‘Someone’s trying to make me look bad,’ she eventually said.
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you have enemies?’
‘We all do, don’t we? Especially in this job.’
‘Want to give me any names?’
Jessica thought of the people she’d helped to put away over the years: Randall Anderson, Dennis Doherty, Edward Marks. Then there were the ones who got away: Brenda Gale, Zipporah, the Hyde family, plus Pomeroy and his cronies. Where would she even start?
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Jessica was suddenly aware of Fordham’s breathing. There was a slight tickle at the top of his throat, as if he had a secret cigar habit. In and out. In and out.
‘We’ve got the post-mortem back on Peter Salisbury,’ he said. ‘He was stabbed in the neck – but we already knew that. The person managed to get close to him – someone he knew, trusted, or was comfortable with. They were standing in front of him, a little shorter but not too much.’
In other words, someone close to her height.
‘They’re still picking over the body for DNA.’
Fordham glanced across to her, not needing to ask the question.
‘I’ve never denied I was with him,’ Jessica replied. ‘There might be one of my hairs stuck to him.’
‘Someone swabbed him with bleach. He or she knew what they were doing, knew how to hide any trace of what they’d done.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘This person had seen bodies before. They knew how to tidy up their handiwork.’
‘It’s not me.’
Jessica was too late to catch the repetition.
Fordham turned to face her. For a moment Jessica thought he was going to take her hand as he angled forward. Instead, he twisted the face of his watch and leaned backwards, waiting for Jessica to hold his gaze.
‘What’s going to happen if Sophie turns up dead?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t kill anyone. Why would I?’
‘We’re still waiting on those blood results from your car, plus we’re looking into Sophie’s final movements. Why did she call you?’
‘I told you – she’d seen my poster of Bex and said she wanted to meet.’
Fordham pushed himself up and straightened his long coat. He tightened the knot of his tie but didn’t bother to move it any higher on his neck. When he put his hands in his trouser pockets, the tails of his coat were caught by the breeze and flapped behind him. He’d make a good silhouette.
‘Don’t go anywhere near Sophie Johns’ parents,’ he said. ‘This is me telling you that they’re off limits. No grey areas, no misunderstandings. If you try to talk to them, you’ll be arrested and we’ll keep you in. Understand?’
Jessica stared past him towards the ocean. ‘Absolutely.’
Twenty
With his point made, Fordham sauntered off along the promenade, hands still in his pockets. Jessica concluded that if he wasn’t playing with himself through the trouser material, then the most serious relationship in his life must be between him and the mirror. He really did have a look-at-me vibe about him, like some bloke wearing a bright green suit at a wedding. There was always one. He probably spent fifteen minutes getting his tie into the perfect position every morning. She could imagine criminals – real criminals – absolutely hating him.
Jessica watched him walk away, wondering if he’d turn to look at her, but he didn’t. After a couple of minutes, he disappeared behind an approaching tram and then she lost him in the crowd. She found him almost impossible to read: friendly one moment; a bit of a dick the next. Perhaps he was playing her, waiting for her guard to drop when he’d trick her into saying something stupid. There was also a chance that he was as bemused as she was, trying to figure out how it all slotted together. He’d definitely be getting it in the neck from some superintendent somewhere.
When she was sure Fordham wouldn’t be returning, Jessica headed back into the hotel. She ignored the breakfast room, passed the reception desk without saying anything to Eckhart and continued up the stairs. She was about to head into room seven when she heard a shuffling at the far end of the corridor. A maid was wrestling with a vacuum cleaner, hauling the snaking arm and dragging it through an open doorway among a muffled barrage of what Jessica assumed were foreign expletives. If they weren’t, they should be, given the venom with which they were spat.
Jessica made her way slowly along the corridor. After depositing the vacuum cleaner into the room, the maid was facing the other way, trying to yank a cleaning cart backwards. The wheels were stuck on a ridge of carpet and refusing to budge. Jessica rounded the cart and motioned to help, offering to lift the other end. The maid’s caterpillar eyebrows rocketed, her dark eyes widening with such fear that Jessica took a step back and held her hands up to show she meant no harm.
‘Do you want a hand?’ she asked.
‘No English.’
Jessica motioned towards lifting the cart again. ‘I can lift this end, it’s not a problem.’
The maid shook her head furiously. ‘No, no, no.’
She was staring at the ground, avoiding any amount of eye contact, so Jessica took the initiative. She hoisted up the back end of the cart and pushed until the wheels bumped over the bulge in the carpet. The maid stepped back, squeaking something in her native tongue.
Jessica again held her hands up, showing her palms. ‘No worries, see. Are you okay?’
‘No English. No English.’
The maid glanced sideways at her, sneaking a quick peek from the corner of her eye and then looking away again. There was a tiny fraction of a second in which they locked eyes and Jessica saw understanding.
‘You can understand me, can’t you?’ she said.
‘No English.’
Jessica delved into her pockets, hunting from one to the other until she found a folded-up flyer with Bex’s photo. She held out her arm, ensuring it was in a position where the maid couldn’t avoid looking at it.
‘Do you know this girl?’ Jessica asked.
She expected a shake of the head and another string of ‘No English’ responses, but the maid’s eyebrows again shot upwards, meeting in the middle of her creased forehead. It only took her a second to regain composure, but she’d already given herself away.
‘You know her, don’t you?’ Jessica said, unable to mask the excitement in her voice.
‘No English.’
‘Was she a guest here?’
‘No English.’
Jessica reached forward, placing a hand on the maid’s shoulder, hoping to reassure her. It had the opposite effect, with the woman leaping backwards and letting out a small scream.
‘No English,’ she repeated, far louder this time. ‘No English. No English.’
There was a small thump from the top of the stairs and Jessica turned to see Eckhart bounding towards them. His face was red, arms tense as he struggled to control his temper.
‘Everything okay here?’ he asked, addressing Jessica. She slipped the flyer back into her pocket, hoping he hadn’t noticed. ‘Is there a problem with your room?’ he added.
‘Not at all.’
He peered between Jessica and the maid like a headmaster with two naughty students, waiting for one of them to confess. Neither of them spoke, with the maid smoothing down her uniform and then plucking a towel from the cart, looping it over her arm, ready to get to work.
‘I’ll get back to my room,’ Jessica said, dipping around Eckhart’s hand on hip and disappearing through door number seven.
Jessica spent an hour in her room doing very little other than using the Internet on her phone to find out what had been going on in the rest of the world. What she really wanted to do was to talk to the maid further – but she doubted she’d get anything other than the ‘No English’ response, plus she didn’t want to bump into Eckhart again.
When she finally ran out of things with which to amuse herself, Jessica left her roo
m and edged down the stairs. She crouched, peeping towards the reception desk, which was – thankfully – empty. She hurried through the front door onto the car park and then headed to the Saint Andrew’s hotel at the furthest end of the rank. There were wooden boards across the entrance, with sooty scorch marks embedded into the sandstone around three of the downstairs windows. As well as the large banners declaring it a hazard, there was an A4 sheet of paper stuck to the wood across the front door. It was covered with transparent tape, protecting it from the elements, and listed the reasons why the hotel had been shut down.
It was full of the type of legalese so adored by councils and public bodies. If a press officer or lawyer threw enough long words at a statement, chances were that normal people wouldn’t bother to read it.
From what Jessica could tell, ‘significant concerns over the structural integrity of the aforementioned building’ seemed to be the most pressing problem. It was probably a fair concern – because getting a good night’s sleep would be tough if there was a chance the entire building could come crumbling down on a guest’s head.
She skim-read the rest of the information, before she spotted the name at the bottom – Luke Eckhart. He did own the place, after all. It was no wonder he was so concerned about money, considering he had a condemned building on his hands. Whether it was knocked down or refurbished, it was going to cost him a few quid.
Jessica moved onto the Seaview Pleasance next door, which had a flashing neon sign in the front window advertising ‘vacancies’.
The young woman behind the counter was local and overly enthusiastic about selling the hotel as a place to stay. She was likely still a teenager, probably on minimum wage, definitely overworked, considering the stack of papers behind the counter. Jessica asked her about the price of a night and was offered the same cash discount she’d been given at the Prince. She showed Bex’s photo but got a shake of the head and a ‘sorry’.
It was a similar story in the Excalibur and the Sunshine Resort: young people manning the front desk, a potential cash discount, no recognition of Bex.
As Jessica emerged from the final hotel into the car park, she turned back towards the Prince, only to see Eckhart standing at the front door. He had both hands on his hips, scowl fixed on her. Jessica turned her back on him, walking slowly across the tarmac towards the seafront. She crossed the road, determined not to look backwards and acknowledge the hotel owner. As she looked up, Jessica realised the phone booth from which Bex had called her was directly in front of her.
Back to the beginning.
Jessica lifted the receiver, dropped in a fifty-pence piece and called her home number. If Eckhart was still watching, then he would have to guess what she was up to. The phone rang and rang, before the answer machine eventually kicked in. Jessica heard her own voice telling the caller to leave a message. It was short and breezy, recorded in a hurry. Her voice was huskier than she realised, deeper, as if she had a cold. Or perhaps she always sounded like that?
She listened, waiting for a couple of minutes, still not turning back towards the hotel. As she listened to the silence on the line, it dawned on Jessica that perhaps Bex had brought her here – specifically here – for a reason. Something was going on in Eckhart’s hotels that nobody else had noticed. She couldn’t explain everything that had happened with Peter Salisbury and Sophie Johns, but, if Bex had stumbled across whatever it was Eckhart was up to, maybe that was why she’d called?
Jessica removed a handful of Bex’s flyers from her pocket, searching for the correct one. At the bottom was the sheet on which she’d written the number plate of the white van that dropped off and picked up the maids each morning and afternoon.
At least one of those women knew who Bex was, even if she’d only seen her briefly. Finding out where they were being bussed in and out from would be a good start, but Jessica couldn’t go through Izzy. All police checks of the number plate database would be logged and she didn’t want to risk getting her friend in trouble.
She needed help from outside the force – which meant it was time to call a face from the past.
Twenty-One
A woman’s voice answered the office phone, offering a too chirpy, too self-satisfied ‘hello’. Even with the one word, the Mancunian accent was thick.
‘Hi,’ Jessica replied. ‘I’m looking for Andrew Hunter.’
‘This is Hunter Investigations,’ the voice replied.
‘Yes, but I’d actually like to talk to Andrew.’
‘Mr Hunter is busy right now, but I can help. If you’d like to give me a few details—’
‘Is he actually there in the office?’
There was a short pause and then: ‘I’m sorry, who’s calling…?’
‘Tell him it’s an old friend.’
There was a ruffling and then the sound of voices muffled by a hand over the receiver. Jessica had no idea to whom she’d been speaking, but if Andrew had a secretary, then he was moving up in the world. The last time she’d met him, he couldn’t even afford proper chairs. He was a private investigator who’d entangled himself in one of Jessica’s cases involving a teenager that had seemingly killed herself. She thought him a bit clumsy, annoying even, yet there was something about him in that he genuinely seemed to care for the people with whom he was working.
They’d not seen each other in years, but she’d always kept his number, figuring the day might come when she needed a favour.
The stifled sound of chatter on the phone was replaced by a man’s voice. ‘Hello, this is Andrew Hunter. Can I help you?’
‘Wow,’ Jessica replied. ‘You’ve really been working on your phone manner. That was very posh.’
‘Er… who is this?’
‘It’s your absolute, all-time favourite police inspector. Think incredible charm, Hollywood good looks, rapier wit…’
Silence.
‘Is this a wind-up?’
Jessica huffed her annoyance. ‘I obviously left a lasting impression then…?’
‘Megan?’
‘Who the hell’s Megan?’
More silence.
‘Oh…’ he said. ‘Jessica.’
‘You could sound a little more pleased.’
Andrew either laughed or breathed, it was hard to tell over the phone. The new one Jessica had bought sounded far tinnier than her actual one.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked.
‘Is this line secure?’
He lowered his voice. ‘I’m not sure there’s much I could do if MI5 are listening in, but we do check for bugs in the office every now and then. What do you want me to say?’
‘I need a bit of a favour,’ Jessica said. ‘You owe me one for not tipping me off about that whole devil cult in the woods thing, so this can make us even.’
This time he definitely laughed. ‘Ah, Jessica. I forgot what it was like to work with you. I do keep an eye out for your name in the paper. Every now and then I’ll see you there, pulling a face.’
‘I don’t pull faces.’
‘Perhaps that’s your “Hollywood good looks”? Anyway, I figured the day might come when I’d hear from you again. What can I do for you?’
Jessica was sitting on the sea wall, a couple of hundred metres past the hotels, well out of sight if Eckhart was still trying to watch her. A handful of tourists were passing up and down the promenade, but nobody was paying her any attention.
‘This is going to sound dramatic,’ she said, doing her best to make it sound undramatic, ‘but someone’s out to get me.’
She half expected Andrew to laugh – it did sound ridiculous – but he didn’t. She could sense the anticipation in his voice.
‘Go on,’ he replied.
‘I’m in Blackpool and things are a mess.’
Jessica spent the next few minutes talking him through everything that had happened since she had arrived. The more she spoke, the more ridiculous it all sounded. He queried a few points and asked her to expand, but she told him everything she could. It
felt good to finally hold nothing back and tell someone the full story. She wondered if she should have gone to him to help find Bex in the first place. It was the type of thing in which he specialised, and yet to do so would have admitted defeat. After all, it was the type of thing in which she was also supposed to specialise. If she’d stuck her pride to one side, perhaps she wouldn’t have ended up like this.
‘If you’re busy with a case, there’s no problem,’ she finished with.
‘I can find time.’
‘I only need a few details – who owns that number plate and where do they live? I take it you can get hold of stuff like that?’
‘I have my ways. Are you sure that’s all?’
‘Yes… well, hopefully. I don’t know. Will you call this number back? Forget any other ones you have for me.’
Jessica could hear the scrape of a chair in the background and the sound of the woman’s voice who’d answered the phone.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘If you want me, call the desk number you have, then press one as soon as it rings. It’ll redirect to my mobile. I’ll call you back, but give me a little time. I am in the middle of something. Are you sure that’s all?’
‘I suppose there is one other thing?’
‘What?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
Twenty-Two
While Andrew got to work, Jessica figured she’d be proactive by herself. DCI Fordham had specifically told her to stay away from Sophie Johns’ family – but he’d said nothing about her friends. Besides, he’d told her where Sophie worked, practically begging Jessica to stick her nose in.
It was barely midday, but the Honky Tonk Diner was already rammed with families tucking into the ‘world-famous all-day American breakfast’. For less than a fiver, it was perhaps no surprise, even if ‘world-famous’ was pushing it. Jessica doubted there were many south-east islanders desperate to escape their Pacific paradise in order to tuck into a mound of eggs and bacon close to Blackpool’s seafront.
Silent Suspect: A completely gripping crime thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 13) Page 12
