by Gayle Curtis
Kristen had finally been allowed back into her own home, and she was managing, just about. Her parents had begged her to continue staying with them, but the abnormality of the situation there only highlighted everything, and she’d wanted to return to her life – to face what she’d put on pause.
The family liaison officers had left for the evening. She’d been told there was a police presence on the square in case she needed anything, but she had nothing to worry about. Kristen looked at the graffiti scrawled across the front of the house and wasn’t so sure. Someone had sprayed ‘MURDERER’ in bright red paint, across the front door. There had been reports in the papers – mostly lies – about how she’d been so drunk that night, and another story claimed she’d been taking drugs. The tabloids were asking the question: was she guilty?
Kristen had promised herself she wouldn’t drink – waking up with a hangover, on top of everything else, would only add another dimension to the nightmare she was facing, and there was always a risk she might let things get out of control. But she’d just poured a whiskey when Rita turned up wearing a black jogging suit and trainers, her bright red hair covered with a baseball cap. Kristen realised she didn’t want to be recognised by the paparazzi camped outside. It wouldn’t do for the detective in charge of her case to be seen socialising with her.
They’d been friends since they were children and had gone to the same school. Busy lives meant they didn’t see each other as much as they’d like, but they often messaged one another and were always supportive when anything happened. Kristen had an idea that Rita wasn’t just checking up on her, though. She had something to tell her, the post-mortem on her little boy being due in. There had been a preliminary cause of death, but the full report hadn’t yet been released. Kristen stalled her, distracted her, as she knocked back whiskey after whiskey, knowing full well the pain would still be there once the anaesthetic wore off.
‘Hit me with it,’ she said finally, tucking her legs under her on the chair and cradling the tumbler of warming liquid.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Kristen?’
The two women stared at one another for a few moments. The exasperated look on Rita’s face meant she wasn’t talking about anything to do with Raymond. It was about Amos. ‘I didn’t tell anyone, not a soul. Who leaked it?’
‘One of the officers on house-to-house came across Amos in the church. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “I’m Raymond’s dad. I found him on the green.” We nicked him and checked his DNA. It was all over Raymond and there was a familial match—’ Rita put her hand up before Kristen could speak. ‘And no, we have no reason to think he had anything to do with his death. His DNA wasn’t found anywhere else, other than on the items in Raymond’s rucksack. And you corroborated he’d seen him that morning.’
Kristen frowned. ‘I should have told you.’
‘At the risk of sounding racist, there aren’t many mixed-race people in this area. Amos being his dad was fairly obvious,’ Rita said, smiling at Kristen. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘No, I wasn’t off my face, and no, it wasn’t a one-night stand. We were together for eight months when I lived in London. We met about twelve years ago.’ Kristen looked at Rita’s perplexed expression. ‘He wasn’t always like that, you know.’
‘What happened with you two?’
‘I decided it was all too good to be true. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and in the process, I ruined it all.’
‘I take it that’s why he moved here, to be near you?’
Kristen nodded, then described how she’d first met him in the cafeteria at Crown Court. Amos was in there on his laptop. She’d spotted him immediately, and he’d looked up and smiled at her.
When she’d returned for more refreshments a few hours later, he was still there, in exactly the same spot. ‘Has your office burnt down?’ she’d asked him.
He laughed and then his face became deadpan. ‘No. My house has.’
Kristen stopped laughing when she saw how serious he was.
‘That was a joke.’
Kristen had laughed again and ordered herself a coffee. When it turned out they were both waiting for the same delayed case – he was a friend of her client – she ordered him one too. Normally she wouldn’t have done it, but there was something about him that compelled her.
Coffees had turned into drinks, then dinners and eventually breakfasts. And it was all too much too soon. Kristen began second-guessing his thoughts, and he loved her so much it made him depressed. They brought out their worst anxieties and fears in each other. However hard they tried, it just didn’t work. They were better off as friends.
‘He hoped I’d change my mind,’ Kristen said wistfully to Rita and they were silent for a few moments. ‘What about the blood in the toilet? I just can’t get my head around the fact someone could have come in while I was sleeping.’
‘Are you absolutely certain Cara didn’t hurt herself during the evening?’
‘No. In fact, she only came in for something to eat, I don’t recall her using the toilet. And I’ve already told you I thought she looked worried about something. Maybe she’d been threatened.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Are you completely sure Amos had nothing to do with Raymond’s death?’ Kristen shook her head. ‘I need to know you’ve completely ruled him out.’
Rita leant across and touched Kristen’s knee. ‘There is no evidence pointing towards Amos, no motive and he’s been released on bail but that’s all the assurance I can give you. Anyway, we’ve got our sights set on someone else.’
‘Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘Yep, I wanted to catch you alone, without the family liaison officers listening in. My first time as Senior Investigating Officer and I’m being watched.’
Kristen’s skin prickled up the side of her neck. ‘Who’s the suspect?’
‘Rachel Fearon. We’ve got her under surveillance. I know Cara was Raymond’s best friend, but do you know Rachel very well?’
‘We’re not friends, but she’s dropped Cara off at my house on a few occasions.’ Kristen frowned, trying to take in the news. ‘She’s a teacher at one of the high schools, isn’t she?’
‘That’s her. She was nicked on Sunday for having an affair with one of her students. They were meeting each other at Player’s gyms. She kept cropping up in the surveillance, and one of the UCs realised what they were up to. We suspect she might have something to do with Cara’s disappearance, but we don’t have anything concrete yet . . .’ Frowning, Rita appeared to drift off to another place, as she quite often did. Kristen had never known such a deep thinker as Rita.
‘Her own child? I can’t believe it.’
‘She’s definitely shifty. I know that sounds vague, but really, she’s letting her nerves get the better of her. She’s caught up in it, I’m sure of it. I discovered she works at Adrian’s private club on Saturdays, so she could be involved with him in some way. I have quite a bit of authority, being the SIO, but I’ve got to be careful focusing on Adrian too closely.’
Kristen leant across and poured more whiskey in Rita’s glass. ‘Just a minute, are you saying there’s a possibility he had something to do with Raymond’s death?’
‘Possibly . . . Listen, Kristen, there’s something you ought to know . . .’
Kristen could feel her heart begin to race. She couldn’t cope with this. It had been bad enough coming to terms with the abuse she’d suffered alongside Rita when they were children, but knowing Adrian might have something to do with her son’s death was something else altogether.
‘Rachel had been giving Raymond lifts to Adrian’s private gym on his estate. He’d—’
‘She what?’ Kristen could feel the walls of the room tipping one way and then the other.
‘He’d only been for two or three sessions.’
‘That can’t be right. He wouldn’t lie to me about something like that. He knew how I felt about hi
m going to that gym.’
‘I’m sorry, Kristen, but we’ve got him on CCTV getting out of Rachel’s car.’
They were silent for a few moments. Tears trickled down Kristen’s face, set off by the sudden, gut-punching realisation that she would never be able to ask him about it, or ground him for lying to her.
‘Why would that bastard want my son dead?’
‘Adrian doesn’t do his own dirty work, you know that, but we suspect he may have needed to keep the children quiet over something they’d found out . . . We’re just speculating right now.’ She opened her mouth and it seemed that Rita was about to say something else, but then took a sip of her drink instead. They were both silent, staring into their glasses.
‘You will find Raymond’s killer, won’t you, Rita?’ Kristen said eventually, a burning pain in the back of her throat threatening to suffocate her.
‘I won’t settle until I’ve convicted the bastard who did this. You know about the videotapes they found at Adrian’s house, don’t you?’
‘What?’ Kristen pulled her legs from beneath her and sat up.
‘There’s a team of officers working through eight hundred hours of footage as we speak. I’m waiting to hear what’s on them.’
‘Fucking hell, Rita! Going back how far?’
‘1985.’ Rita took a large swig of her drink.
‘What are we going to do if they find us on there?’
‘If they ask you, deny it. This is our chance to screw this bastard, and nothing is going to get in my way. If anyone finds out that you, me and Jason are on any of that footage, the entire case against Adrian will collapse, and any evidence we have will be inadmissible.’ She took another drink. ‘Anyway, just relax, we don’t know if there’s anything there yet.’
‘You seem pretty convinced. Why don’t we just make our own complaint? Is it really that important for you to run this investigation?’
‘Operation Ladybird is my baby. I need complete control of it for my own sanity. He’s got away with this too many times. Trust me, the viewpoint is better from my angle.’
‘I understand.’ Kristen sighed. ‘Sounds like you know what you’re doing.’
Rita nodded. ‘You know Emma Langley, Adrian’s stepdaughter, filed a complaint against him? He’s out on bail at the moment, pending further enquiries. As soon as she heard what happened on the green, she put the call in. We’ve got him, Kristen, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make all this stick. He’s got something to do with Raymond and Cara, I can feel it. He’s the only one with a motive, we just need to find out who he paid to do it.’
Kristen stared at her friend, completely conflicted by what she was hearing. Of course she wanted Adrian fucking Player to spend his life in prison, even if he’d had nothing to do with what had happened to her boy and his friend. And if he was caught up in it – that was too kind a fate for him. She’d want him trussed up and tortured as her sweet Raymond had been. She’d ache to do the torturing.
But Kristen couldn’t help feeling Rita was going to get caught before she could bring the law down on him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE LESTER BARCLAY SHOW
FIVE YEARS LATER
Rita’s phone had buzzed with an unrecognised number during the break. Four times it rang, but whenever she answered it the line was quiet on the other end. She had switched it off before filming began again.
Lester continued.
‘There were two more people found dead on Blue Green Square and, sadly, they were your parents, weren’t they?’
Rita nodded, clenching her jaw.
‘Can you tell us about that? You were the one who found them. That must have been quite a shock?’
Working in close proximity to her parents’ house, Rita had noticed their curtains were closed in the afternoon. She’d just decided this wasn’t unusual in the heat – everyone was being advised to shut their windows and curtains, to keep their houses cool, with the summer being so unbearably hot – when she noticed the milk festering on the doorstep and newspapers hanging out of the post box.
Rita had known they were dead as soon as she’d stepped out of the unmarked police car. She ignored the front door, instead walking straight down the side of the large Georgian house, heading for the back to see if there was any sign of life. All the drapes were closed, as they were at the front. Through the thin glass of the windows she could hear a radio playing and Jade barking. This gave her some brief hope, but it was quickly dashed when she peered through a gap in the curtain of the old French doors in the kitchen and saw her father sitting in a chair, eyes wide and clouded like opals, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, with a book open and their tabby cat perched on the top. Hearing Rita outside, the cat woke up and ran to the door. It wasn’t until later that she realised how important the cat would be in the whole story.
The French windows had given way easily enough, and Rita had found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, also dead, the awful stench of decay hanging in the stifling air. She remembered there being something eerie about the high-ceilinged, echoey room, as if she were seeing it for the first time, and she didn’t know if it was because the windows were so narrow, giving the room a gloomy appearance, or if it was the cold, pastel blue gloss on the walls. The sills were covered in spider plants, brown and crisp from the heat. Rita had noticed how quiet it was, apart from the radio; there was a thick stillness in the air, making her feel nauseous, and she’d had to sit down before she passed out.
‘What was the cause of death?’ Lester brought her back into the studio.
‘Carbon monoxide poisoning.’ Rita leant forward and reached for her glass of water. ‘It was a very difficult time.’
‘You continued to work on Operation Ladybird though?’
‘I had to. In a strange way, work kept me sane. But it’s still very hard to talk about.’ Rita shifted uncomfortably. ‘Can we move on?’
Lester nodded, acknowledging her request. ‘Isn’t it true your mother had called the station with new information after the house-to-house, and the call had been cut short?’
Rita sighed, thinking first about what she was going to say, and what she would omit. ‘That’s correct. She called to say she’d remembered something. When this news finally got to me – more slowly than I’d have liked, but we were swamped with interviews – I was excited. Apart from the landlord of the Drum and Monkey, she was our only other known witness, but it wasn’t professionally ethical for me to take the statement because of my connection with her.’
‘What was it she’d recalled?’
‘She had remembered seeing a white van sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. She had the first numbers of the plate. But then the phone call was cut short. She could be heard speaking to someone in the background. She never called back and the officer dealing with it hadn’t followed it up.’
‘Did you find out who she’d been speaking to?’
‘We think it was Jody Brunswick. My mother employed her to work there a couple of hours every day after school.’
‘Jody Brunswick?’
‘That is correct.’
‘When did you first become suspicious about Jody? Why her and not Amos Browne, who your mother had also reported seeing along with the van?’
‘My parents had been the only people on the green who hadn’t joined in the bank holiday celebrations. They were also insomniacs, and my mother had been wandering around the house, as she sometimes did when she couldn’t sleep. Initially, she’d reported seeing a white van, but she couldn’t recall the entire number plate. She was a stickler for scribbling them down, always on the lookout for a burglar. She’d gone to the library while Jody gave my father his tea. There was one book on the kitchen table which, when we checked, she’d renewed instead of returning, and in the front, written in pencil, was a number plate. It belonged to Jason Brunswick’s van.’
‘How did Jody know about the number plate?’
‘She was already worried about the white va
n, knowing her father owned one, and Jody was fiercely protecting him. It’s quite likely she saw the note in the library book when my mother was on the phone.’
There was silence in the studio for a few moments.
‘I’m guessing your mother didn’t see Raymond on the grass in the early hours because he wasn’t yet dead? What I’m getting at is, could she have remembered something that Jody believed was incriminating?’
‘Forensics checked every window of the house, and the angle at which Raymond had been lying meant the trees would have obscured her view. Also, it was still quite dark. So he could quite possibly have been dead.’
‘What was Rachel Fearon’s involvement in it all? There were so many jaw-dropping revelations about her husband.’
‘I can’t talk about that.’
‘Come on, Rita, you must be able to tell us about some of it?’
‘At the time, we believed she was complicit in the death of Raymond Hammond. She had motive, and we had evidence she’d conspired with someone to have her daughter kidnapped.’
‘She was cleared?’
Rita inhaled deeply. ‘She wasn’t cleared, Lester. Rachel Fearon is in a witness protection programme. I can’t talk about it.’
‘You mean she did a deal?’ Lester grinned. ‘Who was the other suspect?’
‘I can’t talk about it,’ Rita said firmly. ‘She was involved with someone at Adrian Player’s club, that’s all I can say.’
‘So you still believe she was guilty in some way.’
‘Rachel Fearon was guilty all right. She had conspired in the kidnapping of her daughter, Cara. It could be suggested that this led to her death. One incident often leads on to another.’
‘I think what no one is clear about is whether the murder of Cara Fearon was a separate incident to the murder of Raymond Hammond?’
‘No, that’s where people get it wrong. They were linked. We just don’t know who started it and who finished it.’
‘But you just said the charges against Rachel Fearon were dropped.’
‘She was involved to begin with, and we did a deal with her because she had information on a suspect we were interested in. But in the end, she claimed she didn’t know anything about the murders, and we had no choice but to believe she was telling the truth.’
