by JANICE FROST
“Amy looked upon him as a kind of benign stalker according to Becci. She felt no sense of threat from him. Maybe she felt a kind of bond with him, even though she had no idea he was her brother,” Ava speculated, but Neal looked sceptical.
“Bit weird, I know, but strange things do happen.”
“Like a ten minute journey stretching to half an hour?” Neal remarked.
Ava coloured, “I can explain, sir. I was following up a lead on Christopher Taylor. Sir, he was being blackmailed by Amy Hill.”
Taken aback, Neal stared at her. “That’s an interesting piece of information, Sergeant, and I’m looking forward to your explanation of why you’ve obviously been investigating Taylor when his alibi is rock solid. I realise your feelings towards Taylor are complicated, but he’s not our killer and he’s not what we should be focusing on right now.”
“But, sir, it could be relevant. Taylor had motive.”
“And that can explain how he came to be in two places at once?” Neal’s back was up. If she’s going to continue working with me, she’ll damn well have to shape up, he thought. Her complicated feelings about Taylor are undermining her objectivity. Cutting off her reply, he said, “Save it for later. We have a suspect to interview. And by the way, Sergeant, straight afterwards I want you to make an appointment with the police doctor. I need to know that you are physically fit for duty.”
The atmosphere between them was strained as they entered the interview room where Simon was sitting waiting. He had said nothing on the journey to the station, only stared out the side window, his head bowed, perhaps ashamed to be seen in the back of a police car, even though it was unmarked. He did look up briefly as they settled in the chairs opposite him, running his eyes discreetly over Ava. Men tended to do that when Ava entered a room. But Simon was politer than most — his eyes did not linger.
Neal took the lead, “You know why you’re here Simon, don’t you?” Simon Foster nodded. It was not enough. “Simon?” Neal prompted.
“You think I killed my sister,” the boy said. He looked Neal straight in the eye. There was a keen intelligence in his gaze, no hint of defiance or challenge.
“No one has accused you of anything yet Simon, but taking off the way you did wasn’t very clever. Care to explain?”
Simon Foster was a good-looking boy with the kind of symmetrical features that would make him strikingly so as his lingering acne cleared and his features matured. He was in need of a more flattering hairstyle than his mop of shoulder length thick, dark hair. At least his glasses were trendy; perhaps Anna Foster had helped him choose them, or one of those assistants at the opticians who were good at that sort of thing. There was a certain vulnerability about him also, not weakness, just a sort of ‘little boy lost’ look, like that celebrity physicist who was always on TV that Maggie and most of the women at the station were always drooling over.
It was easy to be misled by a face like this, Neal knew. He had been in the room with convicted psychopaths who tugged at your heartstrings with their sweet expressions and sincere assertions of innocence. It was their gift, just another tool in their box that they could employ at will to appear normal. A skilful interviewer learned to use another set of tools to expose them for what they were: cunning dissemblers with no heart or conscience.
“I know that now,” Simon answered, quietly. “I went a bit crazy for a while. I was going to come to you when I got my head sorted out. But it’s true, isn’t it? I wouldn’t be sitting here now if you thought I had nothing to do with Amy’s death.”
“Did you have anything to do with Amy’s death?”
“No. God, how can you even think that? I’d only just worked out who she was — might be. It was all so mixed up and I kept having these sort of flashbacks. I thought I was going mad. I felt this need to look out for her, keep her from harm just until I could get my head round it all.”
“When did you last see Amy?”
“The evening she . . . she . . .” Simon couldn’t bring himself to say it, “. . . disappeared.”
“Had you been following her all day?”
Simon hung his head in shame.
“I saw her in the morning, going into a house up the hill. She’d been there a couple of times before and I’d checked who lived there. It was a professor at the university.”
Neal pointedly avoided looking at Ava, but he was aware of her leaning forward in her seat, and the sudden shift in Simon’s gaze to Ava’s face confirmed that she had reacted.
“Did you find out the name of this professor?” Neal asked, pre-empting his sergeant.
“I can’t remember now, but I think he teaches English at the uni. That’s what Em — Amy was studying. I assumed she was either involved with him or getting extra tuition from him, or something. She only stayed about twenty minutes or so.”
He has an alibi, Neal reminded himself, sensing Ava’s excitement. “Where did she go after leaving her professor’s house?” he asked.
“She went shopping on the Eastgate.”
Ava gave Neal a knowing look. Neal knew exactly what she was thinking. The Eastgate was where the town’s most exclusive shops were located; designer boutiques and brand names abounded. He’d heard Maggie bemoan the fact that she didn’t earn enough to shop there. If Ava were right about the blackmail, the professor must have been paying handsomely for Amy’s silence.
“She had a lot of shopping bags,” Simon continued. “In the middle of the afternoon, she went to the new patisserie on the Long Hill.”
It was a favourite of Amy’s; the same one Nancy had taken her to for lunch a few days before she disappeared, Neal remembered.
Again, Simon looked down, “I followed her in. I sat down at a table near the one she’d chosen. She came over and joined me.”
The silence that followed Simon’s words was electrifying. Ava was not just leaning forward in her seat now, but practically jumping out of it. Neal made a mental note to talk to her later about the need to contain her emotions.
“You spoke with her?” Neal asked; his voice steady.
“I thought she was coming over to tell me to fu . . . to get lost,” Simon said, “but she wasn’t annoyed at all; she was amused. I can remember the exact words she used, ‘why don’t we have a coffee and a nice pastry and you can tell me why you keep following me?’ I almost got up and ran out, but she seemed . . . so okay with it that I just agreed.”
“Did you tell Amy about your suspicions that you were brother and sister?”
“No. I was going to but at the last moment I bottled out. I told her she reminded me of my sister who’d died when I was very young, that following her made me feel close to Emily.”
Neal saw Ava roll her eyes. Needless to say his sergeant would never have fallen for a line like that. He asked Simon, “And she believed you?”
“I think she felt it too,” Simon answered, then perhaps picking up on Neal and Ava’s questioning looks, he added, “The bond between us. I think she kind of sensed it. I know she wasn’t scared of me. I know she didn’t feel any sense of threat from me.”
Neal had to admit that Simon did not fit the profile of a typical stalker. He had never had a romantic relationship with Amy, nor did he crave one. He simply wanted to know if she were his sister and to keep her safe. Maybe he felt partly to blame for her disappearance.
It was at that moment that Neal doubted they had found their killer. He had done the training, learned about aspects of deviant behaviour and psychopathy. He knew there were manipulative and charismatic individuals out there who could dissemble to a spectacular degree, but in his heart of hearts, he just did not believe that Simon Foster was one of them. Yes, he had issues relating to his early childhood abuse and would probably benefit from some hours on a psychologist’s couch, but he was no killer. He said, quietly, “Simon, we know you weren’t with your mother the night Amy died. She told us so. Care to tell us where you were, really?”
Simon looked as miserable as a person could look
. Looking like a man about to damn himself, he said, “I was following Amy, but only until around seven thirty. She met a girlfriend outside the cinema. I hung around for a bit, wondering whether to go in, then I just left.”
“And where did you go?”
Simon looked completely miserable, “I bought a bottle of vodka and drank it sitting on a swing in the little kids’ playground off Friary Lane. It was deserted at that time of the evening.”
Neal nodded. He knew the park Simon was referring to; he had taken Archie there often when he was younger. It was near a school in the Uphill area and wasn’t frequented by the usual vagrants and junkies because it was kept locked at night.
“How did you get in?” he asked Simon.
“I climbed the fence. It wasn’t that hard.”
It was believable. Your everyday vagrant wouldn’t think it worth the effort, but for a young, fit lad like Simon, it would present little difficulty.
“And you stayed there all night — in the rain?” Ava asked.
“I drank half the bottle and passed out in a little playhouse.”
Neal sighed. He remembered bumping his head in that playhouse whilst chasing Archie through it. No one would have seen Simon in there; small as it was, he could have lain curled up inside without his feet protruding. He said, changing tack, “Simon, are you aware that following Amy in the way that you were doing could be construed as stalking?”
“That’s what Maya said, but I didn’t see it that way at the time. I was kind of obsessed by her, but I wouldn’t have harmed her, I swear. I just wanted to look out for her and learn more about her. I wasn’t the only one obsessed with her either.”
Neal and Ava exchanged glances. Neal frowned, thinking of Becci’s remarks about someone else besides Simon stalking Amy. “How so?”
“I was in the Union bar one day and I got talking to this bloke — he wasn’t a student at Stromford Uni — he was studying elsewhere but was visiting his dad for the weekend. Anyway, we’d had a few beers and got talking; we were looking out the window . . .” Simon paused, colouring, “Seeing if any hot girls were walking by, and he got all kind of puffed up at one point and pointed out a girl standing outside the library. When I looked over, I saw it was Amy. He told me he used to fancy her, but I got the impression he still did. We’d both had quite a few pints by then and I started telling him how I thought Amy might be my sister who’d disappeared years ago after my father killed my mother. He was really taken by the story, wanted to know all the details, where my father was doing time, when and where it all happened. I made him swear not to tell Amy about all this.”
“And what makes you say he was obsessed with Amy?” Neal asked.
“Because he was following her too. He was in Stromford all that week and I saw him watching her and her friend, the skinny blonde one, on more than one occasion. Then he just disappeared. I assumed he’d gone back to uni.”
“You spent — what — a couple of hours chatting over beers. Did you exchange names, contact details?”
Simon shook his head, “We kind of just called each other, ‘mate.’”
“Can you describe him to us?”
“He was a big guy — I mean not particularly tall, just kind of . . . overweight,” Simon answered tactfully. “Not being mean or anything, but he wasn’t really God’s gift — I doubt he was the type a girl who looked like Amy would go for. Even if he had a great personality, which he didn’t, really.” Simon paused, embarrassed, perhaps, at his honesty.
“Go on,” Neal said. A picture was forming in his mind, but he needed to be more certain. Ava, he noticed, was leaning forward in her seat again. Did she share his suspicions?
“He had light brown hair, very short, spiky really, like he’d shaved his head and his hair was just growing back. Sorry, I don’t remember much more about him. After that first time, I only saw him from a distance.”
Neal turned to Ava, “Get PC Jenkins to bring a picture of Bradley Turner from the file.” He and Simon sat silently while they waited for Ava to return, which she did after less than two minutes, carrying a brown file, which she handed to Neal. He opened it, removed a photograph and slid it across the table to Simon, rotating it until it was the right way round for him to see.
“Is this the person you were just describing?” he asked. There was no hesitation.
“That’s him. Who is he? Did he kill Amy?” Simon seemed to suck a big breath in and forget to let it go, then he did let go but the next breath came as a laboured gasp and within seconds he was struggling to breathe.
“Simon. Do you have asthma? Where’s your inhaler?” Ava said, sounding a little panicky.
“It’s not asthma, it’s a panic attack,” Neal said, recognising the symptoms. “Get a paper bag, quickly.” As Ava dashed out the door, Neal pulled his chair to the other side of the table so that he could sit next to Simon.
“Okay, take it easy, son, just concentrate on breathing.” Simon Foster was twenty years old, but at that moment he seemed younger than Archie. Neal pushed the comparison out of his mind, reminding himself that Simon was still a suspect in a murder investigation. The boy’s attack appeared genuine enough, but even if it were, how could Neal be sure that it had not been somehow self-induced?
Ava re-entered the room carrying a brown paper bag. Before passing it to Neal she turned it upside down and scattered pastry crumbs all over the table, explaining, “Sykes had a Cornish pasty for lunch, he dug this out of his waste paper basket.”
“It’ll do the trick,” Neal said, placing the bag over Simon’s mouth and nose and instructing him to breathe in and out, repeating the words, “in and out,” over and over to help the lad focus on something other than his alarming symptoms. Within minutes, Simon’s breathing steadied and he signalled for Neal to remove the bag.
“Okay, Simon. Here’s what’s going to happen. Detective Sergeant Merry here, is going to contact your mother and ask her to come down to the station to collect you. She will take you home and you will stay there. No more running, understand?”
Simon nodded, still recovering. Ava gave Neal a quizzical look and left the room to call Anna Foster.
“Get one of the PCs to bring Simon a glass of water,” Neal called after her.
In less than forty minutes, Anna Foster had collected her son and taken him home. Ava had explained the circumstances over the phone and when Anna arrived at the station, she greeted Neal and Ava with a chilly look and no exchange of pleasantries. All she said was, “Where is my son? What have you done to him?” Clearly, she was of the opinion that Simon’s panic attack had been the result of mistreatment whilst in police custody.
“She should be grateful we’re letting her precious son walk,” Ava commented, after the Fosters’ departure.
“For now,” Neal reminded her. Frustrating as it was, they had no real reason to detain Simon; he had bolted, but there was no evidence to tie him to Amy’s murder. Despite Neal’s feeling that Simon was not a killer, the lad did lack an alibi and he was still a suspect.
“How’s the foot?” Neal asked Ava. He’d noticed she was still limping.
“Better. I’ll make that appointment.”
“See that you do, Sergeant.” There was an awkward pause, but the previous tension between them had evaporated. Neal asked, “Fancy a bite? We can discuss Bradley Turner and you can tell me about this idea you have that Amy Hill was blackmailing Taylor.”
“I’m famished,” Ava admitted. Then, perhaps sensing that Neal was no longer angry with her, she added, “It’s more than an idea, sir. I have proof.”
At a secluded table in the nearest pub to the station that served decent food, Ava related how she had spent her morning, and her suspicions about Taylor, leaving Neal with a sense that there was something she had left out. There was an edge to her voice when she talked about him that hinted at something — what? Neal couldn’t put a finger on it. An idea flashed in his mind and was cursorily dismissed. There was no way his sergeant was involv
ed sexually with Taylor, was there, even as she sat in front of Neal, accusing the professor of having intercourse with underage girls?
At first, Neal made no comment, only concentrated on working his way through the best steak he had eaten in a long time. Or was it just that it had been a long time since he had eaten?
Taking a slug of cold beer, he said, “It seems that you’ve been carrying out your own investigation, Sergeant.” His voice was stern, but he wasn’t certain how he felt about Ava’s behaviour. Was she a bit of a loose cannon, or a person who acted on her own initiative and got results? He would not give her any indication that he approved of her running a parallel investigation into a man who wasn’t even a suspect.
“How do you even know if this Rohina or Roxy or whatever she calls herself is telling the truth? You say she admitted herself that as a young girl, she fancied Taylor. What if, as he claims in Amy’s case, he turned her down and she resented him for it?”
Ava was shaking her head in frustration.
“I’m sure she was telling the truth. The man’s a monster.” The words came out with such vehemence that Neal was startled.
“I know his alibi is cast iron, sir, but even if he didn’t kill Amy, his relationship with her was far more than he admitted to.”
Neal had had enough. He said, “Taylor did not murder Amy Hill. If he’s guilty of having sex with underage girls, then that’s a whole separate investigation. And what do you have? Look at it from the point of view of a jury. At best, one possible victim’s word against that of a respected academic. At worst, a spiteful girl getting her own back on a man who spurned her.”
Ava was staring at him, looking a little stunned.
“I didn’t take you for the kind of man who dismisses allegations of abuse against women so casually,” she said, “I know that kind of attitude is still prevalent amongst lots of cops but I didn’t have you pegged as one of them.”
