Tethered to the Dead: DS Lasser series volume three (The DS Lasser series. Book 3)

by Rob Roughley

  ‘Far from it, she showed a remarkable aptitude in almost all of her studies...’

  ‘But I thought...’

  ‘I know what you thought, but Rachael was a very intelligent girl. In fact, I think half her problems arose from boredom. You see, we don’t tend to get many first rate students, the area, the poverty, the lifestyles of these children all conspire against them.’

  Lasser could almost hear the violins tuning up.

  ‘Rachael had the dysfunctional home life, but she also had a remarkable ability to manipulate those around her.’

  ‘I can believe that.’

  Harper raised an eyebrow. ‘Most of the time, as a teacher you feel in control of the situation, the classroom is your domain and you set the rules. Rachael seemed to understand this completely and had a way of making the teacher feel very uncomfortable. She would delight in making suggestive remarks that were beyond the other students. In fact, she became so adept at it she could leave you doubting your sanity.’

  ‘That sounds a little melodramatic.’

  ‘You think so?’ Harper picked up the phone from his desk and punched in a number. ‘Miss Collins, could you tell Mrs Summerbee I want a quick word, thank you,’ he dropped the receiver back onto the cradle and smiled at Lasser. ‘She should be here in a minute; would you like a drink while we’re waiting?’

  ‘No thanks. Look, Mr Harper, I’m a little pushed for time.’

  The Headmaster flapped a hand. ‘I understand, but believe me you need to hear this.’

  39

  When Bannister spotted Suzanne standing amongst the crowd of onlookers he thought he was hallucinating. Jostled from side to side, a look of utter despair engraved onto her face. It was as if she were moving in slow motion, whilst all around her chaos reigned.

  Storming over, he grabbed her arm and pulled.

  ‘Is it true, have you found the body of Kelly Ramsey in that house?’ Someone bellowed in his ear.

  Bannister glanced at the man, his face congealing with anger. Brewster, the same bastard who’d given Jonathan grief at the gates of the Ramsey home.

  Suzanne slithered from the throng like a new-born slipping into a world of pain. ‘Come with me, Suzanne.’

  She looked up at him blank eyed.

  Brewster looked at the woman, his eyes widened in recognition. ‘Suzanne Ramsey,’ he said as he made a grab for her arm.

  ‘Do you know if the decapitated remains belong to your daughter?’

  ‘Mitchell!’ Bannister yelled.

  A burley man in a uniform that looked two sizes too small popped out of the back of a transit. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Arrest that man,’ he pointed directly at Brewster who turned and tried to push his way through the crowd of onlookers.

  Shooting forward, Mitchell grabbed him by the collar and yanked, Brewster was reeled in kicking and screaming. ‘This is police brutality; they’re trying to stifle free speech!’ He screamed.

  None of the crowd appeared concerned with the plight of the reporter; they all seemed to be looking at Suzanne.

  ‘It’s the mother of that missing girl,’ one woman hissed, the news travelling through the crowd like a virus.

  Bannister took her arm and led her behind the safety of the cordon, placing a protective arm around her shoulder as she staggered forward.

  ‘Tell me it’s not true?’ she gasped, everything about her stretched to breaking point.

  ‘Kelly isn’t in that house, Suzanne, I promise you that.’

  ‘But that man said...’

  ‘That man is a lying piece of shit.’

  ‘But...’

  Bannister stopped and took hold of her shoulders. ‘Listen to me, as far as I’m concerned, Kelly is still alive, we just have to find her.’

  ‘How can you know that, how can you be sure?’ her eyes were brimming with tears, she swiped a shaking hand under her nose, there was something almost childlike about the gesture.

  Bannister looked skyward, all around he could hear the sounds of cameras taking a snapshot of time never to be repeated, whilst above the clouds drifted lazily by.

  ‘Call it a gut feeling,’ he eventually replied.

  ‘But you don’t know for sure?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t.’

  She sniffed and nodded.

  ‘Where’s Jonathan?’ he asked.

  ‘Back at the house, tearing it apart looking for drugs,’ she sounded dismayed – awash with uncertainty.

  He sighed and led her to his car, once inside she closed her eyes and time ceased to exist, he watched her closely convinced for a moment that she was actually sleeping. ‘What Jonathan said about Kelly being nervous around you wasn’t true,’ she said in a small voice.

  Bannister watched as Carl came out of the house, another plastic sack containing a body part held in his hand.

  ‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do Suzanne, but he was probably right, I mean, so many times I wanted to tell her...’

  She looked at him in confusion. ‘Why would you want to do something like that?’

  He ran a hand across his eyes, trying to remember when he’d last slept. ‘If I’m honest, it was nothing more than jealousy on my part. I started to think it should have been me.’

  ‘It could have been, if you’d stuck around,’ she snapped.

  Turning, he looked at her, a man who wished he could somehow turn back time, yet knew it was impossible. ‘The first time I saw her I couldn’t believe how much she looked like you, I suppose I’d convinced myself that she didn’t really exist...’

  ‘Yes well, you were always good at wiping the slate clean, weren’t you, Alan?’

  What she was saying was true; in this job, the ability to simply move on and ignore everything that had gone before had stood him in good stead. People thought he was a cold bastard and they were right, the career came first, nothing else had mattered, until now.

  ‘I almost told her myself, once,’ she said.

  He turned fully in his seat, all the commotion outside forgotten about, dismissed. ‘What stopped you?’

  ‘Jonathan and I were going through a rough patch, you know the kind of thing, he seemed to be working all the hours God sends and I started to get suspicious, thought he was having an affair...’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she gave him a strange twisted smile. ‘It wasn’t the first, and after this, I doubt whether it’ll be the last. You see, he likes to be in charge both in and out of the bedroom, which was fine by me...’

  ‘Look, Suzanne, I don’t really need to hear this, what goes on between you two is a private matter.’

  She carried on as if running on autopilot – a message trapped in a loop.

  ‘But you see, when I found out about the affairs all that changed. I lost interest in the sex and he didn’t like that, he couldn’t grasp that he’d done anything wrong...’

  ‘Bastard,’ he spat out the word without thinking, a knee jerk reaction.

  She looked at him as the darkness crept into her eyes. ‘Excuse me?’

  Bannister opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say, something that wouldn’t sound juvenile and pathetic. ‘I...’

  ‘Just because he likes to screw around doesn’t make him a bad father,’ she said.

  Bannister lowered his eyes as if he couldn’t stand to see the accusation in her eyes. ‘You’re right I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that, it was out...’

  ‘Jonathan thinks the world of Kelly; it’s me he has the problem with.’

  ‘But why, I mean, you two always seemed like the ideal couple?’

  She laughed a bitter bark. ‘What a cliché,’ pulling out a pack of menthol cigarettes she lit one, smoke sliding from her lips. ‘Let’s just say the older I get the less inclined he is to come near me.’

  ‘Jesus, Suzanne, you’re only thirty-eight and...’

  ‘And what, I look good for my age?’ she raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Bann
ister swallowed and looked into her eyes. ‘You know you do.’

  ‘Ah, you see, it takes a lot of time to get the mask just so, I used to spend hours at the gym, just to keep myself in trim, hoping he’d start to take an interest again. I put his indifference down to tiredness or stress at work, but you see the truth is Jonathan could have retired, two maybe three years ago. Or at least he could have slowed down, spent more time at home, but why should he when he was having such a good time shagging his seventeen year old secretary.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I said nothing at first, simply trained harder, got some Botox done, thought about having these increased in size,’ she snatched at her breasts, the hands twisting in self-loathing. ‘But no woman my age can compete with a seventeen year old...’

  ‘Look, I’ve known you since you were eighteen and I’d...’

  ‘What. Still fuck me; is that what you were going to say?’

  Bannister gripped the wheel, his own sense of worth shrinking as his erection grew. ‘Maybe we should concentrate on the here and now...’

  ‘And why would I want to do that? My daughter,’ she paused and closed her eyes, ‘our daughter is missing and the longer she stays that way the less chance I have of ever seeing her again, that’s the truth, isn’t it?’ She studied his face, his lips compressed into a thin line that told her all she needed to know. ‘The secretary didn’t last long, but then again they never do. I know of four girls that he’s had affairs with, the last one was six months out of school.’

  ‘Six months!’

  She met his gaze, her eyes defiant. ‘I want him checking out, Alan...’

  ‘But...’

  ‘No buts, he might have acted like a doting father but I don’t trust the man. In fact, I never have.’

  40

  Mary Summerbee looked cautiously at Harper across the desk.

  She was in her mid-thirties, hair short and trendy, dressed in dark blue trousers and a cream top, her face set in a frown of confusion.

  ‘What’s this about, George? I was just on my way to class, and...’

  ‘Rachael Bradley.’

  Lasser watched as she threw him a furtive glance before looking away. ‘What about her?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to explain to Detective Sergeant Lasser here that she was somewhat unique.’

  ‘I prefer to call her sick and twisted,’ she snapped.

  George Harper nodded. ‘Quite.’

  Lasser turned in his seat. ‘Look, I don’t know why he’s called you here, Mrs Summerbee, but if you have something to tell me then perhaps we can move it along,’ he checked his watch. ‘And make it the abridged version if you don’t mind, I have places I need to be.’

  ‘Fine. Rachael Bradley is a manipulative, scheming little bitch who should be institutionalised before she can cause someone some serious damage. Is that brief enough for you?’

  Harper leant back in his seat, lips, ruler thin.

  Lasser fiddled with the cigarette box in his pocket. ‘I take it she made accusations against you?’

  ‘I gave her a ‘B’ for an assignment in English and she questioned me about it.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’

  ‘Not as such, but this was different, oh, you always get the child who believes that everything they produce should be graded an ‘A.’ They’re delusional, Sergeant, and you get used to dealing with them. With Rachael it was almost as if she deliberately handed in a piece of work that was below standard, just so she could put her plan into practice.’

  ‘Plan?’

  She leaned forward in her seat, elbows on knees. ‘What you have to realise, Sergeant, is that Rachael never does anything without good reason. Oh, the reason might be twisted and unfathomable to the likes of us, but to her it’ll make perfect sense.’

  ‘So, what did she do?’ he asked.

  ‘Two weeks previously I had cause to reprimand her for smoking, as it happens it was behind the bike shed, a cliché I know, but nonetheless true.’

  ‘And she didn’t like it?’

  ‘That’s just it, she seemed to take the detention in good grace, no shouting and screaming like you get with some of them.’

  ‘Did she sit the detention?’

  ‘Yes she did, I was the teacher in charge, and she sat there quite as a mouse and completed the work I set her. Then, two weeks later, she came to see me and told me she was going to make an accusation against me of a sexual nature.’

  ‘Because you caught her smoking?’ Lasser asked in disbelief.

  ‘You would think so or maybe it was because of the detention, or a crazy mixture of both, but in reality it had nothing to do with any of that...’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because she told me.’

  Lasser felt confused, the need for a cigarette was gnawing at his senses. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Summerbee, you’re starting to lose me.’

  Harper stood up and went to the window, hands folded behind his back, still as stone.

  Mary Summerbee glanced at his back and shook her head. ‘She laid it out in very graphic terms, the things she was going to say,’ she shivered as she recalled the memories. ‘And she was true to her word wasn’t she, George?’

  Harper turned. ‘She came to my office and told me that Mrs Summerbee had forced her to perform a sex act on her. Thankfully, Mary had already been to see me and explained about her threats.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I made it known in the strongest possible terms that accusations such as these were unacceptable.’

  ‘And what was her response?’

  ‘She laughed at me,’ Harper cleared his throat. ‘She sat where you are, and she laughed, she actually told me to take a ‘chill pill.’

  ‘Did she make any allegations to the authorities?’

  ‘It was I, sir, who went to the police, I mean, I couldn’t just sit back and ignore any of this,’ he looked flustered, colour rising in his grizzled cheeks, a Dickensian character in a twenty first century world.

  ‘And what was the outcome?’

  ‘She denied everything,’ Summerbee hissed. ‘She said she had no idea what I was talking about, the police questioned a couple of her friends, who of course backed her up, saying that she was with them the whole of that day.’

  Lasser sighed. ‘Well, to be honest she isn’t the first and I dare say she won’t be the last to play mind games...’

  ‘The day after, she approached me in the corridor, in front of at least half a dozen witnesses and apologised. She said the whole thing had been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘To tell you the truth I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I simply walked away, which I now realise was a mistake on my part. She followed me and started to cry, there were fellow students watching and I couldn’t get away fast enough but she just kept on following until I was almost running.’

  Harper watched her with a look of sympathy. ‘There but for the grace of God.’

  ‘She caught up with me outside the staff-room door and it took me a moment to realise that she wasn’t crying at all, she was actually laughing. I wanted to slap her face...’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘Of course not, I’m a professional, but I wanted to.’ Summerbee swallowed down her rising anger. ‘Then she said she just wanted to see how easy it would be to destroy a reputation.’

  Lasser frowned, that didn’t sound like the kind of language a sixteen year old would use.

  ‘Those were her exact words?’

  She threw him a sidelong glance. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but it’s the truth, she said she was just curious and that I shouldn’t take offence. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and then she turned and walked away.’

  Harper placed his hands on the desk and peered at Lasser. ‘So you see, Sergeant, Rachael Bradley left quite a mark on this school and we were all glad to see the back of her.’

  Mary Summerbee took out a handkerchi
ef and blew her nose ‘And now you say she’s at Claremont’s? ’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well all I can say is God help poor Christopher.’

  Lasser turned toward her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, I would imagine when Christopher Fulcom left here he would have thought that was the last he would ever see of the poisonous little bitch.’

  41

  Kelly Ramsey had been missing for almost forty-eight hours and the atmosphere in the incident room was downbeat. Tired eyes watched as Bannister walked to the front of the room, his eyes fixed on the whiteboard that had images of Marshall Brooks blue tacked to the surface.

  Bannister tapped a finger against one of the black and white photos. ‘We need to find out everything about this man, and quick. That means going door-to-door and I don’t just mean the next-door neighbours. We know Brooks was a creature of habit, everyday he went to the Cosy Cafe in town, never missed in over two years, until yesterday.’

  ‘What about the killer, boss?’

  ‘Right, Bob, as far as we can tell there was no forced entry, which means he probably knew his killer and people like Brooks follow a routine, they come into contact with the same people on a daily basis. We need to find these people and check them out.’

  A hand shot up. ‘Yes, Black?’

  ‘What about the photographs?’

  ‘Well, I think we can safely say that it was Brooks who took the images of the girl, but there’s no equipment in the house to process the photographs, which means he was probably getting them developed somewhere else. If that’s the case then it stands to reason that Brooks knew someone who would print them – no questions asked.’

  Lasser listened closely, the way Bannister said ‘the girl’ instead of using her name pointed to the fact that he was attempting to distance himself from reality, trying to forget that she was his flesh and blood. As far as Lasser was concerned, he was doing a good job, though how long he could keep it up was another matter.

  ‘Now of course we’re trying to identify the other girls in the albums, but that could take some time,’ he looked down at his shoes and cleared his throat. ‘About the scent that the dog picked up last night, we’re going to start dredging the pond later this afternoon. So unless anyone has any further questions I suggest we all get a move on.’