Killer Plan

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Caroline, you need to tell me the truth. Something’s happened to Ed, hasn’t it?’

  Caroline turned a stricken face to her, but said nothing.

  ‘I can’t help you if you keep lying.’

  Tears welled up in Caroline’s eyes, but her voice was curiously expressionless. ‘No one can help me. Not now.’

  ‘I will, if you tell me what’s happened.’

  Caroline turned and went inside, calling to her son to go upstairs. He just stood in the hall, watching. Geraldine followed her in and closed the front door. With a hurried glance at Matthew, Caroline ushered Geraldine into the front room and shut the door. She sat down facing Geraldine, and spoke quietly.

  ‘Ed’s been missing for eleven days.’

  Geraldine was staggered. ‘Eleven days? What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘You’re telling me your ten-year-old son’s been kidnapped and you didn’t report him missing?’

  Caroline glanced towards the door as though afraid Matthew might be listening. ‘No, I did. I reported him missing.’

  Struggling to control her sobbing, Caroline described how she had gone to the police station the day after her son’s disappearance to tell them he had been kidnapped.

  ‘It was the Monday. I went there as soon as Matthew was at school. I had to get him out of the way first because I’d told him Ed had gone to stay with a friend of mine.’

  More lies. Geraldine wondered if Caroline could help it, and if it was reasonable to believe anything she said.

  ‘I’ve been going out of my mind with worry,’ Caroline burst out suddenly. ‘Please, you have to help me.’

  ‘Let’s go through this step by step. When did this alleged kidnap take place?’

  ‘Sunday night. And it’s true. I know it is. He’s called Brian.’

  ‘Hang on, I want to go through this step by step,’ Geraldine insisted. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. He went to the shop and he never came back.’

  ‘How do you know he was kidnapped?’

  ‘There was a note.’

  ‘A note?’

  ‘Yes. When he didn’t come home, Matt and I went out looking for him and when we got home there was a note on the doormat. It was from Brian.’

  ‘Have you still got it?’

  Caroline pulled a scrap of flimsy paper out of her pocket. On it was written ‘ED’. Nothing more.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yes. It was in an envelope but I don’t know what happened to that.’ She stared at Geraldine, appalled. ‘I should have kept it, shouldn’t I?’

  Geraldine dismissed her regrets, assuring her the writer had probably been wearing gloves. The days of tracing criminals from their fingerprints were long gone. Geraldine picked up the slip of paper by one corner, and dropped it into her purse.

  ‘So Ed disappeared on Sunday evening and you received this note through the door shortly after.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you said this note was from someone called Brian?’

  Caroline explained how she had met someone from her junior school in the park, and he had kidnapped her son.

  ‘What makes you think it was him?’

  ‘I know it was.’

  ‘And you said you went to the police ten days ago? What happened?’

  ‘Nothing happened. They didn’t believe me. I think it was because my headscarf looked weird.’

  ‘Headscarf?’

  Caroline described how she had worn a disguise when she had gone to the police station. The more the woman talked, the more far-fetched her story sounded, with a shadowy kidnapper threatening to kill Ed if she went to the police.

  ‘I get it that the kidnapper doesn’t want the police involved,’ Geraldine said, as she struggled to make sense of the garbled account. ‘But what does he want? Do you have any idea why anyone – why Brian might have wanted to kidnap your son?’

  Caroline hesitated. ‘No.’

  Yet again Geraldine thought she was lying.

  ‘Caroline, you have to tell me the truth.’

  Caroline shook her head. Geraldine tried again.

  ‘You’re going to have to give me something more than that to go on.’ Geraldine waited, but Caroline just began to sob. ‘If you know anything, anything at all about the person who’s taken your son, you must tell me.’

  ‘His name’s Brian and he went to Cartpool Junior School. We were there at the same time. And now he’s taken Ed. That’s all I know...’

  Geraldine wondered if the woman was unhinged, whether by grief or guilt it was impossible to tell. If she hadn’t already been mentally unstable before her husband’s death, she might well be now.

  ‘Did Ed have something to do with your husband’s death?’ she hazarded.

  Caroline stopped crying abruptly. ‘What do you mean?’ She sounded genuinely shocked.

  Geraldine pressed on. ‘Did Ed know too much? Is your husband’s killer the kidnapper? Caroline, help me out here. Why would anyone want to kidnap one of your sons? What’s going on that you’re not telling us?’

  Caroline became agitated. She stood up in one swift movement and went to the door of the living room.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. You have no right to come here making accusations. We’re the victims here, me and my boys.’

  ‘Caroline, you need to start telling me the truth. Is Ed here?’

  ‘No. No. He’s gone. He’s gone. You have to find him. You have to find Brian.’

  Bending double, she wrapped her arms around her waist and began to wail. That much at least was genuine.

  63

  Max sat, one leg loosely crossed over the other, his head tilted on one side, listening attentively. Geraldine did her best to concentrate, but it was difficult to stay focused on the case with Nick’s desk standing empty; the proverbial elephant in the room. For the time being at least the office was exclusively hers, but she didn’t appreciate the solitude, not under these circumstances. No one was deliberately unkind, but her colleagues made it worse. Over and over again she had to listen to people telling her that she hadn’t known Nick for as long as they had. Geraldine didn’t disclose that it hadn’t actually taken her and Nick very long to get to know one another.

  Some officers were depressed about the loss of their colleague. ‘I worked with him, on and off, for nearly twenty years,’ a grey-haired detective constable said mournfully. ‘You never had a chance to get to know him. He was a good officer. A great bloke.’

  Others expressed anger about what had happened. Wherever she went in the police station she was met with the same refrain, ‘You didn’t really know him, not like we did.’ She heard it so many times, she began to wonder if it was true.

  ‘I shared an office with him,’ she responded, but her colleagues just turned away, muttering that it wasn’t the same.

  ‘The same as what?’ she wanted to shout. ‘How about sharing my bed with him? Does that count as getting to know him?’

  But she kept her feelings to herself.

  It was true that she had only been in London for just over a year. Nick had been away when she had arrived. They had shared an office, on and off, for less than a year, and had barely exchanged civil greetings for much of that time. Their antagonism had begun with his flirting. Knowing he was married, she had resented his attentions. Her irritation had been fuelled by Sam’s hostility towards Nick. Privately, Sam decried him as a womaniser who had slept his way around half the women at the station. Geraldine agreed with her. Conduct that would have been dubious in a single man was despicable in a married man.

  Max nodded thoughtfully. ‘Could she have killed her husband herself?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Perhaps the boy saw her, and she had to silence him?’

  Geraldine was relieved that Caroline had an alibi for herself and her sons. The thought that a ten-year-old boy might be implicated in his own father’s murder was hard to contemplate. Yet there was no getting away
from the fact that a boy’s DNA had been discovered on a second body.

  ‘Perhaps it was him,’ Max suggested.

  ‘Yes, perhaps a missing ten-year-old boy has been battering grown men to death, felling tall men at a blow,’ she replied gruffly. ‘His mother discovered his secret, and is hiding him. But where is he?’

  ‘Whichever way you look at it, it’s all very odd.’

  ‘Max, that’s not helpful.’

  ‘There couldn’t be a mistake with the DNA, I suppose?’

  She shook her head. ‘We have to go with the evidence, however confusing or disturbing it is. But Caroline and the boys were at their football practice when Dave was killed.’

  They gazed helplessly at one another. She wasn’t sure whether to feel reassured to know that he was as worried as she was by the turn the case had taken.

  A constable trained to question children had been interviewing Matthew. After listening to the recording, Geraldine went to speak to the constable.

  ‘It was a bit awkward,’ the constable admitted. ‘Matthew’s mother had told him Ed had gone to stay with a friend of hers. She’s been doing her damnedest to cover up the fact that Ed’s gone missing. Basically Matthew now knows she was concealing it from him, on top of everything else that’s happened.’

  ‘I suppose she didn’t want to worry him.’

  ‘He’s hardly less worried now, knowing his brother’s disappeared and his mother lied to him about it.’

  ‘Do you think she knows where Ed is?’

  The constable shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to be sure what she knows, because she’s been lying all along, to everyone.’

  It was time for Geraldine to interview Caroline formally. She had to find out the truth. A young boy’s life might be at stake.

  ‘No more lies, Caroline. We know you lied about Ed staying with a friend. That never happened, did it?’

  Caroline sat motionless across the table from Geraldine in the interview room. Her face was dreadfully pale. She didn’t answer.

  ‘Caroline, it’s imperative you tell me everything you know. We have to find Ed.’

  An involuntary sob escaped Caroline’s lips. At last she leaned forward and mumbled something. Geraldine asked her to repeat it.

  ‘He never went to a friend. He was kidnapped.’

  They were going round in circles. Geraldine spoke fiercely.

  ‘Caroline, do you know where Ed is?’

  The other woman shook her head. She looked too terrified to speak. Geraldine had a horrible feeling the woman was insane and had hidden him away herself – or worse. For the moment she decided to humour Caroline, and see where the line of questioning led.

  ‘Can you tell me who kidnapped your son?’

  ‘It sounds so final, hearing you say it like that.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who’s responsible?’

  ‘Yes. I keep telling you. It was Brian.’

  Caroline kept coming up with the same name. Geraldine suspected Brian’s role in Ed’s disappearance was a figment of Caroline’s diseased imagination. Nevertheless she continued to act as though she believed what Caroline was saying.

  ‘Where can we find him?’

  ‘If I knew that, do you think I’d be sitting here, talking?’

  ‘Tell me about Brian.’

  Caroline launched into a convoluted account of a boy from her school she had met recently by chance on a park bench, where there were no security cameras. Caroline began to cry.

  ‘He’s not right in the head. He hasn’t got any children of his own, so he’s taken one of mine. You have to find him!’

  Geraldine wondered whether this was another lie, to cover up for what she herself had done to her son. It was possible that she was a paranoid schizophrenic who had killed her own son and was blaming someone she had known years before. But there was also a chance she was telling the truth. The story she was telling was consistent with the earlier accounts she had given of someone called Brian kidnapping Ed.

  ‘Does this have any connection to your husband’s death?’

  Caroline started, as though she had been slapped.

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  Once again, Geraldine was almost certain she was lying.

  ‘Caroline, if we want to find Ed, you have to tell me the truth about everything.’

  Caroline shook her head, weeping. ‘I’ve told you what I know. Now you have to find Ed, please, before it’s too late.’

  64

  The entrance hall to the school looked pristine. It must have been recently redecorated. Glancing through the windows of several classrooms she passed, Geraldine saw that they were less well maintained. The signage led her to the headmistress’ office. Seeing the door was open, she tapped on it and went in. The headmistress stood up to greet her visitor. She was a tall woman. With cropped grey hair and a square jaw, she could have been a man were it not for her calf-length plaid skirt and lipstick.

  ‘Inspector Steel, is it?’ she boomed, extending a large hand in greeting.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Pennycook. I’ve been expecting you this morning. Now, what’s this all about?’

  Geraldine explained the purpose of her visit. When she finished, the other woman shook her head.

  ‘I may look old enough to have been headmistress here twenty-eight years ago,’ she said, smiling. ‘I have been teaching for that long, but I’m afraid I’ve only been here for four years. Your enquiry goes back way before my time. You’re looking for a boy called Brian? Do you have a surname?’

  It was Geraldine’s turn to shake her head. ‘I’m afraid the only information we have is that he was called Brian, and he attended school here. That, and the fact that he has fair hair.’

  ‘You’re talking about a long time ago, and names can be unreliable.’

  Geraldine understood Brian could have been a nickname. People sometimes changed their names. Nearly thirty years had passed since Caroline had known a child called Brian at school. But Brian was all they had to go on. She enquired whether the school kept records going back nearly thirty years.

  ‘We should have complete records going back that far, yes.’

  ‘Then we can look it up and see if there was a child called Brian in that year group.’

  It took about twenty minutes to establish that the relevant list was no longer accessible.

  ‘It must have been missed out when we moved everything onto computerised records,’ the headmistress apologised. ‘The only other thing I can suggest is that you talk to Betty Collins. She worked here for over twenty years, and she still lives just up the road. She retired when her husband died. He was school caretaker when I arrived. She might remember something, although I’m not sure how reliable her memory is these days. She still visits. She keeps a kind of archive of the school, school photos going back for years. She might be able to help you.’

  Betty lived in a slightly rundown block of flats two streets away from the school. When Geraldine explained the reason for her enquiry, the old woman invited her in at once. Bright-eyed, sprightly in her movements, her face was wrinkled, her fingers twisted with arthritis.

  ‘Ah, the children,’ she said, with a sigh, as they sat down in her cluttered front room. ‘We loved those children, Bert and me.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Who did you say you were, dear?’

  Her memory seemed more reliable when they moved to the subject of her time at the school.

  ‘Brian? I’m not sure.’ Her beady eyes grew distant. ‘Oh yes, there was a Brian once, funny little thing he was.’

  ‘Can you remember his full name? Please think. It’s very important.’

  The old woman shook her head.

  ‘Now let me put my thinking cap on. His real name. Let me see. It’s all a long time ago... the other children were very unkind to him, although he brought it on himself really. Nasty little lad he was. They used to tease him about his ginger hair. He used to cry a lot. The teacher – what was her name? – a
nyway, she called him a crybaby. Mrs Whittaker, I think it was at that time. Was it Mrs Whittaker?’

  Geraldine asked to see the school photo from the year Caroline left the school and the old lady bustled off, returning with a box file labelled 1990s.

  ‘I keep them all in the right boxes,’ she explained with a touch of pride. ‘Bert and me, we used to do it together. He was a stickler for keeping things in order.’

  Alert now, she rummaged through the box and brought out a photograph of a class of children.

  ‘Here you are, dear, this is the date, isn’t it? Is this what you wanted?’

  Geraldine stared at the faded photograph.

  ‘And here’s my list,’ Betty went on. ‘You’ll see we kept them all in order, me and Bert.’

  Geraldine studied it. Caroline’s name was there, listed under her maiden name. There was one boy called Brian, who must have been the former classmate Caroline had spoken about. Assuming she hadn’t been lying, they had met up again recently, just before Caroline’s husband was murdered. It was hard not to jump to conclusions. Looking at the faded image, Geraldine was reminded of the old photograph she kept hidden in the top drawer of her bedside cabinet. It was a tenuous link to the mother who had given her up for adoption at birth. At the time, her decision to give her baby away had been made with her daughter’s interests at heart. As long as the search continued, Geraldine could cling to the hope that her mother only continued refusing to have any contact with her out of a sense of shame. But she knew that might not be true.

  Returning to Caroline’s classmates, she studied the faded image closely.

  ‘Can you tell me which one’s Brian?’ she asked, curious to see what he had looked like.

  The old lady frowned. ‘Let me see,’ she said.

  Propping her glasses on her nose, she peered at the picture, consulting the list clutched in her other gnarled hand.

  ‘I remember Pamela,’ she said at last, pointing out a mischievous-looking girl with short dark hair. ‘She was a real tomboy. And that’s Tommy.’ She broke off with a cackle of amusement.

  Geraldine tried to control her impatience. ‘And Brian?’