The Night Stalker (Detective Jane Bennett and Mike Lockyer series Book 4)

by Clare Donoghue

  ‘Soooo,’ she said. ‘Have you guys been with CID long? The Express Park building is amazing, isn’t it? Must have cost a fortune.’

  More silence.

  ‘Townsend said he’d only been with you lot for six months. Seems like a decent DI.’ She heard Pimbley scoff from the back of the car. She was used to cajoling an eight-year-old into conversation. If she could crack Peter, these guys didn’t stand a chance, not now they were a captive audience. ‘I guess it takes a while for a team to gel. Who was your DI before Townsend?’

  ‘Waters,’ Pimbley said.

  ‘Where did he . . . she go?’ With Peter, she could usually break his silence with a well-placed question about dinosaurs. These guys were a little different.

  ‘She,’ Abbott said. ‘She’s had a baby.’

  ‘So Townsend’s just covering her maternity leave.’

  ‘We wish,’ Pimbley muttered.

  ‘And here I was thinking it was us you didn’t like.’ More silence. She decided to wait and see if one of them would fill the void. She kept her eye on the rear-view mirror, watching Pimbley’s expression. People didn’t show this much dislike for their boss for no reason. Perhaps Lockyer was right to be wary of the guy.

  ‘No one has a problem with you or your boss,’ Abbott said from the passenger seat. His voice was quiet. His tall and lanky frame was folded into the passenger seat like damp tissue paper, but his face was hard.

  ‘Well, that’s good to know,’ she said. ‘So what’s the problem with Townsend?’

  ‘He—’ Pimbley started to speak, but Jane saw Abbott glance in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘There’s no problem,’ Abbott said.

  ‘OK.’ She tried to think of another way in. ‘Are you guys local?’

  ‘Abbott is,’ Pimbley said. Jane felt Abbott shift in his seat. ‘I live past Cannington way.’

  ‘Where do you live, then?’ she asked, turning to Abbott.

  ‘Doddington.’ She could see he wasn’t happy divulging the information. ‘So you must know Barney, then. He’s a—’

  ‘I know Barney,’ Abbott said.

  ‘He’s his neighbour,’ Pimbley added from the back.

  ‘Small world,’ she said, watching as Abbott flared his nostrils. ‘I was out with him yesterday. He took me up to the crash site and was showing me the hills . . . you know.’

  ‘He’s the best one to do it,’ Pimbley said. His demeanour had changed beyond recognition. He looked relaxed, his eyes bright and smiling.

  Jane thought about what Barney had told her – and what he hadn’t. ‘Did either of you know Pippa Jones?’

  Abbott turned in his seat to face her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Barney said you’d been asking him about that too.’

  ‘Why, is that a weird question to you?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Seems to me this is a pretty small place. Who knows who is kinda relevant, don’t you think?’ Abbott shrugged. ‘Barney was telling me he went to school with Pippa and her brother, Aaron.’ She caught Abbott’s eye. ‘What about you?’

  He reddened. ‘As it happens, yes, but she was a year below me, so we were never in any classes together or anything.’

  ‘But you knew her . . . saw her in the playground or whatever,’ Jane said, thinking Abbott couldn’t have been a DS very long if he was only twenty-six. She glanced again at the clock.

  ‘I guess,’ he said.

  ‘Did you see anything of her when she moved back?’

  ‘We’ve seen her in here a fair few times, haven’t we?’ Pimbley said, nodding to Abbott and then the pub outside the window. He received a hard look from Abbott for his disclosure. ‘Once or twice over the other side, I s’pect.’

  ‘Would this be your local?’ Jane asked, turning to look at Abbott, exploiting the division that had sprung up between the two officers.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Does Townsend know? Did you tell him you knew the victim . . . that you knew Pippa?’

  ‘No,’ Abbott said, ‘because we didn’t. I didn’t.’

  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘I think he’d want to know.’ Abbott folded his arms and turned away from her. The conversation was over.

  ‘Everyone knows everyone around here,’ Pimbley said from the back. He seemed oblivious to Abbott’s annoyance. ‘No one really knew her or anything . . . she hadn’t been staying here long, but most people know her aunt. Well, the girls on the team do.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Claudette runs a spa place over in Taunton.’

  ‘Pippa’s aunt?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And most folk know of her uncle.’

  ‘Why? Who’s he?’

  ‘Well, I guess he must be an ex-uncle now,’ Pimbley said. ‘Him and Claudette split up years ago. He wasn’t DCC then. His mother didn’t approve of the marriage, apparently . . . something about them being Catholic and Claudette’s lot being C of E, who knows. Shame. She died a while ago now. Choked on a Brazil nut.’ He put his hand to his throat.

  ‘Sorry, who? Whose mother are we talking about? Who wasn’t DCC?’

  ‘Hamilton’s mother,’ Pimbley said, as if that alone should suffice.

  Jane rolled her lips over her teeth and shook her head. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘Claudette’s late mother-in-law. Les Hamilton was her eldest. He’s DCC now.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Jane said, trying to wrap her brain around the plethora of names and random pieces of information Pimbley had just dumped on her. ‘Who’s DCC?’

  ‘Hamilton, Les Hamilton,’ he said. ‘Claudette’s ex-husband.’

  ‘So you’re saying Pippa’s uncle is a deputy chief constable?’

  ‘For Avon and Somerset, yeah,’ he said, ‘but like I said, him and Claudette have been divorced years now. He remarried not long after. Someone his mother approved of, I guess. She died too, a few years after his mother . . . cancer, I think. Her folks used to own Pepperhill Farm, I think, but . . .’

  Jane nodded along as Pimbley continued his impromptu and baffling genealogy of half the population of Nether Stowey, but she wasn’t listening. Only one name had stuck. Hamilton. DCC for Avon and Somerset. Pippa’s uncle. DCC was the second highest rank in the Country.

  The mystery surrounding Lockyer’s secret mission had come into sharp focus. Although she was surprised and somewhat impressed that this was the first she had heard about Hamilton. She had worked with Aaron for over two years, and he had never said a word about his powerful uncle. Not a word.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  12th December – Saturday

  Lockyer pulled in to the side of the road at the Carew Arms in Crowcombe Village to let a string of cars pass him. It occurred to him as he raised his hand in response to the numerous thank yous that this would have been the last point of civilization Pippa Jones encountered before she died. In the fading light it was unremarkable, but at night, on an icy road with the rain pouring down? It couldn’t have been a pleasant journey. He sighed and focused instead on each car, trying to decide how best to describe them.

  Before his meeting with the paint nerds, he had only ever thought in terms of straight colour: red, blue, white, black and so on. Now, though, he realized each vehicle had a different tint, a different accent. The palette was as varied as the cars themselves. The red Fiat at the back of the line was in fact maroon, which would appear on the ‘red with blue tones’ range on a colour chart. Whereas the Ford Focus, two from the front, was a warmer orangey-red, so it would appear within the ‘red with yellow tones’ spectrum.

  It had been a fascinating couple of hours. He had dealt with paint fragments numerous times in his career, but he had never really paid attention to the science. Larry and Linda Mason were a husband and wife team who owned and ran South West Forensics. They offered a mind-boggling list of services, from examining trace evidence, including fibres, glass and paint samples, up to and including DNA analysis. In fact, their company was handling the footwear and tread marks found in and around the
crime scene. He somehow doubted the impressions would be from the other driver, given the whole idea of a hit and run was to ‘run’ afterwards, not stand around and watch; but it was worth a shot.

  As a couple, Larry and Linda were an odd pairing. She had to be a good twenty years his senior. Larry was a fresh-faced science geek with glasses, gelled hair and a Seventies dress sense, whereas Linda reminded Lockyer of Joanna Lumley’s character Purdey from The Avengers. Lockyer guessed she was in her late fifties, but she was well put together. She had explained, in husky tones, that the contact paint fragments taken from Pippa’s car would be examined using their three main components: the carrier, the binder and the vehicle. Linda would then input the data using the PDQ – the international forensic automotive paint data query database – and with any luck be able to identify the make, model, year and even the factory the other vehicle had come from. Her lips were like two plump cushions. When she said ‘paint pigment’, Lockyer could swear he had blushed.

  He nodded to the guy in the maroon Fiat, put his car into gear and started up Crowcombe Hill. The scenery looked different as the light grew dim. Either side of the car were grass-covered verges peppered with snow and thick undergrowth leading up to dense woodland. The hill itself was steeper than he remembered. He thought again about the conditions on the night Pippa Jones had died. There was no way he would be happy about his daughter making this journey.

  A gateway to his left showed an open vista beyond, the rolling farmland cast in shadows. He glimpsed it for a second and then it was gone as the car was enclosed by woodland again. He shook his head. Of course, Megan was here and could very well be using this road, day or night, and as per usual he could do nothing to stop her. ‘Kids,’ he muttered to himself as he accelerated, his engine rumbling with the effort. It would take about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to get to the Joneses’. He would have been earlier, but his discussion with John Mills, once he had found him, had taken longer than expected.

  It transpired Mills was the chef as well as the landlord, so Lockyer had ended up conducting the majority of the interview in the kitchen. The guy had a lot to say for himself, all whilst browning meat and par-boiling a dizzying array of vegetables. He was, by his own admission, the eyes and ears of the place. Mills claimed to know who was screwing whose wife, who had a drink problem, who was about to be made redundant – but he wouldn’t name names. He was ‘a man of discretion’, he had said more than once. Lockyer huffed out a laugh as he flicked on his headlights. Within five minutes of this statement Mills had proceeded to tell Lockyer the life story of everyone south of Bristol, it seemed. And he wasn’t kidding. He appeared to know his customers’ lives in minute detail.

  One example of clandestine goings-on involved the skittles team. On an away match in Minehead three of the team had got so drunk, they had ended up swapping wives at the end of the night. The three couples never breathed a word and still played together – skittles, that was – every Sunday night. Lockyer had asked how it was Mills himself knew. He had tapped the side of his nose and moved on to the next poor sod to have their life put under his microscope. Lockyer pulled at his seatbelt and knocked the heated seat down a bar. His arse was beginning to roast.

  Mills’ knowledge of Pippa was no less detailed. According to him, despite growing up in Somerset, Pippa had hated the South West. She was a London girl through and through. It was her intention, so Mills said, to earn as much money as she could while staying with her aunt, Claudette Barker, over in Nether Stowey. All she needed was enough to cover her room in London until one of her many job applications came to something. When Lockyer asked how Mills knew all this he had just shrugged and said, ‘It’s a gift. The tail end of a conversation here and there, talking to her, reading between the lines. It’s all there. You just have to have the right ear . . . and I do.’ Lockyer had thought he would make a pretty good detective, but he had kept that nugget to himself. Let Mills decipher it with his mind magic.

  Lockyer’s car rumbled over the cattle grid as he passed onto the Common, as the locals called it. He was struck, as he had been this morning, by how barren it was up here: the trees blown sideways, the grass and heather buffeted into submission. It was bleak. How must Pippa Jones have felt navigating this tiny lane at night as a pair of headlights loomed large in her rear-view mirror? The thought reminded him of the old Spielberg movie Duel where Dennis Weaver was pursued through the American Midwest by an unknown, unseen driver of an oil tanker. The film was as understated as it was unnerving. Had Pippa known who was behind her? It was a question Lockyer kept putting to himself, but so far he didn’t have an answer. He tapped his brakes, slowing enough to avoid a herd of sheep ambling by the side of the road.

  From what Mills had said, Pippa had made few friends. She had been out with some of the AONB lot a few times, Barney among them, but other than that Mills said she kept herself to herself. Lockyer thought about Jane’s earlier text. Cooper, Pippa’s boss at Fyne Court, had said the same. He would send Jane up here tomorrow night. Sunday was skittles night. She could speak to the regulars and get their impressions of the girl. Jane was better at tackling a group than he was. No doubt she would say that was because she could multi-task and he couldn’t. He flicked on his windscreen wipers at the first drops of snow. She could bring a few of Townsend’s team with her: Crossley with the big bum and the other one, with the grey hair, Nicola something-or-other. His phone started ringing, blinking from the passenger seat next to him. He had left his hands-free in Jane’s car. ‘DI Lockyer,’ he said, touching the speaker button, picking up the handset and balancing it between his collarbone and chin.

  ‘It’s Bill Townsend.’

  ‘Bill,’ Lockyer said, his surprise genuine. ‘Good to hear from you.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  Lockyer noted the lack of preamble and the edge to Townsend’s voice. ‘I’m on my way to the Joneses’ now,’ he said. ‘Should be there in five, ten minutes. Did you get my email? Are you back in the office?’

  There was a long silence before Townsend said, ‘I’m not in the office, no. I called to see who was and Crossley advised me that you, DC Pimbley, DS Abbott and DS Bennett were all out running interviews.’ A silence hung in the air. What could Lockyer say? Everything Townsend had said so far was true. ‘In future I would appreciate it if you and your colleague would speak to me before you arrange or rearrange any interviews relating to my investigation, not to mention having the courtesy to ask before you requisition my officers.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Lockyer said, going for sincere and failing. He wanted to add that maybe next time Townsend should consider being in the office when he had a murder investigation to run.

  ‘I understand you told Maureen Jones that you would be seizing her daughter’s laptop?’ Townsend was almost growling.

  Lockyer found himself nodding, his neck heating. He wasn’t sorry, but it was embarrassing. If anyone had done to him what he had done and was continuing to do to Townsend, there’s no way he would have remained so magnanimous. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I thought it best to get a jump on her known associates . . . chase down any issues. You know how these kids are today – they live their lives online.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s necessary. The Joneses are trying to cope with the death of their daughter.’

  ‘Bill,’ Lockyer said, measuring his tone. ‘You know as well as I do that every second counts in a murder investigation.’

  ‘If that’s what this is.’

  Lockyer debated challenging him for a second, but then decided he needed some answers, and now was as good a time as any to get them. The guy had been MIA all day – who knew when he would resurface again? ‘Either way, she’s still dead, Bill. Murder, manslaughter, what’s the difference? Someone’s still to blame.’

  ‘There’s a difference,’ was all he said.

  ‘Shit, maybe I’m wrong here, Bill, but you seem more than a little reluctant to see this incident as a deliberate act – that
it could have been premeditated.’

  ‘Deliberate and premeditated are two different things, Mike,’ Townsend said. ‘I’m still inclined to think we’re looking at manslaughter – someone driving drunk. It wouldn’t be the first time . . . or the last.’

  Lockyer was shaking his head. He felt like he was pushing jelly up hill. ‘Look. I don’t disagree that drink could be a factor,’ he said as he passed over the cattle grid where Pippa Jones had lost control of her car, ‘but the evidence from the crash investigation team clearly shows it was a sustained attack – incident – made worse when whoever they were fled the scene and left her to burn.’ His phone slipped and dropped to his lap. ‘And another thing,’ he said, grabbing it and shoving it to his ear, ‘you said Pippa Jones died on impact.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not what Dr Reed said yesterday.’ Lockyer braked and pulled into a passing space. The line was crackling. He wasn’t going to risk losing the connection. Now he had Townsend cornered, he wanted some answers. ‘He said there’s evidence she tried to get out of the vehicle after the fire took hold.’ An image of Pippa’s wrecked hand flashed in front of his eyes.

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to look at Dr Reed’s full report,’ Townsend said.

  ‘But you were there, Bill. Reed said the two of you discussed it.’

  ‘Dr Reed is mistaken,’ Townsend said. Lockyer thought he could hear an electronic announcer in the background. Where was he? ‘I trust you won’t be burdening the Joneses with this new information?’

  ‘Of course not. For Christ’s sake, Bill, we’re on the same team here.’

  ‘Are we?’ Townsend said. ‘Superintendent Atkinson advised me earlier that DS Bennett has requested to review a file I handled when I first came down to Bridgwater. The Chloe Evans case?’

  It was Lockyer’s turn to be on the back foot. He was going to kill Jane. His mind ground to a halt as he reached for a plausible explanation. He saw a black 4x4 coming up the hill towards him. He spotted the AONB insignia. ‘That’s right,’ he said, feigning nonchalance. ‘I’m pretty sure I mentioned it in my email – the one I sent this morning?’ If Townsend was going to put him on the spot, Lockyer was going to return the favour. ‘DS Bennett was out at the crash site with one of the rangers, Barney Gill, yesterday,’ he said. ‘He mentioned that the local community were distressed about the incident . . . that they were fearful of driving through the area.’