by M. J. Ford
He quickened his steps, drawing level, looking for a gap in traffic so he could cross. Then she stopped, and shouted across the road.
‘Why the fuck are you following me?’
Thankfully there was no one in earshot. There was no recognition in her eyes at all. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he called back. As he began to cross the road, she turned and walked away. He’d anticipated this part, but he forgot what he was supposed to say, so instead he ran, his rucksack bouncing uncomfortably. He caught her though, and grabbed an arm. ‘Wait! Hear me out! I’m your …’
She turned, and her foot flashed out, catching him in the groin. His legs gave out at once, crumpling him to the ground. The pain was all-consuming, and he fought back a wave of bile. ‘Fuck off!’ she said.
She kept on walking, leaving him curled into a ball. With difficulty, he scooted to the edge of the pavement, using a low wall to help him stand. He checked under his tracksuit bottoms, fearing he might see blood, but he was still intact. She had vanished out of sight.
That hadn’t gone according to plan at all. Fuck, she’d kicked him hard!
It didn’t matter though. He’d found her now, and one way or another, he was never letting her go again.
Chapter 15
A clearly enraged Jordan Tomasz had to be escorted from the police station, and Jo wondered how soon he would report back to Blake’s father. Blake himself was still in the interview room where Jo had left him. Perhaps he felt pleased to get things off his chest, but it wouldn’t be long before he began to reassess the wisdom of the information he’d given her. They hadn’t charged him with anything, and it would be an arduous and detailed conversation with the Crown Prosecution Service, taking into account the assistance that he’d offered, before they decided how to take things forward. In the meantime, he would likely be released. She doubted it would be long before he was hooked again though – some fish, she knew, were like that. If they did press charges, Jo was under no illusions. Any half-decent legal brief would argue that Blake was under the powerful influence of his hardened criminal father. The chances of him doing time were minute.
Jo’s boss had given her a clap on the back as soon as she left the interview room. Dimitriou approached her with smile and a shake of the head. ‘I can’t believe you used the dog. So cold.’
That was as close to congratulations as she’d get from Dimi.
‘Not as cold as Matthis family Christmases from now on,’ she replied.
Their first priority at this point was the safety of both Blake and his mother. Carrick had already instructed Heidi to get in touch with the youth offender team, and to have a uniformed officer stationed at the hospital.
As Jo sat back at her desk, Reeves said, ‘That was amazing, ma’am.’
It had been a gamble, but it had paid off. And she knew she should feel better than she did. The fact was though, a couple of pieces might have come together, but the big picture was more than a little hazy. There was no leads for the arson attack. They still had no murder suspect in custody for the deaths of Xan Do, or the Baileys, and why Harry had paid the ultimate price was a deeper mystery still. He wasn’t involved in the drug trade at all, other than historically, when he’d done his best to stem its flow into Oxford in the nineties. She was struck, suddenly, by a vivid memory from the Three Crowns – one of the times he’d spoken about his work in some detail. It had been the night of the work Christmas party, but he was on duty, and called to a suspected overdose at an illegal rave. When he got there he had discovered the boy was the son of a colleague. He’d had to deliver the news himself, while White Christmas played in the background.
If the killings had been carried out by someone higher up the narcotics food chain, the chances of bringing them in without hard forensics was tiny. They could try talking to Matthis Senior, but he wasn’t likely to offer them the name of his supplier even if they had almost killed Blake’s mother. Grasses in prison tended not to fare well. He would have to find a way to make good on whatever profits the police seizure had diminished.
The only other person who might have been able to pass on useful information was Xan himself.
Carrick gave her a tap on the shoulder. ‘Can I have a word?’
She followed him into his office and shut the door.
‘None of this makes sense, does it?’ he said.
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ said Jo. ‘Xan’s killing looks like a drug hit, but the Baileys is something different altogether. Whoever killed them took their time.’
‘And a good amount of buckshot in the process,’ said Carrick.
‘Any word on the DNA in the blood on the carpet?’
‘Samples went to the lab Saturday for extraction. They’ll be sent to the national database for comparison any time now. Until then, the priority is still to find Megan Bailey. She’s a dangerous person to get close to, it seems. God knows how Harry got mixed up with her.’
‘I had a thought about that,’ said Jo.
‘I’m listening.’
‘What if he was looking after her?’ said Jo. ‘It looks like she tried to rob him, probably for a bit of cash or valuables. For some reason, he didn’t turn her in. Instead, she started living with him.’
‘It’s a nice theory,’ said Carrick, ‘but why?’
‘Maybe he was lonely,’ said Jo, and she remembered Dimitriou had said the same thing, back at the start of the investigation. He’d been implying a sexual connection, of course, and she still couldn’t wrap her head around anything like that. In her heart it made some sense that he would want to help. Harry had had no one, other than the drinkers at the Three Crowns. And in the last few months, he’d not even had Jo herself to talk to. ‘Perhaps he thought he could help her get clean.’
Carrick stroked his chin. ‘I suppose it’s academic for now.’
‘I also think we have to assume there’s another male on the scene.’
‘Someone who took an exception to Harry?’ added Carrick.
‘And who drove Megan across town to the supermarket where we saw her later. She’s definitely not on her own in all this. I want to take another look at the CCTV from the betting shop on the corner of Canterbury Road. We only looked at the window immediately around the attack, but maybe this individual had been hanging around a while.’
‘Go for it,’ said Carrick, ‘but unsavoury types and betting shops are hardly uncommon bedfellows.’
* * *
The youth offender team took Blake Matthis away just before midday, while Dimitriou finally went home after twenty-eight hours on duty. Jo went over the footage Reeves had sourced from the bookies. After so much time focused on Blake Matthis and the Baileys, it felt good to be returning her attention to the case of her deceased friend.
She hadn’t told Carrick the full reason for wanting to access the recordings. What Alice Reeves had confided about Lucas being in the Three Crowns had never fully left her mind over the last twenty-four hours. The fact he’d been in the area in and around the time of Harry’s death didn’t necessarily mean anything – and indeed, the thought of Lucas being involved in violence of any sort seemed daft – but she had to remind herself that Lucas had known where Harry lived, and he had been particularly determined to track her down recently. He was also no stranger to being black-out drunk. She wouldn’t be doing her job if she didn’t check it out.
With a strong coffee to prepare her reserves of patience, she plugged in the hard-drive in the AV suite, winding back to approximately the time of the murder. She watched in reverse – the police cars and the ambulance retreating across the screen, the punters staggering back into the front of the building. Her own car, just a blur. Order restoring itself as the clock ticked back.
With a notebook open at her side, Jo made meticulous notes of the comings and goings, each accompanied with precise time-stamps. They’d estimated the time of the attack at 16.30, and the hours prior were busy ones at the bookies. More than nine in ten of the people who entered were
men. She disregarded anyone who went inside – figuring that she was looking, specifically, for outsiders coming to the area and thus simply walking or driving by. She ignored women, of whom there were few, and anyone she recognised specifically from the Three Crowns. There were plenty of others whom she could safely cross off the list. The very old, or the infirm – there were two on motorised scooters, and one visually impaired man with his guide dog. Of possible male suspects in the two hours prior to the murder, there were six. But none of them seemed to be in a hurry as they passed the bookies walking away from Ferman’s. And winding back further, none had approached from the same direction.
It was the day before the murder – Wednesday 16th – that she spotted Megan Bailey. She played the footage forward and saw the girl, dressed in the same voluminous coat as at the supermarket. For a few dozen frames, she crossed the camera angle moving towards Harry’s. She was carrying a bag of shopping in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other. The same flowers that had been on the floor beside Harry while he breathed his last. Jo made a note, and rewound, discovering shortly after that Megan had left the house twenty-seven minutes before she returned. Just nipping out to the shops, it seemed.
The day before there was no sign of Megan, but Jo did see the same man passing the front of the bookies on four occasions, two times back and forth. The gap between his journeys to and fro were only a couple of minutes, suggesting a destination somewhere on Harry’s road or close. He wore a hooded top, and walked with purpose. Jo tried zooming in the picture to get a better idea of distinguishing features, but it was frustratingly unclear. He was white, she thought, wearing boots of some sort, black tracksuit bottoms, and a dark hoodie. He carried a rucksack that looked almost military issue. She guessed he was around five-foot-ten, with a stocky build, which hardly narrowed things down. Still, she printed out several of the images, before rubbing her eyes and continuing.
At 8.28 pm on Tuesday 15th she saw Lucas. He was stumbling from the direction of the Three Crowns, along Canterbury Road, towards Harry’s place.
‘Shit.’
She paused the recording, sinking back in her chair, trying to work out the implications.
On the surface, it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t even on the day that Harry had been attacked, so there was nothing specifically incriminating. But it would still have to be written up as a line of enquiry, and as soon as Carrick realised her personal connections were further elbowing into the investigation, as surely as Lucas had staggered into the station the other day, her boss would be back to thinking about damage limitation. And she could hardly blame him. The last thing Thames Valley needed was another case with her name front and centre.
At the same time, a thought occurred. The 15th was the day of Harry’s message, regarding a ‘delicate situation’. Now it was all too easy to see what he’d meant. If Lucas had come to his door, drunk, demanding to know where she was, he wouldn’t have known what to do other than call her.
She made her notes and continued. It was important, now more than ever, not to get side-tracked. The rest of the day followed a similar pattern – the bookies were busiest between eleven am and four pm, with many of the same sad faces as on days she’d already looked over. With long periods of little pedestrian traffic, she could get through the footage at a decent lick, but with the frequent stops to make jottings, it took a couple of hours to get through the first couple of days prior to Harry’s murder. Her eyes were stinging from the intense focus, and she was about ready to give up.
Heidi knocked and stuck her head around the door just after two pm, handing Jo a sandwich. ‘We’ve got hold of the Oxfordshire City Council Child Welfare Team – they’re going to organise a liaison tomorrow with a member of staff who knows the file.’
‘Good of them to rush,’ said Jo, rolling her eyes.
‘We offered to send someone over today, but apparently it’s not as simple as that. Needs to be signed off through their legal department.’
‘Of course it does,’ said Jo. ‘They live for crossed T’s and dotted I’s. Cheers for the sarnie.’Alone again, she moved her search into the previous day – Monday 14th – and the time-stamp ticked backwards from midnight. Then, a few minutes short of nine pm, something made her stop. She blinked and paused, then slowly brought the car back into shot. It had been the distinctive shape of the front fender that caught her eye, and it was hard to see from the few frames if the colour was a match. But one thing was certain – the man in the driving seat was Greg Bailey.
He was driving straight down Harry Ferman’s road. It wasn’t the only surprise.
Jo zoomed in closer to be sure, focusing on the person in the passenger seat.
‘What the actual fuck?’ she muttered.
It was almost certainly Greg’s sister, Megan.
Chapter 16
When Greg Bailey didn’t answer his phone, they contacted his solicitor’s office directly. Aiden Chalmers did his best to deflect their enquiry, saying that his client was grieving and should be left alone.
‘Mr Chalmers,’ said Jo, the call on speaker in Carrick’s office. ‘We’ve got some important lines of enquiry that only Greg can answer. There were some inconsistencies in his previous statements.’
‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for any anomalies,’ said Chalmers, remaining unflustered. ‘Let me see what I can do and get back to you.’
He ended the call.
‘He’s a slippery one,’ said Carrick.
‘You think he’ll find Bailey?’ asked Heidi.
‘He’d better do,’ said Jo, ‘because if I get to him first, it won’t be pretty.’
Bailey hadn’t strictly denied being in Oxford recently, but the impression he gave to the contrary had been a strong one. Jo listened back to the recording of their conversation in Chalmers’ office. He said he’d last seen his parents at the ‘very end of January, just before I went back to uni’.
That was a long way from I was in Oxford a week ago with my sister and as far as Jo was concerned, he’d lied.
While they waited, Jo opened up the notes on the Ferman case, looking through the fingerprint record. If they could put Greg Bailey in the house, on the day of the murder, it would be more than a promising lead. Her brain searched for a motive but struggled to identify anything remotely credible. Bailey apparently despised his sister, but how that led to Ferman being bludgeoned was anyone’s guess. Perhaps Greg and his sister had argued, and Harry had somehow got in the way. In that case, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Bailey would get off with a manslaughter charge.
But the revelation threw up all sorts of other possibilities. If Greg was involved in Harry’s death, if he’d been in Oxford when he claimed to be in Cambridge, did that mean he was somehow caught up in Stanton St John too? In the murders of his own parents? If that bloody print on the stairs was a match, this was open and shut and the motive hardly mattered. But Jo’s immediate thought was the drugs. For all his avowed distaste for the world of narcotics, if ever there was a vice that turned family members against one another, made people do unspeakable things …
And he’d been so keen to pin it all on Megan. If that was a deflection, it was as good a ruse as Jo had ever seen. But she had to admit, her own prejudices hadn’t helped. Everything about him had screamed privilege – a walking stereotype of the private school to Oxbridge conveyor belt leading to an easy life in the one per cent. A million miles from someone like Blake Matthis.
But maybe not so far from Xan Do …
It was only the spark of an idea, but it took hold.
‘Heidi,’ Jo said across the desks. ‘I think Dimi mentioned Xan Do was privately educated. Any idea where?’
‘No. You want me to speak to the parents and find out? Might not be wise, given the complaint they’re bringing.’
‘Hold off, then,’ said Jo. It’s probably nothing anyway. She turned instead to the search engine on her computer and typed in ‘Xan Do St Cuth
bert’s.’
The hunch she’d had was a good one.
‘You need to see this,’ she said, as the results came up.
Heidi came around, and Jo opened the top link. It was a report from four years earlier, detailing the results of an orchestral competition held in London. Xan Do was mentioned as one member of a string quartet that took the second prize, and the school he represented was none other than St Cuthbert’s.
‘Oh my,’ said Heidi. ‘He knew Greg Bailey.’
‘They’re two years apart, but it’s probable.’
‘We need to tell the gaffer.’
‘Tell him what?’ said Carrick, appearing at the door.
Jo spelled out the link. ‘Whatever’s going on, Bailey’s got a lot of questions to answer.’
‘Lucky for you, he’s on his way,’ said Carrick. ‘Chalmers just called. They’re both coming in.’
* * *
Andy Carrick joined her in the interview room. Jo was in no mood to pussyfoot as she cautioned Bailey, and read him his rights. Neither he, nor Chalmers, looked terribly alarmed.
‘You lied to us, Greg. You said you hadn’t seen Megan.’
Bailey crossed his long legs, revealing five inches of naked ankle above the loafers. ‘I didn’t lie,’ he said. ‘I said I hadn’t seen my parents. That was true.’
‘You lied by omission. You knew we were looking for your sister.’
‘It was family business,’ he said. ‘Really none of yours.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, fifty per cent of your family are dead,’ said Jo.
‘Oh, come on!’ scoffed Chalmers. ‘That is grossly inappropriate. If you can’t be civil, I’ll have no alternative but to advise my client to terminate this voluntary interview.’
Jo was pretty sure the threat was empty, but if he did try to get Bailey out of the station, she was perfectly willing to arrest him in order to continue the conversation. She kept her focus on Megan’s brother. ‘I appreciate that privacy is important,’ said Jo, ‘but this is a murder enquiry. Is there anything you can tell me about the reason for your visit to Oxford.’