by Penny Grubb
He grabbed at the door handle. It wouldn’t shift. The windows were reinforced glass. There was no room to swing anything with enough force to break them.
His eyes had adjusted now. He could see the glistening strands, the details of the mechanism that would send this car to wherever Drake had planned its end to be. But even without seeing the detail it was clear how delicate it was. They couldn’t get to either woman without shattering the whole contraption, collapsing it to a bundle of meaningless wire strands. He wanted a record. If he could preserve the scene, he’d have an ace to play. Surely this whole set-up should provide aces enough, but even now he didn’t trust that Drake couldn’t slither out of the trap.
There would be no clear photographs until the doors were open, and once open the priority had to be the women inside. He wanted to wait for specialist teams, but he couldn’t, even if he could see that she was breathing – and he couldn’t see any movement at all – he couldn’t neglect the woman who was carrying his child in order to preserve a crime scene.
A sudden flash of light made Ahmed jump. He fought to keep his breathing shallow. What was Webber doing? He had his phone pressed to the car window and was taking photographs. There wasn’t much room. He squeezed down the other side of the vehicle, trying to see inside. The windows were misted over. Webber was leaning in close, using his cupped hands to focus his gaze before pulling back and again aiming the camera. But if Suzie was in there – and as his eyes adjusted he could see the indistinct form of a figure leaning across half behind the wheel – they had to get her out, not piss about with photographs.
He grabbed the door handle and yanked at it but it wouldn’t budge. The keys would be at Michael Drake’s house or even in the custody suite with the man’s other belongings.
No time to speculate. They had to get into the car.
‘Is it Suzie?’ He held the cloth tight to his face as he spoke, trying to avoid the taste of the foul air as he peered in.
‘Yes.’ Webber’s camera phone flashed again. ‘In the front. Tiffany Drake … I assume it’s Tiffany Drake … is curled up on the back seat.’
‘But … but are they all right?’
‘God knows. I hope so.’
‘They’re drugged, that’s all,’ said Ahmed buoyed by sudden certainty. ‘He doesn’t kill them till just before the crash.’
‘That was true for Trent,’ said Webber, ‘but who knows about Yeatman? Most of the victims were bludgeoned then buried … or left for wild animals to find. Get that jemmy thing. See if we can force one of the doors.’
Ahmed pushed his face on to the windscreen, cupping his hands the way Webber had, and stared into the car’s interior. At first it seemed that the whole space had been filled with silky cobwebs, the delicate strands looped this way and that around the controls, anchored to the seat backs. His mind fogged with the scene in front of him … she hadn’t been missing long enough for insects to weave this complexity. Then the figure focused out of the haze and he could see it was Suzie, lolling sideways, hands in her lap, head tipped forward. The strands looked less like cobwebs and more like fishing line. He strained to see movement, a rise and fall of her chest. The shadows and the filmy strands wouldn’t allow a clear view.
He peered again to see between the seats to where Tiffany lay on her side, legs drawn up. The tableau felt surreal, as though he was staring at two plastic mannequins … another sleight of hand … not the real Suzie or the real Tiffany at all.
‘It needs specialist photographers to get the real complexity of it.’ Webber’s voice cut into his thoughts.
What was he saying? The strands … the silky web that threaded its way all over Suzie … wrapped around the wheel … the controls … disappearing down into the foot well. He understood. This was the mechanism designed to operate the car for a short distance. No chance of understanding it from here but even his restricted view showed the care that had been taken with the loops and ties. It could be yanked free leaving no more than a few scraps of anonymous thread secured to the anchor points – just the way they’d been in Trent’s smashed vehicle.
Specialist photographers? Then leave it to them, he wanted to shout. We have to get them out of there.
He shuddered. The sudden surge of annoyance with Webber raised his heartrate; forced him into a deeper breath. What in hell had been rotting in this place and how long for? He couldn’t hold back a cough as he fought the nausea.
He dived back outside, gulped in a mouthful of sweet-tasting air and grabbed at the cloth round his face as it flapped madly in the wind. His gaze raked the ground and with a crow of triumph he caught the metallic gleam of the jemmy.
Webber clamped one hand over the top of the handkerchief to try to keep the stench at bay. In the car Suzie sat immobile.
Footsteps. Ahmed was back with the metal bar. Webber saw the DC’s face pucker as he stepped back into the garage. ‘What’s been going on in here?’ he gasped.
‘God knows,’ Webber said. ‘Bring that thing round here.’
Ahmed worked the iron bar into the gap between door and frame. Webber crowded close to help give weight to the improvised lever. It needed too much effort for shallow breathing. An aura of decay seeped into every inch of his being.
The door frame buckled … a scream of tortured metal became a crack as the door gave way. At once the car’s alarm shrieked into the darkness.
Webber pulled the door as wide as the cramped space would allow. Head throbbing with the deafening noise, he squeezed in sideways and reached forward, feeling the soft skin at Suzie’s neck under his gloved fingers. Her strong steady pulse lifted a weight from him. He kept his hand pressed into her flesh, savouring the relief, then realising that it must look to Ahmed as though he was searching for a pulse. He twisted round, seeing Ahmed’s face still furrowed from the odour of death all around them, and gave him a nod. Then he turned and reached for the figure in the back, resting his hand against her for long enough to feel the rise and fall of her chest.
‘Are they OK?’ Ahmed shouted over the pulsing scream of the alarm.
‘Alive and breathing,’ Webber shouted back as he eased out of the car. ‘They can stay where they are until the medics get here.’
He saw Ahmed’s slump of relief and heard him mutter, ‘There’s enough here to keep him behind bars forever.’
Webber aimed his camera phone again although much of the delicate mechanism had sprung free. He flapped his hand to signal they should get out of the tight space and away from the deafening echo of the alarm as it bounced off the walls.
His ears rang with the sound even as the weather damped its intensity. ‘Trent’s car was clean,’ he said. ‘And Jenkinson’s flat. Who’s to say this car’s going to give us anyone other than Suzie and the current Mrs Drake?’
‘But it’s his lock-up, isn’t it?’
‘It’s in the name of Brown. They didn’t recognise his photograph. We’ve got our tiger by the tail, Ayaan, but that’s not the same as having him caged.’
Chapter 58
Noise and lights overran the area, proper vehicles, proper kit. After he’d directed the new arrivals, warned them to preserve the scene as far as possible, Webber could only stand and watch from the side-lines as the medics eased their way into the tight space, their priority Suzie and Tiffany Drake’s safety. They wanted the car out in the open so they could get at the unconscious women. He wanted to say no, they’re not injured just drugged, haul them out with the car in situ, but it wasn’t going to happen so he kept quiet and watched the evidence take a beating from the weather before anyone could step in with specialist equipment. Then the ambulance doors were shut, its light revolving lazily, washing shades of blue across the bright spotlights that opened up every corner of the gruesome garage.
And at last the CSI team was in there and all over the car. He envied them their suits and masks.
‘The traffic lights business was a diversion, wasn’t it?’
Ahmed spoke from close behin
d him. Webber gave him a glance and a nod, remembering the thoughts he’d had when mulling over Gary Yeatman’s death. ‘If you put someone already dead behind the wheel of a car,’ he said, ‘and send them into a stream of fast-moving traffic, and if traffic lights are being tampered with across the city, then we’ll be looking in all the wrong directions and cause of death isn’t going to be in the spotlight like it should be.’
‘Gary Yeatman and Arthur Trent died on deserted stretches of road in the early hours.’
Webber nodded again but he’d already followed the line of thought. ‘Yeatman was the first and I don’t think he dared do Trent out in the open. He needed to know if the trick still worked. But yes, I know what you’re thinking.’
Drake hadn’t been working on the traffic charade in order to cover the killing of Arthur Trent. Trent had been collateral damage after Tom Jenkinson’s death. Suzie hadn’t been on his radar then either, nor had Tiffany. But Drake didn’t dispose of his wives that way.
‘He was planning to kill someone else,’ Ahmed said, ‘before Trent, before Tom, before Suzie.’
‘I think he’d decided it was safe to get rid of Joyce Yeatman.’ Webber imagined Drake’s years of worry about Pamela Morgan’s suicide note, the one that neither he nor Edith Stevenson had ever managed to prise out of Joyce.
There was a flurry of activity that turned their attention to the car. ‘When I first saw them in there,’ Ahmed said, ‘Suzie and Tiffany Drake, they didn’t look real.’
Even now with the vehicle empty, Webber felt a surreal air over the scene. He wondered why the ambulance wasn’t moving off, which of the women was considered serious enough to need treatment on the spot. Michael Drake had said he wasn’t up to digging holes these days. So who or what had he been butchering in this garage? Now that it was lit up, it was obvious this place hadn’t housed a vehicle for a long time. The garage contents had been shoved aside to make room for the car.
He supposed they’d never know if this lock-up had been used years ago to set up the stunt that killed Gary Yeatman, but it was plain it had been used for very different purposes since then.
‘What’s the betting there’ll be human remains once we’ve sifted it?’ someone speculated, but Webber didn’t think so. He’d had no hint of uncontrolled carnage as the driving force behind Drake or Stevenson. This was something else altogether.
He moved towards the entrance to try for a clearer view of the rest of the space, but had to turn his head away as the putrefaction wafted over him.
A suited figure stood upright from inspecting something on the ground, an evidence bag in hand.
‘Can you tell what’s been going on in there?’ Webber asked.
‘It’s animal remains by the looks of it.’
‘What sort of animals?’
‘Dogs and cats, I’d say. Hard to tell with the older stuff.’
‘They found animal bones over that way.’ Webber pointed back towards the scrubland. ‘Illegal disposal of cattle decades ago.’
‘I’ve not seen anything that looks like cattle bones.’
Webber nodded. ‘Any sign of anything bigger than dogs and cats … more exotic?’ He wanted to ask if any of the bones could be big cats, tigers say, but that was foolish.
Whatever this was, it was the work of Michael Drake and Edith Stevenson. Stevenson knew the game was up. Her escape plan had been suicide. He wondered why she hadn’t done something simpler like take pills and burn the artefacts she’d wanted to destroy, rather than heading for the sea. Joyce Yeatman had clearly been in touch with the woman over the years, but something about that last summons had spooked her enough to draw in Melinda. He’d bet that Stevenson had wanted one last try to get Pamela Morgan’s suicide note … must get on to that and see if Mel was right. If the note still existed he wanted to see it.
Out of nowhere he remembered the film that Ahmed and Suzie had shot outside that supermarket; Ahmed’s certainty that Stevenson had known they were there. She’d moved just like a man, she must have known they had it on tape. Was she dropping hints about the way they got in the path of random security cameras, either bolstering alibis for each other or disguising their real identities? Maybe she’d been trying to reveal their secrets for years.
It hadn’t all been paperwork that she’d thrown off the bridge, and because of the press and their cameras there was detailed footage to study.
He and Ahmed were trapped here until someone had the time to drive them round the track to the road and to the far side of the site where their cars were parked. The direct route across the marshy scrubland wasn’t a tempting prospect now the light had gone altogether.
He said to Ahmed. ‘What did Stevenson chuck off the bridge? Why did she do it?’
‘Evidence I suppose,’ said Ahmed, his stare like Webber’s glued to the gaping mouth of the garage. ‘Or maybe trophies. Going back years. They recovered a toy bridle that I’m guessing will match that piece from Tilly Brown’s rocking horse saddle.’
It had been Melinda who identified that, putting together the clues she’d picked up from talking to Jack Meyer. Webber thought back to Kowalski. Something had bugged her about that horse.
‘It’ll wash up, won’t it, the rest of it? We can’t drag the bloody Humber.’
Ahmed’s gaze dropped. ‘It’s not that simple. She’d practiced that move, maybe thrown stuff off before. Get the right spot and the right tide and things can be swept for miles, that is if they aren’t torn to shreds in the currents. Me and Mrs Webber were talking about it on the way back, wondering why she’d done it the way she had.’
Webber indicated that they should move into the shelter of the far end of the row of buildings. ‘Go on.’
‘Joyce Yeatman thought her husband had been part of the crimes years ago. Either Stevenson convinced her or it was something in Pamela Morgan’s note. It gave Stevenson a hold over her.’
Webber nodded. He didn’t believe Gary Yeatman was guilty of much, but he believed in Edith Stevenson’s hold over Yeatman’s wife.
‘Stevenson knew the game was up. I guess she called on Yeatman because … well, we couldn’t work out what she wanted exactly.’
‘Pamela Morgan’s suicide note, I should think,’ said Webber.
Ahmed seemed to weigh this and then nodded. ‘She knew exactly where to go. She even had the diversion planned to shake a follower. By the time she got to Hull, she had about 20 … 30 minutes to catch the right tide.’
‘How did they end up swapping cars?’
‘They went to Stevenson’s house in Joyce Yeatman’s car. While they were there, Stevenson slipped out. Mrs Webber says she thinks Yeatman helped her, diverting attention and that, but she didn’t know why. I mean why take her along at all if she’s going to help Stevenson get away?’
‘I suppose she wanted Stevenson to dispose of any evidence against her husband, but she didn’t want to go with her. You were saying about the cars.’
‘Yes, Stevenson took off in Yeatman’s car, leaving her own out front hoping Mrs Webber wouldn’t spot that she’d gone. She did though. She said she realised quite quickly that Stevenson wasn’t coming back from making tea.’
‘Making tea …?’ Webber murmured, watching the activity in the garage. After Melinda had raced off in pursuit, Joyce Yeatman called a cab and returned to her own house to pour alcohol down her throat. The officers Davis had sent for Stevenson hadn’t missed them by much. Something nudged at him but he couldn’t catch it.
‘No, nothing,’ he said to Ahmed’s puzzled glance. ‘Go on.’
‘She got it out of Yeatman that Stevenson was heading for Hull, for the Humber Country Park.’
‘But she wasn’t, was she?’ Webber felt his eyes narrow. Mel really needed some better training in questioning witnesses, she was too impatient, thought she could bounce people into blurting out the truth. It might work on Saturday night drunks but in cases like this all she would get were half-truths and false confessions.
‘It’
s a straightforward route,’ Ahmed went on. ‘She clocked her quite quickly and stayed with her, hoping that she hadn’t been spotted. But she must have been and that’s why Stevenson led her round the park. I’ve traced it through from what Mrs Webber told me. Stevenson cut through and back, then parked up in the open, so Mrs Webber almost met the car head on. When she saw that Stevenson wasn’t in it, she parked out of the way and went to follow on foot, assuming she was heading up towards the cutting. Stevenson was probably just standing in the trees with her head down. You know she was wearing rags when they found her? Just like Michael Drake. It was blowing a gale. She’d have been invisible as long as she didn’t show her face.’
Webber shook his head. ‘Melinda didn’t say anything about rags.’
‘She’d have had something on over the top of the outfit, but she must have been dressed and ready to go.’
‘Joyce Yeatman turned up without Pamela’s note and with a police officer,’ Webber mused. ‘I guess Stevenson decided to cut her losses and run.’
‘Mrs Webber climbed up to the top path,’ Ahmed went on. ‘She caught a glimpse of someone up there but it must have just been walkers. Then as soon as she was well away from her car Stevenson made her move. That’s when Mrs Webber saw her, but she had to get back down and drive right round from the top, where Stevenson could drive right out. She said she was on the phone to you when she saw Stevenson.’
Webber nodded. ‘She dropped the phone then?’
‘Yes, she said she stumbled when she saw Stevenson getting into the car and the phone flew right out of her hands and bounced down the hill.’
‘Even so, Stevenson can’t have gained much.’
‘Just a few minutes, but that was all she needed to get herself to the exact spot and have time to throw things over.’
