The old-fashioned type bell dinged their arrival above her head.
The explosion of colour continued inside the store, but the clothing was arranged artistically, showcasing each individual piece on the wall with room to breathe. The shop displayed traditional Jamaican women’s wear of dresses and skirts and shirts, mainly constructed of calico. Many of the garments were variations of the green, yellow and black of the national flag while others were infused with flashes of bright red. Kim hated small shops that tried to fill every available inch of retail space in a ‘You will like something you see’ kind of way. These garments said ‘enjoy me’.
She approached the small single till area located halfway down the shop.
A woman in her mid-to-late forties smiled pleasantly in her direction. She wore one of the colour blocked dresses hanging in the window with a traditional headscarf.
The look turned suspicious when she spied Travis trailing behind.
‘Adaje James?’ Kim asked, removing her identification.
The woman tucked her straightened ebony hair behind her ears, revealing a small gold studded earring in her lobe.
‘I used to be. I’m Adaje Sumner now,’ she said, holding up her left hand.
‘Daughter of Jacob James?’
She nodded, slowly.
‘Is there someone else here?’ Kim asked. They needed her full attention.
Mrs Sumner shook her head. ‘Not for another hour or so,’ she said.
‘We really need to talk without interruption,’ Kim said, looking towards the door.
‘Have you found him?’ she asked, softly.
Kim looked again towards the door. This was not a conversation she wanted to start while there was the possibility of customers disturbing them.
Mrs Sumner stepped around the desk, revealing a quad screen CCTV system behind.
She turned the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and slid the bottom bolt.
‘Please, follow me,’ she said, heading to the back of the store.
Kim followed past a row of curtained changing rooms to a door marked ‘Staff Only’ and then left into a small but tidy break room. A square wooden table sat in the centre.
They all took a seat around it.
Mrs Sumner’s fingers laced together.
‘Have you found him?’ she repeated. Her eyes stayed on Kim.
‘Possibly,’ Kim said. ‘But we need to ask you a few questions.’
The woman leaned her forearms on the table as though grounding herself, bracing for impact.
She nodded.
‘Did your father have any old bone injuries?’ Kim asked. Doctor A had established two potential indicators of a positive identification.
‘The bone in his left arm?’ Kim continued.
‘Was broken in a football match in his early twenties,’ she said. ‘It was just after I was born.’
Kim felt the familiar sensation of excitement mixed with dread, as she asked the second question. ‘Any injury to the knee?’ But she already knew the answer.
‘An accident at work in the late eighties,’ she confirmed.
‘And when exactly did your father go missing, Mrs Sumner?’
‘October 17th in ’89.’
‘And it was you who reported his disappearance?’
She nodded. ‘There were only the two of us, officer,’ she said, quietly. ‘My father came from Jamaica in the fifties. The work situation was dire, and he was unskilled. He got a job in a printing factory and worked hard. He met my mother there. They married, and I came along in ’67.’
The woman’s smooth skin belied her forty plus years.
‘I lost my mum in ’77 to leukaemia. There was a street party outside the day she died,’ Mrs Sumner said.
‘A street party?’ Travis asked.
‘Queen’s Jubilee,’ she answered. ‘That left just me and Dad. He carried on working at the printers. Never had one day off sick,’ she said proudly. ‘Right until it closed in ’85. After that he went from labouring job to casual work, unable to find anything steady.’
‘What about when he disappeared?’ Kim asked. ‘Had there been any issues? Anyone he was having problems with?’
‘What are you saying?’ she asked, frowning.
‘We just need to understand events close to his disappearance before—’
‘You have found him, haven’t you?’ she asked. ‘Those two questions have confirmed it or else you’d be gone by now.’
Like many relatives of missing people, Mrs Sumner may have held on to the belief that her father was still wandering around somewhere. There was a thin line between hope and delusion.
‘We think so, Mrs Sumner,’ she said, honestly. This woman had waited long enough, and Kim was suitably convinced they were talking about the same man.
The tears gathered in Mrs Sumner’s eyes but she blinked them away.
‘I had no real hope, if I’m honest,’ she admitted. ‘So many years. As each one passed I tried to remain hopeful, but I knew he would not have stayed away so long. We were very close.’
Kim nodded her understanding.
‘How did he do it?’ she asked, unsure.
It was clear that this woman wanted to know details ‒ but also didn’t want to hear them.
‘Do what?’ Travis asked.
‘Commit suicide,’ she answered, as though it was obvious.
‘What makes you think your father took his own life?’ Kim asked.
‘Because he left of his own accord. He was depressed; he couldn’t find work. He was in dreadful agony but still he searched for work every day. I’ve questioned myself every day if I should have done more. How could I have prevented it? How did I fail him?’
Kim was caught off guard. This woman had spent more than two decades coming to terms with the fact her father had left her and taken his own life. And now she had the task of opening that wound and salting it.
‘Mrs Sumner… I…’
‘Adaje,’ she said. ‘Please call me Adaje.’
‘Okay, Adaje,’ Kim said, gently. ‘Your father didn’t commit suicide. He didn’t leave you all those years ago, and there’s nothing you could have done.’
Adaje began to shake her head slowly, trying to erase all the questions, regret and blame of the last twenty-seven years.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, licking her lips. ‘Some kind of accident?’
Kim shook her head. ‘It was no accident, Adaje. I regret to inform you that your father was murdered.’
Travis just about caught her before she fell sideways to the ground.
FORTY-NINE
‘I can understand that must have been quite a shock to you,’ Kim said, once Adaje had taken a couple of sips of water.
Travis’s quick thinking had prevented the woman suffering a nasty tumble to the ground. He had held her firm until she had come back around.
‘I know everyone says this but my father wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was a quiet, unassuming and very gentle man. He was softly spoken, never got ruffled or stressed or angry and, believe me, I tested that in my early teens. He would always walk away from an argument. He hated conflict of any kind.’
‘Was there anything at all that you can remember from the days immediately before he went missing?’ Kim asked again.
Adaje shook her head. ‘The day before he disappeared he’d been out job hunting. He’d run into “the boss” as he still called him.’
‘The boss?’ Kim queried.
‘Yes, the man for whom my father was working when he had his accident. My dad said he’d been offered five hundred pounds to drop the case,’ she said, nodding as the memory cleared in her head.
‘He had politely refused the offer. The solicitor had told him to have no contact with his old workplace. The sad thing is, if they’d offered him his job back, he would probably have accepted, even though they were at fault.’
‘Wait a minute, Adaje, your father was suing the company he worked for?’ Kim clarified.
She nodded. ‘Well, company is a bit of a stretch, but yes, they were negligent. Gave him a pair of faulty ladders to climb onto a barn, and he fell and badly injured his knee.’
‘A barn?’ Kim asked, stealing a look at Travis.
‘Yes, my father was a labourer on a farm.’
‘And the boss’s name?’ Kim asked, fighting the dread in her stomach.
‘Oh yes, I’ve never forgotten. The boss’s name was Mister Cowley.’
FIFTY
‘Bryant, don’t you think our time is better spent heading for Nexus?’ Dawson asked, wishing he’d never given his colleague the keys. Had he been working on his own, he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be baited or sidetracked by Frost, and he’d be on his way to Stourbridge to talk to Bubba’s boyfriend. They were going to talk to a young girl who had no physical injuries, instead of the partner of a man whose head had been severed from his body. He wasn’t getting the priority.
‘We’re two minutes away. It can’t hurt to have a quick word,’ Bryant answered, exiting the shopping complex. ‘You don’t find it strange that this closing your eyes thing has come up twice now?’
‘Just coincidence,’ he muttered, as Bryant turned into Hollytree.
It didn’t help that Dawson had not been back to the Hollytree estate since that night.
He felt a slight tremble as Bryant drove further into the belly of the estate. The council houses around the perimeter were like a skirt. Inside them were the maisonette blocks like a petticoat, covering the flesh which was the row of tower blocks at the centre.
‘You just missed the turn,’ he advised Bryant.
‘Bloody place is like a maze,’ Bryant said, taking the next left.
Bryant had been driving around this estate for more than twenty years but his little ‘mistake’ would mean they would not drive past the exact spot where Dawson had been attacked. The place where he’d thought he was going to die.
An image flashed into Dawson’s mind. Curled on the floor, trying to protect himself from the four pairs of feet pounding him. The shame brought colour to his cheeks. Yes, there had been four of them, and yes they’d had a knife.
And yes, he was eternally grateful that Tracy Frost had come along when she had, saving him from further injury, but still he couldn’t look at the woman without remembering that night.
‘You do know I’m not as stupid as I look,’ he said to his colleague.
‘That’s a bloody relief.’ Bryant said, parking the car. ‘So, which one is it?’
Dawson nodded towards the end property and headed towards it.
The door was opened by an Indian woman, of slight build, whose hair was tidily encased in a yellow headscarf.
‘Hello, Mrs Gupta,’ he said, showing his identification. ‘We’re here about Aisha. May we speak with her?’
Mrs Gupta hesitated for a minute, and then nodded and stepped back, away from the staircase that led up to the second level of the property.
Both he and Bryant shuffled in past a collection of coats fighting for space on two hooks.
‘Please, go through,’ she said, before calling her daughter.
A colourful picture of Guru Nanak above the fireplace told him he was entering a home that followed the Sikh faith.
Dawson knew a little about the religion: that it hailed from the Punjab region of India and followed the teachings of eleven gurus. A couple of years before he had accompanied his girlfriend to the wedding of one of her colleagues and had made it his business to disabuse himself of his ignorance.
‘You are not the men we spoke to at the police station,’ Mrs Gupta said, suspiciously.
Dawson lowered himself to the sofa, even though he had not been invited. He felt imposing towering over her petite frame.
‘We are from another department, Mrs Gupta. We’re detectives.’
‘I asked to see detectives on Friday,’ she said, as Aisha entered the room.
Dawson guessed the girl to be sixteen or seventeen. She was dressed in jeans, a plain jumper and a bright red headscarf.
He knew that women did not have to wear turbans but were urged to cover their heads. Unlike her mother, Aisha did not have her hair tied up. Instead it flowed over her shoulders and peeped from beneath the scarf, uncut as a symbol of her faith.
‘Are you from Brierley Hill?’ Mrs Gupta asked.
‘Well, no, we’re from Halesowen but we all do the same—’
‘I don’t understand why you are here,’ she said.
‘We think what happened to your daughter may be linked to an investigation of ours,’ Bryant offered.
‘So, now you want to listen to her?’ Mrs Gupta asked. ‘Instead of dismiss what happened to her as a prank.’
Her voice had risen and the words were shooting from her mouth.
‘May I ask Aisha some questions, Mrs Gupta?’ he asked quietly, hoping his low tone would bring down her agitation.
She pursed her lips but nodded.
He turned to the young girl and spoke gently.
‘Aisha, can you tell me where exactly the incident happened?’
‘The car park at Asda. I’d finished work and was on my way home.’
Dawson knew the area. ‘Main road or shortcut?’
‘Shortcut,’ she said, apologetically. ‘It was cold.’
Dawson smiled. The overspill car park was poorly lit and deserted at ten o’clock.
‘Go on,’ he urged.
‘I never even heard the footsteps behind me,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He turned me around—’
‘To face him?’ Bryant butted in.
She nodded but then lowered her eyes. ‘He was wearing a hoody, and it all happened so quickly.’
‘Aisha, did the man touch you in any way inappropriately?’ Dawson asked, resuming the interview.
She shook her head.
‘Did he try to grab any… part of you?’
Again she shook her head.
‘Did he hit you?’
She hesitated and then shook her head.
‘He grabbed my arms when he pushed me to the ground.’
‘Then what?’ he asked.
She frowned. ‘He told me how to lie. He wanted me to bend my arms and legs at strange angles. He kicked at my knee when I couldn’t do what he wanted.’
‘And then what did he do?’
She swallowed.
‘He told me to close my eyes.’
Dawson nodded for her to continue.
‘And when I opened them he was gone.’
He glanced towards Bryant with a triumphant expression. He’d been right. They’d learned nothing new at all but perhaps Bryant would now accept this had nothing to do with their current caseload.
He made a move to stand.
‘But I did see the scar,’ Aisha said, quietly.
‘A scar?’ he clarified. ‘Where?’
Aisha indicated a spot on her cheekbone.
The mention of a scar sparked some distant memory that his brain couldn’t quite catch. Something he knew he should remember but it wouldn’t quite come.
Dawson was convinced there was no way this random act of stupidity could be linked to the murder of Bubba Jones or the assault of Henryk Kowalski. This was probably just some kind of prank. A dare.
Although his gut was no longer as sure.
FIFTY-ONE
‘Do not keep telling me to calm down,’ Kim said, as she jumped on the brakes in the centre of Smethwick. ‘Give me one time that telling someone to calm down has actually inspired them to calm the fuck down.’
There were approximately eight miles between her and finding out exactly what the Cowley family had been up to.
‘Then stop gambling with our lives at every set of traffic lights,’ he snapped.
‘Oh Tom, either grow a pair or shut your eyes,’ she said. Even Bryant wasn’t this bad.
‘You don’t even know their involvement. So, we know our guy worked there. There were probably many more that worked…’
‘And we have two more bodies to identify,’ Kim said, testily.
One of the first things they’d be wanting from the Cowleys was a full list of ex-employees.
‘So, who exactly are you going to arrest?’ he asked, mockingly.
‘The first person to piss me off,’ she answered. It was a pity right now that Travis wasn’t an option.
‘So, that’ll probably be Fiona,’ he said. ‘Even though she’s way too young to have been involved.’
‘Details, Travis, you’re always caught up in the details.’ She took a brief look at his closed expression. ‘But, can you tell me that she doesn’t know something about something. She’s been lying since we first met her at the hospital.’
‘Not a crime.’
‘Unless it’s about a bloody crime,’ she said, gripping the steering wheel, hard. ‘And Travis, are you trying to piss me off even more with these stupid questions?’
‘Probably,’ he admitted.
‘Why? Are you trying for suicide by cop driving erratically?’
Bryant would have just left her alone.
She took a left, sharply, and then straightened quickly.
The irritation that crossed his face was reward enough. Childish, yes. Worth it, absolutely.
‘Thank the lord for that,’ he said, as she pulled on to the Cowley’s farm.
An earlier storm had reduced the area at the front of the house to a mudbath. Kim parked her Golf next to Fiona’s Jaguar.
The door was opened by Jeff Cowley before they had reached it.
They’d had a call to confirm that the last tech vehicle and Travis’s guy, Johnson, had left half an hour ago.
‘May we come in, Mr Cowley?’ Kim asked, stepping past him.
‘Miss Cowley,’ Kim said, striding past the kitchen. ‘Would you mind joining us in the lounge?’
Normally she resented the woman’s presence and interference, but today she welcomed it. This time they’d had no time to practise. Fiona’s need to control the situation and her father’s propensity to panic could be very interesting.
‘Mr Cowley, Miss Cowley, does the name Jacob James mean anything to you?’
‘Never heard of him,’ Fiona said.
‘Yes, he worked here,’ Jeff said.
Dead Souls: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist Book 6 Page 18