[Alicia Friend 01.0] His First His Second

by A D Davies

  Chambers came back in without the cigarette, slapped the newspaper on the table and asked if they were done.

  She snatched up the drawing and held it close to Freddie’s face. “Is this him? You’re sure? I’m not going to put this out there and get some priest in trouble am I?”

  “It’s him,” Freddie said. “Can I go home now?”

  “We have to find you somewhere first,” Joyce said.

  “But I want to go back to my land. I like it there.”

  “That is no place for someone to be living. Besides, it’s not your land anymore, Freddie. It was repossessed a year ago and sold to the council. It’s their property, and once this investigation is over—with your help, Freddie—the council are closing the site and will probably demolish it. Out of respect for the families of the ladies found up there.”

  They were tearing down his home!

  “Freddie, the council are grateful to you for reporting this, and they’ll do everything to make sure you are rehoused somewhere nice.”

  He wanted to break something. So he took the coffee cup Chambers had been drinking from and smashed it on the floor.

  “You bastard,” Chambers said. “I got that for Christmas.”

  Freddie threw Joyce’s mug against the wall, the artist ducking as it smashed near his head. “I want to go home. My home. Not someone else’s.”

  “Freddie, please…”

  “Still think he doesn’t need sectioning?” Chambers said. “I can make a call.”

  “No, he’s just upset. Freddie.”

  Freddie prepared to tear up Chambers’ evening edition of a local newspaper. “Let me go home or I’ll do it. I’ll rip up your paper.”

  Chambers said, “I’ll distribute this picture now.”

  Then Freddie saw it. Below the newspaper headline, Two Siobhans Swiped by Devil. Four people at a table, sat before an eight-foot wide police badge and a photo of a pretty dark-haired girl. The man in the middle...

  “This is him!” Freddie said, waving the newspaper. “It’s him, here, look.”

  Chambers sounded bored. “That is the father of a missing girl, you numpty. This,” holding the drawing before Freddie, “is nothing like that,” pointing at the newspaper.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. The artist’s wrong. This is him, I swear it.”

  Chambers rudely snatched the newspaper, examining the photo. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sorry. I made up the drawing cos I couldn’t describe him properly. I wanted to go home. But that photo—you should have shown me that sooner. We’d have saved a lot of time.”

  It was too much for Richard. He hadn’t moved from the chair throughout Wellington’s tale. He listened, he planned, he calculated.

  He had no chance of freeing Katie by himself.

  Which left what as an option? Only one thing: he had to tell Alicia.

  With police help he’d be able to do it, though his methods would come to light. He’d have failed his target of family perfection. He’d be caught, tried, and most likely jailed for life.

  A great sadness washed over him. He was losing something of himself. Alicia would not understand his actions, not here. Perhaps she’d understand the ones from America, the perfect killings, the beauty of them, but she was the sort of person who would not forgive him. The prospect of losing Alicia, after being so close, was too much to bear.

  “Hey, hard man,” Wellington said. “What you crying for? Are you going to kill me or let me go?”

  Richard wiped the tears from his face, thought about killing Wellington and the woman in the kitchen, but there’d been enough bloodshed. And Alicia would probably hate him even more if he did this.

  He didn’t untie either person. He simply packed his things away and headed to the door, running Wellington’s speech through his head once again.

  The task was impossible for him alone. And if he told Alicia, she’d never let him tag along. So what was he to do?

  Alicia was clever enough. When she worked backwards, she’d find him out, track him down.

  No. His fantasies of fighting the man by himself, gutting him from groin to throat and showing the man his own insides, all of that would never be realised. He confess all to Alicia, even the bits she’d hate him for, then she’d send him to jail.

  But Katie would be safe. At least he would meet that goal.

  Richard stepped into the driveway, light and breezy now he’d made the decision. He felt free.

  Two men approached.

  “Morning,” Richard said, all sprightly and neighbourly.

  The ginger-haired scruffy one chuckled mischievously. The Chinese-looking one pointed a small grey box at Richard, pressed a button on the top, and two wires shot out, embedding themselves in his chest.

  “Hey,” Richard said, “that hurt.”

  “Then get ready,” the oriental guy said with an American accent. “Cos things are only gettin’ worse for you.”

  The man pressed another button and every muscle in Richard’s body contracted under the force of a massive electric shock. Fire coursed through him, filled him completely, the world turning sideways, growing darker and darker.

  His last thoughts before losing consciousness were of his daughter, bleeding to death in Alicia’s arms.

  For the first time in his life, Richard had failed.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Murphy struggled to keep up with Alicia. He breathlessly followed her into the operations room where men in cheap suits and loose ties shifted boxes onto trolleys. All four whiteboards lay on the floor waiting to be packed. She told a man about to lift one of the boards to leave it right where it was. She even pointed a finger like a gun and ordered him to drop it. Confusion at first, then she presented her ID and said, “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”

  Someone said, “Ah, so you’re Alicia Friend.”

  “Excellent. I love it when my reputation precedes me.” She lined the whiteboards up again, side by side, oblivious to all around her.

  “Come on, Alicia,” Murphy said. “Let me in. What’s going on?”

  “Barry. My ex. But not just Barry.”

  “You’re blabbering.”

  Too much going on at one time, unable to see clearly. Everything was personal. Everything. Right back to Tanya. Tanya. That’s where it starts, that’s where everything points, and everything points at her leaving with someone she knew. Someone she trusted. But the deaths, all of them … so different. So incapable of reason. All of them inflicted by someone whose mood changed, from the slick abductions, to the calculated but angry beating of Pippa, the dumping of her in sinking mud—

  “He tried to hide her!” Alicia said. “It was right there. I saw it, then forgot about it. I said it that first morning, even before I got your smile to work properly. Donny ‘the Don’ Murphy, we are so wrong it’s unreal.”

  “Talk,” Murphy said.

  “If Henry or whoever wanted to use these girls as smokescreen, in preparation for killing Tanya, why try to hide the first body?”

  “Maybe you were wrong about the sinking mud.”

  She shook her head. “I’m never wrong.” She winked. “But no. Seriously. I don’t think I am. He tried to hide her. That means they weren’t going to let Tanya be found either.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning…” The information reached no conclusion. Her system was close to crashing. “Meaning we’re stuck again. These crimes are personal. Passionate. They mean something to someone.”

  Murphy rested against a desk that used to have a computer on it. He read the boards. “Don’t suppose you have any more ex-boyfriends to call on? No psychics?”

  “Tony!” she said suddenly.

  “Tony? The Interpol guy. Wasn’t he tracking James Windsor for us?”

  “Yes, and he hasn’t reported in yet.” She had a terrible thought that maybe he’d been killed too. She unlocked her phone and dialled. He picked up straight away. “Thank God you’re not dead.”

>   “Good to hear from you too, Alicia,” he said. “What can I do you for?”

  “James Windsor. Did you find him?”

  “Not yet. But I’m kind of busy with a Croatian gang smuggling teens—”

  “Honey, you know I love you to bits, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then just bloody well tell me if you found him.” She smiled into the phone.

  Tony had a laugh in his voice. “Sure, honey. He left Manchester airport on his passport but it didn’t check in at Delhi. I did check for other movements but so far, zilch.”

  “How’s that work?”

  “Either he went through the boarding gates at Manchester and did a runner across the airport, or he got off the plane in Delhi and did the same.”

  “What? Legged it across the runway? Why would he do that?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “So he might not have left the country after all.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Thank you. Keep looking.” She blew some kisses and hung up, and pointed at the Tanya board. “This is where it started. With Tanya and Paavan. They were in love and nothing would stop them from living as a couple. Not even the love of her cousin.”

  “James. The guy who screwed up Wellington’s story when he blabbed in an interview. All that about being close, how she wouldn’t leave him.”

  “And Henry’s class war. His need to be rich, respected. Probably rubbed off on his son.”

  “And if Tanya left, she’d take her cash, her butler, and all the privileges the family had enjoyed over the years.”

  “And even Henry told us how much James liked having that butler around.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Alicia said. “Do you know how much they cost? I could do with one.”

  Murphy made another of his “hmm” noises. “So why these others? Why the other girls?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Your ‘trigger’. The prospect of losing her set him off.”

  “Not quite. The difference is subtle.” She asked one of the new guys, “Has the file on James Windsor gone yet?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “That whole section on the rich girl’s kidnap is on its way.”

  She clapped Murphy on the arm and rattled her keys. “Time to make loud noises and flash our lights at motorists.”

  Alicia pulled the Vauxhall out of the station and blasted the siren at everything that got in her way. The light on the dash revolved and Murphy held on to the door handle as well as checking his seatbelt every few minutes. Alicia sat close up to the wheel, her short legs working the pedals as skilfully as any advanced driver he’d met.

  Out of the city centre, traffic was lighter, but coming up to Headingly, where students would be starting their lunchtime drinking sessions, it snarled up again. Alicia tore down the wrong side of the road, grinning, glancing at Murphy and quoting lines from films like Mad Max and The Fast and the Furious. Cars pulled over for her, and others swerved to avoid her coming at them head-on. A journey that would take most people forty-five minutes, Alicia slashed to ten.

  When she cut the engine in Sheerton’s car park, Murphy peeled his fingers from the door handle and pretended he wasn’t even remotely fazed by the experience.

  Just another day at the office.

  Inside, Alicia followed directions to the new operations room and Murphy tried his best to keep up. He decided he’d take up jogging once this was done with. Maybe even yoga.

  When they arrived, PC Rebecca Ndlove, a new recruit they’d benefited from thanks to Siobhan’s abduction, greeted him with a nod and moved away from Alicia, back to whatever she was doing before they arrived. The room was vast compared with the operations closet at Glenpark, and bright and air-conditioned.

  It even boasted a view of the car park.

  Alicia quickly located James Windsor’s file.

  “Derek Doherty,” Alicia said, “the guy who worked with Welly on the case, he wrote up a profile on each suspect, but they were barely touched because Welly cleared them all. But listen to this.

  “James Windsor was in trouble with the police aged eight. He and some friends, hanging around the streets, tying fireworks to cats, all standard thuggish behaviour. At the time, his father was looking bankruptcy right in the eye, so James was neglected, finding new friends, friends from school. They got in trouble some more—vandalism, verbal abuse of OAPs, more animal/firework experiments. But the money troubles eased with the sale of more land and when Henry was able to lavish James with toys and attention again, his troubles ceased. Or at least went off the books.

  “In his teenage years, he grew interested in war. His passion was Vietnam, and—bloody hell!—he even built a scale POW camp in the grounds of the estate. Worked out, built up his body, obsessed with fitness. He trapped and imprisoned all sorts of animals. Badgers with foxes, chickens and ducks, dogs with other dogs, and wagered with his mates who would win.

  “This all came out in the wake of Tanya’s disappearance, from an old school friend who stopped playing with James the day he suggested attaching razorblades to a fox’s paw and a badger’s head—to make it more interesting. Someone buried this information.”

  “Wellington,” Murphy said.

  Alicia continued, “The RSPCA ripped down the structure following an ‘anonymous’ tip, and the prosecution went away after the charity received a sizable donation. But his fascination with war continued. First and Second World War recruitment posters filled his walls, some from Vietnam and Korea. Photos copied from the internet on his PC: napalmed children, blood and guts from all over the world, all of it one big amusement.

  “We should have been onto this from the start,” Alicia said. “The animals, the fascination with violence. It’s first year psychology. He should have been suspect number one all along.”

  “Practice,” Murphy said.

  “It was only when Tanya lost her parents and moved in with them that he began to calm down. His excitement of having a butler who lived through a real live war was soon abated when Tanya had a word with him, explaining that Lawrence’s experiences in Iraq were still a source of great anguish and pain for him. James understood. Or so he claimed.”

  “Where’d this background intel come from?”

  “Doherty again. Before Wellington nixed him.” She returned to the file. “Under Tanya’s influence, he knuckled down at school, achieving five As, an A-star, and a B, a vast improvement from the straight Cs predicted in his mocks. She was good for him.”

  Murphy paced, putting it together. “All this was exactly why Doherty had been so hard on James in the interview. Wellington played good cop, but really he was protecting the lad. He reigned Doherty in when he got close to the bone. When James insisted Tanya loved him and that she’d never leave him, that’s when Wellington aborted the session. Doherty was close, and Wellington needed him gone.” He stopped mid-pace and shook his head. “I remember the original file. No major detail, just the facts. He threw Doherty off the case. Doherty requested a transfer out of Glenpark a week later.”

  Alicia said, “Tanya was someone James had been lacking. Only a few years older, but Tanya was the mother figure he craved.”

  “And what happened to his real mother?” Murphy asked.

  “She died soon after they sold the park to the council,” Cleaver said, entering behind them. He was in possession of the file that contained the financial records of Wellington’s share dividends.

  Murphy and Alicia turned. “What park?” they said together.

  Cleaver grinned at them. “A slice of land that got incorporated into Roundhay Park. Where they found the Davenport girl. And guess what else? The family used to own the land where Pippa Bradshaw was found too, but was sold to the council in the sixties, where they built a bunch of crappy houses.”

  “And the railway lines?” Murphy said.

  Cleaver nodded, still grinning. He handed Murphy the documents. “They made a lot of money in the rag trade, at least H
enry’s father and grandfather did. Owned all that land, but sold it off after the war.”

  “People,” Alicia said, waving James’s file in the air until the men arranging the room were as attentive as Cleaver and Murphy. “This is why I said being dumped wasn’t the trigger for all this. The trigger was something else. He held her for so long he wanted to please her. Bring her a friend. The trigger wasn’t being rejected by Tanya. The trigger was the girl—Pippa—rejecting Tanya. He couldn’t bare to think anyone didn’t love her like he did.”

  “So why kill Tanya?” Cleaver asked.

  “Any number of reasons. Probably she begged him not to kill Katie. Maybe Katie didn’t reject Tanya, but Tanya rejected Katie.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Murphy said. “The ‘why’ is irrelevant. The ‘who’ is what we needed.”

  “And,” Alicia said, waving the file, “I think I can safely declare we have a prime suspect.”

  She wanted to jump up and down and squeal with delight. It was all to do with James, his sick obsession with animals merging with an obsession with his cousin. And the task force was motoring.

  Warrants were needed and needed soon. Now it was too much for even the most connected brass to reject. A psych profile, a disappeared suspect, a sturdy-looking aviary where it was stated, on record, that the disappeared suspect used to torture animals.

  Alicia didn’t want to wait, but this needed doing right. They still didn’t know for certain where he was holding the girls, and if they went in too soon he might never tell; he could kill them or leave them to starve to death and start again.

  Cleaver searched for news on James’s mother, for a photo, anything, but it was one thing Doherty hadn’t been thorough about—dead people didn’t need a profile. Murphy set Cleaver the task of researching those dead people.

  “Where’s Sergeant Ball?” Alicia asked.

  “Here,” Ball said, walking in eating a yoghurt. “What do you need?”

  “Surveillance,” Murphy said. “Right now. Get out to the Windsor estate and watch it. Radio in with anything. Use the binoculars from up high. There’s no mobile reception in the valley, so stay in touch. You’re looking for an IC-one male, big build, twenty-one years old but may appear a little older.”