‘It means that those men are connected in some way. It means that someone is trying to tell me something by sending me that cutting. They want me to dig into this story. There’s something there, I’m certain of it. And wait until I tell you the next thing I’ve discovered.’
Charlotte was catching up now. Those men were involved in something, and it took place at her guest house. A girl had been held hostage there and a former owner—Rex Emery—was in prison for it. She could sense storm clouds gathering, and she wasn’t happy about it; all of this made them vulnerable. It could reveal the truth about what happened back in the eighties.
Nigel didn’t wait for the prompt.
‘The police have put the other men in that picture on a high state of alert. But here’s the thing; one of them is dead already.’
‘Well, I’d expect that,’ Charlotte said. ‘They must be getting on a bit, they’ll be nearing retirement, won’t they?’
‘This was another suicide, a while back,’ Nigel continued. ‘Only it was a gruesome one. It was a senior police officer, a man called Harvey Turnbull. He was decapitated. He put his head on the rails of the big dipper at Adventure Kingdom. It took it clean off, according to the old news cutting I managed to dig up.’
The violence of it took her aback. First Barry McMillan and now Fred Walker. She thought about the horror of it, being slowly suffocated by a cord pulled around his neck. And before all this, there was Harvey Turnbull.
She could hardly believe it. Who would kill themselves in that way, so violent and bloody? A police officer, too. And all of them had been in her guest house thirteen years ago.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Charlotte replied. ‘This is almost too much to take in.’
‘It means Barry’s death was no fluke. These men are linked in some way, going back at least thirteen years, if not more. And it looks like someone is trying to finish them all off.’
‘Does DCI Summers have any theories?’ Charlotte asked, a sense of fear rising in her. This was too close to home, threatening and unsettling.
‘No, I was slightly ahead of her on this one. But listen, I’ve managed to fix up an interview with Harvey Turnbull’s wife this evening. Do you want to come?’
‘I’m not sure if I can. I’m on a train to Cheshire at the moment…’
‘I told her you would be coming. I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to, with that photo being taken in the guest house. She wasn’t going to speak to me until I mentioned you. Apparently, she and Harvey used to eat at your place a lot in the nineties. It had a restaurant in the lounge back then; it was quite a destination, apparently.’
‘What time?’ Charlotte asked, pulling the train timetable from her pocket.
‘Half-past seven at the Midland Hotel?’ Nigel suggested.
‘Can you pick me up from the station? The guest house is covered for staffing already, so I can make it. Are you writing a news story on it?’
‘Not yet, but I reckon I will be soon. Something was going on between those men in that photo, Charlotte. And now, thirteen years later, someone appears to want them dead. And it all links up with your guest house in some way. There’s something up, and I want to find out what it is.’
Chapter Ten
Fletcher Prison made Charlotte shiver. God forbid she should ever end up in a place like that. She could barely believe that her friend was incarcerated there. Jenna was no criminal. Sure, she’d been an accomplice in a kidnapping, but she wasn’t violent or psychotic; she’d just been desperate.
The site was surrounded by high fencing topped with razor wire. It reminded Charlotte of a military barracks, much like their own college had been before it had expanded massively. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for Jenna. At least as a visitor she could leave at the end of the day.
Charlotte was subjected to the usual round of scans, searches and pat-downs. Everything about the process made her feel she had something to hide. It was a bleak experience; the officers checking her for weapons or contraband were hardened and unfriendly.
She sat in the visiting room, waiting for Jenna to arrive. Considering it was a women’s prison, there was a distinct lack of male visitors. They’d probably long since made themselves scarce, moving on to the next poor soul to make their lives hell.
As the inmates began to pour into the visiting room, the supervising guards visibly tensed. Many of them had tattoos and short hair, and most had haunted looks in their eyes, hardened by life’s blows. There was an absence of smiles in the room, despite it being visiting time. Young children cried around her, no doubt confused by seeing their mothers when they couldn’t come home. Charlotte thought that there had to be a better way.
Jenna entered the visiting area, her eyes empty of emotion. It made Charlotte want to cry. Had she and Will done this to her? In her less forgiving moments, she wondered if they’d all have been better telling the truth. But Will would get cross with her, claiming Jenna had brought it upon herself. She’d deceived and threatened Charlotte. She’d seen a blackmail opportunity when they arrived back in Morecambe and had been merciless in taking it.
‘Her prison sentence is nothing to do with Bruce Craven. You need to remember that,’ he’d say to her. But Charlotte knew different; it was all connected in some way to Bruce Craven.
Jenna sat opposite Charlotte at the small, grey table. It had been heavily vandalised with offensive words and images scribbled in pen and even some names carved into the grubby, plastic covering. In the centre of the table, directly between them, were the words Fuck the pigs etched deeply.
Jenna sat down, as blank as if she was sedated. The spark of life had gone.
Charlotte never knew what to say. ‘How are you?’ she ventured. But all she really wanted to do was to hug her friend, apologise for how she’d abandoned her and then walk her out of that place.
‘Fine,’ Jenna replied, tersely. ‘I’ve got a parole hearing coming up. Pat was found guilty on some other charges from way back. It could play in my favour as a first-time offender.’
‘I brought you a couple of books,’ Charlotte said. ‘They’ve been checked. You’re fine to take them.’
She took them out of her bag and slid them across the table. She’d learned on her first visit to Fletcher Prison not to bring anything with pockets and compartments. She’d once arrived with a plain supermarket bag containing her belongings. Even that was seen as a potential risk to suicidal inmates. The prison had a reputation for it. Charlotte had found an old documentary on the subject on YouTube, which had made her shudder.
The three books sat on the table. They’d been checked already for concealed compartments, drugs, weapons, mobile phones or whatever else visitors tried to smuggle into the place. Jenna reached out to examine one of the books. As she did so, her long sleeve moved up her arm, revealing a bandage around her wrist.
‘Jesus, Jenna. What’s that?’
As Charlotte blurted the words out loud, the guards tensed instinctively, expecting some trouble to break out. She held her hand up to indicate that all was well.
Self-conscious, Jenna pulled her sleeve back down and withdrew her arm.
‘It’s nothing,’ she replied.
‘Jenna, it doesn’t look like nothing. What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she replied.
Charlotte let it drop for the moment, but she knew that surgical dressings around the wrist area were seldom a positive sign.
They exchanged monosyllabic pleasantries for ten minutes, until one of the inmates kicked off and had to be restrained by the guards. It came from nowhere, a desolate, harrowing scream as if she’d been told something terrible.
‘She should be in a psychiatric unit,’ Jenna said, as the woman was escorted from the visiting room. ‘But there are no places available for her, so they keep her here. She’s on a constant suicide watch; they can’t believe how she finds ways to kill herself. Ligatures, sharp implements, drugs; you name it, she manages to lay
her hands on it. She’s actually a very nice woman when she’s on her meds and calm. Her estranged husband raped her, killed their kids, then shot himself. Is there any wonder the poor woman is a basket case?’
It was the most she’d heard Jenna speak for months. There was a controlled anger in her voice, as if she wanted to scream out loud, but had to wait until the right time to do it.
‘I’m sorry, Jenna…’
‘What are you sorry for?’
‘I’m just sorry. That you’re in here, that your life has come to this. And about Bruce Craven. I should have warned you about him back then. I’m sorry about us and our friendship. I abandoned you for Will. It was a shitty thing to do.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes, the hubbub of chatter now restored in the room after the recent incident.
A tear rolled down Jenna’s cheek.
‘What is it, Jenna?’ Charlotte asked, reaching out to touch her friend. A guard tensed to the right of her; they didn’t like sudden moves in this place. Charlotte retracted her hand, placing it onto her lap. She didn’t want to cause any trouble for Jenna.
‘It’s nothing bad, I promise,’ Jenna replied. ‘Just a low moment in my cell. I don’t know what came over me.’
‘You didn’t try to commit suicide, did you? Oh Jenna, please tell me you’re not going to do that?’
‘No, I promise I won’t. It was just… I don’t know what it was. A cry for help, I think. It’s just so lonely in here, Charlotte. I’m surrounded by people all day, yet I’ve never felt so alone. I crave closeness. It’s all I can think about. I feel ridiculous.’
Slowly, Charlotte reached her hand across the table so as not to startle the guard who was now watching them closely. She gave Jenna’s arm a gentle squeeze.
‘What is it, Jenna?’ she asked. ‘Look, if you can’t talk to me, who can you talk to? I promise I’ll do what I can to help.’
‘You have to show strength in here. You can’t let them see you’re weak,’ Jenna replied.
‘Please don’t keep it to yourself.’
‘I have to tell you, Charlotte. I don’t want to bring him back into your life, but you need to know. You might be in danger.’
The knotted feeling in Charlotte’s stomach was back. It had been lingering all week, ever since she’d found Barry McMillan hanging from the beam in his room at the guest house. She’d put it down to delayed shock.
‘There was something I never told you about Bruce…’
‘There were plenty of things none of us talked about.’
‘No, this is important, Charlotte.’
Charlotte sat in silence, sensing that she was about to be told something that would rock her life once again. If only she could press a pause button.
Jenna cleared her throat, then began to speak with some difficulty. ‘After that night with Bruce, I was terrified, wondering if someone had seen what happened. But as the day passed, and we heard that Bruce had left the holiday camp, I saw I was in the clear.’
‘That’s how we all felt, Jenna. The man was a monster. We all did what we had to do.’
‘But some men came round looking for Bruce. They were horrible, threatening to do terrible things to me.’
‘Who, Jenna? What men? Was this at the holiday camp?’
‘Jenna nodded, her eyes now red, her cheeks wet with tears.
‘They were looking for him, Charlotte. Somebody was looking for Bruce. He was involved with something, and they wanted to know where he was.’
‘Did you tell them?’ Charlotte asked, desperate for her to get to the point now.
‘No, they threatened me, then left me alone.’
‘So that’s it then, isn’t it? I mean, it must have been terrifying for you, but that’s all in the past. Isn’t it?’
‘I thought it was too, Charlotte. But they’ve started to threaten me again. There’s a woman in this prison who keeps intimidating me. She must be connected with them in some way, because she keeps asking me what happened to Bruce Craven. Somebody very powerful and dangerous wants to know what happened to him, Charlotte.’
Chapter Eleven
Charlotte began the return journey in a trance. Once again, the demons of her past were being swept up by a strong wave, ready to come crashing at her feet. Why wouldn’t Bruce Craven stay buried?
Piece by piece, she’d extracted the information from Jenna. How the men had visited her the night after Bruce was killed. How scared she’d been for her life, afraid to tell anybody about it, terrified they’d come back for months afterwards.
She, Jenna and Will were all victims of that man, and now he was pulling them back into his shit. What the hell had he been up to back then that was still so important now? It was over three decades ago. It seemed unbelievable that whatever he’d been involved in could still be making ripples so many years after. They were all kids back then, yet he was continuing to haunt their lives. Charlotte wanted to scream.
It was hard to leave Jenna at Fletcher Prison. She’d finally admitted that the wound on her wrist was due to self-harming, but she didn’t know what had driven her to it. In her frustration, fear and helplessness, it had seemed to be the only thing that would alleviate the situation.
‘Should I tell the guards? Can I contact the governor?’ Charlotte had asked.
‘No, I have to deal with this in here. If I get the screws involved, I’m a dead woman. I’ll be labelled a snitch. I have to try to avoid contact with this woman. If I’m lucky, I’ll get parole and be moved to a less secure prison. Please don’t interfere with this, Charlotte. It’s easy for you on the outside, but it could misfire badly in here.’
Charlotte longed to be back in Morecambe. Every time the train stopped at a small station, she cursed, willing it along the tracks faster. As the train neared Preston, she chanced her luck with Wi-Fi again. Eureka, she had a connection. She wanted to do some research on Fred Walker. She could feel the grim, black clouds gathering overhead, but she couldn’t tell when the raindrops might begin to fall on her and her family. If somebody was looking for Bruce after so many years had passed, they had to make a call on her and Will soon, surely?
The connection was slow, and it took an eternity for the web pages to load. Nigel had already published the bare bones of the news story on the paper’s website, but there were no names and detail about how he’d died. She knew nothing about legal matters, but she assumed it was the police who’d requested an information blackout because the family hadn’t been informed about the death yet.
She searched for information about Fred Walker, but it was such a common name that it was tricky to pin down. By refining her search, she found an article from a building industry magazine with a detailed profile about his life. He was an impressive man, with an incredible rags-to-riches story, not unlike Barry McMillan.
Charlotte skimmed the article, noting the points of interest. He’d started his working life as a brickie after leaving school at fifteen, then set up his own business from a wooden shed in his back yard in 1981, winning his first major infrastructure project in 1983. His rise thereafter had been nothing short of meteoric. If there was a major redevelopment project going on in and around Morecambe—and further afield throughout the north-west—then Fred Walker was likely to be involved in it. No wonder he’d been featured in the article in the local newspaper, along with Barry and the other men sitting with him around that table.
So who wanted them dead?
What was the other name that Nigel had given her? She could only remember the surname. A Google search brought up a single result, a Flashback feature from a more modern edition of the newspaper. Harvey Turnbull was the man behind Rex Emery’s arrest.
2006 Flashback: Popular hotelier and restaurateur Rex Emery is charged with abduction and imprisonment. The officer responsible for his arrest, DCI Harvey Turnbull, receives a commendation for his work. In other news, Morecambe hotel refurbishment project begins, and Bon Jovi tribute band wows crowds.
These m
en were connected, but it was not clear how. And Harvey Turnbull had committed suicide, in a violent and gruesome way. They’d all been in her guest house too. The echoes of whatever they’d done were lingering in the very fabric of the building; if only she could hear them.
It was too much for her to get her head around. As the train pulled away from Preston, Charlotte closed her eyes and tried to figure out what to do next. If Jenna was being bothered about Bruce Craven again, that might potentially come back to her own doorstep. What if Jenna revealed what had happened? They’d discussed that possibility in the jail. Jenna had sworn she wouldn’t say anything, yet she had been treacherous about the facts already. If George hadn’t seen her finishing off Bruce among the broken bricks and rubble in the paddling pool’s foundations, she and Will would have forever believed that they were responsible for his death. As far as that story was concerned, Jenna had previous form.
George could vouch for them. He was their living proof. A surge of heat coursed through her body as she realised how vulnerable they were. If George were to die—and the possibility had to be considered—it would be down to Jenna’s word against her and Will. And the body was still there, in the foundations. There was still proof that he’d been killed.
Charlotte looked around at the people in the carriage, imagining they all knew what she had done, looking at her, accusing her. For the first time since they’d rescued Lucia, she realised how exposed they still were. There was nothing to stop Jenna sending those men over to see her and Will. Her children would be in danger.
Eventually, Jenna had told her what the men had done. How they’d touched her and implied that they would rape her. She felt faint even thinking that she might have exposed Lucia and Olli to that level of danger.
Yet, how could she tell the police? She couldn’t. It would mean having to admit what they’d done. She was as trapped as Jenna. This was dangerous, even worse than before. Although she’d been scared out of her mind by the threats from Jenna and Pat, she now knew they were false, intended to blackmail her out of money she and Will didn’t have. It was a botched and clumsy attempt, scary at the time, but ridiculous in retrospect.
Circle of Lies Page 6