Wrong Way Home: Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month
Page 24
She waited with fingers poised over her keyboard as he brought it to mind. She typed in the name and, scrolling down the search results, came to the website of the estate agents who had originally marketed the newly built flats. ‘Yes!’ She beat the air with a fist.
‘What?’ asked Blake. ‘What have you found?’
‘It’s probably nothing, and it’s my stupid fault for not realising sooner, but Larry Nixon’s apartment building has a basement gym. It’s private, residents only. We never searched it, did we?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘but if Larry uses it, he’ll have a locker.’
‘He looks pretty fit to me,’ she said. ‘And he’s paying for the use of it, anyway, through his service charge. Get your coat.’
The hour-long journey to Southend seemed to stretch on forever. Grace was only too aware of how the clock was ticking on Larry Nixon’s period in custody. If they returned empty-handed, she would have wasted precious time.
Although the concierge recognised them, he was initially reluctant to allow them access to the private gym, let alone to a resident’s personal locker. Blake explained politely that, with Larry Nixon under arrest and currently in custody, they had a legal right to search any property occupied or controlled by him, which included any personal storage area to which he held the key. The young man consulted a list on his computer that supplied Larry Nixon’s locker number and then accompanied them down in the lift. It opened on to a small lobby where a glass partition fronted an exercise area heavy on industrial chic, with bare concrete walls and exposed metal pipework across the ceiling. Various pieces of black equipment – weights bench, treadmill, cross-trainer and rowing machine – faced floor-length mirrors on the opposite wall. An elderly man plugging away on an exercise bike nodded to the concierge and watched curiously as he led the visitors into the male changing room.
It was not a big area and had few amenities other than simple bathroom facilities and a wall of blond wooden locker doors sitting above a wide slatted bench. The concierge identified the locker at the far end as belonging to Mr Nixon of apartment 71 and, once he realised that Blake would otherwise force entry, nervously handed over the master key.
Blake pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and then unlocked the tall wooden door. Grace held her breath and crossed her fingers tightly behind her back as he opened it wide. A quick glance showed exactly what she would have expected: towels, shorts, several singlets, discarded sweat bands and a pair of well-worn trainers. The disappointment was painful. But then she followed Blake’s blue-gloved hand up to the top shelf where a black sports bag had been stashed into a space only just big enough to contain it.
He lifted it down carefully. It was bulky but did not appear to be heavy. He placed it on the bench and stood back. The zip fastening was padlocked. Grace met Blake’s gaze, feeling herself go cold with anticipation. Was this it? Why else would a bag left down here be padlocked? Would it contain all the evidence they needed to put Larry Nixon away for life?
She watched Blake run his hand tentatively over the stiff fabric, feeling for the contours of the objects inside. They appeared to shift about relatively freely inside the bag and he looked at her, his eyes shining.
‘Could be,’ he said.
‘Let’s get it straight to the lab.’
The drive back to Colchester with their precious cargo bagged up on the back seat felt even more tortuous than the journey down. Intensely aware of the aura given off by whatever lay sealed inside the bag, Grace was certain that the malign spell the mysterious contents cast over Larry Nixon was nothing compared to the powerful charge they were exerting right now over her.
53
Grace stood watching beside Blake as Wendy swabbed and taped the padlock on the black sports bag before cutting through the flimsy bolt. They were all wearing forensic suits and masks so as not to contaminate any DNA evidence the bag might contain, and the air seemed almost static with expectation. Grace had a flash of doubt, suddenly convinced that her hunch had been a foolish waste of time and the bag would be crammed with mouldering gym-wear. Wishing the ground would open and swallow her up, she held her breath as Wendy unzipped the bag. She and Blake both leaned forward to peer inside and saw the soft nap of beige, white and pale blue drawstring bags. Shoe bags. Her heart leapt. It was over, she’d been right, they had him!
‘Open one,’ she begged Wendy.
Wendy smiled. ‘You’ll have to be patient.’
Wendy stood back to allow the forensic photographer a better angle on the interior of the sports bag and only then lifted out the first fabric pouch. She took it over to a separate bench where she placed it on a piece of blanking paper, laid a scale beside it and waited for the photographer to record it. Grace was on tenterhooks as Wendy requested close-ups of how the drawstring had been tied.
‘Sometimes a knot can offer important evidence,’ she said by way of apology for making them wait. She snipped the string and removed the intact knot, bagging it up separately. Finally, she slipped a gloved hand into the opened bag and pulled out a black patent-leather shoe with a high, tapered heel. The sole was worn and the inside stained with what looked like sweat. It was for the left foot. As Wendy turned it over for the photographer Grace could make out the size number stamped on the inside. She’d expected to feel exhilaration, but it was one of the saddest sights she had ever seen.
Blake put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, looking at her in excitement. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Triumph, exhaustion, pity, relief; she wasn’t sure which one was uppermost.
Wendy swabbed and taped the inside and outside of the shoe before examining it under different wavelengths of light. Finding a faint glow on the inner sole, she delicately removed it and then, warning them that such findings were not conclusive, scraped an area of its surface for an enzymatic test for seminal fluid. When that showed a positive reaction, she cut away a small portion from which a slide would be prepared for confirmation prior to DNA testing.
Wendy slowly unburdened the black sports bag of ten further single high-heeled shoes, taking her time to examine and then bag each of them in turn. Each was in its own cloth bag, none was new and all were for the left foot. Grace was able immediately to identify three of them: one had belonged to Cara Chalkley (white plastic), another to Rhona Geary (pale pink with an imitation metal-embossed decal) and the one which had been worn by Heather Bowyer (a pink sling-back). Heather’s shoe, the pair to which had been gathering dust in a police property store for twenty-five years, still bore a faded and half-torn-off price sticker on the unworn instep, a sharp reminder of a life unlived.
Eleven pieces of evidence, each in its numbered evidence bag. Eleven women. It seemed safe to assume that, in addition to Heather’s, five of the shoes would belong to the women who had reported being raped to the police at the time of their assault, and one probably to the poor wretch whom Grace had met and who hadn’t wanted to give her name, but that still left four other women who had suffered in silence. Grace dreaded the task of tracking them down. Although she hoped a conviction would bring some measure of closure, she wouldn’t be surprised if, after so many years, the unidentified women who had owned these shoes chose never to come forward.
She realised how little, when she’d first grasped the possible significance of the missing shoes, she had prepared herself for this sight, and hoped that the twelve eventual jury members flipping through the photographs in their evidence books would fully understand the pain, terror and ongoing trauma that each of these ordinary and inoffensive objects represented.
‘How quickly can we get DNA?’ she asked.
‘I assume you only need a match to him and one of the victims to charge him,’ said Wendy. ‘We can fast-track for those and take our time with the rest.’
‘So tomorrow or the next day?’ The clock was ticking, but Grace was confident she would now be granted a thirty-six-hour extension to the time they could hold Larry Nixon in custody for questioning.
‘W
e’ll do our best,’ said Wendy. ‘Which one do you want us to process first?’
‘Heather Bowyer’s pink sling-back,’ said Grace. ‘An initial charge of rape and murder should quash any argument about remand.’
‘And being able to disprove his account of Reece’s “confession” opens the door to charging Larry with arson and a further double murder,’ said Blake.
‘We’re making good progress on that petrol cap, by the way,’ said Wendy. ‘If there’s anything to find, we should have it for you in the next day or two.’
‘Brilliant.’ This welcome news didn’t stop Grace experiencing another flash of anxiety. She looked at the shoes. ‘We will be able to find his DNA, won’t we?’
Wendy grinned. ‘If he’s been doing what I think he’s been doing with them, we’ll have more than enough.’
Grace laughed from the relief finally coursing through her veins. ‘Can you imagine the nicknames they’re going to give him in prison?’
‘His violent, grubby little secret is going to be on the front page of every newspaper.’ Blake’s tone was unforgiving. ‘He’s not going to like that one bit.’
‘No,’ Grace agreed. ‘He’s going to hate us.’
She was right. A couple of hours later, as soon as Larry Nixon fully recognised what they were showing him, he turned so pale, shivery and clammy-looking that Grace considered putting him back in his cell and calling a doctor. However, he quickly made what was evidently a huge effort to pull himself together and the colour returned slowly to his cheeks. Reassured that he wasn’t about to faint or be sick, she placed in front of him, sealed in its evidence bag, the first of the three shoes they had identified.
‘Did you take this shoe from Heather Bowyer?’
Larry stared down between his knees at the floor. ‘No comment.’
‘Did you, on the third of October 1992, in Cliff Gardens, Southend, rape Heather Bowyer and, furthermore, stab her in the back with a kitchen knife, resulting in her death?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you take this shoe from Cara Chalkley?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you, on the fifth of June 1992, in Southchurch Park, Southend, rape Cara Chalkley?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you take this shoe from Rhona Geary?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you, on the eighteenth of July 1992, in Cliff Gardens, Southend, rape Rhona Geary?’
‘No comment.’
As Blake removed each shoe and placed another in front of Larry, Grace observed what torture it was for him to endure the sight of another man handling his treasures. Barely attending to her questions, his gaze followed each shoe as Blake placed it aside. As Blake put away Rhona’s expensive pink shoe, Larry stretched out a hand towards it and looked around and under the table as if searching for the rest. Far worse than the dawning realisation that they knew his secrets, that he was never going back to his light-filled apartment and that he was going to prison, possibly for the rest of his life, was the loss of these precious objects. He could never touch any of them again. They had passed beyond his control. He had lost everything.
Larry Nixon began to weep. The urbane and meticulous businessman they had previously encountered crumbled before their eyes as his intense private world fell apart.
Grace had what she needed for now and ended the interview, telling him that he would be held in custody overnight – she had already been granted an extension. As Larry was led back to his cell, she warned the custody sergeant to keep him on suicide watch.
She was exhausted. Colin had been over the moon when informed that, hopefully within the next twenty-four hours, they were likely to have the DNA evidence that, this time, would be enough to convict Heather Bowyer’s killer. Colin had congratulated her in front of the entire team, who were all equally jubilant. Duncan had said he was glad he got back in time to play his part, and Carolyn that she couldn’t believe her luck at getting to work on the investigation. Grace knew she had gambled on the original familial DNA search and won. She ought to be as thrilled as everyone else, but now, after the interview with Larry, she couldn’t face going for a drink with them all. She just wanted to be on her own.
She managed to slip away without anyone noticing. Outside in the car park it seemed later than it was. The clocks had changed at the weekend and she was not yet used to the earlier darkness. Driving home, she saw bunches of kids with painted faces roaming the streets dressed as black-hatted witches, skeletons and Frankenstein monsters bandaged with toilet paper, and she passed several front gardens that sported glowing pumpkins carved with jagged, leering faces. She had forgotten that tonight was Halloween.
It all seemed laughably theatrical compared to the banal yet potent evil of the man locked up in a cell in the basement of Colchester Police HQ. Tomorrow Grace would also have to visit Monica Bowyer and explain to her that her beautiful daughter had died so that Larry Nixon could toss himself off into one of her shoes. She wasn’t going to phrase it so crudely, but that was the depressing truth. Maybe it would be easier if rapists and murderers did actually look like monsters, but she knew all too well that true evil was never as simple as that.
54
Welcome back to Stories from the Fire. I’m Freddie Craig, and I’ve been investigating a second brutal murder that took place in Southend around the time I was born, that of sixteen-year-old April Irwin. Her death is not connected with the rape and murder of nineteen-year-old Heather Bowyer. Or not in the obvious ways. But we’ll get to that later.
Right now, I’m speaking to a woman I’ll call ‘Jane’. That’s not her real name but, well, you’ll see why she’s nervous about identifying herself.
So, ‘Jane’, explain why you got in touch after hearing the most recent episode of Stories from the Fire.
Jane: I was at school with April.
Freddie: That was in Romford?
Jane: Yes. I wasn’t her best friend. That was a girl I’m going to call ‘Hayley’.
Freddie: Jane has also asked me not to make Hayley’s real name public either.
Jane: I remember when April ran away. At school we talked about nothing else for weeks. To begin with no one knew where she was. And then ‘Hayley’ started getting letters from her.
Freddie: Letters?
Jane: She would bring them to school and read bits out, about why April had left, about her mum’s horrible new boyfriend, about how lonely and miserable she was. April used to cover the letters in kisses and stuff, saying how much she missed her mates. That was until she met someone, anyway.
Freddie: Did she say who? Did she give a name?
Jane: I’m sure she must have done, but there’s no way I’d remember it now. Too much water under the bridge since those days. And April was never my closest friend.
Freddie: But it was a boyfriend she wrote to about, very possibly the father of her child?
Jane: Oh yes, definitely. She was on cloud nine. Although after April met this guy, her best friend, ‘Hayley’, would only show us tiny bits of her letters. Used to put her hand over parts she didn’t want us to see. I think she got a kick out of making like they were too personal to share with anyone else, and that she was the gatekeeper. Made her feel important.
Freddie: So if April had named the father of her child in these letters, why didn’t the police speak to him? Why were April’s letters never mentioned at the trial?
Jane: Because by the time we found out that April was dead the police had caught someone. It never occurred to us that they wouldn’t have got the right man.
Freddie: You didn’t hear about her murder when it happened?
Jane: The nearest thing to newspapers that we read were Smash Hits and Just Seventeen. And most of us were leaving school, getting jobs. I guess it didn’t take long for us to forget about poor April.
Freddie: Did she ever mention the name of Damon Smith, the man convicted of her murder?
Jane: Not that I can recall now.
Jane: I don’t know. To be honest, the main thing I remember is us all crowding around ‘Hayley’ and her showing us these pieces of paper with big loopy handwriting and, as I say, lots of hearts and flowers and long lines of kisses. She loved the attention.
Freddie: You’re not in touch with her now?
Jane: No.
Freddie: Well then, that’s my job, to track down April Irwin’s best friend. She might be more likely to remember the name of April’s new boyfriend. She might even have April’s letters still in her possession.
Any fresh leads they might reveal are too late now to be of any help to Damon Smith, who died in prison, but they might raise interesting questions around why the police were so quick to charge him. And why the father of April’s unborn child never came forward at the time.
So, if you’re listening now, or if you’re someone who can put me in touch with April’s best friend at school, or maybe even knows the name of the man who fathered April’s unborn child, you can contact me through the website. I’m Freddie Craig, and this is Stories from the Fire.
As I said earlier, April Irwin’s murder is not connected in any obvious way to that of Heather Bowyer. The two young women never met, and I’m not suggesting that the same person is responsible for both slayings. But there is a connection and, if you think about it, it might spread even further than these two crimes.
Two unrelated and possibly unsolved murders in the same small town within a month of each other. I’m not saying there’s an ongoing conspiracy. But Damon Smith, the man perhaps wrongly convicted of April’s murder, died protesting his innocence. And it’s taken twenty-five years for the police to get anywhere near catching Heather Bowyer’s killer. As I speak, still no one has yet been charged. Why not? What do the police have to hide?
Maybe you can begin to understand why ‘Jane’ chooses not to reveal her real name, or that of April’s best friend.