Above Suspicion

by Lynda La Plante

  Anna switched on a lamp and found the recharger. She then fixed him a drink as he watched her with angry, watery eyes. She calmly took out her notebook and, leaning against the bar, made notes of everything he had told her. Southwood remained silent, drinking thirstily, before holding up his glass for a refill.

  “I’ll check all this out,” she said, pouring more vodka. “Is there anything else?”

  “Nah, that’s it. Like I said: it might mean fuck-all. There was just something about him.” He hesitated. “Made you feel uneasy. I think it was his eyes. He’d got these big, wide-apart eyes.”

  “Anthony Duffy,” Anna said softly.

  “Yeah, he was a really handsome boy. Christ knows where he is now. That was twenty years ago.” Southwood looked pitiful: hunched in his chair, clutching his glass. “It’s all I have, swear on my dead mother’s grave. That’s it.”

  Anna put her notebook away. “We’ll check it out. Thank you.” She started to walk to the door.

  “Why don’t you stay and have a drink with me?”

  She glanced at him and shook her head. The big, foul-mouthed man looked vulnerable. Though he was obviously lonely, she couldn’t stand to be in his presence a moment longer.

  “No. Thank you.”

  By the time Anna left the villa a crate of Scotch had been deposited on the doorstep by the front door. Southwood called after her from his chair. “Good night,” she said, and walking outside, closed the door behind her. They had a possible suspect. Anthony Duffy. She’d finally got what she came for.

  Ron jumped out of the waiting taxi and opened the passenger door.

  “You all right?” he said. “I was getting worried.”

  “I’m fine. Just find me somewhere quiet where the food is good and cheap, and has some decent sangria to go with it. And then I need to find a hotel.”

  “On our way,” he said as the taxi swerved down the hill, away from the decaying villa and its equally decaying, drunken occupant.

  “Did you get the information you wanted?” Ron asked.

  “Yes,” she said, repeating the name “Anthony Duffy” to herself. It might prove to be unconnected. But if it didn’t, they had, at long last, a suspect.

  Chapter Six

  Langton kept staring at the memo.

  “Anthony Duffy?” He looked at Lewis. “What’s this about?”

  “Travis sent a text message to Moira. Here’s the printout.”

  “This is it?”

  “Yeah, that’s all she said. And that she should be back this morning.”

  “So what’s with this Anthony Duffy?”

  Lewis scratched his head. “We don’t have any record of him; he’s not on any files. I guess we have to wait until we get the details from Travis.”

  Langton pursed his lips in anger; he returned to his office.

  Moira looked over. “I told you to wait until she got here.”

  Lewis whipped round on Moira. “This is a fucking murder inquiry, Moira! She needs to get herself organized: sending bloody text messages! She never even contacted the Spanish policeman we arranged to help her.”

  It was a nightmare journey home for Anna. Ron’s friend with the B and B was in fact the proprietor of a seedy, rundown hostel. The room was cramped and damp and she had to share the dubious bathroom. That, with the aftereffects of the awful sangria, greasy hamburger and french fries from Ron’s favorite café, had kept her up most of the night before she reboarded the plane. She staggered back and forth to the toilets throughout the trip. She wasn’t exactly sick, but she did feel like someone with a cement mixer in her stomach.

  When she arrived at the station just after two o’clock, she wasn’t feeling any better. The cement mixer kept on churning, but now she was feeling light-headed, too. Moira came to her desk.

  “Gov is very spiky about your text message,” she whispered. “You wanted me to pass it on, right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, he’s ready to have a go at you.”

  “Go at me? My God, I’ve had no sleep, I have worked my butt off and Southwood is even worse than you described. He’s got no idea what I had to go through to get the information out of him!”

  “Travis!” There was a bellow from inside Langton’s office.

  Anna made her way there.

  “Sit down,” he snapped. “What the hell were you doing? You did not contact the authorities. You did not use the patrol car provided.”

  “Nobody told me to contact anyone,” she spluttered.

  “It’s fucking procedure, Travis! You think we’d just let you loose without any backup? Then I get handed this text message! Lost your voice, did you? Couldn’t call in?”

  “It was very late when I got the information.” The cement mixer was churning faster, making her break out in a sweat. “I think I’ve got a bit of food poisoning,” she added.

  “Take some Bisodol! You going to be sick, is that it?”

  “No. I just don’t feel very well.”

  “Neither do I. So, let’s have it! Who is this Anthony Duffy? This suspect? Jesus Christ, who the fuck is he?”

  It took Anna over fifteen minutes to explain how she had eventually been able to gain the information from Southwood. Langton listened without interruption; though he made a few notes, his anger was palpable.

  “So, if the profiler is right about our killer taking his revenge against his mother, then Southwood’s suspect could be the man we are looking for.” Anna swallowed audibly.

  Staring at her, Langton now held up his hand.

  “You think this cab driver saw what you did by the swimming pool?”

  “No, sir. I am sorry if it was unethical, or against usual procedure, but I did get a result.”

  “True. Well, I hope to Christ it doesn’t have any repercussions for us. Go and fix your stomach and we’ll get onto this.”

  “Thank you.”

  Langton’s expression softened a fraction. “I’m sorry I sounded off at you, Travis. You look terrible, by the way.”

  “I feel terrible.”

  Lewis was standing by the computer. Having run the name Anthony Duffy through the “known felons” database, the team still had no result. Social Services also came up blank; Passport and Immigration likewise. Anthony Duffy didn’t appear to exist. They had requested information from the Greater Manchester murder team and Vice Squad, but many files had been lost in a fire at the station fifteen years ago,

  If alive, Anthony Duffy would now be in his late thirties. They contacted Housing, Benefits and Inland Revenue; no one had a record of Anthony Duffy. They had numerous Duffys, of course, and even eighteen Anthony Duffys, but none of the correct age. There was not a parking ticket in his name, no police record, and he had never been called for jury duty. It seemed that he had disappeared off the face of the earth.

  Then their luck seemed to turn. The address for the mother, Lilian Duffy, had been found on an old electoral register. The house she had lived in was owned by Jamail Jackson, a small-time con artist and pimp in the Swinton area. But then, no sooner did they glimpse a light at the end of the tunnel than it flickered out. The house had been demolished fifteen years ago and Jamail murdered in a pub fight four years later.

  Langton ordered the search to spread to foster homes and adoption agencies. But by six o’clock that evening, they still could find no trace of Anthony Duffy. He could be living abroad; he could be lying in the cemetery.

  Anna had stayed the course all afternoon but by that time she was feeling even worse. She had not dared eat anything all day, only spooning in her mouth half a bottle of Bisodol. Lying in bed later that evening with a hot-water bottle across her stomach, she went over and over everything Southwood had said.

  Duffy was well educated. The profiler Michael Parks had described the killer as having above-average intelligence. There was also the connection with his mother being a prostitute. He had to be a very viable suspect.

  Could there be a link between the olde
r victims? They were all from the north of England and had moved down to London for one reason or another. Or they had become weekenders. Could one of the victims’ relatives have a clue to Duffy’s whereabouts? Sleep didn’t come easily to Anna that night.

  By the time she got to work the next day, Langton had divided up the team and sent them to interview relatives and other contacts of the victims. So it continued for the next three days, as the team worked on tracing and interviewing people. On the fourth day everybody was called together for a briefing.

  Langton asked for an update. One by one, the officers detailed their interviews with the victims’ relatives. Many had moved on, or were dead, so tracing them had taken time. The children of the victims were spread far and wide, many of them on the same downward spiral toward drug and alcohol abuse as their mothers. No one appeared to have ever heard the name Anthony Duffy and there was as yet no photograph of him to show.

  Langton suggested they return to Southwood and get an e-fit picture made of their suspect. Anna had written in her report that he had a very good recall of Duffy’s face. The picture could be aged, then released to the press.

  Then the breakthrough they had been waiting for came. Mike Lewis up in Manchester found a possible link in the files of an adoption agency there. The woman running the agency had no papers going back further than twenty years, but acting on her own initiative she visited Ellen Morgan, who had been the administrator at one time. Since then, laws and restrictions regarding the foster program had been tightened, but twenty years ago Mrs. Morgan not only arranged foster care for numerous children, she was also a foster mother.

  It was Moira who took Lewis’s call. Mrs. Morgan had at one time cared for a boy called Anthony Duffy. Her address was a nursing home, Green Acres, in Bramhall, near Manchester.

  Langton chose to do this interview himself and ordered Travis to accompany him. It was to be another day trip. They boarded the eight o’clock train at Euston the next morning. Langton wore a smart suit and held an armful of newspapers.

  “Mike’s also managed to track down an ex–Vice cop who might be able to help,” he told her as they made their way along the narrow aisle to their seats.

  “I thought we’d interviewed them all,” she said.

  “This one was invalided out, eight years ago. Shot in the leg. He lives at Edge Hill. I’ve got a car waiting for us, so we can zap about, see what we can get.”

  Langton settled in his seat, opposite Anna. He took out one paper, proffered another, but she shook her head, indicating her own Guardian. She was ill at ease sitting opposite him. She couldn’t help wondering how it would be, being in such close proximity to him for the three-and-a-half-hour journey there and the three and a half hours back. She sat back to read. Occasionally she would steal a glance at Langton, but he appeared oblivious to her presence. The entire journey passed mostly in silence.

  She just managed to avoid the train door slamming into her as he charged off down the platform once they reached the station.

  Outside, a Greater Manchester Police patrol car was waiting for them. Langton sat in the front seat with the driver, a friendly, chatty officer. They did not discuss the case. Instead, the two men engaged in a lively conversation about the rise in property prices.

  “You married?” the officer asked.

  “Nope. Been there twice, though, so I’ve got the T-shirt.” Langton grinned. He turned suddenly to Anna in the backseat.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “Am I married?”

  “Yes?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  The driver offered the information that not only was he married, he had five children.

  “Five?” Langton said, shaking his head in astonishment.

  “You got any?” the driver asked.

  “Yes, one daughter. She lives with her mother. Lovely girl, very bright. I have her some weekends, when I’m free.”

  As Langton chatted, Anna was amazed to hear so much about his personal life. By the time they reached their destination, Langton in turn knew virtually the driver’s entire life history.

  The nursing home looked pleasant, set in the middle of a well-laid-out garden. The reception area seemed light and friendly. There were flowers on the desk and cards pinned up on the bulletin boards. Mrs. Steadly, the cheerful administrator, was a woman in a pink suit.

  “You can see Mrs. Morgan in her room, unless you prefer to have coffee and biscuits in the sun lounge. You won’t be disturbed there. It’s not that warm today and with all the glass it can get a bit chilly. We really need to put central heating in, but we have to raise the money first!” she said as they crossed the reception area with her.

  “I think we’d prefer to see Mrs. Morgan in her room,” Langton responded, smiling.

  The room was fairly large, with numerous pot plants on the windowsill. Mrs. Steadly introduced a frail, tiny woman with a halo of snow-white hair. Crippled by painful arthritis, Ellen Morgan moved with the aid of a walking frame.

  Mrs. Steadly backed out of the room and closed the door. Laid out on the bed were two large photo albums. Anna took a seat by the window, Langton sat on the bed and Mrs. Morgan leaned on her frame.

  “I knew you wanted a photograph. So I got everything out and went through them. It brought back memories, I can tell you.”

  Langton smiled. “You had a very full life. How many children have you cared for?”

  “Too many. But I keep in touch with most of them and they come and see me,” she said, moving across to the bed.

  Langton gently helped her to sit beside him and placed the album she was pointing to in her lap.

  “Tell me about Anthony Duffy,” he prompted.

  “Anthony was four when I first met him. He was only supposed to come for a few weeks, but he stayed with me eight months. He was very shy, exceptionally nervous. He looked like a skeleton when he arrived.” She chuckled.

  Langton watched the bulbous, distorted fingers turning the pages. Then she pointed. “Here’s one from that time. It was taken at one of the boy’s birthday parties. There’s Anthony, at the corner of the photograph.”

  Langton gazed at the face, then removed the photo, which he passed to Anna. Anna was struck by the image of this tiny boy, with his paper hat, wearing a striped, knitted pullover. His pixie-like face was unsmiling; he had large, extraordinary, beautiful blue eyes.

  “He was very much a loner. Not that he was trouble; well, he was young, but he didn’t mix with the other children. His mother was in police custody and went to prison for six months. When she came to collect him, he clung to the banister rail, screaming. It was very sad. There was nothing I could do in those days. She was his mother.”

  Mrs. Morgan removed another photograph from the album. “He came back to me four years later. This is him. He’d grown quite tall for his age. He wasn’t as shy, but he still wouldn’t mix with the other children. He was very bright, but he had become more difficult to control. When he didn’t get what he wanted, he would throw the most terrible tantrums; you’ve never seen the like.”

  Langton passed the snapshot to Anna. Anthony, at eight, was tall and skinny. He wore shorts, a shirt and tie and his hair stuck up in odd tufts, looking as if it had been cut with garden clippers.

  Mrs. Morgan stared at the empty space in the album. “I said I would have him for the eleven months his mother had left to serve in prison, but I couldn’t handle him. The house was cramped with two girls of my own and the four other children living with me. But that wasn’t the real reason. I just didn’t want him disrupting everyone the way he did. He’d get angry—” Mrs. Morgan stopped for a while, as if remembering something.

  “He had the most extraordinary eyes, ‘Elizabeth Taylor eyes,’ I used to call them. He could be very foulmouthed. That I could deal with. But we had a big, fluffy old cat, Milly. She gave him asthma. I explained that he should not stroke her or go near her, really, because if his asthma got worse, he wouldn’t be able to stay.
Then his asthma cleared up. I will never forget finding Milly. He’d wrapped her body in a tea towel. I confronted him and he didn’t lie, didn’t try to make an excuse. He had taken the cat down to the garden shed and strangled her. He said he loved me and didn’t want to be taken away again.”

  The tears started to flow. She dabbed at her eyes with a folded tissue.

  “There was a couple, they had fostered before. They were very nice, elderly, quite well off. They agreed to take him. I packed up his few things and they came round in a very expensive car. He was so excited about the car that he never even looked at me when they took him away. Anthony was fostered by a couple called Jack and Mary Ellis in 1975. They are both dead now.”

  “Did you ever see him again?” Langton asked.

  “I saw him once; it would have been about six or seven years later. I was drawing the living-room curtains and I saw this boy standing outside the gate. Just looking at the house, staring really. He was in a school uniform: blazer, a yellow and black school scarf, long gray trousers. I knew it was Anthony because of those eyes. But by the time I got to the front door, he’d gone. He never came back. I never saw him again.”

  Back in the car, Langton’s mood was subdued. The driver started up the engine, asking if they wanted to go to lunch or should he drive them to Edge Hill to see ex-detective Richard Green.

  “Straight to him, please,” Langton said without hesitation. “What did you make of that, Travis?”

  “Very sad,” she said. Her stomach was growling.

  “Yeah, shoved from pillar to post. If we don’t get any joy from this chap Green, when we go back we might try to do a composite picture ourselves and age it up.”

  “How did you track me down, then?” Green said when they met at his house.

  “It wasn’t that easy,” Langton said, smiling. “You certainly move around.”

  “Yeah, well, with the pension I get, money is tight, so we buy houses, do ’em up and sell ’em on. The wife made all the curtains and covered the sofas. She’s also a dab hand with the paintbrush, decorating. I do a spot of carpentry.