THE FOURTH FRIEND a gripping crime thriller full of stunning twists

by Joy Ellis

‘I’ve ditched it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, you know why! He was my main case study, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Let me take over his case. I know that you are more than capable of dealing with his problem, but you are too involved with the man himself. It’s not healthy, my dear. You don’t need me to tell you about distancing yourself emotionally.’

  Laura let out a sigh. ‘God, Sam, I’ve tried all the tricks, even the exercises we use in training. But this time . . . nothing works.’ She paused. ‘You are right, Sam, but because I work for the police force I can’t just hand his case over to you. You don’t have clearance.’

  ‘Then allow me to help you. Don’t tackle this alone.’

  ‘Would you? It would be such a relief! And let’s pray that our boys and girls in blue solve the mystery of Suzanne in double-quick time, before we all finish up in therapy!’

  Sam hung up, feeling happier. At least if he were there to guide her, she wouldn’t have to worry about errors of judgement. And if things didn’t pan out for Carter McLean, Laura might really need him.

  * * *

  Jackman was just deciding to call it a day when his phone rang.

  ‘As promised, the full story.’ Rory Wilkinson sounded excited. ‘It’s a shame I’m based in Greenborough, I’d love you to call into my underground kingdom. I have this really dinky little 3D graphic showing the last moments of Suzanne Holland.’

  ‘I can get there tomorrow. But for now, can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘Of course, dear heart! Now would you like the full cast production, or the abridged version? I recommend the full Monty because then I can show off my huge repertoire of regional accents.’

  ‘I’m sure your repertoire is most impressive, Rory, but a simple synopsis would suffice.’

  ‘Are you related to DI Galena, by any chance?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. Er, the story . . . ?’

  ‘Right. Suzanne died because she hit her head against the mantelpiece. She then fell to the floor sustaining a further head injury on the cast-iron surround of the fireplace.’

  ‘She fell?’ Jackman was sure Rory had suggested a more violent end.

  ‘Yes, she fell.’ Rory paused. ‘But only because she was pushed, with considerable force.’

  ‘You can be quite irritating sometimes, Rory, did anyone ever tell you that?’

  ‘I’m told — frequently.’ He chuckled. ‘I really do think I can explain much more clearly when you see the whole thing in motion.’

  ‘Early tomorrow, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Since I practically live here, that will be fine. Oh, and I am going to do another forensic sweep of your crime scene. I have equipment available to me now that wasn’t around eighteen months ago. Blood spatter analysis is my passion, and I have a theory about the hearth rug that I would like to check out. Would you arrange that for me?’

  ‘Just say when. I have access to the keys.’

  ‘We’ll sort that out when you do me the honour of visiting tomorrow. So for now I’ll just say, Ciao, and hasta mañana.’

  Jackman replaced the phone and saw Marie standing in the doorway.

  ‘Any joy?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ She sat down. ‘Carter has got a name for one of Danny’s gofers, but the little scrote has gone to ground.’

  ‘Maybe uniform can find him.’

  ‘I’d leave it to Carter, sir. He’s got a knack with the underbelly of Saltern-le-Fen. If anyone can root him out, Carter can.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There’s an undercurrent out there. We both noticed it.’ Marie massaged her temples, as if her head ached. ‘It’s hard to explain, but there seems to be a lot of bad feeling towards the police — more than normal — and Ruth Crooke in particular. First thing tomorrow I’ll pull up a list of local villains that might have a grudge against her, then Carter and I are going knocking on a few doors.’

  ‘Where is Carter now?’

  ‘He’s gone to see her.’

  ‘Voluntarily?’

  Marie grinned. ‘Yes, would you believe? I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that this business with Leah is mending a very old rift.’

  ‘Not before time.’

  Marie stretched. ‘Any news on the Suzanne front?’

  Jackman told her about the half-brother, and what Rory had found.

  ‘Looks like we are moving forward at last.’

  ‘Let’s not count our chickens, but something’s beginning to emerge from the mist.’

  ‘Good.’ Marie yawned.

  ‘Get off home, Evans! And get some rest.’

  ‘I will. I just want a quick word with Carter before I go.’

  ‘Don’t let him get you involved in one of his long heart to hearts, please. I need you on the ball, not worried sick over imaginary dead people.’

  ‘Er, sir. They are actual dead people. Not imaginary.’

  ‘So remember that, okay?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Understood, sir.’

  * * *

  Carter was on his way to Stone Quay, and trying to concentrate on the road. His mind was on Ruth Crooke, and the sudden change in their relationship.

  At close of day, he had sat and actually talked to her for almost half an hour. And not one acrimonious remark had passed between them. Nothing had been said, but he knew that they had made their peace at last. He left her office feeling as if the wind had blown a heavy storm cloud from the sky.

  He came to a halt and found the key to the storeroom. He had a couple of particular jobs to attend to this evening, and then he would be almost done.

  Silas was sitting on an empty oil drum, with his dog sprawled across his feet.

  ‘Evening, Silas. Alright?’

  ‘Good enough, young’un. You eaten?’

  Carter considered the question.

  ‘Thought not. Come to the cottage, it won’t take more’n a few minutes. You can’t work with no fuel in your belly.’

  Carter followed him through the long grass and reeds to the tumbledown cottage. Carter had eaten with Silas before. His meals might not pass current food safety standards but they were the most delicious he had ever tasted.

  Now he sniffed the air. ‘Rabbit stew?’

  ‘Hare casserole. Get yourself a bowl.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I ate earlier. But you help yourself.’

  The old man offered him a ladle and pointed towards an ancient stewpot bubbling away on the stove.

  ‘I used a bit of my homemade wine in it. Think it worked, too. Eh?’

  ‘I’ll say.’ Carter ate and ate. Being with Silas Breeze felt right, it always had. This old half-ruined cottage was his refuge from an unkind world.

  He finished the bowl of food and sat back. He looked around. No Tom. Come to think of it, he never saw Tom when he was in Silas’s place. ‘I must get some work done, Si, but thank you for that. I appreciate it.’

  ‘I knows that.’ The old man grinned showing very few teeth. ‘You’ll work twice as ’ard now.’

  Silas had been right. Carter worked until encroaching darkness made it impossible to do any more. All evening, Tom had been a silent presence.

  He drove away, and the sound of her name followed him into the dark night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jackman arrived back from Greenborough just in time for the morning meeting. Marie met him in the corridor by the vending machine.

  ‘Coffee?’ She smiled, and in her eyes, he saw a spark of the old Marie.

  ‘I’d love one. Are the troops assembled?’ He nodded towards the CID room.

  ‘All present and correct, sir.’ She handed him a beaker of coffee. ‘Was your trip worthwhile?’

  ‘Edifying, Marie. Very.’

  ‘So is what our Max dug up in Scunthorpe.’

  ‘Then we’d better go and put our heads together.’

  He confirmed that another person of interest had surfaced in the Danny Hurley investigation, and then conce
ntrated on the Holland case.

  ‘Professor Wilkinson is conducting further forensic work at the Holland Cottage, and until he has completed his checks it will remain sealed up.’

  Jackman took several large printouts and pinned them to the whiteboard. Diagrams of the crime scene.

  ‘These are stills from motion graphic software. You will see in the first diagram the general layout of the lounge, and here,’ he pointed to an enlarged photograph taken by the first team of SOCOs, ‘is the forensic photographers’ view of the room. It has an old-fashioned stone fireplace and an open fire. Note, the mantelpiece is very low compared to modern, or even Victorian designs.’ He pointed to the next picture. ‘Professor Wilkinson believes that Suzanne was standing in the centre of the hearthrug — here.’ The image showed a woman of Suzanne’s height and build. She was facing away from the fireplace.

  ‘How has he done all this?’ asked Carter.

  ‘Blood spatter and stain analysis.’

  ‘Clever stuff.’

  ‘He’s a brilliant scientist.’ Jackman gave a wry smile. ‘If a little off the wall.’

  There was a ripple of laughter. Rory Wilkinson was universally liked in Saltern. His camp humour often defused the tension that followed after witnessing a traumatic crime scene.

  ‘I suggest you all come and look at these pictures when we are through here. It will give you a fairly good idea of what happened. In a nutshell, it went like this . . . Suzanne Holland was pushed with considerable force. She possibly caught her foot in the rug, tried to turn to steady herself, then hit her head against the corner of the mantelpiece. She then fell to the floor and cracked her temple on the iron surround. Prof Wilkinson says that there is no chance that she survived her injuries.’

  ‘How can he be so sure? And how did he know it was her temple?’ Marie was staring at the pictures.

  ‘I’ve just come from a twenty-minute tutorial on the mechanism and classification of spatter patterns. It included low, medium and high velocity of the blood depending on the force of impact. I have learnt that blood issues from the body in many different ways. It can drip, ooze, flow, gush and spurt, and they all leave different patterns. It was worth getting a migraine. I’m telling you, there is nothing that man does not know about blood at crime scenes.’

  ‘Heck, sir! I only asked.’

  Jackman grinned, and then became serious again. ‘As for the temple, Prof Wilkinson said there was an arterial spurt that most likely came from one specific artery, the left external carotid. He made that deduction from a passive bloodstain that would have gathered beneath her body after her heart stopped beating.’ He exhaled loudly. ‘Of course, without her body we cannot be certain about everything, but the crime scene and the evidence found there will tell us more than enough.’

  Charlie raised a hand. ‘So would it be classed as an accidental death, sir?’

  ‘We do not know the intentions of the person who pushed her. Whatever, it was definitely the push that caused her to shatter her skull and sever an artery. The blood loss must have been extensive. If there had been no intention to harm, then it would be manslaughter, but if it was deliberate, well, then it was murder.’

  ‘We need to find her body,’ Carter almost whispered.

  ‘We do.’ Jackman looked across to Max. ‘Come up here and tell us what happened when you went to see Suzanne’s brother.’

  Max took centre stage. ‘Ralph Doolan is at present in Scunthorpe General Hospital. He sustained injuries in an accident, a hit and run that took place in the early hours of yesterday morning. Neither the vehicle nor the driver of the car have been traced.’ He looked down at his notebook. ‘I was allowed to talk to him for a short while, and then again a little later. I confirmed his name, date of birth, and the fact that Suzanne Holland was his half-sister.’ Max closed his notebook and looked around the room. ‘His injuries are not life-threatening, but he has some serious damage to his pins, er, sorry, his legs. With several operations planned, he is likely to be there for some time, so we know where he is if we want him. Now, the thing is,’ he ran a hand through his spiky hair, ‘he says he was in the Fens at the time of his sister’s disappearance, but he hadn’t seen her for weeks. He swears that he wasn’t near the cottage on the night in question.’

  ‘Does he look like the photofit?’ asked Marie.

  ‘Bang to rights, Sarge. And he still has the ponytail. Oh yeah, and the glasses were Ray-Bans.’

  ‘That’s good?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Pleb! Like they would have set him back a couple of hundred smackers?’

  ‘Alibi?’ Jackman questioned.

  ‘He’s given me the name of a friend. He said he might have been with him that night, but he can’t be sure. And that, folks, is that.’ Max returned to his seat.

  ‘So, no firm alibi, and he is a match for the photofit. It doesn’t look good for Mr Doolan, does it?’ Carter commented.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ agreed Jackman. ‘So we better have another word. And, Max, talk to the friend, will you?’

  ‘That’s first on my list for this morning, sir.’

  ‘Right, people. Let’s do all we can to discover what happened to Suzanne’s body.’

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Jackman was sitting in his office with Marie and Carter.

  ‘Before you get back out there looking for whoever was running Danny Hurley, I’d like to get your thoughts on what happened in the Holland house, now we know she was actually killed there,’ Jackman said.

  ‘What I can’t understand is, why remove the body?’ Carter rubbed at his chin. ‘Given the amount of blood, it was patently obvious that something dreadful had happened. Why not just ring it in?’

  ‘Would you, if you’d just killed her?’ Marie asked.

  ‘Do you think it was Ponytail and sidekick?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Who else? Two men heard talking in raised voices on the path leading to the scene of the murder, on the very night we believe she died?’ Marie raised an eyebrow, ‘What more do you want?’

  ‘A motive,’ interjected Jackman. ‘Okay, so she wasn’t popular, and she’d had a failed marriage, then she went a bit wild and slept around for a while, but that’s not sufficient motive for murder by stone mantelpiece, is it?’

  Carter looked at him. ‘Could she have tripped?’

  ‘Rory assured me that so much blood loss means that she was probably flung or pushed by someone in a rage.’

  ‘What does he hope to find from this new search, sir?’ asked Marie.

  ‘He just said he has a theory, but nothing more.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Carter muttered.

  Jackman stood up. ‘Well, thanks for the input, but I think we are just going to go around in circles until we have more information, so you’d better get back out there. Good luck, guys.’

  Carter went off to make some preliminary calls.

  Marie waited behind. ‘We are edging closer to finding out what happened, sir, aren’t we?’

  ‘We are.’ Jackman saw her expression. ‘Close the door, Marie. Okay, what’s wrong?’

  Marie hesitated for a moment. ‘Carter is really into this, really focussed. I believe he is totally convinced that solving the mystery will get rid of his unwanted friend. But what if he doesn’t like what we discover? What if the person who killed Suzanne was someone very close to home?’

  Jackman digested her words. ‘As in one of his other friends?’

  She shrugged. ‘Possibly. I’ve been wondering who that second man was, the one with our friend Ponytail. I spent a lot of the night thinking about all the people who had some connection to Suzanne. Four of them are dead, so proving where they were and what they were doing won’t be easy, will it?’

  Jackman breathed in. She had a valid point. ‘I’ll personally check the old reports for discrepancies, but I’ll do it quietly, if you see what I mean?’

  ‘Thanks, sir. It’s just a wild guess really, but I still feel very twitchy about Ca
rter’s reaction if things do not go as he imagines they will.’

  ‘You and me both, and Laura Archer. I saw her talking to the FMO yesterday, and she looked worried sick.’

  ‘And we can all guess who she’s worried over.’

  Jackman mustered a smile. ‘Thanks, Marie, now you’d better go before the closed door causes comments.’

  * * *

  Two hours later, Carter and Marie were sitting in a seedy backstreet café talking to an even seedier man.

  Carter had told her that Sidney was one of his oldest snouts, and unlike most of the street people he used, he actually trusted him. Sidney had taken a bit of finding, but the promise of food and a hot drink had tempted him out of his hole.

  Now, with a full English breakfast inside him, he looked almost human.

  ‘He’s a creep, Mr McLean, no other word for him. Danny’s had these “things” about women before, but he’s never gone as far as snatching them. Silly bugger.’

  ‘You’re certain he was acting alone when he arranged to take the girl?’

  ‘Well, he used a couple of the lads to do the actual snatch.’ He winked at Carter. ‘As I think you know. But, yes, he was going to take her away with him.’

  ‘Where?’

  Sidney shrugged. ‘No idea. But of course, it wasn’t him that started the whole thing.’

  ‘So he says.’ Carter’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘He isn’t lying, Mr McLean. The word on the streets is that a certain well-known family — one that’s headline news at present — were just saying “thank you” to the rozzer that put three of them in the cells.’

  Marie’s eyes widened. ‘The Cannon family?’

  Sidney tilted his head. ‘Maybe.’

  That would make all kinds of sense. In her head, Marie went over the reports on the arrests and yes, Ruth Crooke had been the OIC. ‘Do you reckon that they never meant Danny to go as far as he did?’

  The old man looked shrewdly at Marie. ‘They are in enough trouble, miss. It was just meant as a sort of “gesture.” Not intended to be linked to them, but still, an irritating thorn in said rozzer’s side.’

  Carter shook his head. ‘Well, they certainly chose the wrong man for the job.’

  ‘I dunno. Even in our community, not many people know about Danny Hurley’s dark side.’