MURDER AMONG FRIENDS a totally gripping crime thriller full of twists

by JANICE FROST

  “As I said, she went to the gig with her friend. At some point, the two got separated.” She stopped as Thea emitted a strangled sob. Lottie patted her arm. “It’s alright, sweetheart. We don’t know if anything’s happened to her yet.”

  Steph and Elias exchanged glances. Steph looked at Thea. “Who are you talking about? Stacey? The friend who told you about Adam and his mates?” Thea bit down on the knuckles of her right hand. They’d get nothing from her. Steph looked urgently at Lottie.

  “Yes. I waited outside with Thea until the gig was over. Stacey was supposed to be going back to Thea’s for the night. We waited until everyone came out, then went back inside to check if Stacey was in the loo or something, but we couldn’t find her.”

  “There would have been a lot of people streaming out all at once,” Steph said, “and it must have been quite dark. Are you sure you didn’t just miss her?”

  For the first time, Lottie looked uncertain. “I’ve never actually met Stacey, but Thea showed me a selfie she’d taken of them earlier in the evening, when they were getting ready to go out.”

  “Right. I still think you could easily have missed her. It’s not that easy to recognise someone from a selfie, and I’m assuming Thea was in no state to concentrate. Couldn’t Stacey simply have gone home? Have you checked?”

  “I rang Stacey’s house this morning, pretending to be one of her friends.” I didn’t want to worry her mum and dad by saying she was missing, you know, until . . .”

  Alarm bells were ringing in Steph’s head. “What about her sister, Karina? Have you checked if she knows where Stacey is?”

  Lottie nodded. Steph hadn’t expected anything less of her. “Karina went back to her mates’ hall after the gig. They had a party in the communal kitchen. Karina stayed over.”

  “Did you tell Karina her sister was missing, or didn’t you want to worry her either?”

  “Thea called her. She said Stacey had lost her coat at the gig and asked if Karina had maybe picked it up. Karina would have said if Stacey was there, wouldn’t she?”

  “Not necessarily. If she’d been partying half the night and you woke her up at the crack of dawn.” Steph looked at Thea. “Call her, now.”

  The look of dismay on Thea’s face didn’t get her off the hook. “We need to know if this is a false alarm,” Steph said sternly. “Turn it up so we can all hear.”

  The phone shook in Thea’s hand as she made the call. “Hello? Karina? It’s Thea Martin.”

  “Thea? Oh, yeah, Thea. Stacey’s friend. Did you call earlier, or did I dream that?” She yawned.

  “Is . . . is Stacey with you?”

  “No. Wasn’t she supposed to be going back to yours last night? Did she change her mind? Isn’t she answering her phone? Typical! It’s only ten o’clock, mind you. Stace never gets up before half ten on a Sunday. Try her again in half an hour, okay? I need to go to the bathroom. Byeee!”

  So that was that. Still didn’t mean any harm had come to Stacey.

  Yeah, right. The warning bells in Steph’s head had gone silent, but they’d been replaced by another, equally alarming sound: her own heart, pounding wildly in her ears.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Ed had left early. It was Sunday, but he was driving out to Louth later on, to make a delivery to a client. “Come with me. We can have lunch in a cosy pub somewhere deep in the Lincolnshire Wolds.” But Jane passed. She needed a bit of time to process the events of the past few hours.

  Ed had looked disappointed. Then he’d reassured her. “There’s no rush.” That was all he said, but the words meant everything.

  She’d expected the house to feel different after he’d gone. It did, but in an unexpectedly good way. There were reminders all around that she hadn’t just imagined the past nine hours. Two toothbrushes in the bathroom (Ed had borrowed one of hers), two wine glasses on the coffee table in the sitting-room (both half full). When she took them to the kitchen, she found Ed’s scarf (cashmere, tartan) draped over the back of one of the chairs. Possessions left behind meant that their owner had to come back.

  Jane picked up the scarf and held it to her cheek. It smelled faintly of Ed. She smiled, wrapped it around her neck, half wishing she’d accepted his offer of a trip to the Wolds. Idiot. Acting like a lovesick schoolgirl.

  She felt restless. It would have been a good day to be wearing her uniform, either out on the streets or in the patrol car. She wondered how the investigation into Mark and Kylie’s death was progressing, as she did every day. She hadn’t heard from Warwick since she’d turned up to interview Thea.

  The look on Warwick’s face when she walked into the sitting-room at Thea’s house and saw Jane sitting on the sofa! Priceless! She’d barely been able to acknowledge her presence. Not that she’d behaved much better. She hadn’t exactly jumped up and embraced Warwick.

  Jane’s phone rang. A number she didn’t recognise.

  “Hello. You don’t know me. My name’s Lottie Purdey. I’m with your friend, Thea Martin.”

  “Thea! Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine, but she’s a bit upset. We’ve just been talking to the police. I was going to get her a taxi home, but she says she’d rather go to your house — if that’s okay with you?”

  Jane was pretty sure her heart rate had just quadrupled. “Of course. Where are you right now?”

  “About a minute from your front door.”

  Jane rushed to her door, still holding her phone. She hurried up the steps to the pavement, looked right and left. A young woman waved to her from a short distance away. Thea was by her side.

  Thea ran to her. “Oh, Jane! Something terrible’s happened.”

  “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.”

  Lottie was included in the invitation, but she shook her head. “Now that I know Thea’s okay, I’ll head back to the uni. I’ve got a seminar on Monday that I need to prepare for.”

  Jane led Thea inside and sat her down at the kitchen table. “Whatever it is, I’m pleased you’ve come to me,” she said. “When that young woman called and said you’d come from the police station, I was afraid something bad had happened to you.”

  “I wish it had! Then I wouldn’t feel so terrible.”

  “Come on. Tell me what’s up.”

  “Stacey’s gone missing.”

  “When? How?” Jane listened while Thea gave her a rundown of the events of the previous evening. It was an effort to stay calm and not interrupt until she’d finished. When she had, Jane fired out one question after another. “What did DI Warwick say? Did she take it seriously? Is she going to investigate? What did she say when Lottie told her Adam Eades and his mates had been watching you?” She paused. “Sorry, Thea. I shouldn’t be bombarding you with questions.”

  “It’s okay. I just want someone to do something. I don’t trust that DI Warwick.”

  That’s my doing. “She knows her job.”

  “I don’t care. I trust you.”

  “Thea, I’m suspended from duty, and even if I weren’t, there wouldn’t be much I could do. I don’t — didn’t — have the authority or the powers of a detective inspector. And I can’t wear the uniform while I’m under suspension.”

  “People don’t know that you’re suspended, do they? Anyway, you don’t need a uniform. You can investigate without one. Private detectives do.”

  Jane couldn’t think of an appropriate reply to that. Private detective. Hmm. She turned the idea over in her head and liked the images the words conjured up.

  Without the uniform, as she’d pointed out to Thea, she’d have no authority, no additional powers over an ordinary citizen. On the other hand, as a PI she would have the freedom to investigate a case without being hampered by her rank as a special. No more being constrained by her lowly status in a hierarchy in which she couldn’t, at her age, hope to progress much further. Best of all, she wouldn’t have Warwick at her back. She had to admit it was an attractive fantasy. But fantasy was all it was.

&
nbsp; “Jane? Are you okay?

  “What? Yes, I’m fine. I was just thinking about what you said.”

  “You’d make a brilliant private detective, Jane. You can get people to talk to you. I bet they don’t open up to that tight-arsed DI Warwick. You can start by finding Stacey.”

  Thea’s faith in her was touching. Jane smiled at her apt description of Warwick. “I’m not sure I know where to start.” She sighed. “What if I make us some coffee and we go over what happened last night again? You might remember some more details.”

  A few minutes later, bolstered by a frothy cappuccino, Thea recounted what she remembered. “It’s a shame I was so drunk. It really does give you blank spaces in your memory, doesn’t it? I’m never touching alcohol again.”

  Jane smiled. She’d said that plenty of times herself, and every time she’d believed it.

  “Karina only got us two cocktails each, but Stacey had sneaked in some vodka in her handbag. She kept topping us up.”

  “So, would it be fair to say that Stacey was as intoxicated as you were?”

  “Probably. Maybe she wasn’t as completely out of it. I wish I’d gone with her when she asked. I wouldn’t normally just abandon her. It’s just . . . the music seemed like it was alive inside me. I couldn’t pull myself away.” She sipped her coffee. Jane waited. She could see Thea frowning, as though trying to remember more. “Come to think of it, there is something I didn’t mention to DI Warwick.”

  Jane leaned in closer. “It’s probably not important. I forgot to tell her that I’d met up with Stacey earlier in the day. We went to one of those vintage craft fairs at the uni, then we had lunch at the Savvy Swan with Stacey’s sister, Karina. Adam Eades and Phil Lavin were there with another man. I recognised him, but only because he was with Adam and Phil. You know how a memory is sometimes triggered by something sort of associated with it?” Jane nodded. “I realised I’d seen him at the leisure club. Stacey said she thought he was one of the exercise coaches there, so that would explain it. He’s probably a student too.”

  “You didn’t tell DI Warwick any of this?”

  “I only told her about the evening. She knows Adam and Phil were at the gig with two other men. One of them was the guy who’d been with them at the Swan. I didn’t recognise the other man. My head was still a mess when Warwick questioned me, and I forgot to mention we’d seen them earlier in the day.” She smiled at Jane. “See. You are a great detective. You got me to remember something that DI Warwick didn’t.”

  “This other man, the one you said you didn’t recognise. Was he the one Lottie told the police was taking a lot of interest in you and Stacey?”

  “I think so.”

  “And you definitely didn’t recognise him?”

  “No. Sorry. He seemed to stick close to the guy from the leisure club. The one Stace said was an exercise coach.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Medium-sized, bulky, brown hair and bearded. He wasn’t hot like Adam and his mates. I wouldn’t even have noticed him if he hadn’t been with them. He was sort of . . . meh, if you know what I mean.”

  Jane did. Meh was her son’s favourite word. He used it in response to her questions about everything from how he was feeling to what his latest girlfriend looked like.

  “He was just kind of ordinary.” Thea looked at Jane. “Maybe he works at the club too? That would explain why he seemed to keep close to the exercise coach guy.” Thea looked pleased with her deduction. She sat back and sipped her cappuccino.

  Her theory sent a creeping sensation up Jane’s spine. The associations with Hi! To Fitness seemed to be stacking up. Mark, Adam and Phil had all been there. Now it appeared that at least one of the men accompanying them the previous night worked there.

  Other memories began to stir, as though triggered, like Thea said, by association. She recalled Kylie’s description of the man who had harassed her in the restaurant. A man of average height, heavy-set, with dark hair and a beard. Mr Generic. It was almost word for word how Thea had just described the man at the Savvy Swan.

  “Right.” Jane said nothing more. She needed some time to absorb what Thea had just told her.

  The man who abducted Stacey might also be connected with the leisure club in some way. Adam, Phil and Mark were regulars there. The friend who’d been with them last night worked at the leisure club. The other man had stuck close to him. Was he another student? Or a colleague at the leisure club, as Thea suggested.

  Jane thought of the description Thea had given her of the man she’d described as hot. Things began to fall into place. She was pretty sure that he was Chase, the good-looking young man who’d shown her around Hi! To Fitness the day she’d gone there to get some information on Adam and Phil, under the pretext of being interested in taking up membership.

  “Oh, something else has just popped into my head,” Thea said. “I must be sobering up. When he was stretching across the pool table, his shirt gaped open across his stomach a bit and I could see he was really hairy.”

  Jane stared at Thea, another memory by association forming in her mind. It seemed like the confirmation she needed. “I think I know who they both might be.”

  Chase’s handsome features and blond hair had remained in her memory, precisely because it wasn’t every day that you were introduced to an Adonis. In contrast, she could scarcely recall a single feature about the other young man she’d met that day. The one who’d been more interested in ogling the young women in their bikinis than telling her about the pool. When she tried to summon up an image of him in her mind, all that she could come up with was a vague impression of hirsuteness, and not a lot else. The reason? He had been quite ordinary. Unmemorable. Indistinguishable from hordes of other young men his age. He was Mr Generic.

  “Jane?” Thea said. “Who are they?”

  “The exercise coach is called Chase.”

  “And the other one?”

  “His name is Dale. He’s a pool attendant at Hi! To Fitness.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Steph would have liked a double gin laced with ice and tonic. Instead, she had to settle for making herself a cup of coffee in the station kitchen. She’d known it was going to be a long, long day the moment it was confirmed that Thea Martin’s friend, Stacey, had not gone home, or to her sister’s after attending the gig at the university. Any hopes that she might simply have left with another friend, or someone she’d met at the gig, dwindled as the day wore on and the usual missing persons protocols failed to uncover her whereabouts.

  Now Steph had Stacey’s guilt-stricken and anxious sister and her worried parents to deal with. She’d sent a family liaison officer round to their home to keep them up to date with any developments, and if she were being honest, to keep them off her back. Add to all this the pressures of two ongoing murder investigations. She was beginning to feel overloaded.

  Karina Ashworth had last seen her sister when she arrived at the venue for the gig. She confessed to having bought Stacey and Thea a couple of drinks each. Cocktails. She should have known better. Steph made sure she was aware of it.

  Thea had told them Stacey had smuggled in a bottle of vodka. No wonder Thea had looked so delicate when Lottie brought her to the station that morning. It was a wonder she hadn’t needed to be rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.

  Steph allocated a couple of officers to carry out a foot search of the local area, check for CCTV opportunities and collect details that would allow a missing person’s report to be collated. She also ensured that someone contacted the COMPACT missing person system to see if Stacey had gone missing before or was on the system, just in case. She wanted to make sure that full information was recorded in case a statement was needed at a later stage.

  Lottie Purdey and some of her friends, including Tristan and Ivy, were mounting their own search for Stacey, showing her picture around campus. They had also posted requests on social media with pleas for anyone who’d seen Stacey at or after the gig to
come forward. This had already resulted in a message being relayed to the police that Stacey had been seen in the Ladies toilets about ten minutes before the band went off stage. That was when Thea had slipped off into the crowd to continue dancing. The witness had confirmed that Stacey seemed very drunk, on ecstasy, or both.

  A little later, Lottie contacted the station again to say that she’d heard from two female students who’d been stopped by a young woman fitting Stacey’s description. She’d asked them if they’d seen her friend. They claimed to have seen the same young woman stopping other people, presumably asking them the same thing. This had been after the band returned to the stage to perform their encore of two more songs. The same time that Thea had left with Lottie.

  Steph recalled what Lottie had said that morning. She’d been concerned about Thea because she was obviously very drunk. She’d also mentioned that Adam Eades and Phil Lavin had been at the gig and that one of their friends had been taking an interest in Thea. Could it have been Stacey he was really interested in? He could have kept an eye on Thea, thinking Stacey would re-join her at some point. Then, when Lottie led Thea outside, he would have had to have changed his plan and gone looking for Stacey. If he’d abducted her before the end of the gig, that would explain why Lottie and Thea didn’t see her leaving the venue. Had he spotted Thea and Lottie as he left the area? They hadn’t seen him.

  It was possible Stacey had approached Adam’s group seeking information about Thea, and he’d seen his opportunity. Maybe he’d even followed her and offered to help her find Thea.

  Steph shared Lottie’s latest information with Elias. “We need to interview Eades and Lavin again. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The house across the street from Adam and Phil’s had had a new window fitted, Steph noted. The planks of wood that had been used to board over the broken glass were lying on the street outside the front door.