Missing Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘Of course, but Leo isn’t based here full-time. He’s only needed in particular circumstances, so his main job is elsewhere at a private clinic. There are some regular times when he comes in to monitor patients, so I can check the rotas to see when he’ll be in next.’ She went to look. ‘He’ll be back in on Friday, unless we have any other emergencies.’

  ‘Paddy Henderson. His treatment has ended, has it?’

  ‘Paddy?’ The question surprised her. ‘Yes, ages ago. I mean, I know that he still gets flashbacks, nightmares from time to time, but that’s par for the course. Often it can go on for years. Why do you ask?’

  ‘On the day after Dee went missing we asked him about her journey home, and he said, “if I’m there I can pick her up.” It gave me the impression he was here quite regularly anyway.’

  Ellen smiled. ‘Dee roped him in. You’ll have seen the “Heroes Welcome” collectors in the main foyer? Once a month Paddy comes in to do his stint at rattling the tin. When Dee’s on earlies he tries to arrange it around that, so that he can bring her in and take her home.’

  Their conversation ended and Mariner watched her go back into Lomax’s room to return the scrapbook, talking to the soldier as if he were fully awake. As Mariner was leaving, a porter came into the department carrying a pile of clean linen, which he deposited on a trolley at one end of the ward.

  If Dee was right-hand man to Leo Hayden, how would Paddy Henderson feel about that, Mariner wondered. Still no body or parcel of clothing for Dee had turned up. Was this because their washerwoman was feeling the heat, or was it because Dee’s disappearance was nothing to do with him or her at all?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Charlie had driven into the city centre and parked behind the former law courts on Corporation Street. He’d never had cause to go into betting shops except when he was on the job and he found them dismal places, all the more depressing because he knew they’d been a favourite haunt for his dad. Now that internet gambling had made it all so easy, though, places like this must surely be on their way out. It would be no great loss.

  Although imposing, Mark Kent turned out to be a disappointment. Well over six feet tall and heavily built, he had the kind of bulging muscles that Glover associated with steroid use. His brown hair was tied back in a lank ponytail, and his complexion was washed out. From beneath his shirt collar Glover could see the tail end of a tattoo in some kind of Gothic script, creeping up towards a ragged beard. Unless Larry Hausknecht had been very mistaken, or Kent had radically altered his appearance in the last eighteen months, he couldn’t possibly be the man who had attacked Chelsey. He was, however, interestingly evasive about what had happened on the night that Ricardo and Rosa got hurt. ‘I was very drunk,’ he said, as if that excused his behaviour.

  Glover showed him the photograph of Rosa. ‘Do you remember this woman?’

  Kent coloured up. ‘She got in the way. I didn’t mean to hurt her, and I said I was sorry. It’s a dump, that place,’ he added belligerently. ‘I don’t even know why we go there.’

  ‘Do you go there often?’ asked Glover.

  ‘I think the boss must get good rates or something.’

  ‘Do you dress up for these nights out?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know — suit, tie?’

  Kent laughed. ‘Do me a favour. I don’t even own a fucking suit.’

  ‘We’d like to take a swab, with your agreement, of course, for elimination purposes.’

  ‘Elimination from what?’

  ‘The enquiry into this woman’s murder,’ Charlie said, holding up Rosa’s picture again.

  Kent looked visibly frightened now. ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he said.

  ‘In that case I’m sure you’ll want us to rule you out as soon as possible,’ said Glover. He gave Kent a business card with the Granville Lane address on it and on the back he noted down the dates when Grace, Rosa and Dee had gone missing. ‘It would help too if you could tell us where you were on these dates. No hurry, it will do when you come in.’

  * * *

  Stepping outside the hospital, Mariner rang through to Vicky Jesson again. ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘No,’ she said, sounding wearied by it all. ‘And we’re about coming to the end. We’ll be packing up soon and coming back.’

  She sounded despondent and Glover seemed to have gone completely off the radar. If Mariner wasn’t careful, his team would start to fragment. He made a snap decision. ‘Do you know the Country Girl on Raddlebarn Road?’ he asked Jesson. She did. ‘Meet me there in half an hour. I think we might be looking in the wrong place.’

  ‘Now he tells me,’ said Jesson.

  ‘Aw, don’t be like that,’ said Mariner. ‘If you’re very good I’ll buy you a sandwich. And can you do something else for me? Find out from Ricardo the exact date when he and Rosa spent half the night in A&E. And ask him if Rosa went down to the cafeteria at any time.’

  ‘OK.’

  Mariner tried then to call Charlie Glover. When there was no reply he left a message telling Charlie the arrangement for meeting up. He could take it or leave it. Ringing off, Mariner went back into the foyer. He realised he had noticed without really seeing the ‘Heroes Welcome’ volunteers with their collecting tins. Today it was the turn of a woman in her fifties — the mother of a serviceman perhaps, or perhaps even the grandmother. Drawing out a handful of loose change from his trouser pocket, he dropped several coins into the plastic canister. In return he was given a friendly smile and an emblem of crossed rifles.

  At the enquiries desk Mariner was directed to the fifth-floor geriatric ward. For a while he thought he might be too late, but then he spied Councillor Clifton off in the distance pacing one of the corridors.

  ‘How is he?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘His condition’s improving, but they’re keeping him in.’

  ‘This may seem a strange question, but when did your father-in-law last have an attack of emphysema?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago,’ Clifton said. ‘That’s the problem. They are getting closer together and more severe.’

  ‘Did Grace ever come to visit her grandfather here?’

  ‘Yes, she was very good like that. Better than the other two, in fact. She used to call in on her way to work.’

  ‘Was your father-in-law in hospital around the time that Grace went missing?’

  Clifton considered for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘We had to go straight from here to the engagement party, and of course it was disappointing that Donald couldn’t come along to that either.’

  Mariner’s next stop was the hospital linen store. It appeared that the laundry services, like so many aspects of the NHS these days, were contracted out to a private company, whose logo was above the door, but the store room, with its shelves of clean linen and tubs of dirty laundry lined up underneath, awaiting collection, was staffed by Sunita, a tiny woman of about fifty. She accepted Mariner’s warrant card and his request as if his visit was the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘Have you worked here very long?’ Mariner asked, as she went to retrieve a sheet from the cupboard for him.

  ‘Nearly thirty years,’ she said proudly. ‘I started off at the old site and then came across to set things up here too. It’s all changed, of course. In the old days we used to have our own laundry and wash everything ourselves. Now all I have to do is exchange dirty for clean, and then distribute it around the hospital, so they won’t give me the staff any more.’

  ‘You must like it, though,’ said Mariner.

  ‘It’s a wonderful job,’ she beamed. ‘And I know my linens. Any place me and my husband stay, I always judge it by the quality of the sheets.’ She chuckled. ‘It drives him mad.’

  Mariner thanked her and took the sheet. Having used up most of his coins donating to ‘Heroes Welcome,’ he was forced to pay over the odds in the car park, practically enough to fund a small principality. He didn�
�t always bother with claiming expenses, but he would this time. Leaving the hospital, he drove across to the other side of the Bristol Road, to the pub where he’d arranged to meet Jesson.

  Although still a popular haunt for university students in the evenings, business at the Country Girl had presumably taken a hit since the closure of the old hospital, which now stood derelict and securely fenced off to keep out vandals. It was astonishing just how fast the new site had become established. Not long ago, it was impossible to move around these streets for parked cars, yet now the traffic flowed freely. Today the lunchtime trade in the pub was steady, and Mariner was pleased to see Charlie already there.

  ‘Got your message,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘What are you drinking, boss?’

  Ten minutes later Vicky Jesson joined them.

  ‘So what have you been up to, Charlie?’ Mariner asked.

  Charlie described his encounter with Mark Kent. ‘He’s a thug,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think he’s our man. I’ve asked him to come in and provide a forensic sample along with alibis for the key nights, though, just to be sure we can eliminate him.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Jesson, impressed.

  ‘The staff from Sceptre Betting frequent the Belvedere on a regular basis,’ he went on.

  ‘So that might explain why the hotel didn’t want to make a fuss about the incident,’ said Vicky.

  ‘Something else,’ said Charlie, reluctantly. ‘I remembered why the Belvedere rang a bell with me.’ He told them about the attack on Chelsey Skoyles. ‘I didn’t know if there might be a link.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Mariner, interested. ‘It would make sense that our washerwoman hasn’t started with abduction. There may be a history of other offences.’

  ‘Well, I’ve read the case notes,’ said Charlie. ‘And reasonably enough, the officers made the assumption that the attacker came from out on the street. They didn’t consider the possibility that he could have come from inside the hotel.’ He faltered.

  ‘And?’ said Mariner.

  Glover recounted what he’d gleaned from Chelsey and with Hausknecht. ‘The trouble is, I don’t think the case was pursued with much vigour. The implication from the case notes is that she was drunk, incapable and asking for it. Chelsey’s mother was pretty hostile towards me too. But the American’s agreed to help with putting together an e-fit, so we may get something out of it.’

  ‘It was worth looking at,’ concluded Mariner. He took a couple of swallows of his pint. ‘Out of interest, who was the original officer involved?’ he asked.

  Charlie concentrated hard on picking up his beer. ‘I can’t actually remember,’ he said. ‘I’d have to check back with the file.’ It was an uncharacteristic lapse.

  Vicky Jesson also had some limited intelligence to report. ‘Aside from one or two guests who stay regularly at the hotel, no one was there on both nights when the women disappeared.’

  ‘And who are the regulars?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘Two of them are musicians playing at Symphony Hall, who I suppose could theoretically have known Grace. Of those, one is Peter Sandstrom, a percussionist. But no one has told us that Grace ever mixed with the musicians, and his orchestra is on tour at the moment in South America, so it won’t be easy to get hold of him. Did you get anything new from the hospital?’

  Mariner recounted his conversation with Ellen Kingsley. ‘I’d be interested in talking to this Dr Hayden to ascertain if his relationship with Dee is purely professional. It might be that Dee was getting too close to him, or looked as if she was, which would bring us back to Paddy Henderson. It might have upset him.’

  ‘You really think that would be enough?’ asked Glover.

  ‘As a motive, it would hardly be unique. And as I’ve said before, Dee’s killing may not even have been deliberate. He still gets episodes from when he was in Afghanistan.’ Mariner paused while the waitress delivered their sandwiches. ‘An argument between them could have got out of hand, which might explain why Henderson’s so cut up about it. Either way, it would be interesting to invite him in for questioning.’

  ‘Are we talking intelligence or evidential?’ asked Jesson.

  ‘Intel for now,’ said Mariner. ‘But then we’ll see.’

  ‘Why did you want to know about Rosa’s trip to A&E?’

  ‘I was coming to that,’ said Mariner, taking a bite out of his ham and cheese panini. ‘We made an assumption that heavy-duty sheets could only come from a hotel, but that’s not the case, is it? Hospital sheets are heavy-duty and laundry-marked, too.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That our washerwoman might be someone at the hospital?’

  ‘Or someone who’s a regular visitor there. We can place Rosa at the Belvedere. It’s also a reasonable assumption that Grace walked past it. But so far we have no link between the hotel and Dee.’

  ‘Unless she walked past too,’ said Jesson, reasonably.

  ‘But that’s just speculation,’ Mariner pressed on. ‘I found out earlier today that on the day she went missing, Grace Clifton was at the QE visiting her grandfather before going on to Symphony Hall. We’ve wondered all along how it was that Grace and Rosa could have been taken off the street without anyone noticing and have even considered the possibility that it’s someone they know. But what if it’s just someone they’ve met before, someone they’ve talked to and who’s made a deliberate effort to get to know them?’

  ‘That’s a hell of a lot of people,’ said Charlie. ‘Have you got anyone in mind?’

  ‘It brings me back to Paddy Henderson,’ said Mariner. ‘He told us himself that when he can he tries to get over to the hospital to pick Dee up, to save her that tortuous journey home.’

  ‘But surely if Grace was visiting her grandfather before work it would be too early in the day,’ Jesson said.

  ‘Dee works various shifts. I’d have to check, but if she was on an early shift that week, Henderson could easily have been hanging around the hospital then. And he’s there on a regular basis anyway.’ Mariner brought out the crossed-rifles badge.

  ‘Isn’t the idea that you wear it on your lapel,’ said Charlie, ‘instead of hidden away in your pocket?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not sure that I fully agree with it,’ said Mariner, unable to articulate exactly why that might be.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Vicky, unexpectedly. ‘Some soldiers might be heroes, but it doesn’t mean they all are.’

  Charlie looked personally affronted, but they moved on.

  ‘My point is,’ said Mariner, ‘that once a month Paddy Henderson is in the hospital main foyer shaking a collecting box. The one thing we’ve been told about Grace and Rosa is that they’re friendly — that they would do anything for anyone. The likelihood is that they would also give to what they perceive to be a worthwhile cause, and in doing so they would engage with Paddy Henderson.’

  Charlie picked up the badge. ‘There was one of these in the drawer at Rosa’s house, I’m sure there was.’

  ‘We need to find out if Paddy Henderson was collecting at any of the times when Grace was visiting — or on the evening that Rosa was in A&E,’ said Mariner.

  ‘You’re thinking of Henderson for Rosa and Grace now too?’

  ‘It’s not impossible, is it? We’ve established that he had the opportunity.’

  ‘What about the motive?’

  ‘Again, I refer you to the PTSD.’

  ‘It’s a bit flimsy.’ Glover wasn’t convinced.

  ‘But he’s a regular visitor to the ward, so it would be easy enough for him to get hold of the right kind of sheets. They’re just sitting there.’

  ‘And his name fits with the necklaces,’ said Glover.

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Jesson. ‘One of the first things they learn in the military is to keep their clothes washed and pressed and their boots highly polished. It would be habitual for him.’

  ‘We need to get all over his alibis and see if there’s any chance he could have met Grace or Rosa,
’ said Mariner.

  ‘I bet the hospital foyer is covered by CCTV,’ said Charlie. ‘If we look at it for the days that Grace and Rosa were around we might see them talking to Henderson.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Mariner. He held Glover’s gaze.

  Glover eventually twigged. ‘Oh, not me,’ he complained. ‘I didn’t mean . . . I thought maybe a uniform . . .’

  ‘But you’d know exactly who and what you’re looking for,’ argued Mariner. ‘And we can’t afford any mistakes. Start with Rosa. As far as we know, she’s only been there on that single occasion, so he’d have to have met her then. He could have approached either woman in the canteen, or at any time. Both Rosa and Grace would have been wearing their name badges. He could have talked to them, found out where they worked, and met them “by chance” when they knocked off. That’s when he could very easily have picked them up. We should get hold of Henderson’s service record too and see if he’s got any history of violence. We’ll bring him in for questioning again. At the moment he thinks we see him as a victim in all this, so we might catch him off guard.’

  They finished their drinks and sandwiches and went out to the car park. ‘That’s quite a structure,’ said Jesson, as they approached the cars. ‘What is it?’

  Turning, Mariner followed her gaze towards the ornate red-brick tower peeping out above the trees. ‘Oh, it’s part of the old hospital,’ he said, getting out his car keys. ‘A water tower or some such, I think. You’ll have driven right past it.’

  * * *

  That evening Jamie fell asleep early, giving Mariner a rare opportunity to catch the late news. It featured a brief story about more than thirty soldiers who had been presented with medals by the Queen that day. The focus of the piece was a unit who had defended a vulnerable outpost over several days, sustaining a number of fatalities. The whole item lasted only a couple of minutes, but at the end of the footage Mariner thought he saw a face he’d seen before. Using the digi-box facility, he rewound the short clip, pausing at the relevant moment. At the back of the group was Lomax’s father, there to collect his son’s award. Soldiering it seemed was a family tradition — he was in uniform too.