Problems with Girls (DI Sloane Book 2)

by Kelly Creighton

  ‘But she was one of the first judges here who was female,’ said Paul, as if to convince me I was wrong, as seemed to be his job here.

  ‘And yet …’ I said, ‘she always believed the men. Or discredited the women they abused. It was like those rugby players …’

  Paul looked disinterested. ‘It’s just a job, at the end of the day.’

  It was after eight and I was starving. I put my plate in the microwave.

  ‘The boys went over quickly, didn’t they?’ said Paul, glad to change the subject from how men like him were suddenly the bogeymen they never knew they were.

  ‘They never slept for Sylvia,’ I said. ‘She looked absolutely beat.’

  ‘That’s just a taste of what we’ve been going through,’ he said, and we were back on side again, on the same side. ‘Not that I’d change a thing,’ he quickly added and added on a smile for me.

  After I ate, we sat in front of the telly and returned to a boxset we started watching before Florida. I lifted my phone and looked up the gardener service, Clipped and Trimmed, and got a name – Dan Hamilton. I asked Paul to pause the TV while I nipped to the loo. I went into the hall, bringing my phone with me.

  ‘Why have you got that?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Are you my father now?’

  ‘You’re coming back, right?’

  ‘I’m going to take a peek at the babies.’

  ‘Don’t wake them, Harry.’

  I went and called Sarge Simon. ‘Run this name for me,’ I told him.

  ‘I don’t have to,’ he said, ‘I’ve worked in the area for a long time. Hamilton’s a convicted murderer, I can tell you that now.’

  ‘Who did he murder?’

  ‘A young woman. I remember the case, she was coming out of a bar on the Woodstock Road. I see Hamilton about from time to time, you know.’

  ‘Do you know the details of the case?’

  ‘Not off the top of my noggin. Let me check, I’ll send them through to you.’

  ‘Great. Put it all in an email.’

  I went to the nursery door and stood looking at the babies, I was trying to hold my breath when they squirmed. Then I went back to sit beside Paul.

  ‘I could hear you on the phone,’ he said and I side-glanced him. ‘On the monitor.’

  ‘The boys are sleeping well,’ I said.

  He pressed play and began our show but I started to fiddle with my phone again, trying to see if there was anything in my inbox yet.

  ‘Are you too distracted to watch this?’ Paul asked, pausing the TV.

  ‘No, no, unpause it.’ My phone pinged. ‘Sorry,’ I said and got up. I went into the kitchen. ‘I’ll catch up. You go on.’

  ‘But you’re going to miss who the murderer is,’ Paul said.

  ‘I get enough of that.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll stop watching crime now. You just like to show off that you can work it out, anyway.’

  ‘You know me so well,’ I said, closing over the door.

  The email from Simon read:

  Dan Hamilton has a conviction. He did time – eight years – in the 90s (he was in his twenties then) for killing a woman, Darleen Boyle, aged twenty-two. A single mother, she was stabbed on the Woodstock Road. It was at night. She was walking home from Speedy’s bar and it was completely unprovoked. But it was the only time he was ever in trouble with the law, before or after.

  I came back and trained myself to stare at the screen for Paul’s sake; going through the motions, but behind my eyes my brain was buzzing, putting together pieces and taking them away, my mind back to how it always was on the job. I just hoped Paul wouldn’t give me a pop quiz at the end of the programme, because I hadn’t taken in a thing of the episode.

  Chapter 9

  That night I couldn’t stop seeing Jason, especially when I thought about Lewis. I had been swept up by this boy’s charm, thinking he could not have done anything wrong. I had thought that because he didn’t look the type. Now I was disappointed in myself because I knew personally that appearances mean nothing. I woke up wanting to talk with Lewis again.

  ‘Thomas said that Lewis was bombarding Chloe with messages,’ I said to Higgins as soon as I spied him in the office that Friday morning.

  ‘Then we need to see him,’ Higgins replied.

  ‘Yes, we do. And Lizzie seemed adamant that there was something off.’

  ‘Okay, whatever you say, boss,’ said Higgins.

  ‘But I want an alibi for Chloe’s dad first. Jackie was shopping around the time Chloe was killed. He couldn’t have spent all that time buying milk. I want receipts.’

  ‘I’ll get onto it.’

  I was sparking my fingers off the computer keyboard, trying to locate Dan Hamilton, researching more about his case back in the 90s, when Higgins told me that Jackie Taylor’s alibi had checked out. The manager of Danske Bank in Donegall Square West said Jackie was sorting out their computer system. In fact, the manager said Jackie was there until half past eleven. That fit – McDonalds, shopping, a call from us.

  ‘That’s one less person to look into right now,’ I said and I relayed the information Sarge Simon had given me about the gardener and showed Higgins what I’d found out.

  ‘Woodstock Road,’ he said.

  My mobile went. It was Lewis Skelly. ‘I was trying to call you earlier,’ I told him.

  ‘I was in class. I had my phone silenced.’

  ‘Do you think you could meet us today to talk some more?’

  ‘I don’t know what else I can tell you, but sure. That’s fine. Where are you?’

  ‘At the police station.’

  ‘I’m on the bus home now, I’m not far. You’re based at Strandtown, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the one.’

  ‘I can be there in fifteen.’

  ‘See you then, Lewis. Just report to reception when you arrive.’

  *

  When he arrived at Strandtown he looked nervous. ‘Would you take a seat?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m not being interviewed, am I?

  ‘You’re helping us with enquiries.’

  ‘That’s okay. Happy to. I just wondered if I needed a solicitor.’ Lewis sat down.

  ‘You’re not under arrest and you can leave at any time,’ said Higgins.

  ‘I get you.’

  ‘We were talking to Thomas,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah? How is he?’

  ‘Much the same, really.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Lewis, were you still in correspondence with Chloe?’

  ‘Yes. We were friends.’

  ‘Thomas said that you would have contacted Chloe excessively.’

  ‘He has that wrong.’

  ‘Why would he say that then?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t like me?’ Lewis said with a note of sarcasm, like we should already know this.

  ‘We got that impression,’ said Higgins.

  ‘That doesn’t mean I did the killing,’ said Lewis. ‘That’s a ludicrous idea.’

  ‘No one is saying that you did, Lewis,’ I tried to reassure him.

  ‘This is so much to get my head around. Yesterday was … I was still in shock, but today is bad. It’s bad, man. Really bad. She’s really dead.’ Lewis started to cry, crouching over so his face was in his sleeves, not wanting us to see him be emotional.

  ‘Do you want a tissue?’ I asked, sliding the box on the desk toward him.

  He shook his head and sniffed then tried to catch a breath. ‘I only contacted her, excessively – if that’s what you want to call it – in the early days of the breakup; I just wanted an answer for why we broke up, why she finished it, then I could move on.’

  ‘Had you already moved on?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ his voice went high.

  ‘Thomas seems to think you had another girlfriend.’

  ‘I’m seeing someone now. Seeing … It’s not serious. I was with Chloe for years.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s totally okay if you are se
eing someone, Lewis,’ I said.

  ‘Well, what about Thomas?’ Lewis asked, becoming defensive. ‘Have you talked to him?’

  ‘We have,’ said Higgins. ‘He’s Chloe’s brother, so it’s standard practice.’

  ‘He’s told you all this? That I have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do? Never move on?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I said.

  ‘I saw Thomas this morning; he ignored me when I tried to talk to him,’ said Lewis. ‘He has a display in the Met’s summer art show. It’s worth seeing.’ He looked at us each in turn. ‘I really recommend it.’

  ‘Is there anyone we’re missing talking with?’ I asked him.

  ‘Her cousin. Surely you must know him.’

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Higgins, careful not to presume that Lewis was talking about Drew. He was.

  ‘Drew Taylor. He’s a well known crim,’ said Lewis.

  ‘Would Chloe have been involved in a criminal activity, that you would have known of?’

  ‘Chloe? She’s ethical to a fault. Look, I’m not saying this to get anybody into trouble, but I know she and Thomas are not expected to have part-time jobs, their dad gives them pocket money still, just, I think she might owe Drew money. She was never good at paying people back what she owed them. Just don’t tell him it came from me. Please.’

  ‘Who else did she owe money to?’

  ‘No one,’ said Lewis.

  ‘You said she was never good at …’

  ‘Me. She owed me. But I’ve written that off. I think if you lend something to someone you shouldn’t expect to get it back.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Higgins.

  ‘It’s what life has taught me,’ said Lewis.

  I looked at him thoughtfully. Gosh, he was a sweetie. I felt bad for him – and Chloe, too, above all – to have been embroiled in such a tragedy, especially when there were vicious bastards like my ex-husband walking the street, untouchable.

  ‘Would Drew have loaned Chloe money?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm, yeah. He did.’

  ‘We’ll look into it, won’t we?’ said Higgins.

  ‘Good.’ Lewis lingered. ‘You can look at my phone if you want. You can see what the messages between Chloe and me were. I’ve nothing to hide. Here.’ He opened the page and scrolled through, held it to face us. ‘There; a few hope you’re wells, please answer your phone, I want to know what I did wrong, then going back to when we were dating.’ He pulled the phone away.

  *

  ‘He could have deleted the bad messages,’ said Higgins after Lewis had left. We were in the service car. ‘That’s what anybody sane would do.’

  We passed Lewis outside the PACT office. He looked like a zombie.

  ‘Pull in,’ I told Higgins. ‘Lewis, you okay?’ I asked him out of the window. He was staring through me. ‘Are you okay?’ I repeated.

  He broke into tears and hid his face in his sleeves again.

  ‘Are you headed home?’

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  ‘C’mon, get in. We’ll give you a lift.’

  ‘No,’ he said but he came over.

  People walking by had slowed down and were watching, especially as he got into the back of the service vehicle.

  ‘That’s what hit me today,’ said Lewis, leaning forward to tell us. ‘I took the bus in past the … scene, and saw all the flowers outside and then it was real. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen now. Chloe,’ he cried. Really cried.

  We dropped Lewis home to Orangefield. His mother came to the door.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked. She wrapped her arms around him. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked me. ‘Is it about Chloe?’

  ‘I think it’s just properly hit him,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, son.’ Then she was in tears too. ‘I am so very sorry.’

  *

  ‘Let’s go to Chloe’s mother’s house,’ I said to Higgins.

  We knew that she lived in Ballyhalbert. So we travelled out through Dundonald and towards Newtownards, cut down along the peninsula, along Strangford Lough. Crossed inland to a beaded string of villages. Small communities, self-contained. No need to leave if your needs were modest.

  In Ballyhalbert there was a pub, a chippy, a pharmacy. Chloe’s mother lived in a terraced house a short walk from shops and a sea that shone like it was made of sequins – at least it did that day. The smell did something good for the soul, it felt great to be out of the city.

  An old man approached and asked us how we were keeping. As soon as we said we were well he asked if he could bum a lift home, assuming we knew him and knew where he lived.

  Higgins got rid of him for us, and the old drunk stumbled on. I filled my lungs with fresh air and courage before I knocked on the door. Instantly I knew that the woman who opened the door had to be Chloe’s mother, I had stared at Chloe’s poor lifeless face for long enough that Wednesday. And for two days since, in photographs in her folder which every now and then I consulted for inspiration.

  This woman was small with the same green eyes as her daughter’s. They looked just as empty. She wore thick kohl eyeliner and had dyed her hair jet black and cut it bluntly into a bob with a thick fringe.

  ‘Glynis Taylor?’

  ‘You’re speaking to her.’

  I introduced myself and Higgins. ‘I don’t know if anyone has told you, but we have some sad news to report.’

  ‘I already know,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve heard about Chloe?’

  ‘I have,’ she said staunchly.

  ‘How are you bearing up?’ asked Higgins.

  ‘Not very surprised, to be honest,’ said Glynis.

  ‘Really?’ Higgins asked, surprised by her response.

  ‘I knew I’d never see her again,’ said Glynis.

  ‘May we come in?’ I asked.

  Glynis shrugged, then went into her oppressively red living room.

  ‘When did you last see Chloe?’ I asked.

  ‘Years ago, now.’

  ‘When?’ asked Higgins, taking a seat.

  ‘A couple of years ago.’

  ‘Do you mind telling us why you hadn’t seen her in so long?’

  ‘I hope you’re not judging me, Detective. I made my peace with what happened to my family long ago.’ Glynis ran her bare toes through the mossy green rug on the floor.

  ‘Nobody is judging you,’ I said, ‘relationships don’t always work out; we understand that. We just want to find the perpetrator of this crime and get justice for your daughter.’

  ‘I understand that part of it. End of the day your child’s your child. You’d die for them. But I can’t catch the culprit. It has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘There are just people we need to talk to,’ I explained, ‘to get pointers, and you are Chloe’s mother, after all.’

  She looked downcast. ‘I did cry yesterday. I thought about her as a wee girl, as a baby, and pictured her wee back, like velvet it was, and somebody putting a knife in it. I pictured that and I cried. But I’m feeling better.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  There was not one photo that I could see anywhere, just one picture, of three flowers, two of them were cream, the middle one burgeoning and blood red. Burnt out candles remained on almost every surface in the room. I lost myself for a moment, looking around the room, trying not to take in what she had just said, the sorrow of it, the callousness.

  ‘I am sad,’ Glynis blurted out, ‘sad in the way I’d be sad for any young one losing their life. I can’t say much more than that.’

  I thought it had yet to hit her, regardless of their estrangement. I thought about Lewis.

  ‘So, there was a feud …’ I started.

  ‘Saying that there was a feud in the family is giving the whole thing too much importance,’ she said discernibly irritated. ‘Talk to Jackie; even he’ll tell you it wasn’t a feud, just abandonment. He didn’t want to know when I was s
ick.’

  ‘Sorry to hear you were sick,’ said Higgins.

  ‘Thank you, that’s sweet.’

  ‘May I ask in what way were you sick?’ I asked.

  ‘I still am. I have bipolar disorder. Jackie had no time for sickness. We split and he took the kids. Well, not that he took them anywhere. He pushed me aside. Spiteful man.’ Her head shook. Glynis became innocent, frail before my eyes.

  ‘That’s how the split began?’ asked Higgins.

  ‘I suppose it does look like a feud,’ said Glynis, ‘but a feud is heated and passionate and this was … cold and heartless. He has no heart, that man. I just had to try to forget about them, since he’d taken my home from me. That house, I’m sure you’ve seen it, that was mine. I was the one who decorated it, who picked out every stitch and every swatch.

  ‘And I worked. I worked hard. I was a paramedic, I have a brain. Then I got sick and lost everything, so I can’t. I’m sorry but I just can’t do this; I can’t go through this kind of pain. It’s not good for me. I’ve already been through it. I can’t lose Chloe twice. I’ve grieved them all already, you see. Thomas too. He’s gone to me. It’s already done.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said. I felt a sob wrack through me that I’d never experienced on the job before. I blamed it on being a mother now. I blamed it on thinking of my own mother and having already lost her to illness.

  I never allowed myself to think about it. To feel anything about it.

  ‘Do you work now?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘No. I don’t, son. I can’t.’

  ‘Are you on any form of social media?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. I want to disconnect from people. Why do you ask that?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said, lifting my hand to break that branch of conversation.

  ‘Last time I saw Chloe,’ Glynis said, ‘she was staying overnight and wouldn’t do a hand’s turn. I asked her to tidy up after herself and she snapped at me, called me ‘‘pathetic and lazy’’. Said all I did was sit around, while she worked and studied and volunteered. She forgot I once had a very good career.

  ‘There was no respect left. I told her I wasn’t running a guest house and she could leave. Then she never called me again. And Thomas … well, he does everything she tells him. He thinks the sun shines out of Chloe’s backside.’ Glynis jumped up. ‘Okay, I’m done.’