The Disciple

by Steven Dunne

  ‘We’re keeping an open mind.’

  ‘Well close it. They couldn’t have been involved. They wouldn’t have the strength to drown a man – especially someone as powerful as Harvey-Ellis. He was a rugby player at one time.’

  ‘Maybe not to hold someone like Harvey-Ellis under the water,’ agreed Hudson. ‘But a smack on the head with a baseball bat wouldn’t be beyond either of them.’ Brook said nothing. ‘You don’t seem to dispute your ex-wife and daughter might have had motive.’ Brook shrugged. ‘Can I assume then that you know about the affair between Harvey-Ellis and your daughter?’

  Brook narrowed his eyes and sank further into the chair. Grant noticed his hands clenching into fists. ‘You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t certain I knew what was happening, would you?’

  ‘Honestly, no,’ said Hudson. ‘Out of interest, how did you find out about the affair? Did your ex-wife confide in you?’

  Brook looked away. ‘I’m a trained detective. I found out. Leave it at that.’

  ‘You seem uncomfortable discussing this, Inspector,’ said Grant. ‘How would you feel?’ Brook glared at Grant. ‘Virtual strangers asking questions, about my daughter and her…’

  ‘Affair.’

  ‘Can we not refer to this as an affair? Affairs are for adults. Terri was fifteen. Harvey-Ellis is a predator. Was.’

  There was a long silence while Hudson and Grant let Brook simmer. ‘Strong feelings feed strong motives,’ added Grant eventually.

  ‘Which makes me the prime suspect.’

  ‘Is that a confession, Damen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any normal father…’ blurted Grant, then stopped, annoyed with herself. Hudson had been very specific about avoiding any hint of an accusation. She apologised to her boss with a look.

  ‘Are you a normal father, Damen?’ asked Hudson, deciding he had no choice now but to run with it.

  ‘Normal enough to threaten him,’ agreed Brook. ‘I assaulted him as well. I suspect you know that.’

  ‘Nearly two years ago. Is that why you got suspended?’

  ‘No. No-one knew about the assault. I was suspended for dropping off the grid at the height of the Wallis Inquiry.’

  ‘To come to Brighton to confront Tony Harvey-Ellis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that didn’t stop the … relationship with your daughter.’

  Brook’s eyes bored into Hudson. ‘No.’

  ‘So why didn’t you do something?’

  Brook smiled sadly. ‘You’re the second person to have asked me that.’

  ‘Who was the first?’

  ‘Someone I used to know in London.’

  ‘And what was your answer? After all, you could’ve exposed him, made his life very difficult. You might have had a crack at putting him away, Damen.’

  ‘I know. It’s just … things got away from me. Later I realised how much they both loved him and hated me. There didn’t seem much point after that. It’s academic now.’

  ‘Before we ask the next question I want to remind you that we’re just having an informal talk,’ said Hudson. ‘But in view of your distinguished career, neither I nor DS Grant would feel happy if you felt you needed representation and didn’t ask for it.’ Hudson waited.

  Brook nodded. ‘Ask your question.’

  ‘Where were you last weekend, Inspector Brook?’ asked Grant. ‘We’ll settle for Saturday night and Sunday morning for now.’

  Brook tossed his head back to concentrate on the ceiling. ‘I’m not sure but I think I was either near Matlock or Tissington. It’s in the Peak District. I was on two weeks’ leave. I didn’t take a calendar with me and quite often I didn’t know what day it was.’

  ‘You were on your own?’ asked Grant, now taking notes.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Did anyone you know see you?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone.’

  ‘Well, would anyone you don’t know remember you?’ asked Grant.

  ‘Unlikely. I was camping wild. The whole idea is to keep away from civilisation.’

  ‘Isn’t that illegal?’ asked Grant.

  ‘Sometimes,’ nodded Brook.

  ‘So you have no alibi,’ concluded Hudson.

  ‘If I thought I needed one, Joshua, I would have slapped a policeman in the face with my passport and stuck my birth certificate in his mouth.’

  Both Hudson and Grant made sure to give Brook an appreciative chuckle, but Hudson knew that such flattery was unlikely to make him more forthcoming.

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  Hudson ground his teeth. After a few seconds he said, ‘Funny, you’re not asking for many details about the murder. I find that odd for a police officer. You’ve asked no questions about how a fit, forty-three-year-old male was forcibly drowned.’

  Brook looked at Hudson and Grant in turn. ‘I don’t care about Tony Harvey-Ellis or how he died. I’m just pleased he’s dead after the way he preyed on my daughter and betrayed my ex-wife.’

  ‘You think of their welfare no matter how much they hate you.’

  ‘I guess Terri doesn’t hate me,’ said Brook. ‘But she loves her mum more. Amy probably hates me because I destroyed her first marriage and tried to do the same to her second. The fact that I was right to do so on both occasions is a detail as far as she’s concerned.’

  ‘And, if it were necessary, would you consent to giving us a DNA sample? In case we need to rule you out of our inquiries.’

  Brook pursed his lips in a show of concentration, looking back at Grant. ‘No. I don’t think I would.’

  ‘Really? Why not?’ ventured Hudson.

  Brook smiled back at him, unblinking. Grant and Hudson had just about given up on an answer when Brook said, ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Officers are encouraged to volunteer dibs and dabs for the database,’ said Grant. ‘It’s compulsory for new recruits.’

  ‘Good for them,’ replied Brook. ‘Let me know when it becomes compulsory for me.’

  Hudson decided he was going to have to play his one remaining card. ‘Have you ever heard of Twilight Sleep, Damen?’

  Brook’s eyes widened and his mouth parted slightly. ‘What?’

  ‘Now I don’t know too much about Vitmanstein,’ said Sheriff Dupree, holding back a stray branch so the agents could pass unhindered, ‘but this here ground is a clearing, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘No doubt,’ nodded Drexler as he and McQuarry emerged from the undergrowth and approached the line of motor homes sitting alongside the twenty-foot rock wall that made up one side of a natural basin. ‘This is a clearing.’ He mopped his brow. The air in this bowl was oppressive, the breeze apparently unable to penetrate the dense foliage surrounding the amphitheatre on three sides.

  The vehicles had been carefully parked against the wall of rock and were in various states of decay, the oldest on the far left, all the way to the newest on the right. Some were physically intact and others had clearly been in some kind of collision, whether it was just a dent or, in the case of the newest vehicle – a yellow VW camper with California plates – a hefty crash.

  ‘The yellow camper you see there belonged to the Bailey family,’ said Dupree. ‘The last family to disappear.’

  ‘Colorado, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona.’ McQuarry muttered, as she examined the motor homes’ plates. ‘Guess we’re on board, Mike.’ She approached the VW camper and tried the door handle. It opened and Drexler and Dupree saw her reach inside briefly. She straightened up again holding a rag doll with yellow string for hair, then turned to her partner, a sombre look on her face. She looked at the ground, surveying the well-dug soil. ‘Not a lot of vegetation growing in the ground, is there?’

  Drexler followed her eyes down, looking at his own feet. ‘Jesus,’ he breathed when the penny dropped.

  ‘You think … ?’ Dupree took a few seconds’ pause as he and the two agents began to step backwards, away from the vehicles to the edge of the clearing, as though walking
on hot coals.

  Chapter Seven

  Grant stirred the remains of her starter and pushed it away. A waiter made to remove it so she pulled it back towards her. When Hudson returned from the toilet and sat back down, she took a sip of her sparkling water.

  ‘Have a lager, darlin’. We’re on exes, remember. Make the most of it.’

  ‘I’m not an MP, guv. Water’s fine.’

  Hudson shrugged and ordered another Kingfisher. ‘At least give the case a break.’

  Laura Grant smiled like a patient mother with an errant child. ‘He’s still our guy, guv, I’m telling you. He didn’t turn a hair when you said it was murder – all that hooey about “what brings you up from Bromley”. He knew from minute one why we were here and where we were from – which means he knew Harvey-Ellis was dead when he walked in.’

  Hudson nibbled on his roti bread, nodding at Grant’s starter. She shrugged her assent and Hudson attacked her mushroom puri.

  ‘Sure he knew. But it doesn’t mean anything. There’s the internet. Maybe Terri or Mrs H phoned him…’

  ‘He said he hadn’t spoken to them for a long time.’

  ‘He may have lied. But it’s not enough.’

  ‘He’s got no alibi.’

  ‘That doesn’t put him in Brighton, Laura. We’d need a lot more to put pressure on a detective inspector. Assuming we wanted to…’

  ‘Assuming we wanted to? Why wouldn’t we?’

  ‘You heard him, luv. Harvey-Ellis was a sex offender – a paedo, strictly speaking. Good riddance, most people would say. We say it every day about the scum we’re forced to deal with.’

  Grant sighed. ‘I suppose. It’s just he was so damned cocky about it. It’s not normal.’

  Hudson raised an eyebrow. ‘So you didn’t like him. Or don’t you like the fact that you did like him?’

  Grant looked up from picking poppadom crumbs off the linen tablecloth. Her pretty face became surly for a moment, then eased. ‘I can’t deny Brook’s got … charisma.’ Hudson smiled. ‘But do I find him attractive? Er, not likely. He’s almost as old as you, guv.’

  Hudson’s smile thinned. ‘Thanks a bundle.’ He looked around at the décor of the smart Indian restaurant just down the road from the Midland Hotel. ‘Nice curry house, this. Good find, Laura. The food’s great.’ Hudson folded the final forkload of mushroom into his mouth and sat back with a sigh.

  ‘You know, there is one thing in his favour,’ said Grant.

  Hudson nodded, trying to clear his mouth to speak. ‘Yeah. Twilight Sleep. That really threw him.’

  ‘It appeared to throw him, guv. He could still have been faking it.’

  ‘But why would he? Someone using The Reaper’s MO – it’s a big deal to Brook.’

  ‘Maybe he was just surprised that we got onto it so quickly.’

  ‘You’re not going to let this go, are you, luv?’

  Grant paused, tipping the rest of her bottle of sparkling water into her glass. ‘You know guv, as a woman I probably shouldn’t say this, but I know about rape, I’ve worked cases, I’ve seen…’ a moment of remembrance darkened her countenance for a second ‘…I’ve seen the victims and what it does to them. And, honestly, I don’t give a shit about the affair with Terri. Fifteen or not, Harvey-Ellis did not coerce that girl into bed. Okay, he may have seduced a silly little girl whose self-importance got the better of her judgement, but he didn’t hold her down and she wasn’t drugged. I’ll admit he deserved a tug for it but as far as I’m concerned, he didn’t deserve to die. And if people think they can play God and take other people’s lives because they think it’s justified, then they’re going to have to answer to me.’

  Hudson stared at Grant, who merely glared at the tablecloth tight-lipped. After a few moments of silence, Hudson took a long pull on his Kingfisher and nodded at her.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Drexler waited while McQuarry finished speaking with the satellite office in South Lake Tahoe. By the end of the conversation, Drexler knew that a small army of forensic pathologists armed with the latest equipment would be mobilising. In a few hours the entire site would be alive with people wielding state-of-the-art technology and expertise, working under protective marquees looking for bodies of the victims of the newly dubbed ‘Ghost Road Killer’.

  When found the bodies would be processed and tested, photographed and analysed, before going to the portable mortuary. And, assuming the latest victims had more than mere skeletons to tell the story of their deaths, there would be a further battery of tests as well.

  When she’d finished speaking on Dupree’s car radio, McQuarry rejoined Drexler and they followed the sheriff back to the station building. An empty ambulance now stood outside, the crew inside waiting with a gurney for the body of Billy Ashwell. As they entered, two Crime Scene Investigators were standing ready to take Billy’s weight as another prepared to cut him down. As the two CSIs wrapped their arms around the boy’s lifeless trunk, something fell to the floor from the dead boy’s pocket. ‘What’s that?’ asked Drexler.

  ‘Looks like some kind of flower to me,’ answered Dupree.

  ‘It’s a red rose petal,’ said McQuarry, stooping to examine it.

  The CSI released Billy’s legs and more deep red petals fell to the ground. One of the CSIs followed the trail back to Billy’s trouser pocket, which had been forced open by the attempt to get him down. He pulled at the fabric so the sheriff and the agents could see that the pocket was full of the same dark red petals.

  ‘Zuzu’s petals,’ said McQuarry to nobody in particular.

  Drexler and Dupree turned to her. ‘Zu who?’

  ‘Zuzu. The little girl in It’s A Wonderful Life!’ she said looking back at them. ‘The film. James Stewart? Rose petals in his pocket?’ They didn’t seem to understand her. The sheriff arched a puzzled eyebrow. She shrugged her apology. ‘Sorry. Drive-in major.’

  Brook was late setting off for home after his shift, having made a conscious effort to clear his backlog of paperwork. It was partly that things seemed to be pretty quiet at the moment, the colder weather being credited with a decline in drink-fuelled violence, and partly a result of his meeting with Chief Superintendent Charlton.

  Charlton had been as unsubtle as he could manage without openly saying what he wanted.

  ‘How old are you, Damen?’

  Brook had sat blankly in his chair, flicking a discreet eye towards the copy of Brian Burton’s book on Charlton’s desk. He didn’t like the Chief Super using his first name. It wasn’t that he cared about Charlton’s overfamiliarity, more that he resented its use as a tactic to soften him up for some ulterior motive that Brook was fairly certain he could guess. To make his point, Brook waited longer than was polite to respond, knowing that Charlton almost certainly knew the answer.

  ‘Forty-seven, isn’t it? Forty-eight just before Christmas. You know, I envy you, Damen.’

  Brook eyed his superior coolly, trying to mask the contempt rising in him. ‘You wouldn’t if you knew the pain I’ve suffered, sir.’

  Charlton was taken aback. ‘Oh?’

  ‘My parents tried their best to keep things special but it’s an expensive time of year. Uncles, aunts and grandparents always gave me one present for Christmas, which had to double up for my birthday as well. All told, I calculate I’m down about seventy presents from my childhood.’

  Charlton briefly looked at Brook as though he were completely insane, then pressed ahead with his own agenda. ‘No, I mean that coming up to fifty, your thoughts must be turning towards retirement, getting out of all this … stress.’

  ‘Must they?’

  ‘Not that you’re not a valued officer. But I know it’s a young man’s game, eh? Let them get on with it while you go off and enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Enjoy myself.’ Brook lingered over the words and Charlton began to realise that he’d been a bit too obvious.

  ‘But that’s not why I wanted to see you…’ And he’d rapidly changed lanes to t
alk about the Brian Burton book and how much Brook was prepared to say on the record.

  So, subliminal or not, Brook had left the meeting feeling a need to clear his desk, and had spent several hours doing just that. Whether it was the need to show he was still a competent detective, or a subconscious acceptance that he was ready to call it a day was more difficult to fathom.

  * * *

  Mike Drexler and Edie McQuarry sat at the table of the windowless room at Markleeville PD sifting through various papers. Some were faded faxes of car rental receipts; some were black and white images of driving permits. The most disturbing were the happy family portraits of the doomed families, grinning timelessly into the camera, shiny with hope and purpose, now immortalised as victims of The Ghost Road Killer – or killers. When the documentary makers moved in, these would be the pictures set beside the pictures of skeletons, like the rag doll found in the VW. And when the story became public property it might even weaken OJ’s stranglehold on the front pages for a day.

  ‘Okay, we got the Campbells from Brigham City, Utah, the Hernandez family from Prescott, Arizona,’ said Drexler, slamming down a missing persons folder for every family. ‘The Biscotti family from Las Vegas, Nevada, the Reeves family from Denver, Colorado and the latest victims, the Bailey family from San Diego, California. Five families matched to five different vehicles so far. That’s in chronological order.’

  ‘And the Baileys were the last family to go missing.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How long exactly?’ asked McQuarry, shaking out a cigarette and lighting up with a precautionary glance over her shoulder.

  ‘They were reported missing two months ago, but obviously may have been abducted before that. Or after. They were last seen on July fifteenth when their holiday started.’ Drexler looked over at his partner. ‘Ed, outside a restaurant may be a grey area, but now you’re definitely breaking California state law.’

  ‘You think state police give a hoot about a law forced through by a few rich anorexics in LA with too much money and time on their hands?’