Tom Douglas Box Set 2

by Rachel Abbott

  Her heart thumped.

  She leapt up from her chair, ran to the garage door and stopped. Who was in there?

  She was about to turn back into the house and make sure the children were safe when she heard a noise. It sounded like a sob.

  Josh.

  Maggie flung the door open. Josh was lying on the floor, Duncan’s bike on top of him.

  ‘Josh,’ she shouted. ‘Are you okay?’

  Maggie rushed forward and lifted the mountain bike off him.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked as she pulled him to his feet. He was clearly not hurt – just upset with himself.

  ‘I was trying to get the bikes down off the wall. I was going to ask if we could go for a ride. But yours was caught around Daddy’s, and when I tried to get it down, it pulled Daddy’s off and it fell on top of me.’

  Maggie pulled Josh towards her and gave him a cuddle. She looked at Duncan’s bike and had a sudden flash of memory. On his thirtieth birthday she had told Duncan to go into the garage, and there was his present – a beautiful new bike, the one he had wanted for ages. She remembered the surprise and pleasure on his face, and the happiness of that day.

  Duncan’s old bike had been quite a sight. The main frame was yellow, but the bit at the front, which he told her was called the suspension fork, was red, and the back bit – the seat stay, Dunc said – was bright green. He had built it from spare parts.

  There was just one thing that clouded the perfection of the memory. She had told the children that Daddy had won races on his old bike, and Josh – ever fascinated by detail – had quizzed Duncan about where, when and were there photos? Perhaps they were online. Josh wouldn’t shut up, and Duncan had lost his temper.

  At the time, Maggie had been cross with Duncan, but it was soon over and they had all gone out for a birthday tea. Now, though, Maggie realised that like everything in Duncan’s past, she only had very sketchy details about his cycling success, and the races had never been mentioned again.

  32

  By late Saturday morning the incident room was buzzing. Becky had been right about the body they had found that morning: the victim’s name was Michelle Morgan, and she was known to the police. According to the vice team, she had been around for years and they considered her to be smarter than most of the girls. She had always been fairly astute at judging which cars to get into and which to avoid.

  She had obviously got it wrong this time, but this suggested that whoever’s car she had got into, she hadn’t considered him to be a threat.

  She was found well away from her own patch, which was apparently the eastern part of central Manchester around Piccadilly station, on the roads that ran under the railway lines. Tom couldn’t help thinking it was strange that the body had been moved to Castlefield when the first body had been found so close to Michelle’s preferred working area.

  According to Jumbo, the woman hadn’t been killed in situ. There was no blood in the vicinity of her body, although there was plenty on her clothes. She had to have been transported to the position under the railway arches after death, most probably some time during the early hours of the morning. The body had now been taken to the mortuary, and the team had begun the examination of the shopping trolley against which her body had been displayed.

  Tom hadn’t expected to get any update until the forensic investigation of the site was complete, so he was surprised when a clearly excited Jumbo called. ‘Tom, I think we might have something here. There’s something I’d like to show you, if you can spare the time.’

  Castlefield was only a ten-minute drive for Tom and Becky, and if Jumbo thought it was significant, Tom was only too happy to return to the scene.

  Crime scene investigators were crawling all over the place, but one item was centre stage, and Jumbo was standing guard by its side.

  ‘Take a look at the shopping trolley,’ he said, his wide smile back in place now the body had gone. ‘Look at its position in relation to where the body was situated. I think it was supposed to look as if it had been abandoned, but it’s not been here long.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Becky asked.

  ‘Look down here.’ Jumbo pointed to where two wheels were missing. ‘The body of the trolley is made of zinc-coated steel. Zinc corrodes over time, but it doesn’t rust like steel. Now look at where the wheels have been broken off. You can see the bare steel, and it’s not rusty. I think the wheels were broken off on purpose and very recently. We’re supposed to think this is just an old abandoned trolley, but what if they wheeled the body here in it and then broke the wheels off, thinking we would disregard it as junk? We’ll check it for blood, but if it is related, it’s good news.’

  Tom knew exactly what Jumbo meant. If the trolley had been used to transport the victim’s body, the killer couldn’t have brought her far. It gave them a different search area than if, for example, she had been brought here by car. They knew she hadn’t been killed in situ, so if she had then been put into the trolley and pushed, they could start searching likely places in the vicinity. And if they checked out where the trolley had originated, it might give a geographic profiler something to start with.

  Tom looked around for likely places for the murder to have been committed. There were too many, that was the problem. The arches under the railway lines were largely occupied by car repair companies and the like, and any one of the premises could be the site of the murder. They would all have to be searched.

  ‘There’s something else, Tom,’ Jumbo said. ‘When we were checking out the first victim, there were some wheel marks in the mud in the tunnel that could easily have come from a trolley like this. The marks were unclear because there were puddles and stony areas on the path, but we managed to get a couple of good sections. You were concerned about one man carrying a deadweight, but what if he didn’t? What if he wheeled her there?’

  Tom remembered them thinking the same thing twelve years ago when Sonia Beecham’s body was found on Pomona Island.

  ‘That would take some nerve, wouldn’t it?’ Becky said, her face displaying her incredulity.

  ‘No more than carrying the victim over your shoulder. Either way, if somebody sees you, you’ve got a dead body with you. If she was in a shopping trolley you could at least cover her up with a bit of carpet or something – make it look as if you’re moving some stuff around.’

  If the two victims had been murdered in the same location, though, the killer would have needed more than a shopping trolley to transport them. There was about a mile and a half between the locations at which the bodies had been found. Somehow Tom couldn’t see anybody trundling through the streets of Manchester with a dead body in a shopping trolley, even with an old rug covering it. If it turned out that the trolley had been used in both crimes, that suggested the killer had a van of some kind – something that you could fit a trolley into. Then he could get close to his chosen place, stick the body in the trolley and push it the last few metres.

  It was one more thing to add to their list – the suspicion that this man had a van.

  ‘Becky, let’s get somebody on to tracing the supermarket trolley. I don’t know how many stores from this chain there are around Manchester. Let’s get them all on a map and see if it helps. Then contact them and see if they have any video of trolleys being nicked by somebody in a van.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he’s left a pound coin in the trolley with a nice fat fingerprint, has he?’ Becky said with a grin.

  Tom laughed. He wished life was so easy.

  Fortunately for Tom, he and Becky had arrived at the murder scene in different cars so he didn’t have her driving to contend with on the way back to the incident room. This meant he was able to spend the time thinking, rather than clinging for dear life to the grab handle as Becky swung her car between lorries, buses and trams.

  He tried to focus on the two dead women, but the resemblance of the first to Leo, and then the rather pathetic attempt to make the second look similar was unnerving him. The message
was clear. If the profiler had been right all those years ago, three was the key number. She had offered an alternative perspective, though – that two of the three were merely to confuse the police and were effectively motiveless murders. So in searching for motive with the two women who were already dead, were they wasting their time? Was one of these two the ‘real’ victim, or was that going to be the third woman?

  If the second theory was right, Tom’s every instinct said the crucial murder had not yet taken place. Hayley Walker didn’t appear to have any enemies, and the latest victim didn’t even look like Hayley – she had been made up to resemble her. So why go to all that trouble with the second one unless it was a warning to somebody else? It would also explain why the bodies had been put on show. Twelve years ago Sonia Beecham and Tamsin Grainger had been left sitting upright, but in less public places where they were unlikely to be discovered immediately. This time, the killer wanted both girls to be found quickly.

  The thought that the third victim could be Leo was tormenting him. He couldn’t think of a reason why anybody would want to kill her, but that meant nothing. She was out there somewhere. He could feel it. He knew it with every bone in his body. He just didn't know where, and he didn’t know where to start looking.

  12 years ago - June

  ‘Douglas! My office,’ the boss shouted from his open door.

  Tom had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a happy meeting. He picked up his files and made his way into DCI Victor Elliott’s office, closing the door behind him.

  ‘What have we got on the dead girls?’ the DCI asked before Tom had a chance to sit down.

  Tom pulled up a chair to the visitor’s side of the desk.

  ‘Plenty of background, that’s for sure. Particularly Tamsin Grainger. She was a popular girl, although from what I can tell she was more popular with the lads than with other girls.’

  The DCI’s mouth turned up at the corner in a lecherous sneer. ‘Bit of a tart, was she? No need to be shy, Douglas. Tell it like it is.’

  Tom wasn’t being shy; he just wasn’t inclined to make an assumption without the evidence to back it up.

  It irritated him that his boss called everybody by their surname. Perhaps he thought it made him sound as if he had been to some posh school where surnames were the accepted form of address, but he had been to the local comprehensive like everybody else in the office.

  ‘Why are you so keen on this guy Alexander?’ the boss said, pointing to a picture clipped to the file on his desk.

  ‘He was Tamsin Grainger’s boyfriend. Well, that’s what he believed, but according to her friends she had a different idea. From what we can gather, he thought it was an exclusive relationship, but she had only seen him twice and he had totally misinterpreted the situation. After he found her in a car with one of his lecturers – not one of hers, as it happens – he had a massive row with her, overheard by some lads returning from the pub. She laughed in Alexander’s face, told him to grow up and refused to see him again. According to the lads, he was about to punch her, but they intervened. She told her friends to steer clear of him, that he was a weirdo, but he wouldn’t leave her alone – kept following her around, apparently. According to one girl, she stuck a picture of him on the wall in the halls of residence and wrote KNOB underneath it.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about that. The boyfriend’s got a cast-iron alibi, though, so rule him out and don’t waste any more time on him. It’s more than likely another ex who hasn’t got over her. Check them all out, and the lecturer too – dirty bugger, screwing his students.’ Victor grinned.

  Tom looked at his boss. He knew he wanted a result – they all did – but a result had to be the right result, not just another tick in a box. Victor wanted them to find one of the ex-boyfriends who didn’t have an alibi and then pin it on him, but Tom hadn’t given up on Alexander, alibi or no alibi.

  He had to admit, it was an impossible alibi to break. Alexander had been in the company of about thirty other students at the time of both murders. For the first he had been in North Wales, and for the second he had been in the Lake District with a university sports club. But Tom couldn’t help feeling that he knew something, although he had no motive at all for Sonia Beecham’s murder as far as they had been able to tell. She was such a quiet girl, and they couldn’t find any evidence that her path had crossed with Alexander’s. But if the profiler was right, she could have been a decoy and her murder without motive.

  There was something not right about this lad Alexander. When Tom had interviewed him he had talked too much.

  ‘I wasn’t even here,’ he kept repeating. ‘I was away with my team. I won my race – it’s all recorded. You can check, you know.’

  Tom had pointed out more than once that they already had.

  ‘And Tamsin – I know things ended badly. What did you think of her?’ Tom had asked.

  There was a pause, as if the lad was trying to work out what to say.

  ‘She was a slapper,’ Alexander said, his mouth forming a tight line.

  33

  The cycle track was slushy and Lily loved riding through the puddles to make the biggest splash she could. Josh wasn’t having a good day, though, and Maggie felt helpless. She was distracted with worries about Duncan and that awful picture that had been pushed through her door the day before, and she was only giving her children a small percentage of her attention. Try as she might, she couldn’t force away the desperate fear that Duncan was in danger and needed her help, and yet she didn’t even know where he was.

  Lily’s sturdy little legs were pedalling furiously, and Maggie increased her speed slightly to keep up with her daughter as they rounded the bends in the path that ran along the outer edge of the woodland. It was a couple of minutes before she realised that Josh was no longer right behind her.

  ‘Lily, stop,’ she shouted, applying her brakes. ‘We’ve lost Josh.’

  But Lily ignored her, or didn’t hear her, her wispy blonde curls blowing in the wind as she pedalled. She often sang as she rode her bike, and she was probably lost in her own little world. Maggie looked over her shoulder again. What should she do?

  Josh was probably a bit further back, round the corner, hidden by the trees. But they couldn’t cycle off and leave him, and now Lily was getting away from her.

  Maggie only had one choice. She raised herself off her saddle and pedalled hard until she caught up with and passed Lily. She swivelled to face Lily coming towards her.

  ‘Stop,’ she said. Lily laughed, thinking it was a game. ‘We’ve lost Josh.’

  Lily put her feet on the ground and turned her upper body to look back along the track. There was no sign of Josh.

  ‘Come on, tiddles. We need to go back and find him.’

  Lily heaved her bike round and started back along the track. They rounded the bend. But the path ahead of them was clear. No Josh. Where was he?

  ‘There, Mummy – look,’ Lily shouted, her finger pointing to the side of the track.

  Lying on its side was Josh’s bike, but there was no sign of her son. Maggie’s heart began to hammer in her chest.

  ‘Josh!’ she shouted as loudly as she could. ‘Josh – where are you?’ Lily joined in.

  They were right at the edge of the woods, next to a small parking area, but it was empty – or about to be. A white van was pulling out of the car park. Maggie stared open-mouthed at its retreating rear doors. ‘Duncan?’ she whispered, too quietly for Lily to hear her. She knew it was wishful thinking. The van wasn’t as new as Duncan’s. Or as clean. And there was no sign of Josh.

  She jumped off her bike and threw it down on the side of the lane, screaming Josh’s name as loudly as she could. She turned to Lily, who was staring at her, her mouth turning down at the corners. Oh God, I’m scaring Lily.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m sure he’s hiding from us – playing a game.’ She plucked her daughter off her saddle with one hand and steered the bike off the track with the other, leaving it propped again
st a tree. With her daughter under one arm, she climbed the bank into the wood where it bordered the small car park.

  ‘Josh,’ she shouted, trying to keep the fear from her voice.

  Up ahead she saw a flash of red. His cycle helmet.

  Still carrying Lily she ran the fifty metres to where she could see the helmet. It was Josh, lying face down in the grass.

  ‘Josh!’

  She fell to her knees at his side, put Lily onto the damp grass and reached out to her son. With relief, she saw his back moving but in seconds she knew he was crying.

  ‘Joshy, are you hurt, darling?’ she asked.

  He didn’t lift his head, but a weak ‘No’ emerged from above his folded arms.

  ‘What happened? What are you doing here?’ She stroked his back gently.

  Slowly he lifted his head. ‘I thought it was Daddy,’ was all he said, before the tears came again. Maggie stroked his back gently. Lily stroked his leg.

  ‘I don’t think it was, sweetheart. This van was a bit old for Daddy’s.’

  He raised himself up on his elbows.

  ‘I know. But I saw it this morning too – at the top of our road. I thought it might be Daddy then, but there were two men in it so I thought I was wrong. Then it drove off.’

  Maggie put her arm around her son.

  ‘Then when we set off on the bikes, it was there again but parked round the corner outside Oscar’s, so I thought it must be some men working on Oscar’s house or something.’

  Oscar was Josh’s friend and lived just round the corner.

  ‘That sounds right, Josh. There are always workmen there.’

  ‘I know, but when we turned to go onto the cycle path, I put my hand out like Daddy taught me, and I looked in my mirror to check if there was anything behind. That’s when I saw the van. It was following us. When we got to the car park, it was already there, and the men were watching. One of them had a camera.’

  Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth to cover her gasp. Why were these men following them? Why did they have a camera? But she had to calm Josh down. She rolled from her knees and sat down next to her son.