“Coke then, and make sure it’s cold,” he couldn’t resist adding.
“I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything,” Melissa told him.
The kettle had boiled by the time she returned to the kitchen, and she filled the three mugs she had prepared. Two of the mugs she delivered to Mitchell and Constable Pritchard, while the third, she kept for herself. With the mug in one hand, and the last can of coke from the fridge in the other, Melissa headed back to Oliver.
“I’m very sorry, Oliver,” she said sincerely when she had unlocked the cell and handed over the can. “Sergeant Mitchell and I have just come back from taking your uncle to town; he’s confirmed that the body found this morning is your cousin, Georgina.”
“No!” Oliver launched himself off the bed with a howl of anguish. Coke fountained from the can in his hand as he crushed it and threw it aside. His eyes flashed angrily, his nostrils flared, and his hands clenched and unclenched themselves into fists as though they ached to be smashed into something or someone.
Melissa had always been frightened of Oliver Ryder – not so much of him as a person, but of the violence he was capable of when angry. She stood her ground, though, determined not to show what she was thinking or feeling, and sipped at her coffee in an outward show of calm that was almost betrayed by the minor trembling of her hand.
“It’s okay, everything’s fine, there’s no need to panic,” Melissa told her colleagues when they hurried along the passage to find out what was going on.
“You sure?” Mitchell asked, looking past Melissa and into the cell, where Oliver was pacing up and down and swearing under his breath.
Melissa nodded. “It’s fine, Oliver’s just blowing off some steam, aren’t you, Ollie,” she said with a quick glance over at her shoulder at the pacing prisoner. “I just gave him the news about Georgina, and he’s a little upset.”
“Okay, well, I’m just along the passage if you need me,” Mitchell said. “You behave yourself, Oliver.”
Melissa was trying to decide what to say next, and how to say it, when Oliver surprised her with a question.
“Have you arrested him yet?” he asked as he stopped his frenetic pacing to face Melissa with his hands balled into fists at his sides.
Perplexed, the mug in Melissa’s hand froze on its way to her lips. “Arrested who?” she asked, though she realised straightaway who he must be talking about.
“That psycho prick, Wright, who d’you think I mean?”
“No, we haven’t arrested him, we have no reason to. What’ve you got against Kieran Wright?” Melissa wanted to know. “I know you think he’s a prick, but I’ve never heard anyone else say anything bad about him, other than that he can be a bit full of himself, and you’re just as bad there. Personally, I’d pick you as a murderer ahead of Kieran, especially after earlier.”
“If you guys hadn’t come, I’d have finished that asshole.”
“Exactly. But why? You must have a reason for hating Kieran so much, and for thinking he killed your cousin. If you know something, you have to tell us,” Melissa insisted. “This isn’t just about Georgina, Ollie, Lucy’s missing as well.”
“What’re you talking about?” Oliver surged to his feet again. “Why hasn’t anyone told me Lucy’s missing? How long’s she been gone? What’s happened to her?”
“If you hadn’t acted like such an idiot earlier, racing off to attack Kieran the moment you were told about Georgina, you’d have found out then. It’s part of what we wanted to talk to you about,” Melissa told him. “Her mum reported her missing last night. Of course, we couldn’t do anything then because she’s sixteen, but her mum still hadn’t seen or heard from her by this morning.
“After Georgina was discovered, we realised we had to take her absence seriously; so far we’ve discovered that the last time she was seen is yesterday afternoon, about two…”
“Let me guess, by Wright!” Oliver spat the name. “Can’t you see, you should be arresting him, not standing here talking to me like it’s any other time you’ve got me banged up. That sick bastard killed Georgie, and he’s probably killed Lucy by now as well. I don’t even wanna think about what he did to them before he killed them, the sick fuck!”
“What is your problem with him? Come on, what is it? There must be a reason for you to hate him so much.”
“You wanna know what my problem with that asshole is. He’s a rapist, that’s my problem with the bastard, he’s a fuckin’ rapist!”
“Are you saying Kieran raped Georgina? When did this happen?”
“No, I don’t know, maybe; she never said anything if he did. I’d’ve killed him already if she told me something like that, even with his daddy protecting him.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Lucy.”
“Kieran raped Lucy?”
“As good as. He sure as hell tried to.” Oliver’s face darkened, and he punched one fist into the other palm, hard enough to make Melissa wince. “That’s why she dumped his ass. He got her one night, up at the picnic area, when they were seeing each other. He tried it on, and when she said no, he attacked her.
“If she hadn’t managed to get away, he’d’ve raped her.” He saw the look on Melissa’s face. “You don’t believe Lucy would be seeing someone and not sleeping with them.”
“Her reputation does make it difficult to accept.”
Oliver gave her a look of amused bemusement. “Don’t ask me to understand women, especially Lucy. She were with Wright for months, and wouldn’t let him go further than copping a feel, but she jumped me the first night.”
“Did she tell you Kieran tried to rape her? She never reported it to us. At least not that I heard, and I’m pretty sure I’d have heard about it if she had.”
“Yeah, she told me, she told me after he attacked her the second time.” As he spoke, Oliver rhythmically slammed his fist into his palm; a smacking sound gave testimony to the strength with which he did so. “He was seeing Georgie by then, but that didn’t stop him when he saw Lucy walking home after he dropped Georgie off one night. He grabbed her and tried to rape her again.
“She got away and bumped into me. I took her back to my place to calm her down, that’s where she told me what happened, and that it weren’t the first time.”
“And that’s when you attacked him.” Melissa recalled the incident easily, she had gotten a black eye while trying to break up the fight. “Why didn’t she tell her parents, or report it to us, the first time he attacked her?”
“Would you have believed her? You already mentioned her rep; you know what people think of her. I doubt anyone’d believe her over Wright. They’d just assume she was lying to cause trouble.”
“So instead, she told you.”
“Yeah. We’d hooked up a few times and started seeing each other when it happened, if that’s what you want to call what we do. So, when I took her back to my place and calmed her down, she told me. She needed to tell someone, and knew her parents wouldn’t listen, and you guys wouldn’t believe her.”
“And you decided the best way to deal with the situation was to find Kieran and attack him.”
Oliver shrugged, as if it was what anyone else would have done in his place. “I knew it weren’t worth looking for him that night, he would’ve been home by the time I got to him, and attacking him there were a stupid idea. He’s got a shotgun, and so’s his dad. I did it the next time I saw him in the village.
“He were just coming out o’ the pub when I nailed him, and I nailed him good.” His satisfaction evident in his face and voice. “I would’ve finished the job if you guys hadn’t come along and dragged me off him.”
“It’s just as well we did, if we hadn’t, you’d be in jail now for murder.”
“Better that than leaving him alive to do whatever he did to Georgie and Lucy. I’d have gone to jail happily if it kept Georgie alive. So, are you gonna arrest that bastard now?”
“That’s not up to me,” Meliss
a told him. “It’s up to Sergeant Mitchell. I’ll tell him what you’ve said. I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about it later. I know he was planning on talking to you anyway. He’ll be the one who decides who we arrest.”
“If you don’t arrest that prick for what he’s done, I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill him the next time I see him.”
*****
“So, you don’t think we should pay any attention to what Oliver said.” Melissa’s voice was disapproving. “You think we should just ignore him.”
“I didn’t say that,” Mitchell said, pausing in the act of getting out of the car. “I just don’t think we can do anything, when all we have are the suspicions of a guy we know has a problem with Kieran. We have absolutely no reason for thinking Kieran’s responsible for Georgina’s murder, other than Oliver’s accusation. It’s not like Kieran has a history of violence, nor has anyone complained to us about his behaviour.
“If Lucy had come to us, or even told her parents what Kieran supposedly did, or tried to do, we might be able to do something with it, but it’s an accusation made by someone we know has no problem lying to us, against someone we know he can’t stand. For all we know, Oliver could be trying to cause trouble for Kieran, just to be a pain in the ass.”
“Maybe,” Melissa agreed. “But it could also explain why Ollie’s attacked Kieran three times in the last month, when he’s barely paid any attention to him before. And Ollie explained why Lucy didn’t come to us or tell her parents, she didn’t think she’d be believed, or that we’d do anything about it, though I’d like to think we’d have looked into it, even if we weren’t convinced she was telling the truth.”
“Of course we would,” Mitchell said quickly. “We’d investigate any accusation, no matter what it was, or who made it.” With that he got out of the car and started up the path, signalling that he was done discussing the matter.
16
Zack was showering when the doorbell rang. He cursed briefly, and hoped that whoever was at the door would go away. A second chime told him the person on his doorstep was not going to leave so easily, and it was then that he remembered his neighbour telling him the police had been looking for him.
Stepping out of the shower, he crossed to the window so he could poke his head out.
“I’ll be right there,” he called out, before returning to the shower long enough to rinse himself off. Once he had done that he dried himself off quickly and left the bathroom, wrapping the towel around his waist as he did headed down the stairs.
Answering the door wearing just a towel was not something he would do usually, he didn’t consider it decent, but on that occasion he thought it better to let the police in and then get dressed.
“Forgive my appearance,” he said once he had greeted the two officers on his doorstep. “You caught me in the shower. If you’ll wait in the living room, I’ll get dressed and be right down.”
Melissa took a seat on the sofa, while Mitchell took a position near the fireplace so he could see the whole room and get some idea of what sort of person Zack Wild was, and whether he could be the killer he suspected he was.
Zack was back in under five minutes, having swapped the towel for a pair of well-worn blue jeans and a dark blue t-shirt. “Can I get either of you anything to drink?” he asked from the doorway.
“No, thank you,” Mitchell said before Melissa had a chance to say anything.
“Okay, in that case, I guess we should get down to your reason for being here.” Zack left the doorway and took the armchair. “I assume this visit has something to do with the body I found this morning.”
Mitchell nodded. “Yes. We have some more questions we need to ask you about Georgina Ryder, and about another matter that has come up. Do you have the time to talk?” he asked. He was ready to arrest the writer if he answered in the negative, but he didn’t want to do that without good cause; he suspected it would cause problems.
“Sure, I haven’t got anything else I need to do today.”
“Okay, well, first off, you said earlier that you normally follow the road through the village and head out towards town when on one of your runs; have you ever gone down by the river before today?”
“I’ve been that way before, only the once, though. I’ve explored most of the village, and the countryside around it – not in any great depth, but well enough to get around.”
“When was it you explored the riverbank along from the pub?”
A shrug was Zack’s immediate response. “Not sure exactly, it was a while ago, back around the time I first moved here.”
“So you haven’t been that way in the past week or so? You wouldn’t know if there had been anyone hanging around the area where you found Georgina Ryder?”
“No, ‘fraid not.”
Mitchell showed no sign of being bothered by that answer, though he did react when he was posed a question in return.
“Do I take it you’ve been able to identify the girl I found?” Zack asked.
“Yes. Did you know her?”
“As I said at the station when you questioned me, I’d heard the name around the village,” Zack said. “As I understand it, she was missing for about a week, but I don’t think I ever met her – in passing maybe, but not properly.”
Mitchell responded to that by taking out the photograph of Georgina Ryder that had been provided by her mother when she was reported missing. “This is Georgina,” he said. “Do you remember meeting her now?”
Zack took the photograph but soon shook his head. “Sorry, never met her; I did see her around the village a couple of times, in the shop or something, I never spoke to her, though.”
“When did you last see her?”
“No idea.”
That was not the answer Mitchell was after, and he had to stop himself grinding his teeth in frustration. Once he had the impulse under control, he said, “So you didn’t see her last Friday evening? Only we have a report that she was seen heading up the road outside on her way to the Wright Farm.”
“I wish I could help, but I didn’t see anyone last Friday.”
“You’re sure about that?” Mitchell asked. When Zack nodded, he said, “Where were you last Friday evening, from about six?”
“At home, I was home all evening.”
“And you definitely didn’t see Georgina, or anyone who could be responsible for what happened to her?”
Zack shook his head. “Like I said, I didn’t see anyone.”
“So you were at home all evening and you didn’t see anyone,” Mitchell said dubiously. “What were you doing?”
“This and that, nothing special, mostly just pottering around, keeping myself busy.”
Mitchell couldn’t conceal what a hard time he was having believing the author. “Is there anyone who can confirm where you were, or what you were doing?”
A rueful smile touched Zack’s lips. “I wish I could say yes, but I can’t, I was on my own. You’ll probably be able to find time stamps for things on Facebook and on the emails I sent out, but that’s all the alibi I have.”
Since he had nothing, yet, to contradict Wild’s alibi, Mitchell had no choice but to accept it and move on. “Do you know a Lucy Goulding?” He wondered if the lack of surprise shown by Wild meant anything.
“I wouldn’t say I know her,” Zack said. “She turned up on my doorstep yesterday afternoon.”
Such an open admission was the last thing Mitchell expected. He had been sure he would have to reveal that there was a witness before getting Zack Wild to admit to knowing her. “She came to see you? What time was that?”
“A little after two; I’m not sure of the exact time,” Zack answered. “Has something happened to her?”
Mitchell ignored the question. “How long was she here? Why was she here?”
Melissa thought the second question a little pointless – it seemed obvious to her why Lucy had visited the author – but supposed it had to be asked, for the sake of thoroughness.
�
��She was here for about an hour, something like that. She got here not long after two, and it was getting on for half three when she left. I wasn’t looking at the clock, so I can’t give you exact times, sorry.” Even to his own ears, his apology sounded insincere.
“Why was she here for that long?”
Zack ignored both the suspicion in Mitchell’s voice and the question, instead of responding to them he repeated his own inquiry. “Has something happened to Lucy?”
“We’re not sure,” Mitchell made the admission reluctantly. “She hasn’t been seen since yesterday afternoon, and, so far, you’re the last person to have seen her. Now, why was Lucy Goulding here? What time did she leave, and is there anyone who can confirm that she actually did leave?”
“Yes, my neighbour, Mrs Hawkins, she was pottering around her garden for most of the afternoon; I’m sure she’ll be able to give you a rough idea of when Lucy left.”
The moment he heard that Mitchell left Wild’s so he could head next door and speak to his suspect’s neighbour.
Zack turned to the constable on his sofa the moment he heard his front door close on the sergeant. “Now he’s out of the way, how about a drink? I don’t know about you, but I could do with a coffee.”
“Sure, a coffee would be good,” Melissa agreed. She had been annoyed by Mitchell’s dismissal of the offer of a drink on her behalf, and was happy to take advantage of the second offer.
“How do you like it?”
“White, three sugars,” Melissa said, flashing an apologetic, and slightly embarrassed, smile when Zack paused to look back at her. “I’ve got a really sweet tooth. Everyone’s always saying I should be really fat, probably diabetic, and missing at least a few teeth; don’t ask me how I’m not, I guess I must have a super-fast metabolism or something.”
“Consider yourself lucky, there’s plenty of people who’d kill for a metabolism like that. I’d be happy with one half as good,” Zack commented. “It seems like since I hit thirty, my metabolism’s hit the brakes.”
Almost the moment he was out of the living room, Zack heard stealthy footsteps; he guessed that Melissa was looking around to satisfy her curiosity, either about him personally, or about his visit from Lucy. He knew he should be offended, but he didn’t care; no matter how hard she searched, he knew the constable would not find anything that would suggest he had had anything to do with either Lucy’s disappearance or Georgina Ryder’s murder.
Written In Blood Page 10
