Closer To Home

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Right, Fletcher. Send somebody in your team to find this Darren Thomas and check Reese’s statement with him. We also need to find Ken Fowler, check that he saw Reese last night and told him to stay away from the pond.’

  One of Kate’s DCs raised his hand.

  ‘Yes, Barratt?’

  ‘Might Fowler have wanted Reese to stay away so he didn’t see the body? Is there anything to suggest that Fowler had checked the pond apart from what he told Fletcher this morning?’

  Raymond glanced at Kate, eyebrows raised as if to ask well?

  ‘Not yet,’ Kate said. ‘He told me that he’d checked twice yesterday. Reese and Fowler seem to alibi each other at the moment. Somebody needs to talk to Fowler.’

  ‘I think you just volunteered yourself,’ Raymond grinned. Kate suppressed a groan. She didn’t want to be hunting down alibis; she wanted to do something more practical, useful. She didn’t doubt what Fowler had told her; he had no reason to lie unless he had killed the girl and he would have had to be some special kind of psychopath to kill a kid just so he could watch people look for her. Still, anything was possible.

  ‘What else?’ Raymond was asking.

  ‘CCTV?’ Cooper suggested. ‘We might pick up Aleah after she left the bookies, see if she spoke to anybody. Obviously, we haven’t checked yet because we had no idea that she’d been on Main Street when she disappeared.’

  ‘Get on it, Cooper,’ Raymond said. ‘Fletcher, work with Cooper on that. Get a phone number for this Ken Fowler and ask him to come in to give a statement. No point you chasing all over the county looking for him.’

  Kate nodded and Hollis grinned at her.

  ‘Right,’ Raymond said. ‘Look at these pictures.’ He stretched out one of his improbably long arms, the suit sleeve riding up his wrist, exposing a starched shirt cuff complete with silver cufflink.

  ‘Aleah Reese. Seven years old. Bright, happy and dead. We need to find the bastard who turned this,’ he tapped the school photograph, ‘into this,’ a tap on the scene image.

  ‘At the moment, her stepfather is looking a bit dodgy and, as we all know, it’s rarely a stranger in a case like this – we need to check the records of Reese and his dad and anybody else who had contact with Aleah. We also need to contact her real father as well. It seems that he’s in Scotland but we need to verify the details. Hollis, see if you can get some more information from Jackie Reese.’

  Hollis nodded and jotted the instruction in his notebook.

  Kate took out her own notebook and jotted down Jackie and Dave Porter’s names, CCTV and Ken Fowler. She could make a couple of phone calls while Cooper and Hollis tracked down the footage, if there was any.

  ‘Right. Let me introduce Detective Sergeant O’Connor.’ He pointed to the man sitting opposite Barratt. ‘He’s been working in Thorpe, and in particular on the Crosslands Estate, to break up a smuggling gang, cigarettes and booze, small-time stuff. I don’t see any reason to assume a connection with Aleah Reese’s murder but he knows the area and he knows the people. Use him, Fletcher.’

  Kate nodded, avoiding eye contact with O’Connor. She was just getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of her team and she didn’t want the dynamic disturbed by a new member. She also suspected that O’Connor was to be Raymond’s eyes and ears as she and her team dealt with the Reese case, and she didn’t appreciate the gesture.

  ‘If anybody wants me,’ Raymond continued. ‘I’ll be at Doncaster Infirmary watching the pathologist cut open the body of this little girl. I’m assuming that nobody wants to come with me.’

  A murmur of assent round the table.

  ‘Good. Let’s crack on then. Anything comes up, let Fletcher know straight away.’

  Ken Fowler proved easy to find – a quick call to Search and Rescue got Kate his home and mobile numbers. Fowler was able to confirm that he saw somebody fitting Craig Reese’s description on the old quarry site the previous night. He didn’t want to come to Doncaster, though, so Barratt was dispatched with a photograph of Reese to confirm his identity. O’Connor was sent to find Darren Thomas in order to verify Craig Reese’s statement. It wasn’t a job for a DS but Kate wanted him out of the way until she’d had time to think about what it meant to have him on her team, and how she could use him. She didn’t want him sniffing round while she was working out which lines of enquiry were worth pursuing.

  Her priority was to track down Dave Porter but this proved to be harder than she’d imagined. She’d hoped to be able to find him without having to contact Jackie but a quick trawl through 192.com told her that there were thirty-seven Dave or David or D Porters in Scotland and she didn’t have the time to call each one to ask if he’d fathered a child with a woman called Jackie seven years ago. She’d have to call his ex-wife.

  The phone was answered on the third ring but it was Tatton who spoke. Kate explained what she needed, expecting Tatton to see if she could get any more information but the call was interrupted.

  ‘Who is this?’ a voice at the other end demanded.

  Kate recognised the slightly nasal tone of Jean Loach, Jackie’s mother.

  ‘Mrs Loach? It’s DS Fletcher, we spoke yesterday?’

  ‘Aye. I remember you.’ The words could have been a simple acknowledgement of their conversation yesterday but the tone implied history. Jean Roach knew who she was, or rather, who she’d been.

  ‘I’m really sorry to bother your family at this difficult time…’

  ‘Bother my family? That’s just what I’d expect from you. Jackie can’t talk now.’

  ‘Please, Mrs Loach, I need some information about Dave Porter, Aleah’s dad.’

  A snort from the other end of the phone.

  ‘I’ll give you some information about him. He’s a shit dad and a crap excuse for a human being.’

  Kate sensed that she was losing ground. Jean Loach clearly had a shed full of axes to grind despite her grief or, perhaps, because of it.

  ‘I need to find him,’ she pressed on. ‘I need to find out if he’s had anything to do with Aleah in the last few years.’

  ‘He’s in Scotland. Look up there for him.’

  Grief or no grief Kate had had enough.

  ‘Mrs Loach,’ she snapped. ‘There is a possibility that he might have had something to do with what happened to Aleah. I need to find out if that’s the case. If he has any information it is imperative that I speak to him as soon as possible.’

  Silence. Kate wondered if the other woman had hung up but she was sure that she could hear the faint rasping wheeze of a twenty-a-day smoker at the other end of the phone.

  ‘He was living up near Dumfries,’ Mrs Loach said. ‘I don’t know his address, you’ll have to ask his mam.’

  ‘And where can I find her?’ Kate asked.

  ‘She lived down Low Thorpe, near Craig’s dad. Jubilee Terrace I think. Probably still there.’

  Kate made a note of the street name.

  ‘Is she still called Porter?’ Kate asked, pushing as far as she dared without risking further antagonism.

  ‘How the bloody hell should I know? I’ve only said hello to her about four times since our Aleah was born. You’re the copper, you find out,’ and the line went dead.

  ‘Helpful,’ Kate muttered as she logged back on to 192.com. ‘Right, let’s see if there’s a Porter on Jubilee Terrace.’

  A few key strokes later she had discovered that there was a Mrs A Porter at number seventeen and, not a great believer in coincidence, she switched browser windows and crossed everything that the woman wasn’t ex-directory. Bingo. The number was listed.

  Kate jotted it down then kicked her feet against the newly laid carpet tiles and wheeled her chair over to a quiet corner of the incident room where Cooper and Hollis were poring over a computer screen.

  ‘Got anything?’

  Hollis shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen.

  ‘Bugger all. The council say there’s no coverage in the village apart from at the
bus stop and that’s pointed at the benches and the toilets. Sam rang the bookies and got lucky there. There’s a security camera over the door and one inside. New ones, so they record digitally. The manager emailed me copies of the files from the day before yesterday. Funny format though, so Sam’s downloading a media player that might be able to play them.’

  ‘Got it,’ Cooper said. ‘It’s a media player that I’ve used before. It will play pretty much anything. The problem is these files only use the proprietary player for the recording software so we might be out of luck if it’s something specific to the manufacturer.’

  Kate just nodded, barely able to decode what she’d just been told. She knew that Sam Cooper knew her stuff when it came to computers. She was also learning that Cooper preferred her machines to people most of the time. Cooper tapped the enter key twice. ‘Right, got it. Select, and play.’ She sat back slightly allowing Kate and Hollis a clearer view of the screen and Kate leant forward to make sense of the images. The first few seconds were snowy and then the picture suddenly sprang into sharp focus, a view of a short section of pavement from above. She glanced at the clock in the top corner of the frame.

  ‘Too early, can you fast forward?’

  A quick tap and there were people coming and going at breakneck speed. The clock was whizzing towards eleven.

  ‘Right, slow it down again.’

  Cooper followed her instructions and at 11.24 a man and a girl approached and entered the bookies.

  ‘That them?’ Hollis asked.

  Cooper tapped the keyboard, rewinding and then freezing the image. Even though it was in black-and-white Reese’s shaggy dark hair was unmistakable and Aleah’s pigtails were clearly visible.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Kate said. ‘Let’s have a look at the footage from inside.’

  Cooper closed the file and loaded a different one, fast forwarding to 11.20. As she allowed the footage to play at normal speed Kate watched Craig Reese and Aleah enter the bookmakers and cross to a waist-high counter littered with betting slips. A figure approached Reese from an area that was outside the camera’s range. George Reese. The two men seemed to be talking and neither noticed when Aleah wandered out of shot.

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ Kate asked.

  Hollis just shrugged and kept watching.

  Aleah appeared again ninety seconds later and seemed to be asking her stepfather something. Reese grabbed a stack of betting slips and a pencil and thrust them towards her but she shook her head and folded her arms.

  ‘Stubborn,’ Kate said.

  Reese dug a hand in his jeans pocket and pulled out a handful of change. He poked through it, extracted a coin and passed it to Aleah who grinned and left the building.

  ‘No, let it run,’ Kate said, reaching out a hand to prevent Hollis from pressing stop. ‘Let’s see if there really was some sort of altercation between Reese and the manager.’

  Reese watched Aleah leave and then had a quick conversation with his father. The older man shook his head emphatically and marched over to the counter. Reese followed and spoke to the person behind the glass. The view was obscured by a reflection but it was clear that whoever Reese was speaking to, he wasn’t getting the answer he wanted. Eventually he stalked over to the window and slumped in a chair.

  ‘Fast forward a bit, what time does he leave?’

  DC Cooper sped up the recording and stopped it just as Reese was heading for the door. The clock said 11.35. So far everything he had told them was supported by the recording.

  They switched back to the outside camera, watched Aleah leave and then, ten minutes later, her stepfather. No suggestion that there had been anybody hanging around, lurking by the door waiting to approach either of them. A quick check found Reese back again fifteen minutes after he’d left gesturing frantically to his father.

  ‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ Hollis said, pushing his chair back.

  ‘It corroborates Reese’s story, though,’ Kate said. ‘It looks like he did finally decide to give us an honest account. Have you got the council footage yet, Cooper?’

  ‘Some time this afternoon. For what good it’ll do. I can’t see whoever snatched her sitting around in full view at the bus stop,’ Cooper said.

  ‘Probably not,’ Kate had to agree. ‘But you never know. Fancy a trip back to Thorpe while we’re waiting, Hollis? I’ve found Dave Porter’s mother. I was going to ring but it might be best face-to-face, especially if she’s upset about Aleah. Who knows what she might let slip?’

  6

  2015

  Jubilee Terrace was a neat row of Victorian houses tucked away on the edge of Low Thorpe. They fronted directly onto the street without the benefit of even a small garden to separate them from prying eyes and each one seemed to have staked its place on the street with a small touch of individuality. One had hanging baskets on both sides of its main window; another had a boot scraper next to the door and, further down the street, the lintels above a door and downstairs window had been painted a bright blue which seemed to give the house a slightly quizzical expression.

  ‘It’s different here, isn’t it?’ Hollis asked. ‘On Jackie Reese’s estate, I got the sense that people are proud of their houses and take care of them. Old Mill near the main shops seemed like a bit of a dump but I’m not sure what to make of this part of town.’

  ‘Village,’ Kate corrected him automatically.

  ‘Village? Bit big for a village.’

  ‘Thorpe’s always been a village even though it’s probably, technically, a town,’ she said. ‘It was mostly council and pit housing when I was growing up. I was ten years old before I knew that ordinary people could own their own homes. I thought that everybody rented from the council or the NCB. This part, Low Thorpe, was all pit houses. When I was at school I thought the kids from Low Thorpe were a bit rough. Crosslands Estate, where I lived, and where the Reeses live, was a bit snobbier even though it was all council housing. Looks like things have improved here though.’

  Aileen Porter’s house had a red sandstone front step and an ornate door knocker shaped like a thistle. Kate wondered if the family had a Scottish connection, or if this was a present from her absent son. She rapped the knocker on the door smartly and stepped back, scanning the net curtains of the front room and the bedroom above. No sign of life but, if there was anybody home, they were probably in the kitchen at the back.

  Just as she was about to knock again, the door opened to reveal a tiny woman wearing a thin coat and a headscarf. She looked like she’d either just come home or was just about to go out. Kate estimated her age at mid to late sixties. The headscarf stood proud of her head indicating freshly styled hair underneath and she was wearing a bold dash of lipstick on her thin lips, with a smear of rouge on each high cheekbone. Wrinkles carved deep slashes down each side of her mouth and there was a furrow between her eyes, but she didn’t have that dry chamois look that Kate had seen in a lot of women her age. Obviously, somebody who cared about her appearance.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Mrs Porter,’ Kate flashed her ID. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Kate Fletcher and this is DC Dan Hollis, we’re here about…’

  ‘About our Aleah. I thought somebody might be in touch. I expect you want to know where our Dave is?’

  ‘Er, I, er…’ Kate stuttered, completely wrong-footed by the woman’s directness.

  ‘He’s living near Aberdeen and he’s not been back here for over a year.’ She glanced up and down the street as though checking whether the conversation was likely to be overheard, then seemed to come to a decision.

  ‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ she said, opening the door further and stepping out onto the street to allow Hollis and Kate to pass into the narrow hallway. ‘Go straight through to the kitchen in the back. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  The kitchen had been extended beyond the original footprint of the house and the extended part had a window in the sloping roof that allowed the strong sunlight to illumina
te the cream walls and light oak units. It was a functional space, with a small table to one side, a fridge, cooker and an assortment of cupboards and drawers, but one that had been thoughtfully decorated and recently cleaned. An air freshener, a bottle with sticks poking out, masked any stale cooking smells and another plug-in one guarded the swing-top bin. Kate could see that the woman was as proud of her house as she was of her own appearance.

  ‘Sit,’ Mrs Porter said, slipping off her coat and headscarf and pointing to the two pine chairs flanking the table. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  Hollis asked for a glass of water, Kate for tea.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Kate said. ‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through. We’re doing everything we can to find out what happened to Aleah. That’s why we need to ask about Dave.’

  ‘He’d have loved to have been a dad to her, you know,’ Mrs Porter said, her voice raised slightly to compete with the sound of water as she filled the kettle. ‘But that Jackie wouldn’t let him. They’d already separated – I don’t know why he married her in the first place but I bet Aleah wasn’t her first ‘pregnancy’. Wouldn’t put it past her to trick him into it. Wasn’t much of a wedding anyway – registry office and then a small do at The Lion. I think she just fancied having a husband and when he didn’t turn out to be what she wanted she got rid of him. Said he was a waste of space and told him to sling his hook. Did you know that she told him that she’d got rid of the baby? Aleah was nearly a year old before Dave knew about her, and by that time he’d gone up north.’

  Hollis pulled out his notebook and started jotting.

  ‘Put it about that he’d run off. As if. Our Dave might have his faults but he’s a good lad. He’d have done the right thing by her and the kiddy even though the marriage was over. And now she’s… gone… before he could even get to know her.’

  Her hand trembled as she filled a glass and placed it on the table.

  ‘And I never got a chance, neither. I suppose you think I’m daft, being upset about a kiddy that I didn’t even know, but I’d always hoped that when she was older she’d want to know about her family.’