* * *
There were no messages for her when she finished in court that evening, either at the reception desk or on her phone. She drove out of the car park, acknowledging the security guard with a brief wave. Ray would like to chat, she knew; he was recently divorced and liked to feel a part of other people’s lives. She thought he also missed the canteen gossip of his co-workers on the police force. Ironic that he had left the force to please his wife, but she had walked out on him because she found him dull outside of the world of crime and imminent danger. Sara felt bad that she hadn’t stopped, but didn’t feel up to Ray’s questions, or the excitement that sparked in his eyes when he asked her about Megan.
So she escaped without saying a word, turning left at The Strand and skirting the southern edge of the city, towards home. The sun was still shining, and the blue sky created a stunning backdrop to the pink-and-white cherry blossom in a few of the gardens along the route.
Megan had been afraid, she was sure of that, and she hadn’t been lying about her stalker. After working in the courts for fifteen years, Sara knew genuine fear when she saw it. If Megan had lied about going to the police, it was because she didn’t trust them, and being in care was enough to make most young people distrust any government agency, especially the police.
Her street was already crammed with cars and she had to park fifty yards from her house. Unable to stop herself, she dialled her message service as she walked back. Nothing — no messages — not even a missed call. In her hall, the LED on the answering machine was flashing and she pressed the new messages button eagerly, offering up a silent prayer. It was her mother, wondering why she hadn’t been in touch. She cancelled the message half-way through, feeling a pang of guilt. The phone rang immediately, and she jumped, giving a yelp of surprise. She picked up on the second ring, unable entirely to control the tremor in her hand.
‘Hello?’
The line was silent.
‘Megan?’
She was about to hang up when she noticed a faint sound, like the hiss of wind or the distant roar of the sea. Traffic, she thought. ‘Megan, is that you?’
She heard a click and the line went dead.
She punched one-four-seven-one, her hand still unsteady. Number withheld. Sara stood in the hall, listening to the house. It seemed too still, as it often felt after she woke from a bad dream.
She picked up an umbrella from the hallstand as a weapon and went from room to room, opening doors, looking behind furniture. In the kitchen, she rattled the door handle of the back door to establish it was secure and then moved on to the upper floors, opening every cupboard and wardrobe, checking for intruders. She even flung back the shower curtain in the bathroom, brandishing the umbrella in a heroic gesture. The house was empty.
‘Idiot,’ she muttered, dumping the umbrella in the bathtub.
She had left the door to Megan’s office open. Now, she returned to it and looked around the room. This was where Megan worked, where she spent most of her day, and yet it was as blank and featureless as if she had moved in days before, rather than months.
The desk was empty, except for the phone extension; the police had taken everything else: the monitor, the CPU, even the cables and power leads. All that remained was a thin film of dust where the keyboard had been.
Sara believed in God, she was versed in the emblematic and symbolic significance of dust in the Church’s history and dogma, but she pushed these thoughts aside — she would not believe that Megan was dead. This dust was nothing more than dead cells, sloughed off by life and living. Impatient with herself, she swiped a hand across the surface, then clapped her palms together.
She snapped off the light and went into Megan’s bedroom, standing for a few moments with her hands on her hips, while she decided where to start. She began with the bedside cabinet. The top was clear of clutter, its interior held only a paperback novel and a half-finished Sunday crossword. Megan liked the cryptic ones.
She went next to the large chest of drawers to the right of the window; they contained clothing: sweaters, jeans, underwear, but nothing that might indicate why Megan had disappeared. The same was true of the wardrobe — everything neatly organised, revealing an ordered mind and nothing more. The top drawer of the dresser clinked and rattled as she opened it. Inside, she found Megan’s cosmetics, laid out on glass dishes, ready to be lifted out when they were needed: make-up, perfumes, nail varnish, lipsticks — everything she would have expected to see cluttering the surface of the dresser.
The bottom drawer contained T-shirts, but there was a gap at one end, and Sara remembered the sad little box that Sergeant Foster had found there. Stuffed with the sweepings of a young life, rubbish that most would have thrown out, but which Megan had hidden away as treasures.
She suspected Constable Hart and Sergeant Foster would dismiss the box as unimportant — and what if Megan came back, looking for it? The one possession she valued enough to carry around with her from place to place? Sara took the business card DC Hart had given her from her trouser pocket and looked at it for a moment. Hart hadn’t exactly seemed concerned when they had last spoken. In fact, she was pretty sure that Naomi Hart thought her a liar and a fantasist.
She sighed, moving back through to Megan’s office. Standing in the dark, she tried to imagine where her young friend might be, wondering if she was afraid, willing her to be strong. She looked again at the card; she had the number by heart, she’d looked at it so many times. Down the street the lamps flickered on in twos and threes. A burst of noise from a motorbike speeding past brought her to the window.
A man stood under one of the streetlamps, staring up at the house. Sara gasped. Fear took hold of her, squeezing the air from her lungs, pressing on her chest till she couldn’t breathe. It was the man who had been following Megan.
She staggered back, catching herself on a corner of the desk, bruising her thigh. The pain shocked her out of her panic, and she took a moment to steady herself, leaning on the back of Megan’s office chair. Then she reached for the phone and dialled.
‘Naomi Hart.’ The constable’s voice sounded crisp and confident; background noise suggested a pub or restaurant.
‘Sara Geddes,’ she said, careful to keep her own voice level and unemotional. ‘He’s back.’
Chapter Ten
Naomi Hart brought Jake Bentley into the interview room and sat him down without so much as a flicker of anxiety. He was six-two and fifteen stone of supplement-enhanced muscle, she was eight-stone-nothing and slender as a sylph, yet Bentley allowed her to guide him inside and direct him to a chair, sitting meekly when asked to.
He might be a big bastard, Foster thought, but the power is all with her. ‘You’re looking sorry for yourself,’ he remarked.
Bentley looked up at him; only the eyes moved, the head remained rock-solid on his shoulders. There was no neck to speak of; the shoulders merged seamlessly with the jaw line, tapering only slightly inwards and upwards.
The eyes were dark and cold. Foster saw the danger in the man: he’d seen it a hundred times before in Friday-night bust-ups — hard men building a rep.
‘Ooh,’ he said. ‘He’s giving me the dead eye. I’ve come over all trembly — help me, Constable Hart.’
‘You boys behave yourselves,’ Hart said, breaking the seal on two cassettes and slotting them into the tape recorder. It buzzed as she pressed play. She gave Foster the arched eyebrow warning — which really did make him come over all trembly — then she sat down next to him.
Hart went through the introduction and caution and then sat back, staring at Bentley as a mother might stare in disappointment at a child caught out in a lie.
Bentley looked down at his hands. They were wide and thick, the palms and finger-pads callused from lifting weights. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. His accent wasn’t as broad as Foster’s and his voice was lighter and softer than you would expect from such a big man. Foster was intrigued. Was all this muscle a kind of armour against
the classroom bullies of his youth, and the nightclub boozers of his early employment? Those types could spot weakness from fifty yards, seemed to sense it and seek it out in a bar or pool-room.
‘What do we think, Mr Bentley?’ Hart asked.
Bentley shrugged one massive shoulder. ‘The pictures.’
‘The obscene photographs we found in your flat,’ Hart said.
‘They’re not obscene,’ Bentley said, offended. ‘They’re art.’
They had found hundreds of photographs of young women, naked or near so; they appeared to have been taken in sand dunes.
‘You’re a Peeping Tom, Mr Bentley,’ Hart said.
‘I’m an artist.’
‘Then how do you explain the other photographs — the ones of young women entering and leaving their houses?’
‘It doesn’t do any harm.’
‘Yes,’ Hart said. ‘It does. You’re a stalker, Mr Bentley.’
‘No!’
‘Why don’t you tell us why you’ve been following Megan Ward?’
His forehead creased. ‘I wasn’t,’ he said.
Hart gave him the more-disappointed-than-angry look again. ‘You were seen, Mr Bentley. More than once.’
‘Following her? No!’
‘You’ve been watching the house.’
‘No!’ His gaze wouldn’t rest, it lighted on Hart, the tape recorder, the door, then back down to his hands. ‘I was there,’ he admitted, ‘but I wasn’t watching the place. I was just . . .’
‘You were just . . . Sussing out the place as an investment?’ Foster suggested. ‘Gonna put in an offer, were you? ’Cos you know what, mate, it’s way out of your price range — I mean what do gym jockeys earn these days?’
Bentley’s right hand tightened into a fist and he covered it with his left hand, but he made no reply.
‘Where is Megan?’ Hart asked.
‘How should I know?’
‘Because,’ Hart explained patiently, ‘you’ve been watching her house and she was obviously frightened by your presence, so when she suddenly disappears, we naturally think you might be involved.’
Bentley’s eyes widened. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘No way.’ He was sweating, and when he glanced at the door again, Foster wondered if he was thinking of making a run for it. He felt Hart tense, readying herself for the onslaught.
But Bentley was the sort who talked himself into trouble by trying to talk himself out of it. ‘I know what this is about,’ he said.
‘You do.’ Hart kept her tone neutral.
‘Them other charges.’ He looked miserable and pissed off and seriously misunderstood.
Bentley had two charges of ABH on record; one dropped, the other resulting in a six-month suspended sentence. As interviewing officers, Hart and Foster weren’t allowed to mention previous form, but since Bentley had brought it up, they let him run with it.
‘You don’t keep order in the clubs downtown by asking people to be nice,’ he said. ‘The lad come at me with a knife, I put him down.’
Hart nodded without commenting.
‘The other charge was dropped,’ he said. ‘Some dickhead injecting testosterone. Couldn’t handle it — went all Tarantino on one of the clients at the gym, I stepped in.’ He leaned in to the mike. ‘I saved that guy’s life.’
‘Thank you for being so frank with us, Mr Bentley,’ Hart said, bringing the subject to a close, for now. Foster understood what she was doing. Right now, Bentley was talking without a solicitor present, but if they pushed too hard too soon, he could turn nasty or demand representation — either way, they would get precious little out of him.
‘Did you telephone Miss Geddes at six p.m. this evening?’ Foster asked.
The diversionary tactic worked. ‘I don’t even know her number,’ Bentley said, sounding more confident. ‘She’s not in the book.’
‘So, you did check,’ Hart said.
He sighed and glanced away, then back to Hart. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘If I tell you why I was there, it’s not gonna get me in any trouble, is it?’
‘That depends on what you tell us, mate,’ Foster said.
Bentley gave Foster the dead eye again, but when he looked at Hart, he reverted to the vulnerable schoolboy. ‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ he said.
‘You know you’re entitled to a solicitor?’ Hart asked.
Foster held his breath. Bentley had already been advised of his rights, but if he was about to come up with some sort of confession, they had to be on solid legal ground.
‘Can’t we keep this just between us?’ His tone was wheedling, unsure of himself.
‘We’ll see,’ Hart said, falling easily into the role of matriarch. Foster marvelled at her, she knew exactly when to be tough, and when to conform to an interviewee’s expectations.
‘I work at the gym on Castle Street,’ Bentley began.
‘Uh-huh.’ Hart said, still maintaining her neutrality.
‘I go jogging on my lunch breaks. It clears my head.’
They waited.
‘I noticed Sara a few weeks back—’
‘Woah!’ Foster said ‘Sara?’ Hart silenced him with a look.
Bentley raised his eyes tentatively to Hart’s face. ‘Go on,’ she said, nodding encouragement.
‘She likes to jog, too,’ Bentley said, his eyes sliding away from Hart. ‘I wanted to speak to her, but I . . .’ He sighed again. ‘I’m not good with that stuff.’
‘Were you in the park today, Mr Bentley?’ Hart asked. ‘Wearing that sweat top?’
A slight flush rose to his cheeks. ‘She recognised me, didn’t she?’
In fact, Sara Geddes was convinced she had never seen Bentley, except outside her house, but Hart let him assume she had.
‘I wasn’t following her — not like you think — I just wanted to . . . I don’t know, ask her out, I suppose.’ He looked at her again, wanting her approval, her understanding.
Hart gave it. ‘That’s why you went to her house,’ she said, gently.
He nodded.
‘How did you know where she lives?’
‘I—’ He lost eye contact again. ‘I was behind her at the traffic lights on The Strand one night. I didn’t think about it — it wasn’t you know — deliberate. I just ended up sticking with her all the way to her house.’
Foster had done surveillance work. Following someone in rush-hour traffic wasn’t an easy thing to do — you couldn’t ‘stick with’ a car without serious effort. He cleared his throat, but managed to curb his urge to butt in, and Hart continued:
‘So you found yourself at her house. Then what?’
Bentley raised his hands and let them fall. ‘Nothing. I couldn’t just go up and knock at the door, could I? I mean, how would I explain? I thought maybe I’d start up a conversation in the park one lunchtime, but—’ He grimaced.
‘Somehow it never happened?’ Hart offered.
He seemed pleased that Hart understood his difficulty. ‘I wanted to, but look at her . . .’
Meaning a classy woman like Sara Geddes would never give a brainless hunk of meat like Bentley a second glance — and of course, she hadn’t. Foster had to admit the guy was more perceptive than he appeared.
‘Were you at Sara’s house the night Megan disappeared?’
‘No.’
‘I haven’t told you which night it was, Mr Bentley,’ Hart said. ‘Now if you know anything — if you saw anything that might help us—’
‘I was there,’ he interrupted. ‘But I didn’t see anything.’
Foster stared hard at him. ‘You need to make up your mind, mate.’
Bentley’s eyes darted right and left. ‘I saw Sara go in. I — drove home with her.’
Foster glanced at Hart. It sounded so much better for the tape than ‘I followed her’.
‘You and Sara drove home together?’ Hart asked, deliberately obtuse.
‘Not in her car,’ Bentley said. ‘I was just with her, you know?’
‘You followed her
.’
‘I know where she lives,’ he said, looking a little flushed and agitated. ‘I didn’t need to follow her. I—’ He seemed to have a sudden inspiration and his face lit up. ‘I wanted to see that she got home safely.’
‘Very considerate,’ Foster said.
Bentley glared at him and Hart intervened again. ‘What happened after Sara got home?’
But Foster had needled him once too often. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I saw her into the house.’ He gave Foster a hard stare. ‘Then I left.’
Chapter Eleven
‘That was a bit of turn-up, wasn’t it?’ Foster said.
It was eight a.m. and they were in the CID Room, DC Hart typing up her report of the previous evening’s interview, Foster distracting her. A check of Bentley’s mobile phone SIM card and landline showed no record of his having telephoned Sara Geddes. Of course, he might have used a public phonebox — the call to Sara’s house at six p.m. had been from a public phone — but proving he had been the caller would be difficult, so they’d had to let him go with a warning to stay away from Miss Geddes and her house and not to attempt to communicate with her in any way.
‘Am I talking to myself, or what?’
‘Hmm?’ She continued typing at her computer keyboard. Foster leant against her desk, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his chest. It emphasised the long, lean look and Hart suspected that Foster knew it.
‘I said it’s a turn-up, Bentley stalking Sara, not Megan.’
‘If you believe him,’ Hart said. Damn, damn, damn — don’t get drawn into a discussion, Naomi, she told herself. Ignore him — he’ll go away.
He frowned. ‘You think he’s lying?’
‘I don’t know, Sarge.’
‘D’you think he saw Megan leave?’
SEE HER DIE a totally gripping mystery thriller (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 2) Page 6