her.

  ‘I’d like you to accompany me to the police station. We think you might be able to assist us in identifying a potential suspect,’ Geraldine explained, taking care to be as generic as possible in her explanation.

  Ashley’s set expression didn’t alter, but her eyes blazed. Rather than looking frightened, she seemed furious.

  ‘There’s nothing to be concerned about,’ Geraldine added kindly. ‘But we really do need your help. I trust you can spare her for a few hours?’

  ‘Of course,’ the manager replied at once. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added, turning to Ashley. ‘You can take the day if you need to. I’ll make sure it doesn’t come off your holiday entitlement.’

  They drove to the police station in silence. Geraldine wasn’t convinced it was sensible to try and put pressure on Ashley to open up. She was afraid the approach might have the opposite effect. If possible, Ashley seemed even more obdurate than when Geraldine had last seen her.

  ‘Are you going to lock me in a cell?’ Ashley asked as they stepped out of the car.

  ‘No, nothing like that. We just need to ask you a few questions.’ Geraldine gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile. ‘As long as you’ve done nothing wrong, there’s no reason why you should be locked up.’

/>   ‘You locked Leah in a cell for days, and she hadn’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘No, she hadn’t, but she was a suspect for a while.’

  ‘And I’m not?’

  Geraldine paused in her stride. They had not yet reached the entrance to the police station but were walking up the wide path towards it. She didn’t want to stop as it was cold, and a fine drizzle had begun to fall. Yet to Geraldine’s irritation, Ashley seemed ready to start talking. If this moment was allowed to pass, a similar opportunity might not arise again. Even the rooms used for informal interviews had an oppressive atmosphere, and whatever Geraldine said to try and gloss over the situation, there was no denying that Ashley had been brought into the police station for questioning. She might be more inclined to talk freely right now, outside, in the open air.

  ‘No, not at the moment,’ she replied. ‘And hopefully you never will be. But you do need to tell us the truth, Ashley. The more you beat about the bush, the more suspicious my senior officers are likely to become. You do see that, don’t you?’

  Ashley nodded.

  ‘So don’t you think it’s about time you started telling us the truth?’

  ‘I am telling you the truth. I’ve never lied to you.’

  ‘I mean the whole truth,’ Geraldine said. ‘Why did you tell me your ex-boyfriend’s name was Tom when we now know he’s called Tim?’

  ‘That’s what I said to you. I said he told me his name was Tim. But he never told me his second name.’

  The rain began to fall in earnest and they hurried towards the police station. Geraldine wasn’t sure how she was going to crack Ashley. Far from flummoxed at being caught out in a lie, she was coolly acting as though Geraldine had made a mistake. They reached an interview room and sat down.

  ‘You say that you didn’t know your ex-boyfriend’s surname, but your former head knew he was called Tim Hathaway,’ Geraldine began. ‘How would she have known that when you…’

  ‘Hathaway!’ Ashley interrupted her quickly. ‘Yes, that was it. Hathaway. I’m hopeless with names, but I remember now. We used to joke that he might be a descendant of Shakespeare’s wife, you know, Ann Hathaway. The others wanted me to ask him about it, but I never did.’ She gave a faint laugh. ‘It was just a silly idea they had.’

  ‘Now we know his name, we’re going to find him,’ Geraldine said.

  Observing Ashley’s face closely as she spoke, Geraldine didn’t add that she gave no credence at all to Ashley’s pretence of having forgotten Tim Hathaway’s name.

  Ashley looked very pale and drawn. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘You can find him, can’t you?’

  ‘You can make it easier for us, Ashley.’

  ‘How?’

  Geraldine suppressed a sigh. ‘By telling us where he lives.’

  Ashley shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Listen, we didn’t see each other for very long and I was still at school, still a kid. We went to his house a few times, but he drove us there in his car and I don’t know where it was.’

  ‘What can you remember about it?’

  ‘It was a row of houses, somewhere near York, or it might have been in York, I don’t know. I never paid much attention to where we were going. It was fun, you know, being in a car with a man, when I was only seventeen. It was something to tell the other girls. That’s why I did it. We were never serious about each other, at least, I wasn’t,’ she added uncertainly. ‘I can’t speak for him.’

  ‘You must remember something about his house.’

  ‘It had a dirty front door, and the window sills were dirty, and you could hear the trains going past from the back garden. There was a big old tree in front of the house but I can’t remember if it was in the garden or on the street outside. The place was pretty rundown inside and it smelt funny.’

  ‘How funny?’

  ‘Sort of damp and mouldy.’

  ‘Was it near the station?’

  Ashley shrugged. ‘That’s all I can remember. It wasn’t – it wasn’t a happy relationship.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He wasn’t a very nice man.’

  ‘What did your friends say about him?’

  Ashley shrugged and her cheeks flushed a deep red. ‘They were impressed, because he was older and he had a car and a house and everything, even though it wasn’t a very nice house. I didn’t tell them that,’ she added, with an embarrassed laugh.

  ‘You wanted them to be jealous?’

  ‘We were seventeen.’

  ‘You said he wasn’t a nice man. What you mean by that?’

  Ashley shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Did your friends agree with your opinion of him?’

  ‘I don’t know. They never met him.’

  Geraldine frowned. Ashley seemed to be telling the truth at last, but her stilted confession hadn’t really shed much light on the mystery.

  ‘Do you think Tim Hathaway killed your friends?’ she asked outright.

  Something in Ashley’s face changed, as though she had withdrawn into herself. She stared straight at Geraldine and spoke in a completely flat tone that didn’t alter even when she posed a question. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Why would he?’

  She had voiced what was bothering Geraldine. What could have prompted Tim Hathaway to suddenly start killing the former classmates of his ex-girlfriend, a girl who claimed she hadn’t seen him for several years. It was all really odd. And if something didn’t make sense, it was probably untrue. She wondered whether they were following a false lead, after all.

  57

  Glancing at the security screen that displayed activity in the street outside the house he had moved into, he noticed three cars drawing up, one after another. He had been waiting for this. However careful he was to cover his tracks, he knew the police were cunning. He would never make the basic mistake of underestimating his enemy. That kind of hubris had proved the downfall of many clever criminals. There was nothing to suggest these were police cars, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He had been preparing for this, practising the gait he was going to adopt as part of his disguise. But he didn’t have much time. Six people climbed out of the cars, all at the same time, and headed for his gate. This was it. They had found his house. But they hadn’t caught him. While they were banging on his front door, he was watching from an apparently empty house three doors away.

  Stopping only to seize the bag he had packed in case of such an emergency, he dashed for the back door. He felt the gun in his pocket and smiled grimly. If the police cornered him they wouldn’t take him alive, and not all of them would walk away from the encounter either. Slipping out of the house, he listened for the Yale lock clicking shut behind him. If they traced him to the derelict property, leaving the back door unlocked would give them a clue about where he had gone, and he had no intention of making this easy for them. Crouching low, he struggled through bushes that proliferated along the side of the overgrown lawn, and hurried down to the end of the garden. It was the work of a second to push a loose fence panel aside and force his way through. Slithering down the steep bank to the railway, he darted across the tracks and sprinted along beside the line. In the distance he heard the roar of an approaching train and flung himself down in the undergrowth. Invisible to anyone sitting in the train, he used the time while it thundered past to pull on a dark cap which would prevent him shedding hair and dandruff.

  By now the police would be in his house, searching for him. It was only a matter of time before they discovered signs of occupation in the empty property three doors along, and found the loose fence panel. He had to find shelter at a station before they widened their search. Glancing up at the sky, he wondered how long it would take the police to mobilise a helicopter. As though in response to his upward gaze, it began to rain. The slope might become too slippery to climb. Abandoning his plan to run until he reac
hed a station, he began to clamber up the grass. A successful criminal had to be adaptable. Only then could he stay one step ahead of his pursuers.

  As he struggled up the slope, he faced an even harder challenge – to control his anger that his identity had been discovered so soon. Because he wasn’t ready to stop yet. With only three victims down, he still had much to do. But he had to control his rage and focus on finding somewhere to hide. He couldn’t allow any other consideration to distract him from that immediate priority. Once he had given his pursuers the slip, he would continue with his plan, undeterred. In the meantime, worrying about how the police had traced him would have to wait. In terms of his overall scheme it wasn’t really that important because, however hard they tried, they weren’t going to stop him.

  Now they knew who he was, the police would be setting up a massive man hunt, and they wouldn’t hold back. It would be easy enough for tracker dogs to follow his scent along the railway line and up the slope. Somehow he had to circumvent his pursuers for long enough to reach the river without being spotted. As well as men and dogs on the ground, there would soon be helicopters circling and searching. There was no point in waiting until darkness fell, because the helicopters would have thermal imaging. He might even be easier to spot moving around at night.

  Once he had crossed the river he would be safe, because the dogs would lose his scent. And as for the police, well, they would be looking for a man in his thirties. On the other side of the river, Tim Hathaway would vanish, and he would resume his activities unhindered. It was a pity, but from now on it might be best to simply shoot his victims. Admittedly it wasn’t as much fun, but without access to his van all the blood from a stabbing would make things tricky. Plotting and scheming, he reached the top of the slope. He wasn’t far from the river and safety.