by Mark Roberts
‘Or what,’ said Riley.
‘I’m a smart arse, I’m a copper,’ goaded Green.
Riley smiled.
‘What are you smirking at?’
Riley ignored her and remembered how Barney Cole had filled her in on the details of Christine Green’s past from the NPC when they were still in her house on Rice Lane.
Six years earlier, in her mid-twenties and not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, Christine had been arrested at a bus stop on Lodge Lane in Liverpool 8 after calling an eighty-year-old Chinese man a fucking perv and a fucking Chink in front of a large group of black and white youths who detained her until the police arrived.
The red and amber traffic lights turned to green and Riley pulled across the junction and headed southbound on Queens Drive.
‘I said, What are you fucking smirking at?’
‘Book smart, street stupid!’ replied Riley.
The black taxi behind Riley’s car eased into the left-hand lane and slowly nudged forward. She glanced at the taxi driver and saw it was a tough-looking woman, a blonde whose attention was dead set on the road ahead and whose jaw pounded down hard on a wad of gum.
Riley looked at the road ahead as the rear end of the taxi pulled alongside the passenger door of her car. Her instincts started to twitch.
‘These fucking handcuffs are fucking pinching me. Oww! Owwwww!’
Put a bloody big rock in it, thought Riley.
The taxi edged ahead of Riley’s car in the left-hand lane and, uneasy now, she had a clear sense that she was being watched.
She glanced left at the passenger on the back seat and recognised her immediately. Samantha Wilson.
It’s got to be a coincidence, thought Riley. I see dozens of people I know in different places every single week.
Samantha Wilson raised a hand, waved, and Riley nodded back.
Samantha turned her attention away from Riley and towards the taxi driver. She spoke to the driver, gesticulating with her hands.
Issuing instructions, thought Riley, imagining the terminally lonely Karl Stone being hit on by a good-looking but flakey woman and the conflict he must have endured.
The taxi driver slowed right down and took a sharp right turn to tuck into the space behind Riley’s car.
Cathedral bells rang inside Riley’s head, as the black taxi remained directly behind her in the right-hand wing mirror.
As Riley approached the junction with Derby Lane, the taxi pulled into the right-hand lane, to the turn-off leading into Old Swan. She looked at the taxi but Samantha Wilson appeared to be oblivious, looking ahead, talking either to the taxi driver or herself.
I’m not happy, thought Riley, not one little bit.
64
3.01 pm
Annabelle Burns sat in the window of the Full O’Beans Cafe on St Mary’s Road, with an empty cup in front of her, rereading the front-page article on the diner’s early copy of the Liverpool Echo again.
MATHER AVENUE MURDER
SECOND PAEDOPHILE TARGETED
BY VIGILANTE COPYCAT
Her eyes skittered over the photograph beneath the headline and the print seemed to swirl from the page as the enormity of her son being questioned by the police in relation to such a serious crime sent her anxiety levels sky high.
The thought of Lucien sparked a memory of Caroline, the daughter she had lost many years ago, and the memory of that little girl filled her with a sadness that time had never diminished.
She pulled herself together, reminded herself of the trouble Lucien was in, here and now, and, ordering herself to be practical, called the Spire on speed dial. Connecting with the switchboard, she commanded, ‘Put me through to Sister Bishop on the nurses’ station.’
As the phone rang, a teenage girl in stained overalls came to collect her cup. Annabelle folded the Liverpool Echo over so that the football news on the back page was visible.
The teenager reached towards the empty cup.
‘I’ve not finished with it yet,’ snapped Annabelle.
‘Ooh, sorry.’
Annabelle looked at the teenager. Go away! Keep away!
‘Sister Jenny Bishop spe—’
‘It’s me, Annabelle. I can’t come to work this evening. Lucien’s not well. I’ll try and get in tomorrow. If I can’t I’ll let you know.
‘Well, I hope he gets b—’
Annabelle hung up. She looked around. She was the only customer in the cafe and the staff were all in the kitchen behind the counter. Annabelle headed for the door and blustery road outside and flagged down a black taxi.
‘Springwood Avenue. Quick as you can!’
65
3.01 pm
‘Any sign of the carpets upstairs being lifted recently?’ asked Stone.
‘No,’ said Winters. ‘They’re all well tacked down. We’ve been round every centimetre of the skirting boards in the bedrooms and upstairs landing and I’m telling you, Karl, she hasn’t been messing with them. Unless she’s a fully qualified carpet fitter as well as a skilled woodworker. She’s converted her spare bedroom into a joinery workshop. She’s got all the gear.’
‘What’s she carved?’
‘Mostly crazy Nazi stuff. No Vindici. No Weeping Children. No Day of the Dead shite.’
Stone wondered what Clay and Hendricks would make of that, and then focused on the task at hand. ‘Upstairs, we need to get the boards up, pretty please, Mr Winters. I’ve found the entrance to the crawl space beneath the ground floor.’ He had pulled the hall carpet away from the skirting board, folded it back and weighed it down with a wooden chair from the kitchen.
‘She’s going to love you,’ said Winters, nodding at the carpet.
‘She mightn’t be coming back.’
‘There’s nothing at all to incriminate her so far. She might be a Nazi bitch with a big mouth but, hey, if there’s no evidence, there’s no evidence.’ Winters looked around. ‘Have you noticed?’
‘Noticed what?’ asked Stone.
‘She hasn’t got much in the way of things but what she has got is all top drawer. That carpet you’ve just pulled back, it’s a Brinton.’
‘Is that good?’
‘Brinton, good? It costs sixty quid a square metre in John Lewis. We’ve got a drawer full of paid-up utilities bills, council tax, TV licence but we’ve got no records of DSS payments or wage slips. Lots of money going out but none coming in.’
‘Definitely no sign at all of a source of income?’
‘Not that we can find. No bank account either.’
‘Send Eve a text and copy everyone in on that information.’ Stone clicked his torch on and off and fought down the uncomfortable sensation that was building inside him. With a claustrophobic streak that ran right through the middle of him, the prospect of going on his hands and knees under the floorboards of the ground floor of Christine Green’s house filled him with dismay.
‘You and the lads, take the carpets up in the bedrooms and landing. Get the boards up. I’ll look in the crawl space down here.’
Stone waited until Winters was upstairs, took a deep breath and lowered himself down through the open hatch in the floorboards at the front door. He ducked, got down on to his hands and knees and drank in the dampness of earth. Turning on his torch, he scanned the darkness and saw columns of brick supporting the weight of the house.
Against one of the columns was a plastic bag and, at first glance, Stone thought it was a bag of compost. He crawled closer, shone his torch on the bag and saw it was an open bag of fertiliser. He dragged it close to the hatch and made his way deeper into the crawl space.
His left hand touched a saw that looked a hundred years old, which was next to a china doll dressed in Victorian clothes, the body broken in the middle, the lower and upper parts at odd angles to each other, the upper part clothed, the lower half naked and sexless.
He crawled for several paces, found himself dead centre of the house and saw the foundations of the left-hand corner of the back
wall. He began a systematic, torchlight-wide investigation of each square foot of the earth beneath Christine Green’s home.
When he reached the right-hand corner of the back of the small space, he returned in a diagonal to the dead centre and, turning a full circle, lit up every piece of the crawl space but there was no sign of a laptop.
His iPhone rang and, with his scalp touching the underside of the floorboards, his nerves jangled as he looked at the display and saw Samantha Wilson’s name.
When he connected, Stone imagined he could feel the entire weight of the house balanced on his head.
‘Hello, Sammy.’
‘Karl, I’m sorry about last night.’
‘There’s no need to apologise.’
‘What can I say? I overreacted. Maybe when all this is sorted out, we could go out for a drink?’
‘Absolutely...’
‘I was a bit fragile, after the service.’
Stone felt a door opening deep inside himself and, with it, light and ice-cold air poured through him. ‘Just as a matter of interest, Sammy, did you tell anyone about your father’s cremation? When and where it was happening?’
‘No. You told me it was a secret. I wouldn’t betray one of our secrets.’ She sounded puzzled. ‘Besides, I’m quite alone in this world, Karl. I can go for whole weeks without talking to another human being.’
She paused and in the silence, Stone thought, that doesn’t stop you from talking about it on the internet...
‘Since you told me about the arrangements for the cremation, the only people I spoke with were you and my mother, briefly, on the telephone... Karl, can you speak?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper.
Stone inspected the dark empty space with his torch and said, ‘Yes?’
‘I don’t want to scare you away, Karl, but I’m developing feelings for you. I was awake all last night – I couldn’t stop thinking about your kindness. It has touched me so deeply. I want to be honest with you and I want to give you the chance to go away because I don’t think I could cope with being hurt.’
Stone turned the torch off, sat in the dark, damp space and listened to the distant muffled noise of his colleagues in the space upstairs.
‘Say something, Karl.’
‘We’ll sit down and sort it all out when this is over, Sammy.’
He felt as though his head was in a vice, and the darkness and her neediness combined to tighten the grip on his skull.
‘We’re friends, aren’t we, Karl?’
‘Of course we’re friends.’
‘As a friend, can I ask your advice on something, Karl?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ve decided I need to try and build a bridge with my mother. Now, I know you told me to put her behind me but last night, while I was thinking about you, I thought about her as well and I realised she was a victim of my father too. Maybe not as much as me, no, but she was on the receiving end of his deceit and duplicity. He’s gone now. So as far as I can see, it’s just me and her. She was negligent, of course she was, and of course she buried her head in the sand, but she was a very good mother in other ways and I don’t know if I’ve allowed the negatives to completely blind me to the positives.’
Stone heard water dripping somewhere and a sigh pour from his core.
‘Say something, Karl.’
‘I think you ought to think it through some more, Sammy. You’re in a delicate place at the moment, and so is your mother. I wouldn’t go rushing in to any big reunion right now. Give it a week, a fortnight. Give your mother a call maybe, tell her what you’ve told me. Give her some food for thought but leave any direct one-on-one contact for now.’
‘You’re a wise man, Karl. A good, wise and kind man.’
‘Thank you, Christine!’
‘Christine?’
‘I’m sorry, Sammy, I’m currently in the house of a woman called Christine Green, who we’ve taken into custody in relation to your father’s murder. Sorry, Sammy, silly me.’
‘Christine Green?’ She made her name sound like quiet but profound curse.
Stone flicked on the torch and picked out the china doll, the absence of genitals like an echo of a detail from both Wilson’s and Jamieson’s murder.
‘Christine Green,’ said Stone. ‘Does that name ring a bell?’
‘Why should it? I don’t know anyone called Christine Green. Why do you ask?’
‘Because most murder victims know the person who murdered them. I’m leaving here to go back to Trinity Road in a few minutes to talk to Christine Green. It’s just a thought, but if you knew her you could give me information about her that may prove helpful in the investigation into your father’s murder.’
‘But I don’t know anyone called... Christine Green. Why should I?’
‘Don’t get upset, Sammy. You know me. I’m a policeman and it’s my job to ask questions, even dumb, crazy questions like: Do you know Christine Green? I feel such a fool,’ he lied, ‘getting your name and her name mixed up like that.’
‘Are you talking to yourself down there, Karl?’ Winters’s voice slipped though the open hatch.
‘I’ve got to go, Sammy. My colleague’s calling me. I’m coming now, Clive!’
‘I’m sorry, Karl, I didn’t mean to get upset. But the idea of you being in another woman’s house, even if it is for work, it upsets me.’
‘Promise me you’ll hang fire with your mother, Sammy.’
‘I swear on all I hold dear. You.’
‘I’ll be in touch shortly.’
Stone reflected. For the first time in his life he had refused a sexual come-on and in a matter of hours he had shifted from feeling utterly regretful to being completely relieved.
As he crawled back to the hatch, butt of the torch in his mouth, he felt the eyes of the china doll on him and was glad to see Clive Winters’s face poking into the space.
‘Anything?’ asked Winters.
Stone hauled the bag of fertiliser from the crawl space and Winters said, ‘But she hasn’t got a garden back or front.’
‘Maybe she’s planning to build a bomb to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kick start the Fourth Reich...’
‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ laughed Winters. ‘She’s crazy enough I guess.’
66
3.40 pm
Clay opened the door to the incident room and saw DC Margaret Bruce, fresh from the search of Lucien Burns’s house, scrolling through photographs on her iPad.
Anticipating a disappointing response based on the lack of an excited phone call from the scene of the search, Clay said, ‘Hi, Maggie, no news is not good news I guess.’
‘Well... we didn’t find anything that relates directly to the investigation...’
‘I sense there’s a little but in your voice.’
‘Look at this. Profile-wise, it’s kind of interesting.’ Slowly, Bruce turned her phone towards Clay, and she imagined her big right paw sheathed in a boxing glove and flying at her face at speed.
‘Four rooms and a bathroom upstairs. This is Lucien’s den from several angles. Sunbed, weights, sexy chicks and ice-cold killer action heroes on the wall, clearly doesn’t know how to fold his clothes, a rather vain but pretty typical teenage lad.’
Bruce scrolled. ‘Mum’s room. OCD. Bed made as neatly as in a five-star hotel, the hooks on the hangers in the wardrobe all point out in the same direction, the shoes are evenly spaced on the wardrobe floor.’
‘OK,’ laughed Clay. ‘I kind of got the picture when she cleaned the protective covering on the sofa in her living room.’
‘There wasn’t even one hair in the teeth of her brush on the dressing table. You could make a wig from the clumps in my hairbrush.’ Bruce scrolled. ‘This is Lucien’s bedroom.’ She fanned her nose. ‘Oh, the smell of musk and hormones. Again, though, dead tidy.’
Clay looked at the numerous women on the walls in different states of undress and the box of Kleenex by his bed head.
‘I’d say he was your averag
e six-wanks-a-day teenage lad,’ said Bruce.
‘I think you’re underestimating him, Maggie. He doesn’t attend school so he’s got a lot more time and opportunity than most. Anything in the bathroom?’ asked Clay.
‘No, but look at this. This is the fourth bedroom.’
Clay looked at an overview shot of the room, a baby girl’s nursery, pink walls and white ceiling, a white wooden cot with a mobile of aquatic life overhead. Large stuffed toys from Winnie the Pooh sat on the floor alongside a tactile mat with bells, mirrors and different textured materials within the broad blue rectangle.
Bruce paused on a picture she had taken of a framed photograph above the cot.
In the picture was a younger, much happier Annabelle Burns with a baby girl, about eighteen months of age.
‘What’s in the evidence bag?’ asked Clay.
‘The picture itself.’
Clay took the framed picture from the bag and, turning it over, saw a padlock key sellotaped to the back.
‘When we went through the little girl’s room, we found this.’
Bruce showed Clay a picture of a birth certificate. She took in the details. Caroline Burns. ‘She was born in 2001. Mother, Annabelle Burns. Father? No named father. Lucien had an older sister.’
Bruce handed Clay a second evidence bag. She took out a photo album and flicked through pictures of Caroline as she grew from a newborn in Annabelle’s arms towards her sixth birthday. Clay stopped at a death notice from the Liverpool Echo.
CAROLINE BURNS
2001–2007
Taken suddenly by the angels 13th August 2007
You will always be remembered by your
grieving mother and little brother Lucien
Clay handed the album back to Bruce. ‘Thank you, Margaret. This is...’ Tragic, awful, desperate. ‘Potentially very useful and interesting. Send a selection of pictures from each room to my iPhone, please.’
