THE GUILTY ONES a gripping crime thriller filled with stunning twists

by Joy Ellis

  ‘And when he killed himself, how was that perceived? As an admission of guilt? Or the fact that he couldn’t face a life sentence knowing he was an innocent man?’

  ‘Again, divided. Most thought he was guilty and he couldn’t live with himself after what he’d done.’

  ‘I’ll read the transcript after the meeting, and see for myself.’ Jackman stood up. ‘I’d better get the guys sorted out. Thank you, Ruth. I won’t let you down.’

  * * *

  Jackman finished delegating the tasks and saw Marie beckoning to him.

  ‘While you were with the super, I heard from witness protection.’

  ‘That was pretty damned quick!’ exclaimed Jackman.

  ‘Only because they were adamant that no one connected to the Lyndsay Ashcroft murder trial was put on the programme.’

  ‘Blast!’ Jackman growled. ‘Does that mean we’ve got the whole thing wrong?’

  ‘No, sir, just that the two anonymous girls were not considered to be under threat. Brendan Symons was safe behind bars serving a life sentence, and their identities had been kept under wraps. It wasn’t considered necessary.’

  ‘Right. Then I think it’s time we acquainted ourselves with exactly what happened to Lyndsay Ashcroft, don’t you?’ asked Jackman.

  ‘And then get the super to access the names of those two young witnesses. Until we know for sure that they really are Sarah and Suri, we could be chasing our tails.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘Not that I believe that’s the case for one minute. We are on the right track, sir, I know we are.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Marie was right. They collated all the information — from Orac, DCI Cameron Walker at Beech Lacey, Ruth Crooke, and whatever they had found themselves — and by seven that evening they had the strange story of Sarah and Suri.

  Engrossed in the work, not one of the team asked to go home, but they did accept the offer of pizza, courtesy of Jackman. He summed up what they knew as they ate. ‘The start of it all is the murder of Lyndsay Ashcroft back in 1995. Ruth Crooke has been told that the names of the two teenagers who gave testimony at the trial were Pauline Grover and Heather Miller, or Suri and Sarah as we know them. The murder took place in a small town called Nettleby in the north of the county. The teenager who was killed went to the same school as the girls, and Brendan Symons, the young man who was convicted of her rape and murder, lived in a neighbouring village. He was known to all three girls.’ He sipped at his coffee. ‘Phillip Seaton was the prosecutor, and apparently he did a very good job of not only securing a conviction, but making sure that Symons got life.’ He glanced across to Gary Pritchard. ‘You found some very interesting evidence at Seaton’s house, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did.’ Gary put down his half eaten slice of pizza. ‘The man kept records of everything and filed dozens of letters, many of them poison pen letters. He had evidently been hounded for many years, accused of bringing about the death of an innocent man. I think it was just irritating to begin with, as it rather comes with the territory, but Seaton’s wife died suddenly, and not long after, his only son went off to Australia to work. At this point the threats intensified, and under pressure, Seaton cracked. He gave up work and moved away. He began using his middle name, and refused to speak to anyone from his past. He emerged as Bernie, the recluse of Harlan Marsh.’

  ‘But his nemesis found him,’ Robbie added sombrely.

  ‘He did.’ Gary snatched a bite of pizza. ‘Even though he was ex-directory, he started getting phone calls. I know this because he kept a diary for a while. Sadly he gave up just before his persecutor’s first visit, or I’m sure we would have a description to match the one his neighbour gave us, and our snout Carrie’s.’

  ‘Any suggestions as to why Seaton finished up on the streets?’ asked Max. ‘That’s the weird part. After all, even though he was a recluse and a bit on the odd side, he still dressed really well and was careful with his appearance.’

  Rosie laughed. ‘Still thinking about that awesome haircut?’

  ‘Yeah! He had values. He was no spring chicken but he took care of himself.’

  ‘And his house,’ added Gary. ‘Apart from the articles that were destroyed, the place was immaculate. And he had some smashing gear too. Lovely paintings, beautiful ornaments and really classy furniture.’

  ‘Would you say his surroundings were important to him, Gary?’ Jackman asked.

  ‘Very much so, sir.’

  Jackman nodded. ‘Then maybe that’s how the killer manipulated him.’

  Robbie looked up from his food. ‘Like threaten to torch the place? Something like that?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Jackman said. ‘His wife and son were gone, and his possessions were all he had left.’

  ‘But surely that wouldn’t cause you to kill yourself?’ Charlie asked. ‘I mean, I completely understand if your kids are threatened, but belongings can be replaced.’

  ‘Don’t forget that this was a sustained psychological attack, over a very long time. Who knows what state his mind was in by the time he died?’

  ‘True. I hadn’t thought of that.’ Charlie picked up his pizza, then put it down again. ‘Do you think he had OCD?’

  Jackman shrugged. ‘Gary? You’ve seen his house? What do you think?’

  Gary frowned. ‘I didn’t think of it at the time, but yes, quite possibly. I said immaculate, but it was really almost too perfect. A place for everything, and everything in its place, as they say.’

  Charlie grinned. ‘Then you are right, sir. A threat to his perfect home might really get to him. Just mess up his sock drawer and he’d probably feel like topping himself.’

  Jackman tried not to smile. ‘A tad on the callous side, Charlie, but I catch your drift.’

  ‘It would take a master manipulator and a lot of patience to carry off something as insidious as that,’ Robbie interjected. ‘Sir, do you know the history of the Ashcroft murder? Was the convicted man’s guilt ever in doubt?’

  ‘No. His DNA was everywhere at the scene, and with two eyewitnesses identifying him under oath it was pretty well cut and dried.’

  ‘But the family never doubted his innocence, even with all that damning evidence?’ Robbie looked perplexed.

  ‘Tomorrow we will go over the whole transcript together.’ Jackman drained his coffee. ‘I’m as puzzled as you as to why the family are still so adamant after all these years. And if it’s not the family behind the deaths, someone else also believes that Brendan Symons was wrongly convicted.’

  ‘Someone who loved him, maybe?’ murmured Marie.

  ‘A woman?’ Gary asked. ‘Surely not.’

  Marie shrugged. ‘Why not? But it can’t be. We know for a fact that it was a man hounding Seaton. The neighbour saw him visiting just before Seaton disappeared.’

  Rosie added, ‘Men are capable of loving other men, in any number of ways. I’m thinking hero worship, comradeship, brotherly love, apart from the straightforward good old-fashioned sexual sort.’

  ‘I agree,’ Max added. ‘You would have to have very strong feelings indeed to keep up a hate campaign like this one for so long.’

  ‘Why wait all this time?’ asked Charlie. ‘Why not start to even the score immediately after Brendan killed himself? It’s been twenty years since his suicide.’

  ‘He’s got a point, sir,’ said Gary. ‘I know all about revenge being a dish best served cold, but why let the people you hold responsible have twenty good years of life and freedom?’

  ‘There could be a valid reason. Maybe he’s been in prison. He might have sat in jail plotting retribution until he was let out,’ Jackman said.

  Marie looked pensive. ‘I keep thinking about that terrible quote of his, about “seizing and dashing your little ones against the rocks.” Couldn’t this really be a calculated long-term plan, something truly terrible? What if the killer waited until his targets had something really precious in their lives so he could use that against them?’

  ‘Could anyone be that wick
ed?’ asked Rosie, then added quickly, ‘Don’t answer that, I know the answer.’

  ‘The big question is, does it end here?’ Jackman exhaled. ‘The two witnesses and the prosecutor are dead. Is that enough for him?’

  ‘I suspect not.’ Robbie looked grim.

  ‘Me neither.’ Marie folded up the empty pizza boxes. ‘This whole thing just screams insanity, and no one can second guess what a psychopath will do next.’

  ‘Laura could give us her opinion,’ volunteered Jackman. ‘Remember her old mentor, Professor Sam Page? He’s a retired psychologist specialising in memory. Maybe he could give us some input too.’ The thought of seeing Laura again gave Jackman goosebumps.

  Robbie nodded. ‘Good idea, sir. It would be good to get some insight into the kind of person we’re dealing with.’

  ‘Surely it has to be one of Brendan’s family?’ Max balled up a paper serviette and lobbed it at a wastepaper bin, smiling when it went in. ‘I like the idea of a stricken, lovelorn, lost soul, but it’s much more likely to be a blood relative wanting revenge, isn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly could be, which is why we will be interviewing them. And when we do, mind, it’s eggshells all the way. The super says they’re tricky, and I didn’t like the look in her eye when she said it.’

  Charlie leaned back in his chair. ‘Sir, regarding the murder trial, what were the grey areas you mentioned?’

  Jackman glanced at the clock. ‘Don’t you guys have homes to go to? Annie and her cleaning staff are waiting to come in.’

  Max shrugged. ‘Ten more minutes won’t make too much difference.’

  ‘Briefly then, the teenager was found in a wooded copse on the edge of the town. She had been beaten and then strangled. Brendan never denied seeing Lyndsay that night and admitted that they had made love. He was adamant that it was consensual, and that they had been planning it for weeks. It was her first time.’

  ‘And her last,’ whispered Rosie. ‘Poor kid.’

  ‘Exactly. Brendan flatly denied killing her. He said they had planned to leave the area separately in case they were seen together, which they didn’t want. He swore that she was alive when he left her. Alive and happy.’

  Gary frowned. ‘So, if they were so careful to keep this a secret, how come Sarah and Suri saw them? You said they were eyewitnesses.’

  ‘There had been a party that evening, a very clandestine affair arranged by a couple of young men from Brendan’s village. They’d broken into a disused stable at the back of one of the lads’ homes, and because his parents were away for the weekend, they organised drink and some music and invited a select few girls from Nettleby. Lyndsay was invited, along with Sarah and Suri, but Lyndsay only stayed for a very short time. Her two friends went out to look for her and thought they saw Brendan’s motorcycle hidden in a small stand of trees. They sneaked into the copse and saw Lyndsay and Brendan together. The girls admitted giggling together when they realised that they were actually going to “do it,” as they put it.’

  ‘And curiosity got the better of them,’ said Rosie.

  ‘They were both still virgins. They said they knew they ought to leave, but they were so fascinated, they stayed to watch.’ Jackman could picture the stifled giggles and the wide, disbelieving eyes. ‘When it was over, they slipped away before they were noticed. But when Lyndsay didn’t come back to the party, they started to get worried. After a while they went back, and that was when they saw Brendan’s bike heading off. Then they found Lyndsay, dead, in the same spot she had been in with Brendan earlier.’

  Max pulled a face. ‘That didn’t exactly sound like rape to me. Surely, the girl had consented? Wouldn’t the girls have seen if it was rape?’

  ‘That’s what Brendan said. But, the post-mortem found considerable bruising and damage. It was decided that what the witnesses saw was only part of what happened. It seems that he wanted more, Lyndsay objected, and he raped her. She would have called out for help, and he silenced her by hitting and then strangling her. Then he ran away.’

  ‘Phew!’ Charlie grimaced. ‘Nasty.’

  ‘The forensic evidence was undeniable. Brendan’s was the only DNA found.’

  ‘And the two girls saw them together,’ Marie concluded. ‘And also saw Brendan leaving the scene later. Case closed.’

  ‘Except that they never actually saw him hurt her. What they described was an inexperienced attempt at lovemaking.’

  ‘I hate to get too personal, but initially did he actually . . . ?’ Gary asked tentatively.

  Jackman nodded. ‘Yes, he scored.’

  ‘If they were, as he said, planning this “event,”’ Max asked, ‘Wouldn’t he have used protection?’

  ‘He did, but he made a serious beginner’s error and put it on wrong.’

  ‘Disaster!’ Rosie winced and shook her head.

  Jackman nodded. ‘And that was what put the nail in his coffin.’ He looked up at the wall clock. ‘Now I really think we should call it a day. Tomorrow we’ll get an action plan together and tackle this head on. We cannot afford to let this killer melt into the shadows. We have to identify him and apprehend him, and to do that we have to take this murder case to pieces.’ He pointed to the pile of thick files on the desk in front of him. ‘He’s hidden in here somewhere. We need to dig him out, before he does any more damage.’

  * * *

  He sat on top of the pillbox and gazed across the dark marshland. There was a hint of dampness in the air, a thin misty sea-fret was coming in, but he didn’t mind. As long as it was silent, devoid of any trace of humanity, he was happy.

  He hadn’t meant to come here tonight, but a strange, uncomfortable sensation had invaded him, a feeling of being trapped in his own home, in his own skin. The next thing he knew, he was riding across the fen on his powerful motorbike, heading towards the seclusion of this wild and miserable spot that he had come to rely on when the church was closed.

  Earlier, he had felt almost manic with delight. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the sublime terror on the faces of the two women the moment before they jumped. The feeling of power had never left him, and he knew he would never forget it.

  With the lawyer too, it hadn’t been the death that excited him, it had been his control over that man. He had him take to the streets, made him sleep on cold, hard pavements, despite his fastidiousness. He sighed contentedly. As soon as you understood what really mattered to a person, then you had control over them. The actual death had been something of a let-down, although it had been amusing to watch those shaky little trial cuts, before making the final killing slice. He hadn’t wanted to step in, but by then it was getting tedious, and he didn’t want any of those nosey street people coming across them. No, best by far was the prosecutor’s reaction when he destroyed his beautiful possessions and his fragile memories. The pain. The pleading and begging. And then the dandy’s degradation at having to ask the Salvation Army for clothes. So satisfying. Over time, he had managed to compel the smug prosecutor to desert all his affluent friends, sell his three-storey town house, and go scurrying to that desolate spot deep in the fens, to a place where he knew no one, and more importantly, no one knew him. The women had paid the ultimate price for what they did so many years ago, but the prosecutor had truly suffered.

  He hoped that Brendan and Lyndsay were somewhere above, looking down. He hoped they understood that he was gathering in the sinners and making them pay. He sometimes pictured the two of them as avenging angels, fire flying from their pointing fingers and fearsome golden lights flashing from their scornful eyes.

  After all these years, hot tears still formed behind his eyelids when he thought of Lyndsay. After she was gone he had believed his life was over too. But like a miracle, her passing had made him rise, a phoenix emerging from the ashes of her death. He had found the strength and courage to mould a new identity from the wreck of a child that he had once been. And what a man he had become! A man capable of sowing the seeds of destruction in the minds of othe
rs. A man of power. A man of infinite patience.

  He kicked his heels against the lichen-covered sides of the old concrete pillbox and stared unseeing, into the shadows that drifted over the marsh. Suddenly he realised that this wasn’t the finale he had planned for, but just the beginning. He was far from finished. How far would his powers take him?

  Murder, and the motives behind it, had always fascinated him. He had read extensively on the subject and had come to the conclusion that he was quite different from others who killed. All the studies described killers as lacking in human feelings and emotions. In order to function in society, they had to emulate what they saw in others, and some became good at it. But he did have emotions, and they were deep. He could communicate. He attracted people to him, and they admired his drive and conviction, shared his beliefs. He was no loner. He was curious and outgoing. His house was open to all and he had any number of friends.

  He was nothing like the men and women he had read about, he was simply different, and that alone gave him enormous power.

  Thoughts of power led him to consider his last “experiment.” This particular plan of vengeance had taken a very unusual turn. The police knew nothing about it yet, although they would probably bump into it fairly soon. The longer it took them to find, the nastier it would be for them.

  Now to his next target. He had one other planned demise, but after that? Which one would give him the most pleasure to bring down and destroy? He was here tonight to settle the matter, or at least narrow his selection to two or three. He wiped the chilly droplets of rain from his face and supposed that, like so much in life, in the end it all came down to love.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Each night, as darkness shrouded Rainham Lodge, Ella grew nervous. It made no difference whether James was there or not. It was up to her to keep Miles and Ryan safe. She felt alright when Jackman was there. But tonight he wasn’t around, and she didn’t know if he was coming.