by D. E. White
“I really didn’t get a look at the second attacker, so it is just an impression.” Dove leaned back against the wall, going over the events of the night before in her head. “It could have been a woman, I guess?”
“But you can’t be sure?”
“No,” she said regretfully. “Shame we lost them, but keep me posted, won’t you? I wish I could have been more help, or at least hung on to one of them,” Dove said, suddenly aware Steve was at the door to the stairwell, making impatient noises. “Gotta go, my partner gets grumpy if he doesn’t get his caffeine fix.”
“Let me know if you remember anything else or want to add to your statement. DI Rankin is going to be running with this one. Hey, I don’t suppose it’s worth doing a photofit for the first man, the one who attacked you?” he called after her.
She considered for a brief second, memory flashing back. “Not really, I only got a look at his mouth and a rough outline of the lower part of his face.”
“No worries!”
Dove caught up with Steve as they finally emerged into bright sunlight, and quickly updated him on the Claw Beach attack. “No joy from last night on a perp either. It’s all going well this morning . . . Also, the machine is screwed again, but you can have this one.” She handed him the full cup.
“There are reasons I like having you as a partner.” Steve grinned as she started the car. “God, this seat is boiling — it’s going to be another scorcher today. Zara’s got the day off, and is taking Grace to the beach with some of her friends,” he added. “She loves the water.”
“A little wannabe surfer,” Dove suggested. Steve’s baby daughter was gorgeous, even if, as he frequently commented, she still hadn’t discovered the joys of sleeping through the night.
The sky stretched a glorious vivid blue over the town, and the dusty streets were already busy with tourists and day-trippers. Quaintly historical Abberley, with its ancient church and cobbled streets, coupled with Lymington-on-Sea with its full deck of modern conveniences, made the two-town coastal sprawl a must-stop for beach-lovers in search of a day out. The two towns, after forty years of infill building and new developments devouring the green downland above the coast, were now joined, although still referred to by their separate names. There had been an outcry when the county council suggested renaming the fast-growing area to create a new “super-town”.
Dove, ignoring Steve’s comments about the perfectly efficient air conditioning, wound her window down and let the familiar smells of dust, fast food, sweat and summer pour in, cooling her hot face and ruffling her hair.
Tomas Radley was working on a building site just to the north of Lymington-on-Sea, and according to the site manager Steve had called earlier, had taken the news of his wife’s death without visible emotion and then insisted he wanted to carry on at work.
“I told him to take time off, or at least to sit in one of the spare offices in the show home for a bit. Took no notice of me. He’s Latvian,” the manager added, as though that explained things. “Angelicized his name when he moved here. Radovic or something originally.” The manager’s tanned face, just slightly too orange, was puckered with worry and shiny with beads of sweat, and his elegant silver-grey hair combed down across a lined forehead. “He’s the one with the orange vest over on site four.” He pointed, before retreating thankfully into the air-conditioned show home.
Dove and Steve picked their way past noisy machinery, stacks of tiles, bricks and other building supplies, all caked with a thick layer of dust.
“Mr Radley?” Steve called. “Can we talk to you for a few minutes, please? DS Steve Parker and DC Dove Milson.”
Tomas Radley straightened and looked hard at them. He had just picked up a massive load of bricks, and was standing with them hoisted over one shoulder. “Need to drop these off,” he told them, before walking in the opposite direction.
“I thought Lindsey would be over here by now,” Dove said, and she and Steve followed, feeling rather stupid and conspicuous in their suits, among the hard hats and fluorescent jackets.
“Maybe she got caught up with our other vic’s husband instead,” Steve suggested.
“Wait! Who the hell are you? You haven’t got any safety gear on,” another man was shouting from the scaffolding of a half-built house.
“Bloody hell,” Dove muttered, before raising her voice, “Police. Major Crimes Team. We are just borrowing Mr Radley for a little while, and we’re going straight back to the office.”
“Are we?” Steve queried.
“No, but we haven’t got time to faff around looking for safety equipment,” Dove said, as the man dumped his heavy load and stomped slowly towards them.
“God, you’re bossy,” Steve complained.
Tomas Radley was a powerfully built man, probably in his late forties, with dark hair and eyes, and a solemn unsmiling face. “What do you want?”
“Mr Radley? We are very sorry to hear of your wife’s death, but could we please have a quick word?” Steve asked respectfully. Most people liked Steve on sight. With his messy brown hair framing his face in random spikes, small glasses and slight tummy bulge, he was deferential, genuinely interested and compassionate. It was a winning combination, coupled with a sharp brain. Perpetrators were often fooled into thinking he was a bumbling cliché of a policeman, but were then trapped by their mistake as surely as ants in honey.
“It’s Tomas, call me Tomas.” The victim’s husband looked hard at them, bloodshot eyes travelling slowly across first Dove’s then Steve’s face, before he spoke again. “Why do you need to talk to me? She is dead, and she died doing something stupid. I don’t need to know any more. I already said this to the other police officers.”
He made as if to walk off but Dove delayed him with a gentle hand, while Steve continued talking. “We are detectives from the Major Crimes Team, and it will be our job to discover exactly what happened and why. Come and sit over here. We just have a few questions, and I promise we won’t keep you for any longer than we have to.”
Dionne Radley’s husband looked exhausted, grief-stricken and everything in between, Dove thought, with a wave of sympathy for the man.
He seemed to dither, before sighing heavily and allowing Dove to shepherd him towards a wooden bench just outside the site boundary. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes but didn’t offer them around.
“I told you, I already spoke to the police. They came earlier to tell me Dionne was dead. They told me where it happened and who she was with.” He blew out a long breath of smoke, and tapped a muscular knee with his free hand. “I had no idea she was out, no idea she was breaking in, playing games in an escape room with friends I don’t know, but Dionne, she did her own thing. I thought she was working last night.”
“Were you at home all evening?” Steve asked casually.
“No, I was with my brother from seven thirty. He lives on Sands Park in one of the static homes. I sometimes go and spend an evening, stay the night if we have a beer. Last night we sat outside on the deck, watched the sun go down, and talked about things, while I thought Dionne was out working until at least midnight, maybe later. Dionne knew where I was, and what I was doing.”
Tomas’ voice was bitter and sad. “She could have called me at any time if she needed help, if she was in danger. Even with everything that has happened between us, I would have always helped her, and she knew it.”
“Do you recognise any of these people?” Steve flipped his iPad round to show Tomas headshots of the deceased.
“No, I don’t know her friends, her men, anything about her anymore,” Tomas said. “She has been this way for a couple of years now, saying she wanted a new life, she hated her job, hated my job. Last month I said we should get a divorce.”
“What did she say to that?” Dove asked.
Tomas met her eyes, his own dark and pain-filled. “She agreed that we should. She was going to deal with it because she said she knew a solicitor in town but nothing has happened yet.” He wiped a
hand across his sweaty brow, and took a bottle of water from his tool belt. His fingers shook slightly as he unscrewed the cap.
“Where did Dionne work?” Dove asked, feeling sweat drip down her back, wriggling her shoulder blades with discomfort. The heatwave was really only glorious if you were on a beach somewhere.
“She’s a cleaner for an agency, Camillo’s. They clean offices, many businesses, including the solicitors’. Pearce and Partners, it’s called. I used to pick her up sometimes after work, but now she gets her own rides home.” Again a shrug of the massive shoulders. “Apparently these law people often work late. The cleaners come in later so as not to disturb them, but they meet anyway. She got talking to one man.” He shrugged his vast shoulders. “I suppose that is who she was asking about our divorce, I don’t know. She said she was going to be working there last night, this Pearce and Partners, before going on to do some offices in Lymington-on-Sea. It’s a regular gig for Camillo’s.”
“Sorry to have to ask, but did Dionne ever have affairs?” Steve asked carefully.
He nodded sadly, a giant of a man, with all his bluster gone. “Of course. She had many. Our children had left home. My brother says we married too young, had our children too young. Two girls we have, both now living and working abroad. They are devastated about their mother. I rang them just after the other police officers left. They couldn’t believe it at first . . .”
“Did Dionne ever take sleeping tablets?” Dove asked carefully.
“No, never. She was always a heavy drinker, more than me even.” He gave a faint smile. “But never any drugs. She hated to even take antibiotics when she was sick.”
“How was she recently? It must have been a shock when you suggested a divorce?”
“I think not really,” Tomas paused. “She has not been happy for a long time, as I told you. One thing she said the other day, which was painful to hear . . . She said, ‘Now I’m free I’ll go crazy and do whatever the hell I want with my life.’” He nodded, face sombre again. “I felt very sad after hearing that, as you can imagine. Now she is dead.”
“We are doing all we can to find out what happened . . .” Steve began, but the man stopped him, holding up a massive rough hand.
“I don’t want to know. She is dead. Something went wrong and accidents happen . . .”
“This wasn’t an accident,” Steve said.
“Someone killed her? Killed them all?” He appeared to consider this, shaken and pale under the tan and the dust. Tomas moistened his lips, clearing his throat before he spoke again. “You are saying she was murdered?”
“We are investigating all possible leads,” Dove told him smoothly, inwardly cursing the cliché. “When your wife died she had a lot of alcohol in her system, which from what you’ve told us, doesn’t seem to be unusual?”
He nodded, eyes wide and fixed on her face, hands fidgeting with the cigarette packet, turning it over and over in his massive palms.
“She had also taken a drug called zopiclone, which is prescribed as a sleeping drug or for anxiety.”
“Never, she would never have taken drugs.” He lit another cigarette from his first, before shoving the lighter and packet back in his pocket. “But, I suppose, whatever. Who am I to say this now? It was those people she hung out with. Maybe they pushed her into this? Or spiked her drink?”
“People?”
His shadowed, red-rimmed eyes were wary. “I told you, men, and I don’t know them. I don’t think she did really, I just heard gossip. I have no names that will help you, it was idle gossip. And now I must get on. I will help, of course, if you need to ask more questions, but for me it is over. I will be staying with my brother. 204 Sands Park. It’s off the Cliffacre Road.”
“I know it,” Dove said. “One of our colleagues will be over later just to see if you need anything. Thank you for your time, Mr Radley.”
“Tomas,” he repeated, and shambled away, shoulders sagging under an invisible weight, even though he no longer carried a load of bricks.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“What do you think?” Steve asked as they made their way back to the car, waving at the anxious-looking site manager, who appeared at the door of the smart red-brick show home.
“Not sure. I mean, he’s clearly devastated, but he also admits knowing his wife was having affairs,” Dove said as they drove out of the building site. “He has an alibi, assuming it checks out.”
“Sands Park is pretty busy this time of year, maybe one of the other homeowners saw Radley and his brother sitting outside on the deck with their beers,” Steve suggested. “We can easily swing by and ask around, once we’ve seen Aileen’s husband. The site manager will have security cameras too.” He checked his watch. “Plenty of time. Tomas Radley certainly has a motive.”
Dove agreed. “Let’s stop at Ren’s for some takeaway coffee and cake. We have to go right past to get up to Junction Road, and the husband of victim number two, Aileen Jackson, lives at the top. He should be waiting for us.”
“You need a sugar fix. You really should eat breakfast,” Steve told her, pressing the button to send the windows up again.
“Can’t. I feel sick if I eat breakfast,” Dove said. “But I can easily sink a bacon sandwich with brown sauce by ten, especially if I’ve been out on the water.”
“Ketchup,” her partner corrected. “Brown sauce is disgusting.”
“It’s luscious. There’s something else I thought of while Tomas was talking . . . Might just be a coincidence, but the victim from the Claw Beach incident last night is a solicitor at Pearce and Partners. Alex Harbor.” Dove had been mulling this over in the back of her mind ever since Tomas Radley had mentioned his wife worked there.
“I wonder if the man from last night is the solicitor Dionne Radley was going to talk to about her divorce?” Steve suggested. “I guess it would be too much to hope for that we could hit two cases at once. Worth a visit, I think, even if just to follow up on Dionne’s movements.”
“DI Blackman will go nuts if both cases are entangled,” Dove commented, “especially as I’m a Sig Wit for the Claw Beach attack. Look, if I pull over behind that delivery lorry, I’ll run in to Ren’s place. What do you want?” Dove neatly manoeuvred through the busy street.
“Large latte and a slice of carrot cake, thanks. I’ll ring Camillo’s and see if I can ask a few questions about Dionne. Her employers might be able to give a little more insight into last night.”
“Okay, cool.” She left him and wove her way through the traffic to Ren’s coffee shop. It was situated in one of the older town buildings, and the warm brick and red-painted signage drew people in. They stayed when faced with the luscious baking smells and promise of iced coffee. This summer, Ren had an ice cream counter too. Dove was partial to the blue bubblegum flavour, which made her sister laugh.
Today, Dove joined the queue impatiently, waved at her elder niece, Eden, who was serving, and smiled as she heard Ren singing along to the radio out the back.
Eden had always said she enjoyed the homely atmosphere of the family coffee shop, and now her little son, Elan, had started nursery, she was helping out more often, even trying her hand at some baking.
“Hi, Dove, what can I get you?” Her niece was smiling at her, long brown hair caught up in a high ponytail, blue eyes sparkling with well-being. There were still times when she was sad and silent, but these were getting less and less, Dove thought, smiling back.
“Large latte, iced coffee with hazelnut syrup and two slices of carrot cake, please,” Dove said, moving along the counter as her order was collected.
Her mobile rang as she paid and gathered everything up, and she swore under her breath, put everything back down on the counter, fumbling for her phone.
“Yes, boss?”
“You two still on your way to see Billy Jackson?”
“We are.”
“Updates for you from the first post-mortems. Aileen was pregnant, about seven weeks.”
“Oh my go
d,” Dove said softly, horrified. She found her hand was clenched on the phone, shoulders tensed, and deliberately relaxed them. It was an instinctive reaction, she thought, to such news, and nothing to do with her personal issues.
“Exactly. And we have an ID for our fourth victim: Ellis Bravery. He’s forty-seven, with no record apart from a couple of parking tickets. I’ve sent Maya and Josh straight over to his place with the SOCO team. He’s an IT consultant, and a whizz-kid entrepreneur. Lives next to the marina in one of those new apartment blocks with his girlfriend,” the DI said briskly.
“Big difference in social demographic for all four of them,” Dove commented, recovering quickly.
“Right. Let me know if you get anything. Be back for the briefing at six. And tell Steve to switch his bloody phone on!” the DI said sharply.
Dove staggered back to the car and relayed the information to her partner. “Oh, and Steve, the DI wants to know why your phone is switched off?”
“It isn’t, I just used it . . .” Steve yanked it out of his trouser pocket. “Shit, the battery’s dead now. Grace was up at midnight and I was on it then. I must have forgotten to charge it.”
The drive to the Jacksons’ home took fifteen minutes, and by the time they arrived snacks and coffee were gone, and Dove’s energy was back to sky-high.
The house was a neat red-brick affair on a housing estate. The windows all had white lace curtains and the perfect square of green lawn at the front of the building was made of artificial turf. A sad-looking ornamental tree grew right in the middle of the lawn, leaves wilting in the heatwave.
“No cars on the drive,” Steve noted, wiping sweat off his forehead.
The sun was approaching midday heat, and Dove’s shirt already felt damp, clinging uncomfortably to her body. Her trousers felt as if they had shrunk two sizes, but like most of her female colleagues she would never have dreamt of wearing a skirt or dress to work. As her MCT colleague DS Lindsey Allerton had once summed it up, “Those kinds of clothes are a liability out in the field. You need to be able to run away and kick the shit out of someone if they go for you, so trousers are the only option.”