Detective Mike Croft Series Box Set

by Jane Adams

  And so it went on. It was only when Flint told him that they were going to search his house that Myers showed any emotion.

  ‘You have a right to be there, of course,’ he said. Phillip Myers’ eyes flickered with resentment, but he answered calmly. ‘I have done nothing wrong.’

  4.15 p.m.

  The two uniformed officers listened to Terry’s version of events. Maria was sitting close by, quietly encouraging. ‘I went into the room,’ Terry said, ‘and she was just lying there. I thought she might be asleep at first; coming in through the door I could see her feet propped up on a cushion on the end of the sofa. But then I could smell it.’ He hesitated for a moment, looking up at Maria as though needing encouragement.

  She nodded. ‘Go on, you’re doing fine.’

  The boy continued, his voice low and artificially steady, sitting on Maria’s couch with Sarah beside him, clasping his hand tightly. Maria and John facing him. She had dimmed the lights. Only a single table lamp, casting more shadow than illumination across the scene, like some Italian chiaroscuro painting, all depth and light with little in between.

  ‘I could smell the booze,’ Terry said, ‘and the sick.’ His lips twisted in a look of disgust. ‘I knew she’d had a problem; we’d talked about it.’ He looked up quickly at Maria as though again needing approval. ‘Because of my mum, you know. I couldn’t get her to talk to me. She said I wouldn’t understand, but Theo never ever said that. She treated me . . . like I was important to her, you know. Like an equal.’

  He hesitated, and they all waited. At last Maria said, ‘The last time we spoke, you mentioned Theo and I had the impression this was a new friendship. It wasn’t though, was it?’

  Terry shook his head. ‘Months ago,’ he said. ‘In the summer. I . . . I liked her, Dr Lucas. I really liked her. I didn’t want anything to spoil it. And it’s always been the same, every time I made a friend, somebody would interfere. Try and break it up.’ He licked his lips nervously, fidgeted with Sarah’s hand. ‘I even told her about me, about my mum, about Nathan. I thought she’d hate me, but she didn’t. I knew my mum would go up the wall if she found out, either about Theo or Sarah. She would have hated it; she always got so scared when I made friends in case they found out. But Theo listened the way you do, but she didn’t judge me.’

  ‘I’ve never judged you, Terry,’ Maria said steadily. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Yeah. But you’re paid not to. Theo just didn’t.’

  Maria nodded slowly, not bothering to correct him.

  Terry had no idea that her involvement with him was voluntary; she’d always figured it would just add to the burden of guilt the boy already carried.

  She said, ‘So what did you do, Terry? What happened then?’

  ‘I went in. I thought, if she’d been drinking then it would have to be something really bad to make her start again, so I thought . . . she’d been to see the doctor. I thought it must be bad news. I’d promised to come round before David got home and see how she’d got on.’

  ‘The doctor?’

  ‘Yeah, some specialist in London, not her own doctor. She’d been to him when she lived there. When she was still an actress.’

  Maria exchanged a glance with John. Even David had claimed not to know of Theo’s illness. Had she confided in Terry?

  ‘This doctor, Terry, did Theo tell you his name, or what she was seeing him about?’

  He shrugged. ‘Abbot or something. I don’t know really. She usually just called him the specialist. She said she had pain, here.’ He touched his stomach. ‘I thought she just meant an ulcer or something. My grandad had an ulcer. But she said it was more than that. She said she’d brought it on herself with the drinking and stuff. I told her that was stupid.’

  He fell silent then, staring at the simulated flames on Maria’s gas fire. She found herself wishing, not for the first time, that the fire was real. That would have been more comforting, somehow.

  ‘What did you do, Terry, when you found her? What did you see?’

  The boy shuddered as though suddenly cold. Sarah moved closer to him and gripped his hand tighter. ‘Tell them, Terry,’ she said gently. ‘Tell it like you told me.’

  He nodded. ‘It was like the other time,’ he said.

  John glanced at Maria, his look questioning. Other time?

  ‘When Nathan . . . when Nathan died. The pillow was over her face. I was so scared.’ He was almost whispering now, his gaze fixed and staring. It had been like reliving a nightmare. He had reached out, he told them, not daring to get too close, afraid of seeing Theo’s face, blue-lipped like the baby’s had been. He had reached out with fingertips, grasped the corner of the pillow and tugged it aside. Theo had been lying there, her eyes half open and her mouth gaping, and he had known, without going any closer, that she was dead.

  ‘Then I ran away,’ he said simply. ‘If they’d found me there no one would believe I hadn’t hurt her. Just like they didn’t believe me about the baby. About Nathan.’

  He raised his head, looked desperately at Maria. ‘I’m sure I didn’t do anything, Dr Lucas. But I’m scared. Sometimes people do things and then they don’t remember, do they? One therapist I had, she said people shut things out they don’t want to think about. She went over and over, trying to get me to say I’d shut it out. Killing Nathan. She kept telling me it would be all right. That all I had to do was say I was jealous of my baby brother and that I killed him. Then they could help me. She kept on at me and on at me and so did my mum and everyone else that in the end I didn’t even know what I really remembered any more and what I thought I did. So what if they were right? What if they were and I don’t remember? I need locking up if they were, don’t I? Don’t I?’

  There was silence. John, new to this, not knowing how to respond; the possibility that for the first time he had a proper suspect for his friend’s murder hadn’t escaped him. He forced himself not to react. To reserve judgement until he had some more of the facts.

  Maria paused, then, professional tone carefully in place, she began quietly. ‘I don’t know what happened, Terry . . .’

  But Sarah, who had been silent through all of this, seized on something he had said.

  ‘You saw the baby’s face. You said you saw the baby’s face.’

  They all stared at her. Sarah reddened but carried on. ‘That means you must have moved the pillow, but you told me, when the baby was found, it had the bumper pad over its face.’

  Terry stared at her, his eyes horrified as though in that simple deduction she had just confirmed his guilt.

  ‘So I killed him,’ he whispered. ‘I must have done.’ He tried to get to his feet, to pull his hand away from hers, but she was yelling at him that she wasn’t saying that.

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ Maria said, realizing where Sarah was leading him. ‘She means you saw the baby’s face after he was dead. That maybe Nathan was dead even before you went into his room. That maybe you saw him, like you saw Theo and knew you had to move the bumper pad from his face. Even quite small children know about smothering. Maybe you moved it then. Saw him, dropped it back when you heard your mother coming.’

  Terry was staring at her, his face a conflict of emotions. ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘I just don’t know. Maybe it was like that and maybe it was just an accident, but what if I did kill Nathan? What if I saw his face because I’d lifted the cushion up just to make sure that he was dead?’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  4.30 p.m.

  Vinnie Vincenza, alias Brian Hammond, had made a big thing of remembering Mike.

  ‘Things have been looking up for both of us since you went away,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’d even made it to sergeant then.’

  ‘Just,’ Mike informed him. ‘I’d just received promotion. A lot of water’s passed under since then, Vinnie. I hear business is good. You have a place out of town these days.’

  Vinnie laughed. ‘Just like the old days,’ he said. ‘Always up with the gossip. Y
eah, I’ve got a little place out Malmesbury way, though the truth is I only make it down for the weekends.’ He grinned. ‘This is still where the action is.’

  Mike took the pictures of Marion from his pocket and laid them with the magazine on the table.

  ‘I’m told she’s one of yours, Vinnie.’

  Vinnie picked up the polaroids and flicked through them with an air of professional interest. ‘She was,’ he said. ‘Not any more though; this is a tough business we’re in. You’ve gotta be professional.’

  ‘And Marion wasn’t?’

  Vinnie shrugged expansively. ‘Didn’t turn up for a shoot. You’re letting a lot of people down if a girl fails to show, doesn’t do a whole lot for a man’s reputation, so I crossed her off my list.’

  ‘Did she give any explanation?’

  Vinnie’s eyes flickered sideways for the merest instant, then met Mike’s again. ‘Never a word,’ he said. ‘I left her messages, told her to give me a call, but nothing. That’s the way it goes sometimes.’

  He shrugged again, more reflectively this time. ‘It was a pity. She had just what it takes to make it. Right to the top.’

  Mike let the unconscious use of past tense go. Vinnie wasn’t going anywhere at the moment and he didn’t want to scare him off. He had no doubt that Vinnie either knew Marion was dead or suspected it.

  ‘Did she do work for anyone else?’

  ‘A little glamour work, that sort of thing. But she had a regular job and wasn’t into selling herself cheap.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Choosy, you know. What she’s been doing since she left me, I’ve no idea . . .’

  Mike nodded and got up to leave. There was a lead here, he could feel it, but push too hard now and he might lose what edge he had. Better to use the local force, they’d have the background info.

  Vincenza was seeing him to the door. ‘You haven’t told me what this is all about?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, have I?’

  ‘Aw, come on, Mike . . . OK, OK, always the tight one, weren’t you? Well, if you happen to run across my girl, tell her the door’s always open.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t give people a second chance.’

  ‘You know Vinnie. Always a soft touch.’

  Mike left him, walking purposefully back towards his car parked two streets away. He paused once out of sight and back-tracked carefully, waiting ten minutes in the shadows of an alleyway behind a small hotel. Vinnie didn’t show. Any longer and he would attract far too much attention.

  Reluctantly, Mike made his way back to his car and the long drive home.

  Maria called him just after he’d left Vinnie’s and told him about Dr Abbot.

  ‘I’ve already looked him up in the register,’ she said.

  ‘OK, give me the address and I’ll fit him in before I come back.’

  5.30 p.m.

  Price and Morrow had returned to the place where Marion O’Donnel had died. Their mood was sober; Morrow had driven and had only terrified Price once.

  They had left the car parked near Silbury Hill and climbed through the wire, Morrow puffing with exertion by the time they reached the top.

  It was already winter dark but by the time they had reached the summit, Price’s eyes had adjusted to moon and starlight. Around them lay fields, brown with winter earth, flecked with the white of the chalky landscape.

  ‘They used to play cricket up here at one time,’ Morrow commented.

  ‘God help anyone that hit a six.’

  Price walked to the edge of the flat-topped hill, looking across towards the village of Avebury.

  ‘What about Vincenza?’ he said.

  ‘No evidence he’s anything more than a two-bit creep. And, according to what he told your boss, he sold the pictures on elsewhere.’

  ‘But the magazine thinks they came direct from him.’

  ‘Maybe he sold them twice, or rather, sold Marion. Whoever hired her would do their own pictures, I presume. Or video,’ he added, thinking of the stuff they’d seen that afternoon.

  Price looked away. ‘Yeah, could be she was into more than the odd centrefold.’

  He turned back to Charlie Morrow, who seemed to be staring at something moving in the grass.

  ‘Do we believe Vincenza?’

  Morrow shrugged. ‘Best we can hope for is apply for a warrant to search his place at Malmesbury and both offices. Could take a bit of time unless we get something more definite. It’s going to involve three separate forces and God alone knows how many sub-divisions.’

  Whatever it was that had attracted Morrow must have moved. Morrow edged towards it.

  ‘What have you spotted?’

  ‘Rabbit,’ Morrow told him.

  ‘Can’t we just buy dinner at the Lion?’ Price asked plaintively.

  Morrow laughed briefly and inched towards the little animal. ‘Lot of them still have myxie round here. Pitiful it is.’

  ‘Myxie?’

  ‘Myxomatosis. Used it to control the population.’

  ‘Sure, but I thought that was years ago.’ He watched, fascinated as the big man inched towards the rabbit.

  He’d picked up a large stone in his right hand. The animal didn’t move.

  ‘You going to kill it?’ He could see the animal clearly now. Milky eyes, unable to stand and with patches of fur hanging from its body. ‘Christ,’ he said.

  Morrow brought the stone down squarely on the creature’s head, then got back to his feet again and wiped his fingers on a bunch of serviettes he’d filched from Mickey’s place that morning.

  Price looked away.

  They didn’t speak again until they had reached the car, then, to break the silence, Price said, ‘Beth Cooper. Attached, is she?’

  Morrow gave him a predatory grin.

  6.45 p.m.

  Theo Howard’s London doctor had his surgery in a quiet square in St John’s Wood, amazingly quiet after the bustle of King’s Cross. Mike could hear the birds sing.

  ‘Yes, I saw Theo last week,’ Dr Abbot told him. ‘I’d been seeing her for years, usually minor complaints, a little depression from time to time. I gave her a medical once a year, that sort of thing, but until this, Theo had rarely ever been ill.’

  ‘You knew what was wrong with her? You made the diagnosis?’

  ‘I suspected what was wrong with her. Theo . . . Theo drank perhaps rather more than she should have done over the years. It became very serious at one time, but she was a tough lady. She worked her way through it. When she came to me I thought at first it was liver damage purely alcohol-induced. I sent her for tests. She had a tumour on the posterior lobe. It was operable but we suspected there were secondaries.’ He frowned. ‘You see, she put off coming to me until the pain began to get very bad. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the pain, or even of dying. But she didn’t want to die. She told me that she had met someone. Someone very special. I believe that for the first time in her life, Theo Howard had fallen in love.’

  The two men were silent for a moment, then Mike said, ‘We found no medication in her house. I would have thought . . .’

  ‘I gave her pain-killers, this time. She’s refused them every time before and you know, Inspector pain is a funny thing. Some people have a high threshold. I think Theo must have been one of them, but it would not have lasted for much longer. The disease was spreading and there was nothing any of us could do. If you found no medication, well, I don’t know.’

  As Mike was leaving the doctor said, ‘There’s another thing. It might be unimportant but . . . Theo said she wanted to leave something for Davy to remember her by. Pictures, I think she said. She didn’t want him to think of her as she was going to be in the end. She wanted to leave him something special. I thought she meant one of these makeover portraits at first. You know, there are studios that specialize in those things. She thought that was really funny, I remember. She seemed very excited about the whole thing. Like a child. Said she had something far more special in mind.’

  10.00 p.m.
>
  Flint had news when Mike got back to Norwich. The first check on Voters had drawn a blank, then Bristol had sent through a list of other aliases their suspect had used.

  ‘They were used in different offences,’ the collator explained. ‘He was done for kiting, passing forged cheques, about seven years ago. Bristol dug around for the names he used then and guess what?’

  ‘You’ve got a match on Voters.’

  ‘Might not be connected, of course. Max Harriman might be just that. But he fits the general time frame, came here two months before the first attack occurred and is A blood group.’

  ‘We’re bringing him in,’ Flint confirmed.

  The call came a few minutes later. No Harriman, but the landlady lived on the premises and had let them in.

  ‘He’s our man, guv,’ the officer’s voice broke up a little. ‘The walls are plastered with stuff. There’s pictures of Marion O’Donnel and another woman and also some young kid. And books of press clippings. Looks like the man’s into souvenirs.’

  ‘Then we wait for him to come back,’ Flint said.

  ‘No need, guv, we’ve got his workplace. The landlady insisted on a reference for him before she took him on. He’s working shifts, finishes at ten.’

  Flint looked across at Mike. ‘Croft,’ he said. ‘You want to do the honours?’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  10 p.m.

  Less than a street away from one another, it felt as though Terry and Sarah were at opposite ends of the earth. Terry, seated at the kitchen table, stared morosely out of the window, trying at least to look as if he was concentrating on his essay.

  For the last two hours he had tried to work. His mother had been so busy pretending that this was just another normal day, that Terry felt compelled to do the same. She had been dusting and polishing and bleaching the already spotless flat, filling the air with the stink of cleaning fluids and the atmosphere of angry busyness until Terry felt he could take no more.