by M. J. Ford
By the end of the swimming session, a mere twenty minutes, Theo’s lips were showing a slightly purple tinge and he howled the place down in the changing rooms, only to fall asleep as soon as he was in his car seat. Jo grabbed a coffee at a drive-through, and read a text from her brother asking if she’d like to come over the following day for some lunch. She was going to call to accept, but instead she found her fingers dialling the station’s number almost as instinctively as a nicotine addict lighting up a cigarette. Alice Reeves answered.
‘Oh, hello you,’ she said.
‘Just wondering what the latest was,’ said Jo.
‘Well, we got hold of the son, Greg. He’s halfway through his first year in Cambridge. Obviously a shock. He’s coming over, and the family solicitor is going to organise an interview.’
Jo’s detective antennae tingled.
‘How come there’s a solicitor involved already?’
‘I don’t think it’s anything untoward. It’s a family friend of some sort. Hang on, let me put you through to the gaffer.’
‘Oh, no need for—’ But the call was already transferred.
‘Jo,’ said Carrick after a few seconds. ‘How surprising to hear from you.’ His voice, she was pleased to hear, had an edge of mockery.
‘Theo’s asleep,’ she said, looking briefly at his reflection in the rear-view. Once again, she wondered why she felt the need to explain herself. ‘You can’t expect me to switch off completely.’
‘Mel’s team are still at the house,’ said Carrick. ‘We found the shotgun licence, and a case in the wardrobe, but no sign of the weapon itself or any ammunition. Mel is going to check for residue on Mr Bailey’s hands to confirm he fired the shot. They’ve taken hundreds of prints, but so far there’s nothing that matches Blake Matthis on preliminary examination. And certainly not the blood-print on the stairs. I suppose it doesn’t mean much. He’d have to be pretty stupid not to wear gloves, and he may well have been accompanied.’
‘Did Mel mention the time-frames with the flies?’
‘Give him time, Jo. There was a lot to look at.’
‘It’s just, I looked into last night. Really, there’s no way fly eggs could hatch, then go through a larval phase before—’
‘You’re an entomologist too?’
‘It’s not only that,’ said Jo. ‘The phone records had Matthis there less than eighty hours ago. Those bodies were seriously decayed. I’d guess a week or more.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. There are margins of error.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that, but if we can find out when they returned from holiday, it might give us a clearer window. There should be travel documents in the house somewhere. Failing that, local airport taxi firms might have a record …’
‘We’re on it,’ said Andy. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Okay – but seriously, gut instinct, do you think Blake did it? A barely seventeen-year-old boy?’
‘A young man from a criminal home with a record of violence and theft,’ said Carrick. She could almost imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose against a tension headache as he spoke. ‘There’s a narrative. They were using the house to store the drugs while the parents were away. He went to get them, maybe with an older accomplice. Things went pear-shaped when the Baileys fought back.’
‘Anything about a gunshot wound from the hospitals?’
‘No.’
‘Going from the volume of blood in the bedroom carpet, it wasn’t an insignificant wound.’
‘And we’ll know soon if it belonged to Blake,’ said Carrick. ‘Believe it or not, we’ve got things in hand here.’
‘Fine,’ said Jo. ‘One more thing.’
‘I hope it’s a question about teething and not work-related,’ said Carrick.
‘Do you trust the priest?’
Carrick gave a joyless laugh. ‘You think he did it?’
Jo grinned. ‘I thought he was hiding something. About the Baileys. He got defensive pretty quickly.’
‘Because he didn’t want to share things about their private lives? Jo, I think you’ve misunderstood the nature of the confessional. Even if he knew they were rural Oxford’s answer to Pablo Escobar, he wouldn’t be in a position to tell us. Look, I’ve got to go. We’ll be putting out the appeal we discussed on the evening news for Megan – officially she’s a person of interest and potential witness in the murder of Harry Ferman, rather than a suspect – and we’re not releasing any details about Stanton St John before we’ve had time to inform her directly.’
‘She can’t be in the dark about it, surely?’
‘As far as that girl goes, I’m not sure about anything,’ said Carrick. ‘All I know for certain is that there are a trail of dead bodies in her wake, and I’d like to find her before we come across any more.’
In the back of the car, Theo stirred with a high-pitched wail.
‘Hey, hey, it’s okay,’ said Jo, reaching back to stroke his face.
‘I’ll let you go,’ said Carrick.
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Jo. ‘He’s just grizzling.’
Carrick had already hung up.
* * *
A steady downpour set in for the rest of the day, keeping Jo indoors. She wondered how Lucas was faring, and if he would even remember her suggestion that they should talk. She certainly had no stomach for it now, and he’d vanished before they could arrange a time. Towards the final days of their relationship, though he’d appeared relatively sober, she’d soon realised he suffered from complete and regular blackouts, not remembering their increasingly fractious arguments. At the very end, as she grew increasingly gravid with Theo, it had been easier to sever contact completely than deal with Lucas. In the grip of impending motherhood, with the weight of responsibility, she’d banished all uncertainty and unsafety from her life. And that included him. Occasionally, and painfully, she blamed herself for what had happened, or at least the way she’d dealt with things. She’d tried to put herself in his shoes, but never quite succeeded. She’d told herself he had his other family, his ex-wife and children, to care for him; even fantasising in the intervening period that he had found happiness with them. Yet she’d known, somewhere, that she was lying to herself, and his dishevelled appearance at the station confirmed the worst.
She looked into Theo’s face as he contorted his lower body, tugging at the toe of his bodysuit in an effort to chew it. He had blonde hair, but there was no sign of Lucas’s curls there yet. His eyes were dark and owlish like Jack Pryce’s. The small dimple in his chin might well vanish as his face slimmed, but Jo fancied it would mature into the same cleft that her own father had possessed. He hiccupped as he lost his balance and rolled over.
‘Oopsie!’ she said, leaning across to right him. He came up looking surprised, but smiled as she held him straight, head bobbing. Whatever the composition of his genetics, she told herself, he was neither of his potential fathers, and innocent of their flaws. He was her little boy, and deserved to live unburdened of her chequered romantic past. She owed him that at least.
Periodically, as she went through the motions of mothering – encouraging Theo to sit up and reach out for his favourite toys, tickling him until his laughter turned on a sixpence to anger – she also thought about logging on to the police network to see what had been added to the files. Until around three o’clock, she resisted, but as he settled down for his afternoon nap, the urge became too great. Carrick could keep her out of the station, but not out of the loop completely.
The Harry Ferman case file was a disappointment. It had barely advanced in the last twenty-four hours, what with all the attention suddenly switching to Stanton St John. Jo had hoped something might have come through on the DNA, or at least some further door-to-door work, but there was nothing recorded. She was well aware of the paucity of resources, and that things necessarily slowed down at the weekends, but she couldn’t help thinking that Harry was simply being forgotten. As SIO, it was her job to rectify that, even if
her hands were partially tied.
She looked again at the crime scene photos, forcing herself to linger on the most upsetting, of her friend’s body in situ, body temperature dipping after his spirit had flown. She still hadn’t mentioned to anyone the message he’d left on her phone, and listened to it again. He certainly didn’t sound scared, or in danger. Simply curious. To reveal it now would look a lot like professional negligence. After all, what were they always saying to potential witnesses? If you remember anything amiss, however small …
Theo was beginning to stir through the baby monitor as she skimmed the photos faster, moving on from his body, past the close-ups, on to the murder weapon. There was definitely a commonality between Harry’s death and that of Megan’s parents – an efficient, uncaring brutality. What made it worse was the premeditation. In both cases, there would have been plenty of opportunity to walk away. It was hard to imagine that either victim was a physical threat to the person who killed them.
She was about to close down the image files when a final one caught her eye – the repair to the glass in the back door. Mel had found prints on the inside door handle, matching others in the house. It seemed likely those were Megan’s. But they were no closer to identifying who had drunk from the coffee mug – those prints were entirely distinct. However, it was the door that interested her, as it presented one other avenue of enquiry she could explore without alerting Carrick, or treading on anyone’s toes. She closed the files, then walked through to the bedroom where Theo was writhing in his cot. ‘You fancy some fresh air, mister?’
* * *
The rain outside had eased a little, and Jo didn’t bother with her umbrella as she walked from her car along the parade of shops where the Iffley and Cowley Roads intersected. Theo was happy in the sling she wore, his face nestled against her chest.
The doorbell of PJ Adams tinkled as she entered. The glazier also sold door and window framing in a variety of materials, plus mirrors and decorative coloured-glass inlays. There was one other customer in the shop, a woman inspecting a catalogue of conservatory designs. The man behind the counter was a small, broad-shouldered, grey gentleman, with a significant hunch in his back, and he wore a long black apron over a checked shirt. He was leaning over a machine, wearing goggles and moving a cutting guide. He ceased work as she approached, held up a key in dirty fingers and blew away metal dust.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Are you Mr Adams?’ asked Jo.
‘The one and only,’ he replied. He cleaned his hands on a rag. ‘Looking for something in particular?’
‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you about some work you’ve done. Number 21 Canterbury Road.’
Mr Adams took the unusual request in his stride. ‘Chap who had the break-in? That’s right. About a fortnight back.’
So it was a burglary …
‘I’m a friend of Mr Ferman, the man who lives there,’ said Jo. ‘I wondered – did he tell you anything about it?’
‘Only that he caught her at it,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Came back from the pub, he said, and found her right there.’
‘A girl?’
‘So he said. You know what druggies are like. Steal anything to feed a habit.’
‘Did he say what she looked like?’
Mr Adams wiped his knotted fingers on his apron. ‘I can’t recall that he did. No, I tell a lie. He said she was just a slip of thing.’ He frowned. ‘Sorry, what’s this about? The replacement was top notch. Twenty-year guarantee.’
‘Oh, I’m sure the work was very good,’ said Jo. The other woman had left by then, so she explained that she was in fact a police officer as well as a friend, and that she was investigating the murder of Mr Ferman. The shopkeeper’s face fell at the disclosure; he obviously hadn’t made the connection, until that point, between the death on the news and the job he’d done recently.
‘That’s just awful,’ he said. ‘What a world we live in. He was a real gent, that fella.’
‘Yes, he was,’ said Jo. She thanked him for his time. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
As she was leaving, he called after her. ‘Do you think it was this girl who did it?’
‘We really don’t know,’ said Jo, and she meant it.
Back in her car, Theo safely buckled, she pulled out into traffic, trying to digest the new information. It seemed almost certain, then, that Megan Bailey had broken into Harry’s house, two weeks before he was killed. And following that, instead of reporting her to the police, he had let her stay. And for some bizarre reason, she had agreed. Nothing made sense about Megan Bailey at all. Sexually promiscuous, possibly drug addicted, a school dropout, but was she really a murderer too?
* * *
As if he’d picked up on own troubled thoughts, Theo chose that night to sleep fitfully. At three in the morning, having ascertained he was both well-fed and dry, a period of wretched tiredness ensued, in which nothing would quiet him and every effort at comfort was met with angry cries. If she picked him up, his legs curled and his fists clenched as if he was in pain. If she set him down he would reach out to be held. In the end, she found a compromise, opening the side of the cot and placing one hand beneath his back, the other on his stomach, massaging gently. Though his protests dimmed, occasional eruptions at a higher pitcher were enough to jolt her frequently to wakefulness.
Eventually, sheer fatigue must have overwhelmed her, because she woke to what she sensed were the early hours in almost utter darkness and a sound she couldn’t place. Wolvercote had no streetlighting, so the only illumination through the curtains was the ambience from distant houses. Theo was sound asleep, and the side of the cot was raised, so it seemed fair to assume she had closed it in some semi-sleeping state. She was about to roll over when she heard another noise – some sort of rattling from downstairs. For a few seconds, she remained under the duvet, ears pricked. Sure enough, she heard the noise once more. It sounded very much like someone’s hand on the back door, testing it.
Jo’s throat was dry, and her heart felt solid, and small, like a golf-ball knocking back and forth inside the walls of her ribcage. She looked for her phone, but couldn’t see it. As she rose from the bed, she felt curiously disembodied, and before she knew it she was descending the stairs. There was that sound again. She told herself there was no danger. The back door was sturdy, secured with a deadlock, the key inside, and bolts at the top and bottom.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she entered the kitchen. It was cast in shadow, and the windows were black. She reached up to find the lightswitch, but when she pressed it, nothing happened. She tried again. With a sudden spike of terror, she saw the key missing, and as she watched the door handle turn slowly downward, registered that the bolts were in fact drawn across. She moved in a flash as the door eased ajar, slamming her arms against it in an attempt to drive it closed, but whatever was on the other side resisted. ‘Go away!’ she cried, because it was the only thing she could think to say. Whoever was there made no sound at all, but even as Jo leant all her weight to the door, the pressure on the outside increased. She was losing the battle. Whoever it was on the other side, he was stronger. Upstairs, Theo was crying, and she knew, in the deepest part of herself, that if she didn’t close this door and lock it, a sequence of events would follow that would leave him defenceless. ‘Please, leave me alone!’ she begged.
It was no use. She had no strength left. In a sudden thrust, the door slammed open, snatching her up like a wave and hurling her backwards …
Jo woke with a gasp, covered in sweat. Theo was crying in anger, and as the reality of the dream subsided, she looked across to see why. Her arm was right across his chest, pinning him. When she tried to move it, it wouldn’t respond. The angle had left it dead and bloodless, and only by rolling over did she succeed in dragging the lifeless limb from the cot. She sat up, and for a few seconds, there was nothing she could do but wait for the circulation to return. Then she picked Theo up, and cradled him against her as the air of the b
edroom cooled her damp nightdress against her skin. ‘I’m sorry, baby boy,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Chapter 12
SUNDAY, 20TH APRIL
The night’s disturbances meant Jo was in a daze as she prepared Theo’s milk in the hour before sunrise, and thankfully they both managed to sleep a little more afterwards. When Jo woke properly, she was surprised to find it was past nine am. She had a message on her phone from Paul, suggesting she come over early – at ten – in order to sort through some of their mum’s possessions prior to disposing of anything unwanted. It didn’t give her much time to get ready, but she replied that she’d be over shortly.
The horrors of the dream stayed with her as she prepared a nappy bag, milk and the other assorted items she now took everywhere. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d dreamt at all, let alone a nightmare so close to the bone. As she carried Theo to the car, her phone beeped again. Probably Paul telling her not to bring cheap wine. But on checking, she saw it was actually Dimitriou: ‘Someone paid Blake a visit …’
The text was accompanied by an image, taken in the twilight, of a fire engine outside the house where they’d visited Tracy Grimshaw in Blackbird Leys. The front door was off its hinges and the downstairs windows were just twisted frames with black soot marks climbing the outside of the walls up to the second floor. She got on the phone at once, and Dimitriou answered.
‘Thought that might pique your interest.’
‘Is everyone okay?’
‘How sweet of you. Tracy’s recovering in hospital from smoke inhalation. She was asleep upstairs when someone poured petrol through her front door. Luckily the dog woke her.’
‘You think someone was sending a message?’
‘Seems likely, doesn’t it? Those drugs have been out of circulation for maybe a week. My guess is someone hasn’t been paid and this is a warning. Anyway, enjoy your Sunday!’
