11
Melissa watched as a ball landed on the fairway visible through a gap in the trees. The ball bounced forwards, landed on the edge of the green, and then rolled down the incline towards the water she could see only because of the sun that was bouncing off it.
“Is there a penalty if your ball goes in the water?” she asked of John Knight, whose office it was.
The head grounds-keeper offered an amused smile. “That depends on how good a golfer you are,” he said, “and how deep the water is. If the water’s shallow, and you’re a good golfer, you can get the ball out, you might even be able to get it somewhere useful. Most people, though, will take a penalty and drop a replacement ball near the edge of the water; in the long run, it saves a lot of time, effort and aggravation. I take it someone’s just put a ball in the water on the sixteenth.”
“If that’s the hole out there, then yes,” Melissa said. “The ball bounced twice, then rolled down into the water.”
Knight’s smile broadened. “A lot of people make that mistake,” he said. “There’s a bit of a nasty bunker to the right of the green, you have to aim just past the edge of it if you want to stay on the green, and not many people manage it, especially if they don’t know the course.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“Depends on how you look at it. I’m paid to make the course a challenge for people who know how to play a good round of golf.”
Mitchell had no interest in the golf talk, and paid little attention to it, instead he focused on watching out for Oliver Ryder. His vigilance was rewarded when a short while later he saw Ryder. “He’s here,” he told the other two.
It was another couple of minutes before a knock sounded. “You asked me to come in, Mr Knight,” Oliver Ryder said as he entered the office. He stopped the moment he saw the two uniformed officers with his boss. “What d’you want?” he asked of Mitchell, not even trying to conceal his dislike of the sergeant.
John Knight took his cue from the look directed at him by Mitchell, and excused himself.
“Hello, Oliver, how are you?” Mitchell asked. “How does it feel to be gainfully employed, for the first time in your life?”
“What d’you want?” Oliver repeated his question, ignoring the pleasantries.
“We need to speak to you about something,” Mitchell said. “A couple of somethings, actually.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t wanna speak to you, so you can get lost,” Oliver told him. “You only ever come looking for me when you think I’ve done summat. Well, I ain’t done shit, other than go straight. I’ve got a legit job, I’m learnin’ to be a grounds-keeper, and you’d better not have messed it up for me coming here. If you have I’ll…” He cut himself off before he could finish the threat he was thinking of.
“We’re not here because we think you’ve been involved in anything,” Mitchell said. “We’re here about Georgina.”
“What about Georgie?” Oliver demanded. “Don’t tell me you useless plods have actually managed to find her. No, if you’d found her, Uncle John would’ve called to tell me, he wouldn’t have left it to you lot.”
Mitchell hesitated for a moment before saying, “We have found Georgina, or rather, she has been found.”
“Then why hasn’t Uncle John called to tell me himself?”
“Because, and I really hate to have to tell you this, Oliver, Georgina was…” Mitchell paused before plunging on. “Georgina is dead, she was killed,” he said that in a rush, and braced himself for the inevitable reaction – he was not disappointed, though he was not sure that was the right word.
For several, long seconds Oliver simply stood there, staring at the sergeant. His fists were clenched at his side, and his chest rose and fell heavily as he sought to control himself, without success. After about three or four seconds, Oliver gave up trying to control himself, he turned and ran from the office, surprising both Mitchell and Melissa, both of whom had expected him to explode and rage at them. He was gone before either officer could recover from their surprise.
Melissa recovered first and quickly set off in pursuit, unsure why Oliver was fleeing, only that she had to catch him. She stopped to look around when she got outside; at first glance it seemed as though Oliver had disappeared, but she guessed where he must have gone when she heard the roar of an un-muffled car exhaust. She hurried for the corner, so she could make for the car park at the side of the building, and reached it just in time to be forced to dive out of the way to avoid being run down by Oliver Ryder’s speeding car.
“How could you let him get away?” Mitchell demanded when he caught up with Melissa, who was still on the ground, and saw the Volkswagen Golf disappearing rapidly down the road.
“I didn’t let him get away,” Melissa said, disbelief on her face as she pushed herself up. “Oliver’s faster than me, always has been. In case you’ve forgotten, he was the hundred metres champion for the county two years running. He was already out of sight by the time I got out here, and in his car by the time I got to the corner. I didn’t have a hope in hell of stopping him.
“Oh, and I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.”
Mitchell fumed, but didn’t allow himself to react to the sarcasm in Melissa’s voice. He had more important things to worry about, namely the fact that Oliver Ryder was getting away. Without checking to see that Melissa was with him, he hurried away so he could give chase.
Melissa felt like swearing but held her tongue and followed Mitchell. She caught up with him just before he reached their patrol car, and slid into the passenger seat, while he got behind the wheel and started the engine.
“Why d’you think he’s run?” she asked as they raced down the narrow drive that led to the rear entrance of the golf course. “We’ve got no reason for thinking he’s involved in what happened to Georgina, at least we didn’t ‘til now; running definitely makes him look like a suspect. And where’s he running to? He can’t be heading home, that’d just be asking for him to get caught.”
“He’s not heading home, he’s got someone he wants to talk to,” Mitchell said.
12
Mitchell drove through the ruins of the gate Oliver Ryder had smashed and brought the car to a stop in front of the Wright farmhouse. Together, he and Melissa quickly got out and looked around; Ryder’s car was a short distance away, the driver’s door standing open, suggesting he had abandoned it the moment he reached the yard, but of Ryder himself, there was no sign.
“That didn’t sound like Ollie or Kieran,” Melissa said when a scream sounded from the house. Hurrying around the car, she could make for the front door, which stood ajar.
“I know, it sounded like a girl,” Mitchell said, unhappy with the development. “You take the front, I’ll go round the back; give me a minute to get there, then we’ll both go in.”
Melissa could not remember a longer minute. The moment she reached sixty she burst through the partially open door; she expected to find Oliver on the other side, instead she found an empty passage and had to hurry down it to the kitchen, from which the sounds of fighting were coming.
She threw open the kitchen door the moment she reached it, and heard a sudden cry of pain, high-pitched and obviously female. Melissa guessed that the person she had just hit with the door was one of Kieran’s sisters, the other being a short distance away, she didn’t have time to worry about her, though, for in the middle of the room was a wrestling match. One of the wrestlers was Oliver, Melissa could see enough to recognise him easily, the other was not so easy to see, but she guessed it was Kieran Wright.
Without waiting for Mitchell, who should have been there already, Melissa moved forward to try and break the fight up. If she didn’t, she suspected Kieran was going to be killed, or at least left permanently injured, given the energy and enthusiasm with which Oliver was smashing his head onto the floor. It quickly became clear that it was not a good idea for her to wade in; the moment she got within a foot of the fighting pair, she was caught
across the cheek by a wild swing from one of Oliver’s fists.
She reeled away from the fight, but the moment she recovered her balance, she threw herself back into the fray. As best she could, she avoided the flailing arms as she sought to separate Oliver and Kieran, with only minimal success. Fortunately, Mitchell arrived before she could receive more than a few painful and annoying bruises, and between them they managed to drag Oliver away from Kieran and hold him long enough to get cuffs on his wrists.
“It might be a good idea if you take the girls into the living room, while I speak to Oliver and Kieran,” Mitchell said once he had the two young men on opposite sides of the kitchen.
“Okay.” It took some persuasion to get Emily and Tara, Kieran’s sisters, out of the kitchen and along the passage to the living room. Emily went willingly, but Tara had to be all but dragged away.
Mitchell waited until Melissa and the two girls had reached the living room, and then he turned to Kieran. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“What the hell are you asking him for?” Oliver demanded. “He’s the sick bastard killed Georgie.” He launched himself across the room, catching Mitchell by surprise, and threw himself on Kieran. The fact that his hands were cuffed behind his back didn’t stop him, he rammed into Kieran with his shoulder, driving him backwards into the upturned table. When he stepped back, Kieran fell to the floor, and there was just enough time for him to lash out with a booted foot, burying it in Keiran’s stomach, before he was dragged away.
“You okay?” Mitchell asked of Kieran, bending to help him to his feet after shoving Oliver across the room.
“Sure. That pussy couldn’t hurt a flea,” Kieran said dismissively, ignoring the fact that the so-called ‘pussy’ had just floored him.
Oliver sneered at that. “Who the hell are you trying to kid? If anyone’s a pussy here, it’s you, and you know it. You couldn’t fight your way out of a wet paper bag. If your daddy hadn’t been here with his shotgun last week, I’da had you in hospital, and if the pigs hadn’t turned up today, I’da finished the job I started the other month. You’re a sick sonofabitch, and you need to die.” As he raged, he struggled against the handcuffs that kept him restrained, even though he had enough experience with handcuffs to know that it was impossible for him to break out of them.
“Shut up, Oliver,” Mitchell ordered. He righted one of the upturned chairs that had previously been around the table and pushed him down onto it. “You sure you’re okay?” When Kieran nodded, Mitchell got down to his reason for being there. “I’m sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, Kieran, but…”
“You never said you was sorry when you told me,” Oliver butted in angrily as he half rose from the hard, wooden chair he had been put on.
Mitchell pushed Oliver back down, glad of the handcuffs that made the violent twenty-year-old easier to deal with. “I would’ve said sorry, but you never gave me a chance,” he said, fixing him with a hard look. “You ran off the moment I told you what’s happened, before I could say anything else, so you could come here and attack Kieran, for no reason other than you don’t like him.”
“Don’t like him, I fucking hate him,” Oliver snarled as he continued to struggle. “Uncuff me, I wanna kill that sick sonofabitch.”
“Shut-up and behave yourself,” Mitchell told him. He shoved Oliver down again, this time with enough force to rock the chair back on two legs momentarily. “If you don’t, I’ll have Melissa take you out to the car while I talk with Kieran.”
“Fuck you.” Oliver leaned forwards to stop his chair falling over, and then surged to his feet so he could launch himself at Kieran. Before he could cover half the distance, he was dragged to the floor by Mitchell.
“Melissa,” Mitchell called out as he struggled to keep Kieran on the floor.
Melissa skidded to a halt in the kitchen, having run down the passage to find out what was going on. It didn’t surprise her to find that Oliver Ryder had been causing trouble. “What do you need?” It looked to her as though everything was under control.
“Take this pain in the ass out to the car,” Mitchell told her. “Lock him in the back; we’ll take him to the station once we’re finished here.”
Melissa nodded and moved to take charge of the prisoner. She got him to his feet, with help from Mitchell, and then led him from the kitchen.
“Okay, now Oliver’s out of the way,” Mitchell said once he was alone with Kieran. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news…”
“It’s okay, I know why you’re here,” Kieran said sadly. “You’ve found Georgie.” He didn’t look at Mitchell as he said that, instead he focused on righting the table and chairs overturned during his fight with Kieran.
“Who told you?” Mitchell asked, bending to help with the table, he would not have liked to lay odds on who had contacted Kieran, the list of possibilities was too long.
“I must have been called or text by half the village in the last hour and a half,” Kieran said. He gave a short, humourless laugh. “You know how it is around here, nobody can wait to pass on any news they hear, especially if it’s bad news.”
Mitchell nodded, well aware of how much the villagers liked to gossip. “So what has everyone been telling you?” he asked, wondering how accurate the gossip had been – not very, was his guess.
“They all said pretty much the same thing,” Kieran said. “That Georgie was found this morning, and that she was – she was killed.” He could not bring himself to say murdered.
“That’s right,” Mitchell said. “I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t necessary to trouble you with this, and I wish you hadn’t had to hear about this from the village gossips, I had to tell the family first, though.”
“I understand, of course you had to tell Georgie’s parents first.”
“I hope you also understand that I need to ask you some questions. Some of them I might have asked before, but I need to ask them again, in case you’ve remembered something you didn’t think of before.”
“What sort of questions?” Kieran wanted to know.
“Well, first off, where were you on Friday evening, a week ago?”
“You already asked me that, last week.”
“I know, but as I said, some of the questions I need to ask, you’ve already answered, but I need to be sure you didn’t forget something that you now remember,” Mitchell told him. “So, where were you last Friday?”
“At the cinema.”
“What time was that?”
“I got there, musta been about half-eight.”
“As I recall, you said you were supposed to meet Georgina.”
Kieran nodded. “We were supposed to go to the cinema together. She text me just after six to say she was stopping at her cousin’s, and would meet me at the farm after, then we could head into town. She never turned up, though. I hung around for ages, waiting for her, then I went looking, but couldn’t find her. In the end I gave up and went into town on my own. I never saw her.”
“Weren’t you worried when she didn’t show up like she was supposed to?”
Kieran thought about that briefly and then shook his head. “I think I was more annoyed than worried. When she didn’t turn up, I figured Georgie had let her bloody cousin talk her into sticking around and cleaning up after him and his moron friends, like he always does. I thought, if that’s what she wants to do, it’s fine with me, I’d just go and see a film I wanted to see, instead of the stupid, sappy romance I was supposed to see with her.”
“What time did you get back from the cinema?”
Kieran shrugged. “Half-twelve, one a.m., something like that I’d guess. I don’t really remember. It was definitely after midnight, ‘cause the film didn’t finish ‘til about eleven, and it’s over an hour’s drive to get back here from the cinema.”
“Can any of your family confirm what time you got home?”
“No, they were all in bed, so it was definitely after midnight ‘cause Em’s usually up ‘til ‘bout midnight. Wa
it, yes, Tara can. She might not know exactly what time it was, but she can give you a rough idea,” Kieran said as he remembered. “A ninja I’m not, I dropped my phone on the way up the stairs, and it bounced all the way down; the noise woke Tara, she came to see what was going on, had a go at me for waking her, went to the bathroom for a pee, and then went back to bed.”
“Why didn’t you pick Georgina up, instead of her coming out here to meet you?” Mitchell asked. “You could have met her at Oliver’s, it would have been more sensible than her walking up here.”
“I was supposed to meet her down in the village,” Kieran admitted. “But I was having problems with my car. I’ve been trying to save up enough to get it fixed for good, but I can’t afford it right now, so I’m having to bodge it. Damn thing conked out on me just as I was leaving to pick Georgie up, took me and dad about twenty minutes to get it going again. I text Georgie to let her know what was going on, that’s when she said she was gonna stop in at her cousin’s, and head up here if she didn’t hear from me first.”
“Why didn’t you head down to Oliver’s to pick her up once you got the car going?”
Kieran snorted. “You’ve seen what he’s like, he hates me, attacks me every time he sees me. Georgie hates it when I fight with her idiot of a cousin, so I avoid him as much as I can.”
Mitchell doubted that that was the only reason Kieran avoided Oliver; he suspected it was more because he wasn’t as tough as his girlfriend’s cousin, and didn’t want to get beaten up.
“I didn’t want to get into a fight, that’s why I stayed away; besides, I figured if Georgie was gonna choose to hang out with her cousin, instead of going to the cinema with me, I was better off going on my own.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter, but his indifference was quickly replaced by a deep sadness. “When I – when I heard the next morning that Georgie was – that she was missing…” He fell silent for several long moments. “I wished I’d looked for her, wished I’d done more than just text to ask where she was, and then gotten annoyed when she didn’t answer.
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