by Jane Adams
Chapter Eleven
Mike flicked through the photographs in the folder and laid one down in front of Alastair Bowen. It was five o’clock and the late afternoon sun streaming in through the window mocked the grossness of the images.
‘Marion O’Donnel,’ he said.
Obediently Alastair regarded the image of the pretty blonde woman set before him.
‘And this is how she ended up, Mr Bowen.’ He covered the picture with another showing a burnt-out car and the remains of a body curled grotesquely in the driver’s seat.
‘She was one of his so-called models, I suppose.’
‘She was,’ Mike told him.
Alastair shrugged.
‘You’re suggesting she deserved to die like this, Mr Bowen?’
‘You lie down with wolves, Inspector.’
Mike let it pass, but his dislike of Alastair Bowen was growing by the second. Two hours they had spent so far, bringing Alastair up to date on Jake’s crimes, trying to draw from the man some kind of response, some kind of explanation for what his son was doing. They were looking for a clue that might help them to predict his next move.
‘This one’s from February.’ Peterson laid the photograph of another young woman down on the table. She too was blonde, her long hair wrapped tightly around her throat, hiding the bruises left by her killer’s hands. ‘We don’t even know her name,’ he said. ‘But somewhere she has family, friends who want to know what happened to her.’
‘You believe that?’ Alastair questioned. ‘In their place I’d prefer to keep my illusions, not be faced with the life she must have led.’
‘Whatever life she led, Mr Bowen, she was still a young woman who had the right to live it.’
‘I didn’t kill her, Superintendent Peterson,’ Alastair retorted impassively. ‘I don’t need your accusations.’
‘This next is Simon Caldwell,’ Mike went on. ‘He was twenty-eight years old. An actor.’
‘Is that what you call it? Acting?’
‘An actor, Mr Bowen. Jake killed him by forcing a tube down into his stomach and feeding him neat bleach. It’s a horrific way to die, Alastair.’
‘My wife died of cancer, Inspector. That is a horrific way to die. Death is rarely either clean or peaceful.’
‘This is hardly the same as death caused by illness, Mr Bowen.’
‘And you expect me to have more sympathy with this actor than with the sick who die of disease not of their making? He chose the way he lived.’
‘He didn’t choose the way he died.’
‘How many of us do? How many of us could?’ Mike gave up and pushed the photograph aside. Caldwell’s professional name had been a little more anatomically biased. He’d been starring in porn flicks the past five years, making a steady living out of his knack for staying hard as long as the producer wanted. Caldwell had kept his reputation right up until the time he died, and the ligature tied around his penis made certain that he stayed that way.
‘Matthew Thompson,’ Mike went on impassively, laying the next image on the table. ‘Not one of Jake’s actors, as far as we know. He was a businessman, owned a chain of retail outlets.’
Alastair Bowen glanced at the picture. ‘I remember the news item,’ he said. ‘The man died in his bath, I believe.’
Mike nodded. ‘He’d been tied up. Tied up with a wire noose round his neck. The end had been fastened to the drain hole and the hole blocked with car body-filler. Jake must have been in his flat for quite some time to set this one up. The man had been drugged, presumably while Jake stripped him and positioned him in the bath. Then he’d turned on the taps and left them running. We know Jake watched him die because we have the film.’ It was not something Mike would forget in any hurry. ‘He watched him die and he filmed every moment, Alastair.’ The man struggling to get free before the water drowned him or the ligature tightened around his neck and he choked to death.
Mike thought of Essie, then tried not to think of Essie. He turned angrily on Alastair Bowen.
‘There’s no pattern to what he does. His victims are all different. Male, female, all ages, no real consistent MO. And we need to get him, Alastair, before he kills again. Before he kills . . . that child.’ Mike found he choked on Essie’s name.
‘And you expect me to explain it to you? You expect me to explain my son?’
‘Any light you should shed. We need anything you can give us,’ Peterson told him.
Alastair Bowen made no response. He stared at the pictures on the table but seemed not to see them.
‘Jake sees himself as an artist,’ he said at last. ‘He’d do whatever was needed to get an effect. It was always that way.’ He looked up at Mike. ‘He’s also a businessman, Inspector Croft. Surely you lot have worked that out by now? Jake works to commission, he always did. Someone wants a particular script filming and is willing to pay top price for it, Jake will do it any way they want. Life doesn’t matter to him. People’s lives, their hopes, it’s all script to Jake. All part of the storyline.’
‘You know this for certain?’
Alastair Bowen pushed himself away from the table, irritated and clearly bored. ‘A child could work it out, Inspector Croft. You’ve detailed Jake’s career, you’ve seen the films. Jake enjoys what he does, but he also makes a killing from it, if you’ll excuse the pun, and you can bet your sweet life that he’s been doing it for a hell of a lot longer than you credit him with.’
* * *
There had been the problem of finding somewhere for Alastair Bowen to stay, but finally they had settled him at Lyme in the boarding house that Maria had stayed in with Essie. There was a room available only for the next two nights, but there was talk anyway of moving Alastair to a safe house as soon as they went public with him. It seemed logical to assume that Jake would not appreciate his father giving evidence against him.
Mike then made his way slowly back towards the Dorchester road.
It was almost ten p.m. and the sky already darkening over a calm sea. Bats cruised in front of him as he travelled the back roads heading towards the dual carriageway. There was little other traffic and nothing in the blue-grey of the twilight to distract him. Mike was very tired. His thoughts began to wander. Twice he caught himself nodding with sleep, jerking his attention back only just in time as he veered across the road.
He tried to drag his thoughts to the case. Thinking about the fragmentary photographs that they had found at the Normans’ house. He doubted they would help further the investigation. All they had done so far was cause more pain to the parents. The few items she had left at the house she shared when she went away had added little to their knowledge. There had been sketches, notebooks for her college projects. No portraits and nothing relating to Jake, not even the odd initialled heart scribbled in the margins. Jake must have been one big secret in Julia Norman’s life.
‘She was seeing someone,’ one of the girls she had lived with had said. ‘We knew that, and we thought it must be someone older. But, I mean, Julia went out with a lot of boys, none of them got serious.’
The impression was that Julia had been sowing a few wild oats, breaking free of her parents’ rather staid and solid background. When he had put this to her flatmates, one of the girls had laughed. ‘Oh, God. Yeah, I guess that’s what Julia thought she was doing, but I mean, really, if she had more than a couple of drinks she’d see it as living on the edge.’ She’d hesitated, close to tears. ‘She was sweet, you know. Innocent.’
The fork for the main road came up out of nowhere and took Mike by surprise. He swerved onto it, blessing the fact that the road was deserted at this time of night. Driving between the trees, it was darker and his mind began to wander yet again. From the corner of his eye he caught movement between the trees like someone running, leaping from the shadow of one tree to the next. He wound the window down and put the radio on, finding some local station playing loud rock music, then flicked the lights to full beam to drive the shadow-men away. For a minute or two
it seemed to work, but then he nodded again, his eyes began to close and even the music faded, the names and faces of the dead filling his mind as he drifted into sleep. Julia, Marion O’Donnel, Caldwell, Matthew Thompson. Essie . . . No, his mind rebelled against that one. No, not Essie!
It was the jolt of the front wheel hitting the verge that woke him and the sudden jerk of the seatbelt cutting across his chest. For one God-awful moment Mike thought . . .
Wearily, he stumbled from the car and stood in the road waiting for his breath to slow down and his heart to stop pounding. The car was poised with one wheel above the ditch and the first of the trees only inches away.
Chapter Twelve
25 June
True to his word Macey had taken the computer equipment to Charlie Morrow. He’d arrived early and the morning news was on in Charlie’s room. The two men watched in silence as the hastily arranged press conference was aired and pictures of five-year-old Essie filled the screen.
‘There has been no word from the kidnapper and, so far, no clue as to why this child was taken. Essie’s grandmother and aunt made the following appeal to the kidnapper . . .’
Macey and Charlie continued to watch, listening as the two women made tearful appeals that the child be given back, that she not be hurt, that she be left somewhere for the police to find. They had heard it all before. Neither spoke until the news moved on.
‘Poor little bugger,’ Macey said softly. ‘Not much hope there, I don’t suppose.’ He frowned. ‘But I’ve seen that woman before. The aunt, I mean, I just can’t quite place her.’
‘She’s Mike Croft’s girlfriend,’ Charlie told him, his voice harsh with shock.
‘Then Jake must have taken the child,’ Macey said.
* * *
Mike had watched the appeal on the early news. Afterwards, he had tried again to call Maria, only to find that she had left to go to Oaklands and collect some things. He guessed she also needed time away from the overwhelming tension of it all. He tried Oaklands, where Maria lived and worked, to find that he’d just missed her. Her mobile was switched off, which meant she was probably in her car, and he was forced to give up.
He called her mother’s house again and left a message with the officer on duty, asking him to get her to phone.
‘She tried earlier,’ he was told, ‘but you were in a meeting and she couldn’t reach you.’
Mike smiled faintly. At least she’d tried. ‘Tell her to use my mobile number. And to keep trying. I’ll leave the damned thing switched on.’
He rang off, deeply frustrated. This seemed to be the pattern of their relationship just now, missing one another . . .
* * *
It had taken a long time to persuade Alastair Bowen that he should go public, but he had finally agreed and much of Mike’s day had been taken up with the arrangements.
‘People will hate me,’ Alastair had said. ‘They will hate me for what I am. They will blame me for Jake.’
‘They’ll hate you more if you don’t,’ Peterson told him bluntly. ‘Alastair, you’re the best hope we’ve got, the first real advantage we’ve had on Jake. You appearing on the television may be just what we need to flush him out.’
Finally, he had given in and after that everything had moved with speed. The Ten o’clock News saw Alastair Bowen on national television, patched in from BBC Bristol and simultaneously broadcast as a newsflash on all channels. Alastair Bowen pleading with his son to put an end to the killing and the pain.
‘I’m asking you to come forward, Jake. There’s been enough death and enough cruelty. You need help, Jake, as much as anyone else, you need help and I promise I’ll be there for you, whatever you might have done.’
He hesitated, clearly uncertain of how to carry on. ‘Your mother’s dead. She died five days ago from cancer and I buried her back home at St Bartolph’s. I know she missed you . . . son . . . we both did, and thought about you . . . always. It’s time to come home.’
Watching from the sidelines, Mike could see the falsity of Alastair Bowen’s pleas.
He despises him, he thought. Loathes and fears Jake even more than we do. It was a revelation, a small one, but, Mike felt, deeply significant. He set himself the task of finding out why and when Alastair had first conceived this passionate loathing of his son.
* * *
Jake Bowen had not expected ever to see his father alive and his appearance on the late news caught him by surprise.
Sitting on the large blue sofa in front of the television, Jake leaned forward to get a closer look at the parent he had left behind so many years before.
He swivelled round to regard the small figure lying propped on pillows at the other end of the settee.
‘Don’t you think he’s getting old?’ Jake asked the child.
Essie, arms limply at her sides and eyes gazing listlessly into space, never said a word.
Chapter Thirteen
26 June
Early on the Wednesday morning Mike took Alastair Bowen to see Max Harriman.
Alastair was confident. ‘He’ll speak to me,’ he assured Mike, with that same implacable calm he had displayed when Mike had first been introduced. ‘Max loved Jake, doted on him. I’m a link back to their shared past, you see. Max will speak with me.’
Mike was not so sure. Harriman had a mind of his own where cooperation was concerned.
Alastair seemed less blasé about the news reports that had followed his appearance on the television the night before. Every national led with some version of the story, the headlines varying from the lurid ‘Father of a Monster’ to the insipid ‘News Appeal Brings Fresh Hope.’ All asked why Alastair Bowen had taken so long to come forward. All seemed certain that he must long ago have known what path his son had taken.
Mike asked him about it as they drove along the M5, keeping just above the speed limit in the centre lane.
‘I knew he was involved with filth,’ Alastair told him. ‘That he made films that decent people would never want to see.’
‘Was that what made you break with him?’ Mike asked. ‘We know he lived with you into his early twenties then you and your wife and Jake seem to drop out of sight. What happened then, Mr Bowen?’
Alastair took time before he answered. His reply, when it came, was obtuse. ‘Jake was evil. From the moment he was born, the boy was evil. I told his mother, but she wouldn’t have it. No, she was a good woman and could see good in everyone, even Jake. But it was there, that devil’s look, right from the moment he was born and I first looked into his eyes.’
Mike glanced sideways at him, the hairs rising at the back of his neck, despite the absurdity of Alastair Bowen’s words.
‘I don’t believe that any child is born evil,’ he replied. ‘Children are a blank page, it’s what the world does to them that makes them good or bad.’
‘A tabula rasa,’ Alastair intoned. He laughed. ‘Inspector Croft, I would have thought you’d seen enough of the world to know the lie of that. Sometimes evil is born, made incarnate, and there is nothing you can do to that child, neither kindness nor beating, that can make it not so.’
Mike shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘And what did Jake have most of, Mr Bowen? Kindness or beating?’
Again the laughter devoid of humour. ‘Oh, no, Inspector, you can’t lay that at my door. No one can say that Jake was made the way he is by anything I did to him. Jake had what was needed, one way or another, in about equal measure. His mother was too soft with him. Women are. I had to balance that. But he respected me for it even though I knew there would be no saving him. I had to try, you see, for his mother’s sake. What woman would want to live with the fact that she’d given birth to evil?’
Mike glanced at the dashboard clock and saw that there would be at least another hour before they reached Max Harriman. He wondered how much more of Bowen’s ranting he could take, but there was so much he needed to know. He tried another tack.
‘Max’s mother. She brought him up alone, I unde
rstand?’
He felt rather than saw Alastair Bowen nod. ‘The father was killed in a mining accident just before the boy was born. It put her into labour early and they weren’t sure she or the boy would have the will to live.’
He fell silent.
Mike persisted. ‘Mrs Harriman was killed about the time that you and Jake left the area?’
‘That is true.’
‘And Max was accused, taken in for questioning.’
‘And then released without charge.’
‘Did Jake kill Mrs Harriman?’ Mike asked.
Alastair was silent, so silent and so still that Mike thought he might even have fallen asleep. He glanced sideways at him once more. The man sat with his hands clasped neatly in his lap and an empty expression on his face, gazing out through the windscreen at the road ahead.
‘Mr Bowen?’ Mike prompted. ‘Do you think Jake killed her?’
Alastair shifted slightly in his seat, but took his time making a reply. ‘I never saw that woman smile,’ he said.
* * *
Macey paid another visit to Charlie Morrow, this time bringing him a pile of disks; stuff he’d pulled down from the Net.
‘Mostly news groups and chat rooms,’ he said. ‘We know Jake Bowen puts stuff out over the Internet. If he’s online then he must have a provider and most providers monitor anyone making an abnormal number of hits to kinky sites.’
‘Most, but not all,’ Charlie corrected him, ‘and there are ways around it. Depends on the route you take through the system. Anyone as smart as Jake Bowen will have thought of that. So, for that matter; will my untoasted colleagues.’
‘Right,’ Macey said. He’d still not grown used to the way Charlie made fun of his injuries. ‘Look, he went on, I’ve been trying something a bit different. As you know, there are chat rooms and discussion groups on just about anything. I’ve picked up over a dozen without even trying hard, all specializing in kinky porn, and they’ve all got something to say about Jake Bowen.’
