*****
It was 8.30pm by the time Tom reached Coppersfield. It was already dark and most places had closed. He could smell the roast chicken as he entered the old house, he sent up a silent thank you to anyone listening for the homeliness that Lee had brought to the house for Jess.
“Hello, ladies, how are you?” he said as he bent over the couch to give Jess a kiss on the head.
Jess lifted her foot slightly and wiggled her toes to show her newfound mobility. “Look, Dad, I should be back at school by Monday.”
“I’ve kept you some dinner, Tom if you want it,” Lee said.
“Oh, you’re an angel,” he said as he loosened his tie and threw it over the back of the chair.
Lee’s mobile began to ring and she changed direction from the kitchen back to the living room for her bag.
“It’s in the oven, help yourself,” she threw over her shoulder as she answered the phone.
“Hi, Lee, it’s, Elsie here, on my way home to night I saw a sign at John Caulder's place. He is having a ladies night this Friday coming. A medium and some card readers and he’s throwing in a finger buffet, so there’ll be food, do you fancy it?”
“Eh, I …”
“That’s great, I got you a ticket already, so do you want me to come to you or do you want to just meet there. Did I mention there would be food?”
Lee smiled. “Yes you did, Else. Ok, but there had better not be anything too unnerving, I’ve had enough of that sort of thing to last a life time.”
“Oh I’m sure it will be just for a laugh, entertainment, nothing more.”
Lee hung up the phone and smiled at the conversation. She had her reservations, things had been strange around here lately and she did not like it. Maybe a night out was just what she needed.
Tom was taking a warm plate from the oven and pouring some gravy over the potatoes when Lee joined him. They shared a laugh at Elsie’s evening from beyond the veil as it had been called on the flyer.
“How did you do today?” asked Lee referring to the case.
“I spoke with Samantha Caulder. She did not have anything to do with what happened to Angela, but she did mention something about Angela being annoyed at someone. She thought it was a man. And I met P.C South’s girlfriend. She is a wreck. She won’t talk about Coppersfield at all.”
“I’m not surprised; she did loose her fiancée here.”
“Yes, well, first thing tomorrow I’m going to chase up Jill Patterson’s next of kin, and I think I will get a copy of the post-mortem for Dave south.”
“Surely, Tom, you can’t think what happened to P.C South was anything more than a tragic accident?” Lee walked over and eased the kitchen door over a little to stop Jess from hearing too much.
“I don’t know anything for sure right now, Lee. I just know that there seems to be a lot of coincidences and I don’t do coincidences.”
Lee could feel a chill settle over her at the implications of what Tom was saying. Coppersfield had been her home all of her life; this was like something out of a book.
After dinner Tom retreated with his papers into the study at the back of the house. Lee and Jess were talking their way through the Twilight saga. Jess had been talking a lot about her mother lately. She seemed to be missing her more and more.
“Your mother had great awards for the work she did with patients suffering emotional traumas you know.”
“Yes, I know. We used to have them on the wall back in Edinburgh, but I haven’t seen them since we moved here.”
“Where are they?” Lee said.
“I think they’re in Dad’s study. There are a lot of things in there that he hasn’t unpacked yet”
“Would you like them to be back on display?” Lee asked.
Jess nodded. She missed seeing her mother’s things around the house since they moved.
“Aunt Lee? Why don’t you stay tonight, Dad will probably be working until all hours in the study, we could watch TV all night and talk about when mum and you were kids.” For Jess, having Lee there was a little taste of how it used to be. In the mornings, she could smell Lee’s perfume as it floated from the bathroom, in that small window between sleep and wakefulness she could be back in the kitchen in Edinburgh and her mother would be preparing breakfast and packing her lunch for school. For Lee, this was a ‘get out of jail free’ card, she hadn’t felt fully comfortable at her own home since the night Elsie came round and introduced her to the other side.
“I suppose I could, are you going to go to your own bed tonight?”
Jess wriggled on the sofa. “I don’t like my room, I prefer it down here.”
“Well, I for one would much rather go up to bed. There isn’t anything wrong with your room, Jess, you do know that don’t you?”
Jess paused. “Neither you nor Dad saw the shadow in the corner.”
“Honey, there wasn’t anything there to see. It was just a bad dream. You were only just waking up from it, you know, your mother had a great imagination. Maybe you are going to take after her, do writing or something.”
“Aunt Lee, I didn’t imagine it. She’s there all the time, if I can’t see her I can always feel her. I thought it was Olivia, but now I’m not so sure.”
Lee was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the conversation. She didn’t want to sound patronizing, the way Tom often did when he dismissed Lee’s feelings, nor did she wish to reaffirm what Jess was experiencing and make it so real that Jess wouldn’t go upstairs again.
“Look, I will go and get changed, and then we can watch some telly. But at some point in the night, I will be going up to bed. You can let me know if you want to do the same. ok?”
Jess threw her head back and smiled. “You’re a braver woman than I, Aunt Lee.”
With sleeping arrangements agreed, Lee went to the back of the house and knocked on the study door. Tom was at the desk studying the case notes. He knew there was something staring him in the face; he just could not see what it was.
“Tom, I’m going to spend the night here, so I’ll get sorted for bed ok.”
“Sure, that’s fine, Lee.”
“Tom, do you still have Sara’s things here, her diplomas and her awards?”
Tom nodded to a pile of boxes in the far corner of the room. A slight shift in atmosphere made Lee tread carefully.
“Jess was saying how she missed seeing her mum’s things around the house. If you like I could go through the boxes for you and get out some of the pictures and things?”
Tom pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose and sighed. He knew he would have to unpack them eventually; he had just kept putting it off.
The box, Tom.
“I’ll have a look through the stuff this week and get out some pictures for her.” His voice was low and heavy.
Tom, the box.
“Ok, Jess will be pleased.”
Do it now.
Lee left the study, and she and Jess settled down to tell stories of a time long since past. Tom continued to peruse the case notes.
It bothered him that one girl was a red head and the rest were blonde. He did not know why this niggled away at him, but none the less, it did.
Tom!
He knew only too well that killers, although they had a preference, they often deviated from what they preferred. Sometimes simply because of what was available. Yet for some reason, the change in hair colour bothered him more than it should.
Every couple of minutes his eyes would wander from the case to the boxes in the corner of the room. Stretching his arms out and leaning back in the chair he stood up and wandered over to them. A charge of electricity went through the room, Tom, oblivious to this lifted the first box off the pile and carried it over to the desk. The box contained some shorthand personal notes. Observations that Sara had made. Most of her patient files had been kept by the clinic she worked for when they cleared her office. These notes were simply things she had noted herself.
The other box contained her persona
l files. Sara had also run a class on creative writing. She kept the files from that class at home. She worked out of the local university at night and some days from the local community centre. She had referred some of her patients from her clinic to various different writing classes. Allowing them to free up their minds and write what ever they choose. It was often therapeutic, although they did not usually come to her class; they often thanked her for recommending this unusual therapy.
Tom closed the box and retrieved the next one. This one had her diplomas and certificates that Jess wanted to hang on the wall again. The picture that Sara had kept on her desk was of Jess, Tom and herself, smiling happily in the garden of their Edinburgh home. Tom held the picture, capturing that moment again, God, he missed her so much.
He took the pictures out and laid them aside for Jess. The third box held her books, profiling 101, profiling violent crime, and so on.
Now these could help him, he thought.
At the bottom of the box lay a small silver tape recorder. Sarah used a Dictaphone to take notes when she was working. Tom lifted it out and turned it over in his hand. He had not seen this before. He had not heard Sara’s voice in over five years. His heart began to beat a little faster and his head began to ache.
Hear me, Tom!
Listen to us!
Hear me.
Just for a moment, a rush of excitement went through him at his new discovery, the possibility of hearing her voice after five years, then the thought of feeling that dreadful loss all over again. The fear of going back there began to creep in. He turned the small device over in his hand as he weighed the implications of it. Eventually he leaned over and placed it in the top drawer of his desk.
The lights in the study began to flicker, then darkness. The shrill screams from the living room told Tom that it was not just his light that had gone out, but the whole house. He fumbled over to the bookcase and retrieved his torch. A sharp beam of light stretched out in front of him.
“Calm down, it’s just a fuse,” he called in the direction of the screams.
“We’re in here, Tom.” Came back the forcibly calm yet shrill voice of Lee.
A dark shadow cut in front of his torch light casting a shape on the wall at the end of the hall way. Tom stopped. “Is that you, Lee?”
“We’re in the living room, Tom.”
Tom could feel his neck bristle as he stood there trying to make sense of what he thought he saw. He opened the cupboard door under the stairs and with the flick of a switch; the house was flooded with light once again. He hurried in the direction of the shadow and checked the kitchen, the unused dinning room and the lounge before doubling back to the living room. There was no one there, no one in the house. It was obviously a trick of the light.
“Are you, girls ok?”
“Hardly! I hate this place Dad. You don’t listen to me, it’s creepy!”
Tom walked over to Jess, her eyes like saucers clutching Topaz close to her.
“It’s all right, Honey,” he said with a slight chuckle. “It’s an old house; it will blow a fuse from time to time. And I do listen to you. The house is not creepy; you just have a very fertile imagination. I hope one day you will put it to good use and write a book, let me live in the lap of luxury.”
Lee, feeling somewhat shaken by the episode resumed her usual duties of making hot chocolate when things became a bit bizarre. Tom reassured Jess and headed back along the hall to his study.
The case files on his desk were in disarray. Lying on the floor was a picture of Jill Patterson. Tom bent down to pickup the papers. He sat back in his chair and began to read the notes on Jill. She was only twenty-two when she went missing. Like the rest, she was a pretty, petite, blonde girl. This was the girl for whom neither he nor Danny had been able to contact next of kin. Tom glanced at his watch. It was already 22.15pm. He read on. The girl had gone missing from the Lands End pub in Edinburgh. There was very little information beyond that. Again, the police had considered that she had run away. Tom looked at the contact details again and decided it was not too late to call, after all, they may be pleased to know someone is looking into her disappearance again. He dialled the number expecting to leave what would be another unanswered message.
“Hello.” The voice of an older woman answered the other end.
“Hello, my name is Detective Sergeant Tom Hunter; I’m looking to speak with Jane Patterson.”
There was a pause at the other end. “Speaking.”
Tom explained that he was looking in to her daughter’s case and would be interested in any information she may have leading up to the time of her disappearance. Again, the woman at the other end of the phone paused.
“I received your messages, Mr Hunter; I’ve been away and only got home this evening. I do not think I can tell you much. Jill had moved out around a month before she vanished. You know what girls are like at that age, all independent. I had not heard from her for a few weeks. I got a call from her flat mate saying she thought something was wrong, I went to the police and the rest you know.”
“Had you fallen out?”
Another pause. “We didn’t always see eye to eye. She did not like her stepfather much and that often caused some problems. But no. It wasn’t unusual for me to go for long spells without hearing from her; it was just the way she was.”
“Do you think your daughter just moved on, or do you think something happened to her?”
“I have thought about this many times over the years. I think if Jill was out there, I would have heard something at some point from her.”
“Would it be possible to meet with you, Mrs Patterson?”
“Eh, to tell you the truth, I can’t tell you anything more than I have. It has been twenty-nine years since Jill went missing; I do not want to go back down that road, Detective. I think the best person to speak to would be her flat mate. She saw more of her than I did at that time.”
“Do you know where I can reach her?” Tom said.
“No, I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch with the girl after Jill. No reason to.”
“Did your daughter have any connection to a place called Coppersfield, Mrs Patterson?”
The woman thought for a moment. “No I don’t think so why, oh wait, I think her flat mate did, or she had family there. Something like that.”
Tom could feel a flurry of excitement. He thanked the woman for her time and made a note in the file that she was of no use. He felt a deep sadness that a young woman could disappear and her family have no great urgency to find answers as to why. He put in brackets that the stepfather may be worth looking at if she turns out not to be connected to the other victims.
He flicked through the file to find the name of the flat mate that Mrs Patterson had mentioned. The name had been buried as though she were insignificant in the file. Eva Brook. Tom said the name over again out-loud. It sounded familiar. He thought about were he had heard that name. He went on line to track her down. Most people have facebook pages or myspace and they do not realize how much information a stranger, who knows what he is doing can actually find on them. Eva Brook, was not a common name and before long, he had found a page belonging to a fifty-one-year-old woman. Much to his disappointment, in this case there was not a lot of information to be had. He lifted the phone and called Danny.
Tom explained that the family were of no use and seemed to have minimum interest in solving the disappearance.
“Don’t you find that strange, Sarge?”
“Yes, if she turns out not to be connected to this case then I think the stepfather may be worth a look, but first we have to rule her out. Could you get me anything you can find on Eva Brook. She was Jill’s flat mate and the one who informed her family that she was missing. I would like to speak with her, see if there is anything she can remember about that time.”
“Sure, I’ll see what I can get hold off. Are you thinking of taking this up to the DI yet?”
“Yeah, I think I’ll wait for the PM on Dave
South first. Just see if there is anything there.”
Tom said goodbye and hung up the phone.
*****
The Sunday morning dew glistened in the spring sun. Danny leaned back in his chair and watched the early morning birds in the garden of the police house. He now understood why Tom did not talk about his late wife. Danny had always assumed it was a car accident that had claimed her, he had no idea how freakish and horrific her death had really been. Danny shuddered at the thought of explaining this to a young girl. Jess would have only been around ten years old when it happened. The closed casket would deny them the opportunity to give the child real closure.
He looked at the pile of papers he had printed off. He hadn’t decided whether or not to tell Tom of the connection he had found between Eva Brook and his late wife or just give him the files to read through himself. Danny rapped his fingers on the desk while he thought of the best way to broach the subject. Eventually he got ready and decided to wing it. He would see what kind of mood Tom was in when he got to the house and then he would make a decision.
Danny drove through the sleepy village and headed up to Hill House. There were not many people about at 8am on a Sunday morning. Even the churchgoers did not surface until nearer ten.
He gathered the file together and rang the bell. Tom answered looking unshaven and wearing sweat pants.
“You’re an early bird. Come in. Coffee?”
“Sure. I got the information you wanted on Eva Brook.”
Tom plodded into the kitchen and switched on the percolator.
Echoes of the Past Page 10
