It was a cul-de-sac of large Edwardian houses. At one time, these would have been worth a packet, but they had long since been bought up by investors and converted into student accommodation. Each house no doubt brought in a decent amount in rent, having ten or more rooms with a communal sitting room and kitchen.
Elwyn met her at the door. “I’ve rung the bell but no one’s responded.”
Rachel checked her watch. It was gone nine. “They could have left for uni, I suppose. Try again.”
Elwyn hammered on the door. Nothing. He tried a window. Finally, a young woman flung open the front door. She was wearing a dressing gown, and her hair was wet.
“Where’s the bloody fire? I was in the shower. What do you want?”
“We’re police, love.” Rachel showed her badge. “Is Hayley Burton in?”
Rachel saw the doubtful look. The girl was considering her response.
“Look, I’m late. I’ve got to leave soon. Why do you want her, anyway?”
“Is she here or not?” Rachel was running out of patience.
“Come in.”
The girl led the way inside. The place was untidy, with empty cans of lager and festering take-out cartons strewn about. The girl brushed some rubbish off the sofa and nodded for them to sit.
“I’m Hayley,” she admitted. “But I’ve done nothing wrong — as far as I know.”
“We’re not saying you have.” Rachel assured her, still on her feet. There was no way she was sitting down in here. “We simply want a chat. We think you have some vital information about a case we’re investigating. You paid for a young man to have a tattoo done in a local parlour, isn’t that right? On his foot.”
Hayley grinned. “That’s right. Alfie.”
This girl could have vital information, Rachel decided to risk the arm of the settee. She handed Hayley an image of the lad, taken from the CCTV on Canal Street. “Who is he?”
“Ollie,” she said at once. “The tatt was a joke. He isn’t really called Alfie.”
“Oliver who?” Elwyn asked, notebook open.
“Oliver Frodsham. He’s at college, like the rest of us. Why? What’s he done? We’re not in trouble over the joke, are we? We were just winding Alice up — that’s Alice Brough. After he had the tatt done, Ollie spent about two weeks pretending to be her long-lost twin brother. I realise it was a bit stupid, but we were drunk and Ollie wasn’t bothered, he was well up for it.”
“Why would you do that to Alice? Surely you realised how upset she’d be once she discovered the truth?”
“We didn’t think,” Hayley shrugged.
“Why Alfie and not some other name?” Rachel knew very well the answer to that one, but wanted to hear what the girl had to say.
“Like I said, it was a joke. A way to wind up Alice. She’s so intense, so into finding this long-lost brother of hers. She drives everyone wild with her constant going on. We just wanted a way to make it stop.” She thought for a moment or two. “But I think Ollie had other ideas all along. He saw Alice as a soft touch and intended to get what he could out of her. You see Alice has money, and now I think that’s what Ollie was really after. And he did very well out of it. Alice took him home, gave him money. I have no idea how much, but I bet that stupid tattoo was well worth it.”
“When was the last time you saw Oliver?” Rachel asked.
“About four days ago. He stayed here, dossed down on that sofa.” She smiled. “He’s a bit of a loose cannon, is Ollie. Sometimes we see a lot of him and then he’ll disappear for days on end. He’s doing a journalism course, always chasing some story. He was full of himself when he came round here. Working on a story about the homeless in Manchester. Said the story was dynamite. Said if he got it right, there’d be big money in it, and he could dump college. He also told us that some big-time villain had hired him to keep watch on a piece of land, note and report on who came and went.”
Rachel’s stomach lurched. “Did he give you the name of this big-time villain? Say anything else about it?” She waited for the reply, praying the girl didn’t say it was McAteer.
“No idea. He didn’t tell us much.”
“D’you know why the land was so important?” Elwyn asked.
Hayley shrugged. “No idea, but he really got into it. Pretended to be one of the rough sleepers so he could doss down nearby. That way he reckoned no one would take much notice of him.”
“Do you know where Oliver came from? Anything about his family?”
Hayley began to look worried. “Something’s happened, or you wouldn’t be here. Has he had an accident, got himself into bother? He’s not been arrested, has he?”
“No, not arrested.” Rachel told her gently. She couldn’t say anything further until a family member officially confirmed that the body was Oliver Frodsham’s.
The girl sat down. “He is in bother. I can see it in your faces.”
“We can’t say too much until we’ve spoken to his family.”
“They live in Heaton Norris. It’s not far. Just carry on up the A6, through Stockport and beyond.”
“We know where it is,” Elwyn said.
“Do you know his address?” Rachel asked.
Hayley shook her head. “It never came up.”
Rachel smiled, trying to look reassuring. “Ollie’s friends. Are they students like you?”
“Ollie knew a lot of people, but yeah, they’re mostly students.”
“Would you write down as many names as you can remember, please? We’ll need to speak to them.”
Hayley took the notebook and pen Rachel offered her and scribbled away for several minutes before handing it back.
“Thanks. You’ve been a great help. We’ll be in touch.” Rachel said, getting to her feet with some relief. “Here is my card in case anything occurs to you that you think we should know.”
They went back to the cars. “She turned out to be quite helpful in the end,” Elwyn said.
But Rachel was staring at the list of names. “My Megan is on here. She must have known him.”
Chapter Twelve
“If Oliver’s friends prove to be important witnesses, you can’t interview Megan,” Elwyn said.
“I know that, but first things first. We’ve still got to confirm the lad’s identity and tell his parents.”
“Has Megan mentioned him? Said anything about him being missing or about the murder?”
“No, Elwyn. At least, I don’t think so. But then I’ve not seen much of the kids. I’ve been too busy.”
This was an important lead, but Rachel’s head was too full of other stuff for her to think straight. She had a bad feeling. Hayley said she thought Frodsham was working for some villain. If that was Jed McAteer, she was stuffed. It was no secret that he was one of Manchester’s most infamous crime barons, but what no one knew was that he’d once been the love of her life. Once. Who was she kidding? Even today she was still susceptible. She had to keep away from him. Their relationship was a secret, and Rachel was prepared to move heaven and earth to keep it that way, her career depended upon it. Was it just coincidence that he’d been texting her these last couple of days? Or did she have a problem?
There was no time to dwell on this now. Rachel rang the office and spoke to Amy. “Get on to the uni and find out the home address for an Oliver Frodsham. It will be in Heaton Norris somewhere. When you’ve got it, text me. We’re on our way.”
“They’re students,” Elwyn was saying, “they see each other around. Megan probably didn’t know him that well.”
“I think she might have done.” Rachel sighed. “This Alice Brough that Hayley was on about. She’s close to Meggy, has been since they first started. Alice lives within walking distance of us, and she sort of latched onto her. They got the same bus into uni, and they became friends.”
“You know her?”
“Not well, but she’s been to ours a few times. She’s eaten with us occasionally. She’s an odd sort, Alice. She wears weird clothes and does her ha
ir in old-fashioned styles. To look at, her and Meggy are poles apart. But they get on, and they are both on the same business course.”
“An individualist, then?”
“Very much so.”
He nudged her. “Your phone’s beeping.”
It was Amy, sending her Oliver’s address. Rachel tapped the postcode into the satnav and then passed it to Elwyn. “Let’s get this over with.”
Elwyn followed Rachel’s car to the address and parked up behind her.
“I hate this part of the job, Rachel,” he said as they surveyed the property. “I don’t have kids of my own, but it’s still the hardest thing in the world to tell parents their child has been murdered.”
“I wonder what they’re like, his family? They probably think he’s safe at uni, doing his thing, getting the grades. When I say goodbye to Meggy in the mornings, I don’t for one minute imagine she’s sloping off somewhere else. But it seems that young Oliver was.”
“His parents will have to ID the body.” Elwyn grimaced.
“Don’t worry, they won’t see what was done to him,” Rachel said. “I hope they kept in touch. We need to know a lot more about that young man’s life. This story he was after sounds interesting, a motive for his murder perhaps. Who knows what he’d stumbled on?”
Her mobile beeped, making her jump. Her nerves were getting the better of her. This had better not be Jed again.
“Problem?” Elwyn asked. “Is it Mia?”
“No.” Relieved, she said, “My running club is putting together a contingent for the Manchester marathon. They want to know if I’m in.”
“Don’t know how you can. Where do you get the energy?”
“I have a demanding job, mad kids, one of whom has a condition, and an ex who won’t let go. Believe it not, I don’t always sleep nights. Late at night, when everyone’s finally asleep, going for a run clears my head.”
“I find a couple of whiskies does it for me.” Elwyn smiled.
The house was a modern detached one in a new development. He whistled. “Money.”
“Let’s get on with it.” As they walked up the drive, Rachel saw a woman watching them from the front window. “This bit always makes me nervous. You never know how they’re going to take it.” She rang the doorbell, steeling herself.
A middle-aged woman answered the door.
“Mrs Frodsham?” Rachel said.
“Yes. It’s Ollie, isn’t it?”
Rachel could see at once that this woman had spent sleepless nights worrying about her son. She probably knew a little about his life, but not the bits that mattered.
“I’ve been ringing him constantly and getting no reply. That isn’t like him. We speak, or he texts me, several times a week. Not about much, mostly about his coursework. To be honest, I’ve picked up the phone to ring the police several times, but I haven’t been able to go through with it.”
“Can we come in?” Elwyn asked.
“What’s he done? Is he hurt?”
“We’d like to speak to you, ask you some questions, if we may,” Rachel said gently. “Is there anyone with you?”
“My sister. We were about to go out. Come inside.”
A second woman was standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Sandra,” the woman said, “the police are here. It’s about Ollie.”
As they walked the length of the hallway, Rachel glanced at the numerous family photos on the walls. One captured her attention straight away, and she paused. It showed a young man whose blue eyes seemed to follow her. A blond lad with a pretty face and a mole high on his cheekbone. There was no doubting it now. Ollie was their victim.
Chapter Thirteen
Rachel stood at the front of the main office, ready to address the team. The room was full — her own people along with several uniformed officers who would help with the legwork. She’d had a difficult lunchtime. Another brush with the dead.
“Earlier today, I accompanied Mrs Frodsham, our victim’s mother, to the morgue.” Her voice faltered. She cleared her throat. This wasn’t like her. Rachel had to learn to do this job without becoming prey to her emotions every time she dealt with something difficult. But the reality was heart-wrenching. Rachel had had to stand by and watch a woman, not much older than her, being confronted with her dead son. She watched her break down at the loss of the most precious person in her life. Throughout Sheila Frodsham’s ordeal, Rachel had thought of her own daughters, and how she’d feel if it were one of them lying there in the morgue.
“She has officially identified the body as her son,” Rachel said. “Oliver was twenty. He was studying journalism and media at Manchester Met. He contacted his mother several times a week, but he chose not to live at home. There is adequate public transport into the city from Heaton Norris. His mum didn’t question this, putting it down to him wanting his privacy.”
“What about his dad?” Jonny asked. “Where was he?”
“Oliver’s parents are divorced. His father pays for the house and keeps the pair of them. He has a job in IT and travels extensively for work. He rarely sees either of them.”
“Did Oliver have a permanent address?” Elwyn asked.
“He gave his mum the address of a friend at the student house in Fallowfield we visited. When Oliver first started his course, he gave his mum a fake address. We have no idea where he actually stayed or why he did that. Once he got to know other people at uni, he seems to have spent his life sofa surfing.”
“Seems an odd thing to do when he’d a perfectly good home a few miles away,” Jonny said.
“Does his mum know what might have got him killed?” Amy asked.
“We didn’t go there,” Rachel said. “It’s too soon. She was too upset. We’ll speak to his uni friends first, see what they have to say. One of them, Hayley Burton, told us he was hired by some villain to watch a piece of land, although she’d no idea why. That’s an important line that needs following up. I’m hoping that one of his fellow students will give us a clue.”
“It’s possible he trod on someone’s toes. I’m thinking of the gay angle. Perhaps he simply picked up a wrong ’un and paid the price,” Jonny suggested.
“We certainly need to know a lot more about his personal life. Who he dated, and who his friends were outside college. But we’ll start with what we’ve got and wait for forensics.” Rachel looked up. Stuart Harding had entered unnoticed and was standing at the back of the room. “We have an ID, sir,” she said. “It might be an idea to hold back on the appeal.”
“Frodsham?” He said thoughtfully spotting the name on the incident board. “I know a Graham Frodsham. Used to play golf with him.”
“Probably coincidence, sir.” Rachel smiled, hoping that’s all it was. She turned her attention back to the team.
“Specific points of action. Amy, get onto the university. Arrange for us to meet with Oliver’s friends, and the people on his course. Preferably today. You and I, Elwyn, will go see what we can find out. Jonny, take a walk down Canal Street and speak to the people who work in the bars. Take a photo with you, see what they know about Oliver.”
“You’re not sending our pretty boy down there, surely, ma’am? They’ll have him for dinner.” Amy sniggered.
Rachel frowned at her. “Leave it out, DC Metcalfe. This is a serious business.”
“Will you tell his friends what’s happened?” Jonny asked, and glared at Amy, his face red.
“Just the basics, no gory details. Their friend has been murdered, that’ll do for now.”
“Ma’am, the lad’s phone records are in,” Elwyn said. “It was a cheap pay-as-you-go smartphone, but he’d taken several photos.” The DC had them up on his computer screen. “The quality isn’t bad. They’re mostly of the small industrial estate the other side of the canal. And of Greyson’s in particular.”
“Why Greyson’s?” Rachel circled the name on the board. “Coupled with finding the nuts and bolts, that firm has suddenly become a great deal more intere
sting. Interviewing the staff there is now a priority.”
“DCI King,” Harding called out. “Keep me informed. Any significant developments, I want to know at once.”
Harding left. Rachel took a deep breath. She knew what he wanted, a quick result. But a case like this had to take as long as it needed. Meticulous investigations and forensics would get them there in the end.
“Is there anything from the lab yet?” she asked Jonny.
“They’re still doing tests, but they’ve confirmed that he was a drug user. They found traces of cocaine in his blood.”
“We need to find out who his supplier was, and if he owed money for dope. Cross the wrong people, and that’s another way of ending up dead in the cut.”
“His student friends might know. He’s turning out to be quite a boy, our Ollie.” Jonny smiled.
“He was young, living away from home for the first time. He upset someone, that’s for sure, but don’t be too quick to judge him.”
“Sorry, ma’am, just saying.”
“We have several strands to look at. First, we speak to his fellow students at college. After that, Elwyn and I will investigate the Greyson’s connection. Amy, once you’ve arranged for us to see Oliver’s friends, find out who he made those calls to.”
Chapter Fourteen
The entrance to the university, on Oxford Road, was crowded with students. Rachel and Elwyn had to elbow their way into the building. It brought back Rachel’s student days. She and Jed had both studied at UCLAN, and they spent every spare second together. She closed her eyes for a second. Why did her mind do this to her? Why did she have to keep thinking about Jed?
“Oliver’s course tutor has organised a room for us,” Elwyn told Rachel. “It’s on the fifth floor. Walk, or take the lift?”
Rachel smiled. “You know I don’t do lifts.”
Rachel’s phobia about lifts dated back to the early days of her marriage to Alan. The pair had gone to a Victorian hotel on the east Yorkshire coast for their honeymoon. The place had a lift that was practically a museum piece. Ramshackle and shaky, it had a grill which you had to push aside before you opened the doors. The lift was so small there was only room for one inside, and that terrified her. As Rachel told Alan, it was nothing more than a vertical coffin. Then what she’d been dreading happened, she became trapped between floors, alone and in the dark. It took hours for the engineers to release her. A terrifying experience which she never wanted to repeat. Ever since then, she’d mistrusted lifts, and took the stairs whenever she could.
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