Lonely Hearts: Killing with Kindness takes on a whole new meaning (DI Falle)

by Gwyn GB

  Claire is surprised by this honesty and Rachel looks as though she’s just realised how open she’s been too, because she clams up and studies her nearly empty plate. What hurt has she suffered in the past that could make her this nervous to commit?

  Claire feels her discomfort and changes the subject.

  ‘What sort of time do you see the stalker, if they come?’

  ‘To be honest it can be anytime, but if they’re in the back it’s usually when it’s completely dark and everyone is inside. Anytime from now onward, but they may not come with your car parked in the drive.’

  ‘Have you given any more thought as to who it could be? An ex-boyfriend maybe, or disgruntled client?’

  ‘I wrote a list earlier of everyone I could possibly think of from now and the past. I honestly cannot think of anyone other than those you know, and I can’t believe someone from the agency is doing this.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how people can live double lives. The worst sociopaths are the most charming people on the surface, but underneath…’

  Rachel looks upset.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Rachel replies more quietly now. ‘I know you’re doing your best and I really appreciate you being here. The worst part isn’t the threats, it’s the not knowing who it is. You know, could I be talking to them, or be standing next to them in a shop? Is it the man who walks towards me on the street, or one of my neighbours?’

  ‘We will find out. They’ll make a mistake and when they do we’ll be on them.’

  Jackie Stiller’s broken body flashes through Claire’s mind on permanent video loop. That will not happen again.

  At just gone 10pm Claire starts yawning to the point where she knows she has to get home. She makes her apology to Rachel.

  ‘It’s been nice having you here,’ she replies, ‘I really do appreciate it.’

  ‘And don’t you forget keep that panic button with you at all times and if you’re not sure of something call me or 999.’

  ‘I will.’

  As Claire leaves and Rachel closes the front door, she wonders whether her earlier good mood will now disappear. Will the realisation she has the rest of the dark night to get through, alone, keep her up tonight? Claire looks around her, straining to see past the dark shapes of the bushes. Are there eyes watching her leave now?

  49

  Claire, 19th October 2016

  The whole team are gathered and it’s rumoured the DCS is going to be making an appearance to chivvy on the troops.

  ‘I’ve got the press office on my back,’ Bob growls. ‘Getting it from every angle right now. We need a result or at least some progress.’

  Everyone shuffles and looks away, grateful that it’s him and not them having to deal with all the pressure.

  ‘If we don’t find something, we’re going to have to let Gary Foster go in the next few hours. We don’t have enough to hold him and he’s sticking to his no comment routine. It means that we have him, Eddie Scott and Rosa McKenna all without alibis on the night Neil was killed. Not to mention, our invisible man of a stalker and the incredibly elusive Michael Stratton - who appears to have completely disappeared into the wilds of Vietnam. Felicity Baxter and Carly Watson are both accounted for. But we do have a connection between Rosa and Michael Stratton.’ Bob pauses and looks around the room. ‘I want to know everything on those two. I also want the list of every single one of the women Neil dated from the agency, all cross-referenced.’

  ‘We’ve started interviewing them Sir,’ Lew interrupts. ‘We’ve got about another half-dozen to get through; he was a prolific bugger.’

  ‘Well get to it. Pull in more support if you need to.’

  ‘There’s something else sir, concerning Rosa McKenna. She was involved in a domestic violence charge about two years ago.’

  ‘Huh, I’d be surprised that anyone would have the gall to try and hit her.’

  ‘That’s the thing, sir, it wasn’t her being hit. Her former partner brought the charge initially, said she’d regularly hit him, that there was both physical and verbal abuse.’

  ‘Why didn’t we spot this before?’

  ‘It never went any further Sir, he withdrew the claim, apparently after a nice settlement from Ms McKenna, and refused to co-operate.’

  ‘OK, so we know she’s capable of low-level violence, but is she capable of murder?’

  Lew shrugs. ‘You’ve met her Sir.’

  ‘Don’t forget she also engineered it so that she could get a date with Neil,’ Claire joins in, ‘She met him through Michael, liked him and persuaded him to join the agency, whereupon she promptly applied for a date with him. Only he didn’t like her.’

  Bob is nodding thoughtful, ‘OK Lew, she’s your priority today, I want you to get to know everything about Rosa McKenna. Talk to neighbours, friends, colleagues. What makes her tick, is there something in her past that has prompted her to behave like this? Any other complaints about her? Did anyone else at the agency go out with her for more than one date? If they did let’s talk to them. She’s well-off, there’s no reason why she couldn’t have hired someone to kill Neil after he snubbed her. And find out if she dated the other unexplained deaths at the agency, particularly Todd Fuller. Get to it.’

  Claire is gasping for a coffee but she doesn’t feel up to running into Jack this morning. She’s hormonal and can feel her emotions are on the edge. The last thing she’s going to want is to lose it with either Jack or Lara. So, she breaks her rules and uses the incident room kettle and local supermarket’s best instant coffee. The whole set up just makes her nose wrinkle. Used teaspoons and a tray with various spillages stained into its surface. She can at least find a clean mug, but the supermarket brand coffee smells disgusting. There’s something chemically about instant coffee, it’s nothing like the rich aroma of fresh beans. Still, needs must so she pours in some milk, making a grey/brown liquid that looks nothing like her usual latte, and heads back to her desk. She manages about half of the mug before she really can’t take anymore.

  ‘Slumming it?’ Lew quips as he walks past. ‘Thought you hate instant?’

  ‘I do I…’ she realises that she is just about to tell him she hadn’t wanted to go to the canteen in case she runs into Jack and so quickly shuts up. ‘Just didn’t have time to go to the canteen,’ she says instead.

  Just across from them Bob slams down the phone on his desk. He’s not angry for once, his face is alive.

  ‘Edward Scott has just walked up to front desk and said he’s got something to tell us,’ Bob announces. ‘Maybe we’ll get things moving along now.’

  Edward Scott is sitting bolt upright in interview room two. Claire immediately senses there’s something that’s changed about him. His pasty, stressed out face has been replaced by something altogether more determined. He’s dressed smartly, as though off for Sunday service in a striped blue shirt and new black cords.

  ‘I’ve filed for bankruptcy. You’ve finished off my business,’ he announces to them as soon as they walk into the room.

  ‘I’m sorry Mr Scott, we have been discreet, we haven’t mentioned anything to the media. This really isn’t the responsibility of the police force.’

  Eddie Scott scrunches up his mouth as though battling to keep something in.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here though,’ continues Bob, ‘Because we need to ask you about Sandra Jennings - or should I say, Carly Watson. You knew she had given you a false name, but you did nothing about it.’

  Eddie raises his chin and gets back some of his defiance.

  ‘Yes. That’s right. She told me her history, I thought she and her daughter deserved a second chance. I just chose to ignore it.’

  ‘That’s illegal Mr Scott,’ Bob replies eyebrows raised.

  ‘Yeah well… I decided that a mother and daughter’s lives were more important than worrying about what they called themselves.’

  ‘It’s also perverting the course of justice.
Why didn’t you tell us she was living under a false name when we came to the agency and told you she’d disappeared? You wasted our time.’

  That seems to register with Eddie.

  ‘Sorry. I knew I’d be in trouble if I told you and besides, I don’t know her real name. I’d told her not to tell me so that I could never make a mistake and risk blowing her cover.’

  ‘I will have to report this, you realise that,’ Bob tests Eddie’s resolve.

  Eddie just shrugs.

  ‘It’s all over as far as I’m concerned. I’ve had enough of the lies. You need to release Gary Foster, he’s done absolutely nothing wrong,’ he declares looking defiantly at Claire and Bob.

  ‘I think that’s for us to determine Mr Scott,’ Bob calmly replies.

  ‘He is innocent. There is absolutely no way he could have killed Neil Parsons.’

  ‘How do you know this Mr Scott?’

  ‘Because he was with me.’

  Bob looks to Rachel, ‘I thought you told us you were at home with your wife?’

  ‘I did. I lied. She knows about it. We kept up appearances for the business. Ask her.’

  ‘Knows about what Mr Scott?’

  Eddie hesitates, his features wrestling as though he’s trying to bring up a giant fur ball.

  ‘Gary and I are partners. We’ve been in a relationship for years. He was with me on the night of the 13th.’

  Bob doesn’t miss a beat, although it’s taken Rachel by surprise.

  ‘How do we know this is true Mr Scott. You’ve both lied about where you were already.’

  Eddie has the air of somebody who now doesn’t care about anything, ‘I can find you plenty of people who will corroborate that we’re partners. We were at the office that evening. Like we are most nights. I’m sure there would be some CCTV cameras that caught us on the street outside.’

  ‘Why have you been lying about your relationship? This isn’t the 1900s,’ Claire asks him.

  Eddie turns and looks at her in the eyes.

  ‘I run… I ran a dating agency, my wife runs a wedding events company. People wanted us to be a happy couple. I’ve been shoring up the facade of a successful business and marriage for years now. Times have changed but we hadn’t. I should have let the agency go years back.’

  Bob sighs as they stand in the corridor outside interview room two.

  ‘We need to see what we can get to corroborate what he’s just said about their relationship,’ he tells Claire.

  ‘I can interview Gary again if you like?’ Claire volunteers. ‘We’ve only got Eddie’s word for it about the relationship. Maybe he’s covering his own arse after seeing Gary arrested?’

  ‘Maybe, but we’ve got nothing on either of them over Neil’s murder, especially not if their alibis stand up.’

  ‘Still doesn’t mean they didn’t knock off agency clients to try and help the business,’ Claire offers.

  ‘No. No it doesn’t and if Eddie Scott has been prepared to live a lie all these years to keep the business, then what else has he done? Perhaps that’s the tactic, fess up to the gay affair and prove you couldn’t have killed Neil, to distract us from looking at the other deaths. Keep digging, but in the meantime we’ll have to cut Gary Foster loose.’

  With that Bob disappears into the Gents.

  50

  Claire, October 19th 2016

  Claire is sitting staring at her screen for inspiration when the call comes through from front desk.

  ‘There’s a Tanya Morgan here, says she needs to speak to the SIO in the Neil Parsons case urgently.’

  Bob is on tenterhooks, he’s been expecting a phone call from Vietnam at any time. He’s got the DCS on his back about the extra budget and resources he’s now using and yet they’ve nothing to show for it - apart from Neil Parsons in the morgue and a suspicion that there have been several potentially dodgy deaths at the dating agency he went to.

  ‘Can you take it for me?’ he says to Claire.

  She nods.

  Tanya Morgan turns out to be dripping in jewellery that looks remarkably real, as though she’s turned out for a bling competition. She’s also very nervous and jittery. An attractive woman underneath the thick make-up, with long dark hair and a petite frame in a floaty long sleeved coat. She reminds Claire of a trapped bird fluttering around the interview room, unable to sit down.

  ‘Would you like to take a seat?’ Claire suggests.

  Tanya sits down but it’s obvious she’s uncomfortable.

  ‘How can I help?’ Claire continues, ‘I understand you have some information about the murder of Neil Parsons?’

  Tanya nods vigorously.

  ‘I need to know first that you’ll protect me like. You know, that I can go on the witness protection programme.’

  ‘We can certainly look into that, but we would have to make an application and it is obviously going to depend on the strength of your case.’

  ‘I can’t go back home,’ Tanya jumps up again, ‘He’ll kill me, don’t you understand?’

  She pulls back the sleeves of her coat and reveals thin bruised arms.

  ‘I got cuts and bruises all over me. He never puts ‘em on the face, only places where they can be hidden.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘My husband, Darren Morgan. Drug squad will know ‘im. I can give them stuff too.’

  Claire isn’t sure if this is a woman trying to find a way to seek help from a violent husband or if it could be genuine information relating to Neil. She doesn’t have to wait long to find out.

  ‘He killed the wrong bloke. It wasn’t him I was having the affair with, but as usual he went ballistic after that bastard Charlie Higgins gave him wrong information.’

  ‘Sorry, are you saying that your husband has killed someone?’

  ‘Yeah, Neil. Poor bugger.’

  Claire sits up alert.

  Tanya continues, ‘He don’t know but I kept some evidence. He had blood all over ‘im like, wanted to show me see. He destroyed everything except I kept one glove. Dropped it after he’d come back pumped up and raped me. It’s in my bag.’

  Tanya reaches into her handbag, Claire can see her hands are shaking. She’s a woman who has obviously been through a lot and is surviving on her nerves. Coming here must have taken a lot of courage.

  Tanya pulls out a plastic bag with a black glove. Some dried blood spatters are just visible.

  ‘He says he’s going to kill me next. I haven’t told him he murdered the wrong bloke. They were always out together see and Charlie’s a thick shit. Too many years in the boxing ring. He just made assumptions cos Neil was the handsome one. It’s not about looks though is it? I told Mikey to get out the country, but we’re gonna be together again once this is all over.’

  Two hours after Tanya Morgan walked into the police station, Darren Morgan is in custody. In the next door cell is the caretaker from Neil’s block of flats - who’d not only sorted the CCTV but had let Darren in and helped him get out, in exchange for a nice hefty sum towards paying off his gambling debts. Tanya, meanwhile, is now less trapped bird and more singing canary, sitting chatting with the Specialist Crime Division about all her husband’s ‘business’ affairs.

  A message has been sent to Michael Stratton via the mobile number he gave to Tanya and the incident room is celebrating the end of the long days and weekend work - for now. They have Neil’s murderer.

  The relief on Bob’s face is palpable and the exclusion zone around his desk is lifted.

  ‘Knew it was a crime of passion,’ he beams at Claire.

  ‘But what about Rachel Hill and her stalker, or the deaths at the agency?’

  Claire feels cheated somehow, that it could all be so easily solved by one woman standing up to her husband.

  ‘We now know they’re unrelated, we might need to pass those on to another team that deals with cold cases.’

  ‘But Rachel’s stalker isn’t a cold case.’

  ‘I know, but it is outside our remit. Whoev
er is bothering Rachel Hill is not the killer of Neil Parsons. That is our case DI Falle, we can’t solve all the crime in London and we have to stick to what we have been told to do. I’ll make sure it’s picked up, don’t worry and we’ll finalise the initial enquiries into the agency deaths so we can hand it all over, send it upstairs and see what’s next.’

  Claire goes to open her mouth to protest. Bob stops her and draws her aside.

  ‘Listen, I know what happened with Jackie Stiller, I of all people know what you went through with that case, but you need to step back a bit here. We are professionals, you are a professional, Claire. You’re letting yourself get personally involved in this because you felt like you let Jackie down. You didn’t. Jackie’s death was not your fault. There were a whole host of failures in the system that should have protected her.’

  Bob stops a moment and studies Claire’s face. She’s trying hard not to let her emotions leak onto her features, but she knows he’ll see through the mask.

  ‘Rachel deserves to be properly protected and her stalker brought to justice. I’ll make damned sure he is, I promise you. It’s just that it might not be you who does it. I also promise that I’ll make sure the deaths at the agency are thoroughly investigated. I’ll even ask for you to be on that team if it’s not given to me. They might decide it’s better with a fresh SIO used to cold cases.’

  ‘So you’re saying you don’t think I should be investigating Rachel’s stalker?’

  Bob chooses his words carefully.

  ‘I’m saying that I don’t think it’s in your best interests and possibly not even in Rachel’s best interests, that you continue with that case. It was different when it could have been part of our murder investigation, but now… There’s a danger here that you could lose sight of the procedures and methods needed because you’re emotional about it. I’m not being sexist here; I’d say the same thing to a bloke if he’d had a recent bad outing with a similar case to one he’s investigating. I’m saying this to you as a friend as well as a senior officer.’