by Kate Medina
‘We’ll be compassionate,’ Marilyn said, sensing the direction this conversation was heading, wanting to cut it off at the pass. He didn’t want an oversensitive doctor hovering over him while he grilled his only potential witness.
‘I’ll give you ten minutes,’ Murawska said.
‘We may need longer than that.’
She held up her hand, without turning. ‘Ten minutes. Take it or leave it.’
‘I have a violent killer to catch.’
‘And I have a patient to protect,’ she countered, as uncompromising as the paramedic he had locked horns with last night. The book of intransigence was clearly required reading for all St Richard’s Hospital staff.
They entered a corner ward, containing six beds, four of them occupied, windows on two sides – south-west facing, must be, Jessie thought, as she could see the spire of Chichester Cathedral from the far windows, barely visible through the drizzle. DC Darren Cara was hovering in the vicinity of a bed in the far corner of the room, clutching a saggy, half-eaten sandwich in one hand and a Costa Coffee cup in the other. He looked even more ragged around the edges than Jessie felt. It was the first time she’d seen Marilyn’s keen, young DC looking anything other than immaculately turned out in his City-trader suit, crisp white shirt and snappy hairstyle, and she was sure that Marilyn would be having a sly smile at the poor kid’s expense and thinking: Welcome to a multiple murder investigation, kiddo. Cara hurriedly tossed the remains of the sandwich in the flip-top ‘Hazardous Waste Only’ bin, when he clocked Marilyn steaming across the room towards him.
‘Has she said anything?’ Marilyn asked him, in a low voice.
He shook his head. ‘She spent most of the night crying. The little time she did sleep, she thrashed around and kept calling out.’ He stifled a yawn with his crumpled suit sleeve. ‘She was obviously having nightmares. And this morning, she just cried some more and spent the rest of the time staring into space, totally uncommunicative.’
‘Unsurprisingly. Head off home now, son, and grab forty winks. I’ll see you back at the station later this evening.’
‘I’m fine, Guv,’ Cara protested.
‘A knackered DC who can’t think straight is no use to me,’ Marilyn snapped. ‘Grab a couple of hours’ sleep and a change of clothes. You’re making me look smart with that crumpled suit and the bed hair.’
Suitably cowed, Cara nodded. ‘Right, Guv.’ He glanced at Jessie and smiled. ‘Bye Dr Flynn.’
Jessie gave him what she hoped was a confidence-giving ‘don’t take it personally – Marilyn’s ragged too’ smile back. ‘See you later, Darren.’
Sophie Whitehead was hunched in the hospital bed, bent forward, shoulders sagging, as if she had just been punched hard in the stomach. She looked painfully tiny, pale and wan, a little Victorian waif in her borrowed blue-and-white-checked hospital gown, her skinny legs draped in a thin baby-blue hospital blanket. Pronounced black rings of smudged mascara underscored each eye, dark blots in the pallor of her face, making her look as if she hadn’t slept for months. She won’t sleep for months, Jessie thought grimly as Anita Murawska drew the pastel-green curtain around the bed and held up both hands in front of Marilyn’s face, fingers raised.
‘Ten minutes,’ she mouthed. ‘I’ll leave you.’
Marilyn nodded meekly, also suitably cowed.
There was one chair next to the head end of Sophie Whitehead’s bed, which Jessie ushered him towards.
‘I’m fine standing,’ he muttered.
‘No, really, take the chair,’ Jessie countered, in a low voice, with a firm nod of her head.
Marilyn took the hint. The last thing a vulnerable teenager who had just found her parents butchered needed was him leaning over her like some gargantuan, interrogational crow. But as always, he was driven by his core desire to get a result; the human element of policing his perennial Achilles heel.
While Jessie pulled over a second chair, Marilyn began, resisting the temptation to lean forward, plant his elbows on the edge of the bed and steeple his fingers while he spoke.
‘First of all, we are very sorry about your parents, Sophie, but I assure you that we are going to find their murderer.’
At the word ‘murderer’, a sob burst from the girl’s mouth. Dropping her head, she covered her face with her hands. She sat like this for long seconds, making muffled mewling sounds, her shoulders shaking.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed, her hands falling back to her lap.
‘Please don’t worry,’ Jessie said. ‘Your reaction is totally understandable.’ More than understandable. Tugging a couple of tissues from a box on the console beside the bed, she handed them to Sophie. She felt as impotent in the face of this grief as she had, aged fourteen, watching her mother grieve her dead brother, assuring her that it would all be fine, knowing that nothing would ever be fine again, that both she and her mother would forever be missing a chunk of their hearts – just as Sophie would forever be missing two chunks of hers. ‘As Detective Inspector Simmons said, we’re working to find the man who murdered your parents. We need to ask you a few questions … but you can stop the discussion at any time if you feel it’s too much,’ she finished, avoiding Marilyn’s glare, knowing he would be more than happy to let the doctors worry about the girl’s welfare. They had questions to ask; answers to get; a serial killer to find.
‘Can you talk us through your movements last night, please?’ Marilyn asked, cutting to the chase.
‘My friend came to my house first, to collect me,’ Sophie began falteringly.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Lucy. Lucy Heath.’
‘What time did she get to you?’
‘About eight.’ A big sniff.
‘And then what did you do?’
‘We’d ordered a taxi. We were excited and Lucy wanted a vape, and my parents don’t like us vaping, so we went and stood outside on the pavement chatting until the taxi came.’
‘What did you talk about while you were waiting outside?’
‘Nothing much. Just about the nightclub, who we hoped would be there, that kind of thing. Lucy doesn’t know anything though. She left Sheiks early, left me alone.’
‘Sheiks in Bognor?’ Marilyn clarified.
Sophie nodded. ‘It’s half-term, which is why I was allowed out late. They have half-price entry on Wednesdays and you get one free drink too.’
‘Why did you stay when your friend left?’ Jessie asked.
Sophie flashed Marilyn a quick glance. ‘There was a boy I fancied,’ she said quietly, addressing the comment to Jessie. ‘But then he left too and I was tired, so I left.’
‘What time?’
‘About one, I think.’
‘Did you talk to anyone you didn’t know while you were in the club?’ Marilyn asked.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah. I stuck with Lucy and we just chatted to the boys that we know from school, danced with them.’
‘Including the boy you liked?’ Jessie asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘And after Lucy left?’
‘Just the boys … that boy in particular.’ She lifted her thin shoulders. ‘But he obviously wasn’t interested in me. Not like that anyway, and then he left too.’
‘What did you do then?’ Marilyn cut in.
‘I hung around at the edge of the dancefloor finishing my drink and then I felt really horrible, so I went to the toilets and I … I was sick, I think.’ She nodded, almost as if to herself. ‘Yeah, I was sick, and then I just wanted to be at home so badly.’
‘Did you notice anyone watching you?’ Marilyn asked.
‘No.’
‘Did you see anyone who looked odd? Out of place? Anyone who looked as if they didn’t belong there?’
‘No, it was full of kids from school and some other schools around here. Young people.’
‘Are you sure?’ he prompted.
Sophie nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘
OK.’ Marilyn exhaled the word on a weary sigh. Jessie didn’t blame him. Sophie Whitehead was their only potential witness, and so far their questioning had drawn a blank. It was a blank that they couldn’t afford. ‘You left the club alone at about one p.m. How did you get home?’
‘In a taxi.’
‘Which company did you use?’
A few moments of silence before she answered, in a quiet voice. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you phone the taxi?’
She shook her head. ‘It was waiting by the side of the road, down from the entrance to the club.’
‘How far down?’
‘I don’t know. Not that far.’
‘A hundred metres?’ Marilyn suggested.
‘Yeah, about that, I suppose.’
‘Was there anyone else out there with you?’ Jessie asked. ‘Even people you didn’t know?’
‘No, just me. Sheiks doesn’t close till two.’
‘Do you remember the taxi’s crest? The taxi company’s name?’ Marilyn asked. There were only three main taxi companies in Chichester and he knew their liveries like the back of his hand. Some of the taxi drivers were good customers of the police, with their sidelines in peddling illegal substances to their younger clientele.
Sophie sniffed and shook her head.
‘What did the car look like?’ Marilyn pressed.
‘It was small and dark. Black or maybe dark blue. Metallic, I think.’
‘Did you notice a make or model?’
Another sniff, another shake. ‘I’m not good with cars.’
‘How about the markings on the outside of the car, the taxi? Can you remember anything specific about them?’
Another sniff, this one longer, wetter; she was close to tears again. ‘There weren’t any,’ she managed.
‘OK.’ Marilyn kept his voice measured, though Jessie could sense frustration bubbling up from his insides, like acid rising from a post-curry gut. ‘So what made you think it was a taxi?’
Tears welled up in Sophie’s eyes and a barely audible voice came from somewhere at the back of her throat. ‘I don’t know. I was just so tired and, I … I … just wanted to get home.’ She broke off, her glitter-pink nails picking at the tissue in her hand, tears trickling down her face.
‘Did it have any stickers outside, or perhaps inside, on the windscreen or dashboard?’ Jessie asked gently. ‘Anything at all to indicate that it was a taxi?’
A mute, teary shake of her head. Marilyn sat back with a frustrated sigh. Jessie caught his gaze and gave a minute shake of her head. He had to keep a lid on the impatience, or they’d risk losing her altogether. Sophie had clearly been drunk, big surprise. Jessie could also remember being so drunk as a teenager that she couldn’t work out left from right, and would have accepted a lift home from Lucifer himself if he’d promised her safe passage to her bed in double-quick time. She doubted, if Marilyn could cast his mind back that far, that he’d have been any different – worse probably – despite his new-found attachment to clean living.
‘It’s OK,’ Jessie cut in. ‘We know that you were at a nightclub, so we’re pretty sure that you’d been drinking and we really don’t care. You don’t need to be embarrassed to tell us anything.’
‘I just wanted to get home,’ Sophie sobbed. ‘I was drunk even though I know it’s illegal to drink at my age.’
‘We’re not worried about that,’ Marilyn assured her. ‘Right, so you found a car outside – a car that may or may not have been a taxi?’
Sophie nodded and gulped back another sob. ‘Like I said, my friend left and I stayed, but the boy I fancied obviously didn’t fancy me at all and I was drunk by then and there was no one left I knew and I really really wanted to get home and then I saw the taxi, saw Charles.’
Marilyn sat forward again. ‘Charles? That was his name?’
‘Yeah, but he didn’t really look like a Charles.’
‘What does a Charles look like?’
Sophie lifted her thin shoulders. ‘Well, Charles is a posh name, isn’t it, like the prince, and this guy wasn’t posh.’
‘Where do you think he came from?’
‘I don’t know, but he just sounded normal. Just like any normal bloke you’d find around here, but not like a posh guy, not like one of those shooting kind of guys, but not a chav either.’
‘What did Charles look like?’
‘He was wearing these thick, black-rimmed glasses. I remember thinking that they were like comedy glasses, the frames were so thick.’
‘What colour hair did he have?’
‘Dark brown.’ Sophie’s glitter-pink nails picked at the tissues in her pale hands.
‘How was it cut?’
‘Short and kind of spiky, like that young policeman who was here before. I remember thinking …’ she tailed off, shredding the ball of tissue, spreading confetti across her lap.
‘Thinking what?’ Jessie pressed.
‘That it all didn’t fit.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The glasses and the hair and his clothes. The glasses and clothes looked like they belonged to someone a bit shambolic, but his hair was neat.’
‘How old was he?’
‘About my … my … my dad’s—’ A sucking intake of breath as she tried desperately not to break down again, tried and failed.
Jessie took hold of her hands, held them, chewing on her lip, looking past Sophie, out of the window at the skyline of Chichester, groggy in the rain, focusing on nothing and everything, until she felt the shake in the poor kid’s hands subside.
‘Can you remember any other details about him?’ Marilyn asked, when Sophie had calmed down enough to speak.
‘Yeah,’ she sniffed. ‘Yeah, I can.’ Unwrapping her left hand from Jessie’s, she held it out. ‘He had scratches across the back of his hand. Deep scratches that looked like they came from wood, maybe.’
‘Wood?’
‘Yeah, like the kind of scratches you’d get if you ran through woods. Like Little Red Riding Hood kind of running away from the big bad wolf, or a horror film, when someone runs and gets scratches all over them from the branches and twigs. Or from, like, from fingernails.’
‘Did you ask him about them?’
‘Yeah and he said they were from DIY. He didn’t really say much else, and by then I was getting a bit scared.’
‘Scared – why?’ Jessie asked.
‘Well, because he locked the doors. I was leaning against the window and he said he didn’t want me to fall out, but that’s a bit odd, isn’t it, and he also took a strange route down some really narrow, quiet lanes. I started to sober up and then I realized that I hadn’t seen any taxi markings and then I got really scared.’ Her face crumpled and she began to cry, great, heaving sobs that shook her shoulders and caved in her chest. ‘But … but I suppose there was nothing wrong with him, because he just dropped me home, safe. And it wasn’t me that was in danger at all … it was Mum and Dad.’
‘That’s enough,’ an efficient voice chimed. Dr Anita Murawska was standing at the end of the bed. ‘No more questions, I’m afraid.’
‘One more,’ Marilyn said.
‘No.’
‘It’s vital. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.’
‘It’s fine.’ A choked voice came from the bed. ‘I want to help.’ Sophie dropped her hands and her bloodshot eyes moved from Marilyn to Dr Murawska and back. ‘I want to help catch him.’
Murawska sighed and held up one finger. ‘One.’
‘Thank you,’ Marilyn said. ‘Sophie, have you ever heard of a man called Hugo Fuller or a woman called Claudine Fuller? They were a married couple.’
Sophie’s eyes widened. ‘They were those people who were murdered a couple of days ago.’
‘Yes, they were.’
She bit her lip, struggling not to break down again. ‘Dad kept reading newspaper articles about them, watching the news,’ she managed. ‘Mum got angry with him because he kept going on about them and she
didn’t understand why he was so interested in people we didn’t even know.’
‘And how did he explain his interest?’
‘He … he said that he was trying to find out details to keep us safe.’
‘And neither he nor your mum had ever mentioned Hugo or Claudine Fuller before?’
She shook her head.
‘Perhaps Hugo was a childhood friend of your dad’s?’
Another firm shake. ‘No,’ she murmured, her voice thick with suppressed tears. ‘Dad said he didn’t know them and Mum definitely didn’t because she couldn’t understand why Dad was so interested in them getting murdered.’
At the word ‘murdered’, Sophie’s shoulders heaved and the tears she had been struggling to hold back spilled over her eyelids and tracked down her cheeks again.
‘That’s enough,’ Anita Murawska snapped. ‘You have to leave. Right now, I’m afraid.’
Marilyn nodded. He and Jessie stood.
‘Thank you, Sophie, you’ve been very helpful,’ he said, touching his hand to her shoulder. ‘We’ll find the man who killed your parents and we’ll send him to prison for a very long time. I promise you that.’
45
Workman was back on Valerie Fuller’s doorstep, feeling as if she had been teleported to the Arctic once again, though at least she had worn a scarf this time, which was wrapped tight around her neck underneath the raised collar of her favourite navy belted overcoat. She was surprised when the door opened barely seconds after her knock, and a sliver of Valerie’s face appeared behind it, followed by a blue-veined hand which beckoned her inside, easing the door open just enough for her to slide through the gap sideways, her belt buckle catching on the door as she did so. Valerie shut it firmly behind her.
‘Were you followed?’ she snapped.
Workman bit down on a sudden, intense desire to laugh. It was doubtless the fault of exhausted hysteria that made her find the fact that Valerie Fuller was worried she’d been followed by a horde of press highly entertaining.
‘No.’
Valerie gave a relieved sigh. ‘I’ve been doorstepped virtually non-stop since Hugo and Claudine were murdered. I was polite to the first few, but then there were more and more, and then I read a couple of decidedly catty things about me, so I now refuse to have anything to do with any of them.’
