Tom Douglas Box Set 2

by Rachel Abbott

  Mug in hand, she pulled up a chair next to his desk and plonked her tea down. Keith whipped open a drawer and pulled out a coaster to slip under her mug. Becky looked at all the ring marks on the surface, lifted her eyes to Keith and raised her eyebrows. He said nothing.

  ‘Right. How’s it going, Keith?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘I’m not sure this case is going to be as straightforward as DCI Douglas seems to think. The young man whose DNA matches the whisky bottle found in the car that killed Sergeant Gray is Kieran O’Connor, and he’s adamant that he dumped the car a couple of days before Sergeant Gray was killed. He doesn’t deny stealing it, but he swears he didn’t keep it for any length of time.’

  ‘Well he’s bound to say that, isn’t he?’ Becky said.

  ‘I agree, ma’am, but I’ve looked into the history of car thefts in the area and I’m sure O’Connor’s responsible for at least some of them. He wasn’t much more than a boy then and he hadn’t passed his driving test. All the other cars stolen in the weeks leading up to this crime were dumped within four or five hours of being taken. Bernard Gray was killed three whole days after the car was stolen. Without anything other than the DNA – which doesn’t actually prove that he was driving – a good lawyer could probably get him off any charge other than the theft of the vehicle.’

  Becky had to admit that it was unusual for joyriders to hang on to a car for that length of time.

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been in touch with the department initially tasked with the investigation of Sergeant Gray’s death. With the lead detective retiring and there being no evidence of any kind to help us identify the perpetrators, it hasn’t really had the focus that perhaps it deserves.’

  Becky interpreted this as bugger-all progress had been made.

  ‘So, what are you looking at?’

  Keith lifted some papers and banged their bottom edges on the desk, forcing them into a neat pile.

  ‘I thought I should start back at the beginning. I’ve not given up on O’Connor – at least until we determine whether he has any sort of alibi that stacks up – but I do think we need to give everything a second look. We’ve always believed this was just a joyrider incident, but if it turns out O’Connor’s telling the truth, we need to look at other options, including whether his death was intentional.’

  Becky took a sip of her tea. If Bernie Gray had been murdered – and there was no other interpretation of intentional – then a whole eighteen months had been lost.

  ‘What lines of enquiry are you following, Keith?’

  ‘I’ve been through all the reports and I’ve made notes on anything significant.’ Keith indicated the stack of papers, and Becky couldn’t help thinking there must have been much more information than he first suggested. ‘Each sheet holds a separate idea, so as I rule things out, I can throw them away, leaving me with a progressively smaller pile of options to look into.’

  That explained the size of the pile at least, even though it was a slightly unconventional approach.

  ‘If that works for you, Keith, that’s fine,’ she said.

  ‘The initial investigation couldn’t find any credible link between Sergeant Gray’s death and any of the cases he’d been working on, and as he wasn’t the lead in any of them there was no sensible reason for singling him out, as far as we can tell. So there was nothing to contradict the joyriding assumption.’

  Becky hoped he wasn’t planning on rehashing every negative finding in the initial investigation before getting to anything that might move them forward.

  ‘They also looked into his home life, of course, and in some detail.’

  Becky almost groaned. She wanted to hear about something new, something Keith might have unearthed that others had missed.

  ‘Sergeant Gray was married, happily by all accounts, to his childhood sweetheart. They had one child. Apparently they had hoped to have more, but that wasn’t possible because of a gynaecological problem with Mrs Gray.’ Keith selected the appropriate piece of paper. ‘The report says that she suffered from—’

  ‘Keith, it’s enough to know that she couldn’t have any more children. Unless whatever was wrong with her internal workings had anything to do with her husband’s death, I think we can probably skip the detail.’

  Keith shuffled the page to the back, clearly not quite ready to discard it.

  ‘Gray had two particularly close friends, Edward Cooper and Megan Jenkins, both longterm colleagues in the police. Edward Cooper’s interesting. I checked out his address on Google and pulled up a picture of his house, as I do for each person involved in a crime. I find it a very useful resource.’

  ‘And…?’ Becky was keen to talk to Tom about today’s interviews, and this was taking a whole lot longer than it needed to.

  Keith turned his stack of papers towards Becky, and the top one showed an image of a very solid-looking double-fronted stone house.

  ‘I thought this was a little over the top for a single policeman on his salary, so I’d very much like to look into his finances. He must earn the same as I do, roughly, and I’ve checked house prices in the area. This would have cost around seven hundred thousand pounds, I think.’

  Becky raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, I have to agree it’s a big house for one man, but maybe he inherited some money, or won some. We can’t make any assumptions.’

  ‘Actually it’s not just one man now. It seems he has taken up with Natalie Gray, Bernard’s widow, and she and her daughter have moved in with him.’

  Wondering whether Keith would elucidate ‘taken up with’, she held up her hand as he was about to move on to the next piece of paper.

  ‘Hang on a minute. You mean they’re a couple, right?’

  ‘Without actually asking either of them about their sleeping arrangements it’s rather difficult to verify. All I know is that she moved in with him, and I only know that because I wanted to talk to her and was informed that her address had changed.’

  Becky sat forward eagerly. ‘Come on, Keith. What do you think you should be looking into if this O’Connor chap turns out to be innocent of this crime?’

  Keith gave her a puzzled frown but didn’t respond.

  ‘Think about it. It’s eighteen months since your man died – just about long enough to be respectable before the wife takes a new lover. But what if the wife and the best friend were lovers before her husband died, and he was the only thing standing in the way of them being together? We need to find out everything we can about the two of them.’

  She pushed her chair back, pleased that something potentially useful had come out of the conversation.

  ‘Keep the pressure on O’Connor, but you need to make sure nothing was missed in the first investigation, starting with Mrs Gray,’ she said over her shoulder as she walked out of the room.

  22

  Becky had given Tom a brief update on Keith’s progress with the Bernard Gray case, but their attention right now had to be focused on finding out what had happened to Jennifer Bale.

  Everything they had heard that day – from the pathologist’s report to Becky’s conversation with Naeema – suggested that Jennifer had been involved in an intense and difficult relationship with a boy. Or was it a man? Was the man who had been standing by the railings close to the games field relevant, or was he just a passer-by?

  One thing they couldn’t ignore was the reaction of Jennifer’s brother and his belief that he could have helped her. They had left the Bale family in peace for the day, but they couldn’t overlook the child’s outburst.

  ‘I’ve got massive sympathy for Mr and Mrs Bale,’ Tom said. ‘However well they seem to be coping with this tragedy, they must be hiding a mountain of pain. But I’m not going to stand for them refusing to let us talk to the boy. What’s his name again?’

  ‘Archie.’

  ‘Right. Well I think we have good cause to insist that he talks to us. His sister is dead. We know she had a sexual relationship with s
omeone, and that may or may not have contributed to her decision to take her own life, if that’s what she did. At seven years old it would be hard to argue that Archie is old enough to give his own consent to questioning, so we need to get Mrs Bale – and I’m sure she’s the stumbling block – to grant us permission.’

  Becky sat and watched Tom spinning a pen in his hand as he thought it all through. He wasn’t looking at her. His head was somewhere else as he leaned back, reclining his chair as far as it would go without tipping over.

  ‘We could argue that the parents’ refusal to consent is suspicious and could indicate that something inappropriate has been happening in the family, their son being the only witness to it.’

  ‘Are you suggesting we get an emergency protection order so we can interview him?’ Becky asked.

  Tom pulled himself upright and leaned over the desk, his pen now gripped between both hands.

  ‘No, but I’m suggesting that we tell them we’ll have no choice, if they won’t let us interview the child.’

  In spite of the apparent tensions in the Bale family, neither teachers nor friends had suggested that Jennifer was unhappy at home. But experience told Becky that it was impossible to be certain. How often had the police spoken to grieving parents when a child was missing, only to find that either or both of them were involved in their son or daughter’s disappearance?

  Becky’s mind jumped back to a case she and Tom had been involved in with a family whose daughter had been abducted and was missing for years. It turned out eventually that the father had been involved, although he had been a grief-stricken picture of innocence. And now Tom wanted to interview Jennifer’s brother, and they both knew how that request was likely to be received by his parents. But Tom was right. They couldn’t neglect the opportunity to speak to the boy because of concern over upsetting Mr and Mrs Bale.

  ‘Do you want me to deal with it?’ Becky asked.

  Tom paused and looked at her. ‘No. I think I’ll do it, Becky. These are people who live by a very strict set of rules, and I suspect that – to them at least – the most senior officer should be the one to make the call. If they still refuse to play ball, I’ll get Philippa on to them.’

  Becky winced. Detective Superintendent Philippa Stanley was one scary lady, and Becky thought that even the recalcitrant Mrs Bale would probably shake in her shoes if Philippa called.

  Tom picked up the phone and raised his eyebrows. ‘There’s no time like the present.’

  He consulted the papers in front of him and dialled.

  Becky heard a faint voice from the other end of the phone, and Tom scowled. He had got Mrs Bale then, and not her more understanding husband.

  ‘Mrs Bale, it’s Detective Chief Inspector Douglas.’

  It was Becky’s turn to raise her eyebrows. He rarely used his full title, and almost always included the more informal ‘Tom’. He was clearly about to lay it on thick.

  As Becky listened, he did exactly that. He managed somehow to convey his continued sympathy for the family’s loss with a firm and unyielding directive that he had every intention of interviewing Archie. Becky couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation clearly, but she could hear the high notes of agitation from Jennifer’s mother.

  ‘I agree it’s late in the day today, Mrs Bale, but DI Robinson and I would like to talk to Archie tomorrow morning. You can bring him here if you like, or we can talk to him at home.’

  There were more sounds of distress from the other end of the phone, but Becky could see Tom’s mouth set in a firm line. He wasn’t going to be budged.

  ‘One final thing, Mrs Bale. We’d like to interview your son without either you or your husband present. If you’d like to bring along another responsible adult that Archie trusts, that would be fine – a grandparent, for example. Otherwise, we’ll request that social services provide someone appropriate.’

  The raised voice became shouting, and Tom waited for a pause.

  ‘We need to be sure that Archie’s telling us everything he knows. There may be things he’s not comfortable saying in front of his parents, and in a case as sensitive as this when a young girl has lost her life, we have to be certain that we have every piece of evidence we can get.’

  Becky watched Tom’s face harden even further.

  ‘Mrs Bale, whether your son is allowed to lie to his parents or not, according to your beliefs, is not an issue I’m prepared to explore. Feel free to discuss this with your husband and let me know whether you’ll bring him here or we’ll visit him in your home. Please get back to me within the hour.’

  Tom put the phone down.

  ‘That wasn’t much fun,’ he said. ‘But I want to know what that child believes he knows about his sister. Because he seems to think he knows something.’

  *

  Tom hadn’t enjoyed the tussle with Mrs Bale. She might be cantankerous and opinionated, but she was a bereaved mother, and while it was bad enough to know that your much-loved daughter was dead, there was also the strong possibility that Mrs Bale was going to have to deal with the news that her daughter had indeed killed herself.

  They were planning to talk to Archie in the morning and then have a meeting to discuss their next steps. There was nothing he could do to make this easier for the Bale family, but he wished there was. Whether or not Jennifer had taken her own life, every instinct was telling Tom that something bad had been happening to that girl and it needed to be investigated.

  It had been a long day, and it had taken more time than anticipated that afternoon to talk to all the students and teachers. Tom had interviewed Jennifer’s form teacher from the last academic year, a woman he guessed was in her mid thirties. She was attractive in a hard-looking way, with short spiky hair topping a pair of wide blue eyes and a square chin. She had the straight shoulders and spare frame of a long-distance runner, but Tom had discovered that in addition to being Jennifer’s form tutor, she wasn’t a games teacher as he might have expected, but an art teacher.

  ‘Jennifer was physically a late developer, and I believe she was emotionally immature for her age too. Given the strict code by which she was forced to live, which gave her very little space for personal development, I would say she was ill prepared to cope with the pressures that teenagers have to live through.’

  The teacher had shed a few tears, but Tom had sensed a lack of genuine grief. Maybe years spent in classrooms of teenagers inured some teachers to their pupils’ tragedies. Sadly, apart from this insight into Jennifer’s development, she’d had nothing of any use to add.

  Tom and Becky had gone through the feedback from all the interviewees. The changes in Jennifer’s behaviour from quiet to cocky and back to subdued suggested something had been going on in the girl’s life, and the suspicion – and that’s all it was – that Jennifer had run off the games field because a man was watching was something to follow up.

  They had tried to track down Lauren, the girl with whom Jennifer had gone swimming, only to find that she was on a day trip with her grandparents and wasn’t due back until late that night.

  ‘So, tomorrow we have Archie Bale and the swimming buddy to interview, and then we need to meet DI Warner to decide how we take this forward. Do we hand it back to him, or do we keep it? What’s your thinking, Becky?’

  ‘Naeema’s words when she quoted Jennifer made me shiver, if I’m honest. Jennifer said that she belonged to this boy – man – whatever he was. That sounds bad to me. Everything points to suicide, but if she really did feel she belonged to him, isn’t it just as likely that he took her to the top of that roof, held her over the edge and dropped her? Or at the very least, drove her to it.’

  Tom knew Becky was trying to hang on to the case because, whether or not Jennifer had killed herself, if someone had been tormenting the girl it needed investigating thoroughly.

  Becky shuffled in her seat. ‘Don’t look at me with that sneaky little smile, Tom. We don’t actually know that she wasn’t killed, and whether she was or was
n’t I want to get the bastard that took her life – whether figuratively or literally.’

  ‘I think we do know, from both the post-mortem and crime scene reports, but I’m not about to argue with your logic. We’ll hang on to the case for now, but there’s not much else we can be doing this evening, so get yourself home. You look like you didn’t sleep much last night.’ Tom struggled to control a grin.

  ‘Very funny. And whose fault was that? Mark was really cross with me, you know. He thought I could have ruined our working relationship and I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in.’

  ‘Good for Mark,’ Tom said.

  ‘You don’t mean that. I don’t believe for one second that you regret it. Anyway, when are you seeing the lovely Louisa again?’

  ‘Becky,’ Tom said, a warning note in his voice.

  ‘Okay, I’m going.’

  As the door closed behind Becky, the smile dropped from Tom’s face. The truth was, he had sent Louisa a text to say how much he had enjoyed the previous evening and he hoped they could get together again soon. But that was several hours ago and she hadn’t responded. Maybe he’d got it all wrong, and her earlier interest had subsided after she’d had the pleasure of spending a single evening with him. He must have been a very disappointing dinner companion.

  23

  I put my key quietly into the lock, and gently push the front door open, closing it just as softly behind me. I don’t want Shirley to know I’m back. I want to get to my room as quickly as I can so that I can hug the memories of today to me while they are still so fresh.

  I should have known I would be heard.

  ‘Is that you, Kelsey?’ a warm, friendly voice calls.

  ‘Hi, Shirley,’ I say from the bottom step of the stairs. ‘I was just going to my room for a bit. Is that okay?’

  The smiling face of my foster mother appears in the kitchen doorway, a tea towel in one hand, a mixing bowl in the other.

  ‘Of course, love. Whatever you like. But I’ve made a chocolate cake, so when you’re ready come down and tell me how it went at drama club today.’