by Linda Coles
“No, I walked over for the exercise. It’s not far back. And it’s a nice night.”
“You can’t seriously be thinking of walking home on your own, can you? You do know there’s a nutter knocking about?” Madeline wasn’t trying to scare her, but didn’t know if she’d heard about the groper.
“I’ll be fine, thanks. It’s really not that far.”
“Nonsense. Get in.” She indicated the passenger side. “I’ll drop you round. Better to be safe than sorry.”
Lorna stood tentatively for a moment, then smiled and started to walk towards Madeline and her car.
“Okay. Thanks. It must be awful having someone jump out at you and do something like that. I couldn’t imagine it.” She opened the passenger door and climbed in. So she had heard about the groper.
“No, bloody scary, I expect. And I read on The Daisy Chain he’s not just targeting prostitutes anymore, so there’s no point in giving him the opportunity. Easy enough for me to take you home.” She pulled out from in front of James’s house and took a left on her way to Lorna’s place. It was only a short drive, and as they turned right into her lane, a familiar figure caught Madeline’s attention. Out for a stroll in the fading evening light was a grey-looking man who, at that moment, turned left down a leafy alleyway and out towards the park. There was no mistaking who it was. Grey Man – again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Amanda locked her car and strolled into the station back entrance. Jack was waiting for her. He looked a little agitated; he was fiddling with his moustache as he did when something was up, and he was deep in thought. Some people had other tells; his was fiddling with his moustache. She wondered what her own was, and hoped it wasn’t as obvious.
“Spill. What’s up?” she asked him as she took the steps two at a time. Functional clothing and footwear allowed her to do so.
“Well, if you’d slow down a little so I can keep up, I might be able to tell you.” He was a bit out of breath, which was a bit of a worry considering the small amount of catching up she was making him do. He needed to get more exercise and stop eating such crappy food. She stopped for a moment to let him catch up.
“Another attack on a woman,” he said between gasps. “Toilets yesterday, and get this, again she wasn’t a working girl. By her description, it sounded like the same guy who’s been grabbing the prostitutes, but this woman is different. She went to use the loo, and he followed her in and groped her when she was washing her hands. Grabbed her tits and stuck a hand between her legs. She screamed and he legged it; that was it. CCTV doesn’t show much apart from a blurred bloke with a balding head leaving the toilets at that time. Lucky for him he gets lost in the crowd, and a couple of the cameras are out.”
“I wonder why he’s changed tack and again not targeted a prostitute – that is, if it is the same guy. Could be a copycat? Maybe someone trying to cop a feel for himself and fly on the coattails of another offender?” Amanda didn’t know the answer and was just throwing the notion out there.
“Well, it could be, but either way – a copycat or a perpetrator who’s changing tack – it’s bad news. We kind of thought this was just a naughty John who wanted to hook up without handing over the cash and got his kicks from a free touch-up, but now this – a second one who isn’t a prostitute?” He waved his arms in the air to suggest a much bigger problem. “This will have the greater public worried now, never a good thing.”
“Have you interviewed her yet, the latest victim?”
“No, I was waiting for you, but she’s here at the station so we can both talk to her. Or you may be better on your own, being female and all. She might prefer that.”
“Okay. What’s her name?”
“Gina Harris, aged fifty. Lives in Croydon. She’s in room two when you’re ready. Here’s the notes I have so far from the duty sergeant who took her in.” He handed them over to her.
“I’ll let you know how I get on, then. Anything else to report?”
“Not yet, but the day, as they say, is still young.”
“Night.”
“What?”
“Night. They say the night is still young.” She left him standing there thinking, twiddling his moustache again between his fingers.
“Hello, I’m Detective Amanda Lacey. You must be Gina Harris.”
“Yes. Hello.”
Amanda could see the woman still looked quite shocked, and she’d obviously been nervously picking at her previously well-manicured fingernails because they were now all chipped, and the skin around them all red.
“I’m here to take your statement, your account of what happened, and any details you can possibly remember about the incident. Anything at all, even the smallest detail, might help, so tell me as much as you can. All right?” Amanda placed a hand on the woman’s arm briefly, as a gesture of comfort, and proceeded to take down her statement, stopping her every so often to clarify the facts as she went.
After fifteen minutes there wasn’t really anything left to tell. It had all happened so fast and unexpectedly. Gina had added in that she now felt disgusting after a stranger had touched her in that way, and she was still clearly quite upset. With the interview part complete, Amanda asked her if she’d like counselling support organised. She said she’d think about it, then Amanda offered to drop her back home.
“That won’t be necessary, thanks. My husband is on his way over to collect me. I wasn’t really sure I was going to report it, you see – I felt so embarrassed. So when I decided, I just jumped in a taxi. But I don’t want others to have the same experience. That’s the main reason I’m reporting it. For others, you understand.” She trailed off as she got to the end of her sentence.
“Let me give you a number to call in case you decide to go ahead with counselling,” said Amanda gently. “Sometimes talking really helps you get over something like this.” She took one of the cards she carried out of her jacket pocket, wrote her own direct number on the other side, and handed it to Mrs. Harris.
“Here’s my direct number. If you want to chat to me or if you remember anything at all, just either text me or call me, okay?”
“Thanks. I will. Do you think you’ll catch him? Is there enough to go on?” She looked frailer now than when they’d first started talking.
“It sounds like the same person who attacked the others, I’m afraid. But hopefully your evidence brings him a little closer to being caught and we can find him before he offends again.” Amanda smiled at Mrs. Harris in a comforting way, hoping that she would at least feel she was helping put him away.
“Let me show you back out to the waiting room. Maybe your husband is here for you now.”
They both stood and Amanda followed her out, guiding her with gentle directions back out to the front. As soon as she was in the waiting area, her husband came forward and wrapped his arms around her in comfort and support. Amanda stood until they had left through the main entrance doors, watching as he helped her to his waiting car – a fire-engine-red BMW convertible.
Chapter Thirty
Sunday
Ruth went round to Madeline and Gordon’s for Sunday lunch, which, in the heat of summer, was certainly not a roast lamb dinner as planned. As it was too hot for indoor cooking, Gordon manned the barbecue outside and cooked sausages and burgers. They ate M&S potato salad with them and had trifle for desert. It was actually quite enjoyable, one of Ruth’s better visits – after a glass or two of wine inside her, she was actually quite easy to talk to. Madeline and Ruth were getting on better and better as time went by. And that was nice.
“What’s with that orange digger, Madeline?” The Great Orange Machine still stood out like a sore thumb.
“Well, the guy came, then went, and we haven’t seen him since. I rang but he’s not returned my call, so who knows what the story is.” Madeline smiled like a regular nice part-time housewife rather than a murdering maniac.
“He’s the guy who went missing, isn’t he? Saw it in the paper,” Ruth said dr
owsily from her sun lounger in the shade.
“Yes, the police called round here asking questions. Seems I was the last person to see him that day – not that I could be much help.”
“What sorts of things did they ask you?”
“Just routine stuff, you know, like what time did he arrive, what time did he leave, did he say anything about where he was going. Like I say, I couldn’t tell them much. I don’t know much.”
Not quite the truth, though, eh, Madeline?
“You didn’t tell me the police had been round asking questions. Where was I?” Gordon sounded a bit indignant, like he’d have enjoyed being present. He too was lying on a sun lounger with his eyes closed, soaking up the afternoon sun, the remains of his third glass of wine just evident in the bottom of the glass he was holding. He’d be asleep in less than an hour.
“You were on your way home from work, I expect. It was late one afternoon earlier this week, and like I said, nothing much to tell them.”
“Well, that digger needs bloody shifting soon. And that hole he’s dug won’t float many fish either.”
Madeline smiled at that one.
You mean the hole that I dug, surely?
She could hardly correct him.
“Not sure what else I can do in the meantime. It took him long enough to get here and start the job in the first place, so I expect he’s gone off to start someone else’s job and stop them from grumbling too. I bet he’s got half-happy customers all over the place.”
“That’ll be right,” said Gordon drowsily.
Madeline glanced across at Ruth, who had closed her eyes too and was lying back on her lounger, wine glass lightly dangling from her hand. Madeline got up and took the wine glasses from both of them before they dropped on to the patio and smashed, and placed them on the mosaic garden table. Sitting back down, she glanced over to the Great Orange Machine just as Dexter made his presence known, rubbing his hot ginger fur around her ankles and flopping heavily on to the concrete.
She smiled at Dexter. She smiled at the whole silly situation – here they were talking about a man who wasn’t much more than a few feet away, and a few feet deep, under a pile of earth that she, Madeline Simpson, bulldozer driver extraordinaire, had dug. Was there no end to her newfound talents? Ruth was spark out. Like father, like daughter. Two peas in a pod they were.
Sitting back, Madeline sipped her own glass of wine and let her mind wander in the peace and quiet of a Sunday afternoon. The gentle hum of a distant lawn mower was the only audible sound. Dexter softly purred his appreciation of the tranquillity.
Chapter Thirty-One
Week 5
“The results from the van examination came back, and there is one thing you might find interesting.” Amanda was talking to the back of Jack’s head; he was busy filling his mouth with a ham salad sub. He turned her way to find out what it was, mayonnaise clinging to his moustache, and spoke with his mouth full, spraying little pieces of lettuce onto his lap.
“Damn. Sorry about that, Lacey. And what’s that, then?”
Amanda grimaced a little, watching him wipe the bits of food away.
“Cat hair. In fact, ginger cat hair. Found on the driver’s seat, and some on the floor.”
“And? What’s relevant with that?”
“Madeline Simpson has a ginger cat. So I’m asking myself, what would her cat’s hair be doing in the van of a missing man?” Amanda looked a bit too smug for Jack.
“Well, I’d say that as he was working there, albeit for a short period, the cat hair probably transferred onto him somehow, then into his van. Remember the state of my trousers after our visit? Damn hair all over them from the little sod. But I’m detecting you think it’s more than that?” Jack took another bite of his sandwich and mayonnaise gathered again, this time hanging tight at the corners of his mouth.
“I just think it’s a bit of a coincidence is all. She’s the last person to see him alive and her cat’s hair turns up in his van. And yes, it could have simply been transferred. The rest of the van was reasonably clean, for a landscaper’s vehicle, anyway. There were some other hairs we presume are from his sister that are still to be confirmed, but they look like hers. There’s also a mixture of soils, as you’d expect from various jobs, plus litter and general debris. No real evidence, except the cat hairs.” She watched as he finished chewing his current mouthful, thankfully, before he spoke again.
“Not much else to say, then, really.”
“So that’s it, then?”
“Well, we still don’t know whether he’s dead. We’ve nothing to go on and there are no suspicious circumstances – just the cat hair, and that has a simple explanation for it. There are no signs of a struggle, no blood, no footprints, no injury that we know of, no robbery, no text messages, nothing. No evidence at all that points to anyone or anything. He’s vanished. I say it’s done with, unless something says otherwise. We’ve got too much else going on to worry about a bloke who’s done a runner on his life and disappeared.”
Amanda knew he was probably right, but she couldn’t help the feeling that something wasn’t as it seemed. Something bothered her. Though what, exactly? People went missing all the time and had the right to stay missing if they chose, leaving their families and friends behind to worry, and this guy did have a gambling problem. Maybe he’d done the same? There was one thing for sure, however: she wasn’t going to file the paperwork away in her head as completed. In her eyes, it was definitely still pending, and she’d work on it in her own time if need be. But she’d get to the bottom of it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Friday
Rebecca wiped another tear off her beautifully made-up face. There wasn’t a drop of dirty black mascara staining her cheeks, nor were her eyes red and puffy like when anyone else got upset. No, even in the throes of misery she was gorgeous. All Madeline could do was say the relevant ‘ah’s’ and agree with her while rubbing Rebecca’s arm gently as she let it all out. It was a good job the pub was quiet this lunchtime.
“I feel such a fool,” she said, half-wailing. “I really liked Todd, and I thought he liked me, but now I’ve gone and ruined everything.”
“It had to come to an end sooner or later. I guess you just brought that day forward a little, unintentionally.” Madeline’s comments probably weren’t being much help under the circumstances, but she made them with the best intentions nonetheless.
“Why did I get so greedy?”
There was no answer to that that wouldn’t upset her even further, so Madeline kept her mouth shut and thought about what had happened to her friend. Edward had never really been enough – no news there – but to have Edward, Todd and the young barman on top, pardon the pun… How many men did her gorgeous friend really need? A little part of Madeline was a teeny bit jealous of Rebecca’s antics, and all she could do was console her until the tears passed.
“Look on the bright side. At least Edward didn’t find out, and it was only Todd who found you in the pool house. It could have been a whole lot worse. You’ve still got your lifestyle intact, just not your heart.”
Rebecca sniffed in response.
Rebecca had been waiting at the pub when Madeline arrived, sitting slumped in their usual corner, the remains of her first wine sitting in the bottom of a glass, pale pink lipstick stuck to the rim in a patterned crescent. It was obvious she was upset, and Madeline had immediately sat down and put her arm around her while she’d poured out the whole story of getting found out – by Todd, not Edward. It seemed the barman, known as Gabriel, or Gabe for short, had been doing a little more than flirting at their last lunch date and had slipped Rebecca his phone number. She hadn’t been able to resist, naturally, and had arranged to meet up with him at his place for a drink one afternoon. Well, it was obvious what was going to go on there, wasn’t it? On the second date, back at her place, she’d forgotten completely that Todd was scheduled to work in her garden, and she’d been busy with Gabe in the pool house, which hadn’
t gone down too well with Todd. A bit of a fight had ensued. Gabe had got a bloody nose for his trouble and Rebecca had got dumped for hers.
And I thought my life was full of events. Maybe I should change tack and find myself a young man for the garden rather than the dead man I have lying around. Could be more fun and less troublesome overall.
“Shall I get us some food and a drink?” Madeline said. “Have you eaten today?”
“No, I haven’t. Couldn’t face it this morning. I’ve not been into work either. I told Edward I wasn’t feeling well and not going in.”
“Well, you can’t drink wine on an empty stomach. You’ll kill yourself driving around like that. I’ll go and order, and bring you a soft drink. Wine will make you feel even more maudlin.” She left to order their usual toasties. There was no sign of Gabe at the bar today and she wondered why not. Perhaps he’d got a black eye as well as a bloody nose and had decided to stay away out of embarrassment. A pretty brunette was filling in for him. Perhaps she worked in the evenings. Madeline had never seen her before.
“I’ll bring your toasties over when they’re ready,” the brunette said, and smiled nicely. Maybe she had seen Rebecca crying.
When Madeline arrived back at their table, Rebecca’s tears had stopped but she still looked like her world had caved in. Was she really that besotted with Todd, knowing he was going back to university at the end of the summer anyway? She took her lemon, lime and bitters and sipped at it, curling her nose up at the taste of no alcohol.
“The sugar will do you more good today than the fuzz from wine, so drink it and tell me about the rest of your week,” Madeline said briskly. “What else has happened?”
“No, you tell me about your week. Let’s change the subject from my life – yours will be infinitely better than mine this week. I’m guessing you haven’t stuck your fingers where they’ve not been wanted?” She raised a weak smile at her own joke.
