THE GUILTY ONES a gripping crime thriller filled with stunning twists

by Joy Ellis

  ‘What was this mysterious third sibling called?’ asked Marie.

  ‘Richard Stephan Ashcroft. Stephan spelt with an “a.”’

  ‘And in what way did he reappear?’ Jackman asked.

  ‘Charles Ashcroft enrolled him into a special school, privately run and expensive.’

  ‘But surely he enrolled Alistair?’

  ‘Nope. He enrolled Richard.’

  ‘What the . . . ?’ Jackman puffed his cheeks out and exhaled.

  Orac sat back. ‘I’ve had a little more time to think about this than you, DI Jackman, so please allow me to put forward an hypothesis, and it’s the only thing that makes sense considering the facts I have here.’ She paused, then said, ‘If Richard died young, as I suspect he did, and for some reason his death wasn’t registered, I’m guessing that Charles Ashcroft took Alistair to that school and enrolled him under his dead brother’s name.’

  ‘How on earth would he get away with that?’ Marie asked.

  ‘If he had money, and we know he did, Richard’s birth certificate and some kind of credible history, what was there to query?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Jackman murmured, ‘and it would fit in with what we’ve heard about Alistair being sent away to some kind of boarding school.’

  ‘You’ll need to do some work on that though, as the school closed down quite a few years ago, and I haven’t had to time to chase it up further,’ Orac added.

  ‘I guess if they were only a year apart, then the difference in age wouldn’t be noticed,’ Marie said. ‘And his old neighbour kept calling him a “funny little thing.” Maybe he was small for his age?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’ Orac frowned. ‘I’m absolutely certain this is what happened, but I have no idea why the father would want to do such a thing.’

  ‘And if the child died, why was his death never reported?’ Jackman stared at Orac. ‘You’re sure that neither parent reported an infant’s death?’

  ‘There is no record of it anywhere. But, what I have found is that his wife’s maiden name was Tasker.’ She placed a telephone number in front of him, ‘And I’ve traced her mother. She lives near Maldon in Essex. That’s Liz Tasker’s phone number. If she’ll talk, you could have the answer to a lot of questions. I was dying to phone her myself, but I think that is something you must do.’ She smiled at him and pointed to the end of her desk. ‘There’s the phone. Please, be my guest.’

  Jackman talked to the woman for around ten minutes, then replaced the receiver and exhaled loudly. ‘That was one angry lady! She’s given me the background, but we have a problem . . . the daughter suffered a severe mental breakdown and is now in a psychiatric unit. There is no easy way she can be questioned about her life with Charles Ashcroft.’

  ‘Okay, but what did the mother tell you?’ Marie asked impatiently.

  ‘Your assumption was correct, Orac. Apparently Charles knocked his wife senseless when she wanted to register the death. He swore it wasn’t even his baby in the first place, even though it undoubtedly was. Her mother swears she was too terrified of him to go with anyone else! In the end, Louisa stopped fighting him and allowed him to have his way. She never tried to register the death.’ Jackman gritted his teeth. ‘Liz Tasker says if we excavate the garden at Ash Grange, we will find a baby’s remains.’

  ‘My God!’ Marie exclaimed. ‘But why? Why hide the death? Did it have something to do with Charles?’

  ‘No, apparently the baby died after a seizure of some kind. And Mrs Tasker says the reason the death was never reported was control, plain and simple. Complete control over Louisa, and the denigration of her personal wishes. Her child was never even given a proper funeral, so the poor woman had no closure. Charles was an abusive bully of the first order, and finally things got so bad for Louisa that she ran away, leaving him and her two other children.’

  ‘Left them, with a bully like that?’ Marie shook her head.

  ‘In fairness, she told her mother his anger was only ever directed at her, not the kids.’ He shrugged. ‘We now know that wasn’t the case later on, but maybe she was right at the time, or maybe she just never saw it. What we do know, is that by that time, Louisa was psychologically damaged, and she never made it to a better life halfway around the world. She finished up in a psychiatric unit, heavily medicated.’ Jackman turned back to Orac. ‘This is a real step forward, incredible stuff, Orac. Thank you.’

  Orac inclined her head. ‘All in a day’s work, albeit a pretty long one. Don’t forget Laura’s notes.’

  ‘I won’t, and thank you again.’ For once Jackman didn’t feel like fleeing Orac’s presence. He saw her better now, a valued and extremely talented colleague. ‘I really do appreciate your help.’

  ‘Anytime. I’m always here. Now you know where to find me.’ Orac gave Marie a sly metallic wink and turned back to her screens.

  Back in the CID room, DCI Cameron Walker was still beavering away at a computer.

  ‘What’s this, Cam? Doing night duty?’

  ‘I could ask the same of you two.’ He grinned. ‘Kaye is away at a seminar in Cambridge, so I thought I’d dig deeper into some of the Symons family camp followers.’

  ‘And we now know that Lyndsay Ashcroft’s little brother Alistair is our killer!’ Marie announced.

  Cameron gaped at them. ‘How on earth did you find that out?’

  ‘Oh, he rang Jackman and told him.’

  Jackman grinned. ‘She’s not joking either.’

  Cameron sat back in his chair. ‘I think this needs some explanation, don’t you?’

  ‘Let’s go to my office and we’ll fill you in.’

  ‘I’ll just put the name Richard Stephan Ashcroft into the PNC, then go grab some strong coffees,’ Marie said. ‘Cam looks as if he could do with one.’

  ‘Three sugars please, Marie, for shock, but don’t tell Kaye if you see her.’

  ‘As if!’

  Jackman sat in silence for a while, putting the sequence of events in order. Finally he related the whole story, from Ella Jarvis spying on the man who had been watching the children, to his mother’s visitor, and then the killer’s chilling phone call.

  Marie added, ‘And Orac has confirmed that Charles Ashcroft did place his son in a special school, but under his dead brother’s name. Right now we can only surmise that little Alistair told his father something about Lyndsay’s death that he didn’t want anyone else to hear, so he got him out of the way, fast.’

  ‘So we were right to think that Alistair might have witnessed something that night and it never came out at the trial?’ Cam asked.

  Jackman nodded. ‘Looks that way. And whatever it was, it seems to have sent her little brother on a vengeful killing spree.’

  Cameron sipped his coffee. ‘I’m still not sure how Charles Ashcroft got away with switching his sons’ identities. Surely he would have needed medical reports to get the boy into the school?’

  ‘It would seem that young Alistair was never assessed. In fact, although he was registered with a local GP, he was only ever seen for a few inoculations. His school reports mention only that he was a very quiet child and not a good mixer.’ Marie shrugged. ‘I think Charles flashed a lot of cash, turned on the charm and the crocodile tears, and spun a yarn about the family trying to manage the boy’s behavioural problems until they realised he needed specialist help that they were prepared to pay for.’

  ‘And an assessment will have been done then, in the name of Richard.’ Jackman scribbled some notes on a memo pad. ‘First thing tomorrow we need to find out more about that school and talk to someone.’

  Cam nodded. Then he frowned. ‘Okay, so Dad bundles the problem child into a private school, but surely the boy wouldn’t have answered to Richard when his name was Alistair? And why didn’t he simply tell the truth about himself?’

  ‘Fear,’ chorused Jackman and Marie.

  ‘His father was a violent bully. We know that from two sources already, and we’ve not even started asking proper questio
ns yet. The child was most likely threatened, and witnessing his sister’s murder must have traumatised him. He would have been pleased to get away and hide.’ Jackman shook his head. ‘We can only guess what those two kids suffered after the mother ran off.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ Cam folded his arms and exhaled.

  ‘After his sister’s murder his mental condition must have been one of total shock. He could even have had some sort of dissociative amnesia,’ Jackman added.

  Cam nodded. ‘Maybe that’s what sent him on his terrible journey of revenge.’

  Jackman leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. ‘What a bloody awful day! I’m exhausted.’

  Marie smiled at him. ‘I’m not surprised after what you’ve had to cope with in the last twenty-four hours.’ She finished her drink. ‘Still, we are so much further forward than we were.’

  ‘Yes and no.’ Jackman ached all over. ‘We know who the killer is, but we have no clue as to what bogus identity he’s now hiding behind. How’s that for a conundrum?’

  Cam stood up. ‘Whatever, my friend, it’s a puzzle for tomorrow. You need some rest.’

  ‘I’m not arguing, Cam, believe me.’ Jackman sighed. ‘However, there is one thing I can’t ignore.’ He waved the notes that Laura had sent them. ‘We need to read this.’

  Marie took it from him, saying, ‘Photocopier. A copy each. Take it home, read it before we come in tomorrow, and then we can discuss it. Cam is right. It’s something for tomorrow, not tonight. And that, sir, is an order!’

  * * *

  Marie sat up in bed and for a second time, went through Laura’s notes. They had dealt with some terrible people in their time, but this man had to be the worst.

  She pulled the duvet up around her and slid down into its warmth.

  She couldn’t begin to imagine the workings of his brain, but what really scared her was his utter self-possession. The school’s CCTV footage showed the casual way he skipped between the parked cars, twisting aside to avoid the cameras. It was almost a dance. He was enjoying himself.

  Laura described the killer as devious, deceptive, exploitative — a master of manipulation. His power resided in his knowledge of his victims’ vulnerabilities, and his ability to make use of them. He was totally ruthless, caring nothing for his victims. It is probable that he led Sarah and Suri to believe that they were guilty of complicity in a terrible miscarriage of justice. He then escalated his accusations until the women were so confused that they doubted their recollections of what really happened. And when they were ready, he used threats to their children’s lives to push them into total submission and finally, death.

  Marie wondered how this “poor little thing,” as Beatrice had called him, had turned into such an intelligent, calculating avenger.

  It seemed that Laura had brought Sam in on it, and the two psychologists had discussed multiple kinds of complex personality disorders, but she had simplified it to say they believed that the killer exhibited traits of what was known as the “dark triad,” a trio of psychoses. Anyone who exhibited all three of these traits would have a severely malevolent nature and would be a danger to the mental health of those around them. These people were usually extremely intelligent and highly functioning, but their self-image was unstable and illusory. They concluded that the killer was an extraordinarily evolved version of this particular disorder.

  Marie put down the paper and turned out the light. She hoped that Jackman was asleep, and not poring over Laura’s notes as she had been. He had looked drained. But she knew him very well. He wouldn’t give up until he found the killer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Jackman started awake at around five a.m. Laura’s notes lay unopened beside his bed, where he had dropped them the night before. He had intended to read them before going to sleep, but had succumbed to exhaustion and fallen into a deep slumber. He stretched. Well, the sleep seemed to have done the trick. His old fervour burned like a torch in the cold darkness.

  He picked up the pages and began to read.

  Laura referred to studies that found that people with a controlling megalomania such as their killer exhibited often believed that they were far more omniscient and powerful than they really were. This could be a way to bring him down. She had added, ‘Try to see things as they are, Jackman, not how he wants you to see them. He is not all-powerful, no human being is. Remember what happened to Machiavelli? He was tortured, imprisoned, alienated from the society he had devoted his life to, and he died a bitter man.’

  Jackman wondered if that were really true. He liked to think that evil people paid dearly for their transgressions, but he knew that wasn’t always the case. At university, he and his fellow students sometimes debated whether Stalin or Hitler had been the world’s worst mass murderer. Jackman had voted for Stalin. That man had overseen the deaths of millions of his own people, and instead of being brought to justice, he died of a heart attack while still in power.

  Jackman shook off these negative thoughts. He had to catch this man. He would catch him.

  * * *

  The morning passed in a frenetic blur. The CID office was alive with the sound of phones, printers, voices, and the feet of staff coming and going.

  Jackman spent the whole morning in his office, fielding questions, delegating tasks and overseeing progress.

  At around twelve, Cameron knocked on his door. ‘We’ve found the special school!’

  Jackman almost punched the air. It was a massive step forward. ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s just outside Spalding. The name has changed from the one Orac tracked, and it no longer functions as it did back then, it’s now part of a group of schools that specialise in children with learning difficulties. The good thing is, I’ve tracked down the name of the head that was in charge in the nineties, and he lives here in Saltern-le-Fen. I’ve phoned him and he’s in all day. Would you like to go and see him, or shall I?’

  ‘You go, Cam. And take Marie with you.’ He glanced at his desk and the mountain of paperwork, on top of which was a memo written in thick black felt pen: Ruth Crooke, meeting 12.30. ‘I’m a bit tied up until after lunch.’

  Cameron nodded. ‘We’ll go right away.’

  Cameron opened the door to Robbie Melton. ‘Sir, I’ve been to see one of the men who support Sheila Symons’s cause. Jeremy Shaw?’

  Jackman had to think for a moment. Ah, Shaw. A well-known radical but a loner, according to the sources. ‘And?’

  ‘He’s certainly motivated. There are giant posters of Che Guevara on his walls and he probably has every newspaper article ever printed about the trial of Brendan Symons. Seems to attach himself to lost causes. He lectured me for several minutes before he realised I was a copper, then he got really bolshie.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘As far as looks go, he fits the bill. He’s dark, tall, and around forty, I guess.’ Robbie looked at Jackman. ‘But the only vibes I picked up were a particular dislike of the police, plus he loves the sound of his own voice — so nothing significant.’

  ‘Can we take him off the list, do you think?’

  Robbie frowned. ‘Unless he’s a consummate actor, he doesn’t seem to fit the profile for Alistair Ashcroft.’

  ‘So who’ve you got next?’

  Robbie glanced at his notebook. ‘Well, we were hoping to tackle either Dale or Liam Symons, but we can’t pin them down. So Max and I are just off to see Art Pullen. Reliable Art, according to your notes.’

  Jackman remembered Kenny saying how Art always turned out for a meeting, a protest, a march — anything and everything. ‘Okay, but if you think he’s simply another enthusiastic camp follower, don’t spend too much time on him, will you?’

  ‘No, boss. We’ll give him the once over and report back.’

  When Robbie had gone, Jackman looked at the memo again. He was pretty certain he was on borrowed time. His close family were involved now, so it wouldn’t be long before Ruth was obliged to ask him to hand the
investigation to someone else. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t. From the moment he’d heard Alistair’s voice on his mother’s phone, the case had become truly personal. He drew in a long breath. This investigation had started with Sarah Jackman. Rowan Jackman would finish it.

  * * *

  It felt odd to be out with a different senior officer, but Marie had liked Cameron from the very beginning. For a DCI, he really was a breath of fresh air.

  They found the old headmaster in a flat in a very nice retirement village on the outskirts of town. After the introductions, Ralph Burgess invited them in and disappeared into the small galley kitchen to make tea.

  Marie looked around the room. As old people’s residences went, this was the best she’d seen. It had a lounge and a separate bedroom, along with a shower room and the narrow kitchen, but it didn’t feel cramped or claustrophobic. Ralph had kept several good pieces of furniture, including an oak bookcase that groaned with books. A panorama of school photographs covered one wall from floor to ceiling.

  Marie’s hopes rose.

  When tea had been poured, Ralph asked, ‘Was it Richard Ashcroft that you wanted to know about?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Cameron. ‘Only we have recently discovered that he was enrolled with you under a false name, that of his dead brother. His real name was Alistair Ashcroft.’

  Ralph Burgess digested this information. Then he nodded slowly. ‘That could explain a lot of questions we had about that boy.’

  ‘You remember him clearly, sir?’ asked Marie.

  The man gave a tight little laugh. ‘Oh yes. There are some children you never forget.’ He stood up and went to his photo display. After searching for a moment, he removed two framed photographs and returned to his chair. From a side table, he took a handsome magnifying glass with a carved handle, and examined the pictures.