Mr Manning left with a sympathetic glance at Fay, closing the door with a soft ‘click’.
‘Patrick—’
‘Don’t,’ Doran said. They sat in silence for some time, then Doran rubbed both hands over his stubbled face and through his hair. He stared at her, his fingers grasping tufts of hair, making him look demented.
‘There were other accounts,’ he said. ‘I set them up on your computer to keep them away from work. The auditors . . . the tax man.’
‘Accounts?’ she said. ‘More than one?’
‘Three.’ He sighed so heavily his body shook. ‘Three accounts, all wiped out.’ Then he brought his hands to the back of his neck, gripping it tightly. ‘It’s all gone, Fay.’
Chapter Sixteen
Jake Bentley had returned to the place where he felt safe. He had booked into a B&B in Ainsdale, near the dunes. He wanted sand in his shoes, the wind in his hair; he thought it would make him feel better. It didn’t.
His first happy memory of childhood had been playing in the dunes as a twelve-year-old. Till then, he hadn’t known how big the sky was, that there could be so much space, that you could roll in sand and it would brush off clean. All of this seemed magical to him after the narrow streets of Walton. There, you saw the sky in mean strips, glimpsed between the huddled terraces, and when you played in the street, you stayed dirty, and Jake had always liked to be clean.
At twelve, he was skinny and sickly and his face was disfigured by acne. The other kids called him pizza-face and nobody would sit with him at lunch because they said the sight of him made them want to barf. His mother took him to a doctor, who prescribed antibiotics and suggested that sea air might do some good.
Every Sunday, his mother would pack a picnic lunch and they would take the train to Ainsdale. She would sit on a beach towel and administer his prescribed dose of sea air, grimly reading her magazines till they tore like tissue paper in the salt-spumed wind.
Jake didn’t care — if it rained or the wind blew up a storm, he would insist on going. He put on muscle and developed a salt-brown patina, like waxed wood. The acne faded and his mother smiled with satisfaction that she had created such a handsome boy. The jibes and the bullying stopped at school. Some of the girls would even glance over at him and smile shyly, but he never spoke to them, and never felt forgiven for his past ugliness.
By the time he was thirteen, he was making the journey alone, enjoying the feeling of independence it gave him, the solitude amongst the carloads of day-trippers. It was here he first began watching women; it was easy to observe without being observed on a beach, in the dunes. He came to know the hollows where they would go for privacy, slip off their bikini tops to catch the sun.
A gull sobbed on the rooftop of the B&B. It sounded like a demented mother grieving for her lost child. He went to the window and looked out onto the street below. Sand devils skirmished on the tarmac, whipped to a frenzy by the April wind. If he pressed his cheek against the glass and looked to the left, he could just make out the dunes. With their ragged tufts of marram grass they looked like herds of dromedaries marching to the sea.
It made him sick to think what had happened to Sara. He had seen the men pull up outside the house. Two got out, one stayed in the car. Sara had not yet arrived home. He had scrunched down, cramping his knees against the steering wheel. He fired off a couple of frames — not very good ones because he was unprepared: it was Sara he was waiting for. The two men went inside — no more than thirty seconds playing with the lock and then they were in, closing the door behind them. He saw a light go on in Megan’s office. They moved quickly, searching under bookshelves, in drawers. Lifting pictures off the walls and wrenching the backs from the frames.
Suddenly, Sara was outside the house, taking her keys from her handbag, letting herself in. Intent on the damage they were doing to Megan’s room, he hadn’t seen her arrive. He would have warned her, but he didn’t want to frighten her — she wouldn’t have understood. He had a restraining order against him; what would she have thought if he got out of his car and started shouting to her?
She went in. He thought about going after her, but there was no time. She reappeared, running out of the house, her eyes huge, her face contorted with fear. They were after her. Again, he hesitated: should he intervene? Would it make things worse? She might think he was with the men.
A vivid flash of recall: Sara running, her eyes wide. He almost went to her; had his hand on the car-door handle. One of the men grabbed her. She screamed, lashed out with her feet. Broke free. Fell.
He flinched, hearing again the crack of her skull on stone. Not so hard as a plant-pot’s fall, not so soft as an eggshell. But there was a definite crack! The screams. The ugly sound of bone impacting on brains and blood. The terrible, terrible silence.
It was too late — there was nothing he could do. Even so, after the men left, he got out of his car and went to see if he could help.
‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. He would have done anything for Sara, but now Sara was dead, and he had to start thinking about himself. And he did his best thinking on the move. Minutes later, he was out of the house and jogging down the street, taking it slow at first, the sand like tiny ball-bearings under his trainers making the pavement treacherous.
Soon he was into the dunes, rediscovering the soft yield of sand underfoot and soothed by the insistent cry of gulls on the wing. On the beach, the long stretch of flat yellow sand and the wide sky beckoned him, and he fell into the old rhythm of those childhood seaside excursions: his feet pounding the sand, the roar of wind and surf a constant, drowning the sound of his breathing, his thoughts, his worries, his fears.
He knew one of the men. This was a revelation: he had pushed it to the back of his mind, not wanting to confront it, but the calming rhythm and the pain of pushing himself on an unfamiliar surface had a cleansing effect, making difficult truths somehow easier to face.
The man was a regular at the gym. He worked for Patrick Doran. Bentley knew this, just as he knew the make and model of Doran’s car, that Patrick Doran had a pretty Irish wife eight years younger than him, twin boys aged eight, and a seventeen-year-old girl who took after her mother.
The man he had seen outside Sara’s house was a relative newcomer. His mates called him ‘Cap’, but Bentley knew he could find out his real name quite easily — that wasn’t a problem. The problem was what to do with the information.
He looped off the beach and into the dunes. Out of the wind, he sweated freely, drenching his hooded sweat top. He could hear himself here — the push of his breath, the salty hiss of his trainers in the soft sand. At the end of another two miles’ hard slog he had made up his mind.
He ran on, jogging alongside roads until he reached Liverpool Road. He went into the first phone box available. He hadn’t brought any spare change, but he wouldn’t need it for this call.
‘I’m not in the habit of accepting reverse charge calls from strangers,’ Doran said. His voice sounded cracked and old. ‘This better be good.’
‘I saw what happened to Sara Geddes, Mr Doran,’ Bentley said, excited and terrified. He was talking to Patrick Doran and Mr Doran was listening. ‘I’m about to go and report what I saw to the police, but I thought I should get my story straight, first.’
Chapter Seventeen
He had it all straight by the time he walked into Edge Hill Police Station at four p.m.
DC Hart seated him in the same interview chair and went through the formalities as she had done before. Bentley listened carefully, alert and watchful, rather than miserable and guilty as he had been on the previous occasion.
‘Right off the bat,’ he said, before either Hart or Foster had the chance to ask him a question, ‘I’m not proud of running away. I should’ve stayed.’
‘So why did you run?’ Hart asked.
‘I was afraid of what people would think.’
‘You worry a lot what people think of you, don’t you, Mr Bentley?’ Foster asked.
‘I’m just saying—’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Foster interrupted. ‘Good citizens care what people think. That’s what makes them do the right thing.’
Bentley was confused. If he agreed, that meant he did things because they were expected of him, which would then make him a sad case who had no opinions of his own. But if he said he didn’t give a toss, that would make him a bad person — a bad citizen — and for the purposes of his interview, he was Joe Average, law-abiding, unimaginative, reliable.
‘I just knew you’d jump to conclusions,’ he said, sticking to the script. ‘But I ran, and that was wrong of me.’
‘Okay,’ Hart said. ‘You’ve made that clear. Now, why don’t you tell us what made you decide to break the terms of the restraining order?’
Bentley took a breath. ‘I was worried. When you said Sara’s lodger — Megan? — had vanished, yeah, I was worried. So I went to check that Sara was all right.’ He opened his hands, palms up — no weapons, nothing concealed.
Foster shook his head, smiling. ‘You were obsessed with Miss Geddes,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t break that obsession.’
‘I was concerned for her safety,’ Bentley insisted.
‘A witness identified you as one of the attackers,’ Hart said.
‘No.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘No way. I was there to protect her.’
‘Right . . .’ Foster said. ‘So, what went wrong, Big Man?’
Bentley looked at his hands. ‘I was too late.’
‘Did you see the men who attacked Miss Geddes?’ Hart asked.
‘I caught a glimpse. But it was dark, you know? I was in shock.’
‘Tell us what you saw.’
‘She was struggling with one of the men.’ He fiddled with his shirt cuff. He had worn a shirt and tie, smart trousers, knowing that he might be required to stand before a magistrate for committal, wanting to create the right impression. He took another breath. ‘This is hard, you know?’ He looked to Hart for sympathy.
‘I know, Mr Bentley,’ she said. ‘In your own time — whenever you’re ready.’
He took a breath, then started again. ‘She was struggling. She kicked him. He hit her. She fell . . .’ He shuddered, recalling the sickening soft splat of her head on the pavement. He looked into Hart’s eyes, his face intent, sincere. ‘If I’d reacted quicker — if I’d got there a minute or two earlier. . .’ He sighed and clasped his hands in front of him.
Hart sucked her teeth. ‘Describe the men,’ she said.
‘Big. Dark clothing.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t get a look at their faces.’
‘The car?’
‘I wish I could help,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Like I said—’
‘Yeah, you were in shock,’ Hart said.
Her tone sharper than he would have liked and he began to protest.
‘We’d like to do an ID parade,’ she said, cutting across him.
This was not in the script. They hadn’t even considered it. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I mean, these people could pick me out because they’ve seen me in the street . . .’
‘You want to help Sara?’ Hart said, still with that unfriendly edge to her voice. ‘You say you were concerned for her. Help her now — agree to the ID parade.’
He looked from one to the other, calculating the risks. A good defence council would tear a parade identification to shreds for exactly the reasons he had just given — and Bentley knew for damn sure he would get the best defence.
He lifted his head up and looked Hart in the eye. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘For Sara.’
* * *
‘He’s a changed man, isn’t he?’ Foster said. Bentley had been taken down to the cells, pending the arrival of his solicitor. Hart was on her way to the Exhibits Room, and Foster tagged along. ‘No denials. Taking responsibility for his actions.’
‘Yeah,’ Hart said. When they had first brought him in about the stalking accusations, he had seemed to shrink in his chair, despite his size and bulk. Today, he had filled the room with an exuberance, a warped energy that Hart found unsettling. ‘A miracle.’
‘Almost like he grew a pair overnight.’
‘He’ll sound good on the transcripts,’ Hart said. ‘D’you think he’s been coached?’
‘Only as hard as Liverpool FC for the FA cup final.’
‘Do we know who he’s asked for?’ Hart was referring to Bentley’s belated request for a solicitor.
‘I checked with the custody sergeant.’ Foster paused and Hart looked at him, waiting for an answer. ‘Kieran Jago.’
Hart stopped dead and a clerk hurrying behind them bumped into her, apologised and then squeezed past on the narrow corridor. ‘How can a no-mark like Bentley afford Kieran Jago?’ Hart asked.
‘Good question. I’ll have a word with him when he arrives.’
Jago was the son of Irish immigrants, educated at St Edward’s Grammar School before it took fright at the prospect of being forced into comprehensive school status at the end of the 1970s and went private. He gained a double first in history and law at Oxford, funding himself with grants, bursaries, prizes and scholarships which he applied for almost indiscriminately. In recent years, he had become a solicitor-advocate, and law lecturers advised their students to attend trials he was defending and take notes.
‘He agreed to the ID parade too easily,’ Hart said, moving on again; she had to log the interview tapes with the exhibits officer before getting on to calling in the witness who identified Bentley at the scene.
‘’Course he agreed — we’d need a rock-solid witness to make that one stick — and even if we use VIPER, it’ll take a couple of days to set up.’
‘You’re saying Bentley’s gonna end up back on the street.’
‘I’d put money on it,’ Foster said.
‘Can’t we hold him on the breach of the restraining order? He’s admitted to being there.’
Foster shrugged. ‘It’s not like Sara’s under threat anymore.’
They pushed through a fire door and took the back stairs to the top floor. The corridor was crammed with cardboard boxes filled with yellowed papers, broken lamps, body armour, batons, sports kit, dusty folders containing out-of-date guidelines and faded copies of Home Office codes of practice. Tunstall stood at the entrance of the first room on the left, trying to manhandle a broken office chair through the narrow doorway. The big man sweated profusely, angling the chair badly so that he caught his elbows on the doorframe. He swore loudly and colourfully, throwing the chair down in temper and stepping back into the corridor berating it as though it had a life and will of its own.
‘Need some help?’ Hart asked, keeping her face straight.
‘Oh, hell,’ Tunstall said, wiping the sweat from his face with his shirt sleeve. ‘I am sorry, Naomi. Didn’t see you there.’
She gave him the tapes to hold and edged past him.
‘You’ll not shift it,’ Tunstall said. ‘I reckon they must’ve built the room around that chuffing thing.’
She tilted the chair and eased the backrest through the door, scraping the one remaining wheel on the paintwork, but otherwise had little problem with the manoeuvre.
Foster laughed and Hart gave him a look.
‘What’re you going to do with this lot, Chris?’ she asked, indicating the chaos around them.
‘God knows,’ Tunstall said. ‘I think the boss has ordered a skip or summat.’
‘Better check through the paperwork, make sure you’re not chucking out case files with the dross,’ Foster said, patting him on the shoulder.
Tunstall looked despondently at the jumble around him.
‘Maybe you could ask the boss to send some clerical staff to help out with that, Sarge?’ Hart suggested.
Foster rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, all right then.’ He glanced at Tunstall. ‘You know, she’s not this nice to everyone.’
Hart smiled, surprised, Foster had sounded almost plaintive.
&
nbsp; ‘Have you checked with the General Registry Office, yet?’ Foster said. ‘Asked them to run Megan’s name through ELVIS?’
‘Do me a favour, Sarge,’ Tunstall complained. ‘I’ve been up to me armpits in crap all day.’
Hart thought there was a hint of malice in the question and stepped in. ‘I’ve got a minute — I’ll see what I can find out.’
Foster checked his watch. ‘You’ll be lucky. It’s already after five.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve got to learn to prioritise, mate.’
‘DCI said this was a priority,’ Tunstall said.
Hart waited until Sergeant Foster’s footsteps were no more than a faint echo retreating down the stairwell. Then she turned to Tunstall.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I’ll sort ELVIS in the morning. You know what to do with those?’
He looked at the tapes in his hand. ‘I write them up in the exhibits register,’ he said, as though reciting something he had carefully memorised.
‘And put them where you’ll find them again,’ Hart said. ‘Bentley’s solicitor will be wanting a copy when he arrives.’ She stepped into the room. It was empty — rather dusty, but the shelving was clear and ready for use. ‘You might want to divide off the room into areas: tapes, paperwork and such separate from physical evidence,’ she said. ‘And If I were you, I’d scrounge a few boxes for the smaller, fiddly exhibits, otherwise they could get lost under stuff. Everything will come bagged and tagged, but make sure you label any boxed items clearly.’
‘Right-o,’ he said, assimilating the instructions in the slow-but-retentive way that she had come to understand was more effective than some of the bright terrier types who responded snappily and forgot what you told them five minutes later.
‘Naomi . . .’ he said, as she signed the register.
‘Hmm?’
‘What do I do about all the muck in here?’ He stared soulfully into her face.
Hart smiled. Bloody men! Give them an inch, they’ll expect you to do the housework. She handed him the pen. ‘Talk to one of the cleaning staff — they’ll loan you a couple of J-cloths if you ask nicely.’
SEE HER DIE a totally gripping mystery thriller (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 2) Page 10