by Michael Wood
‘No. My email has been down for a few days. The bloke from the GMC sent them over but I couldn’t access them. I called him and he gave me the bare bones over the phone. Why?’
‘You spelled Milly’s name wrong.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. It’s M-I-L-L-I-E.’
‘Oh. Well, no disrespect meant.’
‘No. I don’t mean it like that. You’ve spelled her surname incorrectly too. The thing is, the correct spelling would have changed our whole approach to our line of questioning.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Sian went over to Scott’s desk and looked at his screen over her shoulder. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ! What have I done?’
Chapter Sixty-Two
Matilda was on the A61 heading for Barnsley. She had tried to persuade Keith to stay behind but he was adamant he was coming with her. Her head was full of thoughts she didn’t really want to think about. She understood that during exceptional circumstances the most sane and rational of people could do things they would later regret, but the carnage at the Mercer house was something else. It was savage. It was pure evil. What kind of a warped individual could inflict such pain and horror on another person? There was one shred of light among the darkness; her theory about Keith Lumb was correct. He was innocent. He would have to face the consequences of his burglaries but at least he wouldn’t go to prison for three murders.
By the time Matilda pulled up in the car park at Barnsley police station it was dark and most of the day shift had gone home. There were very few cars around so Matilda had her pick of spaces. She looked at the building through the windscreen. It looked desolate. No windows were lit up. There was a sense of foreboding about a police station at night. Matilda had never liked being one of the last officers to leave. In her opinion, they should be a hive of activity twenty-four hours a day. She was beginning to wish she’d called Sian or Christian, told them of her theory, but with the way they reacted to her harbouring Keith Lumb, she’d prefer to confront a fellow colleague by herself. There was always a lingering doubt that she could be wrong.
‘I want you to stay in the car,’ she said firmly.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me for backup?’
‘No, I don’t. You’re to keep well out of the way until I know what’s going on.’
‘But what if he’s violent?’
She took a deep breath and looked up at the building. ‘He won’t be.’
‘You could try saying that with more conviction.’
She sighed. ‘Look, if I’m not out within half an hour, call 999 and tell them I need help.’
‘I’ll wait twenty minutes.’
‘Fine.’
It was a cold evening. Matilda picked up her jacket from the back seat and headed for the main entrance. She expected it to be locked but was surprised to find it open. There was nobody at the reception desk, which wasn’t a surprise, so Matilda let herself through into the main body of the building.
Her heels clacked loudly on the floor as she made her away across the quiet, dimly lit corridors. She looked into rooms as she passed them, but most were in darkness. She headed up the stairs to the first floor and made a cleaner jump who was emptying the bins and wearing headphones.
She reached the CID suite and found who she was looking for standing at the window looking out over the town.
‘DS Jonson,’ Matilda called out.
Ross jumped and turned around. He looked stunned to see Matilda standing in the doorway. He was a tall man with unkempt salt-and-pepper hair. His face was drawn and thin, his eyes dark and sunken. His suit looked too big for him, as if he’d lost a lot of weight quickly. If Matilda was correct, he’d had more on his mind recently than cooking a decent meal.
‘Where is everyone?’ she asked, looking around at the empty desks.
He gave the hint of a smile. ‘We have a very skeleton staff at night.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m just finishing up a few bits of paperwork I haven’t got around to doing. We’ve had a spate of arson attacks in the area over the past couple of days.’
‘You didn’t look like you were working.’
‘Just taking a break,’ he said, heading back to his desk with heavy limbs. He slumped into his seat with a sigh. ‘Did you want to see someone in particular?’
‘I came to see you, actually,’ Matilda said, moving further into the room.
‘Oh?’
Ross couldn’t say anything. He was looking in the black mirror of his computer screen. His body slumped.
She pulled up a chair and sat beside him. ‘Do you want to tell me how you know the Mercers?’
He flinched at the name but didn’t say anything.
‘During a murder investigation we look into the victim’s background, as you know. We discovered that Clive Mercer had been brought before a board at the GMC on three occasions. We looked into those cases to see if anyone could have had a motive for killing them.’
Ross remained impassive. He looked down at his untidy desk. His face was blank.
‘Your name came up. More accurately, your daughter, Millie.’
Ross looked up at Matilda. His eyes were full of tears.
‘Do you want to tell me about her?’ Matilda asked.
There was a long silence. It was obvious Ross was fighting with his emotions. Eventually, he spoke. ‘Me and Hattie spent years trying to have a child. It was all we both ever wanted, but it just never happened. We used all of our savings up for IVF but that didn’t work either. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, she fell pregnant. We couldn’t believe it. We were so happy. Millie was born on her due date. Our lives were complete.’
Ross picked up a small framed photograph from the side of his desk, hiding behind his laptop. It showed his wife, Hattie, grinning to the camera with a young girl sitting on her knee. The picture of happiness. He looked at the picture and smiled. He gently brushed the faces with the tip of his finger, as if stroking them.
‘Millie started with headaches when she was about two. They weren’t just normal headaches, they were crippling. She’d burst into tears sometimes. We took her to the doctor but they were useless. They kept saying we were being overly cautious because we were new parents. They told us to take her to an optician, but we’d already done that and she was fine. Eventually, we were referred to the Children’s Hospital in Sheffield. Then they sent us to this specialist at the Northern. Specialist. That was a joke. We saw this arrogant doctor who said Millie was attention seeking. Can you believe that? She didn’t need to seek attention, we doted on her. Nobody would listen to us. We knew she was ill.
‘Finally, we got to see this neurologist. She didn’t even look as if she wanted to be there, like we were some kind of an inconvenience for her. She came into the office and started talking about Millie’s diet. She was asking us what food we were giving her. Then she’s asking us how long we sit her in front of the television for. Bloody useless.’ Ross’s frustration was growing as he recounted his story. He had obviously relived it many times over the dark months since Millie had died. Matilda felt his pain. She had done exactly the same thing after James had died.
‘This neurologist,’ Matilda said, ‘it was Serena Mercer, wasn’t it?’
Ross nodded. ‘We saw her again. I kept asking her to rerun the tests. I knew there was something wrong. Millie would be curled up on the sofa, clutching her head, rocking back and forth. She was tired all the time and feeling sick. It’s not normal behaviour for a three-year-old. It was obvious for crying out loud. She had an MRI scan and there was a tumour on her brain. I knew it. I fucking knew it,’ he spat. ‘She had an operation …’ he couldn’t continue as emotion got the better of him. He showed Matilda the photo in his hand. ‘Look at her beautiful blonde hair. She loved her hair. She loved having her mum brush it and put it into plaits. It all had to be cut off. She was devastated.’ He looked back at the photo and smiled through his tears. He placed it back on the desk.
‘I could never pronounce what kind of tumour it was. Hattie could. She did a lot of research into it. I think she knew more about it than the doctors. They said they could operate, but it would be tricky due to where the tumour was. They tried radiotherapy first. She had a course of that lasting four weeks. It didn’t do anything to the tumour and it just made Millie sick. In the end, they decided to risk operating. Hattie wasn’t convinced. It was me who said she would be better afterwards. I mean, they wouldn’t operate on a three-year-old if they didn’t have to, would they?’ He looked at Matilda with pleading eyes, as if begging her to agree with him.
‘No. They wouldn’t,’ she said, sympathizing with him. She was on the brink of tears herself, remembering the endless appointments, scans and courses of treatment her husband had had to endure. The chemotherapy had made him vomit, made him listless and constantly tired. He sometimes thought it would be better to let nature take its course and allow the tumour to do its job. It was only Matilda’s constant badgering that made him return to the hospital for more treatment.
‘The first operation was a success,’ Ross continued. ‘They were able to remove more of the tumour than they thought. A few months later we were back to square one. It was a fast-growing tumour and it was bigger than before. It was obvious Millie wasn’t going to live much longer, but while she was here, they could keep cutting away at the tumour, relieving the pressure and making her more comfortable. Like I said, Hattie didn’t want to keep putting her through the torment of more surgery, but I convinced her. It was that second operation that killed her.’
‘Ross, I’m so sorry,’ Matilda said. Her words sounded baseless but she genuinely meant them.
‘There had to be a post-mortem,’ he said, swallowing hard. ‘They had to cut open my little girl. The results came back that she’d been given too much of the anaesthetic drug. They tried to blame the anaesthetic nurse. She hadn’t been in the job long, but I tracked her down. Yes, she was the one who drew the syringe, but the anaesthetist is supposed to check everything before he administers it, and he didn’t. He took the syringe from her and injected it straight into Millie without giving it a second thought.’
‘The anaesthetist was Clive Mercer, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. What a remarkable team husband and wife make,’ he said, his comment oozing with venomous sarcasm. ‘Between them they killed my daughter and my wife.’
‘Hattie?’
‘She couldn’t cope with losing Millie. We’d tried for so long to have her. She fell apart when she died. It took all her energy to make it through the funeral. Afterwards, she wasn’t interested in anything. She hardly got out of bed; she stopped eating. I came home from work one Thursday and found her still in bed. She’d taken everything in the house she could get her hands on – paracetamol, ibuprofen, old antibiotics, some pain relief I had for my dodgy knee. Those two bastards ruined my life.’
‘But what you did was horrific.’
‘They had to pay.’
‘You slaughtered them.’
‘They killed my wife and daughter. The hospital released a statement after the inquest and said lessons would be learned in the future. What the fuck does that mean? I’ve got to live the rest of my life on my own because my daughter died and my wife killed herself. Meanwhile, those responsible are still working, they’re walking around like nothing has happened. They probably didn’t even remember Millie’s name. Three times Clive Mercer went before the GMC. He should have been struck off after the first time. Maybe my Millie would still be alive. If not, I’d still have Hattie.’
‘But what about Jeremy Mercer? What had he done?’
‘I didn’t know he was going to be there.’ Ross shucked Matilda off. He stood up and went back over to the window. It was pitch-dark outside and all he could see was his tired reflection in the black mirror. ‘I saw in the newspaper the announcement about the big family wedding. They were all smiles, getting on with life as normal. That’s when I realized I had to do something. I couldn’t have them rubbing my nose in it.’
‘So where does Keith Lumb fit into all of this?’ Matilda asked. She folded her arms in defiance. Yes, she felt sorry for what Ross had gone through, but she had been through similar with James. It hadn’t turned her into a murderer.
‘That wasn’t my idea. My plan was to just break in and stab them as they slept. I didn’t give a fuck what happened to me afterwards.’
‘So, what happened? Whose idea was it to fit Keith Lumb up for murder?’
‘Mine.’
The voice came from behind Matilda. She turned around and saw someone standing in the shadow of the doorway. The lights were flicked on. Matilda blinked against the brightness of the strip lighting on the ceiling. She recognized the figure straight away, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the baseball bat he was holding.
Chapter Sixty-Three
DC Kesinka Rani was bored. She hated being given lighter duties. She was a detective constable for crying out loud. She should be out there interviewing suspects, knocking on doors, not sitting in a cramped office listening to all the excitement through the radio. She cradled her stomach, as, once again, the baby made its presence felt. Ranjeet popped in to see her when he could and Sian had sent down a few snacks, but she felt like she was missing the gossip and the fun of being in the HMET suite.
A mug of tea was placed in front of her.
‘Thanks, Karen,’ she said to her new colleague who had the station next to her.
‘Uncomfortable?’
‘Very.’
‘I’ll have a word with Sergeant Bowler, see if we can get a more comfortable chair in.’
‘That’ll be lovely. Help yourself to a Club; Sian sent a couple of packets down for me.’
An alarm sounded that made everyone in the control room freeze. It wasn’t heard very often but when it was, everything was dropped. It was the sound made when a police officer was in distress and the emergency button on their personal radio was pressed for urgent assistance.
Sergeant Bowler, a huge barrel of a man, went over to Kesinka’s desk and looked at her screen over her shoulder. ‘Who is it?’
‘Oh my God. It’s DCI Darke,’ Kesinka replied.
‘Get me a GPS location.’
With shaking fingers, Kesinka tapped on her keyboard. ‘She’s at the Churchfield Sub Divisional HQ in Barnsley.’
‘What’s she doing there?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Is the ACC still here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Minutes later, ACC Valerie Masterson was in the HMET suite with Sian, Scott and Christian. None of them had had any idea Matilda was planning on visiting Barnsley. She’d told them she was going home early. Scott filled the ACC in on Ross Jonson and what he and Sian had found out about him in the past half an hour or so.
‘It looks like DCI Darke found out the same information,’ Valerie said. ‘But are you really suggesting DS Jonson committed such brutal murders?’ she asked, looking up at the crime scene photographs on the murder board.
‘Until we know all the details, we’re not saying anything,’ Sian jumped in. ‘However, I think we should proceed with caution.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Do you want me to give DI Eckhart a call? See if he’s seen DCI Darke?’ Sian suggested.
‘Better not. DI Eckhart has a personal interest if this is the case. DS Jonson is his son-in-law.’
Ross Jonson looked on in silence as Nigel Eckhart explained how he’d laid the trap for Keith Lumb to escape from his cell and do a runner. They’d had some of his clothing when they arrested him and had the power to search his flat for stolen items, where samples of the DNA could be lifted. Keith had been in and out of custody many times over the years. His one fear was being sent to prison, yet he never seemed to be able to change his criminal ways. He was perfect to be set up for murder. Who was going to believe his pleas of innocence against his background and the indisputable forensic evidence?
‘Bu
t why Keith Lumb?’ Matilda asked.
‘It didn’t have to be him. He just happened to be the first loser we had brought into the station.’
She turned to Ross. ‘All that stuff about Tina Law …’
‘I made it up,’ he said, ashamedly. ‘I wanted you to believe he was violent.’
‘And there wasn’t anything wrong with the cell door?’ she asked Nigel.
‘No.’
‘So, Bella Slack is in on it all, too?’
‘Bella and I have been seeing each other on and off for years. She’d do anything for me,’ Nigel said with a smirk. ‘The plan was for Ross to kill Clive and Serena, make it look like a robbery gone wrong, plant the evidence, then leave. I’d be his alibi, should he need one. I had no idea he was going to be so frenzied.’
‘I couldn’t stop myself,’ Ross said, looking down at the floor. ‘I was just so angry.’
‘You wore a forensic suit for the murders, didn’t you? Where is it?’
‘I burnt them,’ Nigel answered. His voice was steady. ‘Everything Ross wore that night was burnt. There’s no evidence to trace back to him.’
‘What about the knives?’
‘They’re in a secure location until I need to use them again.’
Matilda thought for a moment. ‘You’re going to plant them in Keith’s flat, aren’t you?’
‘The man is a grade-A loser. He’s done fuck all with his life. He’ll end up in prison sooner or later. This way, he’s off the street and the little old ladies of Barnsley can sleep easy in their beds without the worry of some pointless wanker stealing their jewellery because he can’t be bothered to get a job.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Nigel, this isn’t you?’
‘At the end of the day, Matilda, we’re all trying to get through this fucker of a life in the best way we can. However, there are some who think they’re above everyone else and their incompetence forces us to act because the law won’t. My daughter,’ he choked when he mentioned Hattie, ‘my daughter killed herself because she couldn’t live without Millie. I lost my only child and grandchild and look at that poor bastard over there.’
