A text came in from Cooper.
Angela Fox. Works at DRI. Colleagues say she’s on holiday. Lives in Tickhill. No answer at home or mobile. No sign of her car.
‘Shit!’ Kate hissed.
‘What’s up?’
‘Sam’s found contact details for Angela Fox but she’s not there. Her workmates at the hospital think she’s on holiday. No reply on her mobile though.’
‘Doesn’t mean anything,’ Hollis said, his tone betraying his lack of conviction. ‘She might be in a poor signal area or she might have turned her phone off as she’s on holiday.’
‘Or she might be the next victim and we might be too late. I want to get over to the DRI and talk to her colleagues. Somebody might know something.’
Entering the hospital inevitably made Kate think of Nick and how she’d responded to his brief text with an equally terse Fine. The chances of bumping into him were tiny but, as she strode up to the main reception desk, she felt a prickle at the back of her neck as though he might be watching her.
Kate flashed her ID and asked for directions to the admin office where Angela Fox worked. She wasn’t surprised to be directed downstairs into the bowels of the sprawling 1960s monstrosity of a building; in her limited experience of the DRI most of the structure housed wards and laboratories – she’d never seen anything resembling office space.
‘Through there.’ Hollis pointed to a sign on the wall indicating that ‘Administration’ was further down the dingy corridor. He pushed open a door and Kate followed him into an open-plan office divided into groups of four desks, each one separated from its neighbour by a blue or grey partition. The egg box-like effect was enhanced by the low ceiling and the lack of natural light.
Just inside the door was a single desk and its occupant looked up as they entered.
‘Can I help you?’ the woman peered over reading glasses that were so small Kate wondered if they could have any effect on her vision. Her fair hair was tied back in a neat ponytail and she wore a plain, pale blue blouse open at the neck to reveal a discreet gold cross.
‘Detective Inspector Fletcher and DC Hollis,’ Kate said. ‘I believe one of my colleagues rang earlier about Angela Fox.’
The woman stared at her for a second and then nodded enthusiastically, making her ponytail bounce on her back. ‘Of course. I couldn’t tell her much except that Angela is on holiday. I don’t understand what else you could want.’
Kate wasn’t sure herself, but she felt a need to find out as much as possible about the woman if they were to have any chance of protecting her. ‘Is there anybody that Angela is particularly close to? Somebody she might confide in?’
The woman gave Kate a wry smile. ‘Have a look around, detective inspector. The workspace isn’t exactly conducive to socialising. And, to be honest, it’s not encouraged.’
‘But you must have coffee breaks, cigarette breaks, that sort of thing.’
The woman sighed. ‘Try Dylan, third desk on the right at the back. He probably spends the most time with Angela.’
Kate followed her directions and wasn’t surprised to see over a dozen heads turn to watch as she and Hollis crossed the office – it didn’t feel like a place where very much of interest happened. Dylan had already turned his seat round and he smiled at Kate as she approached.
‘Dylan?’
‘Is this about Angela? Somebody rang earlier and I said that she was on holiday. Has something happened to her?’ He looked intrigued rather than upset, his slightly breathless questions suggesting that he wasn’t an especially close colleague.
‘Why do you ask?’ Hollis wanted to know.
Dylan smoothed his over-gelled blond hair back from his forehead and looked at Hollis with steady blue eyes. ‘Because it seems a bit unlikely that the police are making enquiries about Angela unless she’s in some sort of trouble or something’s happened to her. I don’t know her well, but I know enough to think it’s more likely to be option B.’
He folded his arms across his chest, creasing his immaculate white shirt and rumpling his navy-blue tie.
‘You don’t know her well?’ Kate wondered why she’d been sent to this particular desk.
‘Well, we’re not BFFs but we chat a bit. We’re the only two smokers in the office. Well, vapers now. We try to have our breaks at the same time otherwise it can get a bit lonely out in the smoking shelter.’
Kate looked round. ‘What is this place? I know it’s admin but what sort? Patient records?’
Dylan gave her a patronising smile. ‘If the manager is to be believed, we’re much more than records, we’re the beating heart of the hospital. Over there we have appointments admin,’ he said, indicating a section of the office near the front. ‘To the left is records, over there is something mysterious that nobody understands to do with programming the MRI scanners and our section is mainly general IT support.’
‘And Angela’s role?’
‘As I said, mainly IT support.’
‘Can we go somewhere a bit less… exposed?’ Kate asked. ‘I’m hoping you might be able to give us some information to help us to track Angela down.’
‘Track her down? No need,’ Dylan said with a grin. ‘She’s in Scotland. Mull to be exact. She’s renting a cottage up there for two weeks. She should be back next week – she’s been away for nearly a week already.’
‘In November?’ Hollis’s voice squeaked with surprise. It did seem unlikely. Who’d choose to head so far north at this time of year?
‘She likes the solitude. It’s a regular thing before the Christmas season. She likes to get away for a while.’
‘You’re extra busy at Christmas?’
‘Not here. Angela’s in an AmDram group and they start planning their spring production at the beginning of December as well as having pantomime rehearsals.’
‘Do you know the name of the group?’ Hollis asked, taking his notebook out of his breast pocket.
‘Christchurch Players. They’re based in the old cinema in town.’
‘And Angela acts?’
Dylan shook his head and smiled. ‘If you met her, you’d know how ridiculous that sounds. She does stuff behind the scenes. She’s far too shy to get up on stage. She doesn’t even like having her name in the programme.’
‘Is she married? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Dylan responded. ‘She’s never mentioned a significant other. Straight though, I’d guess, but she’s never shown much interest in romance.’
‘And she lives alone?’
‘Again, I can’t be sure but I’m fairly certain that she lives in a village somewhere, in her parents’ house. She said that they were dead so I assume she inherited it – I can barely afford my shoebox of a flat on what we get paid.’
‘And you’ve not heard from her since she left for her holiday?’
‘No. But I wouldn’t expect to. As I said, we’re not that close, we just chat on our breaks.’
Kate thanked him for his time and they left the oppressive underground space.
As they were crossing the car park Kate’s mobile rang. She glanced at the screen, expecting an update from Cooper or one of the others but the number wasn’t familiar.
‘Fletcher,’ she snapped, expecting sales or a PPI scam.
‘Detective Inspector Fletcher? This is Vicky Rhodes. I believe you wanted to talk to me about something?’
26
‘Thanks for getting back to me,’ Kate said, her tone genial even as her mind was racing. Had Vicky Rhodes, once known as Dusty, spoken to Grieveson? Did she know that he’d confessed to setting up Whitaker? ‘Would it be possible for me to ring you back in a few minutes?’
‘That won’t work for me,’ said the woman at the other end of the line. ‘I’m on a brief break between clients. I’m free later if that’s any good. We could Skype or FaceTime if it’s easier?’
Kate was grateful for the suggestion. She wanted to be able to see Vicky’s reactions when she was asked a r
ange of questions and a video link would be as close to face-to-face as they could get. They could even record it, with Vicky’s consent, in order to properly assess her responses.
‘Vicky Rhodes?’ Hollis asked, as Kate ended the call, even though he’d clearly heard both sides of the conversation. ‘That’s a surprise.’
‘I know,’ Kate agreed. ‘I want to be back at base when we Skype. I’m sure Sam’s got some useful software to help us to get the most out of the interview.’
A text pinged into Kate’s message service. Vicky Rhodes’s Skype details.
‘At least we might be able to tell if she really is in Tenerife,’ Hollis said. ‘We can get her to pan round with the camera and see if it’s sunny.’ Kate wasn’t sure if he was joking but it was a thought that had already crossed her mind.
Kate’s team were already assembled by the time she and Hollis got back to Doncaster Central. O’Connor was sitting at the head of the conference table swinging back on his chair and chatting to Barratt who had both hands wrapped round a mug of coffee. Cooper was watching something on her laptop and, from the way she kept tapping her keyboard every few seconds, Kate guessed it was CCTV footage from somewhere.
‘Right,’ Kate said as Hollis slipped into a seat next to Barratt. ‘I want a full progress report – I’m assuming you’ve all had a busy day – who’s first?’
Sam looked up from her computer but made no move to speak while Barratt and O’Connor looked at each other.
‘As Matt said in his e-mail, PM on Charlton didn’t reveal much that we didn’t already know,’ O’Connor began. ‘Preliminary ID confirmed from the photo on his driving licence in the absence of information about next of kin. Wounds to his back and the backs of his thigh look like Taser burns, no sign that he was restrained, no ligature marks. Kailisa suspects that he was drugged to enable his killer to keep him compliant and get him to the kill site – obviously bloods have been sent away to check for the usual suspects. Cause of death exsanguination. Preliminary examination of the genitals suggests that they’re definitely his as the excision pattern of the wound and the missing flesh match up.’
‘Would’ve been a bit unlikely to find somebody else’s bits at the scene,’ Hollis muttered.
‘True,’ O’Connor said. ‘Just being thorough. Obviously, we’ll have to wait for toxicology and DNA but Kailisa isn’t especially hopeful about the latter.’
‘Anything to link this murder to that of Margaret Whitaker?’
O’Connor shook his head. ‘Bugger all.’
Kate was tempted to share what she’d heard from Colin Bland, but it was too tenuous a link to Charlton’s murder to risk Das finding out that she’d got information through slightly underhand means. Instead she moved on to the second part of Barratt and O’Connor’s day.
‘We’ve got Neil Grieveson confessing to setting David Whitaker up and he names Lee Bradley as an accomplice. What’s Bradley got to say for himself?’ Kate asked, turning to Barratt.
The DC shook his head. ‘He denies all knowledge of anything to do with Whitaker. Says he met Grieveson and Rhodes at the reunion and they finally spoke about the abuse but that’s as far as it went. He confirms Vicky Rhodes’s ID as the third amigo and told us that she lives on Tenerife – her job’s something to do with property. He doesn’t know where Grieveson lives and hasn’t spoken to either of them since the reunion.’
‘That’s bollocks,’ Hollis interjected.
‘You believed Grieveson?’ Kate asked.
‘I can’t believe that Grieveson cooked it up on his own. He was terrified when we turned up – I’ll bet that Bradley took charge and now he’s letting his mate take the fall. I think we should get him in here and tell him what Grieveson told us.’
Kate thought about it. Was there really any point? There was no evidence linking either man with the murders and there would be little mileage in pursuing a prosecution for the entrapment of a known paedophile. Especially as Whitaker had been convicted on solid evidence found at his home.
‘Let’s leave it for now,’ she said. ‘Matt, contact Bradley and let him know what his ‘friend’ told us. I’m happy for you to give the impression that we don’t know what to believe and that we’re keeping an open mind at the moment. I expect Grieveson will already have been in touch with him anyway. Right, Sam?’
Cooper looked up at Kate and then back at her laptop. ‘I’ve been thinking about the car that was used to abduct Simon Charlton. How many of us drive saloon cars these days?’
Blank looks and head shakes all round.
‘They’re not that common and most of them are high end. It seemed a bit unlikely that our kidnapper just happened to have one at his or her disposal so I’ve been looking at car hire companies in the local area. It looks like only the big nationals have saloon cars for hire so I’ve rung the branches in Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield. Two of them rent out Skoda Octavias and one only had BMW saloons. I’ve tried to enhance the CCTV footage, but the car doesn’t look like a recent model. So, that leaves second-hand car dealers. I did a search and then rang around a few to see if they’d sold a dark saloon car in recent weeks. JB Motors on Balby Road sold a 2003 Skoda Fabia saloon three weeks ago.’
Kate felt a frisson of electricity run round her team. This could be it.
‘I got a name. But that’s where it starts to turn to crap,’ Cooper admitted. ‘The client was a woman. She paid with a credit card in the name Stephanie Martin. The same name as Margaret Wallace’s “niece” who took her out of the nursing home. I asked for a description. Shortish, blondeish, fortyish, attractive.’
‘Could be Vicky Rhodes,’ Kate said. ‘She’s dark haired but hair colour is the easiest thing to change. Or it could have been a wig.’ She sighed in frustration. It seemed like this woman was always one step ahead of them – if it was a woman – and they were playing catch-up all the time.
‘Got a date and time?’ she asked Cooper.
‘Three weeks ago. On a Friday afternoon. The salesman says she didn’t even take it for a test drive. Put a deposit on her card and picked it up on the Saturday.’
‘And no doubt dumped it somewhere after she’d killed Charlton.’
At least Cooper had a description and an index number for the car. If it turned up in the area it could be tested for DNA, but Kate was willing to bet that it had been left on one of the estates in Doncaster with the keys in and would be a burnt-out wreck by now. It did tell them more about their suspect though. She had money. A second-hand car of that age wouldn’t have been expensive but not many people had a few hundred pounds to throw away.
‘Nice work, Sam,’ Kate said. ‘We’ll need to look at the credit card. Barratt, I need you to get round there to take a formal statement. You never know, the salesman might remember something else. Take a photo of Vicky as well, just to be certain it’s not her.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Hollis said, tapping his watch. ‘We need to set up that Skype call.’
Kate nodded.
‘Anything else?’
Cooper blushed, obviously she had something to add. ‘Simon Charlton’s house has been searched and I’ve got access to his laptop. I’m going to see if I can find how contact was made between him and his killer.’
‘How did you get that so quickly,’ O’Connor asked, suspicion clear in his tone.
Cooper’s blush deepened. ‘I know somebody in digital forensics. She owed me a favour.’
Barratt smiled to himself and Kate could see where this was heading; she just wasn’t sure whether Cooper could handle it.
‘Oh, that tall brunette you used to hang around with – Judy… Jenny? I wonder what you did to get her in your debt.’ O’Connor was grinning as he teased his colleague, no malice in his tone but Kate knew how sensitive Cooper could be about her private life.
‘I’d tell you, Steve, but I really don’t think you’d understand. And I know you could never do the same.’
Kate watched as Barratt’s jaw dropped open. C
ooper was finally standing up for herself. She’d had plenty of teasing from O’Connor about her ‘preferences’ and her ‘conquests’ – most of it good-natured – but she’d chosen to ignore most of it; until now.
‘Better not let Abby know,’ O’Connor continued, referring to Sam’s partner – despite the recent wedding, Sam refused to refer to Abby as her wife.
‘What makes you think Abby wasn’t in on it?’ Cooper said, picking up her laptop and heading for the door. ‘It was a really big favour Jenny owed me.’
27
Kate glanced at the time in the corner of the screen and mentally added an hour. Vicky Rhodes should be home from work now and, hopefully, ready to chat. Looking over to the opposite desk, Kate checked that Cooper was ready if Rhodes gave them the go-ahead to record the conversation and then she tapped the call icon and waited for it to connect. An image of herself appeared in the top right-hand corner of the screen. She looked tired, her blonde hair in need of a touch-up at the roots and her foundation not doing its job very effectively. Turning fifty earlier in the year hadn’t been as much of a shock as she’d expected but her reflection or a candid photograph could still take her by surprise.
‘Detective Inspector Fletcher.’ Vicky Rhodes’s voice was warm as though she was greeting an old friend, but the screen remained blank.
‘Good evening, Vicky. I’m afraid we might have a technical hitch. I don’t seem to be able to see you.’
Kate flicked Cooper a quick glance and the DC responded with a shrug. Not their end then.
‘Hang on,’ Rhodes was saying. ‘This laptop has a mind of its own. That any better?’
A female face appeared on screen, her expression somewhere between concern and amusement and Kate recognised Vicky Rhodes from the Facebook photos of the reunion. Her dark hair was slicked back from her flushed face and Kate assumed that she had just got out of the shower. She was wearing a long-sleeved white blouse which accentuated her deeply tanned skin.
Reunion: a gripping crime thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book Book 4) Page 17
