by Joy Ellis
‘Not at all. But he was a gentle man, something of a loner, and she misread his friendly attitude towards her, which was nothing more than politeness to a fellow member of the Haines’ staff.’ Jackman pulled a face. ‘She misread a lot actually. It had got around that he was a divorcee, which made him fair game, but what she didn’t know was that the marriage had failed because of his homosexual tendencies.’
‘Oops.’ Max tried to stifle a smile.
‘The flashpoint came when Thayer saw Lydia Haines walking across the yard to where Ian Farrow had a small barn conversion, and going inside. Thayer had been out on an errand in the town, and she was unaware that there had been a power cut affecting the whole of the farm estate. As Lydia used a solid-fuel Aga to cook on, and Farrow had been out in the fields all day, she had cooked him and several of the others, bacon sandwiches to tide them over until the power returned. Françoise Thayer believed that Lydia was entering Farrow’s living quarters for an assignation, and her jealousy exploded. Even when she learned that the power had been down, she decided that Lydia had used it as an excuse to get into Farrow’s bed.’
‘And she killed both Lydia and her husband?’
‘With nary a bat of her long eyelashes, she hacked them both to death.’ Jackman stood up. ‘And I think she would have killed Ian Farrow too, except that he went into the town that evening and got too drunk to drive home. He spent the night in his Toyota, parked close to the Shrimp Boat Inn.’
‘And Dotty Daniel reckons Thayer’s his ma?’ Max drew in a disbelieving breath. ‘If I thought something like that, I’d keep my trap well and truly shut.’
Marie became serious. ‘Daniel is totally obsessed by the thought, and we need to convince him otherwise.’
‘Unless he’s right,’ said Charlie — Saltern’s own prophet of doom.
Jackman nodded. ‘Exactly. So, one way or the other we need to know the truth. And as soon as the relevant departments have woken up, I want you three to get me everything you can from the Thayer trial — transcripts, evidence boxes, and most of all forensics reports, ones that mention DNA.’ His voice had hardened. ‘We need to present Kinder with solid evidence before we start trying to infiltrate his mind.’
Max nodded, then said, ‘What about the time restraints on holding him?’
‘Even if we have to bail him, Kinder won’t be going far. He wants to be here, probably just as much as we love having him as a house guest.’
‘And what about Alison Fleet and our Jane Doe?’ Much as Marie wanted to get to the bottom of Daniel’s sinister parentage, she didn’t want their ongoing cases to suffer.
‘I’ll hold the reins on Operation Nightjar. The foot soldiers are doing everything possible, and until we get more forensic reports back, we’ll be kicking our heels anyway.’ Jackman had a slightly over-enthusiastic look in his eye and Marie hoped that Daniel Kinder’s quest wasn’t going to cloud the DI’s usually sound judgement.
‘Don’t worry, guys, this is solid background work to do with the Fleet investigation. If anything happens that requires us to change priority, I’ll be on it like a shot. So go to it.’
Marie watched him go into his office and close the door, then she turned back to her two detectives. ‘Okay, gang, we’re now the cold case squad. Let’s make a plan, shall we?’
* * *
If the day had started gloomily, it got steadily worse, until by two o’clock, Marie was about ready to call HR and ask for an immediate transfer to a small Scottish island. Preferably one inhabited only by sheep.
She smashed the phone down in its cradle and glared at it murderously.
‘I don’t like that look.’ Jackman had appeared beside her desk. ‘It smacks of incipient insanity, or maybe the intent to murder.’
‘I consider both suggestions to be high on the list of possibilities.’ She looked up at him and threw her hands in the air. ‘This is hopeless! The last five hours have been like a kid’s pantomime! But distinctly not funny.’
‘Thayer?’
‘Yes, Françoise sodding Thayer.’ She exhaled very loudly, then slouched back in her chair and said steadily, ‘How long ago was this case? Twenty years? Not long in the grand scheme of things. I have a freezer that’s older than that, but with all the technology that we now have at our fingertips, can we get the information that we require? Like hell we can!’
Jackman pulled a chair over from an empty desk and sat down next to her. ‘Slowly, and from the top.’
Marie groaned. ‘I don’t think I have the energy, but the bottom line is this. The storage facility that held the evidence from the Thayer case suffered a serious fire some ten years back. Evidence boxes that were not completely destroyed were salvaged and moved out in a hurry and transferred to other temporary stores. As the case had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion and was already a decade old, they weren’t given priority, and now . . .’ She spread out her hands, palms up. ‘They could be anywhere, or nowhere. There is no record that they were cremated, but there’s no record of them in any other storage facility either. This trace is dead, guv, stone dead.’
The other two detectives ambled over to join them, and Max said, ‘Not only that, things are also well cocked up by the fact that Thayer was suspected of murders in France.’
Charlie stared at his notes. ‘Yeah, a lot of the information on her earlier life seems to have been transferred abroad.’
Max’s mouth drooped. ‘Right, and with our budget, try finding details that are not just held by another force, but another country. It’s blinking ludicrous.’
‘Damn it,’ muttered Jackman. ‘Not what I’d hoped for. And without a lot more sound evidence to link Daniel to the killer, the police budget that you fondly mentioned sure isn’t going to extend to lengthy calls or trips abroad.’ He bit on his lower lip. ‘Dare I ask about DNA?’
‘You can ask.’ Marie scratched her head. ‘But that was the reason I just used my phone as a therapeutic tool to express my anger.’
‘Can I make a one-word suggestion?’ Charlie offered.
All eyes turned to him, all clearly trying to guess what that word might be.
‘Orac. If there’s something lurking in our systems somewhere, she’ll be the one to find it.’
Marie smiled broadly. ‘Sometimes, Charlie Button, I really love you. Another hour pounding this keyboard would have put me in a straightjacket.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll go see her.’ She stopped and looked enquiringly across to Jackman. ‘Or maybe it would sound better coming from you, sir?’ But Jackman was already on his way back to his office. All she heard were the words, ‘Very busy. You sort it.’
Max smirked at Jackman’s retreating back. ‘You know what I think?’
‘Forget it, sunshine.’ Marie threw him a dark look. ‘Don’t even go there.’
* * *
Orla Cracken, known to everyone from the chief constable down as Orac, didn’t look up when Marie entered the IT unit. In fact for one creepy moment Marie envisioned Orac as a kind of robot, an integral part of the bank of computers, monitors and screens that surrounded her. She was as immobile as the keyboard in front of her, and in her ramrod straight position she looked more like an automaton than a human being.
Marie decided that Orac was the kind of woman who would still look striking in a duffel coat and fluffy slippers. She needed no props to make her stand out, but Marie had never seen her without those weird metallic lenses.
‘We need your help,’ said Marie quietly, not wishing to upset the strange calm of the room full of machines.
‘Who doesn’t?’ came the terse reply.
It was true. All seemingly unsolvable problems ended up on Orac’s desk. And nine times out of ten she would produce the answers. The trouble was she also had to help three other area forces. The Fenland Constabulary had very little that was special, and their budget was as tight as anyone’s, but they did have Orac, and that was a valuable commodity indeed. Sadly, she was too valuable to keep to themselves.
> ‘We’ve run into a barrier chasing down info from an old case. I’m hoping you can find something that we’ve missed.’
Orac turned round and gave Marie a shocked look. ‘I sincerely hope I can, or I’m in the wrong job.’ Her eyes flashed brightly like the shiny surface of a CD. ‘Is it important? I’m up to my neck right now.’
‘Jackman thinks it’s very important.’
‘But he didn’t come himself?’
Marie said, ‘You’re not the only one up to your neck. We have two dead women and one mega-flaky suspect.’
‘Ah yes, Mr Daniel Kinder, the one whose computer I swept yesterday.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘And your boss didn’t even grace my doorway with his presence, after I’d slaved all afternoon on his behalf. He sent a small, spotty boy to pick the data up.’ She tilted her head to one side in an imitation of reproach. ‘I’m beginning to think he’s scared of me.’
‘Jackman? Scared?’ Even to herself, Marie’s derision sounded unconvincing.
Orac smiled wickedly. ‘Okay, Detective Sergeant. Whatever you say. So, you need an old case resurrected?’
Marie explained. She could see that Orac’s mental data processor was ticking over, already formulating search programs. ‘This sounds a little more interesting than chasing offshore accounts and bogus vehicle licence plates.’ She turned back to her machines. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll ring when I have something for you.’
With a final glance in Orac’s direction Marie left the room with the humming, whirring machines and their strange overlord.
As she strode up the stairs from the basement, she wondered why Orac had mentioned Jackman twice in that short conversation. She grinned as she tried to imagine Jackman and Orac sipping wine in some quiet bar. Maybe not. How about walking hand in hand by the river at sunset? Hell, no. That was even worse. And the thought of a romantic dinner in a small intimate restaurant finally made her snort with laughter. It would certainly be something of a turn up for the books. No one knew anything about Orac’s private life. It had been intimated that she didn’t have one and that the only hard thing she needed was a hard drive. A person as enigmatic as the IT boss was certain to give rise to speculation. She was a genius, that was clear, but the grapevine had whispered that she was ex-MI5, and that she’d been used as a scapegoat in a major hacking scandal. That was why she had finished up in a two-bit, rural county police station, crunching numbers for provincial coppers. Someone else said that she had been put out to pasture, simply because she knew too much, but too much about what, they couldn’t say.
Marie didn’t believe any of the mess-room theories, but she had to wonder why such a techno-mastermind was working in a one-time wine cellar in Saltern nick.
‘Just be grateful for small mercies,’ she whispered to herself as she approached her floor. ‘The woman is brilliant, and she’s in our basement. And stop fantasising, it’s bad for your blood pressure.’
Back at her desk the notion continued to plague her. She looked across to where Jackman was in deep conversation with a uniformed officer. It was hard to be objective when she knew him so well, but slowly the odd thought was becoming less of a joke. Maybe he was more Orac’s type than she’d realised.
Marie tried not to stare at him. She decided that Orac would be unmoved by his good looks. It would be the mind that would concern Orac, and Jackman was well-endowed in that department. And he was clever enough to know when to temper his academic manner of speaking. He was able to adopt the street-level vernacular and the gallows humour when it was appropriate. Perhaps Orac had lifted her strange eyes from her smartphone or tablet and seen all this.
‘I said, any luck?’
Marie’s head snapped up and she saw an amused Max Cohen looking down at her. She hadn’t even noticed him approach her desk.
‘You were well away with the fairies, Sarge.’
‘Oh, not really. Just mulling over one of the universe’s multifaceted conundrums.’
‘Right.’ Max gave her a perplexed stare. ‘Well, when you’ve worked it all out, do let me know. In the meantime, any luck with Orac?’
‘She actually seemed mildly interested. Is that the kind of luck you’re looking for?’
‘Respect! I’ve seen disapproval, impassiveness, and buckets of irritation, but rarely interest. I’d say you’ve scored a hole in one.’
‘In which case, whoopee,’ said Marie flatly. ‘She’ll ring us and summon us back to her cave when she has some answers.’
‘Great! Can I go?’
‘No. Didn’t you go before, to pick up the data from Kinder’s computer?’
‘No, the boss sent Charlie.’
‘Ah, that explains it.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Go do some work.’ Marie glanced up and saw Jackman beckoning to her.
She went into his office where he pointed to one of the chairs. ‘I’ve had the prelim from the pathologist regarding Alison Fleet, and a few scribbled notes about Jane Doe. The most important point is that it appears that the same knife was used. Jane’s poor condition has prohibited anything positive yet, but even the angle and depth of the stab wounds seems to indicate the same killer.’ Jackman shook his head. ‘Jacobs has pointed out that there are still considerable differences about the way the attacks were carried out, but he suggests that Jane Doe’s death may have been a result of a bout of extreme anger on the part of her assailant, whereas Alison Fleet’s was carefully considered and deliberate.’
Marie screwed up her forehead. ‘But surely that indicates two killers? One organised, and one disorganised? And they are at opposite ends of the serial killer spectrum, aren’t they? Two very different beasts?’
‘If we were talking serial, yes, you’re right, but what if the first death was not premeditated, and only after she was dead, did our man discover his true vocation?’
‘Possible.’ Marie mulled the idea over in her head. Very possible, actually. As Charlie had said, they had to start somewhere, and whereas these killers usually escalated up through cruelty, sadistic behaviour, sexual assault and rape to abduction and finally murder, there was always the odd chance of an accidental trigger sending the already twisted mind off the scale.
Jackman picked up a report. ‘Jacobs says that whoever killed Alison Fleet was thorough to the point of retention. So far forensics have found no residual evidence left by the killer, no prints, blood, fluids, hair or fibre at the scene, and whereas that means we cannot place Daniel Kinder there, we can’t place anyone else there either.’
‘So we can’t prove he was there, but we also can’t prove he wasn’t. Wonderful!’
‘It is complex, that’s for sure.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘And there have been no matches via missing persons on our unknown woman either.’
‘You said she was wearing designer clothes? She’s obviously not a drop-out or a runaway, so why hasn’t a woman like that been reported missing?’
‘She could be a business woman? Someone who travels a lot? Single? No dependents? Maybe even no immediate family?’
‘Maybe foreign?’
‘Could be. And she could still be a runaway. Charity shops and places like the Salvation Army hand out donated clothing. Some of that is good quality. We need the full post-mortem to know the condition of her body prior to death to answer that one.’
‘Or someone ringing in begging us to find their beloved daughter, or wife, or girlfriend.’
‘You think we’ll get that lucky?’ asked Jackman grimly.
‘Probably not, but let’s not get too negative.’
‘Excuse me, sir, but Superintendent Crooke asked me to give you a message.’ Charlie leaned around Jackman’s door. ‘She said could you go up to her office immediately, and, quote, you are going to owe her big-time.’ He turned to Marie, ‘You too, Sarge.’
Marie nodded to Charlie, then raised an eyebrow at Jackman. ‘The royal summons, no less. Better do as she says. Maybe that comment about luck was an omen.’
As they approached the superintendent’s office they heard voices coming from inside the room, and Marie stopped in her tracks, one hand grasping Jackman’s elbow and pulling him back.
‘Wait!’ she said urgently.
There was an odd intensity in her voice, and Jackman realised that her fingers were still tightly attached to his jacket sleeve. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘That voice. I’d know it anywhere. It’s Professor Guy Preston.’
Jackman thought hard. The name rang bells but no torrents of information flooded his brain. ‘Well,’ he said with a smile, ‘It makes a change for you to know someone that I don’t.’
Marie shook her head. ‘This is incredible! I had no idea he was back in this area.’
‘You’ve lost me. Who is Guy Preston?’
‘He’s a top psychologist, sir. Back when I was a baby tec, he helped us with the Austin enquiry . . . well, things went a bit pear-shaped at one point . . .’ Her voice faded. ‘Look, I’ll tell you about it when we are alone. It’s something I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about, and it’s not exactly common knowledge.’
‘Now, I’m really interested,’ whispered Jackman, ‘but we’d better not keep the super waiting. Tell me later, and promise to leave nothing out.’ He looked at her from beneath his eyebrows.
Marie ignored him and drew back her shoulders as they entered the office.
There, the penny dropped. Preston had written some very interesting papers that had been part of Jackman’s reading assignments at Cambridge. He was a powerful man, an outspoken but respected psychologist, and Jackman wondered how the hell Ruth Crooke had managed to stretch the budget far enough to accommodate a man of his professional stature.
‘I believe you two already know each other,’ said the superintendent, glancing from Marie to the doctor.
Marie held out her hand. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Guy, and certainly something of a surprise.’ She turned to Jackman and introduced him.
The handshake was firm, but not bone-crushing. Jackman saw a man in his late forties, his greying hair longer than average though neatly cut. A close, well-trimmed beard. The only thing that spoilt what Jackman thought of as the “Indiana Jones” good looks was an old jagged scar down the side of his face, one that even the beard could not disguise.