by Roberta Kray
It was over a week, seven hazy days and nights, before Maddie was out of intensive care and able to start making sense of what had happened. Even then the pieces of the jigsaw didn’t quite fit together. Rick came and went, feeding her bite-sized portions of information: Adam Vasser arrested… guns and drugs… a police stakeout… an extra body in a coffin. The words settled around her but didn’t quite sink in.
Time passed. She lay back and listened to the sounds of the hospital: the creak of wheels, footsteps on lino, a telephone ringing, the hum and beep of the machines. Alisha and Winston brought homemade soup and news of Zac. Shauna dropped by with magazines and gossip, their differences forgotten in the face of a crisis. Solomon sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. ‘Hell, babe, you’re the only person I know who can turn grave-tending into a dangerous occupation.’
It was on the Saturday that everything changed. Rick was sitting by her, talking again about the police surveillance on the cemetery. ‘Because of the missing key, they thought someone who worked there might be involved. That’s why it was all hush-hush. Even Delia Shields didn’t know about it.’
‘And the body?’ she asked. ‘The other one. Have they found out who it was yet?’
‘Still trawling through the missing persons list. You’d be surprised how many people go AWOL, just walk out of the door and disappear.’
‘The cigarette ends at the mausoleum,’ she said, not sure why she had suddenly remembered them. Her thoughts seemed to be leaping around like jumping beans. ‘Did Vasser leave them there?’
‘Or one of his cohorts. He must have had help shifting all that gear. Maybe one of Tony Gissing’s boys. We reckon they did some of it at night, came over the wall of one of the houses. But they probably dropped by during the day too.’
She thought of Vasser lurking in the bushes, watching and waiting. The idea wasn’t pleasant. By tending Lucy Rivers’s grave, she had inadvertently got a little too close to his hiding place. And then, while she was pondering on this, her thoughts shot off in another direction. ‘Did you ever suspect anything? About the cops, I mean. Although, I suppose people are always wandering around the cemetery.’
He gave her an odd look. ‘What?’
Maddie managed a weak smile as her hand automatically rose to her bandaged skull. ‘I’m missing something, huh? Sorry – my brain is still mashed.’ And then, out of nowhere, the penny finally dropped. Her eyes widened as the truth hit her. ‘You said “we” just then, when you were talking about Vasser. You said “we reckon”. Oh my God, you’re a cop, aren’t you? You were part of the operation.’
Rick gave a reluctant nod. ‘Yes. I came down from Manchester. They needed someone who the locals wouldn’t recognise. It was a big job, a chance to nail the Street family once and for all – except it didn’t quite work out like that.’ He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t mean to deceive you. But I couldn’t say. You do understand that, don’t you?’
She frowned, still trying to absorb the revelation. And then, with a jolt, she realised that she had fallen in love with someone she didn’t know at all. A dark, sick feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. ‘Is your name even Rick?’
‘It’s David,’ he said. ‘David Hampson.’
‘David,’ she repeated, testing the name on her tongue and feeling its oddness. Her mind flipped back through the past few months, trying to pick up on any clue, any hint, anything that might have given her reason to doubt him. But there was nothing. He had played the part of the genial gravedigger to perfection.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I know it must be a surprise, a shock. But the two of us, you and me, none of that was a lie. I never meant for it to happen, but…’
‘But it did.’ She stared at him, struggling to find a way to accept, to move beyond, but her emotions were in turmoil. Who was this man? What did she actually know about him? ‘You’ll be telling me you’ve got a wife and kids next.’
She had meant it as a joke, but instantly his gaze slid away from her, his face full of guilt. Her heart sank. Just when she’d thought it couldn’t get any worse… Quickly she snatched her hand away. ‘You bastard! Get out of here. Get out of here now.’
‘Maddie, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t —’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’ She turned her head away from him. ‘Leave me alone. Go away. Fuck off and don’t ever come back.’
Slowly he rose to his feet. She listened to his footsteps cross the room, heard the door open and close again. And then there was silence. What now? Tears rose to her eyes, but she blinked them away. She couldn’t afford to give in to self-pity; if she started crying now, she might never stop. She had taken a chance and it hadn’t paid off. Love had slipped through her fingers again.
Maddie stared hard at a thin, jagged crack running up the wall. She had to hold herself together, refuse to fall apart. She had to find a way to carry on. Terrible things had happened – too many of them – but she was still living, still breathing. Damaged, perhaps, but not destroyed. She was, if nothing else, a survivor.
Epilogue
The inside of the dark blue Mercedes smelled of leather and the musky scent of aftershave. Maddie stared out through the windscreen, gathering her thoughts for what was to come. It was almost a month now since she’d escaped death by the skin of her teeth and gradually life was returning to normal. Soon it would be autumn and the leaves would start to fall. Things carried on. The world kept turning.
Solomon drove his boss’s car with an easy nonchalance, his right elbow leaning on the base of the open window. ‘Any particular reason why you want to see this guy again?’
‘Loose ends,’ she said.
‘Ah, those. Tricky things, loose ends.’
‘They can be. And thanks for the lift. I really appreciate it.’
‘No problem.’
‘Chris Street didn’t mind you borrowing the car?’
‘He was the one who suggested it. Reckoned it was the least he could do. If it hadn’t been for what happened to you, Vasser could have caused him a whole heap of grief. There was a goddamn arsenal stashed in that mausoleum. Man was planning some major warfare. Wouldn’t have been pretty, I can tell you.’
‘Well,’ she said dryly, ‘glad to be of help.’
Solomon grinned at her. ‘Try and say it with feeling, girl. I know you ain’t got much time for the Streets, but there’s worse people could be running this manor. Chris may have his faults, but he ain’t no psychopath.’
Thinking of Adam Vasser made Maddie shudder. She still had flashbacks to her time in the mausoleum, sudden panic attacks that left her feeling weak and helpless. She was scrabbling about in the dark again, blindly feeling her way across the dusty concrete, hammering on the door until her knuckles bled… ‘It’s weird to think of all those guns in there. If I’d found them, I could have tried to blast my way out.’
‘Maybe it’s better that you didn’t.’
‘How do you figure that one out?’
Solomon’s fingers beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel. ‘Big, thick metal door, small space – those bullets would have been bouncing all over the place. One bad ricochet and you’d have been brown bread, hon. They’d have been scraping you up off the floor.’
Maddie hadn’t considered that. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Yes, that could have been something of a suicide mission.’
‘Mind, if that tart hadn’t stolen my phone, you’d never have been there in the first place.’
‘Louise?’
‘Yeah, the lovely Louise. I knew there was something dodgy about her.’
Maddie remembered the time she’d seen them together at Adriano’s. ‘How come?’
Solomon heaved out a breath, his mouth turning down at the corners. ‘Now, I know I’m a catch, right? Ain’t no denying it. But that girl was all over me like a rash. A bit too keen, if you get what I mean.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘But you still slept with her?’
> ‘Been rude not to. The girl went to a lot of effort.’
‘The perfect gentleman.’
‘Can’t argue with that,’ he said.
‘So have the police charged her with anything?’
‘Aiding and abetting, but she’ll walk. Daddy’s got her the best lawyers that money can buy. They’ll claim that Vasser forced her, threatened her. They’ll play the drug-addiction card and say she didn’t know what she was doing. She’ll go to rehab for a few months and that’ll be it.’ He gave a disapproving shake of his head. ‘Ain’t right, but that’s the way it is.’
Maddie thought it ironic, even amusing, that Solomon was bemoaning Louise’s lack of punishment when he worked for a family of criminals himself. She turned her head, glancing out of the side window, so he wouldn’t notice the smile playing around her lips. ‘I guess we both made a few mistakes on the romance front.’
Solomon released a thin whistle from between his teeth. ‘You ain’t wrong there, babe. Reckon you get first prize, though. An undercover cop. Shit, that was a turn-up for the books.’
‘A married undercover cop,’ she said.
Solomon pulled a face. ‘Yeah, that don’t help none.’
‘I’ll get over it.’ She said the words with more bravado than she felt. In truth, she was still aching from the deception, still feeling completely and utterly betrayed. Sometimes she wondered if any of it had been real. She suspected now that Rick – she still couldn’t get used to calling him David – had only befriended her in the first place because she was tending a grave that was close to the Belvedere mausoleum. Maybe he’d thought that she was involved in some way, using her job as a cover while she helped to stash the guns and drugs in the small brick building.
She gazed out of the window, trying to focus on the streets and the shops and the people, anything other than Rick Mallory. But she couldn’t shift him from her mind. She liked to think that he’d had some genuine affection for her, that she hadn’t just been used, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Love was a gamble, and on this occasion she’d drawn the joker.
Solomon gave her a glance. ‘Next time we’d best be more careful, huh?’
‘Are you kidding? There isn’t going to be a next time. I’m sworn to celibacy for the rest of my life.’
‘That’s a long time, babe. Sure you want to make that kind of commitment?’
‘Absolutely sure.’
They were quiet for a while with no other sound in the car than the soft, gentle purr of the engine. The miles slipped by, the districts merging, and within five minutes they were approaching their destination. Maddie felt her stomach tighten. She needed answers, but would she get them? There was only one way to find out.
Solomon pulled up the Mercedes beside the high grey wall. ‘Still time to change your mind,’ he said. ‘We can turn round and go back home.’
‘No, I want to see him. I have to.’
‘Okay.’
‘I won’t be long.’
‘Ain’t no rush, hon. Take as long as you need.’
Maddie sat for a while, getting her thoughts in order. Then she took a deep breath, got out of the car, shut the door and walked through the gates of HMP Thornley Heath.
DI Valerie Middleton flicked through the slim folder as Swann did the driving. It had taken a while, but they’d finally identified the body sharing coffin space in the mausoleum. Owen Vickery had disappeared twenty-eight years ago, left the house one day and never come back. His wife had reported him as missing, but hadn’t suspected foul play. Vickery, a former manager of Kellston Cemetery, had been a less-than-perfect husband, having indulged in a string of affairs during the eight years he’d been married. The last one had involved a young girl called Lucy Rivers, who had probably taken her own life.
‘Not going to be easy after all this time,’ Swann said. ‘Whoever did it could be long dead.’
Valerie flicked through the report. ‘A blow to the side of the head with a blunt heavy object. Not much to go on. I wonder what he was even doing at the cemetery; he’d resigned from the job a couple of years earlier and moved away from the area. The wife says he didn’t have relatives buried there.’
‘What do you reckon to her? A woman scorned and all that. Maybe she decided she’d had enough.’
Valerie thought back to their interview yesterday with Sandra Vickery. She’d seemed surprised but not especially upset by the news. She’d identified the St Christopher found round the neck of their mystery skeleton, and the white-gold wedding ring that was still attached to what remained of the third finger of the left hand. ‘I don’t think so. For starters, how would she have got access to the mausoleum? And even if she had, she’s not a big woman. I can’t see her being able to drag a body into the building, force open a coffin and then lift him into it.’
‘Perhaps she had help.’
‘Perhaps.’
As Swann parked the Peugeot, Valerie put the file back into her briefcase. She had the feeling that this might be one of those murders that they never got to the bottom of. Cases like these were notoriously hard to solve, but that wouldn’t stop her trying. For the time being, though, she had other things on her mind.
She slid off her seatbelt and opened the door. ‘Here we go again.’
‘You think he’s wasting our time?’
‘Well, we’ll soon find out.’
They walked together to the reception area, showed their ID and a few minutes later were led through the corridors to their first appointment of the day.
Valerie crossed her legs and stared hard at the man opposite her. She felt like she spent more time than was strictly healthy sitting in small, stuffy rooms while she listened to one lowlife or another feeding her a pack of lies. Today the room was in Wormwood Scrubs and the lowlife was Adam Vasser. He was currently on remand, awaiting trial for the attempted murders of Lewis Hale and Maddie Layne. There was little doubt in her mind that he had also been responsible for the killing of Delia Shields, but as yet they didn’t have sufficient evidence to charge him.
‘So, Adam,’ she said, ‘what can we do for you?’
Vasser leaned forward, laying his forearms on the table. ‘I’d say it’s more the other way round. I’ve got some information. Two unsolved murders: Bo Vale and Greta Layne. Ring any bells?’
Valerie pricked up her ears but kept her expression neutral. It was over six years now since Bo Vale had been found floating in the Thames. The body of his girlfriend, Greta – Maddie Layne’s sister – had sunk without trace. They’d come up against a brick wall in the investigation and the case was still open. ‘What about them?’
‘Maybe I know who wasted them.’
Valerie waited, but he didn’t go on. ‘And?’
‘And nothing,’ Vasser said. ‘I’m not saying more until I get some guarantees.’
‘What kind of guarantees?’ DS Swann asked.
Valerie shot him a look. ‘We don’t do deals.’
Vasser smirked. ‘Sure you do, Inspector. You just call it something different, give it a fancy name and pretend it never happened. I mean, you wouldn’t be here, would you, unless you were prepared for a little give and take?’
‘Perhaps we had nothing better to do,’ Swann said dryly. ‘There’s always that possibility.’
Vasser sat back and folded his arms across his chest.
Swann gave an audible sigh. ‘I’m getting bored already. Just spit it out, mate. Tell us what you want.’
Vasser’s gaze flicked from one officer to the other, his eyes cold and sly. Eventually, he began to talk again. ‘I’m up for attempted murder, right? Attempted. And I reckon that’s going to be pretty hard to prove.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Valerie said.
Vasser’s eyebrows shifted up. ‘You think? Take our rent boy for starters. I go out for a quiet drink and get chatting to a guy at the bar: football, the state of the economy, the usual mundane stuff. The bar’s about to close and he says come back and have another bevvy
at my place. How am I to know that he’s a whore? He makes a move on me and I lose my rag. Yeah, I shouldn’t have hit him, but he took me by surprise. I overreacted, but I wasn’t trying to kill the geezer.’
‘And Maddie Layne?’ Valerie asked, not even attempting to disguise the disgust in her voice. ‘How do you account for smashing her over the head with a spade and leaving her to die in a pitch-black mausoleum?’
‘I didn’t hit her that hard. I just panicked when she suddenly showed up. And who said I left her to die? I was going to go back and let her out later. I didn’t know how badly hurt she was. I just wanted to teach her a lesson.’
‘Some lesson,’ Valerie retorted. ‘And she didn’t just turn up. She was sent a message from a stolen phone to go to the cemetery.’
Vasser shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about a nicked phone.’
‘No, of course you don’t. I’m sure you didn’t ask Louise Cole to steal it either.’
‘You drop the charges down to GBH and I’ll tell you who killed Bo and Greta.’
Valerie knew that with the help of a good barrister, he could twist the truth enough to cast doubt on whether he had actually intended to kill his victims. ‘I can’t make that decision. It’s up to the CPS.’
‘So you go and talk to them and let me know.’
For the first time, Valerie saw a flicker of fear in his eyes. Vasser didn’t fancy going down for a long stretch. He was only twenty-four and was looking at a life sentence with a minimum of fifteen, maybe even twenty years in the slammer. ‘I need names,’ she said. ‘I need motive. I need to know you’re not wasting our time.’
Vasser glared at her across the table. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a name. And later, if I get what I want, I’ll tell you where the weapon’s hidden. You can’t do anything without that, anyway. Once you’ve got the gun, you’ll be able to match it to the bullet you dug out of Bo Vale’s brain.’
‘There are still the drug charges, the weapons found —’
Vasser gave a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I can deal with those.’
