Reach (The Blake Harte Mysteries Book 4)

by Robert Innes

  “Good morning,” Frost said, his voice as smooth as ever. “I rather thought I’d be seeing you again, Mr Harte.”

  Blake said nothing.

  “And who’s this you’ve brought to see me?” Frost said icily, staring at Mattison. “Is it bring your child to work day?”

  As instructed, Mattison didn’t reply. Blake turned his head to the prison guard. “Are we recording?” The guard nodded. “Interview commencing at nine forty six. Present in the interview is myself, Detective Sergeant Blake Harte, Police Constable Billy Mattison, Andrew Dixon, a guard at the prison, and Thomas Frost.”

  “Billy?” Frost said, ignoring Blake’s preamble and staring at Mattison with a smirk. “What a mature sounding name. Is it your first day?”

  “Oi,” Blake said sharply, clicking his fingers. “Eyes on me.”

  Frost smirked at Blake. “Oh you have my full attention, Detective, I assure you.”

  “I’d like to start with asking you about Kerry Nightingale.” Blake began.

  “Kerry?” Frost said innocently. “I don’t think I know a Kerry.”

  “Is that a fact?” Blake said, producing a photograph. It was an ordinary picture of Kerry, as opposed to the forensic snap of her body. Blake knew how much of a kick Frost would get out of seeing that. “So, you’ve forgotten about the woman you attempted to murder seven years ago, then?”

  “I murdered a lot of women, Detective,” Frost chuckled, glancing at Mattison. “Did he tell you about my murders, Billy? Little bit above you, I should think. You won’t have met anybody like me before, will you?”

  Again, Mattison did not reply. Blake was pleased to see that his deadpan expression had not altered since he had entered the room.

  “A few days ago, you made a threat,” Blake continued, holding up the photograph. “You said that Kerry Nightingale would be dead within the week.”

  “Did I?” Frost said, looking surprised. “Are you sure?”

  Blake frowned for a second, as he tried to work out what Frost was playing at. He had been expecting him to be gloating, to be revelling in the fact that he was being interviewed about a murder he had dreamt of since the door on his cell had first been locked.

  “Tell me, Billy,” Frost said. “Do you know what your colleague is referring to? Or are you a bit young to be given details like that?”

  “Stop talking to him, I’m the one you’re here to talk to,” Blake snapped at him. “Tell me about Kerry.”

  “But I told you,” Frost replied, looking at Blake with almost serene confusion. “I don’t know what threats you’re referring to. Could you produce any proof of these threats?”

  “Proof?” Blake repeated, slightly taken aback.

  “This interview, I mean the one you’re doing now,” Frost said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s being recorded, isn’t it? I mean this is one of your official little chats that you police do from time to time?”

  Blake closed his eyes, cursing his own stupidity. He knew what Frost was getting at before he had even said it.

  “I mean, if you and I have had a previous conversation, I expect you’ve got a recording of that to refer back to?” Frost asked him lightly.

  Blake leant forwards. “Listen, I know you were involved in this somehow. You know what I’m talking about, and you know how it happened and who did it. We’ll be going through the records of anybody who has visited you, searching your cell. You thought you had no privacy in here now? You’ve seen nothing yet.”

  “The only person who ever visits me is Simon, Detective. He likes to keep himself to himself though, so you might have some trouble finding him.”

  “Who’s Simon?” Blake asked him.

  “My son. Do you have children, Billy? Have you even been to bed with a girl, yet?”

  “When did you last see him?” Blake inquired.

  Frost ignored him, he was still examining Mattison. ”No, I don’t suppose you have. You’re just a little boy, really, aren’t you?”

  “You were asked a question, so answer it,” Mattison suddenly snapped. “When did you last see your son?”

  Blake frowned and threw him a look. Mattison bit his lip.

  Frost looked delighted. “Oh, toys are out the pram! You’ve never been one for travelling without a colleague with a big mouth, Mr Harte. What was the name of your other one? Sally something? I didn’t like her. She didn’t have much up top.” He glanced at Mattison. “Still though, at least she was old enough to vote.”

  “Take him back to his cell,” Blake told the guard. “I’ll find out what we need to know myself. Interview terminated at nine fifty-one AM.”

  He stood up and the guard opened the door to let him out. Frost smiled cheerfully behind the glass. “Going so soon? But we were just getting acquainted, Billy!”

  As Blake followed Mattison out of the room, the sound of Frost’s mocking laughter rang in his ears. Once the door had been closed, Blake turned to Mattison as he leant against the wall with his face in his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” he said quietly.

  “You were dealing with him admirably, Matti. What happened?”

  Mattison shook his head. “He just wound me up, telling me how young and immature I looked. Bloody creep.” He kicked the wall he was leaning against, with an air of frustration.

  “And I told you that was what he would do,” Blake replied, looking at him with concern. “You let him get to you, that’s how he works in those sorts of situations.”

  Mattison rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Sorry, Sir. Look, is it alright if I wait for you in the car?”

  Blake nodded. Without another word, Mattison sighed again and disappeared down the corridor. Blake watched him leave, his eyes narrowed, wondering if his strange mood had anything to do with the apparent fall out with Patil.

  Mentally putting a pin in the matter, he turned to the guard. “I need access to Frost’s visitor records, any post he’s had, anything that comes under the category of communication with the outside world.”

  The guard nodded. “He gets mail, but it’s all vetted. Most of it is from those weird people who seem to have a fetish for the insane, you know how it is.”

  Blake nodded and rolled his eyes. He never understood the fascination that people had with someone like Frost, especially from women; but they existed. Women with an overwhelming sense of loneliness in their lives exuding it into somebody they perceived to be raw and exciting. People like Frost would get fan mail, almost as much as somebody on television.

  Walking into the prison guard’s office, he was greeted by a group of the other guards crowded around a television screen. One of them, an older woman, turned to Blake as he entered.

  “You the one who’s been investigating this murder?”

  Blake raised an eyebrow. “Yes, why?”

  “And you think it’s got summit to do with Frost?”

  Blake frowned. “I’m investigating all possibilities, why?”

  The woman nodded at the screen. “We’ve got this footage of Frost in his cell from this morning. He started a fight last week so we put him in solitary and those cells have cameras in.”

  “Okay,” Blake said, wondering where this was going. He looked at the screen. It showed Frost lying in his cell bed.

  “I know he’s just lying there, but he starts acting a bit weird, so we thought it might be of some sort of use to you. He’s a nutcase, we know that, so I dunno if it’s helpful.”

  Blake nodded as the woman rewound the footage and clicked play.

  The footage showed Frost not moving from his bed, he was just lying there. Blake was just about to ask what he was supposed to be looking at when the footage showed Frost raising his arms up in front of him and slowly wrapping his hands around something, presumably imaginary in front of him. His fingers closed together, in a throttling motion, a dark smile appearing on his face.

  Blake stared at the screen. “Has he ever done that before?”

  “Not that we’ve ever seen,” repl
ied the guard.

  “And this was this morning?”

  “Yeah, when we wake them up. Eight o’clock this morning.”

  Blake’s heart skipped a beat. The time in the corner of the screen confirmed what the guard was saying. It read eight AM, the exact time of the murder.

  When Blake returned to the car, he found Mattison sitting in the passenger seat, staring up at the ceiling.

  “So,” Blake said to him as he climbed in. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”

  Mattison shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s honestly nothing, Sir. I’m just being stupid.”

  Blake raised a disdainful eyebrow. “Is that a fact? So stupid that you let a few jibes from Frost get to you like that? Put it like this, Matti. That could have gone very wrong in there. Frost prays on weakness in people. So we can either go for the formal route, where you don’t tell me anything and I always have second thoughts about you ever being a second officer for me in an interview because I don’t feel you have the temperament for it, or I can be the nice, understanding DS Harte, and you tell me what’s wrong, and we put this down as a blip. Then I try and help you because I know you’re a much better officer than the one I just saw in there. Your choice.”

  Mattison sighed and fiddled with a loose bit of cotton on his trousers. “It’s Mini. Don’t tell her I told you this, but –”

  He was interrupted by Blake’s phone ringing. It was Sharon from forensics. Blake groaned and glanced at Mattison.

  “Don’t think you’re getting off that easily,” Blake said, winking at him, before answering the phone. “Hi, Sharon.”

  “Blake, I’ve emailed you the pathology report on Kerry Nightingale, but there was something that I figured you’d want to know sooner rather than later.” Sharon said, in her usual sharp tone of voice. Blake could always imagine her rushing down a corridor to her next task whenever they spoke in circumstances like this.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “That leaflet from the abortion clinic that we found in her flat,” Sharon continued. “Turns out we may have jumped the gun ever so slightly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because she hasn’t had an abortion. She was pregnant. About six weeks gone, I’d say.”

  Blake raised his eyebrows and exhaled. “Wow. She kept that one quiet, then.”

  “Apart from that, I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Cause of death was strangulation with a thin piece of rope or wire.”

  “Okay, thanks for letting me know,” Blake said. He ended the call and exhaled, his brain whirring.

  “What’s happened?” Mattison asked him.

  “Turns out Kerry was still pregnant. That abortion leaflet must have been something she was thinking about, rather than something she’d already had done.”

  Mattison scratched the back of his head. “And her ex-lover, Jamie, according to a witness statement, stormed out of her flat last night, telling Kerry she would pay for getting rid of his baby?”

  Blake nodded. “Jamie Salford. I think it’s time we paid him a visit.”

  Jamie sat on the floor of the shower, the water raining down on him, with the steam rising up from his body, misting up the glass. The water had gotten steadily hotter the longer he had been in there, but he had barely noticed. His mind felt like a DVD that was skipping; all he could see was Sonia saying ‘She’s dead, Jamie. Kerry is dead,’ over and over again. As the water began to run into his eyes, he closed them and tried to remember where he had gone and what he had done after leaving Kerry’s apartment the night before, but try as he might, it was all a blur.

  He knew that the bruise on his arm was from fighting with someone he had had a disagreement with in the club he had started the night in, and that was what worried him more than anything. When he had arrived at Kerry’s apartment, he had already been angry and was feeling violent; who was to say whether Kerry had ended up on the receiving end of it?

  A loud knocking on the bathroom door broke into his thoughts.

  “Dude,” Marcus called through the bathroom door. “There’s two policemen here to see you.”

  Jamie sighed, his stomach performing a somersault. This is the moment he had been dreading. If even Sonia suspected him of killing Kerry, what were the police going to think?

  He pulled himself up and turned off the water, grabbed a towel and tied it around his waist, trying to think of something to say to the officers that would abscond him in some way from the events.

  He walked out onto the landing. As he walked past the top of the stairs, he saw Blake waiting at the bottom.

  “Afternoon, Jamie,” Blake said, nodding curtly. “Quick as you like, please. We need a word.”

  “I won’t be long, I’ll just get some clothes on,” Jamie replied, trying to judge from Blake’s tone just how much trouble he was in.

  “Don’t be long, please,” Blake replied, smiling cheerfully at him. He turned on his heels and walked into the living room, leaving Jamie at the top of the stairs, feeling more worried and defensive than ever.

  By the time that Jamie walked into the living room, Marcus was sitting on the edge of the sofa looking nervily at Blake, who was sat sipping a mug of tea, with another officer sitting next to him. They all looked up as Jamie entered.

  “Ah, there you are,” Blake said, placing the mug on the floor. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced, Jamie. Detective Sergeant Harte, this is my colleague, PC Mattison. We’d like to speak to you about the death of Kerry Nightingale.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Jamie said hurriedly.

  Blake nodded. “In that case, this shouldn’t take very long. Would you mind, Marcus?”

  Marcus practically jumped at the mention of his name and nodded, looking relieved that he was no longer required. He exchanged a worried look with Jamie as he almost ran out of the living room and closed the door behind him without a word.

  “Now, then,” Blake said. “Do take a seat, Jamie.”

  Jamie sat in the seat recently vacated by his housemate, but remained silent.

  “We wanted to talk to you about your movements last night,” Blake told him. “We’ve had a couple of people tell us that you were a bit drunk last night.”

  Jamie shrugged. “Not a crime, is it?”

  “If it was, we’d have some rather full prisons, wouldn’t we?” Blake said cheerfully. “No, the only reason I ask is that we have a witness telling us that you turned up at Kerry’s apartment last night, quite worse for wear and you were quite angry.”

  Jamie struggled for the right words, desperately trying to think of some way to defend himself, so he just nodded.

  “What were you so angry about?” Mattison asked him.

  “Bare in mind, we do know about your relationship with Kerry,” Blake added.

  Jamie bit his lip in thought. “I was going out with her, yeah. I wasn’t anymore, though, she ended things with me.”

  “And that’s why you were so angry?”

  “One of the reasons, yeah.”

  “What else was happening?”

  Jamie sighed, running his hands through his hair. “Turns out she was pregnant. I was going to be a dad. She didn’t even think it was worth mentioning to me, before she ran off to Spain. She went and had an abortion and if I hadn’t have gone there last night, I never would have known.”

  Blake glanced at Mattison and tilted his head slightly in what looked, to Jamie, like an attempt at sympathy. “We’ve had the report back from pathologist. Kerry was pregnant when she died.”

  Jamie’s heart seemed to skip a few beats. “What? You mean she hadn’t had an abortion?”

  Blake shook his head. “Nope. Does that change how you were feeling about her?”

  Jamie leant forward and put his head in his hands. It did change how he was feeling, but he found it impossible to describe exactly how his perception of Kerry had altered. So, if the abortion had not happened, what had
been her plan? To have the baby in Spain, and just never tell him?

  “Did you want to have a baby?” Mattison asked him. “I mean, was it planned?”

  Jamie looked up at him, frowning. It seemed like quite a stupid question to him. “Of course it wasn’t planned, but I would have been there for it. What would you have expected me to do? Send her a tenner every month for maintenance?”

  Blake glanced between the two of them. “Jamie, would you be able to tell me what your movements were last night?”

  Jamie shuffled in his seat uncomfortably as the questions he had been dreading arrived. “I’d been out to the club in Clackton – Eclipse. I ended up getting pretty drunk.”

  “Yes, we know that,” Blake said. “You turned up to Clayton Apartments, according to one witness, ‘off your head.’”

  Jamie scoffed. “You can cut all the ‘one witness’ crap, I know it was Sonia that you’ve spoken too. She couldn’t wait for things to go wrong with me and Kerry.”

  “Do you remember what you said to Kerry?” Blake asked him. “Baring in mind, we do have a witness who was there for quite a lot of the conversation?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Not really. I was pretty hammered. The whole reason I’d got that drunk was because I wanted to forget about Kerry.”

  “But Kerry’s apartment was the first place you went to?” Mattison put in lightly.

  Jamie glared at him. “What? You never had a falling out with your missus, mate?” He was pleased to see that Mattison looked down at the floor, apparently embarrassed. “I wanted to see if I could patch things up with her. I didn’t know about the baby, though I’m guessing that’s why she broke up with me.”

  “Apparently your last words before storming out,” Blake said, glancing down at his note pad, “were ‘you’re scum, you will pay for this.’” He looked up at Jamie, appearing almost apologetic. “Not exactly helpful last words to a murder victim a few hours before her death, are they?”

  “I don’t remember saying that,” Jamie mumbled. It was perfectly true, his mind was a blank after he had found out about the baby, but he doubted Blake believed him. “But I didn’t do anything. I was angry, I must have come straight home after that.”