by Jade Winters
At the end of her shift, as she drove home, Ashley mentally prioritised the problems she faced. This exercise always helped put things into perspective. As frustrating as it was, there was nothing she could do for Nathan at the moment, because she had no information to go on. As much as she hated the thought of it, she’d have to do what Colleen said – sit it out. She had to wait until the thirty-six hours were up, at which time her colleagues would be forced to make a move – charge or release him. They could apply to the court for an extension of up to ninety-six hours, but Ashley doubted they would. Nathan clearly wasn’t a career criminal or serial murderer and a court was hardly going to grant it without some solid evidence against him. At least there was some light at the end of the tunnel in which Nathan sat. As for Tasha, that was a whole other matter.
Chapter Fourteen
Whilst Ashley stood in the damp morning air waiting for Dale to pick her up, she watched the dark grey clouds move slowly across the sky. It prompted her to think about the weather in Australia. It was the summer season there now, and she wondered if Tasha would take advantage of the warm weather. Ashley still hadn’t heard from her. It was as if Tasha was punishing her for Aaron’s crime. She couldn’t believe it had taken mere days for her life to be turned completely upside down.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She tried to remember the last time she and Tasha had truly laughed together like they had when they first met, but she couldn’t think of one occasion since Tasha had been released from the hospital. Now that Nathan appeared to be in serious trouble, she wondered if she’d ever laugh again.
Dale’s blue Audi stopped in the middle of the road, and she jogged towards it.
“Thanks for picking me up,” she said as she climbed in and buckled up. “I’ve had about two hours sleep. I don’t think I’m fit to drive.”
“This must be so tough on you both,” he said. The car moved slowly up the road.
Ashley cleared her voice. “Tasha isn’t here.”
“Oh, right,” he said nonchalantly. “Where is she?”
“In Australia.”
Dale slammed on the brakes and turned his face towards her. “What is she doing there?”
Ashley glanced at him and smiled. “She needed a break, apparently.”
“Shit, I’m sorry, Ash. That’s awful.”
“Nah, don’t be. It’s just as well, really. I don’t think I could have coped with Nathan, reporters, and Tasha at the same time. She’ll be back soon enough.” Ashley switched the subject to more emotionally stable ground. “Speaking of work, Colleen e-mailed me to say the Johnson report I left on her desk was ‘satisfactory’, as she put it. So, at least we can finally close that case.”
She and Dale had been working on an assault case. The ex-husband of a socialite had viciously assaulted her new beau. Just when they thought they wouldn’t be able to charge him because of his air-tight alibi, Ashley dug a little deeper only to find footage of him at a petrol station buying cigarettes when he said he was at home with his mum.
“Thank God for that. I wonder if a charge will be filed against his mum for obstructing justice,” Dale said.
“I hope not. I believed her when she said she thought he’d gone to bed. Why would she think a grown man would be skulking off in to the night to beat up some poor, defenceless guy?” Ashley replied.
He rolled his eyes. “Mothers and their sons.” Dale laughed.
The school was quieter than the day before with most of the students in class. Ashley and Dale waited in Mrs. Heywood’s office whilst her secretary went to fetch Helena. In the middle of chit chat about the weather and Abbi Connor’s unchanged condition, there was a meek rap at the door before it was slowly pushed open. A girl with reddish brown hair stepped into the room, sporting a bruised eye on her fair skin.
Ashley rose slowly and smiled at her, before reaching out her hand. “Hello, you must be Helena.”
Helena smiled hesitantly as she placed her small hand in Ashley’s.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Ashley said reassuringly. “We just want to ask you a few questions about Abbi Connor if that’s okay?”
Helena nodded timidly. “Is…is she going to be alright?”
Ashley sat back down again. Her eyes flickered to Helena’s. She wasn’t going to lie to the young girl. “It’s still early yet. Now I heard you weren’t at school yesterday...”
“No, I went home early because I had a…well it wasn’t exactly a fight, but Abbi hit me.”
“And she did that to your face?” Ashley asked gesturing to Helena’s black eye.
Helena bowed her head. “Yes.”
Ashley could not get her head around fights in schools. Pupils basically assaulted one another and were never brought to task. If somebody whacked a colleague at work in the face they would be brought up on assault charges but in schools they managed to get away with labelling physical violence as bullying.
“Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Abbi?”
Helena tentatively touched her eye. “Not a lot of people liked her. But I don’t know who would try and kill her.”
Dale shifted forward in his seat. “So you don’t think it was an accident?”
Helena shrugged. “I don’t know. Why else would you hit someone with a car in a car park if it wasn’t to harm them?”
“Do you have a boyfriend, Helena?” Ashley asked.
Helena shook her head. “No.”
“Do you ever hang out with older kids?” Maybe one of Helena’s friends thought they might give Abbi a bit of her own medicine, but had taken it a step too far.
Helena’s cheeks turned scarlet pink. “No, I don’t have many friends. I’m more unpopular than even Abbi is.”
Ashley wrapped up the interview within the next few minutes. She believed every word Helena had said. The timid girl looked like she had never told a lie in her whole life. This took them back to square one again. It was now time to visit Abbi’s parents at their home and see what they could add to the mix.
As they made their way over to the Connor household, Ashley’s phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and turned to Dale. “It’s Colleen.” She answered, hoping it was good news about Nathan.
As she listened to Colleen speak, Ashley felt a heavy weight settle in the pit of her stomach. She carried on listening for a few more minutes before saying a curt goodbye.
“Dale, turn around please. I need to pick up my car. I have to go to Nathan’s flat.”
“Are you going to tell me what Colleen said?”
She smoothed her hair on either side of her head with the palms of both hands. “Dale, they got an extension from the court. They’re holding him for another thirty-six hours.”
“Put the address in the Sat Nav. I’ll take you there.”
“No, you should go and see Abbi’s parents.”
Dale drummed the steering wheel with two fingers. “We can both go later.”
Ashley leaned forward and tapped her brother’s postcode onto the Sat Nav screen, then settled back in her seat. Things must be more serious than she’d anticipated. She had to try and find out what was going on. Maybe by searching Nathan’s flat she would find a clue – anything that could shed light on his involvement with the case. None of it made any sense.
“If no one’s going to tell me anything, I’m going to have to look for the answers myself,” she said, more to herself than to Dale.
Chapter Fifteen
Dale followed the navigation instructions and headed for Nathan’s two-bedroom apartment in a grade-two-listed building, minutes from Harlow’s high street. Fifteen minutes later, he brought the car to a halt on the wide, pebbled driveway. Four, large, bay windows overlooked the immaculately landscaped communal garden. The fronts of the three adjacent houses were covered with scaffolding up to the roofs.
Switching off the engine, Dale turned to Ashley. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
Ashley shook her head as she unbuckled he
r seatbelt. “No. I won’t be long.”
She got out of the car and walked up a set of concrete steps to the grey front door, glancing briefly at a tall figure looking out of a bottom window of the building. Her hand was poised to insert the key into the lock when she heard footsteps crunching on the gravel behind her. Turning, she saw the heavily jowled face of the building manager, Mick Rodgers, who was heading towards her.
“Ah, Ms. McCoy. I was wondering when one of your lot were going to show up,” he said, stopping at the bottom of the steps.
“Sorry?”
Mick walked up the steps and stood next to her, taking a bunch of keys from the pocket of his navy trousers. He opened the door.
“I take it you’ve spoken to your brother about the break-in,” he said as he pushed the door open and gestured for Ashley to enter first. “I know nothing was taken, but it’s not the sort of thing we want happening round here.”
“I’m sorry, Mick, but I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” Ashley made her way along the communal hallway and through a glass door that led to Nathan’s apartment. Mick was right behind her.
“Oh, I thought that’s why you were here.”
“No, I’m here to pick up a few bits for Nathan,” she said, stopping outside Nathan’s door. “Nathan’s flat was broken into? When did you say this happened?” Ashley wondered why Mick hadn’t mentioned the police search. Maybe he wasn’t around at the time.
“Oh, let’s see.” Mick looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “It would have been Tuesday, I think. Yes, that’s right. Tuesday. That was the day of our tenants committee meeting. Nathan thought he’d left his door open by mistake. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if it wasn’t for one of the tenants mentioning a strange man lurking about in the hallway. At first I thought it might be one of the painters working on the other properties, but I spoke to the foreman. He reassured me his workers would not have entered the property. Plus, his painters wear overalls.”
“Did the tenant say what this man looked like?”
He shook his head. “No. Apparently, he was wearing one of those hoodies. Personally, I think those bloody things should be banned–”
“–What about ethnicity, height, build?”
“Well, Ms. Richards said he was white and enormous, but coming from her, that’s not much to go by, seeing as she’s barely five foot tall, most average sized people look enormous to her.” He chuckled at his own joke.
Ashley inserted the key and left it in the lock before taking her card out of her pocket and handing it to him. “If you can get Ms. Richards to give me a call for a quick chat, I’d appreciate it.”
He nodded. “Not a problem.” He turned and walked back towards the entrance.
As soon as he was out of sight, Ashley leaned her forehead against the door. A break-in? Could this have something to do with the case? Had the suspect left evidence inside her brother’s flat? Is that why they were holding him for so long? There was only one way to find out. She opened the door a fraction. It squeaked like a baby mouse. She froze for a moment, feeling as though she was somehow violating her brother’s privacy. Shaking her head, she realised what a silly thought that was and pushed the door open completely before stepping through into the hallway.
Seconds later, she was in the living room, her eyes sweeping over the carnage and tell-tale signs that the police had searched the place. Cushions with their covers removed were strewn across the floor. A bookcase was pulled away from the wall, its contents scattered everywhere. The search had been thorough, and the living room was probably the place where it began. Ashley knew the procedure, how the searches went. She also knew that as the search continued through the premises, the officers got lazier as they tired of prowling through the lives of strangers.
She paused in the doorway, bending to pick up a framed picture that lay face down on the wooden floorboards. It was cold in her hand. She turned it over, gently brushing away the broken glass. It was a picture of her entire family, gathered together for Ashley’s birthday the year before. Ashley remembered that night, the happy evening spent together and the warmth and laughter that had permeated the entire night. It seemed like a lifetime ago. She gazed at the picture, running her thumb over Nathan’s smiling face. She put the photo frame down gently on a side table that had been left untouched amid the chaos of the room.
The kitchen was in a similar state. The cupboards had been completely emptied, the contents of the fridge strewn across the table. Drawers had been pulled out and thrown down on the floor, upside down with their contents scattered around them. She walked over to the opposite wall and eyed the day calendar hanging there.
Her eyes fell to the second of the month, the date Nathan had been arrested. “Work drinks at Moe’s” was written in the space below the date. The rest of the month was blank. She let out a sigh. The calendar had no glaring details that were of any particular interest. She knew Moe’s was a bar near his workplace, so that was nothing new.
She left the kitchen and headed towards Nathan’s bedroom. The door was partially open, and from the end of the hall she could see a small sliver of his bed through the gap. Ashley really didn’t want to look in there, in case she found something that would incriminate him. But her feet propelled her down the hallway. She tentatively reached out towards the door. It was as though the actions of her body were beyond her control.
The mess in the bedroom wasn’t as bad as in the other rooms of the flat. Clearly, those who carried out the search had begun to believe or realise the evidence they were looking for wasn’t to be found in Nathan’s flat. The search in the bedroom had been less intense than the one carried out in the living room and kitchen, but still fairly thorough. The covers had been removed from the bed and the mattress was half hanging off the frame, indicating it had been checked. Drawers had been emptied and piled on top of each other, and clothes and paperwork were spread across the floor. These had been examined and discarded like everything else.
Nathan’s wardrobe had been emptied. The clothes, still somehow on their hangers, were thrown carelessly on top of the mattress, and the doors of the wardrobe were wide open. Ashley began to think there may actually be no secrets to find.
Crossing the room, she remembered Nathan used to hide things in his wardrobe back at the family house when he was a kid. He’d created a hiding place in the base, putting anything in it he deemed too personal for family members to know about. His secret space.
She knelt down and ran her hands over the wooden base. It felt completely smooth – she could feel no lines or imperfections. She pressed a little harder, but still, there was nothing. She gave up and began to climb to her feet, using the base of the wardrobe for support. Something beneath her hand gave way, almost sending her tumbling into the wardrobe itself. She righted herself quickly, kneeling down again with her hand still pressing on the board that had risen, using her free hand to grasp the end and lift it up.
There was something in there. She said a silent prayer that it not be the murder weapon, then taking a deep breath, she pulled the board away. Placing it to one side, she reached inside the gaping hole.
Ashley lifted out a thick folder, tightly bound with twine. She rested it on her lap and tried to put the board back in place. She jiggled and wiggled it, attempting to fit it as seamlessly in the gap as she could. She ignored the urge to look inside the folder straight away. She wanted to get out of the flat in case her colleagues decided to come back for a second search and found her holding evidence
Finally, Ashley got the board in place and stood up. She grabbed a few items of clothing and shoved them into a sports bag she found by the door. She looked around once more before she left the room, and then hurried out of the flat. As she stepped out of the door, she ran straight into Mick, who’d obviously been snooping outside.
“Oh, err, I was just coming to check if everything was alright,” he said. His face flushed as he eyed the bag she held in her hand.
&nb
sp; “Everything’s fine,” she said. She closed the apartment door behind her and brushed past him. Her heart pounded as she made her way out of the building, feeling as if her prize was about to burn a hole in the bag she held at her side.
Reaching the car, she flung the passenger door open and got in, desperate to see what was inside the folder. She tossed the bag containing Nathan’s clothes onto the back seat.
“What’s in there?” Dale asked, staring down at the folder Ashley held on her lap as she sat down.
“I haven’t looked inside yet. I found it hidden in Nathan’s wardrobe.”
Dale smirked. “Don’t worry. I don’t think you’re going to find the murder weapon in there, Ashley,” he said. “It’s most probably a work file or something.”
“In a hidden compartment in the bottom of his cupboard?” She rolled her eyes. “Dale, I was talking to the building manager and he told me Nathan’s flat was broken into last week.”
“Really? Did Nathan say anything to you about it?”
“No. Apparently nothing was stolen. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”
“Maybe the would-be burglar didn’t find anything that took his fancy.”
“Impossible. Nathan’s got valuable stuff in there, stuff that would make a burglar’s head spin.”
“So what are you thinking?”
Ashley turned to him, her eyes wide, and her face bright with hope. “What if he wasn’t there to take something? What if he was there to plant something instead?”
Dale glanced across at her. “Like what, exactly?”
Ashley scrutinised the blank cover of the folder in her lap. She couldn’t help but wonder why Nathan would feel compelled to hide it in his own home.
“Like whatever’s in this folder.”
“There’s only one way to solve the mystery,” Dale said.
Ashley took a breath, dreading what truth might be unveiled. Tentatively, she flipped the front cover of the folder open. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t. There was a full-page photo of a woman twisted and bound in an awful position, with a man behind her. His erect penis was in full view, and, by the look on the woman’s face, she wasn’t enjoying herself as much as he was. Ashley flipped through page after page of similar images, bile rising in her throat as she took in the degrading pictures. She wanted to scream as it dawned on her what she was looking at. It was a folder full of hard-core pornography.