by Jane Adams
Jake listened to him pleading, the voice thick with tears and the body twisting and convulsing with mental agony and the physical pain of arms tightly pinioned.
And Jake filmed it all, regretting only that he could not see the tears that would have stained the young man’s face.
Chapter Twelve
9.05 p.m.
Sergeant Price arrived at Fairfield just after nine. Sergeant Mason, his opposite number in the uniformed section, greeted him at the entrance. ‘It’s probably a waste of time you being here,’ he said, ‘but the mother’s practically hysterical and two of the previous attacks took place not half a mile away.’
Price nodded. ‘And the girl just went to the door and hasn’t been seen since?’
‘S’right. A blue light flashes in the gym when someone wants to come in. The door’s released by this catch here. Gives you five seconds to get out before it closes again.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that it’s much of a problem. The door lock can be blocked with chewing-gum — often is when the kids are in school and half the time in hot weather they prop it open with a litter bin. Unless the alarm’s actually armed, and it won’t be while the building’s in use, there’s nothing to tell anyone the door’s been left unlatched.’
‘Very security-conscious.’ Price laughed without humour. ‘But tonight it was properly closed?’ He glanced up at the security camera above the door. ‘Do we have the video tapes yet?’
‘Someone from the security company’s being sent over. Should be here within the hour. There’s that camera there and another two trained on the car park.’
Price looked towards where he pointed. ‘Which anyone with half a brain cell could avoid by staying close to the walls.’
Mason nodded. ‘Set up to deter car thieves, and petty vandals,’ he said. ‘I imagine they give a good view of the car park and the first-floor windows but not much else. And this porch affair makes that camera less than useless once you’re underneath it.’
Price nodded. ‘Well, we’ll have to hope we get lucky. You’d better take me to the mother.’
Inside the gymnasium all was quiet. A small knot of women in training gear gathered around a woman sitting on a bench. A WPC, looking strangely out of place in her dark uniform, was taking statements. She saw Price and came over to him. The woman on the bench watched anxiously. Her hands clutched at the sweatshirt draped around her shoulders and her face looked pinched and tired.
‘She’s certain it’s the sex attacker,’ the WPC said. ‘I keep telling her it’s way off his MO, but the idea’s got fixed in her head.’
‘Any reason, I mean particularly?’
The WPC sighed. ‘Because Sarah looks like the rest, sir. Fifteen years old, small and blonde and slightly built and because the mother’s scared out of her wits. Wants any answer. Though it beats me, sir, if she’s more afraid of her daughter being grabbed by some pervert or of going home to her old man and telling him about it.’
9.30 p.m.
Mike was getting nowhere.
‘I know nothing, Inspector Croft,’ David Martin was insisting, as he had been since the interview began. ‘I came home around 7.30, the door was unlocked. I thought it was strange, but Theo’s like that. It’s one of those doors that you have to actually remember to lock. It doesn’t latch on its own.’ He looked at Mike as though for confirmation. ‘Sometimes Theo just forgot.’
He paused, studied his hands clasped in front of him on the table. ‘I called her name and I went through to the back room. She was just lying there. Just lying there the way . . . I thought she was sleeping. But she’d been sick . . . and then I saw the bottle.’
‘And you tell us Theo had had a problem, but that she no longer drank at all.’
‘She couldn’t!’ David Martin’s voice rose again. ‘I told you, Theo had a problem. A big problem, but she’d been sober more than a year. Completely dry for almost thirteen months.’ He broke off and hammered with both fists on the table. ‘And then your lot arrived and dragged me here. I should be with Theo, not sitting here with you going over the same bloody ground over and over again. I did nothing! I saw nothing! She was like that when I got there and I don’t know what the fuck happened.’
Mike was silent and for a moment there was no sound in the room except for David Martin’s laboured breathing. Agitated, David dragged his fingers through his hair and then rubbed both hands across his face, pulling at his skin as though trying to wipe reality away. ‘She’s really dead?’ he asked, his voice cracking. ‘Theo. She’s really dead?’
‘You were close friends?’ Mike questioned.
‘We were more than friends. Theo and I, we’d been lovers for, well, close to a year. She moved here and I followed on a couple of months later. I had some things to sort out first.’
‘Things?’
‘A . . . a job, that sort of stuff.’ He lifted his gaze to meet Mike’s and his voice rose angrily again. ‘I had a living to earn. I wasn’t going to sponge off her. And don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking. Younger man. Older woman. Just using her for what he can get.’ He fell silent again, twisting his hands, his anger burning itself out once more.
‘But no one knew of your relationship,’ Mike reminded him. ‘Why was that?’
The young man’s eyes flashed. ‘Because she was afraid. Scared of what everyone would say about us. Everyone like you, thinking the worst. Cheapening what we had.’
‘Close friends would have understood,’ Mike said quietly, thinking of John Tynan.
‘Theo had no close friends. There was only me. The rest. The rest meant nothing to her.’
Mike let it pass. The young man’s hands had grown still now and lay flat upon the table. He stared down at them, his gaze intense, but blank.
Mike let the silence sit for a little longer, Then: ‘That scratch on the side of your face, Mr Martin. How did you get it?’
Chapter Thirteen
Saturday, 17 December, 3 a.m.
Although it was now the early hours of the morning, the noise of the argument continued unabated. It had been interrupted, briefly, by Price’s arrival, but soon resumed and as he went into the hallway to use his phone he could hear the parents railing at each other even through two closed doors.
The noise became louder momentarily as the WPC who had been left to cope with the grieving parents slipped out after him.
‘They been like that all the time?’ Price asked her.
She nodded, wearily. ‘More or less. I gave up trying to calm it down. I might as well not have been there for all the notice they were taking, so I thought that as long as they weren’t actually coming to blows I’d let it burn itself out.’
Price gave her a wry smile. ‘Grief takes people in different ways. That’s what my old sergeant used to say when I was just a probationer.’
‘Right sir; if scoring points off each other counts as grief, well, I’d say they’re drowning in the stuff.’
Price grinned at her, his hand resting on the phone. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me or did you just need a breather?’
‘Both! But yeah, there is something Mrs Myers told me about ten minutes before you got here. I’d have called it in, but I’d been told you were on your way and she seemed pretty keen on keeping it from her husband.’
‘Oh?’
‘The kid, seems there might be a chance she’s taken it into her head to do a runner. I mean, if this was going on all the time . . .’
‘She wouldn’t get far, no money.’
‘That’s just it. She had her mother’s Visa card.’
‘She had what? She stole it?’
‘No. Her mum didn’t want the bother of taking her handbag, she’d just got her sports bag, so she asked Sarah to look after it for her. Sarah slipped it in the pocket of her jeans. She had it with her when she left.’
‘Fucking hell! Why didn’t she mention this hours ago?’
‘Says she was too distressed and just forgot.’
‘Forgot.
All right, all right. I’ve got to call in about the video tapes. You go back to the battle of the bulge. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes and we’ll deal with this.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Thanks a lot, sir.’
Price, his hand still resting on the phone, nodded slowly, listening to the continued arguments. Silently, he hoped the kid bankrupted the pair of them.
Price was surprised to be put through to Mike Croft. ‘What the hell you doing there, guv? Thought you were off tonight.’
‘So did I. Suspicious death. What’s your excuse?’
‘Misper. Christ almighty, we’re never going to get the overtime on this. I’ve clocked up thirty hours so far this month alone.’
Mike laughed briefly. ‘So tell me another one. A Misper, can’t the new relief deal with it?’
‘Well, it got a bit complicated.’
He explained briefly the details of Sarah Myers’ disappearance. ‘The mother’s convinced it was the sex attacker. It’s looking more and more as if the kid simply took off with her mum’s credit card.’
‘Anything useful on the video tapes?’
‘Nah, not a lot. We’ve reviewed just the half hour either side of her going. It’s the usual over-used tape and grainy pictures and it’s dark and raining and the sodium lights create one hell of a glare. You know the problems. The girl left with someone, probably male, looks tall, but as Sarah Myers only stood about five two in heels anyone’s going to look tall.’
‘Probably male?’
‘Well, it was wearing trousers, but so was Sarah. No, looked vaguely male but the hood of the coat was pulled well up so it’s hard to tell anything more.’
‘Anything to suggest she was being coerced?’
Price sighed. ‘My instinct says no. But he had hold of her arm and at one point she pulls back, glances towards the door. So . . .’
‘Right. Well, I’m just about to wrap up for the night. What’s left of it. This one’s going to turn out a little difficult, I think.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘The dead woman, she was a friend of John Tynan’s and he’s going to be pushing for some answers.’
‘Ah. Nasty. Is it definitely murder? Anyone in the frame yet?’
‘I’ve got the lodger here making a statement but we don’t even know what we’re dealing with till I’ve got the PM report. The look of it is, she got drunk and choked on her own vomit, so . . .’
‘Right. Well, I’m going to have to get going. I need to find out if this credit card’s been used since the girl disappeared and if she has any relatives in the south of France she might have run off to.’
He signed off. Behind him the noise continued unabated. Price took a deep breath and went back to join the adult Myers.
3.40 a.m.
Maria had dozed off in the chair. She woke to find John bending over her, a mug of hot chocolate in his hand.
‘I made us both one,’ he said. ‘But you ought to go to bed.’
‘I’m all right. Sorry, John, I’m supposed to be keeping you company, not falling asleep on you.’
‘I don’t need a baby-sitter, my dear. I’m quite all right.’ He paused, sitting down opposite Maria on the old sofa. ‘I just wish he’d call.’
‘I know, John. I know.’
Maria leaned back in the chair and sipped her chocolate. It was still too hot to drink properly. Her gaze travelled around the comfortable sitting-room that was so familiar now. The massive, carved wooden cupboard that took over one wall. The sagging, tapestry-covered furniture, chosen by John’s wife years before and well past its retirement age and all the random collection of books and pictures and knick-knacks accumulated over long residence. Recently, a new photograph had joined the collection on the bookshelves. Herself and Mike, taken on a day at the seaside in July. She was in a summer dress, the skirt blowing in the usual east coast wind. Mike was in cream trousers and an open-necked shirt, head slightly bent to the side and that lost look he always had when someone took away his jacket and tie.
‘He’ll call, or be here, before long. I’m sure he will.’
John Tynan nodded, the lines gathering about his eyes as he tried to smile at her. ‘It’s just so hard, my dear. I want to be out there, doing. Not stuck here like some spare part unable to help, to influence a damn thing.’
3.45 a.m.
Money had been withdrawn from Mrs Myers’ Visa account. Discovering that it had not been drawn until one fifteen that morning and that the transaction could have been blocked only added to Phillip Myers’ anger.
‘And it never occurred to you to mention it? Never thought it might be important, I suppose?’ he shouted at his wife.
Why the hell does she put up with him? Price thought. He exchanged a glance with the WPC and said quietly, ‘Did Sarah know your PIN number? Kids often see their parents drawing money. Do you think she would have known your number?’
Paula Myers nodded. ‘Probably,’ she said. ‘I mean,’ she took a deep breath, ‘yes, of course she did. She’d been with me when I drew cash, I’m sure she would have seen.’
‘And remembered?’
‘My daughter is not a thief, Sergeant,’ Phillip Myers said stiffly. ‘Someone abducted her from the leisure centre and that same someone must have used the card.’
‘You think they forced her to tell them the number?’
It was interesting, Price thought, that Myers found it so much easier to accept that his daughter had been kidnapped and forced to reveal the number of his wife’s Visa card than it was to accept that she might have drawn the money herself.
‘They wouldn’t have had to force it out of her,’ Myers said heavily, glaring at his wife.
‘Oh, Phillip, please.’
‘I’m not sure I understand, Mr Myers.’
Phillip Myers exhaled slowly. ‘My wife,’ he said heavily, ‘as you cannot fail to have noticed, is not the brightest of people. Amongst other annoying little habits, she forgets her PIN numbers. I scratched her number on to the corner of her card so she wouldn’t forget it yet again.’
‘You did what?’ Price could hardly believe it.
‘And there was no damn need,’ Paula Myers was saying. She had been seated at the dining-table, agitated fingers playing with the white lace cloth, but now she rose to her feet, her eyes blazing, more anger powering her slight body than Price had seen her display all night.
‘I make one mistake with the card and you treat me like a complete fool. It’s something anyone could get wrong, but no. It’s just one more proof to you of your goddamned superiority. Well, let me tell you something, Phillip. That wasn’t the only mistake I made. The biggest one, the first and most damning one, was marrying you and the second one was letting you have anything to do with raising Sarah. If she’s run away it’s because of you. Your fault.’
She laid a shaking hand on her narrow chest, breathing hard. ‘Not mine. Yours, because she hates you just as much as I do and what’s more she’s bright enough that no one had to teach her how to do it.’
Phillip Myers stared at his wife, momentarily silenced.
Price wanted to applaud; instead, he glanced appraisingly around the dining-room at the expensive and perfectly matched yew-wood suite and the display of fine china on the dresser shelves. Money, he thought. Money and stuff bought for show. Because they went well together not because there would be any pleasure in their use.
Phillip Myers had recovered himself and was about to begin again. Price turned back to him with a question he’d been wanting to ask since he’d first arrived and seen lurid scratches on Myers’ temple.
‘Where were you on Thursday night, Mr Myers, between about six and nine?’
4.10 a.m.
Mike arrived at Tynan’s cottage just after four. The place looked to be in darkness and he breathed a sigh of relief, wanting rest rather than questions he couldn’t answer right then. A tiny crack of light at the heavily curtained living-room window made him groan out loud. It had been too much
to hope, really, that John and Maria would have gone to sleep, content to wait till morning for the news.
They must have heard the car because the door opened, flooding yellow light on to the step. The rain had stopped and the air smelt fresh and clean as Mike got out of John’s car and walked wearily to the open door. He fancied he could almost smell the sea on the freshening wind. It was very cold and he was very tired.
‘Not much I can tell you, John,’ he said as he stepped into the narrow hallway, ducking his head instinctively under the crooked lintel above the door.
‘How did she die?’
‘We don’t know yet, but it may well have been an accident.’ He was aware that he had lowered his voice, dropped into that careful cipher he used for the distressed and the newly bereaved. Aware too, from John’s face, that he had recognized the tone and resented it.
He apologized at once. ‘I’m sorry, John. It’s been a bloody night. Has for all of us.’
He shrugged off his coat and turned to kiss Maria who had emerged sleepily from the living-room. ‘Mind if I make some tea? I’ve had three cups tonight, all of them cold and with that foul stuff in the plastic cartons instead of milk.’ John Tynan nodded, going into the kitchen to fill the kettle and setting it on the stove. Maria followed him, perching herself on the table edge, and Mike leaned against the doorframe, watching the gas flame lap around the kettle, willing it to boil quickly.
‘You knew she had a drink problem?’ he asked John.
‘Yes, she told me when I took wine over to dinner. The first time I went to dinner with her. Before David went to live there.’
‘Well, it looks as though she could have started over again. There was an empty bottle of scotch on the floor and she’d been sick. Until I get the PM report I can’t say for sure, but . . . it happens. She was lying on the sofa as though she’d been taking a nap. If she was too drunk to wake up properly . . .’
