DEAD SECRET a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by JANICE FROST

  “Why am I so convinced he’s a rat?” she asked her fat cat, Camden, who was curled up beside her on the sofa, purring hypnotically. As always, when she consulted him on any matter, urgent or trivial, he stared at her with the same bored expression, as if to say, “Why should I care?”

  “I mean, it’s not as if I know he’s guilty of anything; it’s just a bloody feeling, for goodness sake. The man could be a saint for all I know.” Camden yawned and turned away.

  “Jim doesn’t like him,” Ava said to Camden, wondering why that mattered, but it did. She said Neal’s first name aloud again, enjoying the sound of it on her lips.

  “I think I need another glass, Camden,” she said to the cat, who meowed in protest when she rose from the sofa to pour a refill. After the third glass, Ava fell asleep, waking well past midnight from dreams in which the things she did with Christopher Taylor and her boss in turn made her blush with shame, regretful that her only male companion was of the feline variety.

  Chapter 12

  The following morning, Neal greeted Ava with a train ticket.

  “Don’t take your coat off. I picked this up for you earlier this morning. If you move yourself, you can make the eight thirty-five.” Ava took the ticket and glanced down at her destination: Sheffield.

  “Bradley?” she asked.

  “I want you to question him again. Find out about his obsession with Amy; get a list of the dates when he was in Stromford recently. Even if he’s innocent of any wrong-doing himself, he may have information that can help in the investigation. Focus on who he saw Amy with, where she went, you know the kind of thing.”

  Ava cast a regretful look at the coffee machine before making for the door. She had just fifteen minutes to make it to the station and decided to make a run for it rather than take her car and get stuck in the morning traffic.

  She made it with three minutes to spare but her dodgy ankle throbbed with pain as she sank, breathless, into a backwards-facing window seat, looking once more with regret, at a coffee kiosk on the station platform that she’d had no time to visit.

  * * *

  As soon as the train pulled out of the station, she went in search of the buffet car. Five minutes later, large black americano in hand, she settled into her seat and gazed out of the window at the receding view of a flat, harvested wheat field overhung by a rain-swollen sky and a low autumn sun that made the shadows between the ridges of golden stubble look as though they were smudged with charcoal.

  It had been a while since she’d been out of town and even longer since she’d visited a decent sized city. Stromford was more of a large town, despite its pretensions and its resplendent cathedral perched on just about the only hill in the county. The shopping could be better, Ava had thought on first arriving in Stromford, bemoaning the lack of fashionable chain stores on the high street. But new retail developments were underway that would bring the town up to date, including the imaginative adaptive reuse of a number of nineteenth century commercial buildings that had fallen into disuse, as shops, cafes and restaurants.

  The journey would take about an hour and a half and though the seat next to Ava was empty, she didn’t want to risk having a passenger getting on at the next stop sit next to her and attempt to engage her in banal conversation, so she put her headphones on, closed her eyes and made the world go away in a blast of sound.

  This wouldn’t be Jim Neal’s music of choice, she thought absently, her head nodding to the beat. He was a classical music man, particularly fond of Bach and the Baroque period, but lately she had heard him humming modern stuff that Archie liked. The thought made her smile. Neal wasn’t exactly dour, but he was a tad on the serious side and it was as well that he had a young son — and a light-hearted sister — to keep him from becoming a fossil.

  A man in a pinstripe suit got on at the next stop and settled into the seat beside Ava’s. Not the chatty type, thank goodness, Ava thought, watching him extract a tablet computer from his briefcase and turn it on. Within seconds he was immersed in reading The Times online. Ava stared out of the window, mentally reviewing the case. She had turned her music off — it was too distracting, but kept the headphones on to deflect any conversation.

  She deliberately avoided thinking about Taylor. This morning, she needed to focus on Bradley and his part in Amy’s tragedy. He had grown up with her these past seven or eight years. They had been children together, then teenagers, even though Bradley had lived with his mother and only seen Amy when he was staying with his father on occasional weekends and holidays. They had never actually shared a house, where a true brother and sister relationship might have developed. It was quite natural, then, that Bradley should develop un-brotherly feelings towards Amy.

  According to various sources, Amy had no such feelings for Bradley. Far from it; she seemed to have treated him badly. She had mocked his feelings and belittled him, and Bradley had clearly suffered a blow to his self-esteem.

  It was the kind of thing that often happened to teenagers, especially in these days of social networking. Most got over the humiliation and moved on, but for some, resentment might fester until it found an outlet. Had Amy’s ill-treatment pushed Bradley over the edge? It was already established that he could be aggressive; his behaviour at Amy’s funeral had proved that he did not have himself entirely under control.

  * * *

  The journey passed quickly and Ava was surprised when the shantytown façade of the famous — or infamous — Park Hill flats loomed into view, signalling that she had arrived at her destination.

  She took a cab to Bradley’s address; he’d been contacted first thing in the morning and given the choice of talking to a police officer at home, or going down to the station to answer some questions. Bradley had chosen the former. When he answered the door to Ava, he was still in his pyjamas.

  “You’re an early riser, I see,” Ava remarked dryly.

  “I got wakened up at the crack of dawn by you lot phoning me. No point getting up early when I wasn’t going to be in class this morning.”

  Ava didn’t bother to point out that he did have an interview to get up for. Obviously, talking to the police wasn’t an activity he deemed worthy of getting out of bed for.

  “May I come in?” Ava asked.

  “Give me five minutes to put some clothes on,” Bradley said, inviting her inside. He disappeared off upstairs after showing her into a kitchen diner. Ava looked around in some surprise. Bradley rented his accommodation with another male student, she knew. She also knew that it was sexist of her to assume that the place would be a mess. In fact it was clean and tidy to the point of obsession. Either these guys were not your typical students or one of them was suffering from OCD.

  Bradley returned, dressed in a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt with a caption saying, ‘Keep calm and build a cabinet,’ on the front. Ava declined his offer of a coffee, then changed her mind when, to her surprise, she spied a state of the art coffee maker. It wouldn’t hurt to be a little informal. As they waited for the coffee to perk, she spoke with him about his course, hoping to break the ice.

  “You’re learning to design and make furniture, I hear,” she said, “Do you need to be good at art for that?”

  “It helps,” Bradley answered, “Art and design was my best subject at school. I was pretty crap at everything else.”

  “Are you hoping to go into business with your dad?”

  “Maybe. Dad taught me everything he knew, but it’s still good to get a qualification under your belt. My course includes modules on how to run a business and I’ve got big plans.” Bradley puffed up with self-importance, perhaps seeing himself as Alan Sugar’s next apprentice entrepreneur.

  Ava noticed that Bradley spilt some coffee on the worktop and that he left the teaspoon he’d stirred his cup with lying on the side of the sink; not the one, then.

  “You’ve come about Amy, haven’t you? Not to talk about me.”

  “Yes,” answered Ava.

  “I’ve alread
y told you everything I know.”

  “I just want to ask a few questions, that’s all. It’s possible that you may have information that will be of use to us, without even knowing it.”

  “I didn’t kill her,“ Bradley said, sullenly.

  “But you did like her?” Ava said, not unkindly.

  “I used to. You know that already. She wasn’t interested. End of. Like I said.”

  “Not exactly. We know you were following Amy, possibly stalking her. You told your flatmate — and other friends at uni that you were going out with her. Why did you tell them that, Bradley?”

  Bradley shrugged, “I thought she’d come to her senses eventually and go out with me.”

  Bradley wasn’t bad looking. He was tall enough and looked as though he worked out. He could stand to lose a couple of pounds, but it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to see girls his age fancying him, Ava thought. On the downside, Bradley had an unfortunate manner, aggressive and rather domineering. This might appeal to some girls, but apparently it hadn’t won him over to Amy.

  “Look, I cared about Amy. Okay, I was a bit obsessed with her, but I would never have hurt her, even though she was a bitch to me.”

  But you did hurt her once, didn’t you, Ava thought, convinced Bradley was in deep denial, “Do you think every girl who isn’t attracted to you is a bitch?”

  “No, you’re twisting my words — I meant she behaved like a bitch towards me — made fun of me in front of her friends, put stuff on Facebook about me. Told them all I was a pervert. She wasn’t above borrowing money from me, though.”

  Ava’s senses were alerted,

  “Amy borrowed money from you? How much? How often?” Bradley shrugged. No doubt he was ashamed of being so in thrall to Amy that he had actually lent her money even though she had made it clear she despised him.

  “Not much. I’m a student, remember? I make a bit of money selling stuff I’ve made — jewellery boxes, animals carved out of wood. Amy always seemed to know when I had money in my pocket. She was nice enough to me when she wanted to borrow some.”

  “How much?” Ava asked again.

  “The odd tenner here and there.”

  Not enough to pay for the kind of clothes Amy had hanging in her wardrobe, thought Ava. Whoever had financed her expensive tastes, it wasn’t Bradley. She had probably just extracted money from him for fun, because he was such easy bait.

  “When you were following Amy, did you ever see her with anyone else?”

  “What, blokes, you mean? I saw her with a smooth-looking git once or twice. Looked quite a bit older than her. And with Simon Foster.”

  “Simon?” Ava asked, tingling with interest, “Amy knew Simon Foster? You saw them together?”

  “Not exactly,” Bradley answered, “I wouldn’t say they were together. I think Simon was following Amy too.” Ava shuddered at the idea of a double stalking. What was it about Amy Hill that turned men into predators?

  “Why did you think that?” she asked

  “When I was . . . following Amy, I used to see him hanging around, watching her. I think she knew he was there but didn’t mind. I think she pretended she wasn’t aware of him. She didn’t seem threatened or annoyed by him.”

  Just like Becci had said, Ava remembered. Very likely, Simon was Amy’s benign stalker; the one she believed was looking out for her.

  “What about you? Did she know you were stalking her?”

  “I’m not a weirdo, you know. I only followed her a couple of times. After that time when I . . . when she fell over, I gave it up, decided she was a waste of time. I didn’t mean to hurt her, you know. It was an accident.”

  “Yeah, right,” Ava said, thinking again of Bradley’s behaviour on the day of Amy’s funeral.

  “Am I a suspect?” he asked, “I’ve got an alibi, you know. My flatmate can vouch for me.”

  It was true, Bradley’s claim about going on a drunken pub crawl with his flatmate had checked out.

  Ava finished her coffee, feeling a little uncomfortable about having enjoyed it so much. It didn’t seem polite to accept a person’s hospitality, and then insinuate that you suspected them of murder.

  “And that girl in the pub? If Inspector Neal and your father hadn’t stopped you, you’d have given her a black eye at the very least.”

  Bradley gave her a dirty look, “I’ve got a temper, right? Sometimes I can’t stop myself, but I never meant to hurt her.”

  Any twinge of pity that Ava had felt on seeing the Facebook pictures of the drunken, naked, overweight Bradley in a series of unflattering poses was quickly evaporating. She decided to try a different line of questioning.

  “Would it surprise you to learn that Becci and her boyfriend were found dead yesterday at Becci’s flat?”

  It was evident that Bradley was shocked by the news. The colour drained from his face and he stared at Ava in disbelief.

  “You’re not trying to nail me for that as well, are you? Because I’ve been in Sheffield for the past two weeks — ask anyone.”

  “We will,” Ava answered. “Bradley, do you have any idea why someone might have wanted either of them dead?”

  “I didn’t know Gary that well. He was a bit of a clown and he didn’t seem that bright to me, considering he was at uni. Becci was a bitch but she didn’t deserve to die. Was she strangled like Amy?”

  Ava wasn’t surprised to hear Bradley describe Amy’s best friend as a bitch. Probably tried it on with her too.

  “No. Carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  “In her flat?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yes. I already told you that.”

  “They had an alarm,” Bradley said, “I remember my dad telling Nancy to make sure they had one when Amy moved in. And he gave me one when I moved in here. Look.” Bradley got up and crossed to a bookshelf, and pointed to a round white monitor with a green light that flashed intermittently.

  Ava nodded. She had one herself. The piercing signal it emitted had startled her out of a deep sleep one morning; a warning that the battery power was low. She had taken the batteries out . . . had she replaced them? Ava made a mental note to check at the earliest opportunity. They had searched Amy and Becci’s flat for a monitor, and found one which had dead batteries, but she didn’t reveal this to Bradley.

  “If there’s anything else you remember that might help with the investigation, I hope you’ll contact me,” Ava said. Bradley nodded but she wasn’t convinced she’d be hearing from him any time soon.

  Out on the doorstep, she asked him, as an afterthought, how well he knew Simon Foster. She was puzzled by his flustered, stuttering denial of ever having spoken to Simon. Nancy wasn’t Bradley’s stepmother or anything like that, but she was Anna Foster’s friend, and it wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume that Simon and Bradley might have known each other.

  “I never spoke to him,” Bradley repeated unnecessarily, giving Ava just the opposite impression. She left Bradley’s place feeling that she had learned nothing new, and with an intense feeling of frustration.

  Ava suspected Bradley of lying about Simon, and wondered suddenly if he were protecting him. Did he know where Simon was? It might be worth having someone watch Bradley’s place for a while, and follow him to see if he might lead them to Simon.

  * * *

  Her business with Bradley concluded for the time being, Ava should have had no reason to linger in Sheffield, but the next through train to Stromford wasn’t for a couple of hours, and she had wanted to take a trip to Sheffield in any case, to carry out a bit of her own research on Christopher Taylor. After finding the picture of the Asian women in his bureau, she had carried out some off-the-record checks into Taylor’s background, in particular his time teaching English to recent immigrants at a community centre in Sheffield, while he had been completing his doctorate. It had not taken great powers of detection to discover where this was.

  To save time, Ava took a cab, and within twenty minutes of leaving Bradley’s flat, she w
as standing outside the door of a community centre in eastern Sheffield — an area with a sizeable Asian population.

  A slight, pretty, Pakistani woman greeted her at the reception desk.

  “How may I help you?” she asked Ava.

  “I was wondering if you or any of your colleagues might recall working with a man by the name of Christopher Taylor. He taught English here a few years back so it’s quite likely he would still be remembered, or that you have records of his time here.”

  “May I ask why you are looking for this man?” the woman asked.

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential,” Ava answered, reluctantly producing her badge. The woman checked the records on her computer, having tilted the screen so that Ava couldn’t see what she was doing.

  “Yes, I can confirm Mr Taylor worked here.”

  “Would it be possible for me to obtain a list of names of the women he taught?” Ava asked.

  “I’m sorry. Data Protection Act forbids me from supplying that information without their permission.” It was the answer she had expected, but still Ava was disappointed. It was frustrating to be so close to information on Taylor and yet so far from obtaining it. It wasn’t as if she could go through the legal route; there was no valid reason for checking into Taylor’s past given his watertight alibi.

  “It seems that Mr Taylor left very suddenly,” the young woman added, shaking her head. Reading off the screen, she said. “It says here that one of his classes did exceptionally well, and they were interviewed for a feature in the local paper. There was a picture of the group with their tutor,” she said, directing a meaningful look at Ava.

  “Thank you,” Ava said, smiling back, already planning a detour to the newspaper office.