Maybe there are innocent explanations for all the questions I’m trying to raise. Either way, you can help me to find the answers. Spread the word, get in touch, let me know what you think. I’m Freddie Craig. Thank you for listening to Stories from the Fire.
55
The morning ground slowly on as the whole of the Major Investigation Team waited for news of the first DNA results from Heather Bowyer’s pink sling-back shoe. People pretended to be working, but Grace could see how often they glanced up at the clock or, like meerkats, pivoted in unison to look towards a ringing phone. She was no better. With each hour that passed she reminded herself that it might be the next day before the results came back, and yet, with each hour, her insecurity grew that somehow Larry would yet again slide from their grasp.
She distracted herself by considering how best to proceed with the troubling update Duncan had given her about Terri Nixon. Terri had been fifteen when she got pregnant with Deborah. It appeared that either her family had cut her off – at no stage had she ever been reported missing – or Owen, who was ten years older, had deliberately isolated her from them. By the time she was twenty she had three young children. She had a National Insurance number, and had claimed child benefits, but did not appear to have worked outside the home, and her NI number had not been linked to any current address since the 1980s. She had not otherwise generated any kind of official identity that had needed to be dismantled after her death – no bank account, credit card or any household bills in her name. But then perhaps it wasn’t so unusual for a woman married at sixteen in the mid-1960s to leave all financial matters to her older husband, and Grace could easily imagine Owen choosing to retain complete control.
It was possible that Terri Nixon had been sophisticated enough to run away and then cover her tracks, but it seemed unlikely. And she had never applied for a passport, so it was also unlikely that she was now living abroad. According to Larry, her children had not attended their mother’s funeral and he seemed to consider it normal that he should have no idea where she was buried. His lack of curiosity about her fate, now that he was an adult, was striking.
Did both Larry and Deborah possess an obedience to their father so ingrained that neither would even question the cover story he’d invented for a wife who had fled from him and her children? Or was it something worse? Was it that neither Deborah or Larry dared risk finding out what had really happened to their mother?
Had Reece Nixon felt the same? Owen claimed he’d thrown Reece out because he had no respect. Was that because he’d been asking awkward questions? Grace would have loved to be able to ask Anne and Michael whether their father had ever talked about his mother. She also looked forward to assuring them that Reece had had no hand in Kirsty’s death and had been totally exonerated of the other, older crimes. They could now make peace with their grandmother. However, until she had the DNA results from the shoes and could tell them officially that Larry had been charged, she was loath to disturb them with further dark speculations about their grandfather. She could, however, arrange to speak once more to Deborah Shillingford.
Grace had just got off the phone when she saw Wendy enter the main office, a broad smile on her face. Grace hurried to greet her as the rest of the team crowded round.
‘Thought I’d bring the news in person,’ said Wendy.
‘Well, go on then!’
‘DNA inside Heather Bowyer’s shoe is a match to the DNA profile from a blood sample taken from her body. Other DNA present is a match to the sample given voluntarily by Larry Nixon two weeks ago.’
‘Yes!’ A huge cheer went up. Grace looked around at beaming faces as members of the team slapped her on the back or came up to shake her hand.
‘You did it, boss!’
‘Got him!’
‘We nailed the bastard!’
Colin came out of his office. ‘It’s done?’
‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘We’ll match as many of the other shoes as we can to their owners, but it’s done.’
‘Congratulations, DI Fisher,’ Colin said formally. ‘Excellent work.’
‘Thank you, sir. Larry Nixon is a very dangerous man. It’ll be a pleasure to see him behind bars.’
‘It was you who first made the connection between the rapist and the missing shoes,’ said Blake. ‘We wouldn’t have him if it wasn’t for that.’
‘We have him,’ she said, pleased. ‘That’s all that counts.’
As the others milled around, not yet ready to put their euphoria aside and get back to work, Grace retreated to her desk. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt more relief than elation, and wished she could share in her team’s sense of jubilation. She looked up as the crime scene manager approached her desk.
‘Thanks for all your hard work on this, Wendy,’ she said. ‘I would never have started down this road if it weren’t for you.’
‘You were the one sticking your neck out,’ said Wendy. ‘Though you might not be too pleased with the rest of my news.’
‘You’d better hit me with it then.’
‘We managed to find one amazingly clear fingerprint on the cap of the petrol canister from the Nixon fire.’
‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, except it doesn’t belong to Larry Nixon,’ said Wendy, ‘or to anyone on the IDENT1 database. We also ran them against the prints we lifted from the house for Reece and Kirsty Nixon: nada. I’m afraid you blew the budget for nothing.’
Grace frowned. ‘Can’t be helped. And it was always a long shot. So maybe Larry Nixon wore gloves. This doesn’t rule him out. The prints probably belong to one of the guys who worked for Reece. I’ll get it checked out.’
‘Sorry not to put the cherry on your cake,’ said Wendy, ‘but great work all the same.’
As Wendy returned to join in the chat in the main office, Grace shifted her chair to look out of the window. Larry was the only person with a motive to kill Reece, and they still had Dr Tripathi’s opinion that his injuries from the fire could have been the distinctive flash burns of an arsonist. She wondered what had really passed between Reece and Larry that night. Had Reece called Larry to warn him about the DNA tests and begged him to turn himself in? The press cuttings in the attic suggested that Reece had suspected his brother for a very long time.
Was that why Larry had stopped offending after Heather’s death, because Reece had threatened to go to the police if he didn’t? Until now, Grace had imagined that it was something to do with the grandiosity of being the hero of the Marineland fire, a chance juxtaposition only minutes after taking a life that offered a potent promise of redemption. But maybe, all along, it had been Reece who was the silent hero, who had found the determination to exert control over his younger brother while retaining enough family loyalty not to go running to the police. If so, then he and his wife and children had paid a terrible price for that loyalty.
56
The body of the young man lay face down in the mud. The back of his padded jacket had two slashing tears in it and, despite the seawater, was heavily bloodstained. It was only just light, but Inspector Dave Clements advised Grace that the tide had turned and she needed to get the body photographed and then moved as quickly as possible. There was not enough time to call Dr Tripathi down here, and in any case the body had probably been carried here by a swelling or retreating tide, depending on the time and place it went into the water, which could be anywhere along Southend’s coastal strip.
Grace thought it likely that the time of death would be late the previous night or in the early hours of the morning – the usual time when young men got into fights and knives caused mayhem and tragedy. Once this young man’s body had been identified they would no doubt be able to piece together an all-too-common tale of drink, rivalry and misplaced bravado. She was back to business as usual.
She looked at her watch. Another couple of hours and Larry Nixon would be put in front of the magistrates in Colchester, who, unless he had found an extremely clever lawyer,
would place him on remand. He had been formally charged the previous afternoon with the rape and murder of Heather Bowyer, the rape of Cara Chalkley and Rhona Geary, and with arson and the murder of Kirsty and Reece Nixon. Further charges would follow once the owners of all the other shoes had been identified, a task that Grace hoped they’d be able to accomplish fully.
When asked by the custody sergeant if he had anything to say in response to the charges, Larry had answered quietly that he was not responsible for his brother’s death. Grace didn’t believe him. She had seen before how the most brazen offenders would, out of some obscure shame, baulk at admitting to what might even be some small and seemingly insignificant detail of their crimes. Fratricide was hardly a small thing, and it didn’t surprise her that Larry couldn’t bring himself to accept that this was what he had done. Or maybe, she thought, he was too in love with the image of himself as the would-be rescuer dashing into the inferno to confess the truth.
Blake would represent Grace in court, but she would have liked to stand beside her team to watch Larry leave the station in Colchester. It was the completion of a job well done.
The easterly wind was biting cold and Grace was grateful that Dave Clements had suggested on the phone that she wrap up warm and bring welly boots. The cold hadn’t, however, stopped a small group of curious dog-walkers and runners from gathering on the path that ran along the shore. She hoped the mortuary van would arrive soon and they could get the investigation underway. Someone, somewhere would be wondering why this young man had not come home last night.
Her visit to Monica and Simon Bowyer the previous afternoon was fresh in her mind, along with her calls to Cara Chalkley and Rhona Geary. She knew that the end of her inquiry was only the beginning of a new phase in how each of them separately dealt with the past.
Dave Clements returned from speaking to his uniform officers, asking them to move the rubber-neckers along. He sniffed as if the freezing air was making his nose run. ‘I saw on the news last night that you’ve charged Larry Nixon,’ he said grudgingly.
So far they had been meticulously polite to one another, and neither had mentioned their earlier meeting. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We have definitive evidence linking him to a series of crimes, and, although he’s not made any admission, he’s not denying it, either.’
‘I have to be honest with you, DI Fisher, I’ve never been more gobsmacked in my life. I don’t know the man well, but I’ve chatted with him, shared a joke. I mean, I’ve asked him to drive my wife and kids on a couple of occasions. It’s thrown me completely.’
‘I can imagine,’ she said. ‘In our job you always think you have the right antennae.’
‘I never saw it,’ he said. ‘Never.’
Seeing his sincerity, she decided to push a little to discover if there was more he would tell her. ‘We might not be done with the family yet,’ she said. ‘Our inquiry has thrown up an anomaly we need to straighten out.’
He nodded, showing none of the antagonism she’d faced when they’d met before.
‘Larry’s mother, Terri Nixon, appears to have vanished off the face of the earth around 1982.’
Clements frowned and shook his head. ‘I never heard anything about her. Was she reported missing?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Owen Nixon told his kids she was dead.’
‘Southend is full of transients,’ he said. ‘Poverty-on-Sea. People drift in for the summer. A few become fixtures, but most move on and occasionally take new friends along with them. Have you spoken to Owen?’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Did you know that the working girls around Southchurch Park call him the “Guardian Angel”?’
Clements laughed. ‘I think you’ll find they were pulling your leg.’
‘What makes you say that?’
Before Clements could answer, both the forensic photographer and the mortuary van arrived, and Grace wanted to pay attention to the body as it was moved. Once it had been rolled over all she could see was a face plastered in mud, the wet hair sticking to the scalp, yet there was something about the shape of the jaw that seemed familiar. It was only later, at the mortuary, after he had been undressed and cleaned up, that she recognised the young man as Freddie Craig.
57
When Ivo saw it on the Courier’s news feed his hands started to shake the way they had when he’d first quit drinking, and all he could think about was how desperately he wanted someone to hand him a bottle of gin. He’d killed Freddie. First he’d sent an innocent man to jail, and now he’d got Freddie killed for doing what he should have had the guts to do himself.
He knew that if he tried to remain at his desk and pursue a normal day, he would end up in one of the trendy wine bars that had replaced the local pubs. It had been five years since he’d last experienced such an urgent desire to feel the unfettering effects of alcohol hit his brain, and he recognised that he wouldn’t be able to fight it for long.
The Courier could hardly ignore the murder of the podcaster they’d championed and then dropped, and, after the usual grumbling, his editor was happy enough to let him head off to Southend in pursuit of the story. At Liverpool Street Ivo bought a ticket to Colchester and called DI Fisher from the train. She was the only person he wanted to see. The thought of her was his only redemption, and he clung to the sound of her voice on the phone like a drowning man to a lifebuoy.
He took a taxi straight to the police station. The woman on the front desk had been told that DI Fisher was expecting him and showed him into a windowless little room that tried its best not to look like a padded cell. Ivo hoped he wouldn’t have to wait there on his own for long. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold his nerve.
He got up eagerly when she opened the door, but was immediately disappointed to see that she had someone with her, a younger woman whom Grace introduced as DC Carolyn Bromfield. Grace shook hands without much of a smile and then invited him in a formal manner to sit down.
‘You asked to speak to us because you have information you believe might be relevant to the death of Freddie Craig, is that correct?’ she asked, every inch the Ice Maiden of old.
Ivo hung his head, avoiding her cool grey eyes. This might not be the offer of redemption he had envisaged, but beggars can’t be choosers. ‘I told him to look into the murder of April Irwin. I think that’s why he was killed.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It should have been me. I should never have sent a boy to do a man’s job.’
‘You’ll have to explain,’ she said.
He looked up and hoped he wasn’t wrong about the encouraging hint of warmth he read into her steady gaze. ‘It all goes back to DI Jason Jupp.’ He stopped. Could he say the words aloud? Admit to the most shameful thing he’d ever done? He knew he had to, if only to save himself. If he didn’t tell her everything right now, his only hope would be to get drunk and stay drunk. He kept his eyes on Grace, doing his best to ignore the presence of the other detective. ‘JJ knew from the off that Damon Smith never killed April Irwin.’
The world did not stop turning. The two women merely waited calmly for him to say more.
‘JJ knew because I’d told him I’d been drinking in the same pub as Damon Smith all afternoon. JJ told me to go back to London and forget all about it.’
Her silence was unbearable. He couldn’t look at her. He’d give a king’s ransom for a slug of gin.
‘And did you?’ she asked finally.
‘Yes.’ He wasn’t going to make excuses for himself. Besides, he didn’t have any, apart from being stupid and naive enough to fall for JJ’s reptilian charm.
‘Do you know why DI Jupp asked you to do that?’
‘He never said, but he led me to believe it was to protect an informant.’
‘An informant who’d kicked a pregnant girl to death?’
The chill in her voice was like a slap. He deserved every bit of scorn and contempt she could muster. He was a journalist. He could have discovered JJ’s reasons in five minutes flat if he’d really wanted to.
‘The woman Freddie interviewed in his final podcast,’ he said, ‘The one he called “Jane”, have you spoken to her?’ She paused just that bit too long. ‘I’m here to tell you everything I know,’ he pleaded. ‘Totally off the record, whatever I can do to help.’
She thought it over and then nodded. ‘ “Jane” doesn’t exist.’
He saw the younger detective look at Grace in surprise. From the manner in which DC Bromfield immediately tried to mask her reaction, her boss must have committed a massive indiscretion. Ivo thanked all the gods he could think of, silently promising to light candles, pour votive oil or kill fatted calves, whatever it took to express his overwhelming gratitude that he hadn’t entirely forfeited Grace’s trust.
‘So who was Freddie talking to?’ he asked.
‘The woman whose voice we heard on that last podcast came forward as soon as she heard about Freddie’s death,’ said Grace. ‘She owns a hairdressing salon in Southminster, which is where Freddie’s been staying with his grandmother. “Jane” is a leading light in the local am-dram society and says he asked her to do it and gave her a script.’
Ivo was stunned. The kid had made it up! He was more creative than Ivo had given him credit for.
‘We have Freddie’s phone and computer. No school friend of April Irwin ever made contact through his website.’
‘So there are no letters to “Hayley” either?’ he asked.
Grace glanced at DC Bromfield. ‘We had an idea that he might have been fictionalising events for a while now,’ she said. ‘Do you know why he’d do that?’
‘He was a nice kid,’ Ivo told her, ‘but he was desperate. He was skint and had been dumped by his girlfriend. All he wanted was to be a journalist, and he viewed this podcast as his last chance to catch a break. He must’ve decided to sex it up.’
‘And you think this stunt got him killed?’
‘If the man who did murder April Irwin believed Freddie was about to get hold of letters that would name him as the father of her child, then yes,’ said Ivo. ‘Whoever he is, he had the clout back then to make JJ risk a cover-up for him.’
Wrong Way Home: Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month Page 25