‘I’m sorry to have to ask you to do this, Fielding,’ Burton said on the telephone when he rang her shortly afterwards, ‘but can I ask you, while you’re up there, to go along to Franklin Electronics in Boldon Business Park and speak to the owner there about Jennifer Grayson. I’ve already spoken to him and he’s expecting you. And can you also have a word with the late Caroline Porter’s neighbour in Cleadon? Her name’s Sandra Matthews – and she’s a “Miss” apparently, made a point of saying that at the time she was interviewed. Ask about Carruthers, show them both a picture. Also show them the sketch artist’s drawing. See if either have been seen around the area over the past few months. In fact, ask them if they’ve seen anybody or anything suspicious during that time. I know it’s a couple of months back now, and memories can fade, but let’s give it a shot. I’ve only got a short window to hold Carruthers here, and his solicitor is a right piece of work.’
‘So’s Carruthers by the sound of it.’ Fielding told Burton all about what Barry Sangster had said about his company’s computer wizard.
Burton had responded with, ‘Sounds about right.’
Ending the call, Fielding turned to Claire Rawlins and said, ‘You know your offer of the car?’
Rawlins nodded, saying, ‘It’s still on if you want it.’
‘Yes,’ Fielding told her. ‘I think it might be a good idea; we’re not finished quite yet up here.’
Burton had only just finished the call to Fielding when there was a knock on his door. He shouted, ‘Come in,’ and Wayman’s head appeared from around the door, then the rest of him.
‘Can I have a word, sir?’ he asked, and Burton indicated for him to sit.
‘What is it, Sam?’
‘Well, sir, it’s that house in Altrincham, the one where Simon was injured…’ Wayman seemed troubled by the information he was about to impart.
‘What about it?’
‘You’re not going to believe this!’
Although holding it back, Burton was growing mildly impatient. This was turning into a guessing game and he really wasn’t in the mood right now to be playing games of any sort. However, when he said, ‘Just spit it out,’ it did come out a little more harshly than intended and he regretted it as soon as it was said.
Wayman, feeling as if he’d just said something wrong, sat himself up a little straighter in the chair.
‘Sorry, Sam, this thing is getting to all of us,’ Burton apologised, hoping that his DC would get to the point quickly as there was so much more he needed to be doing.
‘Well,’ Wayman hurried it along now, ‘it’s just that the house is up on the market because its owner went to live in a care home three months ago.’
Burton edged forward in his seat, sensing exactly where this was about to go next, ‘Don’t tell me…’ he began, but Wayman finished his sentence for him.
‘Yes, it’s Nathaniel Jackson’s old house.’
‘That’s not just a coincidence then, is it?’ Phillipa Preston astutely observed when Burton followed Wayman back into the incident room and gathered them around to relate this interesting piece of information.
‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘Well, it couldn’t have been Carruthers as he was working up in the north east,’ Francis informed everyone.
‘There’s only one other thing possible then,’ Burton announced to all the group. He didn’t need the help of a profiler to work this one out. ‘If Carruthers is involved in this, then there must be someone else working with him.’
As if realising that DI Burton was doing her job for her, Louise Simmons spoke up, voicing something which had been on her mind since hearing about the murders up north. ‘The murders up in Newcastle have made me think of another option, of course.’ She looked around at all the group.
‘Which is?’ Burton would be more than happy to hear any suggestions or options right now.
‘If we consider all the murders to be linked in some way, which seems more than reasonable to assume now when we take the cards into account – we now have a total of five, both here in Manchester and up in the Newcastle area, and if we take Carruthers out of the picture there is one other person to connect them all.’
‘Yes, there’s our John Doe,’ Burton stated.
But Simmons continued with, ‘No, not him.’
Burton couldn’t for the life of him see what she was getting at, nor could the rest of his team, judging by the blank looks on all their faces. The only other person who could possibly be involved in this was the unknown person who had been visiting the care home.
Seeing that she needed to elaborate on her statement, Simmons simply said, ‘Sally Fielding.’
‘Fielding!’ Burton exclaimed. ‘How on earth have you come to that conclusion?’
‘It’s the two murders in the north east that made me think about it. Another card is left at the scene of the killings, the queen of hearts on both occasions, and both women were known to Fielding, and from her old home town. From the way I see it,’ Simmons continued, explaining how she’d come to this conclusion, ‘perhaps it’s to do with a case she worked on in the past and someone is getting back at her by killing her friends?’
‘That’s logical enough, I presume.’ Burton could hear what she was saying, but was finding the whole idea too extraordinary to comprehend, ‘but I think that suggestion has just made the reasons behind the killings even more complicated than before.’
Phillipa Preston offered up her opinion. ‘I can see what you mean, Louise, especially about the playing cards, and I can get what the connection might be to Fielding with regard to the north east murders, but, like the DI has suggested, how can this possibly be linked to the murders here in Manchester? They can’t possibly be… yet they seem to be.’ She paused momentarily trying to take all of this in. ‘This whole thing just seems to sit right somehow.’
‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Burton, trying to get his head around this new revelation as well.
‘Right,’ he said after a couple of minutes of reflection. ‘Gather together all the information we have and we’ll get the DCI down here to take a look at this. Maybe we need a fresh set of eyes on this… although, this one’s beyond me. In the meantime, Summers, you’re with me. I think we need to pay a visit to Nathaniel Jackson’s house in Altrincham.’
Claire Rawlins’s house in Whitley Bay was more new build than old traditional and, as she had said, quite close to the seafront. So close, in fact, that when they both alighted from the taxi on the main road by the gates, Fielding could smell the ozone in the air. She always felt that she’d grown up along the north east coastline, but her village was just under three miles from the North Sea. Here, Claire was just a very short distance from the long golden sands and the crashing waves. Even though the winter was fast approaching and the colder dark nights had already begun to set in, the air was crisp and vigorously refreshing.
‘Great, isn’t it?’ Claire said, seeing the look on Fielding’s face as she took in her surroundings. ‘It’s not just the sea air that’s making your cheeks glow so much!’
‘Oh, this is so lovely, Claire,’ Fielding declared, looking around her. She’d almost forgotten how harsh and yet so beautiful her homeland was, having lived in Manchester for so many years.
‘See what you’ve been missing!’ Rawlins laughed, leading the way up the driveway.
The inside of the house was not disappointing either. Very fresh and modern with a distinct Scandinavian feel to it, it was minimal but not excessively so. Lovely little touches littered the place, like colourful cushions and unusual prints on the walls. Fielding thought it was how she would like her place in Manchester to look, but she had to admit that she seemed to have accumulated a lot more odds and ends than Claire had – unless, of course, she had a spare room somewhere that she could just push everything in until she wanted them. Fielding didn’t have the luxury of a spare room, or a loft, so all that she owned shared the space with herself and her two cats. A b
it cramped perhaps, but she’d made it as cosy as she could and it was the place she looked forward to coming home to and settling down in every night.
While Claire went off in search of her car keys, Fielding looked at the array of photographs on the shelving. The frame of the shelving unit was a large A shape, with four shelves within the main structure, and it was something that she would have liked for her own place as a quirky reference to her own first name. There were four framed photographs of Claire with her parents, one of her in her graduation cap and gown, proudly holding up a degree certificate, and the last one was a photo of her with a man who was about the same age as she was.
Claire re-entered the room dangling a set of car keys from her finger. Fielding thought that an odd look crossed her old friend’s face when she saw her looking at the last photograph but it quickly passed and she said, ‘You ready then?’
‘Who’s the man?’ Fielding asked her, picking the photograph up to look at it more closely.
‘It’s… he’s just a friend of mine.’ She came across to take it from Fielding’s hands and replaced it where it had sat before.
Fielding got the message instantly and let it go. Claire obviously didn’t want to talk to her about him so she left it at that. Was he a boyfriend? Had he been a boyfriend and they’d parted? Whoever he was, it seemed from his place on her shelving that it was somebody that she cared about very much. Only thing was, Claire just didn’t seem to want to discuss him with her.
Things had changed a great deal in the past thirteen years, although the Boldon and Cleadon areas appeared to be very much the same as she’d remembered them, Fielding thought as she sat in the passenger seat next to Rawlins. The Business Park, however, was doing more business than she remembered, and looked to be the hub of the local community, with the cinema complex, the surrounding restaurants and fast food outlets doing a roaring trade judging by the number of people and families now gathering in and around them.
Franklin Electronics was near the back of Boldon Business Park, quite a distance away from the road. It was an impressive glass-fronted building which gave way to a bigger enclosed warehouse behind that. The company’s European manager, John Scott, was sitting in his office just right of the main front door. He rose to his feet when he saw them pull into the car park.
As if on cue, the minute Rawlins turned off the car’s ignition, Fielding’s phone pinged to let her know that a message had come through. Bad timing, Joe, she thought. He had texted:
Give me a call when you can.
But as he hadn’t said that it was urgent, it would have to wait now until she and Rawlins had spoken to Mr Scott.
‘How well did you know Jennifer Grayson, Mr Scott?’ Fielding asked him when they were seated in his office. As offices go, it was a very nice one: spacious, with an abundance of natural light, and a large table at the opposite end to his desk, big enough to sit maybe twenty people. A television almost as large as the table sat high on the wall behind it.
‘She’d been working at the company for almost seven years. Worked her way up from an office temp to being my deputy. She was a lovely person, and so is her husband. I just can’t imagine what he’s going through right now, especially with the little boy.’
Fielding felt a chill run right through her. She’d been very close to Jennifer at school, and felt guilty at that moment that she hadn’t kept in touch. But with moving away, and then getting the job in Manchester, her old life up here just seemed to take second place. The row she’d had with her mother and sister hadn’t helped matters… but she really should have kept in touch with her friends from her school days.
She continued her questioning, trying to put regret to the back of her mind. ‘Had there been anyone hanging around the place, acting suspiciously, or did you know if anyone had been pestering Jennifer for any reason?’
‘No… no… that’s just the thing. Jennifer got on well with everybody she knew. As far as I am aware she had no enemies. Nobody that would do… that… to her. She was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, she really was.’
At that point, Fielding brought the two photographs out of the file she had on her lap. ‘I wonder if you recognise any of these people, sir?’ She laid the photos of Alex Carruthers and John Doe out in front of him.
He carefully scrutinised both images before pointing at Carruthers. Fielding’s pulse began to race. Could this be the break that they were after?
‘I think I recognise him from the newspapers the other night… does he have something to do with this?’
‘Have you ever seen him here or lurking around, or did Jennifer know him perhaps?’
‘No,’ still looking at the face in front of him. ‘I’ve never seen him before, only in the papers like I said. I know most, if not all of Jennifer’s friends, and I can honestly say that he’s not one of them.’
Severely let down but not wishing to show it, Fielding simply told him that they needed him to get in touch with them about another matter and left it at that.
‘I thought we were really onto something there,’ Rawlins said to Fielding as she was fastening her seat belt back in the car. ‘He seemed pretty definite though, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, locking herself in as well. ‘We’ll try Caroline Porter’s neighbour in Cleadon. She’s our last hope up here, and if she gives us the same answer as John Scott, then I doubt if we can pin anything on Alex Carruthers for these two murders.’
Claire was driving now. ‘I think he’s a good bet for his great-uncle though, don’t you think? Everything seems to point to him.’
Fielding had to admit that he was – in fact, he was the only suspect they had, full stop. And as for John Doe… well… whoever he was and whatever he had to do with this, nobody seemed to know anything about him, and he hadn’t come forward either.
As they drove through the impressive Tyne Tunnel, the underwater carriageway beneath the River Tyne linking the counties of North and South Tyneside, and out towards Cleadon, Sally Fielding’s childhood memories of the place came flooding back to her. Lovely memories prior to the death of her father; not so happy afterwards.
17
A gaudy red and black estate agent’s sign sticking out at an angle from the unkempt hedge read Whitlock and Sons, and included a telephone number in a sickly yellow colour on the bottom line. Burton rang the number and waited. Saturday morning, somebody should be there, and on the sixth ring the call was picked up by a youngish-sounding girl. He quickly introduced himself and explained the basics of the situation. She then put him momentarily on hold while she went to get her manager who was, as she put it, ‘in the back office’.
‘How may I help you, detective?’ This was the voice of an older woman this time and, unfortunately, he had to go through everything again with her. He was a bit annoyed at the young girl for not passing the message on. Listening to what he said, the manager, whose name was Miss Jameson, said that she would immediately drive out to meet them with the key to the property. She was true to her word and arrived well within fifteen minutes of the call.
‘So who else has a key to the place?’ Burton had asked the estate agent before entering. ‘Is it his great-nephew, Alex Carruthers?’
‘He does have one, I believe,’ Miss Jameson confirmed, ‘although we haven’t seen him since Mr Jackson left the property.’
‘What about any other relatives? Did Mr Jackson have anyone else apart from him?’
‘Yes, I believe he did,’ the woman recalled. ‘I’ll have to look it up when I get back to the office, but there are other relatives as far as I can remember.’
Asking if she wouldn’t mind waiting outside, at least until they’d taken a look around, Burton and Summers donned their nitrile gloves and entered the property. The bungalow was cold when they entered, perhaps to be expected for a building which had stood empty for the past three months, and made even more so by the wintery chill that was in the air today.
It was decorated in a style B
urton would have attributed to an older person with more traditional tastes. It reminded him of the way his grandmother would have had it, all floral wallpaper and high wing-back chairs, and an old-fashioned gas fire in the living room sitting on a tiled hearth. Bungalows were popular and always snapped up quickly, but not this one apparently, and that was most likely down to the decor and furnishings. Weren’t you supposed to empty a house completely when you were trying to sell it these days, or were you supposed to redecorate it to make it more appealing?
Burton noticed a broken glass pane in the rear door, which he would bring to the attention of the estate agent, but other than that nothing seemed to be out of place until Summers called him into the living room.
‘In here, sir!’
‘Yes, what is it?’ Burton asked, following the sound of Summers’s voice.
‘There’s a photograph missing from this frame here,’ Summers stated, pointing to the one which was lying face up at the end of a row. Burton went across and looked at all the photographs arranged on the sideboard. Anyone giving them a quick glance would have easily missed it.
‘Well done, Jack,’ he said to his DC, then proceeded to examine each in turn. There were a few of Mr Jackson with a woman who must have been his wife, and a couple of him with a group of men, and also an old black and white photograph of him in an RAF uniform. He went outside and asked the estate agent to come in and take a look. ‘I don’t suppose you can remember what was in this frame here?’ he asked holding the now empty frame up for her to see.
She shook her head, ‘No, I’m sorry, I really don’t. You’ll have to speak to Mr Carruthers about that.’
Oh I will, thought Burton, bringing a poly bag out of his pocket and slipping the frame into it.
Sally Fielding remembered most, if not all of the houses in Cleadon Village being larger than average. Even the bungalows were mostly dormer ones which had been redesigned with loft conversions and extensions. The village was also home to a lot of people who either owned horses or were horse-riding enthusiasts. That was one thing that she remembered very clearly about the place, the horse riders parading throughout the village and surrounding areas either on the roads or along the bridle paths. Even a paddock full of horses every size and colour marked the imaginary boundary line division between the semi-rural villages of East Boldon and Cleadon. Miss Sandra Matthews lived in one of the above average-sized bungalows just off the main road which stretched from one end of Cleadon to the other.
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