‘Serge, heel,’ she snapped. She spoke with a refined yet phlegmy upper-class voice. The dog ran to her side and she peered at Erika and Peterson.
‘Hello, I’m DCI Foster,’ said Erika holding out her ID, ‘This is DI Peterson.’
‘It’s perfectly legal to glean walnuts,’ she started. ‘What the bloody hell does it need two of you out here?’
‘We’re not…’ started Erika.
‘Bloody police were called when someone was picking blackberries from the hedgerows, you heard about that? I mean really. It belongs to God, and he puts it all on earth for us to eat.’
‘We’re not here about Walnuts or anything that you might be picking…’
‘There’s no might, I am picking Walnuts, I’ve picked. Look!’ she said opening the carrier bag. It was full of walnuts, some still in the green and black husks.
‘We’re investigating the death of Jessica Collins, you may have seen something about it on the television,’ said Erika.
‘Haven’t got a television,’ said the woman. ‘But I listen to Radio Four. I heard the news. Nasty business. You found her over yonder,’ she added tipping her head toward the quarry.
‘Yes. Have you lived around this area for long?’
‘I’ve lived here my whole life, eighty-four years.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Peterson, but all this got in return was a scowl.
‘What can you tell us about the cottage there, in the undergrowth?’ asked Erika. The woman peered past her squinting, creasing her face even more.
‘Second World War, accommodation and storage for the air base they had here, all quite hush hush. I think someone stayed on after the war, but then it was empty, it’s been empty for years… Old Bob had it for a long time, unofficially, though not long enough to claim squatters rights, the poor bastard.’
‘Do you know where he is now?’ asked Erika, phishing for more information.
‘A few years back. They found him in there, dead,’ she said tilting her head toward the cottage.
‘Do you know what his name was?’
‘I told you, Old Bob.’
‘His legal name?’
‘Bob Jennings.’
‘And what’s your name?’ asked Erika.
‘Why do I have to give you my name? You don’t need my name for me to answer questions.’
Erika sighed feeling they were going round in circles.
‘There are few, if any witnesses to the death of Jessica Collins. She was only seven when she was dumped in the water. Her body lay weighted down in plastic, and left in the silt for twenty-six years. We don’t know if she was still alive when she was thrown in…’
The old woman was taken aback.
‘The poor child…’
Peterson stepped forward and gave her his winning smile, ’We may have more questions, ma’am. It could be beneficial to us to use your extensive knowledge of the area to help us in our investigation.’
She peered up at him for a moment, then said to Erika,
‘Is he flirting with me?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Peterson embarrassed.
‘I hope not man! Is that your idea of police work?’
Erika stifled a grin saying, ’We have an uphill struggle to get to the bottom of this murder case, any local knowledge will be of great use to us…’
The old lady’s faced creased even more as she gave both of them the once over,
‘I’m the honourable Rosemary Hooley. I live at the old vicarage. I don’t have a telephone, but I’m almost always at home.’
‘Thank you,’ said Erika.
Rosemary whistled at the dog and strode off, the labrador following after her. They watched as she disappeared round the bank of trees, the sole of her shoe flapping.
‘Flirting…’ muttered Peterson. ‘She’s flattering herself.’
Erika pulled out her phone and called in to control asking them to find out when they could about a Bob or Robert Jennings. When she hung up they stood looking out over the water.
It was so still and peaceful.
’To think she was here all this time, less than a mile from home,’ said Erika.
22
After three days watching Amanda Baker’s house, the dark haired man with the stubble had worked out that her routine was both predictable and pathetic. His name was Gerry, or G to his associates. He saw that she stayed in all day, but made a trip to the local off-licence mid-morning to pick up some wine and shop for that evening’s food.
He’d also hacked into her smart phone. He’d dabbled in a lot over the years; a stint in the army, but it didn’t agree with him, organised crime a bit over computer hacking. He was tall, dark and well built, and had the ability to both shine and gain people’s confidence, and when needed he could blend in the background.
It was easy to hack her phone, a cheap Android model, and he’d easily obtained her number from the electoral register. The previous day, in the early hours of the morning, he’d sent a text message containing a malicious code. Once it had arrived it had acted as a Trojan Horse, she didn’t even have to open it, he was able to gain access to her smart phone and delete the message. For the past couple of days she’d been using her handset, unaware that he was inside watching everything she did.
Amanda Baker played a lot of games like Candy Crush Saga, and Jewel. She’d also set up a profile on one of the dating sites using a fake picture of a blond haired woman in her twenties. He soon realised there was nothing malicious behind it, she just liked chatting to guys, the chatting turning into the kind of sexting where she came across as both needy and horny.
It was her internet searches which had spiked Terry’s interest; several times she’d googled the Jessica Collins murder, its wikipedia entry, and searched for information on the Collins family. She had also tried several times to log onto HOLMES the UK police database. She’d had no luck logging in, her access had long ago been revoked, so she had made calls to an officer working on the case called DI Crawford, who was ex-colleague.
Gerry had listened to the calls, and at first DI Crawford had been cold with her, but it became apparent they had a history, they had been lovers, and for a time it had been serious.
She had asked if she could use his login for the HOLMES database, he’d refused her that but he did say he would keep her up to speed with the case. Gerry had reported this back to his boss during a late night phone call, and it was decided that the surveillance of Amanda Baker would be increased.
* * *
It was dark and raining when Gerry saw Amanda turn off the lights downstairs. A few minutes later the light came on in the upstairs window. He waited for the light to go out and then left the car. He moved swiftly through the darkness to the front room window. It opened easily and he climbed in. He worked fast, he had two options; conceal a small battery operated listening device in the room, or find a concealed plug for a tiny black box listening device with a SIM card. Using a low watt torch he saw the mess inside the room and moved quickly. The room stank of smoke, but there was a long defunct smoke detector on the ceiling. He used a chair and quickly fitted the small listening device in the plastic housing of the smoke detector. It was voice activated with a battery life of several days.
He flicked off the light and moved into the hallway. The landline sat on the table, its red charging light glowing in the dark. As he reached out to take the handset from its cradle, the stairs creaked and he froze. He moved quickly and found the doorway to an empty room filled with junk, which was once a dining room, just in time as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
She creaked past him, heavy footed to the kitchen. The light came on, he heard the tap running and a crackle of a foil sheet of pills. The light flicked off and she rumbled past, and back up the stairs.
He came out of the shadows and worked quickly taking the handset apart and inserting a small listening device.
He paused in the hallway. His eyes had grown used to the dark. He noticed
just how steep the stairs were. He made a mental note and then left the house through the front window, melting back into the darkness.
23
Erika slept fitfully, and in her dreams she was sinking down into the freezing dark waters of Hayes Quarry. The moon was full, and as she slowly sank down, the bottom of the quarry stretched out, lit up like a moonscape. She swam along the bottom, her arms and legs numb, her lungs screaming. The silt billowed up around her clouding her view, but then it cleared and her mother’s body appeared. She was dressed in the patterned housecoat she wore when Erika and her sister were little, the strings of her apron suspended in the water out behind her, the skin on her face was pale and it flaked away until she dissolved to silt.
She then saw her late husband Mark. His body pale, and still dressed in his police uniform with the bullet proof vest. When she came close his body slowly turned exposing the bullet holes in his neck, gaping like raw dough. She tried to reach out and touch him, and as she sank down into the silt beside him, his body disintegrated.
Through the clouds of grey, she saw Jessica standing on the bed of the quarry, but she wasn’t a skeleton. She was dressed for her friend’s birthday party; her long blond hair floated around her head like a halo, the material of the pink dress billowed lazily in the gentle undercurrents. Her patterned sandals hovered above the silt. Under her arm she held a wrapped gift, a small square of black and white polka dots. Erika could now see there were a row of houses on the bottom of the quarry. A light shone in one shimmering through the water. When Erika reached Jessica, she was close to the house with light shining. She turned and smiled at Erika. She tried to grab at Jessica, to pull her up to the surface, but as her fingers closed around Jessica’s tiny arm, the skin began to fall away, exposing the bones underneath. The skin then fell away from Jessica’s face, exposing the skull and gaping eye sockets.
* * *
Erika woke with a yell, her sheets soaked with sweat, but shivering. It was still dark outside her bedroom window and the clock beside her bed showed it was four thirty am. She got up and took a shower, standing under the hot water for a long time. Trying to warm her bones, which still held the chills of the cold water in the quarry. When the water finally ran cold she dried, dressed in her thick robe and came through to the kitchen. She had been reading through a stack of files John had flagged for her attention, and she made some coffee and sat down with one labelled “AUG 1990 - OCT 1991 AMANDA BAKER”.
She read with interest details of Amanda’s role the search in the days and weeks after Jessica’s disappearance. It began with a door-to-door in Avondale Road, which drew a blank. Of the sixty houses on the street, residents of twenty-nine of them were away on holiday. In addition, the residents of a further thirteen houses were out on the afternoon of August 7th. In the remaining houses, the neighbours who were at home that afternoon saw nothing.
Almost immediately after Jessica Collins was reported missing, DCI Baker had officers conduct a house-to-house on Avondale Road. At first light on August 9th a large team of officers and local volunteers met on Hayes Common and combed the area. They found nothing.
In the following days, Amanda had the front and back gardens of Avondale Road searched, and where earth had recently been moved or dug over, she sent forensics in with a methane probe. On August 13th a probe registered something at the bottom of the garden at number 34. It was the house of a local councillor, Bob Murray. They also discovered that Bob had briefly been at home on the afternoon of August 7th, between 2pm- 2.20pm until his wife returned from shopping. He was well-respected in the local community, but he was one of the few people who couldn’t account for the full two hour period when Jessica left home and was discovered missing. Despite protestations that he was innocent, and that twenty minutes was a very small timeframe, the garden of number 34 was excavated. All they found was the body of a decaying cat. A stray that their housekeeper had buried at the bottom of the garden three weeks previously, without their knowledge.
Erika could see there was a complaint letter included in the case file from Councillor Murray, citing DCI Amanda Baker’s abrasive rudeness, and that the excavation had caused thousands of pounds damage to their Zen Japanese garden. There had been an altercation between Amanda and Bob Murray’s wife Angela, where Amanda had called her a cunt.
A few days later, Amanda had discovered the existence of a halfway house in the next street, and reports were coming in that one of its residents, a convicted paedophile called Trevor Marksman, had been seen outside number 7 in the days leading up to Jessica going missing.
Erika saw that Amanda had then briefed the press on the morning of August 15th, saying that they had arrested Trevor Marksman, adding that he had been living in a halfway house four hundred yards away. A halfway house that had been approved by Councillor Murray and the rest of the council the previous year.
‘Amanda, that can’t have done you any favours,’ said Erika as she read through the file. She hadn’t noticed that the cup coffee at her elbow was now cold. She thought about the way she had dealt with cases in the past, and how she’d made a name for herself as difficult, particularly with top brass.
‘But it goes back to the same old thing,’ said Erika to herself. ‘A man is direct and blunt and he’s thought of as decisive and driven, a woman does it and she’s a difficult bitch.’
John had included in the file reports relating to Trevor Marksman. He was questioned repeatedly, but it he had an alibi. He had been in the communal television room at the halfway house from lunchtime until early evening on the day when Jessica disappeared. He had several witnesses, including the parole officer who lived in at the time could confirm this.
Marksman’s room at the halfway house was searched, and officers found an album of photos he had taken of Jessica. He had a camcorder and several tapes where he had videoed young girls, including several videos of Jessica taken at the park. The halfway house was searched and so were the grounds, but officers found nothing.
The Collins family offered some of Jessica’s baby teeth for a DNA comparison, but nothing came back from samples taken in his room, or any of his belongings.
A year later, when the case had gone cold, Marksman had already been moved several times for his protection, when he was relocated to a house in North London. On the night of September 4th 1991 a milk bottle filled with petrol was put through his door. The house burned to the ground, and he was pulled out of the flames badly burnt.
Two women, April Morrow and Kelly Crown had been seen outside his house and were arrested. A search of April Morrow’s flat found photocopies of council files relating to the location of Trevor Marksman. The council denied wrongdoing and put the blame on Amanda Baker, saying she had fed them the information. There was no proof either way, but coupled with revelations of a relationship between Martin Collins, and DCI Baker, her reputation was damaged forever.
Erika got up and made herself another cup of coffee, and saw it was just getting light. She hesitated then made a call. Marsh answered almost straight away.
‘Sorry to call so early,’ said Erika.
‘No probs. I haven’t been sleeping much… Marcie wants to work out visitation times for when I see the girls. She’s not happy about me popping in.’
‘Damn. I’m sorry, Paul…’
‘It’ my own fault. I work too much.’
‘Are you busy?’
‘I was just working…’ he said. His voice tailed off. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ve been working my way through the Jessica Collins case files, which confirm the closest they got to a suspect was Trevor Marksman.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it says that Marksman was seen hanging around Jessica and the family in the days leading up to when she vanished.’
‘Erika, he had a cast iron alibi. And you know what the CPS would say about bringing him in after everything…’
‘I don’t want to talk to him as a suspect. I want to talk to him as a witness.’
‘A witness?’
‘Yes, no one saw anything, no neighbours, no locals, nothing. The only person who we know had his eye on her in the days leading up to her going missing was Trevor Marksman. Yes he’s a sicko, but if we put that to one side for a moment, he could also have seen something, heard something.’
‘He never said he did.’
‘Did anyone ever ask him?’
There was a pause on the end of the line.
‘Okay. You’d need to ask him if he’d be willing to talk. I believe he has health problems, he’s confined to his home, and you need to be diplomatic. He’s sued the MET once before and won, substantially.’
‘Ok, I’ll get DC Mc Gorry on to it, he’s impressed me. He’s a good diplomat.’
‘Maybe you could learn something from him,’ said Marsh.
‘Ha ha,’ said Erika.
‘I’m serious. Don’t fuck it up,’ said Marsh and he put the phone down.
24
When Erika arrived at Bromley Station, she came out of the lift on the ground floor and saw a commotion at the end of the hall. A group of uniform officers stood around an old shopping trolley which contained a dummy they’d made for Guy Fawkes’ night. It consisted of a comedy policeman’s uniform stuffed with old newspaper. The head was a balloon, with a mournful face with large eyes drawn on in permanent marker. It was topped by a policeman’s helmet, where a curly red fright wig poked out from underneath. It looked like they’d been stopped by Superintendent Yale, who stood at the front of the trolley and was giving them a bollocking,
‘So instead of worrying about the terror alert being raised to Urgent, you’ve decided to spend your time pissing about?’
‘It’s for Guy Fawkes, and we’re collecting for Great Ormond Street,’ said a small female PC dressed in her stab vest and hi-vis jacket.
Dark Water: A gripping serial killer thriller Page 10