‘If the food is cooked or heated,’ Wilson asked, ‘would that destroy the poison?’
McCush shook his head.
‘I’m afraid not. Many of these toxins are not degraded when food is cooked.’
Tara had one last question for the scientist.
‘If this toxin did not get into food by accidental contamination, might someone have put it there deliberately?’
McCush gestured with his hands wide apart. Myers gazed towards her but didn’t appear troubled by her remark.
‘I suppose it could happen, but I would have difficulty believing how someone might have got their hands on so much of the material.’
At that point, Myers thanked Dr McCush for sparing the time to brief his officers.
‘For now, while Dr McCush’s team continue with testing samples, we are to be stood down from the investigation. It is solely a matter for the environmental authorities and the Food Standards Agency.’
Tara thought differently as she made her way back to her office and her desk. Three people were dead, not from poisoning and yet very much linked to Harbinson Fine Foods. The answers to this mystery lay with that company.
CHAPTER 36
In the afternoon Tara set Murray and Wilson to work on gathering as much CCTV footage as they could find from the stores identified as having sold products from Harbinson Fine Foods, particularly those associated with the samples that tested positive for palytoxin. It was conceivable, she thought, that if the poison had not been added at one of the Harbinson factories then it might have been added to the food within the supermarket stores.
She received a call from DS Lydiate concerning a car found abandoned in Royden Park, near the spot where Jez’s body was discovered. Lydiate wondered if Tara would care to look over it. Several items were found inside that might be of interest to her. She left Murray to his work on footage from the CCTV and drove herself to Birkenhead police station.
DS Lydiate showed her to a silver Peugeot SUV. It had been brought into the station yard and was covered by a dust sheet. A full forensic examination had already been conducted.
Tara helped Lydiate to remove the sheet. He handed her the keys.
‘Feel free to have a look around. Some items have been removed. I have them in the office. You can see them when you’re finished here.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No problem, ma’am. We can go back inside when you’re ready.’
Tara opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. At first glance, the car was clean and tidy. There was nothing that stood out which indicated that Jez had even been the owner.
‘No prints lifted other than the victim’s,’ said Lydiate.
Tara switched on the sound system. As she might have expected, the radio was set to Classic FM. She glanced behind into the rear seats but they were clear of anything that might have belonged to Jez.
‘Any damage to the outside?’ she asked.
Lydiate shook his head.
‘Not a scratch. The car is pristine. I checked with a Peugeot dealership; the car is less than a year old, bought from new by Miss Riordan. No finance involved – paid in full.’
At Lydiate’s desk, the DS displayed the items that had been removed from the car by the forensics team. Each item had been placed in a separate evidence bag. Tara lifted one from the desk. Inside was a pink slip of paper, a delivery note or an invoice. Mattson’s Art was the company name printed in bold at the top of the page. Five items were listed, three of which were various types of paper and the other two were presumably paints or dyes, noted by a reference number followed by the colours, yellow and crimson. In the next bag, there was a till receipt from Tesco for the sum of £27.95 and dated 11 October. Another bag contained a plain white envelope, along with a card from the Silverstein Gallery in Kensington inviting Jez to a forthcoming exhibition of ‘Inner City’ painting entitled, ‘Decline and Fall.’ The card was dated 19 September. She passed over the latest programme for the Philharmonic Hall and the dates of the winter season for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, pausing for a second to recall their first outing together, a night which seemed to point towards a future friendship.
Stuck to the outside of a brown envelope was a Post-it with a number written upon it. It appeared to be a mobile number. She took a note of it and would try it later. In the last evidence bag was a note taken from the brown envelope. It seemed to have been written in some haste, the handwriting untidy and sitting askew on the page. It read, ‘Jez, please don’t do this to me. I thought we meant more to each other. I’ll see you tonight, we’ll talk.’ There was no signature, and the absence of a date was all the more frustrating. If it was recent then she could be looking at the words written by Jez’s killer. Or perhaps, it was a final plea from Richard Andrews before he threw himself off the Liver Building. The thought of Andrews brought her to think about the location of Royden Park where Jez’s body had been found.
CHAPTER 37
Tara had already decided to pay another visit to Jez’s home as she drove away from Birkenhead station. She intended to search for anything that would be a clue to finding who killed her friend. Aside from the mysterious note and a telephone number, there had been little found in Jez’s SUV. She also felt an inclination to be close in some way to the woman whom she had quickly grown to like, despite Jez having been somewhat of an enigma. She still wondered about those two occasions when Jez had kissed her and what she had been intending.
The gates to the house were open, but police incident tape had been strung across the driveway. She left her car on the street, ducked beneath the tape and strode uneasily to the front door. A set of house keys had been retrieved from Jez’s Peugeot, and Tara had asked to borrow them from DS Lydiate. The house was in darkness as she turned the key in the lock. She found a switch and lights came on in the hallway and on the landing above. Such a large house for one person, she thought, wondering if Jez had lived a lonely life. In the short time they’d spent together, she never spoke of friends or family except to mention that both her parents were dead. Tara didn’t know if Jez had ever been married. Did she have children? Friends in London, perhaps?
She nudged open the first door on her right into the sitting room where she had first spoken with Jez. The room was in disarray. Cushions from the sofa were scattered on the floor, books had been pulled from a shelf next to the fireplace and some of the pictures on the walls had been knocked to crooked angles. Tara assumed that police, in performing a search, had not been concerned about causing upset on the premises. She didn’t feel right about leaving the room in such a state. She replaced the cushions and the books and straightened the pictures on the walls. As she did so, she looked out for anything to help her discover what had happened to Jez.
There was nothing obvious but, for the first time, she wondered why a mobile phone had not been found at the crime scene, either in the car or close to Jez’s body. During the time she’d spent in her company, she didn’t recall Jez ever using a mobile. She made a mental note to have Wilson check with the phone companies for any reference to Jez Riordan. From the sitting room, she wandered into the extensive kitchen at the rear of the house, the result of a major extension to the original building. Several cupboard doors were ajar and a few items of packaged foods had been removed and set upon the workbench beneath. Several drawers lay open, but she found nothing of interest. For a few moments, she leaned her back against the island and tried to picture her friend working in this space. She felt an emptiness inside consummate with the room. It was a peculiar feeling of sadness, regret and foreboding. She heard a noise. It shook her from her thoughts. A thudding sound came from upstairs. There was someone in the house. She stepped to the door that led into the hall and called out.
‘Hello? Police, who’s there?’
As she placed her hand on the door handle, the door suddenly swung inwards and slammed into her face. She reeled backwards. Her feet stumbled on the tiled floor and she went down. The back of h
er head thumped against the edge of the island as she crashed to the floor. For a few seconds, all was hazy. She heard footsteps. Running steps. Then the front door slammed. Instinctively, she put a hand to the back of her head. She felt it warm and wet, and when she brought it down it was coloured red with blood. The pain, however, came from her forehead and tentatively she raised her left hand to the wound. There was no blood this time, but already she felt a swelling.
Neither injury stopped her from scrambling to her feet and rushing to the front door. She was way too late. Whoever the intruder was had vanished in the darkness. She ran along the drive to the gates colliding with the stretch of incident tape, tearing it in two. The road outside was quiet. There was no sign of anyone and no sounds of a car starting up and racing away. They had been quick on their feet.
Breathing hard and trembling, she walked slowly back to the house, peering at times into the hedges and shrubs in case the intruder had simply hidden in the garden. Tara closed the front door behind her and leaned against it for a while, trying to steady her breathing. The back of her head was still bleeding. She found some tissues in the kitchen and pressed a wad of them against the cut. She didn’t dare look again to see how bad it was. Instead, she continued with her inspection of the house.
The bedroom to the rear of the house in which Jez slept had been ransacked. Duvet and pillows had been dragged to the floor and the contents of an enormous built-in wardrobe had been pulled out and dumped on the carpet. Jewellery was scattered across a dressing table and items of make-up discarded on the bed. Two guitars, one acoustic, one electric, had been pulled from their housing on the wall and, it seemed, had been thrown across the room to lie next to the wardrobe. The intruder had been searching for something. Tara wondered if they had found it, or had she interrupted the search?
Her head throbbed as she circled the room. She should call for help. Already, by coming here alone she had put herself in danger. It was too late now, she thought and moved on to what was supposed to be the master bedroom but which Jez had used as her studio. Again, the room had been ransacked. Paintings had been thrown around, some ripped to pieces. An easel was upturned and tubes of oil paints scattered on the floor. Tara felt such sadness at seeing the work of a talented woman damaged beyond repair. The so-called ‘environmental’ picture depicting the herd of cows queuing outside a McDonald’s had been sliced with a knife. Tara thought again of the relationship between Jez and Maggie Hull, Maggie having had one of these paintings on the wall of her living room. Who had taken against these women? Did they even have the same killer? How in the hell did it relate to the deaths of four innocent people from food poisoning?
As she was about to switch off the light, she noticed what looked to be a painting wrapped in brown paper. It sat on the floor against the wall with several other canvases. She lifted it free from the others and held it up. There was a small card attached, and the reading of it brought heavy tears to her eyes.
For Tara. Thank you for the memory of a wonderful day. Love, Jez x.
She pulled some of the brown wrapping paper away and examined the picture within. She recognised the scene straightaway. Llanberis and Llyn Padarn. She couldn’t bear to take it with her as she left the house in tears and pain, still bleeding.
The remainder of her evening was spent at A & E in the Royal Liverpool Hospital. Whilst there, she sent a text to Kate in the hope that she might be on duty and could pop down to see her. Kate appeared within two minutes, in tears to see that yet again Tara had been in the wars and it was down to the bloody life she was leading.
‘I’m all right, Kate, honest. It was partly my fault. I stumbled backwards and hit my head on the bench.’
‘Oh, Tara love, when are you ever going to get out of that damned job? Look at your face. I’ve spoken to the triage nurse, you won’t have much longer to wait.’
‘I’m sure there are people here who are a lot worse off than me.’
‘That’s as may be, Tara, but you are going to have to take better care of yourself. What are we going to do with you?’
Tara squeezed her friend’s hand. At that point, she was called into a treatment room, and an hour later she was driving home with two staples in the back of her head and a developing black eye. On the drive to Wapping Dock, and as she left her car and walked slowly to her flat, a question occurred to her as to why she still had Royden Park on her mind.
CHAPTER 38
Before Murray got into explaining that he’d so far seen little of interest on the CCTV footage, Tara asked him to drive her out to Caldy on The Wirral. She realised the previous night that Royden Park was not far from a house she had visited quite recently. The day was cold and damp; once crisp brown leaves by the roadsides had become soft mulch from overnight showers.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, ma’am,’ said Murray as he stopped the car, ‘you look a bit of a sight to be calling at someone’s house.’
‘Yes, thank you, Alan. You certainly know how to make a girl feel good about herself.’
Make-up had done little to conceal the purple bruise on her left cheek and across her eye. She could hardly see from the swelling. In a final desperate effort to look more presentable, she had brushed her hair so that it lay across the left side of her face.
‘And why are we here, exactly?’ Murray asked as he held the car door open for her.
‘I need another chat with Andrews’ widow. She does have a motive for killing Jez. Put that with the proximity of this place to the crime scene, and I think we have a right to ask questions.’
‘What about killing Maggie Hull? How does that fit? Not to mention the poisonings.’
‘Too late, you already did. Let’s just see what we get from here this morning, shall we?’
When they reached the driveway of the house, two young children, a boy of about eight and a girl of not more than five, were playing on a brightly-coloured adventure playground toward the rear of the house. Nicole Andrews must have spotted them as they walked from the car because she emerged rather speedily from the back of the house and called to her children. She did not acknowledge her visitors until the boy and girl were by her side. The electric gates lay open and Tara and Murray strolled into the drive.
‘Mrs Andrews,’ said Tara, ‘you may not remember me, I’m Detective Inspector Tara Grogan, and this is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Murray.’
Andrews gave a cursory nod, glanced at their warrant cards but said nothing.
‘I wonder if you would mind answering a few more questions.’
‘About what?’
Tara looked towards the children in the hope of expressing tactfully that they should not be present. Nicole Andrews took the hint.
‘Off you go, children, Mummy needs to speak with these nice people.’ Both children returned to the slide and climbing frame. ‘You’d better come in, I suppose,’ she said coolly. ‘I have to organise lunch for the children. It’s half-term and we’re going swimming this afternoon.’
Tara hadn’t noticed much change in the woman from their first meeting. Her clothes were dark, jeans and a woollen sweater, her manner somewhat distant, even stand-offish. Perhaps it was the ordeal of police investigations and the recent traumatic events in her life, but Tara wondered why she seemed to lack warmth or charm.
They followed her inside to a spacious kitchen which opened onto a family room where a television was playing a relocation-in-the-sun programme. She invited them to sit at the breakfast bar then, and using the remote, muted the sound on the television.
‘Can I get you anything, coffee or tea?’ she asked from the far side of the kitchen.
‘Coffee would be great,’ Murray replied.
Tara glared at him sternly although she, too, did not refuse the offer.
‘I assume, Mrs Andrews,’ Tara began, ‘that you have heard about the death of Miss Jez Riordan?’
The woman ceased all movement and for a moment glared icily at her visitors. Tara knew fine well that she was s
triking a nerve, but she needed to witness her reactions.
‘Her body was found in Royden Park on Wednesday. We believe that she had been missing since the previous Thursday.’
Nicole Andrews’ face was ashen. She had a tight grip on the kettle that she’d just filled with water, but she stood motionless, staring vacantly at Tara.
‘You did know of Miss Riordan’s death?’
‘Yes, my father told me,’ she replied at last. ‘I wish that I could say I was sorry, but at the moment I don’t feel anything.’ Her eyes filled with tears but she busied them away, placing the kettle on its stand and fetching three mugs from a cupboard.
‘I was wondering, perhaps, if she had paid you a visit recently, last Wednesday or Thursday, for instance?’
‘Certainly not. She would hardly have received a warm welcome.’
‘And you had no arrangements to meet with her elsewhere?’
‘Again, Inspector, I had no desire to ever set eyes on the woman.’
‘Her car was found close to her body,’ said Murray. ‘Royden Park is not far from here. You didn’t notice her in the area?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’ asked Tara, suddenly struck by the thought that Nicole may never have set eyes on the woman she held responsible for destroying her marriage and, ultimately, her husband’s life.
‘Yes. Once,’ she replied. ‘She came here to tell me that she and Richard were having an affair. Apparently, he hadn’t the nerve to tell me himself.’
‘And when did this visit take place?’
‘About eight weeks before Richard finally left us.’ Again, she returned to the task of preparing the refreshments, placing a spoonful of coffee into each mug, fetching some biscuits from a tin on the bench, using the silence to recover some composure.
THE DARING NIGHT Page 14