by SE Moorhead
‘Are you saying he didn’t do it?’ asked Harry, confused.
‘I’m saying that there’s something clearly not right and we need to explore all avenues. We need to get down to it. Kyra and I are going to visit Caylee’s sister to inform her of Caylee’s death and see if there are any leads.’
‘Do you want me to come?’ asked Alex.
‘No, we’re good.’ Tom didn’t look at her.
Alex gave Kyra a hard stare. ‘But she’s not even police.’ Alex sounded more disappointed than annoyed.
Just as they had been starting to see eye to eye.
Tom ignored her.
‘Right, when I get back, I want a list of Lomax’s associates, visitors, enemies, the works.’
Kyra followed him to the door. She turned around briefly to say goodbye, but everyone was focused on their jobs, except Alex who watched as she left the Hub with the boss.
Chapter Fourteen
SATURDAY 3 FEBRUARY
10.27 a.m.
Chloe Carmichael looked much as Kyra had imagined her sister, Caylee, to have been in life. She was small, with dark hair and a hint of a tattoo visible below the neckline of her top which gave an edge to her prettiness. But now, her face was grotesque with grief.
‘I knew it! Oh my God, I knew it!’ she cried out. She dropped the computer controller she’d been holding when she had answered the door to Tom and Kyra and collapsed on to the sofa. The screen in front was showing an anti-anxiety interactive programme. These were prescribed free by the healthcare profession, dished out with medication. Kyra picked up the controller and placed it on a stack of programmes and read some of the titles – Parenting Skills, Addiction Fight, Teach Yourself Management,
Mindfulness …
‘I knew it!’ Chloe sobbed again. Then, turning to Tom, she wailed, ‘You lot said you’d find her!’
‘We’re so sorry.’ Kyra sat down next to her and tentatively put a hand on Chloe’s back. She felt more frail than she appeared. ‘Would you like us to call someone to come to stay with you?’
‘Oh God, oh God,’ Chloe wept, grabbing at her hair, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
Opposite the sofa on which Kyra and Chloe sat was a small kitchen area, with shiny white cupboards, fashionable some twenty years ago, and an overflowing rubbish bin. The smell of fried food hovered thick in the air. There were toys strewn across the floor making a trail to a basket that was half-full in the corner. Tom hovered, near the open door, through which Kyra could see another screen, switched on – a child’s programme with the sound turned down – a double mattress on the floor, the bedcover in a knot.
Chloe turned to her, mascara streaking her face.
‘I knew something had happened to her. I knew it.’ Her voice broke. ‘Caylee speaks to Riley every night if she’s not here. She didn’t call on Thursday. She always calls before he goes to bed. I know she was busy, but she never misses a phone call. Never.’
At that moment, a little dark-haired boy, dressed in navy overalls and trainers, ran into the room. ‘Biscuit?’ he asked, his hand in front of him making a grabbing sign like a duck’s beak.
Chloe reached out and grabbed him to her roughly, sobbing into his hair. He seemed bemused by her distress and asked for a biscuit again. Kyra was grateful that he was oblivious to the significance of the moment.
Chloe pulled away from him, held him at arm’s length and sniffed loudly. She gave a crooked smile and said, ‘Yes, we’ll get you a biscuit.’ He grinned, satisfied, but then put a chubby forefinger on her cheek, which was wet with tears. His expression turned to one of concern.
‘Aunty Chloe sad?’
‘Yes, Aunty Chloe sad.’
He turned to Kyra and Tom, as if suddenly realising they were in the room and said, ‘Aunty Chloe sad cos Mummy gone.’ He held his hands outstretched like little starfish. He shook his head and his eyes opened wide with surprise as he repeated the word ‘Gone’.
Kyra’s heart broke for him. She remembered Molly, at a similar age, crying for her mother. Unlike Molly, this boy hadn’t seen his mother taken, but one day he would grow up and find out the horrific circumstances of her death. Chloe was sitting staring into space now, her mouth open, her face red and wet, lost in her grief.
‘Come on, let’s get you a biscuit,’ Kyra said, standing up and taking the little boy’s hand, ‘and we’ll get Aunty Chloe a cup of tea.’ He seemed happy to go with her. Chloe nodded gratefully.
‘Are you going to show me where the biscuits are?’ asked Kyra. Riley pulled her over to the battered fridge and pointed up. As he did so, his sleeve drew back and Kyra could see a deep purple mark on his arm, covered with transparent clinical wrap.
Tom turned to Chloe. ‘We need to ask you some questions.’
She glanced anxiously at the little boy.
‘My friend, Sophie, lives next door. She’ll take Riley.’
‘I’ll go and get her,’ Tom said and left the house.
Riley’s eyes lit up as Kyra brought the box of chocolate-coated animal shapes towards him.
‘What’s your favourite animal?’ she asked.
‘Monkey!’ the two little duck-beak hands were going again, his arm hidden under his sleeve.
Kyra peeked into the box, put her fingers in pretending to be scared. ‘Ow!’ she pulled her hand out quickly and Riley’s expression was one of concern. ‘A lion bit me!’ she smiled. ‘I’m not brave enough, you’d better get one!’
Riley giggled as she put the box on the counter and watched carefully as he reached up, standing on his toes, and the chubby arm shot out again.
The mark appeared to be a burn – a severe one.
‘Ooh, that looks sore,’ Kyra said.
Riley blinked at her.
‘Poor you.’
Chloe jumped in.
‘It was an accident. He’s fine,’ she said quickly.
‘When did he do that?’ Kyra asked, curious.
‘The hospital checked him over,’ she snarled.
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t …’
She stood up and moved over to them. ‘What you going to do, call the bloody Child Welfare Department on me?’ She scooped Riley up roughly. He didn’t seem fazed and began eating his biscuit. ‘I’m not losing him as well.’
At that moment a woman burst in. Motherly but fierce-looking with a cloud of unruly curly bleach-blonde hair, she enveloped Chloe and Riley in her arms. Chloe crumpled against her and wailed. ‘Soph! Soph! She’s dead!’
Kyra turned away to let them have some privacy, also trying to shield herself from the painful recall of telling her parents that her sister was dead, a brief flash of her mother collapsing, her father trying to catch her before she hit the floor, the animal howl of grief.
Tom stood by the door. Kyra flicked the kettle on and opened the cupboard to look for cups. In a chipped mug she saw a glass pipe, a spoon and a lighter. Chloe’s or Caylee’s?
Riley’s future seemed even more grim. The Child Welfare Department would be all over this now after Caylee’s toxicology report.
Kyra couldn’t let herself go down any further today; instead she would let this push her on, give her fire in her belly to fight for justice for Riley’s mother. What else could she do?
In the cupboard there was also a small mirror and a tube of lip gloss. As she pulled a cup out, the mirror slipped slightly and she caught sight of her face, but then realised it wasn’t her face at all, but Emma staring back at her. She gasped and the mirror fell flat. When she picked it up with shaking hands, it was her own reflection that peered back. She looked around, hairs on the back of her neck standing.
‘I’m right next door,’ Sophie was saying, Riley in her arms. ‘I’ll look after the little prince here.’ She smiled down at the boy. ‘Any trouble,’ she glared at Tom and Kyra, ‘just shout and I’ll hear you.’
When Sophie and Riley left, Kyra sat back down next to Chloe. ‘Do you think you could manage to answer a few questions?’ she ventured.
‘I’ll try.’ Her face was a mess with tears, and much of the mascara had come off, leaving dark circles beneath her eyes.
Kyra said, ‘You told us Caylee was working at the factory on that particular night.’ She watched Chloe’s face carefully. ‘But the manager says she wasn’t due in until Friday.’
What was that she could see in Chloe’s face? Kyra wasn’t sure – feigned surprise, irritation? Whatever it was, she was going to have to work to get to the truth.
‘She told me she was working until midnight, but Riley came into my bed at 6 a.m. asking where she was.’
‘He’s a lovely little boy,’ Kyra smiled. She could feel Tom observing from the doorway.
Chloe eyed her suspiciously.
‘Have they been staying here for a while?’
Her voice was nasal now, her chest still heaved. ‘She never has much money, too short on the rent so she lost her last place.’
‘There were traces of Chinese Lè in her system, amongst other things in the toxicology report,’ Tom said.
Kyra glanced at him, irritated.
‘How do you know he didn’t put that in her?’ Chloe snarled.
‘You’re saying she was short of money. She could have needed money for drugs,’ Tom said. ‘Might she have turned to prostitution to get that money?’
‘No!’ barked Chloe.
‘We’re not judging. We need the facts so we can catch the man that did this to her. ’ Kyra tried to sound reassuring.
Chloe sniffed, pulled out a baby wipe from a packet sitting on the sofa arm and wiped her face.
‘Her life is …’ Chloe looked as though she was struggling to find the word, ‘… messy at times, but she loves that boy.’
‘When you say messy …?’ Kyra asked gently.
‘No one’s perfect,’ she said defensively.
‘Try to give us as much information as you can,’ Tom said.
Kyra’s eyes flicked to the cupboard and Chloe’s shoulders fell. She stood up and paced the room anxiously before saying, ‘She uses a bit of Chinese Lè. Only occasionally. Never around Riley. She needs money for that.’
‘That might be helpful, thank you. You don’t know her dealer?’
‘I don’t want anything to do with the stuff!’ Chloe snapped, her voice high-pitched.
‘I know it’s hard but we need to find who did this. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Chloe?’ asked Kyra. ‘Anyone else who she didn’t get on with? Someone who she might have come into contact with that could have done this?’
Chloe quietened a little and then shook her head. ‘No. She’s a normal girl who likes to have fun … doesn’t have a lot of money … struggles at times, like we all do, but she’s got a good heart. She loves her boy … loved him.’ There was a brief look of horror on her face as she registered the past tense. She made her way over to Tom.
She grabbed hold of the collar of his coat with her thin hands, pleading, ‘Get him. Get him, for Caylee. For Riley.’
But Tom didn’t reply.
What would happen to this little boy with the burn on his arm now his mother was dead? Would his aunt be able to keep him? Could she cope?
How much would it mean to Kyra herself, her mother, Molly, to know for sure that they had caught Emma’s real killer? Would it start the healing process?
Riley was without his mother now.
There was nothing she could do for Emma.
But Kyra wanted to find the bastard who had done this and help to put him away for a long, long time.
Chapter Fifteen
SATURDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2035
12.43 p.m.
‘It could be a copycat,’ suggested Alex. Tom was pacing the Hub as the rest of the team focused on the screens around the room, trying to figure out the puzzle. Kyra was impressed with the digital timeline board Alex had produced that ran across the short wall nearest the door and displayed names, dates and locations, including maps of industrial estates and wasteland areas where some of the bodies had been found. There were photographs of the crime scenes and images of the victims, alive and dead.
‘Could be,’ said Tom. ‘Although the press knew the hands were missing, it was never made known that the heart was also taken. We managed to keep that one out of the news, so it’s not in the public arena. That means that if the killer is a copycat, it would have to be someone who knows the exact details so they could replicate them.’ Tom put his hand to his brow. ‘I need a whiteboard.’
Old school, thought Kyra. She wondered what the team made of that.
Kyra saw Harry shake his head. One of the younger uniformed officers disappeared and returned a few moments later with a tripod whiteboard and pen. He set it up in front of Tom.
‘Thanks, Gabe,’ Tom said as he wrote on the board in small, tight capitals COPYCAT? and drew a rectangle around it. Kyra remembered back in the day, the pages of his distinctive angular handwriting, his need to think it out between pen and paper.
‘If details weren’t made public, then it can’t be a randomer,’ said Alex. She hadn’t looked at Kyra since she returned from Chloe’s with Tom. ‘Could Lomax have spoken about the details to a cell mate who re-enacted them once he was released?’ Kyra could see the glint of eagerness in the other woman’s eyes and felt a flush of approval. She remembered a time when she’d been just as eager – a time when a case meant a puzzle to be solved, the hints and clues that pointed to the truth. Now, she envied Alex’s fearlessness, her naivety.
Will spoke. ‘He’s been in solitary confinement for much of his sentence due to violent outbursts, but he has had two long-term cell-mates, one who died of cancer in 2029 and one who’s still in the nick.’
‘Thanks, Will, so it can’t have been either of them who killed Caylee. Have we got a list of visitors?’
Will continued, ‘There was his mother, she visited him regularly every week before she became ill last July. There was his lawyer. We’ve already established that Lomax wasn’t the most popular person and that’s all that we’ve found so far. We’re trying to find any visitors he had before he was moved to Rockwell.’
‘It looks more likely to have been an accomplice,’ suggested Alex after a few moments of speculation. ‘I mean, if Lomax’s DNA was on some of the bodies, but he didn’t kill Caylee, then it doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t do it. It might mean that he had a partner in crime.’
‘It would make sense of how Caylee was killed in the same way, but Lomax wasn’t at body dep site,’ said Will.
Harry asked, ‘Yeah, but why would an accomplice suddenly start killing people again after fourteen years? Wouldn’t he have killed in the interim?’
Tom turned to Kyra. ‘What’s your perspective?’
‘If Lomax did have a partner in the Mizpah Murders, it’s possible he’s killed again in the interim, but his MO would be different without Lomax, therefore we might not have registered it. On the other hand, some killers can remain dormant for years, living off the images of their previous kills,’ she continued, feeling more confident as the officers appeared to be listening closely. ‘There’s always a trigger, for instance the break-up of a relationship, someone close to the killer died, or maybe even a woman humiliated him in some way.
‘However, there’s always the chance that he might have been in prison or abroad. He might have even settled down, started a family and believed that he could maintain a normal existence, happy to let Lomax take the heat for the original crimes but then found he needs to kill again.’ She gave a half-shrug. ‘So, yes, it’s possible it’s an accomplice.’
But her gut was telling her different and she couldn’t hold back. She glanced at Tom and added, ‘But I think it would be a much more likely scenario that someone is trying to frame Lomax.’
He shot her a glance.
‘Yes, but they would have to know that Lomax was out of prison,’ Alex said.
‘No,’ said Harry looking at Kyra and shaking his head. ‘Lomax killed because he was out of pr
ison.’
Kyra shook her head. ‘You’re looking at it the wrong way. Our murderer has killed precisely because he knew Lomax was out.’
‘What type of person would wait fourteen years to frame someone?’ asked Will.
‘Someone who wanted revenge,’ said Alex.
Kyra and Alex locked eyes.
Tom broke their attention. ‘We’ll have to wait for DNA results to see what is on the body, but it is possible that if someone wants to frame Lomax then they could place stolen bio-matter on the body to make it seem as though it was him.’
Kyra watched Alex’s face as she processed this.
‘If Lomax was framed for this murder, he’ll be able to appeal against his conviction for the previous murders.’ The team watched Tom silently. ‘Presented with this latest body,’ he said slowly, his face grave, ‘we have to face the fact that, yes, it’s possible the wrong man has been convicted, and I take some of the responsibility for that.’
Tom wrote ‘FRAMED’ on the board, reluctantly.
If Lomax was wrongly convicted, then Kyra could understand why he would be so frustrated in prison. If he was innocent, and someone was trying to punish him, then they were succeeding.
‘But how did they get Lomax’s bio-matter?’ asked Alex. ‘For the original crimes, I mean?’
‘ That’s what we need to find out,’ Tom said, rubbing his face. ‘We’re going to have to reopen the original case and prepare for a shitstorm when the press realises there’s more to it than meets the eye. We need to search records for anyone who has been in prison for any similar offences that fit the timeline. Will, as soon as you find any other visitors, if there are any, I want to hear straightaway.’
Will nodded.
‘Harry and Alex, I want you to start going through the original case files, fresh eyes and all that.’ Kyra could see him swallow hard. ‘I spoke to the governor at Rockwell. I have an appointment with Lomax later today and I can ask him about some of these ideas. I’m taking Kyra with me to interview him, see if he can think of anyone who might have framed him and why. Whatever the circumstances, this needs to be sorted and solved.’