by Carla Kovach
‘Stephanie Baxter, it’s DI Harte.’
The woman screamed and pulled away, then she stumbled back towards the side of the house before leaning against the wall and letting out a sob. ‘Police.’
‘Yes. I’m DI Harte and this is DC Wyre. We need to ask you a few questions relating to the murder of Dale Blair and the disappearances of Susan and Phoebe Wheeler. Can we go inside and talk? We’re all getting soaked out here.’
She wiped her eyes, took her keys out and unlocked the door before leading them in.
‘Did you know someone’s been sleeping in your shed?’ Gina glanced around the kitchen as she turned the light on. Two empty wine bottles sat on the work surface along with a few ready meal wrappers. The ultra-modern high gloss kitchen was a far cry from her own.
The woman almost choked on her words. ‘It was me.’
Stephanie fumbled with the cups and tried to put the kettle on but her trembling hands had other ideas and tears began bouncing off her chin, onto the worktop. She almost knocked a cup onto the floor.
‘I can do that. Tea?’ Wyre asked as Gina led Stephanie into the living room, turning the light on as she did.
‘Come on, Stephanie, let’s sit down a moment.’ Gina took her arm and led her into the living room.
The pale woman’s teeth began to chatter. ‘I… I…’ Gina spotted a bruise and blood on her face and a scratch on her wrist.
‘What is it, Stephanie? What are you trying to tell me?’ Stephanie grabbed her long dark hair that had slid out of her clip and twisted it like a rope, tucking it to one side. A few sodden strands stuck to her cheek and snaked beneath her coat. ‘You don’t look well, can I get you an ambulance? Are you hurt?’
She shook her head. Gina felt the photo in her bag. Maybe that would prompt her to talk. Something had happened and Gina needed her to open up. ‘We have this photo of Dale and Susan. I can see now that this girl is you. How do you know them?’
She went to open her mouth and paused for a moment before continuing. ‘I need to speak to Susan before I speak to anyone else. It can’t wait.’ The woman pulled her phone out and began trying to call Susan.
Gina observed her erratic behaviour and waited. Susan hadn’t answered her phone since she went missing and it was off. ‘Susan is missing and we need to find her. Do you know where Susan is?’
The woman slowly shook her head as she stared at the wall.
‘How did you get the injury to your head and wrist?’ Blood had trickled down her face and from her arm to her lap.
Again, Stephanie clammed up. Gina was getting nothing out of her at all. She crept to the kitchen, leaving the woman rocking back and forth on the settee. ‘She needs medical assistance. Can you discretely call an ambulance? She’s definitely showing signs of being in shock.’
Wyre nodded, stirred the tea and handed the cup to Gina. ‘I’ll go outside and make the call.’
‘Thank you.’ Gina headed back into the lounge.
Stephanie took the cup from her and sipped the drink as she clutched the cup in her jittery hands. ‘I’ve been attacked.’
Gina pulled out a packet of tissues from her bag and handed one to Stephanie. ‘I can see you’re hurt. I want to help you. Can you tell me what happened?’
‘I was walking, trying to remember…’
‘Remember what?’
‘Don’t you see? I can’t remember. I was walking and someone came up behind me and went to grab me. I hit him back so hard, jabbed him with my umbrella.’
‘Someone attacked you? When did this happen?’ Gina sat next to Stephanie. She could see the anguish the woman was going through. Her teeth gritted as if she was trying to stop herself from talking. Her knuckles white as she gripped the cup, spilling bits of tea onto her lap as she trembled.
‘Just… just before I came home.’
‘Where did this happen?’ As soon as Stephanie said the word, she would have a team out looking for her attacker. She felt for her phone, ready to pull it out. ‘Where, Stephanie? We need to catch the person who attacked you. I know this is hard and I know you’re upset.’ Gina felt her heart humming away as she thought of Phoebe. She needed to find the girl and that started with Stephanie talking to them but she could see how delicate the woman in front of her was. Her mind was running through the scenario that Stephanie had escaped from the same attacker and the ticking clock was making her head ache. ‘Stephanie, where did this happen? Where?’
She slammed the cup on the coffee table, spilling half the contents. ‘I don’t know. Leave me alone. I can’t tell.’
‘What can’t you tell?’
The woman shook her head back and forth as tears slipped down her face, one after another. Her puffy eyes refused to make eye contact with Gina or anything else. The wall was the only thing she would look at. Gina caught sight of her mucky fingernails and spotted a red streak mixed in with the dirt. ‘Stephanie, my colleague, Detective Constable Wyre has called an ambulance. We need to check you over. I can see you have an injury to your head and wrist and you’re in shock. I see blood under your fingernails. You defended yourself against your attacker, you say? Could that be your attacker’s blood?’ Gina wanted her nails swabbed.
Wyre came back in and nodded. Gina knew the ambulance was on its way.
‘Is there anything you can tell me about your attacker?’
She shook her head. ‘I need to speak to Susan, first.’
‘We don’t know where Susan is. Maybe if you tell me what you do know, we might be able to find her.’
Stephanie shivered and her teeth sounded like castanets clacking together. Gina spotted a snuggle-blanket on the floor by the window. As she went to reach for it a knife dropped to the floor. A mid-length serrated blade. At once she stiffened up.
‘Stephanie, how did this knife get here?’
The woman’s gaze moved from the wall to the knife.
‘The knife. Is it yours?’
She bent forward and sobbed. ‘Yes.’
The case flashed through Gina’s mind then her thoughts stopped at the piece of liquorice forensics had pulled from Dale’s throat. It had been cut with a serrated knife. The only way to tell if this knife had cut the sweet was to have it analysed at the lab. In front of her she had a distressed woman who had just been attacked. She tried to picture Stephanie strangling Dale or being there when it happened. She couldn’t be one of their suspects, could she?
‘Stephanie, it’s really important. What were you trying to remember?’ Gina went to place her hand on Stephanie’s arm and she flinched.
The woman shook her head, an expression of fear on her contorted face as she thought. ‘I don’t know.’ She clenched her eyes closed and held her breath before shouting. ‘The door beyond the door, beyond the other door.’
Susan’s poems mentioned a door, more than one door.
‘Susan mentions a door in her poems. Is it the same door?’
Stephanie paused and held her breath. As her face reddened, she exhaled and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Stephanie, this is really important. We have a missing child, Phoebe Wheeler. She’s only eleven and she’ll be scared. We need to find her and we think you can help. Why do you have this knife, here?’
She shrugged.
Gina spotted Wyre picking up the teabag to bin it. The lid opened. ‘Guv, come here.’
‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she said to Stephanie.
Stephanie sat back on her settee and closed her eyes.
‘What is it?’
‘Look.’ Wyre held Stephanie’s bin open and poking up through her clutter was a stick of red liquorice.
‘We’re going to have to take her in as soon as she’s been seen to. Dammit, look at her. She has a knife, the type we’re looking for and she has a stick of red liquorice in her bin but it’s not her. It can’t be. Something isn’t right but I need her down the station for questioning once she has the medical all clear.’
‘Do we arrest her?’
&nbs
p; ‘We could keep her for twenty-four hours then. I don’t know. She seems really frail and I’m not convinced of her guilt. She’s traumatised beyond belief. I know an abused person when I see one.’ She shivered at how close to home her last statement was. She’d spent many a night not knowing when Terry’s assaults on her would end as he tortured her well into the early hours. ‘We need to be gentle with her.’
‘Just because of how she looks?’
Wyre was right. Looks were deceiving and Stephanie had kept rambling on about trying to remember things. ‘Give me a moment with her. I know how it looks but…’ She couldn’t explain what she was thinking. ‘If I can get her there voluntarily to begin with, I feel we may get more out of her. If we jump in and make an arrest now, I think we’ll send her into shock even more. We’ll get nothing from her, we need to tread carefully.’
‘Agreed, guv.’
‘Stephanie, when we’ve had you checked over, I’ll need you to come to the station to make a statement.’
‘About the attack?’ She prised her eyes open and rubbed her mascara over her face.
‘About the attack, about Susan, about Dale, Phoebe and everything you know. About the reunion.’
Stephanie jolted forward in her seat, her wide blackened eyes manically staring back.
‘About the liquorice in your bin.’
‘It’s not mine.’ Her wide-eyed stare fixed on Gina’s. ‘Okay. I’ll come to the station,’ she said in a quivery voice.
Gina knew Stephanie had plenty to tell them.
‘Ambulance is here, guv.’
It was going to be a long night. Gina doubted she’d get to interview Stephanie before morning. Once she had conveyed her thoughts to Bernard, got the knife and bin contents bagged up, she would get a few hours rest.
‘He’s going to kill me.’
Gina darted over to the woman and kneeled before her. ‘Who is going to kill you, Stephanie?’
She shook her head and brought her knees up onto the settee and rested them under her chin, cocooning herself. Bringing her hands over her ears. ‘Go away, go away!’ She began to scream hysterically. As Gina went to place a hand on her arm, the woman flinched and recoiled, hitting anyone who dared to go near her.
‘I want an officer to go with her to the hospital. I want to make sure she’s safe. Don’t leave her alone. We can’t lose her.’
A paramedic walked over and began trying to soothe Stephanie but she kept batting the woman away and yelling. ‘We need to get her to the hospital now. She looks to be in shock but we will need to run some tests.’
‘Can we speak to her there?’ Gina asked.
‘She’s not in a fit state to talk to anyone at the moment.’ The paramedic began speaking gently to Stephanie. With her emotional state heightening to the point of hysteria, Gina knew the paramedic was right. No one would be speaking to Stephanie for a few hours. ‘Call the hospital in a couple of hours.’
Sixty-Four
Monday, 18 November 2019
The recorder had been rolling for several minutes and Stephanie Baxter was still silent. An officer had brought her straight to the station after she’d been discharged. Gina shuffled in her chair to get comfortable and Jacob rubbed his eyes.
‘You still haven’t told us where your attack took place.’ She held back her fingers from tapping on the table as the tension was waiting to burst out. The location was key and she needed Stephanie to spill the information.
‘I can’t remember.’ Stephanie had broken the silence. Her jacket made a chaffing noise every time she moved and she began to gnaw at her freshly cleaned nails.
‘Where were you going?’
Her long hair had slipped through the gap in the back of the chair and had settled to her right. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I needed to think and walking helps me to think.’
‘I gather you weren’t too far from home.’
‘I guess not.’
Gina couldn’t work out whether Stephanie was playing with them. The distress she’d conveyed the previous night was all but gone and she came across as flippant in her replies.
‘You mentioned being followed.’
She nodded. ‘He came to my house. He posted the liquorice.’
‘Did the same person attack you?’
She shook her head. ‘No, the other one attacked me.’ Gina knew there were two people involved in Dale’s murder. Stephanie knew everything, she just had to coax the information out of her. Phoebe’s safety was at stake. She felt her toes tapping under the desk. Keep it calm, Gina.
Gina glanced back at her notes and referred to the call from the phone box. ‘It was you who called the police from the phone box. You said you were being followed then.’
She nodded.
‘Who was following you?’
‘The other one. I need to speak to Susan. She texted me to come, telling me not to say anything. We need to be together when we talk but when I got there, it wasn’t her. I can’t do this without her. I know Dale can’t help now…’ Stephanie began to fidget on her seat. She clipped at her nail with her teeth.
Blood whooshed through Gina’s head. A text message, that’s what had lured Stephanie in. The same must have happened with Phoebe. Their abductor was pretending to be Susan.
‘When did Susan text you?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Can I see?’
Stephanie passed her phone to Gina. ‘It’s in messages, the last one sent. I don’t get many messages.’
Gina focused on the screen, noticing immediately that the number was different to the one they had on file for Susan.
Whatever you do, don’t call the police. Don’t call anyone. I’ll be in touch. Your dear friend, Susan. We need to go back to the beginning, where it all started. I’ll explain later. I’m going back. Xxx.
‘This hasn’t come from Susan’s phone. Do you believe this to be a message from Susan?’
Stephanie stroked her cheek and began picking a tiny spot as she shrugged. ‘It was odd that she ended with “your dear friend, Susan”. I kept trying to call the number but no one would answer.’ Her cuff slipped slightly as she pulled a hair from her face and Gina spotted the dressing on her wrist.
‘Okay, may we take your phone?’
‘I need it.’
Gina left the phone on the table. She would need to see what else might be on it but that could wait.
‘I have to ask, why did you have a knife wrapped in a blanket on the living room floor?’
She began to tremble. ‘I told you, I was being followed. I was scared, dammit! It was for my own protection. I know it was him, he gives us liquorice.’
‘He gives you liquorice. Who do you mean by us?’ Gina suspected she meant Dale and Susan too but maybe there were others involved.
‘All of us. Anyone. He always had liquorice. Long, red strands of that revolting stuff.’ Tears drizzled down the woman’s cheeks. ‘I can’t keep this secret any longer. I promised Susan and Dale we would do it together but it’s too late and now I have to tell.’
Jacob’s phone flashed and he nudged her and held it up. It was an email from Bernard. A wash of relief came over Gina as she read that the knife found at Stephanie’s had not been the one used to dissect the liquorice found in Dale’s throat.
‘In your own time, Stephanie. I know this isn’t going to be easy but please, tell us all you can.’ Gina knew time was of the essence but she also knew that what Stephanie was about to say couldn’t be rushed out in one sentence.
The woman took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a couple of seconds then sat back. ‘We were in our teens, Dale and I were a bit older than Susan when we all joined the youth group but Susan exuded a confidence that made her seem older. We’d turn up with a lot of other kids and play pool, table tennis, do arts and crafts and they’d sometimes have roller discos. It had been so much fun and we found that our parents gave us the freedom we craved once they knew we were safe at the club.’ She frowned as she thought.
‘What happened after that?’
She bit her little nail and hunched over the table. ‘It all went wrong. We wanted to be more grown-up and the youth leader back then started bringing drinks, alcopops. He’d give them to us. We all thought we were so cool and grown-up, except Dale. He was nervous about the whole thing. We told Dale it would be okay and I have to live with that forever. It was far from okay.’ She looked up with glassy eyes. ‘We started going there more, it was just Dale, Susie and me. We called her Susie then. He called her Susie. We were off our heads a lot of the time. He’d take us to the back office along a locked corridor. Three doors, we had to go through. The room had a computer up the one end and there was a couch as you went in. It was messy and gloomy but he’d done it up with lights and a disco ball. Anything we wanted he would get, from vodka to cake, sometimes he’d give us money for new clothes. It was like every day was our birthday. There was one thing he always gave us and we loved it back then, these long sticks of red liquorice. We’d munch on them all the time.’
Gina watched as Jacob scribbled the odd note down. ‘And…’
‘We’d turn up at the club any time, sometimes alone and even when it was closed. It was like we three had special privileges. I went there alone one day after he told me that the others would be there and he touched me. I didn’t know how to tell him to stop. He was always so kind and gave us everything. I froze, not quite believing it had happened. I’d never even had a boyfriend being a late developer. I was embarrassed and didn’t tell a soul but that wasn’t the first time. It happened again and again until one day, he forced me to…’ She traced the grain in the table with her finger and swallowed. ‘He made me have sex with him and told me if anyone asked, he’d say I was drunk and we’d been having a relationship for ages. I had just turned sixteen. Don’t you dare ask me why I kept going back. I’ve been trying to answer that question myself for ages. At first he seemed to have some sort of hold over me, then…’ She wiped a tear away and shrugged. ‘Dale and Stephanie were my friends and we had a lot of fun there. I didn’t want that summer to end and I didn’t want our little friendship group to die so I continued to say nothing. Before I knew it, I was in too deep. He said I’d spoil things for Dale and Susan, that our friendships would break up if they knew. I thought it was just me that he was abusing. I can call it that now. There is more, a reason I couldn’t report him. He used a photo to keep me silent, I was naked on his couch. There were other photos too and I don’t remember him taking them. I still don’t know how I ended up like that on the couch. Now I know he drugged me and I still have no idea what he did to me all those times.’ She hiccupped a sob and wiped her nose. ‘I said nothing to anyone because of those stupid photos. That was up until the Youth Club Facebook Group had been set up and the reunion had been arranged. I’d contacted Susan and Dale, that’s when my worst fears had been confirmed. He’d abused us all.’