by Neil White
The routine was just the same. The slow walk along the path. The quiet knock on the door, as if it came with an unspoken hope that it wouldn’t be answered. But Wendy Sykes opened the door as they all did, with her face a mix of fear and shock and then tears. Another life changed for ever.
Wendy let the door swing open as she walked back into the house. She was small with short dark hair, dressed in jogging trousers and a T-shirt. She went straight to the kitchen and asked everyone to sit down at a long rectangular table. There was a slow-cooker on the side, filling the room with the aroma of warming stew.
Wendy turned to look out of the window, wiping her eyes. ‘I thought you were here about my husband, or maybe, you know…’ And Sam noticed that she glanced at a picture of two smiling young boys in a small wooden frame on the wall close to her.
She was still looking out of the window when she said, ‘How did she die?’
‘We can’t tell you, I’m sorry,’ Hunter said.
‘But she was killed, right? It wasn’t an accident, or suicide?’
‘I can’t tell you very much,’ Hunter said. ‘But yes, it looks like she was murdered.’
Wendy closed her eyes at that and took a deep breath. ‘Billy?’ she asked.
‘Why do you say that?’ Hunter said, leaning forward.
She opened her eyes and turned round. ‘I don’t mean anything. I thought you always looked at the husband, that’s all.’
‘Had Sarah ever said that Billy was violent?’
Wendy shook her head. ‘No. Just the opposite. Too placid, like she wanted to shake him up a bit, that everything was a bit steady. But everyone has a snapping point.’
‘Why would Billy snap?’ Hunter said.
Wendy paused before she said, ‘No reason.’
‘Billy said Sarah was with you two nights ago. Is that correct?’
Wendy looked to the floor for a few seconds. She let a tear roll down her cheek and then said in a low voice, ‘No, she wasn’t. I stayed in.’
Hunter exchanged small nods with Weaver. Billy’s story was checking out. ‘Did you know that Sarah said she was with you?’
‘So Billy said.’
‘But why would Sarah say she was with you if she wasn’t?’
‘I don’t know. I just know I was here, so I don’t think I can help you.’ The tears had gone now, replaced by tension.
‘Did she text you or call you?’ Hunter pressed.
Wendy reached for a mobile phone that was plugged into a wall socket, charging. ‘Have a look,’ she said, and skimmed it across the table to Hunter.
Sam watched over Hunter’s shoulder as he went to the messages folder. It was blank. Too blank, as if there’d been a clear-out.
Sam held out his hand. ‘Can I have a look?’
Hunter passed him the phone. A Samsung. Sam clicked on the phone icon and went to the logs, a list of all the texts and calls received and made. All the logged calls had a contact name next to it. Wendy was right. There were none from Sarah.
Sam passed it back to Wendy. ‘Thank you.’
When she took it from him, she said, ‘Can you go now?’
‘Not yet,’ Hunter said. ‘A woman has died. I want answers.’ Wendy folded her arms defiantly but Hunter went on regardless. ‘Do you know if Sarah was seeing someone else?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘If she told Billy she was with you and she wasn’t, you’re an alibi. I don’t know how close you are to Billy, whether he would call to check, but an alibi like this only works if the other person knows about it. So did you?’
Wendy pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘You saw my phone. I don’t know anything.’
Hunter softened his tone. ‘Your friend was murdered. It’s time to leave behind whatever you’re protecting. It will come out.’
Wendy didn’t say anything for a while and Hunter let the silence grow. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘And you don’t know where she was the other night?’
‘No.’
‘And you don’t know if she was seeing someone else?’
A tear ran down her cheek and her lip trembled. She wiped it away and shook her head. ‘Like I said, I don’t know anything.’
Hunter stood up and took a business card from his jacket pocket. ‘If you think of anything important, call me.’
Wendy took the card without looking and held it in her hand as she watched them leave.
When they were back in their car, Hunter looked back at the house and said, ‘That puts the husband in the frame.’
‘How come?’ Sam said, surprised.
‘She’s hiding something. She must be protecting Sarah, which means that whatever she knows would hurt Billy.’ He turned to look at Sam. ‘What do you think?’
Sam knew he was being tested. ‘It’s not a simple domestic,’ he said. ‘Billy seemed too plausible. Everything about him seemed genuine. And why display Sarah’s body like that if it was anything to do with him?’
‘To make people like you think of a different suspect,’ Hunter said. ‘Simple distraction.’
‘But why not just bury her and pretend that she’d run off?’ Sam said. ‘He risks forensic discovery in the hope that we interpret it differently? That doesn’t seem right.’
‘You’ve got to play the odds,’ Hunter said, his tone sharper as he started the engine. ‘That’s why you always start at the most obvious place.’
As Hunter set off, Sam wondered why they hadn’t searched Billy’s house more thoroughly. There could be blood or some forensic traces. Instead, they’d left with nothing but suspicions. If Billy was a serious suspect, Hunter didn’t seem to be doing a great job at investigating, and that worried him.
Twenty-two
Joe walked back towards his office through Crown Square, his car back in the underground garage beneath his apartment. He had gone the long way round, taking streets that avoided his office to bring him back round to the purpose of his route: Aidan’s mother.
Mary Molloy was in her usual place, where Joe had seen her so many times that she had begun to fade into the background. Her placard was against the small wall in front of the sloping grass verge that rose up to the Crown Court windows, just part of the daily noise and bustle. She was handing out leaflets to whoever was prepared to take them outside the place where it had all happened, putting in the hours in front of the building in which her son received his life sentence.
Joe watched her for a while. Her smile was engaging, lit her up, gave her some bounce and persuaded people to take leaflets, but whenever there was a gap in the flow of people it was revealed as a mask. She would return to her placard, her face filled with grim determination, her jaw set, eyes looking around, waiting for the next person who might come along, hoping always that the leaflet might end up in the hand of someone who could do something to change things. Behind the brightness of her smile, given up for whoever was passing, there was sadness. Joe hoped that her moment had come the day before, when he had taken one from her.
She sat on the low wall and rested for a few moments. Joe watched her. Her hair hung forward as she looked down, her feet tapping on the floor absent-mindedly, her arms resting on her knees. On some, it might have looked carefree. For Mary, it highlighted her sadness, showed that her thoughts were elsewhere.
Reaching into his pocket, Joe produced the leaflet he had been given the day before and held it up as he approached her.
As he got closer, she looked up and regarded him with suspicion, as if not used to someone approaching her, but then she regained her composure. ‘Can I help you?’ Her soft Irish accent took him by surprise again, having none of the sharp Manchester edges.
Joe smiled, trying to put her at ease. He looked at the leaflet and then back to Mary. ‘I just wondered if I could have a talk with you about your son’s case.’
‘Sure. Tell me first, who are you?’
‘My name is Joe Parker and I’m a lawyer at Honeywells.
’
Her warmth disappeared and an angry look flashed into her eyes, her temper quick. ‘What’s wrong? You worried that I’m soiling your reputation?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My son trusted you to prove the truth, but you didn’t, and now he’s in prison for something he didn’t do and you’re getting all prissy about me letting the world know.’
Joe realised that she blamed Honeywells for their part in the fiasco of her son’s imprisonment.
‘This is nothing to do with Honeywells,’ he said, his hands out, palms down. ‘I wasn’t at the firm when Aidan went to prison and no one knows I’m here.’ He held up the leaflet again. ‘I’m here to find out answers of my own.’
‘About Aidan’s case?’
‘Yes.’
Her brow furrowed and her lip jutted out, the look in her eyes a mix of confusion and suspicion. ‘Why the sudden interest?’
‘Some strange things have happened recently, and I wonder whether they are somehow connected to Aidan’s case. Until I talk to you, I don’t know.’
She stood up and folded her arms. ‘What kind of things?’
‘Come with me and we’ll talk.’
She paused for a few moments, and then nodded. ‘Let me call someone first.’
‘Who?’
‘Just a friend who’s helping me out. A reporter. We decide on strategy together, that’s all.’ When Joe shrugged, she stepped away and whispered into her mobile phone. A few seconds went by as she listened. When she looked back to Joe, her head cocked, her hand over the mouthpiece, she said, ‘Tell me where to meet you and I’ll come along as soon he gets here.’
‘The Acropolis. A café, just along there.’ And he pointed towards Bridge Street.
‘I know it,’ she said. She spoke into her phone and then to Joe, ‘Give me thirty minutes.’
Joe agreed and set off walking, ready for his wait. He didn’t have an urge to do much else with his afternoon.
The Acropolis was a greasy spoon in a narrow street not far from the court, run by an ageing Greek man who served milky coffees and large breakfast platters. The door tinkled as Joe went in and Andreas waved from behind the counter. Joe ordered an omelette and coffee and then sat and waited, his view out of the large windows obscured by the steam.
When Andreas brought over his food, he said, ‘I don’t see you in here so much, Joe.’
Joe smiled. ‘It’s no reflection on your food. It’s just, well, you know.’
‘We all have bad patches in our job,’ Andreas said, and he put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. ‘That girl who worked with you. I heard about it, and it wasn’t your fault.’
For a moment, Joe felt grateful for the contact, wanted to sit Andreas down and tell him all about how he felt about it, a friendly face who wouldn’t judge him, but as quickly as the emotion arrived, he pushed it away.
‘Thank you, Andreas,’ he said.
‘Ten years ago, I wanted to just close this place and go, but now?’ Andreas shrugged. ‘It’s my place in the city.’
Joe raised his cup. ‘I’m glad you stayed.’
Andreas trudged back behind his counter and to the back door, from where small trails of cigarette smoke drifted into the café.
For an hour, Joe watched the occasional passer-by and tried not to listen to the conversations of the other customers. Some were workmen who were renovating a derelict government building and knew that a greasy dinner from Andreas would get them through the afternoon, whereas others were just single old men with nothing to do but walk the streets, and staring into a coffee worked off an extra couple of hours. He wondered whether he had been stood up by Mary when he saw her.
He wiped the steam from the window, just to make sure it was her. There was a man walking with her. Tall, and slim, in a blue corduroy jacket and grey trousers.
Mary nodded at Joe as she walked in, the man with her looking back into the street, scanning it, before closing the door.
Mary slid into the table opposite Joe, the man alongside her, squeaking on the long green vinyl seat before leaning against the large tiled mosaic of the Acropolis.
Joe waved for three coffees and said, ‘I’m Joe Parker, from Honeywells.’
The man with Mary reached across with his hand to shake. ‘Sorry, I’m being rude,’ he said. ‘Tyrone McCarthy.’ And he gripped Joe’s hand hard as he shook it. It was meant to be noticed but Joe didn’t grimace. ‘I’m a reporter. I’ve been helping Mary with her campaign. I hope you don’t mind, but she asked me to be here when you spoke with her.’
‘Irish too?’ Joe said, thinking about his name.
Tyrone smiled. ‘It’s what drew me to her story at first. We’ve a lot in common. I was born here, but my parents are Irish. I felt some affinity.’
‘But why do you have to be here?’
Tyrone put a voice recorder on the table and switched it on. ‘Come on, Mr Parker, you’re a smart man, you know how it is. You work for the firm who acted for Aidan, who let him get convicted, and now you want to speak with her. If I’m helping Mary with her campaign, then I should know what you’re going to say.’
Mary peered into the mug as Andreas put the drinks on the table. ‘Think of it as latte,’ Joe said, which made her smile, the first real softening of her exterior, but it disappeared again as quickly as it had arrived.
Joe considered Tyrone and said, ‘Why were you looking around when you came in?’
Tyrone frowned. ‘Someone has been following me. Probably Mary too. I don’t know if it’s the police, worried about what we might uncover, or someone else.’
‘Someone else?’
‘We’re making a lot of noise, and people start to take notice. And it’s not just the police. Aidan did not kill Rebecca Scarfield, which means someone else did and that person will not want us looking at the case too deeply. Think about it: whoever killed her is still free because everyone thinks Aidan did it. If we prove otherwise, someone is going to get worried.’
Joe looked towards the window. ‘So who did you see?’
‘I don’t know, that’s just it. It was just that sensation of being followed.’
‘So who do you work for?’ Joe said.
‘The Evening Press,’ Tyrone said. ‘I keep on at my editor to do a spread, but he won’t let me yet. He’s worried about a backlash from the police, because of who Rebecca’s father is, the assistant chief constable.’
‘So why do you carry on?’
‘If I can find that one thing to persuade my editor to run with the story, to back a campaign, then it will be worth it.’
Joe saw it then. Mary was Tyrone’s ticket, nothing more. Tyrone hoped that he might make a name for himself on the back of her story. Joe felt a small tug of guilt – he saw something of himself in that equation. For him, Mary was also a means to an end.
Mary put down her mug and leaned forward. ‘So what has happened that involves Aidan?’ she said. ‘If it doesn’t help him, I’m not interested.’
‘Does the name David Jex mean anything to you?’ Joe said.
Her eyelids flickered and her lips tightened. ‘Yes, it does, and you know why, if you know anything about Aidan’s case.’
‘One of the detectives on his case,’ Joe said, nodding.
‘What about him?’
‘He’s gone missing.’
Mary looked confused. ‘I know. That was months back. I’ve read about it.’ She ran her finger round the edge of her mug, her nails short and bitten. ‘Do the police think he’s dead?’
‘I haven’t asked them.’
Mary looked into her drink for a while. ‘Does he have a family?’ she said eventually.
‘A wife and two children. A son and daughter. They don’t know where he is, but this is the thing: he was obsessing over Aidan’s case before he disappeared.’
Mary looked up, and Joe saw that the shadows had appeared around her again. ‘Perhaps it’s guilt for framing Aidan.’
‘Framing?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I know my son,’ she said, her voice raised, her hand pressed against her chest. ‘If he was a murderer, don’t you think I would know? I know what happened on that night. I know what time he got in. I told the police something different, I realise that, but I was confused, scared. I see now, and I can look myself in the mirror and be sure that I’m right, but I don’t think the witnesses can. That couple who saw Aidan’s car? Liars. Those girls who reckoned Aidan had threatened that woman? Liars. The detectives who worked on the case? Liars.’