The Hanging Time

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The Hanging Time Page 25

by Bilinda P Sheehan


  Gregson groaned. “Great, just what we need. A nut job who’s getting more violent. As though killing kids wasn’t enough.”

  Drew closed the file as the DCI dropped into his swivel chair.

  “Any new leads on the enquiry into Mr Thompson?”

  Drew nodded, his expression grim. “IT have passed the laptop over to the child pornography team. They found some files on it that corroborate Dr. Quinn’s theory of abuse.”

  “Christ, what a mess.”

  Drew nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Any new leads on this case?”

  “DS Arya is bringing a suspect in now. We got his details from the victim’s phone. They were supposed to meet this weekend but phone signals actually put him quite near the crime scene on the day of Bianca’s murder—" Drew shrugged. It was definitely a lead but until he had more information, he wasn’t willing to put his arse on the line by saying they definitely had their guy. There were too many loose ends to try and match up and this Ryder—or as he’d learned his real name was Jim Tate—just didn’t answer all the questions raised in the case.

  Of course, if Harriet had been here he could have spoken to her about it all. But as it was, she wasn’t picking up her phone. Not that he could blame her. She’d been through a shock. If she didn’t get back to him by the evening then he was going to swing by her place and see how she was coping. Or at least he would if he ever got out of the bloody office.

  Maz strode into the office and gave Drew a thumbs up.

  “Sir—”

  “Yes, yes, go.” Gregson waved him away as he turned his attention back to the pile of paperwork on his desk. “And Drew.”

  “Yes?” Drew paused in the doorway.

  “Make sure you nail this bastard. I don’t want any cock-ups.”

  Drew nodded. “That makes two of us, sir.”

  Drew followed Maz back to the interview suites.

  “When we told him she was dead, he cried like a little baby—" Maz babbled excitedly.

  Drew paused outside the door to the interview room and peered into the room.

  “His girlfriend wasn’t too pleased, neither.”

  “He has a girlfriend?”

  Maz nodded. “He says she’ll give him an alibi for the times and dates but I’m not so sure. When I told her what we were taking him in for, she seemed pretty certain he wouldn’t get a damn thing from her.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he’s not telling the truth.”

  Maz shrugged. “Only one way to tell.”

  Drew opened the door and stepped into the interview suite.

  Jim Tate sat at the table, his face swollen and blotchy. Snot dangled from the tip of his nose and he swiped it away with the back of his hand. He looked up as Drew entered and his eyes teared up again.

  “I didn’t do this, I swear!”

  Drew held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Relax, Jim. We want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.”

  “Is she really dead then?”

  Drew nodded. “Afraid so.”

  The other man nodded and buried his face in the crook of his arm. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Can you tell me about your relationship with the victim?”

  “We didn’t really have one,” he said. “A bit of sexting here and there. We were going to meet on Saturday night and—" He trailed off and stared down at the table. “You must think I’m a right scumbag?”

  Drew shrugged. “I don’t really care much what you get up to in your spare time, Jim. I only care about the victims of the crime and getting justice for them.”

  “Like I told the other detective, you can ask Justine. She’ll tell you I was with her on the dates you’re talking about.”

  “My colleague is verifying that now, Jim. But Justine doesn’t seem to remember you being with her on those dates.”

  Jim’s face crumpled and his tears overflowed again. “That’s only ‘cause she’s pissed at me for cheating. But I swear I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “But your phone puts you near Bianca’s house yesterday. What were you doing there?”

  Jim stared down at his hands. “You hear about people being catfished all the time. I wanted to make sure she was who she said she was, you know?”

  Drew shook his head. “But you aren’t who you said you were, Jim. I mean you told her your name was Ryder Tate for one thing and you said you were single.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m an asshole. But I swear I didn’t kill anyone. I just wanted to know if she was fit.”

  Drew glanced down at the file in front of him. He was inclined to agree with the man sitting across from him. Jim Tate just didn’t strike him as the type to murder a fly never mind three teenagers and an adult.

  “You have to believe me,” he whined. “I haven’t killed anyone.”

  Drew pushed up from the desk and shoved the file under his arm.

  “Where are you going?” Jim’s voice rose hysterically. “You believe me, right?”

  Drew stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him. He’d seen suspects before who were capable of turning the water works on when it suited them. But this was a whole new level. If Jim Tate turned out to be their guy, then he would eat his hat; or least he would if he wore one.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  An hour later, Harriet sat outside the police station, the papers next to her on the passenger seat of her Mini. It would be all too easy to turn around and leave but what would it accomplish?

  Pushing open the car door, she hurried across the car park and into the station. The place was teaming with people, various different people from the media and newspaper journalists all crowded into one corner of the waiting area. Clearly something big was going down to have them all down here, circling like sharks who had just scented blood.

  Harriet pushed her way to the front and smiled at the greying officer on the desk. The white shirt he wore strained over his ample stomach and he peered at her through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

  “I’m here to see DI Haskell,” she said.

  “You and the rest of them,” he said, gesturing to the reporters gathered behind her.

  “I’m not with them,” she said. “If you could just ask him, you’ll see that I’m—"

  “That you’re not here wasting my time like those other vultures?” The officer behind the counter glared at her. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling that lot. When the DI and his team want to make a statement about their arrest, then they’ll call a press conference. But not until then.”

  Harriet stared at him, shock causing her mouth to drop open and it took her a couple of seconds to recover her senses sufficiently to actually form a coherent thought. They’d made an arrest. They’d made an arrest and Drew hadn’t called like he’d promised.

  “Who?” she said, leaning over the counter toward the Perspex glass that separated her from the officer.

  “Who, what?”

  “Who have they arrested?”

  “What do you take me for?” he asked, looking at her like she’d just sprouted a second head from her neck. “I told you, when—"

  “Yeah, I got that part. Can you please just ask DI Drew Haskell to come down here? Tell him it’s Dr. Harriet Quinn and—"

  “Look, I don’t care if you’re Father bloody Christmas, I have my orders. DI Haskell will make a statement when—"

  “Dr. Quinn?” Maz’s voice cut over the desk sergeant’s tirade and Harriet’s heart leaped for joy.

  “Oh, thank God, a friendly face,” she said, despite noticing the distinct lack of a friendly expression on the Detective Sergeant’s face.

  “I need to speak to Drew but the desk sergeant here said you were all too busy and—"

  Maz gestured her over to the door and buzzed her through. As she stepped through the entry way, she spotted some of the reporters eyeing her up. It wouldn’t take long for them to figure out who she was.

  “Why are you here?”r />
  “I told you, I want to speak to Drew.”

  Maz shook his head. “I told him not to call you.”

  “He didn’t,” she said, unable to keep the bite out of her words. “He said he would, but he didn’t. I hear you’ve made an arrest.”

  Maz nodded and Harriet couldn’t help but detect a subtle amount of pride as he straightened his shoulders, pushing his chest out. It reminded her of the wildlife programmes she watched about King Penguins and their mating rituals.

  “We did. And we managed it all without your input,” he said.

  Harriet kept her expression deliberately blank. There was no point in allowing him to score points off her, not like this anyway.

  “Can I ask you who it is?”

  He shrugged. “Free country. But remember, just because you ask, doesn’t mean I’ll tell you.”

  Harriet tilted her head to the side. “Why do I intimidate you so much?”

  Maz took a step backwards, shock and unease making his expression that much easier to read; not that he’d been particularly difficult to read to begin with.

  “You don’t intimidate me,” he said. “I just happen to think that messing around in people’s heads is never going to beat a bit of good ol’ fashioned police work. Boots on the ground kind of work that you wouldn’t understand.”

  Harriet smiled at him and shrugged. “I’m not going to disagree with you there,” she said. “But this isn’t a competition for me. I don’t need to be better than you are at your job because I’d be a fool to think I could ever be. However, all I’ve ever wanted to do is help people. And all I’ve ever wanted to do since Drew approached me about this case is help you catch the person responsible.”

  “You psychologists are all the same; glory-hounds looking to make a name for yourselves.”

  Harriet couldn’t stop the bubble of laughter that escaped her then. “DS Arya, if I wanted to make a name for myself, do you really think I’d try to do it off the back of a police investigation?”

  He shrugged and looked sheepishly at the floor. “You might. There’s plenty of supposed profilers always vying for attention on the telly every night of the week.”

  Harriet couldn’t argue with him there. The world had gone mad on murder, their desire for every salacious detail made for brutal viewing.

  “Look, I’m not here to change your mind.”

  “You couldn’t.”

  She inclined her head toward him. “Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter anymore though now does it? You’ve made an arrest and that’s the important thing. I’m just trying to put some of the pieces of the puzzle together.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like in the transcripts between Sian, Jumpsuit67, and Aidan she admits that her step-father raped her.”

  Maz’s colour fled, leaving his normally coffee coloured complexion ashen. “She says that in the chat logs?”

  Harriet nodded. “That’s not the only discrepancy,” she said. “Would it be possible for you to tell me the name of the young man behind Jumpsuit67?”

  Maz screwed his face up into a grimace. “You’re not working this case anymore. It’s as good as done.”

  Harriet nodded. “I know that. But I’ve still got some questions I’d like to look into. Namely, who was using the Jumpsuit67 login details to talk to Sian and Aidan up to just a couple of days before Aidan died?”

  “That’s got to be a mistake,” Maz said. “IT tracked it back to an IP address.” He pulled a notepad from his suit pocket and flipped through the pages quickly.

  “Here, see,” he said, pointing to a scrawled piece of writing on the page. The name Trevor Burton jumped out at her and Harriet managed to catch a glimpse of the word Tollby before Maz flipped the notepad shut preventing her from reading the other information he had. “He’s dead. It’s just some kind of analog issue.”

  Harriet smiled at him. “I suppose you’re right,” she said as she turned back toward the door. “You’ll tell Drew about Sian’s logs though. It’s proof at least that we’re on the right path with her step-father.”

  Maz nodded. “I’ll tell him.”

  “And congratulations on the collar.”

  Maz beamed proudly, a dimple appearing in his left cheek which made him appear more boyish than he actually was.

  “Maybe you’re not the worst,” he said as he buzzed her out into the main reception.

  Harriet shrugged at him as she walked away. “Maybe not.”

  She made it to the door of the police station without attracting the attention of the reporters who were waiting none too patiently. Maz was definitely wrong if he thought she was out to make a name for herself. The very last thing she wanted to do was draw the attention of the press. The thought of them digging into her past and plastering it all over the tabloids for the world to gawp at left her cold.

  She slid back in behind the wheel of the car and dragged her phone from her pocket. Pulling up the internet she quickly typed in the name Trevor Burton and the word obituary. Within seconds she had all the listings for all the Trevor’s who had died. She narrowed the results by area and finally by age, eliminating everyone until she had just one name.

  Trevor Burton, formally of Tollby. Aged 16. Survived by his parents, Robert and Lucy Burton.

  She scanned the entry and her palms grew sweaty as she realised the date of his death.

  August 4th, 2018. A year to the day before Jack Whitly’s death. The coincidence was too great to ignore, especially when she took into consideration that his login details had been used to contact Sian and Aidan before their deaths. Had his friends taken over the account after his untimely death and if that were true, were they also at risk?

  Drew might have made an arrest in the case, but Harriet still wasn’t entirely satisfied. There were too many inconsistencies and until she could get to the bottom of them, she wasn’t going to give up.

  Jotting down the address for Trevor’s parents, Harriet started the engine and entered the address into her sat-nav. Drew might have left her out of the arrest, but she was damned if he was going to completely cut her out of the investigation.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The rain pattered softly against the windscreen as Harriet parked the car across the road from Trevor Burton’s house. She switched off the engine and the rain instantly blurred her view of the dark red brick house set back from the road. The wall facing the street was almost entirely covered in ivy. The creeping plant encroached on the windows and Harriet couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live inside it all.

  Grabbing her bag, she slung it over her shoulder before she jumped out of the car and hurried over to the door. There were no guarantees that Trevor’s parents even still lived here but what little searching she’d done on the Internet hadn’t turned up any new addresses for the broken family.

  The doorbell was lit up and Harriet pressed it, huddling under the small porch in an attempt to stay out of the rain that slanted across the driveway in sheets.

  The sound of the bell echoed ominously inside the house. There was a light on in there somewhere, she surmised as she peered in through the stained glass that made up the part of the door.

  “Hello, Mr Burton, Mrs Burton?” She called out as she rang the bell again.

  It was difficult to hear over the sound of the rain as it fell on the gravel drive but as she raised her hand to try the bell again, she was almost certain there was some kind of movement from inside. Something shifted behind the door and Harriet stepped backwards as the door swung inwards and revealed a stooped man with sandy brown hair.

  He was tall and lanky, his body hunched in on itself as though he were afraid to take up too much space or he spent too much time at a desk and his body had grown accustomed to that position and now refused to straighten.

  “Can I help you?” When he spoke, his voice was soft and unassuming, and Harriet found herself having to strain forward to catch his words.

  “Are you Mr. Burton?” She tilted her head
to the side and took note of the beige chinos he wore and the green sweater vest that had definitely seen better days.

  “Yes, and you are?”

  Harriet held her hand out toward him. “My name is Dr Harriet Quinn,” she said. “I’m a psychologist at St George’s University in York.”

  Mr Burton took her hand in his much larger one. His grip was firm but not uncomfortable as he pumped her hand gently.

  “How can I help you, Doctor?”

  “Please, call me, Harriet,” she said. “I was hoping maybe I could come in and have a small chat with you about your son, Trevor.”

  His expression which up until then had been a mixture between bemused curiosity and polite indifference shifted. He narrowed his gaze, his shoulder’s rounding over almost imperceptibly as though she’d dealt him a blow and not asked if she could step in out of the rain.

  “My son is dead,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

  “I’m aware of that and I am so very sorry for your loss,” she said.

  “If you know then why are you here?”

  “I was hoping to have a small conversation with you regarding your son,” she said, inwardly cringing at her lack of sensitivity.

  He opened his mouth as though to protest and Harriet saw her opportunity to get to the bottom of it all slipping away from her.

  “Please, Mr. Burton. I realise this is painful for you but I’m worried your son’s death might have a connection to the murders of three teenagers and more recently the death of a young widowed mother.” Harriet dug her nails into the palm of her hand in an attempt to keep her voice steady. Just thinking about Bianca was enough to cause a lump to form in the back of her throat. But if she fell apart now, it wouldn’t help anyone, least of all her dead friend.

  His eyes widened and he stepped back. “Murder?”

  Harriet nodded. “I’m afraid so. Would it be all right if I came in out of the rain?”

  As though he’d noticed the weather for the first time he started and stepped back before he gestured for her to step inside.

 

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