‘Actually, a rather interesting new true-crime podcast,’ Ivo replied, ‘about a cold case I covered back in the day.’
‘Podcast?’ the editor echoed. ‘Any good?’
‘Not bad. It’s made by a young graduate who interned for us.’
‘Is that so? I keep being told we ought to get more into podcasts. Some of the poncier titles have been doing them for a while.’
Ivo was struck by an agreeable idea. ‘I was thinking about running a piece on this one, actually. It’s called Stories from the Fire.’
‘Catchy title.’
‘Maybe the Courier could sponsor it or something,’ Ivo suggested. ‘It’s a good cause, seeking justice in an unsolved rape and murder.’
His editor nodded. ‘Write something up and show it to me.’
Twenty-five minutes later, having won approval to run the piece in Saturday’s paper, Ivo texted Freddie to let him know. He was happy to be able to give the kid a break. With a print circulation of over a million and a further two or three million online, the right coverage in the Courier would send the number of Freddie’s listeners rocketing. It wasn’t only that Freddie was struggling to get a job; he’d also confided to Ivo that his relationship was under strain. While he was marooned at his grandmother’s on the Dengie Peninsula, keeping tabs on the old girl while trying to save enough money to get the podcast up and running, his girlfriend had got a job and a flat-share in London. They could only see each other at weekends, and she was becoming less and less keen on schlepping out to Essex. Given the real sacrifices Freddie was making for his project, Ivo reckoned he deserved a leg-up. An article would also put Freddie’s name under the noses of those at the Courier who were in a position to commission work. What happened next was up to him, but Ivo’s self-congratulatory glow was gratifying. He could almost see himself getting into this mentoring malarkey.
If he was to persuade the Courier to sponsor the podcasts, they’d have to be good. Freddie had pressed Ivo to remember anything he could about the Bowyer case, and Ivo had noted down several colourful stories he could tell him about JJ, including a bizarre evening when JJ had introduced him to the local Masonic lodge. Freddie had also particularly asked for anything to which he could attach sound effects, but Ivo had so far only managed to come up with one suggestion, which was that one of Heather’s friends had mentioned hearing a snatch of music from a passing car around the time they lost sight of their friend. It was better than nothing.
He’d already told Freddie he should try interviewing the guy from the fire, Larry Nixon – the tragic irony of a man who had once saved strangers, then failed in the attempt to rescue his own family, was a gift of a story. But Freddie had said he preferred to focus the next few episodes on the cold case rather than the fire. He seemed to think it was only a matter of time before he somehow magically unlocked the mystery. Privately, Ivo reckoned that, by allowing his listeners to expect that kind of revelation, Freddie was simply setting himself up to fail, but had said nothing. The kid had to learn for himself.
It was a long time since Ivo had dwelt in any detail on recollections of his youthful self, and he now found himself struggling with unwanted side effects. These trips down Memory Lane were passing perilously close to certain side alleys that he’d always resisted looking down.
Only with hindsight could he admit how slavishly he’d fallen under JJ’s spell. Why had he come to regard the detective as almost a father figure? His actual father was then still living – emotionally stifled, yes, but in other ways a perfectly admirable role model – so why his need to latch on to Jason Jupp, of all people?
JJ had certainly offered a welcome that was warm and boozy and held a whiff of just enough danger and sleaze to be addictively alluring to a crime reporter still wet behind the ears. Ivo had felt as if the older man had opened a door on to a nostalgic era of criminality that Ivo had hitherto known only from tales told by burnt-out hacks around the bar at El Vino’s in Fleet Street. It wasn’t until long afterwards that Ivo had dared acknowledge that his devil’s apprenticeship had had very real consequences, and that JJ had been telling nothing but the truth when, in his cups, he’d boasted about running Southend as his own private fiefdom. Ivo had long ago become adept at swiftly closing down any unnecessary reflection on the part he had played, and had striven to convince himself that JJ’s various accommodations with the truth had been driven by the best of intentions – a simple case of ‘noble cause corruption’. He knew that sop to conscience was a fantasy, but also that it was far too late to put things right now.
He tore up the notes he’d made about other stories to tell Freddie. Some bits of the past were best forgotten.
18
‘Sir?’ Grace knocked at the open door to Superintendent Pitman’s office. ‘We’ve got a result on Reece Nixon’s DNA sample.’
‘Already?’
‘Wendy leaned on the lab to fast-track it and they managed an extra-speedy turnaround.’
He beckoned impatiently, rolling up the sleeves of his customarily pristine white shirt. ‘Well, come in, then. Tell me.’
Grace sat down facing him across his desk. ‘Reece Nixon is not a match to the DNA profile on the knife used to murder Heather Bowyer.’
‘Not a match?’
‘No.’
‘Fuck.’ Colin threw himself back in his leather executive chair. ‘Excuse my French.’
‘We can still put him at the scene,’ she said, trying to make light of her own frustration. ‘He is a match to a partial profile from inside the glove, where there was a mixture of DNA.’
‘So what?’ he sighed heavily. ‘Gets us nowhere.’
‘It brings us an awful lot closer to Heather’s killer than we’ve ever been before.’
He sat forward again. ‘Fair enough. At least I can inform the chief constable that the familial search wasn’t a waste of time.’
‘And you could argue,’ she said, ‘that if the perpetrator was wearing gloves, then we wouldn’t expect to find a full profile on the knife.’
‘Remind me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’
‘The profile on the knife is touch DNA,’ she reminded him. ‘All that tells us is that we might be able to identify someone who handled it. It doesn’t tell us when or how the DNA was deposited. But we know that the glove and the knife are forensically connected because some of the other DNA markers found in the glove also match the profile on the knife. They suggest we’re looking at first-order relatives. And it’s a kitchen knife. At the time of Heather’s murder Reece Nixon was living at home with his father and his brother Larry. The DNA on the knife might well belong to someone he had shared a kitchen with.’
‘You’ve got DNA samples from the other family members?’ asked Colin.
‘We took one from Larry yesterday. It’ll be early next week before we can expect the results.’
‘But you still think Reece Nixon killed Heather Bowyer?’
‘If he wasn’t guilty, why would he kill himself on the very day that we turn up?’ said Grace. ‘Dr Tripathi is going to be examining Larry Nixon’s injuries from the fire for evidence of flash burns later today. Unfortunately his father destroyed the clothes he was wearing. But in any case, there’s nothing to contradict the assumption that it was Reece who killed his wife before setting fire to his house.’
‘He might’ve thought to leave us a signed confession.’
Grace smiled. ‘He did have the foresight to leave the newspaper cuttings in his attic.’
‘True.’
‘Even if we had Reece Nixon as a live suspect, we’d still have to present corroborative evidence.’
‘If he was alive, we’d also be charging him with arson and the murder of his wife,’ Colin said tartly.
‘Yes, but we’d still need to close the Bowyer case.’ She took a deep breath, knowing that her boss would not like what she was about to say. ‘Reece Nixon kept cuttings about Heather’s murder and also about two reported rapes that had t
aken place in Southend some months before. Not even the original investigation linked these crimes, so why did he?’
‘I expect you’re about to tell me,’ said Colin.
‘He kept no cuttings about other crimes, which suggests that, for him, there was a connection. I think our clearest line of enquiry will be to link Reece to these two rapes.’
Colin frowned, and Grace guessed that he would be looking for reasons to say no.
‘Reece didn’t mention any further offences when he made his confession to his brother,’ he said. ‘If he was already considering suicide, he had no reason not to.’
‘Shame?’ she suggested. ‘Thinking about his kids?’
‘Maybe,’ said Colin. ‘Is there any forensic evidence from the original investigations into those two rapes that we can use?’
‘Nothing was retained,’ she said. ‘Southend had no rape suite or specialist officers. The women were expected to go to the local hospital for examination. Initial statements were taken but there was no follow-up.’
‘Then I’m afraid it doesn’t look very promising,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want to blow the budget on a deceased offender.’
‘There were three other reported rapes that, in terms of geographical profiling and other similarities, I believe might also be linked to Heather’s case. Now that we have a suspect, we might get something useful from one of the women.’
‘After twenty-five years?’
‘Rape is the most serious survivable crime, sir.’
He nodded, but she could see that he was still casting around for a counter-argument. She stayed silent, hoping he wouldn’t find one, and was saved by the phone on his desk ringing.
Colin picked up the receiver. ‘Superintendent Pitman.’ He glanced at Grace. ‘Yes, Hilary, she’s with me now, why don’t you join us?’ He hung up. ‘She’s on her way. You may not have seen this morning’s Courier.’
‘No, sir,’ she said, trying to stifle a wave of anxiety that Ivo had, after all, somehow got wind of Reece Nixon’s link to the cold case.
‘Apparently there’s an article about some young man who’s podcasting about the Heather Bowyer case,’ he said. ‘Hilary says the profile is by the same journalist who ran yesterday’s piece about Larry Nixon being the hero of the Marineland fire.’
‘Ivo Sweatman,’ said Grace, relieved that the media had not yet cottoned on to her investigation. ‘I know him. He also wrote most of the original coverage of the Bowyer murder that we found in Reece Nixon’s attic.’
‘Did he now? Well then, he’s definitely getting a bit too close for comfort.’ He looked up as Hilary Burnett tapped on his door. ‘Ah, good. Come in.’
The communications director smiled at Grace as she took the chair beside her, smoothing her skirt and neatly crossing her legs as she sat down. Her hair and make-up were as flawless and professional-looking as ever. It had been Hilary’s friendship with Grace’s stepmother when they’d worked together in PR for the beauty industry that had first led Grace to apply for the job in Essex. Since then she’d learnt to trust Hilary’s agile mind as well as her discretion. Although Hilary knew more than most about the extent of Ivo and Grace’s unofficial collaborations in the past, Grace had always tried to compromise the older woman’s position as little as possible.
‘So how much does this podcaster know?’ asked Colin.
‘So far only what’s always been in the public domain,’ said Hilary. ‘He’s called Freddie Craig and his podcast is called Stories from the Fire. His original link to the murder is that he was born the same night. I’ll send you the link so you can listen.’
‘Thanks,’ said Grace.
‘The last episode was an interview with Ivo Sweatman,’ Hilary continued, ‘so Freddie Craig knows there’s a link between the Marineland fire and the arson at Reece Nixon’s house.’
‘That’s already been in the Courier,’ Grace pointed out.
‘Yes,’ said Hilary, ‘but I’m concerned that it will be only a matter of time before either Ivo or this podcaster finds out about the prior police interest in Reece Nixon.’
‘We need to stay in control of the narrative,’ said Colin, stating the obvious.
Hilary turned to Grace. ‘We need to make a statement about the Heather Bowyer case. How much can you give me?’
‘It’s all circumstantial so far,’ she said.
‘We don’t want this story dribbled out in bits and pieces,’ said Colin. ‘I think it’s time to take a view.’
‘I’d like to put out a media statement today, if possible,’ Hilary agreed.
‘I must keep Monica Bowyer informed,’ said Grace, thinking fast. ‘Warn her that she might get door-stepped.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Hilary. ‘Tell her to call me if she needs any support. Are we positively identifying Reece Nixon as Heather’s killer?’
‘We have his partial DNA in a glove found at the scene, his confession to his brother, the contemporary newspaper coverage he kept and his suicide,’ said Colin. ‘Seems to me that’s sufficient evidence to register a recorded crime outcome.’
‘I’m fine with identifying Reece as a person of interest, but I’d rather delay anything more definite until we’ve made further enquiries,’ said Grace.
‘When will that be?’ asked Hilary.
Grace held up her hands. ‘End of next week?’
Hilary shook her head. ‘My advice is to issue as firm a statement as we can today.’
Grace saw a hole in the fence and bolted through it. ‘What if we say that we’re widening the scope of our enquiries? That gives us room to manoeuvre and an opportunity to appeal for information.’ Grace briefly explained about the earlier rapes and was relieved when Hilary readily accepted her theory.
‘Closing the book on a serial rapist would certainly paint Essex Police in a positive light,’ Hilary said. ‘The media tends to give very favourable coverage to the resolution of serious cold cases, especially if they can report them without worrying about sub judice.’
Grace turned to Colin. ‘And the publicity should help to bring forward new information.’
‘Freddie Craig is also trawling for witnesses,’ Hilary told Colin. ‘We need to be one step ahead of him here.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t want any fresh evidence going to some amateur sleuth and not to us. An appeal will speed things up and may also keep the costs down.’
‘I’ll draft something to put out in time for the early evening news,’ said Hilary. She turned to Grace. ‘Will that give you enough time to brief the families?’
‘Just about,’ said Grace. ‘Thanks, Hilary.’
Colin also turned to her. ‘Very well, go ahead and make further enquiries about those cases. But don’t go overboard.’
‘No, sir.’ She tried to hide her grin. ‘Thank you very much.’
19
As Grace crossed the MIT office, she beckoned to Blake to join her. She registered as she passed that he was leaning down to speak to Carolyn, his hand on the back of her chair and, when he entered Grace’s cubicle, Carolyn was hovering meekly behind him. Irritated by the young woman’s presence, Grace looked forward to Duncan’s return from honeymoon when the constable could go back to the DVU whence she’d come.
However, the reason for Carolyn’s diffidence immediately became clear. ‘Sergeant Langley told me about Larry Nixon’s clothes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s entirely my fault we didn’t secure them in time.’
Remembering Blake’s earlier admonition, and striving to remember her younger self in the early stages of her own career, Grace spoke kindly. ‘Not entirely. I was there, too. All the same, it’s a useful lesson about seizing evidence.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Anyway, the good news is that Superintendent Pitman has given the green light to pursue a connection between the Southend rapes and the Bowyer murder.’
‘Excellent!’ Blake pulled out the spare chair, only to offer it to Carolyn, as he went qu
ickly to fetch another for himself from the main office. Grace could hardly tell a junior team member she wasn’t wanted, and silently blamed her tetchiness on Carolyn’s over-eagerness to please.
‘Right,’ said Grace when Blake had returned and sat down. She clapped her hands together in a gesture that immediately reminded her of her least favourite teacher at school. ‘I have to go to see Monica Bowyer and explain the implications of the DNA result, but I want the team to get started on further enquiries. First off, we need photographs of Reece Nixon as he looked twenty-five years ago.’
‘We will have to ask family members,’ said Blake. ‘Wendy found no family albums or snaps in the house.’
‘Isn’t that a bit strange?’ asked Carolyn.
‘Not really,’ he answered. ‘Everything in the living room went up in smoke.’
‘I’ll also be speaking to Michael and Anne Nixon to warn them there’ll be a media statement,’ said Grace, ‘so I can ask them if they have any.’
‘Sorry, boss,’ said Carolyn, ‘but why are photographs important?’
‘I’m hoping a photograph may jog memories. Although three of the rape complainants said their attacker was masked, one said she was assaulted by the taxi driver who picked her up. Reece was a local driver, and one of the women might have come across him previously.’
Blake nodded. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to track down at least a couple of the original complainants.’
Grace nodded. ‘Two were visitors, like Heather, but three were local, so let’s start with them.’
‘Carolyn’s been working on a profile of Reece Nixon twenty-five years ago,’ said Blake, nodding at the young woman to read out her notes.
‘He was twenty-five, living at his father’s house in Southend and working as a driver for his father’s taxi company,’ said Carolyn. ‘His then girlfriend, Kirsty, was pregnant. They got married and moved to Colchester in November 1992 and their first child, Michael, was born the following March.’
‘When Larry mentioned Reece moving away,’ said Grace, frowning, ‘he said Reece got weird and cut himself off, and Owen said he threw him out. But getting married and having a baby seems to me like a perfectly normal reason for a fresh start.’
Wrong Way Home: Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month Page 8
