by Vicky Jones
“What is it, Dawn?”
“I received the report from the Ofsted lead inspector. Everything was good except for one thing. Katie, you’ve put the children in serious danger, do you realise that?”
Katie felt her heart thud. Her stomach flipped over. She swallowed to stop herself from throwing up. “Oh, my God, Dawn. I am so sorry. I wish I’d told you sooner what I did. But I just didn’t know how to say it.”
Dawn’s voice softened. “You could have just told me. We’ve been friends for how long now? You have never let me down before. But this? I don’t know how to get over this mistake. The only saving grace is that the health and safety certificate hasn’t expired yet. We’ve got until midnight tonight to get it updated, and renew the public liability insurance, and I managed to finally sweet talk Cynthia Lawton into giving us the benefit of the time window. But Katie, if you didn’t get chance to do it, then I would have preferred you to tell me.”
Dawn’s words were a blur. Then Katie remembered. She was all ready to press submit after filling in the health and safety form when Rachel had called her with an update. She’d left her computer and completely forgotten the form.
“Oh, Dawn, I’m so sorry. I’ll get it sorted; I promise.” She looked at Dawn, but her face was still fixed in a disappointed expression, one Katie couldn’t ever remember seeing on her in all the years she’d known Dawn. It cut her to the bone.
Chloe appeared behind Rachel sitting in the canteen early Monday morning and placed a photocopy of page four of the Daily Star down on the table. Rachel turned to see her with a slight smile on her face. “So, apparently someone gave the press an anonymous tip-off over the weekend,” Chloe said, tongue firmly in cheek. Rachel put down her bacon sandwich and perused the article.
“I wonder who could have done that,” Rachel replied.
“I don’t know. Probably someone wanting to get the press hungry for a scandal? Maybe it was someone who’d just returned from speaking to a previously unknown witness, perhaps? So the case would get the green light to be reopened, especially now as there’s mention of ‘new information’. I mean, I’m just guessing here.” Chloe’s twinkling eyes fixed on Rachel’s.
“No comment,” Rachel said with a crease at the corner of her lips.
“How did you get on when you visited the Spencer property? Did you see the cabin shed?”
“Yeah. Hell of a fall from that height. Poor kid wouldn’t have stood a chance hitting that rock underneath.” Rachel secured the lid on her coffee and stood up. “Right, Sharp. Looks like we’ve got work to do.”
“How the fuck could you be so stupid?” Jenny raged down the phone. Katie held it away from her ear, waiting for the initial tidal wave of anger to subside. “Pam Parker’s just rung me. It’s all over the Star. Have you given a tip-off to a tabloid rag?”
Horrified, Katie gasped. “No, of course not. It was nothing to do with me. I swear. I didn’t even know the paper was going to run a story.”
“It’s really suiting you, all of this ‘I can’t remember shit’ bollocks, isn’t it? Well, these things have consequences, Katie. I just hope you don’t live to regret what the press know now. It won’t be long before they put a name to the killer. And you’ll deserve all you get. You’ve had twenty years of not having to live with the knowledge of what you did. Well, now you get to reap what you sow.”
Jenny rang off, leaving Katie to sit at her kitchen table in stunned shock.
Sat at the table in Rachel’s office, Chloe was beavering away, highlighting key lines in a photocopied version of the Spencer case file, including the medical report.
“OK. So, apparently, after it was ruled as an accidental death, a kind of strategy meeting was held. But only a few professionals attended. There was a psychiatrist, a police officer and a social worker to determine what to do with Katie in the best interests of all involved.”
Rachel looked over the top of her coffee cup at Chloe. “Any names?”
“Yep. The psychiatrist and the social worker are named. No mention of which police officer was present, though. But I guess it would have been the SIO on the case, right?”
“More than likely. But how many DIs have walked through the hallways of Merseyside Police over the years, eh? God knows where they’d be now. OK, give me what you have.” Rachel waited for Chloe to write down the names and pass them over to her.
“Oh, and here’s the name of the reverend at the church nearest to the Spencer residence. He’s still there now,” Chloe said, passing over scrap of paper.
“Thanks, Sharp. I’ll pop over there this afternoon. See what his take on all of this sad business is.”
Rachel parked in a small village car park in Allerton and headed down a narrow pathway, bordered by rose bushes, through the lichgate and up to a red brick modern church.
In its grounds were numerous flower beds, bursting with clematis and primrose bushes. There was a small memorial garden with a bench and brass plaques on sticks in the ground. A jumble of old headstones in the graveyard stood at crooked angles as the ground encasing them had subsided over the years.
Rachel walked over to the arched wooden door and into the church entrance. At the far end of the nave, she saw an elderly man with tufts of white hair circling a shiny bald head lighting a sconce of candles in silent prayer. He was wearing a black suit with a white dog collar, it providing the only shard of colour in his sober grey shirt. As Rachel approached him down the scarlet carpeted aisle, he looked up over the top of his half-moon glasses and flashed a saintly smile.
“Can I help you, young lady?” he said in a raspy voice.
“Are you Reverend Carlisle?” Rachel asked.
The vicar put down his lighting taper and clasped his hands over his middle. “Yes, I am. Call me Clive. I haven’t seen you here before.”
Rachel reached into her jacket pocket and showed Clive her warrant card. “I did leave a message that I was going to call in this afternoon, but…”
Clive shook his head and smiled again. “It’s fine. I’ve just had a journalist in this morning asking questions about… Never mind. How can I help?” he squinted down at Rachel’s warrant card. “Detective Inspector. It must be important if they’ve sent you.” He held his arm out to lead her into his vestry. “Please accept my apologies for being a little put out just then. It’s just I’ve a lot to do. I’ve got a wedding coming up this weekend, and the rehearsal is tonight so…”
“I won’t keep you long. I understand you’ve been the vicar here since 1998, is that right?”
The vicar chuckled and interlaced his fingers. “Probably longer. There isn’t a child in this village I haven’t baptised.”
“Do you remember a local boy, Robbie Reynolds? He lived on Hancock Street, by the park just across the way there.” Rachel pointed out of the vestry window to the main road at the end of the graveyard. “About twenty years ago?”
“Hancock Street, you say?” Clive looked inward for a moment as he searched his memory bank. A few seconds passed before he shook his head. “No. I don’t remember a Robbie living there. Is it important?”
“I’m looking into an old case, chasing up some witnesses. When I spoke to Robbie—”
“You spoke to him?” Clive said, looking up from the papers he was shuffling on his desk.
“Yes.”
“Which case did you say you were looking into?” Clive asked.
“I didn’t.”
“The only incident I remember from twenty years ago was…” He broke off and shook his head. “That poor dear child. Dead.” He tutted and crossed himself. “God rest her soul. But that was all sorted. Accident, they said.”
Rachel nodded. “I’m just dotting i’s and crossing t’s. You know how it is. Only, there was one thing Robbie said when I spoke to him. He saw what happened and needed to tell someone. He said he spoke to a local vicar after the accident. Did he come to you, or any of your colleagues?” Rachel took out her notebook, hopeful of a name.
“No. No, he didn’t. I mean, I can’t speak for any of my fellow vicars, but he most definitely didn’t come to me.”
“How much do you remember about the Spencer case? Did you know the family?”
Clive shook his head. “Not all that well. Peter Spencer, the father, wasn’t very religious. I figured it was because his wife died only a few years after Mollie was born. Now I come to think of it, I can’t remember him, or the children, ever attending Sunday service. I was asked to conduct little Mollie’s funeral, though, but only because the church is so local to them. I hadn’t met Mr. Spencer until a few days before the service. He wanted to go over a few details of what he wanted for poor little Mollie.” He screwed his lined face into a grimace. “That poor sister of hers, Katie, must have felt terrible about what she did, may God forgive her. Such a tragedy.”
Rachel’s ears pricked up. “Katie? What leads you to think Katie was involved?”
Clive paused. He licked his papery thin lips and swallowed. “I must have read it in the paper. It was a big story at the time. It was all everyone was talking about.”
“I don’t remember seeing in the case notes that the papers printed Katie’s name.” She waited to see his reactions. He thought on what she’d said for a moment, blinking and fumbling with a piece of cloth he’d picked up from his desk.
“Oh, well, you know what small villages are like for gossip. That’s what I heard. Now, was there anything else, Detective Inspector? I’m quite busy and I must get on.” He headed to the vestry door and opened it wide.
“Thank you, Reverend Carlisle. I appreciate your time. I’ll see myself out.” Rachel left the vestry, the door closing behind her. She walked back the length of the church nave and towards the exit.
“Excuse me, dear. Do you know where the Reverend Carlisle is?”
An elderly woman with tightly permed grey hair appeared at Rachel’s side. She was wearing a lilac cardigan, beige trousers and a white blouse. A silver and pearl brooch caught the sunlight as Rachel opened the church door.
“He’s in the vestry.” She smiled at the old lady and turned to leave.
“Thank you.” The old lady tottered off down the aisle, her suede loafers padding along the carpet. Rachel had a thought.
“Sorry, excuse me? You might be able to help me.”
The old lady turned and walked back to Rachel. “If I can, dear. My name is Joyce Darwin. I’m church warden here. And you are?”
Rachel fished out her warrant card. Joyce fumbled in her pocket for her reading glasses. “Oh, a detective inspector. Why, that’s interesting. How can I help with your enquiries?” Joyce stood open-faced, as if she were centre stage in an episode of Midsomer Murders.
“Do you remember the Reynolds family? From Hancock Street. Lived there about twenty years back?”
The old lady thought on the question for a few moments. Her light blue eyes lit up as the memory came to her. “Oh, yes. A quiet family. Kept themselves to themselves. Not that religious,” Joyce added in a whisper. “But their boy, Robbie, was a lovely young chap. So very helpful. Cute as a button, a head full of brown curls. We had a lot of young boys come through here back then, with the Sunday school. But Robbie was different. Never came to the Sunday school, but was always hanging around doing odd jobs for the vicar. Family was quite poor, so any cash young Robbie could earn used to help them a lot. I tried to give him a little extra when he mowed my lawn. Such a sweet boy.” Joyce rambled on as she reminisced. Rachel rolled her hand to move her on quicker. “Every now and again the vicar would send him home with a few tins from the harvest festival baskets. Just to help them along. He couldn’t bear the thought of him not having a decent feed. Said he needed some meat on his bones, so he could be fit and strong to help him with the odd jobs around here.”
“So the vicar knew Robbie well, then?” Rachel asked, making notes.
Joyce’s wrinkly face creased into a wide smile. Her eyes twinkled. “Oh, yes. Robbie was like his shadow. Wherever Reverend Carlisle went, Robbie went. Well, that is, until one day. Robbie just seemed to disappear. We never saw him around the church, or the village, again.”
Rachel stood with her pen poised over her notebook. “Mrs. Darwin, when did Robbie disappear? Was it before Mollie Spencer died? Or after?”
Joyce thought on it for what felt like an age. Finally, she prodded the air with her long, bony finger. “After. It was definitely after that dear little Spencer girl died.”
Rachel reached out to shake Joyce’s hand, which the old lady took heartily. “Thank you, Mrs. Darwin. You’ve been incredibly helpful.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Now, was it the vestry you said the reverend was in?”
Rachel returned to her office later that afternoon, Joyce Darwin’s words still reverberating around her brain. If she was telling the truth, then that meant Reverend Carlisle was telling lies. But why? She sat with a thud in her office chair and, as if her prayers had been answered, Chloe Sharp appeared holding a cup of freshly brewed coffee.
“I saw how you walked in. Figured you’d need this. Tina’s on her way in with her famous ginger cake. Try it, you won’t regret it.” Chloe’s chipper face darkened when she saw Rachel’s hadn’t moved. “Penny for them?”
“I’ve just come back from speaking to that vicar. Reckons he’s never heard of Robbie Reynolds. But I spoke to the church warden on the way out who told me a completely different story, so…” Rachel spread her hands.
“Which vicar is this?” Tina Saunders said as she walked in holding a tartan-coloured cake tin.
“The one from St Mary’s, near Hancock Street in Allerton. Clive Carlisle. You ever come across him on any of your church fundraisers?”
Tina’s face clouded over. “I shouldn’t really speak ill of a member of the church. It’s not very Christian.”
“But?” Rachel said, leaning forward.
“Well, I’ve always had a bit of a bad feeling about him.” She hugged the tin close to her chest, her cardigan buttons clanging against the metal. “Outside that church, he has a bit of a reputation. But nobody really discusses it openly, if you know what I mean?” She shook her head, as if wishing she’d never mentioned anything. “It’s all gossip, really. Cake?” she held out the tin, which Rachel waved away.
“What gossip?” Rachel said, standing up. Before Tina could answer, Mags burst into the office behind her.
“Well, you’ll all be pleased to hear that case Bradley and I were working on this week is all boxed off. Mother and daughter are now reunited, hatchet buried and planning a bloody good holiday, so I’m told.” She smiled at the faces in the room, looking at them one by one for accolade.
“Well done, Mags. Another one off the list,” Rachel said.
“I’ve asked Johnny to type up the notes now and get it logged as solved on the database. On to the next one then, eh, Johnny-boy?” Mags called out to Bradley, who was sat at his desk giving Mags a thumbs-up. She swept out of Rachel’s office as quickly as she’d swept in, leaving only a waft of Lancôme in her wake. Tina turned to leave also, cake tin still full.
“You OK?” Chloe asked when it was just the two of them left in the office.
Rachel’s eyes were unfocused, her thoughts racing. “Hmm?”
“You OK?” Chloe repeated. “You don’t seem to be with it, not since you came back from speaking to that vicar.”
Rachel took a huge swig from her coffee. “This Mollie Spencer case is really foxing me. I don’t know whether I’m opening up a can of worms here. I’m going off the word from an eighty-odd-year-old church warden that the local man of the cloth is telling lies to me. Whose memory do I believe?” He tired brown eyes locked with Chloe’s sympathetic ones.
Chloe exhaled and perched on the edge of Rachel’s desk. “I was always told to ‘follow the evidence’. If something doesn’t slot together, or make sense, then there’s a reason for it. If I were you, I’d investigate every detail until it made sense. And if it’s nothing, at the end o
f all of this, then at least you can say you did all you could and officially close the case.”
Rachel’s brow softened. “I’ll speak to the social worker who was involved in the meeting about Katie, then the psychiatrist and the police officer, if I can find out who it was and where they are now. At least that might join a few dots.”
“Won’t Robbie talk to you? Maybe if you tried again? It’s been a few days now since you met with him. He might have calmed down.”
Rachel shook her head. “No. He despises the police. The look he gave me was pure hate. I don’t blame him, really. If he told the police something serious, but they didn’t believe him, or follow it up, there’s no way he’d have any faith to try that again. Especially as he ran away from home over it.”
“Who did he speak to when he came into the station?”
“No record was ever made of him even coming in, let alone the name of the officer he spoke to.”
Chloe thought on that for a moment. “I suppose there is a chance Robbie could have lied? Maybe he had more to do with Mollie’s death than we thought. Maybe he said he came into the station to cover himself? And when they didn’t take him seriously it made him feel he was in the clear? It’s all ifs and buts, I guess.”
“He could have lied, yes. But so could the police.”
“Really?”
“It happens. More than you would think sometimes.”
“Why, though? Why would the police cover up the truth about how a little girl died?”
Chapter 22
Rachel pocketed her warrant card after introducing herself to the pleasant, open-faced young receptionist of a private therapy practice on Rodney Street. The small waiting room she was now sitting in had off-white-painted walls, a lilac carpet and lilac faux leather tub chairs. There was a small coffee table in the middle of the room, laden with leaflets asking the reader if they had ever considered how amazing the ‘inner you’ would be if only they could learn to love themselves. Rachel inwardly rolled her eyes and sat patiently while the receptionist rang through to the therapist she had come to speak to.