Echoes of Guilt

by Rob Sinclair

  ‘Not really.’ Though the thought of going back inside that place again, particularly now she was so uncomfortable in her cold, wet clothes, didn’t exactly fill her with optimism. ‘You find anything before?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She thought back to the phone, which was still bagged up inside, and the picture from that red box of Liam with the mystery woman.

  ‘Let’s get back in,’ she said. She’d just have to push through her discomfort. ‘Get this finished, then be on our way.’

  Easton nodded. ‘Come on then.’

  They spent less than twenty minutes more – though it felt far longer than that – before Dani decided she’d had enough. They left with nothing more than the phone, its charger, and the red box with its photograph and other curious tidbits. Bizarrely, they’d found no other photos of the woman anywhere, and it was intriguing that the only other pictures of any type in the house were largely family ones: Liam at various ages, some with parents, grandparents, with Clara. Just two with large groups of friends – all male – which looked to be from a lads’ holiday from when Liam was a fresh-faced teenager. Certainly nothing, either by way of photos or other items, that suggested he had a girlfriend or partner.

  ‘What else is in that box then?’ Easton asked.

  ‘Just bits and pieces. Nothing much that makes sense. A ring, a bracelet, some old coins. A passport photo of himself. A casino chip. A fridge magnet. A key.’

  Easton sniffed.

  ‘What?’ Dani asked.

  ‘What was the key for?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  ‘And no sign of a computer or anything like that?’

  ‘No,’ Dani said.

  ‘We could bag up more of the stuff in there. Just in case.’

  ‘Just in case what?’

  Easton shrugged. ‘Feels like we’re touching on something here, doesn’t it?’

  It did. But Dani really didn’t know what.

  ‘Let’s work on figuring out who this woman is,’ she said. ‘As it stands we still know so little about Liam’s life. She could be the one who breaks his story open.’

  Easton didn’t look convinced. ‘So what now?’ he said.

  ‘Let’s get back to HQ. Catch-up with the team.’

  And get her own thinking back in order. There were so many strands to the investigation now – including figuring out who they’d just chased – that it was making her head permanently spin. Even without the blow she’d taken.

  ‘But let’s stop off at home before we do that,’ Dani said. She looked Easton up and down. His clothes were as dirty and wet as hers. ‘Both our homes.’

  ‘Sounds like a damn good idea,’ Easton said.

  A damn good idea that they never got to follow through with, because they were still driving out of Walsall, heading back towards Sutton Coldfield, when a call came through on Dani’s dashboard. A call from HQ.

  Anticipation was already welling as Dani answered. It was DC Mutambe.

  ‘We’ve managed to do some work on the phone that made the 999 call,’ he said, his voice crackling through the car’s speakers. ‘We’ve had no luck tracing its current location, presumably because it’s not been left on, so real-time GPS tracking has given us nothing so far. But we’ve had network data back from the phone masts. Old school triangulation.’

  ‘You have a clear address?’

  Dani knew from past experience that so-called triangulation was possible to varying degrees of accuracy. Sometimes a few metres, sometimes a few miles if looking at rural areas where there were naturally fewer masts to start with.

  ‘Pretty damn close,’ Mutambe said. ‘Narrowed down to one of two houses.’

  About as good as you could get.

  ‘Local?’ Easton asked.

  ‘Wednesbury.’

  ‘Give me the address,’ Dani said. Sod the wet clothes. ‘We’re going there now.’

  * * *

  The two houses were all of thirty minutes’ drive from where Dani had taken the call. She and Easton weren’t the first to arrive. A patrol car plus a dog handler – arranged by Easton – had beaten them to it, though on his request they were waiting on an adjacent street. This wasn’t a full-blown raid, but Dani had wanted back-up, just in case. That back-up would remain as nearby as they could while being out of sight, while Dani and Easton approached the houses.

  The street, in Wednesbury, was long and twisting. The homes sat prominently on elevated verges either side: a collection of 1960s grey brick detached and semi-detached buildings, quite plain and box-like in their design.

  Dani parked her car outside the two adjacent three-storey detached houses, numbers 23 and 25, and kept her eyes busy across the street as she and Easton stepped out.

  The road and the pavements were quiet. With the time a little before three p.m., people were still at work and kids were still at school, Dani presumed, though she also got the feeling looking around that more than one of these buildings was unoccupied.

  Dani headed up to the path that connected to the front doors for both 23 and 25 – two narrow but tall houses, mirror images of each other. A light was on in the downstairs front window of 23, but 25 had no signs of life at all.

  Dani headed to 23 first. Easton hung back, milling.

  After a quite lengthy wait, the door was answered at the first time of trying by a doddery man with a zimmer-frame. All of five feet tall he was gaunt and hunched, with tufts of frizzy grey hair and leathery skin and glasses that hung off the end of his nose.

  After an introduction that took an age, it was soon apparent that the man, despite his hearing aid, could barely hear a word she said – old age, though, rather than a lifelong problem, she figured, largely because she could hear a radio blaring somewhere within. Dani was soon shouting nearly at the top of her voice to ask him even the most basic of questions: his name. Was he the owner? Did he live alone?

  By the time she’d figured out the answers to all of those – which included some off-the-cuff comments about the postman and the weather and the prime minister – she was already sure this wasn’t the house.

  ‘Do you know who lives next door?’ Dani asked for a third time.

  ‘Next door?’ the man said, himself shouting. He shook his head. ‘Don’t know them. Quiet folk. Never see or hear a thing from them.’

  Dani wasn’t sure whether to laugh at that or not.

  ‘OK, sorry to trouble you,’ she said to the old man.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ she shouted.

  ‘Oh. OK. Who were you again?’ He looked a little put out now.

  Dani sucked up her growing frustration and patiently went through much of the conversation a second time, trying to reassure the man that everything was fine – though was it? – and eventually she managed to convince him that he could go back inside and finish listening to his programme. He sheepishly shut the door and Dani turned to Easton who had a broad smirk plastered on his face.

  ‘Yeah, very funny,’ she said.

  She moved across the connected path to the neighbouring property. None of the cars parked on the street seemed to belong to either of the houses, and as Dani knocked on the door and waited she stuck her face close to the frosted panes to gaze beyond. She could see no movement inside. Could see nothing much of anything.

  There was no answer.

  She looked back to Easton who was gazing up at the windows. ‘You see anyone?’

  He shook his head. Behind him a car was casually driving past. It parked up a few houses further along and Dani kept her eyes on it for a few seconds as Easton came up to her.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he said.

  Dani moved over to the front ground-floor window and peered inside. ‘It’s empty,’ she said.

  Easton came to her side. Beyond the glass, the room they were looking at – a plain box – was bare except for a cheap and worn carpet.

  As Dani turned back around the car that had pulled over further
along the street moments before was now steadily moving away into the distance.

  Odd. She hadn’t heard the car doors open or close to indicate anyone had got in or out. Given events earlier in the day she wasn’t sure if her suspicion was warranted or not, but regardless, the car was already too far away to catch the plate, and she wasn’t about to send out an alert over something so ambiguous.

  ‘What do you think?’ Easton said.

  ‘I think we should get inside,’ Dani said. ‘As far as I’m concerned we have enough evidence to enter.’

  Easton didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t protest either.

  Dani looked around then grabbed a rock from the small and overgrown front garden and moved back over to the front door. She smashed the stone against one of the double-glazed panes. It cracked, but didn’t shatter – safety glass. It took a second and then a third hit before the glass had crumbled to granular chunks, though was still held in place. Dani used the rock to knock the whole pane inward and it crunched to the floor.

  Dani reached inside and levered down the latch and held her breath as she pushed open the door. No alarm.

  She stepped inside.

  ‘Hello. It’s the police!’ Dani shouted.

  Nothing from inside at all. No voices, no creaks or strains.

  The narrow hallway Dani was standing in was as bare as the front room, with the same cheap carpet. There were no pictures on the walls, nothing really, not even any sign – a dirty outline – to suggest there ever had been anything on the walls.

  But there was a smell. Bleach and cleaner that was doing a lacklustre job of masking a stale and musky odour. Tobacco and weed smoke, Dani thought she could make out too.

  ‘Tell the back-up to get over here,’ Dani said. ‘They can at least help us sweep this place.’

  Dani and Easton had cleared the ground floor by the time the yellow-jacketed officers were walking up the path. They’d found nothing. The downstairs consisted of two plain and empty box-like rooms plus a galley kitchen whose cheap units were worn and battered. No appliances remained. Not a thing in the cupboards. Including dust. It was obvious this place had been cleaned, top to bottom.

  The next two floors each contained three bedrooms and a single small and cheaply arranged bathroom.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’ Easton said as they congregated on the top landing. He and Dani had been in and out of each of the rooms, finding absolutely nothing. No furniture, no belongings, no curtains on the windows. Faint indents in the hard carpets gave an impression of the furniture that had previously been in place, but there was nothing here at all now.

  ‘We should at least get Forensics to go from top to bottom,’ Easton said.

  And Dani agreed with that. Even a solitary fingerprint could prove useful.

  What had happened here?

  ‘We need to find out who owns this place, too,’ she said. ‘Same for next door.’

  ‘The old man?’

  ‘No chances. I’m not saying he’s involved, but right now there’s every chance that the emergency call came from someone inside that house. A visitor, whatever. Even if they were calling about something that they’d overheard in here.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Easton said. ‘Are we done here then?’

  Standing on the landing, Dani mulled Easton’s question as she thought back over each of the basic and drab rooms they’d just been through.

  She frowned.

  ‘Come on,’ she said.

  ‘We’re going?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  She moved down the stairs to the middle floor, then over to the bedroom at the back of the house. She stopped at the doorway and stared inside.

  ‘Why’s this one different?’ Dani said.

  Easton shrugged.

  Dani’s eyes fixed on the carpet. The whole house was decked out in carpets that were a variety of the same theme. Beige or brown, tight and hard short-pile. Hard-wearing, long-lasting for a relatively cheap price, even if they weren’t exactly good-looking or sumptuous to the touch. The kind of carpets that landlords used in cheap accommodation. The carpet in this room was exactly the same type. Yet it was also noticeably different.

  ‘You don’t see it?’ Dani said.

  Actually, it looked like he did. He nodded. ‘No outlines.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Dani said. ‘So either there was no furniture in here, it was never used at all—’

  ‘Or the carpet was only put down after this place was cleared out.’

  Dani knelt down and yanked the edge of the carpet up. She pulled the edge back a couple of feet to reveal similarly new-looking hardboard beneath, tacked onto the original floorboards. A cheap way of levelling a suspended floor for carpet, but was there another reason here?

  ‘This is the room,’ Dani said.

  ‘The room?’

  ‘The room where Jane Doe was killed.’

  Chapter 30

  Ana knew that Victor, Alex and the others were all downstairs. She could hear their muffled voices, could almost feel the anger vibrating through the fabric of the warehouse. She desperately wanted to know what they were saying. She’d already tried the door, hoping to sneak out into the hall and to the broom cupboard, but it was locked. Was she not even trusted when they were in the same building as her now?

  That worried her more than she cared to admit.

  She knew something big had happened since Saturday night. Something bad. Bad for Victor at least. Even though he hadn’t said anything to her directly, she’d managed to glean some of the details: the fact that Victor’s two goons, carrying Maria’s body in their van, had been stopped by the police. Even though they’d got away from the scene, they’d left behind their van, together with the body.

  From what Ana could tell, Victor was more incensed than he was scared of the possible repercussions of the police closing in. The two goons had now gone into hiding. Apparently they didn’t trust their boss not to just slit their throats and send their bodies off to wherever it was Maria had been en route to.

  Victor had been in a rage ever since. Together with Jim, there were three men out there whose blood he wanted, plus he was – quite rightly – convinced the police had been tipped off somehow. Which was why that house in Wednesbury had seen not just a deep clean in the murder room, but had been entirely cleaned out since Saturday night.

  All because of Ana. And she really wasn’t sure how that made her feel. Powerful? Or infinitely small, alone and vulnerable?

  There was banging downstairs then thudding footsteps coming up. Ana spread herself out on the sofa and grabbed her book from the coffee table.

  She kept her eyes on the pages as the door was unlocked and opened and Victor and then Alex strode in.

  ‘Not to mention the lost customers and the contents of their wallets,’ Alex said, mid-sentence. Ana felt she got the gist of what that meant. ‘I’ve already been getting calls from some of our fixers, telling us it’s not good enough. That if we’ve not got the supply back up soon then we’re out of the loop for good.’

  ‘If it comes to that then we go back to the start,’ Victor said, angry, though strangely untroubled. ‘I built this business the hard way. I’m not afraid to do the same again.’

  He was speaking with his fists clenched and Ana felt she knew what he meant. Violence. He’d built his business off violence.

  ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ Alex said, glaring at Ana.

  Ana shrugged, trying to stay as calm as she could. ‘Sounds like you’ve got problems.’

  Victor huffed. ‘Problems? And what, my sweet, do you think could be the cause of the problems?’

  ‘A lack of loyalty,’ Ana said, glancing from Alex to Victor. ‘There’s no other explanation, is there?’

  Alex shot daggers at her, as though he wasn’t sure if she was pinning the blame on him or not. It did intrigue Ana to think who Victor cared more about. Her or Alex.

  ‘Loyalty?’ Victor said. ‘There’s no such thing.’
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  Alex looked a little put out by that. To be honest, Ana was a bit surprised by the comment too.

  ‘I don’t need loyalty,’ Victor said. ‘All I need is fear. My enemies have to know the price of deceiving me. And believe me, Ana, they will.’

  He held her gaze, both of them unblinking until the tension became too unbearable and Ana looked back to her book.

  ‘We might be gone a while,’ Victor said.

  He grabbed his coat and keys and headed back for the door.

  ‘How long?’ Ana said, getting to her feet.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘You can’t lock me in here all night! There’s no food. No toilet!’

  Victor said nothing more as he walked out, followed by Alex who slammed the door shut before locking it. Ana ran over, tried the handle, rattled the door, banged on it and shouted out to them. No response as they trudged away. Moments later there was a bang down below as they left the warehouse.

  All alone – again – Ana was as scared as she was angry. She paced around the room. What was Victor doing?

  Did he already know?

  For more than two hours Ana’s mind was in turmoil as the warehouse lay silent below. She was tired, thirsty, hungry. There was no food in the room at all. The only drinks were a now empty bottle of Coke and several bottles of spirits.

  Eventually it was the Coke bottle she used when she couldn’t hold her bladder any longer.

  All the while, with her brain rattling away, her eyes would flick back and forth to her neatly folded coat.

  Why had she even brought the damn phone here? She should have dumped it the second after she’d made that call on Saturday night. The device was nothing but a noose around her neck now.

  With tension rising inexplicably with every tick, she took the clock off the wall. Took out its battery. She didn’t even want to know the time. Didn’t want to know how long it was, how slowly the seconds and minutes and hours were passing.

  Yet tension continued to build with each beat of her heart.

  Eventually she’d had enough. She couldn’t just sit there forever.

  She moved over to her coat. Knelt down, her hands trembling as she laid it out on her lap. She reached into the hole in the seam. Her two fingers felt about, pincering as she tried to grasp the phone. Each time her fingers met, skin on skin, the hole in her chest grew. Yet she continued in vain, because she couldn’t bear to face the reality.