A Poison Tree

by J. E. Mayhew

  They were red boots. Converse, Hi-tops, or so Vikki Chinn told Blake. He had seen people wearing them but his taste in footwear was more thick-soled and supportive. He frowned at the image on the phone. “So, at three pm, Becky Thompson sends a picture of the boots to her father. They appear old but her parents don’t recall her owning a pair. She didn’t send any message with the picture other than ‘Like them?’ Clearly, she had recently acquired them from somewhere.”

  Vikki nodded. “We need to find out where the shoes came from and what value they might have,” she said. “Might be a motive?”

  “Yeah,” Blake muttered, looking at the time. It was getting late in the day. “Two more visits? Let’s see what Becky’s friends can tell us about these boots.”

  ◆◆◆

  Rory Evans’ house was a small end terrace on a row in Bromborough, a couple of miles or so from the woods. Piles of bricks and hardened bags of cement peaked through the grass of the tiny, overgrown front lawn. The paint on the window frames peeled and Blake noticed that the glass in the front door had been broken at the bottom; a neat hole kicked in it and hastily covered over with a sheet of hardboard. It didn’t look like a recent repair, though. The whole house throbbed with the bass notes of muffled rock music coming from inside.

  “Not what you’d call house proud, sir,” Vikki Chinn had muttered as they knocked on the door. Blake replied with a flick of his eyebrows and a brief smile.

  A surly man wearing a denim shirt and a Motorhead T-shirt that stretched across his huge chest and stomach answered the door. Over the pulsing noise that spilled out of the house, he acknowledged with a nod of his shaggy head that he was Mr Evans, Rory’s father. A livid bruise spread across his jaw and up to his eye as if he’d been punched hard in the head.

  Evans pointed to his face. “Go easy on ‘im. He’s had one meltdown already. I got this for my troubles.”

  Blake looked puzzled. “I’m sorry?”

  “He freaked out. I had to restrain him. Not very nice.”

  “Right,” Blake said, still not really following.

  “In ‘ere,” Evans said and turned round. Blake raised an eyebrow at the ‘Live Fast, Die Young’ motto embroidered on the back of the man’s shirt. He wondered if Mr Evans ever pondered the advice and then looked around himself, realising that he had done neither.

  Inside the house wasn’t much better than out. Evans led them from a narrow hall, littered with old newspapers and half-blocked by a bicycle, into a square, sour-smelling living room filled by a huge lazyboy armchair, a sofa and a wall of sound. Two speakers blared out something heavy that Blake didn’t recognise and was, to be frank, getting on his nerves. A panel show on the television added to the cacophony and a cockatiel bounced between two perches in a cage crammed in the corner, screeching every two seconds.

  A boy rocked back and forth on the sofa; a slightly smaller version of his dad; curly black hair, a round, shapeless body, black jeans with silver metal studs poking through them. Bands and bracelets rattled on Rory’s arms as he moved.

  “Can we…” Blake shouted over the noise.

  “What?” Mr Evans shouted.

  Chinn leaned over and switched the music off, halving the noise instantly. “Can we have the telly off too, please?” Blake said. Mr Evans, shut the TV up and peace settled on the room. The cockatiel gave one last shriek and stopped leaping around its cage. Blake sat down next to Rory, who stopped rocking. “Hi, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Blake, this is Detective Sergeant Chinn. We’d like to ask you some questions, if that’s all right.”

  Rory nodded.

  “We’re trying to piece together Rebecca’s movements yesterday, Rory,” Blake said. “Could you tell us when you last saw her?”

  “Yesterday at 4:23pm,” Rory said. His voice sounded quite high-pitched and nasal. And he emphasised the ‘p’ and the ‘m.’ For a second, Blake thought the boy was trying to be funny. “We went to the shops. Then we went to Rubens for a coffee. I had a skinny macchiato, Gavin had a flat white and Rebecca had a latte. Then we splitted up to go home.”

  “Rory was in before five,” Mr Evans said, tugging at the long sleeves of his denim shirt. “It’s been a rough day for him.”

  Blake nodded but held Mr Evan’s gaze for long enough to make it clear he wanted Rory to talk. “And how did Rebecca seem when you left her?” Blake said.

  “What do you mean,” Rory said, staring at his shoes.

  “What kind of mood was she in?” Blake said. “Happy? Sad?”

  “Just normal,” Rory said.

  Blake pursed his lips. “What about the boots, Rory? Was she happy with her new red Converse boots?”

  Rory looked up as if Blake had thrown a bucket of cold water over him. “I dunno,” he said and started rocking again. “I dunno.”

  Blake frowned and looked over at Chinn. “The red boots, Rory? She sent a photo of them to her parents about three pm. Where did she get them from?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Please…” Evans began.

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted the boots, Rory?”

  “I dunno. I dunno.”

  “Rory, if you’re hiding something from us, you can get into a lot of trouble. It’s better to just tell us what you know.”

  “I don’t know nothing! I dunno. I dunno. I dunno!” Rory rocked back and forth, making the whole sofa creak. The cockatiel rattled around the cage and resumed its screeching.

  “You’re upsetting him,” Mr Evans snapped. “He’s lost his best friend, for fuck’s sake…”

  Blake nodded. “I know, Mr Evans, and I want to get to the bottom of what happened.” He turned again to Rory. “Look, son, just tell me about the boots…”

  Blake had never heard such a blood-chilling scream as Rory threw himself from the sofa and onto the floor. He kicked and thumped the ground, banging his head on the carpet. “It’s not safe! It’s not safe! Clocky’ll come! It’s not safe!”

  Mr Evans leapt to his feet. “Can you leave my house,” he said. “Now. I told you, he’s had one meltdown already. It’ll take him fuckin’ hours to come down from this.”

  Blake nodded. “Fair enough, Mr Evans, but we’ll need to speak to him sooner or later.”

  “Just go.”

  Sitting in the Manta, Blake blew out a long breath. “Well, that went well,” he said. Chinn gave a tortured grin.

  “I think somebody should have warned us he was on the autistic spectrum, sir,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “He was fine until I mentioned the red boots. And what was all that ‘Clocky’ll come’ business?”

  Chinn shrugged. “Beats me, sir.”

  Blake’s phone rang. ‘Pathologist,” he said, putting the mobile to his ear. “Hi. Yeah, Blake.”

  “Hi Will, it’s Kenning. D’you want me to read the full report out loud over the phone or do you want the headlines?” Blake had worked with Dr Jack Kenning before many times and recognised a feeble attempt at a joke. Kenning fancied himself as one of those pathologists you see on TV shows, full of gallows humour and eccentricity. In reality, Kenning was about as dull as a man could be, despite the loud bowties he wore and constantly fiddled with to draw attention.

  “Headlines, please, Jack. If you read the whole report, we’ll be here all day.”

  “I know,” Kenning said, sounding a little crestfallen. “It was a joke.”

  “Yeah, right. The main points, please,” Blake said, rolling his eyes at Chinn.

  “Rebecca Thompson died of strangulation. It looks like her throat was crushed against the railings around the pit she was found in. Bruising on her neck and the internal damage is extensive. I would say she was dead when she was flipped over the railings into the pit. There’s damage compatible with the fall, or rather the impact. A lot of blood and skin under her fingernails. Whoever attacked her was quite badly scratched, probably about the arms and hands. We’ll be able to get DNA from there. No evidence of any sexual assault. In m
y opinion she died about six thirty last night, trying to fend off her attacker. I’ll file the full report for you to look at in more detail.”

  Blake heaved a sigh. “Thanks Jack.” He clicked off the phone and turned to Chinn. “Let’s hope we can get a bit more out of the other lad.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Gerald sat, trembling and twisting a mug of coffee around in his hands at his kitchen table. It was almost evening again but he hadn’t opened the curtains all day. The red boots sat on the table, accusing him. It had all gone horribly, horribly wrong and now he didn’t know what to do.

  On the day he’d opened the boxes and found the shoes, he’d taken himself home. He felt delirious with the shock. A thousand unwelcome memories assaulted him. Even the taste of the sweet tea that he’d had from Natalie had thrown him back to his teenage years. Small details, snippets of conversation, things long buried, all came back to snap at his heels as he rushed home, ignoring the curious looks from shoppers and the blare of horns as he ran out in front of traffic.

  For the rest of the day he lay on the sofa and let a couple of sleeping tablets do the work. But he still ended up slipping in and out of nightmares that took him through the whole sorry history of his teenage years. Sometime in the middle of the night, he’d augmented the tablets with a few deep glasses of Jameson’s and he’d awoken some time mid-morning the next day with a throbbing head and the sketch of an idea.

  It didn’t matter where the shoes had come from. Whoever had sent them just wanted to lose them. Nobody knew their history. All he had to do was go back to the charity shop, buy them, and get rid. In a short while, there’d be nothing left to show for all those years of heartache and that would be absolutely fine.

  Gerald wished he hadn’t made such a fuss when he’d first seen them but he could make up some cock and bull story about how they reminded him of an old flame who had died in a car crash. That was true, in a sense, the car crash was metaphorical but she had died all the same. Nobody would interrogate him about it and if he got funny looks afterwards, he could always leave and volunteer somewhere else.

  As he walked down the road into town towards the charity shop in Bromborough on Wednesday morning, he'd wondered once again what the hell brought him back to the Wirral. He’d left for college in Worcester in the September of his eighteenth year and rarely come back; Christmas, or when his mum or dad had a milestone birthday. On leaving college, he took up a job as a clerical officer in a local benefits office and lived quite comfortably on his own. Never having married, he’d holidayed with his parents every year and kept in touch by phone. He encouraged them to come down to see him as much as possible so he didn’t have to travel up there.

  When his mum died, his dad didn’t cope well and Gerald found himself visiting more often but he was so busy shopping, tidying and taking his dad to appointments that the memories didn’t have chance to surface. The place had changed so much, too. Old shops being replaced with cafes and charity shops. But, physically, it was the same place. Gerald began looking around at his childhood home more fondly. When dad finally passed away and Gerald inherited the house, he decided to sell his property down south, invest the proceeds and retire early. At fifty-five, he found himself as a man of leisure and he’d relished lying in and wasting days watching trashy daytime TV. But eventually, he felt he needed some kind of human contact and so he volunteered at the charity shop.

  Now he wished he hadn’t.

  Still, he’d thought. By this evening, the whole episode would just be a dim, unpleasant memory and he could move on.

  By the time Gerald had reached the shop, Jamie was getting ready to lock up. He looked a little non-plussed at first, when Gerald asked about the boxes and the shoes. Then his eyes lit up. “Ooh, yeah,” Jamie said. “Well, to be honest, I threw the slippers and the court shoes in the recycling. I think the sandals and the stilettos went to the Heswall shop. They’ll sell better there, won’t they?” Jamie said, lowering his voice as if the people of Bromborough were listening. “No sense of style round here.”

  Gerald felt as if he was falling again. “Wh-what about the baseball boots… the con… con…” he struggled to find the word.

  “Oh the Converse thingies. Yeah. A young girl came in and bought them. Seemed made up with them.” He shrugged. “No accounting for taste, is there?”

  Gerald didn’t mean to, but he grabbed Jamie by the jumper. “What girl? When? Where is she?”

  “Oy, d’you mind? That’s an angora, cashmere mix. M&S. Not cheap,” Jamie said, staggering back and smoothing out his jumper. “I dunno. She was with a couple of lads. They went over to Rubens, I think. I was watching them because the two lads looked a bit, well, you know, odd. Then they came out and went down towards the Co-op.”

  Gerald didn’t even apologise to Jamie. He’d hurried across the road to the coffee shop and peered through the front window into the dimly lit cavern of a shop. A couple of mums were sipping their drinks and frowning at him while their kids kicked their feet in their buggies but otherwise, the shop was empty.

  He’d spent the next hour looking in every shop and supermarket, even the pubs, just hoping to see the girl in the red baseball boots. He even stopped at a cashpoint and drew out £100. If push came to shove, he’d offer her all of the money for them. But the girl had vanished. Finally admitting defeat, Gerald stomped home, a swarm of thoughts battering against each other in his head. It would be fine. Nobody would know.

  The girl would probably get bored of them and throw them away. They were pretty worn out anyway, it wouldn’t take long and they’d be binned. But what if she decided to sell them on? What if someone had recognised them like he had and then put two and two together and came up with Gerald Rees? Gerald ground his teeth as he tried to calm himself.

  And then he saw the girl. Walking straight towards him. Blonde, late teens. Tight black jeans and a black leather jacket. He blinked for a second, ashamed at the sudden sexual thrill that had coursed through his body. It could almost be her, he thought and then realised he had caught her eye and she was scowling at him. He’d had to act. It was his only chance. He’d pulled out the money but it looked all wrong. The way she stared at him in disgust. The stupid way he’d tried to explain, pointing at her boots and stammering like he had some weird foot fetish. She’d run and he’d chased her.

  Now he sat in his kitchen, staring at the shoes. The girl was dead and it was his fault.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Hooton Road took Blake and Vikki Chinn off the busy A41 and the hedgerows closed in around them. The houses grew larger with a little more land around them. Then they were into the leafy tidiness of Willaston Village.

  “Would you ever think of living here?” Blake said as they slowed down to allow a green Range Rover to pass.

  Vikki pulled a face. “I’d love to have the money to be able to, sir,” she said. “But I like being in town, close to the shops and all the life.”

  “I know what you mean,” Blake replied. “Great for country walks, though.” They came out of the village and pulled into a short drive on the right. The Manta’s tyres scrunched noisily and Blake took note of the CCTV and alarm warning signs.

  Gavin Waters' house couldn’t have been more different to his friend, Rory’s. The Waters' house stood detached from any neighbours, hemmed in by a high yew hedge. A sea of gravel spread in front of the house and double garage. The curtains were drawn. Trailing flowers spilled out of antique chimney pots that stood guard at the studded oak front door.

  As they walked up to the door, a curtain in an upstairs bedroom twitched and a pale, ghostly face peered out at them. Blake wasn’t sure if it was a boy or a girl but as quickly as it had appeared, the face vanished.

  Raising his eyebrows at Chinn, Blake pressed the brass doorbell. Somewhere deep inside the house, a melodic bell tinkled.

  “A bit more peaceful than the previous place,” Vikki said, with a smirk.

  “That isn’t hard, really, Vikki,” Blake sai
d. The door swung open and another pale child stared at them. It could have been the same one that had stared at them from above, but Blake wasn’t sure. This one looked smaller and paler, if that was possible. Their small frame was wrapped in a black and white striped dressing gown. For a moment, Blake thought of ‘The Children of the Damned,’ a film about a group of creepy, alien kids who took over a village with their telepathic powers.

  “Are you the policeman?” the child said.

  “I’m DCI Blake, this is DS Chinn,” Blake said, forcing a smile. “Are your mother or father in?”

  “Are you from Singapore?” the child asked.

  Chinn smiled. “No. I’m from Liverpool. But I have an uncle who lives in Singapore.”

  “My father has a client called Chinn. He lives in Singapore,” the child said. “It might be the same one.”

  “Your mother or father?” Blake said again. “Can we speak to them?”

  A tall, willowy, blonde woman in tight jeans and a baggy sweater appeared behind the child. “Anastasia, I hope you aren’t bothering the police officers,” she said. She flashed a pearly-white smile at them. “I’m so sorry. Do come in. I’m Martha Waters, Gavin’s mother. My husband and Gavin are in the drawing room.” Blake glanced at Vikki, none the wiser as to which room to go in. Chinn shrugged but fortunately, Martha Waters led the way.

  If Blake had still been a gambling man, he would have bet that the inside of the house would have been oak panels, thick carpets and sonorous grandfather clocks. Not for the first time, Blake was glad he no longer liked a flutter. The house was a minimalist’s dream and a sentimentalist’s nightmare. Every surface was stark white, bare apart from a single silver globe lamp on a glass table. A couple of white tubular steel sofas looked lost and uncomfortable in the huge white room. There were no toys or ornaments anywhere. Blake felt like he should be wearing his white forensic suit just to blend in.

  Mr Waters sat on the sofa. He was as pale and skeletal as his daughter and wore a strange cream suit that had no collars or lapels. His hair was platinum blond and cut in what could only be described as a sixties pageboy style. A pair of silver rimmed pince-nez perched on the end of his long nose.