The Couple in the Photograph

by Valerie Keogh

  ‘Not sure anything can start it this morning,’ he said with an attempt at humour. But he got to his feet and allowed her to lead him downstairs.

  ‘Abbie and Daniel will be home in a while,’ she said, putting a bowl of cereal in front of him. ‘They’re devastated over Roy. It will be good to be together.’

  ‘Hard to think of Metcalfe Conservation without him. He’s not going to be easy to replace.’

  Keri wanted to snap that they weren’t going to replace him but she swallowed the words. It wasn’t the time to be pedantic. ‘He did so much without complaint but he loved it. I mean how many times over recent years have we suggested he get a junior admin person.’

  That raised a smile on Nathan’s face. ‘Probably about once a month.’

  ‘Do you remember the time in our previous office when he thought he’d mislaid a contract and spent all day searching for it until I confessed that I’d taken it home and forgotten to bring it back.’ She laughed at the memory. ‘He was so sweet about it, never complained about the hours he wasted.’ One anecdote led to another and soon they were laughing together about the funny things Roy had said or done.

  Keri was relieved to see tension leave Nathan’s face. Pleased, too, to see him eating a little. She made a pot of coffee and was about to fill their cups when the doorbell rang. ‘You weren’t expecting anyone, were you?’ When Nathan shook his head, she frowned. She’d spoken to everyone yesterday, there was no reason for anyone to call.

  When the doorbell chimed again and Nathan made no attempt to stand, Keri slid from her stool and went to answer it.

  It was the detective from the previous day, a short, stocky, grim-faced woman on the step behind. ‘DI Elliot and–’ He waved a thumb behind him. ‘–Detective Sergeant Burke. I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time.’

  Yes, Keri wanted to say, it was a bloody inconvenient time. ‘No, of course, come in.’

  She brought them through to the kitchen, Nathan looking up in alarm as they entered, his eyes flicking between all three. ‘What?’

  Elliot raised a hand. ‘A few queries, that’s all. We’re hoping you’ll be able to answer them for us.’

  ‘Sit, please.’ Keri waved to two free stools. ‘I’ve made coffee, would you like some?’

  ‘That would be good, thanks,’ Elliot said.

  Burke, who was looking around the room with assessing eyes, gave a shake of her head and muttered, ‘No, ta.’

  Keri put a mug on the counter in front of the detective, filled it with coffee, and pushed the milk jug and sugar bowl towards him.

  Burke was prowling around the living room, stopping to look at photographs on the bookshelves. Keri wanted to tell her to sit or at least stand still, but she couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound rude and didn’t want to antagonise the unfriendly-looking woman.

  Instead, Keri sat, picked up her coffee and looked at Elliot, her eyes drawn to a different but equally dreadful tie.

  He must have noticed because he grinned and ran a hand down it. ‘My daughter buys them for me. When she bought the first one, I lied and told her how much I loved it, now she buys one for every birthday and Christmas. All are equally garish.’

  It was so unexpected, Keri had to smile. ‘The things we do for the people we love.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  He picked up his coffee, took a mouthful, then put the mug down. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a bunch of keys and slid them across the counter. ‘My apologies, I meant to have them returned to you yesterday.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ Keri looked at the keys hanging from a big ornate R, Roy’s distinctive key ring. ‘We all have our own set of keys anyway. With this being a bank holiday weekend, we’re planning to reopen on Tuesday.’ A thought crossed her mind. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course, the team have completed their work there anyway.’ He hesitated. ‘You should organise for a specialist trauma-scene clean-up team to go in first.’

  Keri remembered all the blood and gulped. ‘Yes, of course, I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘There are a few companies.’ He pulled a card from his pocket and scribbled across the back. ‘Any of these three would do a good job.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She took the card and looked at it. Names and phone numbers. ‘You have a good memory.’

  ‘It’s helpful in this job.’

  Keri looked at Nathan whose face was wearing the same shocked expression as the day before. ‘What did you need to ask us?’ The sooner the detective was gone the better. His hesitation worried her. She’d assumed any questions were merely routine dot the i, cross the t kind of questions. It was becoming obvious there was more.

  Elliot reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Tracy Wirick’s personnel form,’ he explained. ‘We found it in a file in reception.’ He opened the sheet out, turned it around and pushed it across so Keri and Nathan could read it. ‘It’s pretty basic–’

  ‘She was only doing work experience,’ Keri interrupted him quickly. ‘There was no need for anything more complicated. We have more detailed forms for our regular employees.’

  ‘It wasn’t a criticism, actually, I was simply stating a fact,’ he said evenly. He tapped the sheet with a finger. ‘The address she gave, unfortunately, doesn’t exist.’

  ‘What?’ Keri blinked, pulled the sheet closer and stared at the address. ‘She filled it in herself.’

  ‘Yes. She lied.’

  Keri sat back, stunned. ‘What about her reference?’

  ‘They’ve never heard of her, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But I rang, I spoke to the school administrator. She confirmed the reference was accurate.’

  ‘You rang the phone number on the paperwork Tracy gave you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Keri shut her eyes. A classic con and she’d fallen for it. ‘This was all a set-up?’

  ‘Looks very much like it, I’m afraid.’ Elliot pulled the sheet of paper back, folded it and tucked it into his pocket.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Nathan said. ‘You think this woman inveigled her way into our company to kill Roy?’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything yet, Mr Metcalfe. Just finding answers to all the questions that have arisen.’

  ‘It’s too much of a coincidence though, isn’t it? She worms her way in and the next day he’s killed. Sounds like two and two equalling four to me.’

  Burke, who had sat on the spare stool, sneered unpleasantly. ‘Detective work unfortunately isn’t as simple as basic maths.’

  Keri saw a flash of anger on Nathan’s face and reached a hand over to grasp his arm. ‘It’s all difficult for us to take in, you understand.’

  ‘This is the early stages of the investigation. We don’t rule anything in or out yet. Instead, we collect all the information and see what fits where. For the moment, this Tracy Wirick, is a piece that doesn’t fit anywhere.’ Elliot took out his notebook. ‘It would help if you gave us a description of her.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She thought back to her first sight of the woman crossing reception to her door. ‘My first impression of Tracy was that she looked downtrodden and defeated. I wonder how much of that was an act.’ She lifted her coffee and took a sip. ‘A description… about five six, slim build, dark hair streaked with blonde. She wore heavy eye make-up.’ Keri shrugged. ‘That’s it really, I’m afraid. She was pleasant-looking but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that stood out.’

  When the detective pocketed his notebook, Keri squeezed Nathan’s arm gently before taking her hand away. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Elliot said slowly. ‘And that, unfortunately, was the easier of the two things I had to ask you about.’ He reached into his jacket pocket again, took out a photograph and slid it across. ‘You recognise this person?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Keri gave a brief smile. ‘It’s an old one but he hasn’t changed that much. It’s Roy Sheppard.’ She felt her insides lurc
h when Elliot shook his head.

  ‘No, I’m afraid, it isn’t.’

  22

  Keri looked from the detective back to the photograph. She picked it up, held it closer to her face. It was Roy, she was sure of it. Handing it to Nathan, she said, ‘What do you think?’

  As she had done, he held it closer to his eyes before putting it down. ‘Looks like Roy to me too.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Elliot said, ‘I should have made myself clear. It is the man you knew as Roy Sheppard, but that’s not his real name.’

  ‘What?’ Keri waited for the punchline. This had to be a joke. ‘Roy has worked for us for eighteen years.’

  ‘Yes. A year after he was released from prison in Dundee. He was supposed to report to his parole officer every week which he did for nearly a year. Then he vanished off the grid.’ The detective played with the handle of his mug as he waited for them to take this news in.

  ‘Shit!’ Keri ran a hand over her head. ‘Eighteen years ago, we were beginning to make a success of the business and still working with minimum staff. Roy walked in off the street one day and stood watching me with a smile on his face while I tried to juggle dealing with two phone calls and a customer.

  ‘He said he’d been in America, had got back recently and was looking for work but didn’t have any references.’ Keri remembered feeling so exhausted that she almost threw her arms around his neck, but she’d already learned the hard way that if something looked too good to be true it generally was. It seemed that all these years later, she’d been proven right. ‘Desperate as we were, I told him to take a hike, that we weren’t that green that we’d take someone on without a reference. But he simply said he’d work for nothing for a week, and if we didn’t think he could do the job, he’d leave and nobody had lost anything.’

  ‘I remember,’ Nathan joined in. ‘We were worn out trying to do everything. He was like an answer to a prayer, especially when in only a couple of days he had everything sorted and running more efficiently.’

  ‘At the end of the week, we begged him to stay.’ Keri frowned. ‘There was no issues with the revenue. He had all the correct paperwork.’

  ‘Prison is a good place to make friends with certain skills,’ DS Burke said.

  Keri looked at the sergeant, at her bad teeth and mean begrudging eyes. ‘He’s worked hard for us since, never let us down, never gave us a moment’s pause where we regretted our decision to give him a job. Whatever he did all those years ago, he’s been straight since.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Burke screwed up her face. ‘Do you know what he did in the evenings, at the weekends, at night?’

  Keri glared at her.

  ‘What was he in prison for?’ Nathan asked, breaking the tension.

  Elliot ran a hand down his tie. ‘He served time for sexual assault.’

  ‘Of a twelve-year-old girl,’ Burke added bluntly.

  Keri and Nathan exchanged horrified glances. It was left to Keri to put it into words. ‘Roy was a paedophile?’ Her hand crept over her mouth. All the nights he’d babysat for Abbie and Daniel. Surely not. Wouldn’t she have known? Oh God, wouldn’t she have known?

  She felt the cereal and coffee churn in her belly and with her hand clamped over her mouth ran from the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said when she returned.

  ‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ DI Elliot said. ‘You’ve had a shock.’

  Burke pointed to the framed photographs of Abbie and Daniel on the shelves behind her. ‘If Sheppard has been alone with them over the years, it might be a good idea to ask if he’d ever been inappropriate.’

  Elliot shot her a quelling look before turning back to Keri. ‘Roy has kept off the radar all these years so it’s likely he was a one-time offender but for your peace of mind certainly have a word with your children.’

  ‘Yes, I will.’ Abbie had adored Roy. There’d been nothing more to it than that. She was almost sure of it. She blinked away tears. ‘Okay, so is that why he was killed? Someone getting revenge after all these years.’

  Instead of answering her, Elliot asked a question of his own. ‘This woman, Tracy Wirick, it says on her form she was eighteen. Could she have been older?’

  Quick thinking was Keri’s forte so she saw immediately where he was going. ‘Could she be the girl he assaulted twenty years ago, you mean?’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I did think Tracy looked older than the eighteen she claimed, but only by a few years, not more than ten, no.’

  ‘It was worth considering.’

  ‘But there must be a connection, mustn’t there? She turns up one day, lies about who she is and where she lives, and the next day she’s gone and Roy is dead.’

  ‘It could simply be a coincidence, couldn’t it?’ Nathan said.

  Elliot looked at him in surprise. ‘They do happen, more often than people believe. However, I do think it’s a little beyond the realms of possibility in this case.’ He pushed the stool back and got to his feet. ‘It’s early days yet, if there’s a connection, we’ll find it.’

  ‘You’ll let us know, won’t you?’

  ‘As much as I’m able,’ he said.

  Keri saw Burke raise her eyes to the ceiling, her mean mouth downturned. Perhaps she was being more honest than the pleasant DI Elliot.

  Nathan seemed once again to be off in a world of his own, so Keri got to her feet and showed the detectives to the door. ‘We’ll be opening the office on Tuesday,’ she reminded them, as she stood back to let them pass. ‘You can get us there if you’ve any more questions.’ She shut the door after them and rested her forehead against it for a moment. It was impossible to think of Roy as a paedophile. A one-time offender Elliot had suggested, as if somehow that made it less dreadful, less disgusting, less downright unbelievable.

  If she discovered he’d ever touched Abbie or Daniel, she’d wish Roy were still alive so she could kill him herself.

  23

  Abbie and Daniel arrived home together a little after 4pm by which time Keri and Nathan had gone over every memory they had of Roy. There was little joy in the recollections this time, each of them dissected for possible evidence of his skin-crawling tendency.

  It was Keri who did all the talking, mentioning with horror all the nights Roy had babysat for Abbie and Daniel. It was she, too, who shook her head, still unable to believe a man she thought she’d known had been involved in anything so vile.

  Nathan mostly sat in continued silence. He added a yes or no when she asked him directly for a comment but otherwise he seemed lost in his own thoughts.

  Their children’s arrival brought relief and more sadness. They arrived late afternoon, bursting through the kitchen door together to envelop Keri in hugs and tears. ‘I can’t believe it,’ both said at the same time.

  Abbie was the first to pull away. She tore a sheet from a roll of kitchen paper and blew her nose, using a second sheet to dab her eyes. ‘How awful for you to have found him.’

  ‘Do the police know who did it?’ Daniel asked, giving Keri a final hug before letting go.

  ‘No, the investigation is ongoing.’ Keri looked to where Nathan sat on the sofa, saying nothing. It was going to be left to her to tell them the awful news. ‘The police were here earlier asking questions, I’ll tell you all about it in a bit.’ Her deliberately casual air did the trick and neither commented beyond a muttered okay.

  Abbie went back to where she’d dropped her bag and pulled out a bottle of wine. ‘Merlot, Roy’s favourite, I thought we could drink to his memory.’ Nathan’s harsh laugh startled her into a step backwards, bumping into Daniel who put an arm out to stop her stumbling further.

  ‘Careful, you clumsy clot. Have you been drinking?’

  ‘No.’ She put the wine down on the counter and stared across at her father. ‘But I think Dad must have been.’ She turned to Keri. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  Keri didn’t answer, instead she reached to rub the pad of her thumb under Abbie’s eye. ‘Take your stuff up
stairs, Panda-eyes, then we’ll have a glass of wine and talk.’

  When they came back, minutes later, Abbie had repaired her make-up and each held armfuls of laundry that they shoved in turn into the washing machine in the utility room. They hadn’t bothered sorting it out, Keri noticed. Some of Abbie’s clothes wouldn’t be machine washable, the colours were bound to run. Normally, Keri would have remonstrated with them, taken it all out and sorted it into piles. Now, she left them to it, it was time they learned.

  When they finished, and rejoined Keri and Nathan in the living room, they were laughing and joking. The resilience of youth. Keri envied it.

  ‘I ordered a takeaway,’ she told them. ‘Chinese. It’ll be here at 7pm.’

  Daniel groaned. ‘I’m famished. Is there anything to nibble on?’

  Keri looked at him with affection. Her greyhound son with the rangy body that belied his enormous appetite. She opened the cupboard, took down a large packet of crisps and emptied them into a bowl. From the fridge she took an open jar of olives. She drained it, emptied them into another bowl, and put both on the breakfast bar.

  Abbie had taken wine glasses out and was pouring red into each.

  ‘I’ll stick to beer.’ Nathan waved a hand to get her attention.

  Keri hurried over to get it before a comment was made about his drinking. This would be his fourth beer in as many hours. She had suggested he slow down, that they had a difficult evening ahead telling the children the truth about Roy, but Nathan dismissed her with a growling comment that he needed it.

  She felt a quiver of resentment that he was drowning his sorrows in alcohol and leaving to her the grim task of telling Abbie and Daniel the truth about a man they’d regarded as an uncle. Worse, it was left to her to pry them gently for the truth.

  ‘Let us all sit down,’ she said. ‘Come on, Nathan.’ She waved the bottle of beer as a lure when he seemed reluctant to move, relieved to see him getting to his feet. He took the beer from her, opened it, and glugged from the bottle.