NEVER CAME HOME an addictive crime thriller with a twist you won't see coming (Detective Inspector Siv Drummond Book 2)

by Gretta Mulrooney

  ‘Corran and Paul are just over the way, and don’t forget the goats. They get very busy at sunset.’

  ‘Oh, of course. They must be great for the craic. And no one’s likely to call by, given where it is,’ Ali said.

  ‘There is that.’

  He grinned and she smiled too. They were getting used to each other.

  * * *

  The Dimases’ home was a semi-detached on Bishop Close, a residential street to the east of the town. The outside had been recently decorated, with cream cladding from the roofline to the top of the ground-floor windows. The front door was a matt grey, flanked by large wooden tubs of pristine white dahlias.

  ‘Theo Dimas is a radiographer at the Towers, a private hospital, or was at the time when his wife went missing,’ Siv said. ‘How long would it have taken Lyn to walk from here to Orford End?’

  ‘I had a wee poke about earlier. A good twenty minutes at a fast pace, I’d say. There are some cut-throughs.’

  ‘She didn’t intend to go there, surely — she told her son she wouldn’t be long. That would take at least forty minutes, there and back. You wouldn’t leave a nine-year-old alone for that long, or at least not without ringing to check on him. And she left her phone — she didn’t expect that she’d need to. The records indicate that everyone spoke of her as a devoted mother. Why would a respectable person be hanging out in a filthy, disused building?’

  ‘Not a clue. Unless it was part of a plan for bailing out, running away.’

  ‘With just a shoulder bag and no phone, car or passport? Come on, we’d best not keep this man on tenterhooks any longer.’ She got out of the car and braced herself. Delivering this kind of news never got any easier and in some ways, the time lapse in this case made it harder. If this man wasn’t responsible for his wife’s death, they were about to dash any lingering scraps of hope.

  Theo Dimas opened the door before they could knock. He was a short, solid block of flesh, bullnecked with slightly bowed legs and a mass of dark, closely cropped hair. He wore a navy shirt and jeans, teamed with bright red braces.

  ‘Come in, please. This way.’

  They followed him into an orderly, comfortable living room lined with bookshelves and framed charcoal sketches. One of them was of Theo Dimas, a good likeness. A home entertainment centre in light oak occupied one wall, housing a large TV, Xbox, an old-fashioned record player with a stack of vinyl records beside it, and an antique rosewood chess set. A pile of school textbooks was on the table beside the chair Siv sat in: GCSE Guide to Macbeth, Combined Science, Biology Explained, and The Tudor World.

  Siv made introductions. ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Dimas, but we have bad news about your wife.’

  ‘You’ve found her?’ He held himself straight, hands gripping his knees, as if braced for a shock.

  ‘Yes. Two days ago, a decomposed body was discovered in an abandoned building in town. The body was tied to the back of a fridge. We’ve checked against your wife’s dental records, and confirmed along with other autopsy results that the body is that of your wife, Lyn Dimas. She’d been strangled. I’m very sorry to have to tell you this.’

  Dimas pressed down on his massive knees. ‘A fridge?’ He shook his head. ‘Did you say a fridge?’

  ‘Yes, a large fridge-freezer. She’d been secured to the back grille with rope, and the fridge had been pushed back towards the wall, so that she couldn’t be seen.’

  ‘My God. All this time and she’s been . . . So she died on the night she vanished?’

  ‘The autopsy couldn’t tell us that. Certainly, she must have died on or soon after that night.’

  ‘I didn’t really hope . . .’ He stopped, cleared his throat. ‘I’d given up hope that she was alive. Where was she found?’ He spoke slowly, deliberately, as if weighing every word.

  ‘In Steiner & Sons Removals, a disused business premises in Orford End,’ Siv said. ‘It’s been empty for a long time.’

  He had wide, full lips. He pressed them tightly together and ran a hand up his impressive neck. ‘Orford End. Where’s that?’

  ‘North of town, near the railway station. The building is about to be demolished to make way for new housing.’

  ‘I read about that. How on earth did Lyn get there?’

  ‘We don’t know that, or if that’s where she was killed. Her body might have been taken there soon after she died. We’ll need to go through the original investigation step by step and talk to people again. It will be difficult because of the time lapse.’

  ‘Six years,’ Dimas said faintly and sat back, rubbing his forehead with agitated fingers.

  ‘Can I get you some water?’ Ali asked.

  ‘Hmm? Please, yes.’

  He sat gazing at the dark green carpet. Siv said nothing further until Ali returned with three glasses of water on a tray. A breeze shook a blazing Virginia creeper at the back window and the branches tapped at a pane. Dimas took a few sips from his glass. His dark eyes were miserable.

  ‘What happens now?’ he asked. ‘I mean . . . can I see her or something?’

  ‘Not just yet. We don’t need you to identify your wife and her body had deteriorated.’ He’s a nurse, he’ll know what I mean.

  He shivered and drank more water. ‘I suppose after six years . . . Oh God. How was she found? I mean, who found her?’

  Ali had been standing, hands clasped behind his back and rocking on his broad feet, studying the sketches. He sat down again. ‘The building is going to be demolished by a local builder. The men who went to clear it out found her body hidden behind the fridge when they went to move it.’

  ‘So Lyn was concealed?’

  ‘Yes. As DI Drummond said, you couldn’t see her until the fridge was pulled out.’

  ‘Even so . . . surely someone who went in there would have noticed something? I mean, as her body decomposed . . .’ He stared at them both in bewilderment.

  Siv said, ‘The building has been broken into over the years and left in quite a state, with rubbish and other materials left lying around. Your wife’s body was mummified as well as hidden.’ I can hardly say that Steiner’s reeks of so many unpleasant odours, it would have been hard to detect a decomposing body.

  Dimas took his time mulling this over and then gulped back the rest of the water. ‘Was she . . . was she attacked sexually?’

  ‘The pathologist couldn’t determine that.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How would she have got to Orford End? Why would she go there? She didn’t drive that night.’

  ‘Either she walked there, or someone drove her. If she was abducted, she could have been taken there after she died. Did she ever have any business with Steiner’s Removals or was she friendly with anyone who worked there?’ Ali asked.

  ‘No. When we moved in here, I hired a van and a friend helped us. Lyn was a podiatrist, based at the Brookridge clinic near the harbour. She never had any reason to contact a removal company.’

  It was warm in the room, with the autumnal sun throwing thick golden bars of light across the floor. Siv slipped her jacket off.

  ‘Can you tell us a bit about what was happening in the weeks before Lyn disappeared? You’ll have been through all this before but it would help us.’ Dimas had a faraway gaze. She recognised shock and deemed it was genuine. ‘Take your time.’

  He put a hand to his mouth and stood. ‘I’m having a brandy. Would you like one?’

  They both shook their heads and waited while he took a bottle from a sideboard and poured a glass. Ali opened his notebook and crossed a leg at right angles over his knee. He scribbled a note, HUGE CAKE IN KITCHEN. IT’S HIS PARTNER’S BIRTHDAY and showed the page to Siv. She gave a little shrug.

  Dimas sat, feet pointing outwards. He held his brandy glass in front of him with two hands circling it at the base, like a chalice. ‘This is all so hard to take in. Unreal.’

  ‘I understand,’ Siv said. Unless your shock stems from your wife finally being found where you hid her. ‘Take your time and tell us a
bout what was going on in the family.’

  He blinked hard. ‘What a bloody awful year 2013 turned out to be. I told Lyn that I was gay on the third of January. She said it was a lovely start to the New Year. I’d been trying to tell her for months and finally plucked up courage.’ He drank more brandy and sighed.

  ‘How did she react?’ Siv prompted.

  ‘Badly. She was angry, shocked, frightened, betrayed. Shouting and crying. I could understand all of that. I expected it. I’d had some counselling when I was working things out, building up to coming out. The counsellor took me through worst-case scenarios. I realised that Lyn would think that the man she’d been married to for twenty years had always been lying to her. When she tore into me, I accepted that was how she saw it, even if I didn’t set out to deceive her. But when I considered the worst that could happen, I didn’t anticipate that she’d get her revenge by alleging that I might be HIV positive. Even when I told her that I’d been tested and I wasn’t, she kept on about it. She told the children and other family and friends that I might have AIDS. She pretended not to know that HIV and AIDS aren’t the same thing.’

  He’d been somewhat naïve, expecting his emotional, vengeful wife not to strike a low blow. Siv asked, ‘Did that make you angry?’

  ‘Sad, more than angry. Lyn turned my father against me, too — it wouldn’t have taken much effort, but she made sure she got him in her camp. That was unforgivable. I couldn’t get through that kind of spite. She insisted that I move out the next day — threw me out, really — and she wouldn’t let me see the kids afterwards. I managed to tell them both that I’m gay just before I left.’

  ‘How did they take it?’ Ali asked.

  Dimas closed his eyes, the remembered pain clear on his face. ‘My son, Adam, was just bewildered, and then in the months after, he was worried that I might die because Lyn was saying I had a disease. Lily, my daughter, was vicious. I was stunned. Young people now are supposed to be inclusive and enlightened, but not Lily. She was worried about being laughed at, losing status. That girl with the queer dad. It was all about her — what her friends would say. Plus her boyfriend, now husband, is homophobic. She’s hardly spoken to me since her mother went missing. You spend eighteen years with your child and then she just cuts all the ties, as if you don’t exist. Madness. Lily’s always been a tough cookie but I didn’t realise she could be so heartless.’

  Ali raised his eyebrows at Siv. She reached for her water. ‘Where did you go when you moved out?’

  ‘I went to live with Monty, my partner. He had a rented flat in town. After Lyn went missing, I moved back in here to care for Adam. I took three months off work. Lily wouldn’t stay in the house with me. She went off to Pearce, the boyfriend, and they got married six months later. I wasn’t invited to the wedding. Adam went as a pageboy. Then Monty moved in here about two years ago, when . . . when it looked as if Lyn wasn’t going to be back.’

  The creeper was tapping at the window again. Siv wouldn’t be able to stand that on a dark winter’s night. She’d imagine it was Ed, out in the cold, longing to come in. She fingered the little scar over her eyebrow. ‘What did you think when Lyn was missing? She must have been under a lot of strain, with you leaving in those circumstances. Did you ever believe that she might have run away or committed suicide?’

  Dimas shook his heavy head. ‘I just didn’t have a clue. Lyn would never have left Adam alone, not intending to come back. She was a devoted mum, wrapped up in the kids. And she took nothing with her except her bag. Your colleagues asked at the time if she was having an affair. I had no idea. I’d not seen her or the kids for months. Lily decided she’d committed suicide but I never thought that was likely.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He drained his brandy. ‘This is going to sound cruel, but you see, if she’d killed herself, that would have left the children with me and Monty. That would have been her worst nightmare, and she’d have seen it as me winning, coming out on top. She’d never have allowed that.’

  Siv saw his point. Some people killed themselves out of spite — See what you’ve made me do. She could understand that staying alive to be a thorn in the flesh was another way of getting revenge. ‘Adam was young to be left on his own that night, even for a short time. Had Lyn done that before?’

  ‘No, and it was unlike her. I agree that she shouldn’t have left him — some shopping can’t have been that urgent. Back then, your colleagues believed she must have had another motive for going out, but if she did, they never found it.’

  ‘Where were you on the night your wife disappeared?’

  ‘At Monty’s flat. We’d had dinner and we were watching football when Jeff Downey phoned. I came straight round. The weather had broken and there was a massive thunderstorm. The heavens opened as I was driving. I’ll never forget it, the way the sky seemed to burst open. It was . . . apocalyptic.’

  That was before Siv’s father died. There’d been flooding in the town two years running, and he’d had to protect his house with sandbags because of the stream that ran at the bottom of his garden. ‘Lily was out at her school prom. What time did she get back?’

  ‘About one in the morning. She flipped when she saw me in the house and heard about Lyn. She was pretty drunk. It really upset Adam, the way she went on. As the days went by, she blamed me for Lyn’s disappearance — said I’d driven her into depression and that must have led her to commit suicide.’ He linked his hands together, palms up and flexed his fingers.

  ‘Was Lyn depressed?’ Siv asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea, because there was no communication. I’d ring her, pleading to see the children, but she either shouted at me or didn’t reply. Anyone can become suicidal, but Lyn was never that type and as I’ve said, she wouldn’t have abandoned the children, no matter how down she was. Lily was being a drama queen and I’m afraid I said that to her at one point, which didn’t help. To be honest, I was relieved in a way when she moved in with Pearce. Her hostility was exhausting.’

  Siv knocked the stack of textbooks as she put her water down. ‘Are these Adam’s?’

  ‘Yes. He’s studying for his GCSEs.’ His eyes creased and he took a breath. ‘How in God’s name am I going to tell him about his mother when he comes home from school?’

  ‘We can send you a family liaison officer,’ Ali offered. ‘They’re trained to help out in this kind of situation.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. I’d rather just talk to him myself. Monty will help. Can you inform Lily? I don’t want to do it by email, and she’s blocked my number on her phone.’

  Ali said, ‘Of course. We’ll need to speak to her anyway. Is she still in Berminster?’

  ‘Yes, she’s Lily Aston now. She lives near Halse woods.’ Dimas slumped, exhausted.

  Siv stood. ‘This has been difficult for you, so we’ll leave it there for now. We’ll need to speak to you again and to Adam and your partner. Do you still work at the Towers hospital?’

  ‘Yes, in radiography. Monty works at Berminster General. He’s a nurse, too — in the maxillofacial unit.’

  ‘We’ll advise you when your wife’s body can be released, so that you can arrange a funeral.’

  He glanced vaguely at her. ‘Funeral? Oh, yes — of course. Sorry, I’m a bit muddled right now.’ He walked them to the front door and turned. ‘Will you be able to discover who did this? I mean, the detectives back then couldn’t even find Lyn.’

  ‘We’ll do our best, Mr Dimas,’ Siv said.

  In the car, Ali took a packet of diabetic fruit drops from the glove compartment. ‘Want one?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ She’d tried them and found them horribly sweet.

  ‘Lily sounds like a dream daughter,’ Ali said drily.

  ‘Theo Dimas certainly dropped a bomb on his family when he came out. I wonder if he’d considered Newton’s third law at the time. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”’

  ‘I’m impressed that you remember your school science so well
. I’ve forgotten nearly all of mine, apart from a few chemical symbols.’

  ‘My dad was keen on Newton, especially his research on optics. He’d wax lyrical about him, usually when we were drinking cocoa.’ If Rikka was around, she’d indulge in theatrical, mock yawns behind his back. Siv had found herself so delighted to have a parent who stayed in at night and could make proper cocoa in a saucepan, she’d hung on his every word.

  Ali laughed. ‘My dad would’ve been studying the form for the next day’s horse racing.’

  ‘What did you make of Dimas?’

  Ali sucked his sweet, pondering. ‘He looked convincingly shocked.’

  ‘Do I hear a “but?”’

  ‘His wife was badmouthing him to everyone and he was facing years of a war of attrition. Not hard to see a motive.’

  She gazed at the house. ‘If Dimas and his partner killed Lyn, they waited patiently for four years to move in together.’

  ‘That would be a sensible plan, if they’d worked it through carefully. They wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves. Is that a possibility? The team that worked in 2013 must have scrutinised their alibis.’

  ‘I hope so, although there wasn’t much to check. They alibied each other. Otherwise, there was just a neighbour who said she didn’t hear them go out, which doesn’t amount to anything. Dimas seemed stunned but then, if he knew that site was being developed, he’d have had time to prepare for the body being found. Drop me back at the station and I’ll go and see Lily Aston, tell her we’ve found her mother. You work with Patrick on trawling the records and getting the incident board up to speed. That’ll make sure he stays awake. Does he have any kind of social life?’

  ‘Patrick? He never says much. It must be hard for him, with Noah at home. He asked Lisa out a couple of times but then had to cancel because of Noah duties and in the end she told him not to bother.’

  Patrick lived with his brother, Noah, who’d had a stroke that had left him disabled. Patrick was run ragged at times, because he went home to his second job as a carer. He was stretched taut like a piece of elastic and she worried that he might snap. ‘Keep an eye on him. I can tell he admires you.’