Echoes of Guilt

by Rob Sinclair

  Gemma’s eyes were glazed over. ‘But he could get out? That’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘That’s never going to happen,’ Dani said. ‘I promise you.’

  Despite forcefully saying the words, she was petrified that she was wrong. What would it take for Daley to create enough doubt in a judge’s mind for them to downgrade the original murder conviction?

  Dani slipped the picture across the table. A close-up of Liam Dunne, aka James Alden. Not the one taken of the Ellis Associates team, with Ben alongside. Dani wanted to test Gemma’s memory unbiased.

  ‘We’re dealing with a new case, and this man is a person of interest.’

  Gemma looked confused by that, as though she couldn’t understand why a new case would have anything to do with her. She picked up the picture as Dani reached for her mug and took a sip of the too-milky mixture. She set it back down again.

  Initially, Gemma stared at the picture with that same unconvinced frown, but after a few moments there was a flash of something else.

  ‘Wait a sec. Yeah, I think…’

  Then her face changed to one of concern.

  ‘His real name is Liam Dunne,’ Dani said. ‘But he also went by James A—’

  ‘Alden. James Alden,’ Gemma said. The look of concern remained, though the tension in her muscles suggested she was trying to hide it.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Dani said. ‘He worked for Ellis Associates, for about a year, back in 2013.’

  Gemma replaced the picture on the table, sat back on the sofa and held Dani’s gaze. Dani kept the silence going, waiting to see if Gemma would offer up anything else.

  ‘You said he’s a person of interest,’ Gemma said. ‘In a murder?’

  ‘An unexplained death. How did you know him?’

  ‘You just said. He worked at Ellis Associates. Same as Ben. I’m presuming that’s why you’re here? Although I really don’t see what it has to do with me.’

  ‘Yesterday we found his sister. Dead. Their parents and grandparents are all dead too, their only living relatives are all in Ireland or elsewhere, so James is her only obvious kin, and we’re struggling to find him. To find out much about him at all, to be honest. So when I said person of interest, I was perhaps being a bit strong.’

  Gemma’s face relaxed just a little at that.

  ‘Honestly? I really didn’t know him that well,’ Gemma said. ‘I must have met him… I don’t know, two or three times, tops. Just social occasions. Ben’s office party. Team dinner. And I didn’t know his sister at all. Wouldn’t even have known he had a sister, to be honest.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  Gemma looked put out by that. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Was he a nice guy? A dickhead? A drunk? A womaniser?’

  ‘He was single, I think. He was… fine. Unremarkable, I’d say.’

  ‘But you remembered him?’

  Gemma frowned. ‘You showed me a picture and reminded me of his name. What’s your point?’

  ‘Did Ben get on with him?’

  ‘So this does have something to do with Ben?’

  ‘Indirectly, I guess so, but it’s complicated and there’s only so much I can say at this stage.’

  Gemma scoffed and rolled her eyes. ‘Of course. I don’t know what Ben thought of him. You’ll have to ask him. I don’t think they were particularly pally, and I don’t remember the two of them ever doing anything together outside of the work crowd.’

  ‘Any animosity between the two of them?’

  ‘No. What are you reaching for, exactly?’

  ‘Do you have any idea where he lived. Anything like that?’

  ‘I think we’ve already established how little I know of him, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yeah. I guess we have.’

  Though Dani was sure there was a little more to the story than Gemma was letting on. Her caginess was unfortunately a normal occurrence when Dani was around, but there was something else underneath here too.

  Dani took another sip from her coffee, then glanced at her watch.

  ‘I really do need to get going,’ she said. Gemma remained where she was. ‘If you do think of anything more about him, names of friends, girlfriend, where he lived, anything at all, just give me a call.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And… it was nice to see the kids earlier. You know I’m always happy to help out, if you need me.’

  Gemma said nothing to that. Just gave a forced smile as Dani got to her feet to leave.

  Chapter 7

  The West Midlands Police’s Missing Persons team was housed in Harborne Police Station – a 1980s redbrick building not far from the neighbourhood’s high street, and only a few miles south of the centre of Birmingham. Dani knew the area well. Not more than a couple of hundred yards away, the other side of the high street, was the Victorian terrace that she and Jason had bought together less than twelve months ago. Not home. Not any more. Not after Damian Curtis had so horrifically invaded that space.

  The Harborne house – Dani and Jason’s first together, a place that should have helped cement their commitment to each other, a place where they had wanted to start a life together – was now rented out to a South African professor at the nearby university, and her husband and son. Dani had no intention of ever going back there. Today was the first time Dani had even been back to Harborne since she’d moved out, and there was a sickly sensation in her stomach as she stepped from her car, the earlier conversation with Gemma for now a distant memory.

  ‘I’m getting bored of this cold,’ Easton said as he shut the passenger door and cupped his hands to his mouth.

  The temperature on the car’s thermometer had peaked at minus two on the journey over. They were certainly experiencing a stark welcome to winter.

  ‘It’s only early December,’ Dani said. ‘We’ve a way to go yet.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘And aren’t you glad you’ll be enjoying Christmas surrounded by your family this year?’

  Easton shot her an unamused look and she had to hold back her smile. They edgily traipsed across the frozen pavement to the police station.

  ‘Having the kids around will be nice, actually,’ Easton said, shrugging. ‘Brings back memories.’

  Dani said nothing to that. She’d not experienced a Christmas with kids since she herself had been one. While she could imagine it added extra wonder and excitement to the day, and while it was true those years at home with Ben and her mum and dad still evoked a huge fondness in her mind, it simply remained impossible to reconcile those memories of Ben, the boy she’d grown up alongside, with the man who was now behind bars. And it also seriously grated on her that she’d never been invited to spend a Christmas with Gemma and the kids. Would she ever?

  * * *

  A few minutes later they were seated in an ageing office space that housed four detectives from the Missing Persons team. Hot tea and coffee was steaming away on the table and would, hopefully, do the job of warming Dani through.

  ‘I have to be honest with you, this case isn’t familiar to me at all,’ DS Carr said.

  In her early thirties, with long, straight red hair and a face that was dominated by freckles, Dani knew Jane Carr to be an eager and competent detective. Her boss, sitting next to her, DI Gregory, was a portly man in his forties, nearly bald on top but with an ever-thickening goatee.

  ‘And you know I wasn’t on the team that long ago,’ Gregory said, his words sounding like a lame excuse. Dani didn’t know Gregory well, but what she did know of him was that he was always happy to push responsibility away from himself.

  ‘But you were here then, DS Carr?’ Easton said.

  ‘I was,’ she said, ‘but I was only a fresh-faced DC. Liam Dunne’s case was run by DI Calvert.’

  ‘She left before I joined,’ Gregory said.

  ‘Then what can you tell us from the records?’ Dani asked, even though it was likely to be little more than she or Easton could have gleaned themselves from
the HOLMES 2 system.

  Carr shuffled the papers in front of her for a few moments as her eyes flicked across the pages.

  ‘Liam Dunne. Thirty-three years old. Went missing sixth of June 2015. He was born in southern Ireland, but held dual UK citizenship due to his mother. He first moved to the UK to attend university at Loughborough, studying economics.’

  She frowned now as she stared at the information.

  ‘To be honest, there are some oddities here. His history after university is very patchy, in terms of jobs, taxes, addresses.’

  ‘We think that’s because he was using aliases,’ Easton said.

  Carr raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t see anything about that in here,’ she said.

  ‘So it’s not in his profile that he worked for Ellis Associates?’ Dani said. He’d used the alias James Alden for that job and had very possibly lost the job because of the false name and history.

  Carr shrugged. ‘Doesn’t seem to be.’

  ‘What about the circumstances of him going missing?’ Dani asked.

  ‘There was very little to go on, by the look of things. His sister, Clara Dunne, reported him missing. That was the sixth of June, but actually it seems we never pinpointed the actual date he disappeared. She’d not had contact with him for a couple of weeks by that point.’

  ‘A couple of weeks?’ Easton said, as though it was unusual for siblings to not talk for that long. He would surely wish to be in that position right now.

  ‘What about family?’ Dani asked.

  ‘They have no other family alive in the UK. Their mother lives, or lived, at least, outside Cork, but the extended family weren’t close. It looks like we did get help from the Garda to check for proof of life in Ireland, but it didn’t turn up anything.’

  ‘And no proof of life in the UK either?’ Dani asked.

  ‘Nothing when we last did our checks,’ Carr said. ‘But it’s not an everyday thing when someone has been missing for five years.’

  ‘And it’s going to be seriously clouded if you’re suggesting this man potentially used different identities,’ Gregory said.

  Which was a fair point.

  ‘We can give you what we have of his profile. Addresses, the like,’ Carr said.

  ‘Please,’ Dani responded. ‘But do you actually know anything concrete about when or how he went missing?’

  ‘Honestly, no. His last recorded employment, at least in his real name, was way back in 2009. He had only one bank account, which was last used twenty days before his sister contacted police. We were told he regularly changed his phone number, likely because he was using prepaid SIMS.’

  Dani and Easton shared a look. Why would Liam do that?

  ‘And when was the final phone number last used?’

  ‘Again, it was a few days before Clara contacted police, from what I can see. We also did searches on CCTV around his home. The address we were given as his home, that is. But we never managed to pick up anything of him at all, never mind pinpointing his last whereabouts. Neighbours didn’t know him. Landlord had no contact with him. The last and only person found who’d had anything at all to do with him for months before his disappearance was his sister.’

  Which altogether was painting a picture of a very strange life indeed.

  ‘Maybe he was James Bond,’ Easton said. ‘Secret lives and all that.’

  His quip elicited a chuckle from Gregory, though a similar thought had already crossed Dani’s mind. Could he have been a deep undercover policeman even? But then surely his disappearance would have by now been clarified.

  Regardless, it looked like there was a lot more work to do in order to figure out what had happened to Liam Dunne. Would more thorough searches for James Alden, Michael Marin and Patrick Beatty turn up any clues?

  But then was it even the job of the Homicide team to do those searches? There was no body for Liam. No evidence at all that he had been murdered. Clara Dunne was Dani’s case, but her brother was still just a missing person.

  ‘If we give you the details of the aliases, we’d really appreciate your help in trying to track any proof of life,’ Dani said.

  Gregory looked a little uncertain, like he thought it was a waste of time. She’d had similar conversations with him in the past along these lines. She could understand there was only so much his team could do to trace people who had simply disappeared, but sometimes it seemed like he wasn’t even that bothered about trying. Like he’d already made his mind up that there was nothing he could do to help certain people.

  ‘We can do that,’ Carr said. ‘You said this had something to do with his sister?’

  ‘Clara Dunne,’ Dani said. ‘Her body was found yesterday.’

  The curious look Carr now gave her boss suggested she hadn’t known that.

  ‘Her death set us onto Liam because we think she was here, in the area, looking for him,’ Easton said. ‘It’s also notable that, like her brother, she was using an alias.’

  ‘So she was killed?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re trying to figure out.’

  Chapter 8

  ‘This is just getting weirder and weirder,’ Easton said as Dani pulled her car back onto the road.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘So Liam goes missing in mysterious circumstances, five years ago, after years spent living under false names.’

  ‘Living and working under false names, apparently.’

  ‘But why?’

  Dani really didn’t know.

  ‘Then at some point, Clara becomes obsessed with his disappearance,’ Easton said.

  ‘Perhaps only because the disappearance was so weird to start with.’

  ‘Perhaps. Then she starts using an alias as well. Clara Doyle? Fake driving licence, the works.’

  ‘And now she’s dead.’

  Dani glanced over to see Easton shaking his head, confused. She felt the same way. There were so many answers they didn’t have.

  They drove on in silence for a few moments. Dani could tell Easton was still deep in thought.

  ‘We’re not going back to the city centre?’ he said, as if finally coming out of his trance.

  ‘No,’ Dani said.

  ‘No court today either then?’

  ‘No point is there?’

  Easton didn’t answer that, though Dani certainly wasn’t finished yet with Damian Curtis. Still, it was far more healthy for her state of mind to concentrate on events she could control, rather than dwelling on her past. Even if it was someone else’s past she was dwelling on.

  ‘So where are we going then?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  * * *

  On the outskirts of Tipton, the 1950s semi was on a twisty cul-de-sac that led to the entrance of a primary school. Like so many other towns in the Black Country area, Tipton had been at the heart of the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, though following the closure of most heavy industry from the 1970s onwards, was now increasingly a commuter town to other areas within the region.

  As Dani shut down the engine and stepped from the car the sound of the young kids playing in the nearby school caught her ears. She looked over to the tall green metal fences of the school, beyond which was a blur of movement as the pupils raced around haphazardly, giggling and shouting and squealing.

  ‘Is that before or after their lunchtime sugar rush?’ Easton asked.

  ‘You would know better than me,’ she said.

  He rolled his eyes.

  Dani locked the car and glanced up and down the street and then along the short drive to the house they were standing by. The houses here were modest but far from downtrodden, though some had clearly been loved and cared for more than others, with neatly trimmed gardens, new windows and doors and faultless tiling on the roofs. A few others were in need of a good dose of TLC, though the one Dani and Easton were standing outside fell somewhere in between. That wasn’t what stood out about the house to Dani. The thing that stood out most was that e
very window at the front of the house had thick curtains drawn across them, both downstairs and upstairs, and there was no car on the poky drive.

  ‘Anyone home, you reckon?’ Easton asked.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ Dani said.

  They headed up the drive. The pockmarked tarmac had been gritted and there were indentations in the sandy mixture from thick-soled boots. Possibly just the postman, but possibly from someone else coming or going recently.

  Dani pressed the bell then knocked loudly three times.

  After thirty seconds there was still no response. Dani tried again.

  ‘Maybe we should have called in advance,’ Easton said.

  But Dani could hear faint movement from the inside now. The click of locks. Then the door edged open a couple of inches, until it caught on a chain. Two yellowy eyes poked out from the darkened interior, barely five feet from the floor.

  ‘Yes?’ said the woman in a croaky voice.

  ‘Mrs Popescu?’ Dani asked. She showed her ID and introduced herself and Easton. ‘We’d like to talk to you about your grandson, Nicolae.’

  Brigitta Popescu said nothing as she stared at Dani. A moment later her eyes disappeared and the door was pushed closed.

  Ten seconds passed. Twenty.

  ‘Weird,’ Easton said.

  Dani was thinking the same. She was about to knock again when the door reopened, without the chain this time, though only just enough to reveal the homeowner. Hunched over, shakily holding a walking stick, Brigitta had a withered face, and even with her cardigan and long skirt it was clear she was a bag of bones by the way jagged joints poked out against the fabric.

  ‘Please. Come in,’ Brigitta said, and it was already clear from her thick accent that English wasn’t her first language.

  Dani and Easton followed into the house. Easton shut the door behind them, and they were plunged into near darkness. There were no lights on in the hall, and just a faint glow of orange and yellow coming from the back room. Dani couldn’t even see the end of the stairs in front of her because the top floor was pitch black.