by Lisa Hartley
Catherine shook her head, unable to believe what she was hearing. Shea laughed, realising they were going to get nothing from her. He reached into a beige cardboard folder that lay on the desk between them, took a couple of photographs from it and threw them in front of Catherine, face down. She glanced at them.
‘What are they?’ she asked, pleased that her discomfort wasn’t showing in her voice.
Shea shrugged podgy shoulders. ‘Have a look.’
She reached out and turned them over. The first image was a close-up of a man, his eyes wide and panicked, obviously terrified, screaming into the camera. He was sitting in some sort of outbuilding. The second photograph showed the same man, clearly tied to a chair. His head had fallen forward towards his lap and blood pooled around his feet, which were purple, hideously swollen and damaged. More blood streaked the man’s limbs and stomach. Several large petrol cans stood ominously next to him. Catherine’s breath caught in her throat but she wasn’t going to let these two idiots know that she was the least bit rattled.
‘Are you trying to shock me?’ Her voice was neutral.
Shea shook his head, the flesh around his throat wobbling again. ‘Not at all. You’re an experienced officer; it would take more than a few sick photographs to disturb you. What might be more of a surprise though is where these pictures came from.’
‘Or who they came from.’ Allan’s tone was loaded. Catherine stared from her to Shea and back in confusion.
Suddenly Shea sat forward, grabbed the photographs and tucked them back in the folder. He smiled at Catherine, his face friendly again.
‘Thank you for your time,’ he said. Allan got up and moved over to the door. Catherine, entirely bemused now, stood and looked down at Shea.
‘So what’s your point?’ she asked. He continued to tidy his papers as if she hadn’t spoken. Catherine shook her head contemptuously and marched out.
Knight was in his office, his eyes fixed on his computer screen. Catherine knocked sharply on his door before walking straight in. He looked up in surprise.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ Catherine demanded. She closed the door behind her but remained standing.
‘What are you talking about?’ Knight was totally calm, which only served to make her angrier.
‘I’ve just had Shea and Allan showing me photos of Paul Hughes.’
He stared at her. ‘What?’
She pulled the chair that stood in front of his desk nearer and sat in it, running her hands through her hair. ‘Pictures of Paul Hughes screaming his head off and then dead in a chair, covered in blood.’
Knight was shaking his head, bemused. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. There were no photographs like that. I mean, obviously we took some once the fire had been put out, but …’
‘That’s it.’
‘What?’
‘These were taken before the fire had even been lit. There were petrol cans next to Hughes but no fire damage at all. Shit, they must have been taken by whoever killed him.’
Knight’s mouth was open. ‘But where have they come from?’
‘Haven’t you seen them?’
‘I told you, we only had photos taken after the fire brigade had finished and they realised there was a dead body.’
‘Then how have Pinky and Perky got hold of them?’
‘You’ll have to ask them that.’ His lips were pressed together and he looked as angry as Catherine had ever seen him. There was a tap on the door and the grinning face of Patrick Shea appeared.
‘Could we have another word, Jonathan?’
Down in the canteen, Catherine grabbed a piece of chocolate cake and a cappuccino, her mind still reeling. As she sat down, she heard the foghorn voice of Keith Kendrick chatting to Sally, who was operating the till. He clumped over, set a mug of coffee and a huge fruit scone on the table and slumped into a chair.
‘Don’t often see you down here.’ Catherine took a bite of cake as Kendrick scowled.
‘Don’t often have a jumped-up DI taking over my station either.’
‘What are they doing here?’
‘You tell me. Fresh eyes on the Hughes case.’ He widened his eyes. ‘Apparently.’
‘I’ve just escaped from their lair.’
‘What did they want? You haven’t even been at work. Jonathan’s in there again with them now.’
He chomped on the scone as Catherine took a sip of coffee.
‘They seem to be implying that Jonathan wasn’t thorough when he investigated Paul Hughes’ death.’
Kendrick swallowed a lump of scone.
‘Wasn’t thorough by accident or by design?’
‘They didn’t actually say.’
‘He does have a bit of a Hughes obsession but he did all he could, I’d stake my pension on it.’
Catherine remembered the tattoo that scarred Knight’s back and wished he hadn’t shown it to her.
‘Me too,’ she said, hoping her unease wasn’t evident in her voice. ‘They seem to have their knives out for him though. They’ve somehow got hold of two photographs …’ Her voice trailed off as she thought about the pictures of herself that had caused her so much anguish during their last major case.
‘Photos taken by whoever killed Hughes?’ Kendrick asked.
‘It looks like it. They said Jonathan didn’t have them, or that they weren’t in the reports at least. He doesn’t seem to know about them at all; I’ve just asked him.’
‘He won’t do. They were sent to Malc Hughes on the day of Paul’s funeral, and he kept hold of them. It was only when our intrepid pair went down to London to speak to him that he gave them up. They showed me the photos earlier today – bloody grim.’
Catherine gawped at him.
‘So they were just winding me up?’
‘Who knows what they were doing? I think they’re just rattling a few cages and seeing what falls out. I wish they’d bugger off though.’
‘You’re not the only one.’
Taking a slurp of coffee, Kendrick lowered his voice to what he obviously thought was a whisper, the volume of most people’s normal speaking voice.
‘You and I know there can be nothing in it. I haven’t known Jonathan long but I’ve seen nothing while he’s been here to worry me at all, have you?’
She swallowed, banishing the image of that tattoo from her mind. ‘No.’
‘Well then.’ Kendrick finished the scone and pushed back his chair, coffee mug still in his hand. ‘The best thing we can do is forget about them and concentrate on finding which of our charming local drug dealing friends sat by and watched the lass we found yesterday die, then cut her open like a Sunday joint.’
Catherine headed back up to the incident room, still fuming over Shea and Allan’s lies. Whatever game they were playing, she didn’t like it. Kendrick had seemed to know all about the photos and no doubt the Super did too, so either Pinky and Perky were being crafty about how much they revealed and to whom, or … what? They were investigating Knight’s handling of the Hughes case with the blessing of his superior officers? She couldn’t imagine Kendrick standing for that, but what could he do if the Super had given it her approval?
She shoved open the door of the incident room, instantly hit by the mixed noise of several phones ringing, the tapping of computer keys and a cacophony of voices.
Chris Rogers waved her over.
‘This CCTV footage is getting interesting, Sarge.’
She went over to him, rested an arm on the back of the shabby blue desk chair he was perched on and leaned in to focus on the images on the screen.
‘What am I looking at then?’
‘Lauren Cook got out of her car in the multi-storey, yeah? We saw that earlier.’
‘And?’
‘Well, she goes off and gets a ticket. Then she returns to her car, takes out her little pink suitcase, locks the vehicle and disappears.’
‘I know that, Chris. So what?’
‘Guess who w
as driving the next vehicle that came in and parked up?’
She blew out her cheeks.
‘Father Christmas?’
‘Bit early for him yet. It’s Mark Cook.’
Her eyes widened.
‘No way.’
Rogers nodded at the screen.
‘Here he comes now.’
Sure enough, a small white van appeared. Mark Cook climbed out, trotted over to buy a ticket and stuck it to the vehicle’s windscreen, then went off in the same direction his wife had taken.
‘Whose is the van?’ Catherine wanted to know. ‘The Cooks only own the car that Lauren was driving.’
‘Belongs to a Peter Davis who lives fairly near the Cooks. I’m still waiting on the footage from the street outside the car park, but it shouldn’t be much longer.’
‘Cook didn’t mention this when I spoke to him.’
Chris opened his eyes wide. ‘Funny that. We’ll soon see if he was following her anyway. By the way, Sarge, I hear you spoke to Ellie last night.’
She straightened up.
‘So what if I did?’
He grinned. ‘Faye said you’d get on. So when are you taking her out?’
‘We might meet for a coffee sometime, not that it’s any of your business.’
‘A coffee? Bloody hell, Sarge, you’re losing your touch,’ he laughed. She couldn’t help smiling.
As she walked away, a young uniformed officer who was manning the phones waved at her from across the room.
‘Mick Caffery’s on the line, ma’am. He asked for Inspector Wallpaper, but I told him you were here.’
Catherine fixed him with a stern look as he smirked at the officers around him. ‘Thank you Ryan, I’ll pick it up at my desk.’ She turned to walk away, then span back. ‘And Ryan?’
He half-stood, looking sheepish. ‘Ma’am?’
‘You can stay in at playtime.’
At her desk, she flung herself into the chair and snatched up the receiver.
‘Mick?’
‘Good morning, Catherine. Are you well?’
‘Fine thanks,’ she said, making a “get on with it” gesture with her hand. ‘How are you?’
‘Keeping busy. Now, we’re still waiting on most of the results, as you’d expect.’
‘Of course.’
‘We were able to get decent prints from the deodorant bottle you provided us with, as well as some that weren’t quite as good quality from the shower gel.’
‘Okay …’
‘Anyway, we’ve completed our initial fingerprint analysis, based on the prints of Lauren Cook from the bottle and from those taken from the subject of yesterday’s post-mortem.’
‘And?’ Catherine bit back a scream.
‘There’s no match.’
There was a second’s pause as she digested this.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The two sets of prints are totally different. The DNA test confirms it - the woman we found by the pond yesterday isn’t Lauren Cook.’
22
‘So who is she?’ Kendrick asked.
‘We still don’t know.’ Knight loosened his tie.
‘So we’ve got a missing woman but no body and a body but no missing woman,’ Catherine said. They were in Kendrick’s office with the door firmly closed.
‘We need to keep liaising with the UK Missing Persons Bureau. Let’s get this woman identified.’
‘What about Mark Cook?’ She’d already explained what Chris Rogers had discovered. ‘If the body isn’t his wife and as far as we can see, Lauren hasn’t left the country, then …’
‘Then Mark Cook following Lauren and not telling us about it starts to look a little bit sinister,’ Kendrick agreed. ‘Why don’t we bring him in for a chat?’
‘You don’t want me to go back to the house?’ Catherine frowned.
‘We’d better send someone to break the news, as well as bring Cook in. He might be more talkative here, especially without his mother-in-law listening over his shoulder – you said she was the domineering type?’
‘Just a bit.’ Catherine rolled her eyes.
‘Okay. A cosy heart-to-heart it is then.’ Kendrick turned to Knight and whispered, ‘What did our friends want?’ He nodded towards the wall that separated his office from the Superintendent’s next door.
‘To show me the photographs Catherine mentioned. Told me in no uncertain terms that they were having the originals analysed for fingerprints, DNA, moon dust …’
Kendrick gave him a hard look.
‘They’ve got a bee in their bonnet about you.’
‘I’ve no idea why.’
‘Catherine and I have agreed on that too, but if you’ve been doing your mystery man act …’
Knight looked bemused. ‘Mystery man act?’
Kendrick waved his arms. ‘You know: giving one-word answers, never really saying what you’re thinking, disappearing into the background …’
‘Like wallpaper?’ Knight grinned.
‘Exactly like wallpaper.’ Kendrick nodded. ‘I just don’t want them to come in, get no further on with finding out who killed Hughes than we did but damage your reputation while they’re at it. Shea’s a spiteful sod, we’ve seen that already.’
‘All right,’ Knight agreed. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’
‘Who do you want to interview Cook?’ Catherine asked. Kendrick pondered.
‘Get Simon and Dave to do it,’ he said. ‘I want Chris to keep going with the CCTV stuff. And Catherine, you observe. You’ve spoken to Mark Cook before, so let’s see how he reacts to being brought in.’
Mark looked ill as he followed Dave Lancaster into the interview room. It wasn’t the grimmest one in the station, but it wasn’t far off and it certainly made the room in which Catherine had spoken to him seem luxurious by comparison. Cook shuffled along, then sat down and stared around him. Simon Sullivan followed them in and closed the door, setting a manila folder on the table as he took his seat.
‘Mr Cook, thank you for coming in today,’ Dave began. ‘You understand that we need to talk to you again about your wife?’
Mark nodded. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help you find her.’ His voice was deadened, a monotone. Catherine felt slightly guilty about dragging him here, but they needed an explanation.
Dave and Simon exchanged a glance. ‘Excellent,’ Dave said. ‘Now, when you spoke to Detective Sergeant Bishop, you told her that you hadn’t seen your wife since she left the house to travel to Amsterdam, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And that was the truth?’
Mark was indignant, a spark of emotion breaking out of his gloom. ‘Of course it was.’
Dave opened the folder and took out a sheet of paper, then turned it over and slid it towards Mark Cook, who stared at it. It was a still from the CCTV footage, clearly showing Cook locking the white van.
‘Can you explain this, Mr Cook?’ Simon asked.
‘When … when is it from?’ he gulped.
‘The day you told us your wife went away,’ Dave told him, tapping a finger on the date and time printed on the corner of the page.
‘I’m not sure what this has to do with Lauren?’ Mark sat up straight. ‘I borrowed a mate’s van and nipped into town. I had to go to the job centre, if you must know.’
‘Do you often borrow the van?’
‘No, but Pete had a day off and offered it to me, knowing Lauren had taken the car.’
Dave shook his head and pointed again at the image on the table.
‘Take another look, Mr Cook. Recognise anything?’
He glanced down, then did a double take.
‘But that’s our car! I don’t … What’s it doing parked there?’
Simon took out a second sheet.
‘It doesn’t take much to work it out, Mark.’
This image showed Lauren climbing out of the car. The time stamp showed that it was only a matter of minutes before Cook himself had arrived at the car park.
‘Well, Mark? What do you have to say to that?’ Dave asked.
Cook shook his head, his bewilderment seeming genuine.
‘I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know she was there. She told me she was driving to Hull to get the ferry. I really don’t understand.’ Mark Cook looked wretched, his face pale and his eyes filling with tears. Catherine shifted in her chair. Cook’s discomfort seemed genuine, but it was too much of a coincidence.
‘You expect us to believe that you walked past your own car and didn’t recognise it?’ Simon scoffed. ‘Come on, Mark.’
‘I’m telling you, I didn’t see it. Why would I? There are millions of silver cars around and it wasn’t like I was expecting it to be there.’
‘So you got out of the van, walked past your own car, didn’t see it. You went … where?’
‘Out of the multi-storey, turned right and cut through the bus station to the job centre. I signed on, then came straight back to the van.’
‘Taking the same route through the bus station?’
‘Yes. I dropped the van back at Pete’s, then I walked home. I didn’t see Lauren at all.’
Dave touched a finger to his lips, his brow furrowed. ‘Tell me, Mark.’ His voice was gentle. ‘When did you first suspect that Lauren was lying to you?’
Cook stared at him. ‘What? What are you talking about?’
With a shrug, Dave said, ‘Just wondering. If it was my missus, I wouldn’t have been happy about it.’
Catherine had to smile – Dave Lancaster was resolutely single. Mark looked from Dave to Simon, his eyes panicked.
‘I only found out she hadn’t gone to Amsterdam when you told me, I’d no idea. Look, yesterday that sergeant came and told us you’d found a body. Today you tell me it isn’t Lauren, and now you seem to be accusing me of killing her?’
‘That’s a bit of leap, isn’t it?’ Dave asked.
Simon cleared his throat. ‘No one’s mentioned you killing anyone, Mark.’
‘Unless you have information that we don’t?’ Dave’s face was stern now.
Cook laid both hands on the surface of the table in front of him. ‘I don’t know where my wife is. You have to believe me.’ Catherine could barely hear him, his voice cracking as he pleaded with them. ‘I’ve no reason to believe that she was cheating on me. We’re happy.’