by M. J. Ford
The crane lifted the van clear of the quarry edge by its rear axle, water streaming through the door seals. Anna Mull wasn’t belted in and the dead weight of her body flopped against the inside of the windshield, face pressed into the glass, limbs at awkward, ungainly angles. The crane rotated until the van hovered over dry land, then the crew stepped forward. Wearing thick steel-mesh protective gauntlets, they guided its progress downward carefully until it was lowered onto its four wheels. Anna slipped back into the seats, one hand jammed up against the steering wheel.
Attention turned to the back of the vehicle and everyone congregated in a loose semi-circle around the van’s rear end. A fireman brandished a crowbar to Carrick. ‘You want to do the honours, detective?’
For once Jo was glad she didn’t outrank him. Carrick took the crowbar, walked decisively to the rear doors and jammed in the lever just above the lock. It took a couple of flexes, bending back the bodywork and inching it further in. Then the lock broke with a crack. Carrick jumped back as gallons of water rushed out over his feet and ankles.
No one moved, so Jo stepped up alongside him, and gripped the edge of the door. So this is it. This is what he wanted me to see all along, the final macabre act in his theatre of death. The Josie Girls.
The door creaked open.
The back of the van was completely empty.
Chapter 26
The crowds dispersed like hyenas from a scavenged corpse, peeling away with little ceremony. Once the front doors were levered open too, the CSOs removed Anna from the seats and laid her on a stretcher. The man from the council threw up noisily. Jo had seen much worse before. Water slowed down any putrefaction considerably, so Anna Mull looked like she might have been killed anywhere between two hours and two days ago. There was no guile in her face now though, no hidden layers of artifice. Death did that to the features – it stripped it all away. Showed the world what you really were.
Jo couldn’t get a fix on her emotions. Whatever Anna had become mixed up in, whatever frankly stupid decisions she had made, she’d paid too high a price. But at the same time, Jo had little mental space for her at all. Mull was dead, and the van that should have been the tomb of three others was empty. Malin, Rita, and Sophie had been given a reprieve. Tyndle hadn’t killed them, at least not here. The divers went back down a final time – it couldn’t hurt to be sure.
‘Looks like we’ve got something,’ said the lead CSO. He pointed to bruising that looped around the front of Anna’s throat. ‘We’ll have a peek in her lungs back at the morgue, but it appears she may have been strangled. From the lack of tissue abrasions and the bruising pattern, I’d guess manually.’
Jo went to the front of the van to check the seats and glovebox, in the vain hope that she could find anything which might be an obvious lead to the other girls. There was nothing at all, but that was hardly unexpected. Something else troubled her, and she found Andy speaking with the CSOs.
‘How did he get to Oxford from here?’
‘I wondered the same thing,’ said Carrick. ‘I can’t see him on public transport, somehow. He must have ditched the van because of all the heat it was getting. Perhaps he had another vehicle.’
‘And no keys on him?’ Andy didn’t have an answer to that. ‘Let’s get back to Oxford. If we can run these plates through the ANPR, there has to be a match somewhere. If we can work out where he’s been, there’s a chance we find the others.’
‘You think they’re still alive, don’t you?’
Jo found it hard to consider the case objectively. She wanted them to be alive, for sure, and the reasons weren’t entirely selfless. ‘Stein said originally he wasn’t a killer by nature. I don’t think he meant to kill Natalie. And I think he killed Anna because she was a liability. The Tyndle I knew was practical. Vicious, brutal, direct, a piece of shit. But I don’t think he got off on killing girls.’
They walked back to their cars, and Jo plugged her dead phone into the charger as she started the engine. There were lots of missed calls. Four from Lucas. Three from Paul. One from Evergreen Lodge. Jo’s throat felt tight.
Evergreen.
E.
Calm down, Jo. He’s gone. He’s dead.
She called the home straight away. Mum had never got on with the mobile Paul had bought her.
It rang and rang and rang.
Another call came through, from Dimitriou.
Jo switched over. ‘Dimi, hi. Listen, can you get over to a care home called—’
‘Evergreen Lodge? I’m here now, Jo. Your family were trying to reach you.’
‘Is my mum okay?’
‘Everyone’s fine. But there’s been a development. Jo … it looks like the girls might still be alive.’
* * *
She filtered through her voicemails as she sped back towards Oxford, with Carrick behind her. Evergreen had called her first, confused at a curious item Mrs Masters had received in the mail. Then her brother Paul, bemused in the first message, progressively freaked out in later ones. Lucas, the evening before, had only said he wanted to talk, but today said he was calling about something to do with her mum; that he’d spoken to Paul, and people were trying to get hold of her. Something about photos that had come to the home.
She and Carrick arrived at Evergreen Lodge. Paul was still there, along with Dimitriou. He was handling three Polaroids, wearing gloves.
Malin Sigurdsson, Rita Prakash, and Sophie Okafor. All photographed close-up in seated positions, and from the lighting, presumably in the same location. There was almost no background in shot, but it looked to be indoors, because Jo saw the corner of a window in one photo, and in another, what appeared to be metal pipework. The camera’s flash highlighted the girls’ tormented faces in stark detail; the whites of their terrified eyes, their faces grubby and streaked with tears. Malin looked the worst, with a gaunt face, eyes sunken and hair matted, a bruise and deep cut around her cheekbone. One of her wrists appeared to be cuffed, the skin raw and streaked with dried blood.
Paul emerged from their mother’s room. ‘Jo! What’s going on? No one will tell me anything.’
Dimitriou looked sheepish. ‘Stratton’s orders.’
‘Is Mum all right?’ asked Jo.
‘She’s confused,’ said Paul.
Jo went past them both and into the room. ‘Hey, Mum,’ she said.
‘Have you brought the kids?’ she asked.
‘Not today,’ said Jo. She kissed her mother’s cheek. On the bedspread was a torn envelope, addressed to ‘Jo Masters, c/o Mrs B Masters’ at the home’s address. First class stamp. It was postmarked in Oxford. She picked it up at the very corner.
‘I’ll be back in a mo.’
In the corridor, she handed it to Dimitriou. ‘Get this processed.’
‘Jo …’ said Paul. ‘I saw the news. They’re saying someone is targeting you.’
‘Not now,’ said Jo.
‘Talk to me, sis. Please.’
Dimitriou looked uncomfortable standing between them.
‘What are you waiting for?’ asked Jo.
‘What are you expecting to find?’ asked Dimitriou. ‘Tyndle must have sent it. Sunday night or Monday morning. Before … well, you know?’
‘Who’s Tyndle?’ asked Paul.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Jo. ‘Stay with Mum.’
‘Jo …’
‘I promise I’ll explain, but later, okay?’
She hated leaving him the dark, but there really wasn’t a second to spare.
In her car, as Carrick drove, she stared at the photos. There was no indication when they were taken, but she assumed at the same time. Given Sophie’s presence, that meant some time after Sunday, when she’d been snatched returning home from hockey. Malin would have been gone for nearly four and half days by that stage. No wonder she looked so bad.
Jo found herself trying to read their expressions, because it wasn’t just fear and bewilderment in their eyes. What had he said to them when he took the p
hotos? Perhaps they knew about what he was doing, and why. Maybe he had told them about her. She couldn’t help thinking they were looking through the lens at this very moment, when the woman at the root of their torture, the only one who could perhaps release them, would bear witness. That was it. That was what lurked in their gaze.
Hope.
* * *
Carrick led the way back to the station and parked in front deliberately badly. The gaggle of press took the bait, and headed over in a mob. It allowed Jo to sneak into the car park unnoticed.
Heidi was the only person in the CID room.
‘Jack’s called a couple of times. I’ve filled him in. Your mum okay?’
‘I think she’ll have forgotten by lunchtime,’ said Jo, and felt bad for saying it. None of her family deserved any of this.
‘Lucas called by too – in person. He seemed concerned.’
‘You don’t need to worry about that.’
Heidi looked like she was about to say something else, when DCI Stratton entered with Carrick. He saw Jo, did a double-take, and glanced at Carrick with disapproval.
‘Masters,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Respectfully, sir, I think you need me.’
‘It’s not my call,’ said Stratton. ‘The Chief Constable doesn’t want you involved.’
Jo sat at her desk, and fixed him with a glare she normally kept for the most recalcitrant suspects in the interview room. And who’s been keeping the Chief Constable abreast of the situation? Santa Claus? ‘Well, the Chief Constable can come here and move me then. Because until she does, I’m going to do my job.’
Stratton’s mouth was still flapping when Nina Creasey, the detective from Bath, came in. ‘We’ve got partial data from Tyndle’s phone,’ she said. ‘Still waiting on the location services, but it looks like he only ever received calls from one number, which was unrecorded. He never dialled out – the phone has no credit.’
‘Anna Mull?’ said Stratton.
‘We can’t tell,’ said Creasey. ‘We’ve got the times of the incoming calls, but that’s it. I’ve saved the call log to the case file.’
Jo brought it up on screen to crosscheck with Anna’s phone.
There were several calls over the last few days, but the one that stood out had been made on Monday at 11.30 am and lasted just over a minute. Prior to that there were two or three calls on each of the preceding days, with five late on Saturday night, and two in the day before Malin disappeared. Before that, nothing at all. And none corresponded to Anna Mull’s call log.
‘The phone was only registered last Saturday,’ said Creasey.
‘So if it’s not Mull he’s talking to, who is it?’ said Stratton.
Jo felt a heat over the back of her neck as she recalled her conversation with Vincent Stein in Tyndle’s bedroom. ‘Perhaps the profiler was right.’
‘Right about what?’ said Stratton.
‘What if Tyndle wasn’t the manipulator at all? What if he was being used, just like Anna?’
‘We all need to slow down,’ said Stratton. ‘We’ve got motive, we’ve got the means – the van. We’ve got opportunity – a loner with no job or connections.’
‘But he didn’t match Dr Stein’s profile,’ said Jo. ‘He’s not in a position of power. He’s not a narcissist. Hell, I don’t even think he’s a psychopath. And now we’ve got this phone record. He was talking to someone, right? The downstairs neighbours said he had a male visitor. We need a list of all his known contacts. Anyone he was inside with. This took serious planning.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Carrick. ‘He came to Oxford with someone else, in a different vehicle. What if this third individual was waiting near St Edmund Hall somewhere? Maybe they heard the sirens coming and fled.’
‘This is wild speculation,’ said Stratton, but he was beginning to sound desperate. ‘I saw Tyndle’s choice of wall art. He hated you, Jo.’
‘No doubt about that,’ she replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean he’s behind all this.’
‘It makes him the perfect tool,’ said Carrick. ‘A man who will do almost anything.’
Something else Stratton had said lodged in Jo’s mind. ‘Heidi, what was Tyndle’s exact release date?’
She tapped away. At the same time, Jo brought up the images taken from the Thatcham house of Tyndle’s pictures.
‘Looks like September 2nd,’ said Heidi.
Jo zoomed into the right side, then again onto a particular photo, the one at the Bright Futures clinic. Only Heidi even knew about her egg-freezing treatments, and she felt no need to share those details now. It wasn’t the point, anyway. ‘That one was taken in Bath,’ she said.
‘He must have followed you there,’ said Stratton.
‘It was also taken in the middle of August,’ she said.
Stratton breathed a heavy sigh. ‘Are you sure, detective?’
They’d been monitoring her ovulation cycles via thrice-daily temperature readings. She knew exactly the date. In fact, she’d met Constable Rhani Aziz for lunch immediately afterwards, a colleague from the station in Bath. Rhani been really cut up still about Ben, and kept bursting into tears.
‘Perfectly. I was on my way to see a friend. Tyndle couldn’t have taken that photograph.’
Phil Stratton was silenced at last. Jo stared at the photo. She’d been happy that day that she was finally getting on with her life. It had felt like a fresh start, the beginning of a new story.
Now it looked like it was just the start of someone else’s.
Chapter 27
Jo kept expecting Stratton to put his foot down and kick her out. She suspected Andy had something to do with her continued presence – he was one of the few people Stratton could be guaranteed to listen to. Or it might simply be that the DCI was as busy floundering as the rest of them.
The list of Tyndle’s connections began to emerge slowly, in two broad groups. Those from his life with a face, and those from afterwards. The prison acquaintances were the hardest to identify. He’d attached himself to a neo-Nazi gang in the early years of his sentence, but the various welfare assessments indicated he’d later drifted apart from their group. He’d taken a course in automotive repair, which he’d passed with good marks. Of his pre-incarceration contacts, several were dead or inside currently. One that stood out was his former tenant, Tommy Somers, believed to have fled abroad while on bail for armed robbery, and also linked with an attempt on the life of an Essex businessman. His file was still open, a warrant out for his arrest. When Heidi spoke to the investigating officer in charge of his case, he couldn’t help at all. Somers was by all accounts off the grid, probably gorging on rubbery paella, with second stage skin cancer somewhere in the south of Spain.
Heidi stretched her back after she got off the phone to Somers’ ex-wife.
‘She said she hadn’t seen or heard from the “stupid prick” for two years. He didn’t even send his kid a birthday card.’
‘You should go home,’ Jo said. ‘You look like shit.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Jo.
‘Thanks again.’
‘About leaving, I mean. I bet you’ve been in since seven.’
‘Five, actually.’
‘You’re eight and a half months pregnant. We can cope here. Phil’s hardly going to say anything.’
Heidi rolled back her chair and levered herself up. ‘All right. But if you need me, I’m on the phone.’
‘Go away before I squeeze you through the door myself.’
‘Once again, thanks.’ Heidi began to put on her coat. ‘Er … should you be here?’
Jo thought at first she was speaking to her, but a shadow moved past her desk. It was Jack Pryce, walking stiffly and wearing a tracksuit. His hair was a mess, he hadn’t shaved, and one of his hands was bandaged in a sling. ‘Couldn’t stay away,’ he muttered.
‘Jack? What the fuck? Did you drive here?’
‘Oh, this?’ he said, wiggling
the sling. ‘It’s just for decoration. Got to keep it elevated as much as possible apparently.’
He sat awkwardly. ‘What have we got then? Anything from the phone?’
‘It’s what we haven’t got that’s interesting – no direct connection between Anna Mull and Frank Tyndle.’ She told him the latest theory about a third suspect.
‘The plot thickens, huh? Want me to check the ANPRs again, now you’ve got a plate?’
‘You need to go home,’ said Heidi. ‘If you die at your desk, it’s going to look really bad.’
‘Dimi is looking at the road cameras,’ said Jo.
Stratton returned, clocked Pryce, and came over. ‘I was going to come to the hospital.’
‘Saved you the trip,’ said Pryce.
‘You can’t be here, Jack,’ he said.
‘I keep telling everyone, I’m fine. Might not be chasing down suspects any time soon, but—’
‘It’s not that,’ said Stratton, with a fleeting expression of concern. ‘Do you want to come into my office a moment?’
Pryce’s face hardened. ‘Come on, boss. Please. You need me here.’
‘I’m sorry, Jack. It’s out of my hands. Standard procedure in the case of a death by officer.’
‘It was self-defence!’ said Pryce. He held up his bandaged hands. ‘Scars to prove it.’
‘That’s immaterial, and you know it,’ said Stratton. ‘It’s a mandatory suspension, without prejudice.’ He came over and laid a hand on Jack’s good arm. ‘I promise, we’ll get it processed asap. You’ll be back in a few days. But we really can’t afford any more procedural fuck-ups.’ He glanced at Jo. ‘Not after all the others.’
Pryce looked to Jo too, as if she could help. She didn’t know what to say, but her heart went out to him.
‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ said Stratton. ‘I really am.’
* * *
More calls from Lucas. Jo ignored them and deleted the messages without listening to them.