Stick or Twist

by Diane Janes

  ‘You never said before that he was checking up on you. What makes you think that he’s getting suspicious?’

  ‘I don’t. But it would be natural for him to be curious. That’s why I think that the less chance he has to spend time with me between now and the wedding, the better it will be.’ She did not add that it would save her from having to mount a virtuoso performance every time they went to bed together. It was one thing to be good at faking and another … well … it would be impossible to explain it to Rob, but as they got closer and closer to the end game, the thought that she was making out with someone fast approaching his death was becoming kind of creepy. No one could train you for a role like that.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Possible case of mistaken identity?’ Hannah’s words were somewhat muffled by the fact that her mouth was full of Granny Mina’s Victoria Sandwich, which was none the worse for the very faint taste of plastic which it had acquired on the journey home.

  ‘Could be. We’re talking about someone who’s been retired for the best part of ten years, and must have taught hundreds, maybe even thousands, of kids in her time. Alternatively she might have remembered Jude, but forgotten the brother.’

  ‘He might not have gone to the same school. Siblings don’t always end up at the same places.’

  ‘Fair point.’

  ‘At the same time, we didn’t bother looking at the background checks on the victim’s family. Presumably that was all checked in the initial stages of the enquiry. Surely we didn’t just take it on trust that her parents were dead and that she had inherited a lot of money?’

  ‘And also that she had a brother. Though I don’t see anything to be gained from pretending to have a brother.’

  Hannah was sitting on the sofa, virtually surrounded by carrier bags. She glanced around the purchases from her afternoon shopping expedition, rather as if she was hoping that inspiration would unexpectedly jump out of a shoe box. When it didn’t, she finished her mouthful of cake, before saying, ‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this? She may have trained to be an actress – if your granny’s friend has even got the right person – but the best actress in the world couldn’t fake those injuries. It wasn’t Twentieth Century Fox make-up department who convinced the doctor. The violence in the case was real enough.’

  ‘Though, as you pointed out, it differed in several respects from the sort of violence we’d normally expect to see, when a person who is going to be murdered anyway, gets beaten up in advance of a final attack – no facial marks to speak of, no broken bones.’

  ‘You’re right, I did say that … For goodness sake, put the lid on this sponge cake before I’m tempted to have another piece. Your granny could market this stuff and make a fortune. It isn’t just Mr Kipling who makes exceedingly good cakes.’

  ‘We should put this to Lingo and ask him for the time to have another quick look – just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Right. First thing on Monday.’ She licked the residual cream and crumbs from her fingers. ‘You know,’ she went on, ‘not only does the brother, Robin, not look like her, but he doesn’t sound like her either. That’s unusual in siblings who were brought up together. Have you ever noticed the way his accent occasionally slips? Maybe your old retired teacher buddy woman is right and Jude Thackeray and her brother are just ordinary common-or-garden guttersnipes, like you and me. Maybe she picked up that posh little accent at drama school?’

  ‘Guttersnipe? Cheeky devil. Speak for yourself.’

  ‘All right then – a guttersnipe just like me.’

  ‘If this is true, why are we only just noticing it all now?’ Peter sounded doubtful again. What had initially seemed like an intriguing anomaly, was beginning to look more like an irrelevant dead end. For his own part, he had never liked the brother. Was that personal prejudice, or copper’s instinct for a wrong ’un? Maybe he was latching on to these imagined differences because he had never liked the brother?

  ‘Sometimes,’ Hannah said, ‘it takes time for ideas to crystalize. If the Thackerays are not quite what they seem, that could change everything about this case.’

  Peter shook his head abruptly. ‘We’re losing the plot,’ he said. ‘It’s no good going to Ling with some half-baked tale from a retired teacher. Teachers can’t be expected to remember everything about everyone they ever taught. Even if this woman’s got the right Jude Thackeray – she called her Judy, by the way – why would she remember whether or not this particular pupil had a brother? And secondary school isn’t like primary. Bigger school, more pupils, more staff, far more chance that a sibling might never take your subject, be in your class, or cross your path at all.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Hannah nodded, preoccupied by the discovery of another smear of jam which needed to be licked off a finger. ‘Anyway, I expect someone checked all this as a matter of routine, right at the start. We concentrated on what actually happened. I suppose the background stuff is all in the system.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  When his phone rang, Stefan grabbed it immediately, but he did not recognize the number on the display, so he answered warily, then all but slammed the phone on the table when he realized that it was some stupid message about a mis-sold pension that he had never taken out. The trouble was that it was never the call he was waiting for and the waiting was making him twitchy.

  He wasn’t a superstitious kind of guy, but lately he had been troubled by a recurring dream, which always started with him building a sandcastle on a beach. The beach sometimes looked a lot like Anonymous Bay right from the outset, though sometimes it was a different beach, which was fringed with palm trees, had yachts bobbing at anchor and a distant bar, all of which would eventually vanish as the beach gradually became Anonymous Bay.

  He would never notice exactly when and how the location changed, because his concentration was entirely absorbed by the construction of the castle. It was an incredibly elaborate affair. He made turrets, which he decorated all over with sea shells, and it was surrounded by a deep moat, crossed by a drawbridge, made from wooden lolly sticks, which he discovered in the sand. There was a central courtyard, paved in tiny, pale grey pebbles, also collected from the surrounding beach and a series of larger stones were embedded in its walls, to represent doors and windows. It took him ages, particularly the intricate laying of the courtyard, and from time to time he would become aware of a shadow falling over his masterpiece, as if someone had stopped to watch. In his mind, this person presented some kind of threat to what he was doing, but whenever he looked up, there was no one there.

  The dream always ended the same way, with the shadow finally coalescing into the outline of a man, which grew larger and larger until it loomed over everything, blocking out the sun, and this time, when Stefan looked up, preparing to tell the man to piss off, he would hear the man laugh and in the same instant a great wave would come swirling out of nowhere, swamping the castle and as he scrabbled to save it, Stefan would slide into the moat and start sinking into the morass of sand and water, so that when a second wave rolled in, it engulfed him too. At which point, he always woke up.

  It was a stupid dream, he told himself. Just a stupid, pointless dream. Dreams didn’t mean anything. It was the waiting. Weeks of waiting. It was driving him crazy. He had learned to be patient, but patience only took you so far.

  He scrolled through the pictures on his phone, until he found his favourite. Waiting made you obsessive. She hadn’t realized that he had taken the picture. He had caught her just as she turned her head, and was not even looking directly at him. Her lips were parted, the way they were before a kiss. In the dream, he thought he was making the castle for her. That was why it had to be perfect.

  He had to be very careful with that picture. He never looked at it unless he was alone, never lent his phone to anyone. No one must know that he had a picture of her on his phone. No one must be able to make a connection between them until well after the killings had been done.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

/>   Peter Betts’s phone went off while he was in the dentist’s waiting room. He was supposed to have bagged the first appointment for his check-up, but on arrival he discovered that there had been some sort of mix-up, which meant that he would have to wait for half an hour. It was going to make him late getting in, which though not a big deal, was a nuisance. He had settled down to read a copy of yesterday’s Daily Mail, presumably abandoned by some other patient the day before, and was a couple of pages in when he had to silence the phone, ignoring the looks of irritation from the two other occupants of the room.

  ‘It’s me, McMahon. Are you on your way?’

  ‘No. There’s been a mess-up. I’m still waiting. Have you managed to ask Lingo about some extra time?’

  ‘No point. Two bodies found in a garage, back of Desray Street, first thing this morning. Boss wants everybody on it.’

  ‘Should I come right away?’ He kept any vestige of urgency out of his voice. He knew the other occupants of the waiting room would be listening. It was natural human instinct. He also knew that it was never advisable to attract unnecessary attention to yourself, by creating a drama. For all the concern in his voice, the caller might have been alerting him to a minor leak under the washing machine.

  ‘Unless you want your arse kicked that would definitely be a “yes”.’

  ‘OK. Will do.’

  He cut the call and swung himself up from the chair, approaching the receptionist’s desk and saying quietly, ‘I’m afraid I’ve been called in to work urgently. I’ll have to ring and re-make the appointment for another time. Sorry.’

  Although his movements were apparently unhurried, he was out of the door before the receptionist had a chance to reply.

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ Mark said. ‘You are happy aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I was just relaxing, enjoying the scenery.’

  ‘I love this part of the world, don’t you?’ He aimed for a note of enthusiasm. ‘I can’t wait to see this cottage of yours.’

  ‘It’s only an ordinary little place. Please don’t get your expectations too high, or you’ll be disappointed.’

  ‘I’m about to spend our honeymoon in a secluded love nest, with you – how could I possibly be disappointed? And as for the cottage, I have absolutely no expectations, because up until a short while ago, I didn’t even know that you had a cottage in Cornwall, and ever since you told me about it, you’ve absolutely refused to show me any pictures, or tell me anything about it at all. You do play your cards very close to your chest, in all kinds of ways, my darling. I hope that now we’re married, we can be a bit more open with one another. What’s the name of the cottage, by the way?’

  It hit her like a blow between the eyes that she couldn’t remember its name. It was one of those weird, local names, which began with ‘Pen’, but she couldn’t bring the rest of it to mind. She had only been down to see it a couple of times, having left most of the arrangements to Rob. It had been an expensive undertaking, renting a place for the entire summer, but it would have been too big a gamble not to have it reserved well in advance. Very few properties combined the special features which they required. The name of it though, what was the name?

  ‘Why don’t you wait and see?’ She tried to sound playful. It was exhausting, she thought, being constantly on her toes, ready to fend off these awkward questions which came at her out of the blue, or to engage in lavish displays of affection with a bloke she didn’t particularly rate. In the early days, she had sometimes needed to keep herself awake for hours after they had gone to bed, just in order to fake the nightmares which had to come in the early hours of the morning in order to be convincing. All that trouble and effort. Acquiring the photograph of an unknown woman in a fur coat and diamond brooch, in order to back the idea that her original attacker had stolen family heirlooms from the safe. Leasing the place in Elmley Green, the house in Colchester and now the cottage in Cornwall. Renting the fancy cars, pretending to fly out to Spain and New York. Calling him from their flat while affecting to be in Barcelona. It had taken months of planning and a lot of seed money.

  She sometimes wondered if they had gone too far, in their quest for authenticity, but she had invariably come back to a favourite phrase, the devil is in the detail. And it had all paid off, she told herself, because they were almost there. Step by step she had guided Mark to the right place, and very soon now everything would come together, just as they had planned it.

  The next scene in the drama had been prepared with the same meticulous care as every other. It would look like an accident, and as the curtain rose on the last act, she would transform herself into the grief-stricken widow, just long enough to mop up every possible asset, before she slipped away to live abroad. She could visualize the headlines in her mind’s eye – ‘Tragic Jude’, or ‘Tragedy Strikes Again for Brave Kidnap Victim’. The inevitable publicity was a nuisance of course, but it would probably be a nine-day wonder. She already had an outfit for the funeral, bagged months ago in a sale. Very important to make the right sort of impression on the in-laws she had never met. She had mentally rehearsed the story for them – how much she wished now, that she and Mark had had a proper wedding, with everyone invited – how their keeping the wedding quiet had made no difference in the end, because poor, poor Mark’s tragic death had put her right back into the headlines, so that they might just as well have done the thing properly, the big frock, the bridesmaids, the attendant photographers …

  Mark’s voice jolted her back to the present. She must not look too far ahead. It was vital to concentrate on the moment, because it would be so easy to make a slip, even at this late stage. ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘I think I must have been dozing off. Say that again.’

  ‘I said that I’d better stop at this garage.’ He was already slowing the car, in readiness to pull onto the forecourt. ‘Not a good idea to let the tank run low, out in the wilds.’

  ‘We certainly don’t want to run out of petrol, while we’re crossing Bodmin Moor,’ she agreed.

  ‘Be an angel. Nip across and join the queue to pay, while I fill up.’

  ‘What for? There’s no hurry.’

  ‘But I hate standing in a queue, and I am in a hurry. It’s all right for you. You know where you’re going whereas it’s all new for me and I can’t wait to get there and start our honeymoon properly.’

  She considered a playful protest to the effect that she didn’t want to stand in the queue any more than he did, or better still, to come up with a quick fire excuse for asking to use his credit card instead of her own, but she decided against it. She didn’t want to pay for the petrol, because their initial capital had pretty much gone, and finances were getting tight, but she reminded herself that it was only a little while longer. Probate might take a while, but very soon now, he would be paying for everything.

  THIRTY

  Raindrops began to hit the windscreen, just as Peter Betts reached the turn for Benton Heath. It was only then that he realized his route would take him past the lay-by where the van used in the Thackeray kidnap had been dumped. The last three or four weeks had been too hectic to allow any further time on that particular enquiry. As well as the Desray Street murders, there had been another attempted indecent assault in the Albert Park area and a nasty domestic murder on the Fairfield Estate. The fact that all the perpetrators had been quickly identified and rounded up did not – as the general public often seemed to imagine – signal the end of the work required to bring in a successful prosecution.

  Small wonder then, that when Peter had approached the boss about the encounter with Miss Salt, Graham Ling had made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t listening to any nonsense about putting someone back onto the Thackeray case for yet another look. ‘I can’t spare people on the basis that some old bird who once reckoned to have taught the victim, has developed a bee in her bonnet. Besides which,’ he had added, ‘I’ve always been
able to smell an ulterior motive a mile off. You must think I was born yesterday.’

  Peter had not bothered to protest that he did not understand what his superior meant.

  Hannah had not taken the news particularly well.

  ‘What did the gaffer say?’ she’d asked, when Peter saw her in the canteen, later the same day.

  ‘Discovering that a victim may have attended a comprehensive school where your mother once worked as the school secretary hardly constitutes a new lead,’ Peter parroted mechanically, as he dragged a chair out from under the table, so that he could sit facing her.

  ‘That isn’t what you told him.’ Hannah had not attempted to conceal her irritation. ‘He wasn’t even listening.’

  ‘Nope. He thinks we’re trying to get it reopened so that we can work one-to-one again.’

  ‘Did he say that?’

  ‘He didn’t need to.’

  ‘We don’t need to work together. We’re sleeping together.’

  ‘I’d say that a bit louder, if I were you. There might be someone down in the cells who didn’t quite catch it.’

  It had been one of her stipulations, that they keep their relationship quiet. That way there would be no awkwardness when they went their separate ways, she had said. No suggestion of anyone throwing anyone else over, or being heartbroken, or any of that kind of stuff. He had gone along with it, much as he had gone along with everything else: partly because he had no wish to argue with her over it and partly because he remained bemused.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she asked unexpectedly. ‘If people do catch on to us?’

  The words came out before he could stop them. ‘McMahon, this is the police force. There’s no “if” about it. Everyone from Grigor, the canteen kitchen porter, to Danny Burridge, doziest police dog handler in history, will already know all about it.’