by JANICE FROST
“Ava?” Neal answered immediately.
“Sir, I think I might have a lead on finding Seth Conway.”
“Go on.”
“Do you remember the young man we met at the college when we were speaking with Jess Stokes’s manager, Trish?”
“Yes, I remember. He took quite a shine to you. His name was Barney, wasn’t it? What about him? You’re not going to tell me he’s mixed up in all this?”
“He was at Jeffers the night Mac’s brother was performing there. Two men were with him. One of them was Seth Conway, and the other looked like a family member, possibly a brother. I think it would be worth bringing him in for questioning.”
Silence. Neal was probably weighing up the possibilities. Ava wondered if she were clutching at straws. She was still blaming herself for Jess’s disappearance. If she had only insisted that Jess meet with her that evening . . .
At last Neal spoke. “Nice work, Ava. I think we should follow it up in the morning, though. I don’t like the idea of upsetting that young man at this hour.”
“But, sir. Jess . . . Yes, sir.” Maybe Neal was right. Maybe what she had seen was just a coincidence. But Ava was convinced it was more than that. She ran the scene again and was sure that the two men with Barney were more than casual acquaintances. She glanced at the time. Okay, Neal was right.
Ava sighed, knowing she wouldn’t sleep that night. She was right. She lay awake bouncing the multifarious strands of the investigation around in her head until she finally fell into a restless doze. She dreamt that everyone involved in the case were together on the dance floor at Jeffers Club, moving slowly around like figures on a chessboard.
As soon as she reached work the following morning, she called the college and asked to speak to Jess’s line manager, Trish Eaton.
“Barney’s surname is Cole,” said Trish. “He’s staying in an assisted living unit. His brother Jonty would likely have accompanied him to a club like that. He has Barney over to stay a lot and often takes him out. If you don’t mind my asking, why are you so interested in Barney, Sergeant Merry?”
Ava ignored this. “Was Jess one of Barney’s support workers?”
“Have you found Jess? Is she okay?”
“Jess is still missing. We’re following up some leads on people she might have associated with. Did Jess know Barney’s brother, Jonty?”
“Yes, we all know Jonty. He drops his brother off a couple of times a week. Lovely young man. I’ve seen him chatting to Jess quite a bit just recently . . . Oh dear, you’re not thinking Jonty . . .”
“Not at all, Mrs Eaton, and I’d be grateful if you’d keep this conversation between the two of us, please. Is this one of Jonty’s mornings for dropping his brother off, do you know?”
“Yes, it is, actually. He should be here in half an hour or so. He usually drops Barney off early.”
Ava looked at her watch. She could be there in ten minutes.
She jogged round to the college, thinking about Trish Eaton’s words, ‘I’ve seen him chatting to Jess quite a bit just recently.’ She waited opposite the entrance to the building and, as luck would have it, Jonty was early this morning. Ava saw Barney first and hoped he wouldn’t notice her. She was standing in the smoking shelter and had pulled her hood up to conceal her face. The man with Barney was tall but stooped, the way shy people often were. Ava guessed he was in his early twenties.
She waited until he had said goodbye to his brother and was on his way back to the car park before she called out to him. “Jonty Cole?”
He stopped and nodded.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Ava Merry. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about Jess Stokes. She’s one of Barney’s support workers, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, I know Jess.” Was she imagining it, or did he seem wary?
“Are you aware that Jess hasn’t been seen for a few days? We have some concerns about her safety.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t know where she might be?”
“No. Why should I? Is Jess okay?”
“How well do you know a man by the name of Seth Conway?”
At the mention of Seth’s name, Jonty spun around and ran.
Ava was so surprised that for a few seconds she could only stand and stare after him. “Shit.” She began to sprint after him, closing the distance between them fast, but not quite fast enough. She caught him up just in time to bang on the roof of his car as it moved forward, the engine screaming. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” Ava made a note of the registration number but didn’t need it. Cole’s car came to a standstill as soon as it hit the early-morning traffic on the main road.
Jonty made an attempt to edge out and jump the queue but he didn’t stand a chance, so he did exactly what Ava expected him to do and bolted again. He swung open his car door and legged it, leaving his vehicle in the road.
This time, she was ready. Her gruelling fitness routine meant that Ava could run for miles, though Jonty gave her a good run for her money. He wove through the throng of startled commuters and reached the city’s busiest road junction. He glanced over his shoulder at Ava, hot on his heels, and plunged on, heedless of the oncoming traffic. Ava charged after him amidst a chorus of blaring horns and the shouts of angry motorists.
Then, suddenly, it was all over. A couple of community PCs appeared out of nowhere and Jonty ran straight into them. Ava ran up, whipped out her ID and cautioned him.
She beamed at them. “Great timing, guys!”
“You can’t arrest me,” Jonty gasped. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Then why did you run?” Ava asked. She gave a nod, and one of the officers cuffed him.
“Want us to bring him down to the station?” he asked.
Within twenty minutes, Jonty was sweating it out in one of the interview rooms, while Ava accounted for her late arrival at work.
PJ shook her head. “And I thought you’d just slept in. Should have known better.”
Neal smiled at her. “Good work, Ava.”
The interview with Jonty Cole had to wait until after the morning meeting. Tom Knight had spoken with the psychologist from CAHMS whose sessions Chantelle Clarke and Michaela Smith had attended. The psychologist, Dr Jean Rowlands, remembered Michaela Howard’s mother making a complaint against Seth during his time at Hope Street, but there had been insufficient evidence to warrant an investigation.
“How the hell Conway managed to get himself a position at the Yeardsley Trust is a total mystery,” intoned Tom. “There’s no way they could have checked his background. It’s bloody scandalous.”
Neal nodded. “And as we know, all too common.” Ava was muttering expletives, while PJ shook her head.
“I also discovered that Leanne Jackson had been in touch with Dr Rowlands only weeks before her death.” They all stared at Tom.
“Didn’t she think to contact us when Leanne’s body was found?” Ava asked.
“She’s just back from a sabbatical in the States. She missed the news about Leanne’s death. Shame. If she’d stayed at home, we might have got to this point a bit sooner.”
“What did they discuss?” Neal asked.
“Leanne was after information on Conway. Dr Rowlands also confirmed that she knew Leanne from her time at CAMHS. Remember Tina Jackson mentioned something about Leanne attending what she termed, ‘anger management?’” They nodded. “Well, it wasn’t quite that. It was a group for troubled teens whose problems had resulted in difficult behaviours.”
“So Leanne knew Seth Conway years ago?” Neal said.
“Yes, sir. She was in one or more of his sessions.”
“That’s mega, Tom,” Ava exclaimed. “We now have a direct connection between Seth Conway and Leanne Jackson. Possible motive, the works. I mean, Seth might have been abusing Leanne as well, right? She contacts Ruby Kennedy, another possible victim of Seth’s, with a view to getting her to come forward as well, Seth gets wind of this and kills them both to keep them qui
et.”
PJ and Tom were nodding, but Neal’s expression was inscrutable.
“What changed her mind about coming forward before, I wonder?” Neal said. “I mean, she could have told the police years ago. It might have kept her out of prison.”
“I think Leanne was acting on behalf of the others,” PJ said quietly. “Maybe it wasn’t until she came across Chantelle and Michaela’s names at the Trust and thought about their deaths. She might have realised that they might well be a direct result of Seth’s abuse. I mean, their mental health was already fragile. Suppose Chantelle took pills because she couldn’t live with it any longer. Maybe Michaela felt the same way. Maybe she jumped into the river after the dog because she didn’t really care whether she came back out alive. Maybe Leanne felt responsible when she heard about it. It gave her a wake-up call.”
It was the most likely explanation, Ava thought.
“Where are we on tracking down the witness to Michaela’s drowning?” Neal asked.
“We’ve got the statement sir,” Tom said, “But we’re having trouble contacting the witness. It seems that he’s moved away and we’re still trying to contact him.”
Everyone understood the implications of this. If the witness was deemed unreliable, it might confirm that they had three murders on their hands. It might never be possible to say for certain that Chantelle’s death wasn’t a suicide, but Ava was convinced that directly or not, Seth Conway was responsible.
“Alright. Good work, Tom. The pieces are starting to fall into place.” Neal nodded to PJ, who had been tasked with contacting the other women in the group.
“I spoke with Alyssa Ballard’s mother via Skype. They moved to Australia, right? When I mentioned Seth’s name, I thought she must have cut me off because there was one of those long silences. Finally she said,” PJ read aloud from her notebook, “‘I knew this business would come back to haunt us. If I’d had my way that man would have been put inside years ago, but the girls — Chantelle and Michaela, as well as my Alyssa — wouldn’t say a word against him. He was as slippery as an eel, that one, always coming up with some convincing story. That’s why we moved here. To make a fresh start.’”
PJ put her notebook aside. “Mrs Ballard put me in touch with Alyssa, and she confirmed that Leanne had contacted her recently, sir. She wanted Alyssa to make a statement confirming that she had been a victim of historical abuse. This was a week before Leanne died. Alyssa had agreed to make a statement. She was shocked to hear about Leanne and Ruby and wants to give evidence when we nail Seth Conway.”
“Thanks, everyone.” Neal said, “So, to summarise, this is what we now know: while on a placement at CAMHS, trainee mental health nurse Seth Conway sees an opportunity to abuse vulnerable young women. He gets away with it through a combination of his charm and the girls’ reluctance to testify against him. He is thrown off his course because he makes a stupid mistake and assaults the daughter of his mentor. Again, he gets away with it. Incidentally, I checked and Seth had intended to specialise in child and adolescent mental health.”
“Hmm,” Tom said. “Typical of a paedophile to choose a career that provides opportunities to feed his sick obsession. But kids with mental health problems — that’s got to be the lowest of the low.”
Neal continued. “We don’t know if Leanne was one of Seth’s victims. At the Yeardsley Trust she discovers that two former Trust attendees, Chantelle and Michaela, have died in unusual circumstances and she becomes obsessed — we know that Leanne was an obsessive individual — with finding out what happened to the other young women that she knew from those therapy sessions. Maybe she thinks memories of their abuse pushed these women over the edge. She contacts Ruby Kennedy and somehow the two of them end up in Seth’s murderous clutches. Now we know that Alyssa Ballard was abused, it’s a fair bet that the woman we’ve yet to trace — Corinna Masters — was also one of Seth’s victims.” Neal became aware of the others staring at him and he realised he’d been drumming his fingers on his desk as he spoke. He stopped abruptly and turned to another matter.
“Yesterday afternoon, Ava and I visited Jess Stokes’s flat. As you know, she’s been missing for a couple of days now. There were signs of a scuffle, perhaps more than that. I think we can now assume that Jess Stokes is connected with our current investigation, and that Seth Conway might have abducted her.” There was no need for him to add that Jess might be dead already.
“How did Leanne locate the bastard?” Tom said, angrily.
How indeed? All their efforts so far had come up with nothing. It was as though Seth Conway had disappeared off the face of the earth. He had no doubt reinvented himself, and was living under a new name. One thing was certain. He would still be abusing teenage girls, which on the face of it, should make it easier to find him. He would be the youth worker, or the schoolteacher, or the children’s nurse. The one with the friendly face, who invited trust and betrayed it in the cruellest way, by stealing their innocence.
“Ava? You okay?” PJ had been watching Ava, who was twisting her hair tighter and tighter into a coiled pleat.
Ava let go her hair. “I’m fine. Cases like this . . . men like this . . . they just . . . get to me, that’s all.”
“They get to us all,” Tom said quietly.
“Ava, contact Alyssa Ballard again. See if Leanne said anything to her that might give us a clue as to Conway’s whereabouts. As I was saying, along with locating Seth Conway, finding Jess Stokes is now a priority. I’m releasing her details to the press today and I’ve already organised for uniform to do a door-to-door with neighbours and around the local area.” Neal looked at PJ. “I’d be grateful if you’d pass on the names of Jess’s boyfriend and the male friends of her neighbours and make sure they’re included. And carry on with the search for Corinna Masters. We’re making good progress on this case, folks. Keep at it. It’s dogged work, I know, but that’s mostly what police work is all about. If you’re in it for the excitement, you're going to be disappointed ninety per cent of the time.”
PJ smiled at this, but Tom and Ava were expressionless. Neal suspected that Tom, like Ava, craved a bit of action now and again.
The meeting ended.
Neal turned to Ava. “Ready for our chat with Mr Cole?”
Chapter Eighteen
Jonty had had plenty of time to think. The minute Ava and Neal walked into the interview room, he said, “I don’t know where Jess is. I’d never hurt her. I’ve been looking out for her.”
“Looking out for her? Why?” Neal asked. “Do you have reason to believe someone means her harm?”
Jonty looked at Ava. “Seth Conway, that’s who.”
Earlier in her career, Ava would practically have jumped out of her seat at a revelation like this. As it was, she stared straight at Jonty without showing the slightest hint of surprise. Or so she hoped.
“Seth Conway? What’s your relationship with Seth Conway?” Ava asked. Jonty put his head in his hands. “I think we’d better start at the beginning, Jonty, don’t you? How long have you known Seth?”
Jonty sighed. “We met when I was sixteen. At a group I used to go to. I had some . . . problems when I was younger and they sent me for therapy. Seth was one of the people who ran the group.”
Ava glanced at Neal, knowing he must be thinking the same as her. Neither of them reacted.
“Why were you there, Jonty, if you don’t mind me asking?” Ava said.
Jonty looked defensive. “I was referred for counselling.”
She nodded. “Okay. So this was what? Six, seven years ago? How old are you now, Jonty?”
“Twenty-four.” Eight years ago.
“And what? You remained in contact? You were friends?” Ava asked.
Jonty stared at his hands. “Yeah. To start with, anyway.”
“Seth was quite a bit older than you, wasn’t he? What was he, a bit like a big brother to you? Mind you, I would have thought that his professional relationship with you would prevent him seeing y
ou outside of your therapy sessions, or is that not the case?” Ava raised an eyebrow.
“It was after he left. Seth wasn’t there for long. He was only doing a training placement there or something.”
“Did he contact you after he left?” Ava asked.
“Yeah.” Jonty looked at Neal pleadingly.
“Go on, son,” Neal said gently. “Did he get in touch with you for a particular reason?”
“I . . . it was . . . it was the girls. He wanted to know about some of the girls in my counselling sessions.” Ava caught her breath. The atmosphere in the room was electric.
“Before I say any more, I need to know that Barney will be safe.” Jonty had tears in his eyes.
Neal frowned. “Why wouldn’t your brother be safe, Jonty?”
“Seth . . . Seth said . . . He said he’d hurt Barney if I ever told anyone.” Jonty sniffed and wiped his cheeks.
Neal gave him a minute. “Tell us what you know and we’ll guarantee Barney’s safety,” he assured Jonty.
Jonty cleared his throat. “To begin with, he was a mate. I was going through a bad time. The other kids at school used to take the piss out of me because of Barney.” Ava noticed how unconfident Jonty seemed. “I never used to go anywhere without him. My mum sort of left me to look after him a lot when he was little. She was on her own and she had to work. Our dad left when Barney was three. He couldn’t cope with having a disabled kid. I didn’t mind. Everyone used to say how good I was with him.”