by LJ Ross
Ryan put a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Get some rest. We need you back on the team.”
* * *
Jack watched his SIO leave and almost called him back. The sound rose up in his throat, desperate to find voice.
But these walls had ears, and they heard everything, just as he had done while he had lain on the ground bleeding and seemingly unconscious. The pain had eventually numbed his mind and darkness had fallen, but not before he had heard a voice he recognised.
Fear was like a heavy blanket and he slumped back against the pillows, tears pooling in his eyes.
So long as he couldn’t remember, he was safe.
CHAPTER 9
Colin Hart leaned carefully over his mother and began the process of unwinding the puss-soaked bandages which covered the sores on her ankles and calves. She wasn’t very lucid today; in fact, she was fast asleep and snoring, which was probably for the best. Her bed was her world, now. When it had become clear that she was getting less mobile than before, even with the mobility scooter that was now sitting rusting on the driveway, she had gradually taken to spending more time atop the grand four-poster bed she had demanded that he buy for her.
He didn’t mind, really. Only the best, for the woman who had given up everything for him. Scrimped and saved to send him to a good school, to take care of him when his no-good father had left them. He had lost count of the amount of times he had been reminded of his good fortune in having Geraldine Hart for a mother.
He tried to ignore the foul smell of the infected bedsores as the bandages eventually came off. He always wore gloves these days, partly to prevent further infection and partly because he just didn’t want the oozing fluid to come in contact with his hands.
He washed them regularly, just in case, with strong surgical soap.
He took out a ball of fresh gauze dressing and began the process of re-bandaging. Not too tight, not too loose, otherwise she would complain. He tried not to notice the sallow, sagging flesh of her skin, or the way the folds wobbled as he manipulated her leg. He tried not to be repulsed by it, but his hands trembled slightly at the effort.
Process complete, he left her sleeping in the musty bedroom, which always carried an unpleasant odour because she refused to allow the windows to be opened. He headed instead for the sitting room he had adapted into his personal library-cum-office. It was a haven in comparison to the chintzy-covered room he had left behind. The walls were plain, the furnishings neutral. Everything was easy on the eye and, consequently, on the mind.
He needed to clock in a few hours’ work, which he was able to do remotely from home. That was the beauty of working as an online stockbroker and he was glad he had made the conscious decision to change profession. It allowed him to be at home to care for his mother, which was only right and proper.
His fingers hesitated over the keyboard of his desktop computer while he warred with himself, but with a guilty look at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, he bypassed the office and logged on to his favourite chat room instead.
Here, the women loved him. He was no longer plain, middle-aged Colin who lived at home with his ailing mother. Online, he was dashing, he was wanted.
Online, he was another man entirely.
* * *
DI MacKenzie tugged her emerald green pea coat around her as she stepped out of her car into the windy afternoon. The sky was bright, but there was a bite in the air to remind her that it may have been summer, but it was still a northern summer.
“Miss Crompton?”
The door to a large, Victorian villa on the edge of a smart area of the city known as Jesmond opened to reveal a woman in her early thirties, dressed in a floaty, multi-coloured kaftan and bare feet. Her hair was bundled on top of her head and had been left to fall in messy blonde ringlets around an angular, expressive face.
“Hello,” she said simply, resting her hip against the doorframe.
“Hello,” MacKenzie replied, drawing out her warrant card. “I’m Detective Inspector Denise MacKenzie. We spoke on the phone?”
“Yep, I remember. Come on in,” she held the door open and led the way along a smart passageway covered in framed poster prints ranging from Che Guevara to the Beatles. “Sorry about the mess.”
It wasn’t so much messy as cluttered, MacKenzie thought. Patterned and cluttered.
A smoky grey cat wound around her legs and blinked at her with bright yellow eyes.
“It’s bloody awful,” Mathilda Crompton said, plopping herself down on one of the easy chairs arranged in a large, open plan sitting room. She tucked her legs up and the cat immediately joined her, curling itself over her toes like a furry hot water bottle. “I can’t believe it.”
“It is sad news,” MacKenzie agreed. “I know that the CSI team have already visited you to take prints and swabs. Thank you for your co-operation with that,” she added politely.
“I hope that they find something. I don’t mean some sort of bloody knife in my knicker drawer,” she tacked on with a nervous laugh. “I just mean – well, I hope there’s something to point you in the direction of her killer.”
“You could help by telling us about Claire.”
Mathilda nodded and stroked the cat methodically as she spoke.
“Claire is … I mean, she was quiet, but then, since I’m so loud most of the time, it worked pretty well. She rented the room upstairs. She’s been my tenant for three years now and I think we’d become good friends.”
“You think?”
“I know,” Mathilda corrected. “I only hesitate because Claire isn’t … wasn’t the demonstrative kind, you know?”
MacKenzie nodded.
“Did she see much of her family?”
“No, not really. They’re over on the Isle of Man and I think Claire was trying to save as much money as she could. Her mum would come across now and then. Last time was in February.”
“What about friends?”
“Um, well, like I say, she could be a bit introverted. I think she found it hard to connect with people and realistically she worked all the time. I mean, seriously, that girl never took a day off.”
“Never?”
“Nope, not that I remember. Never seemed to get sick, either. I used to try and badger her to spend some time to herself, take life a bit easier, you know? But she really needed the money.” Mathilda looked down at the cat, her wide mouth turning sad. “I never put the rent up and, confidentially, I didn’t charge her much for utilities. I didn’t have the heart.”
“That was very decent.”
Mathilda brushed that off with a sweep of her arm and the sleeve of her floral top billowed.
“She wanted to be a nurse and she would have made a good one,” her voice wobbled as the reality of it all began to kick in. “I was happy to help where I could.”
MacKenzie paused for a moment to give Mathilda a chance to collect herself. It wouldn’t help for her to break down; it would take so much longer to find out the things they needed to know.
“When did you last see her?”
Mathilda paused to think.
“It would have been Sunday morning. I was heading over to see my parents for the day and I stayed for lunch. I think she had an afternoon shift from around lunchtime.”
“No calls or texts after then?”
“No, nothing, I’m afraid.”
“When did you first begin to worry that something was wrong?”
“I got home from my parents’ after eight. She was due to get home around half past eleven and I always sort of listen out for her, you know? She kept to a routine, so when it got to midnight and I hadn’t heard her come in, I started to worry.”
“What did you do?” MacKenzie already knew that Mathilda had reported Claire as missing in the early hours that morning, scarcely before they had found her body underneath the sycamore tree.
“Well, I came downstairs and sort of hung around waiting. I felt a bit ridiculous, you know?” Ma
thilda lifted her shoulders and let them fall again, stroking the cat’s ears with gentle fingers. “Like I say, it got to midnight and I tried her mobile a few times, but it went straight to the busy tone.”
Interesting, MacKenzie thought. That meant that the phone had still been active; just switched off. She made a note to trace the mobile phone registered to Claire and hoped they might get lucky and track its location.
“I tried ringing the place she works – it’s the All American Diner, near the station in town,” she added helpfully. “Nobody was answering and I guess they’d packed up for the evening. So in the end I just called the local police station.”
“You didn’t think that she had gone home with somebody, perhaps? Or was just running late?”
Mathilda shook her head vehemently.
“You had to know her, to understand how organised her life was. She never did anything spontaneous, never deviated from schedule. That was just Claire. That’s how I knew that something was wrong.”
MacKenzie switched tack.
“Did she seem unhappy, or upset about anything?”
“No. She seemed fine, if a bit tired.”
“How about friends? You say she didn’t have many?”
“None that I saw, she was quite a loner. Only me, I suppose.”
“How about any boyfriends, or girlfriends?”
“I asked Claire once if she swung in that direction,” Mathilda smiled slightly. “Sadly for me, she didn’t. On the other hand, there weren’t any male admirers who came a-calling, either.”
“Could she have been seeing someone at work?”
“Not likely,” Mathilda scoffed. “She couldn’t stand the bloke who owns the place where she worked and the other ones were all a bit young.”
“OK,” Denise nodded. “You were saying she didn’t like the owner?”
“Nope. She said he had tried it on a few times, she’d said ‘no’ but he didn’t give up easily. I think she was starting to feel uncomfortable.”
“I see,” MacKenzie made a mental note to check out the owner of the Diner.
“Did she ever mention feeling seriously threatened?”
“No, I can’t say that she did. As far as I know, she just kept pushing him back.” MacKenzie opened her mouth to ask the next question but Mathilda continued, “I can tell you who definitely did make her feel uncomfortable. That pervy old git who lives at number 32.”
MacKenzie’s ears sharpened and she took out her biro, preparing to write down a name.
“Who might that be?”
“His name’s Colin. Colin Hart.”
* * *
Phillips found Steven Llewellyn on the golf course, which was a surprising choice for a man who had received the news of his daughter’s murder not twenty-four hours earlier. He seemed to be enjoying the perks of early retirement, if his tanned face and big-ticket golfing gear was anything to go by.
They were of a similar age, Phillips judged, but he had to admit that the other man seemed to be faring a little better than himself at this present moment. He felt like a duck out of water in his conservative grey suit and comfortable Hush Puppies. His tie might have added a little colour, but nothing in comparison with the unrepentant display of pastel shades that Steven Llewellyn was modelling. Where Llewellyn looked trim and tidy in the clinging sportswear, Phillips was already feeling fatigued after a second round of sandwiches over lunch.
He puffed over to where Llewellyn was teeing up the next shot and waited until he had taken it.
“Mr Llewellyn?”
Steven ran an assessing eye over DS Phillips and clearly had no memory of having met him the previous day. It made Phillips feel like a glorified monkey in a suit and it set his teeth on edge.
“Oh God, you’re not from the bailiffs, are you? I spoke to you arseholes last week. I told you, I’ll be in a position to pay off the last of it very soon. There’s no need to come all the way down here to try to intimidate me.”
Pride and confusion warred for a moment. It was flattering to think that he looked sufficiently ‘hard’ to be considered intimidating – those hours in the boxing ring as a teenager were clearly still paying off – but he didn’t much like the idea of being likened to a debt-collector.
Phillips drew out his warrant card.
“DS Frank Phillips,” he explained, watching recognition pass briefly across the other man’s face, followed swiftly by a shuttered, wary expression. “I’m here to talk about Amy.”
Llewellyn sagged against his posh golf stick.
“Oh, you’re here about Amy. I don’t know what more I can tell you.”
“I appreciate that it can be frustrating having to keep going over the same things again, but it’s really very useful for us to develop as clear a picture, as possible.” Phillips made sure that his voice transmitted just the right amount of deference. He had seen Llewellyn’s temper the previous day and had no desire to stoke the embers of it.
“Could you tell me about the last time that you saw Amy alive?”
“Look, I’ve given a number of statements about it.”
“Humour me,” Phillips replied dogmatically.
Llewellyn sighed.
“The last time I saw my daughter was about two months before she went missing. She came over to the house for dinner, we ate, we discussed university and then she left.”
“Two months seems like a long time, given that she lived in the same city,” Phillips commented.
“She led a busy life at university,” Llewellyn’s eyes skirted away and Phillips knew that he was avoiding the truth.
“Sir, it would really help us to know as much as possible about her comings and goings, if we’re going to find out who killed her.”
“I’ve told you all I know,” Llewellyn insisted. “She had been unhappy at university. She came round to the house, moping about it, or about some bloke or another. I told her to buck her ideas up and that I wasn’t throwing money down the drain. She didn’t like it, she stormed off and we never saw her again. I know that Rose always blamed me for that.”
There was more truth in that, Phillips thought, but still not all of it.
“You say there might have been a man in Amy’s life? You didn’t mention that in any of your statements ten years ago.”
“I was upset! We were all upset. It’s perfectly possible that I forgot to mention it.”
Possible, Phillips agreed, but not probable, since Llewellyn had given six statements in total, none of which mentioned the existence of a man in Amy’s life. It had been a major stumbling block in building a case against Keir Edwards, having no supportive statements from family or friends to corroborate a relationship between the two of them. Without a confession, or any forensic evidence, all they had was a photograph. Now, her father seemed to have changed his tune and it made the skin on the back of Phillips’ neck itch.
“Do you know his name?”
“Obviously, after the photograph of Amy was found, I realise that it must have been Edwards that she was worrying about.”
“Did she name him, specifically?”
Llewellyn seemed to struggle with himself.
“N-o … I can’t say that she ever told us his name.” It obviously pained him to tell the truth.
“Did she tell you anything about this man?”
“She said that he was a bit older. I can tell you, that didn’t sit well with us. She didn’t go into any details; we didn’t have that kind of relationship.”
“Did this discussion happen at your last meeting with Amy?”
“She told us about there being somebody earlier than that; maybe around the February before she went missing in June. I seem to remember her mooning about going on some Valentine’s date with Prince Charming. When I saw her in April … that was the last time,” Llewellyn swallowed a knot in his throat and battled through the memory. “She said she was planning to end things. Not before time, we thought. She hadn’t been herself for a while.”
“W
hy didn’t you tell the police about this, back in 2005?”
“I honestly didn’t remember all of it until sometime after. When the photograph emerged, I didn’t like to think of what she had been doing with that … that man.”
Llewellyn looked as if he wanted to spit out the foul flavour in his mouth and Phillips could understand that. No father wanted to dwell on the facts surrounding his own daughter’s death, particularly where sex was involved.
“Do you know when Amy’s remains will be released?”
“I would think in the next few days,” Phillips replied. “But the departmental liaison will be in touch with you about arrangements.”
“Thank you,” Llewellyn murmured. “It’s time we gave her a proper burial.”
Phillips left him to his golf, and his memories.
* * *
When MacKenzie stepped out onto the street again after her discussion with Claire Burns’ landlady, she took out her mobile phone and dialled Ryan’s number. It was bad luck that, at that precise moment, he was in an elevator heading down to the deep storage unit housed in the basement of CID Headquarters. The unit was surrounded by concrete, which was a barrier to mobile phone reception. Stumped, MacKenzie then punched in the number for Phillips, which also carried a vacant dial tone while he stomped the long journey back across the golf course after his discussion with Amy Llewellyn’s father. Naturally, there had been no golf buggies available for a hardworking officer of the law.
She supposed there were others she could call, MacKenzie thought while she chewed her bottom lip, but did she really need them? She would only be conducting a follow-up interview, she reasoned.
Decisively, she walked across the street and headed for the large semi-detached house bearing an ornamental placard with the number ‘32’. With only a slight frisson of unease, she rang the doorbell and heard it chime loudly on the other side of the thick oak door.
She heard footsteps followed by a slight pause while she was scrutinised through the peephole. There was a further pause, before the locks were opened and the door swung open.
Colin was the epitome of an average man. His brown hair was combed into a classic, conservative style, with no gel in sight. He wore a plain cotton shirt, tucked into straight-leg, mid-wash jeans, which looked like they had been pressed to form a sharp crease at the front.
