Choked dipb-4

by Tania Carver

  ‘You asked for my opinion, ma’am. I think blonde. But not necessarily naturally.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘She’ll be more outgoing, more flashy than him. He’ll have had a hard time keeping up with her.’

  ‘Really? And on what do you base these non-prejudicial assumptions, then?’

  ‘Police work, ma’am. Their house has seen better days. So had their marriage. What ornaments there are in the place were quite expensive at one time. A woman’s taste, not a man’s.’

  ‘Not my taste.’

  ‘Or mine. But someone liked them enough to buy them. I think she’s got big blonde hair, dresses flashily, spends a lot on make-up, beauty treatments, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Because that’s the kind of woman who would buy those ornaments?’

  Deepak nodded. ‘Are we betting lunch on this?’ A small smile played on his lips.

  I’m encouraging my junior officer, she thought. It’s my job. ‘Why not?’

  Deepak had been spot on. The flat was along Common Quay, in the newly gentrified waterfront area of Ipswich. She had buzzed them up when they told her they were police officers and it concerned her husband, held their warrant cards up to the video entryphone to prove who they were.

  In the lift, Jessie had smiled at Deepak. ‘Doing well so far … ’

  Once inside, Jessie realised immediately that she owed Deepak lunch. Helen Hibbert had deliberately arranged herself for their visit. She sat in the corner of her flat, one tanned leg crossing the other, a view of the Ipswich waterfront behind her, as if she was, literally, above all that. She was perfectly made up, her nails just manicured. Jessie imagined her nails always looked just manicured. Her dress and shoes were designer, Jessie noted, and, as Deepak had said, she was blonde. Her face, like her body, was composed. Helen Hibbert had been younger than her husband but not by much. It was clear that, despite all the treatments she had received, her skin was loosening, the crow’s feet were lengthening and it probably took her longer each day to keep looking as she did. Time was catching her up.

  She had offered them drinks, gesturing to her own sparkling vodka tonic.

  ‘I know you might think it’s early, but really, it doesn’t matter. It’s cocktail hour somewhere in the world.’

  Jessie had told her about her husband and how they had found him dead. And Helen Hibbert had performed a near note-perfect grieving widow act.

  ‘Poor Jeff.’ A sigh. ‘Poor, poor Jeff … ’

  Poor is right, thought Jessie, thinking of the squalor he had lived and died in. Must have been some divorce settlement.

  ‘There was something about his death,’ said Jessie, as airily as possible.

  Helen Hibbert’s eyes narrowed. Became beady, shrewd. She stared at Jessie as if her words were about to make her lose money. ‘What d’you mean? He had cancer.’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ said Jessie. ‘But that didn’t kill him. He was murdered.’

  She watched the woman, registering, recording her reactions. Helen Hibbert seemed genuinely shocked. Appalled, even. Jessie tried to read all the conflicting emotions that ran across the woman’s eyes. She couldn’t find empathy.

  ‘Did … What happened?’

  ‘An intruder, as far as we can see,’ said Deepak, leaning forward. ‘Perhaps he didn’t expect to find anyone in. Perhaps … ’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps they struggled. Jeff lost. We don’t know. Yet.’

  ‘Is there anything you can tell us, Mrs Hibbert?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Did he have any enemies? Was he in debt? Did he owe money? Would someone have robbed him, killed him, over money?’

  ‘He was robbed?’

  Deepak again. ‘We think robbery may have been the motive.’

  ‘What did they take?’

  ‘We’re not sure,’ said Jessie. ‘Perhaps it would help if you could give us an inventory of his belongings.’

  ‘I don’t know what he had.’

  ‘A laptop, for instance?’

  Helen Hibbert’s eyes narrowed once more. Something was going on there, but Jessie couldn’t work out what.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I have no idea.’

  Jessie and Deepak shared a look. Jessie tried again. ‘Did he … ’ They heard a sound from another room. Jessie looked quizzically at Helen Hibbert. ‘Someone else here?’

  ‘A friend,’ she said, eyes darting to the door. ‘Been staying over.’ She stood up. ‘I think I’ve answered enough questions for one day. This has been very traumatic for me. Please leave now.’

  Jessie tried to talk to her again, but the shutters had come down.

  Outside on the pavement, with gulls wheeling about in the fresh spring air, Jessie stared up at the flat.

  ‘I hate being lied to,’ she said. ‘And we were being lied to. Question is, about what, and why?’

  Deepak nodded. ‘That’s two questions, technically.’

  ‘Pedant.’ She turned to him. ‘Anyway, I owe you lunch. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘Non-prejudicial profiling. Works well.’

  He walked towards the car, a smile emerging on his face. ‘And I saw a photo of her in his wallet.’

  ‘You bastard … ’ Jessie followed. Smiling.

  33

  Helen Hibbert stared out of the window, watching the two police officers walk away down the quay.

  ‘Oh shit … ’

  She felt hands on her shoulders. Warm fingers circling, smoothing over her muscles.

  ‘Fuck off, Glen.’

  The movement stopped abruptly.

  ‘Can’t I soothe you? Make it all better?’ asked a man’s voice in what he probably assumed was a low, sexy growl but which actually sounded more like inflamed tonsils.

  ‘Not now. I’ve got to … to think.’

  She felt her bought-and-paid-for man stepping away from her. She kept her eyes on the two police officers as they reached their car and drove away.

  So they got him, she thought. They actually did it. She knew what had happened. Jeff must have tried his blackmail scheme and it backfired. Terminally. She took another sip of her drink. Where did that leave her? She knew just as much as Jeff had about what the Sloanes had done. Would they come after her next? She took another drink. If they did, then that was it. She would end up just like Jeff. But if she pre-empted them … A plan began to form.

  The two police officers had disappeared. Her glass was empty. Glen reappeared behind her. She turned. He really was good-looking, she’d give him that. Talented and endowed. But expendable. There were plenty more where he had come from.

  ‘I’ve got to go out, darling. Wait for me.’

  He would. As long as she was paying him.

  34

  Michael Sloane stared at the laptop’s screen and willed its secrets to appear before him. He punched more keys. Waited. Nothing.

  He stretched and looked round. Dee was silent, which wasn’t unusual. He knew where she would be, who with and what she would be trying to do. And he had a good idea how far she would get, too.

  He didn’t mind her playing her games. Took part in them, even, encouraged them, like their psychiatrist had told him to do. It kept her grounded. Happy. And, if he was honest, he enjoyed them too.

  Michael put it all out of his mind and concentrated on the laptop. His keyboard skills were good; usually his fingers just glided. But on this laptop, it wasn’t easy. The keyboard was old, the letters kept sticking. He made mistakes. And when he made mistakes, he got angry with himself. And that wouldn’t do at all.

  So he controlled the anger, accepted that it wasn’t his fault and kept working. It was on here somewhere. It had to be. Locations, intentions, plans. How they were going to attack, when and where. Everything. All he had to do was find where Hibbert had hidden it.

  He hit another key. It stuck. Blocked him entry to where he had been going.

  He sat back, about to shout at the screen, but caught himself. No. This w
asn’t working. He had to change his approach.

  He closed his eyes.

  What would I do, where would I hide something, if I was Jeff Hibbert?

  He thought himself into Hibbert’s head. What did he like? What were his interests? His ex-wife. Everyone knew that. He could bore for England talking about her.

  He opened his eyes. Photos. That was it. He checked the hard drive. And there they were. He opened them. Smiled. Helen Hibbert in various stages of undress, sometimes on her own, sometimes with various partners, often more than one. Sloane laughed.

  Dirty bastard …

  He scrutinised the photos, checked the files they were in. Kept scrolling through.

  And found the folder he was looking for.

  He sat back, reading. Once he had finished, he smiled. How obvious …

  He reached for his phone. It was easier to phone rather than shout. Dee answered.

  ‘The Golem’s with you.’ A statement, not a question.

  Dee said nothing.

  ‘Tell him I’ve got a job for him.’ He looked at the laptop. ‘Tell him he’s going hunting.’

  35

  Marina stood on the beach at Wrabness, reading the email. Now she knew why she had been sent here. And it wasn’t the reason she had first thought.

  Stuart Sloane. Somehow this was all connected to Stuart Sloane.

  She walked upriver along the beach, putting the dilapidated farmhouse behind her. The trees were thickening, blocking out the sunlight as she went. The beach huts were set back from what passed for sand, up on stilts, accessible only by wooden steps. Most of them looked occupied, people there for Easter. Some seemed to have permanent occupants. Marina thought it a curious place for a holiday, and certainly to live. But then the place was forever tainted for her.

  This is everything you need to know, the email had said. Read it.

  As she walked, she worked through in her mind what she had just read.

  Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Stuart Milton. Stuart was different. He was special. He had learning difficulties. He was socially awkward, missed the cues other kids didn’t, was out of step with the other kids by at least one beat. But a good kid. A nice kid.

  A harmless kid.

  He had never known his father, who had left when Stuart was very young. His mother, Maureen Milton, had taken any job that came along, anything to feed herself and her son. She ended up working for the Sloanes, a local landowning family. They, as the brochure said, ‘had farming concerns, and were the producers and harvesters of most of the seafood from the area, particularly cockles, mussels and oysters’. Maureen worked in their house, cleaning and serving. She did work hard, we’ll give her that. And she made herself popular with most people. One in particular.

  Jack Sloane was the head of the family. He had just lost his wife, so he was in a bit of an emotional state. He liked Maureen and asked her to move in. She brought her son with her. Now Jack Sloane liked Maureen a lot, and let her know it. For her part, she was happy to respond to his attentions. Jack proposed marriage and Maureen accepted. The wedding was arranged and Stuart was adopted. He was now officially a Sloane.

  So far, so happy ever after, Marina thought. But then the tone of the email had changed, become angrier.

  But not everyone shared Jack and Maureen’s delight. Michael and Deanna, his son and daughter, for instance. Because they saw Maureen for what she really was, a common gold-digging bitch, and they thought her son was a thick, useless mong. They told them so before the wedding. And how did Jack respond? Threatened them with disinheritance.

  The next part of the email was a link to a local newspaper from sixteen years ago. Marina had opened it. It was headlined: Bloodbath in Wedding Day House of Horror.

  The article told how the Sloanes had enjoyed a perfect wedding day and couldn’t have been happier. The following day, however, the police were called to the scene of one of the biggest and bloodiest massacres they had ever come across. The house had been destroyed. Every ornament smashed, every piece of furniture upended, gutted, broken. Phone lines ripped out. The family had been stalked through the house by a maniac with a shotgun. Jack Sloane and his new wife were both dead. The son and daughter, Michael and Dee, had been shot and left for dead. One of the family’s workers, Graham Watts, had phoned the police to raise the alarm. There had been horror on finding who was discovered holding the shotgun: Stuart Sloane.

  Marina could remember the rest. Stuart Sloane was arrested and charged. Although he was technically an adult, his defence lawyers claimed he was unfit to stand trial as he was not mentally competent. They brought in as many psychologists and psychiatrists as they could afford, to assess Stuart and back up this claim. To diminish his responsibility, to plead for him as mentally unfit.

  It was damage limitation and the defence knew it. The evidence, although circumstantial, was too damning. They were in no doubt that he had done it. All they wanted was for him to avoid prison. Serve his time somewhere that could help him, not harm him.

  And that was why Marina knew the story so well, even without the email, because it was one of the first cases she had been assigned after leaving college. She knew that newly qualified psychologists were rarely presented with opportunities like this, and if she didn’t mess it up, there would be a lot more work coming her way. It was also an opportunity to show just what she could do. But she remembered it for another reason.

  She hadn’t believed Stuart Sloane was guilty.

  She remembered him being led into the psychologist’s office in HMP Chelmsford. Everyone referred to him as a man because he was eighteen, but when she finally met him, she thought he was just a boy. A small, confused boy, underweight, his growth stunted by a childhood of malnutrition, his educational progress hampered by the damaged hard-wiring in his brain.

  She stopped walking, looked at the trees ahead of her. Tried to think of the questions she had asked him, the answers he had given her. She couldn’t recall specifics, but she remembered his attitude, his demeanour. Lost. If she had to sum him up in one word, it would be that. A lost boy cast adrift in the big city after inadvertently letting go of his mother’s hand. He didn’t understand what was going on around him, or how serious his situation was.

  He had been found with the shotgun in his hand, and the police had, with good reason, assumed his guilt from that. She had gone along with that assumption, as directed by the defence lawyers, and her questions had been weighted accordingly.

  What was he doing at the house? Could he remember what had led up to that? How had he felt about his mother marrying Jack Sloane? Specific, focused questions.

  But he was vague in his answers, unfocused when asked about those specifics.

  He couldn’t remember how he had felt, or what he was doing there. But he had been very happy for his mother. His mother was happy so he was happy too.

  What about his mother now?

  Now he was sad. Very sad. And Marina remembered him looking sad as he said it. Then his expression had changed, his face had lit up in a smile. But it was all going to be OK, because Jiminy Cricket had said so.

  Marina had been intrigued. Asked him more. Who was Jiminy Cricket? Why was everything going to be OK?

  He had looked at her beatifically. Jiminy Cricket was the voice of his conscience. Jiminy Cricket had said his mother was in heaven with the other angels. And Jiminy Cricket had a plan. Everything would work out OK. Just wait and see.

  Afterwards, she had repeated the conversation to the lawyers. They weren’t surprised. Other psychologists had experienced the same thing. They believed that Stuart had a split personality. His damaged mind had been unable to cope with the enormity of what he had done, and he had abnegated responsibility in that way.

  Marina hadn’t been convinced. She had read his records. Stuart had never displayed any prior symptoms of multiple personality or dissociative states. This Jiminy Cricket sounded like a real person, someone else in the room with him. Stuart seemed to h
ave no knowledge of how the shootings had been carried out, or indeed how to use a gun at all. She wasn’t convinced he was actually responsible for the killings. Yes, the lawyers had said, but it could also be argued that the trauma of his actions had brought on the multiple personalities, had given him the knowledge to use the gun, the courage to act on his impulses …

  And that was what they had gone with.

  Marina had flagged something else up too. She was sure she wasn’t the only psychologist to notice, but it never appeared in the trial. When she asked Stuart about his stepbrother and stepsister, he recoiled, his expression filled with dread. He became agitated, stuttering and stumbling over words, unable to sit still. Convinced there was something there, she had tried to press him. She wanted to question him further on his relationship with them, but had been politely but firmly reminded what her brief was. The brother and sister were not a part of it. They were the victims in this case. And they were also very rich, so the defence had to think carefully before making any investigations into them or allegations against them. Marina had reluctantly agreed.

  The case continued to gnaw at her, but since she hadn’t been called on to give evidence, there was nothing she could do. As her colleagues suggested, she banked the cheque and settled down with a nice big gin and tonic to put it out of her mind.

  But she still followed the case on the news, in the papers, and was horrified at the level of reporting, the scale of tabloid vitriol directed against Stuart from people who had never met him. She saw his supposed multiple personalities defence ridiculed and heard no mention of his relationship with his step-siblings. When he was found guilty and sentenced, she wasn’t the least surprised. But she had to let it go. It was no longer her problem.

  Until now.

  She looked round, trying to find a path back to the beach huts. Then noticed what was in front of her. A huge old house, backing on to the river, crumbling and overgrown, nature trying to reclaim it, pull it back into the earth. And she knew immediately what it was.

  The old Sloane place.