What Falls Between the Cracks

by Robert Scragg

  ‘Well, that went well.’ Styles kept his voice low in case it travelled back to the house and through an open window.

  ‘You believe the story about the trips to Poland?’ Porter asked as they reached the safety of the car.

  ‘If you’re calling it a story, then I’m guessing you don’t?’

  ‘Just seems a little convenient that she remembered after she spoke to her husband, a man who employs our chief suspect and has a vested interest in keeping him out of jail.’

  ‘Playing devil’s advocate, it’s a lifetime ago, and she had just been told that her stepdaughter is most likely dead.’

  ‘A stepdaughter she didn’t have much to do with. Hmm, might be nothing, but I need you to check out her story when we get back. See if we can check if she left the country in the six months after Barclay’s death, and if so, where to.’

  ‘Not sure if we can go back that far, but I’ll give it a go.’

  Porter had noted her reaction to the mention of Bolton’s name with interest. For a woman who claimed to have a strained relationship with her stepdaughter, there had been a definite reaction, and not a positive one. For all he knew it could have been Natasha’s fling with Bolton that had driven the final wedge between her and her stepmum. There was something there for sure, but he couldn’t quite decide how best to approach the problem of getting her to open up.

  He decided to focus on Bolton himself. They could head back to Natasha’s apartment block later in the day and see if any of the older residents recognised a photograph of him. It was a long shot, and maybe not even necessary as they had his prints to place him there, but Porter hadn’t been back since the day they found Natasha’s hand. The absence of hard evidence was making him feel like he was wading through treacle towards an unclear goal. He hoped a trip back to her place might shake something loose, some connection he had yet to make. He had agreed to meet up with Anderson and Whittaker after lunch, and the briefing with Campbell and Milburn wasn’t until five.

  ‘We need to make a few pit stops on the way back,’ he said, turning to Styles.

  ‘How many you got in mind?’

  ‘Four. I want to take another look at Natasha’s place. It was all a bit chaotic last time. Just a quick look around. After that, I want to swing down by the river and poke my nose in at Taylor Fisheries. There has to be something there. It all happened so fast from what they say, so he can’t have planned a perfect crime scene. Last one is to pop in and check on Simmons. I know they said they’d call if there was any change, but it doesn’t feel right ignoring her until they do.’

  If they do.

  Styles nodded, and they lapsed into silence for a few seconds before he spoke again. ‘I thought you said four stops?’

  ‘Ah yes, almost forgot. We may not have got much, but we didn’t leave empty-handed, so mine’s on white bread with no sauce, thanks.’ Porter smiled as his stomach seconded the motion with a low rumble.

  They got their sandwiches to go from a greasy spoon cafe, and demolished them quickly as they drove. Porter’s shirt was a crime scene in its own right, crumbs in his lap and a stray spot of grease the only signs that a sandwich had even existed.

  Natasha Barclay’s flat was eerily quiet compared to their last visit. The swarm of crime scene technicians poring over every surface had long since moved on to pastures new. Only the bald patch where the carpet had been cut away to file as evidence, and the dried blood on the wall, gave any hint of what had taken place.

  What the hell had actually happened?

  Lovers’ quarrel? Drunken fight? Something more planned, premeditated? Had she even known the kind of man Bolton was? He knew it was dangerous to discount the possibility of a third party being involved, but he saw it in Bolton’s eyes. He couldn’t back it up with any evidentiary proof, couldn’t elicit a confession from Bolton, but there had been something in the big man’s smirk at the station. Something that taunted Porter, dared him to come after him. Not that Porter needed any encouragement, but he had to take something else to Campbell, something new, to be allowed to put Bolton in a room again.

  The flat felt like it had resumed its slumber, like a coma patient after the hopeful flicker of the eyelids has passed. The lines etched into the layers of dust would soon be filled, like tyre tracks with fresh snow. The curtains were still open, the dated decor looking even more surreal in the cold light of day than it ever had hiding in darkness.

  Porter didn’t even know what he hoped to find. He wondered if he’d made the trip back as a reminder that Natasha counted just as much as those who had died more recently. He wouldn’t let her be forgotten for another thirty years, not by her family, and not for the sake of Campbell and his crime stats.

  They poked around for another five minutes but found nothing. They had similar luck with showing Bolton’s picture to the older residents. They managed to get an answer at two doors, but both neighbours shook their heads, blank looks in their eyes.

  They opted to visit the warehouse down by the river next, saving a visit to the hospital for last. Porter squinted, focusing on the road as the wipers cleared their twin cones, only to be sprayed with a fine mist again in seconds. There was something vaguely hypnotic about the monotony of the swish squeak as they worked tirelessly, and they rode most of the way in silence.

  The entrance still had a line of police tape across it when they pulled up, but there was no one guarding the front door. Porter guessed that now Will Leonard had filed a completed report, it would be deemed that any and all relevant evidence had been gathered, leaving the rest of the interior and its contents as not relevant to the investigation.

  Styles was closer to the entrance when they parked up, and stooped under the tape, lifting it with his index finger as he did. It looked almost comical to Porter. Styles, with his height, would have been just as comfortable stepping over it like a slow-motion hurdler, but he followed him in without comment or wisecrack.

  It was as if Porter was seeing the inside of the building for the first time. He closed his eyes and tried to picture it from his previous visit.

  Simmons, mask covering her face, a blur on a stretcher. Gibson, facing away, stretched out like a toppled mannequin.

  He silently cursed his own inattention to detail. Sure, he’d seen the crime scene photographs, but they were taken after the story had unfolded. He operated best on the sensory overload that came with a fresh scene. It worked with the adrenaline as a catalyst, fuelled him, made him sharp. He’d been distracted this time, looked at it all through the subjective lens forced upon him when greeted with a colleague fighting for her life on a stretcher. Distracted when he could least afford to be; he felt like he was letting her down, letting them both down.

  He turned in a slow three-sixty circle, taking it all in. The report had found no evidence of any recent activity on the ground floor prior to Tuesday’s events, so he headed upstairs, Styles following close behind. The stillness of their surroundings served to amplify the chorus of creaks and groans as they made their way up the old staircase. The first floor and the doorway into the room beyond looked strangely bare without the body in situ and those in attendance documenting what they saw. The dark tattoo of blood on the floorboards was the only indication that anything bad had ever happened.

  There hadn’t been any prints found on the murder weapon. The length of wood hadn’t matched any of the fittings in the building. The assumption was that it had been left over from a storage crate or something similar, but the identity of who had wielded it remained a mystery. Porter remembered Anderson mentioning the fire escape as a possible exit point for anyone who had been in the building, and wandered over to look. The door was locked, but he peered out of a nearby window and saw a fire escape angling downwards, hugging the side of the building. A narrow alley ran the length of the row of buildings and ended in a T-junction, one branch joining the main road they had parked on, the other a mirror image for the road layout that served the buildings behind them. It would have been a
simple matter of exiting via the fire escape and taking the right fork, away from the oncoming police officers. Of course, the locked door would pose a problem, but for someone with a key, someone who owned the building, for example, it would be no issue at all.

  Thanks to the chaos surrounding their first visit, they hadn’t made it up to the third floor to see where Carter had fallen from, and they headed there next. A series of large wooden boards had been fixed in place to plug the gap where the glass once was. There was a small heap of shards that caught the light. Not much to show for a window that size, but then again most of the glass had rained down after Carter and broken into even tinier pieces when it met the tarmac.

  There was ample light coming through the remaining windows, and Porter noted the position of the desk underneath the light fitting. While Styles paced the edges of the room, Porter climbed up onto the desk and stood up. He looked over his shoulder, then up at the fitting.

  ‘I just don’t see it,’ he said, addressing no one in particular.

  He thought back to the crime scene photographs and realised what had been niggling him. The position of the body had been such that Carter’s head had faced the direction that Simmons had approached from. If he had stumbled backwards off the desk and into the window, surely he would have fallen straight backwards and landed with his head and feet more or less at a right angle with the building, rather than at parallel to it?

  Styles came over to peer out at the street through the remains of the shattered window. Porter dropped down to sit on the desk and repeated his concerns aloud for Styles to chip in his thoughts.

  ‘I agree,’ he said simply. ‘Anything other than Bolton helping our friend through the window is entirely too coincidental. Our problem here won’t be proving it wasn’t an accident, though, it’s still placing Bolton inside the building. There’s a good chance that …’

  He stiffened, and his voice tailed off as he stared through the window.

  ‘What? What you thinking?’ Porter prompted.

  ‘I’m thinking I hope that’s what I think it is,’ he said, leaning and pointing off to the right.

  Porter slid off the desk and waited for Styles to step aside, then peered out to see what all the fuss was about.

  The road was quiet, although the hum of machinery could be heard from a nearby factory. ‘Where am I looking?’

  ‘Right up there.’ Styles pointed again, his arm indicating a line of sight above street level, and Porter followed his direction. He narrowed his eyes, still unsure what he was meant to be looking at, until he focused his attention a little higher to allow for the slight difference in their vantage points. Lamp posts were evenly spaced long the road, with one every hundred feet or so. Most of the other buildings on the street were one or two storeys, and the lights atop the curved neck of the poles looked down upon the rooftops. The one closest to them on the opposite side of the street, however, was slightly different from its neighbours. A small dark shape clung to the top of the pole just below the light.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m guessing it’s some sort of CCTV,’ said Styles, without taking his eyes off it. ‘We can check with whoever worked the scene to make sure they’ve got their hands on the footage. Whether it shows anything worthwhile is another matter, but with a bit of luck I think we may have just found a way to place Mr Bolton where we need him to be.’

  They swung by Darent Valley Hospital for their last stop, and saw a man sitting by her bedside as they entered the room. He held her right hand encased between his, his head bowed, his lips trembling ever so slightly. Their footsteps gave them away and the man’s head snapped up, aware that he was no longer alone.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Porter, apologetic at disturbing the private moment. ‘We work with Evie. Are you a relative or a friend?’

  The man nodded and stood, smoothing out the creases in his pale blue sweater as he did. Porter guessed he was in his late fifties, his hair so grey it could pass for white. His face showed the strain of his bedside vigil, and Porter wondered how many of the creases in his forehead and around his eyes had been carved deeper by the worry of the last few days.

  ‘Alan Simmons. I’m her father.’ He held his hand out over his daughter’s bed, and Porter and Styles took turns to introduce themselves. ‘Please, have a seat.’ He motioned to a trio of chairs stacked in the corner of the room.

  They positioned a pair of chairs on the opposite side of the bed, rubber legs scraping on the hard floor like nails on a blackboard.

  ‘How is she? Any update from the doctors?’ asked Porter.

  Alan Simmons looked back to his daughter as he answered. She looked peaceful despite the dressing that covered most of the right side of her face. Porter could still picture the wound, raised, angry. The bruising had darkened into swirls of indigo and dark mustard yellow, but it would start to fade in the next few days.

  ‘No change.’ He said without taking his eyes off her. ‘Were you there? Were either of you there when it happened?’

  Porter shook his head. ‘No, sir. We only arrived on the scene after we got the call.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened? Are there any suspects?’

  ‘We don’t know everything yet, but we’ve got a few leads we’re looking into.’ The words sounded even more cliché aloud than they had in his head. ‘We’ll find who did this.’

  Alan Simmons gave a tired smile. ‘I want to believe you, Detective, I really do.’ He reached out and patted her hand. ‘I tried to persuade her not to join. I know it’s not a time for “what ifs”. Did you know she studied sociology at university?’

  Porter shook his head. He realised he didn’t know an awful lot about her outside of the job and felt bad for it.

  ‘Always wanted to help people. She was going to be a social worker. She changed her mind, though, and once she had there was no talking to her. Always was a stubborn one, my Evie. Always determined once she set her mind to something.’

  Porter couldn’t help but smile. He had seen first-hand how hard she went after something she wanted.

  ‘Anyway, she loves what she does. That’s all you can ask as a parent, for your kids to be happy.’

  He bowed his head again, weighed down by the helplessness of the situation, slowly stroking the back of his daughter’s hand. Porter felt like an outsider, and looked at Styles, gesturing towards the exit with a flick of his head. Styles nodded agreement, and they stood up.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr Simmons. We’d best get back to the station.’

  Alan Simmons nodded and stood, following them to the door. He shook hands with them both, and Styles headed off down the corridor, but when Porter tried to pull his hand away Simmons kept the grip, resting his left hand lightly on top, and leant in towards Porter.

  ‘She talked about you, Detective. She said you were a good man and a good detective.’

  The surprise showed in Porter’s face. He wondered in what context his name had cropped up.

  ‘Have you ever lost somebody close to you?’

  Porter nodded. ‘I have, yes.’

  Alan Simmons said nothing, waiting for Porter to fill the silence. But Porter hated talking about Holly to anyone, let alone a stranger. It was private, personal, and sharing that side of himself wasn’t his style. He hesitated, Holly’s face flashing in his mind. He saw something of his own grief reflected in Simmons’s eyes, and before he had time to think about what he was doing, he started talking.

  ‘My wife, Holly, a couple of years ago. Hit-and-run on her way back from a parents’ evening at school.’

  ‘You have children?’

  ‘No, she was a primary school teacher.’

  Alan Simmons’s face softened, as if he sensed his own pain mirrored in Porter. ‘Did they find who did it?’

  Porter shook his head. ‘No, they, uhm …’ He cleared his throat, glancing over his shoulder to see how far Styles had got. ‘There were witnesses, but the car had been stolen. No one saw the driver. Found
the car abandoned the day after.’

  Porter felt his face redden. This was the most he’d talked about her in over a year. Simmons was nodding his head gently, acknowledging the effort it was taking to share the memory.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Detective. That must have been even harder to take.’

  Porter nodded at the understatement. ‘We even lifted prints from inside the car, but we didn’t get a match. Whoever they belong to has never been caught.’ He stopped abruptly, not sure where to go from there. Evie Simmons was still alive. The last thing her father needed was to hear a sob story about someone he’d never met while his daughter battled for her own life. What else was there to say? That things would be OK in time? They didn’t feel that way for him, but Alan Simmons needed hope, not hopelessness.

  The two men lapsed into silence again. Porter shifted his feet, uncomfortable at having opened up to a man he’d only just met. Simmons spoke after a few seconds.

  ‘Well, I sincerely hope you’re there when they do.’

  Porter chewed on his bottom lip as he considered what that would feel like. He’d imagined that moment so many times. He didn’t know what worried him more, the thought that they might never slip up, or what he might do if they did, and he had a chance to look them in the eye.

  ‘Funny thing about being a parent,’ Alan Simmons continued. ‘You feel every bump and scrape in the playground like it was you that had fallen. Imagine how this one measures on that scale.’ He inclined his head towards his daughter. ‘If you’re as good as she thinks you are, I’m sure you’ll find him. When you do’ – he leant in closer still, all the softness gone from his voice – ‘I wouldn’t judge you if you chose to stop being a good man, because the man that did this to my daughter doesn’t deserve the kind of justice a good man would offer.’