by Alison Bruce
Her boyfriend was called Toby Doyle, and he had two speeding convictions and one caution for being involved in a late-night disturbance. Apart from that, he’d never been in trouble, but his father and older brothers were well known for lashing out. Goodhew thought she deserved someone better, but kept telling himself it was none of his business. But he still watched the way she walked, loved the sound of her laugh, and made flimsy excuses to come and stand at her desk with his small talk.
He wondered when exactly he’d become that creepy guy from the third floor. As the whole picture sank in, pretty dumb escalated to really, really dumb. People never saw you in the same way as you saw yourself; he’d never seen himself as stalker material, but now he knew.
Up on the third, Kincaide was already seated at one of the desks, and spoke before Goodhew had even registered his presence. ‘You’re in early.’
‘So are you,’ he replied, and was pleased to have someone to take his thoughts away from his encounter with Mel. ‘What’s dragged you out of bed at this hour?’
Kincaide rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t ask.’
He wondered if that meant trouble at home but, considering Kin-caide’s well-known reticence where his marriage was concerned, he didn’t ask. Goodhew reminded himself of what was higher on the agenda.
‘Actually,’ he began, ‘I’ve been meaning to have a word.’
‘Oh?’
Goodhew hesitated and the words suddenly clogged inside his brain. In the end he just held out his hand, and said, ‘I’m pleased we’re working together.’
Kincaide shrugged. ‘Sure. Me too.’
‘I just wanted you to know.’
‘Good.’ Kincaide’s handshake was brief and hard, but he smiled. ‘So why are you here so soon?’
‘Oh, I need to see Marks. Think I might get a bollocking.’ He then explained his visits to Bryn O’Brien and Richard Moran.
Kincaide tried to look as if giving a positive response, but couldn’t quite pull it off without wincing. ‘I’d just tell him about this O’Brien guy – maybe you’ll get Brownie points for finding him – then shut up about the Morans and hope they don’t mention it either.’
Goodhew shook his head. ‘No, I’ll just get it over with. Like some coffee?’
‘No, thanks.’ Kincaide pointed over behind Goodhew. ‘Marks just walked past.’
Goodhew reached Marks’ office doorway before the inspector had even reached his chair. He sat down, but didn’t invite Goodhew to do the same.
‘If you have a minute, sir, I’d like a word.’
‘I’m sure you would.’ Marks tilted his head and raised his right brow, making one eye look oddly bigger then the other. It wasn’t his best look, but Goodhew guessed it wasn’t done for appeal. ‘And I’d like a few with you, too,’ he added.
Goodhew waited.
‘Get yourself a chair,’ Marks barked, ‘then sit in it.’
Goodhew did what he was told, reaching for the nearest chair, which stood against the wall. He began speaking straight away, before sitting, hoping to pre-empt some of the conversation. ‘I saw Lorna Spence’s calendar, and noticed she’d booked her car in for an MOT with someone called Bryn . . .’ He paused mid-sentence.
Marks pointed at the carpet in front of his desk. ‘Don’t talk, just sit.’ Marks then picked up his Parker ballpoint and jabbed the button into his desk blotter a couple of times, making the pen retract and reappear noisily.
When he was ready, Marks spoke. ‘I suppose there was nothing worthwhile on at the cinema last night?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Alice Moran rang to complain about your visit, and I must say that wandering around chit-chatting to witnesses is not how I expect you to find yourself an evening’s entertainment.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, “oh” indeed. Think I wouldn’t find out? Remember, I’m supposed to be coordinating this investigation, so I don’t expect to arrive at work on day two to find I’ve been wheeled into kept-in-the-dark-corner. I want a full explanation, then I don’t want it to happen again. All right?’
Goodhew nodded. ‘Right.’
‘Now, then, start talking.’
An hour later, Marks held a briefing session, perching on the edge of a table with a pile of papers beside him. He scanned the faces of his team, noted some semi-vacant expressions, and hoped it was just because they’d emptied their minds in readiness for this meeting. There weren’t enough of them to go round without having to compensate for any dunces on the team. Everyone would become stretched too far without more manpower.
Goodhew had arrived early with notebook and pen, and was now filling a page with a doodle resembling a spider juggling hoops. Marks thought it would be more appropriate to see him doodling a hangman’s noose, considering the lucky escape he’d just had. It was fortunate for the young detective that they were so short-staffed; it made dropping him an impossibility.
Kincaide looked unusually distracted: wide awake, of course, but his gaze periodically wandering towards the floor.
Marks hated meetings that dragged on, and kept his own direct and fast-paced; he reckoned the sooner they were all active again, the better. He cleared his throat and waited to ensure everyone’s full attention, and only started to speak when Kincaide’s focus floated back up from the carpet. ‘At the moment, this is the full team and, as you can see, we are very thin on the ground. As a result, this will mean two things. Firstly, you will have too much to do.’
Someone murmured, ‘There’s a surprise.’
He ignored the comment. ‘And secondly, you’ll be expected to handle elements of this investigation that many of you will not have had experience in dealing with in the past.’ He tapped his temple. ‘None of you are thick, because if you were, you wouldn’t be here, so use your eyes and ears and, most of all, your common sense. Now, down to business.’
On top of his pile of papers lay a ten-by-eight photograph, face down. He turned round it to face the assembled group. It was a scene-of-crime shot of Lorna Spence. ‘Preliminary information points to a time of death between 10 p.m. on Monday night and 2 a.m. yesterday morning. As you can see, there is a ligature around her neck – this was used to secure the carrier bag. The cause of death has been confirmed as asphyxiation, not strangulation.
‘However, there is no sign of defence wounds on her, or of any injury which may have incapacitated her. Nor evidence of any attempt by Lorna to free herself, so we are waiting for toxicology tests to determine whether any substances were taken or administered previously. We will not have the results of those until tomorrow, at the earliest.
‘The same with the swabs. The victim was fully clothed, except for any knickers. We do not know whether these were removed, or absent from the outset. There are no visible signs of sexual assault, only some old bruising around the inner thigh region, but nothing else that’s more recent in that area. Both her upper arms show some bruising, and this seems to be consistent with being gripped by someone facing her, while both parties were standing upright. Obviously there are detailed shots of all such injuries.’
He turned over the next photo and held it up, too. ‘This is a close-up of her left hand. The same thing was written on both palms. It appears just to say “I’m like Emma”, or it could possibly be part of a longer message. The same person probably wrote both, and the characters are noticeably better formed on the left palm. Since Lorna was right-handed, the current theory is that she wrote this herself.
‘Why, and what it means, we have yet to discover, but I need to know of any connections she had with someone of the name Emma.’
The next photo was a studio shot of Lorna when alive. ‘This is the photo that will be released to the press. To fill you in, Lorna Spence turned twenty-three on 6th February. She was five two, single, working as an administrator for the Excelsior Clinic. So far, no relatives have been traced.’
Marks scanned the room. No one looked at all vacant now. Good.
He then added the salient
points he’d recently gleaned from Goodhew and assigned various tasks to the team. Goodhew was, as usual, pretty damned unreadable, but Marks had noticed his interest peak as Bryn O’Brien’s name was mentioned. He quickly assigned O’Brien’s interview to Kincaide, then informed Goodhew that he would be spending the day studying Lorna’s phone bills and bank statements.
Goodhew opened his mouth to speak, but Marks raised his hand in a halting motion. ‘Is there something you don’t understand, Gary? Perhaps the idea of sitting in the office and not moving at will is a bit alien to you?’
Goodhew shut his mouth again, and strummed his fingers on his knee a couple of times, probably in frustration.
Marks remained silent, letting the room settle, then dismissed the team. ‘My mobile will be switched on.’ He paused, making sure he had Goodhew’s full attention. ‘I need to know every development. Understood?’
Goodhew nodded. The other officers filed past him. He could hear them breaking into conversation once they hit the corridor outside.
Marks glanced at his subordinate’s notepad. The spider doodle had progressed, and some of the hoops it juggled now contained names. He saw ‘Excelsior’, ‘Richard Moran’ and ‘Bryn O’Brien’ written in neat capitals. The other hoops remained blank.
The spider’s body had ‘Lorna’ written clearly in the middle.
NINETEEN
Goodhew wasn’t the only one to think that a pre-emptive strike might be the best way forward.
Bryn had unlocked the garage at 8 a.m. that morning, but after forty-five minutes, he already found he had done nothing so far but fight the urge to bunk off. On one hand, with his father taking a month off to do some decorating, and only himself to answer to, it was never going to be an escape of Ferris Bueller-style proportions, but on the other hand . . .
He thought it over carefully.
On the other hand, there would be no joy in hanging around here, waiting for the inevitable visit from the law. He could see how that would go, probably with the unsubtle arrival of two uniforms in a marked car, generating enough local gossip to knock the business back further than a couple of days’ skiving ever would. Better, then, for them to catch up with him somewhere away from work.
Or, better still, for him to do the catching. And that was when he relocked the workshop and began walking towards Parkside police station.
He pulled a pack of Benson & Hedges from his pocket, and lit up without breaking his stride. One packet usually lasted him all week; three per day wasn’t much of a habit. But this wasn’t ‘most weeks’ and, as he came within sight of the station, he was using the remains of the first cigarette to light his second.
He left two messages at the front desk of the station that morning, both times accompanied with his mobile number. After each visit, he stepped out into the fresh air and lit up again. After the second time, he made up his mind to sit it out, and found a spot on the edge of the park that boasted both a bench and a convenient bin.
In the end, he had no idea how long he remained there, his elbows resting on his knees. He lit each new cigarette from the last but, instead of putting any of them to his mouth, he spent the time watching the ash growing in length, then falling on to the path.
He thought constantly about Lorna. He wondered how much he needed to say, and how much he’d be able to leave out, and whether he was pulling the lid on a can of worms. The Gary Goodhew he’d known from primary school had been quick-witted, logical and intuitive, in retrospect. It was a worrying combination. Bryn was realistic; he wasn’t going to be driving the conversation, but he held on to the idea that it was safest to take a ride with someone you knew.
He finally decided against lighting another cigarette as he pinched the current one dead between the tips of his forefinger and thumb. He was about to toss the butt into the bin when he looked up and, for the first time, realized he was being watched.
Gary was no more than fifteen feet away. ‘I noticed you came in twice, so I thought you might still be out here somewhere,’ he said.
Bryn nodded. ‘That figures.’ He threw the butt at the bin then, and for the first time, missed. It bounced on to the ground right in front of Gary, who retrieved it and dropped it in safely.
‘DC Kincaide is looking for you at the moment and, meanwhile, I’m supposed to be doing something else. What’s up?’
Bryn laced his fingers, then loosened them again when he realized it might look like he was praying. ‘There’s a thing . . . a coincidence, I suppose. It was at the back of my mind when I saw you yesterday, then I thought about it overnight. It’s probably nothing, but I wanted to point it out – you can check, can’t you?’
Gary glanced back at the police station, then at Bryn again. ‘Sure. But whatever you tell me, you’ll need to repeat to someone else, just to keep everything straight. It can’t be unofficial, you understand, don’t you?’
Again Bryn nodded, but Gary still looked hesitant. Finally, he sat down and also rested his elbows on his knees. Bryn realized that it was just one of those body-language mirroring techniques, designed to put him at ease, but it did make him feel more comfortable in any case. They were both now facing forward. For his part, Bryn stared at the kerb across the road; it was the most mundane focus for his attention, and he knew that was what he needed as he deliberately exposed himself to police scrutiny. Sticking his neck out like this really went against the grain, so much so that, even when he started talking, he still took the long way round.
‘I think it was back in December when I first met Lorna, maybe the end of November. Well, not long before Christmas anyway. And, like I told you last night, we went out a couple of times to the pool hall on Mill Road. I was in there one night having a game and a drink with Colin, this bloke I knew. He used to do odd jobs and he’d done a bit of cash in hand for me, a couple of services and a few bits, just helping me catch up with stuff. Well, Lorna turned up with a mate of hers, and we ended up playing doubles.’
‘Mate, as in another woman?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Lorna told me she worked with her, a girl called Victoria.’
‘Victoria Nugent?’ Gary still uttered it as a question, even though he clearly knew the answer.
‘Yes.’ Bryn then paused a beat. He should have guessed that Victoria might already be in the picture, and the thought only made him more sure that this conversation was a good idea. ‘I partnered her, Victoria, and we had a laugh. Have you met her?’
Gary shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘Feisty and flirty. We had quite a few to drink that night, all of us, that is, and Lorna spent as much time chatting to Colin as I did to Victoria, which was the first odd thing.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, to be honest, Colin wasn’t a nice bloke – I mean, especially from a half-sophisticated woman’s point of view; he looked bad, smelt bad and was a bit of a scrounger. But they got on fine.’
‘Unless Lorna was just put out by you flirting with her mate?’
Bryn twisted around, leaning on the back rest for the first time, and eyed Gary with what he hoped looked like mild amusement. He waited for Gary to do the body-mirroring thing before he replied. ‘Trust me, as far as her friend Victoria went, Lorna was just not the jealous type. And, as I said before, there was nothing going on between us, anyway.’
‘Well, then, what?’
‘Yeah, well, according to Colin, they met again. He even reckoned he was “on a promise”. I thought he was having me on, but he was adamant.’
‘But we’re talking some months ago, right?’
‘Yeah, January.’ Bryn could almost hear the tick-tick-tick as his bombshell counted down. ‘Colin’s dead.’
Only Gary’s eyes showed an instant response. The pupils dilated and his stare made Bryn feel pinned down. ‘And what was Colin’s last name?’ he asked.
‘Willis.’ Bryn’s throat tightened as he spoke. No wave of relief followed; he felt no burden lifting after this revelation. But what had he expected, anyway?
After all, his conscience was far from clear.
‘You’ll need to make a statement,’ Gary told him.
Bryn just nodded, as he felt himself making a nauseating slide towards centre stage. It was for Lorna, he told himself. But, as he walked towards Parkside police station, shoulder to shoulder with his old classmate, he couldn’t help wondering how deep he was about to get buried.
TWENTY
Marks still looked pissed off. But even if there was no mood change apparent to the naked eye, Goodhew was certain his boss would have mellowed during the day.
Marks repeated the essence of Goodhew’s request back at him. ‘So, you’ve left Kincaide with this O’Brien guy, and now you want to follow up this Colin Willis lead?’
‘Absolutely.’ Goodhew plonked a bulging folder on to the desk. ‘I thought it would be a good idea to go through this stuff, just as a start. If there’s a connection to Lorna Spence—’
‘What happened to her bank statements and phone bills? You’re not gallivanting off on anything else until they’re properly done.’
‘They are.’ Goodhew slid out a thin plastic wallet from inside the front flap of the larger folder. ‘And there’s not much to know. She used her bank account for paying bills and drawing cash, but for little else. Her bills were mostly on direct debit and, aside from rent, rates, heating etc., she used just one credit card and one store card. She doesn’t appear to have been the type to bother about keeping paperwork, so we don’t have a complete set of household or mobile bills.’
He eyed his boss hopefully. ‘Without the detail, there’s not much to say, but I’ve requested a full set of both, as well as all calls relating to her office extension, a list of the incoming calls on her private numbers, and copies of her credit card statements.’
