‘Angela,’ she tried again, ignoring the metallic voice on the radio behind her. ‘Angela, what happened isn’t your fault. Men like this don’t do these things on the spur of the moment. They’re meticulous. They plan. Nothing you did would have changed the outcome.’
She could make out Angela’s face, pale in the torchlight as she nodded. ‘I thought that, for a long time. I told myself that what I did wasn’t the root cause of the abuse. But it’s not true. I know it’s my fault and I’m prepared to face the consequences. I have to put this right – for them. For Lee and Vicky.’
‘I’ve spoken to Vicky,’ Kate said. ‘She doesn’t blame you. She didn’t even mention you. She has a good life. She’s moved on. You don’t have to do this.’
‘DI Fletcher!’ Hall’s voice. Kate closed her eyes, willing her to hold on for a few more seconds. ‘DI Fletcher, there is an authorised firearms officer next to me. Please inform the suspect that she is in the line of fire.’
‘The suspect heard it for herself,’ Angela Fox shouted back, her voice defiant. ‘And the suspect doesn’t care.’
A blur of movement and then there was a single figure on the bridge. Kate took a step forwards as Angela Fox fell to her knees, hands entwined across the top of her head in surrender. But Whitaker was gone.
Kate rushed to the railings where the climbing rope strained against the weight of the body on the other end. Grabbing a handful, Kate pulled, desperately trying to haul Whitaker back to the bridge. Shouts from below, one of them sounded like O’Connor. There were other police officers down there, obviously waiting in case the rope wasn’t tied properly or something else happened to cause Whitaker to fall unchecked.
And then she saw him, like a child’s swing in a light breeze, swaying lazily left to right, midway between the bridge and the black ribbon of the river.
There would be no rescue for David Whitaker.
37
Kate scanned the wine list, trying to decide if she actually wanted a drink. She’d chosen the restaurant – central, fairly intimate but usually quite busy – in the hope that a neutral setting would allow the space that she and Nick needed to work out if their relationship was worth saving. Now, waiting for him to appear, Kate knew that she’d overreacted to his comments and that asking him to leave had been an uncharacteristically extreme reaction. She missed him. It was so simple that to consider breaking up seemed ridiculous and totally unnecessary. But she had no idea how Nick felt.
A waiter hovered expectantly, so Kate caved in and ordered a glass of red – she could always put it to one side until Nick arrived. She was good at putting things to one side. Wasn’t that what she’d been doing with Nick while she’d been dealing with the Angela Fox case? But now Fox had been charged, Kate felt the need to sort out her personal life.
Wrapping up the details of a case was often as tiring as trying to solve it in the first place. Fox had confessed to four murders; Chris Gilruth, Margaret Wallace, Simon Charlton and David Wallace. She claimed that she’d been acting of her own volition and hadn’t been coerced by anybody.
Nearly everything she told them could be evidenced. She’d attended the reunion and seen Bradley, Grieveson and Rhodes together, and their meeting had tapped into her guilt. She’d witnessed the assaults on Rhodes and Bradley, but she wasn’t aware that Grieveson had also been a victim. She had access to hospital records which showed that Margaret Whitaker had had a male child and she’d eventually worked out, through her research into the family, that Margaret had given the baby to her sister.
Her IT skills had also enabled her to use her NHS access to break into the records of the nursing home and change Margaret’s next of kin information. She also found it relatively easy to track down Simon Charlton. It all made so much sense. Angela’s experience with costume and make-up with her theatre group made disguising herself a simple task.
There were only two things which still niggled in Kate’s mind.
Firstly, a thorough search of Fox’s premises had failed to reveal any computer equipment. The woman claimed to have done all her research at work using the NHS computer system – and she said she’d then covered her tracks. Kate wasn’t convinced. There was a tablet or laptop somewhere with more evidence on it. What Kate didn’t understand was why Fox wanted to hide it. She’d confessed to everything.
The second niggle concerned Vicky Rhodes. Angela had named her former classmate as her solicitor. Kate had no idea why Fox thought that a property lawyer who lived in Spain would be a good choice to help her to negotiate the British criminal justice system, but she’d been visibly devastated when Rhodes had refused to help. Sam hadn’t been able to place them together at the reunion, but Kate was certain that something had happened between the two women, though both denied it vehemently. Despite Angela’s Fox’s full confession, Kate felt there was still more digging to be done.
‘Hey, you’ve started without me.’
Kate looked up into Nick’s deep brown eyes as he smiled down at her.
‘I didn’t know what you’d want to drink, sorry.’
‘No problem,’ he said as he pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. He’d made an effort with his appearance, Kate noted. Jeans and a suit jacket over a pale blue shirt with an open collar – very much the off-duty consultant. And very attractive.
‘You’re going to stay then?’ she asked.
‘Yep. I’m starving. No moussaka on the menu?’
Kate’s stomach lurched as she remembered the last time she’d seen him, and the awful things she’d said. ‘Nick, I’m so sorry I yelled at you. I was so stressed and Das had just kicked me off my own case.’
He stared at the menu, his lips tight.
Kate carried on, ‘And I’m sorry that I accused you of having no right to ask me about my past.’
Still no response. This wasn’t going as planned.
‘Nick, say something. Can we get past this?’
He slowly raised his eyes to hers. ‘I don’t know. It’s not what you said about your past, I get that. And it’s not the yelling that hurts.’
He was struggling to keep a smile from his lips – there was a joke coming. Kate’s stomach unknotted.
‘But you insulted my cooking. You called it,’ he lowered his voice, ‘fucking moussaka. It’s my speciality. It’s a family recipe. How could you dismiss it so easily?’
He was grinning fully. ‘Look, I know you get stressed and I probably shouldn’t have pushed you. And I accept that you overreacted, Kate. But there are still things we don’t know about each other and some of those might be surprising. If we’re going to move forward, we have to acknowledge that and be prepared. And you need to talk to me. I know you’ve been busy, but a couple of texts isn’t really communicating.’
He was right. Kate knew that she was in the wrong – that she was the one to blame – and she felt a wave of gratitude that Nick had turned up.
‘Can we start again?’ she asked.
Nick nodded. ‘We can. Maybe one day I’ll even let you taste my moussaka.’
‘Are you talking dirty to me in the middle of an Italian restaurant?’
‘Not yet. But give it time.’
Kate smiled and picked up her menu. ‘I think I’ll stick to lasagne this evening. It’s probably safer.’
Epilogue
Vicky Rhodes took another sip of her drink and lit a cigarette. She never got tired of the view from her balcony; the street below, busy even at this time of night, the stunted palm trees and then the sea. How often had she sat here watching the ships unloading their cargoes of goods and passengers? She loved this city: loved this life. And now, for the first time, she felt truly safe. The scars of her past still lurked in her mind and beneath the long sleeves that covered her arms whatever the weather, but she already felt more able to cope, more centred.
Angela’s call had been an annoyance but fully expected and she’d felt no guilt for refusing to help. There was nothing she could do anyway – it wasn’t her fi
eld of expertise and she hadn’t practised law in the UK for years. But Angela hadn’t known that and had believed Vicky when she’d promised to help when it was all over. She’d believed so much of what Vicky had said. When they’d met up after the reunion, Angela had been tearful from the start but, when Vicky had shown her scarred arms and explained how awful Lee and Neil’s lives were, the woman had been barely consolable. Her state of mind had made for easy manipulation.
A green bus sped along the street below, heading out of town. That’s what Vicky wanted to do next. To get out of town for a few days, maybe head for the mountains or the west coast. Somewhere quiet where she could reflect; and celebrate.
Behind her, in the living room, her laptop beeped to indicate that it had completed a factory reset and had reformatted the hard disc. Tomorrow, Vicky would take it apart and destroy the disc drive. She knew that Angela would have done the same – following instructions once again. She’d be willing to bet a large amount of money that Angela’s laptop was gently sinking into the mud at the bottom of Tickhill duck pond. It had been a throwaway suggestion but one that she felt sure Angela would have taken to heart.
Vicky picked up the thin pile of papers from where she’d placed them on the table next to the ashtray. They were all that was left. The only evidence. She hadn’t been able to resist printing the e-mails out for one last read but now it was time to destroy them. She flicked her lighter and studied the flame as it danced in the gentle breeze that blew in off the Atlantic. The words at the top of the page caught her attention for the last time. Such a chatty tone for such a serious matter.
‘Do you know how difficult it is to cut up a body? I had no idea. The drugs were the simple part – I’d just…’ The flame caught the bottom of the page and quickly the words were consumed by the fire. Vicky dropped papers to the tiled floor of the balcony and watched until the flames died away.
The mountains. She would definitely go to the mountains.
Acknowledgements
As always, thanks to all the Bloodhound team for their continued faith in my writing and for everything they do to help promote my books. Thanks once again to Clare for the edit – especially for spotting the infestation of Alans! I’m also grateful to the other Bloodhound authors for their encouragement and general banter.
A massive thank you to everybody who has bought and read the first three books in the series – it’s wonderful to know that Kate has something of a following.
I’d also like to acknowledge all the online book groups and bloggers who do an incredible job in helping to publicise authors.
Writing can be quite a solitary occupation, so I’d also like to thank members of the dog-walking community in Stanwix who always seem to have time for a natter when I need to get out and clear my head for an hour or so.
And thanks to Viv for time, encouragement, support and much-needed coffee breaks.
A note from the publisher
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