Closer To Home

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Sorry to bother you so early,’ Barratt lied. He held out his warrant card and introduced himself. ‘I’m here about Aleah Reese.’

  Fowler just stared at him.

  ‘The little girl whose body was found on the old quarry site?’ Barratt prompted.

  ‘I know who she is. I just don’t know why you want to talk to me. I’ve given a statement.’

  ‘Yes,’ Barratt agreed. ‘And that’s why I’m here. I just want to clarify some details if that’s okay with you.’

  Another long, assessing stare, then Fowler stepped back and gestured for Barratt to step into the hallway. He led the way into an immaculate sitting room and pointed at a large leather sofa.

  ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘I’m going out in about fifteen minutes. I trust this won’t take long?’

  ‘Anywhere nice?’

  Fowler didn’t answer and Barratt suspected that his reticence was his default setting rather than a response to being interviewed.

  ‘Right. Well, I just need to ask about your encounter with Craig Reese. It seems that you’re his alibi for the night Aleah went missing.’

  ‘And he’s mine,’ Fowler said. ‘I’ve thought about that. If you suspect one of us then it’s my word against his regarding what happened that night.’ He sat in a chair opposite Barratt and waited. Barratt flicked back through his notes, trying not to let Fowler’s manner bother him.

  ‘You said that you saw Craig Reese at “sometime between half past nine and ten o’clock” near the pond where the girl’s body was found.’

  Fowler nodded.

  ‘And you’d already been to the pond?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Why did you go back so late?’

  Fowler sighed. ‘It seemed an obvious place to look. Kids play over there all the time. If she’d run away or been hiding from her parents I just thought she might have gravitated to the pond at some point.’

  Barratt made a note of ‘gravitated’, Fowler was obviously educated and eloquent despite his reticence.

  ‘But you’d checked there earlier?’

  ‘No. Somebody in my team checked there.’

  ‘So why the need to see for yourself? Don’t you trust your team?’

  Fowler grinned disconcertingly as though he was unused to smiling.

  ‘Of course I trust my team. But what would you do in the circumstances? A little girl was missing, I couldn’t just clock off at five and go home. Is that what you do at the end of a shift? Whatever’s going on, you just leave it until tomorrow? I doubt it. I couldn’t come back here and just sit, so I kept busy.’

  ‘Do you work?’

  Fowler scowled at him and seemed reluctant to answer.

  ‘Retired,’ he finally said. ‘Royal Logistics Corp.’

  ‘And you live alone?’ Barratt asked, glancing round the room that seemed to have been lifted wholesale out of an interior design magazine. There wasn’t a chair or a cushion out of place. The curtains were held back with tasteful tiebacks and the distressed hardwood floor looked expensive. He found himself wondering if Fowler were gay and then gave himself a mental slap for lazy stereotyping.

  ‘I do,’ Fowler confirmed. ‘I bought this place before it was even built. I like the area and I liked the plans. My sister’s an interior designer and she took charge of the decorating. I have a regular cleaner who does a much better job than I ever could of keeping the place tidy. I’m not very domesticated.’

  ‘So, there’s no Mrs Fowler?’

  The stare again.

  ‘Okay. Back to Tuesday night. How did Craig Reese seem to you?’

  ‘Seem?’

  ‘Was he agitated? Distracted? Upset?’

  ‘Distracted.’

  The answer was so definite that Barratt immediately regretted even suggesting it. Was he leading Fowler?

  ‘Distracted how?’ he asked.

  Fowler thought for a minute.

  ‘He didn’t see me at first even though it wasn’t dark. He was wandering along with his hands in his pockets and his head down.’

  ‘Was he walking towards the pond or away?’

  ‘Towards. He said he couldn’t settle so he’d decided to carry on looking for Aleah. I told him that I’d just checked the pond.’

  ‘And then where did he go?’

  Fowler shrugged.

  ‘He just turned away and kept on along the path.’

  ‘Towards the village?’

  Another shrug.

  Barratt snapped his notebook closed and slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

  ‘I do have another reason for being here,’ he said with what he hoped was a convincing smile. ‘My boss told me that you were driving an old Land Rover and I hoped to get a look at it. It sounded like a classic but I couldn’t be sure from her description. I didn’t see it on the drive though.’

  Fowler gave him an appraising glance and Barratt wondered if his fifteen minutes of internet research would be enough to convince Fowler that he was an enthusiast.

  ‘You know Land Rovers?’ Fowler asked, his head tilted sceptically to one side.

  ‘Not really,’ Barratt hedged. ‘I’m just a beginner. My grandad had one when I was a kid and I loved it so I started to find out a bit about them.’

  ‘And what have you found out?’

  ‘All sorts. I quite fancy finding a 1970s Series 3 and doing it up. I’ve heard that the parts aren’t too hard to find.’

  Fowler nodded, satisfied. ‘Come on then.’

  He led the way through the kitchen, which was as impressively clean and tasteful as the living room, to a door which appeared to lead into the garage. It was bolted top and bottom and deadlocked. Whatever Fowler had in the garage was obviously valuable to warrant so much security. Fowler caught Barratt looking at the lock as he turned the key.

  ‘Can’t be too sure,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Right then, here you go.’

  He reached round Barratt and flicked a switch which lit a row of strip lights that ran the length of the garage ceiling. Like the rest of the house the place was orderly and, for a garage, very clean. Garden tools were bracketed to the end wall and the side walls were lined with steel cupboards and cabinets which, Barratt assumed, contained tools. In the middle of it all was the Land Rover. Barratt was impressed despite himself. He’d done a bit of research about classic Land Rovers just to see what they were worth and he knew that this one was something special. Or it could be. It was obviously used, and used often. The tyres were worn and the wheel hubs dusty. The windscreen needed a wipe and the olive-green paintwork was splashed with dirty water marks, probably from one of the recent showers.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, appreciatively. ‘She’s quite something. I’m surprised that you drive her.’

  Fowler turned and frowned at him.

  ‘What else would I do with it? It’s a functional vehicle.’

  ‘But she must be worth a fortune. What model is she?’ Barratt couldn’t help but stick with the female pronoun despite Fowler’s use of ‘it’.

  ‘A 1959 series II. If I gave it a good clean and replaced the brake pads and the back canvas it’d probably sell for about fifty-grand,’ Fowler said. ‘In this condition, somewhere between thirty-five and forty.’

  Barratt whistled. He’d seen models on some of the websites he’d browsed that were worth a similar amount but he hadn’t expected Fowler to have something so valuable. He seemed to be doing well for somebody who was retired. Barratt considered asking Fowler about his financial situation but it was more curiosity than anything relevant to the enquiry.

  ‘Did you do the restoration?’ he asked instead, trying to draw the man out with conversation about his hobbies.

  Fowler shook his head. ‘It was about half done when I got it. I’ve done a lot of bits and pieces but there are still a few bits I could do, like the canvas and the seat covering’s been replaced with cheap vinyl at some point.’

  ‘Do you mind if I…’ Barratt stepped closer to the vehicle, be
nding to peer through the passenger side window. The seat was strewn with maps and papers, obviously left over from Tuesday’s search.

  ‘I used to sit in the back of my grandad’s,’ he lied. ‘Can I have a look?’

  Fowler stepped past him, rolled up the canvas and unlocked the rear door, swinging it open for Barratt to inspect the back. He glanced at the floor. Rubber matting with the Land Rover logo covered the space between the small bench seats. It was ridged but the grooves seemed narrower than the ones on the autopsy photograph.

  ‘Does it have a sick hole?’ he asked with a grin. ‘My granddad’s had a hole in the metal between the seats. I was never sure if he’d put it there or if it came as standard. He called it a sick hole so that the vomit would drain away if anybody got travel sick.’

  The story sounded convincing to his own ears but Fowler’s eyes narrowed and Barratt sensed that he might be getting suspicious.

  ‘Never heard of that,’ he said, pulling back the rubber matting to reveal a plywood base. ‘Must’ve been a later model. I’m not sure what’s under the plywood but from underneath it looks like a solid sheet of metal. Haven’t bothered to take the wood off yet though. No point.’

  Barratt nodded as though everything Fowler was saying made perfect sense but he found it hard to mask his disappointment. He’d had visions of arresting Fowler for Aleah’s murder and phoning it in, in triumph, to Fletcher. There was still the mat though. He could be mistaken about the pattern. Something beeped in the kitchen and Fowler glanced over his shoulder then back at Barratt.

  ‘I need to see to that,’ he said, obviously urging Barratt to follow him back in to the house.

  ‘Okay,’ Barratt said. ‘Could I just have a look in the front?’

  The older man sighed and went back through the door to the kitchen. Barratt dug in his pocket for his phone and managed to get images of the mat and the cab of the vehicle before Fowler returned.

  ‘Summons from the boss,’ Barratt said, waving his phone in Fowlers direction to disguise the real reason for it being in his hand.

  ‘Was there anything else?’ Fowler asked.

  ‘I think that’s all for now,’ Barratt said, trying to place just the right amount of emphasis on the final part of the sentence. He didn’t want Fowler to think that he was above suspicion just yet.

  Fowler led the way back through the house and they parted at the front door. As he was heading down the drive Barratt turned as though the thought had just struck him.

  ‘You can’t drive that Landy all the time. Have you got another vehicle?’

  Fowler shook his head, his expression neutral.

  ‘Nope. Just the Land Rover.’

  Unless he was lying this was another dead end. Fletcher wouldn’t be impressed.

  14

  2015

  It was mid-afternoon when Kate and Hollis finally managed to get back to Thorpe. Raymond had had them both busy with paperwork and Kate suspected that he was trying to get her to back away from the face-to-face investigation and trust her team. Barratt had been gone all morning chasing Ken Fowler, and O’Connor was meeting yet another contact about the smuggling problem in the area. As she read through statements and signed overtime request sheets she wondered if this promotion was going to be what she actually wanted, if it took her away from the front-line investigating that she loved. Hollis had been getting irritated as well, she could hear it in his heavy sighs and the over-loud tapping on his keyboard. Only Cooper had seemed happy, headphones on, tapping away as she mined for information.

  Now, back on the estate, Kate was starting to feel like she’d never been away; that the past thirty-odd years of her life had been just a spectacularly detailed dream. Here she was again, a few streets away from the house she’d grown up in, desperately noting the small changes in the houses and the roads which would signify that time had actually passed.

  The Goodwins lived in one of the two ‘squares’ on the estate, a quirk of the council planners that had never made much sense to Kate. Perhaps they had felt an obligation to break the monotony of ordinary, linear streets, or perhaps they saw it as making the best use of all the available land. On an estate where space didn’t seem to be too much of a concern – green triangles had been laid at the end of each street like grassy parentheses and the gardens were much bigger than on modern housing estates – Kate was inclined to opt for the former.

  She’d been right when she’d described the cul-de-sac as a goldfish bowl. The street seemed narrower and the houses huddled just a little bit closer together than on the ‘ordinary’ streets as though they sensed their difference and needed the protection of their peers. There was very little room for parking and Hollis swore as he tried to manoeuvre the car into a space between a marked police car and a delivery van.

  ‘Just park out on the street,’ Kate said. ‘It’s not worth the stress.’

  Hollis reversed out and did as he was instructed, leaving them a short walk to the Goodwins’ house.

  Kate had expected it to be at the end of the ‘square’ facing the entrance but it was one of the semis that flanked either side. It had a large front garden which was a swathe of grass divided almost perfectly in half by a strip of concrete leading up to a prefabricated garage – a rarity on the Crosslands Estate, Kate noted. A smaller strip of concrete ran from an inconspicuous gate in the hedge up the side of the lawn to the front door. The living room window overlooked the path and Kate had a distinct feeling that their approach was being watched.

  She was dreading this interview. The family would have heard about Aleah and must be fearing the worst after a night of uncertainty and dread. She had no words of comfort to offer. The circumstances were too similar, the likelihood of the same person being behind the taking of both children was extremely high. But she knew that they’d still be hoping for Callum’s safe return and she didn’t want to kill that by saying the wrong thing.

  Hollis knocked on the door and it was opened almost instantly. The woman standing in the hallway was vaguely familiar to Kate and she wondered if they’d been at school at the same time. She looked about the right age although she’d dyed her hair a deep brown in an attempt to look younger.

  ‘Liz McKintyre,’ she said, offering her hand and ignoring Hollis’s outstretched warrant card. The name didn’t ring any bells. ‘You must be DI Fletcher and DC Hollis. I was told to expect you. I’m the FLO.’ Kate nodded her understanding. People higher up the chain of command had obviously made the connection to the Reese case and had sent in somebody to be with the family.

  McKintyre smiled at Hollis as she ushered him inside but her expression changed when she got a clear look at Kate. Puzzlement, quickly replaced with recognition.

  ‘Kathy Siddons?’ she asked, her voice betraying her slight disbelief.

  Kate just smiled.

  ‘It is. I’d recognise you anywhere. You sat opposite me in English for two years. You’ve hardly changed at all.’

  Kate stared at the woman, trying to imagine her as she might have looked thirty years ago. The grin was familiar but the hair colour was wrong. The girl she was vaguely remembering had been fair-haired with a long fringe. The brunette spikes were confusing her.

  ‘Libby Walker?’

  The other woman’s smile widened.

  ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ she said to Kate. ‘It’s been a long time. Would’ve thought you’d have moved away for good. Can’t see why anybody would come back once they’d managed to escape.’

  ‘Things change,’ Kate said, hoping to curtail the conversation. ‘I wanted a promotion and this is where I ended up.’

  The FLO shook her head again and looked Kate up and down. ‘Detective Inspector, eh? You always were one of the clever ones at school. I’m not surprised that you’ve made something of your life.’

  ‘You’re obviously not doing so bad yourself,’ Kate responded, returning the scrutiny. ‘No uniform? You’ve obviously done okay.’

  Liz grinned. ‘Trained as an FLO
as soon as I joined CID. It suits me better than day-to-day investigation. I’m better with people than paperwork.’

  Kate nodded appreciatively. She’d worked with some excellent FLOs in Cumbria and they’d always been prepared to go above and beyond for whichever family they’d been assigned to. It wasn’t a soft option for a police officer – the balancing act of having an active role in the investigation and providing support to the family was never an easy one to maintain.

  ‘How are they?’ she asked, nodding in the direction of the kitchen, assuming that was where the family would have gathered.

  ‘Holding up. They’ll not be best pleased to see you two, though.’

  That was what Kate had been dreading. She and Hollis had no good news, no hope, just more questions and she knew that, as soon as she mentioned Aleah Reese, these parents would start making assumptions that they shouldn’t have to make. But Cooper hadn’t been able to find anything and Kate had to know if there was any connection.

  ‘Come through,’ Liz said, leading the way. Kate gestured for Hollis to go first, hoping that his bulky presence might offer some reassurance before she started asking the questions that the parents wouldn’t want to answer.

  The kitchen was almost a mirror image of Jackie Reese’s. The units were a similar light wood and the counter tops almost the same shade of dark grey marble. Obviously the two women shopped at the same place. It wasn’t much of a connection though, the same taste in kitchens. Two people were sitting at the table, opposite each other. The woman was staring into a mug but the man looked up when they entered and Kate saw the unmistakable light of hope flicker in his eyes.

  ‘Trevor? Anna? Two detectives are here to ask you some questions.’

  The light in Trevor Goodwin’s eyes died, to be replaced with a slowly smouldering rage. He resented their presence before they could even open their mouths.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Kate Fletcher,’ Kate introduced herself. The man scowled, his face reddening. He looked like a boxer who’d gone to seed. His slightly off-centre nose gave him a faintly boss-eyed look and his large lips and ears looked like he might have been on the receiving end of a few well-aimed punches. He thrust his double chin out in a pugnacious challenge.