by Jo Allen
‘I’ve told you. I don’t need or trust the police to protect me. I’ve made my own arrangements.’
‘At the very least, I’d like to offer you the support of a family liaison officer.’
‘I’m sure you would. I know what you put people into families for – to set them up and spy on them.’
Dawn shivered. Would Max never let an old grievance go? But she knew the answer to that. He was a man who held a grudge, and that was almost certainly why this whole thing had come about.
‘Not at all.’ DCI Satterthwaite, picking up the sharp designer jacket he’d placed over the back of his chair, was cheerfully unruffled. That would be further annoyance for Max, who liked to be deferred to. ‘Our FLOs do play an investigative role. That’s true. But they’re also there to offer help and support to the families of victims of crime, and ensure that the system works to our mutual benefit.’
‘Fine words, Satterthwaite, but I think I can manage without a spy in my household. I’d prefer you to use your available manpower to find out who killed my son.’
Shivering again, this time at the idea of the loneliness of being trapped with Max as he nursed another grievance and, she was sure, planned his own version of revenge, and with Sophie, who would cry her heart out when she was told the news, needing all the comfort her mother could give her. Knowing that Max’s fury left no room for empathy, Dawn clung onto the idea of someone to talk to. ‘Are you a family liaison officer?’ She turned to the sergeant.
‘Officially, no. Though as it happens I have FLO training.’ The girl smiled back at her.
‘I know you don’t want anyone to help us, Max.’ Dawn appealed to his better nature, to his love for her. ‘I know you don’t trust anyone. And you’re quite right not to. Of course you are. But I’d find it so helpful. And it would make it easier for you not to worry about me. And Sophie.’
She gazed at him, saw a dozen different thoughts flick across his mind and was unable to define what any one of them was. Some sort of calculation, perhaps, a rapid revision of the circumstances until he came up with whatever decision best favoured his preferred outcome. She put her hand on his arm, hoping that love might soften the anger that came along with his grief. ‘Please, Max.’
He sighed. Her first husband had had a violent temper that was as fierce as the passion she’d once roused in him, but Max wasn’t like that. He liked his own way and most of the time he got it, but he wasn’t wedded to it, and he must know that company would help her. ‘Oh, Dawny…’
‘Please. For me. It would help me. Surely you want to help me?’
He fought, silently, but she kept her eyes on him and she won. With the slightest shrug, he gave in. She could see he wasn’t pleased with the decision, but he’d have to pretend. ‘Of course, darling. If it would make your life easier.’
‘Thank you so much.’ She turned away, her heart a little lighter. There would be someone in the house to listen to her, instead of her having to be the one who attended to everybody else’s sadness. ‘DCI Satterthwaite. Perhaps Sergeant O’Halloran could be assigned to us.’
He gave nothing away, that man, just narrowed his grey eyes very slightly and nodded. ‘I’d need to check my available resources, but DS O’Halloran is certainly qualified to undertake that job. I can confirm that to you one way or another later on today.’
‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ Aching with relief, Dawn hooked her arm through Max’s and allowed him to lead her out of the room, through Reception, where he dropped both their visitor’s badges on the desk without so much as a smile to the receptionist, and into the car park.
She sank into the front seat of the car with a sigh. Max had parked in the shade but the sun had moved round and the leather seat was so hot it burned her bare arms. ‘God, that was awful. Worse than I thought.’
‘Yes. And you didn’t help, did you, inviting a policewoman into our home?’
‘If we’d refused they’d have thought we have something to hide, and we don’t. I know why you hate the police, but they don’t.’
‘It’ll take them a few clicks of a mouse to find out, and when they do, I’ll expect to be treated with a little more respect.’
Privately, Dawn thought they’d been treated with more respect than they’d warranted given Max’s confrontational attitude. ‘I liked that girl. She understood.’
‘She can’t possibly understand. I loved Greg. I brought him up.’ He shook himself, sitting in the driver’s seat for a moment with his hands on the wheel. ‘You realise they’ll have us down as suspects? They always look to the parents first. That woman will be there to catch us out. Do you want that?’
‘No. But I need someone to help me through this.’ Dawn got out her phone again and looked at that last picture. Greg would be smiling out at her from everywhere, from the newspapers and the television as the police sought the answers, tried everything to see if anyone had seen him. ‘He was my child, Max. Mine.’
‘Mine too. And nobody loved him more than I did. That’s why it hurts so much.’ He turned the engine on and headed out of the car park towards the M6.
14
‘Jesus.’ Jude, running a hand through his hair and scowling, was barely inside the incident room before he vented his fury. ‘What a man. That’ll teach me to wish for new leads, won’t it? That’s worse than I thought it could be.’
The entire room looked up when Jude, with Ashleigh in his wake, burst in. Doddsy, who’d been on the phone, dropped it back in its cradle. ‘Meeting didn’t go well, Jude?’
‘How does a meeting like that go well? Chris. Doddsy. Let’s sit down. I want to talk this through. Some collective brainpower would be useful.’ He nodded across to one of the constables seated on the far side of the room. ‘Do me a favour and lean on the lab. We need to get that DNA check run as soon as possible.’ He shook his head in irritation as he turned back to Doddsy, more annoyed with himself than with anyone else. ‘Not that there seems any reasonable doubt – it would be a hell of a twist in the tale if it isn’t their child, and their description of the clothing ties in with what we have left of it for comparison. But if for no other reason, I don’t want to give that man a chance to give us any more aggro. That sort think they can run our investigation better than we can.’
‘One of those, eh?’ Doddsy nodded, sympathetically. ‘You’ve no worries there. The sample’s already on its way.’ He stepped over to where Aditi was frowning at her computer screen. ‘Aditi, could you run us off a photo of the ransom note and a picture of the boy? And get the photo circulated to the newspapers.’
Jude pulled up a chair at the table beneath the whiteboard and allowed himself a micro-second of stillness. Max Sumner had put his back up and it had been a fight to keep control, but now the man had gone and there was work to be done. He looked down at the sheets of paper that Aditi slid in front of him. The photograph of the ransom note was all but useless – bare, brief and threatening, with all the forensic value of the original document stripped away. ‘Now we have some definite information, we can do a bit more theorising. Doddsy, I take it you’ve filled everyone in with Mrs Sumner’s sorry tale?’
‘I have. But as you were in there a while after I left, I suspect you’ve got a little more to tell us.’
‘You’ve looked him up, haven’t you?’ Ashleigh flicked a smile at Chris, who was always half a step ahead of everyone else and far more enthusiastic beavering away at a computer screen than he was out in the field.
‘I have. Believe me, it was worth it.’ He flicked a smile back.
Jude saw the smiles and allowed them to annoy him, even as he ran through the list of things to be done. One thing, at least, was in his favour: as he watched, Tammy Garner passed the glass door to the incident room. Bouncing up again, he wrenched it open. ‘Tammy. Come on in. It looks like we know who the boy was, that he was last seen in Windermere on Sunday. Get down there and see if there’s any evidence to be found.’
‘Come on, Chief,’ she prote
sted, plaintively, stepping into the room. ‘You’re a right whirlwind. Stop and think this through. Whatever might have been there on Sunday, the chances are it isn’t going to be salvaged from a garden after three days. Not after that thunderstorm we had.’
‘Nevertheless, I need it done, and as quickly as possible.’ He hadn’t found much common ground with Max, but Dawn was a different matter. It would be a kindness to her to get the crime scene cleared as soon as possible. ‘Aditi has the address and the details. She’ll fill you in.’
‘I hear you. Am I looking for anything in particular?’
‘Anything out of the ordinary. The Sumners’ story suggests that he was snatched, or went willingly, from the garden. Beyond that, I can’t say.’
‘Right. I’m onto it. No sooner in than out again. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
Ashleigh placed a cup of coffee in front of him as Tammy headed for Aditi’s desk, and took her habitual seat next to Chris. ‘Well, that was an eye-opener and no mistake.’
‘The boy was kidnapped, then.’ Chris shook his head.
‘Kidnapped and killed. Almost immediately, by the sound of it. Some time between ten o’clock on Sunday morning and half past one on Sunday afternoon – that’s between when he was last seen and when Dawn Sumner found the ransom note. He was probably already dead by then.’
‘At least it was quick.’
‘I hope so.’ The cruelty lay not in what had been done to the boy, but in the trick that had been played on his parents, stringing them along in the belief that he was alive. Dawn’s face haunted him, those blue eyes drained and empty, a good looking woman with the soul sucked out of her in just a few days. ‘Let’s begin with the parents.’ It was the default starting point with the death of a child because the parents too often ended up in the dock. He’d seen mothers who’d appeared as distraught as Dawn over the deaths of their children and ended up in jail for their murder. ‘Ashleigh, would you mind talking us through it?’
‘Of course.’ She folded her hands in front of her. He hadn’t noticed the nails before, perfectly manicured, with the palest pink nail varnish. ‘Dawn Sumner says she was baking with her daughter Sophie. We can confirm that with the child. I’ll speak to her when I’m there with the family. Max left the house before ten o’clock. He claimed he was working.’
‘On a Sunday?’ Doddsy was the team’s only churchgoer. Somehow this made him vaguely distrustful of other people’s disregard for the Sabbath.
‘Apparently so. He’s self-employed and works a lot from home. Sophie’s music drove him nuts, he said, and if there was nothing special planned for the family, he’d often go out for the day and think things through.’
Chris harrumphed. ‘Out for the time between when Greg was last seen and the time he was found, eh?’
‘Not quite. He returned at about four thirty, and he gave us details of where he was and when. Chris, I’d like you to get the transcript from the interview and follow it up. It should be reasonably easy to confirm or deny his story. If there are any holes in it – any holes at all – we’ll look much more closely into it.’
‘What do you make of Mr Sumner?’ Doddsy, normally the most charitable of souls, had clearly formed an opinion not dissimilar to Jude’s own.
‘He’s an interesting character, by his own account, and not altogether sympathetic.’ Jude turned once more to Chris. ‘Did you get anything on him?’
Recognising his cue, Chris jumped up, crossed the room and retrieved a sheet of paper from the printer. ‘Quite a lot. Max Sumner. Forty-eight. Born Liverpool, well educated, went to Exeter University where he studied computer science. He set up in business after leaving university. The business, called Three of the Best, involved a series of slightly unusual dating websites.’ He lifted an eyebrow. ‘The clue’s in the name.’
‘Well, he didn’t tell us that!’ Ashleigh’s expression was mischievous.
‘It probably didn’t seem terribly appropriate. He’ll have known we’d find out.’ Sumner appeared to be a man who’d put obstruction in the way of the police even when they were working in his interests. Jude had seen it before, a compulsion to keep one step ahead of authority. ‘Carry on, Chris.’
‘Okay. After five years, the business ran into trouble and was bought out by a consortium. Sumner went back to the drawing board, building up a new business along the same lines. Fifteen years ago, just after that buyout, he married a woman named Dawn Whyte. They had two children, Sophie and Greg. Three years ago, karma took a neat twist in his interests. He mounted an aggressive takeover and regained control of Three of the Best, which he now owns completely. His business is based in Liverpool, and the family live in Formby. As far as I can tell, he’s a very wealthy man.’ He laid down the sheet of paper. ‘That’s pretty much all I’ve been able to find out so far. I suspect there’s plenty more.’
Jude drew a pound sign on his pad. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Some of it won’t be hard to find. He just wants to make us work for it. We’ll look at what Companies House records have to say. You’ve done well to find out that much in so short a time. Good man.’
‘Thanks.’
The boy was thorough. That was what they needed. ‘Is there anything else I should know?’
‘There’s one thing. He obtained a significant settlement twenty years ago from the Metropolitan Police. A business rival paid an officer to implicate him in a money laundering ring, for which he was arrested and charged. The trial brought the truth to light. Sumner was cleared, the officer went to prison and Sumner sued the pants off the police. Did he tell you that?’
‘Yes, though not in so many words. I didn’t press him – I like to cross-check what my witnesses tell me against the facts as they emerge independently. So far, so good. I’m sure if you’d had more time you’d have come up with the embroidery that goes over this particular framework.’ He looked across at Ashleigh. ‘What did you make of our Mr Sumner?’
She chewed the end of her pencil for a moment – not, he suspected, because she hadn’t formed an almost instant and probably accurate opinion, but because she didn’t want to show it off too much. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met a man so proud to have made so many enemies.’
‘He did seem to judge his success in terms of broken bodies, didn’t he?’ Jude reviewed Max Sumner’s unsavoury résumé of his career in business.
Ashleigh looked down at her notes. ‘Three business rivals ruined. One of them driven to a breakdown. Wow. I can get that he might want to punish the police officer who set him up, but the rest of it?’
‘Indeed. Although the question we need to ask isn’t who he may have taken revenge on, but who might have wanted to get revenge on him. We’ve got a few names from him, at least. We’ll get in touch with them and see what they have to say.’
Ashleigh twisted the pencil in her fingers. ‘These are just facts, Jude.’
‘Just facts? Facts are the most important thing we have.’
‘Yes. But do you know what I think?’
‘Go on.’
‘I think we need to ask a different question. Max Sumner didn’t seem remotely bothered at the loss of his child. He’s cold as stone.’
When he got a moment, Jude would warn Ashleigh against the pitfalls of too strong an emotional involvement, but he couldn’t fail to agree with her assessment. ‘He isn’t an easy man to hurt. No. But just because he chooses not to show his feelings doesn’t mean he feels nothing.’
‘No, but I don’t think he feels emotion in the same way as most people do. If he’s grieving he won’t let anyone know, so where’s the benefit if what you want is revenge? Whereas Dawn… she’s cut to pieces. You can see it. So in your position, I might be asking myself the question: who wants to get revenge on her? And from what Max told us later on in the interview, I think we know the answer to that, too.’
Jude sipped his coffee. After a couple of solid nights’ sleep his brain was as clear as the view down from Harter Fell on a good day, y
et it was Ashleigh who’d picked up on the significance of a piece of information that Sumner had tossed into the conversation as trivia. ‘Chris, I’m going to give you leave to get off the facts and onto the gossip for this one. Another thing you’d have found out if you had time, and something that Max Sumner seems extraordinarily proud of, is that his wife of fifteen years was previously married to the man who ruined his first business, and who he later drove into bankruptcy in his turn. That man’s name is Randolph Flett, and I’d very much like to have a little chat with him.’
‘It’s only fair to point out that he also said he didn’t think Flett would have the brains or the courage to do anything about it,’ Ashleigh reminded him.
‘Yes, but that’s definitely worth checking, nevertheless.’ It had been as impossible not to be struck by the defiance of Sumner’s approach as it had been not to feel for poor, broken Dawn.
‘I’ll follow that up.’ Chris added that to his list.
‘Good. Let’s get on with that now.’ He pushed back his chair, applied himself to the whiteboard, wrote Max and Dawn Sumner’s names down. And then, remembering who was at the centre of it, he pinned up the picture Max had sent them of that smiling child, and wrote Greg Sumner(?): Victim in capital letters above it.
*
‘Tarot cards, eh?’
Ashleigh knew it was Jude before he spoke, sensing his elongated shadow creeping up on her as she sat at her desk. Damn. She should never have let slip about the cards, but Dawn’s face had invited her confidence. ‘Yes, why not? It was just a bit of fun.’
Chris was away at the coffee machine and Jude pulled his chair over and slid easily into it. ‘All right, so I’m not going to shout about it, because it might be a bit awkward. But you aren’t seriously telling me that you, as a serving detective, allegedly with a sharp analytical mind, believe in the tarot cards?’
