by Dave Lacey
Another factor in his decision had resulted from a call he had made to Alphonse’s club. Kathy Clancy had answered the phone. He had never met her, but Alphonse had spoken very highly of her, so he felt comfortable talking to her. He’d been a little hysterical to begin with, but she had calmed him down. She had told him about the copper who had visited the club; she said he was nice, and after Paul mentioned his fears, she had confirmed Detective Sumner came across as quite genuine. This conversation had made his mind up. Kathy had given Paul the detective’s number, and, when it was dark, he would go for a walk and call Jack Sumner on the mobile that Alphonse had given him.
As he lay on the bed waiting for it to go dark, Paul reflected on the current situation and how, given his sheltered upbringing, he had arrived there. Alphonse had been nothing like he had imagined. After all the advice and background people had provided him with, within a week he had known that none of it had any bearing on their fledgling relationship. Alphonse had effectively wrapped him up in cotton wool and kept him away from the other side of his life. Paul had never met Alphonse’s family, hadn’t really met any of his friends, and had only once been to his club. Tears sprang to his eyes; it had all happened so quickly.
Paul curled into a foetal position and wondered whether he had the strength to see this through. He hadn’t been terribly close to his parents, but the news of his mother’s death had been utterly surreal. To make matters worse, he had immediately understood why she and Alphonse were dead. If he had not been particularly close to his mother, then he was even more detached from his father. But that didn’t prevent him from being relieved that his father was not privy to the information that was proving so deadly to those who knew. Which probably meant his father was safe.
Paul had watched enough TV and movies to know that the police would likely be able to trace the mobile he was going to make the call from. Hence his decision to make the call whilst on the move. He was waiting for darkness because he felt certain that whoever had killed Alphonse and his mother would now be looking for him. It didn’t take a genius to figure this out, and he reckoned he was only alive now because he had run for cover immediately he had heard the news of Alphonse’s death. His tears had dried up, and it was dark outside. Time to go.
He unplugged the phone from its charger, picked up his room key and headed for the door. Drifting into another field of memories, both of his mother and Alphonse, the ping of the lift door brought him back to his senses. He crossed the lobby, and went out through the doors and into the night. He waited until he was a couple of hundred yards from the hotel before turning the phone on, punching in the number Kathy Clancy had given him. He was unaware of the four by four that was following him at a distance of fifty yards. The detective’s phone rang four times before being answered.
“Hello? Paul?”
This threw him slightly.
“Erm, yes it is. Is this Detective Sumner?”
“It is, and I am really glad you’ve called. Where have you been? Where are you now?”
“It doesn’t matter right now. I need to be very careful. There are some things you need to know.”
“We can talk about that when you come in.”
“No, I need to tell you now. My mother didn’t slip in the shower, Detective.” Paul could feel his emotions rising on an unstoppable tide. “She was killed, because she knew. She told me, and I told Alphonse. You know his death wasn’t an accident, well neither was hers. They’ll be looking for me now, and I think I’ll go the same way as they have if they find me.” He paused.
“Then you need to come in right now, Paul. I’m coming to get you. Where are you?”
Paul had just turned into a quiet side street.
“I’m on George Street, in Manchester, I’m…” The sound of an engine roaring behind him gave him pause.
“Paul, are you there?”
“Yes, sorry, just a car. I think it may have something to do with the church –”
The call was terminated.
***
Jack tried to call him back on the number, the number that he had keyed into his phone should Paul one day call him. It went straight to voicemail.
“Shit, shit! I wonder if he got spooked? I wonder if the battery died?”
“You think he might go on the run again?” Smithy asked.
“I don’t know, but he cut off in mid-sentence. He did say a car had just rumbled past, you don’t think…?”
“What, you think he might be in trouble?”
“Let’s not wait to find out.”
The two of them raced for the door. They had little time, but they at least knew exactly where they were going.
***
Clarence was driving well within the speed limit. After all, there was no need to rush, and no need to draw unwanted attention to himself. They boy had been easy pickings; he had simply driven past him, lowered the window, and zapped him as he walked past. Clarence had overheard part of the conversation, so his intervention had come not a moment too soon. Paul Warwick was now trussed neatly in the boot section of the four by four, and in thirty minutes would be part of the foundations of a new high rise development in the Ancoats area of Greater Manchester. It wasn’t a difficult job; he’d done it before.
The site ran twenty-four hours a day, and at present they were pouring the concrete that would make the solid base for the forty-four floors to follow. It was poured from four huge mixers, one on each side of the building. There were two men at each mixer: one controlled the pour, the other the direction. He would simply gain access to the site with the credentials he’d obtained yesterday from a man who worked for him now and again. He would then taser the two men on the mixer least likely to be seen by the others, take the boy from the boot, drop him into the foundations, and continue the pour until it covered him, then leave. The men would regain consciousness, but by then the body would be covered and they would know nothing of what had transpired.
Chapter 20
Jack and Smithy arrived at George Street twenty minutes after receiving the call from Paul Warwick. They trawled the area and found no trace. They drove to the nearby Lowry Hotel to ask if a Paul Warwick had been staying there. He had, and after a few moments more, they found themselves surveying his room on the tenth floor. It was tidy, and there were a few possessions in the room: three shirts, three t-shirts, one pair of jeans and some underwear and socks. There was a travel bag in the bathroom, and an electric shaver was plugged in.
“What do we do now?”
“We wait for a while. In the lobby, I think,” Jack responded vaguely. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that they were too late. His assertion that Paul had simply panicked and gone on the run again was born out of hope rather than belief.
“Okay, let’s go. All is not lost.” Smithy had sensed his mood.
“Yeah, let’s get a coffee downstairs.”
They took the lift down to the lobby, and were crossing toward one of the hotel bars when the check-in clerk called them over.
“Yes?” Smithy looked down at her name tag. “Louise?”
“Sorry, I was on a break when you came in. Are you the two police officers that came in looking for Paul Warwick?”
“Indeed we are.”
“He went out a little earlier. Actually it wasn’t long after his father came in looking for him.”
This drew the attention of both detectives.
“His father?” Jack asked sharply.
“Yes, his father. He was very upset, you know. He told me about his wife, and how he wanted to find his son. He said he’d gone missing after the death of his mother.”
“Really? What did this man look like, Louise?”
The clerk gave a description of the man who had come asking about Paul Warwick. It didn’t match the memory they had of the man they had met just a few days before. For a start, one was tall and well built, the other was average height and portly.
“Did you see where he went when he left the building?�
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“Not really, but he headed off in that direction.” She pointed to the left of the building as they were looking at it.
“Do you have CCTV coverage of the lobby and the area outside the building?” Jack asked.
“Yes we do.”
Twenty minutes later, Jack and Smithy left the Lowry Hotel with a DVD containing two sections of footage. One was of the lobby, and showed the man who had walked in and claimed to be Edward Warwick asking after the whereabouts of his son Paul. The other was of the outside of the building and showed the same man walking out of shot to the left. Thirty minutes after this section, Paul Warwick left the lobby of the hotel, and a black four by four slowly crossed the outer edge of the shot.
***
Clarence was almost done for the evening; he had just one more errand to run. The operation at the building site had been a success, and now the only thing that remained was for him to get rid of the vehicle he was driving. This was easy. He had an acquaintance who owned a scrap yard, and Clarence had a spare set of keys. By ten o’clock this evening, the vehicle that may or may not have been captured on CCTV at the hotel or the building site would cease to exist. He was confident his own image would give the police nothing, so all in all it would be a good night’s work in terms of making the Warwick boy disappear.
He was disappointed, though, that the boy had managed to make the call to the police. His plan of making him disappear, thus making it difficult to link the murders together, lay in tatters. It was inevitable now that the police would start sniffing around all of the murders. And almost inevitably they would make the connection to the church. The little shit had raised the alarm when he had called the emergency services, then compounded it tonight with the call to inform the police of his theory. Well, at least Clarence had managed to shut that call down before it had really gotten out of control.
Chapter 21
The rest of the evening had gone badly for Jack and his partner. They had waited at the hotel for a while, but Paul Warwick had never returned. They had driven around the streets, covering a three mile radius, in the hope they would stumble upon him. They didn’t. They were now back at HQ, staring at cups of bad, cheap coffee, wondering what to do next. They had already attempted to triangulate and find the mobile again, but it had not shown up at all. Jack was pretty convinced they would neither see nor hear from that number again.
“What do we know?” Smithy asked him.
“We know that Alphonse Ngwenye was killed at the side of the canal. We know that Susan Warwick was found dead at her home, apparently having slipped getting out of the shower. We know that the link between Susan and Alphonse is Susan’s son Paul. Paul has disappeared, for the second and possibly the last time. We don’t know, for certain, that Susan was killed or that her son has been killed. But if he has, then things are starting to get ever so slightly out of control. And, we have a possible serial killer on our hands. However, if all three have been murdered, then the MO changed between victim one and victim two. With victim one, it would appear no real effort was made to make it look like an accident. We don’t yet know what’s happened to Paul Warwick. But if his mother was murdered, the killer took great care to make it look otherwise.” He paused, appraising his partner. “Why?”
“I’ve been thinking about this. I think it’s a different man.”
“Really? You think two people could be working together on this?”
“I’m not sure that that’s the case per se, but case one has a very different feel to case two. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. At the moment, all I can think about is how this kid’s life has taken a shitty turn for the worse in less than two weeks. And now we don’t even know if he’s alive or dead. Or why.”
“I know. What did he mean about the church do you think?”
“Yeah, that was a weird one. I don’t know, but I would think it would be well worth checking it out first thing tomorrow.” Jack leaned forward in his seat and covered his face with both hands.
“You okay?” Smithy asked.
Jack let out a sigh and then looked at him. “Yeah, I suppose so,” he said.
“Is this a little bit about Selena too?” Smithy asked gently.
It was around half a minute before Jack answered him.
“Maybe, a little. I spoke to her a few days ago. It was just weird. We kind of ended up in an argument, and I’ve no idea how. Then she told me she was going out, and I thought she meant on a date. Then it just got awkward. But it’s only a little about that. We were so close to being able to protect that boy today, but we didn’t.” He stressed the last two words with considerable emphasis.
“Hey, Jack, we weren’t to know it was gonna turn out the way it did. It’s not like we failed to respond or were lazy in our approach.” Smithy was moderately pissed now too.
“I know. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m angry that whatever happened to him, happened before we could help him. And now, we’ve no idea where he is or what’s happened to him.”
“Okay, let’s not get too wound up with each other. I think you need to get a good night’s sleep, and I know I could do with a few beers. Why don’t you come in a little late tomorrow? In the meantime, I’ll pick up with Mr Warwick on the church thing, and whether he’s been looking for his son.”
“Hmm, maybe. That’s if I can even sleep at all. But thank you. For offering.”
“Don’t mention it. You can buy me a beer when we crack this case tomorrow.”
***
The following morning, Smithy called Edward Warwick and arranged to pop round to see him at work. It seemed strange that the man was back at work so soon after the death of his wife, but Smithy decided to see how the land lay when he got there. He had taken a call from the team investigating the accidental death of Susan Warwick. Preliminary results had come back from the lab, and they were happy to discuss them when Smithy had the time. He was intrigued by this, and considered going to see them first, but changed his mind almost immediately. The outcome of his conversation with Edward Warwick was not likely to be altered by the result of the lab test, and he was keen to see what the man had to say. The whole situation was beginning to feel very odd, which made him all the more suspicious. Smithy arrived at Harding Warwick Accounting at ten , and Edward Warwick was waiting for him in the reception area.
“Detective Smith, I take it?”
“That’s right. Can we go in?”
“No, I’d rather talk in the car park if that’s okay with you.” His brusque demeanour irked Smithy right from the start.
“Fine. Out we go then.” He gestured toward the front door. Edward Warwick was not ageing well. In his early forties, he was losing his hair and what was left was greying. He was not in any way overweight, but his appearance gave the impression of his body being slightly rounded. His face was shapeless, his clothes rumpled.
The minute they got outside, Warwick rounded on the detective.
“Why have you come here, to my place of work, to bother me? Surely I’ve had enough difficulties over the last week without you exacerbating the situation?” He glared at Smithy.
Smithy bridled. “Now, I don’t know what that word means, but I think you should calm down and take a step back before we both regret what you’ve said.”
Edward Warwick glared at the man in front of him. He unclenched his hands, folded his arms and continued to look at Smithy with disdain. “What can I do for you, officer?”
“When was the last time you saw your son?”
“Not since he disgraced his mother and I. Why?”
“Because we need to find him, and we can’t at present.”
“Look, if you’re unable to carry out your duties, then that’s really no concern of mine. I’ve no interest in Paul. He doesn’t exist as far as I’m concerned. If it wasn’t bad enough that he was…” – he dug for a suitably derisive word – “…queer, he then got mixed up with that ape. No, I have zero interest in him, or his whereabouts, s
o, if you don’t mind...” He raised his arm, pointing back toward the car park entrance, in an unmistakable gesture.
“Okay, dickhead, I do mind. And you’re starting to piss me off. Now, shut the fuck up, and let me do the talking.”
Edward Warwick was stunned.
“I did come here feeling a certain amount of sympathy for you, and I thought that tact would be required in order for me to get the information I need. But it seems the delicate approach is wasted on you. Your son, when we spoke to him, mentioned something about a church. What did he mean?”
Warwick looked like he had just tasted something foul.
“I have no idea,” he muttered.
“You wouldn’t be lying to me now would you, Edward?” It was Smithy’s turn to look disdainful. The man was on the verge of speaking, when he changed his mind.
“Spit it out!” Smithy barked.
“My wife, my late wife, was part of a church group that met up once or twice a week to pray and discuss spiritual matters.”
“You weren’t part of the group?”
“No, I was not. It was…too extreme for me.”
“Extreme in what way?”
“In the way that everything was sinful, everything. Oh, except for her precious son. Homosexuality was okay in her book.” Once again, he wore a look of revulsion and had used the two fingered inverted comma signal around the word okay.
“How and when did she get involved?
“It would have been ten or so years ago. She got involved through a friend, Mary Parker.”
“And is this Mary Parker still involved?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Address? Telephone number?”
Warwick provided the detective with the woman’s home number from his mobile phone, though he claimed he didn’t know her address.