The Secret Admirer: An absolutely gripping crime thriller (Detective Natalie Ward Book 6)

by Carol Wyer

  ‘Plenty of room for us all,’ he said. She followed them in. The man on the gurney groaned.

  ‘It’s all right, Tony, soon be over,’ said the porter. He lifted up the notes at the foot of the bed and read them silently as the lift ascended.

  The doors opened at the first floor and he juggled to manoeuvre the patient out, trolley wheels clattering as he hauled it into the corridor and thrust it in the direction of the operating theatre. Natalie pressed the button for the second floor and rubbed her hands on her thighs to remove the sweat. The doors opened with a swish and she found herself where she needed to be. A pile of plastic bags containing paper suits, much like the forensic team wore, were piled on a table next to a bin, along with a sign telling her to ensure all footwear was wrapped in protective covers. She dressed in one of the outfits then pressed the buzzer. Peering through the square window in the door, she could see nothing but doors. A nurse in green scrubs appeared and granted her entry onto the ward, heavy with silence apart from the beeping of machines.

  ‘I’ve come to see David Ward. I’m his wife.’

  The name badge indicated the woman was Staff Nurse Ursula Leifer.

  ‘He’s this way,’ said the nurse, taking her to a door halfway down.

  Natalie made no move to enter the room. ‘How bad is he?’

  ‘His vitals are acceptable. His ECG was fine and he has been conscious. The consultant will be along later to decide what will happen next. Obviously, they will have to assess what damage has been done, but initial signs are quite good. His father is with him at the moment.’ She opened the door and Natalie entered the white room, with white walls, white blinds at the window and a white locker beside a bed with white sheets. David looked pitifully small lying there, attached to machines. The oxygen mask was still in place. Eric was on chair beside the bed, head back, eyes shut. His blue-and-red striped jumper the only colours in the sterile room.

  ‘Eric?’

  His eyes snapped open and he struggled to his feet.

  ‘No, you stay there.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather have a walk to the canteen and get a cup of tea.’

  ‘Has he said anything more?’ Eric had told her David had spoken only one word – “why?”

  ‘Nothing apart from asking for you. He’s been drifting in and out of consciousness. You might have to wait a while before he comes round and speaks again.’

  ‘Take your time.’

  ‘I’ll be about half an hour at the most. I might ring Pam.’

  ‘You do that. I’ll have to go back to HQ, but I’ll stay here for as long as I can.’

  Eric shuffled away silently. The sprightly elderly man had become old. The loss of his granddaughter and his son’s attempt to commit suicide had added years to his face and whole demeanour. It was only a short while ago he’d been stripped off to the waist, working in their garden, mowing grass, digging out new borders and raking up moss, beads of sweat dripping from his face.

  ‘Hard work never killed anyone,’ he’d said when Natalie had tried to get him to slow down. He was right. It would be sadness that would do it for Eric.

  Natalie made for the chair at the side of the bed and was about to sit down when David mumbled something. She moved closer to hear him.

  ‘David?’

  His eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

  ‘David, it’s Natalie. You’re in hospital but you’re okay.’

  The eyelids fluttered again and one opened. His eye was glazed, and pink. ‘Nat.’

  ‘You’re okay.’

  ‘Nat. Why?’ He couldn’t say any more and she was reluctant to remove the oxygen mask so that he could speak more clearly. His eyelid closed and she thought he’d drifted off but then both eyes opened and he attempted to sit up, held back by the lines and tubes.

  ‘No, don’t move. Stay still. The doctor needs to examine you before you try to sit up.’

  He flopped back onto the pillow, either because of her words or lack of energy. ‘Why… am… I here?’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  His fingers moved, searching for her hand. He was vulnerable and confused so she took his hand, cool in her own. It seemed to calm him. He stared at the ceiling. A minute passed and he tried again.

  ‘I was… with Leigh. Did we… have… an accident? Is she… okay?’

  Natalie couldn’t speak for the thickening in her throat. His eyes fluttered again and shut, and this time he lost consciousness. She released his hand and stood up quietly. She had to report this to the nurses. One thing was certain, she couldn’t tell him the truth. That would have to come from the doctors and at a later stage.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Wednesday, 21 November – Evening

  Natalie tumbled into the office to find enthusiastic faces huddled around a screen.

  ‘What have you found?’

  ‘You won’t believe it,’ said Lucy.

  Natalie chucked her bag onto the floor, folded her arms, efficient again. Murray pressed the cursor and the footage ran. A silver Corsa drove up to traffic lights close to the campus entrance. The timestamp showed it was Saturday night at 8.46 p.m. The car was held in position waiting for the lights to turn green and the driver’s face was visible. It wasn’t Lennox at the wheel; it was the shaven-headed Rhiannon, staring sternly ahead. Natalie didn’t need to say a word. Lucy was already searching for her car keys under a pile of paperwork. The internal phone halted proceedings as Natalie took the call.

  ‘DI Ward.’

  ‘Nat, we have a match. We’ve uncovered evidence of Hattie’s blood and her DNA in the back seat of the silver Corsa.’ Mike’s discovery had come at exactly the right time for the team.

  ‘Thank you. You’ve just made our job a lot easier.’

  ‘You got a suspect?’

  ‘We have. Lucy and Murray are about to get her.’ Her words sent the pair scurrying at high speed down the corridor and helter-skelter towards the stairs.

  ‘Been a tough one.’

  ‘Not over yet but we’re a lot closer to a result.’

  ‘You’d better tell Dan that. He was prowling around here earlier hoping for new information. I’m under the distinct impression he’s under considerable pressure from his superiors. Wouldn’t harm your reputation to let him know.’

  Natalie caught his drift. He wanted her to get credit for a job well done. He believed in her abilities. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Break a leg.’

  She gave a satisfied smile. This time she had facts and proof. She always preferred it when she had something substantial to back up her theories.

  ‘Want me to prepare the evidence and stills for the interview?’ asked Ian.

  ‘Yes, please. I have to speak to the superintendent.’

  Rhiannon’s round face was as expressionless as Ryan’s had been. The tears had long dried and she listened to what Natalie had to say and glanced at the stills taken from the traffic camera without saying a word. She was trapped, with a great deal of evidence to prove her involvement. The duty solicitor had advised her to come clean. Withholding facts would only result in further charges. All that remained was for her to tell her version of events. She heaved a deep sigh.

  ‘Look, I know this looks bad, but I didn’t kill Gemma or Hattie. The whole thing got out of hand. If Hattie had been half as nice as she pretended to be, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Natalie.

  ‘Gemma is starting to get right on my tits and so’s Sasha. I’m sick of her coming around all the time, sitting about the house. She’s never out of the place. It’s like having a permanent, useless lodger, and if Gemma asks me one more time if I’m feeling okay in that girly voice and with that fucking bright smile on her face, I swear I’ll hit her,’ says Hattie, downing her vodka in one.

  ‘I second that. Miss Popular is an irritating cow,’ says Fran. ‘Here, Rhiannon, tell Hattie about what you’re up to.’


  ‘Shh!’

  ‘No, go on. She won’t say anything, will you, Hattie?’

  ‘Scout’s honour,’ says Hattie and makes the sign of the cross on her chest then giggles.

  ‘Well, if you don’t tell her, I will,’ says Fran. She grabs the vodka bottle and refills everyone’s glasses. They’ve been drinking solidly for over an hour and Rhiannon is feeling woozy. Hattie has confessed to spitting in Gemma’s coffee and stealing her favourite lipstick. Rhiannon can’t believe it. She thought Hattie was one of the good ones, but it turns out she’s as miserable and insecure as her and Fran. It’s all on account of her mother dying and her father being a vicar. She’s sick of being expected to be good and kind like him. Rhiannon belches sour breath. She ought to have eaten but she’s been starving herself to try and lose weight. None of the diets work. Starvation is the only way. The problem is, the less she eats the worse her complexion gets. She’s had another heavy outbreak of spots and there’s a whopper on the end of her nose that is still obvious, even with thick concealer covering it. She slugs the vodka.

  ‘Go on then,’ she says.

  Fran laughs. ‘Rhiannon’s had a brilliant idea. She’s running a catfishing scam and using Gemma’s picture as bait. It’s working too, isn’t it, Rhi?’

  Rhiannon smiles. Fran’s called her idea brilliant. It warms her insides and Hattie is staring at her open-mouthed.

  ‘Fucking brilliant,’ says Hattie, and Rhiannon is filled with a sudden happiness she rarely experiences.

  ‘Hattie thought the scam was a great idea, but after what happened to Gemma, she flipped. She blackmailed me to keep quiet even though I hadn’t got any money. My share of the £3,000 was in Lennox’s account. The idea had been to move it to a building society account, but after what happened to Gemma, I didn’t want anything else to do with it. I told him to keep it.’

  ‘How come Lennox got involved in this?’

  ‘Money. Lennox needed money. He’s been moaning about his mother stopping his allowance for ages and he was desperate for some cash. I proposed we went halves on anything we got if he set up the PayPal link to his account.’

  ‘Why? Why didn’t you set up a link to your account?’

  ‘I didn’t want the whole thing to blow up in my face and thought if it got traced, Lennox would take the blame.’

  ‘And he accepted that?’

  ‘Lennox is a spoilt rich kid. He isn’t used to having nothing to live on. He’s been struggling the last month, even cadging food and beer money off friends and housemates. He’d pretty much do anything for money.’

  ‘He had no part in setting up the dating profile?’

  ‘He only set up the PayPal link. I set up the profile.’

  ‘Tell me what happened after Hattie “flipped”,’ said Natalie.

  ‘Fran and I were in the kitchen. It was after you’d confiscated our phones and we were pretty low. Fran brought down a bottle of gin and we drank it. Hattie came in just as we were finishing the last of it. She said she’d phoned you and had been going to meet you to tell you about the scam but changed her mind at the last minute. She wanted £1,000 to keep quiet. I told her to get screwed. I hadn’t got it.’

  Hattie’s skirt is so long it almost sweeps across the floor. She looks like an extra in a television period drama.

  ‘If you don’t give me the money, I’ll go to the police. I mean it,’ says Hattie.

  ‘You fucking bitch!’ shouts Fran. ‘I thought you were our friend.’

  ‘That was before you got Gemma killed.’

  ‘We didn’t get her killed.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Then go to the police. Tell them. We’ll deny it and say you’ve been trying to blackmail us.’

  Hattie sneers. ‘Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.’

  She turns away, and in that instant, Fran utters an animal-like sound and rushes at her, bottle raised. It smashes against Hattie’s head and she topples.

  ‘Hattie! Hattie!’ Fran’s on her knees. ‘Hattie, I didn’t mean it. Wake up.’ She doubles over in tears.

  ‘Fran was crazy and I couldn’t calm her down. I wanted to take Hattie to the woods and bury her but Fran was having some sort of breakdown, and in the end I drove to the back of the old drama studio. It never gets used any more so I didn’t think she’d be found for a while.’

  ‘That wasn’t very well thought through, was it?’

  ‘No. I panicked. Fran was yelling about telling the police, and I knew if she did, she’d end up going to jail and I didn’t want that. She was my friend. I wanted to save her. I bought us some time. I suggested we drop our courses, move away, get a place together, maybe even ask for a transfer to another university.’

  ‘And what did she think about that idea?’

  ‘She was considering it.’

  ‘You say Hattie tried to blackmail you. Why didn’t she try to do the same to Lennox?’

  ‘She didn’t know about my arrangement with him. She thought I was behind the whole scam.’

  ‘And what happened to Fran?’

  Rhiannon rubbed her lips together, back and forth, then decided to speak.

  ‘She died.’

  ‘But how, Rhiannon? How did she die?’

  Rhiannon looked away and wouldn’t answer. Her lawyer urged her to talk but she shook her head.

  ‘Did you poison Fran with oxalic acid crystals?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Don’t start that with me!’

  Rhiannon shifted position, interlaced her fingers, her look far away as if lost in time. She cleared her throat. ‘Vodka. I poured her a glass of vodka to calm her down. Right up until that moment, I hadn’t really planned on going through with it.’

  ‘But you had oxalic acid crystals.’

  ‘Sort of. That’s to say, I didn’t have them on me. I knew where I’d find them. There’s a difference. I didn’t decide to use them until Fran forced me to. If she’d kept her cool or been a true friend, I’d never have been tempted to poison her. It was a crime of passion. The French justice system recognises it. It’s not like I actually set out to kill her… It happened. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I didn’t plan it. There’s a difference, surely?’ She faced her lawyer. ‘There is a difference, right?’

  The young man representing Rhiannon brushed her off with a cool stare and Natalie urged, ‘Tell us what happened.’

  Rhiannon stared straight ahead and began…

  Fran is marching up and down the small kitchen, her face crimson with anger. ‘It’s your fucking fault we’re in this mess.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘You and that stupid scam.’

  ‘You killed Hattie, not me!’

  ‘Fuck off! It was an accident, and if I’d dialled 999 and called it in, I wouldn’t be in this shitty mess. It was your idea to drive her to campus and dump her. I was out of my mind and scared and you manipulated me.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘You fucking well did. You used the fact I was scared and drunk and set me up. You even used my car to do it, you bitch! I’m going to tell the police everything. I might even be able to make some sort of deal with them to get off.’

  Rhiannon can’t believe what she’s hearing. She’s tried to save her friend from prison and this is the gratitude she gets. She spies the yellow Marigold gloves hanging over the tap from when they were last used. Hattie, no doubt. She always used gloves. Fran is still hurling abuse at her.

  ‘Stop it. We’re friends, Fran.’

  ‘You’re not my friend. You’re a fucking leech. You hang around all the time and are so thick-skinned you don’t know when you are not wanted. I’m sick to death of you coming around every single day, but even after I tell you to leave me alone to work, you text or reappear later, and now you’ve dragged me into this. I wish I’d never met you…’

  Rhiannon doesn’t hear the rest of her words for the buzzing in her ears. Fran is her one true friend. How could she say such things?

&
nbsp; ‘You’re just upset. I’m going to get a drink for us and then we can sort this out. We’ll go to the police, confess, and I’ll explain it was my fault Hattie was taken to the drama studio. I’ll tell them what happened was an accident and that she attacked you first. We’ll fix this,’ she says with a calm she doesn’t feel.

  The fight whooshes out of Fran, who slumps onto a chair and doesn’t notice Rhiannon pick up the gloves. Rhiannon heads to the sitting room, where she checks the shelf and lifts a miniature bottle of vodka, one of a few bottles that still has alcohol in it, and pours the contents into a tumbler. Then she heads for the cupboard. Lennox’s car-washing kit is in a box on the shelf, and donning the gloves, she pulls it down and hunts for the acid crystals. It’s in the hands of the fates now. If he’s used up the oxalic acid crystals, she’ll return to Fran, have a drink and then discuss what to tell the police. That’s not how she wants to play this. She doesn’t want to spend any time in jail, and if she’s honest, she knows they’ll both be charged with numerous offences – at best, manslaughter, which carries a prison sentence with it. She gives a smile as she spies a small jar. The fates have decided, and she tips a few of the crystals into the tumbler, swilling until they dissolve.

  ‘Fran only had one sip. The poison took no time at all to act. I carried her to my car, got her into the passenger seat and drove. At first, I was going to leave her in the same place as Hattie, but I spotted the blankets in the abandoned doorway and stopped there. It was more convenient. I didn’t think anyone would find her straight away and I’d have time to return with a suicide note to leave with her body. I typed a note saying she’d killed herself because she was responsible for the whole scam and Hattie’s death and was on my way back when I saw the police vehicles. You’d already found her.’