A Date With Death

by Mark Roberts

  ‘He actually said he satisfied me?’

  ‘He told us he did satisfy you and he can tell when people bullshit him. You weren’t bullshitting, according to Edgar.’

  He watched the knowledge sink deeper inside Susan and noticed the annoyance it caused her, and he couldn’t wait to get into his car and call Clay.

  ‘The cheeky bastard.’

  ‘In no uncertain terms, Susan. Is there anything else you can tell me about him?’

  ‘No. Is there anything else Edgar said about me?’

  ‘He said to tell you that when he got out of the swamp, meaning the police station, he was going to call you straight away.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a message for him. Tell him from me to keep his money and fuck right off, the impotent piece of shit. There isn’t a man alive who can satisfy me on any level. Boasting about how good he is at my expense? Making himself look good at my expense? I’m just not having it. Edgar McKee? Give a man a good name, speak up for him when he’s in the shit and he throws shit back in my direction. He’s not making me look weak. Me and the girls are going to have a really good laugh about this.’ Winters zoomed in on Susan laughing. ‘You’ve cheered me up no end, DC Winters.’

  ‘I’ll pass your message to him directly. Can I have those numbers for Chloe and Erica, please?’

  ***

  In his car, parked at the corner of Armitage Gardens, Winters called Clay and got her on the third ring.

  ‘How did it go with Susan Hurst?’

  ‘I’m going to send you a film of her. Edgar McKee’s managed to piss her off and amuse her in the same breath. Wait for this, Eve, you’re going to love Susan.’

  ‘As in Edgar McKee, sexual action man?’

  ‘Spot on. Do you need me, or are you happy for me to go down to the Royal to the medical records department?’

  ‘Edgar McKee’s records?’

  ‘And Norma Maguire’s while I’m at it.’

  ‘That sounds like a very good plan, Clive. Get what you can on their medical backgrounds and get back to the farm.’

  As he headed down Booker Avenue for Mather Avenue, the music of Susan Hurst’s laughter rang in his ears. And he pictured Edgar McKee’s face when that music was played back to him loud and clear.

  120

  10.33 am

  As she approached the open doorway of Norma Maguire’s kitchen, Detective Sergeant Gina Riley could tell by the look on the young constable’s face that he had conquered something particularly difficult and had made a first-rate job of it.

  ‘How did you get on with the plaster chips from the basement, Tom?’

  ‘I think I’ve pieced it together, though it’s not perfect.’

  Riley looked at the dust in the bucket at his feet and at the assembled plaster on the table in front of him.

  ‘Some of the letters aren’t complete. I’ve been through the bucket looking for the chips to round them off but I reckon the missing black paint is on the dust particles. But you can tell what the words are.’

  ‘Do you know what? You’ve got more than enough here, Tom. Very well done.’

  Riley read the jagged and broken words out loud. ‘And, so, off she floats to nowhere.’

  She took a series of photographs on her iPhone and sent it directly to Clay with a message.

  Eve - This puts Norma Maguire’s basement in a totally new light. Where’s she going to float to? The Irwell? The Mersey? A flooded sinkhole? OMFG Gina.

  Riley raised the hatch and, torch in hand, stepped on to the wooden stairs leading into the basement.

  Walking deeper into the room, she cast a beam of light around the walls. She picked out the wall-mounted light near the door to the adjoining room and turned it on.

  Riley walked to the space in front of the hacked-out wall and, looking at the image on her iPhone, mentally transferred the words in front of her on to the wall.

  ‘And, so, off she floats to nowhere.’

  Images of Annie Boyd on the riverbed and Amanda Winton in a water-filled sinkhole flashed through her mind and the words took on a chilling significance that tightened the twisting knot in her guts.

  She walked backwards, further from where the graffiti had been hacked away, but the words flew around the pathways of her brain.

  Riley faced the wall to her right and saw a hole in the brickwork. She stooped to examine it closely and noticed there was something lurking under the small mound of dust in the hole. With her index finger she scooped out the dust and encountered metal within the brick.

  She felt the outline of a semi-circle on a metal base buried in the fabric of the wall.

  Turning 180 degrees, she saw an identical hole at the same height on the wall with the door.

  Riley considered the dimensions of the space in relation to the position of the graffiti and a bleak picture formed in her mind.

  She took pictures of both holes and of the metal links sunk into the bricks.

  Projecting the picture in her head into the space around her, the image became almost real, its details harrowing enough to make her run up the stairs two at a time.

  In the kitchen she shouted, ‘Stop!’ The movement and noise in the house ceased. ‘Everyone in the hallway, ASAP. Now! Move! Please!’

  As she called Clay on her iPhone, she noticed that her hand was shaking.

  ‘Did you get the picture I sent you, Eve?’

  ‘And, so, off she floats to nowhere? Have you been down in the basement?’

  ‘With a brand-new pair of eyes. I’m speculating but I’d gamble on it big time, Maguire and whoever she’s been collaborating with have had Annie Boyd and Amanda Winton captive together in the basement. Buried in the walls on the left- and right-hand side of the room are two metal links. They’re the first links in a pair of chains. They’ve had the two of them chained to the walls, staring at a vision of what was going to become of them. And, so, off she floats to nowhere.’

  Officers gathered in the hall but no one uttered a word.

  ‘Norma Maguire knows if Francesca Christie’s still alive,’ said Clay. ‘She also knows, dead or alive, where she can be found.’

  Riley looked at the silent officers and all eyes were on her.

  ‘Have we found anything of interest in the house?’ asked Riley.

  Silence.

  ‘How many are we?’

  She counted over a dozen bodies.

  ‘I want three to conduct a fingertip search of the first room in the basement and the wooden stairs leading down into it, and another three to do the same in the adjoining room. We’re combing the floor, walls and ceiling.’

  Riley turned and walked back to the hatch, turning her iPhone on to video.

  ‘Do you want me to glue this together, DS Riley?’ asked the young constable as she passed his broken mosaic.

  ‘I would love you to make that piece of wall as permanent as you can, Tom.’

  She hurried down the wooden steps and decided she would start with the place where the graffiti had been and work her way round the room in an anticlockwise direction.

  Above her head officers assembled and, as the picture of the two women chained to the walls of the squalid space meshed in with the rank smell of the basement, a storm gathered in Riley’s heart.

  121

  10.43 am

  ‘Where’s Francesca Christie?’ asked Clay.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Norma Maguire, her hands flat down on the table in front of her in Interview Suite 1.

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Because you’re responsible for her disappearance. Your accomplice is Edgar McKee.’

  ‘I don’t know Edgar McKee.’

  Clay watched Norma Maguire closely, witnessed the mounting desolation in her eyes.

  ‘I’ll return to Fran later. Do you want the bad news or the bad news?’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘The bad news is that information’s coming in thick and fast about
you. The bad news is that it implicates you heavily in these very serious crimes.’

  In her hands, Clay held three photographs and a folded piece of paper.

  Clay turned over a picture of Cecily Levin, a copy from the framed portrait on Norma Maguire’s office desk.

  ‘Who’s this? Remind me?’

  ‘Cecily Levin, my mother.’

  Clay turned over a second photograph.

  ‘Look at it, Ms Maguire. What you’re refusing to look at, is a photograph of a grave in Springwood Crematorium,’ said Clay. ‘The headstone reads: Catriona West, 1940–2001, Wife and Mother, Stolen in an Instant.’ Clay waited. ‘Seeing as you’re insisting on looking at the wall behind my head, I’ll describe the picture to you.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to look at the picture, Ms Maguire?’ asked her solicitor.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The second picture. Does the name Catriona West mean anything to you? Catriona West, stolen in an instant by a hit and run driver in 2001.’

  Clay turned over a close-up image of the dead woman from the table and presented it to Norma Maguire.

  ‘This is a picture from the gravestone when Catriona was middle-aged.’

  Norma Maguire’s eyes dipped to the table. Clay pointed to the picture of Cecily Levin and said, ‘Young.’ She indicated the next picture on the table and said, ‘Middle-aged. Anything to say on that one?’

  Clay unfolded the green paper.

  ‘Want to see what we found in your mother’s scrapbook?’

  She made a show of examining it closely before placing it in front of Norma Maguire. Clay looked up and saw beads of perspiration forming on her top lip and forehead.

  ‘You’re sweating, Ms Maguire. Please help yourself to the water on the table.’

  Clay pointed to the name of the bride.

  ‘Catriona West was your mother’s maiden name, her real name. Cecily Levin was your mother’s stage name. Why didn’t you make that distinction clear to me?’

  ‘You were in my office. You commented on a picture of my mother acting in a Greek tragedy and asked who she was. In the capacity you saw her, she was a stage actor so I told you her stage name.’

  ‘You accept that Cecily Levin and Catriona West were one and the same woman, your mother. Catriona West? How come she wasn’t named as Catriona Maguire on her gravestone?’

  ‘Because my father was a bully and a brute. When he died, she reverted to her maiden name by deed poll. What’s her grave got to do with this mess? Why can’t you just let her rest in peace?’

  ‘Because one of the aliases given to Annie Boyd on Pebbles On The Beach was Richard Ezra and his address was listed as 66 Springwood Avenue. Turns out there’s only one house on Springwood Avenue so it wasn’t 66. But I dug a bit deeper and found the cemetery’s divided into plots. I visited Plot 66 and your mother’s grave’s there. Richard Ezra, Catriona West, Plot 66.’

  Clay drilled her complete attention into Norma Maguire.

  ‘Richard Ezra. Catriona West. I guess you hated both of them with the same vengeance. Link his name to her address in death. It must’ve felt like banging their skulls together.’

  ‘How dare you say I equate Richard Ezra with my mother.’

  ‘I said it because you did it.’

  Norma Maguire pushed the pictures of her mother and the image of her grave away from herself but Clay pushed them back into the middle of the table.

  ‘Please don’t do anything in this room other than answer my questions, Ms Maguire.’

  Clay scrolled on her iPhone to the images sent to her by DS Gina Riley. She found the reconstructed graffiti from the basement wall and turned her iPhone round so that Norma Maguire could see it.

  ‘Read it to me, Norma, the words on the wall of your basement.’

  ‘And, so, off she floats to nowhere?’ She looked at Clay as if she was an alien.

  Clay scrolled on and showed Norma Maguire the pile of dust and chippings.

  ‘Careless, very careless. Maybe too many other things to do in a microscopic time window?’

  Clay rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward.

  ‘You’re madly in love with Francesca Christie, aren’t you? And she rejected you, didn’t she? You stalked Francesca Christie on Pebbles On The Beach, masquerading as a human rights lawyer called James Griffiths, didn’t you?’

  Norma Maguire covered her face with both hands.

  ‘If you love Fran, Norma, tell me where we can find her. If you really love her, tell me if she’s dead or alive. And if she’s still alive, give her a fighting chance of staying alive. Look at me, Ms Maguire.’

  Her hands sank slowly away from her face.

  Clay scrolled through the images on her iPhone until she found the last staff portrait from the wall of Norma’s office. She made a close-image of Norma Maguire and Francesca Christie.

  ‘What did you do to Francesca, Ms Maguire?’ asked Hendricks.

  She looked startled at the sound of a man who, up until that point, had been a silent spectre in the room. He looked at an image on his iPhone.

  ‘What did I do?’

  Hendricks turned his iPhone around, showed her an image of Annie Boyd, scalped and faceless on the mud of the River Mersey.

  Clay took in her reaction, the way she turned to stone; horror consumed Ms Rice’s face and she touched her forehead with both hands.

  ‘What did you do with their faces and scalps?’ asked Hendricks, pushing his iPhone a little closer to her.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said Clay.

  The door opened and Sergeant Harris walked into the room, followed by Poppy Waters.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Harris.

  ‘No problem. Speak of the Devil. Come here please,

  Poppy.’

  Poppy Waters walked slowly towards Clay, an open laptop in her hands. She placed it on the desk in front of Clay.

  ‘That’s my laptop,’ said Norma Maguire to her solicitor, like a child reclaiming a lost ball.

  ‘You’ve cracked it then, Poppy.’

  ‘I think you need to look at Ms Maguire’s activity on Pebbles On The Beach,’ said the IT specialist.

  ‘I’m closing the interview, Ms Maguire. I need to look at some things on your laptop. I’ll talk to you shortly. But would you like to tell me where Francesca Christie is?’

  Norma Maguire looked torn, like a firestorm of words was raging inside her brain.

  ‘When this gets to court, this lack of co-operation is going to be translated into one thing by the judge and jury. You have no remorse. That lack of remorse will be reflected in the sentence you receive. Think about it.’

  122

  11.30 am

  Clay looked at Norma Maguire’s Pebbles On The Beach page and said, ‘This is great work, Poppy. There’s no way out for her now. Michael Towers aka Richard Ezra aka Thomas Saddler aka James Griffiths aka Geoff Campbell.’

  She looked at Riley, Stone, Hendricks and Cole and saw quiet optimism in all their faces.

  There was a hush in the incident room and, sitting next to Clay at her desk, Poppy Waters said, ‘She tried to delete everything last night. Maybe she had a premonition that you were on to her. I called it all back up. It wasn’t difficult.’

  ‘I’m very pleased with the speed and thoroughness of your work. Thank you.’

  Clay looked at the linguistic glue smeared across the internet, the slime of language that was posted in the name of love, hope and happiness, and had to bite down on the passing need to be sick.

  ‘He’s intelligent in his own way but there’s no way Edgar McKee could have come up with language like this,’ said Clay. ‘Norma Maguire set the traps, Edgar McKee pounced on the ensnared victims.’

  She looked at Hendricks and saw deep unease creep into his eyes.

  ‘What is it, Bill?’

  Hendricks said, ‘A part of me’s thinking we all want this to be Edgar McKee too much. Nothing’s come off
his laptop or phone. There was nothing in his flat to connect him to any of these women. He doesn’t do internet dating sites. So as we’re looking at it, Norma Maguire’s been luring them in and Edgar McKee’s been collecting them from near the places where the meet-ups were arranged. But he’s got a cast-iron alibi for Francesca Christie.’

  Clay considered the problem.

  ‘I’m thinking Francesca Christie was the odd one out. I don’t think Edgar met the victims until date night. But Norma knew Francesca. That alters the dynamic completely. While Edgar was with Susan Hurst in the hotel room, Francesca might have been approached by Norma. Norma could have talked her into coming with her, despite the fact that Francesca had just walked out on her. Francesca comes across as a sweetie. Maybe Norma played her out on a guilt trip. Anyone?’

  ‘McKee’s alibi doesn’t rule him out for Annie Boyd or Amanda Winton, but Sandra O’Day? He’s got a great alibi. He wasn’t even in the country, he was in Amsterdam. We could be looking at a third party. What do you think, Eve?’ said Riley.

  ‘We can ask the question but as it stands right now we’re not going to get the truth from either of them.’

  ‘Daniel Ball?’ suggested Stone.

  ‘She’s been blackmailing him for years over his homosexual love affair. I suppose it isn’t a massive leap to embroiling him in murder. Maybe she had something on Francesca. Maybe that’s how she managed to get her to go with her. We can get in touch with Lydia, Daniel’s wife, check on where he was on the nights Annie Boyd and Amanda Winton went missing.’

  ‘Want me to go and see her?’ asked Stone.

  ‘Yes, thank you. You’ve got her number in case she’s not in.’

  Stone stood up with his eyes fixed on the clock and Clay guessed they were all of one mind. Time was growing increasingly tight.

  ‘Yes, Eve.’

  As he walked towards the door, Clay said to Riley, ‘I want you in on the next interview with Edgar McKee. Given what Winters sent to my phone from Susan Hurst, two female faces may prove twice as distressing as one. Bill, come in with us. Barney, stay here in case anything comes in.’

  Clay looked at Norma Maguire laptop. ‘Have you backed everything up, Poppy?’