Her Dark Heart: A totally gripping crime thriller (Detective Gina Harte Book 5)

by Carla Kovach

  She took in the ‘c’ word written in luminous pink. Her mother hated that word with a passion. Phoebe had heard her father call her that when they’d argued. She’d thrown a cup at him and he’d never used that word since. Her smile turned into a frown as she remembered the last time her father had a swearing fit at her mother, back in the spring, around the Whitsun holidays. Her mother had been dragged along the hallway covered in blood, but not her blood. Her father had slammed the kitchen door and she’d held her hands over Jasmine’s ears to block out the crying and shouting coming from the kitchen. Most kids were upset when their parents had split up, but not Phoebe, she was glad her father had gone. For once they didn’t have to tread on eggshells. She wiped a tear away. She wanted her mum to come home, she needed her.

  She pulled a little make-up mirror from her bag and stared at her frizzy hair. Maybe the girls at school would like her more if she were prettier, or walked like them, like a model. She blew her nose then pranced up and down the park like a catwalk model would, throwing her head high as she posed for her adoring fans, before swiftly turning back around, hands on hips. She glanced around, suddenly feeling stupid and glad no one had seen her.

  Ambling over to the swings, she lay back and stared into the darkening sky, hoping that the next ten minutes would hurry up and pass. She wished Nanny Mary was looking after her and Jasmine. She had taken Rory in, so why not them?

  She almost slipped off the swing as she heard a crunch in the bushes coming from behind. Heart racing, she feared she might lose her breath completely. Letting go of the swing, she snatched her bag. Clutching it to her chest, she took a step back, not taking her eyes off the spot where the crunch had come from.

  ‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing,’ she whispered under her breath, then it happened again. Almost tripping, she darted back to the cut through, onto the school field, past the school entrance, finally reaching the car park. Doubling over and gasping for breath, she stared up and down the road, glancing behind her then back at the road so fast she almost lost her balance and toppled over. ‘Hurry up, Dad,’ she whispered as she shivered. The air was cooling and short puffs of white vapour clouded the air in front of her before dissolving. In a matter of moments dusk had turned to night. Darkness had fallen and it was swallowing her up. A tear trickled down her cheek. She just wanted her dad to hurry up. She glanced back and all she could think about was the person in the bushes. She knew someone had been watching her. Her heart pounded as the car approached, its lights almost blinding her. She should run, but she couldn’t. The man in the bush had come for her.

  Twenty-One

  Gina stepped out of her car and hurried towards Mary Hudson’s front door. As she went to knock, the door flew open. A man hurried out of the house, holding a folder above his head, ready to brave the rain.

  ‘Your laptop’s in good nick now, Ron. Call me and ask next time you get any weird messages pop up. Remember, don’t click unless you’re a dick.’ Howard pointed at the man and pulled a serious expression.

  The man laughed as he nudged Gina with his bags, knocking her back into the rain. She was getting soaked all over again. She really wished this day would do one.

  ‘Come in,’ Howard said as Mary rushed to the door.

  ‘Have you found her?’ Mary gripped the tea towel, almost holding her breath for an answer, her hair slipping from her clip. Again, she twisted her loose hair around her finger and slid it behind her ear with dishwater-soaked hands.

  Her jawline, backlit by the hall lamp, accentuated her very neat profile. A shapely nose and a perfect chin with no excess flesh underneath. It was as if Gina’s own mother had risen from her grave. For a moment, Gina was transported back to when her mother used to greet her after school. Wintery school days, where she’d come in soaked, her mother would be ready with a towel and would laugh and joke as she roughly dried young Gina’s hair. Rubbing hard, tickling her neck until Gina would fall to the floor in great big howls of laughter. A lump formed in her throat. Seeing Mary was like seeing her mother’s ghost, her much loved and much missed mother. As her eyes dampened, she allowed her hair to drip over her face. Her mind wandered back to Susan with her failing marriage. Gina had felt too ashamed to ask her parents for anything when Terry was abusing her, had Susan been ashamed to ask for help?

  ‘Detective? Have you found her?’

  The spell was broken. Her beloved mother had now gone and Mary was back. In a miniscule movement, that exact resemblance vanished.

  ‘Sorry, no.’ Gina stepped into their hallway and removed her coat, not wanting to spray their walls with rainwater. Her drenched hair was another issue but there was nothing she could do about that dripping on the floor unless they offered her a towel. She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

  ‘Can I get you a towel?’ It was as if Mary had read her mind.

  A shiver ran through her body. ‘That would be lovely, thank you.’

  Mary opened the door under the stairs to the tiny water closet and pulled a towel from the rail, passing it to Gina. She began patting her hair dry as she followed Mary through to the kitchen. The kids stomped around upstairs and screamed with laughter. She imagined that they were jumping on and off the bed playing a game. She listened as Clare shouted, telling them to keep the noise down.

  ‘Can we get you a drink?’ Howard flicked the switch on the kettle.

  ‘Coffee would be lovely, milk no sugar.’ She really needed a hot drink. Maybe that would warm up her chilled body. ‘Sorry, I came at a bad time.’

  ‘You could never come at a bad time,’ Mary said. ‘He was going anyway.’

  ‘Do you fix computers?’ Gina couldn’t help but ask. Learning more about Susan’s family may give her more of a clue as to who Susan really was.

  ‘I do. I used to work for a company doing software development. I’m semi-retired now but work for myself. I’m kept very busy with little computer repairs.’ His hair looked as though it could do with a cut as he used his bony fingers to brush it away from his eyes.

  Mary smiled. ‘I used to be a nurse. We never had five minutes together when I worked shifts.’

  He passed the hot drinks around and they sat at the breakfast bar. Gina sipped the coffee. Cream – just the way her mother used to make her coffees. The likeness was uncanny. Howard placed a loving arm on his wife’s shoulders. Gina’s mum and dad had been loving parents but they had rarely showed each other affection, at least not in front of Gina.

  She gave her head a little shake and pressed her eyelids together. Cut it out, Gina. She needed to put thoughts of her mother and father aside for the time being, it was clouding her mind.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Howard asked.

  Gina nodded. ‘Long day. Can you tell me a little more about Susan? I feel knowing her a little better may help us with our search.’ She glanced back and forth between them.

  Mary looked down.

  ‘You have to tell her, love.’ Howard spoke in a soothing voice and gave her a little squeeze.

  Shaking her head slowly, Mary regained her composure and wiped her eyes. ‘I know. Firstly, I have to say, I don’t believe for one minute she ran away on purpose. She wouldn’t do that now. She wouldn’t leave her children. She doted on them. She’s never let them down and she just wouldn’t—’

  ‘Mary? It would really help me if you started at the beginning.’ Gina didn’t want to narrow down the timeframe. Delving into the whole of Susan’s life wouldn’t hurt her investigation. It may give her more to process but it would also give her a rounder picture of Susan Wheeler, mother of three, bookkeeper. She needed to know her desires, her fears; her past behaviour. Any small detail may be the missing piece that leads them to Susan.

  Mary shuffled on the stool and sipped her coffee.

  ‘Susan gave Mary no end of heartache during her teens but that was a long time ago.’

  ‘Howard’s right. She has run away before. Her teen years were hell.’ Mary stared blankly out of the
window, her mouth pursed.

  So Susan Wheeler had a history of running away. Gina pulled her soggy notepad out of her open bag and scribbled to get the biro going.

  ‘She was a delightful child. Both of them were. Clare is five years older and couldn’t wait for her little sister to come along. The first couple of years were hard, you know, toddlers can be jealous and, dare I say it, annoying, but we all got through it. Susan was so beautiful with her dark locks and large brown eyes. She even won a couple of beautiful baby competitions. I thought I had a little model in her, even tried to get her an agent at one point. Like all these things, I parted with a few hundred pounds for a portfolio and never heard from any of these so-called agents again. She turned heads though. Her primary school years went without a hitch. She was popular, active in lots of sports clubs and was forever bringing her friends home for tea and sleepovers.’

  ‘You mentioned her teens. Did something happen?’

  Mary nodded. Howard slid a box of tissues across the table. ‘Their father died suddenly of an aneurysm. We’d just split up which made it worse, the girls were heartbroken and I think Susan felt a lot of resentment towards me but I couldn’t stay in an unhappy marriage any longer. He hadn’t been a bad husband and he wasn’t abusive or drunk, I just didn’t love him. Clare was working in her first job out of school and she was so stable during this time. Susan however ditched all her clubs and sports and began smoking and hanging out at a local park with gangs of kids. She’d come home stinking of cheap vodka and would cause turmoil in our little household. I relied on Clare so much to keep it together while I was working shifts at the hospital. I sometimes think I put too much on her. One night…’ Mary swallowed and pulled a tissue from the box and sobbed into it.

  ‘It’s okay, love. You’re doing really well. This isn’t a time Mary likes to think of.’ He placed his arm around her again.

  ‘That night, I came home and Clare was pacing around the house, her clothes all ruffled. Susan had come home in a strop as she often did. She’d pushed Clare to the ground, they’d wrestled as Clare tried to calm her down and Clare had lost even though she was much older. Susan was like a rabid dog once she started. There was no reasoning with her. She’d grabbed her bag and stormed out. This had been teatime. When I arrived home at around ten thirty on that night, Clare was distraught. She’d been trying to call me at work but I’d been with my patients at the time. When I got home, I remember calling all of Susan’s friends and no one had seen her. She had our lives on hold. We thought she was dead in a ditch. After two days, the neighbours all rallied around and helped us search for her. Nothing. She breezed back into the house five days later as if nothing had happened and basically told me to shove off for asking where she’d been. I lost control of her that day. I’d lost my perfect, beautiful little girl.’

  Gina scribbled a few notes. The blue ink bleeding a little into the damp edges of the notepad. So, Susan had run away before. Although it was in her teens, could it be that she had run away again and would turn up tomorrow or the day after? ‘What happened after that?’

  Mary shrugged and dropped her hands to the worktop, almost knocking her coffee over. ‘She wouldn’t talk to any of us. She’d hang out alone in her room, playing grunge type music loudly. Her long dark hair looked as though it had been badly cut short with a pair of blunt shears and she pierced her own nose. I didn’t know her any more. She’d test me and Clare to our limits. We never knew where she went for those five days but she came back a changed person. To cut a long story short, she ran away again and again. We soon stopped worrying as much as she always came back but it hurt when she left. The last time she ran away was when she was eighteen. Slowly, the young woman, the daughter I no longer knew, came back to me. Slowly she mellowed and began dating occasionally. She no longer came home drunk. Not long after she met Ryan and those hurtful years were over. They married, had two beautiful girls. She went back to college and I was so proud of her.’

  Howard guided Mary’s head towards his chest then stroked her back.

  ‘She wouldn’t run away again. That was all in the past. Something bad has happened to her, I know it. You have to keep looking for her. I didn’t want to mention her past. I knew you wouldn’t take it seriously. I need you out there. Find her, please?’

  Mary stroked Howard’s arm and leaned back up, her gaze pleading with Gina.

  ‘Has anything serious or traumatic been happening in her life at the moment?’

  The woman shook her head and wiped her nose with the crumpled tissue. Little pieces of it fell away and floated to beyond the worktop. ‘She and Ryan are getting a divorce and it’s a messy one. I found the papers amongst her belongings when I was cleaning up her house.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘It wasn’t straightforward. She wanted the house, she wanted the kids and she had listed how much maintenance she wanted. To me it seemed high as I know roughly how much Ryan earns. They’ve borrowed money from us in the past just to keep the roof over their heads. But then she listed the reasons why and it felt as though my heart were in a vice and being twisted. She’d stated that he’d never let her go out alone, that he followed her when she went out, that she wasn’t allowed friends or privacy. She was being slowly suffocated by him. I had no idea she’d been so unhappy. I wish she’d spoken to me.’

  Gina could understand why Susan hadn’t said anything. Her face reddened as she thought about all the secrets she had. Susan would be mortified that Mary had read her divorce papers.

  Mary continued. ‘From what I see, he has been very good with the children, even stepping up with the girls this past couple of days. She had confided to me that he didn’t do enough for them but he seems to have stepped up in our hour of need. There is one other thing.’

  Gina almost woke up from the automatic note-taking. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘She accused him of having an affair.’

  Gazing at Mary, Gina wondered if the family had recently had an argument. Is that why Susan had left? Susan was accusing Ryan of an affair and Ryan had mentioned that there was another man in her life.

  ‘This isn’t serious to you any more, is it? You think she’s just run away and she’ll come back. That’s why I didn’t want to say anything.’

  Shaking her head, Gina flipped her pad closed and threw it into her bag. ‘Mary, of course we don’t think that. We will keep following leads and we will keep looking for Susan. Today, we have followed up on her appointments that you passed to us. We are still searching for her car and we will keep searching. Just because Susan ran away in the past wouldn’t mean we’d stop looking for her.’ She knew Mary found that hard to believe. Even though Susan’s teens were a long time ago, she couldn’t dismiss that this was maybe Susan’s way of coping with all that was happening. She tried to push that thought out of her mind. It was her job to find Susan and find Susan she would. ‘One last thing, do you know if Susan knew anyone living in Beech Street?’

  Mary’s brow furrowed. ‘No, not as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘The postcode you gave me covers Beech Street. Maybe it belonged to a client she was meant to visit on Tuesday.’ The information they had so far flashed through her mind. Mother of three in her thirties, missing. Job where she visits people’s houses, possibly compromising her own safety. Marriage breakdown. Messy divorce. Possessive husband. Affairs on both sides.

  The two children above had escaped onto the landing. Clare’s yell filled the silence and Gina’s trail of thought was long gone. ‘Baby Shark’ bellowed out, a song Gina was beginning to loathe. Maybe a bath followed by a good night’s sleep would give her the clarity she needed.

  ‘I know this is difficult for you which is why I have a family liaison officer on standby—’

  ‘No way. I don’t want anyone in my home. Whatever is happening, we can manage this as a family.’ Mary turned her head.

  ‘But—’

  ‘No, thank you. I know you mean well but you can help us all by just b
eing out there and finding out where Susan is. We just want her home. Some officer hanging around making cups of tea and getting in the way isn’t going to help one bit.’ Mary was adamant.

  ‘Of course, I understand,’ Gina replied as she headed towards the door. ‘Do you recognise the names Michaela Daniels or Dale Blair?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not that I can think of.’

  ‘Thank you for your time. I’ll keep you updated.’

  Where could Susan have run to back in her teens and where was she now? History of running away and returning. The husband’s alleged affair. Dale Blair, the client she’d been arguing with. Where was Dale and who was Ryan seeing?

  When she left the house and the door had closed behind her, she stood on the drive in the rain and dialled Detective Chief Inspector Briggs. She knew he was still scheduled to be at the station. Her fingers tingled as she pressed the button, wanting to keep her distance from him yet needing to hear his voice.

  ‘Gina?’ His voice made her shiver in a pleasant way. That brief fling would remain theirs and theirs only, forever. With more rainwater filling her already sodden shoes, she swiftly relayed all that she knew.

  ‘Can we arrange a regular overnight drive-by of Dale Blair’s house? I know it seems like a waste of resources but I need to know when he returns home. I need to speak to him.’

  ‘Just because he hasn’t contacted us today?’

  ‘No, because he and Susan argued on Tuesday and neither have been seen since.’

  ‘Gina, you know the budgets are tight and we haven’t given him ample time to respond to the card that you left. I’m poring over the finances now. This department is existing on thin air. You know what I’m up against.’

  ‘You know something’s not right.’ She needed him on board. She knew it was a big ask but she didn’t want to let Mary down. If she had vanished and her mother was still alive then, like Mary, she’d be hoping that the police would do all they could. ‘Fine, I will head straight over there myself and spend the night watching his house, in the rain, alone!’