by Chris Ould
A second man – older than the one outside but just as much a minder – was sitting at a table with a cigarette burning in an ashtray and a Sunday newspaper spread in front of him. He looked up as Alford came into the room. “Who’re you?” he said, taking his cigarette from the ashtray.
“Drew Alford,” Alford said. “Tommy called me.”
The man looked him over for a second, then nodded and stood up. “Wait there.” He moved off towards a door by the bar, disappearing through it.
Alford waited a moment. He could hear voices and an occasional bark of laughter from the other side of the pub – the saloon bar – but what was being said was too indistinct to make out. It sounded like there were several people in there, but even when he moved closer to the bar he couldn’t see anything of the other room and after a moment he went back to where he’d been told to wait.
A minute or so later the door by the bar opened again and the man with the cigarette came back.
“He’ll be here,” he said.
Alford gestured towards the door. “What’s going on?”
The man looked at him. “Poker,” he said simply, then sat down and returned to his newspaper.
There was another burst of laughter mixed with a couple of catcalls from the other bar and a few seconds later Tommy Vickers pushed the dividing door open. He was dressed in jeans and an open-neck shirt, the sleeves pushed up his arms. From his expression it was impossible to tell if he’d won or lost on the last hand.
“What were you doing yesterday?” Vickers said without preamble, crossing the square-patterned carpet to where Alford was standing.
“Yesterday?” Alford frowned, as if the question didn’t seem to have an obvious answer.
“The police,” Vickers said. “They took you in. Why?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alford said, making out that he finally understood. “It’s okay, it wasn’t anything to do with—”
“I didn’t ask you that,” Vickers cut him off. “I said why?”
Alford took it and nodded. “There was a girl, Friday night. She was attacked or some shit. I’d seen her – before it happened – and one of her mates tried to make out it was me.”
“Was it?”
“No. No way.”
Vickers eyed him suspiciously but Alford held his ground.
“It couldn’t’ve been, could it?” he said. “You know where I was when it happened – the minimart, yeah?” He glanced at the guy reading the newspaper, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should say more in front of anyone else.
“So what did you tell them?” Vickers said.
“Nothing. I mean, I told ’em I was over the other side of the estate with some mates. I knew they’d back me up. Got to, cos they were the ones with me at the minimart.”
“The police say anything about that – the shop?”
“Nah, not a thing,” Alford said. “Just this girl. Then they let me go. It’s just coppers, yeah? Load of bollocks.”
For a moment Vickers still looked distrustful, but then he shifted and Alford knew he’d sold the lie.
“As long as it is,” Vickers said, then he dismissed the subject. “Okay, I’ve got something else for you. Cloudsley House, that’s your patch, right?”
Alford thought about it quickly. Cloudsley House wasn’t his turf because there’d never been any reason to claim it. Now though…
“Sure,” he said. “It’s ours.”
“So no one’s gonna give you a problem if you come and go?”
“Not if they’ve got any sense.”
Vickers nodded, as if that was the correct answer. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a key ring with two keys hanging from it.
“Flat 407. It’s empty – least, it’s supposed to be. I need someone to keep an eye on it – go up once a day and make sure it’s secure: no one hanging around.”
“I can do that,” Alford said. “No sweat.”
“Hold on, I haven’t finished yet. – Time to time you’ll get a call from Malc.” He gestured to the man with the newspaper. “That’s Malc. When he tells you, you go up and wait inside the place till someone comes, then you let them in. Either they’ll be leaving something or taking something. Whichever it is, you wait till they’ve finished then lock up behind them. The rest of the time, stay away – you don’t use it for a shag pad or parties, nothing like that, and it’s only you who goes in there, understood?”
“Yeah, got it,” Alford said. “What’s the stuff gonna be?”
Vickers shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about that. You’re just the caretaker, right? You get fifty a week, maybe a bit more, depending. Main thing is, you don’t attract attention. You keep everything nice and quiet so no one asks questions.”
“Okay,” Alford said. “No problem.”
Vickers gave him a look, then tossed him the keys. “Start today – check it out and make sure it’s okay. Any problems, call Malc.”
“Okay.”
“And remember, anything goes missing that shouldn’t, I’ll know who to look for.”
Alford looked pained. “I know that,” he said. “I’m not stupid.”
“I know,” Vickers said. “That’s why you’re here.”
And with that he turned and headed back towards the other bar.
Alford pushed the key ring deep into his jeans pocket. As he did so he became aware that the man called Malc was watching him. The man beckoned him over.
“All right?” Alford said, careful to keep it neutral – not too matey. He reckoned a guy like Malc would want some respect, because he looked pretty hard, although he had that flabby-round-the-chin look, like Alford’s dad.
Malc said nothing, but shifted his weight and pulled a wad of notes from his pocket. He peeled off two twenties and a ten.
“This week’s up front,” he said as he handed the notes to Alford. Then he tore a thin strip from the top of his newspaper and wrote a number on it.
“That’s me,” he said. “You don’t call Tommy even if something’s wrong – ’specially if something’s wrong. Got it?”
Alford nodded.
“Okay, go on then, fuck off. I’ll talk to you later.”
5.
ITU
QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL
09:57 HRS
In the Intensive Therapy Unit Dee Jarvis was reading aloud to her daughter from a magazine. Mrs Jarvis looked a little less drawn than the last time Holly had seen her, while Ashleigh remained worryingly pale, with a breathing tube still in place and a surgical dressing on the side of her head. She also looked younger than she was, perhaps because of the teddy bear-patterned nightdress she was wearing. Holly knew it as the sort of thing your mum would choose from your drawer because it still fitted, even though you’d stopped wearing it ages ago.
Holly knocked on the open door and paused just outside. “Mrs Jarvis? I’m TPO Blades from Morningstar Road police station. I came in with Ashleigh from the scene – from the accident on Friday.”
“Oh. Oh, yes,” Dee Jarvis said, standing up. “Sorry. There was so much going on then… I lost track of everyone’s names.”
She came over to Holly, the magazine still in her hand.
“That’s okay,” Holly said. “How is she?”
“They think she’s a bit better,” Dee Jarvis said. “They say the swelling is going down – you know, in her brain. They say that’s good. And she’s breathing without a machine since yesterday, but she still hasn’t woken up. They don’t really know how long that might take, but it could be any time.”
Holly nodded in what she hoped was a positive way. She felt slightly awkward discussing Ashleigh while she lay there, even though she was unconscious.
“I hope it’s soon,” she said. “I came in to bring you Ashleigh’s bag back. You just need to check the contents and sign a receipt.”
“Oh, right, yes. Thank you,” Dee said.
The only table in the room was crowded with cards and flowers, so they went outside to a couple
of chairs. Dee Jarvis sat down on one and used the other to go through the bag, checking its contents against the list on the evidence form.
Holly waited a moment, then put on a tone of voice that she hoped sounded casual enough to mask the lie she had worked out.
“There was one thing I was asked to check,” she said. “At the scene they found a packet of contraceptive pills near the bag. They wondered if they could be Ashleigh’s.”
Dee Jarvis looked up. “The pill? No, they’re not Ash’s.”
“You’re sure?”
“She’s only fourteen,” Dee said, leaving no room for doubt. “We’ve talked about it – you know, the whole thing – but she’s still too young for all that yet. Even if she had a boyfriend… When she does, well, that’ll be different, but she knows how I feel about – about getting in too deep before you’re ready. That was what happened to me.”
“You were a young mum?” Holly asked.
“Not so young – eighteen – but I was involved too soon. The wrong bloke, like everyone told me, except I wouldn’t listen.”
Holly nodded. She was uncomfortable to have been told so much because of her lie, but at least it proved that her hunch was right. She still wasn’t sure what it added up to, but when she saw Dee take Ashleigh’s mobile out of the bag Holly found herself speaking before she’d really thought it through.
“Could I look at that for a moment?” she asked, extending a hand.
“Sure,” Dee passed the phone across. “The battery’s probably flat though.”
The phone was a Nokia with a touch screen, not dissimilar to Holly’s own. She pressed the power button and immediately the screen lit up, but wanted a PIN. Dee Jarvis shook her head when Holly asked if she knew it.
“More than my life’s worth to look at her phone,” she said, raising a smile. “Bet you’re the same.”
Holly nodded, smiled back, but then put on a serious tone. “I think there might have been a mistake,” she said. “If the phone’s locked it could mean no one’s examined it – I mean, Forensics. Would it be all right if I took it back to the station just to be sure?”
“Well, I suppose…” Dee said, but she sounded uncertain.
“I’ll make sure you get it back right away,” Holly said. “I just don’t want to get the blame if they should have held on to it.”
“No, you take it,” Dee said, making up her mind. “Ash doesn’t—” She caught herself, seemed to shiver slightly, then made an effort. “As long as she can have it back when she wakes up.”
“I’ll make sure,” Holly said.
Ashleigh’s mother forced another smile. “I trust you,” she said.
6.
INCIDENT ROOM
MORNINGSTAR RD STATION
10:24 HRS
Ashleigh’s phone didn’t really weigh the same as a brick in her pocket, but it seemed to, and Holly knew there were a ton more waiting to fall on her. Ever since she’d left the hospital she’d had a growing feeling that she had stepped over a line and now there was no going back. The only way out was to finish what she’d started, so when she re-entered the station she headed for the Incident Room instead of Custody.
As she’d expected, the place was unoccupied, the lights off, door locked. For a moment she hesitated. This was probably the stupidest thing she could do. She had no business and no authorisation to be in the room, but given that the case had been more or less dropped, and as long as she wasn’t actually interfering with anything…
She made up her mind, keyed in the door code she’d memorised yesterday and let herself in.
The whiteboards were still as they’d left them the day before and Holly stood far enough back that she could see everything together: timelines, names, locations, evidence. But it was the photo of Drew Alford that took her attention most, and she realised that it was something about him that was bothering her. It was something to do with his interview, his version of events, but she couldn’t quite pin it down. Was it something he’d said?
Holly crossed to a desk and located a DVD in a jewel case: the copy of the interview footage DS Woods had showed to DI Connors yesterday. She prised the disc out and took it to the DVD player, switching the TV on as it loaded.
She knew she didn’t have time to watch the whole interview again, but as the screen came to life, Holly pressed FFW and let the picture run through at 8x speed. She was hoping that something would jog her memory even at that speed, but except for the small, jerky movements of Alford’s head as he was questioned, very little else changed. He kept the same posture, sitting back in his seat, arms folded, legs crossed, resistant and defensive. You could just see he was denying everything.
Then, about three or four minutes before the interview was terminated, something changed. Suddenly, because of the playback speed, Alford seemed to jerk into a different position. His legs were uncrossed and he sat forward, arms on the table.
Holly pressed pause, then rewound the disc to the point where Alford changed position. When she pressed play, Alford was speaking:
“…So she says, ‘I’m a ten. You want me to show you?’ And I said sure. So she says, ‘Let’s go over there where it’s private,’ and we go over to the bin shelter. That’s where she starts snogging me, right? I’m telling you, she’s the one doing it all – snogging me, rubbing up, right? You know what I mean. She says she’s fancied me for ages but didn’t want no one to know.”
And that was it, Holly realised, stopping the disc. Everything he’d said before that point in the interview had been distrustful and defiant. But here he was speaking without being prompted and his body language was open and candid. That was the difference – and however much she might not like or trust Drew Alford, if Holly had to say how she interpreted what he was saying at that point, she would have to say “true”.
So what did it all mean? How did it fit together?
She says, “I’m a ten. You want me to show you?”
That wasn’t the Ashleigh her mother and best friend knew – the girl who wasn’t interested in boys yet and was young for her age. No, that was a different Ashleigh: one who’d had unprotected sex sometime on Thursday or Friday, had given Drew Alford the come-on, and who’d had a contraceptive implant without telling her mother.
There were two Ashleighs, Holly was certain of that now – and the more she thought about it, the more she began to suspect what might really have happened to her on Friday night.
7.
CID
MORNINGSTAR RD STATION
10:42 HRS
Unlike the round-the-clock rota for uniform officers, CID generally only worked nine to five on weekdays. Unless there was a major investigation in progress, nights and weekends were covered by a single CID Duty Officer and today that was Danny Simmons, which was good – or at least, Holly hoped it would be.
He had three empty takeaway coffee cups on his desk and was typing – badly – at a computer terminal when Holly walked in. The rest of the office was empty and quiet.
“I think I might be in trouble,” Holly told him when he finally looked up from the notes he was transcribing.
“Why, what’ve you done?” The way he said it made it clear that he thought there was a punchline coming.
“I’ve got Ashleigh Jarvis’s phone,” Holly said, taking it out of her pocket. “I didn’t— I took Ashleigh’s bag back to her mum and when I saw the phone I asked if I could bring it back here. I didn’t tell her the truth about why I wanted it, though.”
Seeing the phone, Danny Simmons leaned back in his chair, realising now that this wasn’t a bit of banter. “It’s been checked out of evidence?”
Holly nodded. “All the stuff in her bag has.”
“So why do you want it?”
“I don’t think anyone’s looked at it. I mean, not at what’s on it. It’s still locked, so…”
“There wasn’t any need to send it for technical analysis,” Danny said. “It can’t give us anything we don’t already know.”
>
“Do you think you could get it looked at?”
“Why?”
Holly took a moment, then glanced round and moved to an empty whiteboard. She picked up a marker pen. “Just let me go through it, then you can say it’s crap and I’ll go away, okay?”
“Fair enough,” Danny said. He stood up from his desk and came round to watch as Holly drew a horizontal line on the board, then crossed it at four different points along its length.
“18:00 hours, Ashleigh leaves Lauren’s house… 18:40, she texts her mum: ‘Home soon’… 18:45 approximately, she meets Drew Alford and they go to the bin shelter… 19:05, she runs away from Alford and into the road and gets knocked down.” Holly looked to the DC. “Yes?”
“Yeah, but we know all this.”
“I know, but this is what doesn’t make sense: she leaves Lauren’s house at 18:00 and says she’s going home, then she texts her mum at 18:40 like she’s only just leaving Lauren’s.”
Holly turned to the diagram and drew a wavy line between the two points in time.
“So what was she doing between 18:00 and 18:40?”
Danny Simmons studied the diagram, then made to speak, but Holly said, “Hang on. There are two other things: first, Ashleigh’s got a contraceptive implant but her mum doesn’t know. Second, she’d had unprotected sex with someone on Thursday or Friday, but everyone who knows her says she doesn’t even have a boyfriend.”
“Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Yeah, it was a secret,” Holly said. “But that’s the point, isn’t it? Why? Most girls can’t wait to tell their mates about the lad they’re going out with, but Ashleigh didn’t even tell Lauren, her best friend. When I asked Lauren if Ashleigh had a boyfriend she said no. Everyone says Ashleigh isn’t that kind of girl. But I think they’ve got it wrong. I think she is that kind of girl. I think she’s seeing someone and that she’s having regular sex with him.”
She tapped the space between 18:00 and 18:40. “I think she was with him here. She went to meet him and she didn’t want anyone else to know.”
