Retriever of Souls

by Lorraine Mace

  The phone rang on the secretary’s desk.

  “Katy, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you if I find out anything. Okay? Love you,” he said and closed his mobile.

  The secretary picked up her phone and murmured a few words Paolo couldn’t catch. She stood up and smiled at them.

  “Mr Roberts will see you now,” she announced and went across to the only other door in the room apart from the one they’d entered by. She opened the door and announced Paolo and Dave, holding it open until they’d gone inside and then she closed it quietly behind them.

  Paolo wondered what had happened to Matthew’s client, but then saw his office had another door. Presumably that one also led to the corridor and enabled Roberts to show clients out without them having to pass whoever might be in the waiting room.

  “Please, sit down. I hope Jennifer looked after you.”

  “Yes, she did, thank you.”

  “She’s amazing. Did you know she was my dad’s secretary? Oh, no, of course, you wouldn’t have any reason to know that. I inherited her with the practice and thank God I did. I dread to think how I’ll ever replace her when she finally decides to retire. But you didn’t come here to discuss my secretary. Chief Constable Willows says it’s to do with my DNA sample throwing up an anomaly. Something to do with a possible family connection?”

  He raised his voice on the final sentence and Paolo realised the moment he’d been dreading had arrived.

  “Hmm, yes,” he said. “But it’s not just any family connection. Your DNA matches partially with our killer’s. It’s almost certain that the DNA we recovered from a series of murdered prostitutes belongs to a sibling of yours.”

  “But I don’t have any,” Matthew said. “There must be some mistake in the test procedure.”

  Paolo leaned forward. “That’s what we thought, but the test results have been checked. Is it possible that either of your parents might have...?”

  He left the unspoken words dangling in midair. Maybe if Matthew himself joined the dots he might not be so ready to explode. Paolo watched his face, waiting for him to start chucking threats of lawsuits around, but instead, incredibly, Matthew laughed. A genuine laugh of pure enjoyment.

  “Which one did you have in mind, Paolo? You met both my parents. Can you really see either of them providing me with a sibling and keeping quiet about it?”

  Paolo was stunned. Whatever reaction he’d been fearing, this wasn’t it.

  Matthew still looked amused. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you, or at my parents, I’m not sure why I found it funny. I suppose it must be a reaction to shock. You see, you’ve just told me something I didn’t know, which is that I have a sibling. Now I’ll tell you something that you didn’t know – my parents are not my biological parents. I was adopted as a child. So, whoever this mysterious sibling might be, he isn’t a product of my parents’ mucky past.”

  “God, Matthew, I had no idea. In fact, I’ve always thought you looked like your father, which just goes to show that we see what we think should be there.”

  Matthew smiled. “Knowing how efficient my mother was, she most probably picked me because I had the right colouring and would fit the family.”

  Dave had been sitting silently, but now took out his notebook. “Do you know anything about your natural mother, Mr Roberts? We need to trace the person whose DNA has been left on the bodies and the only lead we have is through you.”

  Matthew shook his head. “I’ve known I was adopted since I was about ten or eleven, but funnily enough have never wanted to find out who my mother was or why she gave me up. I suppose it’s because I had a very fortunate upbringing. I didn’t need to find out where I came from because I’ve always been happy with who I am.”

  Paolo stood up. “We’re going to have to look into your adoption records to find out if your birth mother had other children. If she didn’t, then we’ll have to try to track down your biological father. You do understand that I have no choice about this, don’t you? It isn’t part of any plan to cause you problems in any way whatsoever.”

  Matthew sighed. “Yes, I realise that.”

  “I suppose the next question is, do you want to know what we find out? I mean, if we discover anything about your birth family, would you like the information?”

  “I don’t know, Paolo, and that’s the truth. You’re saying a sibling I didn’t even know I had might turn out to be a serial killer. That’s not easy to take. Give me a few days to process what you’ve told me and I’ll let you know if I want to hear all the grisly details of how he ended up as he did.”

  Paolo nodded. “One last thing before we go. Do you know where the adoption took place? Do you have any paperwork, any records that might help us?”

  Matthew smiled and picked up the phone. “Jennifer, would you come in here, please?”

  Within moments the door opened and Matthew’s secretary came in. “Jennifer, please find whatever paperwork is available to do with my adoption and make copies for these gentlemen.”

  “Certainly, Matthew, I’ll get on to it at once. Your next appointment is waiting for you.”

  As she left the room, Matthew stood up. “If you wouldn’t mind going out through that door, I’d appreciate it. It gives my clients a degree of privacy if they don’t have to pass each other coming in and out. Jennifer will send the copies of whatever she has on record over to you later today.”

  Matthew held out his hand. Paolo shook it, feeling as if he’d trespassed on private ground, which in a way he had. It couldn’t have been easy for someone like Matthew to give access to his personal life and allow others to claw through it.

  “We’ll be as discreet as we can, Matthew, but unfortunately this relationship is bound to come out at some stage. You might want to think about how you’ll deal with the press when the time comes.”

  Matthew nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said and gave a wry smile. “I imagine it’s going to be very different being questioned about this on television compared to the normal stuff I do. That’s always supposing anyone would be interested in my connection to the case.”

  Paolo didn’t say anything, but knew deep inside that the press would be all over it as soon as they got wind of Matthew’s family involvement. The flip side of being a media darling came when something happened that you didn’t want splashed on the front page and you discovered that you were big news for all the wrong reasons.

  CHAPTER 18

  Paolo looked back over the last few days, reflecting how weird things had been since discovering Matthew’s adopted past. Matthew’s secretary had been as efficient as he’d promised she would be and copies of the files had arrived within a couple of hours of Paolo and Dave leaving Matthew’s office. Dave had been set the task of following up on the information contained in the photocopied pages. He’d been hard at work chasing every lead and had phoned nearly an hour ago to say that he was on his way in.

  Paolo looked at his watch for the tenth time and seethed with frustration. Surely to God Dave should have been here by now? He was about dial Dave’s number to chase him up when the door opened and he came in clutching a file. From the grin on his face, it looked as though he’d won the lottery.

  “Morning, sir. Sorry I kept you waiting but I got waylaid on the way here. I received a call with a bit more information to add to the rest,” he said holding the file aloft like a trophy.

  “Judging by the Cheshire cat grin I think you must have some good news for me. What have you found out? Please tell me that Matthew Roberts has a brother who looks just like him, you’ve tracked him down and he’s in the cells waiting to be put away for a long stretch.”

  Dave sat down and grinned across at Paolo. “Not quite as good as that, sir, but you’re going to like what I’ve found out so far. That’s for sure.”

  “Great. I like good news on a Wednesday. It makes the week go faster.” He waited, drumming his fingers on the desk while Dave sat silently reading from the file. “Come on, Dave, don’t
keep me in suspense. What have you got for me?”

  Dave looked up from the file. “Hang on, sir. I want to make sure I give you the pieces in the right order. It will make more sense if I tell it to you chronologically.” He read for a few seconds longer and then closed the file. “Right, here goes. Let’s start with Matthew Roberts. He was adopted just before he was three years old. I have no idea whether or not the Roberts’ lived up in the Liverpool area at the time, but I couldn’t find any records of them doing so. It’s possible there might have been something suspect about the adoption, because the records are, to put it bluntly, a bit strange. Not all the information about the mother and her background had been filled in, but the adoption took place in... you’re going to love this, sir... Liverpool.”

  Paolo smiled. “And so we come back to the city where we believe the murders started.”

  “Wait, sir, it gets better. The natural mother was...” Paolo sat up straighter in his chair. He knew what was coming. It had to be... “Catherine Andrews, the Liverpool victim.”

  Dave looked deflated and Paolo regretted saying the name out loud.

  “Sorry, Dave. It just seemed to fit. It brings us full circle in a way. Tell me the rest. I promise to keep quiet and listen. Unless, of course, you tell me something truly astounding.”

  “Okay, I’ll hold you to that. You’re right in your guess about the birth mother, of course. The woman was a prostitute called Catherine Andrews, but she wasn’t on the game when her boys were born. At least, there’s no record of it. She was married to a local thug who used to knock her around according to the court records.”

  “Court records?” Paolo asked. “For what?”

  “For the case against her when she was on trial for murder. She stabbed her husband in a drunken rage, although to be fair, her defence was that she killed him to protect herself from yet another beating. The jury wasn’t convinced, but that might have been because she didn’t stop even after the husband was dead. There were twenty-one stab wounds on the body; most of them inflicted long after the husband was in no fit state to fight back. Anyway, they found her guilty and she was sent to prison. She ended up serving fifteen years. She had no family that anyone could discover so her children were taken into care. There was less than a year between them. The youngest, Sean, was just a baby at the time and Matthew wasn’t even two.”

  Paolo sighed. “Poor kids, but at least we know that Matthew landed in a good home within a year. What happened to Sean?”

  “He went into various foster homes until he was ten, but no formal adoption. It seems that he was a disruptive kid as he grew up. He was passed from pillar to post, no one keeping him for more than a few months at a time. He was blamed for burning down the last foster home he was in, but there was never any proof he was guilty. Although he did boast about it afterwards, but that might just have been trying to gain extra street cred with the gang he ran around with.”

  Paolo nodded. “Sounds like the type of thing a boy in that position would do.”

  “Burn a house down, sir, or claim he’d done it even if he hadn’t?”

  “Either, both, it doesn’t really matter which. What does matter is that he was clearly a troubled youth. What happened to him after the arson, if it was arson?”

  Dave looked back at the file. “No one was prepared to take him in after that. He spent the next six years in the Catholic orphanage and then-”

  “Catholic orphanage?”

  “Yes, sir. Apparently the mother was Catholic and begged the social services to respect her religion when they placed her boys. Why do you ask?”

  “I was surprised, that’s all. Carry on with your tale.”

  “Okay, he left the orphanage at sixteen and completely dropped off the radar of social services and anyone else who might have taken an interest in him. Liverpool has been able to pick up his scent again by checking the unemployment records. He’s been out of work for years, signing on as regular as clockwork until ten months ago when he disappeared and hasn’t drawn any money since. He never returned to the flat he shared with his girlfriend, but as they’d had a flaming row the night before she simply assumed he’d left her for good. Apparently they’d broken up quite a few times before and she was glad to see the back of him. She bundled all his stuff into a black bag and shoved it under the stairs.”

  Paolo grinned. “That sounds encouraging. Let’s hope there’s lots of lovely DNA on a comb or toothbrush to match with our killer’s.”

  “The bag was collected yesterday, sir. If there’s anything to test, it will be treated as urgent. Liverpool have promised us the results as soon as they get them.” “So, he disappeared around the time his natural mother was killed. Do you know if there was any contact between them?”

  Dave shook his head. “Liverpool weren’t able to establish whether or not Sean had tracked her down, but the ex-girlfriend says that he was trying to find her.” Dave grinned. “You’ll love this next bit. She told the inspector up there that Sean had decided to trace his family after he saw Matthew Roberts on television. She says he was astounded by how alike they were and was convinced they must be related. Apparently he went mad over the idea. Wanted to know everything about his past.”

  The phone rang and Paolo looked at the caller display. Holding up his hand to ask Dave to wait a moment before continuing, he flipped the phone open.

  “Barbara, hi, I’m in the middle of something really important. Can I call you back in about half an hour or so?”

  “Sure thing, Paolo, there’s no urgency. Well, there is, but not for me.”

  “Sounds intriguing. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  He shut the phone and nodded for Dave to go on.

  “The girlfriend says that up to that point he’d never been interested in knowing anything about his background, but once he’d seen Matthew he started going on about what a great life the two of them could have, that’s Sean and her, not Sean and Matthew, if he was really related to someone rich and famous. She doesn’t know exactly what he meant by that because he went AWOL soon after. Maybe he was planning to blackmail Matthew, you know the type of thing, pay me x amount and I won’t tell the redtops that your mother was a whore and your brother an out of work loser.”

  “Good theory, Dave, but we don’t know if he found out who his mother was. If he hadn’t, then he might not have known for sure that Matthew was his brother. All he’d have been certain of was that he looked like Matthew.”

  “Yes, sir, but the mother was killed within a couple of weeks of Sean spotting Matthew on the television. It certainly looks like he traced her.”

  Paolo nodded. “Okay, fair enough, but then why kill her? What would have made him strangle her when they’d only just met again?”

  Dave shrugged. “Maybe he was pissed off that Matthew had lived the life of luxury and been adopted while he’d been abused by the system. Maybe he blamed his mother for his shitty life. Who knows what’s going on in his mind? If he’s our man, he certainly seems to have it in for prostitutes, so that’s a clue right there to the way he’s thinking.”

  Paolo sat forward and leaned on the desk. “How come Liverpool didn’t connect Sean to Catherine when she was killed?”

  “There wouldn’t have been any reason for them to know about Sean, would there? I mean, if he’d only just found out who she was, there might not have been a trail to follow leading back to him. To be honest, sir, I’m not sure they investigated that deeply. The inspector I spoke to up there seemed to think that she wasn’t worth too much police time.”

  Paolo sat up in surprise. “Dave, you sound like you disapprove of that attitude. Are you feeling okay?”

  Dave grinned sheepishly. “I’m turning over a new leaf, sir. I’m trying to treat everyone the same. My boss told me he’d kick my arse if I didn’t.”

  Paolo smiled back. “Your boss sounds like a good bloke. You should listen to him more often. Go on, what else is in that file?”

  “Sadly, sir, that’s abou
t it. We know he was tracing his mother and can only assume he found her. We know he believed he was related to Matthew Roberts, but presume he hasn’t made any contact with him. At least, Roberts hasn’t mentioned it and surely he would have done if Sean had been in touch.”

  Paolo tapped his fingers on the desk. “Okay, so why hasn’t he made contact? If he felt there was a relationship what would be a good enough reason to avoid getting in touch with Matthew?”

  “The only thing I can think of is that he’s waiting for the right moment.”

  Paolo nodded. “Yes, it could be that, but I think there might be a more sinister reason. Our killer has made no effort to hide his face when picking up the girls he later kills. He’s operating in the town where Matthew lives and is easily identified. He’s driving a dark car, similar to the one Matthew drives. What if Sean is setting Matthew up? Leading us deliberately to think Matthew is involved. What better revenge could he have on the sibling who has it all than to destroy his life and leave him with nothing?”

  Dave closed the file and stood up. “I’ll get copies of this to CC and George, sir.”

  “Good work, Dave. Is there a recent photo of Sean available that we can use in a public appeal?”

  Dave nodded. “Yes, sir. The ex-girlfriend is sorting some out for us. At this stage she hasn’t been told what Sean is wanted in connection with. I believe she jumped to the conclusion the police were looking for him to do with some kind of benefits fraud. Apparently Sean moonlighted in a few places while claiming unemployment.”

  “She’s going to get quite a shock when she sees his picture on the news in connection with this case. I’ll tell the chief to go ahead and set up a press conference as soon as we have a good photograph to use.”

  When Dave had gone Paolo picked up the phone and called Barbara.

  “Hi, you wanted to ask me something?”

  “Thanks for calling me back, Paolo. I want to ask you for a favour. It’s not for me as such. Well, it is for me, I suppose. Oh crap. I’m making a right mess of this. Can I explain over lunch?”