Follow the Leader
Page 14
‘It’s a connection we have.’ Allie wouldn’t be drawn into speculation. ‘I’m not sure how relevant it will become.’
‘Should we be worried?’
Allie didn’t reply at first. A commotion along the corridor gave her a bit of breathing space. Ahead of them, the custody desk was dealing with a noisy problem.
She glanced back at him. ‘People are getting tetchy.’
‘Want me to run anything specific in the paper?’
‘Not yet, but you’ll be the first to know.’ She looked at him; his blue eyes were attentive. ‘A murder every other day – we don’t want the public to think there is another one likely.’
‘Okay, I get your gist.’ He nodded. ‘Everyone’s suggesting links but I’ll try and keep it from being too obvious.’
Allie smiled her gratitude. The Sentinel had a daily circulation of forty-two thousand print copies – with many more thousands of hits online. How that could fuel the fires of the rumour mill if this case were reported improperly or irresponsibly, she mused.
‘This thing – that “Eve” could be the beginning of a word?’ she said to him quietly as people came along the corridor and past them. ‘It might be something and nothing so we need to keep the emphasis on that away from the public for a while longer if we can. It’s bad enough having three murders in a week without anyone panicking that there are going to be more.’
Simon looked up from his notepad. ‘You think there might be another one soon?’ With nothing more forthcoming, he nodded. ‘Okay.’
Allie nodded too. It was a mutual sense of understanding that they had. She would get details kept from the press: he, in return, would get first call once a story became hot. It had worked out well over the years as trust had grown between them.
‘You have a bigger story brewing?’ he probed one last time.
Allie sighed in frustration. ‘I have a feeling that we’re likely to find out sooner rather than later.’
The noise was ear-splitting when Allie entered the incident room again. Phones ringing, officers talking, officers shouting, hands waving, paper flapping about. All available staff had been drafted in – calls were being answered and logged as quickly as possible.
Nick beckoned Allie across to his desk before she went to sit back at her own. ‘Can you take stock of what we have as it comes in?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll transfer the incident number to my desk so I can take some calls too.’
‘And can you see to it that anything important is listed and on my desk?’
‘Of course.’ Allie recoiled slightly, putting his overreaction down to the urgency of the case rather than assuming he felt she was incapable of thinking for herself.
‘There’s a lot of pressure on us right now. Let’s just hope there’s something useful before . . .’ Nick stopped.
Allie nodded. ‘Better get to it, then,’ she told him. ‘I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.’
Chapter Eighteen
Joe heard about Frank Dwyer when he arrived at work, and it had shaken him. There was no doubt about it: he knew all three victims.
Frank Dwyer had been his P.E. teacher. Dirty Dwyer, they’d called him – he’d had a problem keeping his hands to himself, if the rumours at the time were true. He racked his brain for any connection with someone name Eve, but he couldn’t recall anyone from school.
It played on his mind for the rest of the day and it was the first thing that Rhian mentioned the moment he got in that evening.
‘Have you heard the news?’ She followed him into the kitchen once he’d hung up his jacket. ‘I can’t believe there’s been another one. It’s beginning to get a bit scary.’
‘Yeah, I heard. I’ll catch up with it on the TV once I’ve had a shower.’ Joe opened his wallet and pulled out a few notes.
‘What’s this for?’ she eyed him suspiciously as he gave them to her.
‘I have to go to London tomorrow for a couple of days.’
‘But you’ve only just got back from a night there!’ Rhian’s shoulders drooped as much as her face. ‘What for now?’
‘The usual.’ He kissed her on the forehead. ‘Nothing to bother your pretty head about.’
‘And when will you be back?’
‘Tuesday – Wednesday at the latest. Thought you might like to go shopping.’
‘Money’s not the answer to everything. I do make some of my own too,’ she whined, wrapping her arms around his neck. ‘And I’d rather not be on my own right now. The press conference on the TV earlier said that everyone should be extra vigilant.’
‘I’ll be there and back before you know it.’
‘Couldn’t I come with you? I promise I wouldn’t get in the way of whatever it is you’re doing.’ She smiled, licking her top lip suggestively. ‘I could make sure we had some fun too.’
‘Don’t you have any appointments booked?’
‘Yes, but I could always rearrange them.’
Joe shook his head. ‘Sorry, business is for the boys.’
‘Don’t be so bloody sexist!’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘So, what if the police call?’
‘Why would they?’
‘They might want to question you again. What will I say?’
‘Tell them I’m away on business.’
‘But you still haven’t told me what you were doing on Wednesday evening, and I’m not comfortable lying to cover up for you when I don’t know what you were up to. I –’
‘Rhian!’ Joe pressed the bottoms of his hands to his temples. Stop with the whining, will you?’
Rhian folded her arms. ‘No, I want to know –’
‘Leave it out!’ He pushed past her. ‘You’re becoming a proper nag, do you know that?’
‘And you’re becoming a proper bore, do you know that?’
Rhian took a moment to calm her temper before flouncing into the conservatory. Stupid bloody man – if he thought he was going to disappear day after day and she would stick around to wait for him, he had another think coming. But after a few minutes, she came to her senses with a huge sigh. She needed to calm down, stop her mind from working overtime and perhaps try and get to the nitty-gritty of what Joe was really up to.
Flicking through that evening’s edition of The Sentinel while she waited for him to come down from his shower, she read about the recent murders. Mickey Taylor: early Monday morning. Joe had gone out that day at six o’clock. And he’d definitely been out when Suzi had been murdered. She read the article again, noting in particular any times. This Dwyer fella had been killed this morning . . . what time had Joe come in last night? Around midnight?
‘Stupid bitch, putting doubt into my mind,’ she muttered, her thoughts turning darkly to Allie.
This was all to do with that sergeant this morning. She must have it in for Joe, for some reason. And even though she felt wary of him at times, he had never hit her. Of course she’d heard he was handy with his fists too, but that didn’t mean he had murder in him.
Did it?
Allie wasn’t enamoured with a visit to the city morgue first thing on Sunday morning but welcomed the response from the press conference the night before. Since the victims had begun to pile up, she’d barely found time to sit down and think about the case. Everyone at the station was getting antsy: if the killer was meticulous about detail, there would be another magnetic letter tomorrow, meaning someone else was going to die, and the police still had no idea who. But she was determined to find the killer. She didn’t need another unsolved case hanging over her head for years.
Several leads had come through after the press conference. One of them was a woman claiming to be Frank Dwyer’s sister. Perry had also brought in Charlie Lewis to see if the rumours he recollected were true. She left him to it as she went to meet Colleen Hulton.
Once the formal identification of the body had taken place, Allie sat down with Colleen in a private room and waited until she was ready to speak.
‘Frank and I haven’t spoken in a while,’ Colleen admitted, wiping at her eyes. ‘But it still upsets me that he’s gone. He’s the only family I had left. It makes me realise how precious life is – and that maybe I should have kept in touch with him, tried to patch things up.’
‘Can you recall roughly how long ago it was that you saw him?’ asked Allie, opening up her notepad.
‘I can tell you exactly. December 1983. Frank was working at Reginald Junior School and there was an . . . incident with a boy, one of his pupils. He touched him inappropriately, if you get my meaning.’ Colleen grimaced, shaking her head vehemently. ‘I was disgusted by it. I don’t know how long he’d been doing that sort of thing. When it all came out in the newspapers, Frank was sacked from the school. The school didn’t name the boy but they did name my brother, and his neighbours hounded him out of his house. So I let him stay with me.’ She looked at Allie then. ‘It was the worst thing I could have done. Because then everyone started hounding me too.’
‘Everyone?’
‘All my neighbours and so-called friends.’ Colleen blew her nose before continuing. ‘Frank ruined my life, and my family’s life. I nearly lost custody of my kids. I was going through a bitter divorce at the time. My husband went ballistic when he realised Frank was staying there. It would only have been for a few weeks, until things had calmed down. I have two boys, you see. How can you tell them that you don’t want them to be alone with their uncle?’
‘Did he ever –’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Are you sure they would tell you?’
Colleen ripped the corner from the tissue and rolled it in her fingers. ‘I asked them when they were older and I’m sure they told me the truth.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Frank appeared in court, and lost his job. He was struck off the teaching register.’ Colleen sniffed. ‘Not exactly the kind of role model I thought he would be for my boys. In the end, we moved to Newcastle. I – we never saw him again after that. Not until I saw his picture on the news last night.’
Allie wrote down what she had said. ‘Did you know Frank was homosexual, Mrs Hulton?’ she asked next.
‘Yes, and I accepted that, but what I couldn’t accept is what he had done to that boy.’ Colleen breathed in deeply and sighed. ‘It was wrong. He shouldn’t have done that.’
Allie showed Mrs Hulton out of the building and then went back to the room. While it was unoccupied, she sat and wrote up her notes. Then she headed back to the station to catch up with Perry. She wanted to hear what Charlie Lewis had told him.
‘It’s something I’d blanked out until I heard that Dwyer had been murdered,’ Charlie Lewis said as he sat opposite Perry in an interview room. ‘I tend not think of school days much now.’
‘I try to forget them as much as I can, too.’ Perry couldn’t help but smile. ‘I had braces on my teeth and terrible acne.’
‘I imagine I wasn’t much better.’ Charlie’s smile was faint.
Perry took out his notebook and looked across at him awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry – this is going to be uncomfortable to discuss, but I need to know what happened with Dwyer when we were at school.’
‘Right.’ Charlie shuffled in his seat and coughed to clear his throat. ‘Luckily for me, I was young and what he did – well, I didn’t let it change me, nor my outlook on life. Compared to what other children go through, I suppose you could say that I got off lightly. It was after a P.E. lesson one day. I’d been running around the athletics track and had an asthma attack. Dwyer was looking after me and had taken me into his office. It was lunchtime so I waited it out while I got my breath back.
‘Dwyer was at my side. He gave me a drink of water and he rubbed my back while I calmed down. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I thought he was comforting me. But when I turned round,’ he cleared his throat again, ‘there’s no easy way to say this without being vulgar, but he had his cock in his hand and was masturbating.’
Perry could hardly look at the man. It wasn’t something he hadn’t heard before but because he remembered Charlie as the quiet ten-year-old he was back then, it seemed more perverted than usual.
‘I stood up quickly, went for the door, but he blocked my way out. It was then he told me that he’d been watching me, knew that I’d been watching him – as if – and that he was showing me what I wanted to see. He kept asking me to touch him but I wouldn’t. I was terrified, I can tell you. And all the time he talked dirty, he was wanking. And he didn’t stop until he’d finished.’
Perry kept his head down as he took notes rather than show Charlie the blush spreading over his cheeks. ‘What happened afterwards?’
Charlie almost growled. ‘He just popped it back in his trousers, the dirty bastard, moved from in front of the door and let me out. But as I ran, he grabbed my shoulder and whispered into my ear. “This had better be our little secret, Charlie boy,” he told me. Then he licked my fucking – my ear. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. Ran like hell, all the way home. Near on had another asthma attack. Lucky I didn’t live too far away.’
Perry knew he was trying to make light of the situation. The look on Charlie’s face wasn’t one of embarrassment anymore; it was one of hurt.
‘Did he try anything again?’
‘Hell, no. When I got home, my mum took one look at me and it all came tumbling out. She was on to my father soon after – and the school were informed. But we kept things quiet because my father was a local councillor then. He didn’t want any scandal and I didn’t want to be known as “the boy who had been touched in the changing rooms” or else I would never have been able to live it down. Luckily for me, it never did get out either so I carried on pretty much as before. Dwyer was suspended soon after that – sacked a few months later after an enquiry. He tried to deny it but people actually believed me – that was a great feeling at that age. I wasn’t a troublemaker and I was a quiet boy, as you know.’
‘Not like me.’ Perry couldn’t help but smile to lighten up the mood.
His smile was barely returned as Charlie composed himself again. ‘Sorry – brings a sour taste to my mouth just thinking about it now.’
‘It’s all just helping us to build a better picture of who his killer might be.’
‘And the killer of Mickey Taylor and Suzi – Sandra Seymour?’ Charlie asked. ‘They’re linked in some way, aren’t they?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that.’
‘Which leaves me to believe they are. Can you tell me if I’m in any danger?’
Perry shook his head again. ‘For all we know, it could be anyone next. It could even be me.’
Chapter Nineteen
Rhian stood at the bottom of the stairs, barefoot in a skimpy nightdress, a long-sleeved cardigan falling off one shoulder in a way that she knew looked sexy. She had decided that getting Joe on side was the best way to find out what had happened, and they’d made love twice that morning. Normally at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, they’d still be asleep, recovering from a skinful the night before. But as Joe was driving to London, he hadn’t wanted to touch a drop and she’d stopped after a couple of glasses on her own. She hadn’t had such a clear head at the weekend for ages. Definitely a bonus for what she had planned to do for rest of the day.
‘Do you have everything?’ she asked as Joe came downstairs, carrying a small bag. ‘Toothbrush? Toothpaste? Deodorant?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ he grinned, reaching the bottom.
‘Someone has to look after you.’ She pulled him close. ‘I’m going to miss you.’
‘I’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Erm, that was the part where you should have said that you would miss me too, you big jerk.’
Joe laughed. ‘I’m going to miss that cute little ass of yours. You’re a dicktease, wearing that thing.’ He put his hand up her nightdress and gave her bottom a squeeze, pressing him to her as he kissed her deeply.
‘Just in case you forget me while I’m gone,’ he said afterwards as they broke apart. ‘It won’t be long and this will all be over.’
‘Until the next time?’ Rhian pouted, shiny eyes full of lust.
‘There’ll always be a next time. That’s what you love about me. You can’t deny that.’
Rhian tried to keep her face straight but failed miserably. ‘Your modesty. That’s what I love about you.’
‘Not my charm and good looks?’
She shook her head with a cheesy grin. ‘Nope.’
Waving him off moments later, she closed the door behind him and grinned even more. One thing was certain: she wasn’t going to miss him tonight. She reached for her phone and sent a text message to Laila to say the coast was clear to come over. Then she raced upstairs to pack her own bag. She and Laila were booked on the eleven-ten train to Manchester to do some real shopping: Stoke would never be able to compete with that. She’d booked a room at the Midland Hotel and they were going out that night too. She couldn’t wait!
When she arrived at the station following the identification of Frank Dwyer, Allie was just about to head upstairs when she spotted someone in the reception area. It was the oatcake man. He delivered the Staffordshire delicacies across the city, stopping off at their station every Friday morning. She doubled back quickly, hoping that if a breakfast order had been placed, someone from her team would have thought to add her usual two filled with bacon and cheese to the list.