Nine Elms: The thrilling first book in a brand-new, electrifying crime series (Kate Marshall 1)

by Robert Bryndza

  ‘So, the mystery of Caitlyn Murray?’ she said after the waiter delivered their drinks.

  ‘You said in your messages with Tristan that you’d expected to get a call about her from a private investigator?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Well, perhaps I was being a little over-dramatic . . . Only because the police at the time did so little. They didn’t seem to talk to anyone. They came in a few days after she’d vanished and told us that a police officer would be in school all that day in case any of us had anything to tell them. I don’t know how many girls went to talk to them.’

  ‘Did you talk to them?’

  ‘Yes, I told them the little that I knew, but I never heard from them again,’ she said, grabbing another bread roll and tearing it in two. There was something off about the way she answered. Was it guilt? wondered Kate.

  ‘You worked with Caitlyn at your father’s video shop?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘One of six video shops, thank you very much. Daddy was the north of England’s top franchisee.’

  ‘Did Caitlyn have a boyfriend?’

  ‘No one special,’ said Victoria. ‘There were a few suitors in the mix. Like any young girl of sixteen she was quite the little shagger.’

  A look passed between Kate and Tristan.

  ‘She had several boyfriends?’ asked Kate.

  ‘No one serious. There was a lad who delivered soft drinks to the newsagent next door . . . A delicious blond with a washboard stomach, very Abercrombie & Fitch. We were both guilty of sleeping with him . . . He looked a bit like you,’ said Victoria, fixing Tristan with a beady stare. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and poured himself more water. Victoria had the breezy confidence of someone from the upper class.

  ‘Can I ask where Caitlyn met with this delivery lad?’ asked Kate.

  ‘He delivered drinks and popcorn to the video shop. One lunchtime, when Caitlyn went out for some food, he was all flirty. I was a thin slip of a girl back then, with tits like rocks. It was all over in ten minutes, but rather fun . . . A couple of weeks later I came back early from lunch to find Caitlyn and him at it in the same place . . . Up until then I’d thought she was a little prim and frigid, but we bonded over the sexy delivery lad.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re happy to talk about this?’ asked Kate, who was surprised the conversation had taken on such a confessional tone before the first course had even arrived. Victoria waved it away with her third bread roll.

  ‘Of course. Although I seem to be making young Tristan uncomfortable.’

  ‘No. I’m good,’ he said, trying to hide his annoyance. He looked pleased when the food arrived. Kate and Victoria had ordered the spaghetti carbonara, and Tristan the macaroni cheese with a breadcrumb crust.

  ‘This is scrumptious,’ said Victoria as they tucked into their food. Kate was finding her difficult to read. Everything seemed so breezy and confident and jolly hockey sticks.

  ‘There’s one thing about Caitlyn’s disappearance that’s really troubling us,’ said Kate. She went on to explain that Megan Hibbert had seen a man picking up Caitlyn from the youth club in a brand new Rover.

  ‘Well, I never went to this Carter’s youth club,’ said Victoria through a large mouthful of spaghetti. ‘I remember the three scholarship girls talking about it – Wendy, Megan and Caitlyn. The youth club sounded ghastly, but that was probably Paul who picked her up.’

  Kate felt Tristan’s knee press against hers under the table.

  ‘I’m sorry. Paul? Paul who?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Paul Adler. He was a police officer for a couple of years, a very good one too, but he was attacked on the beat one night. Two thugs with a knife jumped him and he lost an eye . . . he had a glass eye made, a very good one. It almost exactly matches his real one.’

  Kate and Tristan had expected her to describe Peter Conway, but now she had veered off in another direction.

  ‘You knew this Paul Adler?’ asked Kate, unable to hide her disbelief.

  ‘Yes, well, I knew of him. He owned Adler’s the chemist two doors down from Hollywood Nights, where myself and Caitlyn worked. He took the compensation he got from the accident and opened up the chemist, or should I say pharmacy. He bought the building, so he had that and all the shops paying him rent. He became very well off. He used to stop by and rent videos,’ said Victoria.

  ‘Do you still see him?’

  ‘Good lord, no, me and him are all in the past.’

  ‘Did you have a relationship with him?’

  ‘No!’

  Kate wanted to press her more on this – her reaction had been so quick and vehement – but she needed to concentrate on Paul Adler and Caitlyn.

  ‘How long were Paul and Caitlyn an item?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think they were an item. He was married, still is, but they used to go off for “drives”,’ Victoria said, indicating inverted commas with her fingers. ‘He was quite eligible. He always used to get the new registration cars the day they came out each year. He was the first to have the new H-reg car in the area.’

  ‘A friend of Caitlyn said she saw Caitlyn talking to a bloke in a new H-reg car,’ said Tristan. He took out his mobile and found the picture of Peter Conway. ‘Did you ever see Caitlyn with this man?’ He held up the photo.

  Victoria took a sip of her tonic water and almost choked. It took her a moment to compose herself. ‘Sorry,’ she said wiping at her chin with a napkin. ‘You surprised me. That’s Peter Conway, the whatsit, the cannibal killer . . . Why on earth have you got that picture?’ She pulled a conspiratorial face at Kate. ‘Who else’s photo has he got on that phone? Jack the Ripper? You are a naughty boy!’

  ‘I’m showing you because we think Peter Conway may have been involved in Caitlyn’s disappearance,’ said Tristan.

  ‘He was a police officer in Greater Manchester in 1990,’ added Kate.

  Victoria sat back in her chair, chastised. ‘I know all this. I do read the newspapers . . . And I wasn’t Caitlyn’s nursemaid. I rather think I gave her confidence to chat up men. That’s all. She did the rest.’

  ‘Peter Conway never came into the video shop?’ asked Kate.

  ‘I can’t remember everyone who came in, and I only worked there part-time!’

  ‘Do you think Paul Adler could have known Peter Conway?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘Absolutely not! No, no, no,’ Victoria said. She saw her glass was empty and called the waiter over and ordered another.

  ‘You said you haven’t seen Paul Adler in years. How could you be so sure?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Well, we’ve spoken over the years, and it came up in conversation. Peter Conway worked in the area, and there’s been all those rumours about if there were previous victims . . . You have to remember the police force in Manchester is big, and Paul told me that he never came into contact with Conway.’

  The waiter brought over her drink. She had become flustered and fumbled in her bag. She removed a bottle of pills and had trouble with the lid. Tristan took it from her, twisted it off and handed it back.

  ‘Thank you, blood pressure medication, forgot to take it.’ She popped a pill in her mouth and swallowed it with a gulp of tonic water. ‘I wish I could go back to my young svelte sixteen-year-old self and shake her for thinking she was fat.’

  ‘Okay, so you think it was Paul Adler who picked Caitlyn up that night from the youth club?’ asked Kate. ‘This would have been late July, early August 1990. And it was definitely an H-reg Rover.’

  Victoria rolled her eyes. ‘I feel like we’re going around in circles. It certainly sounds like Paul Adler. He’s on Facebook, and I think he’s got a picture of his younger self on his profile.’ She had pulled a powder compact from her bag and was reapplying her lipstick. It seemed she had had enough and wanted to go.

  ‘Do you have Paul Adler’s details?’ asked Kate. ‘I’d like to get in contact with him.’

  ‘Erm, I’m not really comfortable giving out other people’s phone numbers without their consent,’ she
said, snapping the lid back on her lipstick.

  But you’re happy to label Caitlyn, who is missing and presumed dead, as ‘quite the little shagger’, thought Kate.

  ‘We’re going to look him up anyway, and I just want to ask him a few questions. He might know something useful.’ Kate smiled and didn’t break eye contact.

  Victoria turned and unhooked her bag from the back of her chair, taking out a small silver address book. She flicked through pages and pages until she found an address. ‘Here we are. Paul Adler.’ She gave Kate his details. ‘You know, the police spoke to him about Caitlyn going missing, and he had a cast-iron alibi. He was in France with his wife on the day Caitlyn disappeared. They have a place out there, Le Touquet. He’s a nice family man.’

  Kate felt her heart sinking into her boots. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t think Paul Adler would be a suspect.’

  ‘Can you give us a list of any other men who Caitlyn was involved with?’

  ‘Four that I know of. The drinks lad. Another young lad who delivered the videos each week, the new releases. He was barely eighteen and, again, blond . . . I don’t know their names or their addresses. They were fun, silly boys.’ She faltered for a moment. ‘And, er, she slept with my father . . . That’s why myself and Caitlyn fell out in the end. Shagging around is all well and good, but you don’t shit where you eat. And Caitlyn was stupid enough to think I would turn a blind eye.’

  ‘Where was your father the day Caitlyn went missing?’ asked Tristan.

  Victoria turned to him, all her faux jolliness gone. ‘At a wedding,’ she said, her smile now thin. ‘My whole family was at the wedding, in case you want to know where I was too. My cousin Harriet Farrington got married in Surrey. Leatherhead church . . . I know Sunday is an unusual day for a wedding.’ She saw Tristan and Kate exchange a look. ‘I have photos, if you need me to prove it.’

  ‘Yes. If you could send them, thank you,’ said Kate, matching her thin smile.

  On the way home in the car Kate and Tristan were quiet until they reached the outskirts of Ashdean. It was grey and had started to rain.

  ‘I didn’t get a good vibe off Victoria,’ said Kate. ‘She was very nervous.’

  ‘That pill she took wasn’t for blood pressure. It was Xanax. I saw the bottle,’ said Tristan.

  ‘She could just be a person who suffers from nervous anxiety.’

  ‘She seemed completely different in her messages,’ said Tristan. ‘I didn’t like her in person. There was something a bit weird about her.’

  ‘Well, being a bit weird isn’t enough evidence. If it was this Paul Adler who was seen outside the youth club with Caitlyn,’ said Kate, ‘he has an alibi, and Victoria’s father has an alibi. So who else is there?’

  ‘The lads who delivered stuff to the video shop. We could track them down,’ said Tristan. ‘And we need to show Paul Adler’s picture to Megan in Australia.’

  ‘Why didn’t Malcolm and Sheila know about the boyfriends, the boys?’ asked Kate gloomily, taking a left turn onto the coast road.

  ‘What parent knows everything about their teenage son or daughter?’ said Tristan.

  ‘Oh, lord, I’ve got all that to come with Jake.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the police have told Malcolm and Sheila, if they’d known?’

  ‘Probably not. They might not have been assigned a family liaison officer who would give them this information.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We need to do our due diligence. We need to follow up everything we’ve looked into. The teacher, the other girls in the school. And I want to talk to this Paul Adler, if only to confirm what Victoria said.’

  Over the next four days Kate and Tristan managed to track down Caitlyn’s teacher and the other girls in her class, none of whom were able to add anything new to the investigation. Kate also called in a favour from Alan Hexham, asking him to look into Paul Adler. Victoria’s version of events checked out. He had been a police officer and retired with a commendation in 1988 after an attack where he lost an eye. At the time of Caitlyn’s vanishing he was questioned by the police, because Caitlyn passed Adler’s Chemist on her route to the cinema, but he had been out of the country the day she went missing.

  Kate had a look at Paul Adler’s Facebook profile and found an older photo of him and sent it to Megan Hibbert in Melbourne. She messaged back and confirmed he was the man in the H-reg Rover she’d seen picking up Caitlyn outside Carter’s youth club.

  On Thursday morning Malcolm sent Kate an email, asking how things were going. Kate knew their leads had gone cold.

  It seemed Caitlyn had vanished into thin air.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Carmichael Grammar School’s sports field was set back behind the school and backed onto the edge of Dartmoor. Thursday afternoon was cold, and at around 5 p.m. the light was fading enough for the coach of the school hockey team to switch on the floodlights for the first time since the spring.

  Layla Gerrard was easily the best hockey player and the most popular girl on the team. She was small but wiry and strong. She had a burst of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and wore her long strawberry-blonde hair in a thick plait. After practice, the girls went back to the warm changing rooms, pulled on sweaters and tracksuits, and packed up their sports bags and hockey sticks. Most of the team made their way back to the school building, but Layla and Ginny Robinson, who both travelled home by bus, left the school fields by a small gate behind the changing rooms.

  Layla usually walked part of the way home with Ginny, who was rather posh. Layla liked her though; she was a good player and their mutual love of hockey overcame their differences. Once they were out of the floodlit field, they were swallowed by the darkness, walking along a thin path bordering the train tracks, which came out onto a main road. The nights had been drawing in for some weeks, but this was the first evening that they made this journey after the sun had set. They felt secure walking in a pair, and they each carried a hockey stick. As they walked, they munched on protein bars and chatted about their coming match on Saturday.

  As they reached the main road, the bell sounded and the railway barriers came down. A train rumbled out of the trees and over the crossing. The girls took advantage of the red lights and crossed the road. On the other side they parted company. Ginny carried along the main road to her bus stop, and Layla turned off on a residential street. She hunched down in her fleece, feeling the cold air stinging her bare legs.

  The street was pleasant, one of the posher areas of town, and lights glowed in the windows behind curtains. Layla checked her watch and picked up the pace, seeing that her bus was due in less than five minutes. The side of the road was lined with cars where the residents parked, and a couple of cars pulled into vacant spaces as she passed. A man in a suit carrying a bunch of roses got out and hurried up the steps to a front door with big white pillars, and a woman with a small boy and girl emerged from the other car, the children whining that they weren’t allowed fish and chips for their tea.

  ‘You can have them tomorrow, now shut up!’ said the woman. She followed along behind Layla, with the children whining and dragging their feet.

  ‘I don’t want to eat steamed vegetables,’ the little girl was saying.

  Layla smiled, remembering the protracted torture of being made to eat her greens as a little kid. She looked back as the little boy dropped the school satchel he was carrying.

  ‘Pick that up! The ground is wet!’ his mother trilled. Layla thought how much she was looking forward to Friday, when her dad always got fish and chips on the way home from work.

  *

  There was a railway bridge with an underpass, which cut through to another residential street close to her bus stop. It was now dark, and the underpass up ahead was poorly lit, but with the family following behind, Layla felt more comfortable taking this shortcut to her bus stop.

  But just as Layla entered the underpass, the mother and her child
ren took a right into the gate of a house and their voices dropped away. The noise from the surrounding street was muffled and Layla’s feet echoed in the enclosed space. It was dank and stank of urine, and she hurried on to the other end. She emerged at the end of another residential street. Next to the arches of the underpass was an overgrown play park and a large house whose windows were in darkness. There were no streetlights, and at first she didn’t see the black van parked at the kerb in the shadows.

  Just as she came level with it, the side door slid open and a tall man dressed head to toe in black reached out and clamped a square of surgical cotton over her nose and mouth. His other arm encircled her shoulders in a powerful grip, and he yanked her off her feet and bundled her into the van. It happened smoothly. There was a brief moment where her hockey stick caught on the edge of the door, but he pivoted her around deftly.

  The back of the van was empty apart from a small mattress. They went down soundlessly, hitting the mattress together. The man used his weight to keep Layla still for the fifteen seconds it took the drug soaked into the cotton over her nose to take effect, and for that brief moment she fought back, writhing, until the drug hit her system and she went limp.

  The street was quiet, and in the dark pool of shadows by the underpass no one saw the gloved hand drop Layla’s mobile phone into the drain by the van.

  The door slid closed with a soft click, and a moment later the engine started and the van moved along the quiet residential street, joining the traffic at the main road and heading towards Exeter.

  CHAPTER 24

  On Friday, Kate woke when it was still dark and, skipping her usual morning swim, left her house very early to drive up to Altrincham on the outskirts of Manchester. For an hour the sun struggled to come up, and when the dawn finally broke, only an eerie grey light filtered through the clouds. With the light came the rain, hammering on the car roof as she crossed the hills and moors. She arrived just before lunchtime, and was starving when she drove through Altrincham.