by Lisa Cutts
Or so he thought.
‘Hi there, Harry,’ said a voice from the office doorway.
He smiled before he looked up from his computer screen.
‘Don’t be too pleased to see me yet,’ said DCI Barbara Venice. ‘You don’t know why I’m here.’
‘Babs, I’m always pleased to see you. What can I do for you?’
‘Don’t call me Babs, for a start.’
‘I’ve been calling you that for decades.’
‘And I’ve been asking you not to, you cantankerous old bugger.’
By now, the two old friends were sitting opposite each other, like grey-haired bookends, bitter at the world for the crap it had thrown their way, but still determined to do the best job they could, despite the ever-growing difficulties that accompanied any investigation.
‘There was a time,’ said Harry, ‘when you and I would have cracked open a bottle of Scotch and sat talking bollocks.’
‘I don’t drink,’ she replied. ‘But go ahead with the talking bollocks. You’ve always done enough of that for two.’
‘As much as I’m loving the verbal sparring, Babs, what did you want?’
‘The murder we had on Friday possibly wasn’t a one-off.’
Harry threw himself back in his chair, head tilted, eyes on the cracked and blistered ceiling paint, hands going up to his face. He rubbed at his stubble, something he always fought a losing battle with. As a new recruit, he was berated for not shaving properly, so one morning, to his then sergeant’s astonishment, he brought his shaving gear to work with him and shaved in the parade room in front of the entire shift. Three hours later the stubble was back and no one questioned his standards ever again.
‘Where and when?’ he said eventually.
‘Someone’s been looking into suspicious deaths in the last year,’ she said. ‘I’m amazed they linked these two so quickly, especially as the one I’m going to tell you about happened several months ago in another force’s county.’
‘If there are other departments with so many staff on at a weekend, perhaps they can send me some. I’m scratching around here for an outside enquiry team. I’m only grateful I’ve got Pierre coming back from his annual leave on Monday and a new DC, Hazel Hamilton, starting. Pierre I can vouch for, but she better be as good as her reputation. I’m up shit creek here.’
‘From what I’ve learned so far,’ said the DCI, ignoring the comments, ‘it was a male, aged thirty-three years, found in the woods with a noose around his neck, hanging from a tree.’
‘Not suicide then?’
She paused, leaned back in her chair and said, ‘That was the first thought. Especially as there was a note, and he had no family, well, none that were speaking to him.’
Harry raised an eyebrow.
‘The victim was called Dean Stillbrook. His family had severed all ties with him after he was arrested and charged with the attempted rape of a young girl who lived in his street.’
‘Oh fuck,’ said Harry, the realization of what was coming next about to hit him full pelt.
‘The case went to trial but the jury acquitted him. He left the court a free man, went into the woods two weeks later and was found hanging by his neck.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said the DI, lurching forward in his chair to tap the words ‘Dean Stillbrook’ into his keyboard.
‘It wouldn’t have made any sense if it actually was suicide,’ agreed Barbara. ‘Only, the chances are that he didn’t take his own life.’
‘What makes anyone think that?’ said Harry, but already knowing that there was much more to it, or he wouldn’t have a DCI sitting in his office on her day off telling him about it. He wondered if this was the reason that Barbara had been turning up at his briefings. He was on the cusp of asking her outright when it struck him that she had only just found out about the possibility of the two deaths being linked, so it didn’t explain her presence on Friday night. The time wasn’t right to ask her, and besides, he knew that she would tell him if there was something else bothering her. Their relationship had never been more than a comfortable working one, but nevertheless it was solid.
‘Well, for starters,’ she continued, ‘it was only two hours’ drive from here to where he died. The cause of death was strangulation and both Woodville and Stillbrook are alleged sex offenders, although one was found innocent and one found guilty at court.’
‘There must be more than that?’ said Harry, trying to keep the hope from his voice.
‘Take a look at Dean Stillbrook’s suicide note and then I’ll tell you something really interesting about it.’
Chapter 22
By the time DC Tom Delayhoyde and DC Sophia Ireland left Toby Carvell, they both felt their energy levels had dropped. They walked out to their car, not entirely convinced they had made any progress.
Once inside the confines of the battered green Peugeot, complete with approximately twenty scratches and paintwork scrapes that no one had ever admitted to, the pair exchanged a look.
‘What do you think?’ asked Tom.
Sophia pulled a face and turned in the direction of the house they had spent the last three hours in. ‘We’ve at least got a signed statement from him saying where he was on Friday night, but didn’t you get a feeling that he wasn’t telling us everything?’
‘I’m honestly not sure. I felt truly uncomfortable listening to what happened to him as a kid so perhaps it clouded my judgement a little. He certainly gave us lots of detail about where he was and who he was with, including where he left his Ford Focus overnight. That shouldn’t be too difficult to confirm.’
For a few seconds Sophia thought this over before she added, ‘Didn’t you think it was a little too detailed?’
‘We were only asking him about as recently as yesterday, although I get your point. Do you reckon he was expecting us?’
‘He could only have been expecting us if he actually murdered Woodville.’ She let out a long slow breath and said, ‘In which case, if he reckoned he was with Leon Edwards, they did it together. Not very friendlike, is it?’
‘We either make a decision that we now go and see Leon Edwards, check out Toby Carvell’s alibi, which is what we really should do, or complete the other task given us, and we go and see our murder victim’s girlfriend, Millie Hanson. What do you want to do?’
‘I want to keep my job, so I’ll let someone else make the decision, because whatever we do we’ll no doubt be wrong.’
The sound of a phone ringing filled the car via the hands-free before DS Sandra Beckinsale answered her mobile.
‘Beckinsale,’ was all she said.
Tom raised his eyes at Sophia who smiled and shook her head.
‘Er, Sandra. Hello, it’s Tom.’
When she didn’t reply, he shrugged and continued. ‘We spoke to Carvell and got a statement from him about where he was on Friday night. He said he was with his mate, a bloke called Leon Edwards. What do you want us to do now? See Edwards, follow up on where Carvell said he was and finish this enquiry properly, or go to Millie Hanson’s?’
There were several seconds of silence.
Sophia and Tom exchanged a look.
‘What do you both think about Carvell?’ she asked at last. ‘Do you reckon he’s telling the truth or not?’
‘It’s difficult to say,’ said Tom, giving a hunch of his shoulders that his detective sergeant couldn’t see. ‘We’ve talked about this and both Sophia and I feel that it’s a tough call to separate out how much of what Carvell might be keeping from us is because of his past sexual abuse, or because he knows more about Woodville’s murder than he’s letting on.’
He paused but then felt compelled to fill the silence when once again the DS on the other end of the line kept quiet.
‘I’d prefer to go and see the girlfriend now, even though we haven’t strictly speaking finished this enquiry,’ he said.
‘As long as we don’t lose anything evidentially,’ said Beckinsale, ‘go with your
instinct and see Millie Hanson next. Make a note that I’ve told you to do it so it doesn’t come back on you if the proverbial hits the fan.’
‘OK,’ he said, as he nodded his head in agreement, ‘will do. And thanks. See you later.’
Tom leaned across and pressed the disconnect button. ‘Some people think she’s a bit of an old bag, but I quite like her.’
‘Tom,’ said Beckinsale’s voice. ‘I’m still here. You didn’t end the call.’
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ said Sophia half an hour later as they pulled up outside Millie Hanson’s house. ‘Beckinsale’s going to have your guts for garters.’
‘There’s no need to find it quite so funny,’ said Tom. ‘You can do the talking on this one.’
‘I don’t mind. And if it’s supposed to be a punishment, you can’t keep quiet for long enough to make me ask all of the questions anyway.’
As they stood at the front door, both of them were already aware of what kind of person Millie Hanson was from what they could see of her house. It was clean and tidy, a smattering of children’s books and toys strewn across the living-room floor, visible through the window. The front lawn needed a cut and the flower beds were neglected, but the absence of bags of rubbish all over the front garden or broken or boarded-up windows pointed towards her being civil towards them at the very least.
Neither of them voiced their prejudice that a mother of two young children couldn’t possibly be a murderer.
When she opened the front door, her face didn’t register surprise, but almost relief that at last the police had come. Without one word, she stood back to let them in. Sophia still felt that introductions were needed but from the flitting of Millie’s bloodshot eyes from her to Tom, she wasn’t entirely sure she was listening.
‘Come in,’ said Millie, eyes in the direction of the staircase.
‘Is this a bad time?’ asked Sophia, felling a little uneasy that Millie seemed so conscious of her surroundings in her own house.
‘I know why you’re here,’ she said as she closed the front door. ‘My children are upstairs. I don’t want them to hear what you’re going to tell me.’
She walked into the depths of the house, the two detectives exchanging a glance before following her into the lounge.
Without asking, Sophia and Tom took a seat on the sofa opposite her.
‘You said to us in the hallway, “I know why you’re here,” ’ began Sophia. ‘Why do you think we’re here?’
‘Albie,’ she muttered, and then louder said, ‘Albie. You’re here about Albie.’ Millie waited for the officers to speak and then said, ‘Because of his past and what he did. I’ve already been told this by DC Laura Ward. I’ve got her card here somewhere.’
She made to get up.
‘Millie, please don’t worry about that now,’ said Sophia, watching her closely. ‘When did you last see Albie?’
‘It was a month ago, the same day that Laura came round here and told me what he’d done.’ She put a hand up to her mouth, a nervy shaking hand, and then put it back down in her lap. ‘What sort of a mother lets a man like that anywhere near her children?’
‘Do you know what’s happened to Albie?’ Sophia said, wondering how she was going to give a death message to a woman who was likely to have very mixed feelings about the imminent news.
The widow shook her head and peered out through tear-filled eyes.
‘This is so hideous. Has he done it again? Please don’t say he’s done it again.’
‘No, no, it’s not that. Millie, Albie Woodville was found dead last night.’
Her eyes widened and this time the tears cascaded down her face. All she said was, ‘Dead. Oh God, he didn’t?’
Chapter 23
It wasn’t long before Eric Samuels’ Saturday ritual of catching up with East Rise Players’ business and correspondence was behind him. Lunch, as usual when his wife was out, was taken on a tray in the sitting room.
He tried to put any unpleasant thoughts about the future of his full-time hobby – some might call it an obsession – out of his mind and focus on the homemade pea-and-ham soup that Belinda had left for him before going off to start her weekend round of visiting elderly folk in hospital and at home. It was something that his wife was as passionate about as he was about his productions. She, however, didn’t have all the worries he faced, especially the more pressing one of the success of his upcoming musical, Annie. Four of the teenage girls had dropped out already, one with a particularly angry father who thought it was acceptable to shout abuse down the phone at Eric.
He lifted a spoon of steaming soup from the bowl to his mouth, and willed himself to concentrate on the television lunchtime news. He waited for the soup to cool before taking a sip and lost himself in the international disasters unfolding in front of him.
Several times he tutted and shook his head at the atrocities in the world and marvelled at how people could blow each other up, shoot and kill their neighbours, all because of religion, land or money. He still went on enjoying the soup, now and again a too-hot spoonful taking him by surprise.
He enjoyed his lunch so much, he decided to get himself some French bread to go with it and mop up the remains in the bottom of the bowl. Having placed his tray on the side table and pressed the mute button on the remote control, he wandered into the kitchen to find the loaf he had seen that morning. As he did so, he began to hum to himself, wondering, not for the first time, whether he was overreacting to the whole Albert Woodville interfering-with-children episode. He was even wondering where his daft idea of telephoning Albie to tell him he was no longer welcome at the Players had come from.
After all, he only had two police detectives’ word for it. They might have been embellishing the truth. Now he came to think of it, he wasn’t entirely sure that they’d told him how many children Albie had been convicted of touching. If it was only one, surely it was the child’s word against that of the adult? How times had changed.
Once Eric had cut a single piece of bread, he decided that he would have a second. He was feeling much better and now he’d had time to ruminate on the Albert Woodville affair, he put it down to no more than a storm in a teacup. Apart from not having all the facts in front of him, he really liked the man. He had always turned up on time, been courteous and well presented. These weren’t the signs of someone who had a tendency to interfere with children. Once he started to reflect on the legal system he couldn’t help concluding that juries got things wrong all the time. That idiot woman who lived four doors away was recently on a jury and she didn’t have the brains to know which way was up.
That was Eric’s mind made up: the legal system couldn’t be trusted and there was no way one small, impressionable child, who couldn’t have known wrong from right and was no doubt coaxed by her parents and the police, could understand what she was accusing a fully grown man of.
He put the bread on a small plate, as he didn’t want Belinda scolding him for dropping crumbs everywhere again, and almost felt sorry for the image he was conjuring up in his head of a scared seven-year-old girl who was encouraged to tell lies about a grown-up.
‘Pitiful,’ he mumbled to himself as he sat back down in his leather chair to catch the local news.
The screen filled with a miserable-looking news reporter, raincoat pulled tight around her, long blonde hair flapping in the wind, rain hitting her face from time to time and forcing her to blink rapidly. Behind her were police cars, vans with CSI on the side of them, people in sodden white paper suits and a uniform officer standing in front of some blue-and-white tape to keep the public out.
What caught Eric’s eye was what the police officer was guarding. If he wasn’t very much mistaken, it was the front door of a block of flats that he had been to on more than one occasion. For some reason, it seemed that the entrance to Albie Woodville’s home was being protected.
He had an awful feeling that word had got out that somewhere a young foolish girl had told a pack of lies
about a man Eric would be happy to call a friend. Perhaps the police had been called to keep the angry mob out; after all there could only be one person accused of such an atrocious crime in the seaside town of East Rise.
Eric fumbled for the remote control, unable to take his eyes from the screen. He watched the news reporter turn, glance over her shoulder and thumb in the direction of the block of flats. At that moment he hit the correct button, releasing the words … murder investigation of a sixty-three-year-old man, as yet unnamed by the police …
The rest of the words were lost on Eric as he sat stunned and not fully grasping what he had heard. In spite of the warmth of the room and the hot meal he had eaten only moments ago, he couldn’t help feeling a chill.
Someone had killed his good friend Albert.
With shaking hands, he picked up the phone and dialled the incident-room number that had been shown on the television screen.
It wasn’t long before someone answered and clearing his throat he said, ‘I’ve just seen on the news that a man’s been murdered. I know someone who lives in those flats and if Albert Woodville’s been killed, I know who’s done it.’
Chapter 24
‘So, come on then,’ said Jude Watson as he looked around the dingy back-street pub they had agreed to meet in. ‘What exactly are we going to do now?’
He scrutinized Jonathan’s hands as he picked up a beer mat and began to tap it on the edge of the table. He couldn’t remember ever examining the back of another man’s hands before and was surprised to see that one had a red welt across it.
‘How did that happen?’ he asked, pointing at the mark.
‘Very funny,’ said Jonathan. ‘Don’t pretend that you don’t know.’
Jude pulled a face and said, ‘Do you want another beer?’
‘No thanks. I’d better get going after this one. I’ve got to pick my daughter up from some swimming gala, so one bottle’s my limit.’
