Even from where he was sitting, Harry could see the hint of red spreading across Gary’s cheeks.
‘Well, yes, I am busy,’ Jen said. ‘But, honestly, thank you. That’s very kind.’
‘Sorry,’ Gary stuttered, backing away a little and out of the door, ‘I didn’t mean to . . . Look, I’ll go.’
‘Perhaps some other time, yeah?’ Jen said, as Gary moved to leave. ‘Mondays are never good, really. Start of a new week, catch up from the weekend, that kind of thing.’
‘No, of course, I get it,’ Gary said. ‘I’ll give you a call later in the week, maybe?’
‘Yes, do that,’ Jen said. ‘Much better, I think. And thanks again. It really is a great car!’
Gary gave a short nod, then was gone.
‘Well, that was awkward,’ Jen said, wiping her brow in mock relief.
‘He’s obviously a bit smitten, that’s all,’ Liz said. ‘Got to admire him for coming over. Takes brass, that.’
Harry got to his feet and stretched, his back cracking and popping as he did so. Jen waved goodbye and was then gone out of the door, clearly desperate to get out and make herself busier than she’d looked when Gary had knocked.
‘You need to take up yoga,’ Liz advised, looking over to Harry.
‘And you need to stop giving orders to senior officers,’ Harry retorted, smiling. ‘I don’t need you having a go at me as well. It’s bad enough with Jen keeping at me about the running.’ He put his mug down by the sink and threw the bag from the breakfast pie in the bin. ‘You got the keys for the evidence room?’
Liz handed them over, then swung herself round to the single laptop used by the team.
‘Right, then,’ she said, flexing her fingers. ‘Time for a bit of social media snooping . . .’
‘Has Facebook sent the data in, then?’ Harry asked, wondering if he’d missed something vital, or just not been told, probably by Swift.
Liz shook her head. ‘We can’t be waiting around for that, right? But if I can find out what groups she was in, that kind of thing, I might be able to get a bit closer to how she ended up in Swaledale.’
Harry was very pleased not to have anything to do with it. He’d been horrified by all that social media represented from the moment it all began, with Friends Reunited, and MySpace, and whatever else had come and gone over the years. Now though, with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, and whatever the hell else was going on now, he’d moved from horrified to truly terrified. To Harry, the thought of having his life displayed for all to see, seemed to be not just astonishingly nihilistic, but also dangerous. And perhaps Liz would find something that proved his concern to be correctly placed. So, leaving Liz to it, he slipped out of the office and made his way through the community centre to the designated temporary evidence storage room. He wasn’t really sure what he was going to find, if anything, but sometimes you just didn’t know until you started looking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jadyn, having got nowhere at all with either Kirsty’s gym or her place of work, was beginning to think the day was a total loss. It was already closing in on mid-afternoon and there was no way he was going to get back to Hawes before the end of the day.
At the gym, all he’d been told was that yes, Kirsty had a membership, a joint one with her husband, and that, yes, she was a regular attendee at classes like Body Pump and Pilates, but other than that, there was nothing else the staff could tell him. The only contact details they had on record were hers and her husband’s, so that was a dead end. The person at reception, a man who clearly bought clothes a touch on the small side to emphasise his physical splendour, had tried his best to persuade Jadyn to take up a free consultation, but Jadyn had got out of there sharpish. Gyms weren’t his thing. Fitness was, though, and he had plenty of kit at home to keep him in shape.
As to Kirsty’s place of work, everyone there had been far too busy to see him, and not one of them had looked at him with anything other than disdain. Her line manager, Mr Wilkinson, a man in his late fifties, who Jadyn had thought was not so much thin as narrow, like he had been in some unfortunate industrial accident involving an enormous pressing machine, had not just been disinterested but also strangely racist.
‘And where are you from?’ he’d asked, staring at Jadyn through glasses that were all lens and little else.
‘North Yorkshire Police,’ Jadyn had answered. ‘Richmondshire area.’
‘No, I mean originally,’ Mr Wilkinson had then said, seemingly oblivious to where the conversation was suddenly going. ‘Your name, you see? Okri. It’s an interesting one, isn’t it?’
‘Bradford,’ Jadyn had answered. ‘Can’t move for Okris down there, you know.’
Mr Wilkinson had furrowed his brow, offered little else to Jadyn other than the limpest attempt at shock and upset when informed about Kirsty’s death, then left him in the reception area where he’d met him.
Now though, Jadyn was standing outside an old stone terrace house in Richmond, hoping that not only was there going to be someone on the other side of the door he was about to knock on, but that they were going to be rather more useful.
Jadyn double-checked the name and address, lifted his hand, and knocked.
The door opened as though sucked from the other side by a vacuum to reveal a figure wearing a leather apron and a welder’s mask.
‘Yes?’
‘Jane Peacock?’ Jadyn said, somewhat hesitantly. ‘I’m Police Constable Okri. I rang earlier?’
The figure was still for a moment then reached a hand up to the welder’s mask and lifted it. The woman’s face beneath it was red, sweaty, and bleary-eyed, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail.
‘You’re black,’ the woman said.
‘Yes, I am,’ Jadyn said, not really sure how to respond.
‘No, I mean, this is Richmond, in Yorkshire. It’s not exactly the most diverse of populations. Come in, please.’
The woman stepped back from the door, inviting Jadyn to cross the threshold into her home.
‘Thank you for your time,’ Jadyn said, his hat removed and stowed under his arm. ‘I’m sure this won’t take too long.’
The woman walked ahead and down a short hall, leading Jadyn through to a kitchen diner. ‘Tea?’
‘No, I’m fine, thank you,’ Jadyn said.
‘Well, I’m having one, that’s for sure,’ the woman said. ‘I’m parched. Please, sit down.’ She then gestured to the dining table, which looked out through French windows onto a long garden, which ended with a nicely built wooden office.
Jadyn pulled a chair out and sat down at the table.
‘You’ll have to excuse all of this,’ the woman said, gesturing to what she was wearing. ‘I’m an artist, you see? I make stuff out of metal, sculptures, individual pieces, that kind of thing, garden whatevers, but I won’t bore you with it all. And after the news about Kirsty, well, it was the only way I could think to cope, really. Just threw myself into a new piece, trying to make it represent her, but it’s not easy, not when it’s so raw.’
Jadyn wasn’t given much of an opportunity to respond as the woman’s words spilled out of her, a verbal torrent pinning him to his chair. Then, with a fresh mug of tea in hand, she sat down opposite him.
‘So, how can I help? Jadyn, is it? Yes. Good.’
Jadyn opened his notebook.
‘Oh, you still write everything on a little pad? I was expecting you to have a tablet or something, be all high tech.’
Jadyn said, ‘No, it’s notebooks all the way. No batteries.’
With those important points out of the way, Jadyn first of all offered his condolences. ‘There’s nothing I can say, I know,’ he said, ‘but I’m very sorry for your loss.’
Jane at last took her welder’s mask off completely then scratched her head. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘It’s her poor parents I feel for, though. Bloody awful.’
‘How long have you known Kirsty?’ Jadyn asked. Never quite sure whether to talk abo
ut the recently deceased in the past or present tense, he went for the present, as it felt more appropriate somehow.
‘Since university,’ Jane said. ‘Durham. She just walked into my room on the first day and introduced herself. From that point on we were best friends, really.’ Jane laughed then, and it was loud and genuine and warm, but it tapered off quickly, cut sharp by the threat of tears. ‘She was always there for me, you know? Well, until that bastard turned up.’
Jadyn waited for Jane to explain further rather than interrupt with a question. But she fell silent, leaving him no choice but to pry further.
‘College boyfriend?’
Jane shook her head. ‘Oh, there were plenty of those. It was university, after all, so there’s no point settling down when there’s so many choices, right?’
Jadyn remained passive, allowing Jane to continue.
‘No, it wasn’t a college boyfriend, which was a shame, because one of them, Paul something-or-other, he was lovely. Fit, too, if you know what I mean. But he buggered off around the world so that was the end of that.’
Jane reached for her tea and warmed her hands on it, even though the room was warm.
‘Did she stay in touch with Paul?’ Jadyn asked, half thinking that maybe some long lost lover had been her end, though doubting it with pretty much every ounce of his being.
Jane laughed then, but the sound was a cold bark hard enough to shatter granite. ‘Stay in touch? With Daryl calling the shots? Not a chance!’
‘Her husband,’ Jadyn confirmed.
‘Owner, more like,’ Jane sneered. ‘A complete and total bastard. I never liked him, not from the moment she introduced him to the rest of us. It was a Christmas party, couple of years after the end of uni. Met him at work.’
Jadyn was beginning to think that Daryl was already sounding increasingly like the kind of person they were looking for. ‘But Kirsty liked him,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes, but she was blind, wasn’t she?’ Jane replied. ‘All she could see were those shockingly shiny teeth, the flash car, the rich parents! It was all so different from her own background, so exciting. She couldn’t see it. Wouldn’t listen.’
‘And what happened?’ Jadyn asked.
‘How do you mean?’ Jane asked.
Daryl looked back at his notes. ‘With Paul,’ he said. ‘You said something about Daryl calling the shots?’
Jane finished her tea. ‘It started as soon as they moved in together,’ she explained. ‘Suddenly, she wasn’t available or was too busy. You’d call her phone and Daryl would answer. I mean, we all tried, you know? Invited her out, kept calling, did what we could, but he built this invisible wall around her and it was impossible to get through.’
‘But you kept in touch?’
‘Actually, no,’ Jane said. ‘Well, not until recently. We drifted apart years ago because of that bloody man, God I hate him, but then out of the blue she gets in touch.’
‘How?’
‘Facebook,’ Jane said. ‘Must’ve been over five years since I’d heard from her, then I get this message about three months ago, and it’s Kirsty, and it was like we hadn’t been apart a day, never mind years! It was so great to hear from her again.’
‘So why did she contact you?’ Jadyn asked.
‘Can’t you guess?’ Jane asked. ‘Because she’d finally decided that she’d had enough of Daryl the Dickhead, that’s why!’
‘She told you she was leaving him?’
‘Not exactly, no,’ Jane said, then leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, her hands folded. ‘I mean, she didn’t say she was going to leave him, nothing so specific, but she had clearly woken up to the fact that he was a controlling bastard and that she needed to get her life back.’
Jadyn thought for a moment about what to ask next. ‘Did she mention anything at all about what she was doing this weekend?’
Jane shook her head and a look of bewilderment and disbelief stretched its way across her face. ‘The whole camping thing?’
Jadyn gave a short nod.
‘I had no idea she was going to go this weekend, if that’s what you mean. But yes, I knew she wanted to do it. And believe me when I say that it was very un-Kirsty-like, if you know what I mean.’
‘Go on,’ Jadyn said.
‘She’d grown used to the finer things in life,’ Jane explained. ‘She’d spent years earning a good wage, married to someone earning even more, going to expensive restaurants, flying off on the kind of holidays people like you and I can only ever dream of! And here she is getting excited about camping? Go figure.’
‘So why did she do it, then?’ Jadyn asked. ‘Where did the idea come from?’
‘I think she saw something on Facebook,’ Jane said. ‘She talked about the equipment she was buying, and it was like listening to a young girl getting excited about doing something behind her parents’ back, you know?’
‘Are you saying that Daryl didn’t know?’
‘Of course, he bloody well didn’t!’ Jane said, her voice reaching such a high pitch that Daryl winced a little. ‘She was buying all this stuff and hiding it at home in the attic. She’d tell me every time she’d get something new. Nothing cheap either, being Kirsty. Always the best. And like I said, she was getting hints and tips from some group on Facebook.’
‘You didn’t mention a group,’ Jadyn said.
‘Didn’t I? Well, it was. Wild camping or something. Don’t ask me. The only stuff I follow on Facebook is anything to do with puppies being cute and artists so pretentious they make you want to puke, but only after you’ve given them a proper slap.’
Interesting, Jadyn thought, particularly the mention of this Facebook group Kirsty had joined. He underlined it just to make sure.
Jane stood up. ‘Anyway, I need to be getting on,’ she said and grabbed her welding mask.
Jadyn followed her lead and rose to his feet. ‘Did she say anything after she left Daryl?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps about how he reacted or, well, anything really?’
Jane was thoughtful for a moment. ‘You know, when she told me she’d left him two weeks ago, I think that was the last time she mentioned him. Since then? Not a dicky-bird.’
‘Did he know where she was going camping?’
‘Haven’t the faintest idea,’ Jane said, ‘but I can’t see how. Though he was a conniving shit of a man, to be sure, so I’ve no doubt he kept an eye on her.’
At the front door, Jadyn thanked Jane for her time, then made his way back to his car. From all that she’d told him, he had a better idea as to why Kirsty had left her husband, and Jane’s views on the man only confirmed what Harry had shared with them all, after his and Jim’s visit a couple of days ago. So it was nice colour to help them build a picture of Kirsty’s life, but it didn’t help them much in finding her killer. The Facebook group thing, though, Jadyn thought, now that was interesting, wasn’t it? Particularly after what they’d done the day before out on the moors. Because, as Matt had suggested, if the killer had actually suggested to Kirsty where to camp, then could it be that they belonged to the same group on Facebook? Was that where this had all started?
Jadyn stopped then, chilled at the thought of someone prowling social media, looking for victims, and Kirsty falling foul of it. He pulled out his phone and called Harry.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Closing the door behind himself, Harry slipped into the temporary evidence storage room and flicked on the light. The energy-saving bulbs spluttered unenthusiastically to life, and with the pathetic amount of light they offered once fully lit, Harry could understand why. He also wondered if the contents of the room weren’t exactly helping. It wasn’t that he was in any way superstitious or religious, and he certainly didn’t believe in ghosts, but he’d always sensed that the physical evidence from a violent crime scene could somehow make their immediate surroundings gloomier. As though, to be in their very presence was to allow a thin, grey veil to cover your eyes, as a creeping chill scratched its way across your sk
in.
Harry spotted another light clamped to a shelf and flicked it on. It certainly made the room bright, but no more inviting or welcoming.
In the centre of the room stood two tables pushed together, a couple of chairs sitting beneath them. Around three walls were sturdy metal shelves and it was on these that the evidence was resting. The fourth wall contained a window that had been bricked up.
Harry walked over to the evidence and carefully moved it from the shelves and to the tables. Everything was in transparent plastic evidence bags, tagged with dates and location information, and a brief description of the contents. He also added to the pile the evidence bag containing Kirsty’s purse, and the bag with the plastic balls.
For the next five minutes or so, Harry allowed himself just some quiet time to think, to take it all in. The crime had been a terrible one. The violent taking of a woman’s life, by someone who had clearly set out to kill. His mind turned to Kirsty, not because he wanted it to, but because he forced it to, because everything that he was doing was for her, and he owed her that much. She would have had no idea at all that her life would end that night. Indeed, it seemed to Harry that perhaps Kirsty had viewed that night as the start of a new life for her, a fresh beginning. She was out in the moors on her own, being adventurous, being daring, and the future had probably looked so exciting.
Harry spotted the bag with the burned photos and reached for it, holding it close. He removed the photos and carefully shuffled through them. Most of them were too damaged to make anything out clearly, but the one of her wedding day still showed Daryl’s face staring back. Harry wondered what Kirsty had seen in him back then, and how those feelings had changed. What it was that had caused the marriage to turn sour? He’d met the man and could guess that Kirsty had finally realised that the man was a complete arse, but was that really enough to lead to Kirsty’s death? Yes, Daryl had done a runner, but unlike Detective Superintendent Swift, that just wasn’t enough for Harry, not by a country mile. And anyway, the whole thing seemed too planned, too specific in its detail, to have any link at all to the husband. But if it wasn’t him, then who?
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