“I’m so sorry. You took me by surprise and I suppose my manners fled. Please, do come in.” He scrutinised her carefully and a prickle of unease raced over Harriet’s scalp.
“Can I get you a towel?”
She smiled her thanks and let him lead her into the house. He directed her into a small living room. “I’ll get you that towel. Get comfortable, I’ll be back in a moment.”
Harriet nodded and moved into the room. Her gaze swept over the framed pictures that decorated the walls. Typical family photographs of holidays spent in the sun. Trevor as a happy smiling child who grinned up at the camera.
It took her only a moment to realise there were no pictures of Trevor as a teenager. Instead, he was frozen in this between place of childhood and prepubescent boyhood; as though his life had ended when he was ten or twelve and not when he was sixteen.
“That’s Trevor,” Mr Burton said, his silent return made Harriet jump and she turned to face him, but he had eyes only for the pictures on the wall.
“He was a very handsome young man,” she said.
Mr Burton nodded and held the towel gripped in his hands out toward her. “He was. Lucy always said he’d grow up to be a real heartbreaker. We didn’t know then how right she was.”
Harriet nodded. “Where is your wife now, Mr. Burton?”
“Please call me, Robert,” he said. “Everyone else does.”
Harriet returned his smile with one of her own. “Ok, Robert.”
The smile on his lips hovered only for a moment before he moved over toward the chair opposite the couch and dropped into it. Harriet copied him, choosing a seat on the couch that angled her body toward his without being so close that he might feel overwhelmed.
“Lucy is dead,” he said. “She died four months ago. I always said it was a broken heart after Trevor but the doctors said it was an aneurysm. They don’t think she suffered but...” He shrugged and splayed his hands out in front of him. “That’s not much of a consolation when I know she suffered after Trevor died.”
“I am very sorry,” Harriet said, setting the towel aside. “I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for you; to lose both you son and your wife.”
He nodded and raised his tear stained face. “I still wake up expecting them both to be here, you know? As though I’ll go to bed one night and find out it was all just a terrible nightmare.”
Harriet nodded sympathetically. “It must be terribly lonely for you,” she said.
Robert rubbed his hands back over his face. “I feel close to them here. That probably doesn’t make any sense, I know. But it’s the truth.”
Harriet had heard others in the thick of the grieving process say the same thing.
“Just being here brings me comfort.” He smiled thinly at her. “Listen to me, bending your ear about something you don’t want to hear.”
Harriet shook her head. “I don’t mind listening,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s the only thing I’m truly good at.”
Robert smiled at her and rubbed his hands vigorously on his thighs. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
Harriet slipped the papers of the transcripts from her bag. “During the course of the investigation we discovered your son appeared to be in contact with a number of teens in the months directly proceeding his death.”
Robert shook his head and stood. Harriet drew her legs up in an attempt to prevent him from brushing against her as he moved around the couch to the pictures on the wall behind her.
“Was he?” Robert seemed genuinely surprised and Harriet found herself wondering just how much time he’d actually spent with his son.
“Did he have many friends?”
“Some,” he said. “Trevor could be a little bit of a loner.”
“Would it be possible for me to take a look around, Trevor’s room?”
Harriet kept her smile warm and inviting despite the sense of foreboding that was slowly beginning to creep over her.
Robert glanced down at the floor and she half expected him to shake his head and decline her request. Instead, he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently in his throat before he nodded his head.
“Of course. I’ll take you up there.”
Part of her wanted to ask if she could go upstairs herself but she knew it would be asking too much.
He directed her to the stairs and Harriet moved ahead of him. The stairs creaked and groaned as Harriet’s shoes tapped against the dark hard wood.
“It’s down here,” Robert said, touching her arm gently.
Harriet’s fingers tightened over the handle of her handbag as she swung around the top of the landing and moved down the wooden hall.
Robert paused at the door. He sucked in a deep breath, his eyes closed, as he seemed to compose himself as his hand hovered just over the door knob.
“I can do this alone,” she said gently. “If you’d prefer?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t mean any offence, but I don’t like having strangers in Trevor’s room. It feels wrong.”
“We don’t have to do this if it makes you too uncomfortable?”
Robert smiled and shook his head. “Trev would want me to do this. He’d want to help. I’ve got to honour that, do you know what I mean?”
Harriet nodded. “I can understand that.”
“Have you lost someone close to you too?”
“My brother,” she said.
“I’m sorry. How did he die?”
“Car accident,” Harriet said simply. It was easier to boil everything that had happened with her mother down to something simple. It was too complicated a story for most and the last thing she needed to do here was confuse the situation with her own trauma.
“That must have been very difficult for you,” he said. “I didn’t have any siblings myself so I’ve never had that kind of bond. It must have been terribly traumatic for someone so young.”
Harriet nodded, her eyes intent on the door but his words brought her up short.
“Excuse me?” She kept her smile in place.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I only meant that you’re still so young to lose a brother.”
“Of course.”
Robert shook his head. “Shall we get this over with?” Before she had the chance to answer, he pushed the door open.
Dust motes swirled in the grey light that filtered in through the windows. Robert stood back and gestured to the room.
“Go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
Harriet nodded and stepped into the room.
A large set of mirrored wardrobe doors sat against the back wall of the room giving it a sense of space it wouldn’t ordinarily have enjoyed.
A large wooden desk dominated the wall beneath the window; an iMac sat pride of place, with books and other notepads scattered around.
Harriet turned slowly and drank it in. Her gaze came to rest on the bed and she paused. It was immaculately made. The corners of the sheets were tucked in beneath the mattress in a macabre mirroring of Sian’s bedroom.
“He loved his computer.” Robert’s voice cut through Harriet’s thoughts and she jerked her gaze back to the man silhouetted in the doorway.
“He was always doing something on it and if he wasn’t tapping away on the keys then he was taking them apart to see how they ticked. I always said he was a chip off the old block in that sense.”
“You work with computers?”
He nodded. “Technical support,” he said. “If you need a new hard drive installed, then I’m your man.”
Harriet glanced down at the papers in her hands as bile crept up the back of her throat. It meant he would have had both the means and the opportunity to gain access to his son’s accounts online.
“Would your son have told any of his friends the login details for his online forums?”
“No. He knew how important internet security was. He would never be so stupid.”
“And is it possible his friends were as equally int
erested in computers as he was?”
Robert shrugged. “I don’t actually know. Like I said downstairs Trev was a bit of a loner in school. He was athletic, and intelligent. He was handsome too and it should have made him the most popular boy in his year but—" Robert shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. I think he was just more interested in his virtual life than the one he was actually living.”
Harriet nodded and schooled her features into a smile. “Would it be possible for me to use your bathroom, Robert?”
“Of course,” he said. “Third door down. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Thank you.”
She let him escort her from the room, skirting carefully around him in the doorway. There was no doubt in her mind that whoever Drew had arrested was the wrong man. The one they were looking for was right here and she was standing in his house alone. No one knew she was here.
The precariousness of her situation flashed through her mind as she walked down the hall.
She needed to get word to Drew before Mr Burton realised what she was doing. And then what? She had no proof. Pointing to a bed and the way it was made was proof of nothing more than a man who liked to keep his house neat and tidy.
No, she needed proof too; Drew and Maz wouldn’t give up their suspect so easily.
“It’s just there,” he said politely.
Harriet pushed open the bathroom door and stepped inside before she locked the door behind her.
She leaned her head back on the door as she closed her eyes and swallowed back the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn’t give up now, not when she was so close to the truth.
She dropped her bag into the sink and proceeded to scrabble around in the contents in search of her phone. Her fingers closed around it and she jerked it free. With hands that trembled she dialled Drew’s number, the phone ringing in her ear she waited with bated breath.
“Please pick up,” she murmured.
The voicemail kicked in and Harriet’s heart sank. Why couldn’t he just have picked up his phone this once?
The shake in her hands intensified as she dialled the number of the station. The call was answered after the first ring.
“My name is Dr. Harriet Quinn,” she said. “I need to speak to either DI Drew Haskell, or DS Maz Arya, please it’s urgent.” She spoke quickly in hushed tones, her mouth cupped over the mouthpiece in an attempt to keep her voice from carrying.
“Miss, I—“ The woman on the other end of the line hesitated.
“Are you all right?” Robert Burton’s voice seemed to carry ominously through the house and a cold sweat broke out on Harriet’s skin.
“I’ll be just a minute,” she said.
“Are you in trouble?” The female operator said.
“I think so,” Harriet said. “Please, I just need to speak to DI Haskell, this is pertaining to his case.”
There was a click on the line and Maz’s voice cut over the operator.
“Dr. Quinn?”
“Oh, thank God,” she said quickly. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think you’ve got the wrong man.” Harriet’s gaze snagged on her reflection in the cabinet above the sink.
She barely recognised herself; eyes ringed with dark circles, skin pale and milky in the poor light that poured in through the small frosted glass window behind the toilet. Her heartbeat thrummed in her chest and the panic she’d fought so hard to control since the incident in the hospital insidiously crept through her veins.
Maz sighed. “You just don’t give up do you?”
“I’m in his house,” she said. “His name is Robert Burton. He lives at 62 Ashfield Drive in Tollby.”
“Dr. Quinn, I think—"
“Listen to me, damn it,” she said. “I’m in his bloody house. I know you don’t believe me but I need you to tell Drew. He’ll understand that what I’m saying is true. His son committed suicide a year ago. His wife died four months before the murders began and I think that was his trigger.”
“I don’t understand,” Maz interrupted. “Why are you in his house?”
“Because he’s Jumpsuit67,” she said. “Well, his son was the original Jumpsuit but he took it over.”
“How do you know all of this?”
As he spoke Harriet pulled open the door of the cabinet and peered in at the contents. There was a razor and shaving gel, cotton buds and aftershave lotion. And interspersed among the normal items that take up space in a bathroom were bottles of prescription medication. Harriet’s hands shook as she lifted down the nearest bottle and studied the label.
Flunitrazepam. The same kind of benzodiazepine drug the coroner had found in Sian’s system.
“Dr. Quinn?” Robert’s voice came from directly outside the bathroom door and it took every ounce of strength Harriet had not to let the bottle of pills fall from her hands.
“The same medication they found in Sian’s body. It’s here in his bathroom,” she said. “It’s got his son’s name on it.”
“Dr. Quinn, I—"
“Harriet...” Robert’s voice was low.
Harriet set the bottle of pills back in the cabinet as he rattled the doorknob.
“Just a second.”
“Tell Drew,” she said into the phone. She ended the call and slipped the phone back into her bag. Smoothing her hair back from her face, she tried to calm her heart rate as she moved toward the door. She flushed the toilet hurriedly and tugged the door open and found herself face to face with Robert Burton.
He was framed in the doorway and he peered past her into the room as though he expected to see someone else in there with her.
“I thought I heard you talking to someone,” he said.
Harriet shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s a hazard of the job. Sometimes I like to talk my thoughts aloud. Articulating them helps me to see a situation more clearly.”
He smiled but it never reached his dark eyes. “And what has this visit helped you to see more clearly?”
“This was more of a fact-finding mission,” she said. “I’m trying to understand all the elements at play a little more clearly.”
“And?”
He didn’t budge from his spot. Harriet’s palms had begun to sweat but her voice at least remained steady.
“I think the person we’re looking for has his reasons for his actions.”
“They said on the news that they’ve made an arrest,” Robert said, his voice completely flat. “The reporters don’t believe the man responsible could have a reason. They called the deaths, senseless. A pointless waste of human life. They’re calling him a murderer. Do you think that’s true, Dr. Quinn?”
“You should call me, Harriet,” she said gently as she took a small step backwards. “And no, I don’t agree with them. This man is not murdering these people, he’s helping them.”
Robert closed his eyes and nodded, his face breaking out into a broad smile. “I knew you’d understand...”
She didn’t wait for him to finish. With her hand still on the door she slammed it shut in his startled face.
“Dr. Quinn, what are you doing? I thought you understood.”
He rattled the door as Harriet flipped the lock into place.
“Open up, Dr. Quinn. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Robert, I need you to listen to me,” she said, quickly. “I do understand what you’re doing.”
“Then open the door so we can finish this.” There was a thread of something harder in his voice as he spoke.
“Why do you think Trevor took his own life?”
Robert ceased his assault on the door and Harriet sucked in a deep breath as she waited for him to answer.
“He said in the note that he was unhappy. That he didn’t want to be a disappointment anymore.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“How do you think it made me feel?” He snapped back. “I was never disappointed in my son. I don’t know where he even got the idea from.”
“But
you read all those messages he sent to his friends,” she said. “You got the chance to get a glimpse into your son’s mind. That’s not something most people get, Robert.”
“It gave me a glimpse into the unhappiness of those other children too,” he said.
“Tell me about them, Robert,” she said. If she could just keep him talking, then it would give the police a chance to get here...
That was of course if they were actually coming at all. She definitely hadn’t managed to convince Maz of her suspicions but he was a good police officer and she needed to believe that he wouldn’t let his dislike for her outweigh his desire to do his job.
“The boy, Aidan Wilson; his father is a drunk. Beats his wife and Aidan too. I don’t know how any man could do that to his child. Our children are precious, a gift from God. We’re supposed to protect them.”
“And that’s what you were doing, is it?”
Something hit the door with a bone-shaking crash and Harriet jumped. She backed up and collided with the edge of the sink. Turning toward the cabinet again, she tugged it open and searched among the shelves for something, anything, that she could use as a weapon. She snatched up the razor but being a safety razor meant it was as good as useless. Finding nothing else, she turned her attention to the rest of the room as another earth-shattering bang sounded from the door and the wood around the lock began to crumble.
“Robert,” she said. “Just talk to me.”
She hit redial on the phone in her bag and prayed for the call to connect.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said as he hit the door again. The lock finally gave way and the door opened, slamming into the plaster wall with a dull thud.
Harriet spotted a cloth in Robert’s hand as he stepped into the room toward her.
“I know what you’re doing,” he repeated. “But everything will become clear soon enough.”
Harriet shook her head. “You don’t need to do this,” she said softly as the sweet scent of the chloroform caught her nose.
Panic flared inside her chest. She knew what would happen if he rendered her unconscious. She couldn’t let that happen.
“Don’t fight me,” he said. “It’ll go so much easier if you don’t; for both of us.”
The Hanging Time Page 26