Reunion: a gripping crime thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book Book 4)

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Russell nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any formal qualifications in information technology?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t do IT at school?’

  ‘No. I didn’t do very well at school. I always liked computers, though.’

  ‘So, your knowledge of computers is self-taught?’ Barratt felt O’Connor’s foot tap his own. They’d agreed before the interview that Barratt would lead and also that he would let Russell answer fully, without prompting.

  ‘I got a laptop when I was eleven – my sister bought it for me – and I learnt how to use it. It’s not difficult really.’

  ‘So, what programmes can you use?’

  Russell grinned at him as though, finally, he felt on safe ground. ‘I’m pretty good with all the Microsoft stuff. Word, Excel and e-mail. I like keeping things in order, so I use spreadsheets. That’s why Mr Hibberts took me on – he likes everything in order as well.’

  Barratt made a note. This wasn’t the information he required. ‘What about the internet? Do you use it a lot?’

  ‘Not at work.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Russell glanced at his solicitor and blushed. ‘Mr Hibberts caught me doing something I shouldn’t have been, so he told me not to use the internet at work.’

  Barratt struggled to keep his face straight. ‘What were you doing, Calvin?’

  Russell hung his head and mumbled something.

  ‘I’m sorry, Calvin, I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I was playing online games and I missed two important phone calls.’

  ‘What were you playing?’

  ‘Minecraft.’

  Pines sat more upright in her seat and gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Is this really relevant?’

  Barratt tilted his head to one side and gave her his best patronising smile. ‘I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t. So, Calvin, do you play games on your laptop at home?’

  Russell nodded but Barratt saw little point in pursuing this line. Pines was right – this wasn’t relevant – and he was unconvinced that Russell had the skills or experience to hack into a computer system and alter confidential records.

  ‘What else can you do on a computer? Do you chat with other people, Facebook, Twitter?’

  ‘I don’t do that stuff,’ Russell said. ‘My sister, Clare, told me that there are some bad people out there who pretend to be friendly but they aren’t. She said they might take advantage of me because I’m not very good with people. I just play games.’

  This was getting them nowhere and Barratt could feel O’Connor’s seat vibrating as he twitched his leg up and down in frustration. In his previous interviews with O’Connor, the DS had taken the lead, but he felt like he’d formed a bit of a bond with Russell during their previous encounter and O’Connor had been happy to take a back seat. Barratt thought the DS had enough on his plate with Fletcher being AWOL – he knew that O’Connor preferred to do his own thing and he wasn’t overly comfortable being in charge of the team. Fortunately for all of them, Fletcher had allocated jobs before she’d left the previous day, so her absence hadn’t been felt too much so far. O’Connor had spent part of the day chasing information on the owner of the storage facility but didn’t seem to have found anything helpful and this interview was looking like a dead end.

  ‘Calvin, do you know what a hacker is?’ O’Connor asked abruptly. So much for not asking leading questions.

  Russell nodded. ‘It’s somebody who gets into other people’s computers without permission.’

  ‘And how would somebody do that?’

  Russell looked blank.

  ‘Come on, Calvin. How would somebody hack into a computer?’

  Russell gave his solicitor a panicked look. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Really. Somebody who’s as good with computers as you claim to be, and you don’t know how to get into somebody else’s data?’

  ‘No. And even if I did, I wouldn’t. It’s not right.’

  Barratt was convinced – Russell’s distress was completely sincere.

  O’Connor nodded. ‘I believe you, Calvin. But I just needed to check. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your job? Anything that might help us to find out who killed that old woman?’

  Another glance at Pines. ‘I don’t want to say in case I get it wrong?’

  Barratt leaned forward. This was interesting. Russell hadn’t given any indication that he had any further information up until now. ‘You can tell us anything,’ he prompted. ‘It won’t get back to Mr Hibberts.’

  ‘It’s not about him,’ Russell said. ‘It’s about the man who rented the storage locker. The one where the body was found.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He didn’t look quite right. His face and that. And his hands. That’s what I noticed most.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Russell shook his head and sat back. ‘I don’t want to say.’

  ‘Come on, Calvin,’ Barratt lowered his voice. ‘This could help us to catch whoever killed that woman before he kills somebody else. You could be a hero.’

  Russell seemed to consider this for a few seconds then gave a hint of a smile. ‘He wasn’t really a man. Not properly. Or he might have been. I’m not sure. I know there’s a word that you’re supposed to use to be polite.’

  ‘What word, Calvin?’

  ‘I think he might not always have been a man. He might have been a transgender.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘His hands were small,’ Russell said, more sure of himself now. ‘And his voice was quite high-pitched. He had a beard, but it was a bit scraggly.’

  ‘Could he have been a woman dressed as a man? Are you sure he was transgender?’

  ‘I suppose he could have been a woman dressed up. I just thought that’s what we are supposed to say nowadays though – transgender.’

  Barratt’s mind was racing. This changed everything they thought they knew about their suspect. If it had been a woman all along, it tied in with what Hollis had told them about the woman who took Margaret from the nursing home. They could be looking for a single female suspect. O’Connor had obviously had a similar thought because the leg was jiggling frantically. It was time to wrap up the interview.

  ‘Calvin, would you be happy to work with a police artist? You could describe this person and the artist would try to draw them.’

  ‘With a pencil?’

  Barratt shook his head and grinned at the other man. ‘No, on a computer. It’s fascinating to watch.’

  Russell returned his smile. ‘Yes. When can I do that?’

  Barratt explained that it would take a few days to organise, but it would be really helpful. He promised to be in touch and then summoned a uniformed officer to escort Russell and Pines back to the front desk.

  ‘Well?’ he turned to O’Connor who was frowning, deep in thought.

  ‘I don’t know if this is a breakthrough or a setback,’ O’Connor admitted. ‘We might know more when we get the image done. It does link with what Fletcher and Hollis found out yesterday though. I think I need to run this past Das. And I think we need to get Kate back as soon as possible – this is way too big for me to handle without her.’

  13

  Kate took a big gulp of coffee and logged on to her laptop. Her slightly fuzzy head and very furry tongue reminded her that she’d had too much wine the previous night but, without Nick to share the bottle, she’d felt justified in polishing it all off as it would only have gone to waste otherwise. And it wasn’t like she had to get up for work the next day.

  After Nick had left, Kate had slunk out of her bedroom to check the kitchen. Despite her instruction, he’d left the moussaka filling, the white sauce and the fried slices of aubergine on the stove top awaiting their final places, layered up in an oven dish. It would have been simple for Kate to have finished the process but instead she’d opened the bread bin, cut a chunk off a white loaf that she didn’t remember buying and t
ook it into the sitting room with the pan of meat and tomato sauce and a large glass of white wine.

  She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that the key to the two murders lay in the past – in whatever Whitaker had done while he was working at Sheffield Road Juniors, possibly thirty years ago. She could see how somebody might want to kill his wife as some sort of twisted revenge but what about Chris Gilruth?

  It was the time span that gave her the idea. She’d looked for anything that mentioned any sort of school reunion and her search had led her inevitably to Facebook. There appeared to be three groups connected with school reunions for Sheffield Road Juniors but, without a Facebook account, Kate had no access to any of them. She’d considered ringing Sam Cooper, but she’d had just enough wine to feel confident that she could manage this herself and ten minutes later she had a Facebook account in the name Cathy Siddons – the name she’d been known by all through her childhood in Thorpe. It hadn’t been quite as simple as she’d imagined though. Each group was private and she had to send a request to join. After that it had been a waiting game.

  Now, in the harsh morning light, with a mild hangover, Kate wondered if she’d been a bit rash. It was unlikely that any Facebook group would accept a new member who had just joined the site and had no friends and, even if she had been accepted, the chances of the group representing the correct school year accepting her were slim.

  The message icon at the top of her Facebook homepage had a red tick next to it so she clicked on it to see who had contacted her. There were two messages, both from admin members of groups that she’d applied to join the previous evening. One simply informed her that she’d been accepted into the group and could now view status updates and the other was a message accepting her into another group but this time with a personal touch.

  Hi Cathy. I don’t remember you but there was a Karen Siddons in my year. Are you related?

  ‘And that’s why I don’t do social media,’ Kate muttered to herself as she clicked a link to the first reunion group and started scrolling down the page.

  Some of the images on the page were breathtaking in their familiarity. Visiting the school had been a jolt but so much had changed that it had been possible for Kate to remember that she was no longer a child. Now, the constant scroll of photographs triggered memory after memory. Teachers, sports days, school trips – everything was a reminder of a childhood that had been almost ridiculously happy until her mother had died when Kate was nine.

  She saw class photos – three irregular rows of children like a crumbling Aztec pyramid – the faces not quite familiar but the clothes and poses could have been from any class she’d been in for the four years that she’d been at the school. She did recognise some of the teachers, though, and was surprised to find that she could name most of the ones who had taught her, even though the photographs were from at least ten years after she’d left the school. Their hairstyles had changed, the faces were a little more lined, but they were still the same people who’d obviously left an impression on her.

  And then she spotted Mrs Dalston.

  Mrs Dalston had been Kate’s teacher the year her mum had died and had been instrumental in helping her cope with the grief and sense of loss. She’d given Kate books to keep her occupied. Books that were for older children, books about loss and anger, and also books that were pure escapism.

  Kate hovered the cursor on the photograph and was surprised when a name appeared – Liz Dalston. She’d been tagged in the photograph, which suggested that she had joined Facebook and was potentially still alive. Kate clicked on the image and it took her to the teacher’s homepage – a few pictures which looked like they might have been from foreign holidays and two images of a scruffy-looking mongrel. Nothing from her days at Sheffield Road Juniors.

  Kate was about to start trawling the second reunion page when her mobile rang. ‘Sam, anything from the CCTV?’

  She heard Cooper sigh at the other end. ‘There’s nothing from when Margaret was admitted or whatever they call it. The company doesn’t keep the footage for that long. The day she left the cameras seem to have been on the blink. The recording is rooted in the IT system so, if somebody did hack in to change Margaret’s records it seems likely that they went in again to destroy a section of the recording. It’s too time-specific to be a coincidence. I think whoever we’re looking for knows what they’re doing.’

  ‘What about Calvin Russell? Has Matt interviewed him yet?’

  ‘Yep. He’s not our hacker. But he did give us one interesting piece of information. He reckons that the person who rented the storage locker might have been trans.’

  ‘Based on?’

  ‘He claims that they looked more like a boy than a man and that the hands were quite feminine.’

  ‘Could have been a woman in disguise,’ Kate mused.

  ‘The niece?’

  ‘Possibly. But I’d bet a lot of money that I don’t have that she’s not Margaret’s niece.’

  ‘She’s not,’ Cooper confirmed. ‘I’ve checked the family history as far as I can. There’s no suggestion that Margaret had a niece, but she did have a nephew. You’re not going to like this though.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, for a start, Margaret doesn’t have a sister called Deirdre – there’s one called Maureen, though. And she has a son – Christopher Gilruth. He’s registered as the child of Maureen and Duncan Gilruth. The father’s dead but the mother lives near Kendal.’

  Kate felt sick. Chris had told her that Maureen was his mother, but the DNA was conclusive. Chris had been Margaret’s son and Maureen’s nephew. She wondered whether Chris had known the truth.

  ‘Sam, see if you can find any record of Chris Gilruth having been adopted by his aunt. I’m not hopeful because things aren’t always done officially in families, but you never know. And let me know when you’ve got a result on the father.’

  Sam had gone quiet.

  ‘I know I’m officially on leave,’ Kate said. ‘And I’m pretty sure you all know why, but I’d like to be kept in the loop until I get back. You’ve gone this far, contacting me this morning. Das seems to think that I’m connected to the two murders but it’s all coincidence. I knew Chris in Cumbria, but I had no idea that the body we found was his mother. And I’m certain I’ve never met the woman.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Cooper offered. ‘But I hope you’re coming back soon. Das’ll see sense, she really rates you, you know.’

  They spent another few minutes chatting about how O’Connor had stepped up to lead the investigation and how he was doing a good job but it was obvious that he didn’t want the responsibility. Kate had expected nothing less. O’Connor was a good DS in many ways and had proven his worth on Kate’s last two murder cases, but he wasn’t promotion material. He’d reached a level that he was comfortable with and seemed content to stay there.

  Before she hung up, Kate gave the DC her new Facebook login details. If anybody could find anything in either of the groups, it would be Sam.

  * * *

  Do you know how difficult it is to cut up a body? I had no idea. The drugs were the simple part – I’d just crushed them up in her tea and she drank it all down without a murmur. I’d made sure to kill her upstairs as there was no way I could lug a body, even one as frail as her, up to the bathroom. Not that I’m not fit, but the stairs have an awkward turn just before the top and I’d have probably sent both of us tumbling to the bottom if I’d tried to negotiate it, and probably killed myself at the same time.

  Funny, when I picked her up to put her in the bath, she hardly weighed anything. It was like lifting a shop dummy and only slightly less stiff. Everything I’d read suggested that rigor mortis didn’t set in until a body had been dead for a few hours but manoeuvring the old lady into the bathroom was like trying to get last year’s Christmas tree through a narrow doorway.

  And then, when I got her in the bath, she went down with such a thump I found myself worrying that I’d hurt her
. Stupid really.

  I hadn’t planned to kill her straight away. I’m not really sure that I planned to kill her at all, I just knew that taking her away from the home would torment him, her husband. Her bloody rambling convinced me that it was the right thing to do though. I didn’t understand at first. She kept mumbling something about Christopher and how he never came to visit and how his father would have loved him so much. It took a while to realise that the father was him – Whitaker – and that Christopher was her son.

  That changed everything. I thought I might keep her for a bit, to torment him when he got out of prison, but knowing that this woman had a child with that bastard was too much to take in. I did a bit of research on the family but there was no record of a child. So, she’d managed to get him away from his father before Whitaker could do anything? She saved her own child from the monster, but she stayed with him. She must have known what he was, but she did nothing to protect his other victims – only her son. A bit more digging led me to a sister who had a son called Christopher. So that was the arrangement, was it? The sister brought up the child in safety while Whitaker was free to do what he wanted; to destroy more lives.

  That’s when I knew it was right to kill the old lady.

  I thought I’d be sick. Really, properly sick the minute I started cutting but, strangely, after the first cut, it didn’t bother me. It was just a job that had to be done. I’d tried to read up on methods to cut up a body but most of the stuff I found online was a bit stupid – people blogging about disposing of bodies in basements after first dates that went wrong, that sort of thing – so I decided to approach it from a more practical point of view. It’s just butchery after all, so I’d ordered the appropriate tools and read about how to reduce a cow to steak and ribs and other bits. A human body is no different really. The only problem was that I didn’t want to have too many pieces to deal with. I stared at her, lying there in my bath, and imagined thick black lines where I wanted to cut. Ten pieces in ten boxes. Two each for the legs, two each for the arms, one for the head and one for the torso. Butchery.