by J. E. Mayhew
“What?” Paul went pale. “I-I… no. I didn’t what’s got into you? I’m going to phone your superiors…”
“I don’t have superiors, Paul, and my colleagues share my suspicions. Come on, tell me what happened that night? Did you plan to get Leonard Hill drunk so that he’d take the blame for Undine’s death? Where is your daughter Paul?”
Percival leapt to his feet. “I don’t know!” he bellowed. “I don’t know! You happy now you’ve seen me angry, Blake? Do I have to have some kind of nervous breakdown for your benefit? Get out of my house before I call your ‘colleagues’ to remove you.”
“The truth will come out, Paul,” Blake said, turning to leave. “It always does.”
*****
Laura pressed herself against the dank brickwork of a side alley and sobbed for breath. Focusing on her breathing, she counted slowly trying to control it. Her heart thumped against her ribs and she shook.
As soon as the man had grabbed her wrists, Laura had gone into survival mode, throwing her head back hard. Stars had exploded in her skull, but the man had given a muffled oath and she was pretty sure she felt his front teeth give. But she didn’t wait to recover; instead, she whirled around directed a sharp punch to where she guessed the man’s face would be. She’d allowed herself a grim grunt of satisfaction as his nose flattened under her knuckles. One sharp kick to the left knee unbalanced him and she took the chance to jab him hard in the throat. Then snatching up her handbag, she scrambled down the stairs two at a time, not daring to look back. Her suitcase would have to stay there. She banged out of a back door. There was bound to be a car waiting out the front. How else would her attacker have got here and how would they have taken her away? If that’s what they intended.
Now she looked down at her assailant’s blood on her knuckles. He had seriously underestimated her, thank goodness. Her head throbbed and she gingerly pressed the back of her head with the tips of her fingers. She winced but there was no blood, so she didn’t think she had cut herself. Slowly, she calmed down and began to assess the situation. Obviously, somebody had put two and two together at last and she was the answer. She knew she was in danger but hadn’t realised things would develop so quickly. It was almost as though somebody had grassed her up. But someone would have to know the truth to do that. Unless they’d inadvertently passed on her name to the wrong person. Laura couldn’t help thinking Josh Gambles was involved in this somehow.
But she could work all that out once she’d got away. Right now, she was still too close to her flat and her attacker would be getting to his feet and coming after her, for sure. Laura didn’t know if the car at the front of the flats had other occupants. If more than one man came for her then she didn’t stand a chance.
Pulling her bag onto her shoulder, she hurried from the side alley, trying to look as casual as possible whilst keeping up an urgent pace. She glanced back to see a dark BMW parked outside her flat. She wasn’t certain but she thought another man sat in the passenger seat. Hurrying across the road, she slipped into another side street and headed for the nearest pub. From there, she could call a taxi and get away.
The Trafalgar pub was warm and welcoming. Retired couples sat at tables and agonised over the menu. Laura envied them their simple dilemmas and worried that she might look odd or suspicious, hurrying in alone and out of breath. She dived into the toilets and checked her reflection for any traces of blood, bruises or scratches but she was clean. Her fist was a bit blue and grazed but she could keep that hidden.
Back out in the bar, she ordered a gin and tonic to steady her nerves and squeezed herself into a corner table. It was then she remembered she didn’t have her phone. She’d left it on the bed quite deliberately. Will would probably be calling and what about poor Charlie? She sipped at her drink. She’d have to ask the young lad at the bar if he could call a cab for her. He looked friendly enough and she knew she could easily persuade him. Before she could move, though, a large, burly man with a shaven head, settled in the seat next to her and she froze in fear.
Chapter 28
There were things that Blake should have been doing, people he should have been interviewing. But his blow up with Paul Percival had made him more determined to find out the truth about the man. Blake was convinced he was hiding something. He knew he’d get a bollocking for hounding Percival like that but Blake didn’t care. He’d phoned Vikki Chinn for the address and now found himself sitting outside the home of Davina Allisen, the woman Paul Percival was meant to be having a dirty weekend with whilst his daughter was being abducted. He should have rung ahead or given her some warning but she only lived in Heswall on the other side of the Wirral and Blake took it upon himself to just go.
As he drove through the town, he found himself wondering once again how a place could support so many coffee shops. This was a desirable area and even the smaller properties on the other side of Telegraph Road, which ran through Heswall, were expensive. The Allisen’s house was on the river side of the road down a number of lanes which twisted and turned towards the shore. It was a huge, modern development with windows that looked out over the Dee Estuary and a gravelled drive that ran up from the narrow, hedge-flanked lane. The houses either side were kept at a polite distance by the property’s couple of acres of garden. Blake turned into the drive, his tyres crunching on the shingle.
He rang the doorbell and somewhere inside, a dog yapped. Then it was silenced by a voice and finally, a woman appeared at the door. She was in her thirties, Blake judged, slim with long dark hair and fine features. He reminded Blake of Sam Percival but then maybe Paul had a ‘type’ that he liked.
“Mrs Allisen?” Blake said, flashing his warrant card. “Detective Chief Inspector Will Blake. I’m sorry to drop in on you unannounced but could I have a word?”
Davina Allisen glanced back into the house. “Is this about Florence?”
“Yes,” Blake said. “Do you have a minute? It would help me enormously…”
“I don’t know how I can help…”
“I believe you know Paul Percival,” Blake said. “I believe you know where he was last weekend.”
Mrs Allinsen went pale. “Okay, but we’ll have to walk. My husband is inside, and he can’t know.”
She pulled the front door shut and stepped into a pair of Hunter Wellingtons that stood to the side of the front door. “Come on, we’ll walk down the lane. I can always tell Nigel, my husband, that you’re a surveyor for the electricity board or something. Not that he’ll notice. Or care.”
“Did he not notice your weekend break?” Blake said, striding after Davina Allisen as she strode off down the drive.
She gave a bitter smile. “No. But if Nigel found out I’d been seeing someone else, he’d be insanely jealous. Not because he loves me; he just couldn’t bear to lose. Especially not to Paul Percival. You’re that dishy policeman off the TV, aren’t you?”
“Erm, yes. I mean, I was on Searchlight. It was a long time ago now.”
“It was,” Davina said, tracking her eyes across Blake’s body. “We used to watch that at University just to see you. Imagine that, a whole house full of students all ogling you on telly, Inspector.”
“As I said,” Blake murmured, clearing his throat. “It was some time ago.”
“You’ve still got it, though,” Davina Allisen said, smirking at Blake’s discomfort. “Even better in the flesh, so to speak. And to think, I can’t brag online to my friends about this.”
A skein of geese flew, honking to each other over their heads. “So, you were with Paul Percival last weekend?”
“Yes,” she said, with a grimace. “Nigel was away for the weekend and Paul talked me into going away too. I won’t be doing it again, though.”
“Why not?”
“He’s an insufferable bore. All he did all weekend was talk about himself. He wasn’t great in bed either…”
Blake looked out across the fields. Beyond them and the River Dee, the Welsh hills beckoned. Blake’s fathe
r had loved walking and had taken him up and down those hills. It had been a long time since he’d been over there, what with work and his mother’s dementia and disappearance but he felt a sudden pull and promised himself that he would dig out his boots and go. Soon. “So how long did you stay?”
“Until Monday. Nigel came back on Tuesday. He never knew I’d been away.”
“While you were there, did Paul talk about his wife or his family?”
“He said his wife had mental health problems. He didn’t really talk about Florence at all other than to say his nanny was looking after her.”
“So what did he talk about all weekend?”
She shook her head. “What would you talk about, Inspector?” Davina said, lifting her head up to stare into his eyes.
Blake shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, honestly. “The view, what we were going to do that day, my cat… maybe work…”
“I should have taken you,” she said, giving him a flirtatious smile. “You’d have been infinitely more fun and better looking too. No, he just went on about the investment portfolio he used to have and the deals he used to close in London. He told me about the many times he put various people straight on points of finance, faced down muggers in Brixton and saved his company from ruin. Very tedious. He’s been trying to get Nigel to invest with him, but we know Paul of old and did a bit of digging, ourselves.”
“Really? You’re old friends?”
“Acquaintances, really,” Davina said. “We went to the same school. Paul was always a bit of a legend in his own lunchtime if you know what I mean? Full of himself. Nobody was a friend of Paul Percival not even that weirdo he hung around with. What was his name? Leonard, that’s right.”
“And yet Leonard Hill used to follow him slavishly, right?”
“Bravo, Inspector, you’ve been doing your research. Leonard the Loner, that’s what we called him. He was a scholarship boy. Nothing wrong with that but Hill always gave me the creeps, but it turns out there was a good reason for that, eh?”
“That must have been quite a trauma for the school to go through…”
“Not really. None of us were really involved and we were only kids. I suppose now they’d have counsellors and psychologists hovering in the wings waiting to sweep us up and save our ‘mental health.’ It was just a source of juicy gossip for a while. Especially when Leonard tried to point the finger at Paul. That divided the school.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why do you think? Some kids thought Paul was more than capable of killing his sister. And poor old Tanya Ellman was accused of lying to cover for Paul. There was a graffiti craze in the school. You’d find ‘Tanya Lied’ scrawled on desks and on toilet walls all around the school. The poor girl had to move schools.”
“And do you think she lied?”
Davina gave Blake a withering look. “Do you think I’d sleep with a man who’d murdered his sister? No, Inspector, I’m sure Leonard Hill was responsible for Undine Percival’s death. Whether he deliberately meant to kill her, I don’t know but I’m sure he caused it.”
“You said you did some digging into Paul’s past. What did you find out?”
Davina Allisen stared out across the fields. “What we always knew. He wasn’t all that great with money. Or people.”
“That was why he was after your money?”
“He’s almost broke, Inspector. We hadn’t seen him in years and he suddenly turned up at a cricket club party and started glad-handing everyone. He soon found out that Nigel was the man with the money and homed in on us.”
“So, if he’s such a boring loser, how come you agreed to go away for the weekend with him?”
“Paul Percival isn’t bad-looking, he can be charming. Maybe I just wanted to see for myself what he was really like. I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing, Inspector, it’s all a front. He’s like a cardboard cut-out and the creature that lurks behind that façade isn’t very nice at all. Amongst the stories he regaled me with on our weekend, he did have one bitter rant about his work colleagues down in London.”
“Really?”
“The world is against him, Inspector. Apparently, he’d been accused of inappropriate advances towards an intern. She took exception to them and reported Paul to her uncle, the CEO. Paul left London short of cash and with his professional reputation in tatters.”
“It sounds like he’s his own worst enemy,” Blake said, suppressing a grin. “So, Paul Percival arrives home, ruined and broken…”
“His parents berate him but bail him out financially. According to Paul, his parents never took his side so he bought that house in the park to upset them.”
“It did puzzle me that he chose to live so near to the scene of such a tragic event. It must drive a knife into his parent’s heart every time they visited him.”
Davina Allisen looked troubled for a second. “He scoffed at the way his parents doted on Florence. It was quite unpleasant to see. He bragged about them having to pay for the pleasure of seeing their granddaughter.”
Blake thought back to what Samantha had said about using Florence as a bargaining chip. “Really?” he said, not giving anything away.
“That’s what he said, Inspector. He’s a nasty piece of work. Now, do I need to worry about Nigel finding out about my mistaken fling with Mr Percival?”
“Well, I can’t pretend that it might not come out in court should Paul Percival need to provide some kind of alibi but…”
Davina’s eyes widened. “Oh my God. Do you think he was involved with the kidnapping of his own daughter?”
“No,” Blake said, wincing. “I don’t know. It’s unlikely but I’d hate to make a promise I couldn’t keep.”
“Right,” she said. “So I’d better get my affairs in order, if you’ll pardon the expression. Oh, don’t worry, Inspector, I’m not contemplating anything fatal, just getting my ducks in a row in case I have to leave in a hurry. Who knows, if I’m a free agent, you could give me a call sometime.”
Blake felt himself blushing. “Well, I couldn’t. I mean, not that I… it wouldn’t be… besides I have a friend already… a woman…”
Davina laughed and started to walk back down the lane towards her house. “Don’t worry Inspector, you’re too good for the likes of me. Your friend is a very lucky woman.”
“No,” Blake muttered, pulling out his phone as she left him and calling Laura. “I’m a lucky man.” He waited for her to answer but it just went to speaker phone yet again. He called a different number and Vikki Chinn answered.
“Tanya Ellman, Paul Percival’s alibi on the night his sister died? I can have a look, Will,” she said. “Give me a few minutes. Why do you want to talk to her?”
“I don’t know, Vikki. Just something nagging away at me that I need to lay to rest. I’m on my way in for the press conference. But I need to speak to her urgently.”
Chapter 29
DC Andrew Kinnear hated breaking bad news to families but as he and Alex Manikas were searching for Brendan Dockley anyway and were actively involved with the case, it fell to them to drive over to Tuebrook to the Dockley household.
Now they sat in awkward silence in the small front room of Brendan’s childhood home. Mrs Dockley filled her armchair, shredding an already soggy tissue. She had bright red hair and a kind face that was lined with worries. Mr Dockley ran his hands over his bare scalp. He had once been a wall of muscle but that had long since softened and given in to gravity. Probably aided by a few pints each evening, Kinnear thought.
“Who did it? Was he mugged? If I get my hands on those bastards…” Mr Dockley said to nobody in particular.
“We don’t know yet, but rest assured we’ll do everything to find out the truth,” Kinnear said, shifting in his seat.
“I said he should never have taken that job with the Percivals. It was a bad idea from the start,” Mrs Dockley said.
Kinnear glanced at Manikas. “Do you mind telling me why, Mrs Dockley?” he said, gently.
> “They were a different kind of people. Living over the water in their posh house, with their posh accents and fancy ways,” Mrs Dockley said. She looked up at Kinnear. “They were just different to us.”
“Different to bloody everyone, if you ask me,” Mr Dockley muttered darkly. “Friggin’ vampires.”
“What do you mean by that?” Kinnear said, keeping his voice soft so as not to antagonise or upset the grieving parents.
“I dunno,” Dockley said. “They use people up don’t they? We used to take Brendan to the Drama group in town. He’d come alive there, far away from here where he had a reputation for trouble. You know he had a bad incident with a stolen car? His best friend died. He always blamed himself.”
“He did tell us that, yes,” Kinnear said, nodding. “The Drama group must have been an escape for him.”
Mr Dockley nodded. “I mean, I always thought it was a bit odd, like, but it made our Brendan happy. Those Percivals, though. They dominated the place, even though they were just members like Brendan. Took all the lead roles and bossed Mrs Fishwick who ran the group around. They’d been going a long time…”
“It was a mixed age Drama group, then?” Manikas said.
“Yeah. They were good. They did professional shows in real theatres, like. Not just school stuff. Our Brendan was in a few pantomimes at the Empire and over at the Floral in new Brighton. Stuff with real celebrities, like.”
Kinnear nodded in approval. “You said they used people up. What did you mean?”
“When they found out you had a trade, like a plumber or a joiner or something, they’d get you over to their house and have you working on it for next to nothing. A lot of us got wise to it. But there’d always be new blood coming through.”
“And the way they spoke to you,” Mrs Dockley said, staring at her tissues and shuddering with sadness.
“If they spoke to you. Most of the time, they’d just look right through you. Nah, they were bad news. You’re right love, we should’ve stopped him going over there.” Her husband sat on the arm of her chair and placed his hand over hers. They sat for a moment swallowing back their grief.