(2011) Only the Innocent

by Rachel Abbott

  Laura was crying. She bit the inside of her mouth to try to control her urge to sob out everything - all the things that she had kept to herself for so long. Things that even Imogen didn’t know. But she knew she mustn’t. She told Will how she had reported her suspicions to Theo Hodder. She had no idea how much of this Becky knew - maybe Tom had told her, maybe he hadn’t. But she didn’t care.

  ‘But it didn’t work, Will,’ she sobbed. ‘I should have tried harder to make somebody believe me. I should have stopped him before now. But I couldn’t. Hugo knew I was on to him, and he had all the cards, you see. It’s much more complex than any of you realise.’

  She looked at Becky and Will, and could see nothing but bewilderment on their faces. They had no idea what she was talking about now.

  ‘Those poor, poor girls. Hadn’t they suffered enough? They’d been brought to England full of hope, only to find that they had to service God knows how many revolting men each day. Then they were rescued and all was well for a while. Life started to look good. Then a devil in disguise smiled at them, and they didn’t recognise what he was. What’s that Shakespeare quote? ‘O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain.’ That was my husband. That was Hugo.’

  CHAPTER 36

  As soon as the ambulance had left with a weak - but alive - Mirela, Tom arranged for a car to take Beatrice back to Oxfordshire.

  ‘Beatrice, thank you so much for agreeing to come. The local police have arrived now, and they’re taking over. But I’m going to stay here and work with them. You’ve been a great help, you know, and I do hope it hasn’t been too traumatic for you.’

  She patted him on the arm in an almost maternal way, which seemed at odds with her previous manner. She must have been as shocked as anybody. After all, Hugo was her brother.

  ‘I’ve lived a long time, Tom, and witnessed a lot of pain and suffering over the years. It’s deeply disturbing that a member of my own family treated another human being in this deplorable fashion, but I don’t think it’s me you should be worried about.’

  Beatrice looked genuinely concerned as she continued.

  ‘How do you think Laura’s going to take this? Whatever she suspected, it’s not going to be an easy thing to come to terms with.’

  Tom didn’t want to contemplate how Laura would feel. She had lived with this man, and been his wife for several years, so on top of all the other emotions there was inevitably going to be a huge sense of humiliation - the shame of living with a monster, and the guilt of wondering whether any of the blame could rest with her. He tried to think of a way to lessen her pain.

  ‘Beatrice, you may be able to help. At the moment, Laura will only have the bare facts. But you’ve seen what this place is like. One of the locals told me that the fence and gate have been here for at least twelve years, as far as he can remember, so whatever Hugo’s been doing, he’s been doing it for a long time. Since before he met Laura. She needs to be made to understand that whatever has happened, it is not her fault. I don’t think anybody but you will be able to convince her of that - particularly given what you told me on the journey down here. Would you do that for me, please?’

  Beatrice squeezed his arm.

  ‘You’re a kind and thoughtful man, Tom Douglas. I would say that it will be my pleasure - but of course it won’t. I’ll talk to Laura and I’ll do my best to make her understand, because I don’t want the innocent to suffer any more than you do.’

  Trying his best to muster a smile of thanks, Tom quickly helped Beatrice into the waiting car and returned to the house.

  ‘Good timing, Tom,’ DCI Sarah Charles, the Senior Investigating Officer from the Dorset police informed him. ‘We’ve managed to open the study door about ten minutes ago. Hugo clearly didn’t want anybody getting in there, given the elaborate locks, so let’s see what he’s been hiding, shall we?’

  A quiet voice interrupted them. Bruce, the ever-resourceful young sergeant had been put in charge of searching the upper floors, and Tom could see that he still looked a little pale. But then he had been the one to find Mirela, and it couldn’t have been easy for him. Even the most hardened and experienced of policemen never really become inured to acts of blatant cruelty.

  ‘Ma’am, sir, I thought you should know that we’ve found lots of female clothing upstairs in the attic. Some of it’s in cheap suitcases, some just in bin liners. But it’s all just shoved in - there’s no way it’s been packed for a trip.’

  ‘All for one woman, would you say Bruce?’ Sarah Charles asked.

  ‘Doubt it, ma’am. Several different sizes - none big - from about a size six to about a ten, I’m reliably informed.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. You know the drill.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Tom spoke for the first time.

  ‘What do you reckon, Sarah?’

  She shook her head and gave a small shrug.

  ‘I don’t feel good about this, if I’m honest. I’ve got that tell-tale tingle up my spine. You?’

  ‘Yep. All the way.’

  Without another word, they turned and headed for the study. A couple of crime scene technicians were busy, but they waved them in.

  ‘What’ve you got, guys?’

  ‘We’ve just started, but there doesn’t seem to be much. Just a pile of bills and a ledger. It’s got dates, names, numbers and addresses, but they’re all quite old. The most recent one is dated at least a couple of years ago.’

  Checking first that the crime scene team had finished with the ledger, Tom opened it on the desk, and he and Sarah leaned over it eagerly. It took Tom less than a minute to recognise the significance.

  ‘Wait here, Sarah - I need to get something from my car,’ he said, turning quickly and leaving the room almost at a run.

  He yanked open the car door and grabbed his briefcase from the back. He was sure that he recognised those names, but he needed to be certain. And there was one aspect of the list that he was finding particularly uncomfortable.

  Sarah was watching him speculatively as he dumped his briefcase on the desk, opened it and started rummaging through the papers.

  ‘Here it is. I thought I’d brought a copy with me,’ he said with grim satisfaction. It was the list of the girls that had gone missing over the last five years.

  The ledger went back much further than that, but he compared the dates and names in the diary with the list from the charity. The names matched, but the dates were all out by several months. And next to each of them were two figures. The first was a fairly consistent one thousand pounds, but the second varied - anything from a hundred to five hundred.

  Tom slapped the table with his hand.

  ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘The reason the dates are out is that these are the dates that he let the girls go, not the dates he brought them here. Look, the dates in the ledger are almost always a couple of weeks before the next girl went missing - so it’s out with the old, and in with the new. Any idea about the numbers, Sarah?’

  Sarah stared at the paper with a frown of concentration.

  ‘He’s got their addresses. That must be relevant. Do you think he paid them off, Tom?’

  ‘It’s possible, but why do the entries stop a couple of years ago? We know he was still taking girls.’ He checked his list again. There were six other names, plus Mirela. It didn’t make any sense.

  He peered closely at the ledger page. The last entry had been struck out with what appeared to be considerable force. The paper was nearly scored through. He noticed that a couple of the letters were still just about legible. Shit. He compared the date to his list, knowing without a doubt what he was going to find. He was right. And after that final name, there were no more names, no more addresses, and no more sums of money.

  Tom went cold. Perhaps he was reading too much into this. Perhaps Hugo had a different ledger that they hadn’t found yet. But he didn’t believe it.

  The door opened and Bruce popped his head round.

  ‘We found a couple of bits of ID i
n the clothes bags. Nothing much. One had an old letter in it, but it’s written in a foreign language, so I’ve no idea what it says. The name on the envelope might be helpful though. One of the other bags had a cleaner’s security pass for a hospital. We’ve bagged them - I don’t know if they’re any use. There’s nothing else.’

  Bruce passed the two bags to Sarah, and turned to go back to his search. Pressing the bag against the contents, Sarah read out two names to Tom. He didn’t need to check his list again. He knew both of these names would be there - but neither was in the ledger.

  ‘Sarah - I’m going to give you a timeline of events and a series of known facts. I’m too close to this, so before I jump to the wrong conclusion, I want to hear what you think.’

  He pointed Sarah to a chair, and she sat, watching him. But he couldn’t sit down. He paced backwards and forwards, hands thrust deeply in his pockets.

  ‘We know that Hugo has been taking girls. We know when he has taken them, and judging by the ledger, we know when he let them go. It would seem he gave them money. But the last girl on that list - the one that he has scored out - has cropped up several times in our investigation into Hugo’s murder. Her name is Alina Cozma. We know when he took her.’

  Tom paused for a moment and glanced at Sarah, to check that she was with him. Then he continued pacing, staring at the floor as he concentrated.

  ‘Alina Cozma went to Hugo’s office. It was months after he had taken her. And according to one of Hugo’s staff, she was smartly dressed. That suggests that she had either had her payoff, or Hugo had bought her some clothes - but my guess would be the payoff. She had an argument with Hugo, and later she was seen in his car, driving away from the office. The only word that the secretary heard was ‘pool’. She assumed that Alina meant ‘a’ pool - but what if she meant ‘Poole’? Isn’t that the closest big town?’

  Sarah nodded, her eyes following Tom’s movements. She probably thought he was raving, but he knew he was onto something. Alina must have known where he’d taken her, and his gut said that Hugo wouldn’t have been at all happy with that.

  Tom thought back. There was something else. Something to do with Laura’s letter to Imogen that he had read - the one about Danika Bojin.

  ‘Some of Alina’s friends were looking for her. They went to the office in London. Then two days later, one of them went to his home in Oxfordshire to try to see Hugo. According to Hugo’s PA it was also two days after the friends’ visit to the London office that Alina Cozma turned up there, and was driven off in Hugo’s car. It must have been the same day. But Hugo’s wife said that he was away that night, and it was unexpected. She also said he was very angry about something, and he was away for a couple of days.’

  Tom walked over to the desk and grabbed his list of names and dates that girls went missing.

  ‘The next girl disappeared only days later - so what happened to Alina? And why are there no more addresses?’

  He felt sure that Sarah would have struggled with his timeline as the names and the whole story were new to her, but he had been speaking more to himself than to her. It was equally clear from the expression on her face that the implications had hit her with force. Hugo was still taking the girls, but why were their clothes still here, and why were there no more addresses?

  ‘There’s one more thing, Sarah. My sergeant has been talking to Hugo’s wife, Laura. It is her view that if he treated them this badly, he would never have let them go. My guess is that everything escalated with Alina.’

  He could see from Sarah’s face that her thoughts were mirroring his.

  They needed to get a team here now. They needed to search the grounds, the cellars and the outbuildings. And they needed specialist equipment, because by Tom’s reckoning, they could be looking for the remains of six bodies.

  CHAPTER 37

  Tom was beginning to feel a little superfluous at Lytchett Minster Farm. It was only a few hours since they had formulated their gruesome theory, but now the specialists had arrived and Sarah Charles had everything under control. It was, after all, her jurisdiction. He was relieved to have received a call from the hospital though, to say that Mirela was responding well to treatment. She had been rehydrated and was weak but able to talk.

  He knew that nobody in the Dorset force had his knowledge of the case and there were some questions he desperately needed answering, so asking Sarah to keep him up to speed by telephone, he set off for the hospital. It hadn’t taken long for the press to get wind of the basic facts of course, so he had to squeeze his way past the tightly packed cars and satellite vans that were now lining the narrow lane. They only knew that a girl had been found and that she was alive, but these guys had been to enough crime scenes and would easily recognise the significance of men in white coveralls. And if they brought in the dogs, Sarah would have to make a statement - something she was hoping to avoid for another couple of hours until they had more solid evidence.

  He’d just made it to the main road when his phone rang.

  ‘Tom Douglas,’ he said.

  ‘Guess who’s just called, boss?’ said a rather smug Ajay. ‘Jessica sodding Armstrong! She’s just seen the breaking news on the telly, and has finally twigged that her idol is not quite all he was cracked up to be. She’s finally dished the dirt.’

  Tom slapped the steering wheel with satisfaction.

  ‘At last, she’s developed a conscience. But the question is, does it help?’

  ‘Well, I think it supports your theory. The day that Hugo rushed out after Alina Cozma, it appears he left his desk drawer not only unlocked, but slightly open, and Little Miss Nosey had a look, didn’t she? She found a load of envelopes, and each one was addressed to one of the girls who had gone missing over the previous couple of years. She recognised the names, of course. And there was money inside. Hugo realised that she’d sussed him, and gave her some cock and bull story about singling girls out for special scholarships, but of course it had to remain completely confidential.’

  ‘Hah. A likely story! So what did he pay Jessica for then?’ Tom asked

  ‘He asked her to take over making the payments for him, and said he would give her a bonus for doing it. She realised, of course, that he was paying her to keep schtum and I don’t think she ever believed him about the scholarships. She strongly suspected he’d taken these girls as mistresses and was just paying them off, but she thought it was his right since he was locked in such an unhappy marriage.’

  Tom was trying hard to maintain his concentration on the road, follow the directions he’d been given to the hospital, and listen to Ajay at the same time.

  ‘Has he carried on with the payments?’ Tom asked

  ‘There were no new names added to the list, according to Jessica. When she’d originally checked the envelopes, there was one addressed to Alina - but when he passed the envelopes over the one for Alina was missing. She presumed Hugo must have given her cash or something, but her name was never on the list after that, although he kept paying the others. She thought he must have either settled on Alina as a permanent mistress, or decided that he was playing a dangerous game.’

  Tom was so glad that Ajay had spoken to Jessica. He thought he would have had a problem keeping his temper, and if he ever had to see her again he would feel a strong temptation to throttle her. Ajay hadn’t finished though.

  ‘Jessica also said that this explained what she described as Hugo’s ‘suppressed excitement’ and that he’d promised to continue to reward her loyalty as long as she stayed with him. She preferred to believe that this was an act of altruism, as she called it.’ Ajay snorted with derision, and Tom had great sympathy with his unvoiced opinion.

  It was all slotting perfectly into place, although none of this brought them any closer to discovering who killed Hugo Fletcher. He had to admit that the murderer had probably saved at least one life, though - that of Mirela Tinescy.

  The call ended as Tom parked his car in the hospital car park, and made his way to Mire
la’s bedside. He had no idea how capable she would be of telling him everything he needed to know, given the trauma she had been subjected to.

  He was pleased to see that Mirela had been given a private room, but he noticed how pale her face looked, with deep hollows for cheeks. He suspected that she had already been quite a slim girl, but days without food and water had taken their inevitable toll. The shape of her body was barely visible under the bedclothes. His own stomach was rumbling, but he would just have to ignore that. He walked into the room, and sat down quietly in the visitor’s chair, waiting to see if she would acknowledge his arrival. Her eyes were closed, and he hated to disturb her.

  ‘Mirela,’ he said quietly. Her eyes didn’t open, but her head turned slightly towards him, so he knew that she had heard him. ‘My name is Tom Douglas. I’m a policeman, and I need to talk to you. I’m so sorry to have to do this, but if there is any way that you can talk to me I would be really grateful.’

  She opened her eyes and they had the look of a baby deer, caught in the headlights of a car. He should have brought a female officer with him. What a stupid mistake.

  ‘Would you like me to ask a nurse to sit with us? Would that make you more comfortable?’

  Mirela seemed to think about it for a moment, and then she gave a slight shake of the head.

  ‘It’s okay. You have a kind face.’ she said, with an attempted smile.

  ‘Do you think you can tell me what happened, Mirela - how you came to be in Sir Hugo’s house on your own?’ Tom didn’t mention the fact that she was tied up - he would try to introduce that later.

  Mirela spoke quietly, and he didn’t catch every word. But it was enough. She explained how all the girls got follow up visits from the charity, to check how they were settling in and to see if they had any problems.

  ‘About six months ago, my visit is from Sir Hugo. I am very surprised by this, but pleased. He tells me that I am special, and he want to help me. He will look for a better life for me, but I must wait.’