Wrong Way Home: Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month

by Isabelle Grey

  Yet a niggle of doubt lingered. She mustn’t allow herself to be side-tracked by it. She had a complex investigation on her hands that was in danger of stalling. Clear the ground beneath your feet, that’s what she’d tell another SIO to do, so why wasn’t she taking her own advice? If she didn’t come up with something soon that would lock down the case against Larry Nixon, then Colin would pressurise her to wind up the cold case inquiry. Worst-case scenario, he’d dismiss the flimsy evidence against Larry and ask her to accept Larry’s account of Reece’s confession and declare Reece Nixon a Deceased Offender.

  She recalled how hard it had been to persuade Colin of the cost-effectiveness of the original familial DNA search. That initial discussion felt like a very long time ago, and her original projection of how the case would develop if they were to find a match now seemed ridiculously simple and optimistic. If only she could stall him long enough for the results of Wendy’s forensic tests to come through.

  ‘Boss?’

  She looked up to see Duncan trying to catch her attention. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘I just had a reply already from Rhona Geary,’ he said, clearly delighted.

  ‘That’s quick. And brilliant, thanks.’

  ’She lives in Northumberland, but she’s agreed to a Skype interview.’

  ‘And she’s OK with that? She knows what we want to discuss?’

  ‘I didn’t totally spell it out, but I said it was regarding a complaint she’d made to the police in Southend in 1992.’

  ‘If she was one of the victims, then she’ll realise what it’s about,’ said Grace. ‘Set up the call for whenever suits her.’

  ‘I’ll let you know.’

  Rhona Geary seemed all too keen to speak, and replied that she’d be free in an hour’s time, giving Grace long enough to set up a computer screen in an interview room where the conversation could be recorded. She hated having to use Skype. It would be almost more effective with voice contact alone than attempting to create a meaningful connection with a stranger with patchy streaming and eye contact that kept flicking between the screen and the camera. But it was Rhona Geary’s choice, and Grace was impatient to hear what she might have to tell them.

  Rhona, however, had questions of her own. ‘Why are you looking into this now?’ she asked, once Grace had introduced herself. ‘It’s the last thing on earth I expected after all these years.’

  ‘You understand what I want to talk to you about?’ said Grace. Although the screen angle made the other woman appear slightly distorted, Grace saw a pretty face with short dark hair and dangly earrings, and guessed that, beneath the anxiety of the situation, lay a natural animation and confidence.

  ‘You want to talk about when I was attacked in Southend,’ said Rhona. ‘Please, whatever you want to ask, just get on with it. I can’t – I don’t understand how you tracked me down, what you could possibly want to know from me now?’

  ‘We have new DNA evidence from the rape and murder of a young woman that we have strong reason to believe was linked to the sexual assault you reported.’

  ‘You’ve caught him?’

  Hearing the eagerness in Rhona’s voice, Grace’s sense of failure cut deep. ‘Not yet,’ she answered carefully. ‘But it might help if you could bear to tell me whatever you remember most clearly.’

  ‘I can’t describe the whole thing,’ said Rhona. ‘I can’t go through it again. I can maybe answer some questions, but I can’t put myself back there.’

  ‘We have your original statement,’ said Grace. ‘But maybe in hindsight something stands out, or you can add something to what you reported at the time?’

  ‘You say he killed someone?’

  ‘A young woman was murdered a few months after you were assaulted.’

  ‘I thought he was going to kill me, except it wasn’t about me. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I’m older it makes a bit more sense.’

  ‘Can you explain?’

  Rhona shifted her head so that her face all but disappeared from Grace’s screen, leaving her with a partial view of a sitting-room fireplace with shelves to one side crammed with a jumble of books.

  ‘I just want it to be over. I want to be able to stop looking over my shoulder. That would be so wonderful. Is anything I tell you really likely to make a difference?’

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ said Grace, ‘and I’m enormously grateful to you for your courage in agreeing to speak to me. The more information we have, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to bring charges and hopefully put the right man behind bars where he belongs.’

  Rhona nodded, her chin dipping so all Grace could see was the top of her head. ‘It was my shoes. That’s the only thing worth telling you. It wasn’t really me he had sex with. He only had eyes for one of my shoes. It’s partly why I’ve been able to put it behind me. In the end all he really took from me was that shoe.’ She managed a curdled laugh. ‘I’ve never worn high heels since.’

  ‘Are you able to describe the shoe?’ asked Grace.

  Rhona sighed. ‘I was kind of going for the supermodel look. Pale pink, with a heel I could barely walk in, and like a decal, a medallion, across the front. They weren’t cheap, either.’

  ‘What did he do with it afterwards?’

  Rhona fell silent, staring at Grace’s image on her screen before she spoke again. ‘This is actually making sense to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s extremely helpful.’

  Rhona laughed again. ‘Thank God! I hope you get him. He took it away with him. He cradled it like it was some precious object.’

  Just like he had with the borrowed shoe Carolyn had worn in the interview room. ‘How did he leave?’ asked Grace. ‘Did he have a car?’

  ‘I was by myself when he grabbed me. My own stupid fault. I was a bit drunk and desperate for a pee, so I went into a park across the road from where we were walking. Told my mates I’d catch them up.’

  ‘You didn’t notice any kind of car nearby either before or afterwards?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘If we’re able to bring this to court, as I hope, how would you feel about giving evidence?’

  Rhona thought it over. ‘Maybe. If it would help to put him away, then yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’d like to go now.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you’ll let me know, won’t you?’ Rhona asked. ‘The minute he’s charged, I want to know.’

  As Grace agreed and ended the connection, she thought about the other promises she had made, not only to Cara Chalkley, but also to Monica Bowyer and her son. She could not let them down.

  Rhona’s description of her attacker cradling her shoe had been uncanny. There was no doubt left in Grace’s mind that Larry Nixon had raped Rhona, Cara, Heather and the evidently drug-addicted woman who wouldn’t give her name, as well as the other women they hadn’t managed to trace and any who had never reported the crimes against them. Grace was also more convinced than ever that Larry would still possess the collection of shoes he had taken from his victims. But where?

  The police had been keeping tabs on his movements since his arrest, but so far he’d failed to lead them to a convenient lock-up or storage facility. It was possible that he had stored them at his father’s house – he had called Owen after speaking to Reece – but she had no cause to apply for a search warrant and anyway couldn’t believe that Larry would share something so deeply personal with his father. But until they came up with new evidence, they couldn’t even continue interviewing him.

  She hated the idea that, through his possession of the shoes, Larry could perpetuate his feeling of control over the women he’d attacked. The thought made her even more determined to find his treasures, if only to rob him of them.

  47

  The kid looked even worse than he’d sounded on the phone. Freddie had been desperate for someone to talk to but, when Ivo suggested he come to London, admitted that he was too skint. Ivo had taken pi
ty on him and agreed to meet in Burnham-on-Crouch. After all, it was only an hour on the train, and Ivo had nothing else to do on a rainy end-of-October Saturday.

  From Freddie’s descriptions of the remote village where he was lodging with his grandmother, Ivo had imagined the Dengie Peninsula as a wilderness but, even in the rain, the quaint little town was much prettier than he’d expected. Freddie met him at the station and they walked the short distance to a rather flash Essex gastro-pub that served fancy coffee. If anyone looked as if they didn’t belong here, it was Freddie. His hair was lank and his clothes looked crumpled and unwashed. If Ivo’s editor were to see him now, there would be absolutely no remaining hope of persuading him to change his mind about cutting the Courier’s support for the lad’s podcasts.

  As Ivo expected, that was what Freddie wanted to talk about, begging him to do his best to get his sponsorship reinstated.

  ‘Look, it’s not about the money,’ said Ivo for the fourth time. ‘What they were paying you was a drop in the ocean as far as the paper’s concerned. It’s this stalker scenario you’re acting out. It’s gone too far.’

  ‘But the punters love it,’ Freddie insisted yet again. ‘You should see the threads on Reddit, the Twitter traffic.’

  Ivo had no idea what Reddit might be, but someone at the Courier was clearly up to speed. ‘It’s the tone of all that which the paper doesn’t like,’ he said.

  ‘But that’s the clickbait, don’t you see? It’s working.’

  ‘For all the wrong reasons,’ Ivo warned. ‘The only way I can get them to keep you on board is if you change direction.’

  ‘I can’t risk that,’ said Freddie, ‘not when it’s really starting to take off. It could be huge.’

  ‘You don’t want to make an enemy of the Courier.’

  ‘This is my one chance,’ said Freddie. ‘If I can make my name with Stories from the Fire then all kinds of doors could open to me. Not just journalism, but maybe radio and television, too.’

  ‘Freddie, this isn’t journalism. Pretending you’re going to abduct someone and then encouraging your listeners to egg you on to do it is at best fiction and at worst a lurid misogynistic fantasy. Believe it or not, the Courier likes to think of itself as a family newspaper. It can’t be part of this in any way.’

  Freddie shook his head despairingly. ‘I’m twenty-five. I’ve got a good degree and an MA in journalism, but I’m staying with my granny, have no girlfriend and now I’m having to borrow cash from my parents if I want to go and see my friends. This is all I have.’

  Ivo sat back on the slippery cream-leather banquette. Rain was now streaking the leaded windows of the centuries-old pub. Why the fuck had he come? He looked across the table. Freddie had his head in his hands, his unwashed hair in danger of falling into the beer that Ivo had bought him.

  ‘Chin up, kid,’ he said, marvelling at what a soft touch he could sometimes be. ‘You’d better talk me through it. Maybe we’re all just being dinosaurs and not understanding what you’re aiming for. Your vision – that’s what all your generation have to have these days, isn’t it, a vision you’re passionate about?’

  His lame joke worked, for Freddie raised his head and even managed a faint smile. He swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘It’s all just shades of truth, isn’t it, the difference between fact and fiction?’ he said. ‘Take that media conference we went to, for instance. There was a lot the police weren’t telling us, right? So you could say that was merely a performance designed to put across the story they want to tell and keep back the facts that aren’t yet part of it.’

  ‘They might have sound operational or legal reasons for that,’ said Ivo.

  ‘But no one accuses them of lying,’ said Freddie. ‘So OK, what about a courtroom? A trial is pure theatre. Each witness tells their story, then the barristers bend the evidence to suit which side they’re on and the jury have to decide which story they’re going to believe.’

  Ivo felt sick. He knew the truth of Freddie’s argument better than anyone. Tell one story and the wrong man goes to jail; tell another and he doesn’t. ‘I don’t see how this takes you to being a pretend stalker and rapist,’ he said, needing to steer Freddie away from shark-infested waters. ‘How does it get to the truth of who killed Heather Bowyer?’

  ‘You have to make the story matter.’ Freddie was starting to perk up, already looking better as he warmed to his theme. ‘The lines between factual journalism and escapist entertainment were blurred a long time ago. I think my audience understands that. Sure, one or two of them are sick trolls who need to crawl out from under their rocks, but I think the majority are like me, people who want to make up their own minds about what’s fake and what’s true.’

  Ivo was only half-listening. He was thinking about a different story, one where there could be no alternate ending. A woman had been kicked to death, five months pregnant and little more than a kid herself, and whoever had done that had walked free while an innocent man had gone to prison and died there.

  ‘Responding to events in real time becomes part of the story.’ Freddie was still speaking. ‘I have to make things happen in order to move the story forward and make it dynamic.’

  Ivo shook himself back into the present. ‘And once the police have enough evidence to close the case, where do you take your story then?’

  ‘If it’s gained enough momentum, then I can let the audience decide,’ said Freddie. ‘That’s why I have to keep going, why I need your help. If you could just write about it one more time. Please, Ivo. I could tone down the stalker angle if I have to, introduce some new thread to investigate. I can easily do that. It doesn’t even have to be real. Taking wrong turns and changing direction can all be part of the journey.’

  Ivo looked at Freddie. His eyes were red-rimmed and over-bright, his unshaven cheeks thin and pale. It had been Ivo’s vanity at wanting to rediscover something of his younger self in this kid that had prompted his encouragement, his article that had been the catalyst to send Stories from the Fire viral. He had to own some responsibility for the state the kid was in. This pretend stalking business could land Freddie in real trouble. Seeing his unhinged state, Ivo worried about what stupid lengths Freddie might go to in order to keep his podcasts alive.

  ‘If you really want to make your mark,’ Ivo said, ‘you have to find a true story, something real, and get stuck into that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Like a miscarriage of justice, maybe.’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Freddie. ‘I don’t mind the research. I love it. But how do I go about finding a case worth pursuing? If you can help me, that would be awesome.’

  Ivo heard the words spoken aloud as if they were issuing from someone else’s mouth. ‘Don’t bring me into it, but you could try taking a look at Damon Smith.’

  48

  Vincent Rondini, a rotund eighty-seven-year-old, was a good head shorter than Grace. He wore an open-necked white shirt, tan trousers pulled halfway up his chest, huge old-fashioned glasses and several pieces of gold jewellery. He was genial and garrulous, and Grace imagined he must miss the sociability of the seafront ice cream parlour he had founded. A side-table had been laid with an ornate tea set and a plate of fancy biscuits, and she hoped that he had agreed to see them because he had something of value to share and not because he was lonely. As if reading her thoughts, he gave her a sly look and an impish grin.

  ‘You’re not here to humour an old man,’ he said. ‘But take a seat.’ He dropped heavily backwards into an armchair. ‘Help yourself to anything you want.’ He waved an arthritic hand towards the cups and saucers.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to see us.’

  ‘So you spoke to my granddaughter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grace, as she and Blake sat together on the tasselled sofa.

  ‘I hope she didn’t charge you for the ice cream!’

  Grace smiled, instinctively liking him. ‘She was very helpful.’

  ‘Good,’ h
e said. ‘She tells me you want to know about the night the old Marineland building burnt down.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Lovely place it was when I was young. Used to get all spruced up and go dancing there. So what can I tell you?’

  ‘Let’s start with where you were on the night of the fire,’ she said.

  ‘Taking the dog for a walk,’ he said. ‘I always used to take him down along Westcliff Parade before turning in.’

  Grace exchanged glances with Blake. ‘Westcliff Parade runs along the top of Cliff Gardens, doesn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Nowadays, if you carry on, you get to that shoddy little shopping centre they plonked on the site. Anyway, that night the wind must have been blowing out to sea, because I could smell the smoke quite strongly. Couldn’t see where it was coming from at first, but then – it was scary how fast it all happened.’

  ‘Did you notice anyone else nearby at that point?’

  ‘I did. I saw it all, how that man went in to rescue those two boys. Owen Nixon’s boy, Larry, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I only found that out later,’ said Rondini. ‘The place was boarded up, but kids were always breaking in. It was only a matter of time before there was some kind of trouble. Didn’t expect it to burn to the ground, though.’

  ‘So where was the man you saw when you first noticed him?’ asked Grace. She was tingling with anticipation that they might finally have their first sighting of Larry before the fire.

  ‘He came out of Cliff Gardens and ran off. There was a taxi parked up ahead and I thought he was dashing to try and catch it, but then I saw it was parked because he opened the driver’s door. Then he must have seen or smelled the smoke, too, because he slammed the door again and ran off towards Marineland.’