Close Your Eyes

by Rachel Abbott

  My eyes flood with tears. I take deep breaths. I just need to get this over with.

  ‘Do you think Mr Forakis will harm your son?’ the chief inspector asks, and I hear the concern in his voice.

  ‘Define “harm”,’ I say with a bitter laugh. ‘Will he physically hurt or abuse him? No. I doubt it. Will he damage his mind, his soul, his spirit? Oh yes. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. That’s why I need to get out of here. I’ll answer any questions you want to ask me. Anything to speed this up.’

  I see genuine sympathy in the eyes of both men as they wait for me to continue. I try to calm myself and take a sip of water.

  ‘You asked why I remove all traces of myself. It sounds like paranoia, but Aram’s followers come from all sorts of professions, and they’re often intelligent, successful individuals, but they’re also lost souls dominated by him. I’m sure he’s spread the word far and wide via his YouTube channel. If any one of his devotees discovered where I was, they would tell him immediately. They would do it because Aram asked them to.’

  ‘I can understand why you felt you had to hide,’ the chief inspector says, ‘but the question is, what do you know that is potentially so damaging that someone set you up as a murderer? There must be some reason why they chose you.’

  I think about the gossip in the office, and there’s nothing of consequence. I think of everything I know about the company, about Niall and Genevieve, and maybe there is something.

  ‘I can’t tie it all together. I know bits and pieces, but nothing that forms a coherent pattern.’

  He smiles at me. ‘That’s our job. You give us the pieces, and we’ll try to match them up.’

  ‘Okay.’ I try to concentrate, to put things in a logical order, but the ideas come to me in flashes, images, like a collage that makes no sense. ‘Niall used to leave the office via the back stairs a couple of times a week. I don’t know where he was going, and I never asked. No one was allowed to know – not even Spencer. If anyone came looking for him, I was to say he was on a conference call.’

  I don’t add that I think he was having an affair because I don’t know for certain.

  ‘Genevieve was interested in the money – how much the company was worth and the value of Niall’s shares. I got the distinct impression she was thinking about a potential divorce settlement.’

  ‘Do you know the answers to her questions?’ DS Cumba asks.

  ‘It’s complicated. Niall has been bleeding money from the company for a while, but the new investors were bound to examine the books as part of their due diligence, so he needed to cover the shortfall. I’m certain Spencer Johansson put in money to repay what Niall had taken. None of it would be documented, because then it could be exposed and used against Niall and XO-Tech. I wasn’t supposed to know, but they’re not particularly good at hiding their tracks. So Niall’s net worth appears much higher on paper than it is in reality.’

  I can see a light in the chief inspector’s eyes. He likes the sound of this.

  ‘Why would Spencer Johansson hand over a chunk of his money without anything in writing?’ the younger detective asks.

  That almost makes me laugh. People have been handing over money to Aram Forakis for years on the promise of something as nebulous as eternal happiness. Spencer only had to believe in the boasts of his own marketing materials, and to him Niall is a hero, a demigod, the man who is ultimately going to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams.

  ‘Niall’s great at promises,’ I tell them. ‘People believe him, and believe in him. Spencer trusted him to transfer some shares. Not that it’s happened. I heard them talking about it, and Niall always had an excuse.’

  ‘And if Genevieve had taken Niall for fifty per cent of the assets shown in the books, where would that have left things?’ He’s looking at me intently, but I have a feeling he already knows the answer.

  ‘Niall would have had to sell his remaining shareholding, as a minimum. He’d have ended up with nothing.’

  72

  Tom could feel the buzz he always got when he knew the answers were so close he could almost touch them. If Niall didn’t have a cast-iron alibi, Tom would right now be getting someone to drag him down to the police station. But unfortunately, he did.

  He strode down the corridor, Becky at his side. She was saying nothing, he was certain her mind would be whirring just as his was.

  He pushed open the door to the office and found a number on his phone. His call was answered after two rings.

  ‘Keith, I’ve got several things I need you to follow up on. I want you to go in person to see Elise Chapman and look her in the eye as she gives you an answer. Ask her why she took Martha’s phone to be updated, who asked her, and who did she give the phone to.’

  ‘Got that,’ Keith said.

  ‘Then I want you to get someone to go through the company’s finances carefully. Check exactly where a recent cash injection came from – not the millions from the venture capital. We think some money came from Spencer Johansson, so look at his finances too.’

  ‘Okay,’ Keith murmured, and Tom knew he would be getting all this down in his meticulous handwriting.

  ‘Finally, do some more digging on Strachan. He regularly left the office in the afternoon, but he used the back stairs and no one knew he’d gone out. If he was having an affair, we need to know who with.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No. I think that’s plenty to be going on with. My gut is telling me it’s Niall Strachan, and I wish to God we could break his bloody alibi. But unless inspiration strikes, it’s not looking likely.’

  Tom ended the call and looked at Becky. ‘Thoughts?’

  She didn’t have time to reply before they were interrupted by Tom’s phone.

  ‘Jumbo! What news?’

  ‘All good, Tom. All good. We’ve found a branch we believe was used to attack our victim. You might remember that opposite the bottom of the steps from the murder scene to the Loopline there’s another flight. They lead through a rickety gate to a field. We’d already searched the path, but I extended the search beyond that, and my guy spotted it straight away. It wasn’t just a broken branch. It had been cut, and even with the naked eye we can see some hairs stuck to it. My betting is that they belong to Genevieve Strachan. We may find prints, but only if our killer is really stupid, which I suspect he or she isn’t.’

  ‘Let’s hope they’ve made another mistake, because we think they’ve made one with the phone.’ Tom quickly explained what they had discovered.

  ‘Excellent! I love it when a carefully constructed plan fails through a tiny mistake. And I haven’t finished with the good news. At the far end of that field there’s a rough piece of land that we thought was a likely parking spot.’

  ‘I know where you mean.’

  ‘Here’s the thing. It rained on Monday night, but it stopped at about ten p.m. There are tyre tracks in the dried mud. Looks like an SUV, but we’re having them checked to be sure.’

  A thought struck Tom. ‘If they went that way, why did we find the knife under the culvert? That’s in the opposite direction.’

  Jumbo chuckled. ‘I’m wondering if the plan was to leave the knife where we would find it, especially if they were setting someone up. It’s always worried me because it could have been hurled into the undergrowth anywhere, but instead it was just inside the culvert – easy to spot. I’m guessing our killer jogged down, dropped the knife where we would find it, then ran back, hoping we’d check parking spots further on along the Loopline beyond the culvert.’

  ‘Smart, but not smart enough. Thanks, Jumbo.’ Tom ended the call.

  Their killer might not be that clever, but Tom had to admit they still didn’t know who it was.

  Friday

  73

  By the time they had finished interviewing Martha Porter the previous evening, Tom and Becky had both admitted to feeling weary. They’d been working long hours, and despite wanting to get home, they’d decided the sensible thing to d
o was to take advantage of the hotel that had been booked. If they had driven back it would have been far too late for Tom to see Lucy, and when he spoke to Louisa she’d told him to make the most of an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

  They were on the road shortly after 7 a.m., and Becky had been driving for a little over half an hour before Tom voiced his thoughts.

  ‘Enough shilly-shallying with Niall Strachan. If we believe Martha, and he’s the one that made the pass at her – and I know you do, Becky – then he lied to us. What else has he lied about, and why the hell was he sneaking out of the office a couple of times a week?’

  They were back on the A1(M) heading towards the M62 and home. The sooner they could tell Rob to let Martha Porter go, the happier he would be. He no longer trusted the evidence against her, but she was still their chief suspect – and a flight risk, as well they knew.

  ‘You’re getting grumpy, Tom,’ Becky said. ‘You always do at this point in an investigation.’

  He turned to look at her, and she quickly glanced his way and laughed.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised! You genuinely believe you should know from day one exactly what happened, and who did what. And when you follow a lead that turns out – despite evidence to the contrary – to be wrong, you blame yourself. And then you get grumpy.’

  Tom turned back and stared out of the window. She was probably right. He’d said all along that he didn’t want to become blind to other possibilities just because Martha seemed so obvious a suspect, and here he was, trailing around the east of England when he should have been back in the office.

  ‘I’m going to call Strachan,’ he said. ‘See what he’s got to say for himself.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Absolutely. And if he stalls, I’ll say we’re sending someone to bring him in for questioning.’

  He pulled out his mobile, put it on speaker and called the number he’d stored.

  ‘Mr Strachan. DCI Douglas here. I need to ask you a question, and I would be grateful if you would give me a straight answer. I don’t want to have to ask you to come in for an interview unless it’s necessary.’

  ‘Of course. Ask whatever you like.’

  There’s a confident man, Tom thought. Something about Niall Strachan rankled, or maybe it was just the way he was feeling at that moment. The man seemed too smooth – as smooth as Brylcreem, as his dad used to say. He wouldn’t repeat that to Becky. She’d have no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘Were you having an affair?’

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Becky look at him. He knew he was being blunt, but there was no point beating around the bush.

  Niall Strachan was quiet, and Tom waited.

  ‘Not exactly. I was seeing someone occasionally, but I wouldn’t call it an affair.’

  Tom struggled to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘I guess that’s just semantics, Mr Strachan.’

  Strachan sighed. ‘Come on, Mr Douglas. You know how it is.’ Tom turned towards Becky, who had heard every word, and raised his eyebrows. She flashed him a cheeky grin. ‘There was someone, but it wasn’t serious.’

  ‘To you, maybe not. But what about the woman – sorry, that’s an inappropriate assumption – the person you were seeing.’

  ‘She… is no more interested in a relationship than I am. If you’re thinking she had something to do with Genevieve, then you’re wrong.’

  ‘Did your wife know about her?’

  ‘No. I’m not sure it would have mattered to her, though. She wasn’t the jealous sort.’

  Tom didn’t comment. He found it strange not to care if one’s partner was having sex with someone else, but each to their own.

  ‘Does she work at XO-Tech?’ He was tempted to ask if her name was, by any chance, Elise Chapman. But he resisted.

  ‘Of course not. I’m not that stupid.’

  There was no suitable response to that, much as Tom wanted to make one.

  ‘We need her details, please. Maybe you could text me her name and phone number. And Mr Strachan? You should have told us this at the start.’

  With that, Tom hung up and slouched back in his seat.

  ‘You only said that because you don’t like him,’ Becky said.

  ‘Possibly, but it’s true. He should have told us. Anyway, he’s an insolent bugger, suggesting that because I’m a man I would understand his cheating ways. And it was a bit rich saying he wasn’t stupid enough to have an affair with someone in the office when he’d tried it on with Martha.’ Tom glanced at Becky, who was clearly amused by his antagonism towards Niall Strachan. ‘Anyway, irritation aside, let’s get back to motive. We know – or at least we believe – that Genevieve was planning to leave Niall and take half his assets, and adultery would have provided handy grounds for claiming irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.’

  ‘You think this is all to do with money, don’t you?’

  ‘I think it’s the most likely reason, yes. But that still points to Niall, and we know it couldn’t have been him.’

  ‘Contract killer?’ Becky said.

  ‘He’d certainly know how to get on to the dark web to recruit one.’

  It was a startling fact that contract killings were becoming more common, and not only by hitmen who charged six-figure sums. If you knew what you were doing you could head to the right pub, in the right part of town, and find someone down on their luck who would do just about anything for the price of a good meal.

  Tom’s phone interrupted them, and once again he put it on speaker.

  ‘Yes, Keith. What have you got?’

  ‘How long until you’re back, sir?’

  Tom looked at Becky. ‘About an hour and a half,’ she shouted.

  ‘Excellent, because I think we may have got him.’

  Tom shuffled upright in his seat. ‘What?’

  ‘I followed up on everything on your list. Elise Chapman says Spencer Johansson asked her to get Martha’s phone. We also checked the finances. I’m assuming you already know part of this, which is why you asked us to look, but money was put into the company to replace withdrawals by Mr Strachan. The money appears to have come directly from Strachan himself, as far as the company accounts go. But I don’t think it’s that simple.’

  Keith paused, and Tom shook his head. Why did he have to drag everything out?

  ‘Tell me, Keith. What do you think it is?’

  ‘We looked into Mr Johansson’s finances. He owns an apartment in Ancoats, in one of those converted mills, you know? He paid cash – money that he made in the last company he worked for. He recently remortgaged it and raised half a million, which it appears he gave to Strachan to put into XO-Tech – to cover the shortfall.’

  ‘Christ, that’s a risky thing to do. The powers of persuasion and the promise of a better life!’

  ‘He didn’t put quite all of his money into XO-Tech, though. He used over forty thousand of it to buy a top-of-the-range Jeep Wrangler. An SUV.’

  Tom knew what a Jeep Wrangler was, and it certainly suited the image that Johansson liked to portray. He seriously hoped this meant what he thought it did. All they needed was for Jumbo to compare tyre tracks.

  Tom tried to curb his growing excitement. ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’

  Keith was smiling; Tom could hear it in his voice. ‘Yes, sir. If you remember, Mr Johansson made a call to Mr Strachan after midnight. It appears Johansson switched his phone off at eleven p.m., but at twelve eighteen a.m. the signal was re-established. He was travelling at that time, and he spoke to Mr Strachan at twelve twenty. He was driving along Regent Road towards his home in Ancoats.’

  Tom thought of the geography in his head. The best route from Worsley to Ancoats included Regent Road – the end of the M602. The timing worked too. Time to run partway along the Loopline, dispose of the knife and run back to where his car was parked.

  ‘You are a superstar, DI Sims!’ There was silence from the other end of the phone. Keith wasn’t a man who knew
how to accept praise. ‘Go get him, Keith. Seize his car, check the tyres, blood in the car, you know the drill. Bring him in, and he can wait for us. Let him stew a while. And well done.’ He hung up and turned to Becky. ‘I think I might kiss Keith when we get back.’

  ‘Please make sure I’m there when you do. Anyway, great as all of this is, why kill Genevieve? Why set up Martha?’

  ‘I can guess, but let’s hear what he has to say.’

  74

  MARTHA

  Last night, they brought me to this cell. I stood in the doorway for too long, but the officer was kind. I don’t know why he would be. They must be used to locking people up, but he seemed to realise that the thought of being shut in terrified me. Despite everything that happened during my life at Lakeside – the ritual humiliation, the shunning – I was never locked in. I was ignored, stared at with disdain, saw faces turn away at the sight of me, but never shut behind a locked door.

  I didn’t think I would suffer from claustrophobia, but since the moment the bolt slid into place, I have shivered despite the humid heat, which barely eased during the night. Every time I stand up, I have to sit down quickly as dizziness overtakes me, and I feel as if the previous inhabitants of the cell are laughing at me for being so pathetic.

  I will be interviewed again this morning, apparently. I’m still their main suspect – their only suspect at the moment as far as I know – and they have twenty-four hours to charge me, ask for an extension or let me go. It’s all been explained to me.

  I lay awake all night, missing Alfie with every bone in my body. I have never been apart from him overnight before, and he’s going to wonder why I have deserted him. Is he still safe with Dad?