Behind Dead Eyes

by Howard Linskey

  In her note Helen had chosen a neutral approach and attempted to hand some power back to Amy. Though the judge had, controversially, allowed her history with Richard to be mentioned in court, she had not been called to give evidence for either the prosecution or the defence. Helen wanted to give her the opportunity to speak about the man she had once been intimate with; to condemn him or help to save him but ensure that either way, the choice was hers. She had folded the note, written the name of the café on the blank side and slid it under Amy’s door.

  The woman Tom described from his interview with Mark Birkett was a free-spirited soul who was too vibrant and carefree for an immature and controlling Richard Bell. Time and circumstances had altered Amy Riordan; Helen could tell that from the moment she first saw the woman and she could see it now as she watched Amy leave her apartment block and make her way cautiously to the café. She was dressed as if to hide her looks in blue jeans and baggy jumper, sleeves pulled down over her hands and balled in her fists. What the hell had happened to Amy in the intervening years? thought Helen. As the other woman opened the door of the café, she sensed she was about to find out.

  He drove one-handed, rubbing the chafed skin around his throat with the other hand. Tom kept reliving the moment when Freddie Holt lunged for him. Was it murder he had seen in the older man’s eyes and what would he have done if Tom had been incapable of fighting him off? More to the point, had Tom been given a glimpse of what he had done to his wife? Perhaps both Annie and Richard Bell were right about that. Freddie Holt had a strong motive and hadn’t tolerated it when Tom reminded him of the fact.

  How could he have been so stupid? Tom had been deliberately goading Holt, looking to get a reaction from the businessman, testing his feelings for Rebecca to gauge if they were real. He would surely be more likely to let something slip in an emotional state but Tom had woefully misread the situation. Holt was a street fighter who grew up swinging punches. Tom had meant to press Freddie but only to knock him off balance, not push him right over the edge.

  With time before his next appointment, Tom headed back into the city to replace his broken Dictaphone. He’d had a good few years out of the tape recorder and it had seen him through many an interview. Now though it was broken and obsolete. Tom knew just how it felt.

  Amy Riordan sipped from a cup of fruit tea and spoke in a very quiet voice, as if Richard Bell was sitting at the next table. Helen had to lean forward to hear her. Amy was still an extremely attractive woman but she looked incredibly tired. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t let you in,’ she told Helen, ‘I’ve had some problems lately.’ She didn’t elaborate on what they were.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Helen said, ‘thanks for seeing me.’ She explained why she was there, including the role Tom Carney was playing in their investigation but stressing that nobody was saying Richard was innocent just yet.

  ‘Richard has a sweet side and a dark side,’ Amy told Helen, ‘he is capable of love but it has to be on his terms. That’s why I broke it off with him, but he’s not used to rejection. He takes it very badly. It brings out the worst in him.’

  ‘Richard wanted to control you,’ said Helen.

  Amy shook her head. ‘He wanted to own me. It was great at first but then he started making comments like “You’re not wearing that are you?” and “Who was that you were talking to?” ’ Her face showed her anger now. ‘I was nineteen, for God’s sake. I was enjoying life and he wanted to keep me tethered to him.’ She sat back in her chair and started twirling a strand of hair in a nervous, repetitive gesture. ‘It got much worse. I don’t think he even realises his behaviour isn’t normal.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s always the way; for some reason men get obsessed with me.’ This might have sounded egotistical from another woman but not the way Amy Riordan said it, like it was a curse. ‘Why can’t they just be with someone without having to own them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Helen, quietly. It seemed that Amy Riordan had rarely known anything other than this kind of relationship and it had damaged her.

  Amy looked desperate then. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she pleaded, as if the other woman could provide her with an answer.

  The shop had changed since Tom had last been in there. The owner used to provide recording equipment for journalists, secretaries and clerks who took dictation, with a sideline in 35mm cameras and rolls of film, but lately he’d branched out and the small shop looked like something Q from the James Bond films would have been proud of. The technology leap in the past decade meant that machines, which were the preserve of large companies or wealthy individuals in the eighties were now available to anyone with a bit of disposable income.

  The Dictaphones, or personal recording devices, as the owner insisted on calling them, were stored in a locked glass cabinet and the prices varied wildly. ‘I just want a bog-standard one,’ Tom insisted. ‘I’m a journalist, not a spy. What’s this?’ he asked, picking up something that looked like a cross between a chubby pen and a torch.

  ‘A nanny cam.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s the latest thing from America,’ the owner enthused. ‘You just put it somewhere discreet and you can secretly record the room. It’s called a nanny cam so you can check that the nanny is looking after your kids properly and not harming them.’

  ‘So you’re filming a young girl without her knowing?’

  ‘Aye,’ he admitted.

  ‘Sounds a bit creepy to me. What’s all this stuff?’ Tom was pointing to a second cabinet.

  ‘Covert listening devices.’

  ‘Bugs?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Everything is so tiny,’ marvelled Tom.

  ‘That’s the future. We’ve got high-res surveillance cameras and voice-recognition audio recording devices.’

  ‘I just need something to record interviews,’ Tom told him. ‘I want an old-fashioned, battery operated, reliable tape recorder with buttons on it.’

  ‘Buttons?’

  ‘On, off and record and possibly pause – but nothing flashier than that,’ Tom said, ‘got it?’

  ‘Aye, I’ve got it.’ The owner did not conceal his disappointment. ‘I might still have one of those,’ he said gloomily, ‘out the back.’

  It had taken some time for Helen to assure Amy Riordan she was not the cause of the verbal and physical abuse she had received from several men over the years.

  ‘It’s not your fault. You’re just very unlucky that’s all, but you’ll find someone …’

  ‘I don’t want to find someone,’ she said sharply and Helen decided to curtail that subject straight away. She had to remind herself she was here for a reason and needed information from Amy.

  ‘When Richard Bell slapped you …’

  ‘He hit me. It wasn’t a slap!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Helen. ‘When he hit you …’

  ‘He punched me,’ said Amy. ‘He was immediately sorry and begged me not to report him but I did. The police were pretty good about it. I think they put the fear of God into him. He never bothered me again. I thought he was going to drop out at one point. He stopped turning up at his lectures or tutorials until Annie apparently dragged him in with her one day.’

  ‘What did you think of her back then?’

  ‘I never even noticed her,’ said Amy, ‘not at first. Annie seemed to just appear in Richard’s life and then she was there all the time … What kind of woman takes on a man when he has been dumped by his girlfriend for hitting her?’

  ‘Do you think she genuinely loved him?’ Helen asked.

  ‘I think she loved the project he became,’ conceded Amy. ‘She liked to think she was taking on a hopeless case and redeeming him. I don’t know if that’s love.’

  ‘And did Richard love her?’

  ‘Course not,’ said Amy, ‘he loved me – or should I say he was obsessed with me at the point she pushed her way into his life. She was picking up damaged goods. He was just grateful because she saved him.’

 
; ‘That’s why he cheated on her,’ asked Helen, ‘because he never really loved her?’

  ‘Possibly. I just think he went back to his old ways. I hurt him so he decided he would avoid emotional attachment. He had his low-maintenance new girlfriend who became his wife and he had others on the side to satisfy his appetite for sex. I think it was all a way to avoid intimacy so he could never get hurt again.’

  ‘But he hurt you, not the other way around.’

  ‘He hit me because I hurt him,’ Amy explained. ‘He couldn’t handle being rejected. Don’t you get it? There was no way Annie was ever going to reject him, no matter what he did. She’s still standing by him even now, according to the newspapers. When he started seeing her he knew she would never dump him, so he’d never be hurt like that again. Now do you see?’

  ‘I do see. You make him sound very cold.’

  ‘Oh, he can be.’

  ‘Do you think he killed Rebecca Holt?’

  ‘When I broke up with Richard he called me some terrible things, he hurt me, hit me, even wished me dead. Did he mean that at the time? I don’t know. Was Rebecca Holt a re-run of our relationship with a different, far worse ending? It seems so. I have spent a lot of time going over all of that in my head. I worry that it’s my fault.’

  ‘How could it be your fault?’

  ‘The police asked me if I wanted to press charges when he punched me. I didn’t want to ruin his whole life so I let them give him a caution and the university allowed him to stay on. If they’d prosecuted him for assault he might have been convicted. Don’t you see? He’d have been kicked off his course and Annie wouldn’t have been able to save him. He never would have married her or even met Rebecca Holt so he could never have killed her. That’s why I can’t help blaming myself.’

  ‘It isn’t your fault, Amy. You couldn’t have prevented this.’

  ‘Sometimes I worry I will go mad because I find myself wondering … all the time … if he did kill Rebecca and whether he was capable of killing me back then but just didn’t go through with it for some reason. I keep thinking I should have done more to make sure he could never hurt another woman … that her death is all my fault.’ The tears were flowing freely now.

  In her distress, Amy’s voice grew louder and other people in the café started to notice the woman who was crying by the window. ‘I get so frightened when I think about what he did to her. I keep thinking about it over and over again …’ she sobbed ‘… because I know it could have been me …’ She repeated the words in disbelief: ‘It could have been me.’

  Tom returned home for a while to eat a sandwich and test his new, second-generation Dictaphone, which to his gratification was a no-frills machine similar to his old one. He put it to one side and settled down to make some phone calls.

  His first was to the Meadowlands home. Tom spoke to a man called Dean who told him there was no way he would be allowed to interview the girls there, no matter who he claimed to be working for. Detectives had already been to Meadowlands following the disappearance of Sandra Jarvis and Dean did not want the traumatised girls in his care disturbed again. Although this was galling, he couldn’t actually fault the man. At least Dean was looking out for the girls in his care. However, that didn’t help Tom; he would have to figure out another way to get access to them.

  There was something else that was troubling Tom after he hung up. If detectives had already visited Meadowlands in connection with the disappearance of Sandra Jarvis, how come there was no mention of this in any of the case files?

  His next call turned out to be just as fruitless.

  ‘Physics Department,’ answered the man on the other end of the line, ‘Doctor Alexander speaking.’

  ‘Professor Alexander …’ Tom began

  ‘That’s Doctor,’ he cut in, ‘I’m a lecturer, not a professor.’ It sounded as if he himself was acutely aware of the importance of this distinction, even if Tom was not.

  ‘Doctor Alexander,’ Tom corrected himself, ‘I would like to speak with Professor Matthews please.’

  ‘And may I ask why you are trying to get in touch with the professor?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s private.’ Tom didn’t want to admit he was a journalist following up a murder case, needing to cross-examine its star expert witness. He knew academic institutions could easily be spooked where their reputation was concerned. ‘But it is extremely important that I speak to Professor Matthews. There really is a great deal resting on it. Might it be possible to have a quick word with him?’

  ‘Well as a matter of fact,’ the tone was indignant, ‘it wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m afraid Professor Matthews is no longer with us.’

  ‘Are you saying the professor has left to work at some other university?’

  ‘No,’ the tone was blunt, ‘I’m saying that he’s dead.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘Don’t call me sir in here,’ Kane warned Bradshaw, ‘it’s my local boozer.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Bradshaw but he couldn’t ever imagine being comfortable using Kane’s first name, even in here.

  The mentoring, which consisted of a few platitudes about policing and a number of home truths about the limitations of the legal system, had already concluded by the time the second pint was pulled. DCI Kane didn’t seem to mind that he might be almost over the limit but his home was just round the corner.

  Bradshaw wasted no time bringing his DCI up to date with both cases but Kane seemed distracted that afternoon. Perhaps he thought he had already done his bit by assigning resources, in the form of Bradshaw and Tom Carney, to assist the councillor. Whatever the reason, he seemed keener to talk about Bradshaw’s domestic situation than ongoing investigations. ‘You still seeing Debbie Harry?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Blondie? You know, what’s-her-name.’ And he clicked his fingers impatiently for Bradshaw to provide him with an answer for once again he had forgotten her name.

  ‘Karen? Yes, s—’ He stopped himself from saying sir just in time ‘… I am. She’s moving in actually.’ He tried to announce it casually.

  ‘Really? I thought you said you weren’t shacked up together.’

  ‘We weren’t,’ confirmed Bradshaw, ‘but we’re going to be.’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because when I mentioned it the other day you reacted like a scalded cat. I thought you were more likely to give the poor lass the heave-ho than an engagement ring.’

  ‘We’re not getting engaged.’ Was Kane being deliberately dim? Bradshaw wondered.

  ‘Well, as good as, if you’re moving in together. You can’t finish with a lass if she’s living with you and you can’t date other people either because it would be pretty difficult to bring them back to your place. You might not see it as permanent but she bloody will, so you’d best wise up.’

  Bradshaw realised Kane was right. Bradshaw had assumed this was the next stage in their relationship but if they didn’t get on she could just move out again, yet Karen had reacted as if he had handed her an engagement ring.

  ‘Yep, it will all change now,’ Kane told him.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Sex will go out of the window for starters. She’ll spend all her time sitting on your sofa watching soap operas, dressed in her pyjamas and moaning if you want to watch the football. She won’t have to make an effort anymore, so she’ll probably put on at least two stone.’ Kane saw the look on Bradshaw’s face. ‘What’s the matter, man? I’m only pulling your leg!’

  ‘It’s just I never really thought of it as being permanent.’ Bradshaw took a long sip of his pint.

  ‘Well that’s alright, lad. Most of us blokes don’t, do we? That’s why we need the women in our lives to give us a bit of a pull in the right direction. Who hasn’t been on the receiving end of the where’s-this-relationship-going question? If it was down to us none of us would ever end walkin
g down the aisle, but you’ve got a cracker there. Everyone in the station fancies her.’

  ‘Yeah but … what if …?’ He couldn’t even complete the question.

  ‘She isn’t the one?’ Bradshaw’s silence spoke volumes. ‘Ha! Don’t worry about that, man. There’s no such bloody thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I used to be like you,’ said Kane suddenly. ‘I know you find that hard to believe but I was, many moons ago. I was the romantic type see. I used to believe in all that guff once upon a time, you know, red roses on her birthday, wining and dining the lady, parachuting down with a box of Milk Tray in my teeth, all that shite.’

  ‘But you don’t now?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘and I stopped believing in it long before I reached your age.’ He regarded the younger man carefully for a moment. ‘There’s no such thing as the perfect bird, you know. They can be great fun, good company, kind-hearted, beautiful and filthy in bed but you’ll still always find something wrong with them if you look for it.’

  ‘So what’s the secret then,’ asked Bradshaw, ‘since you’re handing out the advice?’

  ‘Don’t look for it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly that. Nobody’s perfect so just accept that and don’t rock the boat. You’re looking at me right now like I am the least romantic bloke in the world but that isn’t so. I am telling you that you can set your sights too high and mess up what you’ve got already and I ought to know. When a man who has been divorced twice gives you some advice, you should listen to it and take heed. It’ll spare you a lot of aggro.’

  ‘So, why did you get divorced? If you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Strictly between us?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Stupid reasons. The first time, with Janet, it wasn’t the job or the long hours or all the bad things we see. I’ll tell you something shall I. Most of the guys on the job who say that’s why their marriages broke up are lying. I mean for some of them it is undoubtedly true that the force caused them marital problems, I’ll grant you that, but with a fair few of them it’s just a handy excuse because they couldn’t be arsed to keep their marriage going and they don’t want to admit it.’