by M K Farrar
He stared intently at Cole’s ravaged face, checking for a response. If Cole had heard him, or understood him, he wasn’t showing any sign.
He tried again. “Can you remember what happened to you? The reason why you’re in hospital now. Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
Cole might be awake in that he was breathing on his own and his eyes were moving, but how much of the person he’d once been was still in there? Did he have normal thoughts but was unable to make his body work well enough to convey them?
The heart monitor suddenly let out a shrill beep. Cole moaned then thrashed from side to side. His shoulders jerked, and his hips lifted from the bed. His eyes rolled back, showing the whites.
Ryan stepped back in shock. A nurse rushed up and checked the drip in Cole’s arm and switched off the alarm. She put her hands on Cole’s shoulders, pinning him down, and spoke to Ryan over her shoulder.
“It’s time for you to go now.”
Ryan wasn’t going to argue. He turned and walked briskly from the ward before anyone else could ask who he was or what he was doing there. It wasn’t as though he meant Cole any harm. Despite everything he thought about the man who’d killed his daughter, he hadn’t come here to finish off the job. He wasn’t a murderer, no matter what his intrusive thoughts insisted. The only time he’d ever even consider taking another life was if he had to bring down a criminal in order to save others.
He wouldn’t have tried to kill Cole Fielding. He was positive.
Almost.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I have an update on the Ford Transits that were seen around the area at that time.”
Ryan had barely got in the office door before he was accosted by DC Penn.
“Tell me.” Ryan shrugged off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair.
“As you know, there were four vans fitting the description caught on CCTV from around the area between the hours of three and six a.m. on the Monday morning,” Craig said. “Three are registered to businesses, and the other is privately owned. One of the vans belongs to a fruit and vegetable wholesaler, Seasonal Produce, based on Cheltenham Road. It was driven by fifty-three-year-old Barry Hayle. He was out on deliveries to all the shops that stock their produce and was able to produce a list of each of the places he visited between the hours of eleven p.m. and six a.m. the following morning, when his shift ended.”
Ryan frowned. “Why do the deliveries in the middle of the night?”
“Less traffic on the roads. They can be done in a fraction of the time it would take during rush hour.”
That made sense.
“Okay, we can rule him out then. Who’s next?”
“The second belongs to a pet transporter who was bringing rescued dogs over from Spain. They had a drop-off several streets away from the Wyndhams’ road.”
“At three o’clock in the morning?” he checked.
Craig nodded. “Yes, they cover most of the country, driving several hours between places, dropping the animals off to their new homes. Two people were in the van; forty-year-old Mick Fraser and his wife, Annabel. They can prove that they were in Oxford before the murders, doing another drop-off, and then after the drop-off in Bristol, they drove straight down to Plymouth.”
“Okay, so they wouldn’t have had time to commit the murders.”
“The vehicle privately registered belongs to a painter-decorator, Mark Ledlow. He’s twenty-eight years old and lives with a flatmate in Bristol, who can attest to his whereabouts before he left that morning. He was driving to Bristol airport to catch an early flight to see family in Portugal. I’ve checked out his story, and it all fits. He’s in Portugal now, actually.”
“Lucky him.”
Craig grinned. “I thought the same.”
“And the fourth van?” Ryan prompted.
“Registered to a photography company. The director is Philip Sweeny, aged thirty-two. His most recent address is here in Bristol, but attempts to track him down have so far been unsuccessful, so we haven’t been able to rule him out.”
“That sounds promising. What else can you tell me about him?”
“The first thing I did was run a background check on him, and we already have him in our system. He was charged and convicted of ABH at the age of eighteen towards a foster parent, Mr Willis. Sweeny had aged out of foster care at that point but returned to the family home and attacked Mr Willis. He didn’t serve any time but was put on a suspended sentence.”
“Do we know why he attacked his foster father?” Ryan asked.
“It simply says a ‘disagreement’ on the file.”
Ryan tapped his fingers against his lips. Was it worth sending someone out to interview the foster father, assuming he was still alive? At this point, they didn’t know if Sweeny even had anything to do with the Wyndham murders.
“What kind of work does his photography company do?”
“He mostly seemed to work in residential properties for sale or rent.”
Ryan frowned, not quite understanding. “He puts places on the market?”
“No, he doesn’t. He works for estate agents who employ him freelance to go in and take photographs and also videos for these online virtual tours of properties for their websites.”
Ryan remembered something Elouise had said, and his pulse quickened. “And the Wyndhams had put the place on the market because they’d been planning on emigrating to Australia. That must be our link.”
Craig nodded. “Sounds like it could be.”
“We need to find out which estate agents the Wyndhams had the property on with.”
“I can find out,” Craig offered.
“Make it a priority. Have you got an address for Sweeny?”
“Yes, here you go.”
He slid a piece of paper onto Ryan’s desk. “Also, I sent you a link. It’s for Sweeny’s website. Take a look.”
Ryan opened his computer. Every muscle in his body was tense, priming himself for what he might find. He consciously loosened his jaw, aware it was clenched so tight he’d probably impact his molars. What sort of thing would Sweeny have online? He imagined a website like Watch People Die, which had been taken offline due to its increasingly graphic content, including an eighteen-year-old committing suicide, but when he clicked on the link Craig had sent, something completely different came up.
It was a professional photography website for a business called Property Studio. The header encouraged the viewer to take their property listings to a new dimension. A number of photographs of smart, modern buildings were on the front page.
Ryan clicked on one of the photographs and was surprised when it moved. So, this was what was meant by virtual tours. He could move his mouse and swing the view on his screen right the way around the room, and then if he pulled his mouse down, the view lifted to the ceiling, and if he dragged it up, he was able to see right down to the floor.
The footage allowed him to take a tour of this property right from stepping inside the front door, all the way through the house. He could count how many shoes were on the shoe rack, the exact number of stairs up the first floor, and see where the keys were left on the hall console. He could see the photographs of the family on the wall, and when he clicked to go into the kitchen, he was able to read the bills that had been attached to a cork pinboard on the wall.
“Jesus Christ.”
This footage gave whoever had access to it an unfettered access to the exact layout of the house and the people who lived within it. It let him see exactly what locks were on every door and window, and where the keys were kept for each one.
His mouth ran dry, his heart beating harder. He had little doubt that this man had used this footage to learn everything there was to know about the Wyndhams and their home. His inside knowledge had allowed him to sneak in and out of the house. Maybe it had started with him just watching the videos to get a taste of their family life, but then when that hadn’t been enough, he must have wanted more and started entering t
he home for real. He’d hidden himself inside the loft space, coming down at night or when the family were out.
A thought occurred to him. That was how he knew the bedroom windows had small keys sticking out of each of the locks. That he could lock the windows from the inside and remove the key and there was no way for either of the children to open a window and either climb out or shout for help. But how did he know the alarm code?
“Impressive, right?” Craig said, raising both eyebrows.
“This definitely wasn’t what I’d been expecting.”
“You think he used the videos he took of the Wyndhams’ house to learn how to get around the place unseen?”
“It’s definitely a possibility. Until we find him, and can ask him some questions, there’s still the chance this is just a coincidence. Liz Wyndham complained about a white Transit van being outside of her house, but that doesn’t mean whoever was driving it killed the family for sure. At this point, we don’t have any actual evidence that Philip Sweeny was responsible. If he worked in this area anyway, he might have just been out on a job.”
“At half past three in the morning?”
“Or someone else was driving the van. We don’t know how many people he has working for him, or if he lends the vehicle to someone else?” Ryan lifted both hands in a helpless shrug. “I understand what you’re saying, and this is excellent progress, but until we’ve got that physical proof, or can find the man himself to confess, we can’t bring charges. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
With this new development, Ryan needed to call a briefing.
He gathered his team together in the briefing room and ran them through the most recent findings, including the discoveries in the loft and what DC Penn had learned about the Ford Transits.
“Currently,” he said, addressing the room, “Philip Sweeny is our biggest lead. He was known to us, with a prior conviction for violence against his foster father, but whether that means he also has it in him to murder a whole family in cold blood, I’m not yet sure. We believe he may have photographed the Wyndham house when they put it on the market briefly earlier this year. Craig is going to track down which estate agents they had it on with, but our main priority needs to be tracking down Sweeny.” He looked to another of his DCs. “Linda, can you find out everything there is to know about him. Did he have any connection to the Wyndhams before they’d put it on the market? Any friends or relatives? Sweeny is a good decade younger than the Wyndhams, but I still want to know what schools they went to, or if they had any similar interests. I want to know what motive Sweeny might have for wanting the family dead.”
Linda jotted down what he’d said.
“Does there always need to be motive?” Mallory said. “Some people just kill for the sake of killing.”
He struggled to look at her with her eye all swollen half shut. “You’re right, but if there is a motive, I want to know about it. We also need to track down Sweeny’s van. If we find the vehicle, we might find him. Shonda, can I put you onto that?”
Shonda nodded. “You got it, boss.”
“We know Sweeny has a business mobile phone as his number is on his website, but he could have a personal one as well. Dev, can you see if we can find out what network he’s on and then get his records pulled.”
“No problem, boss,” DC Dev Kharral said.
Ryan continued. “I’m going to take DS Lawson and go to his flat, see what we can find out, and ask around the neighbours and find out what they know. Remember, right now, it could just be a coincidence that we spotted a similar van to the one Liz Wyndham had reported and we can’t track down the person most likely to be driving. For all we know, Philip Sweeny is innocently on holiday and has no idea we’re trying to track him down, and someone else was driving the van, but then again, he could be in hiding because he murdered the Wyndham family in their beds.”
He took in the faces of his team who were all nodding in agreement.
“Let’s get to it. I want Sweeny found by the end of the day.”
***
Ryan pulled the car up outside the address they had registered for Philip Sweeny.
The flat where Sweeny lived was nothing like the sort of premises he’d expected. Where the photography website was all stately homes and posh apartments, his flat was in a rough area, with dirty windows and peeling paint around the frames.
Ryan climbed out of the car, and Mallory followed. He stopped and cupped his hands to the side of his face to peer through a window. Through the dirty glass, he could make out a living room, with a dilapidated orange sofa and an old television in the corner.
There was no sign of Sweeny.
He left the window and went to the door. The lower flat had a bell beside the number, and Ryan pressed his finger on the button. From inside the property came the muffled chime of a doorbell. Ryan gave Sweeny a moment to answer, and when there was no response, he pressed it again.
He lifted his fist and hammered on the door. “Police, Mr Sweeny. If you’re in there, you need to open up.”
“He’s either not in,” Mallory said, “or he’s hiding out.”
Ryan turned to her, chewing his lower lip. “We don’t have enough on him to force entry, but we might have to start thinking about getting a warrant. Let’s talk to some of the neighbours.”
He rang the bell for the upstairs flat.
From above, a female voice called out of a window, “Can I help you?”
Ryan stepped back and held up his ID for the woman to see. She appeared to be in her seventies, with short hair dyed unnaturally black. “We’re after Philip Sweeny. We’d like to have a quick word.”
“Give me one minute.”
He and Mallory exchanged a glance, and they waited for the woman to come down.
Thirty seconds passed, and the door opened, revealing the woman who was barely five feet tall and must only weigh seven stone.
“What do you want with Philip”? she asked.
“We need to talk to him regarding a case we’re working on.” Ryan had no intention of giving her any details. He didn’t need for this to get out to the press and for them to start declaring they had a suspect. Doing so might give Sweeny a warning they were onto him. “When was the last time you saw Mr Sweeny?”
“Oh, gosh. It’s been a while now. Almost a week.”
“Can you think back to exactly when that was?”
Her already wrinkled brow furrowed further. “Hmm, I think it was after I’d come back from my Pilates class which is on a Friday evening. We start at seven, and I’m home by about quarter past eight.”
“And you saw him then? What was he doing?”
“Looked like he was off out somewhere. He had one of those shoulder bags, you know the kind, like he was off to the gym.”
“And this would have been around eight-fifteen?” Ryan checked.
“Yes.”
“Was he on foot or driving a vehicle?”
“He has a white van that he always has parked around here. He got into that and drove off.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
“I have no idea, sorry. We say hello to each other out of politeness’s sake, since we’re neighbours, but we don’t have any real conversations.” She gave a quick smile. “I mean, what would a young man want to say to someone like me anyway.”
Ryan thought of his own neighbour and what good company she could be. “I’m sure you have plenty to say, Mrs...?”
He left the gap open for her to fill in.
“Rollick. Glenda Rollick. Is Philip in some kind of trouble?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”
She winked and tapped her finger against the side of her nose. “Top secret, eh? Don’t worry, I won’t tell him you were asking after him.”
If they ended up forcing entry in to his flat, Ryan thought there was a good chance he might figure it out for himself, but he didn’t say that to her.
“Does Philip live alone?”
>
“Yes, he does.”
“What about friends or family? Does he ever have anyone with him?”
“No, I’ve never seen him with anyone else. He’s always struck me as rather a lonely soul. I must say the same about myself, though. It’s not easy being on your own. That’s why I do all my classes, even at my age. Helps keep me connected to others, and keeps me fit as well, of course. Just ’cause you’re older doesn’t mean you should start letting everything go.”
She had the chattiness he often saw in people who lived alone. It was as though they stored up their lack of conversation from living by themselves and regurgitated it all onto whoever was willing to listen.
“Thank you for your help. We’ll let you get on with your day.” He handed her a card. “If he does reappear, though, I’d appreciate a call.”
“Of course, Detective.”
She shut the door, and he and Mallory took a few steps down the street to distance themselves from the property.
“We need to interview each of the neighbours,” he said, “find out if any of them know Sweeny and if they have any idea where he might be. We need to find that van, too. It has to be somewhere and if it was always parked around here, it doesn’t look like anyone else would be driving it.”
Ryan’s phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket. The screen showed ‘Maggie Bryant’ who was part of the specialist fingerprint team, and so he answered it.
“Maggie, how’s it going?”
“I’ve just sent you an email,” she said down the line, “but I thought I’d better call you, too. You’re going to be happy with the findings.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Tell me,” Ryan said.
“We were able to match them to prints on the system. They belonged to a Mr Philip Sweeny.”
Ryan barely held back from punching the air. “Philip Sweeny is our man then. We’re currently at his flat as a Ford Transit registered to his business was caught on CCTV on the morning of the murders.” He sensed Mallory watching him intently and he nodded at her and mouthed, it’s him.