Reunion: a gripping crime thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book Book 4)

by Heleyne Hammersley

  He had no idea who I was or why I was there. But he was going to find out. I waited until it was fully dark before bringing my car round to the front of the block of flats. Then I dragged him to the top of the stairs and let him go. He was weak and floppy from the drug and just slid down, landing in a puddle between the bottom step and the door. It didn’t look like it hurt at all – which was disappointing.

  The most dangerous part was getting him out to the car, but I’d been watching the cul-de-sac and there was very little activity after around 6pm. Most of the old folk seemed settled by then – not much to do on a grim winter’s evening. Even if somebody did see me, by the time they’d called the police I’d be on my way and it would be too late. I hauled him to his feet and opened the door, letting him lean on me but use his legs as I guided him outside. I was whispering that it was all going to be all right, that he was fine, and he seemed to go along with me.

  I plonked him in the front seat and fastened the belt around him before driving to the industrial estate on the outskirts of Doncaster. I pulled in behind a warehouse and transferred my passenger to the boot, giving him a hefty hit of chloroform before I started my final journey.

  35

  The phone rang for what seemed like an eternity before Vicky Rhodes answered. Kate had gone over every possible scenario in her mind and it came back to the solicitor. Why had she threatened to kill Angela Fox? And had she really manipulated her two childhood friends into framing Whitaker? She’d claimed to have planted the seed but was there more to it than that? What, if anything, had she said to Angela at the reunion?

  ‘DI Fletcher,’ Vicky said as she answered. She’d obviously stored Kate’s number in her phone. Had she been expecting further contact?

  ‘Tell me about Angela Fox,’ Kate said, not bothering with a greeting.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘What happened between the two of you on that camping trip? I know you said your threat to kill her was just a childish expression, but I don’t believe you. I have at least one witness who says you were furious and that if you could have got your hands on Angela you may well have carried out your threat.’

  A chuckle at the other end. ‘I told you. I was angry, but it was just kid’s stuff. What’s this about, detective inspector?’

  Kate ignored the question. ‘She did something that links to the abuse that you suffered. I think that you hold her responsible in some way – whether you actually told her that or not.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Angela Fox for thirty years. How could I have told her anything?’

  ‘What about the reunion?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Didn’t you see Angela there?’

  ‘I’ve already told you that I didn’t.’

  Kate didn’t believe her. She needed something to link the two women together.

  ‘Okay. You knew Angela when you were children. Did she have any special places that she liked? Somewhere that she might have gone on holiday?’

  ‘We weren’t friends. I shared a tent with her for a few nights but that wasn’t my choice. How would I know where she went on holiday?’

  ‘Who were her friends? Who did she knock about with?’

  A pause on the other end of the line. ‘Honestly? I have no idea. She was barely on my radar at school.’

  ‘And yet you hated her enough to threaten to kill her. In a manner that concerned at least one other child. In my experience, that depth of emotion comes from long acquaintance or from a very serious offence against you.’

  Silence.

  ‘You have no idea where she might go if she was in trouble?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ Vicky said, her tone completely unconcerned.

  Kate hung up, half tempted to throw her phone at the wall in frustration. Instead she texted Cooper and told her to ask anybody who was at the reunion for their photographs. If Rhodes and Fox had met that night, there might be photographic evidence on somebody’s phone.

  Kate stomped back upstairs to the attic room. ‘Barratt, Hollis, get yourselves up here!’ The answer might be in this room, somewhere amongst the strange collection of costumes and documents, and she needed her team to help her to find it.

  Two sets of footsteps on the stairs preceded the entrance of the two DCs, both clad in protective overalls, gloves and bootees.

  ‘Have a good look at all this crap,’ Kate snapped. ‘The answer’s here somewhere. Where has Angela Fox taken Whitaker?’

  Barratt scanned the wall opposite the window while Hollis contemplated the contents of the wardrobe. O’Connor, standing at the top of the stairs, seemed to have found something interesting on his phone.

  ‘What about the school?’ Barratt suggested. ‘It’s where we found Charlton.’

  ‘Not sure she’d use the same location twice,’ Kate said. ‘But it’s worth a look.’ The thought had already occurred to her, but it didn’t feel right.

  ‘How do we know she’s not at Whitaker’s flat?’ Hollis asked.

  ‘We don’t. But we can’t knock the door down without something more concrete than a hunch. I’ve asked Das to hunt down a warrant for the morning.’

  ‘We need to go back to the past,’ O’Connor said, pointing at the pictures from the camping trip. ‘Everything started on that trip and the reunion was some sort of catalyst. If she was abused by Whitaker and/or Charlton, why wait thirty years to exact her revenge? She either saw somebody or something was said to spark this off.’

  ‘Like Bradley and Grieveson,’ Kate said. ‘Rhodes planted a seed and they ran with it and got Whitaker put away.’

  ‘You think Vicky Rhodes might be behind this as well?’ Barratt asked, his tone doubtful.

  ‘Not a clue,’ Kate said. ‘Rhodes claims that there was no contact between herself and Fox at the reunion. We have no evidence to the contrary. Come on, what do we know about Angela Fox? What do her friends and colleagues say?’

  ‘Quiet?’ Hollis suggested. ‘We know she liked theatre but only behind the scenes. She chose isolated locations for her holidays. I got the impression that Dylan felt a bit sorry for her.’

  ‘Loner,’ Barratt added. ‘Nobody close to her. Maybe childhood abuse has prevented her from forming relationships – she might find it hard to trust people. That’s not uncommon. This could be revenge for what Whitaker did to her. We could include Charlton in that as well – the ritualistic elements of his murder suggest retribution,’ Barratt suggested. ‘Maybe she was Whitaker’s victim, but she knew that Charlton had assaulted one or more of her friends. Or vice versa.’

  ‘But why would she do that? Why would she kill as revenge for somebody else’s abuse?’ Kate asked, trying to create a scenario where Barratt’s suggestion made sense.

  ‘She might just see Whitaker and Charlton as guilty of the same thing if she and her friends were hurt at the same time.’

  ‘Which brings us back to why now? There’s something else. Something that we’re missing. And we still don’t know where she’s taken Whitaker.’

  Blank looks from the two DCs.

  ‘O’Connor, will you put your bloody phone down? We could do with your input here.’

  The DS gave Kate a lazy grin and held up his phone. ‘Millers Dale Bridge. You can still do abseiling from the top. It’s close to where the kids camped, and we know that they went here. Didn’t you say that the other teacher got injured there and had to go to the hospital? We keep saying that everything leads back to that camping trip – then I think that’s where she might have taken him.’

  Kate looked at the papers Sellotaped to the walls around her. The pictures of happy kids, the map of part of Derbyshire and the image of the bridge. It did make a certain sense that Angela would finish this where it had started.

  ‘Right, Matt, to the school. Take a couple of uniforms with you. Dan, Steve, you’re coming with me to Derbyshire. I’ll call the local DCI or chief super or anybody else who can get us some warm bodies on that bridge. If we’re wrong, I want you both there t
o share the embarrassment – this was your call, Steve.’

  ‘And if I’m right?’ O’Connor asked, already halfway down the stairs.

  ‘I owe you a pint,’ Kate said. ‘Maybe even two.’

  36

  It was nearly 10pm when Kate and Hollis pulled up in the Millers Dale car park. A full moon was high in the sky illuminating a section of the Monsal Trail – a former railway which had been converted into a popular hiking and cycling route. Kate had contacted Derbyshire Police and they had confirmed that a dark blue Citroen C4 had been spotted nearby – carefully parked and unoccupied. Just before they’d turned off the A623, ten minutes previously, another phone call had confirmed that there were two figures on Millers Dale Bridge. Kate had advised caution but knew that she and Hollis might arrive too late to intervene.

  Hollis leapt out of the car as soon as he’d put on the handbrake, shrugging himself into a padded high-vis jacket. Kate did the same. O’Connor was somewhere behind them – having been held up at traffic lights somewhere round Sheffield – but Kate couldn’t wait for him. David Whitaker might be dead already.

  ‘Which way?’ Hollis asked, switching on his torch and playing the light across the grey gravel of the parking area, catching the reflective markings on two police cars parked either side of a dark hatchback.

  Kate tried to remember the map she’d studied as they’d sped through the Derbyshire countryside. ‘Left past the old station and left again onto the trail. The bridge is a couple of hundred yards further up.’

  They’d only gone a few steps when a figure seemed to materialise out of the darkness.

  ‘DI Fletcher?’ The deep voice indicated a male, but Kate couldn’t see beyond the blinding beam of his high-intensity torch.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘PC Ollie Gould. I’ve been told to wait here. They’re expecting you.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘DI Sophia Hall and a uniformed sergeant – Damian Leese, I think. They’ve got eyes on the suspect and another person – male, sixties or seventies, slight build.’

  It sounded like Fox had managed to get Whitaker out onto the bridge.

  ‘Advice is to approach with caution.’

  Kate managed to refrain from telling the PC that he was simply repeating her own advice back to her and set off past him at a slow jog. Hollis switched off his torch as they reached the flat expanse of the disused railway. The surface was the same fine, grey gravel as the car park and the moonlight lit up every dip and puddle. Ahead, Kate could see high-powered torch beams and a collection of silhouettes, but she couldn’t make out who was who. She slowed to a steady walk, Hollis falling into step beside her, and squinted against the harsh lights, trying to add detail to the shapes in the darkness. She could clearly make out a tall female and a male in high-vis about fifty yards ahead of her but the people at the edge of the trail were a complex mix of shadow and dark clothing.

  A beam of light suddenly flicked towards Kate and Hollis.

  ‘Who’s that?’ The woman’s voice was authoritative, leaving no room for hesitation.

  ‘DI Kate Fletcher, DC Dan Hollis – South Yorkshire Police. I’m the one who called this in,’ Kate said, slowing her pace further as she moved closer to the other two police officers. For a few seconds all she could hear was her own laboured breathing and the crunch of gravel as she and Hollis approached their Derbyshire colleagues.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Kate asked as she got closer.

  ‘Hard to say,’ the woman – Hall – answered. As she trained the torch on the two people on the bridge, Kate was able to get a closer look at her counterpart. Tall, probably close to six feet and dressed in dark clothes, she was a formidable figure. Short dark hair topped a pale face which was half swaddled in a thick scarf that snuggled beneath the collar of a high-vis jacket like the ones Kate and Hollis wore. ‘There’s a man and woman out on the bridge. The man is tied up in some way and he’s on the wrong side of the railings. Looks to me like the woman hauled the man over and then tied his hands to the top rail.’

  ‘Have you spoken to either of them?’

  ‘They know we’re here, that’s about it. The woman warned us to keep away. I think she was tying the rope when we arrived but it’s hard to be sure.’

  ‘Whoa, something’s happening,’ the sergeant said, straightening his torch. Kate looked across to the edge of the bridge, straining to make out any details in the darkness. The two figures were suddenly lit up sharply as Hollis lifted his torch to add to the illumination.

  ‘That better?’ he asked. Kate gave him a nod that he wouldn’t be able to see as she concentrated on Angela Fox and David Whitaker. With the extra light it was easier to see what Fox had done. She’d got Whitaker over the railings and had tied his bound hands to the top rail with nylon climbing rope that flickered in the light, obviously run through with some kind of reflective thread. There seemed to be a narrow parapet below the iron work, on which Whitaker was standing, his body leaning forwards. The only thing stopping him from toppling to his probable death was the rope around his hands.

  ‘What’s below the bridge?’ Kate asked Hall.

  ‘The river. It’s shallow and not very wide.’

  ‘How much of a drop?’

  ‘Eighty feet. I’ve got people down there.’

  Eighty feet. Enough for serious injury but not certain death. What was Fox up to?

  ‘Stay back!’ Fox was holding something in the air, waving it above her head. It caught the light, arcing white beams up into the night sky. A knife.

  Hall immediately lifted her airwave radio. The weapon changed things. If the suspect was armed, they were all in danger and Kate knew that Hall had no choice. She listened as the Derbyshire DI requested backup from an authorised firearms officer. But how long would that take? Kate’s training and instincts were screaming at her to do anything possible to prevent the loss of David Whitaker’s life and she knew that the time to act may have already passed. She shouted to Hollis to send O’Connor into position with the police officers below the bridge and then took a deep breath.

  ‘Angela?’ Kate stepped towards the two figures.

  ‘What the fuck, Fletcher?’ Hall hissed. Kate ignored her and took another step forward.

  ‘Angela, my name’s Kate. I’m with the police. Can we talk?’

  Kate could make out some kind of movement and, for a split second, she thought she’d misjudged the situation. Then a torch beam caught Fox and Whitaker full on and Kate understood what the ropes and the knife meant. Whitaker had rope round his wrists and his neck. One swipe from Fox’s blade and she’d cut through the bindings on his hands, leaving the man to plummet to the length of the rope and hang. There was no way he’d be able to manoeuvre his arms so that he could cling on to the railings behind him. Even if that were a possibility, he looked woozy, as though he’d been drugged.

  ‘Angela,’ Kate tried again. ‘You don’t need to do this. Just talk to me.’

  ‘Go away.’

  It was a start. Fox had acknowledged Kate’s presence; had engaged with her.

  ‘We’ve been looking for you, Angela. We’re here to help.’

  ‘Go away. You can’t help.’

  ‘Angela, I know who he is. I know what he did. This isn’t the way. We can prosecute him. There are always historic abuse cases coming to light. He’ll pay for what he did to you.’

  A flash of light as the blade moved.

  ‘What he did to me?’

  ‘We know that David Whitaker is a paedophile. We know he assaulted some of your classmates on a school trip. They’ve spoken out. You can do the same.’

  ‘You have no idea.’ The tone had changed. Fox was sullen, sarcastic. ‘He did nothing to me. David Whitaker never touched me.’

  Kate was confused. She’d been convinced that Fox was another of Whitaker’s victims hence the attempt to destroy his entire family. Was it Charlton then?

  ‘What happened, Angela? Tell me what happened on that trip. Y
ou can trust me. If you kill him, you’ll spend a long time in jail but if you show some mercy it will go in your favour.’ Kate was making it up as she went along but she could see that the knife was close to Whitaker’s hands again.

  ‘I don’t care,’ the other woman said. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me. It’s all my fault. I deserve everything that’s coming to me. I destroyed their lives.’

  ‘Whose lives? Whose lives did you destroy, Angela?’

  Silence. At first Kate thought that Fox wasn’t going to answer but then she heard a loud sniff. She was crying.

  ‘Angela?’

  ‘It’s all my fault and I don’t know what to do anymore. If I can do this last thing then it might put things right.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘It’s my fault he hurt them.’

  ‘Who? Who did he hurt?’ Kate knew the answer, but she was desperate to keep Angela talking; to keep the knife away from Whitaker.

  ‘Vicky and Lee. I was there. I saw what happened. I saw what Whitaker and Charlton were doing. They were just little kids. How could they do that to little kids?’

  Kate kept quiet, willing Angela to fill the silence.

  ‘I told Mr Whitaker what they were planning. I didn’t think they should be wandering around the campsite at night, so I told. And then they got caught and those men… those men attacked them. It’s my fault. I’ve had to live with this for thirty years. But no more. It’s nearly over.’

  Suddenly it all made sense. Angela Fox wasn’t a victim; she felt that she’d been complicit in the abuse. But why act now? The answer was obvious. The reunion. It had sparked her memories and fed her guilt until she couldn’t bear it any longer.

  Kate heard a car close by and then footsteps on the gravel track, but she didn’t dare turn round. If she lost Fox’s attention now Whitaker would die – she was certain.